Swalpa Adjust Madkoli

When the price of beans touched a new high of Rs 120/- a KG recently, most people of Namma Bengaluru opted to buy cheaper vegetables at the market. The public figured that they could supplement the proteins from other sources and anyway beans do not have an earth-shattering taste that cannot be done away with. This trend set off the elderly of the senior generation on a nostalgic trip.

Syamala recollected the times when she came to live in Bangalore as a new bride from Tamil Nadu way back in the early sixties, everything about Bangalore fascinated her. The climate, the trees, the uneven topography, the winding roads reaching heights and touching lows, homes with rooms at different ground levels, eminently traffic free roads and the April showers among the other features caught her attention almost immediately.

Bangalore was certainly not a place of tourist interest to this thrifty housewife, though it did figure in her initial sojourn in Bangalore. She lived a little away from the famed eighth cross of Malleswaram and made frequent trips to the market where she found the vegetables to be dirt cheap. She was struck by the fact one had to pay the same amount of money if one bought a kilo of beans or half a kilo for that matter because the price was absurdly low even in the standards of those days to work on a fraction.

It was only two annas. It was no wonder that no amount of argument could persuade the horde of sellers to work on fractions especially where beans were concerned. If there were not enough takers for the vegetables the vendors who came to Malleswaram from nearby village pockets preferred to dump the rest of the veggies just beyond the Ganesha temple and invite the local cows to feast on the green fare rather than take it back. Fruits and vegetables invariably figured as one of the gifts that Bangaloreans gave their near and dear ones living in less prosperous places.

The jackfruit laden trees that lined the roads in Basavanagudi and Malleswaram hardly tempted the wayfarers perhaps due to its abundance. Flowers meant for worship were usually picked by all and sundry because the people had a firm belief that God answered the prayers of the people who worshipped with stolen flowers promptly.

Slowly the scenes changed with the influx of population, inflation and general dearth of healthy transactions. Today most vegetable vendors do not even allow their customers to touch their products, let alone breaking off an end to show that they are indeed fresh. Most scales are not right and the licensed fair priced shops for vegetables do not have enough variety or superior quality of the vegetables. The malls that stud the map of Bangalore add glamour to the veggies by highlighting them with lights and mirrors with fashionable price tags which often makes the potential customer move away from them after giving them an admiring glance.

A new immigrant in the city might find no anomaly but every resident who has lived through the splendid sixties in this green city will not hesitate to shed a tear for their dear Bangalore. It is important to understand that this unhappiness is not only the result of rising prices or vegetables for that matter it is an expression of sorrow when one sees a beloved object, place or person corrode right in front of ones owns eyes, especially when one has unconsciously savoured every moment with relish. Over the years the novelty wears off but the place grows on you like an extension of your personality as there is so much of give and take by the person and the place.

Psychologists explain this metamorphosis as the four basic stages that human beings pass through when they enter and live in a new culture. One begins with the “honeymoon stage” where one is filled with awe for what we find around us and then we proceed to a phase of “culture shock” when one finds incongruities between the native culture and the new culture and then we enter the “adjustment phase” when we fine-tune ourselves to the existing scenario and then finally get into the “At ease at last.”

While the analysis of the psycho professionals with respect to persons and places is perfect, people who have migrated to Bangalore and made it their home have a different story to tell. Just about everyone who was consulted on the subject vouched that they had only gone through the first and fourth phase because native Bangaloreans made life easier for them by getting on to the “ Swalpa Adjust Madkoli” (adjust a little) mode which is the sustaining lifeline of the city!