Category: The Traveller

Venkatesh K N traces Madhugiri hill’s history and facts as he explores the second largest monolith in Asia.

Madhugiri is taluk head quarters in Tumkur district of Karnataka. Its history can be traced back to prestone age. Travelling to Madhugiri from Bangalore, Tumkur and back is an everyday excess for people of Madhugiri. Travelling to Madhugiri from Bangalore and wandering in its locales becomes the most meaningful experience for oneself. In 1790’s there happened a journey between Doddamalur near Madhugiri of Mahanadu Prabhus, Tippu Sultan to Sri Rangapattana, by British’s army from Bangalore to Sri Rangapattana.

Channappa Gowda had ascended throne of Madhugiri for about nine months, by that time he had become the reason for Tippu’s anger. Channabassappa Gowda had supported the kings of Ratnagiri in a conspiracy against Tippu Sultan, so Tippu camped his army in Doddamalur about seven to eight kilometers from Tereyoor after conquering Midigeshi and Tereyoor from Channappa Gowda. There was a reason for Tippu to camp in Doddamalur. He was informed that Channappa Gowda had pleaded Britishers to get back his forefathers despotic rights and kingdom. In reply Channappa Gowda was assured positively by Lord Corn Wallis. Lord Corn Wallis moved his army via Bangalore towards Sri Rangapattana to attack it. Tippu waited for British in Doddamalur. But unfortunately Lord Corn Wallis was marching towards Sri Rangapattana. Immediately learning this conspiracy against him Tippu took his army back to the capital Sri Rangapattana. In this joyful occasion Channappa Gowda in AD 1791 re occupied Tippu occupied Midigeshi and ruled for about seven months. This was the most peaceful moment he had in his life. In 1972 Mahanadu prabhus ended their rule as in the treaty of third Anglo Mysore war Tippu lost most parts of his land to British, Channappa Gowda ruled, it remained under Tippu Sultan.

The journey to Madhugiri and to the fort there from Bangalore haunts of this incident, of a journey made from Bangalore to elsewhere but not to any place near the capital of Mahanadu Prabhu’s Madhugiri but had a strong impact on the political economies trajectory of Madhugiri.

While climbing almost impossible steep monolith during our second visit which also has a fort built on and around it, we met an interesting engineering student running up the hill. This reminded me of two incidents. I had come here before, a year ago, with my sister and colleagues; we had met an old man grazing his sheep climbing the slippery mountain wearing a smooth Hawaii slipper without any support. My sister asked him tata (grandfather) how are you climbing, he replied with a sarcastic smile to my metropolitan sister finding it hard to climb, ‘its practice!’ Second, I and my friend had made a road trip to Madikeri, on the way we realized we were on wrong route to Abbi falls; we went towards a small hut, a pork shop on road side in Madikeri to ask for directions. To our surprise a stylish looking tall handsome coorgi man came out of the hut and answered in American accented English, ‘go straight, take left, keep going!’.

We keenly asked the engineering student about the place, why he came to the fort that often. He happily shared with us that the fort had seven entrances making it a ‘yelu suttina kote’ (fort with seven rounds in guard) making it very difficult to conquer in those days and as strong as Chitradurga fort. He also told us that there was a secret route to Chitradurga in the nearby hillock which is closed now. All this drove him up the hill every day.

Another local kannadiga family climbing the hill told us that they come here once in a month, since a mantapa in the hill is on a higher altitude to rest of the taluk it is a cooler place and most of the people visit the fort to relax here. While conversing with him about other tourist spots I got to know that he wanted the hill to get infrastructural improvement. He humbly replied we need a nearly maintained grass like garden and the steps that have been carved on the hillocks stone surface should be redone, the iron stone frame welded for supporting the climb should be made in some other material because, as the temperature raise it becomes difficult to climb down holding the rods. To our sadness he was diplomatic enough to not say with what cultural baggage does he consume the hill and the fort that was not so different from each other for him; to be in the fort is to be on the hill.

Second time we visited Madhugiri to find the statue of Nagi Reddy, which we found did not exist at all. This treasure hunt made us move through the taluk looking for different sources. We were told that the statue of Nagi Reddy was in Venkataramana temple. We went to the temple, surveyed the temple and realized we were in empty hands. Enquiring about the statue to head priest, we were informed that there was nothing like that.

Nagi Reddy who really lived a Prabhu’s life has a lesson to learn from. Nagi Reddy was a despotic, who harassed his subjects. He was never directly connected to Madhugiri, the capital of Mahanadu Prabhus. Not resisting the popularity of Mahanadu Prabhus, he criticized and humiliated Mahanadu Prabhus for being lower in caste hierarchy than him. For this reason Chikkappa Gowda III waged war against him and killed him. His wife committed Sati. After this all the lands of Nagi Reddy was conquered by Mahanadu Prabhus. An interesting folk tale proofs for not finding any lineage of Nagi Reddy clan in the region. Kavallamma, Lakkamma and other seven angels were travelling in sky over Reddy Palya, the village of Nagi Reddy. The reddys were safeguarding their crops by hanging birds and animals feeding on their jowar crops. To make them learn their lesson, Kavallamma plicked a jowar crop. This made a Reddy furiously angry, he caught hold of her forehead and started beating. Naturally Kavallamma retaliated by cursing him of extinction by clan and village slowly disappeared.

Madhugiri might have nostalgia of its inflation and politics but not of its beauty. While documenting Madhugiri Francis Buchanan in his book, A journey from Madras through the countries of Mysore, Canara and Malabar Vol I wrote, ‘the view of the Maddagiri hill on approaching from east is much finer than that of any hill fort I have seen’. The beauty of Madhugiri has also been described by Kannada laureates Hoysala, Masti Venkatesha Iyengar, Doddarange Gowda and others. These are true even to this day. The end of summer and before the onset of monsoon will be a perfect season to visit the place. The summer will make hill and region hotter, rainy season makes the mountain slippery. Keeping this criteria in mind june will be the best season to visit the place.

The beautiful part with Madhugiri apart from its landscape is its wonderful messes. On Sundays the hotels don’t serve meals so one has to visit mess in the locales. They serve some of the best rural south Indian rice and sambar. Much more surprising than this is the locally made packets of mysore pak. They are stacked in most of the groceries run by vyshyas here. To my first sight I just could not believe that they were mysore pak. The very packing itself raised doubts about its quality and taste in me. This is unbelievably true, the moment we eat this, all the boasting of pure ghee sweets that we are assured of, in cities are shattered. These sweets do not have extra fat in the name of pure ghee, they are just perfect. The taste of the taluk raise in vapours of mysore pak to tantalize your nostrils.  Anyone who visits this place must shop this delicacy.

H.A.Anil Kumar writes how Nandi Hills ,then called Ananda Giri meaning ‘The Hill of Happiness’,is a perfect summer retreat not only because of its scenic attractions such as Tipu’s Drop, Tipu’s Summer Palace, Amruth Sarovar Lake etc but also for its temples and mythological history.

‘Tipu drop’ is a famous spot on top of the Nandi hills station from where king Tipu used to drop culprits. Located 60 kms to the north of Bengaluru, it compulsorily rains in the city when clouds accumulate on top of this hill. Nandi to the city is Himalayas to India, in attitude and geography. The new address to this hill is that it is also 30 kms north to the new Kempegowda International Airport (KIA). From this angle, the farming spots around the hill looks a real estate agent’s ‘Mechanas Gold’. Tipu, when he ruled the city, it seems, used to drop the State’s enemies from that drop, which was/is steep. There is a renewed joke about it: one of them, who was about to be dropped, protested with a different reason. “I am not afraid to fall and die, but don’t like it below, it’s getting too hot and am going to miss the cold here at the top” he seem to have said. Obviously, he was dropped for telling the obvious truth, this time for telling it to Tipu, instead of to the enemy king!

