Bangalore: 

Swinging it: Young girls swirl with their dandia sticks during a Garba dance file pic

Dasara they tell me, is really big in Mysore. I've never been there personally, but have pored over enough images, wondered over the glitz, glamour and chutzpah and been bedazzled by the pomp and pageantry on display.

But then I've never really been there for it. And my only first hand imagery of Dasara has been living in Mumbai and the frenetic dandia performances every society puts up.

People tell me it's as vibrant in Bangalore too. There are tons of places you can take your dandia sticks and cousins, and whorl the night away, to the frenzied beat of the dhol and a throaty voice trying to be a la Falguni.

Except this year, I guess.

Because dancing is banned and immoral and uncultured. Live music is banned and immoral and uncultured. Boys and girls mixing  with each other late at night is banned and immoral and uncultured. 

 And wearing diaphanous outfits is sigh, sorry to be repetitive banned and immoral and uncultured.

So has the government allowed dandia? And if they have, can I carry two sticks to the next pub I go to, to wave around while I dance, if that counts for culture?

Just asking! Or will those brawny bouncers throw me AND my sticks out?

Talking about pubs, Bangalore has always been known as the city of spirits spirits of the alcoholic kind, that is. 
Until, that is, the captain of an international airliner was landing at the new airport and was greeted by spirits of a more aged variety.

Dunno whether it's rumour or not, but there seemed to be a lady in a white sari , standing on the tarmac who was not exactly part of the welcoming ground staff that BIAL had planned.    

Legend will probably build around the white and welcoming hostess ghostess. Was she an airhostess who was dropped off an aircraft by a malfunctioning exit door? Was she a jilted lover whose paramour left her behind when he left for foreign shores? 

Was she a princess whose land was taken away for the airport? Or is she merely the heartbroken ghost of the old HAL airport? 

Fingers and toes meanwhile are being crossed, to invoke every good spirit this side of the Vindhyas into the State. 

We already know that Kolkata's bad luck was not Karnataka's gain. And swathes of farmers' land in Dharwad do not have to be requisitioned to grow the Nanos, faster than you can say Mamta.

With that honour going to Sanad,  we are back to our sole sport: dissing the archaic bans our State comes up with!