Window to a lost world

From the albums

This picture was taken about 55 years ago in front of my Malles­waram home. I was born here in 1937. My earliest memories of my house on 6th Main are of the large garden, courtyard and many rooms. The shower in the bathroom was a novelty at that time.

When my brother was very young, my sisters and I used to tell him that the new ‘shower bath’ was a type of ‘kesari bhath’ and to keep watching the ceiling for it to emerge from the nozzle! Of course the poor little fellow was fooled and fully drenched as a result!

The ‘souday’ depot in our locality always did brisk business. The firewood we bought from there heated the kitchen fire and the ‘handay’ of water in the bathroom. My father, Dr M Sivaram, was a busy doctor and our house was always full of people.

We were six children, uncles, aunts and cousins who lived with us, relatives who arrived unannounced (equipped with their own bedding, steel trunk and ‘rail chombu’), poor students who came on a weekly basis for a free meal, and the occasional thief who strolled into the bedroom, picked up what he wanted and walked out casually since the front door was always open!

The food we ate was typical of a Kannadiga home. It was only when an aunt from Delhi came and made ‘chapattis’ that we tasted it for the first time.

Milk arrived every morning not in packets or cartons but in the cow itself! The milkman would station the cow in our backyard, we would set a bucket of ‘kalagachchu’ (vegetable peels and other stuff) in front of it and the cow would be milked as it placidly chewed on the offerings of the day. My father owned an Opel car and we had a phone with a four digit number — both rarities in those days.

We girls went to Maharani’s College by bus. We wore saris everyday (and slept in them!) We had a small canteen but it was the ice-candy man at the gate who was a bigger draw.

Bangalore was not very cosmopolitan those days and we had  three or four Gujarati girls while the rest of us were South Indian. We had basketball and throw ball as part of our sports activities.

And of course, we played them wearing saris, with the ‘pallu’ tucked in! We had no Science laboratories in college and so the Science students walked up to Central College to use their facilities. The famous writer Anupama Niranjana was senior to me in college.
 My three younger brothers could visit restaurants, watch a cricket match and go for movies on their own. We girls were not given the same freedom.

Pocket money was unheard of and we carefully collected any gift given by a visiting relative. I remember feeling very rich when I had saved ten rupees in one year!

For us girls, marriage was actually a welcome diversion and sometimes a relief from a sheltered and restricted life. It was a chance to move to another place, meet other people and often dress up.

My wedding reception was one of the few held at the Glass House in Lal Bagh. My father was a well-known doctor, who co-founded the Bangalore Medical College and was an eminent Kannada writer.

 My father- in-law, Mirle Lakshminarnappa, was the Advocate General of the then Mysore State and it is probable that they had obtained special permission to use this historic venue.

Having been a Bangalorean for close to eight decades, I myself am amazed at the dramatic changes which have occurred in our way of life. Yet so many things have remained the same and Bangalore will always be home !