Lalbagh Garden-Legacy of the Garden City

I was surprised to see that people have very wrong assumption about one of the best legacy of Bangalore. When Bangalore is left with very few Greenery and every day we are feeling more and more scorching heat, I am here to introduce "Lalbagh Garden-Legacy of the Garden City"!

Atleast go through the photos(open the link in IE) and you will definitely be amused:


http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=lalbagh+botanical+garden&s=int

Lal Bagh Botanical Garden is a well known botanical garden in Bangalore, India The garden was commissioned by the ruler of Mysore, Hyder Ali. It has a famous glass house which hosts yearly flower show. It also has an aquarium and a lake, and one of the tourist attractions in Bangalore.

Hyder Ali commissioned the building of this garden in 1760 but his son, Tipu Sultan, completed it. Lal Bagh is a 240 acre (971,000 sq.m. - almost 1 km².) garden and is located on the southern part of Bangalore. It holds a number of flower shows, especially on the Republic Day (26th January). The garden has over 1,000 species of flora. The Glass House, modeled on London's Crystal Palace (now re-modelled with a different layout), is the center of attraction. Hyder Ali laid out these famous botanical gardens and his son added horticultural wealth to them by importing trees and plants from several countries. The Lal Bagh Gardens were commissioned by the 18th century and over the years it acquired India's first lawn-clock and the subcontinent's largest collection of rare plants. The garden also has trees that are over 100 years old.

The garden surrounds one of the towers erected by the founder of Bangalore, Kempe Gowda. Hyder Ali decided to create this garden on the lines of the Mughal Gardens that were gaining popularity during his time. The park has some rare species of plants brought from Persia, Afghanistan and France. With an intricate watering system for irrigation, this garden is aesthetically designed, with lawns, flowerbeds, lotus pools and fountains. Most of the centuries old trees are labeled for easy identification. The Lal Bagh Rock, one of the oldest rock formations on earth, dating back to 3000 million years, is another attraction that brings the crowds.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lal_Bagh

Tagore on Today's Google Logo but Did We Remember Our Guruji?

Rabindranath Tagore(7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941): From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

He was a poet, visual artist, playwright, novelist, educationist, social reformer, nationalist, business-manager and composer whose works reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He became Asia's first Nobel laureate[1] when he won the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature. A Pirali Brahmin[2][3][4] from Calcutta, Bengal, Tagore first wrote poems at the age of eight. At the age of sixteen, he published his first substantial poetry under the pseudonym Bhanushingho ("Sun Lion") and wrote his first short stories and dramas in 1877. In later life Tagore protested strongly against the British Raj and gave his support to the Indian Independence Movement. Tagore's life work endures, in the form of his poetry and the institution he founded, Visva-Bharati University. Tagore wrote novels, short stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays on political and personal topics. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced), and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are among his best-known works. His verse, short stories, and novels, which often exhibited rhythmic lyricism, colloquial language, meditative naturalism, and philosophical contemplation, received worldwide acclaim. Tagore was also a cultural reformer and polymath who modernised Bengali art by rejecting strictures binding it to classical Indian forms. Two songs from his canon are now the national anthems of Bangladesh and India: the Amar Shonar Bangla and the Jana Gana Mana respectively.

The Poet's Letter to Lord Chelmsford, the Viceroy , repudiating his Knighthood in protest for Jalianwallahbag mass killing. The letter was published in The Statesman, June 3, 1919:

"Your Excellency,The enormity of the measures taken by the Government in the Punjab for quelling some local disturbances has, with a rude shock, revealed to our minds the helplessness of our position as British subjects in India....This callousness has been praised by most of the Anglo-Indian papers, which have in some cases gone to the brutal length of making fun of our sufferings, without receiving the least check from the same authority, relentlessly careful in something every cry of pain of judgment from the organs representing the sufferers. The time has come when badges of honour make our shame glaring in the incongruous context of humiliation, and I for my part, wish to stand, shorn, of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen who, for their so called insignificance, are liable to suffer degradation not fit for human beings. ..."
Source: http://www.india-forums.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=231291&TPN=6

Mind Without Fear

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action

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Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.