Years ago, when we lived in Ahmedabad, I had heard about Karnataka and what a beautiful city her capital Bangalore was. I never believed that one day we would ourselves come to live in Bangalore. By some divine blessing, our children decided to shift to India and settle in Bangalore. That was in 1994. We began visiting Bangalore for ten to fifteen days at a time to be with our children and then back to Bangalore where we had our house and my husband worked at the IIM A. Soon enough, he fell in love with Bangalore with its lovely trees and purple flowers and, of course, Cauvery water. Cauvery is one of the seven auspicious rivers and so it turned out for us. Ultimately, we decided to sell our house in Ahmedabad and buy an apartment in Bangalore. We too decided to settle in Bangalore.
Twenty years ago, the city was still not overcrowded as it is now. Even now, the jacaranda and bougainvillea trees when in full bloom lend grace and majesty to the city of Bangalore. But at that time there were many more flowering trees and flowering shrubs, keeping us aware that Bangalore was still the Garden City as it once was. It was then also a cosmopolitan city with all types of people from all over the world and yet with its own flavour of Karnataka. Kannadigas are polite, quiet and helpful people. The ladies are gracefully turned out, elegant with fragrant mallige in their lovely long, black hair.
It was a pleasure to mingle with these persons in the ordinary course of life as also on special occasions.
Many Kannadigas do not understand Hindi but the language is full of Sanskrit words - and we could carry on exchanging ideas with them without difficulty. One disadvantage of this convenience was the absence of compulsion to learn the local language. Now of course, Hindi and English are well understood and we continue to nurse our grievance that we have not learnt Kannada as well as we would have liked to learn.
It is my loss that I cannot read Girish Karnad or Shivram Karanth, or Kuvempu in original Kannada. But Gyanpeeth of New Delhi gets these classics translated in excellent Hindi and I have read all of them. But to be able to read in Kannada is a delight which is unmistakable.
People in Bangalore are genuine. Very nice and warm and deeply steeped in Indian culture and it is a pleasure to live with them in this metropolis.
(This is an exclusive extract from the yet-to-be-released book: 'Sumitra Gandhi: A Gem of the Mahatma in Karnataka’ published by Holour S Rachappa. The article is reproduced with publisher's permission.)