“When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in.” – D.H. Lawrence.
Every time we travel to new cities, there are not just new sights to see or new people to meet. There is a whole lot of exploration to be done beside them. And for that, you don't even have to go outside of yourself.
A new place, a new atmosphere brings to you a whole new lot of things that you can know about yourself.
But regrettably, normally we go hide in our thick shells of our personalities when we feel that we are in unfamiliar waters. Always scared of the unfamiliar, we protect ourselves and our mind from everything new out of fear that something undesirable might happen to us and so we close all the doors to new 'us'. The defense mechanism built in us makes us shut ourselves. We remember our old place, we miss our friends and family and wish to go back to them.
But as time goes by, and if we happen to stay for a longer time, something beautiful happens. We slowly release the hold on ourselves, we start to feel easy as the wind is no longer new. We open our eyes and peek from our shell and see the light...and see the life.
Accustomed to living in Gurgaon, I had given up on metro cities. I had formed the thinking that all those thousands like me, who come rushing in metro and shuttles, work all day long and then rush back in metro and shuttles, have died a long time ago. I always used to feel I am in a crowd of clean shaven zombies, dressed in formals, shining shoes and wearing fragrances with ear phones plugged in, eyes lost somewhere, don't know where, somewhere between thousand of lines of codes or targets to meet, duties to perform or clients to attend. No one used to speak, they only listened to same song over and over again, or typed texts after texts after texts containing nothing more than 'hmm'. If some lone soul spoke out, broke the silence, everyone else turned their weary, withdrawn and tired eyes to him and told him to be silent without anyone saying anything. Slowly and gradually, I was too being zombified.
And then I listened to a voice over a speaker, 'We are pleased to announce an ahead-of-scheduled time arrival at Bangalore. Temperature outside is 24 degrees, you can now turn your phone...' And I told myself, this is going to be just another month. But, as it always turns out, life surprised me. Soon enough, I was looking outside the car and saw several huge boards painted with squiggly and pretty faces smiling, posing or showing some kitchen-ware. I couldn't decipher one bit...not what they were trying to say, not what they were trying to show. I just got to know one thing, that I am not where I was and I cannot expect the same from this place.
Next morning, I went to work and met few of the brightest people I have known. Bright just not in intellect but bright with a shine on their faces, with so much energy and so much happiness in their laughter that I found my face stretched wide and smiling. I found life again.
In the evening, I went out and saw people spending time not only inside the malls, running after expensive brands but sitting outside and interacting and talking, trying not to get something out of it. They were not agents trying to convince customers over an expensive coffee drink. They were not chasing cars, but daring to walk on the streets. At night, I saw more people waiting in the queue outside a 'dhaba' than an expensive restaurant. Not that they could not afford it, but they cherished good food more than a showy dining table, preferred loud chatter of conversations over silence, preferred local radio songs over slow instruments in the background, laughing and spilling food over overly mannered eating. And that told me, they have not died during the hours between 9 am to 5 pm. They were not discussing the manner of their decaying for today but they were talking about how they lived.
But what was it that made people here different? They were same just like anyone from any part of the country. They even worked in the different branches of the same organizations. Same facilities, same food joints...what then? What potion were they secretly mixing in their water? Secret lied not in the people. The only thing that was common in all of them and that no one from anywhere in the country shared was...Bangalore. I felt the place had essence of its own that made everything and everyone the way it was. The place had an existence of its own. Unlike towns of NCR who were just a dead dot on the map, this place was alive and full in youth. And upon that thought, I saw it and I met it...I met Bangalore.
Bangalore is where people are not afraid to hold hands and show their love outside their houses, where if you feel running out of your personal time, you are given lots of it to think during the long traffic jams, where the local people, try to learn a language that is not their own but for their guests from outside the city. Where they don't blink at your faces and look at each other when you speak something foreign to them, but they try their best, though in broken language, but they reach out to you. Where there is more to people than shining clothes and fancy cars. Where, believe it or not, an auto driver in old worn out brown uniform, agrees for the fare of 70 rupees and when presented without argument, returns 10 rupees with a smile...more importantly, with a thought. Where, people at the age of 60 with family do not feel uncomfortable in assembling and laughing their wits out on Cyrus's double-meaning jokes, where they know the dirt is not in the talk but in the minds.
And for myself, I found a lot about walking on the road sides and getting drenched in the sudden unexpected rains, reading a message hidden behind an unknown language, reading the sign boards and trying to memorize the long names but remembering only the ending '-alli', being at a place on the top of a hill where cold, strong wind pierced my body and the cloud ran through me.
Bangalore is where I came with bags filled with stuff and ended up possessing much more important things that can not be packed back into. With whom I might have parted now, but will remember, not as a place I visited, but as a soul I met.
