The little city that never was

Bangalore
It is not the city with streets of gold. Not where you can forget your past and come up with a brand new future. Not the city of love or joy or beauty. The pope never lived here. Nor do the stars and starlets. Not famous for absinthe or freaks in cages or sex bars or topless women standing in balconies preening. It is not where the Jats live, love and commit crimes of passion. Not known for mindless opulence and you cannot find Chanel totes in gullies.

Then whatever is Bangalore? Does it really not have a character of its own ? Or is it just that it is rather uncool to be the setting of any movie/ music video?

I think that Bangalore is the place where you come to face reality. Reality. Your own and your country's. No, Impossible is something, something that has to be worked around. You have to plan. You only have so much money. Your family still exists, they didn't magically disappear and leave you free during the few months / years you spent in America. They are not fine. Your mother is growing old and your father is sick. Your siblings are abroad and only you are there in this country. This is not like the time you were in Mumbai or Delhi, far away form your home and you never realised their problems coz they never told you. You need to look at your income realistically. You need to save up for yourself and send money home to make your parents lives better. Your ex has moved on. You need to do that as well. No, you cannot pub hop till the wee hours of the morning. There is work to be done the next day. There are parking fines to be paid and dirty clothes to be washed. It will not do to wear the same pair of jeans to work on 5 consecutive days. You look around. Nobody does that. All your colleagues have cars and/or bikes and clean, big houses with carpeting and flower vases! Even the single ones! Most of them take a vacation abroad every year, not work, but vacation.
It is a good life, there are plenty of opportunities but you have to work hard and harder to make it work for you. Luck has nothing to do with the quality of your life. No slums by the side of railway tracks but no Marine Drive mansions either. There is no Ambani fairy tale, no rags and no riches in Bangalore. Not the city of immense possibility, there is a ceiling. But then there is a solid ground as well.
It is the city of solid grounding and pragmatism. The eye drops that wash your eyes out and leave them with the power to look at your life with crystal clear vision.
You make your life here, clean and beautiful with modest acquisition of beauty and property. You look at your roots and think that it is time to give back. That's it!
The city which teaches you that unlike other cities where you snatch and grab, here you must give back to whatever has made you.
Yeah, I can see a director's view point, no romanticism in solid pragmatism and thanksgiving. No ?
Y

Housewife - Mrs. Robinson or Rajni ?

***My Weekend***
Swabbing with an 800 rupee mop
cleaning
cooking
Appam and kadala curry
the quintessential gajar ka halwa , the post modern Bollywood sweet
cleaning
broken glass
broken down water filter
yelling at salesmen/service professionals
coming up with new threats -bored of the age old ' pulis mein complaint karenge aap ke baare mein'
dreaming - oh always that
building castles in the air about a friend becoming some editorial mogul ( not sure what that is)
then on top of those big-ass castles, building some fragile structures of one's own, a little room on my friends minaret, a little magazine of my own, :P
beauty and pain
smoothness and endless self-adoration for 3 hrs
hunt for the corkscrew
a little more dreaming
clogged drains
long shower
thinking about The Book
rushing to catch slow buses
traffic
thinking about making a patchwork bag - old saree + old curtain, should I ?
a ring and a mangalsutra
some blinding gold shops with hideous jewels
bad salad and good coffee
the corkscrew found
impatience and violence
broken cork floating in the wine
wine through a tea strainer
wine
wine
dirty dishes
wine
wine
snore

Bangalore's signature weather

Cloudy days, inky clouded evenings, cool breeze, the tall towering modern apartments that condescendingly acknowledge your return in the evening, landscaped gardens that stay unmoved to the entreaties of most howling winds and refuse to so much as flutter a leaf without their creator's permission, a 2 yr old swaddled in diapers, tottering to a ridiculous red slide and looking inconsequential in front of an 18 storeyed tower that is her home, grimy labourers counting their wages and emerging from the underground city that is the Parking lot, the garden variety flowers that grow in these garden variety gardens.

This is my home, now. At 5:30 p.m., on a regular day, taken from a bad mobile camera in regular mode and with no effects whatsoever. Looks like it could easily be used as cover image for any of Ayn Rand's books. If the weather weren't so good...

Blahiye Blahiye

Nyet Nyet

No, No, No

I am bored so

Sugar in coffee

but rot in the coffin

honey in the tea-pot

but the corpse rots

sour tamarind when you are knocked up

the honey smell of your baby's head

but you ? You smell of rot when you die.

Radio, TV, papers, twitter and BB

uncle,aunty, mommy and daddy

hubby,baby, sis and her baby

yak yak yipety yip

Why matter?

Blahiye, mine idol, idol mine

my life is yours

In a land where you rule

where no one goes to school

from crib to the bricklayer's shop

to fetch,carry, get hurt and drop

then to be your own bricklayer

and build,always huts and no more

In the land where you rule, Blahiye