As the fellow who was dropped said it, the drop in the temperature of Bengaluru, though in a reverse order, is in a way warming up to the phenomena of global warming. The more the city gets hotter, the more is Nandi Hills in demand for its cool temperature. In my childhood days, I saw the vehicles, then rare though, moving far away from the city to Chikkaballapura, the next district, from the top of Nandi; and completely mistook it to be tiny play vehicles and not the big-ones-at-a-distance! May be that is the reason I came into visual arts and have been coming back, time and again, to Nandi hills, since few decades – in order to rectify the perceptual misconception! This is my favorite spot and my favorite anecdote to respectively show and narrate to all those whom I take there, whether they listen or not. Some act very concerned, “Do you still feel them small or you have grown up?” they insist.

Among seven hills, Nandi hill was converted into a hill-station by the Botanical department of the British government. The news that Gandhi stayed here is not only factual but has become legendary, like Rama and Sita staying and walking in various places, throughout the country. One thing for sure, all of them had big, six foot lengthy feet and the rocks became sand when they stepped upon it. That’s how their footprints are visible everywhere, bigger as well so that even myopic people can see through their presence. The ten thousand people who flock Nandi throughout the weekends want to convert the trees into sand – they write their names every possible where; and write the name of those whom they can’t be without, next to those names! At one time ‘Tipu Drop’ was so infamous for committing suicide that when someone tried to jump from elsewhere, he was ardently instructed by a Nandi Hill fan, “Please jump from Tipu Drop only. It’s worth the money; and the experience is unique and unrepeatable, believe me!” Since Kannadigas (people staying in Karnataka) want to travel rather than turn their homes into travel places, they dropped the idea of converting Tipu Drop as the right spot to embark upon a journey-of-no-return. Even if someone is half dead after jumping from here, route to either the foothills or the top is so complicated that he/she will spend the rest of his/her (left over) life reaching it.

It is so cold up in Nandi that the gates close at 7pm sharp everyday night, not for the fear that otherwise someone is going to die of pneumonia. One should book the rooms inside that gate, to stay overnight, to happily drink beer in the government guest house and to more happily watch the jewel-like lit villages below and the runway of the KIA airport at a distance. May be Tipu should have dropped that pun-filled pundit in night times, with warm regards, because the one who was dropped could have easily caught the flight directly from the runway to heavens.
Shankarnag, known to the rest of the country for his direction of ‘Malgudi Days’ Hindi tele-serials, wanted to construct a rope-way to Nandi hills from top to bottom, or even the other way round. The road accident which killed him when he was just 37 also killed this project as well in 1992. In the Kannada remake of Devanand’s ‘Jewel Thief’ film, Raj Kumar points out towards the city from top of Nandi hills and says that, “Once I am the king, this is my kingdom”. Most climax scenes of Kannada films, wherein the villain or vamp are dropping the male or female child from top of Nandi hills and the hero or heroine is holding on to him or her and kicking the villain or vamp – were all shot in Nandi hills.

People come to Nandi hills to see it from a distance while arriving; and come to see the surrounding districts, after having climbed it. Once on top, the horizon surrounds the hills like a circle, all around. The sun set is not seen only in the west but its effect on the eastern horizon leaves an illusion of the penultimate moments of sunrise as well, like the midsummer of the Nordic countries! Nandi Hills is the cooler as well as the rain harvesting system to a field called Bangalore! Dawn or dusk is the right time to be at Nandi Hills. If you have seen the dawn over here you are a healthy person, because you got up to the early morning mist so earnestly, willingly. If you have seen the dusk over here, it means you are well connected and can afford to overstay, legally or otherwise.

The only way you can climb Nandi is to drive or get driven, with a drive to sight-see. There are altogether seven mountains like this, while only Nandi is put to use. The Bhoganandishwara temple at the foot of the hills is a thousand year old Hoysala-Pallava dynasties construction, that mischievously but brilliantly contests the mystical fact that those two dynasties always punctured each other’s royalty. May be they had a time-out session, wherein they together partied on this hill! The guides, very few of them, tell you these and other stories for a pay which imitates the process of alms-giving. The temple has exquisite carvings a photographer’s delight; a kalyani (water tank) very pleasant for-your-eyes (only, not to take a bath). From this temple, Nandi Hill looks like heaven, if you keep in mind the fact that that is exactly the aim of any temple – to show you heavens.

One needs to drive around the hill, to reach the top, in a clockwise direction, which is almost like driving in the ghat sections, for about 9 kms uphill. Often the truck drivers driving back from Nandi hills are seen getting down from their vehicles and helping out private car owners, to drive upwards with a particular knack. If the drivers or the directions are reversed in such cases, the private vehicle owners who drive can come down walking and collect their vehicles at the foot of the hills – for, the vehicles would have travelled without an owner/driver, just for a change!

The mood on top of Nandi hills is always engrossed by the meticulously planted greenery by the botanical department. The varieties of saplings, flora and fauna, distantly owe gratitude to the German, Mr.Krumbigal, the garder-expert who turned Bengaluru into a garden city. There are no specific places to visit ‘on’ Nandi, but one can move from a temple, to a hotel, from a plantation to a bus stop, over there. All that is to be seen is ‘outside’ of Nandi, as if Shiva is seated on Nandi and watching kailasa all around him. Physically fit people walk all the way from the city to the foothill of Nandi on Shivarathri festive evening; and climb Nandi almost counting the steps. Those in the farm lands all around Nandi sell grapes, cucumber, guava, flowers to the visitors on the highway. The farmers are/were the sellers without a mediator. However, now they are more privileged – - the real estate people visit the farmers in their own abodes, to buy the farm land and convert them into resorts, industries and similar public sectors. This is only if some agricultural land is still left over, without being already sold for similar purposes!

Nandi hill is half a kilometer drive from the northern edge of Bengaluru. This was the hill which was visible from any high-rise building in the city in the 70s, when such high-rises were rare. You see Nandi in one whole form, as if it is intricately composed and connected. On the other hand, Bengaluru, seen from Nandi, is like a being distorted and fragmented due to disorganized planning and demonic ambitions. For those who break their heads in matters of town planning of the Metro, Nandi is an ideal place to chill out. Or, there is another myth about Nandi: no matter how suffocating the city of Bengaluru is, it seems pleasant only from one point – i.e. when seen from Nandi Hills

Every moment we travel, freeze memories and learn unlearn something. Through his words,H.A. Anil Kumar explores the real definition of travel.

As this guy rode in a bicycle towards me, I realized that he had a cheap artificial leg that would have drawn the attention of the whole village back home in India. It was a tiny village somewhere in between Columbia and Jaffna, in 2012 or so, after the LTTE chief Prabhakaran was officially announced dead. I spoke to him, not Prabhakaran, but the one-legged-fellow; and he appeared special to me not just because he was one legged but because of the peculiar artificial leg he carried and that carried him. He appeared more special after he began to speak, about travels.

“We travel because we are sure to come back from it!” he insisted that travel was a job, a sentence, a task, from which one needs to be ‘release from’, sooner or later. “Why did you come to Colombo?” he asked and smiled, expecting any and all the replies to be below the mark of mediocrity. “I am sure you are not sure. If you knew, you would have refused to come here because of the burden of knowing beforehand, about your travel!” I did not understand his words in all its essence, even after returning back to India; and even to this day. The only thing I realized was that his artificial leg was very enthusiastic to move, it always appeared in the shape of an exclamatory mark! As if an afterthought, I realized that all his sentences ended with an ‘!’ i.e. exclamatory marks!!!

A Journey becomes a travel when we realize that not everything that we ‘see’ and ‘hear’ can be realized!    

Nobody is a lonely traveller, for we always travel with guilt: of being extravagant, because we don’t consider a purposeful journey as ‘travel’! We don’t travel for pleasure, for always change the definition of pleasure. How else can one justify the ‘Dharavi slum tourism’, ‘Indian election tourism’ and the religious ‘guilt tourism’ to places like Tirupathi, Dharmasthala and Dhammashala. What is so pleasurable about being witness to poverty, theatricality and the mad trade between religion and economy, respectively?

