Subir Roy: A park for all seasons

OFFBEAT

When you are very young, you skip and jump; when you are older you run or go in your papa's car or on the motorbike you have forced out of him, and when you are past forty you are forced by every conceivable well-wisher to walk regularly. So it is that I am now a regular walker, made easier by the fact that in Bangalore there is no right time to walk. The weather is mild and 'made for walking' round the clock and almost round the year.

Bangalore has parks galore and some of them are outstanding. As luck would have it, when we moved house recently I was forced to come down a peg or two, by having to shift from a superlative park to one not so good. But in a way it is a very distinctive park. It stands at the confluence of the many stages and walks of life. On two sides are houses, one dominated by stand-alone ones belonging to the very well off. At one end of it is a house rented out to a security agency. Every morning there is a small gathering of eager-looking, modest-mannered youngsters come to seek security guards' jobs. One house has a sad looking sign with the picture of a dog who is lost and whose return will fetch the kind Samaritan a reward.

The other side of the park has a faceless row of quarters painted in regulation yellow for the junior officers of a public utility. You need not be posh but you can keep the street before your house a little cleaner, I keep thinking of telling some of those who live there.

The private management school on another side of the park casts a strong influence. Unlike the kothis which mostly disgorge old to very old people with an assortment of limps and dimensions, the management school contributes young students in uniform blazers and dark trousers for whom the park is a great meeting place. Some make last minute exam preparations in groups with textbooks and notebooks at hand. There are also the odd couples, not saying much but exchanging glances, the boy usually awkward and the girl waiting for the boy to say something.

But perhaps the park's most distinctive aspect is the temple taking up the remaining side. Every time you take a round and pass it you get the smell of incense and hear a whiff of the devotional music, usually a Sanskrit hymn, that streams out endlessly but not too noisily. The temple is a great meeting place for people of all ages. Not just the old but many in their youth come for a brief darshan and obeisance to the deity, indicating that the age when youngsters were vehement non-believers is over. The great event occurred on the day a whole bunch of near toddlers from a well known nursery school came shepherded by their teachers, presumably because temple going is part of inculcating good habits.

Over time you get to recognise the regular walkers "" the test cricketer's father, the hardware specialist who lectures his companion on compatibility, the retired police officer who walks at twice the speed of sound, and the slightly modern who are always with Walkman earplugs firmly stuck on. Some talk into their mobile phones all the time, very few are without it altogether. All come briefly as visitors, except for the stray dogs who relax contentedly on beds of dry leaves at this time of the year, without a thought as to where the next meal will come from. What is the temple and its leftover offerings for, if not to give you a bit of the peace of the gods?