A few weeks ago, I met the gentleman who was my first boss in Bangalore. We were meeting after a long time, and over a cup of coffee, he asked me for my visiting card. He looked at it for a while, and said, “I don’t know about you, but I feel very proud about this.” It was a humbling moment. He then smiled, and asked me if I remembered our interview conversation.
Of course I did, because it was one of those occasions that changed my life’s trajectory. He reminded me that when asked why I wanted the job, I had answered “..because my future wife already has a job in Bangalore and I need to move here from Cochin to get married’. He had laughed. The year was 2003, and thus began my life in Bangalore.
The conversation was a reason in itself for a bout of nostalgia, and as I made my way back home later in the evening, my mind was replaying the time I had spent in this city. But there was another reason too, and that’s what this post is about.
In the dozen years since, Koramangala has been our home for ten, and in a few weeks, I would be waving it goodbye, potentially forever. But was that even possible? I still remember us moving to Cox Town and coming back after two years. We wanted to stay near Forum and just went at it until we got that apartment in Ansal Krsna 2, even though it was massively beyond our rental budget! But this time is different, because we are moving to our home.
Koramangala is home to many things, and some of them are what my fondest memories are made of. Late evening life planning in March 2003 in Wipro Park battling mosquitoes and moral police! The first home hunting process and using life stage pleas to negotiate lower rents. That BDA complex where D and I got married in April 2003, the tiny place that was our very first home, and the first ‘family photo’ at GK Vale. D’s one day Kiney lesson that had Lakshmiamma, our maid, laughing her guts out!
Koramangala, also home to the workshop where after days of breakdowns and having to to be pushed through different roads of Bangalore, a decade-and-a-half old ‘Mallu’ Kiney was finally laid to rest. How does one thank the kind couple who took us to St.Johns when we were numb after an accident? An accident which forced D to hobble up three floors everyday with one of her legs in a cast.
On a happier note, how can one forget the late night chaats in Teachers Colony, and the different phases of the Saturday dine-out ritual – from Lazeez and Mars Chicken Delight and Aaranya to loving Little Home and then emotionally divorcing it after it discontinued beef, to lazy brunches at our favourite via Milano and the tender coconut ice creams at Mama Mia and Naturals. Or standing in a line to get into Aangan and Gramin (still the only veg place I would consider re-visiting) to the now-extinct Szechuan Garden and the Magnolia story? A prequel to over a hundred Koramangala restaurant reviews. Or D’s CD battles, and late night Mallu movies at PVR when we used to walk to Forum mall, the yoga classes over the years, and the arguments with a well-meaning lady for walking anti clockwise in a park during our morning walks!
Koramangala, where for every route, I had a backup route. Koramangala, which I staunchly defended as the coolest place in Bangalore. Koramangala, which changed before our eyes, and which watched us navigate our lives. Whose tree-lined tiny inside roads gave us dreams of somehow owning a house in the locality. Desperate plans that finally never worked out and forced us to acknowledge that this could never be home. And yet, a place we consider home because it had housed a young couple’s aspirations, their uncertainties, their routines, their unstated but understood creature comforts, and had given them a sense of belonging in a place far away from their homeland.
As I write this, I can sense that lump in the throat, and in the million fragments that begin to appear in my moist eyes, a treasured few are of days that are no more.
Winds in the east, mist coming in.
Like somethin’ is brewin’ and bout to begin.
Can’t put me finger on what lies in store,
But I fear what’s to happen all happened before.
(Mary Poppins)
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