Smells like Home

Many a times I wonder when people say that they don’t have a city they call home. Too much time away from home makes home itself a foreign place they say. I got an opportunity to experience this feeling (kind off) when I returned back to Bangalore after a while away.

I was really surprised at how things had changed around my house. The new buildings and shops that had come up, many of the old hangouts that had been remodeled. The more I strayed out of my house, the more I started to see how different things had become. I was beginning to wonder if the city had actually become so different in such a short time or was it just me.

That’s when i decided to take a bike ride across the city on a election Saturday afternoon. I started to observe the new buildings that had come up, the increase in traffic, the increase in temperature etc… But as I rode along, I started to encounter so many familiar things from my past expeditions along these roads. The faces of traffic cops were still recognizable, many of them were still at the same junctions. The condition of the roads had become better or worse but the curves of the roads were still the same, I still knew when to overtake where and how fast to take a turn.

Nothing can beat the green road drives in Bangalore. I could still go onto the Asoka pillar road and feel the same breeze blowing in my face. I could still ride through the roads of JP Nagar recognizing the smell of the stalls on the roadside. The roadside stalls hasn't changed, the galli ka dosa camp hasn’t changed. Even the traffic signal remained true and loyal. I still could time myself to go through J.C.Road through town hall without catching a Red.

I was feeling a little good after my drive around when I stopped at a stall to buy some stuff back home, and I talked to the guy in mixed Hindi and English. I had never spoken to a stall guy in English, leave alone Hindi, before when I was in Bangalore. Maybe it was not the city, maybe i had changed in all this time. But it felt really good to finally be back in a place which you could feel like HOME.