//
you're reading...

Living

A Victorian Walk down MG Road

By ⋅ August 8, 2005 ⋅ Post a comment

- I have gone down MG Road sev­eral times and never once noticed that one soli­tary bun­ga­low just after the Yahoo! office.

- I have dri­ven past Nalli show­room time again and never noticed the empty space beside it.

- The bun­ga­low appar­ently belongs to the only per­son who is not sell­ing out to com­mer­cial devel­op­ers. I mean, how many peo­ple can boast of hav­ing a res­i­dence on MG Road? The empty space is appar­ently the plot of the bun­ga­low where Win­ston Churchill had lived in, when he was in Bangalore.

- Churchill wrote 2 books when he was sta­tioned in Ban­ga­lore as an army offi­cer. He also fell in love for the first time in Ban­ga­lore and the lady was from Hyder­abad. She went on to marry some­one else.

- Did you know that the term ‘Ban­ga­lored’ began before the whole out­sourc­ing con­tro­versy started and has mil­i­tary origins.

These and other really inter­est­ing facts formed a part of the ‘Vic­to­rian’ flavoured walk that Shibs and I went on early Sat­ur­day morn­ing. A group of about 15 of us started at Trin­ity Church (I had never noticed this church closely before either). The con­cept of Ban­ga­lore Walks was started by Arun Pai and he has been run­ning this for a few months now. Many cities have these kind of walks so it is quite encour­ag­ing to see that Ban­ga­lore now boasts of its own walk. In fact, Arun is also try­ing to come up with a bike tour, a pub crawl tour etc. to spice things up a lit­tle and intro­duce some more vari­ety. For those of you who are inter­ested, watch this space.

The group in front of the impres­sive pil­lars of the East Parade Church on MG Road

You might won­der what’s the big deal in tak­ing a walk down MG Road. To begin with, we dis­cov­ered a lot of things that we were never aware of ear­lier. Arun has done his research well and he took spe­cial efforts in shar­ing with us inter­est­ing his­tor­i­cal tid­bits that we would have never known otherwise.

A group of about 15 of us walked down MG Road and Arun lit­er­ally made us feel like we were trans­ported back to Vic­to­rian times. When MG Road was one huge avenue with trees and bun­ga­lows on both sides. And there were no cars. Just horse car­riages. The trees are still there (most of them any­way) but the bun­ga­lows have all been replaced by com­mer­cial high rise build­ings. Another bun­ga­low on MG Road con­tin­ues to stand : the occu­pant is a school prin­ci­pal. We even sighted ducks, geese and even a turkey in his back­yard! Right there on MG Road. Who on earth would have imag­ined?! Halfway through the walk, we sat down before the office of the Hor­ti­cul­ture depart­ment (there is a lovely gar­den in front of it) and had cof­fee, but­ter­milk and bis­cuits that Arun had got­ten along.

Inter­est­ingly, I had emailed quite a few friends for the walk, but got­ten a mostly neg­a­tive (or a cyn­i­cal one) response. Why would we pay some­one to take us for a walk down MG Road, one responded.

Well, I have been in Ban­ga­lore for about a year now and never have I walked down the road with any­one. Nor has any­one ever pointed out the inter­est­ing her­itage mon­u­ments and houses in this part of town. In fact, Ms Shibs who accom­pa­nied me, was brought up in the city and said she didn’t know so many things about Bangalore’s his­tory and heritage.

A col­lage of some of Bangalore’s mon­u­ments and famous places

- Ban­ga­lore Walk Album

I would def­i­nitely rec­om­mend it to any­one who wants to know more about Ban­ga­lore, wants to do some­thing inter­est­ing instead of sleep­ing on a hol­i­day morn­ing and wants to taste the cul­ture of the city he/she cur­rently resides in or is just pass­ing through. I will desist from talk­ing too much about the walk itself, because it’s best experienced!

