Bangalore blast: A lament for the city of Narayana Murthy & masala dosas

By Jaithirth Rao


Perhaps our present government is right. The media needs reining in. I might just be willing to give up my commitment to free speech and support restrictions on TV news. They show the same thing again and again. Bombs in Bangalore. An exploded mobike, charred cars, people running like chickens with their heads cut off — and all this in familiar Malleswaram.

I closed my eyes; so many images whirl past that inner eye so loved by the poet of the Lakes. Kempe Gowda flashes before me. He who ate boiled beans and built the magnificent pillars at the Gavi Gangadhareshwara Temple; then Hyder Ali runs on to the stage walking in the enchanting Red Gardens that he created. Bangalore was not a favourite spot for Tippu. He preferred Srirangapatna.

Arthur Wellesley was a short-term sojourner. And then came the irrepressible Mark Cubbon. We owe so much of our city to him. Fortunately, we have not turned hyper-jingoistic; we still have a road and a park named after him. And then there is the little incident of the young Lieutenant Winston Churchill forgetting to pay his bills at the stately Bangalore Club!

The city is literally overflowing with the memories and legacies of Visweswarayya and Mirza Ismail, two eminences who did so much that was good and classy that they will remain with us for years to come. Not to be forgotten is Kengal Hanumanthayya, whose controversial Vidhana Soudha is admired by the common folk, even as elite architects look down on it.

Bangalore means masala dosas at MTR, Vidyarthi Bhavan and Airlines, appamsand stew at Koshys, aimless chatter at India Coffee House, Select Bookshop, Gandhi Bazaar, Majestic Circle and the breathtaking chaos of Kalisipalayam and Russell Market.

One needs to pay homage to institutions that have departed: Three Aces; Alankar and Lido Theatres; Premier Bookstore. People talk of the earlier Bangalore as a retirement paradise. To many, it remains the site of youth and student life. We all have cousins or friends who went to Central and National Colleges, St Josephs, Mount Carmel, St Johns, Bishop Cotton, Baldwins or National High School; not to be forgotten is BMS, where private engineering education in the city, possibly in the country, began.

To think that the horror was perpetrated in Malleswaram unsettles me no end. Even without closing your eyes, you can conjure up the thought of MA Sreenivasan taking his walks there, of the divine food at NKB and CTR (although Basavangudi types would argue that dosas in Malleswaram have their limitations), and of the Tata Institute (remember to pronounce it with a soft “T”). Will we now have a missile landing on Sankey Tank? Where is all of this going to end? In living memory, Bangalore changed as we moved beyond HAL, HMT, ITI, BEL and Mico — the famed names from the early decades of Independence — and had to contend with Texas Instruments, Infosys and Wipro.