Contemporary travels aim at a moment of inner, deeper fulfillment. Hence it is a growing industry. The hunger of an establishment depends on the fulfillment of people’s yearning to travel. Earlier, those who would go to religious places had to renounce something dear to them, over there. Some, as the joke goes, would drop their elders, redefining them as burdens. Others, who would renounce their anger there, would get really angry when asked repeatedly about it!

Murderers and thugs would run off to religious places wherein they would be availed with one sumptuous meal and a piece of cloth every day, throughout their lifetime, due to the belief system. Those travels are always with one way ticket, like that of those who are getting ready to go to Mars, now. “You want to climb up; we want to go deep within” is a quotation that separates the travel-attitude, between the past and the present, East and the West, as is mentioned in the film “Seven Years in Tibet”.

The one-legged Srilankan’s question and teasing statement about the burden of travel needs time off travel, to contemplate. He was speaking in the land of an overwhelming presence of Buddha, like Cheguvara is present in India. It was Gautama who said that the best journey is to travel here and now. Why do we travel? Really? A teenager recently replied, “to travel! Travel is its very purpose, isn’t it!?” Thus the imagination-of-travel-in-itself has become a memento for travellers, they relish bringing back only one thing now, unlike earlier times (mementos-as-reminders-of-travels were the objectives). They bring frozen memories in visual forms: the future photos, to be imprisoned in their Facebook accounts!

Physical movement from one to other place is an ancient mode of travel. If one follows it, even today, despite quicker access through fast engines/gadgets and virtual worlds, such a travel is considered pilgrimage. ‘Home away from home’ is a riddle: where do people residing in/near Vatican, Haridwar, Taj Mahal, Las Vegas and Pyramids travel to? Hence, visiting a place is different from travel, considering travel as a means to an end is taking away half of the pleasure it offers.

My care taker artist at HIAP in Helsinki (Finland) used to ask me often whether I feel like going back to India. Most artists-in-residency, it seems, did so, owing to the cold, solitariness and boredom. I said no, not because of mere courtesy. Back at home, my friends asked me whether I feel like going back to Helsinki. Being tired of my company was not the only reason for them to ask that question.

A disbelief that the answer lies within is the basic reason for travel. Realizing it is called as a return-journey. Yet there is and will be only one reason to travel: to find out why one does so!//

Chavittu Nadakam is a colorful Latin Christian classical art form originated in Cochin,Kerala. Tanya Abraham goes to its birthplace to know this ‘Indian Opera’ deeper and better.

I am in Vypeen in Kochi, with Joy, a Chavittu nadakam artist. My research on culture, and their confluences has brought me to him.He is young, in his late twenties and one of the few of his generation who have chosen to carry on the tradition of the dance-drama.He offers me a cup of tea, we are sitting in his drawing room, the TV buzzing with that evening’s Asianet News. Joy’s wife Omana is standing at the doorway to the kitchen, attentively listening to it.I wonder if she can hear, as Joy lowers the volume. He then pulls out an album of photographs – of his father and uncles, artists who don’t perform any longer. I am curious why he gave up his college degree to become a Chavittu nadakam artist. “i believe that is what I am born to do, the reason why I was born into this family.’ Three generations of artists, have won his family pride; an array of certificates and places sit dust free on the shelf above the TV. Prized possessions. I tell him the reason I am visiting him, that I need to know how this particular art form is an interesting amalgamation of details, where history ties stories together. Joy is thinking, and says that the reason is simple; We are in Kerala, so much has happened in Kochi over the last centuries. ‘Besides music and dance has been the medium of expression, of communication,’ he adds.

Chavittu nadakam carries in its bosom specifics which no other art form has – It is special. It is a narrative of the past – both through movement and speech, and emerged in Cochin amongst a specific community of people called the Latin Catholics in the 17th century. Chavittu means stamp and nadakam means drama. And it is performed by men only,requiring enormous strength and stamina. I am amused at the elaborate, gaudy costumes which hang in Joy’s bedroom.Sequenced jackets, satin pants and crowns in gold paper. ‘It is too expensive to have metal crowns any longer, so we use paper and embellish it with colorful plastic stones. We need to portray royalty, he says. Wigs of various hair texture and colours are places in clear plastic bags in a basket, each assigned for a particular performance.The dramas are set in the Portuguese period, and the costumes carry the flavor.Of Indian men in pink make up and red tinted lips, everything to provide a foreign look. The costumes seem odd for hot weather, but Portuguese Cochin is brought alive on stage. Joy invites me to a performance that evening, and promises he would have me escorted home late that day. Vypeen is a boat’s ride from mainland Kochi, and performances are always at night.It provides to the drama, and the excitement is elaborate with lights and sound.I promptly agree, and promise his wife to help her pack his costumes in a cardboard box. Omana has them arranged on the bed, and combs out the wigs – black, brown and auburn.They go into the box as well and before we know it, Joy is honking from his Maruti 800. I manage to squeeze in at the back, the box snug next to me. It is an hour’s drive from Kochi, he announces.First we cross the waters and then ply our way to Allepey. The church there has asked for a performance, for its Centenary Celebrations.We are to meet the rest of the troupe enroute, at a tea stall where they will stop for a early meal. ‘It is not always easy to find people who want a Chavittu nadakam performance, very few people perform these days; its a dying art he says.I can sense the pain in his voice, as he swallows, his Adam’s apple moving in unison. I notice anxiety rise around in the car, from uncertainty (and a college degree forgotten).

At the tea stall, a van of peering faces stare at us.Pink faces with moles and artificial mustaches.They spill out of the vehicle, sweat beads forming on their painted faces.The make-up artist is dabbing them clean. Joy introduces me to Anthony maash, a veteran and a dedicated Chavittu nadakam enthusiast. He invites me for a cup of tea, with Joy sitting opposite to me.He lights a beedi.’ It started during the time of the Portugese, when they ruled in Kerala.It is the folk dance of the coastal region, and has a religious tone to it.That is why the church still supports it today, perhaps our only support. Religion plays an important role as stories tend to be Biblical or at least carry a Biblical tone:Stories from the Bible were best communicated through dance, music and drama; it was an ideal way to spread Christianity in the region. I decide to mount the van, to be with Anthony mash. He lights another beedi. He narrates a portion of the entrance dialogue to me : The dialogue is extensive and has to be bi-hearted, and are narrated with the stomping of the feet on the wooden stage.The sound of the stomps add to the drama, accentuates the narration. I am amazed at the skill required to synchronize the two, Anthony mash says he can do it in his sleep.

By the time the van moves through a paddy field and into the church compound, people have already begun to gather.The church vicar is there to greet us, and looks at me oddly.I quickly introduce myself.He ignores me.Joy makes sure I get a chair to sit on, V.I.P seating, he says.The others are squatted on the ground. Anthony mash and team have already readied themselves backstage.A gong strikes and the actors appear.I trace the Malayalam in the dialogue and parts are in ancient Portuguese, some a creole. Narrations break out into songs, much in Tamil.The close proximity of Kerala to Tamil Nadu explains the reason why, but also the interesting idea that Tamil scholars and musicians once traversed Kochi.The music and percussion provide a strong ambience, stomping of feet and elaborate gestures mesmerize the audience. I am awed. There is no art form in Kerala which is so unique; the merging of history, culture and ideas from different parts of the globe.Joy appears in orange satin pants and a cross in hand.The otherwise quiet man breaks out in loud dialogue.I clap. Omana smiles at me.The church vicar doesn’t turn to look, but his assistant next to me says that it will perhaps be the last time the church will have the performance.’Too expensive…. the travel, the stage.’ My heart goes out to Joy and his team.Patrons no longer exist, the art is dying and artists are few. Maybe Joy would go back to a regular job in the years to come, I think. I glance at Omana.’His college degree still holds good,’ she says.