After the walk, retail ther­apy ensued and I went home happy with 3 pairs of shoes. I am not too much of a shop­per. So when I do go shop­ping I pick up enough at one go of what­ever I want, so I don’t have to go shop­ping for a while. In the evening, we watched a play called When there’s a Will at Ran­gashankara. It packed in some laughs, but did get a lit­tle repet­i­tive at times. I think what saved it was the per­for­mances. Espe­cially the one by the lead actor who plays the father. He’s only 25, Miztek, tells me. I couldn’t believe it! Quite an admirable per­for­mance for some­one so young.

On Sun­day, after French class, went to Cross­words for a book shop­ping binge and picked up a few:
– Long Way Round: Chas­ing the Shad­ows : Ewan McGre­gor and Charley Boor­man: I’ve been want­ing to read this for a while. I love Ewan McGre­gor and my esti­ma­tion of him only went up when I found out that he had taken time off to travel around the world on his bike! Along with his friend Charles, Ewan recounts their adven­tures over 20,000 miles in 4 months.

- A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle who writes about some inter­est­ing expe­ri­ences and humourous tales of life in the French countryside.

- A book on cat care

- A book on French gram­mar (if only I’d actu­ally read this stuff!)

This to add to my grow­ing pile includ­ing the lat­est Hari put­tar, The Roman­tics (Pankaj Mishra), and the Pen­guin Book of Indian Jour­neys. Ah, I think I will need to devote way more couch time now to com­plete all the books I now have on my “to read” list!

Discussion

22 Responses to “A Victorian Walk down MG Road”

  1. Glad to read that you & Shibani had a good time. These are lovely pic­tures, and a nice descrip­tion of the morn­ing (with­out giv­ing too much away). Hope­fully your (cyn­i­cal) friends may read this and decide to try a walk in Vic­to­rian Ban­ga­lore some morn­ing. If not, there’s always the His­toric Pub Crawl that we are start­ing soon.

    Posted by Arun Pai | August 10, 2005, 11:03 pm

  2. Nice post Anita. nice to know you had a great time on ‘the’ road…

    …Arun a small cor­rec­tion please. that was only one cyn­i­cal friend…rest seemed ok.

    Posted by Sabir | August 11, 2005, 11:38 am

  3. My first time here and I like your blogs which is dif­fer­ent from the usual blogs that I came across. Never paid atten­tion to MG road that way ever.. will take a closer look at all the.. *mon­um­nets* you have men­tioned in my next trip there..

    Posted by King Kong | August 11, 2005, 10:07 pm

  4. Quit Ban­ga­loru. Go back to Kaamatipura.

    Posted by tintin | August 12, 2005, 11:22 pm

  5. Hi Anita!

    Thank you so much for your update. It helped me redis­cover my home city, which may well become my home again soon. I have some excit­ing plans for Ban­ga­lore, and Arun Pai proves that Ban­ga­lore is ready for it! I’d like to get in touch with him. Do you have his email id?

    Posted by Mahesh Shantaram | August 14, 2005, 8:13 am

  6. Delhi has such her­itage walks too (organ­ised by India Habi­tat Cen­tre) .. and bet­ter.. they are for free :p :)

    Posted by Twilight Fairy | August 15, 2005, 4:31 pm

  7. thanks arun! we did enjoy our­selves. and we’re def­i­nitely look­ing for­ward to the pub crawl too :)

    sabir: thanks. there was actu­ally more than one. and i guess jus­ti­fi­ably so. it’s doesn’t seem like there’s much to see/do on mg road till you actu­ally go on a trip like this one.

    king kong: do that! you might be surprised ;)

    mahesh: so you’re com­ing back to good old ban­ga­lore? here’s arun’s ID: arun­pai at gmail dot com. you can get in touch with him…

    twi­light: really? must do it next time i’m there and hope­fully, you’ll come too? :)

    Posted by Anita | August 17, 2005, 4:07 pm

  8. Yeah sure, pro­vided I am there :p.. am in Helsinki right now. Those her­itage walks are great! Most of Delhi doesnt even know what it is miss­ing! With that fast paced life, no one has time to ‘stand and stare’..

