Past Forward

It is strange how the best years of your life remain just that. How you, reminiscing on those rich moments, fail to remember the little things that annoyed you, bothered you and made you mad enough to cry.

Getting back to Bangalore for a couple of days, was something like that.
(It is not that I have not been to the Garden City since these er... halcyon days... I have, indeed, several times. Just that I've had pressing affairs to tend to, keeping my nose to the grindstone. This time, however, was two days of holiday, and nothing else. It makes you think, it does, having time on your hands...)

I have no memory of the city’s pollution, its one-ways, the traffic jams, the terrible sameness of people tramping up and down Brigade's, the coffee powder that sinks into the decoction at India Coffee House, its singed cutlets on heavy, dirty, cracked porcelain plates, the crowds, auto drivers who cheat.

In the pleasing sepia blur of yester year, I can only feel the sharp nip of the early morning air; Coconut oil granulating in its blue plastic casing, the warmth of my jungle- green sweater; I can hear the hiss of the dosa batter slipping onto the hot tawa; I can smell the red chutney on the dosa’s inside, the “thick” coconut chutney and piping hot sambar combo; I can still feel the fluffiness of the two-egg omelet in India Coffee House, the taste of piping hot “butta” (corn on the cob) smeared with a tangy lemon rich soaked in red and white chilli-salt powder; I can see only the purple jacarandas sitting cocky on wayside trees; I remember Church Street as a lazy length where a friend’s aunt lived in a grand house, the size of the lassi tumbler at Sivaji Market, and the police man who would dance at the traffic signal...


Sigh!