Cubbon Park and its Message

Calm before the Storm

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Yesterday, I went to Cubbon Park after a very long time and admired  the fiery yellow shrubbed trees and the old Kutcheri building. I gulped in the fresh air, the greenery, the large tracts of brown ground covered with dry, shedding leaves, the cobbled walkways; in short the vast, vast expanse of virgin green cover that is Cubbon Park. I was thankful that I lived in Bangalore with its salubrious climate  and could still go for a walk in Cubbon Park, fortunately untouched by our politicians and the stifling infrastructural growth that has otherwise choked Bangalore. Cubbon Park is the lung of Bangalore, and like Wordsworth, a feeling of tranquillity descended on me when I was there! Though the Metro work  with its constant clanging and clogging pollutants is going on only a short distance away, still, Cubbon Park has somehow managed to retain its classic grandeur and majesty, right in the heart of a metropolis still in its infrastructural throes.

So that is the garden city of Bangalore, with a royal tradition handed down by the Maharajahs of Mysore, foremost among them being the great Jayachamrajendra Wodeyar, himself a great music composer and a patron of the fine arts. The IT industry has flourished in Bangalore, pumping in the lucre, increasing consumerism, the “cool” culture and the hanging out culture and correspondingly  decreased social values.  Recent Happenings in Bangalore  have become a Tamasha and we Bangaloreans have become a laughing stock. What else can we say of the Karnataka Ministers porno scam and  more recently the  lawyer-police fracas, which led to a total breakdown of law and order. What led to all this beating up,lathi-charging etc. etc. mayhem is still not clear. However one thing plainly emerges- the custodians and counsellors of Law and Order have behaved most disgracefully-like goondas as they are called in Hindi Filmi language. After all, what provocation can be of so serious nature that a rampage of this sort has occurred. Does not this violate all norms of decent behaviour specially from the watchdogs of justice and upright behaviour? Public property has been damaged, senior police officers, even a judge has sustained injuries; all this vandalism by the “ Protectors of the public” seriously calls for some introspection and analysis of certain basic issues-social values have totally disappeared and viciousness  and savagery is making its way into public eye.  A legislator can watch porno in the midst of  Assembly proceedings and can airily explain it away by saying that he was watching to decide whether it was permissible content! His comrades in arms were also watching it for the same reason! Hear, hear! If lawyers and journalists beat up each other and the police look the other way, what about you and me. We may even be bumped off as punishment  and nobody will even open their mouths.

Lastly, what is our government machinery doing amidst all this mayhem? Like Gandhiji’s monkeys, it chooses not to see, hear and speak on anything. After all what else can a lame-duck government, which is in constant fear of being dismissed do?  One thing emerges very clearly- nothing augurs well for the land of Kengal Hanumanthiah and Ramakrishna Hegde and its people? 

                                                                Sham of a Suvarna Karnataka!