Articles by Deepa Mohan

They wait, in their toxic colours in swathed in plastic, these un-green Ganeshas...a miniscule mimority tries to make green idols, much older people remember a time when a little pinch of mud or turmeric was enough to represent the elephant-faced god. I wonder how many of them remain, mercifully, unsold, and are recycled the next year.

It seems to be men who transport these colourful bangles all over the cities and villages...rainbow fragility on women's wrists that are given in fours at religious festivals,and adorn, in dozens, a pregnant woman's arms. Women pride themselves on wrists that can acommodate smaller bangles, while the bangles are often used as a major insult in our men-are-dominant culture. Made of plastic, metal, and sometimes the finest glass..these circlets are an integral part of our culture and heritage. Valley School, 05 Sept 2015.

Most Hindus celebrate the birth of the dark baby God, Krishna, by installing an image of the god and worshipping it in the traditional manner, with flowers,fruit, and other offerings. However, Priya Mukund, of J P Nagar 3rd Phase, celebrates the festival a little differently.  She has, over the years, made a large collection of figurines of Krishna: as a baby, holding ball of butter; sleeping in a cradle.holding a flute while he herds the cattle; in unison with Radha; or in the form of preceptor, revealing the Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna. The figurines start from very old pieces in…

I arrived by the Air France flight which lands at  Bangalore International Airport (BIAL) at 23.50 hrs. It most definitely meant that by the time I navigated Customs and Immigration and came out of the Arrivals area, it was about 01.30 hrs.  I am an avid user of public transport, and there is a Vayu Vajra service (KIAS 12) that drops me at my front gate. I would have felt much more safe in using that, rather than taking a cab. But the service is suspended between 00.30hrs and 0700 hrs. Therefore, I had no alternative but to take a…

Last month, I’d discussed spiders. I then thought about the creatures that use them as prey, and this reminded me of the Wasp-and-Spider drama that I witnessed. About four years ago, I made this post about the Spider or Pompilid Wasp organising food for her yet unborn children, by stunning and burying a Yellow-thighed Tarantula or the Indian Ornamental Spider.  Well, her story repeated itself while we were at the Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary. This Spider Wasp had already stunned the Tarantula by the time we saw it. Unhappy with the first site she had chosen, she dug it out of the…

It is a sad reality that nowadays, by the time it's 26th Jan or 15 Aug, the flower displays are wilting and well past their prime at Lalbagh. Why do the displays have to open so much before the actual dates? Or if more days are needed for the general public to attend, surely the display could start fresh on Republic or Independence Day, and go on for a few days thereafter?

Websites? I mean, the homes of those that make homes of silk… that is, spiders. We’ve all seen spider webs around us: in the house, in the garden...and indeed, so synonymous is clearing spiders’ homes with our idea of keeping house well, that even when we talk about clearing our minds, we say, “let’s clear the cobwebs”. However, a closer look at these “websites” show they are marvels of engineering, strength and resilience. Spiders spin webs out of the silk that they produce, which passes out of their spinnerets. But the actual “architecture” of spider webs can vary very widely.…

If we are apathetic to Nature today, and view the natural world as being something separate from our daily existence, certainly there was a time when it was not so. Much of our rich mythology deals with rivers, trees, and other natural features, and indeed, our ancients imagined mythical beings which combined several features of living creatures. We all know Narasimha, the half-man, half-lion avatar of Vishnu, but Bangalore, and Kannada culture, in particular, has some interesting depictions of some other mythological beings. As a woman who regularly uses Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) buses, (which means that I travel…

The very word 'Tarantula' is something that strikes dread into most of our hearts. We’ve all heard the horror stories of 'evil' arachnnids delivering fatal bites. However, though they may be deadly Tarantulas elsewhere, the ones we have nearby are generally more wary of us than we are of them, and do not bite until they are extremely disturbed. Tarantulas comprise a group of very large and often hairy arachnids belonging to the Theraphosidae familyof spiders. Their large size and hairy appearance, combine to give most of us a dread of them. But they have some very interesting features! Tarantulas do spin…

Almost before one knows it, the face of the city changes, and many things belong to the past, and then to history. Here are a few facts that I remember from the late 80s and early 90s; it was still pre-IT Bangalore, a sleepy town, rather than a city (in fact, two towns, the "English" Cantonment and the "Kannada" areas like Basavanagudi, Malleswaram and Jayanagar)... the quality of life was excellent. In Langford Town, there used to be an auction house, it was run by a Mr Pacheco. It closed down by 1988 or 1989... probably because the owner emigrated…