Imagine a socialite flaunting her designer handbag, bought for the price of a small car, right under the nose of a corporation school pupil hauling her tattered knapsack. That’s what the new pavement on St Mark’s Road reminds me of. I love it, it’s wide and smooth and beautiful, I could play badminton on it if I wished, but what about the rest of the city? Or even the rest of the locality? Just a couple of hundred metres away, there are pedestrians whose trembling legs pick their way over a few precarious inches of stone disguised as a footpath. They too deserve a ‘showcase’ pavement. In fact the whole city should have footpaths half as wide as the streets.
Most of you are looking at me as if I’ve gone stark staring mad. Your complaint about St Mark’s Road is entirely different from mine because you own wheels. You curse us walkers for encroaching on your space, but if you look at it from another angle we have merely claimed what is rightfully ours for once in our miserable lives. For too long have we balanced on knife-edges, dodged homicidal vehicles and confronted two-wheeler Huns bounding up from the tarmac to invade our concrete refuge. Yes, I identify with the downtrodden pedestrian, and if you haven’t read my numerous previous comments on the subject let me say it again: I am a confirmed walker. I take every opportunity I can get to stretch my legs. My walks may be short or long, with or without a purpose, pre-meditated or impromptu, but they’ve been a part of my life ever since I can remember.
Imagine me as a scrawny pubescent, trying to match my father’s stride as he takes his evening constitutional in our hometown. Sometimes we would walk three kilometres to buy delicacies such as storybooks or sweetmeats, and take the bus on our way back. Try getting a 10-year-old in our city today to walk three kilometres. Try getting any young individual, as a matter of fact. Youngsters seem to have forgotten the use of their lower limbs. One afternoon, as the metro pulled into the M.G. Road station I overheard a foreign tourist asking a group of college boys, “How do I get to Commercial Street from here?” They started to explain where she should exit from to take an auto. I couldn’t help butting in. “Or else you could walk,” I called out as I briskly stepped out onto the platform. Faint laughter erupted behind me — faint, because I was already halfway to the steps by then. I tend to go at a fair clip, and this is a matter of some amusement for friends and onlookers. There’s this old pal of mine who lives abroad, and when we were in our twenties, measuring the streets, engrossed in debate (we were constantly knee-deep in debate, my comrades and I), my speedometer needle would start to rise. My friend, who’s a puny guy, would cry, “Why are we running?” And I would laugh and decelerate, but as our discussion warmed up I would accelerate once again, and the cycle would go on.
I realise I haven’t slowed down with age. On more than one occasion, high-school girls from the local Kendriya Vidyalaya have run behind me breathlessly to ask if (puff-puff) I was the writer in the paper (huff-puff) whom she enjoyed reading etc. A recent news item put this huffing and puffing in perspective for me. According to a health survey, the lung capacity of most of Bengaluru’s schoolchildren is below normal because of pollution. And here I was, pillorying the youth for their indolence. My scathing attacks on women who look like bank robbers with scarves masking all but their eyes may have been misdirected. Maybe they are not trying to avoid a tan or skin cancer, as I’d thought, but air pollution.
This brings me to an undeniable conclusion. It is with a sinking heart that I spell it out for you: walking our city’s streets is no longer a pleasure. Besides our scandalous footpaths, there’s now the added factor of traffic noise. You can’t hear yourself think, and if you have a companion you end up in a shouting match. Heaven knows what those noxious gases and suspended particulate matter have done to my lungs. Walking through Fraser Town earlier this year, the memory of a pleasant stroll I had taken some decades ago down Narayana Pillai Street provoked an impulse to recreate the experience. I took off, from Francis Xavier’s cathedral to Dispensary Road, anticipating a quiet lane flanked by ancient Chettinad-style houses. Raw sewage spouting from gutters and manholes streaked many sections of the road. Weaving my way past muck and two-wheelers, I barely glanced at the few remaining old houses. Number 298 stood like a gracefully aging dowager but I wished the owner of No. 205 hadn’t tarted her up in a turmeric-yellow coat decorated with pink flowers and green leaves. As for No. 305 I could already visualise her obituary.
When it rains — hell’s bells, must I describe it? Wading across flooded roads, cars splashing — sorry, I have to censor the rest of this sentence. But here’s a final thought. Lose your gaadi, come join me, and let us walk down St Mark’s Road together.
