Where are you from?

Four years ago, or maybe a tad bit longer, or rather older, I moved to Bengaluru. This charmingly beautiful city with it`s never ending traffic and never ending rains. When you hear the word rains, and if you belong to a part of this subcontinent where it rains in the monsoons unlike the more dry arid parts. then be warned, Bengaluru loves to charm it`s way and trick you into believing that it did rain. So I ask: Did it rain? and then pat comes the reply, Yes, it did, look at the soggy clothes and wet faces. But well, alarmingly enough, you see the sunlight right away.

Over the years, I have been curious to read narratives of Bengaluru, written by its locals. Narratives of an honest depiction of the Bengaluru of the bygone days, of the post-colonial days, wherein you could hear the sounds of birds nested on a brick white window sill of a mansion with beautiful tapestries. I didn't want to read the contemporary narratives, for the present is quite jarring, with looms of dust descending upon us like a never-ending nightmare, poor kids wheezing in jam-packed streets addled with potholes. These descriptions don't make a coffee table read.

What I have forgotten in this whole narrative is the simplest answer to the question, I have been asked quite frequently over the past few years: Where are you from?

I have grown up in the monsoon clad humid Visakhapatnam, known for its harbors and beaches. I, however, stayed away from Vizag for a period of seven years, living in Hyderabad. The city I returned to after these years was barely recognizable. The city I left, didn't have flyovers, manicured beaches, and malls. The city I left didn't have chains of food joints splattered across its radius, beckoning consumerism further in. I do not for a second rue the development, the city has seen. However, it baffles me to greet an old friend with a completely unrecognizable makeover and warmth just on the fringes, barely there.

So when the good ol' Bangalorean here, tells me, they miss the Bangalore they knew, I understand. I can relate partly to the changes that happen in a city. that grows at a mind-boggling pace. I would love to have a time-turner to just flip back to the good days back in time to have an energetic banter over hot filter kaapi and idlis sold at tiny stores under the shelter of trees, adorning a street with Sampige and mallige blossoms. 

Recently. I was in an auto with a friend, thinking of my years in this lovely city, recounting the roads I cycled in the North Bengaluru on a cold breezy day like the one today. I came to this stark realization that, over the past years I indeed developed a rare bond with this city. That rare moment of joy you experience when you know the potholes of the road as perfectly as the back of your hand. When you walk in the pavements of the road, knowing precisely where you need to be wary of the sludge dislodging from the streets onto the clothes; and when you can occasionally follow a heated conversation in Kannada without looking for translations, you know that you have got the whiff of Bangalore around!

I write this blog on a pleasant Sunday evening, with a cup of tea in my hand sitting peacefully in my home, watching green parakeets occasionally whir away, surrounded by beautiful Torenia blooms. So, trust me, Bangalore is not a dry sad place devoid of nature.

Signing it off, 

@Namma Bengaluru