City of Juxtapositions: Musings from a BMTC Bus

By SK Meenakshi

Bangalore: On a sunny day, frustrated, overheated, and overstimulated, I step into a BMTC Bus and find everyone looking down at their phones, with earplugs in. I take a seat in the very back, right next to a window and pull out a notepad and a pencil, wanting to rant about the state of my surroundings. If your attention span can handle it, let me tell you a story in verse. A story that you and I see everywhere, all around us but no one dares to articulate it. Before some unbearable academic wants to write a paper on it behind a paywall, let me tell my story to you all first. 

So many people around the world have done their research on me. Today I'll do the research myself. You all love to write about me but today, I want to write about myself. You all love to observe me but today, I will be the one to make the observations. Today, I am not Bangalore or an IT city or a Metropolitan City or whatever other labels you impose on me. Today, I am merely a silent observer in a BMTC Bus, quietly jotting down my thoughts. Perhaps you'll resonate with this version of me. Perhaps not. That's okay. 

I

A chicken shop seated next to a mechanic shop,

Something is being butchered there,

Something is being fixed here,

A yellow-roofed auto zips by with a tricolour flag looped around its side mirror,

A clump of plastic bags spilling garbage and browned banana peels, a dead crow and a hungry cat. 

Cows with curling red horns, paddling in the rush hour of traffic,

Crisscrossing busy roads, swishing tails, blocking cars and buses,

Someone reaches out, touches them with their palms reverently, a prayer oozing from their lips,

A prayer learnt in 6th grade, mum's insistence, steaming hot idlis and sambar for a reward. 

Migrant workers, rust in the air, the din of drilling and building, dust-caked hands and feet,

Children slung on their backs, childhood stitched along the borders of apartments they'll never inhabit, 

Black and red ribbons, slates and white chalk, and if they're lucky, pastel-coloured chalks,

Cricket matches in wide playgrounds, Sundays of footballs and Panipuri. 

Bengaval-uru (city of guards), Benda-kaalu-ooru (town of boiled beans),

Bengaluru, Bangalore city, a city of fluctuating identities,

A city that sails on the river of languages, a mishmash, a hotchpotch of cultures and accents,

We like to fasten our festivals around the tree branches and electric poles, gold and orange, 

And the music thrums like a gasp, a heartbeat through the ever-ringing streets.