Bengaluru Through the Pages of Time
An illustration from Eleven Stops to the Present: Salma potters through the Russell Market. Image: INTACH
An isolation hospital, a raging bull, a love rock, and many more stories come together in Eleven Stops to the Present, a new children's book on the history of India’s Silicon Valley.
In an eerie similarity to COVID-19, the Third Plague Pandemic began in China in 1855 and reached Bangalore in August 1898, carried by a butler. Shops shut, streets went empty, and thousands died. Some changes were permanent. An ‘isolation hospital’ was set up in 1930s to segregate the plague patients. The hospital is running even today, very much in the city, opposite the Swami Vivekananda Metro Station.
Those who mistrusted English medicine at the time built ‘Plague Amma’ temples to wish the disease away, and you can still visit these shrines in Mavalli, Ulsoor, Akkithimannhalli and other areas. To decongest the old city, the British had to build new colonies with proper drainage and a lot of space. That's how Malleswaram, Basavanagudi and Fraser Town came along.
And then there is Whitefield, a thoroughly modern neighbourhood in India’s own Silicon Valley. This area of Bengaluru features tech parks, glitzy malls, gated communities, bumper-to-bumper traffic, and frothing lakes. But did you know that Whitefield was once a village? The area was established as a self-sufficient farming community for Anglo-Indians in 1882 by a retired civil servant Sir David White—and hence, its name. At one time, ragi, rice, sorghum and lentil farms flourished here, and bullock carts could be hired for a few annas.
After reading her latest story for a children’s book, where she painted a sylvan picture of Whitefield, Menaka Raman’s 12-year-old son asked, “But where is the greenery?”
In 1898, Bengaluru was hit by the plague, which is said to have wiped out 10 per cent of its population then. To ward away the evil disease, people set up 'Plague Amma' temples such as this in different parts of the city.
His reaction says a lot about how cities are losing their original character to development, and how children like him will have little to relate to with the past of their home towns. That's where Eleven Stops to the Present comes in. It’s a book on the history of Bengaluru, written in a style that's fictional and funny, yet steeped in state records, archaeological facts, personal memories and timeless folklores. With 11 stories contributed by 11 authors, including Raman, the children’s book takes readers more than a thousand years back like a time-travelling machine, to show how the people of Bengaluru lived, fought, and thrived, before the city became a metropolis of start-ups, science and research.
When a city becomes home
Eleven Stops throws light on the local histories of Bengaluru, histories that our often passed over in our school textbooks. It nudges young readers to discover the city intuitively. Why does a local bazaar have a foreign name like the Russell Market? Why is there a Benson Town, Cleveland Town, Cox Town, Langford Town, and Richmond Town? Why is the locality of Malleswaram wide and open, while Koramangala is bursting on the seams? Why does the area of Basavanagudi host a groundnut festival (Kadlekai Parishe) every year? How did the Rangaswamy Temple Street become a stop for all kinds of sweets? Who is Mr Mekhri in the busy ‘Mekhri Circle’? Do you know who designed Bengaluru’s much-loved tree-lined avenues?
Yes, there’s a story behind every road, building and festival. Each story carries with it the DNA of the city, one that inspires us to call it home, take pride in it, and fight for it. That’s why it's important to preserves these structures and stories, says Meera Iyer, the convenor of the Bengaluru chapter of INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage), which has commissioned this book.
“The conservation of heritage provides a sense of identity and continuity in a fast-changing world for the future generations,” says Iyer, adding that, whether we realise it or not, we all carry a bit of our past in us, that it has a bearing on our socio-emotional wellbeing, even if subtle. “Innumerable studies have shown that people tend to bond with relics of the past and feel a bit alienated if new structures come up [around them].”
However, Iyer has observed the reverse too. “People are now trying to cling on to things they are familiar with more than ever,” she says. It’s a comment on the rise of citizen groups who head out to discover the inscription stones of Bengaluru with experts (a lot more on their Facebook page, ‘Inscription Stones of Bangalore’), those who share sepia photographs of the old Bangalore from their family albums (‘Bangalore - Photos from a Bygone Age’) and others who, in a pre-COVID world, used to organise heritage walks on weekends.
