by Sitting under the fan ceiling at Koshy’s restaurant, a fixture in this city since 1952, it felt like nothing had changed. Waiters in white uniforms with silver buttons on their tunics served elderly customers in pressed shirts.
Even the items on the menu seemed like artifacts from another era – cream of vegetable soup, pineapple and onion steak, glazed mutton. They went back to the years after India’s independence, when Queen Elizabeth and Jawaharlal Nehru visited Koshy’s – at least according to the menu – and Bangalore was a leafy, moderate city of 750,000 people, admired by middle class retirees in particular.
I first came to Koshy’s in 2006. At the time, Bangalore was at the center of an extraordinary economic boom that was changing India. The city had swelled to six million people, drawn by the growing IT industry.
I was working on a film script – finished, but never shown – set in one of the city’s call centres. It struck me as an extraordinary moment. Old India, sluggish, bureaucratic, poor, conservative, religious, was being modernized at an incredible pace.
In 2006 I visited a charity school that educated children from the slums of Bangalore. One classroom was full of children of snake charmers – actually a form of pest control in India. All the snake charmers were unemployed because the snake charmers were afraid of the huge amount of construction in the city. Every kid in the class wanted to be a software engineer.
I went to call centers where young employees were studying the movies Notting Hill and Bridget Jones’s Diary to tune their ears to the British accent. They might spend their days in a traditional Hindu home where arranged marriage was the norm, but at night they answered phones under western assumed names, trying to help callers whose lifestyles were completely alien.
The training they received included lessons on British culture. I wrote down these words of wisdom from one of the skilled soft trainers I met then: “The British take a long time to open up. They are very dominant. When they are angry they cannot calm down. They don’t like Americans, or even if you mention America.”
The bright, air-conditioned campuses where the young employees worked seemed to be evidence that India was changing irrevocably. Coming back 18 years later, I wonder if I would recognize anything.
First of all, it’s not Bangalore anymore. The old name has been retired – not completely, people still chat – but Bengali is the official one. It is now a megalopolis with at least 13 million people. It has a new metro system. And the new airport, which opened last year, is an architectural masterpiece. Billed as an airport in a garden, it’s full of living walls, plants and giant hanging baskets.
I flew in on one of Virgin Atlantic’s inaugural direct flights from Heathrow. These daily flights, which connect up with routes to San Francisco and further afield, are further evidence of the city’s economic influence.
Arriving at night, driving from the airport on the elevated highway to my hotel, I did not see a single autorickshaw. In the distance, there was a row of shiny tower blocks and a new luxury shopping mall – the Phoenix Mall of Asia – that wouldn’t look out of place in Dubai. We went to the Leela Palace Hotel, a five-star Indo-Saracenic behemoth built on the outskirts of the city.
Although it looks like a palace, the Leela is not much older than Bengal’s economic boom. Opened in 2001, it’s huge and wild, with an army of solicitous staff, a spa, a pool – and even a Tokyo-themed speakeasy in the basement that’s said to be the sixth best bar in India. I can’t comment on that, because I was turned away from wearing flip-flops.
Flip flops, however, did not get in the way of my enjoying a club sandwich and non-alcoholic cocktail in the Library Bar – named for its library of rare spirits – under a giant alabaster light fixture as big as my car.
The Leela Palace Hotel hosted in 2009 the wedding reception of our current Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak and his bride Akshata Murthy. I would rather have a wedding reception at Leela Palace. Unfortunately, my brothers didn’t have as deep pockets as Mr. Sunak.
Ms Murthy is the daughter of NR Narayana Murthy, one of the superstars of Bengaluru’s software boom – a billionaire businessman who co-founded the technology company Infosys.
It is hard to overstate the impact of the software industry on India. In 2021, India earned more from software exports than Saudi Arabia earned from exporting oil: $178 billion dollars. Thanks in large part to India’s technology industry, an economy that was for decades a basket case is now the fifth largest in the world.
By the time I stepped out of the hotel, I expected to find a subcontinental version of Miami: palm trees and skyscrapers, maybe even some bold tech entrepreneurs commuting to work with jetpacks. Imagine my surprise when I was plunged into a very familiar world of the dusty streets, loading cars, women passengers in shalwar kameez, riding saddles on overloaded motorcycles, cai sellers and even cows sometimes wandering through traffic.
But even this India he knew was not the same. I was able to use Uber to hail an autorickshaw. A driver named Naveen took me to Khoshy’s for 86 rupees – less than a pound. It felt in many ways like old India – only better. The thrill of zooming through the streets was still there, but there was no inhibition of price, no worries about an unexpected side quest to a relative’s curio shop, and no arguments about whether the notes being sold were I paid torn or dirty. Naveen’s rickshaw was one of the newest models, powered by compressed natural gas and running much cleaner than the old diesel ones.
Of course, there are problems due to the huge growth of Bengali. Traffic is a nightmare. The city’s sleepy charm, the carefully managed greenery that shadows the streets, and the city’s water supply are all under pressure. But there is something intoxicating about the energy of Bengaluru and the strange contrasts between the new India and the India that hasn’t changed at all.
On a walking tour of the Krishnarajendra Market, I watched a man sitting half-lotus in a cubby hole carefully threading tube flowers onto wire to make garlands. Up the road at the 300-year-old Shree Kore Venkataramana Temple, sacred to Vishnu, a bare-chested priest was performing sacred rituals – and a QR code for electronic donations.
In a microbrewery called Toit, I watched local techies sample the range of craft beers. Up the road from Khoshy’s, a sign outside the Lit gastropub advised me “Head inside coz it’s Lit tonight”. I fell behind a young man on a phone who was saying loudly: “We are going to invest more money in this specific sector and rethink our whole approach”. In the Lalbagh Botanic Gardens, a green oasis first laid out in the 18th century with fountains and a greenhouse, courting couples, families and Instagrammers were posting content to their followers.
Riding the metro – clean, cheap, fast – I fell into conversation with a young entrepreneur named Clinton Baptist. His unusual surname was due to Goan ancestry. He was dressed in the uniform of today’s global citizen: jeans, plaid shirt, snacks and a backpack, and he carried a business plan in a roll of paper like a treasure map.
Like many newcomers to the city, he was drawn there in hopes of finding start-up capital to launch his business and replicate the success of the founders of Infosys. Clinton’s big idea was to use Artificial Intelligence to revolutionize India’s education system. He spoke passionately about AI and how we stood at a historical moment, comparable to the birth of the internet or the Industrial Revolution.
He was on his way to a place where he liked to sit and brainstorm. It turned out to be an independent coffee shop, called Champaca, overlooking a garden. The tables were full of young Bangaloreans working on tablets and laptops. Despite opening just before the pandemic, the bookstore’s founder, Radhika Timbadia, has found enthusiastic and strong demand for her carefully curated selection of novels and non-fiction books.
Champaca would be an ornament to any neighborhood. He was calm and, as Clinton had promised, helped with work and brainstorming. Her young customers drank kombucha while reading or chatting or completing business proposals.
Cambodia was also a reminder that India is a country for young people. Half of its 1.4 billion population is under 30. While in the past young ambitious citizens had to move abroad to pursue their dreams, today’s Bengaluru is a promised homeland.
Basics
Doubles from £206 a night at the Leela Palace Hotel Bengaluru (00 91 80 2521 1234; theleela.com). Virgin (virginatlantic.com) flies from London Heathrow to Bengaluru from £499 return.
