The cats on the MAP in Bangalore (Bengaluru)

Posted on by
Reply

I LOVE CATS. So, I was keen to visit the exhibition, “The Many Lives of the Cat”, which is being held at MAP (Museum of Art and Photography) in Bangalore until 29 March 2026. This small but beautifully displayed exhibition is, according to MAP’s website:

“… a showcase of how the Indian cat appears in paintings, sculptures, matchbox covers, artist sketchbooks and more.”

 

The works on show include those of lesser-known creators, as well as paintings and sketches by well-known ‘modern’ artists including: Bhupen Khakhar, Arpita Singh, and Jamini Roy. There are also older prints and paintings made in the nineteenth century and earlier.

 

Each of the artworks is properly labelled. In addition, there are quotes from a book,  “The Indian Cat”, by the art critic and historian BN Goswamy (1933-2023). After seeing the show and looking at his beautiful book that was on display at MAP, I purchased a copy at my favourite Bangalore bookstore: The Bookworm in Church Street.

 

Even if you are not a cat lover, this is a wonderful collection of artworks. When I mentioned to a friend that I  had just visited the exhibition,  he said:

“I am severely allergic to cats.”

I replied that the cats in MAP were worth seeing and would do him no harm. I am not sure he was convinced.

 

MAP, which opened only a few years ago is housed in an attractive contemporarily designed building on Kasturba Road, which is interesting to see even if you are either allergic to cats or have little interest in viewing an exhibition. That said, I left the exhibition happy to have seen it. And had I been a cat, I would have been left MAP purring contentedly.

Coffee,  Silks, sweaters,and Air India

Posted on by
Reply

UNITY BUILDINGS IS a collection of low blocks near to Bangalore’s Town Hall. The buildings are arranged each side of a long Central avenue. I am not sure when they were built but my suspicion is that they were constructed in the 1970s.

 

Unity Buildings

At one end of the central avenue, there is an older building, Haigh Memorial Hall, which was built in the 1920s. Constructed to commemorate a Wesleyan missionary,  Reverend Henry Haigh, this grey coloured edifice houses an Air India office. Haigh arrived in India in 1875, and during his long stay there he did much work to produce publications in the Kannada language. He returned to England in 1903. The Unity Buildings complex stands on land owned by one of the churches in Bangalore.

 

We visit Unity Buildings for several reasons. First, there is a Kashmiri shop, where over the years I have bought excellent woollen Pullovers (sweaters). Another reason is to visit two shops that offer good selections of silk scarves and other garments. One of them is Janardhana Silk House and the other, the less costly Shobha Silks.

 

The third reason to visit the complex is to enjoy good South Indian filter coffee and vegetarian snacks a the Unity Buildings branch of Kamat. According to a sign within the restaurant, this Kamat company has been in business since 1948, when it was founded by Sri Rangappa Pandurang Kamat (1919-1993). Other branches of Kamats were established by Rangappa’s younger brother Sri Sheshagiri Pandurang Kamat (1926-2002). The Unity Buildings branch of Rangappa‘s company was opened in 1972, and maintains its original appearance, apart from new overhead lights.

 

Usually full of customers, Kamat in Unity Buildings was almost empty on Republic Day this year (2026). When we stepped inside, we were given a warm welcome by the manager, whom I imagine was pleased to see at least two customers on such a quiet day.

 

On normal working day,  Unity Buildings is a bustling place, but never as busy as, say, Bangalore’s Commercial Street area and KR Market (City Market). However, it is a pleasant place to shop for various things.

Memories of childhood at a car show in Bangalore

Posted on by
Reply

MY MOTHER WAS the driver in our family. Having been injured in a bad accident during the 1930s, she was an overly cautious driver.

Fiat 1100

All of our family cars were Fiats. My mother believed that because there were many hills and mountains in Italy, where Fiats are made, these cars must be reliable and ‘strong’. We had a Fiat 600, then an 1100 (millecento), and then finally, a 1200.

Seeing several Fiat 1100s at a vintage car show held at the Bangalore Club (in Bangalore/Bengaluru) jogged my memories of my mother, the 1960s and 1970s, and my childhood motoring experiences.

You can read more about my late mother and her unusual attitude to motoring here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/REMEMBERING-HELEN-MY-MOTHER-ARTIST/dp/B0DKCZ7J7X/

A festival of art incarcerated in a penitentiary in Bangalore (Bengaluru)

Posted on by
Reply

MANY ART WORKS are ‘imprisoned’ in museums, galleries,  and private collections.  Today, 25 January 2026, we visited a collection of art ‘incarcerated’ in a prison.

 

The prison is, in fact, a former prison. It is what was once the grounds of Bangalore’s Central Jail.  After it became disused, it was converted into a public  park in 2008: Freedom Park. This contains many of the former prison’s buildings, which have been restored to create a fascinating museum within a leafy park.

