The Art of Self Expression

I like crazy.

A lot of it has to do with the environment that I grew up in. My family, immediate and extended (bless 'em all), is happily mad as a rule, and anybody who has maintained but a passing interest in these pages over time would agree that all my friends are rather unhinged. My best mates in school and in college were raving kooks, and most of my neighbours over these years have covered themselves with glory in the loony bin department.

I myself, I wish to assure you, remain defiantly mad. The corporate world dusts me off, and drags me kicking and screaming through five days of chained sobriety, but underneath the pleasing calm veneer, Kulkarni remains as Mad as a Hatter.

And that, dear old friends, is why I love Bangalore so much. Although I love Pune infinitely more than I like Bangalore – it is home, after all – I must admit that Bangalore wins hands down in the Madness Stakes. Hands down, I assure you.

And the reasons for this are a-plenty. Speed breakers, and their awe-inspiring designs, cops and their blessed idiosyncrasies, traffic and it's asinine management, the food, and it's bewildering culture, and so many more fascinating aspects that serve as proof of the city's endearing madness.

But the one thing that truly sets Bangalore apart in the eyes of the sufferer and the connoisseur, and the one thing that gives Bangalore the thorny crown without dispute – is it's ability to express itself.

Bangalore advertises the fact that it is mad in myriad ways, each of them a work of art. Be it the advertising on hoardings that abound in the city, the menus in it's many restaurants, in the maddeningly mixed idioms that Bangalore uses, or indeed, in the way that Bangalore communicates at large – it is pleasingly, endearingly, outstandingly mad.

Have a dekko at this picture. It was taken right outside our home here in Bangalore, and it's raison d'etre is still a puzzle.

One can spend (and I have) many hours on trying to figure out the deeper meaning in this magnificent message. First off the bat, "Save yourself from Uneventuality". Even allowing for the fact that every Bangalorean seems to thrive on living life on the edge when it comes to driving on the road, wouldn't the point of following traffic rules have rather the opposite aim in mind? Maybe not, you think to yourself, maybe eventualities is what Namma Bengalooru actually craves. Who is to know?

"VONOV SOLSS".

I mean, you have to give that thing space. You can't begin a sentence right after you say that. Doesn't seem right somehow.

What on earth could it mean? What are they trying to say to us? Is it English? I think not. Should one read it left to right, and then the next line? Or should one bob up and down, V and then S and then O and then O again, and so on? Either ways, it remains resolutely unreadable. Fascinating, is it not?

Now, moving on, if they're indeed going to teach us how to speak English, they could begin with themselves, given what's written right above it.

"Computer Training and Personality Development", of course, just make matters murkier.

"In case someone actually begins to think that he's understood us", you can hear the advertisers scheme," Let's throw him completely off track by throwing in Computer Training in there. And to really run riot, let's follow that up with Personality Development. That'll show 'em!"

They end with, bless their souls, Foreign Languages. So is "VONOV SOLSS"...

...In a foreign language? Is it meant as an appetiser, an hors d'oeuvre? One will never know, because one will of course never have it in oneself to actually call that blessed number.

And what really drives you up the wall is to find that these guys have branches. Not two, but a resounding four. People in Bangalore, it would seem, can't get enough of VONOV SOLSS.

For all you know, a dozen more are being added as we speak.

Bless their souls, indeed.

And this of course, is but one example (one of the better ones, certainly) of Bangalore attempting to express itself. I'll share more over time, be sure of that.

In the meantime, here's wishing you a very happy VONOV SOLSS.