Shantinagar Transit Corridor (12°57'18.44"N, 77°35'32.20"E)

 

Strangely enough, the one type of movement Shantinagar is no longer built for is taking a leisurely stroll, which is not to say it was ever built for doing so; however, this is precisely what I am attempting to do, and I am failing. Maybe I am expecting too much, because here lies the most dynamic, busy and interconnected transit hub in all of Bengaluru. Strolls like the one I am taking are punctuated by moments of standing still, and everyone here is always moving, all the time.

Most people do not know it or think about it, but the STC is the true center of the dying city of Bengaluru. Physically, it’s just a very large intermodal transport hub; buses, pods, flying vehicles, rail, short-range commuter flights, everything. All this is for the metropolitan area; you cannot leave the city from here, but if you wanted to go anywhere, you must come through here. What that means is that everyone, and I do mean everyone, is somewhere in this sprawling mess of concrete and haphazardly placed greenery at some point of time every day (or at least every week.) 

Sure, there are places to sit down and listen to music or do a little virtual tour of the labyrinthine network of corridors and walkways and roads and rail platforms that connect one thing to another, but I can tell that every single person doing these 'leisure' activities is waiting to move to their next point of travel; next bus in five minutes, next pod in eight minutes from gate number six, and so on.

In one minute, I see: morgue staff carting bodies to the service rail, rich people flying to their homes thirteen kilometers away, what seems like millions of working folk changing trains, one completely lost soul searching for the restrooms, loads of vegetables being carried by loads of people, three police officers catching three couples canoodling under an advertising hoarding... it takes me a moment to notice that I, too, have been walking, though I know not where. 

This moment of relative clarity was when I felt a little sick, and I promptly walked towards a sign saying Gate seventeen - Exit. Luckily, once I exited the interchange, everything was back to classic Bengaluru – I got my bearings and understood I was near the FSR at Lalbagh. I stopped off at the nearest cafe, wrote this entry and the published version with an unsteady hand, and shakily walked back into the maelstrom of humanity and machinery. I had to leave the area proper, after all.

The easiest part about the STC? Leaving. Now that is what it’s built for.