The Street Teaches You
Growing up in a Bangalore neighbourhood
This flash essay is part of a collaborative, constrained-writing challenge undertaken by some members of the Bangalore Substack Writers Group. Each of us examined the concept of ‘BANGALORE’ through our unique perspective, distilled into roughly 500 words. At the bottom of this snippet, you’ll find links to other essays by fellow writers.
A message forwarded on a school WhatsApp group said that we might be the last generation of children to have played on our streets. I must confess that I didn’t always enjoy playing on the streets. At first, I found it unnerving to step outside by myself. Many a time, I would have to be nudged and pushed, away from my comic books, to go outside and play.
Only now do I see the immense value of those evenings when we children were not under the watch of any grownups. There was no task to be completed, and we were not being pulled up for our low scores in gully cricket. After all these years, I am now feeling grateful that we had this me-time to do whatever we wished. The only conditions were that we had to do it outside our homes but within the boundaries of the neighbourhood.
Playing on the streets was firstly about finding other kids, deciding on a game we could all play together, and, negotiating and renegotiating the rules throughout the play.
Like most children, I started off playing right outside the house with our immediate neighbours. But sometimes, a parked car would block our wickets - the ones we had inscribed on the compound wall, and so we would have to go elsewhere to find another cricket pitch. And that's how we started playing on adjoining streets and found other children to play with. This was also when we got to know the neighbours on those streets. The neighbours who would gladly return our cricket ball and those who would shoo us away.
It now feels fascinating how we formed instant friendships with other children during our play. Sometimes, our new friends would take us into their homes. Walking into another kid’s home was like entering a whole new world - every home had its own customs and its own warmth. Plus, there were always the mothers who fed us snacks and drinks.
When we were about 12 years old, we formed a team of our own and started going to the big playground nearby to play with children from other neighbourhoods. After playing, we would collect all the small change from our pockets and walk up to the local bakery for refreshments.
Every time I was stepping outside to play, I was asked about where we were headed and reminded about the time by which I had to get back home. That was the amount of surveillance we had back then.
Playing on the streets also meant getting bored with the game we started and loitering the neighbourhood to see what else catches our fancy. Sometimes we would just huddle on the staircase in front of a friend’s house and exchange ghost stories.
I feel fortunate to have grown up playing on the streets of a neighbourhood which had families from different communities living next to each other. The kids I played with were of all kinds too. The ones who fought a lot, the ones who would cry and complain, and the ones who left the game in a huff taking their cricket bats with them.
And yet, we always found a way to play together.
Here are my fellow writers and their essays on Bangalore:
Looking Down over Bengaluru by Vaibhav Gupta, Thorough and Unkempt
Blossom Book House, Bangalore by Rahul Singh, Mehfil
A Walk, A Pause by Mihir Chate, Mihir Chate
Bookless in Bangalore by Vikram Chandrashekar Vikram’s Substack
Bangalore: A personal lore by Siddhesh Raut, Shana, Ded Shana
Bangalore,once by Avinash Shenoy, Off the walls
Bangalore Down the lane of History by Aryan Kavan Gowda, Wonderings of a Wanderer
Nagar Life by Nidhishree Venugopal, General in her Labyrinth
Belonging by Shruthi Iyer, Shruthi Iyer
The Wild Heart of Bangalore by Devayani Khare, Geosophy
A Love Letter to Bangalore by Priyanka Sacheti, A Home for Homeless Thoughts
Movie Dates, Bangalore and Them by Amit Charles, AC Notes
Between Cities by Richa Vadini Singh, Here’s What I Think
A Haven? Awake in Bangalore, by Lavina G, The Nexus Terrain
My love affair with blue skies by Sailee Rane, Sunny climate stormy climate
A City That Builds Belonging by Sathish Seshadri, Strategy & Sustainability
There and Back Again by Ayush, Ayush's Substack
Truly, the streets did teach us and what wild childhoods, we had. We were allowed traipse across a neighbourhood with plenty of undeveloped patches, with the only caveat, that we head home when the street lights came on.
Such a heartwarming read Karthik :)