Moving Cities : Goodbye Pune, Hello Bangalore

September 24, 2008 

After a long wait, I’ve decided to get this out of my head and be done with before logically moving on with the rest of the posts. Here comes the concluding part in the “Moving Cities” series.

Pune NeighbourhoodWith boxes of all sizes and shapes stacked up in every room, we spent the night on plastic covered mattresses laid on the floor; food for us was ordered from outside and some generous neighbours offered to cook up a meal for LG. About 25% of stuff was yet to be packed and we got going the next morning with the carpenter dismantling the wardrobe and the toiletries being stowed away like trash into a stack in the cartons. Yes,  DRS Agarwal - the packers and movers - sucked this time. Satisfied with their services three years ago, we decided to go with them this time too for moving from Pune to Bangalore despite the relatively exorbitant price they charge. And, I regret that decision. The two days that they packed, I had to don on the hat of a supervisor as they lacked coordination and each one was up against the other picking quarrels, delaying loading etc. The last day at Pune was a circus; never had I imagined that so much could be done in twenty-four hours and still be left with energy.  The loading which was scheduled to begin at 11:00 p.m. got delayed to 6:00 p.m. because of a severe shortage of diesel in Pune. To fill the container’s tank took the packers to petrol bunks across the city and by the time it was all done it was late evening.

LG inspecting packingWe squeezed in half an hour in between to visit a Vodafone store to cancel my mobile and deal with the ICICI guys one last time for cheating on a matured FD (that’s for another story altogether). That was an adventurous trip in the auto with the three-wheeler getting stuck in a two-foot-deep hole and V having to get down and push it forward with the help of passers by. Back home, there was more action in store with V cutting his elbow in the hush-hush of loading which took us to a physician. After all the stuff left, we spent the entire evening in darkness with power cut the whole evening. The expanse of this huge house left us sad with the feeling finally sinking in of leaving - leaving behind happy memories of seeing LG crawl for the first time, stand up near the sofa and take his first step, roll off the bed, squeeze his body through the gap in the grill gate at six months and of the beautiful neighborhood I’d spent every evening of the last year walking with LG. His friend - Caesar who he’d see every morning and evening, the park he spent his evenings at, the umachi LG offered his prayers to - these were places LG could relate to. This was all going to change so we took one last ride around the neighborhood that evening despite being exhausted to the bone.

It was a little kept secret that I despised Pune initially for poor infrastructure having to spend days without water and electricity. But, these had grown to seem insignificant once LG came along and how happy he was in the neighbourhood - open spaces, fresh air, walkable roads, numerous parks, tree-lined streets, and some new interesting we were beginning to get acquainted with. Finally, when I was settling down it was time to move again.

It was time to leave the next morning. With dinner and next morning’s breakfast again brought by our house-owners, we left Pune on a sad note carrying with us happy memories of three years spent in the house. Reached Bangalore around noon. I still fail to understand what all the furore is about Bangalore airport of not meeting world-class airports etc etc. I think it’s pretty good and done-up well with good facilities. Alright, no doubt it is far off from the city and puts a DEEP hole in your pocket for hiring a taxi. In our case, the flight ticket from Pune to Bangalore fro a person was equal to the taxi fare from airport to home. But then, every airport is outside city limits across the world. Sure, connectivity has to be improved through cheaper means of convenient transportation and I’m sure that too will soon happen. The airport was a welcoming note but the commute not as much. It took a good 1 hour 37 minutes to travel the 47 Km distance to home.

Our tenants had vacated the flat and moved next door, so we thought it would not be so much of a hassle to get some drinking water for LG. But, hey, I forgot this is Bangalore and not some small town - Pune. The next three days at Bangalore was a shocker to us. Let alone offering a glass of water, it took a lot of cajoling to get them respond to a “hello”. It was a struggle that night as V and my father-in-law went hunting to get the cylinder and we ended up buying another gas stove to fix LG’s dinner for the night. I learnt a important lesson that day - Bangalore had arrived. This was not a part of India anymore where neighbours helped each other. This was indeed a part of the Silicon valley. After numerous sessions of running around to the grocery store, V got tired. I needed a matchstick to light up the gas stove and the shameless me knocked on the neighbour’s door to ask if they had a spare matchbox. The generous gentleman lent me one with 5 sticks with a grin, “You can have the remaining 4 sticks too. I have another set at home.” I managed a “thank you” for his generosity.

What was a deserted and almost uninhabited place with ours being just the only apartment complex five-years-back is now a hub of commercial activity. Crossing the road requires hours of practice. I’m often stuck for twenty-minutes on either side to get across;  after a month I’m getting better. I loved getting out of the house earlier; now they can be numbered in a month unless there’s a compelling reason I’d prefer not to.

A friend wrote in asking what my first impression was on returning to Bangalore. Honestly, the only correlation I could come up was that of hundreds of earthworms squirming in the mud during monsoons. Replace earthworms with humans and you have a picture of the present Bangalore. Every inch of breathing space is occupied; the air so polluted and at times it seems as if all the vehicles produced in India are for Bangalore. Wider the roads, more the congestion. More the shops and factory outlets, greater the discounts and year round sale and larger the crowds. Come weekend and the crowds here are more than what a India-Pakistan match would attract. The transformation is amazing in three years with drivers having earned an average 30% pay-hike annually (yea, soon they would compete with me) and maids getting brand-conscious. In the past, this never hit us so hard but this time it has; perhaps because I was just one of them. For a strange reason, all the people I encounter here seem like clones - work in IT, children with maids, nannies take them to park, feed them, and talk revolves around vacations abroad and whose dick is bigger. Pune was complete with people from different occupations such as manufacturing, business living together. But, this is IT city and the new Bangalore we’ve come to.

Despite all its shortcomings and equally poor infrastructure, I’m not complaining because this is home and there is no better place to be than at home. A done-up house to our convenience, good play area for LG - he’s slowly getting accustomed to his surroundings, and the known-factor makes up for the much needed comfort while V is away.

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Filed Under Bangalore, Personal, Pune

Comments

2 Responses to “Moving Cities : Goodbye Pune, Hello Bangalore”

  1. Dip on September 25th, 2008 3:36 pm

    Good to see you back.
    In Bangalore I lived in a place where mostly empty-nested seniors lived (with one floor rented to people like us). My landlord and neighbours were really nice. And then I moved to Aundh in Pune.
    The cloned lives in IT slums kill scope of any feeling of community. We (oops.. u r no longer an earthworm) seek amenities like gym, swimming pool in our complex (God knows how often we use those) and give a damn to neighbourhood or community.

  2. Lakshmi on September 25th, 2008 5:09 pm

    Dip,

    How true! Is there any end to this discussion? So, we’ve swapped cities and in this gap of a few years come to realize it’s not the same pensioner’s haven anymore. I’m as much a part of the system as you and every one of us who got it so far are …
    However, I think community living in certain pockets of Pune is still very much alive than the commercialized ones such as Aundh which has a higher concentration of outsiders. The same would be true of Bangalore, I presume.

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