Just raise a question
– “what kind of place you wanna live in”. I bet almost all answers will infer
directly or indirectly to a place with serenity, tranquility….. small dose of
natural beauty, where you can escape from the stress of day to day life, feel
refreshed, relaxed, get up with the melody of chirping birds and at least no
water problem J!
I have recently
shifted to Bangalore. Though I made few official trips to the city earlier, I
was dillydally how the place would be to settle down.…..With hundreds of
questions in mind, like, will it be better than Delhi or my home state Assam,
how will be the people, food etc., I came to this city last month.
Depositing a good
amount of money, we took a rented house. Rent is quite high in this IT hub, for
which we started searching for a house to buy from the next weekend of our arrival.
While flipping the newspaper pages- specially the Property supplements, and the
sites like Magic Bricks, 99acres etc., we found there are lots of lakes in
Bangalore. Lots of properties are using “Lake View” as their selling point. We
targeted some of these sites. And yes,
that’s true….actually many of these properties are situated on the bank of the
lakes, such as Bellundur, Ulsoor, Vatkal, Domlur, Munekolala etc.
While exploring various locations within the city, I found Bangalore
to be a beautiful place, full of
exquisite landscapes. There are numerous lakes in Bangalore, though there is no
river close by. Most of the lakes in the Bangalore region were constructed in
the Sixteenth century by damming the natural valley systems by constructing
bunds. But, unfortunately, so many places are facing water problem, some places
have dried out bore-wells, most of the places in the city don’t have Kaveri
water supply. The cities of Bangalore, Mandya and Mysore depend almost entirely
on the Kaveri for their drinking water supply.
Urbanization has taken some heavy toll on the beautiful lakes, the flora and
fauna in Bangalore. Most of the lakes have vanished due to encroachment and
construction activity for urban infrastructure expansion. Some of the major
lakes that disappeared over the years are changed to stadium, sports complex,
bus station, golf association, market area, sewerage collection tank, college, residential
layout etc.
The city once had 280-285 lakes of which 7 cannot be traced, 7 are
reduced to small pools of water, 18 have been unauthorizedly encroached by
slums and private parties, 14 have dried up and are leased out by the
Government. 28 lakes have been used by the Bangalore Development Authority to
distribute sites and build extensions for residential areas. The remaining
lakes are in fairly advanced state of deterioration. Now, only 17 good lakes
exist as against 51 healthy lakes in 1985 in the heart of the city.
We are shortlisting a property on the bank of such a lake. We will have
to pay some extra from our pockets for the so called “Lake View”. But, a thought
is engulfing our heads if the lake will be dried-up or else if government will
transform the lake into a stadium or a market place..…?
Thoughts are still on…..
