I wish I could say that our family vacation to Bangalore, the city of my late childhood, was pleasant.
But it’s hard when all I feel is overwhelming relief being back in Minneapolis, a place I now feel privileged to call home.
The air pollution in Bangalore is so bad, so chokingly bad, that it overwhelmed all the other good parts of the vacation (the best of which was seeing my kids spend quality time with their doting grandparents).
The city itself, I’m sad to say, is a polluted dump.
(Our little Goa sojourn was great though…in no small part due to our respiratory systems getting a much needed break.)
It’s really sad for me to feel a sense of foreboding in visiting Bangalore. Every time I’ve visited, the pollution has gotten worse and my apprehension for future visits has increased as a result. This latest visit has replaced that sense of foreboding with cold blooded fear at the very thought of visiting again.
It is so overwhelmingly bad, I have survivors guilt now…from just “escaping” to a less polluted place. I desperately wish my parents had chosen a less polluted city to retire in.
So it goes.
Bangalore is not a pleasant place to be in right now. One hopes that it turns into a nicer place in the future, but I’m not holding my breath (metaphorically or otherwise).
I’m just glad to call a different city home.
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Broken Shackles Media | Citizen Journalism | Jan 21 2024
love liberation struggle 