Bangalore's first flyover, laid a decade ago, connects the area housing the Town Hall and the Bangalore City Corporation buildings with the beginning of Mysore Road. True to criticism that the causeway is underutilised, not many vehicles ply on it. But the flyover's underbelly is a study in contrast. Teeming with people and vehicles at all times of night and day, this is City Market, a hub for local and out-of-town buses and goods carriers.

If you are courageous enough to take your eyes off the autorickshaws, trucks and buses that jostle for room and threaten to squash you in between, you will see some of the oldest buildings and institutions of Bangalore.

There are the remains of Bangalore Fort, a structure fortified by Haider Ali, the commander of the armies of the former kingdom of Mysore and then its de facto ruler. Its walls are crumbling and whatever stands is plastered with cinema posters and moss. Across the street from the fort is the Fort Venkataramanaswamy Temple (Kote Kovil to Srivaishnavas and Kote Venkataramanaswamy Devasthana to other locals), a temple whose flagstaff bears bullet marks from the time of the Siege of Bangalore by Lord Cornwallis in 1790-91 (during the third of the four Anglo-Mysore Wars).

Next to the temple on the perpendicular is the palace of Tipu Sultan (Haider's son and the 'Tiger of Mysore'). It is a protected monument but is in a sad state of disrepair, needing an urgent facelift.

Opposite the palace is Victoria Hospital, the first port-of-call to lakhs of poor people unable to afford private healthcare. Then there is Bangalore Medical College opposite the temple, an institution that is alma mater to generations of doctors. Round the corner is the Kannada Sahitya Parishat, a once-venerable institution promoting Kannada language that has lately lost its shine.

The flyover separates all these buildings from Bangalore's oldest mosque, the Jumma Masjid, whose tall minarets rise up to the sky and present a majestic view to the few motorists hurtling along on the flyover towards the city centre.

Most of the sites I have mentioned find a place in tourist guidebooks and websites about Bangalore. However, it is unlikely that the cosmopolitan Bangalorean of today has ever heard of them, leave alone visited them. Even among old Bangaloreans, 'Kalasipalya', that area comprising City Market and surrounding localities, is synonymous with goods lorries, buses, rowdies and filth.

One of the buildings in the area that does not figure in tourist maps is the Government Girls School. It is on the right side of the road as you come down from the temple towards the flyover. By the time you have realised it is there, you will have passed it.

The school is the official centre for the carnatic music exams conducted annually by the state government. Once a year during the summer, the old classrooms and rickety desks bear witness to candidates who sing and play on a variety of instruments. Their talent and ability vary widely but their enthusiasm and sincerity are uniformly high.

My wife and I went there a few weeks ago to enroll for the exams scheduled for this April. As we entered I observed that this was a girls school; I didn't know that till then. I also saw that the overwhelming majority of girls were Muslim. That day we saw two long lines of bright, laughing girls waiting to have their teeth examined by a mobile dental van of a private hospital.

We were directed to the computer room on the first floor. There we saw a Hindu gentleman at a desk. Along the walls in front of him there were PCs set up on creaking tables. At each PC was a huddle of Urdu speaking girls, chattering subduedly, while one of them typed away god-knows-what. When we told the computer teacher - that was who the gentleman was - of our purpose, he called out to the girl nearest him. Young Nilofer walked confidently up, and told us exactly where to sign, where to paste our photos and when to expect intimation of the exams. Nilofer knew everything there was to know about the procedure prescribed for the forthcoming carnatic music exams.

As we completed the formalities, I struck up a conversation with the computer teacher. He said that most of the PCs were unusable because they were virus-ridden. Even otherwise their configuration was outdated. The school did not have funds to upgrade. Another school nearby had done better. A corporate donor had given that school PCs with more contemporary configurations. Girls in this school found it difficult to type anything sensible, so badly infected were the systems. I murmered my sympathies.

As we thanked them and left, we thought we should do something more about that computer room, for Nilofer and her friends, than merely nod in sympathy. Just as somebody else was doing something about their teeth.