basavanagudi – Pertinent Observations

This afternoon I visited the Kadlekai Parshe (groundnut fair) with the in-laws. It was the second time I was visiting the fair, and the first time during daylight (the last time was in 2011, with the wife, and I remember getting incredibly pained with the vuvuzelas all kids seemed to be blowing then). Some pertinent observations:

Considering that it was a groundnut fair, an activity that all visitors could be expected to indulge in would be to buy groundnuts and eat them as they walked through the fair. Eating groundnuts has the externality of skins, and there weren’t enough dustbins to effectively dispose of the skins.
As you might expect in a fair where you have a large number of shops selling pretty much the same goods, prices were largely the same. A litre of raw groundnuts (yes, that’s how whole groundnuts are measured and sold in Bangalore) cost Rs. 25 in most roadside shops, while a litre of roasted groundnuts cost Rs. 30.
We ended up buying groundnuts from several shops, and the quality varied widely, though the price didn’t. Some had too many “buDDes” (groundnuts with underdeveloped nuts), some were not roasted well enough, some were roasted too much and so on. Yet, price didn’t vary by much. This is puzzling since it was possible to sample a couple of groundnuts before making the decision to buy.
There were a lot of people and most of the road space was taken up by pedestrians. Yet, there were vehicles plying (well at a slower rate), leading to traffic jams all around. A better solution might have been to turn the stretch of Bull Temple Road between haLLi mane and Kamat Bugle Rock pedestrian only. Would’ve ensured greater safety and possibly faster traffic flows on alternate routes.
In terms of food, there was a large number of chaat carts, carts selling slices of a kind of thick (15 inches diameter) edible root, carts selling potato chips (which looked quite good and reminded me of Prague where I remember buying similar chips at St. Wenceslas’s Square), etc. Being noon, none of them seemed to be doing much business. Hopefully they’d’ve had better luck in the evening
Stalls were licensed, as I happened to see a license number on a “stall” (basically groundnuts heaped on the ground) selling groundnuts. This is a good move. We need full time licensing of city food carts.
The entire stretch of BP Wadia Road bewteen Bugle Rock Park and BMS College for Women was occupied by Lambani tribespeople selling plaster of paris figurines. Again, around noon, not much business, but enough attention to block traffic on that road.
There was a massive crowd going into the Big Ganesha and Big Bull temples. We steered clear and stuck to the peanuts.
There were a few people with DSLRs clicking away (I was one of those on my last visit). No groups though.

It seems like a fairly fun event. With better management (traffic, dustbins) it can be even better.

Recently the Deccan Herald carried an article on how Basavanagudi was an extremely well-planned area. It showed the original plan of Basavanagudi (drawn up in the late 1890s in the wake of the plague that hit the Pete area), and showed how well planned it was – demarcating public spaces, market areas, clubs, schools and residential areas. What is remarkable to me is that an area that was drawn up in the late 1890s has roads that are mostly wide enough to take even today’s traffic (a contrast in Malleswaram, built in the same area, but with extremely narrow roads by today’s standards).

On Thursday, I had to go someplace in Gandhi Bazaar (in Basavanagudi) from my grandmother’s place in Jayanagar, and that was when it struck me how small Basavaanagudi is. South End Circle and South End Road actually demarcated the southern end of Basavanagudi, while the so-called “North Road” (also called Vani Vilas Road) marked the northen end of this area. And I ended up walking from my grandmother’s house (about half a kilometer south-east of South End Circle) to National College in about fifteen minutes – and if you go by the map shown in the article linked above, it is the entire span of Basavanagudi! If this was one of the “major” planned extensions of Bangalore in that era, it goes to indicate the city’s population at that time.

It is interesting to note in the plan (as published by Deccan Herald) that the area that is now MN Krishna Rao park was demarcated as a “public square”. While the area is still being put to public use nowadays I couldn’t help but think of New York’s Union Square, which is build on an area much smaller than Krishna Rao park, but which has multiple uses to different sections of the population. Krishna Rao Park, on the other hand, is now a typical example of a “Jairaj Park” (nomenclature I’ve come up with after the former BBMP Commissioner, who was responsible for populating the city with a certain kind of park). I wonder if people still play cricket inside the park.

Until I saw the plan of Basavanagudi I hadn’t realized the symmetry in design. If you notice, at each corner of the public square there is a large roundabout which is somewhat off-centre (Armugam Circle, Netkallappa Circle, Tagore Circle and Dewan Madhava Rao circle). Of these, Tagore “Circle” is actually a square which doesn’t particularly serve the purpose of the roundabout thanks to which an ungainly underpass had to be built recently. And if you notice in the map, beyond each of these roundabouts is a “diagonal” road. The symmetry in design is remarkable. As an aside, while I was walking back to Jayanagar from Gandhi Bazaar on Thursday, I realized that large roundabouts are pedestrian-unfriendly! Unless they allow the pedestrian to cut across them (like in New York’s squares), of course.

For a long time I used to wonder why there is a Muslim Ghetto in the south-eastern quadrant of Basavanagudi (area between RV Road, Patalamma Street and the extension of BP Wadia road towards “teachers college”). The plan explains this. In line with the sensibilities of those times, Basavanagudi had dedicated areas for different castes and communities, and this sector was probably the area “reserved” for Muslims. It is the same with other areas developed in that time – for example Malleswaram also has a “Mohammedan block”. What is interesting, though, is that even Jayanagar, which was planned post-independence, when secularism was in vogue, has its pockets of Muslim Ghettos. I wonder if they grew organically or were by design. Also, read the map carefully. You will see that different parts of Basavanagudi have been earmarked for different castes!

It would be interesting if someone were to dig up the original masterplans for different localities in Bangalore, and also in other cities. It would be instructive to see how cities were developed at different points in time (for example, immediately after independence came the massive localities of Jayanagar and Rajajinagar – neither of which can be walked across in fifteen minutes). Also, this plan for Basavanagudi indicates that there were no villages in the area where it came up – which was not the case with areas such as Jayanagar which were planned around such villages. Again it would be interesting to see how villages were co-opted into the city.

I can go on but will stop here. I encourage you to also take a close look at the map and make your own inferences, and share them in the comments section.