Mysore City will very soon become a Metro City with the proposal to merge several surrounding villages into its fold and it will have a population exceeding sixteen lakhs or so. This is a welcome feature, what with the people in the surrounding villages already utilising all the facilities like roads, transport, electricity, water supply etc. available in a city and also totally depending on their livelihood on the employment resources available in city.

In this context, it is very interesting to know how the city was about fifty or sixty years ago. An attempt is made to recall the city of those days by M. L. Krishnaswami, a Chartered Engineer, residing in T. K. Extension.

Read on:

Go back to the early fifties of the last century; Mysore was a small town with a population of just about a lakh. It was a royal city with the Palace as the centre of all cultural and social activities even after the country had attained freedom from foreign rule in 1947.

(i) We had the eight - day Gokulastami festival when the precincts of the Palace would glitter in all hues and colours with long procession of horses, elephants, cows — all beautifully decorated and followed by the idol of Lord Krishna, variously draped each day, depicting one of the ten avatars of the Lord. Interestingly, the procession also included three women belonging to the Palace who would be attired in their best and majestically walk along with the other paraphernalia.

(ii) The second important festival was the Andakasura Samhara, which also used to attract a sizeable crowd in the premises of the fort.

(iii) The most important of all the Palace festivals was the Dasara, about which the present population is very familiar.

Life was peaceful those days and rarely there was any traffic problem, with the number of automobiles not exceeding 500 - 1000. Very surprising indeed. Sayyaji Rao Road was the main thoroughfare and cars could be parked easily on either side. There was no K. R. Circle and the Lansdowne Building was extending at an angle upto the Clock Tower on the southern side of the Devaraja Market.

The Circle came up in 1956 or so with the dismantling of a small fountain named after a British by name Elgin and in the place so obtained, a statue of Maharaja Krishnaraja Wadiyar was installed. This statue and the surrounding structure however lacked the grace and beauty of the other statue of the Maharaja Chamaraja Wadiyar opposite the North Gate Anjaneya Temple.

In 1953 or so, the Maharaja had a son born to him — Srikanta Datta — and the people of Mysore got a surprise gift of free sugar distributed all over the city in lorries to every household.

Food items were cheap and easily available and fairly good rice was sold at 4 to 6 serus (one seru of rice weighed about 800 gms) per rupee. In the early forties, pure butter was sold at about Rs. 5 a kilo. Regular house – to - house supply of butter, butter milk and oil was available with women from the neighbouring villages carrying head - loads of the items to every house.

The bonhomie that existed among the citizens was beautiful and people in the professions of teaching and medicine were honourable members of the society. Teachers like M. S. Ramaswamy of Sarada Vilas School, Srinivasmurthy of Banumaiah's and private medical practitioners like Sanjiva Rao, M. L. Mariswamy, M. Annajappa, had their clinics always crowded with patients. They were all held in high esteem by the society.

Maharaja's College had English Professors specially brought from England to teach English and names like J. C. Rollo, Metcalfe and Eagleton were legendary. Eagleton was the last English Professor the city saw. Maharaja's College had legendary figures like K. V. Puttappa, C. R. Narasimha Sastry and D'Souza as Professors. D'Souza was an Economic Professor who went to England for his post-graduation. He was a prolific and humorous speaker and in one of his lectures he mentioned that during his first exposure to British citizens, he was asked by one of them "Do tigers walk in your streets?", indicating the ordinary Englishman's poor knowledge of Indian conditions, even though the British were ruling India.

Would you believe that Mysore did not have a college offering a degree in Science till 1949 and people had to go to Central College in Bangalore to get their B.Sc degree. Another interesting feature about the private educational institutions:

In 1951, in a household on Vani Vilas Road, death visited both husband and wife in a brief span of a few hours. After all the rituals connected with this tragedy, the mourners of this family thought it was a bad omen and they decided to shift to Geetha Road where they had a rice mill. The house was deserted and plants and trees grew merrily for a few months. People walking on the road used to avoid looking at the house in fear. Then, one day it caught the attention of Suttur Seer Rajendra Swamigalu, who used to visit the neighbouring Sanskrit Patashala every day, driving in his green Austin sedan car. Through the efforts of a leading lawyer living opposite, he called up the head of the bereaved family which had lost the couple and fixed up the beleaguered house for rent.

He moved into the same in the next fortnight after cleaning up, white - washing and sprucing. Within a few months, he bought that property. Perhaps the first JSS High School came up in the same building under the benign presence of the great Swamiji. And the rest is history.

The glamour that was Mysore lay in the fields of arts and culture. Music and drama flourished side by side with royal patronage and the Mysore Palace had such distinguished musicians like K. Vasudevacharya, Ariyakud Ramanuja Iyengar, Muthaiah Bhagavathar, Mysore Sadashiva Rao, Mysore T. Chowdaiah and Moogiah as Asthan Vidwans. Some of the above were able and well - known composers also.

In the field of drama, Gubbi Veeranna, Subbaiah Naidu, Nagesh Rao, Malavalli Sundaramma and later K. Hirannaiah were well - known names. When Gubbi Company or Subbaiah Naidu's SSS Nataka Mandali camped in Mysore, the dramas used to commence at 10 pm and went through the morning. They used to camp here for 4 to 6 months with all houseful shows. Such was the response of the public. Town Hall compound and Ratnavalli Theatre, behind the Rajkamal Talkies were the venues. For music, Bidaram Krishnappa's Ramamandir was the cynosure of all music patrons and rasikas. What a magnificent structure it is even today.

Would you believe that petrol was sold at ten annas a gallon (1 gallon = 4.5 litres) and the popular petrol bunks were one at the Maharani's College Circle owned by K. G. Sundara Raj and another near Woodlands theatre owned by Palonji, a Parsi gentleman. Petrol bills were usually monthly and car owners used to pay up every month. KEB was not there and in its place there was MPL — Mysore Power and Light — and monthly electric bills did not exceed 10 or 15 rupees even for a large house.

Courtesy: Star Of Mysore