Thursday, September 19, 2013

City beat: ichangemycity, Janaagraha

Three ways to one destination- Part II

Aliyeh Rizvi sets off on Phase II of our project – evaluating different ways to get to one destination (Cunningham Road – MG Road) and how convenient or people-friendly they really are. This week it’s public transport – the BMTC Bus.  

It’s 3:50 pm on a weekday and I’m standing here at the CSI bus stop on Queen’s Road, near the Veterinary Hospital, waiting for a 295, 300 or 302, which ever arrives first. There is no information on routes or timings at the bus stop but there are plenty of advertisements. Evidently, revenue precedes the need for critical public information. At 4:05 pm, a blue and white BMTC bus that has evidently seen better days shudders to a halt and I hop in, happy to finally be on the 300 and on an adventure into the hazy, crazy world of public transport in Bangalore.   


I pay the conductor Rs 4/- for a ticket.There are only 15 people on the bus. But a few hours later, this bus will be full of people anxious to beat the traffic and reach home on time. The bus stops at the Queen’s Road junction signal. The Indian Express building looms large as we lurch sharply towards the left and turn into Meenakshi Koil street, heading down to Shivaji Circle. In Tamil, Meenakshi means ‘fish-eyed’ and Koil is ‘temple’. Two minutes later, I sail past the vibrant yellow façade of the Sree Dandu Mariamman Temple, dedicated to the fish-eyed Goddess Mariamman,  an incarnation of Sakthi, the consort of Lord Shiva. The location of the temple is significant. 

In 1898, Shivajinagar (then called Blackpalli) was the site of a terrible plague which claimed over 12,000 (T P Issar, The City Beautiful) lives. Temples were immediately built to invoke Mariamman, the ‘Plague Deity’ who protects her people against viral diseases like smallpox, measles and chickenpox. Her symbols are the Margosa (Neem) tree and leaves, turmeric and rain, all possessing cleansing properties. The mass migration to the city outskirts during the plague also resulted in the creation of the early suburbs ( Basavanagudi and Malleswaram) and the development of a formal city sanitation plan.


 The bus rolls past an old Unani and Ayurvedic medicine shop and tea houses selling the famous Suleimani Chai. The conductor finally shouts ‘Shivajinagar!”  It’s 4: 10 pm. I now need to walk in to the Shivajinagar Bus Stand and look for 331-A to get to MG Road. The city route map on a wall is helpful except that South Bangalore, an entire section of the city, has been wiped out by the flick of a wrist! The Canara Bank ATM is right next to the Shree Ganesh Upahar, in case you need to stick around here for a while. The route information at each bay is in Kannada, but the bus numbers are in English. You might therefore, need to know your bus number beforehand.



4:45 pm :Many buses have come in together so there’s a bottle neck, with much honking. I hop impatiently into a bus – 335E en route to Adugodi – which is a gleaming red, air-conditioned Vajra. Popular Kannada movie tunes provide a pulsating welcome. The seats fill up slowly and people poke their heads in constantly to ask where the bus goes, despite the information being right above their heads on an LED scroller. The ticket costs Rs 10 to MG Road, a bit expensive for daily commuters, but the bus is extremely comfortable. If there were better feeder services in the suburbs and route or timing information at bus stops, I would relinquish road rage, potentially high BP levels and repetitive stress injury risks (ankle and knees) for ever.

4:55 pm : Back at the Indian Express junction heading past the Parsi Fire Temple. A left at Minsk Square onto Cubbon Road  and we are at the BRV Theatre junction in no time. Sitting at the same height, I get to lock eyeballs with traffic constable Shivarajaiah, BCP 3617, in his booth.


 BRV Theatre bears a striking similarity to the Bible Society ( once the Blighty Tea Rooms)  building on MG Road with the same dressed stone, top battlements and gabled roofing with pinnacles. It was once an Armoury and the Head Quarters of the Bangalore Battalion (Auxiliary Force, India). In 1912, the present building included a Billiard Room, Reading Room, Ladies Room and a Bar. The Bangalore Rifle Volunteers (BRV), and ‘Defence Cinema’, came into existence in the early 1940s with BRV screening films only when there were no military-related activities on its premises.

 I slowly realise I am on a heritage ride across the Cantonment. A bus window is giving me insights into the city that I could never have driving in a car. I pass the elegant, Gothic, St. Andrews Church (1886) and fancy I can hear the faint sound of bagpipes, Scottish square dancing and celebrations of St. Andrew's Day inside. Being a Scottish Presbyterian Church, it was once charmingly called St. Andrew's "Kirk" and had a tower which held the Municipal Jubilee Memorial Clock with four dials. 

 Running parallel to South Parade (MG Road), we drive past what used to be Baird Barracks (Major General David Baird led the 1799 assault on ‘Seringapatam’ ), turn right at Manipal Centre and then left at the oldest electric power station in Bangalore (in 1904 we were the second city in Asia to be electrified, the first was Tokyo, Japan ) onto MG Road.


5:20 pm: It has taken me over 90 minutes to travel less than 5 kilometres. 1.5 hours later, I am at Trinity Church (1851) where, even before Bangalore became a Cantonment in 1809, legend has it, William Lambton, assisted by George Everest, passed by in 1805 while on his Great Trigonometric Survey of India.  Trinity Circle would have been barren land back then but I jump right into oncoming traffic because the bus has stopped unceremoniously at the divider. Like most pedestrians, I weave dangerously through traffic, violating all rules, because no one stops, and it’s a free for all. 


Sitting in the bus, the conductor sees me making notes diligently. He smiles and asks me “Number gottilla?" Board nodilla?” I smile back. I do not explain that I got onto 335E to track a daily commute to MG Road, but ended up travelling a hundred years back in time