Tag Archives: bengaluru

A war memorial in the heart of Bangalore: they died for the British Empire

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ON ARMISTICE DAY (11th of November 2023), we stopped to look at the war memorial that stands in a busy part of Bangalore, where Brigade Road crosses Residency Road. Erected in about 1928, its design was somewhat influenced by Lutyens’s famous Cenotaph in London’s Whitehall. Actually, it has a greater resemblance to the memorial clock tower in London’s Golders Green, where I was brought up.

Bangalore

The four-sided memorial in Bangalore is to commemorate the members of the Pioneers, who died in WW1. However, it also records other earlier campaigns that claimed the lives of Pioneers The Pioneers, more correctly the regiments of the ‘Madras Pioneers’, were established by the British in the 18th century, and later became known as the Madras Sappers. More details are to be found in an article in the hindu.com :
“A glance at some historical documents shows that the 61st Pioneers originated in 1758 and were raised as the 1st Battalion Coast Sepoys which became the 61st Pioneers in 1901 and later became the 1st Battalion of the 1st Madras Pioneers in 1922. The 64th Pioneers also originated in 1758 as the 5th Battalion Coast Sepoys and became the 2nd Battalion of the 1st Madras Pioneers in 1922. The 81st Pioneers stood apart and originated in 1786 as the 28th Madras Battalion and later became the 10th (Training) Battalion of the 1st Madras Pioneers in 1922.”

Apart from WW1, the monument records other campaigns that were fought so that the British could consolidate their Empire. These include (to mention but a few named on the memorial): Mysore, Seringapatam, Nagpur, Afghanistan (1878-80), Burma (1885-87), and China (1900). For some of these conflicts the numbers of men lost are recorded. Numbers of English and Indian fatalities are listed separately.

When we visited the monument on Armistice Day, we saw two fresh wreaths at its base. One had a label attached, which said it had been placed by the French Consulate in Bangalore. The other had no words but it bore ribbon with the colours on the flag of Germany. There was neither an Indian nor a British wreath to be seen.

Vincent Van Gogh on a wall in India

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YOU CAN SEE MURALS painted on walls throughout the Indian city of Bangalore (and in many other places in India). These paintings transform otherwise boring walls into something worth looking at.

Today, the 12th of November 2023 – Diwali, I visited Airlines Hotel in Bangalore. This place has an alfresco café and a large parking area. I saw some young people painting a mural. The design they were creating was a copy of a picture on the screen of a tablet or ipad. The building on which they were painting faces a long wall that marks the boundary of both the car park and the Airlines compound.

Since we last visited Airlines in February 2023, the boundary wall has been covered with a long painted mural. At first sight, this colourful painting brings to mind the work of the Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh, who died long before it was made.

Though it resembles the style of the Dutch artist, on closer examination you can easily tell it is not by him. But its creator has certainly done a good job capturing the essence of Van Gogh’s style, and has livened up a hitherto unsightly, high breeze block wall. The other murals adorning the compound are visually engaging, but not as much as the Airlines “Van Gogh “

An unusual “Christmas tree” in a garden in Bangalore

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WHENEVER I THINK ABOUT Christmas trees, I envisage a smallish pine tree that is roughly conical in shape. Today, I noticed a tall conifer growing in a garden in Bangalore. Attached to it there was a metal label identifying it as “Christmas tree. Araucaria cookei.” This tree bore no resemblance to any Christmas tree I have ever seen.

I used the Internet to look up ‘Aracauria cookei’, and learned that it is commonly known as ‘Captain Cook’s Pine’. It was first ‘discovered in New Caledonia by a botanist travelling with Captain Cook on his Second Voyage (between 1772 and 1775).

One botanical website revealed that when planted in a pot, this tree can be used as an alternative to regular Christmas trees. Other websites describing this plant make no mention of this. In any case, the specimen I saw labelled in Bangalore was taller than an average three-storey building. It was far too tall to be used as a Christmas tree.

Eating off a banana leaf in the south of India

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DURING OUR HONEYMOON in 1994, we travelled around places in southern India. At one point, we had to change trains at Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu state. With a few hours to spare, we ate dinner at a modest small restaurant near the station.

At Bheema’s restaurant in Bangalore

We sat down and banana leaves were placed on the table in front of us. These served as plates. There was no menu. A waiter hurried around the restaurant, stopping next to each diner and placing dollops of vegetarian culinary preparations on the leaves. He returned and placed a pile of steamed rice next to the mounds of vegetable items. He kept running from table to table, replenishing foods as required by the diners. This seemingly endless distribution of food set us back a total of 12 Rupees, which in 1994 was about £0.40 (yes, 40 pence). The coffee we drank at the end of the meal was the same price.

