The mention of Nandi Hills conjures up images of treks to the top for a glimpse of the stunning sunrise or raising your face to mist-filled clouds drifting in. Actually, you don’t have to climb to the peak for the best secret of all, for that sits quietly at the foot of Nandi Hills. It’s the quaint and beautiful Nandi Halt, a railway station frozen in time.
Built as part of the historic Bangalore-Chikballapur Light Railway, the building’s walls and edifice are testimony to its visionary founders (Sir M. Visvesvaraya for one, the then Dewan of the Princely State of Mysore). But its present-day state of damage and decay is symptomatic of our failure to preserve some of the best bits of our past. The beautiful but derelict building sits in the midst of fields. A lovely large banyan dominates the area, and several cool peepul trees add to the serenity and beauty of the place.
Sanctioned in September 1909 as a two-feet, six-inch gauge railway line, the section from Devanahalli to Chikballapur that passes through Nandi Halt opened to passenger and goods traffic on August 1, 1915. In other words, the building, which has remained virtually untouched for the last 100 years, is today deserving of the ‘heritage structure’ tag.
This was the first railway line in the Princely State of Mysore started by private enterprise under a guarantee from the government of the Princely State under which, if the railway company earned less than four per cent of the capital subscribed, the Princely State made good the difference; any surplus was split 50:50 with the government.
The line has now been modernised to a broad gauge line that links Bengaluru City and Cantonment stations to Chikballapur and onwards to Kolar. Many stations on this stretch between Bengaluru and Chikballapur — with their musical names of Avatihalli, Dodjala and Devanahalli — are a 100 years old and show vestiges of colonial architecture. In some places, Devanahalli, for example, a ‘modern’ train station sits right next to the older structure, and the contrast between the beautiful (but crumbling) and the ugly (but ostensibly functional) couldn’t be more apparent.
Writing in 1929, the Mysore Gazetteer noted that “it is not easy to gauge the moral influence which railways have exercised on the habits and customs of the people. It is often alleged that railways are helping to break down caste…There can…be little doubt that increased travel and the mixing up of all castes and people in carriages, which railway travel necessitates, must produce greater tolerance, if it does no more.”
This little train line and its exquisite stations can so very easily become part of the commuter rail project that Bengaluru is crying out for, to connect the city with its new international airport and the northern suburbs. They are worth preserving and promoting as our collective and shared heritage. It’s an easy way to connect history with modernity. How perfect it would be if we could ensure that the old is left intact yet restored in a way that the imperatives of development are met.
Siddharth Raja lives in Nandi Hills and runs a heritage walking tour company.
