Bangalore Diary: Where's My M.G. Road?

The city you live in is a lot like your parents: they have been around for much longer than you; they love you and you love them; and you want them to stay young and healthy forever. Then time takes its toll and one morning, you find your father donning a pair of glasses. The man you had known all these years looks suddenly so different - he is your father all right, but don't those glasses make him appear as a stranger? It takes a while before you accept your old man's new look, and then you move on, realising that change is inevitable.

The people of Bangalore are going through a similar emotion these days. By people of Bangalore, I mean those who have lived in the city for decades and not those who have been washed up by the IT tide during the past ten years. The latter variety is a thankless lot: they first make a mess and then complain about the mess. The real Bangalorean rarely complains, even now, when M.G. Road will no longer be the M.G. Road they have grown up with - the calmness of the boulevard majestically offsetting the hustle-bustle on the other side of the road. The greenery provides a visual relief even when the road is choked with vehicles. But now to ease the traffic, they are felling the green.

As part of the Metro Rail project, work began last Sunday on M.G. Road with the felling of a few trees at the Anil Kumble circle. The boulevard will eventually have to come down to make way for a 2.5 km elevated viaduct connecting the circle with Kamaraj Road junction. One doesn't know if there was indeed a way to ease the traffic without disturbing M.G. Road, but Bangaloreans will have to learn to live with a pair of concrete glasses above the nose of its most famous thoroughfare.

I was one of those few who witnessed M.G. Road in its original glory for one last time as the Metro Rail guys took over. Last Sunday, around noon, the road was nearly deserted as the driver cruised towards the Anil Kumble Circle. He slowed down as he approached the circle: I saw a green sheet of metal barricading a part of the road and a yellow bulldozer parked nearby. I took pictures sitting in the car. I had wanted to get down and pose with the entire boulevard serving as the backdrop, just to put it on my blog for record's sake, but the otherwise-polite driver made noises about finding a parking place and I found myself being bulldozed out of M.G. Road.

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It is best to be in Bangalore on a weekend: the roads are mostly empty - which is a luxury these days; while the malls and pubs are full - which means you will find pretty faces all around you and, at times, over you. It is a different matter that pubs shut these days at 11.30 sharp - something that the DJ keeps warning you about from 10.45 - but young Bangaloreans have made peace with that and they know how to make the most of the evening.

So there I was, at Fuga, one of the hottest nightspots in the city, nursing my drink with one eye on the women who sashayed in and out, and the other on the TV screen that showed New Zealand demolishing South Africa. A woman on the next table smoked a cigar: the aroma was no doubt delicious but I felt a little sad for the lips that sucked onto the half-burnt brown cylinder. On the table opposite, another woman cutely sipped her cocktail from a goblet whose mouth was as big as her face.

Soon it was time to dance: it is now or never, thanks to the 11.30-deadline. Guided by wife, I squeezed my way into the dance floor. As I danced, my right elbow constantly brushed with that of a woman on the right, and my left with that of a woman on the left. The hair of another was getting into my collar from behind, and in the front was wife, egging me on to keep rhythm. I swayed even more. As we walked out of the pub, I told her: "We must come to Bangalore more often."