Return

Finally Bangalore welcomes me back after a month's vacation in a rather uncharacteristic manner- a cheerful auto-wallah! A rarity indeed even though this is a fine city, but not that I am complaining.

For a person who comes from the idyllic setting of the North-East, I believe that Bangalore is the closest thing to home, speaking of course on a "big-city" scale. It is laid-back with a pretty accommodating local population but at the same time it presents many opportunities which we lack back home. As a student here I have many memories, good and bad. But the experience piled on and now I'm in a position where I can look back at those bad ones and smile genuinely.

Bangalore comprises of a whole kaleidoscope of Indian culture and it's like the miniature version of the country here. Its cosmopolitan atmosphere was a welcome continuation for me from my days in St.Edmund's where our group consisted of guys from literally all over the place. Another thing about Bangalore that would excite us North Easterners is that it has a pretty good music culture and there is a place for every genre here. So if you are musically inclined, there’s no need to fear monotonous Punjabi remixes in this neck of the woods. After all this is the place where Megadeth, Iron Maiden, Sepultura, The Rolling Stones, Elton John, Scorpions(twice!) and many others have played and enthralled their audience.

Also, you don't have to wander too far if you decide to have some pork and beef for dinner. Of course it requires a bit of "discovering" places in the beginning, but that should be welcome by the little explorer that's in all of us. And that is good news because eventually you will get tired of the more commonly available chicken. Also if you are a foodie then Bangalore is a place where you can find multiple cuisines. Just a walk down Church Street here and you can have choices ranging from Vietnamese duck to a nice heavy steak to some delicious Punjabi cuisine and of course scrumptious biryani (a must on your to-do list for Bangalore). There are lots of nice places to eat and that is something about the city that you will discover with time.

And as Bacchus may bear witness, a lot of us love a pint or two on a warm afternoon or maybe something stronger on a rainy evening, and yes indeed, in Bangalore you're never too far away from a watering hole. You got them dingy bars (of which I saw a bit during my college days), where you can imagine those stabbing scenes which you see in South Indian movie trailers happening often. Such is the "ambience" there. Then you got the slightly "posher" ones with the roof-tops where you can have peanut masala and chicken kebabs along with your drink. And of course you got the pubs where they serve you beer in pitchers and charge you double for cigarettes. The attractive thing about most of them is they play good music, although at times they overdo the Pink Floyd or Doors bit. Then there are the discos and they come with a rather depressing deadline, something shared with the pubs. Let’s just say that if Usher was in Bangalore he would have to stop making love by 11:30 P M because that is closing time for the clubs down here.

Rock concerts, grilled chicken, auto-rickshaws and their shady meters, call centres and their daredevil cabs, flooded streets, branches falling on people and protests against "helmets”, triple life-size political portraits and festive movie premieres are all a part of this booming city and top it up with an old fashioned traffic jam and there's the picture. Forum Mall and the brands you find there, multiplexes where Hollywood movies are actually popular and South Indian restaurants where you stand and have dosa, free pop-corn with a pitcher of beer, these are the mental stills in my head when I think of Bangalore.

That's Bangalore in a nut-shell for you; the beginning of a love-hate relationship with this big city that still tries to cling on to its old identity as an idle cantonment town. This little piece here is just an introduction from my part to this city which a lot of us are familiar with, but there’s so much more to it and each topic deserves a chapter of its own.

Here’s to Bangalore, whether you love it or hate it, you can’t ignore it.