Bangalore(sic) rocks-2

Dramatis personae:
The writer
Pervetdly moronic side: He eavesdrops on other people's conversation
Normal side: HE appreciates the pleasant side of bangalore

Lavanya sankaran dedicates her lackadaisical yet partly brilliantly written "the red carpet" to bangalore which she refers to as "my errant muse". It defied logic to me until recently. Because bombay is an enigma, new york has an underbelly which is as diverse as its gentry. But bangalore ?? Apart from housing 2500 IT companies this place hardly has anything to boast about, right ?? Wrong !! Its not for nothing that "bangalored" has found its way into oxford dictionary. However, the sobriquet given to it as "the garden city" is another boo boo. Consumerism has crept neck deep into this bustling place to such an extent that a drive from the airport would make you realise that pradip kishen would have dreaded this drive throughout his remaining life or maybe he is. Foliage would be a misnomer in this part of the world. However, this article takes forward my earlier write up on bangalore. I am not getting enough of this city and hence, the part 2.





Thanks to an mba college interview i had to come to bangalore(which i love doing ). Per capita income must surely be the highest in bangalore because the auto wallah dished out a nokia 6600. I went into a stupor for time immemorial. These must be the ways of bangalore assuaged my disquitedness. However, i could not anticipate what was to follow. One thing common to all metros in india is its long snarling traffic and bangalore is no different. A young couple were on the bike and suddenly they started smooching until the traffic cleared out. This was baffling for my neo liberal mindset. However, what was a kind of conundrum was that no one was minding what was happening. May be the "yeh kya hua kaise hua" moods ad is aired the most in bangalore and what corroborated this theory of mine was that this same brand of protection is available in the vending machines also.




Moving on, after getting bored of trawling the streets of mg road i thought of moving onto rex for the interminably long salaam-e-ishq. A one hour was left and by the most amazing coincidence a gaggle of girls was literally squatting on the portico where yours truly also was sitting. I would not have been interested in what they were discussing. But still the prospect of a bangalorean chat was a lip smacking prospect and i started eavesdropping and i am glad i did that. They were discussing the oeuvre of kieslowski, nitinsawhney's music and , oh my god, umberto eco's baudolino. I was yearning to be a part of that eclectic forum. Not that i would have contributed much though. This got me pretty exciting, even more than the scenes of naked midriffs with the pellucid fabric hardly sustaining and clean underarms(unlike the marwari girls of vizag). Why excited ?? They were talking sheer sense rather than balderdash about whether abhishek will be a ghar jamai or else drooling over da vinci code(for god's sake "in the name of rose" is hundred times better guys). What was the best thing about the gen x of bangalore was that the guys were not after beauty. They were looking for the x factor in a girl. And thats exactly the reason why the most good looking girls were fending off for themselves and a comparatively less pulchritudinous girl had a nice guy pamepring her. I felt good about that. Back home in vizag, guys just swoon,leer and drool over those cretinous comely girls(am so tempted to term them chicks). Ironically, this is the same bangalore where blanknoiseproject.blogspot.com finds its provenance in.



U.Ananthamurthy has truly taken linguistic chauvinism to his heart, and ipso facto, the karnataka government too. Each MNC has the english version of it in the neon lights. However, the kannada version gets a place above the english version. An ashok puncture shop is misspelt as "ashok punchar shap"
but the kannada version is to the T. Few months back, a huge furore was raised over the issue of kannada education being made mandatory throughout the state and after logic taking the driver's state the bill was deferred till this summer. My query to these mandarins is that will they be sending their own children to the kannada medium schools. Without blinking an eye, i can say NO. Its a paradox, but its still intoxicating and you cant help getting addicted to it. Thats bangalore for you.

P.S: the writer did not intend to compare bangalore and vizag. You just cannot compare manhattan and cleveland. He apologises for the fleeting comparison in one of the paragraphs above. He is thankful to bangalore for letting him parzania which he feels is a must watch because it makes the viewer ask questions like "did godhra had to happen ?", "Should narendra modi have been left scot free ?".

Raves of the fortnight:

Its vintage gulzar in "just married". Listening to the lyrics of gudgudee would make the surroundings mirthful. Sample this:Socha tha tumse mili toh paav zameen pe padenge yeh kya pata thi ki phirse khwabon main udne lagenge." Bliss. Pure bliss.

Sacred games by vikram chandra: Forget jonathan yardley. Forget his censure of sacred games on washington post. This tome is a genuine genuine page turner. Vikram chandra is a master story teller. As it happens with all those engaging tomes sacred games is no different. As the pages on the right hand side keep dwindling the reader would just feel a bit sad. The tapestry is so complicately built up that the reader gets sucked into the cesspool. Read it. And trust me sanjay kumar from chabilapur is going to keep you in splits for long long time.

Watch friends with money. A feel good film with quite a lot of characters but still no caricatures. Watch it just for the scene when the supposedly "gay" husband says that he was with a male friend. Those raised eyebrows of the three women was the stand out scene and makes the film even more must watch. I never knew that a mise-en-scene of couches and tables would make the milieu fantastic.

Rant of the fortnight:
Deja vu: I cannot watch a movie with complete suspension of disbelief. Thats the very reason why i loathed at dhoom 2 and now at this denzel washington starrer.