ಒಂಟಿತನ ಮತ್ತು ದೇವರು

ಜೀವನ ಎಷ್ಟು ವಿಚಿತ್ರ ಅಲ್ಲವೇ? ಹೇಳೋದಕ್ಕೆ ನಾವು ಸಮಾಜ ಜೀವಿಗಳು… ನಮಗೆ ಸಂಸಾರ – ಅಪ್ಪ, ಅಮ್ಮ, ಅಕ್ಕ, ತಂಗಿ, ಅಣ್ಣ, ತಮ್ಮ, ಗಂಡ, ಹೆಂಡತಿ, ಮಗ, ಮಗಳು, ಅಜ್ಜಿ, ತಾತ … ಹೀಗೆ ನೂರಾರು ಸಂಬಂಧಿಕರು; ಜೊತೆಗೆ ಶಾಲೆಯ, ಕಾಲೇಜಿನ ಸಹಪಾಠಿಗಳು, ಕೆಲಸದ ಸಹುದ್ಯೋಗಿಗಳು, ಅದಲ್ಲದೆ ಅಕ್ಕ-ಪಕ್ಕದ ಮನೆಯವರು, ದಾರಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ಹೋಗಿ ಬರುವಾಗ ಸಿಗುವ ಹಾಯ್-ಬೈ ಸ್ನೇಹಿತರು… ಅಬ್ಬ! ಅದೆಷ್ಟು ಜನ!

ಆದರೆ ದಿನದ ಕೆಲವು ಕ್ಷಣಗಳು ಇರುತ್ತವೆ – ನಮಗೆ ಯಾರು ಇಲ್ಲವೆನ್ನಿಸುತ್ತಾರೆ, ಯಾವುದೂ ಬೇಡವಾಗಿರುತ್ತದೆ – ನಾವು ಎಷ್ಟು ಒಬ್ಬಂಟಿಗರು ಎನ್ನುವ ಕಹಿ ಭಾವನೆ ನಮ್ಮ ಮನದ ತಿಳಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ಬೇಸರದ ಅಲೆಗಳನ್ನು ಎಬ್ಬಿಸುತ್ತದೆ. ಅದಕ್ಕೇ ಇರಬೇಕು ಮನುಷ್ಯ ಇಷ್ಟು ವೈಜ್ಞಾನಿಕವಾಗಿ ಹಾಗು ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನದಲ್ಲಿ ಮುಂದುವರಿದರೂ ಎಲ್ಲೋ ಒಂದು ಕಡೆ – ಆ ‘ದೇವನಿರುವನು’ ಎಂಬುದು ಒಂದು ನಿಶ್ಚಲ ಸತ್ಯ, ಎಂದು ಇನ್ನೂ ನಂಬಿದ್ದಾನೆ. ಜಗತ್ತಿನ ಎಲ್ಲಾ ಸಂಬಂಧಗಳ ಬಂಧನಗಳಿಂದ ಮುಕ್ತರಾಗಲು ನಾವು ದೇವರ ಮೊರೆ ಹೊಕ್ಕುತ್ತೇವೆ!

Milestones and more…

I am back with more baby news! How can I not write about my baby’s first big milestone?! He walks! Yes, my little puttu paapa, chinnumunnu, rolu-golu, my gumma-maama has actually started taking his first independent baby steps. I’ve never poured over any milestone charts to compare my baby’s developments and have not had a checklist to tick off his various accomplishments. But many babies that I’ve seen began to take their first steps within the first year. But our kiddo was content crawling around on all fours all this time. We were mildly worried that he hasn’t been showing any inclination to walk. It didn’t help when our parents said that their offspring, which is us, were walking around at 10 months! When we tried coaxing him to stand up and encouraged him to take a few steps towards us, he would grin and promptly plonk himself down on his bums. Either he wasn’t ready or was being plain lazy!

And now suddenly in the past week, he has taken to the idea of being up on his two feet and walking towards us when we beckon. It’s a game he thinks, when we make him stand and say puttu puttu hejje, he claps his hands, tries repeating the words, does a little jig, imitates us doing a baa-baa with his tiny hands and totters towards us with squeals of delight and a broad bunny-tooth-ed smile He takes 4-5 steps and either plonks down or takes a lunge towards us in a spate of giggles. And then depending on his mood, he either wants more – asks us to lift him up and repeat the exercise, or crawls away if he spies something else of interest.

Among other developments, his vocabulary has increased so much! He is constantly uttering new words every few days and we are amazed by them. He now says kose(close), bukku/ bukka(book), yed(red), aeight(light), kaa(car), bus, baa(ball), kash (catch), adu (that), idu (this), ochhi (oushadhi – medicine), mam-mam (food), bikki (biscuit), appa, amma, ajji, akka, paapa, boochi (insect), kachchi (suddenly uttered yesterday by looking at the mosquitoes in the Mortein ad!!), ta-ta, pitha-pitha (for the serial Muktha Muktha, the title song of which is his favourite) etc. He also makes several sounds like bow-bow, ambaaa, grrr (roar), aishshh (imitating the cooker whistles)… he also points out so many objects correctly now – the animals like dog, cat, horse, hen, duck; objects like ball, car, bus, teddy, bottle, paapa(baby) etc in his favourite “First 100 words” book (which is already dog-eared by all the rough treatment!) and several others like the toothbrush (at which he does a eeeee and points to his teeth), soap, mixie in another book depicting household items. He points out the various body parts – eyes, nose, ears, mouth, teeth, chin, head and tummy!

