Oxford Book Shop, MG Mall

I had read or heard that the Oxford Bookstore at the 1 MG Mall in Bangalore was huge. That was the attraction for me to visit it. I was wrong. The bookstore is not that big, though the ambience is nice, the bookstore is quiet, and there is a coffee store right inside the store for you to enjoy a cuppa whilst the children browse the aisles. There is a small but nicely done up kids area, and on small wall a set of beautiful coffee table books put up.

Head-on Collision

Admit it, the title of the post made you look, didn't it? It's the morbid fascination with the macabre that we harbor, hidden mostly, but latent, dormant, and waiting to surface at all times, that makes us go rubber-necking on highways.
There is a traffic police post on Bannerghatta Road, opposite the Gopalan Mall, and which is therefore also the site of many a dented and accidented vehicle that have been towed or driven here, waiting for the police investigation to be completed, before these vehicles can be taken to their final resting places. It is here that you get to see some frisson-inducing spectacles, like this one. There have been worse, I am sure, but this one is no less hair-raising. A white mini-van and a black hatchback in what looks like an almost full-frontal collision. Not at very high speed though, because the windshield has not cracked for either vehicle.

© 2012, Abhinav Agarwal (अभिनव अग्रवाल). All rights reserved.

Royal Meenakshi Mall, Bangalore

There seems to be a new mall coming up in Bangalore every other week. South Bangalore did not have as many malls as some other areas in Bangalore, though that has started to change over the last one year or so. There is Bangalore Central in JP Nagar, Gopalan Mall on Bannerghatta Road, a huge mall is coming up along with a co-located Gateway Hotel not half a kilometer from the Gopalan Mall, and a few months earlier the Royal Meenakshi Mall came up, on Bannerghatta Road, a few kilometers south of these two malls.

Croma is one of the anchor stores in the mall, on the ground floor.

Barista Coffee is there, as is Costa Coffee.

The Nike store, adjacent to Croma.

As you can see, the atrium is quite spacious.

This is a Reliance store that had not yet opened.

A wide shot of the atrium reveals Hyper City on the left.

As an aside, a high-rise residential project from Mantri builders, Mantri Pinnacle, is coming up behind the mall.

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© 2011, Abhinav Agarwal. All rights reserved.

Taj Gateway Hotel, Bannerghatta Road, Bangalore

There is a new Taj Gateway Hotel (Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) coming up on Bannerghatta Road, at the intersection of the JP Nagar Outer Ring Road that connects with the Kanakpura Road and then meets up with Mysore Road. Going by the state of the construction, it appears it will be at least the end of 2011 or the first of 2012 before the mall and the hotel are fully operational.

Apart from the Taj Hotel, there is also a mall that is gong to be co-located with the hotel, which will boast a bowling alley, a multi-plex by PVR, and stores by Spar (Spar India) and Lifestyle, among others. This promises to add to the growing number of malls on Bannerghatta Road. The other malls are the Gopalan Innovation and the Royal Meenakshi malls that have come up in the last six months.


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© 2011, Abhinav Agarwal. All rights reserved.

Mantri Square Mall

The Mantri Square mall is billed as the largest mall in India. As of July 2010. Till the next bigger mall comes around. At 1.7 million square feet, and parking space for 2,000 cars, the mall is big.


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The food court at the top level.

The Reliance group seems to have taken space en-masse at the mall.

Puma and Nike shoe stores adjacent to each other.

I wonder if they paid any royalty to the producers of Forrest Gump, or even acknowledged the, err..., aphorism.

A shiny new Honda Accord, waiting to be won. And gift-wrapped too with a nice red ribbon.

The first outlet of the fast-food chain, Taco Bell, in India. Already a huge hit with people.

The formal inauguration of the mall was done by the Chief Minister of Karnataka, Shri Yeddyurappa.

The basement parking lot.

© 2010, Abhinav Agarwal. All rights reserved.

Rajdhani restaurant at UB City Mall

Photos from the Rajdhani restaurant at the UB City Mall in Bangalore (my earlier post on the UB City Mall).
Weekday rates for a lunch buffet, and a buffet is all you get there, and a buffet is more than you can eat, are Rs 225 per person, inclusive of all taxes. Weekend rates are higher. Weekend wait times are also longer. If you get there around 1pm or so, expect to wait an hour or longer. After 2pm or so they even stop accepting people since the restaurant itself closes at 3pm or 3:30 pm.
The food is a mix of mostly Rajasthani and some Gujarati cuisine, and can be a bit spicy. The kadhi is delicious, as are almost all other items.

The toughest part is after they lay out the plate, with all the bowls, and before they start to serve all the food.

The plate fills up quite quickly, and gets emptied with almost equal speed.
 The other challenge of course was in waiting till the plate had filled so I could take the photos.

© 2009, Abhinav Agarwal. All rights reserved.

UB City Mall Bangalore

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UB City is the biggest commercial property project in Bangalore, India. Pioneered by the chairman of UB Group, Dr.Vijay Mallya, it is built on 13 acres (53,000 m2) of land and hosts 1,000,000 sq ft (93,000 m2) of high-end commercial, retail and service apartment space.

• "UB City is finally here - Bangalore - Cities - The Times of India" - http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1672524.cms
• "UB City - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UB_City
• The UB Group web page

Bangalore Malls

The Prestige Forum Mall is perhaps the most popular mall in Bangalore, and certainly seems to be the most profitable, given the amount of people that throng its aisles.


The mall opened in Feb 2004, and therefore the atrium looks so deserted - when I photographed it around that time.


I have never carried a tripod inside the mall, so I had to rest the camera on something that was a bit low, but I still liked the results. The reflections of the store on the floor is what makes this photo interesting to me.



With a tripod and a longer exposure this shot would look a lot better, but still, I will take this.



Given the total traffic chaos and mess on this stretch of road, it looks almost unbelievable that so little traffic can be seen...



This shot is again inside the Forum mall. The people here have thronged to the Coffee Day outlet that had a television set to watch the last few overs of the first one-day match between India and Pakistan in Pakistan. I believe this was -the- last over, and every dot ball drew deafeningly loud cheers and whistles. Yes, cricket in India still has the power to unite people like nothing else!



A wide (stitched) shot of the foodcourt in Forum mall.



The first day of the year 2005. The number of people was simply amazing.



Garuda mall on Magrath Road is one of the latest additions to the rapidly growing list of malls in Bangalore. Relatively uncrowded, for the time being.


The foodcourt map at Garuda Mall.


© 2005, Abhinav Agarwal (अभिनव अग्रवाल). All rights reserved. Reposted to this blog, May 2013

Forum Mall, Bangalore

These are photos of the Forum Mall in Bangalore.
These photos are more than a year old, taken in 2004, when the mall was not as crowded as it is now.

© 2011, Abhinav Agarwal. All rights reserved.