Mangalore-The Impressionistic City

(excerpt from “Kasaragodan Days-Reminiscence of a Bygone Past”)

Dr.G.Visakh Varma.

Mangalore was my dream city .The old Mangalore was a small beautiful city (small is beautiful) laden with roofed houses and lush blooming bogainvilla thickets. Its  streets were narrow, but busy commerce made them lively. The only tall buildings in the city were the Kasthurba Medical College in the light house Hill and the Poonja Arcade at Hampankatta.

 The Mangalore auto rickshaws were of a typical lot. They looked like ravens as one looks from the rear side and had a small dicky too in which one could load provisions, vegetables and the like. Most autos had names like “Shree Devi Prasanna”, “Shree Katteel” etc. Love lorn lines were written in some of the autos, for example “Hudugi….ninagaagi”, “Sneha athi madhura”, “Ee bandhana janma janmada anubandhana”, “Preethi prema vastalya” etc.  The city buses were of all hues. The geography of the city is such that there are elevated areas as well as  plains. Beautiful churches with their crosses shining in the blue sky as well as busy temples adorned the city. I enjoyed  incomparable pleasure and joy in the city of Mangalore. The city was the abode of  youthful beauties who were very friendly, modern and illuminating the joys of energetic fear-free minds. My youthful fancy was to get in to an affair with one such Kannadiga madmoiselle la belle, to marry her and to lead a Mangalorean life amidst Rangappa Poojaris, Venkit Ram Bhats, Shyla Fernandes, Janet Rodrigues, Winston Pereiras etc.I hallucinated that staff of the economics departments of Mangalore colleges would invite me for lectures so that I would get an access to the youth paradise. But nothing happened and I became disillusioned. Nevertheless, I continued my day dreaming imagining myself in the midst of youthful beauties who might develop fascination on my classes.Mangalore was an Anglo Indian paradise (more clearly Portuguese Indian) and the dress code of youngsters were very very modern.   

I first visited the city along with Professors Mohanachandran and MSRP during, I think, March 1983.The very moment I stepped in to  the city of Mangalore, I fell in love with the city. Mangalore became my youthful image. Let it be a regular working day or saturday or sunday, I grabbed every occasion to visit the city, to get lost in the city life’s charm and come back only at late night to Kasaragod. I used to roam through the streets, engage in nice conversations with beautiful minds and sales girls, for example, a very friendly Anglo Indian girl at an electricals shop situated in K.S Rao Road, visit book shops (for example Athree Book House at Balmatta, Higgins Bothams  on the way to the light house Hill etc), get slightly intoxicated from the underground bar-cum restaurants and gulp tasty Mangalorean dishes. Kannada film songs became my craze and I began to record many popular songs like “Sneha athi madhura, sneha athu amara”, “Bhoomi thayane nee ishtakane..”, “Helalarenu thalalarenu nanna manassina bhavane….”, “Ee bandhana…”etc. I enjoyed an evening at light house Hill park because one could see the setting sun in the sky’s silhouette, the docking ships in the sea and sea birds and crows in roosting fervour in the distance. Manglaore prompted me to write some poems a few of which I quote here.

1.A  Mangalorean Girl

 
  Pages of the calender turns back to despair:6-5-1983,

Below the Mangalorean summer, above the churches
Descended a Friday.It was an afternoon.
In the bus stand buses quietly enjoyed a slumber,
Some suddenly woke up and the clock showed its punctuality:
3.30 PM.
In the midst of the crowd, a face caught my attention.
Hair combed and tied neatly to both sides,
Clad in a yellow-light red long skirt,
A Mangalorean girl!
A celestial light tied her and me
An enchanting music I heard in my soul.
Watching her in the crowded bus stand,
I recollected from my memory the picture of a flowering Gulmohar
At a haunted railway station
Somewhere...Somewhere.

2. Easter in Mangalore.

Under the Mangalore summer,
In the road where bogainvillas create colourful panorama,
On Easter day,
...With heartful of psalms and hopes,
Sophie D'souza that lonely lass walks.
Before her merges shades and sunlight,
What entwines there?
Vices or virtues?

                       Now a word about the first poem. It was a thrilling one minute encounter in the old small Hampankatta bus stand and as if from a past life’s bondage, I felt completely subservient to a great romantic interlude. Obsequious to powerful feelings and love like sensations, I felt the first ever intense admiration and attraction towards a female. Yes that was on 6-5-1983, a Friday.