Yesterday, the 9th of November 2023, I was reminded of this experience whilst watching a waiter serving Andhra style vegetable preparations on a banana leaf in Bheema’s restaurant on Bangalore’s Church Street. Naturally, the meal cost a lot more than we paid in Coimbatore in 1994, but it was still very good value.

A café under the banyan trees in Bangalore

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AIRLINES HOTEL IN BANGALORE has an outdoor seating area where you can enjoy beverages and South Indian vegetarian dishes, seated beneath venerable banyan trees.

You can read more about this popular, charming ‘al fresco’ café in my book of tales about travels in India. It is available from Amazon ( e.g., https://www.amazon.co.uk/HITLER-LOCK-OTHER-TALES-INDIA/dp/B0CFM5JNX5/ ) AND ALSO (if you live in India) from https://store.pothi.com/book/adam-yamey-hitler-lock-and-other-tales-india/

The Sport of Kings and a bar in Bangalore

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I MUST ADMIT that I have never been much of a sportsma, and I know hardly anything about the game of polo, apart from the fact that it involves both horses and humans. Yesterday evening, as I enjoyed a postprandial brandy in the recently renamed ‘Polo Bar’ (formerly, ‘The Mixed Bar’) at the Bangalore Club, I spotted a large ‘coffee table’ book by Jaisal Singh about Polo and India.

What surprised me is the great age of the game of Polo. It seems to have been existence in some recognisable form as long ago as the 6th century BC. Then, it was played by some nomadic peoples in Central Asia. The book in the Polo Bar has a photograph of a terracotta model of a Chinese woman playing polo. This model was made between the 7th and 11th century AD. Another photograph shows the earliest known picture of a Polo player. This depicts a man on a horse, and was created in the same era as the model.

Much of the rest of the book is about polo in India. It charts the rise in popularity of the game amongst the wealthy rulers of the Princely States and the upper echelons of the British administrators and military in India.

The Polo Bar, which until recently was known by another name, has been decorated with polo memorabilia (e.g., photographs, trophies, and horseshoes). The handle on the door leading into the bar is horse-shaped. However, for me, the most interesting polo related item is in the Club’s Gardens. It is an inscribed stone block, which was the foundation stone of the Domlur Polo Pavilion laid in January 1914 by Lady Daly, wife of the British Resident.

The stone includes the information that one Major C Rankin was “Hon-Secy” and R Evans Esq was the architect. Both were military personnel, members of the “7th (Q.O.) Hussars”. The pavilion’s building contractor was BV Venkataswami Naidu.

In “Bangalore, the Story of a City”, by M Jayapal, the author wrote that initially the race course was out at Domlur. [Hence, the existence of Old Race Course Road]. In the late 19th century it moved to near Lalbagh, and then to its present position near to High Grounds. Presumably, because there had been equine facilities at Domlur, this would have been a suitable place for the Bangalore Club to locate its polo club there. I am not sure whether anything remains of the polo club pavilion whose foundation stone stands in the Bangalore Club gardens.

According to a blog article (https://wp.me/p1YuI1-1xA) about the pavilion, this is of interest:
“Information, thanks to the Bygone Bangalore group on Facebook: The Polo Club was located on Cambridge Road, in the area that is now Cambridge Layout. Opposite the Sai Baba Temple, there exists a portion of an old building which is said to be a part of the Polo Club.”
Incidentally, the centre of Cambridge Layout is less than a mile from the heart of Domlur.

As for the Bangalore Club’s association with polo, the following words quoted from the Club’s website (www.bangaloreclub.com) are of interest:
“Bangalore Club was established in 1868 as the Bangalore United Services Club for the officers of the British Empire. Originally the buildings were occupied by the Polo Club which moved out in the beginning of the 1860’s.”

I do not know how many current members of the Club play Polo these days. Even if it is not many, the Club’s former associations with the military ( the Club was formerly a club for military officers) and the land upon which it stands justify the naming of one of its bars to commemorate what was once known as “The Sport of Kings”.

A new airport terminal in Bangalore

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DURING THE FLIGHT from Dubai to Bangalore (Bengaluru), the overhead baggage lockers on the ‘plane were filled to capacity with a diverse variety of often bulky carry-on luggage. This was in sharp contrast to what I observed on the flight from Heathrow to Dubai. On the whole, the passengers on this longer flight carried modest amounts of cabin baggage, and there was no problem accommodating it.

