Malgudi series-7
We all have heard enough and more about Bangalore as the garden city of India , Silicon Valley of India and more recently as the start up hub but little we know about its lakes ! Some of the periodicals and city guides of recent times mentions that Bangalore once had more than 80 lakes ( in 1985) which has dwindled in the recent past , this is true about the phenomenon but not about the absolute numbers, the reason is, more old the references you see the more no of lakes you can decipher(280 in 1960 s) .
Me growing up in Tumkuru ( a city close to Bangalore by 50 km) was always told and made to believe that Bangalore once had more than 180 lakes which I always believed looking at neighbourhood when ever I visited the city , it wasn't much crowded then in the 90 s and city could have been easily circumscribed in hours, on any two wheeler !
Famous lakes like ulsoor lake, Sankey tank, madivala lake, sarakki lake , lalbhag lake, hebbal lake ( kempapura kere) were treat to watch then (some even now !) , some had peddle boating , some had gardens around ! When ever we landed in majestic my father would say that this very place was once a lake by name dharmambhudhi and due to its dry patches often in the late 20th century they had to convert it to a bus stand to cater to growing city requirements !
If I extrapolate his explanation to 2016 , the development in the name of more layouts, office spaces, buildings, bus stops, convention and recreation centres , hotels have eaten away all greenery and land to which lakes are not an exception whether filled or dry. Some examples are as follows
Dharmambhudhi kere is now majestic, kempambudhi kere is now a sewage collection tank in chamarajpet, sampangi lake which was situated in sampangiramanagar is now kanteerava sports complex, soole kere is now football stadium, challaghatta lake now is Karnataka golf association, koramangala lake is now national sports complex, domlur lake is BDA layout and many more in shivanahalli, JP nagar, subashnagar, dasarahalli, kamakshipallya, kurubarahalli, kodihalli, banashankari etc.
In Fact lakes are soft targets because they are easily encroachable and convertible as it was government s land which the defaulters and the local development authorities believe as their own forgetting the fact that this will have serious repercussions on water table, ecology, birds and aquatic life and the very climate for which Bangalore was known for centuries !
Bangalore was a place where if you dig 100 feet you would get water which was potable, I still remember in my aunts place in BTM layout where they had a 1m radius well of 50 feet which had full water , Thanks to madivala lake ! Though this lake is still preserved well,the water levels in the vicinity has drastically gone down, more over the no of lakes in the city over the years has gone down at supersonic speed !
Now when we discuss about the no of lakes Bangalore had and lost , the no it still has which needs protection , rejuvenation what we consider is the older Bangalore lakes which is a big miss according to me ,Bangalore as a city has grown 25 km away from silk board till attibele on one side and sarjapur on the other side, it has grown 25 km towards new airport and another 20 km from the old airport ( domlur) , it has grown 30 km from yeshvanthpur till nelmangala ! What about the lakes which comes in all these areas ??? How many would it be if we count all of them ? Can we conveniently not count them in the name of development ? Are small ponds not considered while counting these lakes ? Do we have a number of the lost ponds till now ? Won't they matter ? Can encroachment be legalised in the name of fancy schemes like Akrama Sakrama ?
Do we only care about protecting them only when a varthur kind of froath and fire happens due to excessive phosphates and methane gas release and gets reported in Washington post or New York Times ? Or a bellandur type polluted water stream which seeps into the ground water table and causes allergies and other diseases to the in habitants around ? How long should we wait to take affirmative action ? The lakes which are lost to development and greed can't be brought back , at least the ones which are still in the government records can be rescued !
It's high time to take positive measures as we are already seeing Bangalore temperatures soaring this summer to a record high of 40 degree Celsius , allergies due to ground water pollution, reduced oxygen levels and rise in SPM , CO2 levels in the crowded areas of the city, reduced greener pastures. Otherwise it will be truely dead in a decade if not in 5 years as claimed by IISC prof. TV Ramachandra and other urban experts from whom we have a great deal to learn and implement if we are serious in our own survival !!!
