Becoming Bangalore: Stories That Shaped a Hometown by Roopa Pai

Author:Roopa Pai
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: null
Publisher: Hachette India
Published: 2024-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

The next time you listen to ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’, the American national anthem, and hear the words ‘the rocket’s red glare’, know that Key was referring to Congreve rockets, which were inspired by Mysore rockets, which were first developed in the eighteenth-century lanes around Bangalore’s City Market. Awed locals referred to the area as Taramandal Pete (Constellation Town), after. . .yes, the Deepavali-type sparkles and explosions that were always lighting up the sky above it!

Well before the phrase ‘Rocket Boys’ was used to name a 2022 Hindi web series, a young English soldier called Bayly had inscribed it in his journal. The date was 22 April 1799, twelve days before the final battle of the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War, and the British encampment outside the Srirangapatna Fort was under heavy fire from Mysore rocketeers. ‘No hail could be thicker,’ wrote Bayly. ‘Every illumination of blue lights was accompanied by a shower of rockets, causing death, wounds and dreadful lacerations from the 20 ft–long bamboos invariably attached to them. So pestered were we with the rocket boys that there was no moving without danger from the destructive missiles.’ Alas, all those rockets would not stop the unrelenting British advance and their eventual victory on 4 May 1799.

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