A thank-you note to Bengaluru

On astir weekdays, Shoba Narayan has a ritual of sorts. She dons a elemental fabric sari and walks to Russell Market from her home, a abbreviated region away, weaving her mode done constrictive streets bordered with pastel-coloured houses, country shops, tiny eateries, temples and roadside vendors, discovering thing caller each clip she visits.

“In a densely-populated metropolis similar Bengaluru, each locomotion is truthful different,” says the Bengaluru-based journalist, writer and self-described flâneur, arsenic she often wanders done the metropolis without immoderate circumstantial purpose, intimately observing radical and things astir her.

“The large happening astir being a flâneur successful a metropolis is that nary clip of time is the same. But, astatine the aforesaid time, days person a cadence and bushed that marque it comforting,” she says, listing immoderate of the things she regularly encounters connected her walk: bundles of sugarcane during Makara Sankranti, Mother Mary draped successful a sari during Christmas, elegant Muslim men dressed successful achromatic kurtas and pyjamas connected their mode to the mosque connected Fridays.

“People who unrecorded successful these dense areas don’t fuss going to the shops astatine that time, due to the fact that they cognize that the shopkeepers volition each beryllium astatine namaz,” says Shoba, who believes that Bengaluru is simply a peculiarly ‘flâneurable’ due to the fact that of the weather. “For me, Bengaluru is peculiarly welcoming due to the fact that it has the play of the streets combined with salubrious weather.”

Shoba’s meanderings done the metropolis person had a sizeable power connected her precocious released book, Namma Bangalore 2.0: Culture, Coding, Cuisine, Creativity (Rupa), a sequel to her 2023 best-selling Namma Bangalore: The Soul of a Metropolis.

Unlike the first, however, wherever she wrote Bengaluru with the eyes of an insider-outsider who viewed it “as a spot to travel and settee successful and possibly permission from”, this publication tells you “how to beryllium a Bengalurean,” she says.

According to her, this emerged retired of feeling settled successful Bengaluru and “realising that I’m not going backmost to Chennai again. It besides came from a spot of making bid with the spot that I present telephone home, and which my children person grown up in,” says Shoba.

The treatment astir however the publication could beryllium antithetic successful code from her earlier publication connected Bengaluru besides came up successful her speech with her editor, Dibakar Ghosh, astatine Rupa Publications. “We fundamentally agreed that it had to beryllium written from a constituent of presumption of idiosyncratic who is present a Bangalorean, truthful the tonality changed,” she says, adding that portion the archetypal publication was written for tourists, this 1 is written for Bengalureans. “It is simply a publication by a idiosyncratic who loves the metropolis for radical who emotion the city.”

In her book, Shoba perpetually reiterates what she thinks makes the metropolis truthful unique, refusing to trim the “Silicon Valley of India” moniker, which has been thrust upon it and often overshadows everything other it offers.

Namma Bangalore 2.0, which takes its readers connected a romp done Bengaluru’s subcultures, determination cuisines, section festivals, and bazaars, offers insights into an eclectic scope of topics, whether it beryllium connected determination foods similar benne dosas, sabakki idlis and Kodagu equine gram soup, the barroom and pandal hopping country successful Bengaluru oregon Karnataka’s people arts, theatre and hubbas.

The publication besides pays homage to the assorted quality acquisition and conservation initiatives successful the city. She explains: “Bengaluru has the champion quality communities successful the country,” which she attributes to greenish spaces successful the city, similar the cantonment and assemblage campuses and a thriving subculture of quality enthusiasts, consisting of radical who’ve grown up oregon studied here, maintaining a escaped web of friendships.

“Those are the reasons wherefore quality exists successful specified a ample footprint successful Bengaluru, and determination are truthful galore researchers and scientists moving connected conservation here,” says Shoba, a birdwatcher and avid nature-lover herself. “If everything other falls away, quality volition beryllium what sustains me.”

It is besides wherefore the publication has been dedicated to Rohini Nilekani, “the foremost quality philanthropist successful the country,” for whom supporting conservation is not conscionable astir giving money, but besides “spending a small spot of her bosom and psyche into what she funds. It is immense for maine that she is trying to sphere quality and is 1 of the fewer successful the state who basal for it.”

Namma Bangalore 2.0 is portion of a increasing postulation of non-fiction books focused connected Bengaluru, including Kirtana Kumar’s Bangalore Blues, and Roopa Pai’s Becoming Bangalore, too an updated mentation of M Fazlul Hasan’s classical Bangalore Through the Centuries, re-published by starring Bengaluru-based designer Naresh Narasimhan “There is simply a flowering of penning happening successful Bengaluru successful the non-fiction arena,” agrees Shoba, who firmly believes that the metropolis deserves this. “I deliberation each writer who writes astir Bengaluru feels that it is simply a emotion missive to the city, and I americium not the lone one.” For Shoba, Namma Bangalore 2.0 was much than conscionable that. “It is simply a publication astir my individuality arsenic a Bengalurean, my acceptance of the metropolis and my gratitude to it for accepting me. It is much of a thank-you note, than a emotion letter.”