Roopa Pai was in her early teens when she first read Gone with the Wind, American journalist Margaret Mitchell’s only novel, rife with idyllic, if somewhat ahistorical and whitewashed, imagery of the Antebellum South, portraying it as a great, fallen civilisation. One aspect of the book that struck her was the novel’s protagonist’s (Scarlett O’Hara) deep, abiding love for her family home, Tara, a love that keeps her going through some of the greatest losses, disasters and tragedies of her life.
Roopa Pai
| Photo Credit:
SUDHAKARA JAIN
“She would come home and pick up the red earth of Tara and say, I’m home, and I can heal,” recalls Pai, the author of over 30 books and the co-founder of Bangalore Walks, a city-based history and heritage walks and tours company. ”For me, Bangalore has always been that place. I just have a very deep, positive connection to this city.”
It is this profound, unwavering love for the city, one that managed to survive Pai’s 12-year-long hiatus away from it in the early nineties when she lived in different cities and countries, that was funnelled into a column she began writing in February 2021. “It’s the first time I’ve written a column,” she says, recalling how the editor of a national daily reached out to her asking her to write this online column on Bengaluru back then. “I have never written a fortnightly column before, so it was a bit of a challenge. But it was a challenge I liked because it was about Bangalore,” says Pai, who promptly agreed to it.
Becoming Bangalore book cover.
| Photo Credit:
Hachette India
Column to book
Now, four years and almost 100 columns later, Pai is all set to release her latest book, Becoming Bangalore: Stories that Shaped a Hometown, a collation of 75 of these columns, all centred on the city she has grown up in and is deeply passionate about. Dedicated to “the city that raised me, and to everyone who believes in the singular power of curiosity, collaboration, and a capaciousness of mind and heart in building inspiring communities, cities and countries,” Becoming Bangalore is a delightful 300-odd page paean to Bengaluru, dipping and diving into stories, facts (and sometimes popular factoids), history, mythologies and memories of the city.
The conversion of these columns, published online, into a book happened rather serendipitously, going by Pai’s account. “I am a computer engineer, but I haven’t got around to enjoying reading on the web,” she says, with a laugh.”I’m traditional. I like books.” She had been toying with the idea of converting these online columns for a while, she says, even contemplating self-publishing “because I didn’t think a mainstream publisher would be interested in bringing out a set of columns on Bangalore” until she casually mentioned this to Thomas Abraham, MD, Hachette India in mid-2023, by which time around 60 columns had been published. That was how the idea of a book was born.
Becoming Bangalore, edited by Vatsala Kaul-Banerjee of Hachette India and illustrated by Priya Kuriyan (“I think of us a dream team,” says Pai), is all set to be formally released on 17 January, 2025. There will also be a special launch at the 13th edition of the Bangalore
