Research, Visuals, Writing

Growing up, my father and I bonded over World War history. More than the number of war movies we’ve watched together, it would probably be easier to count the ones we haven’t. It was maybe over 15 years ago now, when watching one of these movies, I was surprised to hear mention of a certain…

The story goes that hundreds of years ago, Goddess Chamundeshwari, the protector of the old Mysore region, chanced upon the acres and acres of mango orchards in our Mavalli, and liked what she saw. The name of our ooru, our village, once laden with rich mango orchards, now close to Bangalore’s central business district, comes…

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…

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 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…