To be able to walk in the shadow tree canopy, right in the heart of the city is truly a blessing considering all the urbanization that has taken place, all the tall buildings that we see, and the sound of buses and cars honking, especially in a big metropolitan city like Bangalore, also known as the silicon valley of India.
As part of our internship with Biome, we interns got to organize a small walk to Cubbon Park on 11 August 2022. Although it was a weekday, we were quite excited that 8 people could join us for the walk. We had already prepared brochures and sent an e-invite. To be honest, it was a first-of-its-kind experience for us interns to organize something like this and so all of us were excited but also nervous. Few of us were busy with brochure design, and some of us were preparing what exactly we were going to say, how we will carry out the whole walk.
This is how our brochure finally came out:
The aim that we had in our minds was that instead of just focussing on the water crisis and what is being done to address that problem, we decided that we wanted to bring in the social, art and cultural dimensions to this walk because when common people get to know all the struggles that went in addressing the water crisis, the hard work that was put in, understanding the water challenge can become more meaningful because then the personal connection can be established.
We decided to start our walk from the Cubbon park metro station, by introducing people to the murals which are part of the Art in Transit project. People were really thrilled when they got to know that the murals were painted from the mud which was recovered from the wells dug in the park itself.
Many of the participants got curious and went ahead to touch the murals to soak in all the emotions and messages that the murals were trying to convey. It was quite interesting to see people trying to come up with their own interpretations of the mural. The participants were quite thrilled to know how different stakeholders like the Srishti School of Art, Biome and the traditional well-digging community were involved in such a huge project.
After spending about 40-45 minutes in the metro station, we then proceeded toward the park. Although many people had come to Cubbon park earlier, this time it was different in the sense that we were trying to come up with a meaningful conversation. We started by talking a bit about the history of the park. The cool atmosphere and chirping sound of the birds immediately caught our attention as we entered the park.
As we proceeded with our walk, we started to engage more and more with the people. Some of them were already aware of the ongoing water issues in the city; some had already attended some water workshops and some were already familiar with the concept of recharge pits and open wells. We also talked a lot about the biodiversity aspect and tried connecting it with the water crisis and with the bigger crisis of climate change.
Answering a key question about the watering needs of the plants in the park, we informed the participants about the presence of an STP plant in the park which was used for meeting the gardening needs of the park. During our visit, we also passed by the library present inside the park.
Towards, the end of our walk, we decided to bring in the cultural aspect of the walk by showing them Karagade Kunte - a well present inside the park, which has cultural significance attached to the famous Karaga festival of Bangalore.
The walk was an enriching experience for all of us as we got to know a lot during the whole process; right from planning the walk to researching all that we could about the park, till the end when we got an opportunity to interact with the people.
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