Bangalore blues

In an archived article of The Atlantic from March 1967, 'On the Writing of Contemporary History', US historian and public intellectual Arthur Schlesinger Jr begins: "If classical auth-ority were required for contemporary history today, it would be amply supplied by the example of Thucydides, resting his narrative 'partly on what I saw myself, partly on what others saw for me'."

Author and journalist T.J.S. George's Askew - A Short Biography of Bangalore is such: a city he himself sees some and a city people he knew saw, had seen and, partly, showed him, too. In Askew, George brings the journalistic skills of pathology to examine the city, because he has seen many cities-New York, Hong Kong, Bombay (before it was Mumbai) and Patna. And what he sees here is Bangalore, not just 'Bengaluru'. In his author's note, he says: "This book is in English, and I prefer to use the English spelling of Bangalore. If a Kannada version appears some day, I shall insist on Bengaluru."

It is in this positioning of himself at a critical point, as journalist, historian and a continuous Bangalorean, that George manages to shape a story of the city, which is easily both Bangalore and Bengaluru, and its times past and present. What is the city, when it is always changing? George says: "Values. A city is a living, throbbing organism with a soul of its own and, it would often seem, a thinking mind. Cities have memories and dreams, they nurture ambition and bemoan failure. Like individuals, cities derive their character from the values associated with them." And he populates the stories with individuals who represent those values-from founder Kempe Gowda I, whose mother had told him in 1537 CE: "Build lakes, plant trees," to a contemporary spectrum comprising successful entrepreneurs, politicians, underworld characters, artists, aesthetes, civil society leaders, contractors and fixers. He takes the reader quickly from history past to history happening, covering the IT revolution, gang wars, identity conflicts of language and race, and the city's monstrous growth driven by greed, corruption and the nexus of politician and contractor.

George courts the inevitable danger in being the contemporary historian. Some of the events he describes are too close, still happening, not all unravelled yet. Many of the individuals are not all done. He clearly blames Bangalore's IT revolution for the massive change: "The problem was that IT transformed Bangalore in ways earlier bouts of industrialisation and immigration had not. The old agreeable Bangalore was replaced by an aggressive Bangalore where no one had time for his neighbours. Everyone was chasing success as measured by a new consumerist value system." He sees a cracked city, without the unifying Bangalorean identity. "If the pre-IT immigrants made an effort to merge into Bangalore, the new ('gladiator culture') combatants were too disparate to try."

George talks like a Bangalorean, a city he himself came to and owned only from the 1980s. "Why did modernity and enterprise make Bangalore unbearable?" He supplies the answer, too: "Bangalore's elected leaders, administrators and builders disobeyed Kempe Gowda's mother." His talent in assimilating the diverse cultures of the city is prodigious. He moves easily among Basavanagudi Brahmins, old restaurants and their Udupi cuisine, the nostalgia of European and Anglo-Indian Whitefield where, he says, a 1920 tourist guide noted, "there is some fairly good shooting to be had", and, bewilderingly and somewhat tediously, lingers with the young heirs of the city's tycoons who seek inspiration and glory elsewhere. George himself, however, loves his city: "Bangalore creates a remembering, a longing that few other cities do." And he remains hopeful: "Can a city that values its treasures and its traditions with such commitment be defeated by profiteers and politicians?" He writes, like he always does, with economy and precision, a metaphoric blue pencil in the other hand, I would imagine, as he did when I stood trembling before him in 1986, applying for a job of reporter in Bangalore's Indian Express. George's Askew is an insider's story and critique of Bangalore. To a Bangalorean, it is an intimate read. To the outsider, it would be an insightful introduction to our city.