26 years in bangalore

Twenty-Five Years in Bangalore

A Journey Through Time

December 17, 1999. I stepped off the train into a Bangalore morning that was surprisingly cold—so cold that the office interiors felt like a warm embrace compared to the crisp air outside. Twenty-five years ago today, I began a journey in a city I barely knew, one that would transform as dramatically as my own life.

Those early days had a simplicity that now feels almost quaint. We walked a kilometer in the evening chill, our breaths forming small clouds, just to make a phone call home. The trick was to wait until after 9 PM when STD rates dropped, making those precious minutes with family affordable. That walk became a ritual, a meditation of sorts, as we navigated the quiet streets of a Bangalore that was yet to explode into the metropolis it is today.

The roads back then were empty, inviting. We rode through them with a freedom that's impossible to imagine now. Today, those same streets are choked with traffic, every inch contested, every signal a test of patience. The city's emptiness has been filled, perhaps overfilled, with success and its inevitable companion—congestion.

But oh, the food! Brigade Road was our weekend pilgrimage, where Chinese restaurants served flavors that danced on the tongue. The chicken rolls at Fanoos were legendary among us—crispy, spicy, wrapped in impossibly thin parathas. Lunch was an adventure in itself: Bheemas with its no-nonsense South Indian fare, Airlines Hotel where the biryani was a production, Aangan with its North Indian comfort food, and Aromas of China, which we swore served the best Chinese food in the city.

Today, Bangalore offers everything money can buy. The restaurants are fancier, the options endless, the delivery apps bring the world to our doorstep. But somewhere in that abundance, something intangible was lost. The taste, perhaps? Or maybe it's the taste of those times—the youth, the discovery, the companionship of struggle—that no amount of money can recreate.

I've watched this city grow from a garden into a jungle, from a pensioner's paradise into a tech titan. I've grown with it, from that young person shivering on a December morning to someone who now measures time in decades. The office is still warmer than outside on cold mornings, but now it's air-conditioned comfort, not the collective warmth of people building something together.

Twenty-five years. A quarter century of memories wrapped in the transformation of a city. Bangalore gave me a career, friendships, a life. In return, I gave it my youth and watched it spend that currency on becoming something greater, if not necessarily better.

Some mornings, I still feel that December chill from 1999. And I remember.

~ December 17, 2024 ~