Does a City belong to you?

I have been away in Bangalore for the past two days ..... just going from one office to the other and back to the airport... and in between all this I realised that my city has changed so much... why is it my city? cos I stayed there for 5 years.... and no matter what I did or didnt do in law school, the 5 years I spent in law school were one of the most life altering years of my life... and for me the city is inextricably linked to that process...

so firstly the city has become a little more crowded.... or maybe I now travel in cars and earlier I would commute using my tiny little bike which made beating traffic a little more easy... now I see myself calculating the time it will take me to get from town (M.G. Road) to the Airport... and I was like "hey, I would do twice this distance during my student days"... and everyone around me says wistfully "times have changed since you left"..

and the city is trying to braze itself for its new metro project... so one of our favourite little theatres is being converted into a new metro station... yes for all the ex-law schoolites reading this, Arvind Narayan's Plaza theatre right on M.G. Road is becoming a world class railway station.... feels weird seeing one of the most recognisable buildings in Bangalore vanish...

While I noticed all these changes in my city, I didnt feel any loss... as in I just didnt feel like I am missing out on anything....I didnt feel the pull in heart about seeing such big transformation... of lost times and bygone eras... and that is when I realised that B'lore for me will always be the city in which I became a young adult... but it is not the city which accepted me an adult... and that is only Mumbai.....