BENGALURU: In the summertime when the weather is fine, Bengaluru is the quintessential city for life, love and sunshine. This city, my city – which is The Paris (romantic city), San-Jose(Silicon Valley of India), Milan (college drop-outs turned designers), Israel (start-up capital), Berlin(most vegan friendly city), Copenhagen (garden green city), London (pub-capital), Tokyo ( high-net worth individuals) of the country – is where I was born, and the only real love in my life. So far, no one has ever asked or been interested. Born to the 80’s I thought Star World, with the incestuous lives of The Bold and the Beautiful and Santa Barbara was the most scandalous and exciting thing to happen to this sleepy, temperate, gentle, pet friendly, park friendly, green borin-galore.
Little did we know we had our very own Bahubali of good times to brew it up? The launch of KFA with the hostesses personally handpicked by him and the RCB cheerleaders personally handpicked by him, he was assuring us that we were really poised to put that ‘bang’ in Bangalore! While I can’t get a guy to commit for coffee, lucky for me I have Modiji promising the sun, the stars and a bridge to the moon. (It is no wonder he is the most eligible bachelor of the country!) Unfourtunately for me, the only promise he has delivered is the RSS gym next door so Baba Ramdev can whip my ass back into reality.
As the Silicon Valley of India, we might be re-christened to San-Joseluru because everyone in this uru seems to have been to San-Jose for a project for a week or two and somehow picked up the accent, dropped off half of the pant and borrowed all their hobbies and habits like Friday night piss-ups, weekend team activity breaks, shopping for groceries online, paint ball and dining at the mall. All this, so they can find a good daughter-in-law for their mother online. From pub capital, we are now the fed-up capital with the current taxation and highway liquor ban. Pubs are now exclusive to the rich, trophy wives and their gym boys.
As the Garden City, we are now the Garbage City with 3,000 tonne of solid waste being produced every day and Arnab Goswami doesn’t even live here? Bengaluru also prides itself as one of the cities with the largest women workforce. If only we could get the men and public officials to cheer along and not treat our assets like the KFA liability. As the third largest hub for high net worth individuals recently proven by the high net worth politicians, it seems wise to ignore this class of people because us middle class will always be stuck somewhere in the middle. “From being a charming, comfortable, trusting, protective and fun relationship, Bengaluru has now grown into a temperamental, unreliable, inconsistent, incompetent, selfish marriage. While this may qualify as terms for divorce in a court of law, this doesn’t qualify for bad behaviour from its citizens.
(The writer is an actor, playwright, director, social ecopreneur at Sansita and educationist at Vyasa International School).