A fountain for a parrot

Bangalore has many fountains and unfortunately some of them have disappeared while others have fallen prey to neglect and apathy.

But did you know that the first ever public fountain built in Bangalore was only in the 20th century and that too it was in Cubbon Park.

Bangalore then was two cities-the civil lines administered by the Wodeyars and the Cantonment which was under the British.

The Cubbon Park has been commissioned by the British in 1870 and the fountain came to be constructed in the park only sixty five years later.

It was sometime in the 1930s and the Royal family of Nepal-the Ranas- had taken shelter, rather refuge, in Bangalore. The Maharani Bajang of Nepal wanted a home for her pet parrot in Lalbagh. The Maharani had seen Lalbagh and she was fascinated by the flora and fauna.

She had seen the dovecot or Pigeon house in Lalbagh and she was enthralled by the concept. She wanted a similar structure to come up in Lalbagh so that it could be a home away from home for her pet parrot.

When she discussed the idea with the then Dewan, Sir Mirza Ismail, he suggested diplomatically suggested building a fountain in Cubbon Park.

He convinced the Maharani that Cubbon Park would be a better alterative and it would be nearer to the royal residence of the Nepal family. This residence today is the headquarters of the Bangalore district police and it is located at the junction of Millers Road and Cunningham Road. This is the Om Mahal. It still exists and some traces of the royal furnishing can still be seem in the form of huge mirrors that are placed at the landing of the majestic staircase.

The Maharani appreciated the Dewan’s idea and she agreed to it. She provided Rs 7000 towards the construction of a fountain in Cubbon Park as part of the project. However, before the fountain was built, the Maharani expired in Bombay and the parrot vanished.

This is the Fairy Fountain in Cubbon Park which was built in memory of the royal parrot which was never found. Not for a day did the parrot roost in the fountain.

Today, the fountain is still in the park but there is neither a board not a sign specifying its unique history. The Om Mahal too exists but the royal family does not.

Decades ago, the fountain sprayed water and it had colourful fish in it. Today, there is neither water nor fish.

The fountain is near the office of the Department of Horticulture. Check it out when you go to Cubbon Park. Old timers still have found memories of the fountain and the soft sounds of music that wafted down from the band stand in Cubbon Park.

Those days are gone now and one hopes that the fountain would not become a piece of history.

Cubbon Park is centrally located in Bangalore and there is absolutely no problem in gaining access to it. There are a number of bus stops around the park surrounding it on all its sides such as Corporation from Hudson Circle side, Nruputunga Road stop from K R Circle side, Ambedkar Veedhi and Vidhana Soudha from Gopala Gowda side, Indian Express stop and Coffee Board near GPO side,  KSCa stadium, Cubbon Park from MG Road-Kasturba Road side and even Kanteerava stadium from Mallya road side.

There areplenty of autos available. Parking is available in the park itself. 

The park is surrounded by a number of museum and iconic structures like Vidhana Soudha, Raj Bhavan. GPO, High Court, Press Club, KGID  Building and museums like Government museum, Venkatapa Art Gallery, Visvesvaraiah Technical museum, Aquarium and  Stamp museum in GPO.

   

An ant named after Bangalore

Bangalore has always been known as a city of  space, aerospace and science. The many scientific and research institutions have given Bangalore the nomenclature of Science today.

Bangalore is also known for many inventions and discoveries such as the Bangalore torpedo and several other inventions in the field of pure science.

But what many do not know is that Bangalore is also known for the discovery of at least two new species of ants, yes ants, and one of the species is named after the City.

Ants are everywhere but few of us notice them. Moreover, for a layman there is no difference between species of ants and so all credit to the researchers who have discovered the new species.

This is Dilobocondyla Bangalorica and this is a species of ant which is the sub family of  Myrmicinae. It is an arboreal ant and it generally nests in dead wood and crevices of tree barks.

This new species was discovered in 2006 in the campus of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Malleswaram.

The credit for discovering the Bangalorica goes to researchers Sunil Kumar M. and Srihari K. T. They collected the 4-millimetre (0.16 in) ant in the IISc campus first in 1997.  Though they identified the genus of the ant, it was Thresiamma Varghese, a scientist at the IISc, whose studies led to the ant being described as a new species in 2006.

This ant builds its nest in the Frangipani plant species- Plumeria Alba alba and Plumeria rubra. While they live in colonies like other ants, they forage individually on tree trunks. The spines on the head and thorax are blunt, and this is the main difference between the Bangalorica and other species.

When these ants forage, they raise their abdomen or gaster high up in the air and in this they bear a remarkable similarity to Crematogaster which is also called acrobat ants.

The worker ants and the Queen ants of Bangalorica is smaller than other species. A few more nests of this species was discovered in Lalbagh and Cubbon Park, Bangalore. So far, this species of ant has not been found outside IISc, Lalbgh and Cubbon Park.

The holotype or the physical example of the ant, known to have been used when the species was discovered in IISc, is still  preserved in the Insect museum of the Centre for Ecological Sciences, which is one of the departments of the IISc.

The D Bangalorica is the twelfth species of ants in the genus Diblocondyla. What makes this discovery significant is that it is the first species of this particular genus that has been found in India.  

The other eleven species are from other different areas of the world.

By the way, Dr. Varghese and Ajay Narendra, an ant researcher, have discovered another species of ant called Myrmecina Urbanii. So far this has been traced only in Kerala and it is also a rare species.

The queen ant of M Urbanii is polymorphic-it has different sizes. In other species of ants, it is only the worker which are of different size.

It was Mr Narendra who discovered another species of ant in Lalbagh in 2013. The ant belongs to the genus polyrhachis and it was found on a bark of a tree. This makes it the second ant species  discovered in Bangalore

The whole of Britain has only 56 ant species while Bangalore alone has 130 of the 170 ant species so far recorded in India. World over, there are 12,000 species of ants.

Another ant species discovered in the Western Ghats recently has been named Discothyrea Sringerensis.