Blogs

Ultimately, I have cow’s urine on my face. There is no getting away from this true fact. Worse still, I am filming an interview and short of halting filming to announce this piece of information to a group of people I have just met who largely don’t speak English, there is little I can do about the aforementioned cow’s urine. A colleague and I have travelled to northern Karnataka to interview slum dwellers on the effects of water privatisation and we are conducting the first interview. Gone are my daydreams of a panorama-esque week filled with journalistic glamour. I will…

  Friends of Elephants    is having an event on  Monday 7th April 2014  at Rangasthala, Rangoli Metro Art Centre on M G Road. Do come in large numbers!

I've attended, and enjoyed, several of Bangalore Little Theatre's productions over the years, because it's Bangalore's oldest theatre society...but this evening's production of "The Court Jester: Tales of Tenali Rama" was very special for me, as my grandchildren, 5 and 1, were visiting me, and I'd been very keen to give Kavya (the elder) a taste of theatre...so having a children's play by BLT to go to was a wish come true! The whole family went to Woodlands Hotel to find that things were delayed a bit, but Vijay Padaki filled in the gap with great panache. He first invited…

Data is often underestimated or ignored in public affairs, especially in the local governance space. Claims can go wrong, but data cannot lie. Data is what gives you the real picture of any given situation. With more and more data being put in public domain in India, there are so many things one can do with it, to get insights and plan the related issues better. Thankfully there are many data enthusiasts who are coming out with hundreds of ideas, that actually offer some tangible insights various issues. This weekend is the 2014 Bangalore Open Data Camp, hosted by Google,…

When I call to wish my father on his birthday, I usually say: “Happy birthday, Acha” (acha or achan means 'father' in Malayalam). And always, my father replies: “Thank you, same to you”. My father is nearly 84. He was once a lawyer. Now, birthdays don't matter to him. Nor do anniversaries, festivals, or any occasion, really. Today, he is a shell of the person he once was, physically and mentally. My father, you see, has dementia. Dementia ('de' meaning “without” and 'mentia' meaning “mind”) is actually a misleading term. It does not mean the sufferer is insane or demented.…

I first visited Dr H Suresh's clinic in 4th T Bl ock in Jayanagar, in 1979, when my daughter was 6 months old. She'd been having severe diarrhoea for two weeks, and I was at my wits' end as I was staying with some friends and desperately worried about her health. Dr Suresh's clinic was called "Deepa Clinic", and that formed a further bond. I learnt that it was his daughter's name. He promptly treated my infant daughter, who recovered. When we moved to J P Nagar in 1997, my neighbour told me about a G P who ran his…

As we entered the Woodlands Hotel just off Richmond Circle, to attend a wedding, our attention was riveted by this little gem, parked in the campus: The MORRIS MINOR is a beautiful little car! As if to keep perfect company with the car, these old buildings of the Woodlands Hotel looked so lovely: We attended the wedding, too...the youngest daughter of one of the old families of Bangalore and Nanjangud: All in all, it was a day when history and heritage seemed to thrive in modernity!

Today, March 20, is World Sparrow Day. During my childhood in Bangalore in the 1970s-80s, sparrows were a part of our everyday life, much the way rock pigeons just merge with the high-rise landscape today.  Scores of sparrows would be all over the backyard, chirping on the pomegranate and guava trees. Unafraid of humans, the sparrows hopped around on the ground whenever mom cleaned the rice, in expectation of falling grains. (Yes, the rice used to have stones that needed to be removed, and chaff that would blow away in the wind as the rice was tossed up and down on…

Receiving the certificate We were reflecting back on the year gone by and our first anniversary. And we were amazed to receive this news. Whitefield Rising was one of the finalists for the Namma Bengaluru Awards in the Citizen Group category! To be a finalist among 71,500 nominations was indeed an honour. The jury headed by Justice Santosh Hegde consisted of Bangalore’s best! He said `These awards are a tribute to the spirit of service and commitment to the city that is alive and vibrant in the citizens, who are also determined to stand up/fight vested interests and claim their space in…

One of the major challenges encountered in the maintenance of Puttenahalli Lake, JP Nagar is water weeds. Some months ago, the blog post "Grappling with Water Weeds" described the experiences of PNLIT in managing the weeds at Puttenahalli Lake, along with thoughts for the future. Read the full post here.     Weed control at Puttenahalli Lake is generally done by manual removal of weeds, though Biological control has been tried as well. Weed removal, if not done regularly, is expensive. Regular weed removal needs a regular labour force, which is difficult to get. Labourers and contractors are not interested in…