Tell me what to like

Ten years of technological development has made living in Bengaluru as a foreigner so much easier. Our first time here, this city was navigated by local knowledge, word of mouth, communities of belonging that we had to find our ways into slowly, frustratingly, patiently, from friends and colleagues, from the Overseas Women’s Club, from the community of ex-pats that we were immediately a part of, from our drivers, from deliberate wandering and exploration. But even with all of that in our short two years we were never able to really gain the knowledge that we wanted, we never really learned this city. Which is, at least in part, why we were so excited to return.

In our first few months here now I have been to more of the city, have seen more of the city, have done more things in this city than in the first year of our previous stay. Instagram and google and the proliferation of easily accessible media has opened the city to outsiders in ways that were unimaginable ten years ago. Grocery stores, barber shops, coffee shops, museums and galleries and events, gluten free restaurants are all available with a quick online search. And navigating the city is even easier; what was a five-minute conversation trying to explain where I wanted to go and where I thought it was is now simply texting the directions from google maps. And if you can’t find it, just order it - this is a city that lives on delivery. Of course and of course, that slow local knowledge is still the only way to learn of the truly wonderful things the city has to offer; even with google maps it took a good bit of wandering and a wonderful colleague to find my new favorite Vietnamese coffee shop. Without that, though, we can learn enough.

Which is an incredibly dangerous thing, learning enough. Because enough is never actually enough. For as much as we have done and seen and been to, I am not yet living here. Partly, to be sure, this is because of how we have chosen to live, where and how we have chosen to make our ways through the city this time; Bengaluru is not, for us, a walkable city, and so I doubt that I will ever truly feel like I know it. But it is also partly because it has all been too easy. In letting an algorithm tell me where the good coffee shops are I haven’t remembered what bad coffee shops look like; in letting an algorithm tell me where the good grocery stores are I haven’t stumbled into a bewildering and mind and palette blowing local vegetable stand; in destination hopping through google maps I do not ever really know where I am.

There is, in this new Bengaluru, an expectation of efficiency and success that feels wonderful and manageable and so very very nice. But also not quite like living. The joy of travel, it seems, as well as the joy of living in a new city, is a joy only found in a slow settling into place, into the rhythms and habits and practices of a place, of finding and failing, and really of being shared with and the sharing in return of a place.