Blogs

On the afternoon of 28th april 2014, I had set myself the task of observing two street corners at either end of Noronha road at Russell market in Shivajinagar - a corner at the Broadway street end and a corner at the St.Mary’s Basilica end (Fig.1). I am reproducing here what I noted and what I sketched there. These were ordinary activities. They probably happen everyday. I observed the urban space – how the vendors create their informal selling spaces on the street and how walkers/shoppers enter these selling spaces and engage in a bargain, a conversation or a purchase.…

Jakkur Kere Utsav is being held on Sunday, 20th November 2016, to celebrate the beautiful Jakkur Lake. Satya Foundation had initiated a citizen group called Jalaposhan in 2014 and has jointly adopted the lake for conservation. In its endeavor to make it a community space many programmes are hosted at the lake. This kere utsav is a good mix of them all. There is fitness, cultural, educational, recreational and fun. It is a sunrise to sunset fest. Visitiors are sure to love it. Do visit with family and friends.  

There are times when the production of a play makes the task easy for the reviewer. When there are plenty of criticisms to be made, it always grieves me to have to make negative comments, when I know that each stage production has so much of passion, dedication and sheer hard work that has gone into it.  But when a production is, from both artistic, aesthetic, and technical standpoints, excellent and highly professional, the critic’s task is just to enumerate the good points.  The play, “Krishna’s Dairy”, by Jacob Rajan, who also essayed the two characters who feature in it,…

Our lake cleaners Puttaswamy and Ramakrishna had been removing the weeds from the water and piling them on the slope. However, they were not so keen to remove the drying weed from the slope since it was so much more difficult. Where they lay, the alligator weed and salvinia molesta would no doubt enrich the soil but the alligator weed would begin to sprout.   We were therefore keen on removing it while also making space for more weeds. When our CSR partner Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions Private Limited (RBEI) asked if their volunteers could work at the lake, we…

For children….   Once a year, Children’s Day (celebrated on Nov 14 in India) comes around, and we have many initiatives just for them. One of these was   “Maya Bazaar” a story of mythology and fantasy, which was made into an epic movie in both Tamil and Telugu.   Over the years, this story (loosely based on characters in the Mahabharata) has been treated as a subject on many stages...folk, street, and mainstream theatre.   So, when Bangalore Little Theatre sent an invitation to the staging of the original English language adapation  of this tale, on the 13th of…

A friend writes: No body questions the intent behind the recent move to demonetize Rs.500 and Rs.1000 notes.   It is the ham handed  implementation by the Babus, living in their 7th Pay commision cocooned largesse,  who did not consider the following points,  and who were blind to the intended consequences,because they have never lived lives of the common man.   1) Absence of card swiping machines in most villages.   2)The honesty of the vast majority, for whom the only avenue was exchange in banks,apart from topping up their vehicles with equivalent  value of demonetised notes,and foregoing the balance.The acceptance…

See the map to Identify the 4 major reservoirs in Karnataka : Hemavathy, Harangi, KRS and Kabini. Inflows and Outflows to all 4 reservoirs are monitored and known and this forms the basis of all calculations The river flows into TN and at Biligundlu there is a measuring station that tells you how much water flows into TN from Karnataka The water that flows into the river downstream of KRS and Kabini is measured at Biligundlu, is expected to flow in from about 22,000 sqm and in an average year can contribute about 80TMC. About 740TMC is the total water…

A question we often get asked as rainwater harvesters is, is there any point in building a recharge structure adjacent to a lake ? Does the lake not recharge ground water ? Will the recharge structure/well make any difference ? This is a very pertinent question and I can write on what we have seen from experience Very often you do see old open wells adjacent to lakes. The well used to be the place from where people drew the water for use. The water level in the lake and the water level in the well would more or less…

Having worked with, seen and spoken to numerous borewell owners, it is apparent that the borewells that yield well; say about more than 60,000 litres of water per day (that are used by layouts, tanker operators, industries etc) are those that are shallower than 800ft. Its not the 1000+ft borewells that yield copious amounts of water. Even if it is a 1000+ft borewell that is yielding a lot of water, a camera inspection will reveal that actually its the shallower cracks that yield more water. Take a look at the attached picture to somewhat make sense of Bangalore's geology and…

Tyagaraja was a prolific carnatic composer. As he travelled to different places around Thanjavur he composed songs praising the deities of the local temples. When he visited Lalgudi, he composed five songs collectively known as the Lalgudi Pancharatna Krithis. These five songs are Isa Pahimam in raga Kalyani, Deva Sthree Tapa Thirtha in raga Madhyamavathi, LalitheShri in raga Bhairavi, Mahitha Pravriddha in raga Kambodhi and Gati Nee Vani in raga Thodi. Here is a video of Shri Lalgudi Jayaraman singing Gati Nee Vani in raga Thodi along with his daughter and disciple Lalgudi Vijayalakshmi.   In a collaboration with Ananya based…