Bangalore Days

Disclaimer – this post is not inspired by the movie. I am 100% sure that this blog post can not create the magic that Fahadh Fasil & Nivin Pauly together create on-screen.

I grew up in Kamla Nehru Nagar, a government residential colony, in Ghaziabad. It was a nice place with 20-25 blocks, some 30 parks (big & small), lots of Amaltas, Neem & Banyan trees, and families who earned their livelihood via government jobs. People from all over the country lived there. In our block, there were people from mountains who spoke Garhwali & Kumaoni, from East India who spoke Bangla & Odia, from down South who spoke Malayalam, Tamil & Telugu & also from the north who spoke Kashmiri, Maithili & Bhojpuri. Living in such abundant diversity had a deep impact on me. This is probably why I had known right from childhood, that there are many worlds beyond my world. I ached to explore these worlds & kept waiting to fall into some rabbit hole to be able to explore the wonderlands.

Why? Didn’t you read the first line? I grew up in Ghaziabad. I think everyone who’s grown up in Ghaziabad had always intuitively known that there are many worlds outside Ghaziabad because God can’t be so cruel :D. Jokes aside, I loved Ghaziabad. I still do. But I had always wanted to live in a different city even when I was a child, which happened to be Bangalore. Why? It could be because two of my ‘IITian’ cousins took their first jobs in Bangalore. It could also be because I had heard that it rains a lot in Bangalore. The younger version of me loved rains. In fact, the adult version of me also loved rains till I decided to stay in Bombay (but that’s a different story).

In the last decade, I have seen Bangalore transforming from being a beautiful city with under-construction metro, normal traffic & forever-pleasant weather to a city with crumbling infrastructure, roads choked with traffic & shifting climate. Even after that, the city continues to remain charming. Even today, when I hear someone talking of Bangalore, my eyes light up a little & a string of memories comes rushing back. It all started in 2008.

In June 2008, I arrived at Bangalore city junction with three luggage bags, one admission letter & countless dreams. Since then, many things have changed but what has remained constant is my association with Bangalore that evolved thrice over the last 12 years:

Friendships, Placements & the Forum Mall:

The two years of college are usually jam-packed with lectures, projects & case studies with no time to sleep or socialize. At least that’s what they portray. But I managed to sleep like a baby, socialize to my heart’s contents & spend more time in college canteens & inside Forum mall than I spent in classrooms. Library? I think I went there only a few times to find my friends. So much for the love of reading!

The first two years of MBA in Bangalore were spent like clockwork:

Wake up, curse the hostel staff, catch the auto in a hurry, snooze through lectures, catch tea-breaks, enter the class right on time & not a minute early, look around the classroom to see who else is sleeping, look forward to evenings & enjoy time with friends over tea worth INR 5, paneer puff worth INR 7 & a packet of chips worth INR 10. Sleep when you absolutely have to, wake up the next day & repeat the drill. This routine was sometimes disturbed by assignments & exams, that would go by quickly. What remained memorable were the countless group presentations & project work that we did. I remember that we (my group in semester 1) took our projects quite seriously. So, we stepped out often for Primary research with our long questionnaire & our thoughtful surveys. And then the autorickshaw would automatically turn towards Koramangala & all of us would find ourselves inside the Forum mall. After all, a long gossip session over Mc Donald’s burgers & soft-serve was priceless & far more important than the project research. 😀

While some of my friends found new hang-out places, I somehow kept going to the Forum mall throughout. All that had to happen, happened within these visits – batch shuffling, new friends, disappointments, daydreams, trips to Mysore & Coorg, internship, more disappointments, loneliness, fear of losing out, anger, surprise placement, more trips to Wonderla & Dandeli & goodbyes.

When I think of my college time in Bangalore, this is all I remember. Not studies, Not lectures, Not my grades either. That was the first time I had lived outside my home. I might not have found a home outside my home, but I did make some good friends, learned to enjoy my company & realized that if you don’t know how to cook, your flat-mates make you chop the veggies, wash the dishes & clean up after them. 😀