Let us be a tourist in one's own city this summer

Hindustan Times

2 days ago

Depending on who you ask in Bengaluru, the summer holidays are April-May, May-June, or July-August. Even for international schools that match their holidays to the American summer that ends in August, this is the tail-end though. Kids are home, driving parents nuts. I remember this phase with my own kids – when the urgent and only question was: how to keep kids busy all summer? To that, I say, with the wisdom of hindsight: why not teach kids to be a tourist in their own city. Let me explain. Need to encourage your kids to keep a 'summer holiday' journal and record five things that they noticed each day, either by drawing or writing, or both. (HT file)
Today, there was a traffic jam in my neighbourhood. Nothing new about that in Bengaluru. But for a change, I wasn't furious. It was a riotous and beautiful procession for the goddess Mariamman, complete with a white-uniformed band, a flower-bedecked chariot atop which rode the goddess with boys dancing in front. Okay, this too might provoke a yawn. What's so new about goddess processions? Happens all over Bangalore all the time. Well, how about a connection between the goddess and the British? If you pose this question to your child, it will induce curiosity and maybe even exploration.
There are a lot of goddess temples in the Shivaji Nagar neighbourhood, where I live. Then again, there are a lot of goddess temples all over Bengaluru. The question is why. Mariamman is venerated for staving off 'heat diseases' such as small pox, chicken pox and cholera. A lot of the Mariamman temples in Shivaji Nagar were built during the plague of Bangalore in 1898 when some 7000 people died. When nothing worked, people prayed to the Plague-amman. Amman means mother. Lest you think it is a piece of history, ask your kid to search for Corona-Devi, worshipped more recently during Covid-19. It too exists in Bengaluru.
I stop at one goddess temple during my morning walk to Russell Market, named after a petty municipal commissioner. Why not change the name of this market to something more appealing to Kannadigas, I always wonder.
I go to Russell market to buy arugula and asparagus before the restaurant guys come and sweep up all the English vegetables. On each walk through the tiny bylanes of my neighbourhood, I see something new. This is a learned skill. A quick way to cultivate it is to take a Bengaluru city tour with one of the many tour companies. When my kids were young, author Roopa Pai gave us this type of city tour and changed our perception of what Bengaluru is.
These days, every time I go out, I try to view my city through the eyes of a tourist. It is a practice and a discipline. You need to view your surroundings with fresh eyes, to look at the world around you as it unfolds, and pay attention to how it affects you – how the external transforms the internal.
This is what is missing with social media. When you compress time to a 90-second reel, you cannot give nuanced complex messages. You can show transformation – I tried meditation every day – time lapse – and I was transformed. Or you can show travel: this is the best place to try Mulbagal masala dosa and here are four reasons why. To combine travel with internal transformation is hard on social media. Think of the script.
I wanted to bond with my daughter so I took a trip to Mulbagal. Guess what? We stopped fighting, ate this wonderful Mulbagal dosa with all its history. On the drive back, I learned about my daughter's new job and how it affected her mental health. The script is a few sentences long. Try making an Insta.
Writing is unique because it allows you to access the internal. It allows you to portray the ways in which the outside affects the inside. This is what the best travel writing does, and it is something that can be cultivated by keeping a diary. So why not encourage your kids to keep a 'summer holiday' journal and record five things that they noticed each day, either by drawing or writing, or both.
To be a tourist in your own city requires just two things: to look around, rather than look down at your smartphone. The second is the ability to be moved by what you see. For this to happen, you need to be present in the moment and not preoccupied. Of course, the city itself needs to inspire. That Bengaluru does to those who pay attention, and to those who open themselves to the city and the neighbourhood that they live in.
A mother in Palm Meadows asked me how to be a tourist when her community was sanitized of all diversity. This is true in most gated communities. It is a vexing problem. As a parent, I would not allow my kids to walk or play outside our community gates, even though I did this routinely as a child. My mother used to send my brother and I to buy coconuts or chilies at the vegetable shop up the road. Would you let your child do this? That is a question only a parent can answer. The more interesting question for Bangaloreans is: how many times do you walk on the city streets? When you take a morning walk, do you walk inside gated enclosures or on the streets. I would say, try the streets. Then try keeping a journal.
So the next time you need toothpaste, stop ordering it online. Instead, take a walk.
(Shoba Narayan is Bengaluru-based award-winning author. She is also a freelance contributor who writes about art, food, fashion and travel for a number of publications.)