Mangalore airport’s tabletop runway amid picturesque surroundings hides the dangers within, in a sense resembling the city itself.

From a laidback coastal town, known for its anjal and pomfret fries, the town has grown into a throbbing industrial and trading centre in the past two decades.

In Karnataka, few will contest the perception that Mangalore occupies with ease the second rung after Bangalore.

But the city itself has not covered itself with pride in recent times. Like the tabletop runway where pilots can ill-afford indiscretion, Mangalore city itself is caught in the throes of a crisis that surfaces occasionally.

The story of Mangalore’s growth is also the story of a rise in communal tensions that hog attention every once so often. And, these tensions are not the classic riot-type situations. They cut deeper and even affect inter-personal relations.

If you are a Muslim boy and walk around with a Hindu girl, you can be accused of carrying on a “love jihad”. If you are a girl in a pub, you can get attacked for immoral conduct. Thanks to Pramod Muthalik’s thugs, this is the overriding view of a city that deserves a better description.

In Karnataka’s relatively placid political scene, if ever there were the occasional storms those were in the Mangalore region.

Years before the BJP finally came to power in the state, the party first dug its trenches in Mangalore. Had the Congress read the situation better, it would have understood that its fortunes, or rather, political misfortunes in the Mangalore region were the chronicles of a demise foretold.

This is not surprising as Mangalore is very different from the central and southern Kannada heartland. In fact, the city is a clear proof of Karnataka’s heterogeneous character. The cultural and demographic nature of Mangalore is very different from the rest of the state. For instance, the Tulu language, rather than Kannada, is dominant here.

And, Mangalore’s umbilical cord is tied to Mumbai rather than Bangalore. Historically, if a Mangalorean stepped out of home, he or she would gravitate to Mumbai and from there to the Gulf. So, the city and the people identified themselves more with neighbouring Malayalis and Mumbaikars.

The other key differentiator was Mangalore’s erudite neighbour Manipal. Housing some of the country’s top professional educational institutions, it always had the stiff upper lip vis-a-vis the rest of the state. If you needed to talk education and career, it was Karnataka and Manipal as separate entities, not both as part of the same.

As if the notional barriers were not enough, the physical link from Bangalore to Mangalore is fraught with dangers. The road connecting the two cities is considered one of the worst in the country. In stretches, it is almost not motorable. For the past four years, the government has made repeated attempts to set it right, but it has not worked, thanks to huge freight carriers transporting iron ore from Bellary to the Mangalore coast and the petroleum tankers from the coast into the state.

After an extended period of negative publicity, in recent months, all was quiet on the Mangalore front. It seemed that the city was attempting to regain its poise and cauterise the abscess of violence and tension.

The Bajpe disaster has rolled back the recovery by several notches at least.

(The author is a Bangalore-based journalist)