City: Bengaluru

Yezdi Roadkings at last year's Jawa Day. Pic:Raj Photography Come Sunday, the 13th of July, witness a spectacle that happens only once in a year - the largest gathering of Jawa’s and Yezdi’s in Bengaluru. Manufactured by the Ideal Jawa Company in Mysore until 1996, these 250 cc bikes known for their distinct beats from its twin exhaust, will come back alive on the road to celebrate the 12th International Jawa Yezdi Day. The International Jawa Yezdi Day is an annual celebration held on the second Sunday of every July across the globe to celebrate the power and legacy of…

Editor's note: This is a response to the opinion published on Citizen Matters last week, titled When Bengaluru's reputed school says no to admitting a "low class" kid... Pic courtesy: ESAF Bangalore FB page Simplicity is misunderstood in two ways, exemplified by two statements: 1. “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler” - Albert Einstein 2. "Given multiple explanations for a situation, the simplest is the best one to assume” — a  reformulation of Occam’s razor I heard as a kid. The first statement is often misinterpreted mainly because, in such matters, no two people can…

Pic courtesy: skyscrapercity.com   Railway Minister for India is from our own Bengaluru. Bangalore North MP D V Sadananda Gowda is all set to present railway budget tomorrow. What does the Railway Budget mean to Bengaluru? Here are some expectations from this budget expressed by several citizens of Bengaluru, who have been in touch with Railways and have been bargaining for particular issues. FKCCI president also had some of his own demands. Sumathi Rao Malleswaram Swabhimana Initiative We want the land adjacent to all the tracks inside the city to be kept clean. Malleswaram has a railway station and there…

Cycling enthusiasts attending Cycle Day event at Yelahanka. Directorate of Urban Land Transport (DULT), UDD, Government of Karnataka which is part of Bangalore Coalition for Open Streets (BCOS) along with local partner Yelahanka United Environment Association (YUVA) conducted the ‘Cycle Day’ event in Yelahanka New Town next to the Allalasandra lake. The program was attended by over 3,000 local residents and cyclists from across Bangalore who enthusiastically participated in the cycle day event. S R Vishwanath, MLA Yelahanka, Manjula-Commissioner DULT, Muniraju-Corporator Ward 4, Mr.Virupaksha Mysore-Additional Commissioner, BBMP-Yelahanka zone and S T Tayappa-President, YUVA addressed the participants. Cycle Day has been…

Just as the new Prime Minister, Narendra Modi took charge, there were reports of an MBA student interning at Bangalore, being arrested under section 66A of the Information Technology Act 2008, for sending an anti-Modi MMS on WhatsApp. This was the second such case to be booked under the section in 12 days; the first was when a man in Goa was arrested for posting an anti-Modi comment on Facebook. The Goa arrest was made on May 12th, before the election results were declared, while the Bangalore arrest was made on May 24th. This raised questions on freedom of expression,…

Rajeev Gowda (second from left) submitting the Namma Railu petition to the ex-Railway Minister, Mallikarjun Kharge in February 2014. Pic: twitter.com/rajeevgowda Rajeev Gowda is a well-known face in Bangalore. He is the son of M V Venkatappa, who was a Legislative Assembly Speaker and Chairman of the Legislative Council in Karnataka. An academic, Gowda was a professor of Economic and Social Science at Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore until recently. He is currently a Rajya Sabha MP, elected from Congress party, representing Karnataka, at the upper house of the Parliament. Rajeev Gowda also started a citizen’s movement, Bengaluru Needs You,…

Let me introduce you to a livewire 5th grade kid I tutor in Bengaluru - Let's just call him Mo (obviously not his real name). All Mo wants to do with his life is to go to the National Defense Academy and join the Indian Army. Mo meets a Mig Yes, he is slow with reading English, and very hesitant while speaking it, thanks to his less-than-lousy Kannada medium education so far at the free local Government School. But he understands what you say in English completely.   Mo & Co. learn to pose He and I work on his…

Waterbody near the entrance of Vishranthi. Pic courtesy: Silver Talkies Greenery and a sense of tranquillity invited us in, as we entered the grounds of Vishranthi, a home for seniors located on the outskirts of Bengaluru. The fresh smell of ripened mangoes merged with the cacophony of students and children learning in the background, as part of Vishranthi’s orphanage and vocational training centre. The ‘Pizza Grannies,’ as the founders of Vishranthi —  Padma Srinivasan and Jayalakshmi Srinivasan — are popularly known, are warm and welcoming. As we sipped on mango juice (from their own garden), they began to tell us the story…

X orders more coffee. He has made his point. But who is in charge – surely there must be someone in charge? I ask. Before plunging in to fix this corner themselves, X and V have done some basic asking around. The question they had was simple – So who’s really in charge of the street in Bangalore? They found that there was no single person or authority. And that is why the streets are such a mess. There is a maze of authorities in charge of different aspects of Bangalore’s civic infrastructure, each of which is a law unto…

Consider this. Bengaluru is the first city in India to drink treated water. Bangalore has the highest density of borewells. It is home to 4 lakh borewells; India has about 30 million across the country. Bangalore has the largest number of Sewage Treatment Plants; this includes those that are functional and nonfunctional. And this. Bangalore was once home to over 900 lakes and tanks. Today the number stands at a meagre 200. Bangalore is likely to be the first city in India that will hit critical ceilings on water availability. There is a possibility that Bangalore will have to be…