Urban history
City chronicles
SHEILA KUMAR
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Bangalore city in three-quarter profile.
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EVERY city, it would seem, needs a re-definition of itself every few years. Post-IT boom, getting back in touch with its bean roots, Bangalore a.k.a. Bengalooru, is no different. And this collection of writings on the city offers up varied views of a
city with many faces.
All the usual suspects are there, of course; Anita Nair, Ram Guha, R.K. Narayan, Shashi Deshpande, Jayant Kaikini. Add to that list names like Winston Churchill, Yusuf Arakkal, Banglophile Thomas Friedman, Sunil Khilnani and you get fresh perspectives.
Predictable themes
The bouquet garni remains the same. Praise for its township-rather-than-town nature, the essentially chilled denizen. Brickbats for the terrible infrastructure, governmental inertia, newly imported ostentation and “the consume
rist generation with no residual loyalty to place or community”. Once laid back, today sexed up. There is no rancour in Bangalore being a melting pot; the place is held up to the light in a manner that reveals all its flaws; yet, the underlying leitmotif is that there is no place quite like it.
Alas, no magic informs R.K. Narayan’s tale, still less Kambali’s. Kalyan Raman’s piece, though, is a gem, thought-provoking, casting aside the stereotypical veil. Suresh Menon’s wry wit underlines his nostalgia piece on music and the city. Anita Nair’s story is more about sex than the city; to some extent, Shinie Antony’s typically sardonic take is similar.
Annalee Saxenian deconstructs the Silicon Valley of India myth most effectively. Khilnani’s extract is brilliant, if all too brief, while Jeff Greenwald’s piece strikes one as a rather pointless inclusion. If that’s a gauche foreign take on Bangalore for you, well, Bob Hoekstra gets it right, as does Martin Buckley. Po Bronson shines the spotlight on someone unfortunately slotted these days as a P3P man, Hotmail’s Sabeer Bhatia.
Striking inclusion
Former CBI head Kaarthikeyan’s account of the Sivarasan endgame is an unexpected masterstroke. Meena Narayan casts an evocative glance at the city’s Anglo-Indians. Timeri Murari’s as well as Vivek Shanbagh’s stories are awkward fits, in sharp contrast to those of Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta, Lawrence Weschler and Smriti Srinivas’ excellent account of the jatre. Guha’s profile of the gentleman cricketer, Gundappa Vishwanath, is another great choice.
The book jacket is nothing if not lurid; the illustrations are less than exciting. Get past these irritations and you are in for a good read. Not the last word on Bangalore, no, but still, Beantown Boomtown has the city in three-qua
rter profile, and it’s a flattering angle.
Beantown Boomtown: Bangalore in the World of Words, edited by Jayanth Kodkani and R. Edwin Sudhir, Rupa Publications,
Rs. 295.
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