Glimpses into the twin-city that Bengaluru once was

Bengaluru was once two very different worlds, co-existing somewhat uneasily with each other, going by the 50-odd postcards on the walls at the city’s National Gallery of Modern Art. These postcards, according to Jayaram, offer insights into “how different these two were and how they were separate cities at first and together only later.” Perfect destination “Bangalore’s ideal weather and geographical location made it a perfect destination for colonial expansion and leisure; the building of colonial bungalows, gardens, and public places have made Bangalore part of the nostalgia of the city that is seen and relished through these postcards,” states the note, adding that the postcards represented the landmarks and tourist attractions of Bangalore of that time. “They focus on the establishment of Colonial rule after Tipu Sultan’s death in the Anglo-Mysore war and the establishment of the Cantonment in 1809, the colonial impact of the British on the Bangalore city’s urban development, civic and military infrastructure, including health and sanitation, as well as religious and social life.” From Bangalore, with Love is part of the Blr Hubba, an annual citywide arts and cultural festival anchored by the UnboxingBLR Foundation that seeks to celebrate “Bengaluru’s diverse cultural treasures in performing and visual arts, literature, theatre, science, music, technology, design, and more,” as the website puts. “That collection has now come to Clare Arni,” he says, adding that the exhibition stemmed from a need to make this private collection public, to showcase the accelerated changes that have taken place in Bangalore and also about looking at postcards as a record of place at a particular time in history.” Private collection Arni says that her father started his Indian postcard collection after he returned to England and collected them over the next 20 years. “Memories were made by documenting the lived reality through colonial and native heritage buildings and portraits of natives through the curious anthropological lens.” Nostalgia and the city In Bengaluru, a city that has grown far beyond the pete and cantonment areas, nostalgia for the smaller, slower, greener city of yore, an imaginary homeland of sorts for the city’s long-term residents, often crops up in contemporary discourse.