Tag Archives: bengaluru

Getting fixed in Bangalore (Bengaluru), India

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KALIM REPAIRS JEWELLERY in Jewellers Street in the Commercial Street district of Bangalore (Bengaluru). He sits on the pavement on the shaded east side of the street in the morning and in the afternoon,  he moves to the west side to keep out of the sun. He can mend almost every kind of jewellery. When restringing necklaces, he uses both his hands and his feet, to keep the thread taut.

 

Kalim at work

Kalim is one of many people we visit in the Commercial Street area to get repairs done. These craftsmen include tailors, a bag repairer, dyers, darners, watch repairers, locksmiths, and jewellers. We have known all of them for years.

 

The great thing about these skilled workers is that they will skilfully repair almost anything. On the UK,  people like this are few and far between.

 

You can read about these wonderful people in and around Commercial Street in my book “88 DAYS IN INDIA: A JOURNEY OF MEMORY AND DISCOVERY”.

The book is available from Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/88-DAYS-INDIA-JOURNEY-DISCOVERY/dp/B0FKTFBFM2/

A Hindu temple that incorporates a banyan tree

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ON THE CAMPUS of Bangalore’s Chitrakala Parishath art college, there is a small Hindu mandir, the Ganapathi Temple. Dedicated in 1984 and built by Mandelia Parmarth Rosh, it contains an effigy of Ganesh and not much else.

What makes this small religious building both fascinating and charming is that its construction incorporates branches of a large, living banyan tree. The tree is growing through part of the temple.

Man, nature, hills, and mountains in the Western Ghats of India

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WE VISITED BANGALORE’S Chitrakala Parishath, an art school, on the last day of an exhibition called “Hidden Gems of the Western Ghats”. We were alerted to it by a good friend, Ajay Ghatage, who posted something about it on Facebook.

 

The Western Ghats are a line of hills and mountains that separate the Deccan Plateau from the western coastal strip of India, the shore of the Arabian Sea. The ghats are in the most part forested.

 

The exhibition included sculptures, many of them beautiful stone carvings, paintings, and a few ‘installations’. Each work expresses its creator’s reaction to the nature and its exploitation (and/or despoliation) by mankind. And the majority of the artworks on display did this well, beautifully, and often highly imaginatively.

 

Amongst the installations, there was one by Shivanand Shyagoti that particularly attracted my attention. It consisted of a tree trunk into which hatchets had been stuck. On the wooden handles of each of these choppers, there were line drawings of the woodland creatures whose habitat would be disturbed by deforestation.

 

The other works on display were at least as imaginative as the one described above. What was impressive about the majority of the artworks was that although they often conveyed messages about the fragility of the natural environments of the Western Ghats, they did it subtly, creatively, and,  most importantly, beautifully.

A Boer officer in Bangalore 1901

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GEORGE GLAESER MUNNIK was a  Boer  during the first Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). He was captured by the British and imprisoned in the south of India. During his time in India, he was taken to Bangalore briefly and was put up in the West End Hotel.

In his autobiography,  Munnik recalled:

“We arrived in Bangalore early in the morning and went to the West End
Hotel. This hostelry stands in extensive grounds and consists of about
half-a-dozen bungalows, each a hundred yards apart and holding six
visitors; each has its own cook, butler, etc…“

The hotel still exists and is one of the finest in Bangalore. Although enlarged since Munnik stayed there, it stands in beautifully maintained grounds.

To discover why the British took this POW from his prison camp to a deluxe hotel in  Bangalore, you will need to read my book “Imprisoned in India”.  It is available as a kindle from Amazon: https://www.amazon.in/IMPRISONED-INDIA-South-African-Bangalore-ebook/dp/B07Z2S4V3P/     

OR  as  a paperback from: https://www.lulu.com/shop/adam-yamey/imprisoned-in-india/paperback/product-1y5j98em.html?q=Yamey&page=1&pageSize=4

In the pie, or the core of the matter

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RECENTLY WHEN WALKING in an an orchard in Hampshire, we found that the trees were literally groaning beneath the weight of apples growing upon them. Seeing all of these ripe fruits brought back memories of visiting family friends, who lived in Kent, during my early childhood.

Whenever we went to their home, we were given a lavish lunch. The dessert was always apple pie. The apples were covered with a topping of pastry. What fascinated me was that the centre of this topping was always raised above the rest of it. Beneath this centrally located curved mound, – and this is what used to fascinate me – there would be a ceramic cup buried amongst the cooked apples. Discovering a cup buried in an apple pie tickled my imagination, and always puzzled me. I believe that it is normal practice to insert something to support the pastry topping, but when I was less than 10 years old, I did not know this. Our friend who used to cook this apple pie for us is, sadly, no more,

Incidentally, in recent years, some of the best apple pie I have tasted is that served at The Only Place in Museum Road, Bangalore (south India). Its recipe was introduced to the restaurant by the American wife of Haroon, who founded the restaurant many years ago.

