Blogs

  Women with courage, strength and patience. Supporting their children and each other. Speaking out against violence at home and outside. Despite the pain of abuse and the threat of ostracization and backlash. In India, Cameroon, China, Kyrgyzstan and elsewhere. Portrayed through the lens of sensitive and concerned artists. In the women's own voices and others'. This was Daughters of Fire, a festival of films and discussions on violence against women and women's resistance to it. Last weekend, Vimochana and the Asian Women and Human Rights Council in collaboration with the Bangalore Film Society and Alliance Francaise de Bangalore organized…

CycleReCycle.in is a project aimed at recycling cycles that are unused, broken, abandoned and bringing them back on road.The project borrows ideas from http://www.recycledcycles.com/, http://www.kiva.org/ and http://thebicycleproject.blogspot.com/The goal is to build a platform where people can contribute time, money, effort, equipment, information so that more and more cycles can get onto the road.The project will be run on a not-for-profit basis.Please get in touch with them, if you: 1. Have an old/unused/broken cycle/cycle-part and want to give it away 2. Know abandoned cycle/cycle-part and can help retreive it it 3. Have time to spare to collect cycles, get them fixed…

The photo speaks for itself.   ⊕

When one is sitting halfway around the world, what's happening in one's city sometimes takes on a distant, unreal quality and one tends to read emails with some amount of detachment...but the way our government is hell-bent on converting all our green spaces into buildings or roads jolts me out of the apathy.So I am posting this online petition, which each of us should sign, to prevent further depradation of Bangalore's open spaces:"Preserving Bangalore's Green cover/Open areas"http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/BTC?eI really think this is an important cause, and I'd like to encourage you to add your signature, too. It's free and takes less…

The newly introduced regulations on Limited Liability Partnership (LLP) have been briefly discussed in the post below. This is in response to the query in an earlier post: Company incorporation or partnership. This post has been contributed by S.C.Sharada and Jayashri Murali, Directors, Lex Valorem India Pvt. Ltd (Sharada.sc@lexvalorem.com and jayashri_m@airtelmail.in respectively). A LLP is basically a partnership firm established under the LLP Act, 2008, consisting of Partners who contribute to the capital of the LLP and is a legal entity which is regulated by the regulatory authority who is the Registrar of Companies. The main requirements to establish a…

Have you ever observed or interacted with children from low income families (and sometimes first generation literates) studying in private or government aided English medium schools, in their school or outside? Who are their friends? What is their medium (language) and topic of conversation?  Do they commute by walk  or bus or private transport? Does their body language display confidence and stability or insecurity and discrimination?   While tutoring and mentoring such children I have found that many of them feel diffident primarily because they can't converse fluently in English and lack academic and career guidance at home. Further, their…

A kitchen counter at a small, but popular South Indian restaurant in the city. It's so popular, the place draws more than a thousand people every day. The food is tasty, the rates are comfortable and it's open from six thirty in the morning, till a convenient hour in the evening. But what's that rag doing in the picture? That rag must have been bright yellow when it was bought. Now it's dirty brown in colour, because of one good reason - it's dirty. And you'd be pleased to know that it is used to wipe the plates dry after…

ABBA's song "Money, money, money, must be funny, in a rich man's world. All the things I could do if I had a little money... " comes to mind at the plight of a few of my latest and long time students like Jaya and Alumelu. Little Nila and Jaya are star performers in their 'English medium convent school' and daughters of our neighbourhood unorganized sector worker Devaki. And Alumelu whom I have voluntarily tutored and mentored since 2005 is now a prospective undergraduate and her mother is a housemaid in Byrasandara.   The former have to shell out around…

As if my mother's smiling approval each morning of the various little children who bagged single digit CET ranks this year, and reading aloud of their newspaper interviews (in which each of them invariably extol the virtues of boring things such as ‘perseverance and hard work') weren't enough, the household phone has been ringing off the hook. Little cousins I didn't know existed have been dialing in with a frequency and gusto that puts fans of NRI American Idol contestants to unspeakable shame. The competitive exam season post the twelfth standard/II PU exams may be the most seemingly pointless/endless, excruciating,…

Comprehensive Trauma Consortium, is a voluntary non-profit organization established in March 2000, specializes in providing round-the-clock Free Ambulance Rescue service (Pre-hospital care) to accident victims in and around Bangalore City . We have conducted 70,000 rescues so far. The objective of this course is to create the importance of Pre-Hospital Care and equip the participant with first aid and CPR skills. This certified course is for one full day along with manual. The course fee is Rs.350/ per person. For registration please call @ 9880323829 and confirm before 30th May 2009.Venue Details : Date 30 /05/ 2009 (Saturday)Time 10.00 am…