What makes a person like a city or dislike one? Many a time I have used in my conversations with people, the term 'character' for a city. This thought comes from listening to the 'Dilli' song from 'Delhi Heights'. It is a pretty cool song and I thought it was a nice collage of Delhi.
Anyway, going on to the character thing. In every discussion, there have been enough defenders for each of the large cities.. the Delhi ones swear by Delhi...of course, the Mumbai-kar loyalists are the loudest and definitely Chennai has its bunch of lovers......a friend from Chandigarh claims nothing like her city...
But the thing about Bangalore...its a strange one...folks staying in other cities view Bangalore as this cool and fun place to be, which it is...but the number of detractors today that Bangalore has inside amazes me (for whatever reason) . Today most of the folks from Delhi or Chennai staying here dont like Bangalore.....given a chance, they would quickly shift out...
To me, its not so much about the traffic and infrastructure etc...its more about what can you associate with the city, what I call the character. Character is the essence or ethos of the city that needs to be felt. For me, when I travel or visit any city, if I can get a sense of that, then I consider my visit satisfying.
At some point, people have stopped making an effort to like Bangalore or understand the possible character of the city. When I started living here in Bangalore, it still had the 'small-town' nature, very laid back and it was just a clean beautiful city. Now I think Bangalore is in a confused awkward adolescence stage. Shes no longer a small kid nor is she an adult yet equipped to handle the growing up...yet the city is still an all-inclusive city which has accepted all into her folds (despite the politicians)
Like any city, there are the problems. But it's not all bad...
Well, maybe a Rabbi song for Bangalore is what is needed to prod folks into making an attempt to like the city ...
Anyway, going on to the character thing. In every discussion, there have been enough defenders for each of the large cities.. the Delhi ones swear by Delhi...of course, the Mumbai-kar loyalists are the loudest and definitely Chennai has its bunch of lovers......a friend from Chandigarh claims nothing like her city...
But the thing about Bangalore...its a strange one...folks staying in other cities view Bangalore as this cool and fun place to be, which it is...but the number of detractors today that Bangalore has inside amazes me (for whatever reason) . Today most of the folks from Delhi or Chennai staying here dont like Bangalore.....given a chance, they would quickly shift out...
To me, its not so much about the traffic and infrastructure etc...its more about what can you associate with the city, what I call the character. Character is the essence or ethos of the city that needs to be felt. For me, when I travel or visit any city, if I can get a sense of that, then I consider my visit satisfying.
At some point, people have stopped making an effort to like Bangalore or understand the possible character of the city. When I started living here in Bangalore, it still had the 'small-town' nature, very laid back and it was just a clean beautiful city. Now I think Bangalore is in a confused awkward adolescence stage. Shes no longer a small kid nor is she an adult yet equipped to handle the growing up...yet the city is still an all-inclusive city which has accepted all into her folds (despite the politicians)
Like any city, there are the problems. But it's not all bad...
Well, maybe a Rabbi song for Bangalore is what is needed to prod folks into making an attempt to like the city ...
1 comment:
A very good post. I thought you bought out the analogies between a city and a character very well.
For the audio of this movie and much more, you might want to check out this site:
http://www.hummaa.com/index.php
It's got a good collection of streaming audio.
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