February 24, 2018: In Bengaluru

I haven't left Colorado in over a year. It seems like a dream that three years ago I was hopping between continents on planes and in Bengaluru.

Since then my connections to the city have weakened, and grown, and weakened again. Mapbox closed its office there six months after my visit. Some folks, like my friend Pratik, moved to San Francisco or Washington, D.C. and I got to see them more often. Ruth's department hired a new assistant professor who grew up in Bangalore and became a mentor to me on the subject of Indian cooking, and pickles in particular. But since the COVID pandemic hit I haven't seen Vamsi at all, and I've only seen Pratik on Google hangouts. Multiple times a week, though, and memories of Bangalore remain a touchstone.

In my older blog post I mentioned the importance of street trees in Bengaluru and in looking for recent writing on the subject I came upon this great post: https://www.thenatureofcities.com/2018/07/01/secular-sacred-domestic-living-street-trees-bangalore/.