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The sight of these posters, stuck all over one surface (and indeed, stuck all over all kinds of surfaces throughout our city) brought home to me that there are many people who live in circumstances very different from home or apartment owners or tenants. The usual demographic of someone who looks for, and lives in, a Paying Guest accommodation is usually someone young, and who has probably landed the first job in this city. The emoluments look very attractive in the small town where that young person may live; but arrival in Bangalore brings them face to face with the…

The way life throws surprises at you! It was on July 29th evening I was standing all alone in some corner of Auroville, located at a distance of around 12 kilometres from the main town of Pondicherry. I had arrived at this experimental township on the same noon, curious to know and understand how this township is experimenting in human unity. I had done my prior booking with a vehicle rental service agent belonging to Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry who was suppose to drop me off at Auroville along with a bunch of other travellers and bring me back to…

A day doesn’t go by that I am not asked at least a few times which country I’m from, for obvious reasons of course. My unnaturally bright blonde hair, translucent skin tone, nasal accent and western attire just scream American to everyone I encounter. But thank you to everyone in Bengaluru for asking where I am from anyway. If that isn’t already enough to make me feel special for a few minutes, thank you - ask me from what city and tell me how much you love Microsoft when I say Seattle. I guess it’s not so big of a…

I do not know which agency thinks that adding concrete structures to every small patch of greenery we have, is "developing" the park. This is in the Mini Forest, in J P Nagar 3rd Phase. The section of the park was looking perfectly all right, when the path was dug up, these concrete platforms getting added, and some kind of construction coming up. Why can we not leave even the tiniest of green patches alone? And where can concerned citizens complain about such unilateral decisions on "development"?

The following post was shared by Praveen Singh, a runner. I decided on a whim one fine April morning in 1989 to visit Bellandur lake and I clicked a full Konica roll worth of pictures. I used to live in Indira Nagar and had visited the lake and surroundings for its beauty and also to watch aircraft land and takeoff from nearby runway. Here are some of the photographs. Last week, I took some time off over the weekend to do a "Then and Now" series of photo captures from almost the same spots I had clicked from over 28 years ago.…

A greatly endangered species: the urban pedestrian. I just crossed Bannerghatta Road at great peril to my life. I waited about 10 mins for the traffic to ease, and still had to weave through vehicles which showed not the slightest sign of wanting to slow down for me, or the (even more) elderly lady I was leading by the hand. If I, in generally good health, find it so dangerous and unnerving, how can the blind, the lame, and the old cross our city roads? I also find it amazing that everywhere (not just in our country), it's the motorized…

Compared to Indiranagar and Koramangla, HSR Layout is a reasonably new layout and hence the tree cover is very sparse. With this in mind, the active citizens of the layout, the volunteers of HSR Citizen Forum came together to brainstorm on ideas to increase the tree cover. “When we took a walk to identify locations to plant tree saplings, we saw most homes and commercial outlets had the area in front of them neatly concretized. Planting there would involve drilling through the concrete, cutting it and making space for soil, compost, sapling and tree guard,” says Krupa, a resident of sector…

Citizens for Bengaluru is extremely disappointed and shocked at the final list of ward committees that have been announced. After the outrage of the initial list, we expected more citizen-centric and inclusive committees but that has been rendered false. There is now incontrovertible proof that ward committees have been largely composed through nepotism and the family-chela network. Even a casual perusal of the lists shows clearly that husbands of various female corporators, and party workers have been selected instead of active citizens. Please see attached images with just a few of our observations. While CfB led a mass RTI filing…

We went on a nature/birding walk to Kalena Agrahara on 15th July, 2017, and skirted the lake at IDBI Bank Layout. I was amazed to see several Nano cars parked, and rusting in the monsoon weather. There must have been about sixty of the cars, parked all around. At a conservative estimate of Rs.2 lakhs per car, that's Rs. 80 lakhs just wasting away. I finally found this banner, saying that these cars apparently belong to this rental initiative: The problem in our country seems to be, not lack of good initiatives, but keeping up with them. I have tried…

A team of ninth and tenth grade students from Greenwood High called Flaming Phoenix, recently competed in First Lego League (FLL) International open championship in Bath, UK. We participated in the international round after advancing in the regional and national round. In the international round, there were 94 teams from 36 countries. Flaming phoenix consisting of team members Adithya Uchil, Adithya Vasisht, Akshay B Shivaram, Ratan Shankar, Rachita Rajesh and Sahana Athreya were placed second place in Robot Game and Project Presentation. What is FLL? FLL is an international robotics competition held all around the world, where participants form teams of…