Tag Archives: bangalore

Adventurous crossing

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BEST TO WATCH THE SHORT VIDEO (1 minute) FILMED IN BANGALORE (India) BEFORE READING THIS!

Watch here:  https://vimeo.com/409423869

SINCE THE ‘LOCKDOWN’, and the worldwide decline in road usage, what is written below has temporarily become historical.

Crossing main roads in Bangalore and many other Indian cities requires an act of faith and is quite an adventure. There are, of course, some pedestrian crossings controlled by traffic signals that are usually but not always obeyed. Once we were in an autorickshaw in Ahmedabad. The driver hardly ever stopped at red signals. When we asked him about this, he told us that there was no need to stop at red lights unless there was a policeman nearby.

Despite the availability of controlled pedestrian crossings in Bangalore, most people cross busy roads wherever they feel like and however hectic the traffic, putting life and limb at risk every time.

Now, I do not want you to think that I am singling out Indian road users including pedestrians for their exciting approach to road safety.

Long ago in Rome, I got the feeling that pedestrians who expected motorists to stop at pedestrian crossings mostly stimulated drivers to drive more rashly when they were trying to cross the road.

In another former imperial city, Istanbul, which I visited in 2010, motorists drove fast and recklessly. When drivers paused at pedestrian crossings, it was only briefly. They were like energetic dogs straining on their stretched leashes. I had the feeling that at any moment cars would charge forward to crush the people scurrying across the road.

Indian drivers, although seemingly undisciplined, expect anything to happen on the road, be it a cow that suddenly strays onto the carriageway to vehicles driving in the opposite direction to the rest of the traffic and people who have decided to dry their grains on a sun drenched flat road surface. Most Indian drivers, expecting the unexpected, seem to have good reflexes. So, pedestrians wandering across the road wherever and whenever they feel like it do not pose a great problem for drivers. That said, I feel that crossing busy roads in Bangalore requires much courage and faith in the skill and care of drivers.

My approach to crossing busy roads in Bangalore is as follows. Quite simply, I look for someone else nearby who wants to cross. As these strangers are often locals, I assume, perhaps naively, that they are experienced in crossing the road. I join them to take advantage of their supposed experience and because any sensible motorist would rather injure one pedestrian rather than several at once. Foolish reasoning, maybe, but apart from making long detours to find allegedly controlled crossings, I will willingly accept better suggestions.

Well, at the moment (April 2020), the streets of Bangalore and London, where I live, are pleasantly devoid of traffic apart from occasional cars, delivery motor bikes and public service vehicles.

Even in London, where drivers are not mentally prepared for pedestrians wandering into their paths away from controlled crossings, traversing the street ‘Bangalore style’ has become possible. My worry is that when ‘lockdown’ is unlocked, will people in London be able to get out of their newly acquired habit of crossing wherever and whenever they feel like it?

Unsuitable for the elderly

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I HAVE ONLY VISITED Nandi Hills once. That was in 1994. My wife’s grandmother was approaching the age of 97.

We were staying with my in-laws in their two storey house in Koramangala in the south of Bangalore. One day, it was decided that a visit to the Nandi Hills would be fun.

Nandi Hills is about two hour’s drive north of Koramangala. Perched on the summit of a steep hill, Nandi Hills used to be a summer fortress of the great Tipu Sultan, whose life ended at the end of the 18th century.

Given that at our excursion destination there would be steep paths and uneven ground, it was sensibly considered that it would not be a good place to take a frail 97 year old.

My wife’s grandmother (‘Granny’), who was fully alert intellectually, was not at all happy with the idea of missing the trip.

While the family was assembling the copious amounts of food to eat during the journey and at our destination, several of us noticed Granny, who usually never left the ground floor, sprinting up and down the stairs leading to the first floor.

When Granny had completed her athletic feat, she came up to us and said:
“See? I can easily manage the stairs. So, I can join you on the trip to Nandi Hills”
My parents in-law employed a great deal of tact tinged with a modicum of firmness to get Granny to agree, somewhat reluctantly, to remain at home.

The road that ascended from the plain up to the fort at the summit of the Nandi Hills was spectacular. It had at least twelve extremely tight hairpin bends, each one numbered.

We spent a pleasant couple of hours picnicking in the garden amongst rusty old cannons near the fort. My wife and I walked to some stone Hindu temples overlooking a sharp cliff-like drop down to the plain far below. One of the temples housed a large stone carving of a Nandi Bull, a creature found in many Hindu temples.

I suppose that once travel becomes safely feasible again, I would love to pay another visit to Nandi Hills.

