What happened? It’s on my mind while I take the elevator down from one of the city’s most iconic bars, Thirteenth Floor, with its magnificent views across the city. To the right is the metro rounding its way around the Palace Grounds where I once saw the Rolling Stones perform. To the left is UB City with its high-end shopping and restaurants.
Turning into MG Road, I make my way to the Bar Stock Exchange, around the corner from Hardrock Cafe. I remember this place to be a car showroom, and the cheerful host informs me that indeed they once used to sell Maseratis here. That must have been a short-lived thing, because I have been coming to this city for some 22 years now and I am pretty sure I never noticed that before.
From Koshy’s on St Mark’s Parade, I can draw you a lay of the land on the backside of a beer coaster that will not only tell you where to go next, but also where we all used to go previously. Unlike cities like Delhi or Kolkata that like to narrate their histories through buildings and sites of historical significance, Bangalore is best understood through the bars that were once there.
Two decades ago, Bangalore was all about themed bars. There was a Nasa-style bar on Church Street that served you beer astronaut-style. At Purple Haze we would all scream along hard rock songs. Don’t get me started about this crazy Egypt-themed place. There was this hilarious Underground-themed bar that was basically a Tube station.
So many others have long been forgotten, including all those that existed down Airport Road. Some things never change though. Pecos on Rest House Road remains exactly as it always was with its wobbly staircase, somewhat chagrined waiters, complimentary popcorn, and neatly stacked cassettes behind the bar of which nobody can ever quite determine if they are still used. Word has it that the mix of Pink Floyd, Doors and Grateful Dead simply plays on a loop but nobody ever stays long enough to notice.
Yet, there is no denying things have changed. Admittedly, this is the story Bangalore likes telling itself as well. When I first came to the city in 2001, people were already lamenting that Old Bangalore was gone. A new one had come in its place, 5 million strong, impossible for such a small city which had never been designed to be so large. Trees were gone, it was too hot, traffic was awful. How could it possibly be sustained? The city was clearly doomed! Ten million people and two decades later, Bangalore is still going strong. Bars on every street corner, its clientele young and professional. Once their day is over, coding done, testing finished, another product launch behind, they will be celebrating that the client-side is now implementing what they have come up with.
At Thirteenth Floor, Madonna’s La Isla Bonita was playing followed by Men At Work’s Down Under. Entering the Bar Stock Exchange, I catch the final whiff of Europe’s The Final Countdown. The moment I sit down, we are already onto Whitesnake’s Here I Go Again. The joke goes that old pop-rock songs come to die in Bangalore. But in truth, here they live on forever.
Meanwhile the waiter wants to know what I would like to drink. ‘I’ll have a Kingfisher Premium.’ ‘London is my favourite city, sir.’ ‘I’m from Amsterdam.’ ‘Where is that, sir?’ ‘In Holland.’ ‘Oh, is that in Italy?’ I get my phone and pull up Google Maps ‘London is there, see. Amsterdam is across.’ ‘Oh, so this Amsterdam is a business place?’ ‘Yes it is, also a capital.’ ‘Of what sir? Italy?’ ‘No, Italy is the capital of London. Now bring me my beer please.’
(The writer is author of Muscular India: Masculinity, Mobility & the New Middle Class)
