It was just another evening as I was browsing through various social media, waiting for my parents to come back home. It was then that my good friend shared an article on a WhatsApp group about a lady accusing a Bengaluru auto driver of racially abusing her (Got a sense of deja vu already? Tanzanian girl sends her regards). The article was so predictable I could guess the statements that would follow, two lines into it. The comments thread and the discussion that ensued later however, got me thinking and dig deep into the issue, which helped me realise something that I believe I should’ve realised long back. I now feel I have the moral obligation to help my fellow Bangaloreans get their realisation as well. This is my small attempt at that.

(Article: https://www.facebook.com/TheBangaloreMirror/posts/1192038144140136 | Recommended: reading the comment thread)

One of the comments was the eye opener and played the catalyst in the whole late realisation process. While we’ve all seen such comments on many previous occasions, seeing it at the backdrop of reading the article really helped in realising the truth, and I’m sure it will help you too.

We have all been living in a state of illusion for some time now, and it’s time we come out of our disillusionment and accept the ground realities as they’ve always been. The few years of luxury, roaming around these posh malls and metros have made us all forget our horrific past, when Bengaluru was literally a hell hole to live in. I mean, do any one of us have any happy memories of Bengaluru of the past? Don’t you all remember those days when we didn’t spend even a day without complaining about the city? I have literally grown up listening to stories of horror that defined the routine of Bangaloreans of the pre-IT era.

It hasn’t even been a decade since Bengaluru started to become liveable, the wounds of our past haven’t even healed completely yet, and here we are, already showing signs of arrogance to those who mercifully, and more importantly voluntarily, brought peace and liveability to our city from everywhere else. For two minutes, just for two minutes, sit back and think what Bengaluru would have been if not for these harbingers of liveability, luxury and comfort. I mean, Bengaluru was so unlivable and dangerous, especially after sunset, that we were the first city to get electrified. We were so filthy and unhygienic that one of the first of the many industries that were set up here was the Mysore Soaps and Detergents Factory. Starting to remember?

For close to a hundred years, our fathers, grandfathers and their fathers lived here with little hope of seeing better days. The hope of finding some light at the end of what appeared to be a never ending tunnel, was the only thing that kept them going. And light they finally found, with the beginning of the new millennium. People from all over India who all lived on greener pastures came to our filthy land, funnily called the Garden City, and gave us the first glimpse of civilisation. It was their entry which heralded the beginning of a new era, that of a liveable and a humanly inhabitable Bengaluru, which would get name and fame beyond the seas and oceans that surround India. If you have forgotten this, now is the time for you to remember.

There was absolutely no infrastructure in our city, was there? The centuries old Victorian style buildings and the pathetic red structures built by those myopic Mysore kings and dewans, were the only grand architecture we had seen. We considered the green grass that grew on vast stretches of land that we called parks, and the occasional patches of other colours that they call flowers as symbols of our well being and development. It was only after we saw our own reflections in those tall glassy buildings and drove on the dark grey of tar and concrete, that we realised what development truly was. The only thing majestic we had seen in Bengaluru till then was our bus stand, even that only because it was called so. I have never been more ashamed of my disillusionment. However, I just don’t just get how in spite of all this, most of the premier Indian institutions of the pre-1991 Reforms era operated/still operate mainly from this otherwise regressive wasteland. Perhaps that is why India is still developing.

While all other states of India were setting up the necessary infrastructure for the establishment of the IT sector, we were busy watering the patches of grass at Cubbon Park and Lal Bagh, the only thing that saw growth in Bengaluru. While other state governments were busy fighting over important matters such as the status of cows and construction of temples, our government was pointlessly losing its head over useless things such as opening up of IT and BT corridors. Could we be any more regressive?

It’s therefore understandable that the jobs the locals are mostly involved in are driving the city’s autos and buses, watering the 1000+ parks that lie everywhere in the city, carrying out mass protests every other day and harming the traffic on the routes that the mighty take and causing them even more trouble, selling fruits and vegetables that we get from our equally backward brethren elsewhere in Karnatak. It is because of their goodwill gesture though, that at least a handful of us Kannads somehow managed to become qualified enough to gain entry inside those buildings from where they have transformed Bengaluru from an uninhabitable hellhole to a decent city, in just a handful of years.

These are the ground realities that we have blinded ourselves from, and it’s high time we come out of our little bubble, remember our forgettable past and ensure we never get back there again. We cannot afford to make the mighty keep us in their bad books, and I shudder to imagine what might happen if they cross their threshold of tolerance and decide to leave our erstwhile godforsaken city that they came to help. We have to stop being ungrateful dolts and start being grateful to them. Expecting them to not be ignorant and dismissive of the extremely dark aspects of our city like its language and culture, is definitely not helping the cause. It is we who have to adjust and adapt, if we have to convince them to stay and help the city survive.

If you are a Bangalorean who has been in disillusion, now is the time to come out. If you are Bangalorean who is finding it increasingly difficult by the day to tolerate the menace and arrogance of people whom you came to help from far, I apologise on behalf of all of us ungrateful folk and re-iterate that we would be ever grateful for your humanitarian service, from now on at least. We also wholeheartedly thank you for tolerating all the rubbish we threw at you, while we were blinded with the luxury and comforts you brought to us from everywhere around.

Thanks for reading! And thank you for making Bengaluru a liveable city!