Hallucinations of Bangalore

I make periodic stops at a blog entitled Hallucinations, written by Shruthi Rao, a young woman who lives in Bangalore, a high-tech center in southern India. The subjects of her posts range as widely as mine, perhaps even wider. But her posts are more disciplined and and less apt to suggest the reader call the authorities in the interest of societal protection. I say the woman lives in Bangalore; maybe she lives in San Francisco. A recent post about going on her daughter’s field trip in San Francisco Bay. Yet another post invited readers to attend a writing workshop for children held at Aakruti Books, 3rd block Rajajinagar, Bangalore. I think I’m making my way toward knowledge of what’s up with her: she now lives in the San Francisco Bay area but originally was from Bangalore. I don’t know whether Bangalore is the “home” to which she plans to return or whether she has adopted the Bay Area as her new home. As with so many things about which I write, the answer is no more important than the question. I suppose it’s irrelevant. What I find relevant and intriguing is the fact that Shruthi Rao seems to me to be so utterly fluent in the cultures of two countries on two continents. She merges her understanding of two strings of experience into an extremely interesting position from which to view the world. At least that’s how I see it. And, as I was contemplating her experience with the two cultures, I discovered more “data” about her: a post from June 2017 revealed that she had returned to Bangalore after a two-year absence and was struck by how the weather was a non-issue. Unlike most “multi-cultural” blogs I visit on occasion, this one is not sharp-edged and provocative. Instead, it is soft and almost annoying in its decency. But that sort of thing can be valuable, bringing balance to an otherwise frenetic life.