Bangalore, O' Bangalore!

It has been a long time since I wrote something meaningful on this blog (or anywhere else, for that matter). The reason has been simple. I have become lazy. Yes, again. The laziness to write has afflicted me ever since I started giving serious thought towards the words that I write. My writing has been sporadic and extremely unorganised. I had thought that I would keep up my writing but it hasnt really happened mainly for lack of inspiration which I attribute to the soul-less work I am forced to do to carve out a living. Dont ask me why I do it. Because I wont tell! :)

One thing I do these days is read. I read a lot. Every night I curl up with a book and read upto 200 pages per night. Then I wake up the next morning and go to work. I like reading. It keeps me company and some of these books I am readin really appeal to me. Currently, I am reading The Man by Irving Wallace, Love in the time of cholera by Marquez, The Ultimate Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, Katha short stories (vol 4), and many other books. I recently bought more books too, including God Emperor of Dune and Focault's Pendulum. Perhaps, i should respond to Jaya's book tagging me. It is something that I will have a lot to say about. But right now, what really moves me to write is the itch to write something, anything. And that is the reason for this let out of feelings.

Perhaps, I should tell you about last weekend when I freed my mind to the domains of things not imagined or perhaps, I should spare my readers of my craziness. But there is something about Bangalore that I cannot resist. I have never been known to be a outdoor guy. The common complaint in my home, whenever I do go home, is that I sit around on the sofa and watch TV all day and my mother always keeps telling me to get out of the house and taste the world outside. Even in IITK, I would never really leave my room, not even for my classes. Partly the reason why I graduated late.
Soemtimes, I felt that I have missed something by not being a very outgoing guy and I have wondered at people who can never stay at home. So, when I came to Bangalore, I decided that I will not let myself be confined within the walls of the room/home and will taste the world outside. Bangalore is a great place to live in. There are a lot of things one could do here and it is the ideal place to roam around, because of the weather. So I like to just walk around aimlessly. It has happenned a couple of times that I have walked for hours, covering quite a lot distance, exploring new places (perhaps, it is the Diablo effect) and pondering over things that prevail over my mind. The weekends have always been the time when I could be free from my day job and have fun my own way. Once I walked all the way from Miller's road to Indiranagar and another time, I walked from Chinmaya Hospital to Ulsoor lake, spent a couple of hours there and then I walked through Commercial street, Bowring hospital and then I turned left to St Marks road where I followed MG road and entered my usual weekend haunt. It was a long, long walk but I felt rejuvenated after that. To get into Ulsoor lake was a fight and I had to walk a long way to get an opening into the place. But by the side of the lake that afternoon, I could not help wondering where else could I have walked so far in the middle of the day and feel so happy about it? The weather is one big factor in favour of Bangalore but though, there are a lot of things I hate about this place.
I think I am beginning to like this place a lot better than what I endured the first few weeks, when I thought this was a pretentious, over-rich, highly commerical place with people whose heads where filled with goo and there is nothing substantial here. It is a place where the extreme economic difference that exists is starkly visible. A place where people move around in cars and the footpaths are in the worst possible condition.
Not that I have changed these opinions of Bangalore but there are things I have come to know that make it a great place to hang in for now. One could possibly have fun and also be his own self in this place and there is a diversity of people that astonish you at first, which is refreshing to see and experience. You meet people whom you would not have met otherwise. I think my outdoor life in Bangalore is partly due to the paucity of my wingmates here and the reason why I live alone these days. I like it like that, without anyone disturbing you and doing whatever I could in my cosy little home.
Sometimes, I wonder about the path that has laid itself before me and which I have gladly, if not enthusiastically, taken up and I think that it is a pretty good compromise, even though it does not give any satisfaction. I realise that, much like my aimless walks in Bangalore, I have been afflicted with an aimless existence, one that does not appeal to me but one which is inevitable.