bnrc, maps and the history of a garden

i live where the black dot is. the green patch to its north and west is the 10-12 acre green space of the mcgm playground

after ages it seems, there was a bnrc strategy meeting at my place. the only time that these meeting happen nowadays is on holidays when everyone has the time to meet and discuss the days of yore.

the bnrc garden near my house is a great subject for protracted discussions regarding what lic had promised to give us- a clubhouse, swimming pool, etc- and never did. instead it was the bnrc - the bima nagar recreation club (with my mother and other neighbours as active participants and contributors)- who managed to convert the unruly overgrown landscape in between the thousands of mango trees into a flat plain first and then a badminton court- a 25 year history.

much of my childhood memories are about this piece of land. hooting and jeering during the annual badminton tournaments where my mother and john played as partners in the mixed doubles; or the underarm cricket in the evenings where i was always so pathetic. then there was the childrens drawing competition where i never won anything because (so i was made to believe- if i won it would stink of nepotism- as my mother was always part of the organiasing set).

in another world that seems so far away, there were the end of the year celebrations with the building march pasts, the sports days where i ran barefoot on terrible roads, and in the evenings acted terribly in john and shyam directed masterpieces parodying the ramayan or the mahabhrat (it was before the days of rabid hindutva), or where mrs dalaya did her peacock dance in a tight sea green peacock outfit adding to my list of recurring nightmares that persist upto this day.

that was before the municipal corporation decided to make it an official ‘garden’. they ripped apart the court and since most of us had gotten older we did not find the energy to resist. the obligatory pathways and stone benches in the memory of the late something or the other lined the yellow and green railing. mr unni from across the garden decided to “maintain” part of it and installed a fountain, a lawn and pretty flowering bushes. the old well was filled in with debris for fear of kids falling in. the bnrc took over another part and put in a children’s play area with slides and swings. the two of us faced each other in a turf war about control of the land. while the bnrc was for all access for lovers who could lurk in the dark corners under trees, for preteens to scream loud and run wild and teenagers to play bare-chested football in the only clearing in the area; mr unni represented the desires of the middle aged to sit on benches and watch trees grow. each despised the other but tolerated them as necessary evils.

todays meeting was to decide the fate of the garden under the municipal corporation inititative where local bodies are allowed to adopt and maintain recreational grounds. we are to bid for control. the ambitions are right now sky high and it’s all rather scary in its implications. but because of that today i finally took a close look at the development plan of the area.

its amazing how one drawing represents both the past, the present and the future. under lines of existing roads of the charles correa plan with its cul de sacs and its corner market, there lies a substructure of circular roads, going round in circles around the old hill. these roads have all but vanished today- though some of the fragments of what they served still exist like the lines of two storied bungalows for bangladeshi immigrants and the so-named “dukkar galli” or “pig alley” near my house. also lesters house from where we used to get fresh bread in the mornings, the mango merchant where we buy fresh mangoes every year, and even the bhaiiya paperwallah from whom we used to hire bicycles in the summer for rides to a still underdeveloped landscape are there. these plots can clearly be seen in the drawing.

who designed this perfect circle- i have no idea. what is the history of the place? i suspect it had something to do with the nearby remains of the portuguese church over the mandapeshwar caves.

the proposed rg of today’s discussions does not care about these patterns. it sits flat across all these lines eating into bungalows, contours, houses weirdly and awkwardly. it is this mess of ownerships that i think has kept the area relatively safe from development. it might not be safe for long.