    Posted by Twilight Fairy | August 20, 2005, 5:11 am

  9. By the way I also have been to one of these walks and felt great!
    One can also book tick­ets of these walks online on events sec­tion of Ghoomo.com

    Look for­ward to also attend Arun’s Pub Crawl and Cycle Walks :)

    Sub­odh

    Posted by Subodh V | August 27, 2005, 2:11 pm

  10. Cooll blog. I liked it here.

    Posted by Shirazi | September 3, 2005, 6:50 pm

  11. Next time you go by the Y! office, why don’t you drop in and give me a holler? :-)

    Posted by Swaroop C H | September 6, 2005, 5:54 pm

  12. hal­llo pliss! madam i jesht laow­ing yuvar block.

    Posted by mahinn madam | July 17, 2006, 2:03 pm

  13. nice one!

    Posted by pramodini | August 15, 2006, 12:09 pm

  14. hi,

    i have been to ban­ga­lore twice and lived there for almost 8 months. I loved the city when i vis­ited it the first time that was in 2004 but later when i went back after a year it wasnt the same. it seemed even more crowded and pol­luted. The inte­ri­ors of ban­ga­lore are really nice like Indi­rana­gar, jayana­gar areas. But i feel ban­ga­lore has a very poor infra­struc­ture, i wish it was less pop­u­lated and had clean air. any­ways i miss ban­ga­lore and will always love it as it has some­thing spe­cial abt. it.

    Posted by swapna | October 26, 2006, 8:32 pm

  15. Very nice site!

    Posted by levitra | March 3, 2007, 4:58 pm

  16. Hi,
    can you please pro­vide me with some more infor­ma­tion about these walks? For instance, I’d like to know when it’s hap­pen­ing again and how often it happens.

    Posted by pragya | June 5, 2007, 12:24 pm

  17. dear fiend,
    i came across this writ­ing as i was search­ing for arun pai after i read an arti­cle in last issue of Sun­day Times about him.

    one of my friends in flickr com­mu­nity has a lot of interst in his­tory of cal­cutta. he would carry a copy of ‘ten walks of cal­cutta’ ‚his cam­era and walk along the roads track­ing the old build­ings of cal­cutta with his young son along with him.

    I have joined him on two sun­days … and i must say , these walks are very intersting.

    i am inter­sted in ter­ra­cotta tem­ples of west bengal.done a bit read­ing , but have wait for the autumn/winter for going out there and take pho­tos .i find her­itage build­ings very inter­st­ing .… had i not read yr arti­cle, i would not have known aboutwin­ston churchill’s con­nec­tion with bangalore.

    rgds

    PS : what is arun’s con­tact no and e-mail? pl send it to :

    shyamalchatterji@hotmail.com

    Posted by Shyamal chatterji | August 6, 2007, 9:20 pm

  18. Even Tallis & Com­pany organ­ise such exe­ri­ences in Delhi aswell.

    Posted by Gagan Anand | March 6, 2008, 1:15 pm

  19. Please send me Mr Arun’s Con­tact No. at ganand@tallisandco.com

    Posted by Gagan Anand | March 6, 2008, 1:16 pm

  20. Hi,
    this sounds very inter­est­ing. do let me know how i can try this once.

    Posted by Venkat | June 21, 2009, 6:30 pm

  21. hello,…

    i would like to have the con­tact no. and e-mail id of Mr.Arun Pai asap.

    rgds

    Posted by shreyas | September 20, 2011, 11:58 am

  22. Namma Ben­galuru Thumba horledu.
    Thanks to the indif­fer­ence, of the politi­cians, get­ting thor­oughly spoilt

    Posted by Sujoy Datta | April 30, 2012, 6:18 pm

Post a Comment

Photos on flickr

Daily Mile