“When someone has a few hours in hand before their flight, they call me to have a walkthrough at Lalbagh, and I oblige. It has become a routine now,” says Suresh Jayaram, a well-known art historian and the botanical historian and chronicler of Bengaluru. Suresh wears many hats; he is an art and culture columnist, a crusader for environmental protection and, above all, the founder-director of 1ShantiRoad, a famous address in the Indian art scene, which is at once an idea lab, residency and exhibition space.
Cubbon Park: Citizens’ Perspectives and Many Visions for the Future is Suresh’s second outing with Bengaluru’s botanical gardens as its central theme. He published a book on Lalbagh, Bangalore’s Lalbagh: A Chronicle of the Garden and the City, in 2021. If that book was about the botanical variety of Lalbagh and its history, the present book on Cubbon Park is built around conversations he had with twenty-six Bengaluru citizens, including a gardener, whose lives have been intertwined with Cubbon Park, hailed as one of the lungs of the Silicon Valley of the South.
Suresh comes from a family with a horticultural tradition. He imbibed stories about Bengaluru’s flora from the stories told by his grandmother, and when he established 1ShantiRoad after his art history studies in Baroda, he became a regular at Lalbagh, befriending other regular morning walkers, joggers, officials, gardeners, lovers and many others. He did not know when he had turned himself into a self-assigned tour guide of Lalbagh. “It happened when people from all over the world and India started coming to 1ShantiRoad. I took them to Lalbagh for morning walks and started telling them about the botanical life and history of the park. Sooner than later, I became an ‘unofficial’ storyteller of the park,” Suresh smiles.
Cubbon Park is a different story, rather more conscious, politically oriented and socially concerned. Established by the British in an undulating stretch full of bamboo groves and water bodies, the history of Cubbon Park goes back more than three centuries. Slowly and steadily, institutions of governance such as courts, assembly halls, hospitals, colleges and roads grew in and around it, each time the park adjusting to the demands of a growing city, in effect collapsing the ecological balance.
According to Suresh, as he reveals in this book, Cubbon Park has been a haven for those socially ostracised for their sexual orientations, as well as for sex workers, destitute people, beggars, tired people, loners, protesters, students, lovers, reel makers, joggers, morning walkers, yoga practitioners, amateur photographers, art students, theatre artists, poets, hawkers and dreamers. One could always see a cross-section of Bengaluru’s urban demography at Cubbon Park.
Things have been changing for many years now. Governments have been making demands on the park’s land, initially by restricting human activities and later through forced constructions. Suresh sketches out how this park has been abused through constant surveillance and restrictive measures. He highlights these issues through twenty-five interviews and shows how each interview has contributed towards the protection of the ‘rights of Cubbon Park’ as a people’s park.
While reading the views of Arvind Narrain, Madhu Bhushan & Shakun Doundiyakhed, Ekta Mital & Angarika G, Dilip Da Cunha, Sheela Gowda, Viswanath Srikanth, Akkai Padmashali, Leo Saldana, Pushpamala N, Vijay Thiruvady, Sneha Visakha, Suneetha Kumar, Nanjappa, Kavitha Krishnamoorthy, Rachel Lee, S Umesh Kumar, Oman Eappen, Surekha Sharada, Naresh Narasimhan, Jasmeen Patheja, Bimal Desai, Janaki Nair, Chiranjiv Singh, Indu & Gautham Krishnan, Priya Chetty and Ankit Bhargava, we come to know that a park is not just a park but a microcosm of the world, with varying issues that need urgent addressal with concern and care.
This book is a must-read for those who love their ‘parks and gardens’ and protected greenery. This book is also a must-read for the Chief Minister of Kerala, Mr. V. D. Satheesan, who has taken a decision to relocate the historic Trivandrum Zoo from its present location to a remote river shore.
JohnyML
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