Reflecting on the ‘Rocking City’ In Anjali Menon’s Bangalore Days

Anjali Menon’s Bangalore Days celebrates a landmark anniversary this year — it has been ten years since Malayalam cinema’s most popular cousins (Dulquer Salmaan, Nazriya and Nivin Pauly as Aju, Kunju and Kuttan) made sense of love, life and grief in Bengaluru, a home away from home. Adil, a strategic alliances professional in Bengaluru looks at the film’s anniversary as somehow his own signpost in life. He recalls making his way from Kochi to Bengaluru, three days before his MBA course, just to watch the film at a theatre in Shivaji Nagar. His association with the city started then, which was followed by an internship in 2014, and eventually a job in 2017. “Celebrating 10 years of the film almost feels like celebrating ten years of making this city my home,” says Adil. 

The Malayalam drama follows the coming-of-age of three cousins who fight their own battles — Aju struggles to let himself fall in love, the tightly-wound Kuttan learns to judge less, and Kunju tries to connect to her wounded husband. But the problems somehow seem lighter, for they are at a place where anything seems to be possible. “Bangalore! What a rocking city,” Aju declares to his cousins, dreaming up a life for them on bed, days before leaving home. It’s not that films haven’t been set in the city before. But Bangalore Days is somehow still immediately recognised for giving the city character.

“There have been many Kannada films where the backdrop is Bangalore," points out Kannada filmmaker Hemanth M Rao, a Bangalorean, who has set all his four films in the city. "Take Pawan Kumar’s Lucia (2013), for instance. If you look at director Suri sir's films, he shows a certain part of Bangalore like Chickpet and KR Puram, representing the dark underbelly beautifully through his films." But Menon’s film did something that not many other Bengaluru films perhaps did. It represented the migrant dream in Bengaluru. 

What's unique about the movie is that during the film's release, there were not that many jobs that had opened up in the city, Hemanth explains. “Non-engineering jobs were still less as a demography if you looked at it. But the aspirational element for most young people was to study engineering and the city has the highest number of engineering colleges in the country. So you had a huge population of the country coming down just to do engineering.” And it is for this generation that the film’s title is synonymous with a huge memory bank. “The title is very powerful in that sense.”

It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the film has found an increasing resonance among Malayalis who have moved away from home. In Bangalore Days, the cousins cannot wait to escape the clutches of family at home. This is a sentiment that is shared by most Malayalis, says Adil. “It is the nearest metro city from Kochi. Malayalis usually prefer going out of their city to make a life for themselves. My father is a Gulf return, and my sister lives abroad. I wanted to study abroad too, but it was quite expensive. So, my next option was Bengaluru.” Adil compares his internship days in the city to the hustle life depicted by the motley band of boys in Jithu Madhavan’s Romancham (2023) trying to make ends meet in the city. “A cream bun used to cost Rs 10 back then, and that used to be my breakfast, lunch and dinner. When you’ve struggled so much in a place, which eventually gives you everything, who can forget it? I was probably like Aju when I moved here, and now I’ve climbed my way up to becoming FaFa’s very professional Shivadas,” he laughs.

Sreeja Nair, who moved to the city six years back from Kochi, looks at Bangalore Days as a film that holds a lot of aspirational value, especially for Malayalis. “To be that close knit with your cousins/ friends and live in a place away from home where you are not restricted by family and societal pressures, I think a lot of Malayalis wish for that. And because of that, the film also romanticises Bangalore a lot. It is a city that lets you be.” Gantumoote filmmaker Roopa Rao, who has also based all her films in Bengaluru, thinks the film encapsulates the city and its shift post the IT boom quite well.

“In 2014, it had been 10 years since the IT boom had happened, so the film was set in that space when the momentum had picked up in the city. I was in the US between 2005-2006 and came back to Bangalore in 2011, and I still couldn't recognise the city with all the pubs and the traffic. The film came when the city was shifting. There is a scene in the film that happens on Nice road.” Roopa recalls the scene where Aju and Kunju go for a joy ride on Nice road in the film. “I remember going on a half-constructed Nice road for drives and putting our bikes on the side of the road and chilling at the time. Because it was quite a cool thing to do,” Roopa says, adding that the film set the tone for the next generation in the city. 

Like Elizabeth Gilbert postulates in her famous novel Eat Pray Love (2006), Roopa, too, believes every city has an emotion. And Bengaluru’s is recreation, the filmmaker adds. Menon’s film, which dealt with the magic of finding your way through mistakes in your youth, is an extension of that vibe. “The youthfulness of the city enables you to have heartbreaks, and fall in love. From British times, Bangalore has always been this city where people come to chill. They built the city like that. They had their ports in Chennai and Mangalore, with Bangalore being the centre point, so it was their spot for recreation. That's why you find so many clubs and parks here. And the city is at an elevation where you never feel too hot. Since the city already has all of these qualities imbibed in it, the film was able to capture it so beautifully.”

As a Bangalorean, the film also gave its residents a certain appreciation for what they already have, Hemanth points out. “I believe that a lot of its locations were in the Whitefield area, which is where the migrant population initially shifted to after the IT boom. In fact when I go to those areas, I don't feel like I'm a Kannadiga, I feel like an outsider. And that is the beauty of Bangalore. It is welcoming. You get to see their story from within in the film and you get to see your own city from a different perspective. That is what makes Bangalore Days unique.”