There's a little lake outside my office. It used to be much bigger once, but I think residential complexes claimed a lot of it over the years and our Tech Park stands on the rest. The bit that's left has been completely fenced in and left undisturbed, so life flourishes there. There are lots and lots of birds, black cormorants, white herons, blue-green kingfishers, white-breasted kites and the brown variety, and swooping in and out are flocks of tiny swallow-like things. It must be teeming with fish, one infers. On the banks there are dragonflies and frogs, and so probably snakes. Yellow butterflies weave in and out of the fence.
The swiftly changing moods of Bangalore's skies are reflected in the restless water, adding a little bit of sorely needed romance to the lives of those who happen to be looking out of a window or standing on the pavement outside.I am grateful and relieved that since I had to work in a Tech Park, it turned out to be almost the only one in the middle of old Bangalore. We're surrounded by public sector campuses with a strong – though invisible – connection to the defence forces, so the pavements are actually paved, the roads are unscarred, the fences largely unbreached and the big trees, uncut.
The last stretch of my journey to work is a bank of landscaped green, an avenue of old raintrees that nearly meet overhead and a lake. Almost as if I lived in the Garden City.
Secret Garden, Bruce Springsteen, Album of the same name, 1995
2 comments:
After all that you described in your earlier posts, of Bangalore not looking like the city you grew up in, it’s refreshing to know that there still exist a few secrets. I’m imagining ek garam chai ki piyali and a sutta along the banks as I watch the birds flock in and out! Wah!
The word "almost" in the last sentence would not have been required a few years ago.
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