Happiness in times to come

Happiness is a mixed emotion; it doesn’t exist alone. A little overwhelmed and the tears tip out of your eyes. Only, you don’t care! You laugh in merriment.

At that point in time, the tears don’t matter but the trickle tells you how happy you are. Likewise, the New Year is this happiness mixed with the experience of the years gone by.

The memory of an aunt who passed away or the birth of a friend’s grandchild, every aspect of each day are pearls that we string together as memories. Those memories stay, to remind us to celebrate a good moment and to deal with a new challenge. Therefore, the years gone by are precious and so will the one we step into. It will be a year to cherish.

Church Street is the quintessential street of walkers. Bengalureans live to walk on this street. You will find the tattooed bodies in tank tops, with piercing to highlight a bohemian languid stride. There is the hurrying sales executive on a short route to his office, envious of the jaywalkers. The poet in her gypsy skirt you will sight on an introspective stroll, wondering at an insightful top by a shop window.

The young who gather there are so joyful, holding hands. The trousers I worry will slip away while the skirts are cheeky. It’s youth in all its splendour. I love the raucous jibes and the tinkling laughter; everyone has a right to be happy.

Church Street is the temple street of restaurants. Cafés welcome you as much to a fine dining experience as cheap buffets that bring in the hungry and the brazen takeouts, which surreptitiously serve its customers late into the night. You have all of it here!

The shops are pretty too; a pet shop has the laziest Persian cats, smug while they glacially stare at you. Then there is the cute curiosity shop, where you can find your favourite comic character – Sheldon or even Achmed, the Puppet. A shop of entrepreneurial effort where reasonable shoes are available, another shop of wispy dresses from only God knows where! But the merchandise finds customers.

The Coconut Grove, a restaurant, has been delighting the taste buds of people who like coastal food.

So, what can be so wrong in this street that a bomb should go off? This street is typically Bengaluru – the hippies, the trend-setters, the business buffs, the jaywalkers, the crazy kids, the tourists, the funky stylists – all take their path here into MG Road and Brigade Road.

There is the Koshy’s restaurant just across, which has stayed with the city and its culture. Serious authors pour over their manuscripts here, and scribes who come for a quick cup of tea, quickly change their mind and sit back awhile! Bangalore and Church Street have existed long before people began to set off these ugly things. “Why for Man?” is my question. We are a city proud of what we have come to be. Let us just live, for we have toiled for Bengaluru to be thus.

We have neither border issues nor broader issues; we have only issues of living a qualitative life – to achieve what we want and what we strive for, and the strife we bear to get there. But we will say a prayer for the departed. We mourn in sincerity and in shock that this peace loving city should have earned a victim thus. We celebrated the New Years in the past and we shall this year, too. It is our tradition, we cannot stop for anyone. We will carry that tradition now and forevermore! Happy New Year!