The picture of newly appointed British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak eating masala dosa at south Bengaluru’s iconic Vidyarthi Bhawan has gone viral. As Chancellor of Treasury or Finance Minister he had visited his wife Akshatha Murthy’s hometown in 2019 and she had taken him to the 80-year-old establishment to try its best dish.
But, over 120 years ago, another British Prime Minister used to live in Bengaluru. Sir Winston Churchill, considered the United Kingdom’s all-time great PM, came to Bengaluru in 1896 as a young British army officer and had lived in the cantonment area of the city. It was a small provincial town with a superb climate.
In his book, My Early Life, he writes, “The climate of Bangalore, at more than 3,000 ft above sea level, is excellent. The sun even at midday is temperate and the mornings and evenings are fresh and cool.” Later, the Anglo-Indians called it “home weather”!
He found the small town boring and spent most of his time collecting butterflies and reading books.
He was a regular at Moses & Sons, the city’s only authentic leather shop run by a Baghdadi Jew from California on Commercial Street.
Churchill, a born British, was from a different century and different culture. During his time, Britain was really great and the most powerful empire on Earth. Certainly, Churchill had no time for the brown natives of Bengaluru and he used to have breakfast at the Victoria Hotel, now demolished a few years ago.
This Victorian-era hotel was built for the White Sahibs and natives were not even allowed to enter its beautiful dining room.
We really don’t know if Churchill ever tasted the city’s signature masala dosa and filter coffee during his one-year stay here. If at all he wanted to try that, he had to visit the old city of Chickpet where a native was running Bengaluru’s best masala dosa hotel. Even if he had gone there, most likely they would not let him in because removing the shirt or upper garment was mandatory to devour the dosa there. And it had no chairs, tables, forks, spoons, and plates!
According to DV Gundappa, a great Kannada mystic and writer who was also a contemporary of Churchill, even he had to struggle a bit to eat the famous dosa there.
True to his blood, Churchill was a member of the snooty Bangalore Club, not far from Victoria Hotel, and used to drink and dine there. It was a White-only club and no native was allowed anyway. When he returned to England, he had owed the club Rs 13, a significant amount during those days. He is still a defaulter and the club’s attempt to recover it from the British Royals or the government has been futile! Don’t know if Sunak settles the bill when he visits his in-laws in future!
Cigar-smoking, suited-booted, also hatted, Churchill eating bread, bacon and eggs with a typical English tea at Victoria Hotel to Sunak in his shorts and t-shirt eating masala dosa with his hands at Vidyarthi Bhawan: both London and Bengaluru have come a long way in the last 120 years.
These two contrasting images tell a fascinating story about the paradigm shift both the United Kingdom and India have made post 1947.
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