Bangalore? Modern? huh...

I was surprised when I first came to Bangalore, after all the hype I had heard from Indian friends and acquaintances. To their minds, Bangalore was the most "westernized" or modernized city in all the subcontinent. But as you tour the city's streets and byways, you don't see much modernity. You see that the majority of commuters get to work by foot, cycle, auto, moped, bus, lorry and the minority are in a/c automobiles. Many wear Tommy and Levis to work, but many more like to wear gaudy imitations of the Tommy and Levis fashions - while there, I realized that the more common folk (chai boys) would rather wear something awful just because it looked Western. And when you see the ladies of Bangalore heading to work, in the place of power suits and pencil skirts, you see lots of colorful saris and salwar kameezes.

I guess I thought that "modernized" meant that if I were to be teleported from Times Square to Cunningham Road, that I would see a lot of similarities and would feel at home in either place. That is why I laugh with recognition when a fellow expat, who has been to Bangalore, asks me "what did you think of Bangalore? Did you find it very modern?" I say, "no way!"

But as I read more of Maximum City and of happenings in Delhi, I think that by contrast Bangalore is more modernized. I think it is the mindset of the people of Bangalore that is "modern" or "Western," and that is what their countrymen have recognized. That peculiar Indian clannishness is falling by the wayside in Bangalore, as people come together to kick Western asses out of their call centers and BPOs.