Bangalore Blog 1- the DNA of Bangalore and how it was growing up in the city in the 90s/2000s

This is a topic I’ve wanted to write about for a long time. Honestly, I can write a small book on this topic and maybe I could have if I had a month off. So I’m probably going to write a series of blogs on the theme with topics such as:

• how it was growing up in the city

• how politicians and landlords have screwed over the city and how citizens are claiming it back

• how the darshini culture has evolved in the city

I’ll recall three incidents from memory and use it to set further context. These are something I hear literally every week but I’m limiting these to 3 only.

• So back when I was in Kotak Wealth, by boss and I were in the car of a senior colleague who dropped us to our meeting spot on her way home. The lady (a Bengali) telling my boss and I (both true blue middle class Bangaloreans) that Bangalore’s ‘development’ is largely due to outsiders like her.

• A few months ago, a couple of my colleagues (A from Kolkata and B from Jaipur) were discussing various things around Bangalore. A said he liked Bangalore and a better place to live than Kolkata, B cribbed about Bangalore’s infra (understandably so). But both claimed that Bangalore’s “development” was largely due to people from other cities like them “go to even good old Wipro, you will see only CAs from Kolkata in the Finance team”.

• I met a friend from my undergrad in HSR. She is also from Kolkata and lived for a few years in Mumbai. She too went into a bit of a tirade that Bangalore is a “boring/geeky” city. I asked her if she would prefer living in Kolkata if she had the opportunities and she gave a resounding yes but when I quizzed her a little, she sort of covered up and said she loves other aspects about Bangalore. Co-incidentally, I was in Kolkata just a few weeks ago and met some of my younger relatives who were either glad to be out of Kolkata for good or those who took a 25% lower pay (okay, she was 21) to get out of Kolkata.

This isnt an attempt to diss what people have to say but is just an attempt to illustrate my sense of identity and belonging in this city and bring out some of my happy memories growing up. Anyway, I’ll bring these anecdotes back into context in a bit.

So my family has been in Bangalore since the late 70s/early 80s. Both my elder brother, 3 of my cousins and I grew up in the city , I was in fact even born here (the only one!). While I am from Rajasthan by ancestry but I identify myself as a native Bangalorean - my wife will attest to this all day. And there are lakhs of people like me in Bangalore.

I am probably not best person to write about the history of Bangalore - how it grew the way it did and how it is designed the way it is. There are already so many good books and stories out there. I’ll suggest this great 40 minute podcast at 1.5x speed or reading this book.

A few quotable quotes from this podcast:

• “Nehru wanted Bangalore to be a city of the future”

• “Bangalore is one of the largest cities in the world with no natural boundaries likes rivers or a sea or a mountain”

• “If you want Bangalore to not run out of water, do what our founding fathers did - build tanks and lakes and preserve them”

• “The psychological impact on the local population of the boom in Bangalore is that the locals feel left out and culturally isolated and their language it not being respected. In which other city in India can you speak 5 languages to an auto driver and get away with it?”

• “Now there are 1800+ resident welfare associations have woken up and are fighting back”

How do I breakdown old Bangalore?

I dont just identify myself as a Bangalorean, I am a “central Banglalorean”. For people who have come here recently, maybe all of Bangalore outside of ORR/Sarjapur, Whitefield, Koramangala, HSR is the same - its like calling Bandra and Kandivali and Dadar, Byculla and Colaba the same in Mumbai.

Here is a little illustration I made to point out how I look back at different areas that were considered a part of the city back then:

• I grew up as a central Bangalorean which consists of areas like Richmond town, MG Road, Shantinagar etc. For me, Lalbagh and Cubbon were just some parks right next door (and not exotic locations like residents of Whitefield may find today), the mix was truly diverse in terms of both languages and religion (Marwadis, Jains, Sindhis, Tamilians, Christians, Muslims etc), most kids I knew went to 19th century convent schools with big playgrounds, we went to eat out and shop at Brigade Roads and MG Road. Most importantly, we had our own version of slightly high-end English slang and way of speaking - the famous Bangalore drawl with words phrases such as brooo, what daa, yessaa, I belted some corner house DBC da. Most people who live were tilted heavilty towards running all types of businesses.

