GENRE: Features

Until a few years ago, Bengaluru used to dump all of its waste in landfills outside the city. While villagers living around the landfills faced serious health conditions, there was garbage dumped and burnt within the city as well, affecting the health of its residents. But now, the majority of the waste from residential households is getting segregated and processed. The 2Bin1Bag initiative was key to popularising waste segregation in Bengaluru households, especially in apartments. 2Bin1Bag showed that all that households had to do was segregate waste into three categories - wet waste in a green bin, reject/sanitary waste in…

Bhendi Bazaar is situated between Mohammed Ali road and Khetwadi in South Mumbai. It is home to several micro-economies that cater to the needs of the communities living in the area.  Interestingly, one of the etymological theories of the name ‘Bhendi Bazaar’ comes from the British era. According to Murtaza Sadriwala, Media Coordinator of the Saifee Burhani Upliftment Trust (SBUT), when the British lived on the Southern side of Crawford Market, the Northern side was referred to as ‘Behind the Bazaar’, which over time was colloquially pronounced as Bhendi Bazaar. This was phonetically similar to the Hindi word for Okra…

“Lakes are like the organs and rajakaluve, or the storm water drains that connect them, are like nerves. Organs will not survive without the nerves,” says Captain Santhosh Kumar, an army veteran who has been volunteering towards identifying and restoring storm water drains and lakes of Bengaluru. Read more: 50% stormwater drains lost: Bengaluru’s flooding is no surprise It all started when Kumar, a military intelligence officer hung up his boots and returned to his native village Anekal in Bengaluru urban district, in 2008. He was shocked when he saw the villagers struggle for water while the water mafia pumped the…

Juned Shaikh’s Outcaste Bombay: City Making and the Politics of the Poor traces the history of Bombay, from the plague epidemic and rise of the textile mills to their dissolution. Assembled together from government archives, poetry, fiction, and translated Marxist literature, the book chronicles Dalit lives, identity, culture and politics in the city. The book challenges the notion that Bombay is devoid of caste, and instead, reveals that it is the orchestrating force facilitating the city’s industries, landscape and culture. Juned is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Below is an…

Ever wondered what it would be like to touch the rifle used by former chief of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Prabhakaran? Or get yourself locked up in one of the oldest prison cells in Tamil Nadu? Or, in the words of Steve Borgia, “to interact with history”? Well, it need not be restricted to just imagination: you can experience this and more right here in Chennai - the Tamil Nadu Police Museum in Egmore. Housed in the 165-year-old former office of the Commissioner of Police, the museum was opened to the public for the first time on…

Ever since she first read about Srinagar’s famous houseboats, Meenakshi, a resident of Pune, had wanted to stay in one. On August 23, she along with her husband landed in Srinagar and drove to the Dal Lake where they had booked a houseboat named Peacock. “After spending a day, I fell ill,” recalls Meenakshi. “I had severe cold, cough and fever. I wasn’t able to move out my bed. The houseboat owner called the boat ambulance and I was taken to the main road first and then to the city hospital. Luckily, I tested negative for COVID. The doctors then…

For anyone harbouring the cliched idea that all Muslim families make Biryani on festive occasions, the Bohras of Chennai challenge this notion with their famous festival staple, the dal chawal palida. “It is unique to the Bohra community, wherein the dal is layered between rice. Although this is primarily a vegetarian dish, people also add meat to it,” explains Tasneem Akbari-Kutubuddin, a Chennai-based journalist and editor. This is one of the many unique things about the culture and practices of the 10000-strong Bohra community who have made Chennai their home.  For the past three years, Tasneem has been documenting the history…

For the third year in a row, Rev Godson Samuel, 46, a Christian pastor has been collecting Palmyra palm seeds from Aarey during the monsoons and distributing it for planting. This year, he has already helped gather and distribute around 7000 seeds in Mumbai along with volunteers from citizen groups like Rewilding Aarey. This is apart from the 13,000 Palmyra seeds that he sourced from others for plantations in other parts of Maharashtra.  Godson wants to convert Mumbai into a 'Palm Bay' by encouraging growing over one lakh Palmyra plantations over the next few years. His passion for Palmyra is…

Ranjitha R and Varun Madhugiri, parents to three and a half-year-old twins, recall with wry humour what it has been like since the first lockdown was announced in March 2020. The daycare centre the twins went to, closed. For this working couple, the next year and a half was about juggling work, domestic chores, parenting, teaching and managing the pandemic. They have now come to accept the new normal, albeit reluctantly. There are good days and bad days, but there is no rhythm to it. Like all parents, they are noticing behavioural challenges with their children, besides their own rising…

As a former capital of many important kingdoms and sub-continental empires, Delhi is a city of outstanding historical significance. The sites that mark important dates and periods of its past are scattered around the city and its hinterland, and widely visited and studied. The architectural breadth of monuments at these sites, and the town planning concepts evident in places around them, have also received a lot of attention. But there is another, less known, side. Diverse historical, cultural, and environmental exigencies, over hundreds of years, have given the city a unique syncretism of cultures. As each dynasty and ruling establishment…