Bengaluru reminds me of the West coast. Wet and cool, bustling with energy and creativity. F2F is delightful and their home makes me want to put effort into things. An assortment of cute art, postcards, polaroids. A booze corner. Rolling paper. Books I've read or want to read. In another life we're best friends. The pizza place she recommends blows my socks off. We get the one with lamb and chimichurri. They have a pizza inspired from Paulie Gee's, a Brooklyn pizzeria I went to in 2016. Samplers of IPA for him and stout for me. Indiranagar reminds me of Portland, and of Montreal in the spring. I have Mexican and Vietnamese food for the first time in four years. When I left my first world life I didn't anticipate living in closed quarters for as long as I did. Senses that laid dormant for years are summoned by the rest of me. Champaca Books is quaint although not quite what I pictured. I may have built it up too much. They have a whole section on caste and tons of comics. I identify the ones I have. I browse Adivasi poetry, stories about partition. I buy from an author whose last name I sometimes borrow. Bookmarks to add to my collection. I can't wait for all my stationery to be reunited.
The greenery is unmatched. I feel multiple places at once. Auto rickshaws give us a hard time. I get catcalled. I bite into tacos and I feel 25 again. A deluge catches us unawares. All cab services are unresponsive. Some of the staff walk us to a busier intersection and help us get an auto. The kindness of strangers. On the way to the city, passengers on our flight were carrying boxes of Alphonso mangoes and I gasped so audibly they offered us some. The kindness of strangers. I sit in the wet rickshaw and feel the cold air wrap itself around me. I feel alive. I have overpriced coffee at Araku. It's a cute locale with great branding but Subko is miles ahead. Just with the branding they win. Vietnamese food is hit and miss but the noodles' flavor stays with me. I think back on Le Petit Sao's vermicelli bowl. I think back on Luc Lac too. It doesn't come close but it scratches the itch partly. Dark brown Birks look so dope too bad I can't wear open shoes right now. I have mango cheesecake from Magnolia bakery that Arsh keeps calling Mongolia bakery. It tastes more like vanilla than mango which isn't a bad thing really just not what I expected. We top it off with one of our airplane mangoes. The tiles remind me of Lisbon. Why is Lisbon the place to be this year? The Luru carries many of the places I've seen. Kannada is undecipherable. I finish up Rumours of Spring. I bury myself in bougainvillea.
Cool youngsters sport mullets and hand-painted tote bags and are really good at Instagram reels. Ali Zafar's Jhoom plays on auto rides and my life is a reel. Cool youngsters wear baggy jeans and crop tops. And lots of green. I learn from them and emulate. We give hijras money and they give us blessings. God bless you back. I try on clothes I'd never wear. We have the flakiest croissant dipped in chocolate and make a colossal mess. I'm still thinking about the drag show in Bandra. Indiranagar is Bengaluru ka Bandra. The weather here is a wonderful change of pace. The city has all of the cool Bombay has to offer minus the cacophony, the smells, the blistering heat, the spoiled SoBo brats. If only Subko opened here. We get beautiful postcards from Blossom. That and Navayana books. I fit in so easily and dream of a life here. At Cubbon Park they don't let us take photos. Nor can we sit on the grass. What's the point really. I wave at the trees I'll soon forget.
I've only been here in my dreams. Corners remind me of Tokyo and the chilly evening breeze has an unmistakable Canadian spring tinge. It's Pride month and National Indigenous Peoples’ month. It's also my birth month. The beginning of my beginnings. At the drag show in Bombay my heart was so full it almost collapsed. I felt alive and honored by the beauty and the unapologetic commitment to the self. I'm reading Billy Ray Belcourt's A Brief History of my Body while eating another chocolate croissant. Kaafi poetic. There's something so moving about acknowledging histories of pain while offering the possibility of joy. To rewrite a history. To describe instead of being described. Belcourt juxtaposes the visceral, the ornate and the grim. Monsoon season is upon us. I pair earthy tones with pastels. I carry a spare book in my canvas tote. I pause to look at the sky. I identify number plates from the rickshaw on our way to Koramangala. This is a place like home.
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My friend asks me how India has been for me. "Do you feel like Diane when she went to Vietnam?" I'd completely forgotten about that episode (BoJack Horseman, season 5) and this is quite a visceral reminder. I rewatch the episode and open my WordPress drafts to see I'd taken extensive notes about it. I do not in fact feel like Diane in the slightest, although prior to a trip to India I may have expected to. I didn't come to India to find myself nor am I oblivious to my non-Indianness. I'm often reminded of it in the way people Indian-splain certain things to me. I'm torn between dreading conversations I can't understand and hating being asked how I know basic Hindi words. As if my skin isn't from here. With friends from the greater Brown diaspora, we've talked at length about this persistent sentiment of unbelonging, of shrinking and sidestepping, of squeezing and plucking. We understand the unspoken hierarchy in South Asianness. The authenticity our ancestors shed when they crossed oceans, forever parting with the land we grew out of, uprooted unbeknownst to them. We can seldom claim it. We know we don't belong the same way when we can't pronounce that sound that's not quite a 'd', not quite a 'th', when our performance of belonging is caricatural at best. I've learned from Gaiutra Bahadur, from Rajiv Mohabir, from Gitan Djeli, that we're really ever at home in a concept, a kinship bound by caste-mixing and border crossing, by dark waters and broken contracts. I came to India knowing who I am so my identity hasn't hinged on this trip. I say this and mean it but I am leaving with a different heart. A heart full of new smells and tastes, new winds and new feelings. Chalo phir, I'll see you when I see you.