Panchavati: The sylvan abode of a Nobel laureate

Nestled among Malleswaram's many houses is the sprawling bungalow which was once home to Sir C V Raman and his family, writes Meera Iyer

Views of the bungalow where Sir C V Raman resided for several decades. Photos by Anu A P

Views of the bungalow where Sir C V Raman resided for several decades. Photos by Anu A P

Cocooned in a tree-filled site in a corner of Malleswaram in Bengaluru, is a rambling bungalow that was once home to India’s first Nobel prize-winning scientist, Sir Chandrashekhara Venkata Raman and his family. Sir C V Raman, who was born on November 7, 1888, and died on November 21, 1970, spent several decades in this house.

The house was already quite venerable by the time C V Raman bought it. It was built by B Jagdeo Kumaraswamy Naik in 1905, a time when Malleswaram was still a new neighbourhood, with 18th Cross as its remote outer boundary. Naik was a respected member of the administration of the Mysore Maharaja, serving as the District Magistrate in Bengaluru City in the early 1900s, and later as Deputy Commissioner of Tumakuru district.

Sir Raman bought the house in 1942 from a descendant of Naik. Raman was already a well-known name by then, having won the Nobel in 1930. It was in Calcutta that he and his student K S Krishnan had conducted the research that led to the prize-winning discovery of the Raman Effect. The scientist moved to Bangalore in 1933, when he took up a position at the Indian Institute of Science. When he and his wife decided to buy a house a few years later, Malleswaram was a natural choice.

Raman wanted to buy a large, double-storeyed house which was at the intersection of 8th Main and 15th Cross. His wife, however, had set her heart on another bungalow at the same intersection which had a large garden around it. Raman acquiesced and in 1942, they bought their new house. The story goes that when Raman was told the house was haunted, he scoffed that he himself was a greater ghost who would drive out any resident ghost!

The house was named ‘Panchavati’ by Lady Lokasundari Raman, after the forest where Rama and Sita spent many happy years during their exile, according to the Ramayana.

The house gradually absorbed the imprint of its new owners. The Ramans laid out a rose garden, for Sir Raman loved roses. They added a portico in front, and some years later, a tiled-roof corridor that connected the house to the rear wing, which had a kitchen, stores and a puja room. And they planted lots of trees – neem, mango, wood apple, jackfruit, sandalwood, and many, many more. Today, the trees they planted have grown into grand old giants, so this little sylvan spot in Malleswaram well invokes the forest hermitage it was named after.

Classical architecture

The single-storey house of brick and lime mortar is built in a typical Classical style, according to Sridevi Changali, principal architect at Mason’s Ink, an architecture firm in Bengaluru.

In 2017, Sridevi led a team that documented the heritage building. “It has high ceilings, tall arched windows, ventilators and louvres,” she explains. The roofs are flat, Madras terrace roofs. A wide verandah with an arcade of semi-circular arches wraps around the front half of the house. The parapet with simple balusters is also Classical in style.

The plan of the house is interesting. It has a large, hexagonal central hall with multiple rooms adjoining it. “Panchavati’s layout thus resembles the bungalows of the Cantonment area, including Fraser Town and Richards Town, rather than most of the bungalows built at that time in Malleswaram,” she says. What inspired Kumaraswamy Naik to build a house in Malleswaram that resembled those of the colonial side of the city, we wondered.

Many old-time visitors to the Raman home remember Lady Raman playing the veena in the central hall. One room leading off from the central hall was Sir Raman’s den. Another room housed his library, which stocked an eclectic collection of books that attested to Raman being a voracious reader who delighted in literature as much as he did in science.

C V Raman lived in Panchavati for many years before he moved to the Director’s bungalow in the Raman Research Institute, which he founded.

Today, the house and grounds of Panchavati are maintained by the Raman Research Institute Trust.

(Meera Iyer is the Convenor of INTACH Bengaluru Chapter and author of ‘Discovering Bengaluru’.)