BENGALURU: Sometime in the early 1990s, Palace Grounds in Bangalore was bedecked to host a one-of-a-kind fascinating event. Its imminent arrival was splashed over all the major dailies, while Cable TV networks back then even promoted its grand scale through a pre-recorded montage and VO that simply made the prospect of beholding this spectacle all the more irresistible for discerning Bangaloreans.
It was an exhibition on dinosaurs, following the Jurassic Park film frenzy. While I don’t exactly remember the exhibition’s name, I vividly recollect the magnitude and seriousness with which it enraptured the city’s imagination. I had visited with my mother, and some friends and their mothers on a weekend evening. The ticket was priced a nominal now, princely then Rs 10 for entry. The organisers had set up large pavilions where life-size bionic specimens of dinosaurs were housed.
Whenever someone happened to get close to an exhibit, the mechanised puppet would automatically move and make sounds. The experience was breath-taking, especially with the massive T-Rex ferociously roaring at onlookers. Before we exited, I purchased little rubbery dinosaur figurines that grew in size when soaked in water overnight, a little souvenir. This is one exhibition I fondly remember, as part of my days in Old Bangalore.
Bangalore, the good old pensioners’ paradise of yore, had a lazy, charming feel to it. Back in the 1980s and ’90s, as far as my life on Earth goes, the Garden City played host to these grand events that were simply called “exhibitions” in the neighbourhoods. Whenever these events came on the horizon, families, friends, relatives, and neighbours, got together to plan a common date to pay a visit. It was a major to-do thing, and mothers would impatiently wait for their kids to return from school so that the family could hop onto their scooter and ride to the venue.
The city had many open spaces and maidans where these exhibitions – also called consumer exhibitions, melas, fairs, expos, and trade shows – would be set up. A mega show where food, joyrides, and retail stalls came together in a melange of light, colour, smells, music, and cheers that every Bangalorean looked forward to. A large entrance, before which a narrow-caged set-up to buy entrance tickets stood, opened to a memorable evening.
The stalls retailed anything from clothes, handicrafts, stationary items, religious paraphernalia, kitchenware, toys, and showpieces, to the more outlandish hand-held massage contraptions, magic prop sets for children, and fish tanks. It was retail therapy at a steal. Food stalls had long lines of tired patrons waiting for their portions of some typical fare, which included chilly and capsicum bajjis, large white papads sprinkled with chilli powder, candy floss, bhel puri, and ball ice cream.
Children would eagerly wait for space on the next round on a ferris wheel, carousel, mary columbus, or a makeshift roller-coaster. Then there were jugglers, daredevils, lucky draws, hooplas, games, and large robots which read out one’s fortune (simply dubbed ‘computer astrology’). Irrespective of what that fortune turned out to be, that was an evening well-spent, money-wise and family-wise.
There was an exhibition every few months, and pamphlets announcing it would be snuck into every newspaper and front gate, ‘hypnotising’ people into coming to the gala. While driving downtown, the imposing ferris wheel in the distance would loudly call out: “The exhibition is in town!” As Bangalore grew, its open spaces dwindled, making way for malls, IT parks, enclaves, and gated townships. Grounds on which these sprawling events once planted tents to entertain cityfolk, became off-limits behind veils of security. Fast forward to today, very few of such exhibitions show up, with their remnants best cherished in RK Narayan’s short story ‘Engine Trouble’. The city might be changing fast, but for us Old-Bangaloreans, its identity is ‘exhibited’ in these lasting fond memories of those evenings some 20 years ago.
(The writers’ views are their own)