Sri Prasanna Veeranjeneya Swami Temple
Mahalakshmi Layout was a mostly barren land with small hills and rocks. After Independence, the place was called “No Man’s Land” as it was outside the Bangalore region. The deity was carved by a sculptor named Shanmugananda. He felt that the place had a spiritual aura and thus spent months sculpting Lord Hanuman, beginning with a sketch. Eventually, after completion, devotees began visiting the sculpture and engaged in doing Puja to the god. During the 1960s, Mahalakshmi Layout showed signs of developing. In the early 1970s, as the city expanded, and the hill was registered within the city limits, the local residents hired professional artists to enhance the earlier outlined sketch, into a grand painting of Lord Hanuman. By the mid-1970s, the authorities decided to turn the painting into a sculpture and formed a high-level committee (involving local residents) for this purpose. In 1976, the sculpture was ready and inaugurated by the Hindu tradition with their priests. PV Narasimha Rao was invited as the Chief Guest for the ceremony. By 1980, a 40×40 ft temple was ready, which went on to expand into a 13-acre temple complex with the help of generous donations by devotees over the next few years, and it became part of the “Must-Visit” list of sightseeing in the city. Over the years, the Temple was developed by the devotees and by the local people and made it a full fletched place of worship.