Articles by Meera K

Praveen Sood, Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic) talked recently about effective traffic management.Given that only about 1% of the total traffic violations are actually ever fined and the traffic police department is just 2500 strong, what is the way forward? Sood has mentioned (The Hindu, January 31) how about 40% of road space is taken up by parking mostly unauthorised. Earlier at the Jayanagar meeting, Sood talked about active Residents' Welfare Associations can replicate the Brigade Road parking model and charge vehicles for parking. They can also help prevent illegal parking - Clamps, he said, can be bought by the…

I don’t know what school authorities have in mind before they decide the colour of school uniforms. But making the lives of moms simple is not one of them. Which shade of white? Pic: Meera K. Many schools have white uniforms to be worn daily, or on the days they have the sports period. You send the child out in a crisp white shirt and shorts in the morning, by the end of the day you encounter him in a garb quite unlike the morning version. Large patches of reddish-orange on the back are remnants of playtime in school. A…

Looking at Manjula Sridhar, you may mistake the BTM Layout resident for yet another technology professional. Not quite. Pic courtesy: Manjula Sridhar. As a Program Manager at Lucent, she was appointed the Distinguished Member of Technology (DMTS) in India. She was recipient of the Lucent Innovator Award and Bell Labs President Gold Award, and has filed many patents in wireless security and network management areas. She was Co-Founder and CTO at Aujas Networks. Now working for a large telecom MNC as Director, Market Analyses Datacom, she is also an avid cyclist and endurance athlete. She has participated in dozens of…

Every season when the avenue trees in Bangalore burst into bloom, I try to memorise how the flowers look. When I get home, I try to refer and identify them. Some recommend Pradeep Kishen’s book on trees of Delhi. But I much prefer this blog post from S Karthikeyan. Read more about him here. It lists the most common trees in Bangalore, has nice closeup pictures of the flowers and local names. It would have been useful to see a closeup picture of the leaves and an picture of the whole tree too. Karthikeyan has even created a pdf version…

S Viswanath, from Outer Ring Roads Association shares the following information on the state of Ring Road at Bellandur junction. The U-turn at Intel junction after Bellandur is now completely blocked, so please drive carefully and move to the right lane after the Intel junction. The traffic police and ORRCA team is doing all possible to ensure smooth traffic. BDA work has created muddy messes at each junction. BDA has not cleared the sand/mud and this is blocking smooth flow of water at various spots. At the connections between service road/main road, the gutter is blocked and huge pile of…

The Ambalipuralake rejuvenation work has progress very well, as mentioned earlier. Purple Heron at Ambalipura Lake. Pic: Rajesh Rao. Yesterday, Rajesh Rao, a resident of the adjoining Trinity Woods, spotted a Purple Heron, and says, "So nice to see the birds coming back!"Meanwhile, the grass has grown very rapidly in the lake, and apparently it can cause the lake to dry up by december if we just let them grow. Rao says if the deep end is cleared, new grass will not grow as there is two foot of standing water.So residents are planning to work this Sunday and clear…

We all are familiar with the various facets of our religious festivals, going to temples, churches or mosques, or celebrating at home, eating traditional food , wearing new clothes and visiting family and friends. One other thing many of us, just observe in passing, occasionally grimacing at the noise, is the public functions and cultural programmes in the weeks following. Often organised by groups of young men, mostly from poorer neighbourhoods, these functions provide avenues for them to prove that they can "do something". School and college students have their culturals, those working in corporates have similar opportunities too. Residents…

From June, work has been going on.First the BBMP workers started clearing the front portion. Some sections of the plot have been left empty. One portion is apparently meant for a BBMP centre. The federation has asked for a water recharge pond at the back. Here is the status as of June end. Here is the update from July end. Pathways have been laid out, red soil filled in. The borewell looks ready. (Should they be using borewell/drinking water for watering plants?). The children's play equipment has been moved here.  Latest news: some ornamental plants have arrived. The light poles…

One afternoon last week I met R Sunder Rajan, the founder of Just Books at N S Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL), IIM, Bangalore, where the two-year-old startup is incubated. Rajan belongs to a new generation of entrepreneurs, who has slipped into something totally different after years of working in IT firms.  Rajan spent 15 years at the IT firm IFlex, after joining them as a fresh graduate from Regional Engineering College, Trichy. The soft spoken and mild-mannered Madurai native in his late thirties says, “My father says I am the first in the family to ever handle a…

Captain MV Prabhakar Indian Navy (Retired), came across one of our earliest articles written by another old time Bangalore resident Usha Srinath, and wrote to us, sharing his blog post on his experiences in learning swimming in Kempambudhi Kere, in Gavipuram. In Amidst Women Swimmers Then (and Now), Usha talks about how she and her sisters learnt swimming in an old well off Bannerghata Road, from Munivenkatappa, held to be the national swimming champion of the forties and was well known in the Basavanagudi area as ‘the' swimming teacher. Capt. Prabhakar also seems to have learnt swimming from the same…