GENRE: Features

Holidays and broke teenagers don’t quite fit together, more so during summer. With the scorching heat and sweat dripping down our faces, getting annoyed was pretty easy. Bengaluru certainly made living easier in some ways, but not if you weren’t ready to pay for it. Every time I wanted to catch a movie, I’d pay Rs 150 or 200 at a single-screen theatre because I couldn’t pay up for a multiplex. So was my story with Rex theatre in Brigade Road. 'Logan' had just come out, starring Hugh Jackman as Wolverine for the last time. Despite not having followed or…

The silly season is upon us. It is an endless cycle that repeats every few years. It is the season when we, the people of India, get breathless with excitement: “You must vote! It is the sacred duty of every citizen in a democracy to vote.” “If you don’t vote, then you are not a patriotic citizen, and you lose your right to have a public voice.” “Your vote is important. The person / party that you elect will frame policies that will determine the future of our country.” It is the season when we pull out from the dusty…

In 2009, Dr Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar came to power on a Trinamool Congress ticket from the Barasat Lok Sabha constituency near Kolkata. Since then the 60-year-old physician has retained her MP seat, winning by a margin of 1,73,141 votes in the 2014 General Elections. The incumbent MP is in the poll fray again from Barasat. Parliamentary constituency No. 17, Barasat, saw a change in its constituent assembly segments in the 2009 elections, following the orders of the Delimitation Commission; as per these orders, the satellite township of New Town, which has been developed as a special urban IT and corporate…

Triplicane, the oldest Islamic settlement in Chennai, bustles with activity now. The spirit of Ramzan is witnessed in every lane of the locality, as shops selling burkhas, Qurans and other necessities have mushroomed. The location of the Big Mosque, the oldest mosque tracing its origin to 1794, adds glory to Triplicane. Big Mosque is famous for its Mughal architecture and the less known, fascinating story of its chronogram. Chronograms are inscriptions where specific letters can be interpreted as numerals to signify a date or a period. “The numerical value assigned to each letter in the text will reflect the year…

One of the most prestigious constituencies of Kolkata, Jadavpur has always seen parties fielding popular leaders and party heavyweights for this Lok Sabha constituency. This was the very place from where the current West Bengal chief minister, Mamata Banerjee defeated Somnath Chatterjee,  stalwart of the CPI(M), in 1984. Indeed, the constituency has seen many high profile and celebrated MPs, the most recent being Harvard historian Sugato Bose, who won the seat in 2014. In the run up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Mamata Banerjee surprised everyone by declaring that local Tollywood star, Mimi Chakraborty would get the much coveted…

Bimal Desai has been a one-man army protecting much of what we see of Cubbon Park. The 14 cases he filed over the last two decades ensured that night-time traffic was banned in the park and encroachments were kept at bay. But one of his learnings while he was fighting the system over the years, was that you can't always win. So while he continued his legal battles, Desai decided to parallelly start greening the city to compensate for its lost green cover. Using the Miyawaki method, he has created eight patches of forests in his house, which is set…

On a sweltering Saturday afternoon, a little more than a dozen men, armed with red flags in hand, towing a middle-aged lady with inconspicuous features quietly walk into a gated housing society in the heart of Kasba, a densely populated residential neighbourhood in East Kolkata. Minutes later, the residents hear a firm female voice that promises a better tomorrow devoid of anarchy and lumpen raj. A face here and a face there, slowly but gradually curious onlookers from windows and balconies start peeping down to catch the show. The lady, with a microphone in one hand (one of her party…

Kolkata-based cyber security expert and entrepreneur Niraj Agarwal is among the 13 candidates who are in the fray for the Kolkata South Lok Sabha constituency that goes to polls on May 19th. But there is one key difference between him and the 12 others. Far removed from the high decibel political campaign of his chief rivals, Niraj is quietly stirring a movement on one of the most important pressing issues of his constituency and of cities in general, but which hardly finds mention in political circles. In an exclusive tete-e-tete with Citizen Matters, this independent candidate says that the real…

1,697 citizens from Chennai took an oath to embrace source segregation yesterday (May 12th), during a door-to-door campaign conducted by Citizen Consumer and civic Action Group (CAG), in collaboration with Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC). The campaign was conducted in three locations in Chennai -- Anna Nagar, Adyar and Royapuram.   The day began with a gathering of people at three different venues. Besides the regular walking population, Anna Nagar Tower park bustled with residents, volunteers, conservancy workers and corporation officials for the event. The Kasturba Nagar Community hall in Adyar and Anna Park in Royapuram also saw good crowds, comprised…

“Ardambarda astrology kaltu, Aptamitra Avinash range-ige build up kodtarappa!” (“Barely knows any astrology, but portrays himself as Avinash from Aptamitra movie”) says Sudarshan in one of his gigs, warning the audience to stay away from the astrologer uncle at family events. Bengaluru has been a stand-up comedy hub for about a decade now, with artists from various backgrounds performing in English and Hindi. This is not surprising as the city is home to people from across India. But modern comedy in Kannada was not popular here till a few years back. Traditionally, in local art-forms like Yakshagana, 'Vidushakas' or comedians…