For Jalahalli, from Mumbai

Punha Drama

After a gap of more than two and a half decades, I saw a Marathi play again. I was too young to remember the name of the play I last saw but I did see a few Marathi plays back then.

Also, I saw the plays not just in a different city or state, it was in a different age, in a world that no longer exists.

Time Travel

The place was a little township just outside Bangalore, built around one of the temples of modern India envisioned by Chacha Nehru. In the early 80s, the 'public sector undertaking' had a little over 15 thousand employees. Through the 50s, 60s and 70s, youngsters from all over India, came and populated the townships, married, swelled the numbers with the ideal hum do-hamare do family and created an interesting model for national integration.

Outside the main gate of the factory where the thousands marched in and out to the call of siren were some old barracks built during the Second World War and according to the urban legend, housed Italian prisoners of war. There was a Royal Air Force base close by too. In Free India, the barracks were turned to schools that taught students in four 'Mediums' English, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu because during the second part of the last century, the official policy was to instruct the children in their mother tongues. A system that is still followed by BMC schools in Mumbai.

Mother tongues and social glue.

The temple of modern India was a tower of Babel. At the end of the day, the workers stepped out of the factories and returned to their mother tongues. The same barracks that housed the school also housed the different linguistic biradaris. The Tamil Snagam, Kerala Samajam, Kannada Sahitya Koota, Kodava Samaj, Konkani Association, Andhra Sabha, Marathi Sangh and Bengal Association.

The centre of every association was a library, and they had the usual cultural and social activities that made up the social networks of the age before television. Dance, music, language classes, etc. It's surprising now, but there was a time when people had the evenings for themselves.

The centre of the township was the hall. It was called Kalakshetra. On weekends, a giant white screen would be stretched across the stage and they would screen movies in different languages. Amitabh, Rajkumar, Kamal Hasam/Rajnikant, NTR ruled the screens on weekends. So that the others are not left out, English, Marathi and Bengali movies were played once in a while. We used to watch all of them, irrespective of the language. All the kids in the township were multilingual.

Drama Festival

The Kalakshetra was built for one reason, several times during the year, the association came together to compete with each other. The annual Drama Festival was one such event. And that is where we used to watch Marathi play every year, along with the other ones. And we as kids would've already peeped into half the rehearsals already. And it was always easy to slip to the backstage and watch the play from there, instead of having to sit like good children among the boring adults.

So when I got a chance to click the backstage pictures for Time Out Mumbai's Behind The Scenes Special Issue, of Punha Sahi Re Sahi, starring Bharat Jadhav, Bharat Jadhav, Bharat Jadhav and Bharat Jadhav, it was like punha going back to the good old days that I had forgotten.

More pictures of Bharat Jadhav mutiplied by 4 in action, tomorrow.

Church Street

19s. Headbangalore.

Nearly 20 years back, there was a pub next door to this gaming haunt on Church Street called 19 Church Street. They played heavy metal music.

The basement garage was called Hangar 19 (Inspired by Megadeth's Hangar 18) on certain weekends when local bands like Crimson Storm and Spiritual Warfare played.

Names that are similar to the games these kids are playing.

Kempegowda Bus Station

ಶ್ರೀ ಮೋಕ್ಷಗುಂಡಂ ವಿಶ್ವೇಶ್ವರಯ್ಯ Bharat Ratna Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya.

Sometimes it's nice to see a familiar face from the last century.

Churumuri on Sir MV

Ramachandrapura (jalahalli east)

Listen to the sound
read the echoes
are women machines
boy child machines?

Sanjaynagar

One among the thousands of wall paintings on Bangalore walls. This one is outside a Government School.

D Rajagopal Road

Bellary Road - NH7

A hospital.

Birth, Death and all the pain in between. To ease it, you can buy yourself a comfortable insurance, be good to your family so that they stick around when you are in trouble and if you haven't done these two things, go pray.

Amen.

... I want angels to lift me.

Seri Saar. Nakku nallida mele illi bandu t.... By the way, what's the language they speak in heaven... or hell?

Why so shy?

5th Block, Koramangala

Group off not Group on. Because in India, Off is associated with discounts.

D Rajagopal Road

All kinds of new imagery on the streets of Vishala Karnataka. It's now clear that it's a BJP ruled state.

Outer Ring Road + Kumara Krupa Road

Which Main? What Cross? has moved. The blogger is now posting daily images from Mumbai at Mumbai Paused.

Outer Ring Road

Best view.

These boys were waiting to have a ring side view of the K1000 2009 race. While the grown up boys who had come to watch had a tough time finding a parking spot for their underpowered toys with flashy stickers, these boys had no trouble parking their single wheeled toys.

Which Main? What cross? has moved. The blogger is now posting daily images from Mumbai at Mumbai Paused.

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SJP Road/Mysore Road

A couple of rare yellow top.

