Sri Dharmaraya Temple Street

The Original Bangalore Habba While the preparations are being made for the Karaga procession, the narrow Dharamaraya Temple Street is closed for traffic and the stretch is transformed into a narrow fair ground. The thousands who have come to the temple are crowding around the various attractions. And almost everyone is busy munching. From the Bangarapet Paani Puri to Bengali Sweets; chatpata Rajasthani Snacks to the seasonal raw mango with salt and red chili powder, there's a lot to choose from. Down the road, the stand and drink wine shop is also doing brisk business. And for the people organising the event, there's a feast being prepared within the temple (pic above). Meanwhile on the street, it's colourful and noisy. All the men and women, selling the usual Mela attractions have congregated here, shouting above the non-stop loudspeaker announcements asking parents to hold their children's hands and not to let them go out of sight.

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Sri Dharmaraya Swamy Temple Street

Push/Pull.


One of the main attractions for the visitors to the Bangalore Karaga is the chance to lend their hands to push or pull a temple chariot during the Rathothsava or Chariot Festival. Each temple in the Pete area has a tall garage built next to it to park the wooden chariot and is brought out this month of the year. The largest among them is the one at the Dharamaraya Swamy Temple.


Here, you can see the chariot being prepared, decorated and the wheels being oiled for the procession, a couple of hours before the procession. This chariot will be pulled and pushed by hundreds of devotees through the narrow gallis of the city market area.

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Raja Ram Mohan Roy Road

The Original Bangalore Habba

The Sampangiramnagar Tank was one of the most important irrigation facility in pre-industrial Benglur. The tank is gone, but a small stepped pond is still maintained for the annual Bangalore Karaga. Next to the pond is a covered platform where the Karaga, that is carried from temple to temple by man, who is said to become Draupadi from the Mahabaratha for that day, is placed for making offerings to the Goddess. Here, the residents of Sampangiramnagar are seen decorating the platform for the Puja that happened at 5am this morning. 

Several of the residents are planning to spend the night here and help with the preparations. Here's a resident called Shiva, in a Vishnu pose, happy to have taken up a prime position to catch the action.

I was unable to catch the action at 5am. And by the time I reached the place at 9, the whole area was barricaded and littered with flowers. The BBMP Sweepers were cleaning the surrounding ground and luckily for me, there was one major attraction waiting for me. The giant reptile that was painted was partially gone and there stood a self-styled god man with a long name starting with Baba and ending with Sanjeeva Reddy. 

From the Khumb Mela to any Urs in a Dargah, you find hundreds of these godmen peddling their idea to salvation. Unlike the Art of Living with its patented exercise or the Hugging Mother from Kerala, this travelling god man was peddling his own idea that hasn't been a hit yet. He's originally from Bidar and has no known home. He also claimed to be immortal. He claimed to be  Jesus, Vishnu, Shiva as well as India's ex-presidents Sanjeeva Reddy and Abdul Kalam. A rather tall claim which probably explains why he's not successful. 

So if you are in Bangalore and if you want to catch one of the city's unique festivals, and meet some interesting people, head for the main Karaga procession. It's on the 9th of April, all night, in the Pete area. 

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Binny Rest House Road

Territorial Pissing.

Roaming the streets clicking pictures brings you face to face with a lot of disturbing sights. Just before Ugadi, I was riding down a road parallel to Mysore Road, a few minutes after clicking the above image on Binny Rest House Road. On the narrow street was a man, completely still, face down and  lying in a pool of fresh blood, next to a Scorpio. It looked like an accident, but there wasn't a single person rushing to help. There was complete silence and shock on every single face watching from a safe distance. Traffic slowed, but didn't stop. I moved along too as a Police van came rushing in. Later I read that it was a gangster called Poone alias Narashimhamurthy who was lying in a pool of blood. Over the next two weeks, there was to be a number of gang related slayings across the city. And the weapon of choice - swords, like these territorial pissing painted on the walls by some wannabe gangsters with the usual 'rowdy' names. 

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Sri Dharamaraya Swamy Temple Road

The Original Bangalore Habba

It's Karaga time once again and the Sri Dharmaraya Swami Temple near Corporation, has a fresh coat of paint. While the children enjoy their summer vacations playing outside the temple, inside, priests are offering special prayers before the big annual event on April 9th. Thousands of devotees are expected to congregate here on 9th of April, in the evening, for the Karaga procession that will visit all the major temples and a dargah in the Pete area. Karaga is the one of the most important festivals in the city's calendar. To know more about the Karaga, click here.  

