BENGALURU, June 26 — For writer and visual artist Suresh Jayaram, Cubbon Park is a people’s place, one that represents the democratic fabric of society. The Bengaluru-based founder of the 1Shanthiroad Studio/Gallery has just released a new book that treats the city’s central green lung as belonging to everyone. His work, Cubbon Park: Citizens’ Perspectives and Many Visions for the Future, presents the park as a space that has fostered community, harboured memories, and nurtured artistic inclinations.
The book uses an interesting format to tell its story — a series of interviews with 26 fellow Bengalureans, interspersed with factoids and evocative photographs. “It is a very eclectic, secular space that has been, for a long time, an axis of the city,” Jayaram says.
He describes the park as having “a kind of palimpsest of history from pre-colonial, colonial, post-colonial times.” Within these layers of history, he notes, there is also a certain environment and ecology that is part of the park. The book delves into the park’s history and its built and natural environments. But it goes further, presenting Cubbon Park as a space that has allowed people to simply be — to develop desire and love, or to find a quiet corner in a busy city.
Jayaram thinks of this book as a contemporary, ethnographic document and archival material. It reflects the Bengaluru-specific identity of the various citizens and stakeholders it features.
“I wanted to collect different voices, almost like a conductor or a sutradhar, string them together and make it a citizens’ perspective,” he says. The work also questions the role of government in managing such spaces. “It gives them the idea that parks need not be regimented like this,” Jayaram says.
“It is a book speaking about the city’s green spaces and community.”
