Apurva Mathad
Ulsoor – a place in transition

Ulsoor is one of the oldest parts of Bangalore. The area is characterised by narrow streets and places of worship, mostly temples, in almost every street. There are numerous old buildings that exist even today but slowly, the character of the neighbourhood is changing. New multi-storeyed constructions have started coming up in the area with the result that more and more people live in the same cramped neighbourhood than before, a reflection of the increasing population of Bangalore. I concentrated on one small street in Ulsoor off Bazaar Street called Yellama Koil Street, which I think is representative of the character of Ulsoor.

Archana Venson

The Ants Café, Indiranagar

The café is located on the first floor terrace of the store
Ants. In tandem with the organisation’s philosophy, the space is very simple and unpretentious. Indiranagar, like other residential neighbourhoods, has undergone an intrusive change by the
influx of commercial zones. This development has taken
away the character of a quiet and peaceful locality. At the Ants Café one can still enjoy the tranquil, outdoor atmosphere. In our city, places with this quality are an absolute
delight.

Arnab Dey
Chandni Chowk Road

Shivajinagar is a major commercial area and an
important transport hub in the city. The area
which was known as Lashkar in the Mughal era,
became a servicing area of the Cantonment during
the British Raj.
The road starts with a automobile spare parts market,
which has every imaginable auto part for any modern or
antique car and bike. Shops that are located on Chandni
Chowk Road are extremely diversified and have been set
up generations ago.
Chandni Chowk Road is a popular around the clock destination
for a hot cup of tea or delicious street food, especially
biriyani. Shivajinagar’s noisy streets, bylanes and its multi-cultural population
living and running their businesses together, represent unity in diversity.

Arnab Dey
Chandni Chowk Road

Shivajinagar is a major commercial area and an
important transport hub in the city. The area
which was known as Lashkar in the Mughal era,
became a servicing area of the Cantonment during
the British Raj.
The road starts with a automobile spare parts market,
which has every imaginable auto part for any modern or
antique car and bike. Shops that are located on Chandni
Chowk Road are extremely diversified and have been set
up generations ago.
Chandni Chowk Road is a popular around the clock destination
for a hot cup of tea or delicious street food, especially
biriyani. Shivajinagar’s noisy streets, bylanes and its multi-cultural population
living and running their businesses together, represent unity in diversity.

Dayaprasad Kulkarni
Sights and sounds of changing Bangalore

Bangalore, the fastest growing city in Asia, has been turned on its head like no other city. For all of us who have lived in the city from the seventies,
eighties or even the nineties, Bangalore is not the same anymore.
Cooke Town is a clean and peaceful neighbourhood located in the east end of the city. Being here, one instantly knows why Bangalore was called Pensioners’ Paradise.
Though parts of it still retain the charm of the old city most of it is gone. Beautiful, crested bungalows have made way for multi-storey apartment complexes.
At this point we must ask ourselves what kind of a city we wish to live in. Do we want to retain the old structures and with it the memories of the past or harbour dreams of turning Bangalore into another Singapore? Is it time to preserve what is left in a time capsule or just move on? I do not know.

Deepti Jois

BDA Complex, HSR Layout

Complexes like these are so prevalent in Bangalore that we are oblivious to the vibrant hum of life inside. These are the malls of the common man, and unlike their glitzier counterparts, they provide for his material
needs. This series is an attempt to showcase the extraordinary
in this »commonness« around us.

Deepti Jois

BDA Complex, HSR Layout

Complexes like these are so prevalent in Bangalore that we are oblivious to the vibrant hum of life inside. These are the malls of the common man, and unlike their glitzier counterparts, they provide for his material
needs. This series is an attempt to showcase the extraordinary
in this »commonness« around us.

Jyothi Karat

Around City Market

When I was asked to choose a place I like to document for the workshop, I didn’t have to think too hard to come up with my favorite. It just had to be the City Market area with its majestic Jamia Masjid, the KR Market, the
SJP road which transforms into a flower market at the crack of dawn, Nawab Hyderali Khan Road and the long over bridge which unobtrusively slithered into the midst of all the chaos that went on, connecting and separating lives on either sides at the same time, alive and rampant
like the rivers around which civilization grew in bygone eras.
Every visit I made was a new discovery of the micro cosmos that existed in its womb, hidden to the world outside, but visible to those who looked hard enough. In its dark alleys, I found the colors that no mall in the city
could offer.