A tailor in Bangalore (India) who knew how to be tactful

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My book, “Coracles and Crocodiles: 101 Tales of India”. is an anthology of some of the things I have experienced during three decades of of travelling in India. Here is a short excerpt from it:

DIPLOMATIC AMNESIA

Almost immediately after I first arrived in India (in late December 1993), and a few days before our Hindu wedding ceremony, my father-in-law recommended that I visit his tailor – Mr Krishnan – to get measured up for some new suits. One of these was to be a white ‘Prince Suit’, and the other two were western style formal suits in greyish materials. The Prince Suit, a traditional Indian design with a high neck collar, was to be worn at our wedding reception after the marriage ceremony. The other garments would be useful for the many formal occasions, which my father-in-law anticipated both in India and England. He loved such occasions.

When he worked in an upmarket tailoring shop in Bangalore’s Brigade Road, Mr Krishnan had made suits for my father-in-law. When I met him, he was semi-retired and worked from his home in a small, old-fashioned house on a short lane in a hollow several feet beneath the nearby busy Queen’s Road. He was a short, elderly gentleman – always very dignified and polite. He measured me up for the suits in his front room, which served as part of his workshop. After a couple of visits to try the suits whilst they were still being worked on, I picked up the finished garments. Each of the suits fitted perfectly – ‘precision-fit’ you could say quite truthfully. Despite being so accurately made, they were not in the least bit uncomfortable. Everybody admired them. I could understand why I had been sent to Mr Krishnan.

Our next trip to India was made 20 months later when our recently born daughter had had sufficient vaccinations to allow her to travel safely. During the interval between these two holidays, my dimensions had changed significantly because of my good appetite and happy marriage. Notably, my girth had increased greatly. Sadly, the suits that Mr Krishnan had so carefully crafted no longer fitted me.

We returned to see Mr Krishnan, who told us that in anticipation of my dimensions changing, he had left extra cloth within the garments for adjusting them. Without comment, he took my new measurements, and noted them down in a book. My wife, who had accompanied me, said to the tailor, mischievously:

“Just out of curiosity, Mr Krishnan, would you be able to look up Adam’s previous measurements to see how much he has changed.”

He put down his pencil, sighed, and said:

“I am very sorry, Madame, but I have unfortunately lost them.”

Mr Krishnan was not only a wonderful tailor, but also a perfect diplomat.

End of excerpt

You can enjoy more tales like this, and experience India without leaving home by buying a copy of the book from Amazon websites, e.g.:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/CORACLES-CROCODILES-101-TALES-INDIA/dp/B0DJZ6DMYB/

Sculptures hidden by the mist in Bangalore

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When we arrived in Bangalore in November 2025, our friend Harsh, an architect and curator who is based in Ahmedabad, sent us a message about his exhibition in Bangalore at a gallery, of whose existence we had been hitherto unaware. The privately owned gallery is called KAASH. It is housed in a beautifully restored old-style bungalow such as were built (mostly) between the 1860s and 1930s. They are a colonial ‘take’ on English country cottages. The gallery’s bungalow at number 2 Berlie Street is complete with perfect examples of ‘monkey tops’ (screens of closely spaced vertical wooden slats placed over porches and windows).  

The exhibition that Harsh had curated at KAASH was a collection of contemporarily designed devotional objects, mainly diyas (oil lamps used on Hindu ceremonies). There were also some almost abstract depictions of Devi created by Jayshree Poddar, and a few items of folk art from various countries in Africa. The artworks were tastefully displayed in rooms within the bungalow.

In the garden surrounding the building, we saw several sculptures. As the sun set, a worker moved around the garden spraying a fumigating smoke that created an eery mist. The sculptures were temporarily partially hidden, becoming rather like peaks partially concealed by low clouds. Gradually, they reappeared as the insecticidal smoke dispersed. Having seen the KAASH gallery, we decided that it would become a place we visit whenever we happen to be in Bangalore.

A coffee house in the Indian city of Bangalore (Bengaluru)

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GOING THROUGH SOME old photographs today, I came across a few taken in the India Coffee House that used to be on Bangalore’s MG Road. Here is what I wrote about the place in my book “Coracles and Crocodiles: 101 Tales of India”:

“When I first visited Bangalore in 1994, there was a coffee house on Mahatma Gandhi (‘MG’) Road close to the now derelict Srungar Shopping Complex. This venerable, popular ‘hole in the wall’ was a branch of the Indian Coffee House (‘ICH’) chain. In both appearance and atmosphere, it reminded me of some of the older coffee houses I had seen Belgrade and Sarajevo in Yugoslavia (when it still existed).

