BOOKS

Day 1: September 27, 2013 It was a very pleasant day. Crowne Plaza in electronic City was teeming with life. The first day of the Bangalore Literature Festival had kick-started. Unsurprisingly, Friday saw the smallest attendance due to it being a work day. The line-up for Friday’s panels featured a variety of famous faces ranging from Sri Sri Ravishankar and TV Mohandas Pai to Farhan Akhtar. Being the first day of the Literature Festival, I had made the decision to meander between talks. At first it had seemed like a smart idea. I thought it would allow me to get…

Bangalore Literature Festival (BLF), the flagship literary event on the cultural calendar of Bangalore city, is all set for its second edition from September 27 to 29 at the Crowne Plaza, at Velankani Park in Electronics City. From (L-R) Shinie Antony, Vikram Sampath, Srikrishna Ramamurthy - cofounders of Bangalore Literature Festival (1) Building on the successful 2012 debut edition, this year BLF will  feature over a 100 authors and speakers, including several distinguished literary names like Gulzar, RamachandraGuha, William Dalrymple, U R Ananthamurthy, Rajmohan Gandhi, Chandrashekhara Kambara, Nabaneeta Dev Sen, Rakesh Omprakash Mehra, Farhan Akhtar, David Davidar, Wendell Rodricks, Prasoon…

"Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books", said John Ruskin in Sesame and Lillies in 1865. What Ruskin told us around 150 years back is still valid. Do you agree? How many of us feel happy when a specific book has made such an impression that it is etched into our souls. A school textbook, an article from a magazine, an Enid Blyton story, a Jane Austen novel or even a grandma's lullaby or anything that has helped us in comprehending the intricacies of life…

Citizen Matters launched its book ‘Living in Bengaluru' on August 4th. The book is a guide to make living in Bengaluru easier. It is a compilation of FAQs and how-to articles written by Citizen Matters' professional journalists and experts. The articles include guides on buying property, getting khatas, ID cards etc., tips for saving time on these tasks, and other tips on saving water, fuel etc.R K Misra, member of ABIDe Task Force, released the book at Reliance TimeOut book store in Mantri Mall, Malleswaram. Vatsala Dhananjay, well known property lawyer and author of a chapter in the book, was…

A couple of years ago, we talked about some of our writers who had authored books. We are now happy to share that more Citizen Matters writers have jumped into the bandwagon of published authors.The latest (and youngest we may add) is Malini Srikrishna. Malini writes a blog online on Citizen Matters. Malini, 14, has just published a book of her poems on Amazon. It is said to take the reader on a “roller coaster ride of a teen girl's life. It talks of best friends and bitter enemies that sometimes you can't tell apart. Of dreams, death and loss,…

The urge to meet people we admire does cross our minds occasionally. By a small probability and quirk of fate when such a meeting does happen then happiness knows no bounds. I finally got a chance to meet one of my favourite writers Amitav Ghosh. Coincidentally, I was in the midst of enjoying ‘The Hungry Tide', lost in the jungles of Sunderbans. Being a voracious reader, Ghosh's writings have satiated me with the fictional world that he spins out with such eloquence. On learning about the book launch of Ghosh's critically acclaimed ‘River of Smoke' from the Ibis Trilogy, I…

Old-timers of Malleshwaram area cannot ‘not know' this simple library, on Sampige Road, Malleshwaram (between 2nd and 3rd Cross). It has been there since 1951.  69-year-old G R J Gupta, has part of this library since he was nine-years-old. Though it started as a small store selling grocery, vegetables, fruits, milk, badam milk and condiments, newspapers, magazines and books, it was later converted into a full fledged library. "My father, who was a very well-known goldsmith and called the Gold King of Chennai, suddenly relocated to Bangalore in 1951.  I was just 9 years old then.  I do not know…

Where is the world's highest motorable road? And the nectar of seabuckthorn (better known as Leh berry)? In Leh, Ladakh, obviously! As many of us know, recently, terrible landslides and flash floods devastated this exotic part of India. Some of us have heard, seen and read heart rending accounts of the resulting death and destruction. And probably want to reach out to the people there. Feeling the same, a group of five friends in Bangalore, namely, Manjari Ranasaria, Christina Daniels,  Lakshmi Karanth, Swathi Chaturvedi and Mayur Jain pondered about various ways to do that. Not wanting to ask people for…

Lakhs of students, millions of books, thousands of trees! It’s that time of the year again. All parents are busy collecting books from schools and covering them in brown paper sheets. They are busy shopping for school supplies. New uniforms, new bags, new tiffin sets. Why? If last year’s set is in good shape, why buy again? The schools expect every student to buy books from them, often at a marked-up price. They also make it compulsory to buy brown paper sheets, often plastic coated and notebook labels. What’s the use of covering notebooks? If the idea is to reduce…

“Allidde Namma Mane – Amerikeya Swamiobbara Atmakathe”, the Kannada translation of ‘The Journey Home – Autobiography of an American Swamy’ was released at Prism Book Shop, Jayanagar, on January 13th. While Shri Radhanath Swami is the author of the original work ‘The Journey Home’, Chaitanya Dasa (of ISKCON) has translated it into Kannada. (Left to right) Mattur Krishnamurthy, G Venkatasubbaiah and Radhanath Swami. Pic: Deepa Vaishnavi. The simple function had Kannada Writer, Shri S Diwakar, as Master of Ceremonies. Shri G Venkatasubbaiah, 96-year-old Kannada lexicographer and author, released the book in the presence of Padmashri Mattur Krishnamurthy, the well known…