Becoming Bangalore: Stories That Shaped a Hometown by Roopa PaiMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Hooter: Namma Bengaluru, one story at a time.
“Becoming Bangalore: Stories That Shaped a Hometown” feels like sitting with a chatty, well-read older cousin who loves this city a little too much and wants you to love it back.
Roopa Pai picks up Bengaluru like a jigsaw puzzle and starts turning over the pieces – a maharani’s foresight here, a scientist’s obsession there, an entrepreneur’s gamble somewhere else. One chapter has you walking under jacaranda and tabebuia, in a city that seems to have decided its trees must take turns blooming so residents never run out of colour. Another suddenly tells you that our very own seemebadanekayi, the humble “chow chow” in your sambar, is here because a horticulture director at Lalbagh once decided to experiment in the late 19th century.
My favourite bits are where history casually bumps into everyday Bangalore. There’s an essay that makes you look at Russell Market differently the next time you haggle for flowers or “English vegetables”, reminding you it was once the gleaming one-stop shop for colonial kitchens and has just been lovingly restored. There’s a piece that connects the city to early electric lighting and Aryabhata, and another where Narayana Murthy and Sudha Murty’s story becomes shorthand for an entire generation’s Infotech dream.
What gives the book its heart is the layering – columns, reader memories, Roopa’s own childhood flashes, little jokes only a Bengalurean will fully appreciate. If you’ve ever waited for a table at a legendary dosa joint, complained about traffic on your way to Cubbon Park, or claimed a favourite flowering tree on your office route, this book will keep nudging you and saying, “See, your city’s been becoming for centuries. You just joined mid-season.”
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