Responding to poverty

The morning after I land in Bangalore, I go for a walk in my neighbourhood. My parents live in a residential area in the old part of town, and their apartment faces a small but busy road. Next to the apartment complex is a general-store, and a colourful STD-ISD booth stands out in one corner. Outside the store a man is sitting on a stool with his sewing machine, adding a few stitches to what looks like a salwar while two young girls stand next to him, waiting. When he finishes, one of them gives him a five-rupee note and collects the dress. The tailor pockets the note, shifts his position a little, and looks around to see if the next customer is approaching.

The smallness of that transaction – five rupees – makes me wonder how many such clients he gets each day. Five, on a good day? And how much would he earn each day, on the average? Surely not more than thirty rupees. That makes it around nine hundred a month, if he worked every day. How many mouths did he have to feed? And what if he had a loan on the sewing machine?

I walk further, crossing people on their way to work early morning. Most are from the lower middle-class – the kind who commute using local buses, work in small offices or shops and earn not more than a few thousand rupees a month. The vehicles on the road are mostly bicycles, two-wheelers and auto rickshaws; occasionally, an old Maruti 800 or an Ambassador passes by. There is the sabji-wallah with his assortment of vegetables clinging precariously to baskets tied all around his bicycle; there is the paper-wallah, also on the bicycle with his load of newspapers, who stops at every gate and throws the morning edition over it; there is the doodh-wallah, returning after his morning round of milk-delivery, with large, empty aluminium cans that make a klang each time his bicycle goes over a bump or into a pothole.

The scene brings me back to reality. The image of Bangalore I have been carrying is restricted to IT parks swarming with software engineers who drive in their newly acquired Ford or Honda and who visit, after work or on weekends, the shopping districts and spend their wealth on designer labels and international brands and, through their spending, create the consumer society that generates more wealth for people in different layers of the economic continuum that spans an urban population. This image, as I see it now, is a very limited one. It is not that I expected most of the city to be transformed; a better explanation is that my focus on a small section of the upper middle-class made me forget the others who occupy most of the city. And what I now see in this scene also indicates that change in India is slow, which, among other reasons, is due to the large number of people involved.

The road slopes down a little, and soon I am at an intersection where a few autos stand in line. Across the road, in a small vacant plot of land, there is a tent with a tarpaulin exterior. A little away from the tent I see a woman squatting on the ground stirring a pot balanced on a few thin logs of wood. A trail of smoke lifts from the fire beneath the pot into the woman’s face, and she uses the end of her saree to wipe away her smoke-induced tears while continuing to stir the pot with her other hand. At a corner of the plot, next to a gutter that runs along the road, two small boys in their underwear are cleaning their teeth with fingers. They take turns to spit into the gutter and to rinse their mouth using the glass of water they are sharing. There is no sign of the father; he is either asleep inside the tent, or is away looking for a suitable spot to answer nature’s call.

I stand there for a while looking at this family preparing for yet another day; slowly my thoughts turn philosophical (as they usually do when I’m confronted with images of stark poverty). It seems plainly unfair that someone like me has a life of luxury while others like them receive such a raw deal. I turn this thought over a few times, and finding no immediate resolution, I continue walking.

* * *

Some weeks later I watch Swades. In the movie, a Non-Resident Indian (NRI) visiting India has a similar experience when he encounters the depth of poverty in rural India. He then goes on to empower a village with power-generating capability through a scheme that harnesses electricity from a tiny waterfall. At the end of the movie he is back in India for good, with the intention of helping the poor.

I know I cannot follow the NRI’s footsteps; I console myself that such responses are limited to the celluloid. But my own responses have been unsteady and inconsistent. I remember the night in college many years ago when I read about the reaction of a nineteenth-century tribal who comes to a city and is shocked by the disparity between rich and the poor, between those who move about in elegant horse-driven carriages and those who sit begging. He asks his friend – a city dweller – how people in the city could live like this, without caring for “one of their own kind”. For the tribal his tribe is his family, and he cannot imagine not taking care of one of them. In the city each one is a stranger, isolated from the rest.

I remember that that innocent remark by the tribal had kept me awake for half the night, a night when I repeatedly asked myself how we had let humanity reach a state of such callousness. Something must be done about it, I told myself that night. And then, as life in college wore on, the message of this episode slowly faded into obscurity.

* * *

On one of my last days at Bangalore, I am reminded of a conversation I had with a German colleague some years ago. After looking at some impressive pictures of our Bangalore office, and he asked me how we felt when we went out from such a plush workplace into a city that had so many poor people on the road. I thought for a while and replied that I had never looked at things that way, and perhaps living in such surroundings over a long period had numbed my senses to an extent I no longer noticed them. The surrounding poverty was part of our landscape, integral to it and one that gave it an identity. It needed a foreigner’s eye to notice the contrast, and it was they who pondered over this duality that was common in cities of developing nations.

I am walking in my neighbourhood as I think about this conversation. It is four weeks since I arrived in Bangalore, and when I look around people in the street appear normal: they do not stand out in my line of vision. I have crossed a while ago the intersection where that tent stood, and I do not remember giving it a glance or sparing a few thoughts. It is now yet another memory, like the tribal I had read about long ago.

