August 2025

  • At the Height of World War and Empire Disintegration, Churchill’s Gifts to his Bangalore Attendees

    It was 1896 when Winston Churchill, as a young soldier, first arrived in Bangalore as part of the Queen’s Own Hussars regiment. Four decades later, the man would become the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. A young Winston Churchill before his Bangalore home. Source: My Early Years by Winston Churchill; Churchill as an officer…

  • The Man That Was Kengal Hanumanthaiah

    In the late 1910s, there came a young boy from Ramnagara to live at our Lalbagh home while he attended the nearby London Mission School. The Lalbagh house had been a hub of political activity, especially of the non-Brahmin leaders, who had begun the state’s first political party. The movement in Mysore then was on…

  • The Tiger Who Walked Lalbagh Road

    The Times of India – Bombay Edition, September 7, 1899, ProQuest. Did you know that there were tigers housed in Bangalore’s Lalbagh Botanical Garden? Along with a rhino, black panther, lion, and a selection of deer. It was only a few years ago that my father recollected a story to me about a tiger that…