Bay-Area techies form group to cope with Bengaluru they once belonged to

Vadiraja Bhatt returned to Bengaluru in January 2005 after working for a decade in San Francisco's Bay Area. For him and the many families that returned during that period, Bengaluru was no longer the city they once knew.

For Bhatt, who needed to take care of elderly parents, the move was tumultuous. "It was a constant struggle to reset expectations. We also had to justify our decision to return, which in itself was a big risk. The turmoil lasted almost a year," said Bhatt, 47, who worked with SAP subsidiary Sybase. He is now principal engineer at Cisco.

More families returned and the challenge of connecting with the city brought them together. The volunteers of the first group that returned became BANRI.

BANRI, which translates to 'come' in spoken Kannada, is now a support system for about 30 Kannada-speaking families that returned in the past ten years. "Ten years is a long time to be away. We were immigrants there and we come back to be told we were never here. We felt helpless," said Bhatt, one of BANRI's founding members. "We only got a 'come to morrow' when we wanted a phone connection. Eventually, we under stood 'come tomorrow' here is an open-ended statement."

Chaya Kumble too returned in 2006 after 13 years in the Bay Area. She went on to start the PageWorld book store in JP Nagar. "I was used to a frank way of communication in the US unlike here where people want to show they know about something even if they don't. We asked ourselves why we even came back. Then we met others. 'Oh, you feel the same way too? Let's talk'. That's how BANRI came about," she said.

Padmanabha Rao Melanahalli returned the same year and he decided with his wife Vanitha not to air complaints in front of their children. " At BANRI, we talked, went to Nandi hills, organised music events and helped each other out," said Melanahalli, who works at Cisco.

Sreevathsa Duglapura, who works for Fremont-based EmbedUR Systems, is one of the last to return in the BANRI network. "We returned not for better infrastructure or traffic anyway . It was the pull of Bengaluru which was always there. It's comforting to be part of a group where others had similar experiences," he said.

Interestingly , families that lived in the parts of the city now live on its periphery. Duglapurwasin Hanumanthanagar when he left Bengaluru in 2000. "I live in Devarabeesanahalli now. It was a practical decision as big companies are nearby . It didn't make sense to spend hours in traffic."