Girish Karnad with UR Ananthmurthy
Bangalore is changing. From a sleepy south Indian town to a hep metro international city; its change of name to a more coloquial sounding – Bengalooru – notwithstanding. One of Bangalore’s old residents as well as one of the city’s most celebrated writers Girish karnad had recently written in The Newsweek :
“Only 20 years ago, when my wife and I decided to move to Bangalore from Bombay, we could visit a new suburb, buy a site of our choice, and then sit down with an architect to design the house we wanted. No more.
“As the demand for housing overran the availability of land, the estate developers took control, eating into the villages surrounding the city, occupying farms and open spaces, razing houses to the ground, and installing multistory apartment buildings in their place, with little regard to the city’s existing infrastructure.
“The current joke is that the only buildings to remain unscathed by the onslaught may be Vidhana Soudha, the building that houses the legislature, and UB City, a complex that is a hideous combination of the Empire State Building and Internet kitsch, built by a liquor baron….
“Twenty years after we built our house in a residential zone, we have now been informed that the road in front of it needs to be widened to accommodate the traffic. Any day now an entire swath could be cleared from our front garden, and the wall of our living room knocked down.
“A city planner told me: ‘Every day 400 four-wheelers and 1,200 two- and three-wheelers are added to the roads of Bangalore. We have to compete with Beijing.’
“It was not so long ago that the city was competing only with Singapore.”
One of the many ways that Bangalore manifests its changing tastes in art and music. Recent music shows are catering to wide variety of tastes. But gradually Bangalore is also probably falling for the ultimate Bollywood charm at the cost of all other forms of music. The rect Shreya Ghoshal show bears testimony to this trend.
With 4 National Awards, 4 Filmfare Awards, and 29 awards in all, Shreya Ghoshal is the most awarded playback singer today. From the movie Devdas till date, her voice resounds in almost all the movies made both in Bollywood and down South. She has been performing all over the world and captivating audiences with her charming personality and musical ability.
Shreya Ghoshal impressed music lovers at Palace Grounds in Bangalore recently. The three-hour concert featured a live fusion jam with 12 leading singers too.
