On her favourite places in Bangalore
Straight off, I’d have to say Richmond Town, which is where I grew up, went to school, went to church at the beautiful St Patrick’s Church, and hung out with friends. Growing up in the 60s and 70s, it was the loveliest little town, full of beautiful bungalows, gardens, churches, family cafés and the loveliest people too!
For my brother and I, our favourite spots were the All Saints Church garden where we met and played with our friends, all of whom lived nearby. Every pay day, it was time for a chocolate milkshake and ice cream with Mum at Fatima’s, where we usually bumped into friends and their kids also enjoying a payday treat. In those days, ice cream came mostly in vanilla, chocolate and strawberry flavours, not the myriad flavours we are spoilt with these days. They came served in single scoops, in little glass dishes with a wafer stuck in at the top of the scoop. Today, if I had a toss up between any big brand ice cream and a single scoop of the vanilla ice cream we ate as kids in Fatima’s, I’d probably choose the latter! Ice cream back then tasted of joy. In fact, Joy was the brand name of one of the two types of ice cream available, the other being Kwality.
Then there was the pretty little Richmond Town park. Occasionally Mum would tell our “ayahs”, as we called our baby-sitters back then, to take us to play at Richmond Town park. There we would meet other friends living in and around the park. On Saturday evenings, there would be groups of Carnatic musicians that would play in the park, on the little outdoor stage. We Anglo-Indian kids knew nothing about Carnatic music but enjoyed watching the musicians anyway.
Richards Park at Cox Town
As a teenager, my friends and I walked through the park on our way home to lunch and back to school, which was Baldwin Girls’ High School. We would chat and laugh and take all the goodness and loveliness of life around us for granted: the flowers, the clement weather, the kindly shopkeepers in the little sweet and stationery shops, like Rashid’s on Alexandria Street, who knew us all so well, sometimes even by name, the little old ladies chatting over garden gates and walls, the elderly gents wearing clamps on their trouser legs to keep them from getting caught in the spokes of their bicycles.
Fatima Bakery
I know that old timers like myself do tend to romanticise their pasts, and perhaps I’m guilty of the same, but life in our little town really was so special. Today, most of the old bungalows in the town have gone. Now it is quite congested with apartment buildings cheek by jowl. The park is still there. The old Johnson Market is still there, and so are the Fatima and All Saints Bakeries, though the Fatima café is no more. But, visiting them is not as easy these days, what with parking woes, traffic congestion and general mayhem all round.
Reminiscing good ol’ Bangalore
The weather. We wore light sun-coats and cardigans even in summer. It was that pleasant. Winters were cold, really cold, and the monsoons could be cold too. I still have trouble adjusting to what summers in our city have become now.
I also miss the greenery, the gardens, the gracious yet unpretentious style of living, stately houses set within neat gardens, all painted white or cream, with the quaint monkey tops and gables. What a stark contrast to the congested residential areas we live in now.
And I miss the cleanliness and the quiet of the city we grew up in. Our parents took us for after-dinner walks up Brigade Road and Mahatma Gandhi Road, which we knew as South Parade. You could actually walk in peace without being jostled and pushed and having your ears assaulted with the screech of blaring horns or ending up with an attack of wheezing from the exhaust fumes from vehicles. Sometimes Mum would let us have a choco-bar from the Joy or Kwality ice-cream stands on MG Road, at 75 paise each. (This would be dessert #2, because we would already have had the standard caramel custard or blancmange after dinner before we had set out).
Plaza Theatre on M G Road
I miss the old movie theatres, especially Plaza on M G Road. The best movies played there and the best popcorn was sold in the lobby. I also miss the everyday courtesy that was a given if you lived in Bangalore. The brash rudeness, the loudness, the road rage and the growing lack of respect that you see so much of everywhere these days was rare back then.
Places that retain the essence of the Bangalore of yore
That is a tough one. So much has changed. I would have to say Fraser Town. You still get to see some beautiful old bungalows there. The residents’ welfare association in the Richards Park area has to be commended for their efforts at maintaining the beauty, cleanliness and ambience of their area. I go that side very rarely, but it always makes me nostalgic when I do. Parts of it still remind me of the good old days.
Change in the city’s music scene
There’s so much music and of so many different kinds in Bangalore. One look at the listings in newspapers shows you just how active and robust the music scene is here. There’s something for everyone, for every taste. The music scene is vibrant. That is a happy thing about Bangalore today. And I’m thrilled and proud to be a part of it all, with the performances that my music school, Kiara Music Academy, brings to the Bangalore stage.
As told to Sravasti Datta
This column features the city through the eyes of a prominent Bengalurean
