Musings of an Empty Landscape

The Fort High School

I had always been fascinated by this 114-year-old structure, the first high school in the erstwhile princely state of Mysore, set in the heart of old Bangalore. While driving through the city, I saw it again and stopped to get this photo.

As I "chimped" at the image afterwards, I could almost see it and smell it. The city a 100 years ago, in a perhaps more elegant age that has vanished. There is a saying that nostalgia is product of our inability to cope with the present.

Considering that the present is replete with the gaudy, half-stolen architectural ideas of the first world, coupled with environmental mess of the third world, I think I should be forgiven my fleeting sentimentality.

Making War in a Pleasant Place

The Balboorie Guest House, home to the State Covid War Room. I had never been here before, even I though I must have passed it a hundred times.

The Lush Hospital

Ah, Vani Vilas Women and Children Hospital. Again, I had never stopped to look at this building before, even though I had passed it over a dozen times. Outwardly, the hospital and the grounds have not changed since 1935, when the hospital was first opened. Inwardly? I haven't the foggiest. The architecture has a taste of Malta to it. But then again, the buildings of Malta that I'm thinking off were also mostly British inventions as well.