A picnic to remember

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I AM NOT A LOVER OF picnics. My perfect idea of eating outside my home is not squatting on a rug in a picturesque open-air location, but in a restaurant. In contrast, my wife and her parents loved picnics.

Many years ago, when both of my dear in-laws were still alive and healthy, that is well before 2006, we decided to have a picnic at the Big Banyan Tree just outside the city of Bangalore (India). Known in Kannada, the official state language of Karnataka, as ‘Dodda Aalada Mara’ that means ‘Big Banyan Tree’, this huge tree, an example of Ficus benghalensis which is about 400 years old, covers about three acres. It is located about 17 and a half miles west by southwest of the Bangalore Club in central Bangalore.

It is a popular local attraction for picnickers. This being the case and also the fact that I had never been there helped my in-laws decide that we should enjoy a picnic at the Big Banyan Tree. After thermos flasks had been filled, masala omelette sandwiches prepared, blankets packed, puri aloo packaged, bhakri boxed up in cylindrical steel containers with tight fitting lids, we set off: my parents in law, my brother in law and his family, my wife and our very young daughter, and me.

We arrived at the tree, which looked more like a dense, tangled forest than a single tree, but that is what banyan trees become when left to their own devices. After threading our way through the aerial roots hanging down from the tree, we found a small open space that looked nice for a picnic. At least everybody except me, not a lover of picnics, thought so.

We laid out the blanket, and put out the containers of food, and that is about as far our picnic was to resemble a normal meal ‘al fresco’. Moments after setting out the food, swarms of our closely related primates appeared. These monkeys had not come to keep us company or simply to watch their two-legged relatives eating. No, they had arrived to be fed. Their only intentions were far from friendly. They had come to steal our picnic. One by one they dropped out of the trees and approached our food. With great difficulty we were able to ‘shoo’ away these almost fearless raiders. At one stage, I resorted to throwing wet used teabags at them. They were very persistent, in fact so persistent that we decided not to persist with our picnic. We packed everything and made a hasty departure having eaten nothing.

This experience did nothing to remove my long-held prejudice against picnicking. It did the opposite. Wasps and other intruders are bad enough, but monkeys ‘took the biscuit’. Well, metaphorically if not in fact.

Keep your shirt on

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My late father in law was enthusiastic about everything new until his very last days. Every day, he scoured the newspapers to discover the latest events happening in Bangalore. If I was visiting the family, I often accompanied him to events that events that caught Daddy’s eye.

For example, I accompanied to the launch of the new Tata Indica car. When we arrived in time for the launch, there was a large crowd waiting for the official launch. When they saw my aged father in law, dressed in a smart suit and wearing a tie, being supported by me and his walking stick, the crowd parted as did the Red Sea when Moses arrived on its shore. We were given the honour of being first to be allowed to sit in the new car model.

On another occasion, Daddy spotted that there was to be a huge shirt sale, at which customers, who brought an old shirt as part exchange, would be able to buy a new one at a substantial discount.

Before we set off, Daddy had to find a shirt that he was willing to part with. This was a lengthy business because he possessed a large collection of shirts, each one of which needed to be examined and considered. This task was difficult because almost all of his shirts were good quality and in good condition.

Eventually, a shirt was selected for sacrifice, and we set off.

There were many people and an enormous number of shirts at the sale. Daddy carefully examined what was on offer and kept selecting shirts and asking my opinion about them, flatteringly but unwisely overestimating my sartorial expertise.

The hours passed and time for eating lunch was approaching rapidly. After giving my opinion about many shirts, all of a lesser quality and beauty to the one he was going to exchange, I told him that the latest one that he was showing me was the one to buy. He bought it and handed his old shirt as part payment.

When we got back home, Daddy showed the family his new shirt. Nobody liked it. They were horrified that I had allowed him to buy such a ghastly shirt. Yet, Daddy loved it. He wore it often. The picture shows him wearing it, sitting with me in 2005 at the Bangalore Club.

Searching for Samsung

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ONE OF OUR SAMSUNG mobile phones needed repairing while we were in Bangalore. Using the Google search engine, we discovered that the Samsung Service Centre nearest us is at Jayanagar. We gave the address provided by Google to an autorickshaw driver and after some navigational difficulties we reached the spot. There was no Service Centre but close to where we expected it to be, we found a Samsung showroom. Clearly, there was a mistake on Google.

