Hiriya Kempe Gowda knew that for a city to flourish, it must have prosperous markets. So when the ‘founding father’ of Bengaluru set out to build what is now the fourth-largest metropolis in the country, back in 1537, he called it Pete (pronounced pay-tae), which means market in Kannada. With roads laid in cardinal directions and entrance gates at the end of each road, it had a modern imprint, an urban foresight that allowed the city to grow organically around it.
At first, Pete was a 2.24sqkm stretch, laid out systematically with a mud fort at its centre and subdivided to make room for different trading communities, such as cotton traders in Aralepete, rice in Akkipete, oil in Ganigarapete, salt in Upparapete and so on. Later, during the Wadiyar dynasty’s rule or the colonial period, new neighbourhoods were appended. Chamarajpete, for instance, was named after a Wadiyar king, while Cubbonpete borrows its title from a British Lieutenant-General.
At the heart of the city even today, the Pete is a melting pot of age-old trades and new ones that celebrate the spirit of a marketplace built five centuries ago.
Pradeep KS is a Bengaluru-based photographer