Lakes in Bangalore

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…..