It was about 8 am in the morning today,I cast my vote and set off from BTM to White Field area where Anoop had suggested that we have shoot on the Anglo Indian community based there. After getting lost for a while I finally managed to reach there with the help of Anoop who was already there with Bhaskar. Upon reaching there I found out that the church we had decided had nothing interesting on the topic we decided to have the shoot on, so we set off to another church close by where we were told that we could take pictures only after the prayer service was over, so we had about an hour’s of time to kill. Bhaskar was feeling hungry so we had some breakfast at a near by fast food joint. Few cigarettes later, armed with our cameras, we found ourselves at a local park where Anoop tried clicking some pics with my 50mm on his brand new 1000D, we strolled around the park for sometime where we captured a few butterflies and some children playing.
After that we were just strolling around the road outside the park when suddenly we were struck by a sense of calm & peace. It was then that we stumble across ‘Perfect Peace’. Its actually the name of the house belonging to Mr. Paul D’souza(hope I ve spelt that right). We were about to leave after photographing the house & its garden from outside when Mr. D’souza came upto the gate and invited us to come in and take pictures. Built in 1914 ‘Perfect Peace’ is one of the few remaining Anglo-Indian architectures in Bangalore and as Mr. D’souza says “we intend to keep it that way” and that “it would be a crime not to allow people of the city to visit one of the few remaining places in the city where man and nature live in harmony”. As we entered the gate we were greeted my chirping birds, squirrels & a cool breeze as if they were all a part of Mr. D’souza’s family. As soon as we entered we saw a squirrel sitting on a table in the porch, lost in its own world munching away some of the food Mr. D’souza had kept for them. Also the fact that these creatures had been so accustomed to the love & care of the residents of the house that they so freely interact with them amazed the three of us. Mr D’souza brought some chips of which he asked Anoop to holdout a small piece in his hand and no sooner than he did that, a squirrel came running down from one of the trees, came to Anoop, took the chip and ran away. Similar story is also with the birds in the garden for whom Mr. D’souza has put up bird houses around various trees in the garden. Mr. D’souza also told us about the story of the crows & the cuckoos in t he garden wherein the male cuckoo goes and sits in the crow’s nest when the crows are away, upon spotting the cuckoo in their nest the male & the female crow try to chase away the male cuckoo, as they are busy chasing the male cuckoo, the female cuckoo comes into the empty crow nest and lays its eggs. The crows finally bring up the young cuckoo birds when they hatch as there is not much difference between the young cuckoos & crows. All these things although may be fascinating to us city folk, this is something that the residents of ‘Perfect Peace’ see & experience almost everyday. Mr D’souza also showed us how to manually pollinate some plant(I forgot its name) with the help a small broom stick(will post the pictures on that).After that we he showed us how to make a water hole for the birds with the help of an inverted half litre coke bottle. In the meanwhile Mr. D’souza’s mother made us some delicious sugarcane juice after which he showed us the fishes in the two smalls man-made ponds in the garden. We had to be careful with our juice glasses which the squirrels loved to push off the table. The squirrels also help Mr. D’souza by pushing off the wood apples from tree in the garden, he also offered us some wood apples which we gladly accepted. After Bhaskar was done with educating Mr. D’souza about some recipes with the wood apple we decided it was time to leave.
As we were about to leave we met Mr. Praveen Gowda, one of the earliest resident of white field and to whom Mr. D’souza introduced us to. Mr.Gowda offered to guide us though some of the oldest houses in white field, he also told us that the ground which was in front of Mr.D’souza’s house(where some boys were playing cricket) used to house the cannons of the British army once upon a time. We then went to the Inn where Winston Churchill used to visit his mistress Ema Hamilton between world wars I and II, it seems Churchill would come to the Inn from Bangalore during the weekends(talk about Bangalore Weekend C****s :-D) riding his horse. We went inside the place which had a pre independence feel to it, but unfortunately we could not go in as the residents were not home.It seems Churchill loved Ema Hamilton so much that he watched the movie 'Ema' inside his bunker during the world war for about 17-20 times. After that we saw some modern houses including that of business tycoon Asim Premji’s house which is located right beside the Inn & also many other old houses whose original residents were supposed to be the poor people like railway ticket collectors, etc & also the land for the inner and outer circle was donated by the Maharajah(I don’t remember which one). Finally at about 1pm we decided to head home but only after having met some of the friendliest, kindest & most hospitable people in Bangalore. All in all a great outing. Cheers!!!
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