H.A. Anil Kumar takes us down an artsy road as he inspects the cultural face of Paris with the Louvre protecting the famous Monalisa and the Eiffel tower standing tall offering a romanticized view at dusk.

I was bargaining the prize of Eiffel Tower, yet to buy it. It was in the form of a memento of what stood just in front of me in reality. Something happened at that moment. My vendor shrunk together the huge shawl containing several such mementos, bundled it and ran away from the police when the latter arrived on the spot. A dozen of such vendors followed suit. “The police run fast like a lover towards the spouse, while the thief is running away faster from the spouse, like a married person” said an old Russian woman to her tourist friend, in a tone which could have been a taboo in a decent social gathering. The memento remained in my hand, but I hadn’t paid the vendor, knew that he would be around and would come back to pick up his due, no matter how many policemen and women chase him. It was spectacular to see those immigrants, selling mementos of Eiffel Tower near its own original self. I could not decipher as to what was illegal, their immigration or the product they were selling. Later I realized that the same memento sold for one Euro over there was five times cheaper than the ones sold in the shops. The shop owners could not stomach the low priced Eiffel mementos. That could have been the reason behind this chase. Those salesmen-immigrants who were caught would be packed back to the countries from wherein they came, since they lacked appropriate visa and passport documents.

Travelling in Paris in 2010, I had the chance to keep a rendezvous with two tall monuments, one by choice and the other one as an inevitable entity. The former was a presence while the latter, a monument. Obviously the second one has been literally and triangularly ‘shaping’ the character of the city since last eleven decades. No matter how many tall structures rose around it, this Tower’s shadow has been demeaning the structures’ appearances between East and West, everyday, round the clock.

When a French writer wanted to escape its overwhelming presence — narrates another writer, much later – the only way he could do so was by taking refuge in the café inside the Tower! Eiffel Tower, which was initially designed to be a temporary monument for six months, in 1900, commemorating industrializations, has over stayed for rather too long, despite the criticism by many including its own contemporaries like Rabindranath Tagore!

The second of the city’s two overwhelming monuments was more abstract, a feel. She has been a foreigner to the French, like those immigrants-selling-mementos who ran for their life, from the police, with a bedsheet full of Eiffel’s mementos. Yet she – without eyebrows — was very welcome in Paris and the Parisians in turn have been welcoming visitors because of several reasons that compulsorily don’t exclude her! This foreigner has been bringing in a lot of economic profit to the French. The foreigner’s (Italian ‘Monalisa’) presence had been constantly pronounced at the airport, the bookshops, café and tourist pamphlets about the city. How many countries do use a singular foreign cultural entity to profit, like the French do?

Like everyone else who came in did, even I did enquire about her, while being inside a palace-once-upon-a-time, the Louvre museum. Rushing towards her also meant overlooking others portraits and was also an insult to all those represented men and women, whom I passed through. I even failed to notice that the Greek ‘Nike of Samothrace’ actually stood on a carved stone ship larger than her overall gliding figure. She has been separated from her ship in most of the art history books that have reproduced her in photographic formats. The fact that I had ignored to notice it came to my realization, while returning back, after keeping a rendezvous with ‘Monalisa’!

Eiffel Tower gives no concession. A ticket priced nine dollars to go up half way through and thirteen dollars to the tip, comes without any concession. Eiffel gave me a concession half way through, in the sense, I felt like going the full length of the height and so I purchased my online journey ticket from half way through midair! As if to compensate the cost or the costliness of traversing the tower, it can be and has been picturized through aerial shots in feature films, unlike Monalisa. This special Woman occupies almost all of the cover pages of the publication at the Louvre, giving an impression that all books are the same, or, that there are too many Monalisas inside the museum! When I produced my identity card as an art history teacher, from India, they not only let me get into the museum for free, but I could also skip the human queue consisting of at least a five hundred people on a holiday, to gain an entry to Louvre. And I could revisit Louvre, again and again, several times, day after day, for the same price of free entry! During one such visit, I realized that I had left my identity card in my hotel room after returning. The gatekeeper had recognized me as the regular visitor; the Indian with the art historian’s ID and let me in without asking for my card, during this occasion!

Yet, when I arrived in the room where this special women resided behind the bullet proof glass, all I could do was to imitate the ritual of everyone else’s attempt to ‘be there’ rather than ‘see her’. Monalisa is a blind man’s spot. She was just in front of us but all of could not see her. My sight failed to pierce through the glasses I was wearing and through the double layer of bullet proof glasses that lay between me and her. We were mutually not only separated by time and geography, but also by blindness of communication. I for one, who loves fantasy, could not bring myself together to consider it as an original. Buddha’s tooth has been similarly displayed in Candy (Srilanka) which you can only sense and believe only from a distance. Monalisa, in this sense, is the first simulated art of the western world. She is approachable only through her reproductions, like the simulated prehistoric rock paintings in Lascaux.

Monalisa is older to Eiffel tower by three and a half century. The one who can see her at close range, into her intricate details, is the one who would be assigned to restore her, time and again! Monalisa, unlike Eiffel, has become an object-of-myth and not an object-of-Art! Monalisa resembles the Konark Sun temple in Orissa in another sense. Both engross the audience to not what they were initially intended to mean, but to observe how both their initial schemes and meanings have been toppled over, owing to their popularity.

Like most visitors, I felt the empathy of ‘being’ with her in the same room, rather than ‘see’ her. Literally nobody could see her in the eyes! And now we speak so much about the visual brilliance hidden within the ‘sfumato’ technique, inherent within her and expressed by her creator, as it is written in the books. We subject ourselves to her gaze, an artwork rejoices watching the viewer’s dilemma of being in front of what they can’t see! On the other hand, while being at its permitted tip, Eiffel tower neither is part of the city nor hides us from itself. Instead, it vertically splits itself into its actual self, containing us and its own shadow, which clads the city’s buildings like a skin-tight-transparent-brown-sheet.

After spending a few days at Paris, I remembered a peculiar similarity between Eiffel Tower and Monalisa, as well. For me, dusk was the best period to be on top of the tower, for, I could watch the day turning into night, while it is in the dusk that the act of the tower which cuts itself from its shadow, ends, as artificial lights lit the tower as well as the city.

Even while travelling through the city’s roads, I could see parts of the tower, never complete when not close to it. On the other hand the famous lady was also familiar to all, irrespective of the scholarly and the mundane. Nobody in Paris resembled her, in the sense that she is a foreigner and international figure.

The one thing we do while visiting Indian temples not as tourists but as devotees is that we rest for a while, after the ritual offering. Both the tower and the women at Paris demanded this from me. The silhouette of Eiffel in the dark poses a weird question: what is it we are going through, in order to watch what? – addresses one and the same tower. Hence the tower doesn’t have walls but only gaps to pass through. To see it is to be physically away from it. To see Monalisa, on the other hand, is to yield ourselves to the sight of what we initially intended to see!

While seated outside the Louvre in the darkness, after hours of watching the museum throughout the day, the first thing that occurred to me was that it was not the eyes but the legs that got tired watching Monalisa. Similarly Eiffel Tower became a comical silhouette in the dark. Thinking about Monalisa outside the Louvre, Eiffel tower is not visible from there. The Louvre building format, with three sides, is so flat that it needs a central glass pyramid to let us go in as well as lit up the ambience. This flatness and literal depth contrasts with the towering height of the Eiffel. Thus the distances, both empathic and emotional ones, ambiguously pronounces that sight wants to colonize the viewer rather than yield.

Paris is an unusual city wherein language is no barrier. You can easily instruct the cab driver by pointing your fingers to the towering height or the cover page of a cultural book; and he will be able to take you to both the places, to Eiffel and then to Louvre.

Clyde D’mello makes you remember the by gone era while capturing the perpetually changing nature of Bangalore.Seeing Bengaluru through the eyes of Bangalore he connects the dots retaining its contemporary essence.