Alternate Realities

I am thinking of the different worlds we inhabit.

Some weeks ago, when I was ill and spent most of the day in bed reading a book, my world was carved by the writer whose book I dissolved into, and it needed a physical act like having lunch or going out to the balcony to bring me back in touch with the real world.

Then, as I got better and spent more time in front of the computer at home, reading other bloggers and thinking about what they’d written and also writing a bit myself, the attachment to this medium – with all those real people at the other end communicating through their journals – was intense enough to make me believe that I could live comfortably in a closed room with only a computer for companionship.

Last week – a busy one where each day I woke up, went to work, came back late and went straight to bed – I seemed to occupy a different dimension: one with rows of parked cars, long corridors, small rooms and serious faces.

I am thinking of these alternate worlds as I walk through the busy Hauptstrasse in Heidelberg this foggy Saturday morning. It is my first visit to this place after my return from India, and this street – with its glossy shop windows, its old buildings radiating the typical European charm, and the stream of white faces flowing all around – is such a strong contrast to the image of the typical Bangalore street I still have in mind that I feel like a fish that has been picked from the sea and placed into an aquarium.

You enter some worlds fully aware you are doing so; others develop unnoticed, surround you, and leave you breathless when you take notice.

You enter some worlds to escape; others offer no way out – all roads lead back to them, eventually.

You cling to some worlds, never wanting to leave; others cling to you, don’t leave you alone.

You sometimes create a world; others enter it; some others destroy it.

I am thinking of the different worlds we inhabit.

Two malls and a street

Avenue road, a narrow street made narrower by rows of two-wheelers and auto rickshaws parked on either side, hadn’t changed much over the years. I used to come here during college days; the array of small bookshops that lined the street sold my college textbooks and guides. This time, after many years, I had come looking for some titles in Hindi which, I was surprised to learn, no big bookstore in Bangalore stocked.

The street was crowded and dust-ridden, as usual. Most people I saw were labourers who worked in neighbouring areas and used this street as a thoroughfare; there were also some students – plainly dressed and carrying a book or two – at the bookshops. Above the shops, closely-spaced and discoloured signboards competed with each other announcing their near identical wares. At a nearby South-Indian fast food outlet a barefooted boy wearing shorts and a soiled T-shirt swiped tables vacated by people after their cup of filter-coffee. Up ahead there was an old woman selling fresh flowers from the heap in her basket, while a little girl by her side tried to shoo a cow that had crept close.

Standing there, taking in this scene and the surrounding din of a busy marketplace, it was difficult to imagine that while this street had gone about its usual business for over a decade (since I was here last), a huge IT revolution had taken place in this city. There seemed no clear signs of change visible here; the signs, as it turned out, were elsewhere.

At the end of the street I entered a photo studio that offered “instant” passport-sized photographs. The photo was taken with a digital camera, and a photo-printer instantly ejected multiple copies of tiny portraits in matt finish paper. As I paid at the counter, another customer asked for the negative of the photos he had just received.

“Sir these are from a digital camera” the man behind the counter explained. “There is nothing like a negative these days.”

The customer, still puzzled, asked how he could get more copies.

“Sir for that we have mentioned a serial number on the bill. Anytime you want a copy, you can give us the serial number and we’ll print out more copies for you.”

“So I will have to come here only for the copies?”

“Yes sir, you have to come here only.”

The digital world, in addition to speeding up processes, had opened new ways to retain customers.

* * *

I took an auto rickshaw from Avenue road to the recently opened Forum mall in Koramangala. I had read about The Forum: it was Bangalore’s biggest mall, occupying three floors with dozens of glittering shops, food-outlets, a 11-screen multiplex cinema and a multi-storey car park that could accommodate a thousand cars. Such large malls, common in Europe and the US, were relatively new in India.

The auto ride through one-way streets bursting with traffic took over an hour; it was dark when I reached Koramangala. At first glance, The Forum appeared on the outside like a cross between a cinema hall and a shopping arcade: movie posters covered one side of the facade, and tall masts carried well-lit displays of well-known brands. Inside, I walked across windows displaying crystals from Svarovski, computers from Apple, and music systems from Bose. Soft music filled the background as I glided on escalators from one floor to next, from one expensive display to next. Around me I found mostly teenagers and young-adults, fashionably dressed and willing to spend. At McDonalds a group of boys in neatly starched uniforms took orders from a long queue of people carrying elegant shopping bags. There was another queue at the multiplex: people waiting to pay rupees 500 for a Gold Class cinema experience.

Avenue road seemed a place very distant, perhaps in a different city altogether.

* * *

Some days later I visited another mall on Brigade road: the 5th Avenue. I remembered this mall from my college days: I had been there soon after its gala opening. It was, a friend had told me, the star of Brigade road. The decorations certainly had seemed to indicate so. You entered through a granite-floored passage that opened into a foyer with shops on four sides and a fancy restaurant in the middle. There was a glass capsule lift in one corner and an escalator at the opposite end. A small queue had gathered outside the capsule lift: people were eager to experience this new arrival in town. It was a small mall, but there was much optimism that the concept would catch on: the mall had done well in the West, and people after all preferred one-stop shopping destinations where they could access different brands and have a snack nearby.

