Early Days in Bean Town (1)
Bangalore is referred to as the Bean Town by parts of the English Press. The legend is that a king called it by that name when he strayed into a village selling boiled beans. While this name is basically a fun name . some of the sobriquets it has acquired do no justice to either the mood or the history of the city. Some journalist with an overdose of imagination saw some retired people going for a walk in a leafy suburb and termed it a pensioner's paradise. Several IT spokesmen, who like to believe that it all started with them, describe the city of those days as a sleepy city. These sobriquets were actually misnomers even in the fifties and sixties when the city was vibrant with the aspirations of a new nation. It was a big city even then being ranked variously between 5 and 7 . Its competitors were Hyderabad and Ahmedabad even then (Some of the big cities are shown in the map below)
Around 1960 it had a population of about 11lakhs. It had more public sector factories than even the bigger cities. Even in the pre independence days , there was the Hindusthan Aircrafts Ltd (HAL) . It was soon to be joined by the other big public sector units like the ITI (telephones), HMT (machine tools), BEL (electronics ) etc. And there were numerous smaller factories. Thee were big cotton mills like the Binny Mill, the Rajah Mill etc . In the early mornings once could see the buses of all these factories plying all over the town.
The City’s limits :
The northernmost limit was the Indian Inst of Science in the Malleshwaram area, In the south, the limit was defined by the aptly called the South End in Basavanagudi. In the eastern part it was the Wilson Garden area and the Mental Hospital (the present NIMHANS) . Mysore Road provided the eastern borders of the town. The suburbs like Jayanagar were beginning to be populated. From the south to the north it was about 10 kilometers.
Some other things have not changed much. South Parade (the present MG Road) was even then the most sought after destination of most college students. We also used to call it Cant, the cantonment area. One would never advertise it at home since the name meant the den of sin for some older people . Since we had yet to acquire our vices, what attracted us more were really the English movie theatres. The Parade Cafe (the present Koshys) was very popular even then. I remember that one of our classmates in the college started gong to Cant very often. He was preparing to go abroad and felt that Cant was one place where you could learn to use fork and knife ! Kannada was rarely spoken in the Cant area. We would try our English with waiters etc who themselves were not necessarily comfortable with the language.
The Transport
The means of private transport was the Jutka , a horse drawn vehicle . Jutka was a crude version of the elegant tonga . For some reason it was only Mysore which had these nice tongas. Jutka was actually more suited to trasnsport cargo ! The hind portion of the Jutka was way above the ground and it was usual for women to get in first. Since the front portion would naturally go up, the younger people would climb in from the front and sit there in the front along with the driver with the feet resting on grass. However, the jutkas were already slowly giving way to the auto rickshaws. Earlier there were 4 seater rickshaws but they disappeared. There were only few taxis in the whole city. The taxi drivers were content driving from point to point and catered to relatively wealthy customers. Taxis never became popular with the people of Bangalore.
Public transport has never been good in Bangalore . It was a problem then and it is so even now. It was called the BTC in the early days (Bangalore Transport Company - niknamed Beppu Takkadi company - essentially a deriding term). Those days Route 1 would start from South end, go via Gandhi Bazar - on to Yashwantpur . The glamorous route was Route 11 - from Gandhi Bazar to Malleshwaram via Majestic- more importantly via Maharani's college ! The bus used to transport girl students from south (Basavanagudi) and north (Malleshwaram ) to Maharani's College, one of the 2 girl's colleges in the city (The other college was Mount Carmel e with reputation of being a smart institution). Natuarlly it attracted lot of attention. Long queues were common at the Route 11 starting point in Gandhi Bazar ( near the present co-optex) . Some admirers were known to stand in the queue but never get into the bus ! . The fare from Gandhi Bazar to Majestic was about 13 or 17 paise in the very early ' 60s ! Another Route which was prominent was route 15 from City Market to Russel Market. In the mid 70s some of these routes used to have double decked buses)
Food, Sports, entertainment etc
As for eateries, the well known Mavalli Tiffin Rooms (MTR) was just then becoming famous but our eating was mostly in restaurants around Gandhi Bazar, especially Vidyarthi Bhavan , This restaurant which has become kind of a heritage place is very popular even now. The cost of a plain dosa was about 20 paise and Masala dosa costed 25 paise. There were also local hot spots – small restaurants known only for dosa or idli or vada etc. As students we used to keep track of such things and we did walk quite often few kilometers for just a dosa. However, our eating habits were very Desi and we were ignorant about fancy restaurants and hotels. There were very few hotels which served Punjabi dishes.
