Pink: the colour of Tabuebia flowers, the quintessential Bengaluru tree and the dubious offerings at the quintessential Iyengar bakery. | Image credits: Priyanka Sacheti, A Home For Homeless Thoughts
This flash essay is part of a collaborative, constrained-writing challenge undertaken by some members of the Bangalore Substack Writers Group. Each of us examined the concept of ‘BANGALORE’ through our unique perspective, distilled into roughly 500 words. At the bottom of this snippet, you’ll find links to other essays by fellow writers.
Mannina magalu, in every sense. Born and brought up in the Ooru, studied here, work here. I grew up in the boonies- R.T. Nagar, when Mekhri Circle was still a Circle and not a Circle Underpass.
In the mid-80s, my enterprising father decided to move us to the wild untamed terrains of R.T. Nagar from the tried-and-tested neighbourhood of Subramanya Nagara. While our house was still under-construction, my father put me in an ‘under-construction’ school in North Bengaluru to reduce my every-day commute from school to home, for when we eventually moved.
He would drop me in the morning to the ‘school’ by 8.30 and go to work at the red building. Fathima aunty would pick me up from school and we would walk the 10 minutes from the under-construction school to the under-construction house, across parthenium-filled sites and amidst cricket-playing youth.
When we did move to our new house, there were two other houses spaced about 200 metres away from each other in the whole layout and my school had its own building. We could see the red BTS bus coming from a kilometre or two away, to our bus stop and my mother, my brother and I would saunter to the bus-stop just in time. We were cool that way. No waiting for us!
As we grew up, the neighbourhood grew around us, the two houses were soon two of a hundred. The 10 minute walk across parthenium-filled sites became longer, as shortcuts were stymied by buildings being constructed on the empty sites. Commerce mushroomed starting with a darshini styled as ‘Sichi Hotel’ in the early 90s to a ‘Coraltree’ 3-star hotel in the 2000s. The kaka angadi Zam Zam stores has given way to Lenskart.com.
My landmarks were the Post Office, Iyengar Bakery, Book Port Circulating Library, 108B bus stop and kachori/ jalebi at Gangenahalli. Wimpy’s, Premier bookstore and Commercial Street were teen discoveries.
Pink-and-white-vanilla chess cake | Image credit: Author
Living up to the stereotype, my old neighbourhood is unrecognizable; having embraced the busy-ness that comes with a suburb swallowed by the city. It has been over a decade and a half, since I moved to the cantonment area. For a long time after I moved away, I would sneak away to my childhood stomping grounds, just to sample the pink-and-white vanilla chess cake at the neighbourhood bakery. Until one day in 2015, my mother called to tell me, ‘Iyengar bakery muchhidey Putti.’ I was not prepared for the pang of sadness that overcame me. Odd that of all the things that I had moved on from, this was the definitive marker of the end of an era for me.
My mother passed away this March. I still haven’t found the words to articulate the grief. Nothing is adequate. Junk food seems to lend some succour.
As I am looking to stock up on rusk, coconut and cashew biscuits, Swiggy throws up ‘Iyengar’s Bakery, R.T. Nagar: 30-35 mins’ as matching my search… I scroll down the menu, to see my old pink-and-white buddy winking back at me…
Here’s a list of other flash essays by fellow Bangalore Substack writers:
Looking Down over Bengaluru by Vaibhav Gupta, Thorough and Unkempt
Blossom Book House, Bangalore by Rahul Singh, Mehfil
A Walk, A Pause by Mihir Chate, Mihir Chate
Bookless in Bangalore by Vikram Chandrashekar Vikram’s Substack
Bangalore: A personal lore by Siddhesh Raut, Shana, Ded Shana
Bangalore,once by Avinash Shenoy, Off the walls
Bangalore Down the lane of History by Aryan Kavan Gowda, Wonderings of a Wanderer
Belonging by Shruthi Iyer, Shruthi Iyer
The Street Teaches You by Karthik, Reading This World
The Wild Heart of Bangalore by Devayani Khare, Geosophy
A Love Letter to Bangalore by Priyanka Sacheti, A Home for Homeless Thoughts
Movie Dates, Bangalore and Them by Amit Charles, AC Notes
Between Cities by Richa Vadini Singh, Here’s What I Think
A Haven? Awake in Bangalore, by Lavina G, The Nexus Terrain
My love affair with blue skies by Sailee Rane, Sunny climate stormy climate
A City That Builds Belonging by Sathish Seshadri, Strategy & Sustainability
There and Back Again by Ayush, Ayush's Substack
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