What began as a venture for greener pasture turned into a nightmare of overestimation and under achievement. The swarming place of Brigade and M.G. Road glitters and occupy the privilege status of being the heart of Bangalore. Reputedly "the happening place" but a tourist nightmare where everything is overrated and swamped with beggars and pickpockets. Few yards away from this bedlam lies "Markham Road" where I stay.

Everything changes. Among the mazes of grotesque buildings and even more astonishing nature of its location, Markham Road is like a mole in the heart of this Garden city! Here you don't see gardens, but you are surrounded by an eclectic amalgamation of slum dwellers and immigrants who have made it big time by virtue of its location.

The concrete buildings and the cornucopia of its inhabitants is a fascinating panaroma. Some of them are endowed with traits of nouveau riche status and yet, seems to be suffering from a complex unwillingness to discard their rugged heritage. You see Musalmans, usually high strung with past glory embodied in the cacophony they create with imperious and incessant prayers one hear from the mosque every waking hours.

The Christians who are mostly neo-converts shows solidarity by their enthusiastic visit to the nearby St. Patrick Church, impervious to the presence of their fellow heathens. The Hindus, mostly business class are pre-occupied with their age old profession of traditional banking, pawning and jewellery. They continue to thrive amidst the small and sinful colony, where you see sales of chicken, pork and beef. A price they must pay and tolerate for the opportunities avail to them.

On the darker side is the rampant sale of local brew at a price affordable to the small time labourers, constables, auto-drivers and sweepers etc. These are the other inhabitants of this place called Markham Road. The usual scene one encounters when walking down the narrow gullies of this concrete mazes is human faeces, stray dogs and people lying unconsciously in an inebriated state. Burdened by the expectations and complexity of living in a city bareft of any semblance of humanity, they seem to have chosen the path of escapism as a way of life. Their miserable existence is a contrast to the optimism with which the affluent seem to fledge their muscles in a multitude of activities like restructuring and renovating buildings, opening shopping malls and bars, etc.

The three houses where the Meiteis have taken shelter as tenants are characteristic of this microcosm. Sharifa building has a Muslim landlord, generous to visitors and the tenants except in matters of water supply. This is also the venue of many a pleasant get together and parties thrown by my friends, where one gets the treat of genuine Manipuri delicacies and where drinks flows like Imphal river once in a while. It serves as a release of our energy and creativity, extolling our pride and prejudices as Meiteis and reliving with an almost nostalgic fervour of our easygoing lifestyles at home.

Our landlord, the House of Varghese, a Malayali businessman of Catholic creed, seems to have crossed the barrier of poverty, selling hardwares, antipathetic to his surroundings without crediting an ounce of trust to anyone, including his tenants. He is suspicious to the brim and yet, shows some signs of humanity once in a while in his dogmatic celebration of Christmas by offering sweets and eatables to his friends and neighbours. However, all credits to him for raising a family who's all earning and English educated even though he cannot not speak them properly. Although proud of his achievements and drinks a little as I suspect from the occasional bouts of cacophonous arguments in the family, he takes a humble subservience to his wife's whims when it suits him. The third house where another group of Meiteis are tenants has a Kanadiga or the local native of Christian creed, alcoholic and generous to a certain extent but a little interfering in personal matters of his tenants.

Funny thing is that I have grown up within this short stay here in this couldron. It has taught me that life is an interesting journey of ordeals and experiences. The ingredients Markham Road holds as the mole in the garden city of Bangalore, is also a glimpse of spurious optimism in growing metropolitan cities of India. It is a reflection of how a metamorphosis takes place in the life of an individual as well as a community. Here I quote a wisdom of Zen philosophy:

The ingredients have their own boundless virtue - which is your virtue too. That is the Zen spirit.

By: Andy E.