Subir Roy: Right there, on MG Road

OFFBEAT

Every city has its flavour, and the current flavour of Bangalore is set by media headlines reporting how the teenage son of leading fashion designer Prasad Bidapa was arrested from a pub well past the 11.30 closing time. The young man allegedly assaulted the policemen who tried to arrest him and, what is even more fascinating, his mother knocked the deputy commissioner of police off his feet outside the police station when she stormed in to try and free her son. The next day Bidapa held a press conference at which he said the ranking police officer must be one of the most delicate around as his wife was able to knock him off his feet!

What intrigues me is why someone of the rank of DCP, an IPS officer who is just below the commissioner who heads the city's police force, should be on late night rounds to haul up pub managements and patrons who do not respect the closing time. It seems the police commissioner's instructions are that DCPs should do at least one night round a week in their respective areas. Some do more than one night a week to keep "control" over their force, whatever that might mean.

Even till the evening of the night when young Bidapa was hauled up, the commissioner had certainly not issued instructions to tackle another aspect of the city's life which has now become routine. Every evening, around 9 pm when I head for home down M G Road towards Trinity Circle, I see a dozen or more women openly soliciting. At the bus stand near the crossing with Dickenson Road, where these women stand virtually next to the waiting crowd, it is an odd sight. The women stoically wait for custom while the rest of the crowd keeps obliquely glancing at them.

Having been a scribe all my life and seen a good bit of life in the raw, I have nothing against the oldest profession in the world. But there is hardly any logic in allowing that trade to be plied right in the glittering centre of the city. This sort of thing gives a city a wrong tone. I never saw these women on the road when I came to live in Bangalore over four years ago.

The first time when I saw them I found out that good cop Sangliana had just retired. Thereafter, I have seen a pattern. If the head of the police force is transiting or the government above it is in bad shape, law enforcement takes a toss and soon enough these women are on the street. Then as soon as firmness is restored they are temporarily gone. To me the women have become a barometer of the stability of the state machinery.

Great cities, where life is a pressure cooker, are great centres of fun with closing time being fairly late. But fun and the rest of life are carefully partitioned. There is an area in Amsterdam which is sort of reserved for the voyeur tourist. The first time I walked down Tokyo's famous entertainment area Roppongi, I was amazed to find out that you would not know a thing about what was happening behind the closed doors until you actually entered the premises.

Bangalore, on the other hand, is currently ruled by provincial minded, not very competent people who do not know how to let a great city enjoy itself while the middle class can go about its own way of life, in watertight compartments. My memory of eclectic Bangalore goes back to precisely a quarter century ago when on a working visit, after a couple of pegs one evening, I asked an older fellow craftsman where you could see a good floor show. Nowhere, he snorted, all the good dancers have gone to west Asia.

But I eventually did locate one, right there on MG Road, up a side staircase to a bare hall, where for Rs 10 paid at the doorway, you went in and stood while three good-natured women in succession stripped as much as Indian sensitivities would allow. What a "live and let live city" I thought, and how different from the gloom of power-cut-ridden Kolkata.

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