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Like individuals, cities derive their character from the values associated with them.
It is perhaps woven into the texture of the human mind to build and enjoy, then to overbuild and suffer, then to collapse and complain, and then to become argumentative about what happened.
Naseeruddin Shah was trying to be nice when he described Bombay as ‘the mother-in-law of all Indian cities’.
Architect Hafeez Contractor, with a permissible touch of exaggeration, said that Patna had become like Bombay’s Dharavi.
Thirty years from now the Nigam-Sivaram generation could well be telling fresh settlers how blissful Bangalore was in 2015 and how it had lost its charm in just a few decades.
H. G. Wells summed up a whole philosophy in three words when he said: ‘Life begins eternally’.
Diwan Seshadri Iyer began harnessing waterfalls and in 1904 Bangalore became the first Indian city to have streets lighted by electricity.
When the fabled founder of Bangalore set out to build his dream capital in the 1530s, his mother gave him two instructions: ‘Keregalam kattu, marangalam nedu (Build lakes, plant trees)’. Gowda made a hundred lakes and lined the pathways with wide, leafy trees.
In 2014, Bangalore ranked second in the number of murders (Delhi was first), third in robberies (after Delhi and Bombay) and third in dacoity cases (after Pune and Delhi).
Despite being almost constantly at war, Hyder Ali found time to create Lal Bagh, one of the finest botanical gardens in the country.
IT tore this system apart. They set up fancy headquarters buildings with no thought to the living and commuting needs of their tens of thousands of employees. With that Bangalore lost the chance for orderly development.’
‘Political capital of a leader declines steadily after he assumes power. Whatever has to be accomplished must be accomplished quickly.’
R. K. Narayan joined the two precincts to form Malgudi, the small town where his stories took place.)
When rice became scarce during the Second World War the Maiyas experimented with semolina, leading to the invention of rava idli, a hot staple today in South Indian menus the world
We grew up in surroundings where acquiring knowledge and imparting it to others was routine.
As the moneyed chase money, progress turns to perdition. Bangaloreans are no longer citizens; they are digits, statistics, percentages and fractions for knaves to make profits from. Dawn never comes to the late riser.
