Jason 
March 31, 2010
as a tourist in bangalore, if you want to do some shopping you end up at brigade road. it’s a dense commercial area that is home to a plethora of outlets, shops, stalls, and street vendors. you will be yelled after and followed by people peddling their wares, offering to be your rickshaw driver for the day, take you to the best sites (bangalore palace, cubbon park, etc). i loved walking up and down, but found it tiring after a while.
this was my first time in more than a week that i’d heard spoken languages other than arabic, kannada, and other local dialects. i found it slightly comforting that i wasn’t the *only* foreigner around. i saw americans and europeans i secretly labeled as “pale ones” to myself, although outside of a few glances and knods, never interacted substantially with them. there were a lot of people i couldn’t quite place — indian complexion with asian features. maybe sri lankan?
i know so little about the world.
So what I find interesting is that the bottom shot looks like the area is full of men doing grocery shopping. Is this true? I would imagine that the shops would be full of women buying produce instead of men, or maybe not?
And yeah, I also like the street punks hanging out in the bottom shot.
Hello Jason,
I came across your blog from Brad’s citysnap website and I’m really enjoying it. I’m from India and Bangalore is basically the city I am from. I’m really from a region called Coorg, which is about 4 hours drive. So I usually fly into B’lore and have some family there.
Glad you liked Brigade Road, and checked out the other areas. Did you catch any time on Commercial St.?
Anyways, the people you couldn’t place are Nepalese/from the North East of India. They are a fairly large community in India, esp. in the South closer to Mangalore. They were given asylum couple of decades ago, and they have quite a few large and impressive monasteries in the region. They consider themselves Indian actually. The younger kids you see are basically the ones moving away from their parents farmland, which was given to them by the govt. I have a few pics in my flickr stream if you’re interested: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shaloot/2573487175
@Reese – To answer your question; it’s usually yes and no. Depending on how strict or conservative the family is, it is usually the men will go and buy the produce since the women will be expected to stay at home to cook the meals and look after any kids. You will find women going and doing the shopping though, so like I said, it depends. To me, in this picture, those guys look like the vendors, and those stalls are usually run by the men only. Again, with the women expected to be at home.
Jason, you wouldn’t know what these pictures just did to me.
I had been a resident of Bangalore until December, for last seven years or so. Went there to find a job, eventually made the place my home and learned to love it, every nook and corner of it, upmarket and downmarket.
I’m in central Indiana now (going to IU Bloomington starting this spring) and I’ve been missing Bangalore badly. Strangely enough, my own home in Kerala, not so much. I miss everything about Bangalore: friends, Kannada spoken in the street, friendly people, auto rickshaws, BMTC buses, stray dogs, cows, marigold flowers, dust, filth in the street corners, my old office, everything.