 

Freedom Park was the site of the 2026 BLR Hubba, which we visited today. The Hubba is a 10-day annual art festival held in Bangalore. Each year it is held at one of the city’s historic landmarks. This year at the former jail.

Encompassing many kinds of art including  for example,  sculpture, painting, music, theatre, and poetry, this festival is  well-attended and vibrant.

 

At Freedom Park, the Hubba’s artwork and events were scattered all over the site of the former jail including within the cell blocks and at the place where hangings were carried out.

 

On the Sunday that we visited the Hubba, there was a competent jazz band playing and a crowd of visitors. Everyone seemed to be enjoying the art and themselves.

 In comparison with the rather disappointing 2025/26 Kochi Muziris Biennale,  which we attended in early January, the Hubba was wonderful: a well curated, excitingly appealing festival of art. Although the Hubba contained far fewer things than the much larger biennale, it produced a far more impressive impact on us than what we saw in Kochi

A little England high up in the hills of southern India

Posted on by
Reply

WRITING IN 1931, the Spanish missionary Father Emilio noted:

“The Protestants in Munnar … appear arrogant and presumptuous and form a stark contrast to the humble pagans and submissive Catholics …”

The writer was referring to the British tea plantation owners and officials and their attitude to their Indian workers, both Hindus and those who had converted to Roman Catholicism.

 

31 years later, and after India had become independent,  another Spanish missionary, P Fermin, observed that Munnar (in Kerala) was conceived as:

“… as a meeting centre, with pretentions of an English town,  to break the routine of their [The British] plantation life on weekends. Munnar has its European club, …”

 

Now in 2026, the above-mentioned club, the High Range Club, still thrives, although now it is no longer exclusively for Europeans. We visited it several times in January 2026. Entering it is like stepping into the past.

 

The Club was established in 1909 on a large plot of land (6 acres) next to and high above a river. It was built as a residential  club, and has 17 rooms. Membership is restricted to corporate planters (senior officials of the tea plantations) of the Munnar area. As the club has many affiliations with other ‘elite’ clubs in India, many of the people who make use of its facilities are members of affiliated clubs.

 

Not only does the club’s architecture and interior design look like a leftover of bygone Britain,  but it preserves the old British club traditions and dress code rules. The Club has a wonderful old fashioned bar. Stepping into this is like going back to England of the 1930s or even earlier. Sadly, the High Range Club does not have a liquor licence.

 

On one of our visits to the Club, I looked at the board that listed the Club’s chairmen. From 1909 until 1973, all the chairmen had British surnames. It was only in 1974 that a chairman, Mr Murthy, had an Indian surname. And until 1966, none of the Honorary Secretaries had Indian surnames. Given this information,  I  wondered how many years elapsed before non-Europeans were admitted to the Club  after 1947 when India became independent.

 

Prior to the admission of Indians, the Club, like almost all of the British colonial clubs, were places where Europeans could isolate themselves from the Indian population. Today, these clubs provide a refuge for better-off Indians, who wish to socialise amongst themselves away from the ‘madding  crowds’.

 

The room used as the dining hall at the High Range intrigued me. At one end of it, there is a proper stage with curtains that could be used for performing plays and other entertainments. Seeing it reminded me of “A Passage to India” by EM Forster.  In it he described a British colonial club and how its members performed amateur theatricals. Here at the High Range is an example of exactly what Forster described.

 

Visiting the High Range is not only a pleasant way to pass a few leisurely hours, but it is also a chance to glimpse into the strange world that was once a feature of British India, albeit one that enforced a racial colour bar.

A teetotal private club by the seashore in Fort Kochi (Kerala)

Posted on by
Reply

DURING BRITISH RULE in India, the (white) colonisers formed clubs to which Indians, apart from those who worked in them as servants,  were excluded. Many of these colonial era clubs are still in business,  but now serve as refuges to which (mainly) upper middle class and upper class Indians can escape from the other Indians that surround them in daily life.

 

One of these clubs is the Cochin Club in Fort Kochi (Kerala). It stands on land close to the seafront. Prior to the establishment of the club in 1914, this land was formerly Schulers Shipbuilding Yard, and later Grieves Beach Yard. It was given to the founding secretary of the club,H Baechtold,  by Volkhart Brothers.

 

It was only in the 1960s and ‘70s that the club ceased to be exclusively for ‘white’ people. Many of the club’s buildings are fine examples of colonial architecture.  The bar is magnificent, as are the rooms adjacent to it (the lounge-cum-billiards room, the library, and another smaller bar).

 

Although the bar is a marvellous example of  colonial era design, there is now a problem. In the early years of the club, members and their guests used to enjoy alcoholic beverages at the bar, this is no longer the case. Exactly when alcohol ceased to be available I do not knoe.

 

For many years, the club has not had a liquor licence, and given the very high cost of such licences in the State of Kerala  there is little likelihood that an  alcohol licence will be purchased by the club. We were told that if a special occ  such as a wedding reception,  takes place within the lovely grounds of the club, whomever is organising it can purchase (at great cost) a temporary booze licence for the day.

