Traffic

Bangalore traffic is killing me. Exhaust fumes, a faulty air conditioner and quitting smoking have seriously complicated my life. Not doing anything with my hands while stuck in traffic makes me fidgety. Besides I still inhale (vehicular) carcinogens, and for what?

I decided to take pictures from my car, while stuck in traffic, often at my most frustrated. The following images for the most part are testament to hours spent in gridlock.

Urban India is in a state of flux. Nike jostles for space with rag pickers, MacDonald’s with underpaid policeman. Security guards earn less than the price of a pair of shoes that they watch over, billboards promise everything in a landscape rife with corruption, bad infrastructure, medieval governance and strangely, as a certain beggar knows, who asks me for money every day (whom I have never given money to)... hope.

The worlds fastest growing middle class, out sourcing heaven, India shining, billions of dollars pouring into info tech, call centers, software parks. "Bangalored" say American newspapers when American jobs are lost to outsourcing. India aligns with the US as an offset to China! We are thrilled to hear that India is considered important in the world. "Finally" 'we' say.

After years of being second class, years of feeling that as an indian one is second class, that opportunities are aligned against us, that years of Nehruvian socialism and five year plans and queues and license rajs, we in the "upper classes" believe that we are arriving. We find ourselves saying things like "You can get everything here" and are no more dependant on relatives abroad for all those knick knacks that seperate us from the crowds, from the chaos and annonymity of Indianness. We banded together by community, club, caste and english . We seperate ourselves from the non english speakers.


Its all happening at the oval, or is it.





While India "shines" the insurgency in Kashmir has claimed more than 70,000 lives, the army cracks down brutally on local populaces in their battles with "anti national" forces far away from newspapers and english, infrastructure does not seem to keep up with economic growth in the cities, Naxalites control scores of districts, the "gap" between the "rich" and the "poor" that all commies talk darkly about grows , our judicial system seems to be in a state of rot with a massive backlog of cases and corrupt government servants go scot free even after being caught by anti corruption squads.










When Kannada actor Dr. Raj Kumar died in Bangalore, frustrations boiled over, I recall tens of thousands who went on a rampage and the word "Bangalored" took on new meaning for all those people huddled in their homes next to their flatscreens bought on loan, while the mob screamed and smashed things in the streets. They burnt the bus's that took them to work and brought the city, including its traffic, to a grinding halt.



Beneath the prosperity, in the quiet shadows, there are a lot of quiet people who are quietly furious and quietly frustrated, unable to move, sans english, sans upper middle class english educations, sans cars, sans traffic jams, but still stuck, immobile.

We fill our lives with neurotic urban behaviours because they get our minds off larger and more terrifying truths about who we are and what we are surrounded by.

I need a smoke. I have to get this. I need that. Fear and consumption go full circle and in five minutes I think that i shall head to Levis. Billboards beckon and Nokia has a new cell phone.

I wonder if they'll have my size. Its so hard to get a good pair of jeans these days and maybe i need to start running. My love handles are getting obvious. She might not like me me if I have a paunch. Maybe diesel jeans are a better option. They have that low waisted thing and I hear the stitching is much better.

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