In Bangalore for a second Innings

From Amchi Mumbai to Bangalore!
Yes, six months in Bombay was enough. I got tired of the crowds, the squalor, the commute...
Wonder why people like that city so much. Maybe it's me, that I don't see what other people see.
Anyway, here in Bengaluru for my second innings.
And right away I can say I don't like the laid back life here, or the total lack of road sense in Bangalore's drivers.
But I guess the divine has some reason for bringing me here; will wait and watch for things to unfold.

Holi in Mumbai - The city shows its culture

Well, it was my first Holi after shifting to Mumbai and I must say it was really a surprise for me. Because the Holi celebrations I witnessed here was a LOT less nasty than the ones I had been through in Delhi. Of course, there were incidents reported of extremes but those were more of isolated incidents.
I saw people in formal attires walking past unconcerned while groups of youngsters played Holi. If it was Delhi, those guys would have been promptly caught hold of and dunked in drain water mixed with colours! Hats off to Mumbai's culture.
Come to think of it, Delhi has no culture. The different invasions that destroyed it time and again, including the quelling of the 1857 mutiny by the British, have left the city with no continuous lines of people to carry forward its culture. If you read William Dalrymple's book The Last Mughal, you will understand what I mean. Much of that mutiny was carried forward by the cooks, dhobis and the sweepers. The culture czars of Delhi had almost no part in the happenings, and finally the Brits killed off those who were left.
Delhi still remains a city without a culture of its own; the only culture it knows is the culture of the sweeper, washerman and the cook. They 'salaam' before you and once your back is turned hurl abuses on you. And scruples is something they haven't heard of. Mix it with the kind of unprincipled politics this country has, especially with all those netas being in Delhi, you would know what to expect of from Delhi and Delhiites!

Swept aside by the forces of greed and selfishness...

The train I take to work every day travels over the Vashi creek. The area surrounding the creek was once a marshy mangrove, but is now a bustling urban centre. A lot of people are moving into Navi Mumbai, just across the Vashi creek; and the marshland is being filled in ever more rapidly. The ecological implications of these changes are enormous, even to the untrained eye. But strangely, no one seems to be giving it much thought. I even read a news report after I came to Mumbai of the state environment minister saying the remaining mangroves should be cut down to make way for highrises!
My friends, who have been in this city far longer than I have been, tell me that only a few years back there was not one human being in the area. Pioneers here say stories of how hard daily life was in the early days of development, with taxis and even groceries hard to come by.
This transformation has set me thinking: who lived here once and were there wild animals in those ghats overlooking the coast? I still have no answers. But I guess there could have been people here; those that scrapped a living out of the meagre resources that nature offered, much like rural life in India in the early 1960s.
All those people could have been swept off by the fast-paced development. Many of those people would have become dependant on the new economy, after seeing their lands and the countryside which provided them sustenance, being snatched away from them.
It is a sad story, and our rulers are ensuring that it get repeated across the country, day after day. Naxalites and other radical elements may try to profit from this displacement and disempowerment but I don't think they can make any lasting transformation in the way things are going now. The forces of the market, fuelled by greed and selfishness, are too strong to be stopped on their tracks, let alone rolled back, by such radical movements.
So what next? I guess we are heading for a huge ecological disaster. I shudder to think of its dimensions and implications.