At the ICH, customers sat at old wooden tables on wooden benches with hard, upright backrests. Old Coffee Board (‘ICB’) posters hung on the walls. The waiters were dressed in white jackets and trousers held up by extremely wide red and gold belts – like cummerbunds – with huge metal buckles that bore the logo of the ICB. These gentlemen wore white turbans with red and gold ribbons on their heads. In addition to (in my humble opinion) rather average quality, but low-priced South Indian filter coffee, a variety of snacks and cold drinks were also on the menu.

During the British occupation of India, admission to most coffee houses was restricted to European clients. In the late 1890s, the idea of establishing an ICH chain of coffee houses for Indian customers began to be considered. In 1936, the ICB opened the first ICH in Bombay’s Churchgate area. By the 1940s, there were at least 50 branches all over what was then British India. In the mid-1950s, the ICHs were closed by the Coffee Board. The Communist leader AK Gopalan (1904-1977) and the Coffee Board workers managed to get the Board to hand over the ICH outlets to them, and they formed a series of Indian Coffee Workers’ Co-operatives. The cooperative in Bangalore was formed in August 1957. There are now several branches in the city. The MG Road branch, which opened in 1959, closed in 2009 … “

DISCOVER more about this and many other things I have experienced in India by reading my book, which is available from Amazon:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/CORACLES…/dp/B0DJZ6DMYB

Gone forever: a wonderful bookshop in Bangalore (Bengaluru)

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HERE IS A BRIEF excerpt from my book “CORACLES AND CROCODILES: 101 TALES OF INDIA”. It comes from a chapter on the booksellers in Bangalore (Bengaluru), and is about a remarkable bookshop that, sadly, no longer exists. Here is the extract from my book:

“Premier, one of the most fantastic bookshops that has ever existed, is also no more. It closed some years ago when its owner, Mr Shanbag, retired. I felt almost as if I had suffered a bereavement when I arrived where the shop used to be located on the short stretch of Museum Road between MG Road and Church Street, and found that it was no longer there. I still mourn its passing.

From the outside, Premier could have been mistaken for a newsagent. A rack of magazines stood by the shop’s entrance. When you stepped inside, you felt as if you had entered a book-lover’s Aladdin’s Cave.  Mr Shanbag, who was related to the founder of Strand Bookstall in Bombay, used to sit by the entrance, hidden behind the piles of books and bits of paper cluttering up his tiny desk. The rectangular shop’s walls were lined with books stacked one upon each other, from floor to ceiling. A central divider was covered in books. Two narrow corridors ran along the length of the shop allowing customers and staff to penetrate the dingy depths of the establishment. Deep inside the shop there was a narrow, book-lined passageway connecting the two main corridors. This was so narrow that most adults, and obese children, needed to progress sideways along this claustrophobic book lined chasm.

In most bookshops, customers can pick a book from a shelf, browse it, and then replace it if necessary. This was not the case at Premier.  Only the foolhardy or a newcomer to the shop would attempt to take a book from the tall, precariously stacked piles on Premier’s bookshelves. A 19th century French composer, Alkan, was killed when he was crushed by books collapsing on him in his library. A possible injury awaited any customer who attempted to withdraw a book from Premier’s hazardously stacked shelves. One could say that the books were stacked perilously. One careless move would initiate an avalanche of literature – both fiction and non-fiction. This often happened. Shanbag would raise an eyebrow, and then he or one of his assistants would restore ‘order’ in the shelves.

You may well wonder how customers ever managed to browse in Premier. It was simple. All that was necessary was to ask Shanbag or one of his helpers to retrieve the book for you. If you were unable to see the book that you desired amongst the huge number of volumes stacked in the shop, Shanbag would be able to tell you instantly whether he had it in stock, without resorting to a computer or any form of catalogue. He knew exactly what he had in his shop, and where a book was located if he stocked it. And when you had made your selection, he would prepare a bill, and then knock 20% off the final total if you paid in cash.

A remarkable thing about Shanbag was his great understanding of his regular customers’ reading habits. He could remember what each customer had bought previously …”

You can find out more about Premier as well as many aspects of life in India in my book/Kindle, which is available from Amazon stores such as: https://www.amazon.co.uk/CORACLES-CROCODILES-101-TALES-INDIA/dp/B0DJZ6DMYB/