Jayanagar gets scant mention in a new guidebook to Bangalore, so I turned to the (not always completely reliable) Google search engine to get a bit of background to this district of Bangalore close to the Lalbagh, a historic botanical garden. According to Wikipedia, a good starting place for research, Jayanagar means ‘victory city’. The area was established in 1948, and was one of the first planned suburbs of Bangalore. What little we saw of Jayanagar during our quest for the Samsung Service Centre reveals that the area is well planned in comparison with other areas of Bangalore. It gives the impression of being a prosperous suburb, which it is.

The people working in the Samsung showroom, where we stopped, confirmed that the address given by Google was indeed incorrect. They gave us directio s for finding the Service Centre, which was ten minutes’ walk away. This walk gave us a chance to gain some impressions of Jayanagar.

After walking past several palatial, fancy looking jewellery stores, we entered a long, mainly residential, street. Most of the houses were well spaced from each other, quite unlike the hugger mugger found in, for example, the prosperous but poorly planned suburb of Koramangala. The architecture of the houses along the street (7th Main Road) in Jayanagar is not uniform but interestingly varied. Several of the houses carry rakshasas, grotesque, scary masks to ward off the ‘evil eye’.

An elegant mandir, the Ganesha Vinayaka Temple, stands next to the intersection of 7th Main Road and New Diagonal Road. Established in the late 1970s, this temple attracts many politicians. Those seeking power come to worship at this place.

Beyond the temple, we reached 27th Cross Road. After crossing its central divider, we entered our destination, the Samsung Service Centre.

As with many faults of an electronic nature, when the engineer checked out the problem we were having with the phone, it had disappeared. Our search for the Samsung Service Centre had been unnecessary… so we thought.

PS After we had returned from Jayanagar, we discovered that our phone was repeating the fault which had caused us to make the apparently pointless journey to the pleasant suburb of Jayanagar.

Under the trees

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The outdoor café at Airlines Hotel in Bangalore has been in existence for many decades and still remains a popular eatery and coffee place. What a great joy it is to sit induer the leafy branches of the trees surrounding the outdoor chairs and tables.

People can be served while they sit in their cars parked in the small car park next to the outdoor seating area. At times, this parking lot can become very full. Cars queuing for entry to Airlines can cause traffic congestion in the street (Madras Bank Road) on which the eatery is located.

The walls enclosing Airline’s compound are decorated with paintings and quotations about tree leaves from the poetry of Kabir Das (1440-1518).

I have been visiting Airlines regularly since 1994, when I first visited Bangalore, and my enjoyment of the place had never diminished.

A memorable new year’s eve

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Some years ago, we were in Bangalore on a New Years Eve. Our daughter went off to an all night party and we remained at home with my recently widowed late mother-in-law.

We ordered a pizza from the local branch of a well known international pizza chain. It arrived by motorbike, looked delicious, but tasted mouldy.

At about 10 pm, we were all feeling sleepy and retired to bed. At about 3 am we were woken by a telephone call. It was our daughter wishing us a happy new year.

We had slept whilst the old year ended and the new one began. It was the most effortless and relaxing way of ‘celebrating’ a New Year that I can remember.

PS: this year we celebrated the New Year’s Eve in a part of India where the consumption of alcohol is forbidden!

Around the market with Mansour

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I CANNOT COUNT the number of times I have passed Johnson Market on my way between Koramangala, where my in-laws live, and central Bangalore. The market building stands close to the busy intersection of Hosur Road and Richmond Road. Recently, I went on a guided walking tour of the area around Johnson Market. It was led by my good friend Mansour Ali, who runs a great organisation called “Bengaluru by foot” (www.bengalurubyfoot.com). I had visited Johnson Market several times before on my own, but Mansour’s tour enhanced my experience of it and its surroundings.

Johnson Market was built in an indo-saracenic style in the early 20th century on the site of stables that housed horses, which were imported into India in 1824 from Persia by Aga Ali Asker who was born in Shiraz in 1808. Some of the stables still exist, incorporated into the structure of the market halls. Ali Asker was one of several brothers. While the rest of ghem returned to Persia, he stayed in in Bangalore where he died after carrying out much valuable public work. One of his grandsons, born in Bangalore, was Sir Mirza Ismail (1883-1959), a great Indian statesman.

Johnson Market is for selling food. In addition to vegetables (including exotic vegetables like Chinese pak choi), there is a wonderful fishmongers shop and a beef market.

Near to the market, stands ‘Koshys Automatic Bakery’, which was the first mechanised bakery in the city. A stall beside it sells bread, cakes, and delicious filled puffs.

