Articles by Deepa Mohan

r All,Earlier this week(April 13 and 14), the Bangalore Metro Rail corporation(BMRCL) has demolished over 500 feet of Lalbagh's wall and cut down 5 eucalyptus trees inside Lalbagh. BMRCL proposes to have a Metro station inside Lalbagh itself!Lalbagh is protected by a separate, stringent law. In a highly undemocratic move, the Karnataka Government changed the law by moving an ordinance to acquire LalbaGh land for the Metro, rather than prefer a debate over the changed law, in the Assembly. The opposition has also failed to protest this undemocratic move.Lalbagh and Lakshman Rao Park on R.V.Road, (also called the AC Road,…

WeMove Productions, a subsidiary of WeMove Foundation, announces: The Short Play Writing Competition 2009. This shall be followed by a "Short Play Festival", where the selected scripts shall be staged, and suitably awarded. (Prizes worth INR 10,000/- for the prize winning scripts) Please read the Rules & Regulations of the competition before submitting your scriptHow to Apply · Applicants are invited to write a short play of approximately 30minutes in length, on a subject of their choice.· he authors should register on www.wemove.in to enter the competition.Visit www.wemove.in and click on "Submit your Script". o Fill in the required details,…

On the 29th of March, I went to Lalbagh to join the joint Max Mueller Bhavan /  Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) -organized Heritage Walk. Having taken many people around Lalbagh, I wanted to know if there was anything I had missed learning about....here's some of what I saw.We all met at the 3-billion-year-old (give or take a few hundreds!) sheet rock on which one of Kempe Gowda's towers stands, and marvelled at the range of pre-history to history; we then walked towards the Glass House, where the Lions of the Ashoka Pillar are etched into…

At the Bannerghatta Zoo area, I saw the hinges of a van had been painted this way....Unhinged patriotism is called jingoism...what is "hinged" patriotism called? :)⊕

Tat Tvam is a young Bangalore theatre group; and "God", by Woody Allen, was their first production. They are a group of amateur artistes; many of them are IT professionals, but a few of them are students, too. For a first production, "God" was a fairly ambitious project to choose, and they did manage to do a good job of the production."God" is a half-absurd,half-metaphysical play, and the locale and the characters change with bewildering rapidity between ancient Greece and Manhattan!In the words of Miracle Entertainment, the group that had earlier staged this play:"Set in an empty Greek amphitheater, this…

Mixed use of our roads has long been both a plus and a minus in Bengaluru, especially in ‘shopping’ areas like Commercial Street and Brigade Road. Recently, some children from Poorna Learning Centre, a school in north Bengaluru decided to address the issue by conducting a survey and presenting a report.  Khyati Shah (right) talking to a shopper (pic: T Deepan) Anyone who has gone to Commercial Street, especially on weekends, cannot be oblivious to the difficulties that pedestrians face, due to the traffic on that narrow street. G V Dasarathi (aka Das) and his daughter Amala saw a woman…

We all know Capt. Gopinath as the pioneer of low cost aviation in India. It's another matter that this whole business model is no longer viable, thanks to the vagaries of petrol price fluctuation and governmental rules and regulations. The fact remains that, in a time of monopolistic aviation practices, Capt. Gopinath undertook to start Deccan Aviation, which made traveling by air affordable to the common man for the first time. So, in our minds, this sense of ‘Capt. Gopinath empathizes with the common man’ was a kind of article of faith. And the news that he is standing for…

The seats decidedThat rather than be dividedThey too, would get togetherAnd sit in conclave,Debate on pleasure and pain:They, too, would discuss the weatherTalk of the bold and the brave...They would gossip and chatLike the people who satOn them. Will they return to their places again?Or will they remain,Forever united,Conversational partners in the park,By the light of the day, and in the dark? ⊕

I was coming back from the Central Business District, and waiting for a friend to pickme up at the junction of Richmond Road, where Brigage Road starts calling itself Hosur Road. Right next to Thom's Hotel, I looked in the cool greenery of All Saints' Church, and on an impulse, walked inside.What an oasis of peace it is! True, the roar of the traffic is unrelenting...but the beautiful, low-set church, and the huge trees (there is one huge Millingtonia, or Sausage Tree, in full bloom and fruit just now) and the birds in them give the effect of stepping into…