THE NARRATIVE ARC
Life in the City of Bengaluru When I Was Twenty-eight
Looking back on the year 2008
There is a small park in Indiranagar next to the house I used to live in. It was my favourite place to go to for morning and evening walks for as long as I had the luxury to live there, which was a little less than a whole year. I remember going there for a morning walk on the New Year’s Day of the year 2005. I believed that a refreshing walk on the first day of the year would bring me good luck all through the year.
I was in love with the parks in Bangalore. They used to call Bangalore the Garden City back then— now the city itself is called Bengaluru. They even have a college called the Garden City College, where one of my friends from school had studied. We aren’t friends any longer but I remember having met him once at Brigade Road when he just started working in the company Mphasis.
Speaking of the tiny park, there still are trees surrounding the perimeter, and green grass on the lawn. However, I don’t live next to it any longer, but I visit when I can. Old people go there for walks every morning and evening. The aunty in pink sneakers walked briskly each morning for about thirty minutes. The uncle in grey shorts who walked his dog in the evenings. They were all older people.
The young do not have the time for parks. There is an office building fifty meters away. A lot of young people work in that office. I have never seen anyone from that office go there for a walk or just to sit on the benches.
The park has stone benches. There are at least five benches there shaded by the big trees. There is one gulmohar tree which sometimes blooms. It looks very bright and vibrant in that space. The tree and the ground covered in red and orange. A white stray cat used to live in that park. She used to come to our house looking for food. Several squirrels lived on those trees.
The park looked really tiny from the window in my room. I imagined a swing tied to the tree. I imagined my stuffed animal orangutan swinging there, climbing the trees, eating the gulmohars and leaves. I imagined we named it ‘Children’s Park.’ Her name was Toto. She wanted a bunch of friends with whom she wanted to go to the park to play with. Every time I went to a mall, I would be tempted to buy more stuffed animals as friends for Toto.
I really like going to the mall. I love the bright lights and the posters, advertisements, decoration, the escalators, the shops, food courts, and movie theatres. My favourite mall in Bangalore is the Garuda Mall near M.G. Road. I was working in a nearby building when Garuda Mall was being constructed. They finished the construction in some five or six months. I used to watch them build the structure at my lunch breaks.
Vijaya and me spent many lunch and tea breaks watching the construction. I was one of the earliest visitors to the Garuda Mall. My main attraction was the Spanish brand Mango store. It was newly launched in Bangalore and I couldn’t wait to see the store. Not that I knew it was Spanish back then. On the day I went there, the store looked pretty and sophisticated from the outside. The salesgirls had lots of airs. So, I guessed it must be an expensive brand.
The year was 2004 or 2005, and we didn’t really have online stores in India the way we have them now. There was no way for me to check the prices before entering the store, so I simply went in and found out that their products indeed were pricey.
If I wasn’t at the mall on a weekend, I would be at the Coles Park near Frazer Town. This covers a much larger area than the one I earlier described. My friend, Singh’s house was nearby where we would play Carrom Board in the weekends. We would get a quick drink at the nearby Lassi Bar and walk into the Coles Park for fresh air. The crowd visiting this park was much more varied from the one in Indiranagar.
There were many Burqa-clad women with their families, and young boys from poor families who were trying not to be hooligans. They were probably new to Bangalore and had heard that hooliganism wasn’t the kind of thing to do in this city. I didn’t see any old auntie with sneakers in the Coles Park, neither did I see anyone walking their dog on a weekend afternoon. The park itself was almost a thicket of trees, as dense as those in the Banerghatta zoo.
One evening, Singh and I were playing carom board in his house, when we heard ghungroo-clad (anklets with tiny bells attached) footsteps walking all around us, the entire evening. We knew it was a spirit but didn’t know what to do about it, so we simply sat there and waited till it went away. We were afraid so we didn’t speak the entire while the spirit circled us around the Carom Board.
I sought the advice of a Yogi guy a friend used to know. This guy told me that the trees of Coles Park were home to spirits. He was a Seer. He advised us not to sit under those trees, especially in the evenings. His name was Vineet. Vineet was based in Delhi. He was about our age, and he was a Healer.
He was homosexual. I give a special mention of his being homosexual because he committed suicide in the year 2010 as his partner gave in to familial pressures into marriage with a girl. His being homosexual had a part to play in his suicide.
Had he been heterosexual, there wouldn’t have been any pressure on him or his partner to wed outside of their sexual preferences. I felt like something is wrong with our society that pressures people to wed outside of their preferences.
We were sitting at the rooftop of Sonesta Apartments in Old Airport Road when Singh and I split up our friendship — we were going separate ways. Our friends were with us that evening. We were just chilling out on at their rooftop on a weekend evening, which soon became night. In the evening, we were watching the radars of the HAL visible from that spot, and when it became night, we were watching the stars and traffic lights. It was the last time we hung out together.
By the year 2009, I was taken to hanging out at the malls all by myself. Most of my friends had left town, and I was left alone working on a tiny tee shirts label that I had hoped I would be able to start up in Bangalore; I was alone, both emotionally and mentally. Bangalore was becoming Bengaluru by this time.
My favourite hangouts then were the Blossoms bookstore and Gangaram’s bookstore, which was nothing short of a mall as long as they were situated on Church Street but they have moved now, and a fancy pub has opened there called the Bluefrog pub. I call Bluefrog a fancy pub because it is expensive. I dislike Bluefrog because they replaced Gangaram’s. I used to frequent the Tavern Inn when they had Live music there, but the Live music stopped, and the Rock concerts stopped.
Tavern Inn isn’t fancy or expensive like the Bluefrog but they played nice Live music by local bands. The Barista in the Book Society building had really good Live music by local bands but it was also replaced by the expensive Hard Rock Café or the HRC. I went to HRC a few times but I soon realised it was not the kind of place I would like to associate with. It is showy, their waiters are pushy, food and drinks are very expensive, and overall, a phoney place.
Now, the Forum Mall has closed down, and there is a Nexus mall in its stead. On the surface, they both seem to be the same. It has the same stores, the same food court and PVR theatre, but it isn’t quite the same Forum mall anymore. There used to be a two story-ed Landmark store in the Forum mall, but now that old Landmark doesn’t exist.
What was once a bookstore selling the likes of Milan Kundera, Alberuni’s India, has now been replaced by cheap WestSide toys and makeup on sale. I don’t go to the Forum Mall anymore; it has stopped existing anyway. The Bangalore Central Mall was one of my favourite malls and I would visit it at least once every one or two months, but now all the Bangalore Central Malls also have closed down.
So, there will no longer be any more “Happiness Sales.”
