Each City Photo Walk Tells A Story

Do you know that ‘the name Bhubaneswar comes from the name of the Hindu deity Shiva, Tribhubaneswar, which means “Lord of the Earth” and that the name was shortened’ for convenience?

Long ago, I got curious about the names of places. When I landed in Bhubaneswar to attend a marriage, my first question (to myself of course) was why Bhubaneswar was so named.

And I stayed at Trident. Lord Shiva or Shankar (or Bhubaneswar, if you like) is always depicted with a trishul, Trident in English.

I entered the lobby and was struck by its beautiful design.

Walk a few steps and you see a beautiful ceiling.

Walk a few more feet and the exceptionally well-designed Swimming Pool captures your eyes. (Disclaimer: I wish to declare that this is not a sponsored or a paid blogpost. It is just that I feel compelled to write about anything beautiful.)

I went out for my morning walk. A casual stroll with eyes open. The road in front of Trident is wide and clean. I noticed that they had planted banyan trees. And trees were flanked on both the sides by concrete pavements. Where will the prop roots go and how will the plant grow? Take a good look at the photo below.

Planners designed a simple solution to this problem. They chopped off the top of the tree, so it can only grow sideways. Perhaps even branches will be trimmed.

Interestingly I saw several Saptaparni trees. Alstonia Scholaris to the botanists. Wiki tells me that in Sri Lanka its light wood was used for coffins. In Theravada Buddhism, the first Buddha is said to have used Alstonia Scholaris as the tree for achieving enlightenment. (So, this tree comes in your life twice; once if you attain enlightenment and then when your light is put off by Him!). The tree top fell to the chopper.

This tree is all around the housing society where I stay. It grows at least 40 feet in height in the cities though Wiki tells us that it grows much taller than that level.

The question is why plant trees and then chop off their heads? That would be something to consider for the headless planners.

As I moved away from the main road I found a lovely sight. A Tea seller, some men around him buying and drinking tea, two men reading newspapers in the pleasant weather of Bhubaneswar and a man feeding the stray dogs. All at peace! That’s the way to begin the day, right?

And three schoolgirls going to school on their bicycles.

My eyes spotted red flags at a building. The building housed CPI(M) office. A die-hard industrial relations man (who else, me of course) will spot red flags from miles away.

This mural is of Shivaji Patnaik (Shibhaji to Oriya guys) who was a well-known communist labour leader.  

As I moved ahead, this interesting poster caught my eye. They have used Rajesh Khanna’s famous line from Amar Prem with a twist. The original line, you will remember, was ‘Pushpa, I hate tears!’ People notice this and walk ahead with a smile.

Residents are trying to keep their city clean.

I was not aware that German architect Otto Königsberger designed Bhubaneswar. He helped Tatas design Jamshedpur too. It was a dirty city in the eighties, but it is now a clean city which shows that the leaders have taken interest in developing Bhubaneswar.

There is so much about cities which we do not know. In the frantic pace of life so much history is lost.

This Konark sculpture of a ‘Horse Trampling the Warrior’ depicts our situation; to me, the horse represents frantic pace of life and warrior represents the history and urban people, me included!

What do you think?

Vivek S Patwardhan

What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others/ All work copyrighted.