Bangalore is an ever-changing city that has captured the imagination of many who would love to visit the city as well as those who have lived in it, “lonely Planet” the magazine has rated Bangalore 3^rd amongst 10 cities in the world worth a visit. However, to what extent? I remember a Bangalore where the winters would be cold enough to wear layers and layers of clothes especially in the months of November, December, January and the summers would be cloudy with short bursts of sunlight, now and then with a slight drizzle- the perfect English town weather.

Elders of a bygone era would remember Bangalore as a place of built houses in a 30/40 or a 40/60 site with ample amount of space for everybody in the family. In addition, were rows of trees, with parks in certain nooks and corners that were aligned to the footpath to bring in a welcoming feel to any given time or space within the city. Elders remember Bangalore to be a place of apple Orchards and grape vines in Cubbon Park (Bangalore is still one of the major wine players in the nation).

The city was based on the Bangalore fort which was founded by Kempegowda 1(the Vijaynagara period) in the 16^th century, that became a stronghold for Tipu sultan against the British and after the takeover by the British Bangalore became larger (The establishment of the cantonment) even the name got changed- from Bengaluru it became Bangalore, recently it again got changed from Bangalore to Bengaluru.

But progress has come in, Bangalore now is a city laden with malls, flyovers, congested traffic, Asthmatic attacks, Apartments, a ring road and to add to that an extension road. These go towards Mysore – the neighboring town (NICE road), and an outer peripheral ring road which connects to Tumkur in the north all with Hosur in the south Magdi roughly in the west and Devanhalli in the east, all of which belongs to Bangalore rural sector ( which connects the “progressed” section of the city from other parts of the State(Karnataka) and the nation (here Bangalore to Mysore).

Bangalore as a map has been ever changing never at rest. There was a time where the extent of the city was limited to Cox town, Malleswaram, Baswangudi and Kormangala tank (East, west, North, South){it was a Cantonment in every form}  the city has been ever changing and in every three to six months a new Bangalore is formed.

Locals who have the habit of travelling outside the city never recognize it once they are back, a sort of shock takes over them.

The recent addition to the brand of Bangalore is the IT  sector aka Silicon city, which has made Bangalore to be one among the rich and costly cities to live in the nation, And with the addition of the outer ring road to facilitate the travel to these sectors the Bangalore that was, became no more. Those who are a part of the fringes of the city also feel alienated because of the addition of an Outer- Outer ring road as well as the establishment of the Metro station, which is again a recent addition to the Bangalore map.

Bangalore at one time was called the Garden City due to its large sized parks, rows of trees on the footpath or pavements, but now due to the construction of flyovers and Underpasses to facilitate travel and to “ease traffic” the amount of trees or even gardens to that matter are reduced to patches in and around Bangalore. The changing weather is noticed predominantly due to the city having an altitude of around 920 meters above sea level as well as pollution and global warming issues, which are affecting the climate drastically an older generation, would remember of a Bangalore being pleasantly cold and would complain about the climate now from then as it changes from year to year.

The city is or should I say was dotted with lakes, but due to the ever increasing population lakes were taken over by the BBMP (BRUHAT BANGALORE MAHANAGRA PALIKE aka Bangalore metropolitan corporation) and by reclaiming the land came in the addition of apartments to support the ever increasing influx of people from different parts of the nation.

Well enough of complaining!

A person from another country or from within the nation, visiting Bangalore would definitely fall in love with the place, this is due to the fact that Bangalore still has a charm, a CHARM of the old welcoming space even after the cities ever changing map, its weather still bearable ( but while standing over a house full layer of pollution). The outer ring road connects to most of the cities desirable spots, Hebbal a stop along the ring road connects to both the centralized bus stand – Majestic as well as Kempegowda international airport. Krishnaraj Puram connects both to Indiranagar which in turn connects to Brigade road ,Mahatama Gandhi Road which is one of the major hang out spots of urban Bangalore. This in turn connects to Shivajinagar bus stand which is the second centralized bus stand in Bangalore which connects to the cantonment section of Bangalore  having most of the English names like Cox town , Frazer town , Parade Ground etc. dotted with military grounds and barracks across cantonment. Going back to Indiranagar would connect you to Marathalli, Whitefield and Kormangala (places well known for having offices of the IT sector. From Majestic bus station is Banshankari which in turn connects to Kengeri a further point on the ring road which also houses The Bangalore University. It is only because of the local transportation system of which I am talking is the bus route, is Bangalore well connected. Thus making a full circle of the city during the 90’sand early 2000’s.

Plus everything is within reach one does not need to travel from one end of the city to another to fetch-let’s say WATERMELONS, or even clothes to that matter everything in Bangalore (like how it was in the old days) is now within the reach of the public because of progress i.e. change brought within the city to sustain its growing population.

Yet it is within this gamut of the city where areas that were once easily recognized are now alien due to the ever-changing map of Bangalore, for eg. Kamanhalli was just a row of houses in mains and crosses and just in a few years it has become what Indiranagar was 8 to 10 years back an on the road shopping mall- no longer the quite town that it used to be.

Yet the idea that proximity makes less of congestion still prevails in Bangalore this can be seen with the dotting of Flyovers in and around the ring road yet due to the lateness of construction and availability of materials, by the time the flyover is constructed the traffic is already increased sevenfold.

Bangalore is thus an interesting city never at rest with its ever-growing map and as it increases in space, it forfeits its serenity form the influx of the populous with apartments and malls or as a friend of mine would say

“You either beat the city or join the city- the rush is part of the experience”

Passport-to-Jungfrau:

It was more than Just‘ice’

Given a chance would you stay alone in a place where the temperature is in the negative, the ‘top of Europe’ from where life loses its impudence and the panoramic view transcends the relative boundaries of achievements and failures? H.A. Anil Kumar contemplates as the large white spread at Jungfrau annuls the horizon of time and space

They issued me a passport to travel to the ‘Top of Europe’ by train! The means and the destination, both shared the same name though. Located on the tip of the Swiss Jungfrau Mountains, it was a spot popularized by James Bond and Krish 3 films, among others. The difference was only villains and superheroes lived and visited it in films. Closer at home, the meaningless-interlude, in the form of song-dance sequences in Indian films was constantly being shot there. However no hero revealed a six pack from over there. Once at the top of ‘Top of Europe’ I realized that this ‘meaninglessness’ in Indian popular cinema and the ‘vertigo’ that the bedspread of ice on top of Jungfrau evoked within one’s top (brains) were correlated!

I had not seen ice, forget about being amidst it. The ticket-in-the-form-of-passport was issued to me as a mark of celebrating the 100^th year of building the six kilometer railroad inside the mountain to reach the top. The poster of actress Aishwarya Rai greeted me as I got into the only Swiss train whose windows could be operated, while I also noticed certain Mehta or other Bollywood film maker’s name etched on the train! I was seriously following the trail left behind by Superman, Spiderman and Krish. I had undertaken a journey of ‘seeing’ where the ice would delete all my ‘prejudices-of-seeing’ like the compulsive existence of horizon lines, while seeing anything.

The journey was not as simple or comfortable as I presumed it to be. The train was well designed to take too long to cover too short a distance. When this two-liner stopped every now and then, I noticed two things: the three Indian ex-patriots were wearing one tenth of the dress-code necessary to be amidst the ice and the second thing was, the semi-circular windows near each stop would reveal what was awaiting us at the top (of Europe). The landscape was just-ice. The whole earth – through the window – looked like a crumpled sheet of huge paper made up of ice. I would not pretend to know what it felt like to be there, though my eagerness was questioned by the conflict between my capacity for the ice/ frost and my assumption of how it would actually be in reality.

I also realized that my ‘top’ was feeling a bit dizzy due to water imbalance, which is generally called ‘vertigo’. Caused by ice, I renamed it as ‘Icophobia’. Forget about leveling super-spider-krish-men’s capacity to (m)eat ice, the migraine inside me was shooting to its brim, due to the lack of oxygen, as and when we moved closer to the top. Yet, the poster of Rajnikanth in the ‘Bollywood’ hotel and the four-euro masala chai availed, as we emerged out of the top, was reassuring. Those expat-Indians-in-one-tenth-clothes were nowhere to be seen, as we emerged out of the mountain.

