It is now official. What was once called Bangalore is now officially declared as Bengalooru. There will be some battle of spellings between Bengaluru and Bengalooru until the official name sinks in the minds of people properly. In the occasion of name change, this long time Bangalorean(from now on a Bengaloorean!) looks at other things that have been changing in Bengalooru, along with its name.
The most evident change is in construction activity. There are flyovers all over the place and a new Metro work has taken over most of MG Road. Needless to talk about hundreds of buildings all over the place - on lake beds, government land, other people lands, and sometimes even their legally owned land! And tree felling comes naturally with all this. Trees gone on Kanakapura road, Vanivilas road, Malleswaram, MG Road... So the erstwhile Garden City can now be called a Baldened City! If the same thing continues forever, after some time we can call it a barren city.
Then they called it air conditioned city. Lets admit that things haven't changed very much and the climate is still pleasent and much cooler than the boiling summers we see in rest of the country. But there is some change in the air. Haven't you noticed it getting more black and smelly over time? There is some chance that your eyes and nose have adapted to the slow change and you may not have realized that change at all. I would call this getting conditioned to the air in the once air conditioned city! So if you haven't realized the 'change in air', take a break, go out somewhere for a few days and come back and you will know.
What was then a pensioner's paradise has now taken more accepted and well known names like IT/BT city, silicon city, etc. Those people who have given all these names have conveniently forgotten to add a few more adjectives like garbage city, traffic jam city, chaocity, etc. But I am confident that all these names will come sooner or later, and changing the official name of the city is just the beginning of it. Let's wait and watch!
Last Word: With the kind of fast growth that Bangalore has seen, and with sudden widening of Bangalore's periphery in the form of Brihat Bangalore, it would not be wrong to name the city as ObeCity
