City: Bengaluru

BMTC Bangalore runs two types of ordinary services - the black board routes covering upto 15 kms (numbered 1 to 209) from city centre and the red board routes covering areas longer than 15 kms from city centre (numbered above 210). The bus passes cost more for red board buses than those for the black board buses. But in reality - the red board buses are at times cheaper and faster than their black board counterparts. Despite the longer distance, they have lesser stages. However boarding a red board bus might mean walking a few more yards to the appropriate…

Bangalore has a small group of poetry enthusiasts with the numbers slowly growing. But with the rise of the internet, there are more avenues for poets to reach out, share their work and get feedback. According to Mohammed Fakhruddin, the founder of Poets International, a 27-year old poetry appreciation society, poetry is a form of wisdom. Fakhruddin, a well-accomplished poet and writer himself, believes that poetry is a form of lifestyle. Most poetry has its origin in topics of daily life - love, life, death or nature. "Poetry can be taken up at any age. What matters is the inspiration…

With most cinema houses postponing their big releases to later this week and the next, new films in Bangalore came from Hollywood and Malayalam cinema. Almost two decades after he made a film in a similar setting, director Oliver Stone returns with Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. In this sequel, Jake Moore tries to save his crumbling professional and personal life amidst the intrigue, corruption and huge egos of Wall Street. Only the agility of his mind can pull him through. In the aftermath of the recent global recession, the theme is topical and hard-hitting. As in films like JFK…

Did you know that rail connectivity already exists between KR Puram and Electronic City? Or between Whitefield and Yeshwantpur? Bangalore has grown so large over the past decade that many peri-urban South-Western Railway stations are now within the greater Bangalore region. The prospect of introducing commuter trains between major city hotspots located along SW Railway's network has therefore been attractive to many and increasingly so today, with Bangalore's worsening road traffic situation. [Click on Image to Enlarge]. Praja and CiSTUP's report proposes these routes for commuter rail services. Image courtesy: Bengaluru Commuter Rail Service, Call to Action, July 2010 But…

On September 7th 2010,  the Bangalore Mirror reported BDA Commissioner Bharat Lal Meena as saying that gated communities are illegal. Meena was reported saying every layout is required to earmark space for parks, roads and areas of common use. "When roads and parks inside the community are controlled by civic authorities, how can such layouts be called gated communities?" Meena is reported to have asked. Ashok Haranahalli, Advocate General of Karnataka Pic: Vaishnavi Vittal. In May 2008, the BBMP issued a public notice with regard to barricading layouts and preventing use by general public. The notice says that there is…

All the world's a stage...And all the men and women merely players These lines from Shakespeare's 'As you like it' goes beyond the conventional definitions of a performance space. In a regular theatre (proscenium), a transparent wall exists between the audience and the performers.  The illusion is based on creativity, sound, lights, music and set design. The audience are mute spectators - they can only travel with the performers on the emotional journeys. Contemporary artistes try to take performance beyond ‘a show' and recreate life through different mediums in real space. Deepak K Shivaswamy in collaboration with dancers of Bangalore…

Litigations have been flying thick and fast at L&T South City apartments, one of the premium residential complexes in south Bengaluru. Six court cases have been filed between the apartment owners, land owner and the developer within the last two years. South City is located at Mico-Arekere Layout, off Bannerghatta Road. Citizen Matters spoke to state advocate-general Ashok Haranahalli on the issue of 'gated communities'. Read the interview here The main contention is regarding two deeds that the original land owner Dinesh Ranka made to the BDA - one in 1996 and another in 2006 - relinquishing 12 of the…

The following are the phone numbers of BBMP control rooms across their zonal offices. BBMP Control Room Phone Numbers by Citizen Matters ⊕

The short film has been a part of the young Bangalorean's vocabulary for some time now. But last weekend the entire movement received a fillip when Suchitra's Centre for Film & Drama (CFD) brought together 50 short films made by 29 filmmakers from six states across India under the Short Film Festival. Even if the cinema was not always cutting edge, there was an abundance of ideas, creative experiments and youthful vibrancy. You could not but help notice the buzzing energy in the air as these filmmakers, many of them just out of college, shared their work in a ‘housefull'…

For 41 years now, Bangalore Kidney Foundation has been working for the cause of people with kidney problems, those whose kidneys are failing them and those who need dialysis, and sometimes kidney transplants. Having been a regular visitor to their annual fundraising event, 'Dhwani', and having contributed to the funds, I found myself curious about the origins and reach of the Bangalore Kidney Foundation (BKF), and decided to meet P Srinivas, one of the founder-trustees of the Foundation, at his home in Jayanagar. This septuagenarian's family owns Rapsri Engineering Industries Ltd. P Srinivas, Founder-Trustee of Bangalore Kidney Foundation. Pic: Deepa…