Look closely and Bangalore can still remind you of the way we were

TRIED & TESTED - SHH, I'LL TELL YOU A SECRET
Look closely and Bangalore can still remind you of the way we were
SHOBA NARAYAN

C ities have secrets. Locals know them and do their best to keep them away from prying tourist eyes. This is the way of the world, and this is how it should be. The person who has the best vantage point to observe these secrets is the person in between a local and a foreigner; a person who still has the fresh curiosity of a visitor combined with the smooth cadences of a long-timer. I happen to fit this profile. I am a non-local who is just in the process of shedding my hyphenated identity and turning Bangalorean. The process of turning local involves discovering a city's hidden recesses-the one she keeps closest to her chest.

Like many of India's great cities, Bangalore's secrets also have to do with timing.

It is not just about what you do or where you do it. The key element is when you do it-timing is everything.

Eating a benne dosa (benne means butter in Kannada) at dawn in Central Tiffin Room in Malleswaram is a hoary tradition. Won't taste the same after the sun rises.

Walking around Ulsoor Lake at sunrise is another. It is where the army-the Madras Sappers have an adjoining campus-trains its rowing team. It is a good way to watch muscular men swish over the shimmering water.

Morning is also the time when the Muslim flower vendors deliver strings of jasmine to Hindu households for the morning puja. They know South Indian pujas by heart even though they take time off for namaz. Secularism still exists-you just need to know where to look.

Noon is when the malls come awake. Everything is slower in Bangalore compared with, say, Chennai, where you can conduct an entire day's business by 8am. But Bangalore is cooler (climate-wise) than Chennai.

Things move at a more genteel pace. The malls are good places to watch today's fashion. There are pretty young things in tight jeans and skimpy T-shirts.

But amid the micro-mini crowd is the occasional maami clad in a Mysore silk sari, with jasmine in her hair and a giant red bindi. She cares little about today's fashion; her own fashion script was written by her grandmother; little has changed since.

Malleswaram and Basavanagudi combined together formed the inspiration for R.K. Narayan's fictional town of Malgudi.

Both are old Bangalore neighbourhoods, full of maamis. The cadences of life in these neighbourhoods are reassuringly similar to the way they were two decades ago. Vegetable vendors still trawl the street, selling plump purple brinjals for a spicy vangi-baath; tiny pearly-white onions for a bisebele-baath; and everything in between.

Baaths (or rice mixes) are a big deal in Bangalore. We have mosaru-anna or curd-rice; bisebele-baath which tastes right only when eaten in a Madhva home in Basavanagudi; and puliyogare or tamarind rice at Kadambam.

Arun Pai of BangaloreWALKS knows many of this city's secrets.

He walks its streets and sees everything at slow speed, from the ground up.

Completely different from sitting in an air-conditioned car. Bangalore's biggest secret might be that it is still a walker's city.

The weather is comfortable enough to walk or bike, which is what architect Georg Leuzinger does. Or you can observe India, and indeed the world, from a comfortable Bangalore garden, which is perhaps what writer Ramchandra Guha does. Or you can stand on the portal of Vidhan Souda and listen to a meaningless political panegyric; better yet is to spend your time in the intimate space of Ranga Shankara and watch meaningful theatre. Or you can shoot the breeze about snakes, healers, organic food, yoga and mahogany trees with my buddy, Prem Koshy, at Koshy's on St Marks Road.

Bangalore's secrets, you ask. Why should I tell you, I say. Come and find out.