Time out — Tale of two cities

to acquire the right look, speak the right language, get the accent right. Anorexia of the soul is the result. Bangalore is doing what the Americans did to themselves — they made an instant culture where there was none. At least the Americans had an excuse. They came to the New World and were forced to create the all-American dream with nothing else to bank on.

Sadly, Bangalore did have a history, but the neo-Bangaloreans are in a rush to fashion a spanking new one. They are jumping up the pyramid far too rapidly, without experiencing the struggle that cultural change implies, without understanding the different forces at work at every step.

They say change should not be resisted. But people like Prof Nanjundaswamy, self-styled protector of the Kannadiga identity, resist KFC and Pizza Hut as if it were a Mars attack. Most people live through change without really acknowledging an awareness of it. That’s because the whole abstract concept, when it is to have a positive effect, should be slow, almost imperceptible. But Nanjundaswamy is not prepared to allow for an agreeable cultural via medium. Fortunately, the cultural elite of Karnataka, or anywhere, oppose change which come too quickly to digest.Delhi does not seek to be something it is not. Its people certainly do, like people everywhere. But Delhi is no teenager; she is an old woman who has seen everything and has long since learnt how to take everything with a pinch of salt. The great struggle for Delhi’s soul in 1857 was both a physical and mental tug-of-war. Bangalore’s battle is a painless terminal illness, and when there is no pain, why resist? In fact, this invasion is almost pleasurable. The enemy is an invisible seducer.The older a city, the friendlier it is to the macabre. I live with my friend in an apartment block which was built on top of a cemetery. The previous tenant of the flat was the neighbourhood witch, whom the children avoided. She claimed that the building was haunted, and used black magic to drive away spirits.Delhi is friendly to ghosts.

Generations of them are all probably fighting for spiritual space. The undead have nowhere to go, because they have left behind, in their earthly metaphors, the power to die. But aliens of whatever kind are unwelcome here because Delhi has a racial memory of atrocities committed by marauders of all habits and cultures. That is why Bangalore is relatively a safe city, where girls who finish work after midnight can still walk home. But never through Brigade Road, of course, where the night hawks lounge for their nocturnal quota of action.One night at 3 am, two of my friends decided to brave the thoroughfare between Cubbon Park and Chinnaswamy Stadium after they finished work late. Halfway up the dark, lonely stretch, when all was quiet and the stadium loomed large and dangerous as it can only do in the night, a red Cielo came screeching to a halt beside them. Their lives began to flash before their eyes in fast forward. The car door opened and out stepped this swank hunk with a fanatical X-files look.He said, “Are you two all right? Do you need any help?” That’s Bangalore for you. In Delhi, they would have been next day’s Newsline history.