In the ‘80s and ‘90s, a typical Christmas morning in Bengaluru was marked by the smell of plum cake and trees outside lined with fairy lights. For those who grew up in that generation, memories such as these live more vividly in the mind than in photo albums, and are replayed every season.
From a parish choir testing their mics to pressure cookers hissing and all your cousins trying to fit into a single auto, the festive spirit seemed to hover in the air. Before the time of malls and Instagram, the joy of the festival spread through word of mouth and the city’s iconic streets.
Places such MG Road, Brigade Road and Commercial Street turned into informal meeting points, spots where everyone met up at least once during the season. “In the ‘80s, we used to walk to church in the chill midnight for mass, because hardly anyone in our area had a car back then,” recalls Jom James, a restaurant owner at Sri Krishna Cafe, in Halasurur, who has lived in the city for 52 years.
Inside homes, the celebrations were simple but rooted in love and connection. James remembered his mother making appam and mutton stew as he and his sister waited, while a simple Christmas tree surrounded by balloons stood propped up as a decoration.
The décor was modest, but food was what gave the holiday its flavour. “My mother would go to MG Road and come back with boxes from Koshy’s — nutty bars, rose cookies and other snacks,” says Yamini Atmavilas, a development sector professional and fourth-generation Bengalurean.
Beyond, Christmas used to glow through various corridors of the city. Yamini and her mother, Bhargavi Nagaraja, a former development columnist in the city, speak of the famous Nilgiris cake exhibition and the towering Christmas tree on Brigade Road, followed by an evening at Koshy’s on St Mark’s Road.
These outings were a ritual, with bus rides into town, slow nightly walks through the lit streets and the simple pleasure of being in the city. Even the background score of Bengaluru was different from what it is today, with far less traffic and many more songs of those years drifting out of homes and school corridors.
Anisha VT, a senior engineering manager at an IT firm who has lived in the city since 1985, remembers pop songs on MTV and the odd cable connection, with children sneaking into friends’ houses to watch Alisha Chinai, Bombay Vikings, Colonial Cousins and others on a loop.
Western tracks often arrived via the “popular kids” at school dances, and everyone else went home to chase those songs on Top 10 shows, a shared thrill of discovery Yamini feels is missing now.
Sadly, some of that magic seems to have disappeared as the city has grown.
Sowmya Seetaram-Sagar, who has lived in Bengaluru for nearly 40 years and once worked as a scientist at pharmaceutical and drug discovery companies, talks fondly about the bike rides she and her friends once took through Commercial Street during Christmas.
“Now I don’t even feel like going that way,” she says. “It is far too crowded, and there is too much traffic; I wouldn’t dream of taking my bike there the way we used to. But it’s not like you stop wanting to go; now I want to go and show the Christmas tree to my children.”
And in that desire, there is still a small, stubborn hope that the city will one day feel gentle enough again for such simple joys.