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Bangalore, July 31: It takes precisely three hours for the fastest-growing city in Asia'' and the Silicon Valley of India'' to shut do...

Bangalore, July 31: It takes precisely three hours for the “fastest-growing city in Asia” and the “Silicon Valley of India” to shut down. Three hours and one man who has so brazenly thumbed his nose at the law for years. This time his target was the state’s “cultural icon” and so the city promptly shut itself down to express its “outrage.”

By 9.30 am, everyone here knew what had happened and within two hours, shops closed, schools were called off. The Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce suspended all activities, including screening of movies in theatres until Rajkumar was released. Phones were dead all over town, and that included mobile phones. Police cordoned off too many roads to mention. Petrol stations declared “no stock” and closed up, a move which had been anticipated so people rushed as fast as they could to stock up. Although by afternoon, it was clear they had nowhere to go.

By 4.00 pm, a round of Bangalore revealed an emptiness never seen before and a bunch of young men enjoying their 15 minutes of fame for the TV cameras. At Richmond Circle, large crowds were stopping anything on wheels that came along; vans, trucks, bikes. Any with women inside were let off, but otherwise, a 20-strong crowd would press against the vehicle and ask, “Which direction?” Anyone looking out at the sea of faces must have said “Any direction you like”, because the end result was that a number of people always got in. The crowd was polite, but very clear they wanted a lift and that’s exactly what they were going to get.

Attenders at a petrol station nearby said they had closed at 11.00 am but a mob had come and cut their electrical wires anyway. At SJP Road, a crowd of policemen said, “No problem here. In fact, it’s a good thing, we’ve been wanting to clean the road for a long time and today, it’s finally clean!”

At the KSRTC bus stand in Majestic, the drivers sat in a circle talking and prepared to wait “until services resume,” in other words indefinitely. A few buses had plied in the morning but by afternoon, not only had bus services stopped in the city but long-distance buses arriving and departing from Bangalore were also stopped. The crowd sitting at the bus stand seemed resigned to waiting indefinitely, too.

A resident from Seshadripuram said, “I just came by to have a look. A big crowd came to my area and threw stones. They have also attacked the Natraj theatre because it usually shows (the movies from a certain community).”

At Bangalore City Station, two women who had arrived on the Karnataka Express all the way from Jhansi said, “We arrived at 2.00 pm. We’re just going to wait it out, what else can we do?” Not a single auto or taxi had been seen on city streets since noon, and there were none at the station either. There was a reason: some buses and cars had been attacked.

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It was only in Malleswaram that the crowds looked like mobs, but there was no doubt they were enjoying the camera lens aimed at their faces. The mob then passed a mound of garbage the Corporation truck had been forced to dump in the middle of the road, heading for Rajkumar’s house in Sadashivnagar.

There, the crowds had been arriving since morning, and looked set to swell throughout the remainder of the day. People had climbed to the topmost branches of overhanging trees, stood all along the walls and were quiet until a media man stood on top of the gate and aimed a TV camera their way. Then, the shouts could have been heard for blocks, and the waving arms no doubt captured for the evening news. And all along the long way home, residents passed blackened and smoking tyres. From Indiranagar, to Ulsoor, to MG Road, to Majestic, to Gandhinagar, to Mico Layout, to Malleswaram and full circle to Sadashivnagar, a city now lies paralysed.