There are a few unspoken rules for bicycling with the Whitefield Riders that you learn in a big hurry. The most important one is: if you’re not in front, keep your mouth shut. This is not out of great respect for the leader, but because you don’t want to discover whether cow dung really does taste like palak paneer, as I’ve suspected all my life.
When I was a little monkey, I’d cycle all over Whitefield and it was green and idyllic in a way that bores one to tears when written about, so I’ll spare you. Today, when those fields are now full of housing layouts with mocking names such as Calm Meadows, Freshtige Flozone and Giggling Waters, I have to travel a little further afield to find the non-capitalised versions – into the now-mythical green belt. (If this term is new to you, it’s got nothing to do with karate, even though it’s constantly getting the chop.)
The sight of a pack of expats (get it?) on mountain bikes brings entire villages to a grinding halt, but it’s a thrill knowing that when the villagers do get back to work it’s to the growing of carrots or mulberry or to the farming of chickens or driving of oxen. There are still bullock carts rumbling along the roads that you can grab and “get pull”, and the children greet us with so much joy that we feel almost messianic.
The closer you ride to Whitefield though, the more the area is best appreciated on winter mornings when the temperature is low and the landscape gently softened by mist. Go through a few hours later, and what you thought was a babbling brook is now Dysentery’s Creek, the wholesome breeze is more like broken wind, and you finally know that the perfume that follows you around after your morning ride is Channel No. 5 – the eau de toilets spray. How sad and funny that one of the first signs of affluence is effluence. That, and a house that looks like a three-storey pista cake.
Out here, you can actually see the city start to infect the country. Suddenly, in the middle of nowhere, there’s a wall or a bit of excavation – a real-estate magnate’s probing digit before the full-scale violation. It’s like surfing on the edge of one of Bangalore’s pseudopods that’s dribbling muck and waiting, just waiting, to engulf all that’s green and good. It quite makes me want to jump off my bicycle and beat it with a big stick, shouting, “Back! Back!” like a character out of a rude Miyazaki movie.
Back home, after washing self and bicycle, I think about how we Bangaloreans sometimes laugh indulgently at Kempegowda’s architectural version of “640K should be enough for anybody”, with his four towers that supposedly bounded the town. Maybe we haven’t credited him with enough foresight. Maybe he’s provided us with four stakes to drive through the heart of this city and bring it to a thrashing halt.Gautam raja
(And if you think that’s insufferably cynical, you’re welcome to take comfort in the fact that I get shit flung at me every Sunday morning.)
Source : Time Out Bengaluru ISSUE 1 Friday, July 23, 2010
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