New girl in the city!

Went to see Wake up Sid yesterday and title above is inspired from the movie but body is undoubtedly a new-fangled…. I have written things about my two years stay in Bangalore but never published it…. Partly because of time, clarity & mostly because of laziness (this always comes haunting me)….. But before I make my mind for the next step in my life I wanted to pen down some of my experience here (rest for diary only).

I landed in Bangalore because of a college friend…. It was my first visit to southern part of the country….The first thing I noticed was that most of the people were dark complexioned (plz avoid my triviality) and above that many of them had blobbed talcum or something similar on there forehead which left a grey texture. I understood why Fair & Lovely was invented and still in market even after a decade. Most of the women were fat with flashy saries and lots of gold… but that’s not all it was just one side of the coin… there were people who appears to be extra modern for a newcomer like me… it seems they have just landed from abroad…. Even a kid as small as one year old was speaking in english this was quite unusual for a ‘Gujju land’ from where I was coming…. There people find speaking in hindi also bit difficult…. Though it was also true here.

That’s not all we came out of airport to take auto my friend told some unpronounceable name that’s where we have to go….… “Benagan….gali.. haaa…li”…. “Khagga…dasa..pura”... Oophs so difficult….. Ok after some discussion auto diver agreed on twenty bucks extra… it took 20 min to reach his place…… on the way I saw some big poster of politicians & movies. Political parties have kept poster like many people were forced to stand in a row and I don’t know which political party it was as neither the symbol nor the individuals were familiar to me……. As far a movie poster were concern there was fat hero with mustache which made me sick and I felt that all my friends & uncles can be actor in South Indian movies…. Anyways……..finally we reached…and driver asked for 200 bucks …. And then again a long argument… I was just a spectator with no clue….some english words and rest all Greek n Latin for me… 200 pay maadi… something something…… meter…. something something….. ask maadi….something something. And after a long fight we settled at 150. After all this I came to know few facts about the city that autowalas are like dacoits here……. And they are always ready to fool new North Indians... and there are many unpronounceable names which I have to encounter with…. I regretted my decision for sometime to come to this place… but amateur buccaneer in me took over & made me ready to face things…..

And this is still true even after two years… autowalas are still the same even those posters, those fat aunties and uncles with grey forehead…. And even me who still don’t know the language and all South Indian languages still sounds similar to me….. something something …. ‘Inder… pinder… Ponder’… (my sister’s version)….something something. But life has changed and things which used to be excited earlier now seems to me monotonous and boring for me… and I guess it’s the time for me to be a new girl in some other new city and challenge my self again…and explore new things.

Jyoti

Inspired by Two states.