I always wanted to pen down this story, but time was at premium. It finally finds its way into this blog. This is not a story of a place. Its an article about the phenomenon called Koramangala and my gratitude for a chance to breathe, live and loathe it.
The year was 1983. But we were living in 1682. The mood wasn’t exactly one of jubilation but more of an urgency. An urgency to find a place which we could call our own, in anticipation of a family which would shortly burst at its seams. With many siblings of my father yet to be married, there was never a perfect time for this shift. Our then rented home 1682, in Rajajinagar had a reason to be vacated. With burgeoning rental demands, and for reasons beyond my comprehension when I was just six, and with pressure from everyone around, we had to vacate the place.
Koramangala was neither in the city, nor was a village. At best it wasn’t even lands that belonged to the rich and powerful Reddys those days. It was more of unexplored forest, which BDA decided to tame in the name of site allotments. My father had been allotted a site for five thousand rupees. Five thousand was like a current day fifty lakh figure to him with his rather abysmal salary levels and the last thing he could do was cough up this amount for the property. He had two choices – Koramangala and Indiranagar. While he could somehow locate the former, he was afraid to go to the latter area !! 🙂
After a lot of discussion and math crunching all the brothers decided to pitch in for the house so that my dad could enable the change in life. This in my opinion was the beginning and end of a joint family. The beginning was one of happiness and the seeds for the end were being sown not withstanding my oblivion about it.
The nearest bus stop to Koramangala those days (80’s era) was can-you-believe-it Diary Circle which is a good 3-4 kms away. I would say its good for a heart patient as such, but for the good-for-nothing health freaks that we are, this was way too much. This also is the sole reason why my dad and grandpa are living/lived a healthy life. They walked this distance at least for a couple to three years before the phenomenon started happening. With just six houses for the entire eight blocks of Koramangala, this was nowhere near a phenomenon in the making.
From there what happened until now is the phenomenon.