Since its early days Bangalore had a virbrant sports life. As everywhere else cricket was a popular sport. The Ranji team for the state consisted mostly of players from the city. There were many cricket teams like the Bangalore Cricketeers, the City cricketers etc. Next to studies cricket was one of the most important activities for us as students. The fields used to play hosts to many cricket matches on weekends. But Banglaore never had a huge field like Azad maidan of Mumbai where one could see umpteen matches happening at the same time.
Bangalore had more theatres per capita than any other Indian city (not to mention bars). The two hubs were Kempegowda Road (Majestic) which had Indian films and Cantonement which mostly showed English films. Kempegowda road had probably the largest number of cinema theatres per given area . Given the cosmopolitan nature of its people, the theatre screened Kannada, Tamil , Telugu , Hindi an English movies. Some morning shows were there of film of other languages like Bengali, Malayalam etc.
The Intellectual Life:
Bangalore had very good educational institutions even in those days. The Indian Institute of Science was the most prestigious institution in the city. It trained scientists and engineers in many fields. The Central College was one of the oldest colleges for sciences in the country. Bangalore produced more than its share of engineers. There were two engineering colleges when most cities had none. There were other famous colleges like the National COllege,St. Joseph's college, Mount Carmenl college etc.
The city had several newspapers in Kannada - the older dailies like Tainadu, Vishwakarnataka , Janavani and the new daily Prajavani. The only English newspaper was the Deccan Herald (An earlier English paper called the Daily News a run of nearly 15 years and had stopped). Deccan Herald had the venerable Potan Joseph as the editor. Several Taml and Urdu papers were also to be seen on the newsstands.
Bangalore South, and especially Gandhi Bazar (our residential area), was a major intellectual hub of Bangalore . The journalist YNK( who influenced various writers and theatre/film movement in Kannada) and H . Narasimhayya , the educationist were very influential with youth. There were also eminent writers like Masti Venakatesha Iyengar, Gopalakrishna Adiga , D.V,Gundappa , G.P.Rajaratnam etc in Bangalore . But our horizons were very limited and we were not able to appreciate some of these writers who were also great thinkers. Our reading in Kannada was limited to novels . The popular novelists of those days were .A. N. Krishna Rao, T.R.Subba Rao , Niranjana, Triveni etc. The Kannada paperback industry (hottige)had just then started and books were available for about Two rupees !
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
(clock wise from top left)
(1) Central college (The pik does not do justice to this nice redcoloured building. In those days the only university was the Mysore University. The post graduate sections were in Mysore (humanities and social sciences) and Bangalore ( natural sciences). Central College used to house the science departments. (2) Prof C.V.Raman (3) The Maharaja of Mysore (4)) Town hall- This was built in mid 1930s. Even today (2007) this place hosts many events (5) Mahatma Gandhi Road- This is the most famous road in Bangalore. In the earlier days it was called South Parade. (6) Vidhana soudha (being built)- This houses the state ministerial offices as well as the halls for holding legislative meetings. This is a magnificient structure( thought to be a little too luxurious for this nation, at least at that time) The builidng was built in the reign of Sri K. Hanumanthaiya. He (the Chief Minister ) got lot of flak for this building (7) Dr. K.V.Puttappa (kuvempu) possible the most famous kannada writer of the last century (also the first jnanapeeth award winner for Kannada) (8) Sri M.Vishweshwarayya (9) ) In the centre is the masthead in kannada of the newspaper Tainadu
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Some important people -
The two Bangaloreans whom everybody respected were Prof C.V.Raman and Sir M.Vishweshwarayya. Both were given Bharat Ratna ,the highest civilian award of the Govt. of India, within the first 3 years of the institution of the awards.
Prof Raman, who discovered the Raman effect in Optics, was awarded the Nobel Prize and was probably the greatest Indian scientist of the time. Dr Mokshangundam Vishwesharayya was trained as an engineer and was responsible for the technological progress of the state.
He was the brain behind the KRS dam on the river Cauvery ( called an engineering wonder), the Iron and Steel MIlls in Bhadrawati, the sugar mills in Mandya etc. The irrigation projects in the state , the Power stations in Shivanasamudram etc. He was also the Dewan of Mysore for a long time. Another person who commanded lot of respect was Sri Jayachamaraja Wodeyar, the ex Maharaja of Mysore who was a great Sanskrit scholar. He was also probably the only Maharaja of those days who was treated with respect by people like Nehru.
(Pl see web site of Mr Ron BangaloreWala for many good pictures of the past; the present piks from various web sites, and from old newspapers)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
