Of wanderings and a conversation

I always enjoy walking around the MG Road - Brigade Road area here in Bangalore. It gives me a slight flavour of Calcutta. A good and improved flavour of Calcutta. It reminds me particularly of the Chowringhee area near Grand Hotel. Where you have the hawkers sitting around selling all kinds of garments. There are no hawkers as such over here. MG Road is what brings back these memories. It's wide and there's a kind of bustle about the crowd. Calcutta is of course more crowded and there is much more of a bustle there. The bustle and the crowd here is enough to make me smile to myself and enjoy the experience of walking around there :) What I really like about the experience of walking around here is the people that I see around me. It's completely different from Calcutta! The crowd is 'richer' and it's very diverse. PYTs clutching on to the arms of their partners, foreigners walking around carrying their backpacks, up and with it thirty year olds and the local crowd which makes up a minority.

Brigade Road is what I would call a more compact version of what I would imagine Park Street to be in earlier times. These days the Left government seems hellbent on destroying whatever remains of it! I think it's more 'compact' because of the narrow road, the numerous shops which are quite literally stuck to each other, the slow moving traffic and the slim footpaths which are teeming with people. Diverse crowd again. The road's got a definite pulse and buzz to it.

On Saturday I had stopped by at a juice shop on Brigade. Was looking around for something with which to quench my thirst. It was nice sitting there. Peaceful, sitting on a long stool, looking out on Brigade Road. Just a touch away from the crowded street. In came a foreigner. It struck me that he asked for an anaar juice. Anyways, he sat down and I started a conversation with him. It was quite an interesting chat we had. We discussed how America and India are diverse in their own ways. Some of the stuff that he told me was quite new for me. I didn't know that in nearly every American city, people of many nationalities interact with each other. I did have a vague idea that local conflicts are not uncommon in America. We also concluded that the means of communication that we have around us are completely changing how society operates.

I feel that eyes reveal a lot about a person. The American's eyeballs were light blue, bright and constantly twitching. An alert person I thought. Half an hour passed in a flash! I have met foreigners before. But never really had a conversation as such with one. Good shit :)