Blogs

The old saying that "A family that eats together stays together" certainly holds good even today, but just needs to be tweaked a little to suit today's health conscious world. It should now read "A family that eats healthy and exercises together stays fit together!" As a dietitian my goal is not only to get my client on the right 'eating' path, but also to extend the benefits of healthy eating and regular exercise to his/her family. Many a time, clients (mostly women) give up on a regimen as it proves difficult to make two different menus - a regular…

Anyone watching the EWS evictions in Ejipura is bound to feel heartbroken for the victims. But this is a tragedy that need not have arisen at all. We allow these problems to build up right in front of our eyes, knowing fully well that they will blow up one day. That has to stop. It is not easy, and it is requires long, dedicated attention to a STRATEGY of fixing the housing problem. There is simply no other way.Here's my letter to the CM today, asking him to put such a strategy in place, starting with the Budget he wants…

Last week,a mammoth conference of psychiatrists was organized at Bangalore. The Annual Conference of the Indian Psychiatric Society, We had more than four thousand psychiatrists attendingIt was declared as a green conference and in place of the usual mementos for speakers, six hundred saplings were planted, at Turahalli Reserve Forest.The forest department organized a memorable function on the day before the event. The Indian Psychiatric Society is the first professional organization to take this initiative and I hope more will follow! Additonally, all the conference halls were named after birds!Kudos to Dr R Raguram, who is theProfessor & Head of…

I found these two Harley Davidson's at Cuppa cafe the other day....I've seen the Harley-Davidson communities in the US, looks as if we have an active community here, in Bangalore, too! ⊕

One of the unusual features of this year's Bird Race was the fact that seven teams out of 35 (that's one fifth!) wanted to go together, rathen than compete on their own. One team, Flamingo, had to drop out, and the other, Flowerpecker, started late..and went on to win the race. But here are teams...Black StorkFalconIbisRuffandSpotted Owletall together in the morning...We stayed together throughout the day, made sure as many of us as possible could see each bird.... had chai, breakfast, and lunch, enjoyed ourselves very much...and one of the teams still managed to get the third prize, and that's…

I've been interacting, on FaceBook, with the MD of BESCOM (Bangalore Electricity Supply Corporation), Mr Manivannan (though our interaction is not mainly on civic issues..he's quite a poet!). I have been getting the sense that he's shaking up this behemoth and making them more accountable and user-friendly.I realized that if I was going to be away for a long time, I could ask for minimum billing on my apartment. I wrote to the contact email (Ms Jayanathi) on the BESCOM website...and promptly got a return email from her, telling me whom I had to contact, and the phone nos...and additional…

On Friday, 11th Jan 2013, a few of us were going for a birding trail, and we were waiting at the chai shop at Mantri Residency Apartments, on Bannerghatta Road, for a couple of others to arrive.Suddenly, in the pre-dawn dark, my friends (all young men) said there had been an accident, and rushed on about 10 yards ahead. Then one of them came back and told me that it was a girl who had been hit. A Tata Sumo driver had started the car and speeded up, and a young woman (about 19 or 20, I'd guess) had suddenly…

What can we do to make sure the kind of tragedy that we are witnessing in Ejipura does not come back to haunt us again and again? Nothing short of a comprehensive review of the housing market will suffice, because there is a fundamental problem - the cost of land is so high that too many people are priced out of home-buying. Here are some things we can explore to overcome that.1. Can the impact of 'land value' in housing projects be reduced?The biggest stumbling block in cities is the scarcity of good quality land. As a result, land prices are…

The Indian Institute of Public Administration is holding a seminar on the reconstitution of the municipal area into two or more cities. If implemented, that would end the experiment of consolidating all the cities in the area into one single BBMP. I'm speaking at the event later this morning ... here's the gist of what I plan to say.In December 2005, when the government pushed through the creation of BBMP, Subbu Vincent and I wrote an editorial, titled "The sum of broken parts" arguing that this was a bad move. I predicted then that we would be forced to abandon…

Those familiar with cricket would know that "doosra" is a cricket term that refers to a type of delivery bowled by off-spin bowlers (just like a "bouncer" is bowled by fast bowlers). Off-spinners generally bowl off-breaks. A doosra is the opposite of an off-break, i.e. it spins in the direction opposite to an off-break, taking the batsmen by surprise because the delivery he receives would not be what he expects.  "Doosra", an English play written and directed by Anand Raghav and performed by Paradigm Creations seems to have lived up to its name and surprised many who saw it. Sanjay Mysoremutt,…