Beyond the skylines

Some places stay with us not because they are extraordinary, but because we have passed them a hundred times—a statue we noticed from a bus window, a name on a plaque that meant nothing until it suddenly did. Our cities are full of such quiet witnesses.

Urban ecology is more than trees, parks, and lakes. Cities are living organisms — they breathe through people, move through infrastructure, and remember through stone. Statues, war memorials, and other commemorative structures may appear inert, but they form part of a city’s sensory and symbolic landscape. They mark the rhythms of everyday life and carry the weight of historical memory. As cities grow and shift, these objects do not merely stand still — they speak, they fade, they transform.

We often think of ecology in terms of natural systems: green cover, biodiversity, and water bodies. But built forms—especially commemorative ones—are just as much part of our urban commons. These are shared, negotiated, and lived-in spaces that shape how we inhabit the city — and how the city, in turn, inhabits us.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Northeast India, where cities like Kohima, Imphal, and Guwahati place war memorials at the heart of their civic and tourist landscapes. These spaces honour soldiers of World War II, but they also serve as spaces for reflection, storytelling, and intergenerational memory. Nearby monoliths — raised to commemorate victories, festivals, or mythical events — similarly stand as archives in stone. These are not just historical installations; they are textured, symbolic elements of urban life.

In contrast, commemorative structures in many Indian metros fade into the background. We may pass them without a second glance. Delhi’s Teen Murti, for example, was a fixture on my childhood commute. Only later did I learn that it memorialises three Indian cavalry regiments from World War I.

In Bengaluru, my home city, there is a small but significant war memorial tucked away at the junction of Brigade and Residency Roads. It is the city’s oldest, commemorating the Madras Pioneers, a regiment famously mentioned in the Sherlock Holmes series as the ‘Bangalore Pioneers’. I once pointed it out to a friend, who was surprised that she had never noticed it. Just a short walk away stands a more ironic figure — the statue of Queen Victoria overlooking the Kasturba Road junction. Erected with contributions from the residents of the Bangalore Cantonment and the Maharaja of Mysore, it depicts the queen in ceremonial robes of the Order of the Garter. Legend has it that during a court ball, the Countess of Salisbury’s garter slipped, prompting the king to retrieve it and declare, ‘Shame on him who thinks ill of it’. That phrase became the motto of the order. In a twist of history, this statue, adorned in the robes of a chivalric legend, stood as a quiet bystander to the feminist protests of the 1970s. Not too long ago, the Mahatma Gandhi statue on MG Road was a regular rallying point for civic gatherings. 

These monuments are not passive. They structure movement, host emotion, and shape memory. They are landmarks, but also civic companions. However, as cities expand and priorities shift, these spaces are often re-layered, sometimes deliberately, often carelessly. In the churn of urban development, they risk being edited out of visibility.

Take the South End Circle, once the city’s southern boundary, now part of Bengaluru’s urban sprawl. Growing up in the 1990s, I often crossed it on my way to visit my grandparents. What always caught my eye was a bust, with ‘Tee Nam Shri Circle’ written on an old plaque. Curious, I asked my father, who told me that he was a great Kannada writer. Years later, a new music teacher at school turned out to be Tee Nam Shri’s granddaughter. I felt a quiet thrill — the statue that I had passed by for years now felt real, and a connection was made.

But over time, the space around the bust changed. A massive billboard went up, its pillar blocking the bust. Later, a lion sculpture was added, crowding the circle further. The bust became harder to see, increasingly obscured by commercial clutter and new commemorations. Even after moving away from the city, every visit home included a glance to check — is it still there? It was. Still is. But more hidden than ever. I recently read more about Tee Nam Shri. He was the one who suggested the term ‘Rashtrapati’ as the vernacular equivalent of ‘president’. What began as a passing childhood curiosity led to a deeper understanding of how everyday urban structures shape our memory and sense of place.

Statues and memorials are not just leftovers of history. They are part of our cities’ social ecology. They root us across time and generations. To preserve these spaces is not just to conserve the past but to make room for reflection in the present.  As cities transform, these quiet sites deserve renewed attention. To remember a city is to remember more than its skylines. It is to remember the quiet markers, the names nearly erased, the busts hidden behind billboards. To remember is to belong.

(The writer is a faculty at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru)