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“Time it was, and what a time it was,” once sang Paul Simon.
Bangalore. Long before the high-rises emerged, before the spawning of IT communities and the proliferation of BPO-three-bags-full-sir culture, much before perfectly normal people started to call each other “dude” for no apparent reason, there was this city that stood in glaring contrast to the way urban India lived.
Bangalore of yore was referred to as “the pensioner’s paradise.” A misnomer that. If this was how pensioners lived, they lived a damn sight better than teenagers in other cities! Bangalore was cool, as cool could be. Barring Calcutta of the Pam Craine and Braz Gonsalves jazz days, no other city in India could swing like the Garden City.
I caught the fag end of the Bangalore action; long after the Trojans had laid down their guitars. Old timers can paint a rosier picture, but there is enough here to hark back to what has forever been lost.
Well read is well bred.
Half way down the Brigade Road slope, in one of the bylanes to the left, the Select Bookstore stood quietly, without pomp or circumstance. A tiny three room flat on the ground floor, stacked with books from the floor to the ceiling. Hardbounds, tattered paperbacks, books on philosophy, religion, crime, science fiction, literature, you name it.
Browsing at Select was an experience in itself. You had an open mind while you searched the haystack for an elusive needle that you never knew was there. Time and again, chances were that you found a treasure while the owner sat in a cane chair mentally removed from your quest; he was always too busy discussing existentialism with a pretty young thing.
“Browse,” sadly is not a word you associate with bookstores anymore. Neither is “pretty young thing” a person who knows her Camus from her Sartre.
Casa style.
They have mushroomed all over Bangalore and even in Chennai, but the real Casa Piccola is the one at Residency Road. Just six rupees for my first goulash! And a great place to eavesdrop on the dubious syntax of piqued lovers (I remember one lady whose verbal overdose could only be matched by her enthusiastic intake at the food trough). Must have been a good day for business.
The food was usually pretty good at Casa. They served a mean chocolate gateau and profiterole. While proprietor Oberoi (of the luxury hotels) lounged around in pink, yellow or sky blue trousers.
There was this occasion when he came around and enquired about the quality of the food. I broke into my lament about how the great dishes once served did not feature on the menu anymore.
“What do you want?” asked Oberoi.
“One could bring back the chilli con carne for a start,” I ventured.
He promised that it would be back in a week’s time. Sure enough, on my next visit, there it was on the menu. And sure enough, Oberoi came around and asked if everything was all right. He left me no choice but to bring up the fact that it did not taste the same.
“In any restaurant you go to,” began Oberoi, “there is only one thing you do if the food is not good enough. Send it back!”
There aren’t too many restaurateurs like that anymore.
Mr Koshy’s the man.
While on the topic of food, one can’t give Prem Koshy a miss. I mean, how can you? The loyalty of his clientele is absolute (except for one period of intense blogging when there was the Koshy fan club and the Koshy hate club). Mr K. himself struts from table to table, a genial bantam waving an enthusiastic “hi” here, and stopping there to say “hello.”
The food at Koshy’s is wholesome. But the point in it being so infamous is largely due to the man himself. On a good day, he is capable of pulling out a comb from his hip pocket and playing a rendition of Duke Ellington’s East Street Louis Toodle-oo with it. In Prem’s hands, the comb is as good as a cornet.
Prem has a thing for the stage. If you ever get the chance, ask him about the role of his life: playing Lawrence of Arabia in Shivajinagar – where he is supposed to have ridden off into the sunset on an enthusiastic camel with a motley cast of irate camel drivers pursuing him with drawn cutlasses.
The music strip.
The bandstand at Cubbon Park came to life every Sunday evening. The music strip was in business where anyone could pick up a guitar, sit at a drum kit and play for the crowd that lazed on the lawns. The music ranged from okay to pretty bad, but who cared. The air was thick with sweet smelling smoke. Bangalore’s blues singer Peter Isaac would make an appearance from time to time in a T-shirt and veshti (a lungi or sarong) worn half mast. Strapping on his telecaster, his head would sway from side to side as he crooned, “I want you… So baaaad, honey I want you…”
Granted, we were not deadheads (not the real ones), Peter was not Jerry Garcia, and Cubbon Park was not Haight-Ashbury. But what the heck, we let it all hang out.
Cranks and pranks.
It must be the air that turned so many of Bangalore’s best into practical jokers. Over dinner with friends who had a six month old baby, we decided to put one over P (let us just call him that). Now P was a great one with the ladies. It was way past midnight, when he opened his door to the insistent summoning of the doorbell and gazed in horror at a baby in a basket left on his doorstep (it was a struggle to keep quiet while we peered through the banisters from a floor above). If only we had camera mobile phones then, to capture that priceless expression!
