City: Bengaluru

One of the great benefits of living in a metro is the opportunity of getting to taste the culture and art of other lands. This time, Ranga Shankara, as part of their AHA! initiative of theatre for children, brought the mammoth production of Choon Hyang (‘True Love’) by Theater Seoul, all the way from Korea.It could not have been an easy task to bring 20 children all the way from Korea to India, but Theatre Seoul in conjunction with Inko Centre (Indo-Korean centre) managed it. Natia Lee, the producer of the play and president of Theatre Seoul, also admitted that…

We have started a community participatory project aimed at reducing alarming noise pollution levels in Bangalore. We have arranged for an awareness campaign and press conference this Saturday and we would like to invite you for the same. Street demo/campaign on Saturday, 15th November 2008: 10 AM to 11 AM near Cubbon Park at the Kasturba Road Signal (Jewels de Paragon) Press conference from 12.30 PM to 1 PM at the Bangalore press club. To all those who are planning to join us in our demo, we request that you bring a poster carrying slogans (a crisp and effective message)…

If the Bandstand at Cubbon Park could talk, it sure would have a lot to say. It would probably tell you about how it started off, as all bandstands do, as a space for outdoor concerts / musical performances. It would narrate to you tales of long lost glory, of how it was a location where the royal family was entertained by musicians, and how, the people of Bangalore got an opportunity to witness memorable recitals by prominent artists, when the city was well and truly able to live up to its name of being the Garden city, much before…

I had heard a lot about the Manchinbelle dam (across the river Arkavathy) from fellow photographer friends and it appeared at the top of my interest list for the weekend. Trip To: Manchinbelle DamFree Add-On: Big Banyan tree, Naga TempleDistance: 40 Kms.Trip directions: From Bangalore city, drive down Mysore Road and turn right at Rajeshwari Dental College. The road will take you directly to the Big Banyan tree and then continue to Manchinbelle Dam. The road is a great all through but the last few kms to the road promise to be bumpy.. EXPERIENCEAs the drive from the Rajeshwari dental…

The nicest thing about Bangalore's roads is that they are (were?) tree-lined. Every out-of-station visitor to our home has said this to us. My daughter’s seasonal observation when she was 3 years old (and when she could only see the treetops from our car window) was testimony to the fact. Come the violet flowers of the Jacaranda tree and she knew that we had reached the main road from our locality in ST Bed Layout, Koramangala; the Gulmohar tree with its beautiful red flowers signaled that we were right across the Barista on the 80 feet Road and the yellow…

About 30 years ago, one of my colleagues was transferred to Calcutta. A year later he came to his hometown on a holiday and it was shocking to hear his experience about the notorious traffic jams of Calcutta. Sitting in the peaceful and slow city of Bangalore we could not envisage those serious traffic jams. But then, we had no clue that we would be experiencing such jams right here very soon! Pictures of a beautiful bungalow from different angle Pic: Sudha Narasimhachar.When I used to go to work on MG Road then, I used to leave home (Yelahanka Satellite…

Standing in front of the High Court, facing the street with the din of the traffic passing through, it is hard to imagine the life here in late 19th Century. No smoke-spewing vehicles, no harried traffic police and not even the huge imposing Vidhana Soudha. The Cubbon Park was a sprawling green area with the barracks on one side and the imposing Residency (present Raj Bhavan) on the other. Officers of the Secretariat would ride through the lush green park environs on horse carriages and enter the Mysore public offices (present High Court) for their everyday work. The entire area…

Behind the chaos that people associate the place with, Kalasipalaya is actually a well laid out grid of streets between SJP Road, Kalasipalaya Bus Stand, VV Puram and Double Roads. The location is perfect to cater to the large 'Market' area with perishable goods like vegetables and industrial supplies. That's the reason; you will find the offices and warehouses of every major trucking company in India in Kalasipalaya. But if you are a trucker, Kalasipalaya provides the perfect pit stop. After a long drive, you have places for the truckers to wash and change. Taste Punjabi food at its dhabbas…

The first two parts of this series dealt with arriving at a broad layout-level strategy for rainwater harvesting (RWH) and how to engage the residents and decision-making bodies of the layout to move the strategy forward. When engaging with residents, one will inevitably face many questions about why people should consider rainwater harvesting (RWH), how the systems are constructed and how they work. The following discussion concentrates on how to address these FAQs, first focusing on general RWH questions and then on more technical questions related to RWH for direct storage and groundwater recharge. Rainwater Clubrainwaterclub [at] gmail [dot] com1022,…