As they say first things first, it is my painful duty to apologize to Bangalore – The city of dreams and also to the blogger inside me, for not sharing my amazing dream like experiences of Bangalore even after five months of my visit. So to spare myself from the guilt, for not writing down the memories of Bangalore and also to feed the so – called – writer soul inside me with some inspiration that I did something worthwhile during my holidays, here is my take on the capital city of Karnataka and also the IT hub of India- Bengaluru.
I always used to believe that it is two different segments of our brain which controls our facial expressions and the inner real feelings of our heart. As Batman says, sometimes we do have to put on a mask; smile even when your heart bleeds and stay strong and iterate ‘aal is well ‘even when your inner self is too afraid to take the forward plunge. But I still clearly remember that magical moment and the wide crescent shaped grin my lips formed right in sync with my heart, when I got off from the train at my destination after a three day tedious journey.
The moment my feet touched the platform floor, a cool rejuvenating morning breeze hugged me, shaking me off completely from my early morning sleep hangovers, which usually takes a few hours to pass. “Are the mornings always pleasant here like today?”, was the first question to my sister while going back to her apartment who was also at the station to pick me. Her candid answer that, not only the mornings, it is almost the same all throughout the day, amazed me.
Yeah !! now I understood why Bangalore was always so cool (Pun intended).
Bangalore Railway Station
Bangalore seemed to me an effectively upgraded model of Chandigarh. Wide highways but with more motor vehicles, buildings all along the streets, but a few stories higher than Chandigarh’s infrastructure, fancy pubs and discs, but here you will find them at every nook and corner of the city, clean footpaths but with more pedestrians over it to litter. Perhaps a trailer of Chandigarh about what it could be after twenty years or so.
As they say, First impression is the last impression, though not always but most of the time it stands true. With what little I had heard from my sister and acquaintances, I had an image about Bangalore as a place where people work and live like machines with less social life and no time for sensitive issues concerning humanity. Yes! honestly that was the certificate I had issued in favor of Bangalore. The main reason I write this piece is to explain how my cognizance about this IT city changed for ever and for the best.
It was my second week of stay in the city and my lovely vacation with memories of stupendous malls, mouth watering food, movie (PK) and shopping was nearing its dusk.
MG Road
But a visit to this metropolis without witnessing the ever renowned MG Road was incomplete. So one morning we decided to visit this famous street. On reaching MG Road, I was in a state of wonderment by what I saw. A long stretch of road with wide footpaths and a range of global and national brands of clothes, restaurants, pubs, book stores and cafes along its sides. People crowding all over the footpaths shuttling from one shop to another, resembling the overhead MG Road metro doing the same between the stations. Wow this was the real facet of Bangalore, all busy with themselves just like I had thought and yeah I liked it, because you don’t get to see sights like these back in Chandigarh.
We sat for a couple of hours at the open air road side, Cafe- Coffee- Day, sipping hot coffee and viewing the fast moving cars, people with either laptop backpacks or neo shopping paper bags walking along the aisle, the lightening fast metro rail making a swooshing sound every time it passed over our heads. It seemed amazing, to be a silent spectator of this fast and rapidly changing city. That moment is still fresh in my mind. That cafe and that view, everything seemed like scenes out of a movie. Everything was changing, but you don’t know whats next. That has always been the secret about Bangalore’s success. You don’t know whats next.!
MG Road with the overhead metro rail.
After moving out of the cafe, we walked more, browsed through a few books at the famous Higginbothams book store, admired the TOI offices and Bible society of India and also felt delighted to click a few pictures outside the majestic Chinnaswamy Cricket Stadium (being a cricket buff, small things like these indeed makes you happy). That day we did not notice the sun shying away behind the horizon, the stars coming out and the moon smiling. I wonder if anybody at the MG Road ever notice these changes. The street lights and the amber headlights of the vehicles came into play and the street looked even more mesmerizing.
Outside The Chinnaswamy Cricket Ground.
Everything has its end point, so the time we sensed that it is getting late, we decided to board the metro back to our apartment than a bus or an Ola cab, given the fact that I had not been in a ‘Namma Metro’ (Local name for the Bengaluru Metro Rail).
To enter the MG Road metro railway station, we had to cross the street and come to its opposite side, which was hidden all through out the evening because of the jam packed road traffic and the high walled dividers. After a herculean task of making our way through the traffic we finally reached the other side of MG Road and I can still say that it looked like a different city in itself and not a part of the street that I had been all through out the evening
Welcome MG Road Part Two (as I would love to call it).
MG Road part two had all the elements to prove wrong every misconceptions about Bangalore, mainly about it being too fast. If the other side was rapid and ever changing, MG Road part two knowingly or unknowingly slowed down your pace. As hard you may try, you cannot miss this stretch of aisle with pieces of beautiful art and other things which shouts out aloud, that Bangalore too has a social life.
Painting made by school Kids
Friendship Point
Sand Castles
From the friendship point where friends tie their friendship bands on the hooks provided over the wall, to the huge Gandhiji (made out of twisted old metal wires) sitting, guarding his street, to the paintings on the wall made by tiny tots from the near by schools, also the large area on the footpath made in the form of a life size snake and ladder board and to the area where buildings and castles were made out of sand, all brings a smile over your face, which by now is tired witnessing the glamour and glitz of globalization right across the street.
My Favorite spot at the MG Road second part was at the place where people had made paper planes and tied them to the strings which were all along the wall, handwritten with their idea for world peace.
The paper planes seemed liked Bangalore’s metaphorical symbolization of their ideas and dreams which they thought had the potential to soar above the social evils and their busy schedules to achieve a better place.
Paper planes ready to take off.
Even today while writing this I imagine what if that evening we had decided to return back home in a cab or bus, we would have missed this magical part two of the MG Road, which completely changed my perception and story about Bangalore.
Indeed life changing things happen at the most unexpected of moments.
Till then I must confess…
Yeah I had got it all wrong. ! 🙂
The Polaroid Story 