I breathe better thanks to one of Bangalore’s greenest lungs. No, I’m not talking about the well-known Lal Bagh or Cubbon Park or those living room-sized municipal parks strewn around the city, encased in wire mesh, in which walkers pace like tigers in cages. I mean an ecological secret that I give away with the greatest reluctance — the Bangalore campus of the Karnataka Veterinary, Animal and Fisheries Sciences University, a 75-acre deep green oasis of walking (and running) heaven. Come 5pm, all that the KVAFSU means to the residents of a section of north Bangalore is wide open spaces, fresh air and the chance to see that rare thing in a concrete choked city — a horizon.

So what ‘actually’ goes on here? Tucked away in the sprawling grounds are the Dairy Science College and the Bangalore Veterinary College which includes a poultry, a piggery and dairy farms as well as a veterinary hospital. The grounds also house, despite the sound of rescued stray dogs apparently going mad inside a shelter, an animal care organisation called Compassion Unlimited Plus Action.

None of this gets in the way. One can walk here with the sense of being in Bangalore’s last wilderness. What will eventually get in the way, in this property-mad city, is obvious. Part of the land, once belonging to the Karnataka Agro Industries Corporation, has been taken over to build bungalows for high court judges. But yet another threat looms: not satisfied with the monster of a road that already connects north Bangalore to the airport, the powers-that be are building another. This one will cut right through this beautiful campus.

Grrr… We might have to make do with those tiger cages after all.