Articles by Deepa Mohan

Recently, I found that several of my older friends are unaware of their rights on Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC).So I decided to clarify about this. Here is confirmation that BMTC offers discounts of 25% to Senior Citizens. .BMTC cites 60 years, though the Hindu report cites 65 years.   The fact, however, is that most conductors do not give the Senior Citizen discount unless one is aware of one's rights and asks for it. So...keep your id cards handy, and insist on your right if you are entitled to the discount.   Here's the extract from the BMTC charter:…

Here is a short video Abhisheka Gopal and a few of her friends made, about the Malleswaram Central Library:     Do send feedback to abhishekagopal@gmail.com

Playing with tops ia a boys' sport and pastime  in India. This is not a sexist statement, it quite simply is so; I have not seen girls playing with tops, from my childhood, till date. As I grew up, I found that there was a season for tops (referred to as "lattu" in Hindi and Bengali), much as there was a season for marbles, kite-flying, cricket, football, and gilli-danda. Tops came traditionally as wooden globes, with nails sticking out of them. Thin ropes were wound round and round the lower part of the top, which had grooves to accommodate the…

The Jacaranda trees are in full bloom now, across the city.     Against the blue, the purple looks lovely:     And then, of course, Nature strews the blooms across the path.     It's lovely to walk through a carpet of purple. The Jacaranda is native to tropical and subtropical regions of Central America, South America, Cuba, Hispaniola and the Bahamas. It has been planted widely in Asia, and in Bangalore, at this time of the year, it adds great beauty.   Here   is the Wiki entry about the tree. Enjoy the flowering trees of spring and…

  Despite the scorching heat, there is so much to see all around us! Lets capture bangalore's summer life in our sketchbooks !    Here's the GreenScraps, nature journaling workshop for this summer! Please find all the details in the poster attached - the batch, date, age and place. As always, the registrations are restricted to about 12 participants each batch.  So, please contact us ASAP, before it gets filled in! Your participation would be confirmed only once the payment is made.     For more detail: GreenScraps Blog - http://greenscrapsjournal.blogspot.in/ GreenScraps Facebook -  https://www.facebook.com/GreenScraps?ref=hl

  Friends of Elephants    is having an event on  Monday 7th April 2014  at Rangasthala, Rangoli Metro Art Centre on M G Road. Do come in large numbers!

I've attended, and enjoyed, several of Bangalore Little Theatre's productions over the years, because it's Bangalore's oldest theatre society...but this evening's production of "The Court Jester: Tales of Tenali Rama" was very special for me, as my grandchildren, 5 and 1, were visiting me, and I'd been very keen to give Kavya (the elder) a taste of theatre...so having a children's play by BLT to go to was a wish come true! The whole family went to Woodlands Hotel to find that things were delayed a bit, but Vijay Padaki filled in the gap with great panache. He first invited…

I first visited Dr H Suresh's clinic in 4th T Bl ock in Jayanagar, in 1979, when my daughter was 6 months old. She'd been having severe diarrhoea for two weeks, and I was at my wits' end as I was staying with some friends and desperately worried about her health. Dr Suresh's clinic was called "Deepa Clinic", and that formed a further bond. I learnt that it was his daughter's name. He promptly treated my infant daughter, who recovered. When we moved to J P Nagar in 1997, my neighbour told me about a G P who ran his…

As we entered the Woodlands Hotel just off Richmond Circle, to attend a wedding, our attention was riveted by this little gem, parked in the campus: The MORRIS MINOR is a beautiful little car! As if to keep perfect company with the car, these old buildings of the Woodlands Hotel looked so lovely: We attended the wedding, too...the youngest daughter of one of the old families of Bangalore and Nanjangud: All in all, it was a day when history and heritage seemed to thrive in modernity!

I met a lot of interesting people today. My friend Jayashree Govindarajan put me in touch with Nidhi Manoj and Reshmi Chakraborti, who have been, for the past two years, running an e-magazine called Silver Talkies , for those above 55 years of age, Today (7th March, 2014) Silver Talkies, along with Suchetadhama (run by Shanthini Dawson) and artist Paul Fernandes’ gallery of Curious Memories, held their maiden event, “Art, Coffee and Conversation”, at the gallery, with high tea at The French Loaf, situated in a heritage house across the road. The idea was to share thoughts and discussions, and…