Kannadiga

“The British,” the economist Ashok Mitra told the poet Dom Moraes during a conversation, “imposed a unified administration on an area they called India. When they left, we thought we’d continue the colonial experiment, but we called it a democracy.” The magnitude of contradictions that make up both the concept and reality of India has always been the stuff of legend, but Mitra’s comment is more radical than that – it points to the fragility of democracy in this nation. A riot in Shahdara, Delhi, on 20 August…

Roopa Pai’s Cubbon Park: The Green Heart of Bengaluru (2022) will appeal to anyone who loves trees, cares about public spaces, worries about gentrification, and enjoys a hyper-local story of citizens rallying around their beloved park. Pai writes, “Cubbon Park is not just a neighbourhood… It’s a universe in and of itself, a consistently large-hearted, always contested, uniquely Bangalorean ecosystem fashioned as much of trees and flowers and insects as of hearts and souls and minds.” Her affectionate prose, dipped in…

How would I describe Cubbon Park? That’s easy! Central to a weekend! — Paul Fernandes, artist, writer, designer and Bangalore’s pre-eminent visual chronicler Cubbon Park is an emotional issue for all Bangaloreans. This one space does not threaten to exclude anybody. Cubbon Park is not a tourist show-piece. The sustainability of a city is characterised by the righteous protection of its land. Parks and open spaces are created not out of political necessity or willingness, but by sheer necessity of survival within a…