  Many times, one or a gang of friends also were with me in my sojourns to Mangalore. One such person was Vijay Nair. In those times, there were only very few direct buses from Kasaragod to Mangalore.We used to catch a local bus to Thalappady and change bus from there to Mangalore city. The city buses commuted between Thalappady and the city centre. It was customary for Vijay to purchase naphthalene balls from a shopping arcade near the upland road deviating to light house Hill. The section of provisions in the arcade was managed by an attractive young lady in her late twenties. She was very pleasant in her dealings and we used to engage in very nice conversation with her. We enjoyed her fluent and sweet conversational English. Such connections even if it is in a commercial establishment taught us that human bondage goes beyond political boundaries, language, culture etc. In our later visits many a times she tried to suppress her laughter unsuccessfully as she greeted  on seeing us, asking us (as if in a Freudian slip) “Hello..you want…some…balls?”.After visiting book shops and shopping arcades finally we settle for dinner in an underground bar (Canara and Navaratna were our favourites).In these bars, we could see young boys and girls from Kasturba Medical College and other educational institutions boozing. In one moment of strong intoxication, I saw in the dim light an Anglo Indian girl in  an uncompromising posture with a youth. Since I was under the influence of liquor, I called her “darling”…to my surprise she patted me on the shoulder….and said “not now..later….”.

 There was a passenger train from Mangalore railway station at the odd time of 11 P.M to Charvattur and we depended on this train for our return journey. Another companion to my many Mangalore trips was Venugopal. With Venu, a different  pattern of commuting to Mangalore was followed. We would catch the 1 P.M noon local to Mangalore and return by the Charvattur local. I had the hobby of by hearting the numbers of locos attached to trains then, and 17363,17108,18211 etc were popular loco engines attached to this train. As it runs through the thick coconut fields in the afternoon a feeling of sadness emerged temporarily in my mind in those days about which I wrote the following poem.

3. The 1PM Local  

When the 1 PM local  puffs out of the station
Everybody go for a mid-noon nap.
Afternoon hours spread across Netravathi and in the graveyard
The dead recollects the past.
Beyond the lush green "thoppu",In his cozy harem,
Intoxicated by a heavy Biriyani lunch,
The bearded gentleman enjoys his newest marriage fancies,
Saddled on a camel, he slowly treads his heavenly path.
Encircled by a sea of sun burnt grass,
Stands aloof a vintage residence
Where, Subbanna Bhat enters a blissful slumber, and
Demonic memories flashes through his unconscious mind.
Behold Muhammed who quarreled with Iqbal right now,
Behold D'souza who coughed with a gurgling sound until now,
Behold Naik who entered in to argument with the Orange vendor just now,
Behold the lonely Narasimha Shenoy-
All fast asleep while the 1'O clock local
Passes the Netravathi bridge.
On seeing them immersed in mid-noon sleep,
Fastly forgetting their life-inflicted woes and worries,
My mind becomes restless, and an unknown sorrow devours my spirit.

While Prof.Reghunadhan Pillai became my room mate, we together visited Mangalore regularly in Pillai’s bike. While at Mangalore, though perfectly knowledgeable about the city’s geography, we would act as if we are first timers in the city and ask innocently to the first beautiful girl we see about  a place, say Hampankatta  while standing right in the centre of Hampankatta. The poor girl not aware about our mocking drill, would exclaim “oh…you are right here in Hampankatta”.Next at Jyothi Circle we repeat our exercise, this time the second beauty in her Mangalorean youthful innocence will give us the directions to reach Hampankatta. On our return journey,

Prof.Reghu would stop his bike on the top of the Netravathi river bridge in late midnight and being intoxicated I would recite my poem on Netravathi. Distance ships with shady yellow lamps could be seen in the mean time in “night’s Plutonian shore” away at the harbour premises. A surrealistic experience which is unique and cannot be expressed in words engulfed me in those secluded moments of darkness with Nethravathi silently flowing forming small rivulets beneath the bridge.

My Mangalore connection reached its climax becoming almost a paranoia so that, to tell you the plain truth, after completing my morning hour duty, I would dash to Mangalore to spend the rest of the day. My colleagues often said that during monsoon I will be more worried about the possibility of Nethravathy overflowing than rivers like Pamba or Periar.