Interactions in Yelahanka: the bus stop

We chose to work on observing the environment of Yelahanka and more precisely on the bus stop called Railroad Wheel Factory. This place is on Doddaballapur Road, a very frequented place.

The bus is a common transport in many countries. We wanted to compare this bus stop with our ones. We spent one hour and a half on a bench to observe the various interactions around us. When we arrived it was quiet but after 30 minutes, at 4:00 PM many people came here on their way home or to wait for the bus. When it arrives people turn excited, they move quickly to enter the bus. Nobody goes out at this stop, people just go in. The users of the bus in India are most of the time from the lower social classes. We observed men and women waiting for the bus after work and pupils after leaving school.

It is a movement place where nobody cares about cleaning and dispose of all waste on the street. This bus stop is surrounded by little shops like fruits or beverage sellers. Walkers, bikers and drivers use them to have a snack. The street is divided into three parts: the road itself where cars, trucks and also pedestrians circulate, the pavement where people wait, and an unnamed area between both where we find a random mix of shops and walkers. We saw many tractors like in the countryside but the landscape definitively looks like a town, that is why we can say Yelahanka is a peri-urban area which links Bangalore and the countryside.

People were very intrigued by what we were doing and came to speak with us, to understand and to share. Many of them wanted to take pictures of them or of us. But they didn't wanted to take them in the street but in a hospital garden, because they prefer this place. It was one of the few clean green spaces around.

The street is a place to spend time, where people meet, work, wait, walk and exchange. Unlike french streets, indian ones are more used because they are less frozen: there are only a few signs, and no borders to stop people from imagining news ways of running its opportunities.

By Noëlline Demeilliers, Nicolas Charronneau & Jean-Baptiste Haag