Bangalore, our beautiful Bangalore, is creating a monument to modernity. It is making haste slowly.

Along a snaking corridor from east to west and north to south it is rejuvenating itself – inch by little inch, brick by brick. Strewn along the sinuous, metamorphosing arteries are scattered the remnants of the past, waiting for the future. Grotesquely beautiful, the structures reveal the residue of the souls that once inhabited them as they gape into streets throbbing with life.

Not too long ago, they, too, throbbed with life. They were homes where people dreamt dreams of the future. They were schools where children laughed and learnt. They were shops where traders haggled, bargained and made deals.

Today, they have been deprived of the original meaning for their existence, converted into mere shells. They lie in a temporary limbo, unwitting and necessary sacrifices to modernity. But their beauty is inescapable, their allure enduring. They are a tribute to the mystery and majesty of creative destruction.

Their destruction only half-finished, the former homes and shops and schools are in a magical interregnum before their reincarnation. They are passing through a profound phase of a natural cycle, where pathos commingles with hope. They proclaim that it is not just completeness that is exquisite. That beauty is along the way.

Ripped open, they appear incongruous yet dignified. For within them they held the hopes and dreams of the men, women and children who make our enchanting Bangalore.

Shattered by sledgehammers and mauled by shovels they now provide glimpses of a thousand intimacies that sheltered within their four walls. They tell tales of hope and of renewal. They were the custodians of life and now they are the enablers of renaissance.

In life they were nondescript structures serving the functional needs of humanity. In their final moments, just before their inevitable passing, they convey the message that ordinariness is subtle and that it is deep. Demolishing a building is not the same as destroying memory.

Bangalore, our grotesquely beautiful Bangalore, is creating a monument to modernity.

Before we -- those who make and remake our beautiful Bangalore -- are overcome by amnesia, K Venkatesh captures the memories of a city which is making haste slowly.