City: Chennai

At the end of the Gandhi Mandapam road in Chennai, at the point where the road meets the Kotturpuram bridge over the Adyar river, is the Vinayaka temple. Locals say this was one of Amma’s favourites in the city. Her motorcade would often stop on its way back from Raj Bhavan or the airport towards Poes Garden at the exact point where Amma, seated in the passenger seat of her SUV, could get a glimpse of the deity. The temple was closed on Tuesday, and on the notice that talks of the closure, someone drew a pair of eyes with…

For most of us, typical cleaning sessions start with discarding our old and unwanted products from home. But what if you could convert old glass bottles to beautiful chandeliers or flower pots and jeans to bracelets? Would you still let go of it as easily? And what if I told you that by doing so, you would not only be honing your creative instincts but also doing a significant bit for the planet? This, in fact, is the very seed of what is one of the most eco-friendly trends in the city today, called Upcycling. In simplest terms, upcycling is…

We have almost grown used to it now: serpentine queues before ATMs, chaos in banks, the hapless senior citizen waiting on the pavement and praying that the bank dispenses some 100-rupee notes today, and even the strident urban supporter who thinks all the pain is for greater gain in the end. It has been two weeks since the decision to ban currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 in a purported drive against black money in the economy, but the implementation of the policy so far has left the ordinary citizen grappling with serious liquidity crunch. As problems due…

At Sabari Terrace, an apartment community with 56 flats off the Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR) in Sholinganallur, we took the first steps towards segregation around five years ago. It started with the creation of a few humble compost pits within our premises - cement rings resting on the ground - where we would dump all our garden waste to begin with. We approached the guru of vermicomposting, Dr. Sultan Ahmed Ismail, and under his guidance started the process of composting our garden waste. Gradually over the next few weeks, months and years, we started approaching the families in the community,…

Even as society struggles to break gender stereotypes and end physical and mental abuse of women, movies continue to be made with regressive plots involving the male lead winning over the female lead, through various forms of coercion including stalking. Remo, a movie that has hit the screens recently follows the same template where male lead Sivakarthikeyan stalks and wins over the female character played by Keerthi Suresh. The movie was boycotted by many people across the state for glorifying the act of stalking. While the Tamil film industry continues to produce movies such as Polladhavan, Padikkadhavan etc., that redeem…

The Tree Lady, Nature Lover, Tree Evangelist... titles of eulogy sit lightly on Shobha Menon's shoulders. At first sight she gives away none of the tenacity and grit that has stood her in good stead in her determined fight to protect and increase the city's tree cover. The soft spoken Shobha chose to put the brakes on a long and successful stint in writing, to set up Nizhal (meaning shade in Tamil) in 2005. After a long (and often lonely) battle, she and her band of faithfuls can look back in happiness at the lovely Kotturpuram Tree Park, a 5-acre…

As a child growing up in the northern part of the country, Deepavali was a bit of a strange festival. We had to wake up at 4 am, have a bath (an oil bath!), wear our new clothes and burst crackers - at least one, said my grandmother - before the crack of dawn. And before we knew it, our Deepavali was over! And then the rest of the world started celebrating Diwali, and it went on and on and on. I clearly remember that our grandmother never let us go overboard with the crackers - she believed it was…

Avinash, a resident of Perungalathur, is waiting eagerly to see a change in the local government. “The councillor is unresponsive whenever we try to raise our voices. Though we were not much affected by the floods last year, we ensured the safety of our residents without claiming any help from the civic body and gathered a few boats to rescue people from the neighbouring area, Mudichur. I welcome the change of council with the hope that it happens soon, before the onset of monsoon flooding,” he says. How soon that will happen, however, is anybody’s guess. Delay in municipal elections…

“And through this having and giving and sharing and receiving, we too can share and love and have... and receive.”– Joey Tribbiani, in “Friends”. Funny that this quote, part of Joey’s intended speech at the wedding of his friends Monica and Chandler, would be apt for a nationwide festival of giving! Daan Utsav is not just about the receiving, we know, it is about the giving. A festival that turns the lens on to itself, like a particularly gorgeous selfie. When I began volunteering for Daan Utsav, I had not seen it up close. I had read about it in…

The floods of December 2015 have made the various departments of the Government think beyond conventional solutions for Disaster Management. As part of a long term plan, the Tamil Nadu Urban Infrastructure and Financial Services Ltd (TNUIFSL) is currently floating a tender for an Early Warning System, that would typically predict the areas and levels of inundation depending on the rain forecast. This will take into account the level of moisture in the soil, which will increase the accuracy of the prediction. This is expected to take about 2-3 years. LiDAR mapping, a remote sensing method that uses light in…