We climb Eiffel Tower to see outside it, to see Paris. Leaning tower is to be seen from outside itself. London-Eye reveals the city in a specifically orchestrated manner of visibility. Jungfrau, on the other hand,  is like Smithson’s ‘Spiral Jetty’ – you travel inside it thinking of the end and when you reach up there you realize that the very train travel route forms the tail of the end, together shaping up in the representation of a sperm. It destroys our notion of the white-cube. Yet, there is more to ‘feel’ than ‘see’. That’s why I was more worried about moving in the ice rather than seeing it. We imagine more of all those covered and camouflaged within the ice than merely see its spread. It somehow reminded me of Greenberg’s definition of Modern Art – you see the surface first and then sense what lies beneath. Some Asian tourists were identifying a seated Buddha at one end of the 360 degree ice-spread. The demand to meet the expectation of imagery is at the heart of a travel.

Jungfrau did not seem like its own self, had I travelled all the way to just watch this mere spread of white-in-white? All through, my movement was orchestrated by what someone had literally carved within the mountain in the form of the railroad, restaurants, rest rooms and the like. I emerged out of it for a while, only to cover a piece of 1/4^th of an acre of ice which was inversely proportional to the ‘width’ of my expectation about it. The ropes were well tied up all around beyond the permitted area, lest one should vanish off into the white-heaven forever. Everyone did what everyone else did, as if they were in front of Monalisa. Nobody watches her and the ice, both are treated equally. Everybody turns their back to these two to take photos of ‘us’ with ‘them’!

Accidentally I walked back into the contemporary cave and realized – just like spider-super-krish-men’s adventure – that there was a lift that would lift us up by another six-seven floors. Out of the lift, was the true Jungfrau, its views, its heart and its essence. Ordinary men (and women) become saintly just by having a glimpse of it. Learned people also understand the futility of their preoccupations as well.

Here I was at the top of Europe, though there was only one mountain next to me, slightly above me. What you feel is what you see there because what is visible doesn’t match what one would have thought and imagined about it. For instance, the distance between the two mountains was immeasurable, for there was no human intervention or human-measured-proportions into it. I did not know how there was a crow just below the  metallic railings below my feet, at that height. I could not realize how far below were those who were skating on circular-tyre-like easy-go apparatuses. Nor did I realize the width of the glass-tunnel below, through which people were peeping out like ants. ‘Distance’ and ‘familiarity’ were emptied from my very perception. I had never seen my own earth in which I had spent four decades, in the way it was visible in front of me right now. This is perhaps what the Sufis meant when they said you can’t see even when it is visible nor can you see even when you think you are.

The mysteries behind the connection between sadhu-babas and Himalayas became clear to me at Jungfrau. The cold had become a tiny metaphoric object which had literally entered inside me, mainly moving around both my palms and brain. The migraine was unbearable, the hands refused to peep out of the gloves even for a while, to click photographs. The small café, out of which I had emerged, had the appearance of an Astronomic construction that must have attracted the filmmakers to it. The famous Sherlock Holmes, who visited Jungfrau in one of his adventure, was frozen in the form of an ice-sculpture inside the artificially created ice-museum within the mountain. Any amount of success of any kind fails to create warmth in these parts. Hence an immense awareness of one’s physical limits is the reward that a mountaineer achieves, when he succeeds.

What we plan and think is controlled by man-made-interiors and exteriors. They are our work place and homes and everything in-between. At the top of Jungfrau, a sense of deja vu takes over. I had a feel that I was ‘at the edge’ – of everything, ideas, plans, physique, and preoccupation. It was a natural body-mind massage of perceptual excess. Whatever images, stored for a life time, of everybody and everything, refused to be collaged upon the white crumpled screen in front of me. Being on top of Jungfrau was like the immediate aftermath of an accident. All our concentration will be of that moment; and upon our body and the anxiety as to what happens to it in the immediate future. Super heroes, to whom I was playing an alibi, are also bound to such binding ice.

People were either getting excited or bored of getting photographed ‘in’ the ice. They were confused, as it happens in front of an artwork, as to how long should they stay there. The last train to the ground was at 5.30pm. It was mind-boggling to see the staff clearing everyone into the train, because if by chance someone stays back, they would be dead with cold by the time their bodies are recovered the next day morning.

“Given a chance, would you stay in this café (6’ x 10’) overnight, alone?” asked a friend.

“I don’t know. But thanks for suggesting the idea, it’s worth contemplating about it after getting back to the warmth of my home (country)” I said. The noise of the icy mountains, commixed with the wind as well as an unusual silence is a treat to the ears. It rings even more, triggering more and more migraine, since the sound of the ice empties what lies within the ears than fills it. The sound and feel of the cold is its vision. The sound track in the best of the Swiss films, about its mountain-life, is evidence to this.

Think about this: I had my first confrontation with that which evaded me for so long. I saw something that did not match my overall perceptive ability, was in a place which was not my notion of space; and realized the futility attached with achievements. I had suffered Icophobia as well as got insights from the suffering, both for the first time. I had travelled to a place to realize that the route is a part of the destination, which, when reached, would write off any difference between means and ends as futile. Super-spider-krish-men look special – even for kids – because they do hint at such possibilities of Jungfrau. A train-passport to the top-of-nowhere is a right attitude to be! When I reached the ground, I was myself ‘plus’ something more which had ‘deleted’ certain prejudice about an absent confrontation with ever changing nature’s ability. My notion of Jungfrau and the ice changed me in a way that the ‘being amidst’ it shifted the focus off me to that which consumed me, making me a part of it. At least Jungfrau told me so.

Going away from her conventional choice of places, staring back at her fear, feeling the adrenaline rush, Shubhasree Purkayastha embarked on a journey without any fear and regrets..    

Once upon a time, I was a very picky traveller. I would only visit a place if it completely appealed to me, which meant it always ended up being a place with some historical significance. Coincidently, I have never had a dearth of people who would accompany me on these trips, be it family or friends.

Hence, it had always been this way – me picking out a place with some important historic story attached to it, usually in the remotest corners of the country and preferably with a museum (Yes, I know what I sound like right now…).

So when I received the concept note for this edition of the magazine, I began to think of all the other experiences that I have had which might make it to the theme of “overcoming your fears and emerging victorious”.

There are so many such incidents from our everyday lives – attending a friend’s birthday party who is also friends with your recently broken-up Ex, but really not caring after a while because you are too busy having fun, or making excuses at a Karaoke Club but ended up singing song-after-song at the sorest of your voice.

In days like these, I have felt extremely awkward and uncomfortable initially. But the trick is to let go, and it has always ended on a good note. Touchwood.

Years ago on a similar day, during a vacation from school, a group of us decided to spend a day at an adventure park in West Delhi. I was never a fan of adventure parks. I have vertigo and I get air-sickness in flights. So when this was decided, I agreed to join thinking I was going to spend the time sitting on a bench, eating candy-floss and waving at my friends from below.

Little did I know that my plans were going to be altered in ways more than one. For starters, the entry itself to the park cost me a fortune (Although they did come with the benefit of trying out every ride as many times as one likes). We were still living on pocket money, and I could not afford luxuries.

After paying so much, it sounded insane to enter only for candy floss. So I wondered, “Oh well, I could get on the smaller rides, the ones more closer to ground level…like the boat attached to a huge knot that rocks back and forth, or those really slow moving swings that rotate in a merry-go-round?”

So, as my friends went yelling and yelping on rides with names like “Twisters” and “360 degrees Roller-Coasters”, I sucked at my pink candy floss, and went round in circles at the speed of 0.99 m/min.