Jyothi Karat

Around City Market

When I was asked to choose a place I like to document for the workshop, I didn’t have to think too hard to come up with my favorite. It just had to be the City Market area with its majestic Jamia Masjid, the KR Market, the
SJP road which transforms into a flower market at the crack of dawn, Nawab Hyderali Khan Road and the long over bridge which unobtrusively slithered into the midst of all the chaos that went on, connecting and separating lives on either sides at the same time, alive and rampant
like the rivers around which civilization grew in bygone eras.
Every visit I made was a new discovery of the micro cosmos that existed in its womb, hidden to the world outside, but visible to those who looked hard enough. In its dark alleys, I found the colors that no mall in the city
could offer.

Jyothi Karat

Around City Market

When I was asked to choose a place I like to document for the workshop, I didn’t have to think too hard to come up with my favorite. It just had to be the City Market area with its majestic Jamia Masjid, the KR Market, the
SJP road which transforms into a flower market at the crack of dawn, Nawab Hyderali Khan Road and the long over bridge which unobtrusively slithered into the midst of all the chaos that went on, connecting and separating lives on either sides at the same time, alive and rampant
like the rivers around which civilization grew in bygone eras.
Every visit I made was a new discovery of the micro cosmos that existed in its womb, hidden to the world outside, but visible to those who looked hard enough.In its dark alleys, I found the colors that no mall in the city
could offer.

Aniruddha Ghosh, »Khoshy’s«

»Koshy’s is a feeling. The cheer, energy and ease seep into you the minute you step in, and you know you’ll be back for more...
It began as a bakery outlet in the 1940s and grew into the Parade Café in 1953. Through generations, it has maintained its friendly and unassuming atmosphere.
With the passage of decades, the palpable sense of history has made Koshy’s an icon. And I love it as if it were my own, because, in some way, it is.«

Aniruddha Ghosh, »Khoshy’s«

»Koshy’s is a feeling. The cheer, energy and ease seep into you the minute you step in, and you know you’ll be back for more...
It began as a bakery outlet in the 1940s and grew into the Parade Café in 1953. Through generations, it has maintained its friendly and unassuming atmosphere.
With the passage of decades, the palpable sense of history has made Koshy’s an icon. And I love it as if it were my own, because, in some way, it is.«

Kusum Dhar Prabhu

Whispering to the bull: Images of another Bengaluru

Techno-savvy, cyber wizardry, glass and steel, emotionally cool city – it is all of that, but that is not all of what it is. I like coming to the Someshwara temple in Ulsoor because here one sees other faces of Bangalore. Here people whisper into the ear of the bull and walk circles around the trees in the temple courtyard.
Someshwara is a home to those parts of my being and that of others who offer their feelings and longings to the protection of the great bull. Here we can do this without the shame and awkwardness that would accompany
such acts outside.

Location: Someshwara Temple, Ulsoor Market

Kusum Dhar Prabhu

Whispering to the bull: Images of another Bengaluru

Techno-savvy, cyber wizardry, glass and steel, emotionally cool city – it is all of that, but that is not all of what it is. I like coming to the Someshwara temple in Ulsoor because here one sees other faces of Bangalore. Here people whisper into the ear of the bull and walk circles around the trees in the temple courtyard.
Someshwara is a home to those parts of my being and that of others who offer their feelings and longings to the protection of the great bull. Here we can do this without the shame and awkwardness that would accompany
such acts outside.

Location: Someshwara Temple, Ulsoor Market

Mallikarjun B. Katakol
Avenue Road

The only option to experience Avenue Road is to walk its streets and discover its rhythms. The temple, the book seller, the textile showroom, the cart puller, the vada pao maker, the lean buildings that tower over their squat neighbours: each is a world in itself. Many layered, multiply textured and richly engrossing. Avenue Road evinces much of what modernity celebrates: economic enterprise, ingenuity, commercial
success. Though hierarchical, its ethos accepts diversity as a principle of life and honours cooperation.

The city is planning to widen Avenue Road, cutting a swath through the maze of lanes and destroying structures that prop each other up on all sides. Thousands will be displaced and the community is divided on the issue.
What are the consequences of substituting the multiplicity of logics that constitute Avenue Road’s current functioning with the singular dynamic of modernity with its narrow notions of how social spaces should be organised? Pavement sellers and hawkers whose right to exist is presently nurtured will instantly become trespassers.
An interdependent community will be disaggregated into those who own property and those who don’t. It would be a pity if in the heat of the ideological debate over development we fail to notice that both history and current events suggest that there is much in this moral economy that is worth preserving.

