DO you miss Mysore?' is a question every Mysorean who steps outside the municipal limits of Malgudi is bound to be asked some day. The appropriate response for such situations is a firm but polite, 'No'. Sure, there's a lot to pine for. The palaces, the parks, the playgrounds; the climate, the smell of good coffee, the sound of Yezdi motorcycles, the lovely sight of heels on wheels, and the sunlight—boy, can the sunlight of your hometown match the sunlight of anybody else's hometown? And yes, there are the fruits and vegetables, the avocados and the avare kais, you can't find anywhere else. But how can you miss a city that never lets go of you? It's probably in The Imaginary Homelands that Salman Rushdie describes the surreal feeling of finding his family's telephone number in the Bombay directory decades after they had left the city. Mysore is a bit like that. You may leave the city, but it will never leave you. It keeps popping back subtly, startlingly. Open a restaurant menu card in Melbourne or Malviya Nagar, and you'll find a Mysore masala dosa or a Mysore coffee staring at you. Go to a temple in Mylapore or Matunga, and you'll find yourself swimming in a sea of Mysore silks and Mysore jasmines. Why, there are at least 9,753 Mysore cafes and Mysore stores around the country. Can any city in the whole wide world boast of letting a million flowers bloom in its name, like Mysore?