Thank You: The unfiltered soul of Bengaluru, India

 

Thank you, Bangalore, for your gentle blue skies as invigorating as a cup of filter coffee; your occasionally blushing sun; your fragrant rains from a refreshing sprinkle to ruinous raging downpours; and, your visually arresting cloudscapes like slow-moving frescoes painted on the sky.

Thank you for your vibrance; houses painted in pastel orange, purple, green, yellow, like a perennial Holi. Your trucks like speeding carnivals embracing “Horn OK please”, trumpeting colourful noises and transporting anything from potatoes to the population of a small village, standing room only. Your neon signs peppering my walks, jewel-like vegetables heaping on roadside carts. Your people radiantly draped in flowing embroidered fabrics no matter their occupation or means. You wear art and personality on a daily basis, and remind me that dressing elegantly is an act of self-respect; like hand sanitiser against the germs of dirt, disease, sweat, mud, and “the municipality has cut the water again”; psychological armour in the daily battle of inequality, discrimination, and so much discrepancy that it becomes the air you breathe.

I arrived in an unfamiliar city, alone with one suitcase, among news headlines of six-year-olds being raped at school. Bangalore, you shattered my faith in humanity, then rebuilt it stronger from all the good souls I encountered. Thank you for following up with a citywide protest against sexual violence. One of my first adventures here was walking through the streets of a slightly shady neighbourhood to find a place to live by the end of the week, knocking on the doors of buildings with signs for “Ladies Paying Guests” and calling phone numbers on flyers nailed to trees.

Thank you for leading me to Kammanahalli, a livelier and safer neighbourhood. In exchange for a longer daily commute in the notorious Bangalore traffic, I got to live among streets chock-full of the most exciting and diverse restaurants (both sit-down and stand-up), bakeries and quirky cafes, and street food stands like the repurposed auto rickshaw that sold ninety-nine varieties of freshly prepared dosas. Here I met waiters who matched my gastronomical curiosity with amused patience, explaining the anatomy of each idli and mithai, fiercely protective aunties who could ride bikes wearing saris, and roommates who had come from all over India to study accounting or fashion design, practise interior design, or work night shifts at call centres, but knew how to conjure up a view of Paris from the rooftop.

Thank you for letting me maunder in your streets just like your cows. I hit the ground running, eager to experience life as it is, and stumbled until I learned to traverse the obstacle course of cracked pavement, sleeping dogs and sometimes people, deadly potholes, strange puddles and unidentifiable debris. This path has its ups and downs, in the literal sense. I learnt the best aperture size for the window of a bus or car to catch the wind, the sights and sounds (no need in an auto rickshaw, because it’s all windows -in a monsoon shower, it is like riding Disney’s Splash Mountain sans seatbelts). The only way to cross a thirteen-lane fast-flowing river of screaming traffic that never stops for a light. I am no sheltered princeling, but my immunity is now steel-reinforced by seeing floating ants in my drinking water, losing power for hours at a time and finding myself alone on a completely unlit street at night, and flicking a diverse zoo of insects off my face while falling asleep at night.

Solitary travel is the ultimate freedom: the unfiltered exposure, the chance encounters, conversations where you might not share a single common language, but you open up more because you will never see each other again. It is also frustratingly limiting when you are a girl in India -even in safe times and places, you get piercing stares from people that try to peel your skin off with their eyes. When your natural tendency is to smile at strangers, it is painful but necessary to project suspicion on everyone you encounter. Somehow, I still made friends of strangers. I knew one person when I came to Bangalore, and I left with special connections to a diverse and unusual set of people that helped make this place a home for me, who opened their hearts to me despite the looming expiry date on my stay.

Thank you, Bangalore, for the kind-eyed bus conductors; wonderful co-workers; the Japanese ladies I befriended on the street entirely by chance and found to be the mirror reflections of my cultural formula; the auto rickshaw drivers that shared life advice, the warmhearted and generous people who became extensions of my family. Thank you for your genuine vibes of people just fighting to live their lives; I have never felt closer to the heartthrob of humanity.

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One response to “Thank You: The unfiltered soul of Bengaluru, India

  1. Beautiful piece of writing. You sound almost like an artiste describing her muse !!
    For someone staying in Bangalore for the past 9 years and criticising the traffic, infrastructure and civic amenities almost every day, your musings come across as a refreshing and positive take on these very shortcomings of the city.
    Need more of your kind to bring in such positivity – and more importantly- work towards bringing in a change for the better.
    Kudos !

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