“Here is Mark Cubbon,” says Siddharth Raja, the founder of Nandi Valley Walks, pointing to the equestrian statue of the former Chief Commissioner of Mysore and Coorg, after whom the park was named. The bronze statue, hewn by sculptor Baron Carlo Marochetti, depicts Cubbon seated on a horse with all four hooves firmly planted on the ground.
Siddharth then proceeds to explain the symbolism of it. If a person is seated on a horse with rearing front legs, it indicates the rider has died in battle, while if one front leg is up in the air, it indicates that he was wounded or died later of battle wounds. “If both legs are planted, it means he died outside of battle,” he says. While this symbolism is often dismissed as an urban legend, it is indeed true that Cubbon, a keen horseman, died on a ship in the Suez Canal while returning to England after nearly 60 years spent in India. “He was a British officer who dedicated his life to India,” says Siddharth.
More such facts, perspectives, gossip and legend came together at this walk at Cubbon Park, part of the Unboxing BLR Habba, the first edition of which was held in the city between December 1 and 11. Over a two-hour-long amble through the lush green environs of Cubbon Park, peppered with sprightly morning walkers, indolent community dogs and solecistic signboards, Siddharth took his audience on a rollicking ride through Bengaluru’s colonial history by offering them the stories behind landmarks like the Seshadri Iyer Memorial Hall, Century Club, the statues of Sir Mark Cubbon, Edward VII and Queen Victoria and the High Court. Hopscotching from the creation of the Bangalore Cantonment to how colonisation impacted the vegetation of the city, the so-called curse affecting the Wadiyar dynasty, the doomed marriage of the travelling diwan, Albion Banerjee, and why Queen Victoria is called the grandmother of Europe, among other things, Siddharth’s session in the park was both informative and enlivening.
A lawyer and a history buff
Siddharth, a seasoned corporate lawyer, is a self-confessed history buff. “I have always been interested in history. After college, I was seriously looking at something in the field,” he recalls in an interview. However, liberal arts were often seen as a dead end in terms of career back then. So, he gravitated towards law, “a natural progression,” as he puts it, continuing to read about history and learn from the excellent history professors he encountered at the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) in Bengaluru.
Though he obtained a master’s from the Warwick School of Law and launched into a successful legal career, his love for history continued unabated. In 2013, when he moved from Bengaluru to Nandi Hills with his family, he ended up visiting the ancient Bhoga Nandeeshwara temple at its foothills and realised that “there was so much about it,” says Siddharth, who started Nandi Valley Walks a year later.
“The actual suggestion came from a bunch of classmates from law school,” he says. What started as picnic outings with close friends in early 2014 has now mushroomed into a history and heritage walking tour company, primarily focused on the Nandi Hills area, though the company is also beginning to look at heritage in the city. “It kind of grew from that,” he says, pointing out that, as many recent finds and research indicate, Bengaluru is steeped in history, and way older than it was previously thought to be.
The road ahead
Till 2018 or so, Nandi Valley Walks only focused on that area, operating multiple heritage trails here. Then in 2018, when the Bangalore Club celebrated 150 years, he was called to do that walk. While doing that walk, he read Aliyeh Rizvi’s “superb” coffee table book on the Bangalore Club and realised that there was so much to know about the city and the park. “That is when I started getting interested,” says Siddharth, who began conducting Cubbon Park walks — around 10-11 of them over the next few years —until it all came to a grinding halt in early 2020, courtesy of COVID-19. He restarted the walks in 2022 and has been doing them since, conducting weekend walks every other Sunday morning between November and March.
So, what drives him to continue doing what he does? For starters, young people are more interested in history than ever before, he believes. “History writing used to be niche, but today you have a lot more popular writing on historical subjects than ever before... many podcasts,” he says, adding that there are so many ways to access history today.
Heritage walks, of course, are one such avenue, something he believes needs to be furthered by training more guides. “It is not good to have just a few people doing this,” he believes, pointing out that knowledge should not be reserved for a few elites but must be truly democratic. It could also be a means of giving employment and upskilling local people, says Siddharth, who is already collaborating with Vinay Parameshwarappa and his team at Gully Tours to deepen and widen the range, depth, and quality of heritage walk tours, hoping to further showcase often ignored or forgotten elements of this vibrant city.
“We need more foot soldiers, who are excited, interested, ready to learn, dig and discover new things, and transmit and convey eloquently about the city and its experiences -- in English, Kannada, and more Indian languages (to reflect the diverse linguistic groups that call Bengaluru home),” says Siddharth. “A handful of people can’t do all that nor be at all places, at all times.”
To know more about these walks, log into www.facebook.com/nandivalleywalks
