To all my buddies....

I have been very lucky in having more than my fair share of absolute wackos as friends. I met two of them in my recent trip to Bangalore and we together trekked up a mound of rock on the Karnataka and Kerala border (Proud inhabitants in that area call it the highest peak in that region... Well if you say so).

Coming back to Bangalore was a strange experience. All the girls on M.G. Road that I used to swoon over earlier now looked no elder than college kids. Purple Haze played one very limp song of ACDC at 10:48 pm while all this while I emptied beer tankards in anticipation of something loud and alive. The one friend who kept me smiling while everything went wrong in my life looked care-worn and sad (His wife was not well). And when couples started an impromptu dance on the floor of Pecos, me and Surya turned around and said, "Kids!!!"

But Bangalore still retains the freshness that I mentally associated with it in my six-month sentence in South-East Asia. India Coffee House still serves that great Tomato Omelette. The Hindu is still eminently readable. The book-shops are still full of books which go beyond the usual thrillers and sex-novelettes. You can still buy beer/vodka/whiskey at 3:00 am by knocking softly on a door off Airport Road. The auto drivers are still surly. And M.G. Road is still bursting with young people.

So what was wrong? Why did I feel slightly out of a city I (still) call my own (Yes.... Ahead of Delhi/Ghaziabad and definitely ahead of Singapore). Has the city changed? Or have I?

I have definitely changed. But I feel that the city has changed a lot more. Most of my friends are now out of there. The city does not make you her own. Its the people who give you a sense of belonging.
This is for all those buddies I found in Bangalore, who stayed with me in G-7 Richfields and basically made us a terror of that neighbourhood, who humoured me when I wanted to climb umpteen hills, who had me chasing phantom women and who let me cry on their shoulders when real ones ditched me.

Guys.... the city is not the same without you....