Articles by Kiran Keswani

I was on my way to a temple in Dodda Mavalli because it was Gowri Ganesh and I had been told it would be a day when devotees would come both to the Maramman temple and the Ashwath katte next to it. I was just curious to see what the rituals were like on this day. The autorickshaw driver abruptly stopped at the end of a narrow lane much before we had reached the temple. In front of us, there was an open space between small houses and there were tempos parked there. Small idols of Ganesha were being carried…

The questions: ‘what is art for?’ Or, ‘why man creates?’ have been asked before and answered many times in many different ways. And yet, I want to ask again. It is like the question ‘what is the meaning of life?’ and the only answer to that question that makes sense to me is “forty-two” – the answer that the science fiction writer Douglas Adams brings to us in his book ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’. Perhaps, it means that there is no answer, or at least no meaningful answer. Here, I am sharing photographs of the two kinds of…

That afternoon, we had been looking for the Durga Book Store in Shivajinagar. I had been told that it might still be there, a bookstore where residents of Frazer town and Benson town had shopped in the 50s as had others from the city. There were many who had memories of going there during their school days. It had been the popular bookstore at that time. We found it. It was still there. Just across the road from Russell market. In a little lane off the Noronha road, right at the corner. When we went in there, it was in…

This is a series of photographs that documents the visual evidence of territoriality at the morning flower market in Bangalore. Within this periodic marketplace, a metal fence appears repeatedly at various locations demarcating vehicular and pedestrian zones. The flower vendors seem to use the yellow fence to both mark and defend their territory. The fence is randomly positioned - sometimes to place flower garlands and sometimes to create small enclosures within the large expanse of this urban space.  The boundaries are both physical and non-physical drawn both by the vendors as they sell flowers and by the public as they…

Placemaking is an approach to the design and management of public spaces that draws upon the strengths and aspirations of the local community. Whereas ‘space’ is a physical entity, a ‘place’ is imbued with memories and evolves as people interact with each other socially and culturally in the public realm. It is a term that Architects and Urban Planners in the western countries began to use in the 1970s to describe the process of creating parks, plazas and streets that could attract people. In India, the street was already a vibrant place with a family celebrating a wedding; the temple deities…

One thing led to another. I was looking for feedback on sketches of the street life at Russell market and that led to the suggestion: “Why don’t you try meeting Mr.Zaffar Sait? He has been an old resident of the neighbourhood” So, that’s what I did and then couldn’t help but turn it into a post just so that others would have the chance to listen to this story as well. So, here is the account of life in Bangalore in the 50’s as narrated by Mr.Zaffar Sait, who belongs to one of the most well-respected mercantile families of the…

An INTACH walk took some of us to Avenue road last Saturday with Lathasshree KS, an archaeologist who unearthed for us the Avenue road of old times. We saw that morning a beautiful past that had been preserved for centuries, low-relief deities in the ground or a nandi that was partly submerged. One step at a time, we moved from the contemporary urban chaos to the ancient serene landscape of shrines, snake stones and peepul trees. The axial symmetry of Chikpete If we look at the map of the fort or Pettah area, there are two axes – the N-S…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUwxV7_pYyE&feature=youtu.be The film was taken in 2010 and the background music is a recording I made from the loudspeakers that played on Bull temple road during the Kadlekai Parishe (Groundnut fair) that same year. The purpose of the film had been a simple one - to record how people use space on an everyday basis. It was a time when the street vendors had not yet been evicted. That happened in Jan 2012. The reason cited by the government for the eviction was that the gandhi bazaar main road was becoming very congested. But, was this the only solution? In…

In his book, ‘Sidewalk’, Mitchell Duneier describes the lives of people who “work the street”, the book vendors, the magazine vendors and the ‘men without accounts’ who guard the door to the ATMs on Sixth Avenue in New York. It is an intensive ethnographical study of the social structure of street life in the city. As I read the book, I’m reminded of my interactions until now with the street vendors outside Russell market in Bangalore. They also “work the street” some becoming entrepreneurs out of necessity and others by choice, in many ways living the same lives as the…

The Goethe Institut, Bangalore tells you that it is "50 headphones. 1 synthetic voice. YOUR city." But, when you take the walk, you realise that they've given you this simple definition because there are sometimes no words to define such experiences. What I am about to tell you can't actually tell you much. And yet, I do want to say something, just so that some of you who haven't yet taken the walk, will want to try it. It tells us something we should know about our city and about who we are. To register, you can go to: REMOTE…