Text: Lata Mani

Mallikarjun B. Katakol
Avenue Road

The only option to experience Avenue Road is to walk its streets and discover its rhythms. The temple, the book seller, the textile showroom, the cart puller, the vada pao maker, the lean buildings that tower over their squat neighbours: each is a world in itself. Many layered, multiply textured and richly engrossing. Avenue Road evinces much of what modernity celebrates: economic enterprise, ingenuity, commercial
success. Though hierarchical, its ethos accepts diversity as a principle of life and honours cooperation.

The city is planning to widen Avenue Road, cutting a swath through the maze of lanes and destroying structures that prop each other up on all sides. Thousands will be displaced and the community is divided on the issue.
What are the consequences of substituting the multiplicity of logics that constitute Avenue Road’s current functioning with the singular dynamic of modernity with its narrow notions of how social spaces should be organised? Pavement sellers and hawkers whose right to exist is presently nurtured will instantly become trespassers.
An interdependent community will be disaggregated into those who own property and those who don’t. It would be a pity if in the heat of the ideological debate over development we fail to notice that both history and current events suggest that there is much in this moral economy that is worth preserving.

Text: Lata Mani

Mallikarjun B. Katakol
Avenue Road

The only option to experience Avenue Road is to walk its streets and discover its rhythms. The temple, the book seller, the textile showroom, the cart puller, the vada pao maker, the lean buildings that tower over their squat neighbours: each is a world in itself. Many layered, multiply textured and richly engrossing. Avenue Road evinces much of what modernity celebrates: economic enterprise, ingenuity, commercial
success. Though hierarchical, its ethos accepts diversity as a principle of life and honours cooperation.

The city is planning to widen Avenue Road, cutting a swath through the maze of lanes and destroying structures that prop each other up on all sides. Thousands will be displaced and the community is divided on the issue.
What are the consequences of substituting the multiplicity of logics that constitute Avenue Road’s current functioning with the singular dynamic of modernity with its narrow notions of how social spaces should be organised? Pavement sellers and hawkers whose right to exist is presently nurtured will instantly become trespassers.
An interdependent community will be disaggregated into those who own property and those who don’t. It would be a pity if in the heat of the ideological debate over development we fail to notice that both history and current events suggest that there is much in this moral economy that is worth preserving.

Text: Lata Mani

Mallikarjun B. Katakol
Avenue Road

The only option to experience Avenue Road is to walk its streets and discover its rhythms. The temple, the book seller, the textile showroom, the cart puller, the vada pao maker, the lean buildings that tower over their squat neighbours: each is a world in itself. Many layered, multiply textured and richly engrossing. Avenue Road evinces much of what modernity celebrates: economic enterprise, ingenuity, commercial
success. Though hierarchical, its ethos accepts diversity as a principle of life and honours cooperation.

The city is planning to widen Avenue Road, cutting a swath through the maze of lanes and destroying structures that prop each other up on all sides. Thousands will be displaced and the community is divided on the issue.
What are the consequences of substituting the multiplicity of logics that constitute Avenue Road’s current functioning with the singular dynamic of modernity with its narrow notions of how social spaces should be organised? Pavement sellers and hawkers whose right to exist is presently nurtured will instantly become trespassers.
An interdependent community will be disaggregated into those who own property and those who don’t. It would be a pity if in the heat of the ideological debate over development we fail to notice that both history and current events suggest that there is much in this moral economy that is worth preserving.

Text: Lata Mani

Peeyush Sekhsaria

Jeevanbima Township – A very fresh place

The form achieved by Charles Correa for the Jeevanbima Housing project (1969 – 72) has precedence in his earlier projects. They could be called terrace houses on upper floors rather than flats or apartments. And these terraces are undoubtedly the charm of these projects.
Jeevanbima Township was designed for for 16,000 persons on a 60 acre site. The units which range in size from one room to five, generate
a number of typologies (from row houses to walk-up apartments), all
using multiples of the same structural module. The construction (up to
five storeys high) is of reinforced brick bearing-walls, minimising the use
of concrete and steel. In certain cases, the units step back to provide
open terraces for all the occupants. All units have direct access to a central
green area of over 20 acres which forms the heart of the project.
Charles Correa, architect, planner, activist and theoretician, is one of
the few contemporary architects who addresses not only issues of architecture, but of low-income housing and urban planning as well.

