Yen macha! hegidiya?
If you’ve been on Indian twitter for some time, you also probably think that Bengaluru is the coolest city in India. It is where it is at. It being anything. It seems that Bengaluru has the best weather, best people, best bars, and best opportunities. Scrolling my twitter feed, sometimes I used to think that if I shifted to Bengaluru, my life would be fixed.
I was finally in the city for 10 days and here is my limited review of the city in the little amount of time I spent there.
ಸಂದರ್ಭವನ್ನು ಹೊಂದಿಸುವುದು/ Setting The Context
After doing some calibration, and strategising1 the stars finally aligned and I somehow found a window to go to Bangalore. So here I was, at Kempegowda international airport at 10:30 pm on 23rd February 2025. I had set foot on Karnataka’s soil after almost 7 years - the first time being back in 2017 for my army interview (my write up for that experience is here).
I had set foot in the promised land. The land of technology, policy, entrepreneurship, and the cool bros who carry three screens with them to cafes. I was elated to be here. Excited for all the meetings I had lined up and the interesting people I was about to meet.
Until, I found out that the cab fare from the airport to where I would be staying was 1600 rupees. I quietly crossed the road and waited for a bus to drop me to the Shanthi Nagar bus station.
Funnily, my Bangalore friends (who live in Delhi) drilled in me the idea that I could not speak Hindi to whoever I wanted here; and that there is always an active threat of getting beaten up for imposing my Hindi on them. So, naturally I, a fair Kashmiri, was a little nervous when I came here. But of course they were also half joking (hopefully), and I had no such bad experience here.2 In fact people were warm, approachable and open to conversations.
I was staying at my friends’ Sandesh, Nirmal and Krishnan’s house for around 10 days, in Richmond Town . An interesting piece of information is that I have known Sandesh and Nirmal for about 5 years now, but mostly online. I got in touch with both of them in 2020 because of twitter and our shared interests. I did not meet either of them for the first 4 years of our friendship. I met Nirmal in 2024 January, four years after knowing him and even recording a podcast episode with him. I met Sandesh for the first time during this trip. I remember laying down on the sofa-cum-bed on the first night and being in absolute wonder and thinking:
I happened to meet these folks online 5 years ago. Now we’re all friends and here I am in their house. All because of the internet.
ವಿಮರ್ಶೆ ಸಮಯ/ Review Time
ಹವಾಮಾನ/ The weather
The first thing I would like to share with everyone is that, much to my surprise, the weather was actually really nice. I did not think all the talk about the weather was true, but as it turns out - the cool breeze does heal all your worries (most of them at least). My friend’s house has a very nice balcony where you can sit on the sofa and just chill. I would sit there and drink my tea/ coffee in the morning and end my day sitting there in the night. I do think my happiness index was at least 5% better off because of that. The weather somehow made me calmer and more quaint. The weather is also, not surprisingly, one of the biggest selling points for the city.
ಜನರು/ The people
I am writing this portion of this post right after my conversation with Pranay Kotasthane of the Takshishila Institution. When asked about Bengaluru’s cool image and why it is considered such a hip place, he replied by saying that it is one of those places where interesting people come, and find interesting things to do. The shared consensus is that Bengaluru attracts good firms, which attract good people, which attract the best capital and therefore it all culminates into Bengaluru being a hotspot of all things. Once a renowned public policy professional had told me that he chose Mumbai to work because of how far it is from power i.e. Delhi. His argument was that power distorts the world around you, corrupts incentives and makes pursuit of truth difficult. Using his metric, Bengaluru is very very far from power and therefore, one of the remaining safe spaces for honest intellectual interaction.
A lot of friends I made online live in Bengaluru, which I think is a sufficient proxy for the claim that interesting people live here. If the people you find interesting (on a platform that anyone could be a part of) come disproportionately from a particular region - something right must be going on there. A lot of times, my stay felt more like a business trip than a vacation given how many people I had to meet! But I am very grateful for everybody who agreed to spend their precious time with me. I had some very interesting conversations here which made me feel (even if for a second) that I must consider Bengaluru for relocation. This is particularly funny, because I have already written a post about how I am trying to find a home between Mumbai and Delhi. And now Bengaluru has self added itself to the list. It will be an interesting year to say the least.
I use excel to organise a lot of my life, and my usage of Excel/ Google Sheets is only second to Google Docs. So naturally, I organised my trip on excel (if you’re for some reason curious to see my itinerary, it is here) and found it surprising that a lot of people were surprised at the fact. In fact, I am surprised that most people do not organise and plan on Excel/ Google Sheets - it is a god sent software!
I met some very interesting people here, and there are many more who I could not meet this time around so I would like to make another trip sometime soon. I would especially like to mention Deepak V.S. here. He’s one of the most interesting and curious fellows I’ve come across in sometime. He’s hell bent on finding the first principles behind philosophies, and a conversation with him is bound to be interesting. He forced me to go back to first principles about my professional practice i.e. antitrust law - something I hadn’t done ever in my limited career by myself or in discussion with my colleagues. He hosts a podcast called Deepak Disagrees where he invites people who hold a strong position on anything and tries to explore their beliefs by disagreeing with them.
ಆಹಾರ/ The food
I anyway had high expectations from Bengaluru. But the food here exceeded my expectations. Right from the beautiful Darshinis serving the most delicious dosas and idlis i’ve ever had to the most flavourful biryani i’ve ever had - Bengaluru food scene had me sending it. Here are some photos of the food I had while at Bengaluru (thanks to suggestions by my friends).
ವಿಭಜಿಸುವ ಆಲೋಚನೆಗಳು/ Parting Thoughts
The city has its own problems as well. The urban infrastructure is woefully inadequate, the traffic is very bad, it can become an echo chamber of eliteness etc. All things considered, I am departing from Bengaluru with a stronger conviction that it is the place to be for bright, young people. I am yet to figure out the premium I would place on it/ the tradeoff I would be willing to undertake to shift here. Especially as a north Indian, another part of the trade off is the fact that this city has often times get very isolating unless you have friends here.
I am leaving this city with the open question of what would it take for me to shift here. But it is a question worth considering, and a question that is in fact not a new one. Almost a year or two back I had made up my mind that I want to work in three cities in India at the least. Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. So this has always been part of the plan. The question is when.
And most importantly, this trip was a much needed distortion in the set routine that I’ve fallen into that made me question some of my choices and made me reconsider the goals I have for myself, and the kind of life I want to lead. I think it is worth visiting Bengaluru if you are in your 20s, I would highly recommend it, even if you have to live in a hostel or explore the city without any friends, just go. As far as I am concerned, maybe one day you will find me with my laptop in Toit. Till then, keep sending it!
It would be a sin to end this post without mentioning the city’s hero, people’s favourite - Appu :)
The calibration here is to find pockets where I was sufficiently free to be able to visit Bangalore and not be working throughout. The strategising was to line my dates immediately after judging a moot competition to save one side’s fare as the host pays for our flight tickets (shoutout to ILNU for sponsoring my ticket to BLR).
A tangential weird experience I had was someone asking me to delete the photo of a tacky resto-bar that I had clicked.
Love reading everything you have to say! It feels like Im reading an excerpt from your personal diary. Very refreshing!
Yayy loved the post! Always nice to hear good things about my city 🥳🥰