 

Because of the absence of a liquor licence,  the club is often very empty – almost like the famed Marie Celeste. The club has five wonderful, spacious guest rooms, and the income from the guests hiring these is an important source of income for the establishment.  In addition, the club rents out space to other businesses. Currently (January 2026), one of these is a café,  and the other is  a boutique.

 

Outnumbering the usual number of members and room guests in the club are the white egrets that stride around the grounds in a most proprietorial manner.

 

Because we are members of a club affiliated to the Cochin Club, we can use their facilities and hire their bedrooms. The Cochin Club is today, as it was in the past, a peaceful place to escape from the hustle and bustle of Fort Kochi,  which seems to increase each time we visit the town.

From the Basque country to the tea plantations of Kerala (southern India)

Posted on by
Reply

DURING THE SECOND half of the nineteenth century, British tea planters cleared away great swathes of forest from the hills around Munnar in what is now Kerala. They used the cleared areas to grow tea bushes. To achieve this transformation and to maintain and harvest the tea gardens Indian workers, many of them Tamil, were brought into the area. Amongst them, there were some who had become Christians, most of them Catholics.

 

Outside Mount Carmel church in Munnar

Anticipating the Christian workers’ needs for practising their religion,  Spanish missionaries from the Archdiocese of Verapoly climbed up the treacherous paths to Munnar, risking attacks by tigers, wild elephants,  leeches, etc. They were of the Carmelite Order.

 

The first of these missionaries was Father Alfonso (1854-1916) who was born in the Spanish Basque country.  He arrived in Verapoly (in Kochi on the Malabar Coast) in 1883. When he first went up to Munnar in 1897,  there were no roads linking the place with the plains below it.

 

To cut a long story short, Father Alfonso managed to acquire a small plot of land in Munnar from the tea company that owned all of the land in the area. There, he built a church. It was a basic affair with a coconut leaf roof. Later, this was replaced by a more substantial edifice. Between  1934 and 1938, a new church replaced the second one, and that, with later modifications,  is what can be seen standing proudly above Munnar town’s bazaar area. Father Alfonso died of malaria while visiting Munnar, and his grave is in the existing Mount Carmel church  in Munnar.

 

Alfonso and his fellow missionaries did not come up to the hills merely to supply the Christian workers with their spiritual requirements.  While visiting their ‘flock’, which was scattered amongst difficult to reach settlements, they managed to convert many of the other labourers to become god-fearing Roman Catholics.

 

I have distilled this information from a fascinating book I bought in Munnar: “Mother Church of the High Ranges. Munnar Church. First Missionary Accounts”,  which contains extracts of letters written by the early Spanish missionaries to a Spanish Catholic journal.

 

What is notable amongst these accounts is the missionaries’ antagonism to the mainly British Protestants in the Munnar area. They also felt that the workers were being exploited, and that all of their readers should remember this while enjoying cups of tea.

Once a railway station in Kerala  but now a viewpoint for tourists

Posted on by
Reply

TOP STATION IS about 20 miles from Munnar (in Kerala) and 5500 feet above sea level.  Today, it is a popular tourist attraction, providing visitors with magnificent views of several ranges of hills. The place gets its name because it was the highest station on a railway that no longer exists.

 

View from Top Station

Between 1902 and 1908, a monorail system used for transporting locally harvested tea was built to connect Munnar with Top Station. In 1908, this was replaced by a narrow-gauge railway  the Kundala Valley Railway. Tea was transported to Top Station, where it was loaded onto a ropeway that carried it down 3 miles to a village, Kottagudi, in Tamil Nadu.  From there, it was transported to other parts of India. Sadly, the railway was washed away during a severe flood in 1924, and was never replaced.

 

Top Station was not only important as a railway Terminus, but also as a place on a road that was improved by the British  in 1942, when it was feared that Chennai, which had been bombed, might be invaded by the Japanese.

 

Following the bombing, which caused little damage, people fled from Chennai, the wealthy to hill station,  and the less well-known off to villages and towns far from the east coast. Meanwhile,  the British built what became known as the Escape Road, which ran across the high mountains between Kodaikanal and Munnar. This 50 mile road linked roads from Madras with roads from Munnar to Kochi (Cochin), from where troops could leave India if necessary.

 

The Escape Road, which reaches 8140 feet was the highest road in India South of the Himalayas.  The road remained in use until 1990. After this date, it fell into disused because neither Tamil Nadu nor Kerala were prepared to pay for its upkeep.

 

As a result of the closing of the former Escape Road,  travellers between Munnar and Kodaikanal have to travel on other roads. The present road route is 105 miles instead of  50 miles taken by the disused road.

  Top Station is well worth visiting. The views from over the precipice are amazing. To see them, one needs to elbow aside the numerous people posing for photographs or taking ‘selfies’. Unfortunately,  the viewpoint itself is covered with litter left by tourists.