Probing into history beyond mere historical facts, this book focuses on the 'imaginations' that have determined the course of Bengaluru over the last two-and-a-half centuries. It puts together contemporary accounts of the imaginations of those who were heard at each point of time. This approach is particularly relevant in the India of the current time where debates on history are largely a matter of choosing one set of historical facts over the other. The imaginations in the book relate to those of the Bengaluru of the eighteenth century that the British colonised; the nineteenth century Banga.