In Bengaluru, grace still survives in fragments: beneath the vast shade of an old rain tree, in the sudden blaze of a gulmohar against an exhausted April sky, or in the liquid call of a koel before traffic reclaims the morning. These moments may appear incidental in a city increasingly defined by speed, construction, and relentless growth. Yet they are also reminders of the gentler temperament that once distinguished Bengaluru from almost every other Indian metropolis.
Over the past several months, as I returned to live here for a while, I found myself renewing an old conversation with the city. I wrote of its flowering trees—the flaming exuberance of the gulmohar, the golden shimmer of the copper pod, the vast and forgiving shade of the rain tree. I wrote of mornings stirred awake by birdsong: the insistent yearning of the Asian koel, the measured calm of doves, the unseen orchestra that still survives in pockets of the city.
And yet, beneath these moments of beauty, another Bengaluru kept announcing itself.
It revealed itself first in the traffic—not merely as an inconvenience, but as exhaustion. Roads once meant to connect now seem perpetually overwhelmed by the sheer velocity of growth. Distances that were once incidental have become negotiations of patience and endurance. In April, under a harsh and lingering sun, the city’s traffic acquires an almost physical weight, borne most cruelly not by those sealed within air-conditioned comfort, but by the thousands on motorcycles, bicycles, and on foot, exposed to heat, dust, and delay.
The transformation of Bengaluru is often narrated as success. And indeed, there is much here to admire: energy, enterprise, ambition, innovation. The city has become one of the world’s great crossroads of technology and aspiration. People continue to arrive here with hope in their eyes and urgency in their steps.
But growth, when too relentless, extracts its own quiet price.
Gardens give way to glass. Trees disappear almost anonymously behind barricades announcing yet another widening, another tower, another necessity. Lakes shrink, pavements vanish, and entire neighbourhoods seem to exist in a permanent state of construction. The city rises, certainly—but often without enough pause to ask what is being buried beneath its ascent.
And perhaps what is slowly eroding is not merely greenery, but temperament.
Older Bengalureans speak not only of cooler weather, but of a slower civility, a more measured pace, a city that once carried its intelligence lightly. Bengaluru was admired not because it was spectacular, but because it was humane. It possessed an unassuming grace rare among large cities—a grace expressed in shaded avenues, modest homes hidden behind flowering hedges, bookshops, public gardens, lingering conversations, and evenings that invited walking rather than retreat.
Fragments of that older city still remain.
One encounters them unexpectedly: in the sudden cool beneath an old rain tree, in the fragrance that follows an evening shower, in a public garden quietly ablaze with seasonal flowers, or in the early morning call of a koel before traffic reclaims the day. These moments may appear small against the scale of the city’s transformation, but they endure with surprising resilience.
Perhaps that is why Bengaluru continues to hold the imagination despite all its contradictions.
For even now, amid congestion and construction, the city retains a remarkable capacity for beauty. Not dramatic beauty, but restorative beauty. A flowering avenue glimpsed through traffic. The softening of light after rain. The persistence of birdsong in a rapidly hardening landscape. These are not enough to solve the city’s problems, certainly. But they are enough to remind one of what is still worth preserving.
Cities are remembered not merely for their skylines or economic success, but for the quality of life they make possible—for their shade, their silences, and their capacity for grace. Bengaluru still possesses these in fragments. The question is whether, amid all its ambition and expansion, it can preserve enough of that gentleness to remain not merely efficient or prosperous, but deeply and recognisably human.
(Uday Kumar Varma is Former Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India)