Cover image: INTACH
In that sense, this book is an important milestone. Iyer explains, “There have been books on the history of Bengaluru but few and far between and none for children (as the target audience).” As a child, she grew up reading about the streets of London in storybooks but she had none that could fill her curiosity about the 'Golden Threshold' on 15, St Marks Road, which she used to walk past on her way to school. It was a colonial bungalow with a well-manicured garden—a total head-turner, which has since been converted into a commercial complex called House of Lords.
“So, we thought a book like Eleven Stops to the Present will help the children connect with Bengaluru naturally, and the next time they go to the Russell Market, they can say, ‘Oh! I know this and that,’” says Iyer. The anthology features the stories by Edgar Demello, Aditi De, Zac O'Yeah, Anirudh Kanisetti, Anitha Murthy, Nagaraj Vastarey, Sandhya Rao, Shruthi Rao, Shweta Taneja, Raman, and Iyer herself, and a foreword by journalist Ammu Joseph. Some of the authors are old-time Bangaloreans, others are migrants, one stays in Chennai, but they are all bound by their love for this city and the awe-inspiring stories it hides in its folds.
Go on a Bengaluru darshan
A settlement blessed with kere (the lakes) and thota (the orchards) and dotted with kote (the fort) and pete (the markets), Bengaluru was highly sought-after. It became the ground for many bloody wars but also served as a site for romance. Women from Britain came here to look for husbands after the Bangalore Cantonment was established in 1809, as immortalised in the rhyme Bangalorey Man. An engraving found on a large boulder in Whitefield suggested that Winston Churchill had fallen for an innkeeper's daughter.
With 11 stories contributed by 11 authors, the children’s book takes readers more than a thousand years back like a time-travelling machine, to show how the people of Bengaluru lived, fought, and thrived, before the city became a metropolis of start-ups, science and research.
Or, take the nomenclature of Bengaluru itself. The city was established in 1537 by Kempe Gowda I but if an inscription found at the Panchalingeshwara temple in Begur, a town located off the Bengaluru-Hosur highway in Karnataka, is anything to go by, a place named Bengaluru existed way back in 890 CE. A legend, however, has it that Bengaluru emerged from the name Bendakaalu-ooru, meaning the city of boiled beans.
Oh! There's a fable on groundnuts too: The famous Bull Temple in Basavanagudi was built by a farmer to appease a bull who went on a rampage of the groundnut fields in the area.
Learn from the past
Eleven Stops captures a lot of imaginative trivia, from biryani to cattle to rocketry. The book’s attempt is to inspire the children of Bengaluru to think about their city, its past, how it stands today, and how they can preserve its ethos in the future.
On August 5, 1905, Bengaluru became the first city in Asia to get electrical street lamps. The inaugural light came up near KR Market, now famous for its flowers, and still stands there. Photo credit: Unventured
“Knowing that Bengaluru was a well-planned city with so many lakes, and then to see the Varthur Lake frothing and stinking today should make us wonder how we have come to this situation,” says Raman, one of the contributors of the book, and mother to two young boys. “Should we citizens sit and complain, or should we join hands with lake activists to restore it? I believe there are good and bad lessons that we can learn from the past to inform our future. We think we are a modern city but are we sustainable? No. And our infrastructure? It's a mess.”
Heritage conservation isn’t as straightforward as telling stories; it requires time and participation from all. “Government's involvement would definitely help,” Iyer says, regarding the hostility the state bodies have shown towards heritage buildings in the recent years. Fortunately, there was some good news last year: the Karnataka government passed the Zoning Regulations (Amendment) Act 2020 to protect the heritage structures and regulate their demolition.
With Eleven Stops to the Present, the hope is that the youth of Bengaluru will appreciate the city’s past, too, and continue the fight to preserve its heritage for future generations.
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Barkha Kumari is a freelance journalist and a lucid dream blogger from Bangalore. You can follow her on Twitter: @Barkha2803 and Instagram: @rainsnroses.
