Symbol of past and present Bangalore Club

Symbol of past and present Bangalore Club
The Times of India

Bangalore: For those who speed past Residency Road every day, it is a familiar, if rather incongruous, landmark amidst towers of glass and steel.

Yet few realise that the Bangalore Club is also a link between Bangalore’s quick-silver present and its days as an outpost of the British colonial empire.

Now 138 years old, the club began as an “extension of England’’ for the thousands of British officers serving the needs of an empire upon which the Sun never set.

M Bhaktavatsala, a past club president and a noted writer/conservationist of Bangalore, captures just that era in his book ‘A Club’s World,’ brought out in 1993 for the club’s 125th anniversary.

Bhaktavatsala pored through the club minutes from 1897 to 1946 for the book. He says the club was a place for officers to relive their English lifestyle and indulge in dress observations, regular dances, dinners, polo, racquets, horses and dogs, and also court “the beautiful English women who followed them across the ocean.’’

The club buildings were originally occupied by members of the Polo club. But in 1863, “some officers of the United Services started an informal club on the premises.’’ This formally became the Bangalore United Services Club (BUSC) in 1868. In 1946, it became a civilian club under the name Bangalore Club.

CHURCHILL CONNECTION Twenty-two-year-old Lieutenant Winston Churchill came to Bangalore in 1896. A BUSC member for
three years, he spent most of his
time fighting battles, but while here, played polo and read books...and courted beautiful young Pamela Plowden who lived in Bangalore then. But she went back to become Lady Lytton by marrying Lord Lytton, says Bhaktavatsala. Churchill left behind memories and a debt of Rs 13 at the club. The amount is recorded in the club books as an ‘irrecoverable sum!’

GOING NATIVE
Indians were not let in easily. ‘A Club’s World’ notes that the Britishers were slow to acknowledge the existence of Worthy Oriental Gentlemen or WOGs such as the Mysore Maharajah — who was the very first Indian invited to use the club. In 1918, the Maharajah’s nephew, Col. Desraj Urs, became the first “Indian officer formally elected to club membership.’’

PRESENT DAY
The BUSC had “balked at electricity, refused the telephone and looked down upon the motorcar,’’ but Bangalore Club today is one of the country’s most gracious yet modern clubs. It has 7,420 members and a 15-year waiting period for membership! And its prestige has not dimmed. You could say, it keeps alive a slice of colonial culture in the heart of Bangalore.

PET GRAVEYARD
The Club used to have a pet graveyard on its premises where the Britishers buried their favourite dogs. The graveyard was, however, unfortunately destroyed many years later.