From Garden City to

The late British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, during the early part of his life as an army officer, had a three-year stint in Bangalore. He didn’t like the place. In his memoirs titled My Early Life, he described the city which the British captured after defeating emperor Tipu Sultan in 1799, as a “third rate watering place with lots of routine work to do, without society of good sport”.

However my experience was nothing similar, when in the late seventies I first visited the elegant metropolis that was founded by a chieftain called Kempe Gowda in the early 16th century. Bangalore’s colonial vestiges, architectural magnificence, historic sites and slow-paced classy lifestyle filled with cocktails and cricket, three piece suits and horse racing were enough for me (and perhaps for many others) to fall in love at the first visit, and thereafter return time and again.

Blessed with a salubrious climate, lush gardens, parks and natural lakes, it was then fondly called the Garden City. Along with locals and tourists, I always enjoyed trundling through the sprawls of the 240-acre Lal Bagh Botanical Garden and the 300-acre Cubbon Park that provided a splashing green landscape for grandiose edifices such as the Neo-Dravidian style state parliament house called Vidhana Soudha and the19th century red-brick High Court and Government Museum buildings, all located nearby.

Being not an awfully pricy city, I could then afford sleeping at the opulent five star Ashok or the colonial West End for a price that was much less compared to similar hotels in other Indian metros. I could dine in style at the rooftop Topkapi Restaurant, which was said to be owned by Bollywood actor Amjad Khan of Sholay fame, before getting into disco mode at one of the vibrant joints at Brigade Road.

I lost touch with my heartthrob after moving to Australia in the eighties, but the capital city of Karnataka state didn’t lose her place in my heart. Driven by that nostalgic feeling, few years ago I touched its soil again and was amazed by the quantum of change that has swept through the metropolis since my last visit almost 25 years ago. It was hard for me to spot the Bangalore I knew intimately.

As the plane was about to land, the first change that hit me was hearing, “Our flight will shortly be landing at Bengaluru airport”. Though I knew about the name change, the announcement instantly created uncanny withdrawal symptoms within me, something similar to the experience of being taken away from your comfort zone.

The next lot of surprises came after entering the same old airport terminal building once dominated by Indian Airlines, but now sharing floor space with hordes of newly introduced domestic airlines from Spice Jet to Kingfisher. Pushing my trolley through the thick multilingual crowd, I realised how liberalisation of air travel has revolutionized the way a common Indian used to travel earlier. Air travel is no more the cartel of the rich and the mighty; it has almost become a common man’s vehicle.

Stepping outside I found the carpark full as usual, but goodold Ambassadors and Fiats were replaced with Toyotas, Opels, BMWs and Mercedes, proclaiming India’s economic progression particularly in this city, due to the global convergence of the information technology business.

With ‘jobs being Bangalored’ as the western world quotes, my ‘Garden City’ is now crowned with her new title, ‘Silicon Valley of the East’.

My image of familiar Bangalore soon got lost in a new genre of a traffic-clogged metropolis sprinkled with new flyovers, lofty office towers, glittering shopping malls, massive residential blocks and a plethora of luxury hotels, bars and restaurants. Flavours of Microsoft, Oracle, Pizza Hut and McDonalds have taken over the baton from HAL, HMT and those traditional ‘Udipi’ restaurants.

The city, which was once a haven for wealthy retirees because of its slow-paced way of life, has become a hub for the younger generation keen on technology, money and a fast routine.

Fortunately the magical transformation didn’t take away my intrinsic liking for this South