For Suresh Jayaram, Cubbon Park is a people’s place, one that represents the democratic fabric of our society. “It is a very eclectic, secular space that has been, for a long time, an axis of the city,” says the Bengaluru-based writer, visual artist, art historian and curator, the founder of the 1Shanthiroad Studio/Gallery.

His new book, Cubbon Park: Citizens’ Perspectives and Many Visions for the Future, engages with the city’s central green lung, which he feels, “belongs to everyone” and has “a kind of palimpsest of history from pre-colonial, colonial, post-colonial times…and within these layers of history, there is also a certain environment and ecology that is part of the park.”

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He uses an interesting format to tell the story of Cubbon Park, comprising a series of interviews conducted with 26 fellow Bengaleans, and interspersed with factoids and evocative photographs. It, of course, delves into the park’s history and its built and natural environments. But it is so much more than that, presenting the park as a space that has fostered community, harboured memories, developed artistic inclinations, nurtured desire and love, or simply allowed people to be.

“I wanted to collect different voices, almost like a conductor or a sutradhar, string them together and make it a citizens’ perspective,” says Suresh, who thinks of this book as a contemporary, ethnographic document and archival material, reflecting the Bengaluru-specific identity of the various citizens and stakeholders it features. It is, he says, “a book speaking about the city’s green spaces and community as well as questioning the role of the government. It gives them the idea that parks need not be regimented like this.”

The idea for Cubbon Park: Citizens’ Perspectives and Many Visions for the Future emerged soon after his book on Lalbagh, Bangalore’s Lalbagh: A Chronicle of the Garden and the City, was published back in 2021. “My research about Bengaluru has been happening intensely for the past 25 years,” says Suresh, who is also behind a project called Bangalore Mapping, which he started with a few artist friends. “I collected a lot of information, and the result was the Lalbagh book.”

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When he began looking more closely at Cubbon Park, “I realised it is very different from Lalbagh,” he says. Unlike Lalbagh, which was primarily conceptualised as a botanical garden, Cubbon Park is essentially a public park, standing between Bengaluru’s Cantonment and Pete areas, and is deeply connected to the judiciary, government, culture and people.

“I believe there was a toll gate that restricted people from going into the Cantonment, and you had to return at a certain time. But, in post-Independent India, it became a bridge between these two areas,” says Suresh, who refers to it as a space that is “quite porous with many entries and exits. This makes a park a crucible of people from different social ranks.”

When people visit the city, they almost always go to Cubbon Park to get a slice of Bengaluru that they don’t get anywhere else, he says, adding that it is an extremely walkable part of town, allowing a visitor to “get a sense of the colonial past, rest and see some art (at the nearby museums), look at nature or even attend a concert at bandstand. We don’t have a beach in Bengaluru, so the place to go to is a garden, where you can eat roasted corn or peanuts, snacks associated with leisure and sharing.”

Having said that, he also agrees that the park’s nature is changing as surveillance within it mounts and freedoms are continually being curtailed. “Gentrification is the new colonisation. We need to be sensitive to people’s needs,” he says. He feels that if someone wants to come and sleep in the park because they are tired, or come from a village for a court case and need to use the park’s facilities, it should be allowed. Cubbon Park is, after all, a people’s park and is eventually for them. “If there are no people, why should there be a park?”

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He insists that the commons, cultural and natural resources that should be accessible to all members of a society, like Cubbon Park, “need to be proactive, welcoming, and non-judgmental…a place where people can meet others, and not only engage with conversation, but also believe in a city which can be taken care of,” says Suresh, who hopes that more people will pick up the book and engage with the park.

Suresh also talks about how a green space like Cubbon Park is essential for another reason, one that is often undervalued: its role in promoting mental well-being. “Sitting in the park and engaging with nature is a fundamental human thing,” he says, pointing out that the citizens of Bengaluru get to engage more with nature because of the city’s numerous parks and its weather, which allows plants to grow in abundance.

“These are gifts that the makers of Bengaluru have given to us; they believed that public health is also dependent on people enjoying a fountain or sitting on a garden seat or looking at a blossoming tree.”

Cubbon Park: Citizens’ Perspectives and Many Visions for the Future is available against a donation of ₹1,199.00 at all major city bookstores.