Leaving Bengaluru

I shall be leaving Bengaluru in a day or two, after having lived here during two distinct periods: first between September 2024 and July 2025, and then again during these recent months from March to May 2026. Between them, I have seen the city through almost all its seasons—under monsoon skies, amid flowering summers, in koel-filled mornings, and during those difficult afternoons when traffic and heat seem to test the patience of an entire metropolis.

Perhaps that is why departure feels less like leaving a temporary place of residence and more like stepping away from a long conversation.

Like most visitors, I first encountered Bengaluru through its contradictions. It was graceful yet exasperating, shaded yet overcrowded, contemplative yet restless. Its old avenues and flowering trees still carried traces of the city that generations admired, even as relentless construction, vanishing greenery, and mounting civic pressures revealed the strain of rapid expansion.

But gradually, Bengaluru revealed itself in quieter ways.

Over these months, I found myself writing repeatedly about the city—its flowering trees, birdsong, changing skies, rains, gardens, and moods. I wrote of the flaming splendour of the Gulmohar against an April sky, of the delicate mauve haze of the Jacaranda, of the golden cascades of Amaltas, and the sudden blush-pink radiance of the Pink Poui that transforms entire stretches of road into fleeting avenues of colour. I remember too the quiet dignity of the old Rain Tree, whose pale blossoms arrive less dramatically but linger with a kind of serene assurance. And then there were evenings touched unexpectedly by the fragrance of Raat Ki Rani drifting through neighbourhood parks, while the liquid call of the Asian Koel announced the arrival of dawn before the city gathered its machinery of noise.

I also wrote, at times, with disappointment.

For no admirer of Bengaluru can remain indifferent to its visible civic fatigue: roads that seem permanently unfinished, disappearing trees, chaotic traffic, shrinking public ease, and a pace of growth that often appears indifferent to proportion, silence, or pause.

Yet even criticism here arises from affection.

For Bengaluru remains one of the rare Indian cities that still possesses the possibility of gentleness.

Its true strength has never rested merely in commerce or technology, impressive though both are. What made Bengaluru exceptional was its openness—its ability to welcome people from elsewhere, absorb their aspirations and energies, and yet retain a certain civility of temperament. Cosmopolitanism here was never a slogan; it was the foundation of the city’s creativity and confidence.

One hopes the city never forgets this.

For cities diminish when they grow fearful of openness. Bengaluru’s future will depend not only upon infrastructure and investment, but also upon its ability to preserve its instinct for accommodation, plurality, and ease.

Equally, its future will depend upon whether development and conservation can continue to coexist with wisdom and restraint. Nature has already bestowed upon Bengaluru a rare inheritance: a climate once celebrated across India, generous tree cover, flowering avenues, lakes, gardens, and a rhythm of life gentler than most great cities could afford themselves. To protect this inheritance while still embracing growth is perhaps the central challenge before Bengaluru today.

For cities become truly memorable not merely when they expand, but when they remain liveable, breathable, and emotionally sustaining.

And despite everything, Bengaluru still offers moments that restore belief: an evening breeze after rain, the sheltering calm beneath an old rain tree, conversations lingering in cooler weather, flowering avenues unexpectedly brightening an exhausted day.

These are small things, certainly. Yet cities are ultimately remembered through such intimacies, not through skylines alone.

Soon Delhi will reclaim me with its own history and momentum. But I leave Bengaluru carrying gratitude—for its changing moods, its enduring beauty, and its continuing struggle to remain humane amidst extraordinary growth.

Some cities impress us. A few remain with us. Bengaluru, despite everything, will remain.

Decidedly. Delightfully.