VOLVO BUSES IN BANGALORE

The BTS called Bangalore Transport Service was renamed BMTC Bangalore Metropolitan Transport service somewhere in 2000. My earliest experiences with BTS is as a child say from around 1973. BTS services could be rated poor during this time with inadequate buses and huge rush of population and jam packed buses with the conductors finding it difficult to complete the job of issuing tickets. Every single bus stop was a scene of despair with families trying to get their act together of squeezing into a bus.
Some of the principal bus stands in bangalore were the Subhash nagar bus stand in Majestic near the city railway station; City Market bus stand; Shivajinagar bus station and Jayanagar bus stop at the 4th block.

With the opening of the ring roads and the many routes that were developed the situation seems to have eased considerably at present. The Kempe Gowda bus station seen at subash nagar must have come somewhere in the late 70's. It used to be a shallow valley were circus used to be held and I was witness to one such circus in the 70's.

The road -lines of Bangalore began to get illuminated with red coloured volvo buses from the year 2000 or so which caught the fancy of up-market residents.This has given the city a touch of glamour. The charges were exorbitant to start with on these buses but were rationalised later.

BMTC or (BTS) has developed and improved itself over the years. But it can be developed even further and defanitely efforts should be put in this direction.

DEMOGRAPHICS AND THE POPULATION OF BANGALORE

Bangalore has a distinct mix of people from different backgrounds.

Before British habitation Bangalore must have been some kind of a forest with ferns, shrubs and trees much abound with cobra snakes. Most of these snakes took shelter in the crevices of rocks that lay close to the many lakes and water bodies. The terrain of this place made it easy to create cachment basins for water which is characteristic of bangalore largely because of the land which had a symmetric and regular distriburion of crests and troughs. In the seige of srirangappatanam in the fourth mysore war the madras front was one faction of the british army mobilised from madras to the battle front in srirangapattana describe their 250 mile journey from madras to mysore as one through forests. The marching troops must have passed through bangalore at that time which must have been a forested land and not very significant as a place but for some bsic support in the form of food and temporary hangout for the troops.

What made bangalore an interesting place for the British would be a moot question. Possibly they were looking for an alternative to madras or a support center for the government in Madras and bangalore being fairly not very distant from madras chose it as a settling ground. They set up a cantonment here possibly to store ammunition and thence came many officers and their dependants to this place. This must have happenned not earlier than 1900 in full measure in my opinion. So officially the modern city of Bangalore could be a barely 100 years and more in vintage.

What makes bangalore different from many other cities is its dichotomous heterogenity. Upto the Bangalore cantonment was in the hands of British and the area further in the hands of the mysore maharajah and this city even to this day is yet to come to terms with this inheritance. The british controlled bangalore had a large tamil population brought to this place by their masters for various kinds of vocations and jobs. The mysore controlled bangalore had a distinct mysorean flavour and possibly the local population indulged in business of various kinds for survival. What a distinct contrast. Kannada was possibly the most spoken language in the mysore part while tamil became some kind of a defacto language in the other part. These two parts of bangalore have very distinct culture which is getting smoothened today by large scope for acculturation among the growing up generation today.

Something very significant about the populace today in bangalore is that no single tag or description fits well to describe the population and any such effort would become even more cumbersome in the days to come. One significant event in this dimension is the large influx of students from Northern India into Bangalore in search of education from the 1970's which began to intensify even further in the 1990's when jobs became plentiful for the youth in this city and such events will dictate and have a large scale bearing on the population of Bangalore of the future.

NLSIU ( National Law School of India University Bangalore)

NLSIU stands for National law School of India University. I spent two years here as a student of law from 2006-2008. I liked the place and the legal education given through lectures. 

There were some good teachers at the law school. Mr. Sairam Bhat who used to teach Contract law; Mr. Chauhan who used to teach environment law and Mr. M P P Pillai who used to teach Company law. I think Mr. Chauhan passed away somewhere in 2009.

I must make special mention of Dr. Chauhan who used to teach environmental law. He had served in the ministry of environment and forests before joining nlsiu. He used to be a very very dedicated teacher and used to teach environmental law with a high degree of involvement and enthusiasm. It is a tragedy we lost him so early. I think something must be done by the nlsiu to honour his memory and dedication towards spirited teaching. He sent me some ppt presentations regarding environmental law which I have preserved .

What impressed me the most at nlsiu is the library which has an axcellent design and also the lawns and the buildings , not to forget the small canteen in the main building and the bright young students who frolick merrily walking up and down the campus walk-ways.

Some people do not know how to reach NLSIU. From the bangalore railway station it is not very far. Take the taxi or rickshaw and follow the mysore road and the next important mile-stone being the raja rajeshwari arch and the gopalan arcade. Ahead you find the Bangalore University gate. Drive through the gate into the straight road until you see the psychology department to the right. Turn to the right at this junction and as you go ahead you see the department of environmental science of the bangalore University to the right and the road leading to a dead end. Turn left here and a few meters away you encounter a main road. Turn right here and keep straight through the winding roads and you rach the national law school. If you reach the new bangalore airport ask for Nagarabhavi circle near Vijayanagar which would be the pivots to reach the law school.

The culture at this institute is largely western and is co-educational and dont be surprised if you see boys and girls embrace; this is the culture here and a largely accepted one.

ST. ANTONY'S SCHOOL KR PURAM

In fact the first school I attended was not Lowry Memorial School. It was St. Antony's school. I think the school is at present in Ramamurthy nagar. I think I attended this school for about eight months and discontinued later to join the Lowry memorial School.

It is interesting to note where the St. Antony's school existed at that time. It was in a godown like shed in a vast area of land opposite to the facade of Indian Telephone Industries yonder the national highway 04. Now the place looks totally different with some petroleum institute having garbed a large share of this land. This shed was built during the British era it is said to house Italian prisoners.

The shed was divided into many enclosures with hardboard barricades and in one such room I spent eight months making fragile steps towards an education. My father used to bring food to this place almost every afternoon. I used to get eye infection repeatedly during my stint at this school and my father thereupon decided to stop education temporarily and re-admitted me to the Lowry Memorial School the following summer.

At this school I had a class mate by name Santhosh Koshy who later became a doctor.

Unni Krishnan who was the production manager of television at BPL was a product of this school.

SPORTS AT LOWRY MEMORIAL SCHOOL

There used to be an annual sporting event at the Lowry memorial School. This was conducted relegiously year after year in november and various athletic events were held and prizes distributed. I remember Ismail from hoodi village (and his brother muhammed ali) who used to win 1500mtrs race year after year . James peter, Swamy das were other sporting heroes of Lowry Memorial School of our times. Some of them used to win prizes at regional events of the karnataka state too.

I tried to be an athlete but in vain basically to bask in the glory of a winner-but never succeeded. But I came very close once. I was not winning short distance races, so i decided to try the 400 meters race. This means running two rounds around the school ground. I was doing a fairly good job and was very close to getting the third prize , had it not been for the unfair designs of my class mate Swatantra babu who was nick named cobbler and was from Kaggadasapura. He repeatedly tugged at me from behind and got the better of me; and in desperation I had to drop out at the last instance thereby losing my only chance to have won a prize at athletics. I protested at the action of my friend cobbler but the decision was against me- I should have completed the race and not drop out. In retrospect I think this decision was wrong and cobbler should have been disqualified for malpractice.

I took to playing field games later like basket ball and had good time doing so for many years.