After a smooth flight from Dubai, we landed at Bangalore on time. I was excited to discover that we were being disembarked into the new terminal. Its construction was still underway when we left Bangalore in February 2023. It has been in use for no more than about 3 months.

I have only seen the arrivals section of the new terminal, and will have to wait before seeing, what I have heard, are the visually spectacular departure areas.

As for what I was able to see as an arriving passenger, I was neither amazed nor disappointed. The place has a feeling of great spaciousness and has much natural lighting. However, although much effort has been made to use ‘natural’ materials and plant-derived matter. For example, the immigration desks are lit from above by electric lamps in giant basket work shades. The desks are decorated with an external latticework of what looks like thin strips of bamboo. I wondered how long this would last before it becomes damaged by frequent wear and tear.

After passing through passport control, passengers enter a duty free shopping area. Its flamboyant decor seems to have been inspired by the ‘over the top’ interiors in Dubai’s airport terminals. Beyond this retail area, one reaches the baggage reclaim area, which seemed more spacious than what exists in the older terminal.

Despite not being overwhelmed by the visual nature of the new terminal, I must say that our passage through it was smooth and quicker than any of my many other arrivals at Bangalore’s airports, both old and very much older.

Wonderful new highways link the new terminal to the main road onto the city of Bangalore. However, after about 20 minutes speeding along, you are plunged into tthe city’s characteristic noisy, slow moving, congested traffic.

Women in art

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SURVEYING THE REPRESENTATION of women by artists in a single exhibition might seem a daunting task, if not impossible. Yet, this is what the exhibition “Visible/Invisible” achieves successfully. Curated by Kamini Sawhney, Arnika Ahldag, Vaishnavi Kambadur, Riya Kumar and Arshad Hakim, this magnificent display of artworks can be viewed at the recently opened (in late February 2023) Museum of Art and Photography (‘MAP’) on Kasturba Road in Bangalore (Bengaluru). The exhibition, which is displayed in most of the rooms on one floor of MAP confines itself to works created by artists, both male and female, from the Indian subcontinent and its diaspora. However, this did not hinder the curators’ aim of demonstrating the female in art over the centuries.

The 130 artworks on show range in date of creation from the 10th century AD to the present. MAP’s website reveals that the various artworks:
“… are interwoven into four key sections based on narratives and counter-narratives: Goddess and Mortal, Sexuality and Desire, Power and Violence, and Struggle and Resistance. Each section presents how women’s lives have been portrayed, the spaces that they occupy and challenges that women have faced in the Indian subcontinent. The themes and ideas explored in Visible/Invisible hopes to encourage audience awareness of the history and role of women and gender in art.”
And the exhibition successfully raised my awareness of the multiple ways in which the lives of women have been portrayed by artists of both genders over the centuries,

The artworks include sculptures, paintings, photographs, film posters, textiles (some created by female artists and others woven in traditional patterns by craftswomen), and prints. Almost every exhibit was a joy to behold, What was particularly interesting were examples of artworks created within the last few decades that demonstrate how Indian women artist have taken control of the way they portray women and their lives, What the viewer sees is how women see themselves, which is a contrast to what has happened in earlier times when women have often been shown in the way that men have viewed their lives.

All in all, this exciting exhibition is compelling both visually and conceptually. The curators have expressed their ideas beautifully and powerfully, but not without considerable subtlety.

A masterful academic qualification

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MANY INDIANS STRIVE to gain a Master of Business Administration (‘MBA’) degree. I can say little or nothing about the merits of this academic qualification, but know many friends who have been awarded it.

A long time ago, soon after we married in Bangalore, we attended an engagement party held for one of our friends. During the evening, the priest who would eventually officiate at the marriage gave a speech. He spoke in English with a strong South Indian accent. He introduced the couple as follows:
“These two dear people are well-matched. He has a yem bee yay. And she has a yem bee yay…”
Just in case you did not make sense of that, ‘yem bee yay’, it is the way that many Bangaloreans would pronounce ‘MBA ‘.

This distant memory of our friends’ engagement party was prompted by noticing a tea shop on Bangalore’s St Marks Road. It is named “MBA CHAI WALA”. Above the name are the words “India’s Most Iconic Chai Wala”. As we were in a hurry on our last day in Bangalore, we had neither the chance to sample a cup of tea nor to discover whether the place had anything to do with the MBA degree. On our next trip to Bangalore, I will investigate and get back to you.