Love thy city, love thy home

**Divertion**
Amateur writers get bogged down thinking of a title for what they want to write. By the time they figure that out, their trail of thought has disappeared half way into the crannies of the mind. As they write more often, they realize that the title should well be the last drop of ink signing off a piece. Well past the sign off, even past the quick read through. When you've caught that trail of thought, laid it down into verse, and nudged it into a cranny that you won't forget at least for a short while. That's when you should pause for a minute, and think about the title. Never before.
**Now back to the what I was thinking of**

I haven't spent much time exploring this city that has come to be home for over 4 years now. While it's easy to attribute it to being consumed by work in thought and action, it's also a function of how.
The city loves to play hide and seek. Try as you might, be as optimistic as you can. Even if you really, really want to go to that place, see that thing, experience that moment, you have to brace yourself for giving up. Try as you might, you will lose hope over the ever-changing one-ways (like the stairs at Hogwarts), the myriad bylanes, the drone of the Metro work, and the cluelessness of pedestrians. But does that mean that you should go back to your 14-hour weekdays at work and predictable weekends wandering at some mall or nosing through yet another "annual sale"?

Hard to answer. For one, the city seems to want you to do the latter. In so many ways, it tries to push you away from that carefully preserved, fast diminishing quaintness that's being replaced as we speak, by designer chic. You want to know what "santhe" means, you want to listen uninterrupted to RK Padmanabha at one of the best concert halls - Chowdiah Memorial, and you want to know just why every budding artist goes to Chickpet to source material. But it isn't easy. You need to walk the talk (in fact, talk the talk) and you need to persever.

And on the other hand, the party-sharty continues. There's a new club or restaurant throwing its doors open almost every weekend. And to stay in the race, older ones keep renovating or rejigging their menu every year. Is it that we never get tired of sampling a new restaurant (whatever happened to phrases like "they are the old timers", "here are my regulars", and "I swear by that one restaurant"...) or do we need constant change to keep us from getting bored of life?

And don't even get me started on the malls. The first 6 months here, I was completely engulfed in "sale mania" - the higher the % value, the bigger my eyeballs would grow. And then you begin to accept it. The sale is here to stay. Every single store in every single mall is always going to have one, irrespective of caste, creed, or anything else. And it's the same clothes and the same shoes. Just how many will you buy?

It's a hard choice. One that will be shaped as much by the people you meet, and the enthusiasm of more than one mind. But it needs to be made. Because when it's time for you to move on elsewhere, what will you remember most about Bangalore? The malls, the clubs, and the jigs, or the music festivals, the tiffen rooms, and the parks?

Some places to start:
Time Out Bangalore
Rudram 2010
Yamini 2010
Chitra Santhe - Art for life
**After note**
I think the title turned out pretty well. Definitely wouldn't have thought of it if I had started off with it :)