The Red Path

Bengaluru, Karnataka · landscape

A red-earth path curves through a city park, the trees on either side stacked into layers of green. Late-afternoon light has begun to come in sideways.

Bengaluru's older parks — Lalbagh, Cubbon, the smaller neighbourhood gardens — were planted in the late nineteenth century on the city's signature red lateritic soil, and to this day the paths in them are unpaved. After the rains the soil compacts down into an even reddish-brown surface that holds the colour of an Indian afternoon better than concrete ever would. It also stains your shoes, and there is a small economy of children who will polish them clean for ten rupees at the exit gate.

I was walking this path slowly because there was nowhere I had to be. The trees on either side stacked into layers of green — close planters with shrubs at the front, then jacarandas and rain-trees, then mango and tamarind behind. The sun had dropped enough to come in from the left, just barely separating the trunks. I framed the picture so the path curved away into the middle distance and disappeared. There is a quiet civic pleasure in a well-kept park: the sense of a city that has decided some of its land is for nothing in particular except walking through.

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