Uniqueness of Bangalore

Bangalore city is the capital of Karnataka state and the official language is Kannada.Bangalore city is really a cosmopolitan city. And there is a good mixture of all kinds of South Asians, of course, majority of them are Kannadigas, the native people of that region.

While traveling on the roads, I noticed that there are so many Andhra restaurants and Hyderabadi briyani restaurants, so immediately I questioned my driver and he said that there’s a sizeable Telugu- speaking community, some migrated to this state from the neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh in the past and the recent surge of Telugus is due to job opportunities in the “Silicon Valley “of India.


In places like Commercial Street where the predominant landmarks are the skyscraping mosques, there is a sizeable Indian Muslim community and Urdu is prevalent in these places. Even the merchants and auto drivers prefer to converse in Urdu or Hindi, both Hindi and Urdu are almost similar except for the script and certain words. (Urdu has a significant number of loan words from Arabic, Persian and Turkish languages) I was mesmerised by the rich Arab culture in Commercial Street. Commercial Street closely resembles the streets in Old Hyderabad except for the architecture of the buildings. I heard Tamil as well in the same place and learnt that there is a big Tamil- speaking population also.

In the pictures: Commercial Street

Even one of our drivers speaks a different version kannada which sounded like Telugu occasionally. Not bad, I was able to figure out the sentences by myself. It seems his mother’s village is situated in a place where Karnataka shares border with Andhra Pradesh and that is the key reason behind his unique dialect. It’s nice to know that Indians, both from rural and urban areas, have accepted other Indian languages for everyday usage and it has given birth to many other dialects as well. These dialects are usually used in homes (domestic usage). Meanwhile, they still preserve and support the official language without injecting foreign Indian language words into it.

I spotted many Indians from the North- eastern part of India residing and working in Bangalore. Initially, I thought they were Chinese but I was wrong, they are Indians and they spoke perfect Hindi also. It’s nice to see them working in big IT industries, branded shops and restaurants and thanks to Globalisation which has really shrunken our world. Oh yes, I forgot we are living in a global village. It’s not only in India, I see them in Singapore restaurants also.

India itself is very colourful and it is a very multi- racial country also. In fact, India is more diverse than China in terms of language, culture and race. There are many things which Singapore can learn and adopt from India. The co-existence of many languages, dialects, religions, and communities can pose various threats to India but the Indian government has implemented laws which do not favour any particular group or individual and it’s successful in maintaining the law and order. In most parts of India, we can see Hindus and Muslims living side by side peacefully and the government and the citizens deserve the applause from us and everyone. Regardless of the differences, India is starting to shine and the country is developing so fast that we might lose out to them in certain aspects.

I will be sharing more cultural stuff with you in the coming days. And just look out for my Day 5 and Day 6 posts which might be combined.