Bangalore Blues

Up until now, my entire experience of India has only been of the South. I can happily sing the praises of this region’s excellent food and pleasant climate. My previous sojourn, in the context of India and the War, took me to Goa, Cochin, Chennai and Bombay. So far, since April, I took up where I left off in Bombay five years ago, exploring The Dream Factory, finding my center in the Andaman Islands, and until a few days ago, checking out the hi-tech scene in Bangalore.

In the three weeks I spent in the Garden City, rather than describe the place and my adventures, I treated you to my ruminations on National Confusion, more of which you can still look forward to.

Here’s what really happened.

For me, as a techie, Bangalore represented the most realistic option for residence in India, and accordingly, I looked at it with a most discerning eye. With an unprecedented catapulting into a debut position in the Top 5 of All Time, I spent my first three nights in the city with India’s Greatest Lover. Thrice each evening, and once more in the morning for good measure. With passion. And skill. On that third morning though, it was sadly and painfully clear that It Was Not Meant To Be. Perhaps this kind of affair only occurs when traveling. While leaving me with a lifetime of wondrous memories and fantasies for posterity, it set the tone for the rest of my stay, of fits and false starts.

I had been invited to give a lecture to the assembled members of Bangalore’s STC on technical writing for localization. I opened by saying that if Mr T had to deal with this issue, he would certainly say “I pity the fool who gets stuck as localization manager!” Indeed, it is a thankless task, especially when performed on unruly, inconsistent legacy documentation, which, as most of us technical writing schmucks well know, is invariably our sorry lot.

The lecture was very well received, and I entertained a rather serious offer of consulting. I also gave an additional lecture at a company on unstructured vs. structured documentation, and the overall technical documentation lifecycle. Pretty riveting stuff, eh? Yet, except for in the largest and most serious multinationals, Indian technical communicators are somewhat behind the times, often preferring to focus on grammar rather than process and methodological innovation. Perhaps for that reason, the market is a potential gold mine.

That said, Bangalore the city, like anywhere else, has its pros and cons. Indeed, it lives up to its epithet as the Garden City, as there are a number of quite pleasant, green parks in the city itself. Great shopping abounds, from bazaars to swanky malls. Multiplex cinemas are also in ample supply, and to be sure, I spent much of my free time in them, seeing basically every Hindi movie that was showing, plus Spiderman 3 and Mr Bean’s Holiday to boot.

As it turns out, I have a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of Hindi cinema since the year 2000, having seen no small number of productions. It inspired me to learn Hindi, and in fact has been my main teacher. I know the major directors, composers, lyricists, background singers, production houses, and of course the star system, with its accompanying gossip mill, all up to date. I can identify almost 90% of movie songs played on the radio and TV, even placing them into the aforementioned framework. It makes for a great conversation piece and Indians are suitably impressed. But I’ve had no chance to further my Hindi by actually speaking it, as the South is not its native region.

Bangalore is the Indian city with the highest prevalence of English, at least that I’ve visited. This is owing to a number of factors. The language of IT is English, forcing a high degree of competence among those who work in the industry, as well as those who serve it. This technology pole has drawn in migrants from all over the country, who similarly have high competence in the language, creating something of a snowball effect, and thereby rendering it as the de facto lingua franca of much of the population. And it has a large population: 8 million. There are the native Karnatakans, a large Tamil community, a surprising number of people from the Seven Sister North Eastern States, as well as North Indians, who, like me, enjoy Hindi cinema.

Alas, the greatest downside to Bangalore is its crowding, congestion and pollution. Practically everywhere you go, it is mobbed. And Indians, with a very different sense of space from Westerners, inevitably stand in the “wrong” places. In queue, inasmuch as they are capable of standing in one, they’re close enough to touch, even with total strangers. If the weather weren’t so muggy, I suppose it wouldn’t bother me. But in the pre-monsoon heat, it can be very annoying. If there’s an escalator, people will be standing in front to block it. Ditto for other entrances and exits. Crucify me for intolerance, but after a while, it starts to get to you.

So while at least formally reserving my verdict on the place, after three weeks, it became imperative to get some fresh air, see the ocean, and decompress. Pondicherry fit the bill. An enclave in neighboring Tamil Nadu, this former French colony also featured ashrams and yoga classes, which having begun in Banaglore, I was eager to continue in cleaner, quieter surroundings.