Bangalore is this moody, artistic youngster who is extremely happy and
hyper at one moment and completely laid-back and chilled out the next!
It is the
yellow Gulmohar flowers strewn on the wet, clean, calm 'Palace Road' after a short spell
of evening showers in the city.
The city’s character is like Sampige road where a KFC faces,
right across the road, a Shanti Sagar. A Hallimane
and a McDonalds coexist happily. And a Reliance Fresh store and road side
vegetable vendor both do brisk business.
This is the place where a fourteen year old Marvari
kid, helping his uncle in a textile showroom somewhere in Cubbonpet, stuns you
with his fluent Kannada within three months of his arrival in the city. But, one would also find an IT guy from Gurgaon barely managing to say ‘Kannad Gotilla anna’, even after 6 years of stay here!
This is where a 200 year old cathedral (St. Marks) shares (well, almost) its boundary wall with a happening pub in the city.
It is here, that a teenage girl in designer clothes would
touch the steering and then her forehead a couple of times before starting her expensive car to go out and meet her friends at the newest café in
town.
It is the place where you would find the largest number of
liquor shops and well, the highest number of Medical
shops (consequently?) too, compared to any other city in the nation.
If this city
has world class institutes such as IIMs and IISCs then it also has the world record
for largest number of cinema halls situated on a single road (Kempe Gowda Road, Sandalwood’s
tribute to the architect of the city).
It is here, that for every vanishing Plaza, Symphony and Lido (Cinema halls, dating per-independence) there is an ‘Everest’, surviving the onslaught of the
Urbanization, Malls and Multiplexes.
The city means the numerous art galleries and dance & theater spaces. Rangashankara has managed to get a play staged every
single day for past 10 years!
On surface, one gets the notion that life is hectic here, but
enter the ‘India Coffee House’ on Church Street on a Wednesday afternoon and 'life' seems to be lazing
around on cold wooden benches, strewn with nine different newspapers and local magazines. One Rose-Milk please! for old times’ sake..
A Pioneer of Cafes
and Pubs, this city gave the world's teenyboppers, their biggest gift, ‘Cafe coffee Day’!
The city to me is represented by that picture of Shankar Nag
on every other auto in the city.
This is where, at one moment, few hooligans, in a dingy bar,
would be gulping down Raja Whiskey while
watching a cricket match and abusing ‘the outsiders’ in the city for spoiling its
culture but the very next moment, they would be screaming their hearts out with ‘Bharat
Mata ki Jai’ as Yuvraj Singh hits a Pakistani bowler out of the park!
This is the place where grandfather and grand kids still take
morning walks in neighborhood parks, together! Former, listening to devotional songs on his
mobile on speaker mode and the latter hooked on to his iPod, enjoying a Pharrell Williams’.
This is where for every Avare
santhe there is a Soul santhe and for every Karga there is an Oktoberfest!
It is the perfect
blend of the old and new, traditional and Modern, orthodox and adventurous, maturity and youth.
This city for me
is a perfect mix of sweet and ‘kaara’...
Bangalore for me is, Chow Chow Bath!
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