Aakash Singh Rathore
Credit: DH Illustration
‘I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains/ I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways/ I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests/ I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans’.
I’ve trained for Ironman races across India’s vast terrain: Delhi’s smoggy loops, Hyderabad’s dusty trails, Mumbai’s humid seafront, Puducherry’s coastal calm, Shimla’s crisp heights, and Bengaluru’s vibrant hills. In Bengaluru, five years ago, I pounded Cubbon Park’s trails, my bike sliced through dawn air near Nandi Hills. What made Bengaluru unique was its runners: a legion of dedicated athletes, some of India’s fastest, whose relentless pace in dawn training groups pushed me to shave minutes off my splits. Now, as I prepare for an upcoming Ironman in Agadir, Morocco, I picture those runners, not to mention the city’s poorest, in pockets of slums dotted around the town, gasping through smog. And I wonder, can Bengaluru outpace the hard rain – to return Bob Dylan’s powerful symbolist imagery from his 1962 ‘A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall’ back towards current climate concerns – that’s a-falling there?
‘And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard/ It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall’.
Hesaraghatta lake, where I once rather daringly swam, lies parched despite restoration vows, one of 40% of Bengaluru’s lakes either dry or poisoned. My old 90-kilometre cycling routes near Bellandur – its lake frothing like a chemical spill – are now unrideable, choked by dust and gridlock. Elite runners, once flying through Cubbon Park, now battle haze, while the poor, in shanties surrounding the Peenya Industrial Area, breathe air even worse.
‘Oh, what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?/ I heard the sound of a thunder that roared out a warnin’/ I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world/ I heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’.’
Bengaluru is a city losing its breath. While the media touts how much cleaner it is to cities such as Delhi, its tech boom fuels high-rises, slashing green cover by nearly 20% over the last decade. The operations of the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation have been impacted by an ageing fleet, while metro delays trap commuters in diesel haze. Even culture suffers – Coldplay (no comparison to Dylan, to be sure) eyed Bengaluru for a 2025 gig but found no venue fit for its ambitions, a small but sharp sign of infrastructure stretched thin. My Ironman training, once supported by Bengaluru’s hills, would now be a battle against smog and chaos. Once I thrived there with a community that made every stride electric. Now, my heart goes out to those runners enduring this air.
‘And what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?/ I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’/ I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest/ Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters’.
What’s driving the coming storm? Urban sprawl without a leash. Policy promises – like the 2023 environmental plan for cleaner fuels and lake revival – lack any teeth at all. The garden city wilts under concrete and neglect.
The media touts Bengaluru as a green oasis, its ‘Garden City’ label and lower pollution ranking than cities such as Delhi masking a harsh truth: the air chokes its runners, and lakes lie dead or toxic. The Jakkur Lake’s community revival shows hope, but scaling it demands action – more electric buses, faster metro expansion, and real polluter penalties. Residents, tech giants, and policymakers must drive change through carpooling, rainwater harvesting, and lake cleanups. Bengaluru deserves more than media spin. Its tech wealth must fund greener systems and get ahead of this problem before it’s too late. The hard rain looms, and no headline can hide it.
Dylan’s call beckons: ‘Oh, what’ll you do when the rain starts to pour?/ We’ll rise as one, we’ll open every door/ We’ll fight for the city we knew and adore/ We’ll stand in the storm till the skies are restored’.