Aug 16, 2024 08:00 AM IST
Inspired by the Dorekere Biodiversity Report, a Bengaluru resident decides to rejuvenate Ulsoor Lake by rallying community support through a neighborhood party.
It is that time of year again when all of us engage in a healthy dose of nostalgia, amnesia and hope about how India has changed since independence. Lists will come aplenty about things to be proud of and things to worry about. For this column though, I thought I would take a different tack. I thought I would figure out what I could do to help my community, city and therefore country: a small project that was doable.
If you ask city activists, philanthropists, and evangelists about one issue that will give maximum bang for the buck in terms of helping Bengaluru, you will come up with many different answers, but two will likely top the list. One is a robust public transport system that will ease our city’s traffic woes and the second will likely have to do with infrastructure.
To put this theory to test, I asked V Ravichandar who calls himself “the patron saint of lost causes,” and has worked across the public and private arena in Bengaluru. What would help Bengaluru the most? “The challenge for our city projects is that the ideas are poorly conceived and therefore badly implemented,” he said. “I would use philanthropic money to develop smart solutions that the city could implement with tax money to make life better for all of us.” What this meant was that the government ought to use the abundance of talent available in the city to come up with “detailed project reports” before implementing the “request for tender” protocol for civic solutions.
My takeaway from this was that it would be hard to do anything substantial in Bengaluru or any other city without government’s involvement. But what project could I tackle? I was mulling this when I got an invitation to the release of the “Dorekere Biodiversity Report,” at Gandhi Bhavan (or Gandhi Bhavana as it is called in Karnataka where we elongate the last letter of each word). I came away inspired because it is a stellar example of how citizens take charge of a lake, use the help of government and other civic bodies such as the Public Works Department (PWD), Bengaluru Bruhat Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) and others in order to rejuvenate said lake – or at least prevent it from deteriorating. Bengaluru used to be a city of lakes. Estimates vary but there used to be at least 270 lakes. Now there are about 80 living lakes in Bengaluru.
I live in Ulsoor near Ulsoor Lake. The lake is dead. It used to be alive but these days, thanks to copious sewage water from apartment buildings being released into the lake, life has no chance. From what I understood, in order to rejuvenate a lake, you need a whole range of what the corporate world calls “stakeholders.” So I decided to get buy-in from all my neighbouring apartment complexes by throwing a party.
Okay, let us leave out the Ambani wedding about which enough has been said. Let us just think of parties in the normal sense of the term, not in terms of pre- and post- wedding parties where global superstars show up. In terms of throwing parties, I thought (and still think) that Delhi does it best, not only because the rich folks in Delhi have space— think of those bungalows in Lutyens Delhi with sprawling lawns. Plus Delhi has the natural flamboyance that comes from the Punjabi influence—the “show off” culture that my Delhi friends mock.
Bengaluru and Chennai are hamstrung by their Southern notions of the evil eye and the concept of “enough,” which means that you cannot think of gaudy grandiose show-off parties. Hyderabad did not fall prey to this culture of “enough” and these days, most Kerala cities with their love of gold, also have no qualms in showing off. Haven’t you seen photos and reels of Kerala weddings where the bride wears enough gold necklaces that they become a gold armour? Bengaluru is changing though and these days, here too, you see parties that are not necessarily the obviously ‘show off’ variety, but don’t skimp on the flamboyance either.
The great news in Bengaluru though is that if you want to enjoy a party, there are many ways of doing this. Organising a party or event is equal parts love, equal parts sharing, and equal parts agenda. And my agenda with this party was clear: I needed people who would help me clean Ulsoor Lake. I need Kannada speakers who could work with the BBMP to stop the sewage, researchers who knew how to rejuvenate this dead lake, naturalists who could teach us residents how to attract migrating birds, and philanthropists to fund the whole thing. The great thing is that you throw in a few beers and a lot of neighbourly conversation, and the whole thing falls in place. Within an evening, we had a group of citizens interested in lake preservation and restoration. And now, the real work begins. I will keep you posted.
(Shoba Narayan is Bengaluru-based award-winning author. She is also a freelance contributor who writes about art, food, fashion and travel for a number of publications)
