Dasara is here and so Mysuru gets its annual Botox shots. Which means Mysuru has once again been given its annual facelift.

Roads are hastily patched, heritage buildings get a dubious lump of paint and traffic medians get back their yellow and black colours. 

It’s the city’s seasonal ‘quick-fix mode’ and like all quick fixes, it looks good only under the glow of fairy lights.

If it takes a 10-day (11 this year) festival to get basic civic maintenance done, perhaps the only way forward is to have more festivals.

For Mysuru to thrive, Dasara must be more than a local carnival; it must be our ticket to the world stage as a city of events. Which means Dasara needs scale, sophistication and                                                                                        international appeal.

Once upon a time, Dasara was a regal affair. Foreigners flocked here, spending lavishly, while locals enjoyed well-curated cultural programmes. Today, it feels more like a chaotic street fair. Tickets are scarce, venues overcrowded, traffic unmanageable.

Yuva Dasara is enjoyable, but a nightmare to get to and exit, which sucks the joy out of it. The much-touted Food Mela offers neither gourmet nor hygiene.

The exhibition is a suffocating mass of humanity with mediocre stalls and events. Even the illuminations, beautiful as they are, create gridlock with selfie-hunters clogging roads.

Even if it’s all mediocre, it’s still enjoyable but it lacks global appeal.

Even the crown jewel, the Jumboo Savari. Sadly, it is now a jumbo mess. The tableaux look like replays from the 1990s, the dance troupes and blaring bands are unchanged and the sight of poor Abhimanyu carrying 750 kilos of Golden Howdah through a human obstacle course of attention-seekers desperate to get on TV makes one cringe and stay away.

The problem is not with tradition; it is with execution. Dasara is still managed by the Deputy Commissioner (DC). An able administrator, no doubt, but no event manager. 

How is he supposed to run Mysuru and manage Dasara? Expecting the DC to run the district and organise an international festival is like asking a pilot to serve coffee in the middle of a turbulence. At this point, he might as well be asked to carry the Howdah too.

Around the world, grand festivals are handled by professionals. They are run by seasoned event managers who understand logistics, crowd control, sponsorships, spectacle and churning out a profit. Why should Mysuru be any different?

Bring in the professionals. Let them handle the floats, the food stalls, the ticketing, the marketing. With the right vision, Dasara could be regal again and even profitable.

Without it, Dasara will slide further into ‘jathre’ territory, just a bigger, louder version of a village fair.

Even Dasara’s most beloved feature, the illumination, comes with its own dark side. Wires and cables are wound around roadside trees, nails hammered in, bark damaged.

This year, Mysore Grahakara Parishat staged an ‘Appiko Chaluvali,’ hugging illuminated trees in protest. Their timing is questionable, even laughable.

Why wait until three days before the festival to register your protest when lights had been strung up for weeks? Still, their point stands: Nails scar trees permanently.

But protests, however, must also bring solutions. If not on trees, how else can the city sparkle?

May be creative alternatives like pole-mounted lights, building projections, etc. must be explored. Because, like it or not, lights matter.

A 2014 Journal of Consumer Psychology study found that bright festive lighting boosts dopamine, our ‘feel-good’ chemical.

Illumination is not frivolous; it is emotional architecture. Without it, Dasara would feel incomplete. Without illumination, Dasara would feel like a wedding without the bride.

Dasara is more than a tradition; it is Mysuru’s annual adrenaline shot. It brings in tourists, revenue, business and pride. But this pride cannot be seasonal. A city that shines only for 10 days a year is not a ‘heritage city’ but a movie set.

What Mysuru needs is continuity. A cultural calendar that extends beyond October. More international conferences, art festivals, music residencies and Yoga retreats.

Big events create scrutiny; scrutiny creates accountability; accountability creates good governance. Dasara must not just be an annual spectacle. It must be Mysuru’s calling card to the world.

For now, thanks to Dasara, Mysuru is at least cleaned, lit and momentarily beautified. But a city should not glow only when it knows it is being watched. A true heritage city shines year-round, because it wants to.

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