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Off Markham Road, Ashoknagar

Good Morning! Benglur Style. Just like how all Dravidian language movies have the 'Suprabhatha' as the morning raga, Benglur streets has its own background morning score. It's the "Hua - Hu-e" call from the flower sellers who go around on foot or cycles with baskets like the one outside a freshly washed and decorated doorstep. The flower seller in this case had left her basket at a customer's door and was gossipping inside! Local news delivery. Free and scented with Mallige.

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Arab Lane

To see the colourful walls of Benglur, click here.

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New Bamboo Bazaar

New Bamboo Bazaar.

Names can be deceptive. Like the New Bamboo Bazaar, next to City market. It sells more more metal and less bamboo (Bamboo is used for ladders and scaffolding). The New Bamboo Bazaar popularly known as the Gujli/Gujri, covers the area between S J Park and Kalasipalayam bisected by a stinking nullah. The bazaar is a collection of tens of little shops stocking scrap metal and second hand metallic parts. Like the humble shop shown above that sells everything you need to repair a tractor or build one from scratch.  Jai Kisan!

We are Indians. We have an army out there that helps us reuse most things we throw.  And if it is made from metal, it usually ends up here. Scrap is landed here by the truck loads in these narrow lanes littered with metal bits. They are sorted, broken down and sold for reuse.

The New Bamboo Bazaar or Gujli is home to of hundreds of small scrap dealers and hawkers. Each of them have their own niche and regular customers. Like this shop, brothers Ali and Hamid inherited from their father. They deal in springs and gears for lathe machines sourced from Mumbai. Their customers are small industries from the many industrial estates that dot Bruhat Benglur or Greater Bangalore.  

The price is usually settled through  old-fashioned bargaining. However, most metal is traded based on weight. The going rate for Mild Steel (MS) is about Rs. 45. You can get them in any size you wish. The customer can sift through the wares or state the required size and the shopkeeper will do it for you. You can also get a wide range of metal alloys  but no one will guarantee you the perfect mix. Here's a young man weighing scrap metal before making a sale. 

And finally here are some friendly faces from the Gujli. Meet Chottoo and Company. That's little Syed Noor with his friend Athalluah, standing shoulder to shoulder. 

 

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NH 7, Hebbal

What power shortage? 

Or like my friend Emile Zwaltek from Pune commented: Looks like a sci-fi movie scene with some mad scientists deciding on Earth's fate. 

But the least BMTC, Times Outdoors and BESCOM can do is switch off the unused bus shelter's advertising lights. 

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Old Thargupet Road + Gundopanth Street

The world's favourite complaint about Benglur is that it's a sleepy city and we are lazy people. And we in turn blame the city's billion dollar weather. But the truth is that Benglur has been a city that went to bed early and was up before the sun. 

For decades, the first things to greet the newspaper boy in the mornings were the blue buses of the many Public Sector and other industries ferrying people for the morning shift and people cycling to work. Time hasn't changed much. These days, it's BMTC buses ferrying techies and most of the cyclists have upgraded themselves to bikes and scooters. 

And if you are one of those who complain about why the authorities here are adamant about closing wining and dining places long before midnight, the answer is that we are Benglureans. We are wired to wake up early. 

Well, most of us at least. 

And here's an interesting set of photographs from the city that never sleeps - Mumbai.  

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Mavalli Rama Rao Road

Don't let the pictures of cows and children fool you. This narrow road connecting SP Road and Avenue Road, lined with hardware stores supply some of the high-tech needs of India's technology capital - Benglur. The shops lining this street and this part of the market are an important lifeline to one of Benglur's largest employer - the small scale engineering industry. They provide regular and specialised raw materials (like special metals) and precision tools, for the best price, to industries spread across acres and acres of tin roofed work spaces, in places like Peenya to the North West and Jigani in the South. These small engineering firms are the foot soldiers for the precision engineering companies that make Benglur the capital of precision mechanical engineering of India. Like they say about Peenya - it manufactures nuts and bolts to ISRO's rockets and satellites, with help from Benglur's small industries who can meet their standards. And the raw materials. It's most probably sourced from these narrow gallis.

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