Hubbubba

HubbubbaThe Bangalore Quiz

1. This temple is built in the memory of Kempegowdas daughter-in-law Lakshmamma who committed suicide by beheading herself with a sword, ostensibly for the protection of the city. Her grave is to be found a few meters from the temple (inside a BBMP park now, and was locked when I went)

However not every historian is convinced that the temple and the grave actually belongs to this person. To paraphrase historian Dr. SK Aruni, why would Kempegowdas daughter-in-laws grave and memorial temple be outside Bangalore, I am sure she would have been buried inside the city itself

Where exactly would you find this temple/grave?

AnswerKoramangala 6th Block (a short walk of some 5 minutes from where this quiz is happening)

2. What did Chikkadevaraja Wodeyar buy from a person named Venkaji (aka Ekoji) who was then living in Tanjore, for a sum of rupees three lakhs? Even though the deal was made with Venkaji, Chikkadevaraja Wodeyar actually paid the money to a guy named Khasim Khan around three years later, because of the way certain situations had changed.

AnswerBangalore

3. Lakshmi Ammanni, wife of Chikkakrishnaraja Wodeyar (aka Krishnaraja Wodeyar II) after whom the Maharani Lakshmi Ammanni college in Malleswaram is named, was born and brought up in Bangalore. She was the daughter of a famous warrior-administrator named Kattigopalaraja Urs. When Lakshmi Ammanni was growing up, who served in Urss househould as the childs personal servant, thus forming a close bond with the future Maharani which definitely was useful later in life for this person?

AnswerHyder Ali

4. The book cover of Fazlul Hasans Bangalore Through the Centuries features a 1792 painting by a Capt. Allen named Storming of the ______ ____. The painting today is in possession of the MEG Centre.

Just fill in the blanks with the name of a location. While the location does not survive anymore, the name still does in an establishment stationed there.

AnswerUlsoor Gate

5. We all know that the story of Veera Ballala taking refuge at an old womans house, and being given boiled beans, thus giving the town the name bendakaaLooru is an urban legend and has zero historical relevance. Fazlul Hasan in his book Bangalore Through the Centuries offers a theory on how this story may have come about. Because of the strong resemblance it bears to a very popular story from English folklore, he believes that this story about the king/old woman/boiled beans is something one of the British soldiers stationed in Bangalore in the early 19th Century came up with, and over the years has seeped into native folklore.

Which is the story from English folk history that he says is the progenitor of the boiled beans legend?

AnswerKing Alfred and the cakes

6. The reason Kempegowda chose the name Bengaluru for his planned city was because his mother, his wife, and his daughter-in-law, all came from a hamlet named Bengaluru. On the shore of which water body would you find this hamlet, that today goes by the name hale bengaLuru and has been all but completely swallowed by urban Bangalore?

AnswerHebbal Lake

7. Which establishment on MG Road had dcor meant to simulate a London tube station? And which establishment on Church Street had dcor meant to simulate a spaceship?

AnswerUndergroundNASA

8. Routes 131 (Majestic to Doopanahalli) and 150 (KR Market to Shivajinagar) were the last two to feature something. What?

AnswerDouble Deckers

9. Today a district headquarters, this town was called Closepet in the British era, named after Sir Barry Close, who was the first ever British Resident in Mysore (and like all Residents for Mysore, lived in Bangalore). Name this town, which was also the site of arguably the first large factory in the Bangalore regionKempegowda established a weapon manufacturing unit here to make all the weapons needed for his army.

AnswerRamanagara

10. Sir Stuart Fraser, British Resident in Mysore had two places named in his honour. One was Fraser Town in Bangalore. How do we better know Fraserpet, in current-day Coorg district?

AnswerKushalanagar

11. What was the name of the first English newspaper published in Bangalore, that started circulation in 1859? Despite the common word in both the names, it has no relation to the currently popular newspaper that is published by the Printers (Mysore) Limited.

AnswerBangalore Herald

12. Whose epitaph reads Here lies the greatest man this island has produced for centuries back.? Also, which island?

AnswerSir Mark CubbonIsle of Man

ABCD13. Given that A:B :: C:D and that A is perpendicular to C (or B is perpendicular to D), solve for A, B, C, and D.