Which Main? What Cross? has moved. The blogger now lives in Mumbai and the current images can be seen here: Mumbai Paused.

RV Road

A message from another age, in another country, survives in Bangalore. And what your local Goorkha is doing on his nightly whistling rounds.

Cubbon Park

Goodbye Garden City



Salaam. Vandanegalu.

It's time to say goodbye to daily photographs on this blog. Over the last 3 years, during my second innings in this city, I have seen more of the city than during my two and a half decades long first innings. That is thanks to a hobby called photography that I discovered along with thousands of other foot-soldiers of the digital camera brigade.

Work is taking me to Mumbai, for a second innings there. This blog will now be updated only during my visits home and I'm hoping that it will be often.

In Mumbai, the city that's always on the move, I'm not sure if I'll be clicking as often as I did in Benglur. But if I find the time to click pictures, they will be posted here at

Mumbai Paused

Mekhri Underpass

Benglur Walls. Painting the new anti-film and political poster look.

Mekhri Underpass

Benglur Walls. The new look.

Church Street

Forget Benglur's Mains and Crosses. This is a great place to discover new things and lose your way: At any of the second hand book shops in the MG Road area.

Gavi Gangadhareshwara Temple Road

Breakfast time at Nammoora Patashaale!

To discover the real India, Gandhi asked us to go to the villages. And luckily for us in Benglur, we don't have to go far. The tentacles of the city spread across and around villages and the Hallis became Nagars and Towns, with pockets that still retain the city's old roots. For example, this is the school at Gavipuram Guttahalli.

Rest House Crescent

The weather was classic Bangalorean. The smell of last evening's rain filled the air as workers dug up yet another narrow stretch. There was a cool breeze, warm afternoon sunshine filtering through tall trees, slow-moving cars looking for that elusive parking space, a school girl on her bicycle exchanging a love note with a boy from another school, well-dressed executives reluctantly rushing back to work after a large lunch and the smell of marijuana floated in from under the thick foliage of the Rest House Crescent Park. All this and more was happening on the Rest House Crescent Road on a Thursday afternoon but Mr Mazumdar was busy in his own world. He sat on the pavement outside an old Bangalore home, sketching and preserving the building's little details on paper, before it disappeared. He told me that he has been doing this for 19 years now.

HKP Road (Broadway)

After school, Aslam Tabrez helps his father, who runs the Ramadan period Kabab stall outside Shivajinagar's Beef Market.

S C Road

Sunbathing.

There are days in Benglur when you can have all four seasons during the course of a day. And here's a man enjoying a brief spell of summer.

Minerva Circle

Beer of Benglur

Meanee Avenue/Ulsoor Lake

Which Nallah? What Drain? Series.

It takes a brave heart to step in to the primordial sludge that fills the Gowri-Ganesha immersion tank carved out of the Ulsoor Lake on the Meanee Avenue, Kensington Road and AM Road intersection.

See the full Which Nallah? What Drain? Series here.


Indian Road Romeos and Juliets, the group for street photography lovers on Facebook is having an interesting challenge called 'Emotion on the Street' this coming week. Click here for more details.

Meanee Avenue

News

Indian Road Romeos and Juliets, the group for street photography lovers on Facebook is having an interesting challenge called 'Emotion on the Street' this coming week. Click here for more details.

S C Road

Sandalwood Friday Movie Release.

If there's a good movie release, the handicapped (and the aged) blackmarket ticket sellers manage to make a few bucks. Today's bigger draw seems to be a movie called Prem Kahani. With stiff competion from Shivarajkumar's Bhagyada Balegara.

Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan Road

The Tale Of Two Peaks. Part 3. The abandoned quarry at Chickabettahalli is a large bowl spread over over a hundred acres. It is pretty enough to be developed into a public space with interesting walkways, a little lake and clever lighting at night.

But the fact is that the Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan Road is a four lane road that provides easy access to the new airport to the western part of the city. So it's not surprising that the corner of the bowl is being filled up right now to make way for future development. The cost of transporting mud and filling up this massive crater is probably lower than the market rate for the land or is it one of the site chosen for dumping the Namma Metro earthwork?

Time will tell.

Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan Road

 

Blast hole for dynamite charge.

The Tale of Two Peaks. Part 2

There's nothing as precious as a hole in ground. And the abandoned, big toilet bowl like quarries at Bettahalli, that were once the highest points in Benglur is no exception (read part 1 of the story about the twin peaks of Bettahalli here). For decades, these rocks were blasted, cut and shipped all over the city.

Artha or Money in Kannada.

There was a time when granite was very cheap in and around Benglur. Slabs were used as compound walls, fencing, culverts and you can still see some very old abandoned homes and waiting stations for bullock carts outside surrounding villages like Kodigehalli and Jalahalli that have slabs used as walls and roofs. But as Boomtown Benglur exploded in size, so did the price of this stone. It has money written all over it. And money can move mountains.