The Machines (12°58'25.64"N, 77°36'24.74"E)

City centres and central districts are often the last ones to die away – like that one leaf on a withered tree that refuses to give up or that one frayed wire on an old appliance that supplies current, fighting against the odds (and the silly rules of health and safety.) As I walk down MG Road, Church street and Brigade road, however, I can’t help but feel that Bengaluru seems to be collapsing from its centre, both culturally and geographically. In a way, it is almost poetic; the thing that defined this city’s conflicting identities, its metaphorical captain, is the first one to desert it as soon as the proverbial ship starts sinking.

The sun has just set. I am in a sizeable crowd of people, but something is off. It takes a moment to figure out what it is – it is close to dead silent. There is no sound other than the shuffling of tens of thousands of footsteps. Maybe the odd ambulance too, far away in the distance. No one is looking at the neon lights covering up the dilapidated buildings because they all (every last one) have headsets on. There are no shops, restaurants, malls, bars; nothing. Every building just houses rows of seats connected to rows of VR setups, known these days as ‘experience sets’ or more commonly among regular folk, ‘the machines’. Like the undead, people walk straight into the front doors of these buildings, wordlessly plug themselves in, swap headsets from their own personal ones to the higher fidelity units connected to the seat, and start spending a section of their lives in a world of their own choosing, or sometimes, making.

Of course, there are a range of machines at each establishment; from the really high-end stuff to cheap knock-offs that are known to mildly electrocute the user if not maintained with extreme care. That being said, every single seat of every single machine is full. Not a single person interacts with another. They are in their own worlds (literally.) Some are in virtual relationships, some on virtual journeys, some eating virtual food while synthetic nutritional fluids are simultaneously pumped into their stomachs through a tube. One shop even advertises ‘Bengaluru’ as one of its fully built out virtual worlds.

I walk around in silence for some time, and then I leave. As far as I am concerned, I just visited a graveyard. These people are dead. And while they might come back to life when they have to leave and go back home to get back to work or their families, a part of them is still here, lost forever in a maze of wiring, tubing and pixels. Rest in peace, friends.