Indiranagar re-invented
Yesterday’s wilderness
is today’s haute haunt. A look at the area’s changing face.
It happened so fast that residents of Indiranagar still
haven’t had time to come to terms with what’s hit them. Some are agape with
delight, others with dismay. From a sleepy tree-lined locality that attracted
more joggers than shoppers, Indiranagar has, in the course of a few years,
metamorphosed into Bangalore’s most thriving retail hub.
Right up to the early 1990s, Indiranagar was an outpost
beyond Ulsoor, almost exclusively the domain of retired defence personnel. A
handful of shops (Aroma Bakery and M.K. Ahmed), the redoubtable Chinmaya
Mission Hospital (CMH) and temple, wide streets and houses, some big, some of
modest mien, scattered here and there. The residents of nearby teeming Domlur
would often use the deserted stretch of 100 Foot Road for their early morning
walks.
The wide roads are still around, only now they’re hedged in
by cramped apartment blocks that are coming up on every cross, CMH road is now
filled with shops selling just about everything and 100 Foot Road is
chock-a-block with traffic every hour of the day.
The thing is that Bangalore has come to Indiranagar with a
vengeance. You want rasgollas? K.C.Das is here. Cosmetics? Go check out the
local branch of Health and Glow. Bhandhej, Soma, Fabindia, Jealous Jeans and
Identiti sit alongside a host of other clothing shops. Even the Max Mueller
Bhavan has moved here. The Indiranagar Club with its ever-burgeoning list of
members, meets most social and sporting requirements of the locals.
Artist and singer Arathi
Shetty, and enthusiastic Indiranagar resident says, “It’s all up, no downsides
to living in Indiranagar. It is peaceful and quiet and everything is a stone’s
throw away.” Her husband, Sunil, who
is part-owner of Indiranagar’s first pub, Take Five, tempers his praise:
“Indiranagar is doing okay but can all too easily go down like other places
have. People living here just don’t do enough to ensure that Indiranagar stays
in the city loop but retains its good characteristics.``
Brian Nobbay,
dermatologist and one of the city’s familiar faces, who has been practicing in
Indiranagar for the past six years, agrees. “What we need is a sound zoning law
so that commercial establishments don’t encroach into residential space. This
will ensure that Indiranagar blooms and booms.”
Boom-time it truly is for commercial establishments like
Food World and Nilgiris, specialty shops like Monday to Sunday and the popular
HOPCOMS outlet that offers cabbages and king cabbages, and everything in
between. Nalini Ramchandran,
homemaker, who has been living in Indiranagar for the past 16 years says, “It’s
become such a convenient place to live in with CMH Road’s shops just a few
minutes away and institutions like Purandhare Bhavan which hosts musical
recitals and dance performances at very nominal rates. Of course, the traffic
situation is worsening by the day, but when I compare it to Koramangla, I’m
glad that I live here.” What makes it even more convenient for the residents,
she adds, is that almost all the banks have opened branches here.
Not just banks, early commercial settlers too, have branches
here. M. K. Ahmed now has two retail outlets down the road and Vivek’s, the
electrical appliances store, has grown from one small shop to three branches,
all in the same area. Besides, there are at least three lending libraries in
the vicinity. Antique shops, lifestyle boutiques, beauty salons and laundries
make up the rest of the invasion.
Jeanne Leong of
Salon Jeanne has been styling the hair of residents for a decade now and she
too, has nothing but plaudits for the locality. “The people who live here are
very trendy. They never hesitate to experiment with their hair and looks, which
could probably explain why they have embraced the new-look Indiranagar so
whole-heartedly.”
Foodies too can rejoice at the choice of options available
here. Virtually every road has restaurants that serve up all kinds of food from
the ever-popular dosa-sambar and bisibele bath of the Shanthi Sagar chain to
specialty breads at Herbs and Spices and Creole cusine at Sue’s Place. There is
a heavenly smell of fresh bread and buns wafting from the many bakeries, be it
ye olde Iyengar Bakery, or the newest entrant on the yeast block, Cakewalk. As
for the young ‘uns, there’s always Barista and Café Coffee Day.
But there is a word of caution amongst all the plaudits. Lalitha Bannerjee, who relocated to
Indiranagar from Washington DC and now works for an NGO, says, “It’s a
beautiful locality with green parks, wide streets and everything you need is
within a three-km radius. Let’s not flood the area with brash yuppies and drive
the older residents away.”
The local Defence Colony Residents Association (DECORA) is
doing its best to make this Indiranagar a model locality. Old-time resident, Maj Gen N.I.K. Murthy offers a
pragmatic view, “I’ve been here for 16 years and have helped create the
children’s park, the walking and the senior citizen’s parks. But I have also
watched Defence Colony lose out to the big builders lobby. But this is all a
part of progress. We are definitely better off than residents of other parts of
this crowded city.”
However, when the general’s wife Premila rues the dearth of affordable domestic help, she speaks for
those residents caught in a time warp, the older residents of the area. They
settled in Indiranagar envisaging a life of peace and quiet but the mushrooming
of commercial establishments have dented that dream, as has the infusion of new
money which has hiked up rates for hired help. Which explains why many old-timers
have sold their bungalows and moved elsewhere; those still here live in a sort
of limbo, unable to keep up with its changing face.
Jayanti Prasad,
corporate sales manager at Jet Airways and wife of cricketer Venkatesh Prasad is
scathing in her comments “All these apartments have hastened the downslide of
Indiranagar. Now this place is known for haphazard parking, clogged drains and
garbage everywhere.” She calls it the “anyplace but my backyard syndrome”and adds,
“what is worse, lovely old trees have been made to resemble Ikebana specimens
after needless trimming and pruning.”
The problems in Indiranagar are pretty much the problems
swamping other living spaces in Bangalore. These include blurring of residential-commercial
lines, indiscriminate dumping of garbage of streets, burglaries and murders of
helpless elderly residents.
Xerxes Desai,
longtime resident and former vice-chairman of Titan, concurs, “Indiranagar has
changed character and I’m not sure that I like its new persona. For all its
faults, however, this area still retains vestiges of how the Garden City used
to and ought to look. But if this unbridled transformation continues, what we
will lose is more than just a livable locality, something of the old Bangalore
will go, too.”
Despite the unanimity and substantial nature of the protest
involved, it is typical of the Bangalorean that, at the end of the day, it all
seems more a case of sound and fury signifying little result. However, one look
at other residential areas like Kormangala, Malleswaram, Jayanagar, the new HSR
Layout and you realise that Indiranagar still has it good. It is truly
cosmopolitan in the mix of residents and shops, the walking parks are green
oases. After all, where else will you be able to walk down a quiet, sun-dappled
cross one evening and come across a gleaming yellow Corvette?