'HOME is where the heart is'

After 3 long years in the USA , I finally decided to take off for a month long vacation to 'namma Bengalooru' this December.It was a super relaxing trip and was indeed a well deserved break. There is nothing that can rejuvenate a spirit like visiting your home. After all 'HOME is where the heart is'!!

I had waited a long time to see my family and friends and my city and was super excited to meet them all. However this wait seemed to stretch longer and longer as I flew our 'warm and motherly' Air India (reminds me of a pun my sister once told me: warm because the A/Cs don't work and motherly because all the air hostesses remind you of your mother). I had heard horrid stories from friends about their flying experiences in Air India. But now I had the chance to experience it myself and I did! Firstly the flight from Chicago was delayed 'supposedly' due to the cold weather which didn't seem to affect any of the 100's of other air crafts taking off that night from O'Hare. It was just poor planning and irresponsibility by the AI management. Its amazing how the staff come up with such lame excuses knowing that not one soul on the aircraft would buy such an explanation. This joke seemed to have ended until we landed in Mumbai where there was further delay. This time it was because we were waiting for other transit passengers to arrive from other air crafts and board ours. And the joke was that the other air crafts hadn't even landed !! And we were made to wait inside the aircraft with no A/C and only an hour away from home which was so frustrating and resulted in my decision to not fly Air India ever again. Anyway, all this frustration flew right out of the window as soon as I landed in namma Bengalooru and saw my parents after 3 years.

Bangalore has changed tremendously and at an insanly rapid pace. Namma Bengalooru doesn't seem much like 'namdu', if you have missed all that's happened to the city in the past 3-4 years. What was once a relatively calm, green and peaceful Bangalore is now a bustling, polluted and loud metropolis. Apartments are springing up on every corner of the street like hair on a petrified cat, real estate prices have skyrocketed in only 3 years and traffic!....well, that's for another post on another day! And I can barely recognise Airport road...All this can be a little over-whelming if you have been away from Bangalore for three years as I found out!!
Well...no matter how much I bitch about the current state of Bangalore, its still namma Bengalooru and I'll always love it. Even with the aforementioned by-products of a booming economy, the people are still the same; warm, cheerful and with a 'swalpa adjust madi' attitude. You cannot help but feel the positive energy that is radiating form this place. I have made a promise to myself to visit Bangalore more often than I did before, for, the next time I see it, It may not be 'namdu' anymore !