A love letter to Bangalore

A city that I never thought would call home

Jun 29, 2025

This flash essay is part of a collaborative, constrained-writing challenge undertaken by some members of the Bangalore Substack Writers Group. Each of us examined the concept of ‘BANGALORE’ through our unique perspective, distilled into roughly 500 words. At the bottom of this snippet, you’ll find links to other essays by fellow writers.

Bangalore is

whitegreenfuschiavermilionorangeredpinkpurplemagenta violet flower market energy. It is meticulously pleated betel nut leaves, neon-strung mallige hair ornaments nesting in wicker baskets, lemon-rose garlands, slumbering water-jewelled lotus buds, plastic blue sacks spilling over with sunshine yellows, monsoon mauves, and moonlight ivories, mobile nurseries on painted carts, and the extra red roses the flower lady gifts you after carefully weighing out one hundred grams of buttery yellow champak petals, night-fragrant chameli, and a pond-fresh magenta purple-stalked water lily.

Bangalore is

sky-spreading raintrees, mauve jacaranda clouds, sunlight yellow golden and pink trumpets illuminating avenues and streets, candyfloss apple blossom, sunset-hued African tulips, sea-creatures of fallen cannonball flowers, nutmeg-scented akashmallige, palms which bloom once every sixty years, centuries-old silk cotton trees, banyans which embroider stone and concrete, crimson gulmohur, and plucky peepal saplings which grow from walls of homes.

Bangalore is

billions of years old year old rocks, of sloping roads, of warm, rust red earth, of cracked speckled brown-gray boulders which are home to lovers and slumbering dogs and picnicking familes and reel-making teenagers, of ghost and reincarnated and surviving lakes. Bangalore is old and new and old.

Bangalore is

a dictionary of colors: pistachio, turquoise, cobalt, jamun, rust-orange, hibiscus pink, lavender, egg-yolk yellow, monsoon cloud gray houses, of blooming window sills and wall gardens, of kolam gardens emerging from cracked pavement, of men and women picking puja flowers from gardens, of herbs sprouting from pavement squares, of decades-old bungalows with their bygone histories and herstories, of bougainvillea clouds and hibiscus rain emerging from gardens, of madhumalti secrets whispering to rainy nights from walled gardens and spilling out onto the wet tarmac, asking to be heard.

Bangalore is

old bookshops which smell of dust, tears, a million stories and words, tucked away inside the books and of those who read and loved before giving a little piece of themselves away, of literary gardens in which to lose yourself, wondering what discoveries you will make today.

Bangalore is

Late night ice-cream dates and walking around with melting cones in monsoony Indiranagar streets, long and short drives, toddling, shrieking, curious walks in Cubbon Park, friendships forged over walking and talking in streets, of secrets exchanged in the company of trees, of discovering eccentric, intriguing temples down forgotten lanes, of buying pink-hearted guavas from a man in a guava-hued shirt, of breakfasts of butter-tender dosas, sharp, slumber-shattering filter coffee, and cloud-soft idlis, watching the roads stream past, of bougainvillea adorned trucks and autorickshaws, becoming chariots of gods and flowers and cycles and mirrors, of street dogs who curl up on carpet squares on roads, and ironing shops under trees.

Bangalore is

of watching few-hours old eyes open and look at me and tell me that Bangalore is our home.

Please do read other writers’ interpretations of this theme in this exercise over here

Looking Down over Bengaluru by Vaibhav Gupta, Thorough and Unkempt

Blossom Book House, Bangalore by Rahul Singh, Mehfil

A Walk, A Pause by Mihir Chate

Bookless in Bangalore by Vikram Chandrashekar Vikram’s Substack

Bangalore: A personal lore by Siddhesh Raut, Shana, Ded Shana

Bangalore,once by Avinash Shenoy, Off the walls

My love story with Bengaluru by Rakhi Anil

Bangalore Down the lane of History by Aryan Kavan Gowda, Wonderings of a Wanderer

Nagar Life by Nidhishree Venugopal, General in her Labyrinth