• Old Bangalore locations such as Malleshwaram, Jayanagar etc which consisted of a lot more service oriented people and maybe that is why it consisted of a lot of Kannadigas and the slang there is a LOT of kannada influnced such as “sisya, magane etc . There is this nice page on Instagram run called “Slanguru” which will convey a lot of such local slang and also maybe cover a lot of other emotions that an native Bangalorean feels. These are sleepy areas with old markets such as Gandhi Bazaar, Jayanagar 4th block and Sampige Road, lakes such as Sankey Tank and Lalbagh lake, has old independent houses and tons of greenery, very decent infra, lots of “tiffin rooms” and old school darshinis.

• The area starting from Chickpet right upto Mysore Road has a lot of wholesale markets and small scale industries and is the old business hub of Bangalore filled with narrow jam packed (and dirty) streets, thousands of shops where you’ll find almost everything under the sun and a very diverse business community. This area is largely dominated by marwadi traders who have come here largely due to a strong network effect.

• The north east part of town consist of another Old Bangalore crowd called the “townies” and consist largely of Tamilians, Muslims and Christians who have been here for long. That part of town consists of areas like Frazer Town, Ulsoor, Benson Town, Cox Town etc. A lot of this part of town was quite cosmopolitan in its own way as compared to the rest of the city.

  Quick Story - there is this popular old bakery here called “Thoms Bakery” in Frazer Town (which I faintly recall stopping by at while on our way to a class picnic in class 7) whose Puffs (aka patties) was something that Anushka Sharma, who grew up in Bangalore, loved eating. So during the IPL, once Virat Kohli came to the bakery by himself , with a mask and sunglasses on. He took his puffs and went to to the cash counter to pay but realized he didnt have cash with him and hence had to pay via credit card (maybe UPI didnt exist then?). He feared that the cashier would see his name on the card and recognize him thereby attracting attention and so Kohli had his security guy be alerted come help him out. However, the uber professional and buys cashier just kept billing as if nothing happened. Kohli was super relieved! Much respect to the man.

• Indiranagar and Koramangala were good locations even back then but were rather sleepy quiet places and not considered elite buzzing locations like they are now. Inner ring road didnt exist and a lot of Koramangala was actually a large lake

• Finally there are large industrial hubs like Peenya, Mysore road, Bommasandra etc which were considered completely outside the city back then.

For us in the 90s and early 2000s, there was no such thing Outer ring road/Bellandur/Sarjapur Road and Whitefield/Yelahanka were known as a separate town which was known only for the Sai Baba Ashram or other temples, HSR was still a largely empty track land (owned by the now extremely wealthy Reddys) and Marathahalli was known only for its factory rate outlets. The HAL airport was still a part of the city (although it was considered to be in the outskirts!)

Diamond District in Domlur, stood out as a outlier of a giant apartment complex because there were very few apartment complexes. Now, apartment complexes have sprung up all over the suburbs and outskirts of the city which were once villages and tanks many years ago. Unfortunately, the state of the roads and general infra there are still a tribute to the villages which these apartments have replaced.

Bangalore was always a known as a sleepy town full of folks working in PSUs like HAL, BEML, HMT or Canara Bank or retirees or business owners. Even in the 80s and 90s, despite the city taking in more immigrants, it still retained its DNA. The city had far far more lakes and density of trees and diverse fauna than it has now - I distinctly recall banyan trees, especially in the grounds of my own school.

Growing up in the City:

I grew up in convent school with a diverse crowd, no place was too far out for me, I didn’t crib and cry about traffic everyday. I loved visiting the Shiv Sagars, darshinis like Brahmins Coffee Bar, Udupi Sri Krishna Bhavan in Balepet, Pizza Hut/CCD/Wimpies/Indiana Burger at Brigade Road and (of course much much later) visiting pubs like Pecos, Purple Haze and Toit/Arbor later on when they just opened up.

I played in playgrounds near and far and remember how hundreds of kites lined up the sky in the kite flying season. I went to Lalbagh a fair bit, especially during outings in my Karate classes (I cant forget a poor fat friend who always failed in the physical exams). Given that my parents were working almost 365 days since they ran a shop, I had more freedom than I would have otherwise and could freely cycle to anywhere from Lalbagh to Koramangala to Lavelle road and go play basketball or meet some friend or just loiter around (like a “loafer”) aimlessly. I remember going to bowling alleys and movies after the last exams in class 9 and 10 or just hanging out on CCDs which was considered super cool back then. I remember going to National Market near Majestic to buy pirated CDs of FIFA and NBA games then.

