Discovering Bengaluru through words

BENGALURU: In Bengaluru's cafés, restaurants and bars, even on trains and flights headed towards this city, one largely hears and overhears conversations about startups and funding. It's hard to have dinner or coffee, or make a journey to Startup City, without someone cracking a joke about or floating an idea for a startup that will, of course, bring in millions in funding. Words that capture just one aspect of this city. But of course, there are many other aspects to this city, and those were captured by the words of authors at the Times Litfest.Its science and simplicity, its activism and ecology, its simplicity and charm, characteristics often forgotten in the everydayness of traffic. “Bengaluru represents a happy mix of new India that represents new economy and old India that is rooted in tradition,“ Rajya Sabha MP Jairam Ramesh observed. It may seem like a clichéd classic-contemporary trope, but it's a truth often overlooked as we gripe about traffic and congestion, garbage and sewage.In many ways, words captured the spirit of old Bangalore, which its older residents are so nostalgic about, while recognising the ways in which chang e had brought energy to the city. “It's wonderful to be in a place where you can see the old greenery of Bengaluru,“ said historian Ramachandra Guha, who was a visitor, while scientists Jyotsna D h aw a n , K a r t i k S h a n k e r, Mukund Thattai and Indira Chandrasekhar, while talking about science and the city, referred to ways in which migration and diversity in the demographics of the city had brought diversity to their own campus, the Indian Institute of Science.Lawyer and activist Gowthaman Ranganathan referred to the city's activism and said Karnataka is making more progress in implementing legislation for the third gender than any other region in India.For visitors who don't come here as often as they'd like to, there are old-world institutions to visit, old traditions to adhere to. Justice Mukul Mudgal said he'd gone across to Vidyarthi Bhavan in the morning for breakfast, preferring it to the “standardized hotel fare“. It's a trip he tries not to miss whenever he's in Bengaluru, he said.All words that prove that the city's 'old' is inextricable from it's today; they go hand-in-hand just as one can enjoy a translation of Raghavanka's Harishchandra Kavyam (The Life of Harishchandra) as much as a crime thriller set in Shivajinagar. It's this happy coexistence of the old and new that's still special to the city. Coffee and cappuccino. One by two.