After getting down from one such “exciting” swings, I was looking for my friends when I saw a 10-year old sitting alongside them in one of the Twisters, grinning and impatiently waiting for the ride to get started. My friend waved at me, and acted out the line “Look-at-the-guts-of-this-one” in sign language.

“That is it!” I thought, “This is not happening. If that kid could do it, so can I.”

I went to the nearest roller-coaster, showed the man my ticket and grabbed a seat. This one, incidentally, was a special one where it ended with a splash right into the pool of water. In time, the belts and the grips came down and we were all buckled and set. The ride began to move – up towards the slope.

“This isn’t so bad”, I heard myself thinking, “It’s a great view from up here – clear blue sky, the sunset…”

And then, the coaster sprinted down!

I remember nothing more than the heavy gush of air on my face, an unstoppable yell escaping my throat and the constant twists and turns of the track. I don’t remember what was around me, because my eyes were closed the entire time. And then, finally, a giant splash. And a stop.

When I opened my eyes, my clothes were wet, I was half submerged in water and my head was reeling.

People around me were unbuckling and getting out of the coaster – laughing and chattering. I took a moment. Got out. Dried myself for a while.

And I heard myself telling my friends, “Let’s do this again!”

This time, my eyes were open. I was screaming and laughing at the top of my voice as were the others, but I wanted to see everything around me – the funny faces people made, the scenery swishing by me like an Impressionist painting that has been made to move very fast on a reel, and the final moments before we hit the water – looking down at the impending collision and the excitement of just doing that, actually wanting to collide, and diving right into the pool.

And then the splash, and oh! What delight!

Contrary to what I had been assuming all these years, I realised that I actually enjoy the adrenaline rush that these rides provided one.

I spent that evening getting on every ride present in that park- twice! We left only when the place had completely shut down and we had to be driven out by the security guards.

That experience ages ago at the adventure park made me conquer one of my fears and helped me know a bit more of myself. I realised I enjoyed adventure sports as much as cultural and historic sites. Since then, I have visited that same park umpteen number of times, and have found myself river rafting, parasailing, and mountain climbing, along with looking at the sunset from the Khajuraho Temples or admiring the paintings at Ajanta. And what’s more, the list goes on.

This was not a travel experience per se. But it did help me overcome a certain drawback about myself, however minor it might sound.

While on my way back that night, all of us high on adrenaline and excitement, chatting about how much fun it was and how we should do this again, I looked back at the day. What If I had never gotten into that first ride at all? I would have never known that I enjoyed them so much, and would have actually spent the day napping on the park bench.

That evening, I did not have any regrets.

It was a life lesson that I still follow – to live without regrets.

In this village disputes are still settled by the village elders under a tree. A multitasking teacher teaches the village kids all that they need to know. Haunted houses, lost wells, desolate paths, jasmine flowers and the smell of wet clay- Sampigehalli is a village frozen in time, ironically located near the post-capitalist city of Bangalore. H.A.Anil Kumar hits a less trodden path to reach this village and comes back with the following impressions.

The old man sits there reading newspaper from beginning to end, from morning till evening. He claimed to have travelled ninety years in this village and that, perhaps, is one of the reason as to why he takes so long to read a Kannada newspaper. By the time he finished reading today’s newspaper, tomorrow’s would be in print! Yet, his village – Sampigehalli –just at the outskirts of North Bangalore never featured in any of those news columns. Never! He had been witness to this village throughout all the major world events of twentieth century, that incidentally did affect the city nearby but not his own village!

He sits on the Ashwatha Katte, the high-rise stone clad pedestal in the village center. A banyan tree and a neem tree are compulsorily grown within these 20 feet by 50 feet pedestal. This man is the oldest man in the village who has seen its transformation or the lack of it, in the light of the speed with which a sleepy township called Bengaluru has been metamorphosed. The tree shades of this katte acts as an umbrella for those who travel through this village, shelters those who take a siesta and acts as the court in the evenings whenever a village dispute is settled. Police have almost nothing to do with this village other than attend the village feasts and festivals.

There is a well next to Ashwatha Katte which is now defunct. Located at the heart of the village which has 250 houses, it used to provide water only to a privileged caste, when it was alive. Filling the well with mud also meant burying the caste differences, at least for now. It is located at the central point of Sampigehalli, en route to the next village. Interestingly the well does not belong to a family from within which nobody is interested to fight over owning it, since nothing grows on a well, one cannot build a deep rooted house upon it nor is its physical width worthy to be considered a site!

A road perpendicular to the main, but non-asphalted, leads to the temple twenty feet away and stops. There are fields on either side and it goes nowhere further. The only bus that arrives twice to this village, everyday, stops near the ex-well. Though most villagers make use of it now –the bus, not the well — people thought it to be an extravaganza when it first arrived only a decade ago. One of the young village dwellers, it seems, tried driving the bus when its owners were having chai at the local-dhaba. The bus was started, moved a bit and mowed down a couple of sheep and turned half-turtle. The boy went absconding till he was assured that there would be no case against him, for serving public transport without being paid!

The desolate mud house on the opposite side of the temple is left to further deterioration. Since a tantric and a mystic practitioner stayed in it once upon a time, nobody dares to make the mistake of claiming it. It is used only once a year when the theatre play that goes on throughout the night (bayalu nataka), is enacted. Extra actors who are not familiar with the village are given accommodation there. A deer and pigeons brought to create special effects, housed in the desolate house, it seems, had mysteriously vanished off during the night, that too even before performing their roles – as themselves –in the play. Their sacrificial remnants were recovered from the lake the very next day! The old man remembers everything, “my problem is I can’t forget, almost anything” he utters. He hints that the mystic-tantric quit his house because of the ill effects of his own magic.

The village celebrates prehistoric transport with such vigor that recently when a boy tried to commit suicide by swallowing sleeping-pills (no medical shops at Sampigehalli), there was unfortunately only one scooter in the village and the driver as well as the vehicle were ‘at home’ at that time. The sinking boy was tied behind the driver and rushed to the nearby Yelahanka township hospital, with lot of bullock carts and bicycles driving behind him in frenzy!

Sampigehalli is a village just ten kilometers away from Bangalore railway station. Yet it seems so remote that it seems to be hundreds of kilometers and a couple of centuries away from the nearby urban space. It also seems like a recently habituated nomadic settlement. Everybody knows the rest of the villagers by their names, even now while in Bangalore city you hardly meet familiar faces on the streets, even after driving the same route for a couple of decades!

With only one road passing through Sampigehalli, it is a sleepy location with a single-teacher primary school. Everything inside the school is visible to everybody outside, all the time.  More than the lack of infrastructure, it is the warmth that has held them together – the first grade students in the first row and seventh grade in the seventh row! During the first and the last hour of everyday schooling, the teacher becomes a sweeper, attendant, organizer as well as the head master. He is ‘the’ tutor for all the classes during the rest of the schooling time. The school, with all the colorful charts painted in enamel paints all over its outer walls looks like a tattooed-museum of its own self!

Popularly known for jasmine flowers everywhere, it has been called Sampigehalli (village of jasmines). Even the bright sunlight in the fields, added with the afternoon silence, apart from the occasional mowing of the cattle and recurring voices of the chicken; their foot marks on the rain clad ground, the typical smell of the wet soil, the children chasing the shadow of the slow flying two seater yellow aero plane from the half-century-old Jakkur aero drum nearby –all in all– comes to an abrupt halt whenever a plane crashes into the Sampigehalli lake. The planes seem to be hygiene-conscious; they are drawn to the waters constantly. Nobody dies in the crash, but villagers rush to drag out the wounded and own the weird plastic parachutes. They have known plastic more as parachutes than as contraceptives. The young cowherds – the result of the practice of bonded labor is still intact – mocking at both the notion of the abolishment of child labor; and attempting to learn swimming by holding on to the tail of a buffalo in the water, would be the only humans slightly disturbed by such surreal occurrences of almost all machine-birds crashing into the lakes.

