When I got a job in Bengaluru as a photojournalist, the only thing I was hoping for was to never get transferred to another city. I was game to spend months on assignments, and brave extreme terrains and inclement weather conditions anywhere on earth. But, when it came to hibernation, I always preferred the ‘air-conditioned city’.
I have been living in my home in RT Nagar, Bengaluru, for two decades now. It used to be a sanctuary of peace. In the mornings, as the sunlight slanted across my bed, I would be woken up by the trilling of red-vented bulbuls. The morning breeze was cool and refreshing, and I never felt the need for fans.
I recall how the city even encouraged my quirky fashion sense—I wore leather jackets in summer, and roamed around in shorts and just a T-shirt and shemagh scarf in winter, something unimaginable in any other big city in India, except maybe Pune.
Bengaluru had already been in rapid urbanisation mode years before I moved here. Old-timers often reminisced about the streets shaded by canopies of trees, clean rivers and lakes, and calm neighbourhoods. Award-winning Kannada filmmaker Umesh Kulkarni, 72, recalls how Champak flowers were sold in the flower markets daily. But most of the Champak trees have been felled to make way for development projects and buildings. The Bengaluru of yore used to be a ‘lazy’ city, free of pollution, heat waves, freezing winters, floods and the suffocating sultry air that leaves one exhausted these days. Over the past two decades, especially after the IT boom, Bengaluru has become a ‘busy’ city. Infrastructure and traffic have grown exponentially, and green spaces have reduced. If you are new to the city, you must learn how to get acclimatised to the perennial dust and noise from construction sites, and the toxic fumes from rampant garbage burning.
They have felled the trees near my home to make space for new buildings. The birds have all gone, and now I wake up to notification alerts from my Twitter feed. Today, I am completely dependent on fans and on artificial lighting, even during the day. I have started to feel like I am living in a sophisticated grave.
Bengaluru is also known as the ‘city of lakes’, but 25 lakes are only in name now, having become victims of unplanned development and encroachment. Public utility spaces are either built on lake beds or catchment areas. The City Bus terminal is built on the bed of the Dharmambudhi lake and the Kanteerava indoor stadium, on that of the Sampangi lake. The constant infusion of pollutants have turned surviving lakes into toxic tanks.
I usually went an hour early to scheduled assignments and spent that time by the lakes in the area. Watching migratory birds and breathing clean air before a shoot was always refreshing. The bonus was getting fresh farm greens and vegetables grown near the lakes. I remember bringing home tomatoes grown next to Bellandur lake 17 years ago. Now apartments have replaced these agricultural fields, and the Bellandur lake is known globally for its infamous toxic froth.
It is disheartening to see these beautiful lakes getting destroyed. And it is not just lakes. River Vrishabhavathi, which originates in Bengaluru, has turned into a sewage canal.
Spending some time in the city’s green lungs, such as Cubbon Park or the IISc campus, reminds one of the pressing need to create and preserve such spaces. They are the only locations where one can breathe free in relatively cooler surroundings. During the lockdown, I got to spend a lot of time on the empty streets of Bengaluru. They were among my best days in the city. It was like spending a month in good old Bangalore. The roads were empty and serene, the weather seemed pleasant and I was surrounded by a carpet of colourful flowers.
Economically we might have suffered, but environmentally, the lockdown offered an illuminating view of what the city was like earlier. And what I hope it can still be.
10%
According to a recent study by the CSIR-National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, only 21 out of the 210 lakes in Bengaluru city, or 10 per cent, have excellent water quality. Eleven of them are in the Yelahanka Zone.