I grew up in the ‘90s and the early 2000s when the norm was Doordarshan and mobile phones were just getting noticed. Evenings after school and college were spent lost in the world of books — one week, it was harsh Russian winters, next week, it was an adventure in the jungles of Africa. My favourite reading place was the terrace of our house.
If I let my eyes wander, they would notice a lone woman gathering clothes from a clothesline or rest on young men and women pacing up and down with a book in hand. If I was very mindful, I could feel the mild breeze and hear the beautiful silence. Perhaps those lingering memories make me yearn for calm environments even in masses of urban concrete.
In 2007, I moved to Bengaluru for work and stayed in Jayanagar. The locality had an inscrutable, but endearing charm, am sure it still does. It was in Jayanagar, in my search for calm urban spaces, that I discovered the parks of Bengaluru.
My weekend routine became fixed. After filter coffee and a Darshini breakfast ( idlis and vadas floating in delicious sambar ), I used to head to the neighbourhood park, with The Hindu and a novel in hand. To read the happenings around the world from the vantage seat of a cool park bench and to have the muffled sounds of fellow Bengalureans going about their business — walking, meditating, children playing — for company, was an indescribable pleasure.
To be physically in one world and simultaneously experience other worlds in imagination — perhaps .