It is amazing to watch the coordination of his hands when he plays, especially when he’s given a small box and items which can go into that – he repeatedly puts different items inside, closes the lid (saying kose), shakes it to hear the sound and opens and repeats the process (when he’s unable to open himself, he throws a mini tantrum and points the box at you asking you to open saying adu, adu, adu constantly!). Like all new-age kids, the remotes and phone are his favourite things to play around with (probably because that’s what he sees us using the most! lessons for us parents ) During the play, he picks random objects keeps them to his ear and says ‘ayello‘ (hello) in the cutest way imaginable!

But the sweetest and most significant development according to me is – during the Diwali week he started saying amma and actually addressing/ pointing to me while saying so! I’d written here about how he first said the words amma, but after that it had been mostly confined to his crying times – that was the only time he would utter the word. Of late, when asked where is amma, he would point out to my photo! (Just imagine how heart-breaking that was for me! ) Did my baby really not know who his amma is? I’d worry. And just like that one day (while we were in Chennai), he clearly said amma and pointed to me. I was thrilled beyond words! The greatest joy that motherhood brings is when you hear your little soul say ‘amma’ in his/ her clear, sweet, warbly voice!

And thus my dear readers, it has been an eventful festive season, where we’ve had an amazing and heart-warming experience of watching our baby gain the confidence and balance to take his first steps; a bitter-sweet realization that our little one has grown up already and has taken that huge first step towards independence!

How has your Diwali been? Hope all of you had a bright, sparkling and safe Deepavali!

Namma Metro

I’m back after a short hiatus and this time, not with baby tales. I see that this space has becomes more or less a mommy-blog, which I suppose is normal; but I feel I have neglected the other aspects of my writing. Earlier I had a wide variety of subjects that I felt like writing about and sharing my thoughts on, but with the arrival of the baby, all that has taken a back-seat. There are events happening around me, and I have opinions/ thoughts on them as before, but those thoughts never find their way onto this blog-space. Today I decided to make an attempt to get back to my former writing style and substance.

And what best to start on than the ‘talk of the town’? Namma Metro! Yes! It is finally here! Today at 4 PM the inaugural run of Reach 1, is scheduled to be flagged off between the MG Road and the Byappanahalli stretch. As this article will tell you, the trains will stop at Trinity, Halasuru, Indiranagar and Swami Vivekananda Road stations for 30 seconds each and the frequency of the trains will be 10 minutes. From tomorrow the regular services are slated to be started from 6 AM in each direction between Byappanahalli and MG Road.

Can you tell that I am super-excited! Gosh! We will finally have the metro zipping across our city! Though it is just a single line being started at the moment, it is a giant step taken, I feel. Better late than never! If there is one thing that was lacking in our city, according to me, it was the metro rail transport system. Having been in several cities abroad and in India and seeing how much difference having a metro makes to the time taken to commute within the city, I always felt that Bangalore sorely missed having one. I thought that it was one aspect of planning for the city which had been left undone too late, cities like London and Paris have an excellent inter-city and suburban rail transport system that was designed and built nearly 100 years ago. If they could do it then, why couldn’t we? Well, I suppose nobody anticipated the kind of bludgeoning growth that the city witnessed in the last few decades, but still, realizing that plan on paper was much delayed.

As the chairman of the commission’s working group and MD of Delhi Metro Railway Corporation (DMRC) E Sreedharan says: “Seven cities are already building the Metro. If the city’s population is 2 million, they must start planning for a Metro now. To me, the Metro rail should be a revolution in urban transport. How else are we going to handle this urbanization that’s going on at a frenetic pace? Buses can cope with just 8,000 passengers per hour.”

Rants aside, I am truly, really, amazingly and goose-bumped-ly happy that I am part of the generation that witnessed the metro services being launched in Bangalore. Did you know that our metro is really high on tech?

Check these out:

•  Ballastless track system
•  Electricity runs on third rail
•  Wi-fi enabled coaches, internet access
•  Emergency call button
•  Voice communication/speaker system between passengers, driver and control centre
•  CCTVs inside stations and trains
•  Automatic train supervision, safety and protection that will sense another train on the same track and come to a halt
•  Stainless steel coaches made by Hyundai Rotem and Mitsubishi
•  Automatic ticketing
•  Recharge of metro cards through mobiles and SMS, a first in the world

Wow! Isn’t that amazing?! In fact it is supposed to be so stable that you can drink your coffee without spilling a drop, as this article will tell you. The logo for the metro is the Rangoli. In the words of the designers Jayanth Jain and Mahendra Kumar: “Rangoli has been an intrinsic part of Bangalore’s culture. With the explosion in vehicle population, it faced the prospect of being lost forever. We wanted to revive this traditional art while depicting the seamless, continuous connectivity of the Metro covering all parts of the city, and it became the inspiration for the logo”

The route map for Phase-1 according to their website is this:

But as many of us have seen and need to know, the journey hasn’t been easy. If there is one man who has taken all the brickbats till now and needs the bouquets, it is N Sivasailam. He has led from the front and has overcome a lot of adverse situations to bring the metro to us. You can read some instances and the team’s experiences here. It has left a lot of broken hearts especially with the demolitions – no compensation can replace their loss; but in retrospect, it was something that we as Bangalore citizens needed the most. So, it is hats off Mr.Sivasailam and his relentless team. We’re proud of you and thank you wholeheartedly.

On this eve, E Sreedharan , in his message to Bangalore says:

“I want Bangalore Metro to be the best. Bangaloreans must take pride in their first mass rapid transit system. With this, we’ve proved to the world that we can construct world-class transport systems”

We definitely are a proud and happy lot! Now, all that I need to do is go to MG Road and hop on to the metro and take a joy-ride! I am eagerly looking forward to doing that!