Ride Sally, ride.
Perhaps the most refreshing sight when you hit Bangalore in the 1980s was the number of girls on two-wheelers. Today they drive cars, but then that was a sign of affluence. The former was visual evidence of female independence. Bangalore girls were talked about with awe and envy in other cities.
There are still girls on two wheelers in Bangalore, so I guess all is not lost.
Bangalore rocks.
The Rolling Stones. Jethro Tull. Mark Knopfler. Sting. Roger Waters. Didier Lockwood. Pete Seeger. Peter Finger. America. Frank Gambale. Wishbone Ash. Uriah Heep. Iron Maiden. Scorpions.
Sure the rockers paradise has been sullied by itinerant visiting bubble gum pop acts from time to time, but that’s okay. Bangalore still rocks.
The Church Street attitude.
Habitat, on Church Street, started off as a place to pick up great video cassettes. And shop owner Minaaz Wazir Ali was in turn, genial, crusty, loquacious and taciturn, depending on who walked in and what they wanted. Minaaz had a retort for everyone. A man with a vast understanding of movies (at least from having watched them), his recommendations could be taken seriously. In time, Minaaz expanded his empire to include audio CDs. Here again, his wide knowledge of jazz and blues stood him in good stead.
But even Minaaz did get his comeuppance, or so I am given to believe by two friends who were there when the following incident happened.
A lady, greying stylishly walked in one day, and asked if The Unbearable Lightness of Being was available. I don’t know if Minaaz had an answer, but he certainly did not have the movie in question.
“That,” said the lady, “was the acid test,” and walked out, leaving behind one stumped proprietor and two bemused onlookers.
Today.
The old order has changed. The garden sprawl has gone, replaced by vertical steel and glass. The iconic Victoria Hotel, the beautiful heritage building, has gone and there is a mall there instead. The easy loungers have gone. There are more style-bhais (the suits). The siestas have gone and even the power lunches are on their way out. The soirees have disappeared only to be replaced by raves.
But every time you leave Bangalore for a few days and return, you realise that this city may have lost much of its charm and may have become ugly, but other cities are still uglier. In a country where old-world aesthetics are sadly on the wane, Bangalore is still the better place.
Bangalore of yore was referred to as “the pensioner’s paradise.”
“Time it was, and what a time it was,” once sang Paul Simon.
Bangalore. Long before the high-rises emerged, before the spawning of IT communities and the proliferation of BPO-three-bags-full-sir culture, much before perfectly normal people started to call each other “dude” for no apparent reason, there was this city that stood in glaring contrast to the way urban India lived.
Bangalore of yore was referred to as “the pensioner’s paradise.” A misnomer that. If this was how pensioners lived, they lived a damn sight better than teenagers in other cities! Bangalore was cool, as cool could be. Barring Calcutta of the Pam Craine and Braz Gonsalves jazz days, no other city in India could swing like the Garden City.
I caught the fag end of the Bangalore action; long after the Trojans had laid down their guitars. Old timers can paint a rosier picture, but there is enough here to hark back to what has forever been lost.
Well read is well bred.
Half way down the Brigade Road slope, in one of the bylanes to the left, the Select Bookstore stood quietly, without pomp or circumstance. A tiny three room flat on the ground floor, stacked with books from the floor to the ceiling. Hardbounds, tattered paperbacks, books on philosophy, religion, crime, science fiction, literature, you name it.
Browsing at Select was an experience in itself. You had an open mind while you searched the haystack for an elusive needle that you never knew was there. Time and again, chances were that you found a treasure while the owner sat in a cane chair mentally removed from your quest; he was always too busy discussing existentialism with a pretty young thing.
“Browse,” sadly is not a word you associate with bookstores anymore. Neither is “pretty young thing” a person who knows her Camus from her Sartre.
Casa style.
They have mushroomed all over Bangalore and even in Chennai, but the real Casa Piccola is the one at Residency Road. Just six rupees for my first goulash! And a great place to eavesdrop on the dubious syntax of piqued lovers (I remember one lady whose verbal overdose could only be matched by her enthusiastic intake at the food trough). Must have been a good day for business.
The food was usually pretty good at Casa. They served a mean chocolate gateau and profiterole. While proprietor Oberoi (of the luxury hotels) lounged around in pink, yellow or sky blue trousers.
There was this occasion when he came around and enquired about the quality of the food. I broke into my lament about how the great dishes once served did not feature on the menu anymore.
“What do you want?” asked Oberoi.
“One could bring back the chilli con carne for a start,” I ventured.
He promised that it would be back in a week’s time. Sure enough, on my next visit, there it was on the menu. And sure enough, Oberoi came around and asked if everything was all right. He left me no choice but to bring up the fact that it did not taste the same.
“In any restaurant you go to,” began Oberoi, “there is only one thing you do if the food is not good enough. Send it back!”
There aren’t too many restaurateurs like that anymore.
Mr Koshy’s the man.
While on the topic of food, one can’t give Prem Koshy a miss. I mean, how can you? The loyalty of his clientele is absolute (except for one period of intense blogging when there was the Koshy fan club and the Koshy hate club). Mr K. himself struts from table to table, a genial bantam waving an enthusiastic “hi” here, and stopping there to say “hello.”
The food at Koshy’s is wholesome. But the point in it being so infamous is largely due to the man himself. On a good day, he is capable of pulling out a comb from his hip pocket and playing a rendition of Duke Ellington’s East Street Louis Toodle-oo with it. In Prem’s hands, the comb is as good as a cornet.
Prem has a thing for the stage. If you ever get the chance, ask him about the role of his life: playing Lawrence of Arabia in Shivajinagar – where he is supposed to have ridden off into the sunset on an enthusiastic camel with a motley cast of irate camel drivers pursuing him with drawn cutlasses.
The music strip.
The bandstand at Cubbon Park came to life every Sunday evening. The music strip was in business where anyone could pick up a guitar, sit at a drum kit and play for the crowd that lazed on the lawns. The music ranged from okay to pretty bad, but who cared. The air was thick with sweet smelling smoke. Bangalore’s blues singer Peter Isaac would make an appearance from time to time in a T-shirt and veshti (a lungi or sarong) worn half mast. Strapping on his telecaster, his head would sway from side to side as he crooned, “I want you… So baaaad, honey I want you…”
Granted, we were not deadheads (not the real ones), Peter was not Jerry Garcia, and Cubbon Park was not Haight-Ashbury. But what the heck, we let it all hang out.
Cranks and pranks.
It must be the air that turned so many of Bangalore’s best into practical jokers. Over dinner with friends who had a six month old baby, we decided to put one over P (let us just call him that). Now P was a great one with the ladies. It was way past midnight, when he opened his door to the insistent summoning of the doorbell and gazed in horror at a baby in a basket left on his doorstep (it was a struggle to keep quiet while we peered through the banisters from a floor above). If only we had camera mobile phones then, to capture that priceless expression!
Ride Sally, ride.
Perhaps the most refreshing sight when you hit Bangalore in the 1980s was the number of girls on two-wheelers. Today they drive cars, but then that was a sign of affluence. The former was visual evidence of female independence. Bangalore girls were talked about with awe and envy in other cities.
There are still girls on two wheelers in Bangalore, so I guess all is not lost.
Bangalore rocks.
The Rolling Stones. Jethro Tull. Mark Knopfler. Sting. Roger Waters. Didier Lockwood. Pete Seeger. Peter Finger. America. Frank Gambale. Wishbone Ash. Uriah Heep. Iron Maiden. Scorpions.
Sure the rockers paradise has been sullied by itinerant visiting bubble gum pop acts from time to time, but that’s okay. Bangalore still rocks.
The Church Street attitude.
Habitat, on Church Street, started off as a place to pick up great video cassettes. And shop owner Minaaz Wazir Ali was in turn, genial, crusty, loquacious and taciturn, depending on who walked in and what they wanted. Minaaz had a retort for everyone. A man with a vast understanding of movies (at least from having watched them), his recommendations could be taken seriously. In time, Minaaz expanded his empire to include audio CDs. Here again, his wide knowledge of jazz and blues stood him in good stead.
But even Minaaz did get his comeuppance, or so I am given to believe by two friends who were there when the following incident happened.
A lady, greying stylishly walked in one day, and asked if The Unbearable Lightness of Being was available. I don’t know if Minaaz had an answer, but he certainly did not have the movie in question.
“That,” said the lady, “was the acid test,” and walked out, leaving behind one stumped proprietor and two bemused onlookers.
Today.
The old order has changed. The garden sprawl has gone, replaced by vertical steel and glass. The iconic Victoria Hotel, the beautiful heritage building, has gone and there is a mall there instead. The easy loungers have gone. There are more style-bhais (the suits). The siestas have gone and even the power lunches are on their way out. The soirees have disappeared only to be replaced by raves.
But every time you leave Bangalore for a few days and return, you realise that this city may have lost much of its charm and may have become ugly, but other cities are still uglier. In a country where old-world aesthetics are sadly on the wane, Bangalore is still the better place.
