For Suresh Jayaram, Cubbon Park is a people’s place, one that represents the democratic fabric of our society. “It is a very eclectic, secular space that has been, for a long time, an axis of the city,” says the Bengaluru-based writer, visual artist, art historian and curator, the founder of the 1Shanthiroad Studio/Gallery.His new book, Cubbon Park: Citizens’ Perspectives and Many Visions for the Future, engages with the city’s central green lung, which he feels, “belongs to everyone” and has “a kind of palimpsest of history from pre-colonial, colonial, post-colonial times…and within these layers of history, there is also a certain environment and ecology that is part of the park.”Also read: Cubbon park is central to Bengaluru’s existenceHe uses an interesting format to tell the story of Cubbon Park, comprising a series of interviews conducted with 26 fellow Bengaleans, and interspersed with factoids and evocative photographs. It, of course, delves into the park’s history and its built and natural environments. But it is so much more than that, presenting the park as a space that has fostered community, harboured memories, developed artistic inclinations, nurtured desire and love, or simply allowed people to be.“I wanted to collect different voices, almost like a conductor or a sutradhar, string them together and make it a citizens’ perspective,” says Suresh, who thinks of this book as a contemporary, ethnographic document and archival material, reflecting the Bengaluru-specific identity of the various citizens and stakeholders it features. It is, he says, “a book speaking about the city’s green spaces and community as well as questioning the role of the government. It gives them the idea that parks need not be regimented like this.”