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Today's youngsters have many more job and career opportunities opening up, rather than the usual aspiration to be a doctor, lawyer or engineer. But as they dream about the ways they will make their living, I wonder how people get into far less noticed jobs. Here are two young men I noticed today The first one, along with another young man of about the same age, was suspended from the terrace of a building, painting the outside walls. It was quite hot in the open sun, and I am sure the entire day was spent this way, with perhaps breaks…

On Sunday morning, we did a walk in the Basavanagudi neighbourhood. It was not an “early morning walk” but a walk that started only at 9am after breakfast was done. Just to make it a little easier for everyone. It was a walk conducted for my students in a course I'm teaching this semester on the Everyday City at the Azim Premji University. The open courses at APU are elective courses offered once a week over the semester for students in the Masters Programs in Development / Education / Public Policy & Governance. The focus of the Everyday City course…

In many places in the city, I find signs like this, claiming public space for private, reserved parking. I had brought it to the notice of Corporation Bank on 1st Main, J P Nagar 3rd Phase, and they removed the signs. People who run establishments must be made aware that such reservation is illegal.    

At least this dug up part of Bannerghatta Road mentions that natural gas pipelines are being laid.   But in most places, roads are dug up without warning and with no information about why the surface is being broken up. Nor does the road get any re-surfacing once the digging has been covered up, resulting in bumpy, muddy paths rather than the roads that we are paying taxes for. When is the BBMP going to be accountable for the damage they cause, without reparation?

One of the inequalities of life is that children may not be allowed for many theatre productions...but adults can certainly go and enjoy children’s theatre. The enjoyment is all the more, when one goes with one’s own child...or grandchildren, because there are then multiple layers to the experience. There was a fairly large audience of children, accompanied by their parents or relatives,  to watch “How Cow Now Cow” by the Sandbox Collective a group that has just crossed its second birthday.   I have not watched the work of this young theatre group before, and I am always interested in…

I've been visiting a few schools lately, and I am rather disturbed by some of the things I see on the campuses. One school has no playground at all. Pointing to a tiny handkerchief of space, the  person talking to me says, "That is enough for our children." Another campus of the same school has a few small ornamental trees near the entrance gate. The entire campus is covered in concrete and the green of the trees are those which are in the neighbouring apartment buildiings. One school has very professional loops of  barbed wire on its compound wall.  …

I've been writing code for a while now. I first learned to program at age nine, and can now write an entire app on my own. The thing I've noticed, though, is that a lot of my friends seem to have a bit of a phobia of writing code.  The US may be pushing code in a big way, but in India, computer science still seems to be the realm of precious few. I take computer science in school, and there are only 7 others taking it out of a class of 40. There isn't a single girl in our…

In December 2016, a workshop on ‘Trees, Culture & Urban design’ was held in Bangalore as part of CEPT University’s Summer Winter School program. The focus of this 10-day winter school was to study the practice of tree worship in the city. Specifically, it looked at how people generate and sustain community spaces through worshipping the Peepul tree (Ficus Religiosa) shrine with its serpent stones and the raised platform around it, locally called the Ashwath katte. This workshop was based on previous research. The paper can be accessed here: The practice of tree worship and the territorial production of urban…

More than six years ago, when I was living at Brigade Millennium, there were rumours that the neighbourhood Chunchaghatta/ Chunchughatta Lake was going to be drained and would become a bus stand. This lake is one of the three erstwhile connected lakes in Puttenahalli, and being involved with the small Puttenahalli Lake, it was of particular interest. I went to the lake area to check out what was happening, and subsequently, Citizen Matters did a story that woke up the authorities. Recklessness choking pretty Chunchaghatta Lake can be read here.  The past year has seen renewed activity at Chunchaghatta Lake.…

There are two strong points of view about stray dogs in our city. One is that they are living beings, and deserve to live like many other creatures who share our living space. The other is that they are pests that must be removed. This view is especially held by those, and those whose children, have been bitten, sometimes fatally, by some of these animals. The method of removal most advocated is to sterlize the dogs, and BBMP, is not doing much about it. The numbers of the stray dogs on our roads is inversely proportional to the political will…