Bangalore

Bangalore is considered a green city, a garden city. And in fact its gorgeous avenues lined with shade-giving trees muffle the noisy, hectic traffic. You can take a deep breath and spend some stress-free hours in well cared-for, spacious public parks. I have discovered parks with and without fences, with and without opening hours, even special parks for seniors and children. And I learned that a little less than one hundred years ago a Saxon had a great influence on the garden city of Bangalore.

He is entirely unknown in his native town of Lohmen near Dresden: Gustav Hermann Krumbiegel, born in 1865. It’s no wonder for he left it as a young man, first heading to Hamburg, then to London. From London, where he worked in Hyde Park and other places, he was sent to India. Here in Bangalore he is honoured as a great man. For 25 years Krumbiegel was the director and at the same time the chief gardener of Lalbagh Botanical Garden. Thanks to his worldwide connections, he was able to collect over 1,000 species of trees and plants from all over Asia, Australia, America, and Africa in Lalbagh Garden. During Krumbiegel’s time there, the park area was enlarged six fold. Lalbagh is one of the largest tourist attractions in the state of Karnataka. Every day 3,000 to 4,000 visitors come, on Sundays and during the holidays 5,000 to 6,000 visitors from all over the country. The entrance fee is 10 rupees (approximately 16 cents). The Indian people, with their great enthusiasm for floral decorations, especially love the huge annual flower shows every January and August, as well as the orange, grapefruit, mango and jackfruit shows and the big rose exhibition. The park attractions include a 20-million-year-old petrified tree, but even more so the three-billion-year-old huge rock on which visitors love to climb. It is one of the earth’s oldest rocks and has already exerted a pull on hoards of geologists from around the world.

Even today the building in which Krumbiegel established Sunday lectures on horticulture still stands – now in ruins – in the park. Exactly 100 years ago he founded India’s first horticultural training centre in Mysore, 130 kilometres from Bangalore. It was also he who had the broad tree-lined avenues constructed in Bangalore. And he made sure that they were planted with trees that blossom at different seasons. Gustav Hermann Krumbiegel died in Bangalore at the age of 91. His gravestone is in the Christian cemetery near Lalbagh Park under an African tulip tree, one of his favourites. There is a Krumbiegel monument on Langford Road, but covered in plastic sheeting at the moment. The street between the main and the western entrances to Lalbagh Park is called Krumbigla Road.

I almost felt as if I were at home in Leipzig as I explored another park, Cubbon Park, on a Sunday. It is a freely accessible municipal park with no fences and no entrance fee. As in Clarapark in Leipzig, the people sit on the meadow for picnics, play ball games, spray each other with a water hose, and fetch ice cream from the vendor. A large part of the park is equipped with children’s playground equipment, there is even a park railway, or you can take a little boat tour.

However, the first green area that I visited in Bangalore was Ulsoor Lake, an artificial rainwater catchment basin very close to my hotel. I was surprised that the rickshaw driver passed by three entrances and finally let me off at a landing stage on the other side. But, I soon noticed that it was the only open access at midday. The park surrounding the lake is fenced in and only opens from five to nine in the morning and from four to seven PM. I soon learned that in the morning, joggers and strollers waited impatiently for the gates to open. The opening hours are intended to prevent the homeless from populating the park at night. I was nonetheless allowed in at one of the gates by the friendly service staff and was able to stroll all alone along a stretch of the lake and watch the plants being watered.

The special parks for children and seniors, as those I discovered in the district of Indiranagar, also have opening hours. There is a seniors’ park for people over 60. Children and younger people are not permitted to use this public park – and if they try, they are sent away by one of the many staff in uniform. It is forbidden to play ball in the seniors’ parks, to ride bikes, or make any noise. But, on the other side of the road there is a playground for children up to 13 years of age and their parents, with swings and slides, seesaws, climbing ropes, and tyres. Right next door there is also a cricket and ball playing field, where young people can let off steam.

I ask myself what the reactions in Germany would be if they would open special seniors’ parks. I assume the older generation would feel ostracized and protest it. But, the seniors’ parks in Bangalore (I’ve also seen some in Mumbai) are a friendly offer, for those who seek some peace and quiet in the greenery are sure to find it there. And if they wish to, the seniors can settle themselves on a bench in the children’s park and watch the little ones at play.