Perhaps it was my recollection of this early visit that gave me the jolt I received when I entered 5th Avenue this time. The granite flooring had chipped in places, and it no longer matched the shiny image I carried. The once fancy restaurant looked worn now; most tables were empty. The escalator had been shut down, and stuck in-between its jagged steps were scraps of paper, cigarette-butts and plastic covers. People were using this escalator as a staircase, stepping over all the filth. The capsule lift still worked, although one could no longer see clearly through the stain-covered glass on its sides. The shops seemed to be doing badly: there was hardly anybody shopping, and the shop attendants looked bored and listless.

The economics behind this decline was easy to see: Brigade road, with all its shops and restaurants, was like one big mall; another small mall added little value here. Further, shops tucked inside 5th Avenue were not as accessible and prominent as the ones on Brigade road, and the mall offered little incentive (in addition to shopping) to draw people in.

But while economics can create and destroy assets, attitude and culture is what preserves and sustains them. The Forum is glittering today; how will it be tomorrow, I wondered, as I walked out of 5th Avenue into the familiar buzz of Brigade road.

Two journeys

“When man is in trouble, he goes to God-Man; but when God-Man is in trouble, where does he go?” asked the elderly man (Mr.Joseph, as I learned later), addressing his companion.

I was seated opposite them in a train, journeying back to Bangalore after a week in Kerala. The two old men were engaged in a loud debate over the Kanchi seer’s arrest and I found it difficult to concentrate on my book. Mr.Joseph probably got a hint of my discomfort; he looked at me and asked: “Are we disturbing you, sir?”

“No, no.” I lied. “Please continue. I do not understand Malayalam anyway.”

“Oh, I see. Where are you from?” he asked, and added immediately: “Bangalore?”

“That’s right.”

“And what do you do?”

“I’m a software engineer.”

“I see, I see.” He continued to look in my direction. His companion, a frail old man wrapped in a shawl, seemed keen to continue their debate, but Mr. Joseph showed no inclination.

“I actually retired as Marketing manager of a multinational tyre company,” he went on, “and now-a-days I help my son in his business.”

“What kind of business is it?” I asked, trying to appear curious.

The other old man understood that their debate had ended: he got up to prepare his berth for the night. Mr.Joseph needed no further encouragement, and lost no time in narrating the story of his son’s business.

“As a teenager Anup – my son – was a wayward character. I was probably also to blame – you see, I was busy with my work and did not spend enough time with him. So when he didn’t do well in 12th, I had to use my highest influence to get him a B.Com seat through sports quota. After B.Com Anup took up CA, but after some years he dropped out and started a business with his friend. After all, there are limits to what you can earn as a Chartered Accountant, isn’t it? Today their business has a turnover of a few Crores. Of course, there are risks in business, any business. Recently we lost 33 lakh rupees because the manager of a restaurant in Mumbai – it is owned by Sachin Tendulkar, this restaurant – refused to make the final payment. We could do nothing, because the manager has links with the underworld. What to do, such things happen. My son asked me not to follow it up further and focus on new clients instead. He said, ‘Don’t worry Papa, if we lose 33 lakhs here, we will make 66 lakhs somewhere else.’ Such a mature fellow, my son. He lives in Mumbai, and has three cars now. I look after the Bangalore office. Life is good, God is great. You must be feeling sleepy isn’t it? Good night then. Very nice talking to you.”

Earlier, during our onward train journey from Bangalore to Cochin, we met the lady from Botswana and her three sons.

When I first saw them together, I thought they were siblings – three young boys with their sister. She was a small woman, with sparkling, child-like eyes that made her look like a schoolgirl. Only when she smiled you noticed the wrinkles beside her lips and the folds beneath her eyes – a smile that revealed more than it promised. She spoke softly to the boys – aged 11, 16 and 18; each with a book in hand – and they silently obeyed. Watching them, it was difficult to imagine that those tall, well-built boys were sons of this petite woman who seemed untouched by middle-age.

They moved to Botswana many years ago, she said. She came now and then to India – for her deliveries, and periodical visits to their ancestral home in Trichur – but her husband had been in Botswana throughout. The oldest boy was studying engineering in Johannesburg; the other two lived in Botswana, with her. There were many Indians in Botswana, and their numbers were increasing each year. There were plenty of Malayalis too. Opportunities for travel were good: the Kalahari and Chobe Game reserves offered plenty of wildlife, and there was South Africa just across the border. On the whole, life was good.

Before they slept the lady held each boy’s hand and offered, with closed eyes, a silent prayer. To my surprise, the boys did not show even a hint of embarrassment taking part in this private ritual in our presence.

A little later, as we were preparing to sleep, my wife whispered into my ears: I want three boys just like them.

I slept very little that night.