Peeyush Sekhsaria

Jeevanbima Township – A very fresh place

The form achieved by Charles Correa for the Jeevanbima Housing project (1969 – 72) has precedence in his earlier projects. They could be called terrace houses on upper floors rather than flats or apartments. And these terraces are undoubtedly the charm of these projects.
Jeevanbima Township was designed for for 16,000 persons on a 60 acre site. The units which range in size from one room to five, generate
a number of typologies (from row houses to walk-up apartments), all
using multiples of the same structural module. The construction (up to
five storeys high) is of reinforced brick bearing-walls, minimising the use
of concrete and steel. In certain cases, the units step back to provide
open terraces for all the occupants. All units have direct access to a central
green area of over 20 acres which forms the heart of the project.
Charles Correa, architect, planner, activist and theoretician, is one of
the few contemporary architects who addresses not only issues of architecture, but of low-income housing and urban planning as well.

Rahil Arora
Bangalore Fort

A walk around the Bangalore Fort throws up scenes of chaos, vibrancy and a hint of communal coexistence which has been the way for many centuries in the area. As you make your way into the fort you realize that the noise that accompanied you all this while has suddenly died down.
That’s Bangalore Fort. It sits quietly next to a noisy market on the Krishnarajendra Road. There are very few visitors on any given day, a testimony perhaps to its forgotten status in the city.

Rahil Arora
Bangalore Fort

A walk around the Bangalore Fort throws up scenes of chaos, vibrancy and a hint of communal coexistence which has been the way for many centuries in the area. As you make your way into the fort you realize that the noise that accompanied you all this while has suddenly died down.
That’s Bangalore Fort. It sits quietly next to a noisy market on the Krishnarajendra Road. There are very few visitors on any given day, a testimony perhaps to its forgotten status in the city.

Rajesh Pandey
Faces and places of Bangalore

We get along with our lives little knowing that people all around us are working tiredlessly to make our lives comfortable. The day starts many hours before we wake up, with our milk, newspaper, fresh vegetables, fresh flowers reaching our door steps. The place where we stay and feel at home is largely due to the countless faceless people who every single day execute their jobs with painful precision.

Rajesh Pandey
Faces and places of Bangalore

We get along with our lives little knowing that people all around us are working tiredlessly to make our lives comfortable. The day starts many hours before we wake up, with our milk, newspaper, fresh vegetables, fresh flowers reaching our door steps. The place where we stay and feel at home is largely due to the countless faceless people who every single day execute their jobs with painful precision.

Rajesh Pandey
Faces and places of Bangalore

We get along with our lives little knowing that people all around us are working tiredlessly to make our lives comfortable. The day starts many hours before we wake up, with our milk, newspaper, fresh vegetables, fresh flowers reaching our door steps. The place where we stay and feel at home is largely due to the countless faceless people who every single day execute their jobs with painful precision.

Ravi Shankar
Vani Vilasa Maternity Hospital

One of the important land marks of Bangalore City is undoubtedly
Vani Vilasa Women and Children’s Hospital. The impressive stone architecture of the Raj period still caters to thousands of patients even today. My photographs are a record of a day in the life of an old hospital.

Swarna Kumarswamy
Malleshwaram: The cool shade that sheltered my childhood

As the city modernizes and becomes a part of the global village it struggles to carve out its identity. It strives to strike a balance between that which is unique and that which is found everywhere over the world.
The identity of Bangalore is well preserved even today in certain parts of the city and across all economic backgrounds. I have photographed an old villa converted into a a Hotel, three ancestral homes and row houses at Malleshwaram. Even though it is undetectable by a traveller passing by, the lanes and bylanes of Malleshwaram hold a lot of nostalgic memories from my childhood.

Swarna Kumarswamy
Malleshwaram: The cool shade that sheltered my childhood

As the city modernizes and becomes a part of the global village it struggles to carve out its identity. It strives to strike a balance between that which is unique and that which is found everywhere over the world.
The identity of Bangalore is well preserved even today in certain parts of the city and across all economic backgrounds. I have photographed an old villa converted into a a Hotel, three ancestral homes and row houses at Malleshwaram. Even though it is undetectable by a traveller passing by, the lanes and bylanes of Malleshwaram hold a lot of nostalgic memories from my childhood.