The honge trees, whose shade are used as bed sheets in the afternoons by farmers, working in the fields to take a nap, are in plenty. They create a white flower-bed in no time. The above said old man of Sampigehalli is seen in the afternoon under the huge tree at the entrance of the village. Being the oldest in the village, he seems to be recollecting the memoirs of not only all the people of his generations who are dead and gone but also seems to be comparing the changing breeze, smell of the greenery as well as the industrial smoke which slowly is turning green into gray. He keeps staring at the quarried mountain to the eastern edge of this small village. The convex bulge of the mountain has become a concave pit in three decades. Even now, no matter how low the quarry and the politics around exploiting it has deteriorated into, the high rises of the city of Bengaluru is still visible from the quarry, like a fairy tale.

Quarrying of different kind has become the favorite time-pass preoccupation of the youth from around this village. Since the actual quarrying has almost stopped, the pit is filled with water and has become a second lake. One of the peaks is retained as it is, since there is a small temple above it and the whole setup looks like an abandoned film shooting set!

Sampigehalli is a village where if one walks for more than two hundred yards, he/she enters into a field, a barren land or a lush coconut grove. The community hall, which is actually an attachment to the temple, plays all India station throughout the day, in the age of digital, facebook and web world. This not only is music to the ears, but also is an indicator to the neighboring township Jakkur that the only luxury in this village is electrifying. Power cuts in this village, which is very frequent, is advertised through the pronounced silence in the otherwise noisy daily chores.

One need to be cautious while walking through the ragi fields, with occasional coconut, tomato, Malabar plants. Mischievous kids would have tied two ragi plants together so that one literally stumbles, apart from stumbling to the scenic beauty of the 400 acres of lake that is surrounded by at least three towns (Jakkur, Yelahanka) which is visible from everywhere in this village. The lake is the London Eye of Sampigehalli.

Sampigehalli is a village which has a natural visibility that most localities around Bengaluru cannot even withhold. You can gatecrash into well nurtured horse farms, nurseries etc. amidst the natural fields, which forms an oxymoron. A stranger is immediately identified herein while in the city nearby everyone you meet every day would be a stranger. The old man never sees Sampigehalli as it is. It is a palimpsest of at least nine-decades-metamorphosis of this village that he per-see-ives. What he sees is inevitably commixed with what he believes he has seen, forgotten, remembers and is hidden about it. During the night time, the famous Colonial- British-established-botanical Nandi hills are lit and visible from this village.

The house he stays is one of the last of its kind: made out of bricks, made up of the clay from the same lake, it seems to have certain site-specificity about itself. Most houses have tiled roofs and all tiles were bought from the now extinct tiles factory of Yelahanka, the neighboring township. In other words, the tiles have been reused and re-laid, like the memories of that old man does as a routine. Each house in the village seems like an extract from the museum-of-man in Bhopal:

They let you peep into the chiaroscuro-like-lit houses with most floors well ground by smearing of cow dung that keeps away all varieties of flies and their lord mosquitoes at bay, forever. Red-oxide flooring is a luxury for the Sampigehallites. The entrance is a cowshed and a semi-open bath room. If it’s raining, the burnt seeds of jackfruit travel directly from the bathroom firewood stove to your hands, even when you are a stranger to the whole setup. The humans and animals coexist, the ripened grains, jowar and other grains are dumped in, and the Rembrandt-like-chiaroscuro is the only light that defines the interiors.

One aspect about Sampigehalli is that it is not and more importantly, it cannot be a tourist destination. It is that palimpsest of memoirs that the old man offers and narrates about his very village that enlivens the place. What if this man is gone? I am yet to cross check as to whether anybody knows him, apart from me! He might actually be a personification of the memories that the village hides within itself. Otherwise, how else can one explain Sampigehalli’s remoteness, despite being just within the edge of the globalized Bengaluru!!

Ignoring the glamour and allurement of ‘historical’ touristy destinations, reminiscing about a humble ancestral home that once was and continues to be an inspiration and part of her silent reveries, Sushma Sabnis walks through a golden weave of distant memories from her childhood.

When you are a child, even a bungalow with three rooms seems palatial and that is how I saw my grandmother’s home in Bangalore. Born and raised in Mumbai, the rare luxury of more than two rooms seemed like a boon and the possibilities of living in ‘that’ one extra room were more attractive than the single bedroom kiosks we call ‘homes’ in an ever-shrinking metro. Add to this palace a huge terrace, a patio, and large space surrounding the house with medicinal plants, vegetables, fruits, aromatic flowering plants and old trees which stood like green sentinels at a fort gate – aged and relentlessly observant.

To many, Bangalore brings in imageries of flower gardens and bakeries, though the landscape has mutated rapidly over the past few decades, the green cover has remarkably diminished and bakeries are far and few with the advent of bullying mall culture. The innumerable ‘tourist spots’  like Cubbon park, Lalbaug, the ancient city of Vijayanagara, Hampi ruins, Nandi hills, Mysore palace and many historically significant places have become mere embellishments for tourists’ catalogues and work more as tourism aiding devices than culture marques.

For me Bangalore represents one specific place, ‘2722, Ratnakar’. A postal address which no longer exists but there was a time when you could just say these words to the auto-rickshaw and you would be delivered safe and sound to the correct place. ‘2722’ was the house number and ‘Ratnakar’ was my grandfather’s name, he was a musician, a painter, a theatre actor and a textile designer.

This ‘palace’ is very important for me because I spent most of my summer holidays in an environment being one with nature, art and the quintessential activities which most people deem mundane, but seen from a more historical perspective, they form the fine silken threads of our cultural heritage. When one takes a journey to see new places, specifically to break the tedium of an urban lifestyle, one often looks for unheard of places. New beaches, new temples, new mountains, newly excavated ruins, though all of these ‘new’ places are actually ancient according to their carbonic birth dates, the urban thinking anoints them as ‘not-explored yet’ hence ‘new’. Perhaps, the newness is brought on by the generous sprinkling of resorts, beach view, valley view, river view, forest view, palace view, boulder view..you name it, they have the view!

‘2722 Ratnakar’ was all of the above. There was no river, but a water tank with enough water for the family, there was no mountain but the walls were strongly rooted to weather storms, terrace high enough to view sun rises, there were no beaches, but the coconut tree leaves shaded half the terrace and gardens. They say the walls of an old house imbibe the nature of its inhabitants. 2722 Ratnakar did just that. Though I never met my grandfather, 2722 Ratnakar perhaps subtly activated some creative genes in me. No one left empty handed or empty hearted from this house.

Every summer holiday of mine was spent in this house. I learnt to draw and paint there, developed an interest in music, science and nature there, learnt new languages, and developed taste buds for different cuisines which the kitchen created daily. Most of all I learnt to trust in the silent and powerful, creative nature of life.

Pickling was an art my grandmother excelled at; carefully handpicked mangoes, limes, gooseberries and unconventional like carrots, peppers, gingers gave themselves up willingly to become immortal under her nimble coercing fingers. Pickling, an art of prolonging the life of a food item to cater to the short term memory of taste buds, while preserving the fruit or vegetable from fungal fronds, beyond its seasonal occurrence and elevating them to an immortal status..yes, Ammama excelled at it.

I often wish there were some sort of pickling agents for bygone years and their ever enchanting juicy memories, perhaps one could revisit those tastes, moments and the quiet air which emanated a sense of inner peace.

‘2722 Ratnakar’ does not exist anymore on a google map or any map, it lives and flourishes only in my memory. I do visit it in early morning dreams, breathe in the aroma of Ammama’s delicious cooking intermingling with the rose bushes and jasmine intoxicants, touch the pregnant seed pods of the balsam plants, tickle the leaves of a shy mimosa, pluck some fruit and bite into it and let the experience consume me in its entirety.

Maybe in the future, when technology creates a successfully working time machine, you would find me sitting and painting on the terrace of 2722 Ratnakar, shaded by those gently swaying leaves of the grand old green sentinels.