Heritage on show by the lake

An exhibition by INTACH chronicles the cultural story of Ulsoor, one of the oldest neighbourhoods in Bengaluru

For a week till Friday, those alighting at the Ulsoor metro station in Bengaluru will be in for a pleasant surprise, with the station playing host to "Namma Halasuru", an exhibition by INTACH showcasing the neighbourhood's culture and heritage. Halasuru is the Kannada name for Ulsoor, and the area is best known for the serene man-made lake there. The carefully curated exhibition consists of various panels on which photographs, sketches, maps and brief write-ups have been printed. It takes the viewer much beyond the lake - from the origin of its name and the architecture of the houses to the story of how a Chinese bell found its way all the way to Ulsoor.

Quite a few people had turned up on Saturday morning to take a look at the exhibition, weaving in and out of the panels. Earlier in the day, a group had been taken on a heritage walk around the 1,000-year-old Someshwara temple. Another heritage walk highlighting the architecture in the neighbourhood, considered to be one of the oldest in the city, is scheduled for Sunday morning.

The name Halasuru is said to be derived from the Kannada word for jackfruit, halasina hannu. A monkey, the story goes, threw an uneaten jackfruit on a mud heap from one of the many trees growing around the lake. When a man who noticed this dug up the mud heap, he found a linga there, which was installed in the Someshwara Temple. But historians estimate that the locality probably began as a settlement around the temple and when Kempegowda established the city of Bengaluru in the 16th century, Halasuru was one of the village clusters granted to him by the ruler of the Vijayanagar empire.

The cosmopolitan nature of the area, with many Tamil- and Telugu-speaking residents, is an inheritance of the colonial period, when the cantonment was established by the British, and migrants from neighbouring areas settled there, attracted by the economic opportunities on offer. Because of the way it has grown, its composition is quite different from other places in the city.

"INTACH has been making an inventory of Bengaluru's architectural heritage, and a team of conservation architects have been making a list of the heritage buildings in Ulsoor," says Meera Iyer, co-convenor of the Bengaluru chapter of INTACH. One of the most interesting features of their research, says Iyer, was the discovery that some houses in Ulsoor continued to have bamboo-pitched roofs, which was popular some hundred years ago and is extremely rare now. Made with thin bamboo poles placed close together with a layer of tiles on top, the roofing system was cheap, sturdy and kept the house cool. The more common roofing system was the Madras terrace roof, which replaced it in later years, and the roofs with Mangalore tiles.

A memory wall will also be set up so that people can share their memories of Ulsoor. There will be storytelling sessions in the evening on Sunday, organised by the Bangalore Storytelling Society.

INTACH has classified some 80 buildings in the area as old, of which at least 25 have central courtyards, and some, a small bench or platform at the front door. A resident is quoted in the accompanying write-up, saying wistfully, "In our Palani Mudaliar Street, we had more than 20 houses with jagalis (platform). Everyone used to sit outside and talk in the evenings. Now, we can see only one or two."

While such heritage seems to be fast vanishing, exhibitions like "Namma Halasuru" allow you glimpses of what it once was.

The exhibition will be on display till November 7 at Ulsoor metro station. Storytelling will be on November 2, 4 pm