AnswerA Alur Venkata RaoB Albert VictorC Mahakavi PampaD Lord Hardinge

14. Flying Horse, Taj Mahal, Jubilee, are all Bangalore brands that are usually never available in Bangalore but commonly available in US/UK. What are they?

AnswerBeers

15. Sarovara Pub had a reputation for being a place where the underworld hung out, and it was only appropriate that an important fight scene in Om, the Upendra-directed movie that launched the trend of laangu-macchu movies, is set there. Unfortunately, Sarovara Pub does not exist anymore. What 5-star establishment would find at the location today? Also, the character with the gun, and wearing all-whites in the scene you just saw was based on which real-life person?

AnswerITC Royal GardeniaMuttappa Rai

16. In 1948, X inaugurated the planned area P, named after Y. In 1949, Y inaugurated the planned area Q, named after X. Just identify the two areas, P and Q.

AnswerJayanagarRajajinagar

17. Who in 1990 was appointed as the Minister of State for Defence by VP Singh, much to everyones surprise, given this concert pianist had little experience with politics?

AnswerDr. Raja Ramanna

18. What was unique/different about the way Kannada actors Lokesh and Girija Lokesh got married? Incidentally, Dev Anand and Suraiya had planned something similar, but that never happened.

AnswerThey got married on stage as part of a play

19. Nrupatunga Road was formerly called Cenotaph Road because at the end of the road, close to Hudson Circle, there was a cenotaph. Who was the cenotaph in honour of?

AnswerBritish soldiers who died in the Siege of Bangalore and the Anglo-Mysore Wars

20. Srirangapattana, Sira, and Chikkaballapura were the other options considered before Bangalore was eventually chosen, primarily because it had superior weather. For what purpose?

AnswerThe British establishing their cantonment in Mysore kingdom

21. Which area of Bangalore, that also lent its name to the title of a hit movie, is named after the Persian word for a military labourer, because during Tipu Sultans time, this is where his military labourers lived?

AnswerKalasipalya

22. An administrator named Khande Rao tried to launch a coup against Hyder Ali. It flopped. Hyder Ali captured Khande Rao from the court at Srirangapattana, got him to Bangalore. What happened next was interesting. Hyder Ali got a large iron cage built and kept it in one of his rooms in his Bangalore house. Khande Rao was made to live inside the cage. He was fed just a fistful of rice (unboiled) and a bowl of milk every day. He soon died of starvation. Why did Hyder Ali torture and kill him in this strange manner?

AnswerWhile capturing him, Devajammanni, the queen of Mysore had requested Hyder Ali to not kill Khande RaoHyder Ali in return promised Devajammanni that he would look after Khande Rao like he were his own pet parrot. And so he did.

23. The old Corporation Building in Bangalore was designed by a Liverpool-educated localite named Lakshminarasappa (who also designed the adjoining Town Hall.) His design was chosen over those submitted by someone else, an European known for certain contributions to Bangalore that have nothing to do with architecture. Who was this European whose design missed out?

AnswerGH Krumbiegel

24. ML Srinivasa Shastry and his wife Sundaramma lost their child at the age of 3 to a liver ailment. What institution did they found in his name and memory in 1942, that runs to this day on Malleswaram 4th Main?

AnswerHymamshu Shishu Vihar

25. On which building would you see this mural?

AnswerUVCE

26. Castle, Nilgiris, British, Bangalore. What did you get when these four got together?

AnswerUnited Breweries

27. What have I blanked out?

AnswerMinerva Mills

28. This BMTC service was introduced when BS Yeddyurappa came to power. The idea was to provide connectivity to poorer parts of Bangalore, and the tickets were priced at half the cost. Around a dozen routes were launched, but the service turned out to be a flop because of bad planning. For example, none of the routes had either of the hubsMajestic, Market, or Shivajinagar as a terminus. Only a couple of the original dozen still survive, and they can be identified by the AS prefix added to the route number. What service is this?

