bangalore journal

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…

INTACH's Parichay at Kudlu earlier this week started off most unusually - with a sacrifice. As one group of people assembled near the Muneshwara temple in Kudlu, waiting for the Parichay (heritage walk) to begin, another set of people had gathered there for a sacrifice of two goats and two chickens. INTACH Parichay to Bangalore’s Tanks, led by Rohan D’Souza. Pic: Arul Jegadish. With that auspicious beginning, this Parichay's walk leader Rohan D;Souza, began talking to the group about Bangalore's lakes. Or tanks, to be more precise. As Rohan, a researcher at National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), pointed out,…

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'…

Piles of garbage lie unattended. Passers-by cringe as they walk past, quickly crossing over to the other side of the road. The carefree add to the mess, urinating right there in the open. This has been the scene for the past 15 years, outside the Air Force Camp School on Wind Tunnel Road  in Murugeshpalya in the Old Airport Road area. The school students have to endure this everyday. Repeated complaints by school authorities and residents of the area have proved futile. BBMP garbage collection contractors have been dumping garbage here, outside the Air Force Camp School, in Murugeshpalya. Pic:…

  For those of us who are fortunate enough to live close to the ever-disappearing lakes of Bangalore, the onset of the rains bring with it a special chorus sung during the night. I am sure everyone is familiar with it. It seems that the perpetuators of this chorus are as joyous as we are for the arrival of life-giving rain. Each new shower of rain is welcomed with a fresh bout of calling. The unseen voice is that of the Indian Bull Frog. The Indian Bull Frog is an integral part of the ecosystem of any pond, well or…

The BBMP has approved a budget of Rs 8848 crores for 2010-11. Additionally each of the 198 corporators have also been given Rs 2 crores (old wards) and Rs 3 crores (new wards). But after complaints from several corporators about the ward grants being insufficient, separate grants have been allocated for each ward to undertake special works and build ward offices. These are the grants in the budget which can directly be used by a corporator to decide on projects. This also gives a chance for citizens to interact with their corporator to prioritise what works need to be carried…

The other day, my four-year-old asked for some salt and used lemon peels. "To clean a brass vessel", she told her surprised grandfather! For the next fifteen minutes she was at complete peace (as were the rest of us!) - polishing away till the vessel shone! Soapnut scrub. Pic: Vinita This set me thinking about how we had lost touch with so many such simple and natural solutions for home cleaning. So I tried to make a list of what I remembered and what I have tried to re-learn along the way. And to be sure, this is not about…

Anyone who dismisses director Abhinav Kashyap's debut film Dabangg as mindless entertainment has not understood the heart of the Hindi film blockbuster. It is fast-paced, action-packed, loud, colourful, lustily melodious, emotional, romantic, reverential of family and held together by the charisma of a single star who towers head and shoulders above the chaotic concoction. It may not always have sequential logic, but it inevitably invites loud cat calls and whistles. It seldom makes you think, but it always leaves you entertained. That is the heart of Dabangg - an entertainer for the masses, easily shrugging off the aspirations of the…