Dusk at Puttenahalli Lake

A visit to Bangalore is incomplete without a visit to the JP Nagar Puttenahalli Lake. This Diwali holiday, it was late evening, and as I rushed down the Brigade Millennium Avenue alone, I was happy to bump into one of my former neighbours, Meena, who said it was a while since she visited the lake. We went together, chatting about our children, and made it to the lake just before daylight vanished.

A splash of yellow Coreopsis flowers against the blue tranquil waters make a pretty picture indeed! It was almost a year since my last visit. Last year too there was a lot of water, so the lake itself did not look different. But this year the trees looked much bigger, washed clean, greener and more lush.

As we made our way along the pathway, we were struck by the richness of the island’s foliage. Many years ago, a single date palm was all that was there. Now, this date palm, though still head above the rest, could go unnoticed by a first-time visitor. We spotted one bird in flight, one lone egret.

The line of coconut trees in the erstwhile neighbouring coconut grove could well be a scene from the backwaters of Kerala.

This dry sheesham tree at the viewing deck looks like an artist’s installation. The boys playing on their mobiles were probably oblivious to its background. I had got it as a sapling during a visit to the Golden Temple, Amritsar.  While it grew well for a few years, something seems to have happened, causing it to dry out.

In half an hour we had walked back to the entrance. By now it was dark, and the waters were lit by the electric lights of the neighbourhood.

Then all of a sudden, we saw movement in the water. Boating was anyway not allowed, so we wondered who could be in the water in the darkness. We soon saw the nets and figured that it was the fishermen, setting out to work in a coracle. They were placing their nets for the unsuspecting catch. With abundant water, fish must be aplenty for them.

Till next time…

Pics taken at Puttenahalli Lake, dusk 21st October 2017
using an iPhone 7