AnswerAtal Saarige

29. Which place, today part of Bangalore, is referred to as Ilaipakkam in Chola records?

AnswerYelahanka

30. Despite the effort and expense spent on it, for many years it failed to serve the purpose it was built for, and hence was commonly referred to as ______s Folly, a name that can be seen in some old maps of Bangalore. Fill in the blank.

AnswerSankey

31. Ever since records started being kept in the mid 19th Century, the only decade in which Bangalores population declined was 1891-1901. What were the two reasons for this decline?

AnswerPlagueAlmost all the soldiers stationed in Bangalore were deployed in either the Boer War, or the Boxer Rebellion

32. What connects the following Bangalore place namesGanganagar, Shivanagar, Kanakapura?

AnswerThey all replaced the halli in their names with a nagara or a pura to reflect that they were now urban. Gangenahalli, Shivanahalli, Kanakanahalli

33. The City Improvement Trust Board was formed in 1945. What did it change its name to in 1976?

AnswerBDA (Bangalore Development Authority)

34. From the 1860s till the 1920s, the leading hotel in Bangalore was something called the Cubbon Hotel. In the 1920s it was purchased on behalf of the British Resident. What purpose does the building that once housed the Cubbon Hotel serve today? A bit of what Cubbon Hotels building looks like now is shown here to help you along.

AnswerOffice of the Commissioner of Police, Bangalore

35. Early 20th Century guidebooks of India, eg. Murrays Handbook for Travelers in India, when they are talking of Bangalore establishments, would always list a shop called ______ and Sons both as a jewelry shop and for photographs. Fill in the blank, with a name that you would still see on MG Road.

AnswerBarton

36. In 1997, Bangalores first street atlas was published under the fairly self-explanatory name The Bangalore Street Atlas: A Complete Guide to the Streets of Bangalore City and its Suburbs, by a company called Street Atlas Company Pvt. Ltd. This company was a spin-off of a firm that put in over two and a half years of research into collecting the data necessary to publish this atlas. Name either the parent firm, or the person who headed this initiative, and hence the spin-off company too.

AnswerVenkataraman Associates / Naresh Narasimhan

37. The genesis of which phrase goes back to marketing material of the late 1980s prepared by KEONICS, a government agency that was constructing Electronic City?

AnswerSilicon Valley of India

38. This was an ad that was often seen on television in the early 2000s. What was the name of a campaign, a name that possibly is a good exhibit for showing that whatever Bangalore does, the rest of India will do over a decade later?

AnswerSwaccha Bangalore

39. Mico was one of the earliest private sector companies to set up a large manufacturing factory in Bangalore, and as a name has gotten itself entrenched into the Bangalore psychefrom names of layouts, to the fact that people still call the Bosch factory on Hosur Road as Mico.

Mico is an abbreviation. What does Mico expand to?

AnswerMotor Industries Company

40. In 2003, Bangalore became the first city in India to have a public WiFi service. Which company offered this?

AnswerSify

41. The first Test match that happened in the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore was between India and West Indies in 1974. It featured three debutants. One on the Indian team, Hemant Kanitkar. Who were the two debutants on the West Indies team, both of whom fared way better in their international stints compared to Kanitkar?

AnswerGordon GreenidgeViv Richards

42. His real name was James Colzie. Formerly of the US Navy, after a fight with his captain, he deserted and came to India from America in 1923, and eventually settled in Bangalore as it was by far the top boxing destination in India. He dominated the boxing scene in India for over two decades, winning the belt in three different weight divisions. He was popularly known by the nickname GBJ, an abbreviation for a name that included a reference to his naval past. What did GBJ stand for?

AnswerGunboat Jack

43. Explain why is it that the Old Airport Road curves in the manner shown. Observe the picture carefully, and you can work the answer out.

AnswerThanks to the old race coursein this stretch, the Old Airport Road follows the curve of the old race course oval.

44. The original name of this institution included the phrase Literary and Scientific. But considering that nothing literary or scientific happens there these days, it has appropriately enough not in use anymore in the name. Which institution?

AnswerBowring Institute