From an Australian in Bangalore

A guest post from Alex Kazaglis, an Australian who currently lives in Bangalore:

Bangalore hasn’t helped my identity crisis. I feel like a fly on the wall, or sitting on a fence, or unable to locate the appropriate cliché. Hello, I’m new and a foreigner, and I don’t know where I fit in. I travel on buses and eat from Bangalore street chaatwallas, I work and earn with the salwar and chappal wearing middle class. I socialise with still another Bangalore who seem to behave and consume in ways more western than I. You people are all so different from each other. And you are delusional. Everyone insists on referring to Bangalore as “small”, when it isn’t. It’s huge. I feel like someone waiting for the joke to be explained. Confused, but fixated.

I can’t avoid standing out here, although I am surely partly to blame. I go jogging on the ring road for instance, where I attract literally busloads of attention. I could attempt to blend in, but it’s quite liberating being watched all the time. It’s so tempting to do something really crazy. Wherever I go time seems to stop still. The construction workers next door pause the incessant dropping of bricks down a long chute outside my window, and strike a hushed pose, their eyes following me until I go inside and lock the door. There I wait to hear the next brick drop. When I leave, the watching begins again.

The security guard of my building is my keenest paparazzo. Every night as I near my building he lets out a victorious and crescendoing “yyeeeeeeeeessss!” that leaves a tonal ringing in the metal gate. He is constantly worried about me, and has a greater mental record of my movements than I do. After a perfunctory aap kesee he, mai teek whoo he proceeds to lecture me about getting home late, and why cant I go to bed at 9:30 like ‘everyone else’. He speaks in a language I don’t understand, but I’m learning to engage with him nonetheless. We do this in long shouting matches where I accuse him of sleeping on the job and he accuses me of trying to damage his reputation by getting myself into trouble. But we laugh at the end of it, and he returns to his station. People here seem to argue and not carry it around with them afterwards. I like that.

But I am doing some observing of my own. As I boldly wander in ever increasing arcs from home I notice patterns: restaurant, paan stall, juice stall, temple, chemist, mosque, flyover, restaurant, paan stall... These are the neighborhoods of Bangalore, and in mine I became instant friends with everyone involved. And while I give a nod to my own naivety, I have never felt anything but complete acceptance in these places. I like this too. So despite the multitude of conflicting consuming habits and worldviews, Bangalore abounds with community and connectedness.

I have also observed, and cannot ignore, Bangalore’s unbounded growth. From the brick droppers next door who have replaced my view with a wall (one that isn’t straight, I might add) to the endless phases and extensions reaching out to touch Mysore. And all utterly devoid of planning, the environmentalist in me is horrified. The outskirts of the city are becoming the city right before our eyes. A decade ago there were 2 million in Bangalore. Some say 20 million in the next decade. But then there are those saying Bangalore’s infrastructure will collapse long before this. It’s an interesting time to live in the fastest growing city on the planet.

Recently I’ve achieved some peace of mind. I’ve realized that in India I am surrounded by unfathomable diversity. People in one village may speak, trade, tie their saris, eat, dance and sing differently from the next. One village may not feel like they have much in common with those down the road, or any another part of the state or country. Consequently, there’s more cultural depth and diversity in this country than in the whole of the western world lumped together, by any measure. Is this multitude of identities a key to why some Bangaloreans feel a sense of smallness? Because, while the sum of it all is huge, the communities within are small and close-knit? Or is it because locals remember the Bangalore of a decade ago, when it was actually small? Maybe it’s a combination, and maybe Bangalore is just as confused as I am.

There’s more fantasy in the Bangalorean psyche than being delusional about its size. Take the proud flags on M.G. road: ‘Bangalore, The Garden City’ … ‘Bangalore, The Lake city’. So presumably Lalbagh’s your garden and Ulsoor’s your Lake? Ahem. Can I simply suggest that with all the tolerance, open-mindedness, modernity and multiculturalism, there is no need to confuse everyone by heralding non-existent natural features. For there is much to celebrate about this great city, how about:
‘Bangalore, The Progressive City (and just a little confused)’