I did my schooling in an elite-ish school called Bishop Cotton and spoke almost completely in English in school and my friends were a mix of all possible backgrounds (religion, language, income group etc). Peer pressure to be cool was definitely on the higher side when I was in school (although never toxic) and I still recall memories of school whenever I pass next to it. I went to school in my cycle from class 6 onwards and I cant imagine too many kids doing that now with the kind of traffic we see.

Quick Story: On the topic of cycling to school - I remember a rumour about me that spread like wildfire in school. Ours was a all boys school and we had “socials” aka prom night with our counterparts from Bishop Cotton Girls School in class 10 - we were all suited and booted and nervous and excited. But somehow - a rumour spread that I came to the event in my suit on my cycle. Obviously, in a high peer pressure cool dude atmosphere led to this being joked about a lot. Looking back at it - its nothing to be ashamed of but hey, it was not true!

Life was not fast paced and people were not always in a rush - the city had and to an extent - still has a laid back culture, people were easy going and forgiving in outlook. Maybe that is an effect of the weather (good even now but not as good as back then) and that is why pubs, parks and breakfast joints are so prevalant in this city.

However, the city has changed rapidly in the last 15 odd years. The populations has literally gone 2-3x and the city is not quite as sleepy as it once was. A lot of local people including many of my friends have gone abroad for good thereby putting a bigger void in my relationship with the city. I’ll write on the explosion of the city, how it has been screwed over by politicians and landlords and how people can reclaim it (and how you should vote in the next election) in another blog.

I take this line from Quora - “While the IT boom was a great leveller in terms of bridging the social chasm between the two Bangalores, it has now gone beyond control. The city is just growing and growing, without any thought towards how it will sustain itself.”

By now, you must have guessed how much pride I take in my identity of being a true blue Bangalorean. This is of course not unique - many of you also take pride in your sense of belonging to your cities. However, the difference is that I feel like a small minority in my own city now.

Some misconceptions about Bangalore

Now to bring back the anecdotes from earlier, it amuses me when people say that:

• Bangalore is “what it is now because of outsiders like us”. Bangalore always had its own solid economy consisting of PSUs, Industrial towns, businesses and IT far before what I call the “ORR boom”. Bangalore was reasonably wealthy and had its own identity anty full of diverse intricacies which even non Kannadigas like me still embrace and connect with. People like me get bothered by this statement even more because it feels like the city has been snatched away from us by the builder-politician nexus and I feel a largely helpless about it. Folks who have come to the city in the recent past equate Bangalore to just IT/startups/traffic and hence proclaim the city to have a hollow DNA.

• “Bangalore has no culture of its own” - Bangalore in its current form is a relatively new city and obviously wont have the culture depth that is so uniform in older cities like Delhi and Kolkata. But that doesnt mean that the part of the city that were not a creation of the last 20 years do not have its own culture. Far from it as you must have got a hint about in the first part of the blog. In fact, I’d argue that Bangalore in its current form also has a mix of its old DNA and a new age youthful forward looking and optimistic culture.

• “Bangalore does not have good food” - I’ve heard people even diss the dosas “I like the dosa in Delhi more”. To them, I’ll say that I like the Chole Bathure in Bangalore more. Why? This is the version I grew up on, just like they grew up eating those versions of dosas. Food is more about emotion, familiarity and attachment than taste alone. That is why you crave for your mother’s cooking - no matter how simple the dish is. In the same way, people who grew up here love the taste of the food (from the Masala Puri to the thick Benne Dosa to the local street foods) similar to how someone from Kolkata misses the Kathi rolls or someone from Indore misses the street food.

To close this blog, here is something I heard in a podcast recently. In his final moments, a famous scientist was asked what was the thing he was thinking about in the last moments of his life - he said he recalled the pristine memories of his hometown, him growing up and his colourful childhood. I can completely understand why.

PS - as mentioned earlier, I will write the next series of blogs on this theme soon!