At both ends of the long building housing the Islamic Educational Board of India on Richmond Road, there are gateways leading to Muslim shrines well hidden from the road. One of them is a Sunni shrine, and the other is Shia/Sufi. Soon after the birth of Islam believers in this religion split into two main groups: Sunni and Shia. The majority of Muslims in India are Sunni, a small minority are Shia. It happens that there is a concentration of Shia establishments close to Johnson Market. This might be because Ali Asker and his descendants, many of whom had homes in the area, were Shias. Each of the shrines or ‘dargahs’ are peaceful enclaves, which although close to the main road, feel far away from the hustle and bustle of the city.

The leafy shaded Mysore Tobacco Company compound is across Richmond Road facing the two dargahs. Surrounded by trees and luxuriant foliage, the main building is a delightful example of colonial Bangalorean domestic architecture. Its windows are partially covered with monkey top woodwork. The large front porch is rich in wooden latticework and rustic carving that hints of idealised quaint country cottages in far-off England.

All Saints Church, founded by the Reverend Pettigrew (founder of Bangalore’s Bishop Cotton School for boys) and designed in Victorian gothic style by the English architect Robert Fellowes Chisholm and consecrated in 1870. It stands at the intersection of Richmond and Hosur Roads, and must have brought feelings of homesickness to Britishers living in pre-independence Bangalore. Stepping inside is like entering a village church in England. The garden surrounding the church contains a rich variety of plants, including a rather spindly olive tree, reflecting Pettigrew’s interest in botany. Tragically, part of this garden is under threat because the municipal authorities want it for use in the construction of a new metro line.

After visiting the church, Mansour took us to see another Shia dargah in a lane leading off Hosur Road. This shrine is connected with the battle of Karbala (600 AD) during which Hussain, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, was slain by the caliph Yazid I. The shrine, which is revered by Shias, contains fine glass lamps and chandeliers which were probably made in Turkey over a century ago. Unlike mosques, where worshippers of different genders are kept separated, males and females can pray together in dargahs.

The Masjid e Askari is the only Shia mosque in Bangalore. Adjoining it, there is a recently built replica of a mosque in Karbala, the city close to where Hussain, sacred to the Shias, met his death. The replica, which is smaller than the original, is a beautiful construction with amazing mirror work mosaics in which words from the Koran are inserted in black tiling.

After spending three hours with Mansour, I felt that I had learnt much about the Shia branch of Islam and a great deal about a part of Bangalore which I have passed often without realising how interesting it is.

Hindu reform in Bangalore

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IN AN AREA OF BANGALORE FILLED WITH TRADITIONAL HINDU TEMPLES, I STUMBLED ACROSS A CENTRE WHERE A REFORMED VERSION OF THE RELIGION IS PRACTISED.

FINDING SOMEWHERE THAT I HAD NOT NOTICED BEFORE IS OFTEN FASCINATING. I have often been driven past this particular place in central Bangalore at speed. One day, I walked past this compound, located close to RBANM’s Ground, at a leisurely pace and discovered that it contains three buildings arranged around a rectangular garden. The two side buildings are typical old Bangalorean structures with verandahs and monkey-top woodwork as well as other typical traditional architectural ornamentation. The central building facing the street but separated from it by the garden has a simple facade supported by four plain pillars with Doric capitals. A stone embedded in the outer wall of the compound reads “Brahma Mandir 1879”. This compound contains the buildings belonging to the Bangalore Brahmo Samaj.

The Brahmo Samaj is one of the attempts to reform the practise of Hinduism. Founded in about 1828 in Bengal, it was a monotheistic form of Hinduism. The Brahmo Samaj was not the only reforming movement in 19th century India, but, like Arya Samaj, it became one of the better known and enduring attempts to reform Hinduism.

In my recent book “Ideas, Bombs, and Bullets, I have tried to show how the two sets of reformers differ:
“The Arya Samaj, in common with the Brahmo Samaj, strove to reform Hinduism, but differed from the Brahmo Samaj in many respects. Members of Arya Samaj had no faith in the goodness of the British Government, whereas the opposite was true for the Brahmo Samaj. Arya Samaj believed in the superiority of Hinduism over other religions, whereas the Brahmo Samaj put Hinduism on the same level as other religions. Another of many differences between the two movements was that Arya Samaj wanted to revive Vedic traditions and to reject modern western culture and philosophy, whereas the Brahmo Samaj accepted western culture and ideas.”

I have yet to stumble across an Arya Samaj place of worship in Bangalore, but I feel sure that there must be at least one in the city. The Brahmo buildings I saw are good examples of beautiful Bangalore architecture, much of which is being callously torn down to make way for ugly new structures.