Bhubaneswar

Bhubaneswar's old town is the survivor of the ancient city of Ekamra Kshetra, a temple centre that grew up where Kalinga's religious life had been concentrated for centuries. The region's earlier capital, the fortified city of Sisupalgarh, stood just to the south and flourished from about the third century BC to the fourth century AD. Near it, at Dhauli by the Daya river, the Maurya emperor Ashoka had his edicts carved after the Kalinga war of about 261 BC, a campaign so bloody that, by his own account, it turned him towards Buddhism. In the next century King Kharavela of the Mahameghavahana dynasty cut the Jain caves of Udayagiri and Khandagiri and recorded his reign in the Hathigumpha inscription.

From the 7th century onwards the Shailodbhava, Somavamshi and Eastern Ganga dynasties built in stone here on an extraordinary scale, and the temples of Bhubaneswar became the main record of Odishan architecture, developing from the compact early shrines of Parasurameswara to the great tower of the Lingaraja in the 11th century. Hundreds of temples survive, out of many more that once stood around the Bindusagar tank.

Under Mughal, Maratha and then British rule the town shrank to a temple settlement in the shadow of Cuttack, Odisha's administrative centre. That changed in 1948, after Indian independence, when Bhubaneswar replaced Cuttack as the capital of Odisha and the foundation of the new city was laid on 13 April that year. The German-born architect Otto Königsberger had drawn a plan of low-rise neighbourhood units with their own markets and schools, and the legislative assembly moved here from Cuttack in 1949. Growth since the 1990s — universities, hospitals, an information technology sector and a steady flow of migrants from rural Odisha — has pushed the built-up area far beyond that plan.

The city lives with its temples in a matter-of-fact way. Morning worship, marriage ceremonies and festival processions run through the old town's lanes, and the temple calendar shapes the year: the lamps of Shivaratri on the Lingaraja tower, the chariot of Ashokastami, the swings and rice cakes of Raja Parba in June. Sanskrit ritual and Odia popular devotion sit alongside the pilgrimage traffic heading on to Puri, 60 kilometres away.

Bhubaneswar is also the cultural capital of Odisha. Odissi, the state's classical dance, has its main schools and performance halls here, and the sculptural poses carved on the old temples are its acknowledged source. The city stages regular seasons of dance and music in and around temple precincts, and the state museum and crafts institutions hold the Pattachitra painting, palm-leaf manuscripts, applique and silver filigree that Odisha is known for. Odia literature and theatre have a strong local following, and the language's status as a classical language is a point of pride.

Modern Bhubaneswar has a young, educated character created by its universities and technology parks, with students from across eastern India and a large tribal-welfare and research presence reflecting Odisha's many Adivasi communities. Sport is unusually prominent: the state government has sponsored India's national hockey teams for years, and international tournaments at the Kalinga Stadium draw big crowds. Manners are conservative and hospitable — guests are fed generously, and visitors to homes and temples are expected to remove their shoes.

The city proper counted about 840,000 residents at the 2011 census, and the built-up area it shares with Cuttack some 1.7 million; the city's population has more than doubled since 1991. Government is the anchor: the state secretariat, the assembly, directorates and public agencies employ a large share of residents, and the planned units around the centre were laid out for exactly that workforce. Hospitals, colleges and the large private universities to the north have grown alongside, and the information technology parks at Infocity give the city a second white-collar economy.

Life differs sharply between districts. The old town is dense and low-rise, with extended families in lanes around the temples and an economy of priests, flower and sweet sellers, and small workshops. The Unit areas are ordered and green, built around markets and parks. Chandrasekharpur, Patia and the new colonies beyond them are a landscape of apartment blocks, coaching centres and student rentals, still filling in. Slum settlements sit between these areas, and the state has run a well-publicised programme granting land rights to their residents.

The day starts early — sunrise comes before six in summer because India keeps a single time zone — and much of the city is out by seven, with offices working through the morning and shops open late into the evening. Recurring concerns are heat, water supply, traffic on roads not built for the present volume, cyclone preparedness after storms such as Fani in 2019, and the pressure of building work on the old temple precincts.

Odia cooking is subtler and less oily than that of its neighbours, built on rice, vegetables, mustard and panch phutana, the five-spice mix of mustard, cumin, fennel, fenugreek and nigella. The everyday standard is dalma, lentils boiled with pumpkin, raw banana and other vegetables and finished with ghee and dried chilli, eaten with rice. Around it come santula, lightly cooked mixed vegetables; besara, a mustard-based curry; and saga, green leaves sautéed with garlic. Pakhala, rice left to ferment overnight in water and served with fried fish, badi and lime, is the answer to the hot season.

Fish and mutton appear at most meals that are not vegetarian: macha besara, fish in mustard gravy, chingudi, prawns from the coastal lagoons, and mutton curry for Sundays and festivals. Temple food is a category of its own — the kitchens of the Ananta Vasudeva temple cook and sell an offering meal, in the same tradition as Puri's mahaprasad, with rice, dal and vegetables prepared in earthen pots.

The sweets are the best-known part of Odia food. Chhena poda, cottage cheese baked with sugar until the surface caramelises, is the state's signature, and Odisha contests with Bengal the origin of rosogolla; rasabali, fried cheese discs soaked in thickened milk, comes from Kendrapara. Street eating means dahi bara aloo dum in the morning, ghuguni made from dried peas, gupchup — the local name for the crisp filled shells known elsewhere as phuchka or pani puri — and pithas, steamed or fried rice cakes made at festivals and sold at Ekamra Haat.