The Villages Have Disappeared, But I Believe That Ruralism Will Still Exist

I can still smell it the wet earth after a monsoon shower, the sharp tang of mango blossoms, the smoke curling from a mud stove in my village near Arasikere. I was a young boy, barefoot and wild, racing the wind through paddy fields. The village wasn’t just home; it was alive cows lowing at dawn, the clack of bullock carts, my grandmother’s voice calling me in Kannada for ragi mudde and soppu saaru. That’s where I started, a world of red soil and endless skies. Now I’m here, in Bengaluru’s concrete jungle, tangled in the IT mess. The villages have disappeared, but I believe ruralism will still exist partly because of her, the girl who lit up my life with her urban shine and rural heart, then slipped away like a monsoon cloud.

The Slow Fade and Her Shadow

It didn’t vanish all at once. I was young when the changes crept in roads snaking closer, whispers of city jobs. My father, hands rough from the fields, saw it coming. I didn’t. I’d climb the banyan tree by the temple, its roots deep as our stories, and watch the sun melt into the horizon. Life was simple school in a single room, fishing in the tank, nights counting stars. Then she came along, years later, when I’d already left for Bengaluru’s college hostels. She was urban sharp, witty, at ease in the city’s buzz but her soul was rural, stitched from the same earth I’d known. She’d laugh about coding deadlines, then talk of her grandfather’s farm near Mandya, her eyes glowing with tales of sowing rice under a wide sky.

She saw the village in me when I’d half-forgotten it. We’d sit on a park bench amid Bengaluru’s chaos, and she’d tease, “You’re still that barefoot boy, aren’t you?” She was right. But the villages faded anyway huts turned to brick, fields to factories. The banyan fell to a highway. My grandmother passed, and with her, the stove’s warmth. She stayed my anchor, blending her city polish with a rural grace I’d lost touch with. Then she was gone love lost to time, distance, life’s churn. By the time I was deep in IT, debugging in a glass cube, my village was a ghost. So was she.

The IT Mess and Her Echo

Now I’m here Bengaluru’s towers, traffic snarls, a laptop’s glare my new dawn. I’m not that farmer’s son anymore; I’m a cog in the IT mess, coding while horns blare outside. The city’s a beast 40% of us aren’t even from here, chasing rupees in a half-English babel. My kids grew up in this, more fluent in Wi-Fi than wet soil. A cobra slithered into our yard once, and my wife called it luck city life twisting even that rural echo into folly. I smirked, but I heard her voice in my head: “It’s just a snake, you city fool don’t overthink it.” She’d have laughed, her rural wit cutting through the urban haze.

I don’t hate this life. It gave me a shot education, a home, a way to wrestle big questions, from meritocracy to hate. But it’s a trade-off. The stars are lost to neon, the air choked with exhaust, not blossoms. Kannada fights for space amid Hindi signs and corporate lingo. She’d have hated that her Kannada was fierce, her pride in our roots unshakable. She was my mirror, brilliant in her city skin but rooted in village truths. Losing her carved a hole, but it left something too a reminder of what endures.

Ruralism’s Last Stand

The villages are gone mine’s a memory, paved into history. Census 2021 says rural India’s down to 65%, draining into cities like this. But I believe ruralism will still exist, and she’s why I’m sure. It’s not just mud walls or bullock carts it’s the patience I learned waiting for rain, the skepticism she sharpened in me, the warmth of a shared meal over a screen’s cold glow. She carried it too that blend of urban fire and rural soul. I see her in the farmer’s grit behind a coder’s grind, in my kids’ laughter even if they don’t know its source. Ruralism’s in my Kannada, threading through my words, stubborn as she was.

The concrete jungle can’t erase it. It’s in me, tough as that banyan’s ghost, whispering the earth still matters under asphalt. I started there, ended here, lost her along the way but I carry them both forward. She was my proof, ruralism isn’t a place; it’s a pulse. The villages have disappeared. Her voice, her spirit, ruralism they’re not done yet.