Realizing that it would be in poor taste to use one of the conditions and consequences of our being here as an entertaining photo op, while also trying to avoid karmic retribution, there are no photos for this one.
As you might remember, our first home here in India was the Oakwood, a full service apartment in central Bangalore. As you might also remember, there are two room location options at the Oakwood: you can either stay on the Skyye Bar side of the building and be kept up every night by the boomin' bass and party peeps (as they are so affectionately known in the Bangalore Times), or you can stay on the side of the building that overlooks Vijay Mallya's construction site, with its six days a week, twenty-four hours a day construction. Although I still get goose bumps when the bass line thumps, we opted for a construction side room.
On the site of his family's old estate, Mallya is building a 31 (or 35, depending on who you ask) storey "super luxury residential complex, with six levels of parking, multiple tennis courts, and swimming pool." This massive project requires three shifts of work a day, each shift comprised of what seems to be about 150 workers each. Aside from the occasional cement mixer and one or two welding torches, the only mechanical tools or machinery on site are two massive cranes, one of which was right in front of our window.
We arrived last year at about the same time as the Mango Rains, semi-regular one to two hour evening rains that pass through southern India. As they would arrive each night, there would be a mad dash at the construction site to cover any not-quite-dry cement, unplug the open electric boxes, and generally clear out and cover up. One of the tasks of the daily rain drill was to cover the cab of the crane: apparently, there was a leak in the roof of the cab, so a blue tarp needed to be secured to the roof to keep everything dry and protected. I am not sure if it was the same man every night or not, but each night it rained one man was tasked with climbing up the crane carrying some rope and a big blue tarp, scampering out onto what was by then a very wet cab roof in what was quickly becoming a rather blustery night, wearing at most a yellow reflective vest and flip-flops for safety (often he would be up there with bare feet and just his regular work clothes). And so he would, quite gingerly and cautiously, slide around the roof of the cab on his belly securing the blue tarp. No harness, no safety rope, no helper holding his legs; just 14 storey's of air between him and a rebarred and cemented job site.
Prior to our moving into our current house, the landlord decided to install an awning over the upstairs deck. The awnings here in Ozone are really quite fabulous: wonderful wrought iron frames with a simple but nicely done floral design, topped with red tiles that match the roof of the house. To access the deck and the work site, the crew used a bamboo and leather lashed ladder. When we came to look at the house, they were hauling stacks of red tile up this ladder on their shoulders; a rather impresive feat if it weren't so devastatingly dangerous.
The work wasn't quite completed when we moved in so we got to spend a few days watching them. One of their last jobs was to install and secure the final row of trim tiles along the outside edge of the awning. To keep the monsoon rains off the deck, the awning itself extends about two feet out past the deck, and since it is, at its edge, about eight feet high, it is from the deck well beyond the reach of most of the crew. So to reach the last row of trim, the crew balanced the bamboo ladder on the six inch wide deck railing, and with a two man team - one for work and one for counter-weight - seesawed their way out to install the trim. And so I watched, for a day, as a man levitated three feet out, twenty-plus feet off the ground, installing the last bit of our awning, trusting, with a faith impossible to imagine, in a bamboo ladder and a partner who could not make any sudden moves.
***
On the site of his family's old estate, Mallya is building a 31 (or 35, depending on who you ask) storey "super luxury residential complex, with six levels of parking, multiple tennis courts, and swimming pool." This massive project requires three shifts of work a day, each shift comprised of what seems to be about 150 workers each. Aside from the occasional cement mixer and one or two welding torches, the only mechanical tools or machinery on site are two massive cranes, one of which was right in front of our window.
We arrived last year at about the same time as the Mango Rains, semi-regular one to two hour evening rains that pass through southern India. As they would arrive each night, there would be a mad dash at the construction site to cover any not-quite-dry cement, unplug the open electric boxes, and generally clear out and cover up. One of the tasks of the daily rain drill was to cover the cab of the crane: apparently, there was a leak in the roof of the cab, so a blue tarp needed to be secured to the roof to keep everything dry and protected. I am not sure if it was the same man every night or not, but each night it rained one man was tasked with climbing up the crane carrying some rope and a big blue tarp, scampering out onto what was by then a very wet cab roof in what was quickly becoming a rather blustery night, wearing at most a yellow reflective vest and flip-flops for safety (often he would be up there with bare feet and just his regular work clothes). And so he would, quite gingerly and cautiously, slide around the roof of the cab on his belly securing the blue tarp. No harness, no safety rope, no helper holding his legs; just 14 storey's of air between him and a rebarred and cemented job site.
Prior to our moving into our current house, the landlord decided to install an awning over the upstairs deck. The awnings here in Ozone are really quite fabulous: wonderful wrought iron frames with a simple but nicely done floral design, topped with red tiles that match the roof of the house. To access the deck and the work site, the crew used a bamboo and leather lashed ladder. When we came to look at the house, they were hauling stacks of red tile up this ladder on their shoulders; a rather impresive feat if it weren't so devastatingly dangerous.
The work wasn't quite completed when we moved in so we got to spend a few days watching them. One of their last jobs was to install and secure the final row of trim tiles along the outside edge of the awning. To keep the monsoon rains off the deck, the awning itself extends about two feet out past the deck, and since it is, at its edge, about eight feet high, it is from the deck well beyond the reach of most of the crew. So to reach the last row of trim, the crew balanced the bamboo ladder on the six inch wide deck railing, and with a two man team - one for work and one for counter-weight - seesawed their way out to install the trim. And so I watched, for a day, as a man levitated three feet out, twenty-plus feet off the ground, installing the last bit of our awning, trusting, with a faith impossible to imagine, in a bamboo ladder and a partner who could not make any sudden moves.
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