namma bengalooru hudugi

During my not-so-long professional life, I have met a lot of people and traveled to a lot of places. And whenever I am introduced to new people, they ask me where I am from. I am from Bangalore, I say. My answer somehow changes their perception of me. Their eyes immediately light up with knowledge. Bangalore, of course! the IT hub of India and a dream destination for all the aspiring software professionals. Bangalore - the city where all the software companies are, the call centers are, the dance bars are and the hip and happening youth are. Bangalore - the cosmopolitan city of India and myself, the cosmopolitan girl of Bangalore. They ask me of the pubs in Bangalore, if I like them better or the ones in other cities I have visited. I smile and tell them that I have never been to a pub. They can’t believe me. After some deliberation, they conclude and tell me I must then be spending my evenings and weekends in the bowling alleys in M.G.Road and Brigade Road. I tell them that I spend most of my evenings and weekends at home with my mother. They can’t believe it. A Bangalore girl is supposed to be as hip and happening as the city; she must have all the glamour and glitz that Bangalore stands for. The simple town girl who spends her free time with her mother at home can’t be a Banglorean.
Well, I have this to say - Bangalore was a small, simple town when I was growing up there. To this day, when I think of Bangalore, I visualize a calm, leisurly Sunday evening in Gandhibazaar, merrily chatting with my cousins, tagging my uncle to a “panipuri gadi”. There is hardly any traffic in Gandhibazaar so my uncle neednot be on constant lookout for our safety. My mother and her other elder cousins are busy watching the Sunday evening Kannada movie on Doordarshan. The movie is not worthy of kids and hence the panipuri bribe. On a rare Sunday evening, appa takes us all to Jayanagar 4th block to buy clothes for some approaching festival. Everytime we land there, we somehow bump into one or the other acquaintance. After exchanging pleasantries and inviting each other to each others’ homes, we move on. All the ajjis and thathas(senior citizens) are seated on the parking lot platform(the parking lot has hardly around 20 vehicles) and alternately discussing family and national politics. M.G.Road and Brigade Road are where the rich and high-society people go and where I can go one day if I studied hard and became a doctor or engineer and earned lots of money.
Bangalore is no more that simple town I grew up in. She has changed. Every time a new guest came to her, she changed herself to welcome and please him. She has been so indulged in her hospitality that she has forgotten her own children. The pizza huts, the coffee days, the bowling alleys and night clubs - she has given everything to her guests but has robbed her own children of their cubbon parks and Gandhibazaars. And somewhere in her mad pursuit to convenience her guests, she has lost her identity.
The small and quiet “town” of Bangalore has given way to the big and noisy “city” of Bangalore but I somehow couldn’t catch up. I still live in the dream that was Bangalore and remain the small town girl whose heart dances with the cool evening breeze and fluttering of leaves and not with the loud rap music of a dance bar.