The film was taken in 2010 and the background music is a recording I made from the loudspeakers that played on Bull temple road during the Kadlekai Parishe (Groundnut fair) that same year. The purpose of the film had been a simple one – to record how people use space on an everyday basis.

It was a time when the street vendors had not yet been evicted. That happened in Jan 2012. The reason cited by the government for the eviction was that the gandhi bazaar main road was becoming very congested. But, was this the only solution? In an article here on Citizen Matters Why target street vendors alone I had discussed this further.

I believe that we should consider pedestrianising Gandhi Bazaar. I discuss this in detail at: The why’s and how’s of pedestrianising Gandhi Bazaar. It is just a few weeks after the Bengaluru Tree festival. In an interesting and meaningful documentation of the kattes in Bangalore initiated by Deepak Srinivasan, the students of the Srishti School of Design have mapped a few trees in the city with the kattes that surround them. More about it here: Katte as Urban metaphor. Perhaps, this learning can also be ploughed into the development of an urban design plan for the Gandhi Bazaar area – a plan that prioritises functions, a plan that builds kattes around its trees and links them in such a way that the pedestrianised Gandhi Bazaar becomes a public space with social, cultural and economic practices functioning seamlessly within it. I would like to be a part of such an initiative and contribute to making an urban design plan for Gandhi Bazaar. If anyone is already working on this or is interested in beginning work together, please do get in touch. You can reach me at: kiranmkeswani (at) gmail (dot) com