GENRE: Features

Every year,  on average, 150000 Indians are diagnosed to be suffering from blood cancers and diseases such as Lymphoma, Myelodysplasia, Thalassaemia, Aplastic anaemia, Sickle cell anaemia etc. For those afflicted, Bone Marrow Transplantation is the last resort. In 2016, however, only around 600 people could go for such transplant, which means that more than 1,40,000 or more people stared at an end with effectively no treatment. But why is it so difficult for patients with the above diseases to avail transplantation treatment? This is because the patient needs matching bone marrow from a healthy donor whose HLA type matches that…

A decade ago, sewage flowed where water once did, in the lakebed of Bengaluru’s Puttenahalli Lake. Today it is 13-acres of clean water, a diverse ecosystem and a peaceful area for community members. It is a shining example of a successful lake rejuvenation, a movement more complicated than it may seem. Apart from being public commons and beautiful displays of nature, lakes are essential for groundwater recharge and rainwater collection, important to Bengaluru especially in the days of water shortage. Rain water canals connect lakes to each other, thus lakes end up sinking a lot of groundwater, while excess of…

It seemed like a bright sunny day. A working woman in her late thirties, left Powai for Matunga by Uber at 7.30 a.m. The route normally takes 45 minutes. But yesterday it took a little longer than usual, around 75 minutes. The rain gods had by then showcased a trailer of what was going to be an adventurous day. Even then, never had I thought that I would return to the cosy comfort of my home only after more than 24 hours! As a Mumbaikar, you can feel the vibe when rain, or for that matter anything, rises above the…

The compound wall of the AMM Matriculation Higher Secondary School in Kotturpuram was as bad as any other compound wall in the city, till a few months ago. The wall was filled with political posters, making it an eyesore.   Some time last year, three 10th grade students - Ritvik Roy, Siddharth Kumar and Sai Muthuraman thought their school compound wall urgently needed a facelift. In the words of Ritvik, he and his friends were fed up with political posters all over and they wanted to replace it with something meaningful. Thus an idea took shape in the mind of…

Many Indian state governments have experimented with subsidised canteens over the last few years. The most recent addition to this has been the Karnataka government launch of ‘Indira Canteens’ in Bengaluru this month (August 2017). According to media reports, the canteens in most states have been very popular, a fact borne out by the long queues often seen outside these. Intended for the urban poor - mainly the destitute, elderly, unemployed, migrants and the working poor - these canteens usually serve food for Rs 10 or much less. The concept of subsidised food canteens became especially popular after the success…

For most people, a college campus is a place where you go through very routine activities of study and research. However, when I entered the IIT Madras campus, I was awestruck at the flora and fauna that greeted me. I learnt in the days post admission that the campus was located in the grounds of a national park which meant that I would get to see even some endangered species. This motivated me to photograph all that I could and share it with people I knew. What started off as a pastime quickly turned into my passion, especially as I…

It was a cloudy evening in mid-August. It had started drizzling and the dark clouds indicated a heavy spell of rain. It seemed like the South West monsoon would finally show mercy on the water-starved city of Chennai. As I walked on a narrow street that leads to Whites Road in Royapettah, my path was blocked by a water tanker, and tens of women and hundreds of pots thronging it. There was utter chaos on the street packed with houses on both sides. The women were fighting, yelling at each other and trying their best to grab their chance to…

If you Google ‘traveling to India’, you’ll be flooded with blog posts written by Americans or Europeans discussing their “spiritual journey to India”, “how to overcome Delhi belly” and “advice to avoid being scammed”. But what does not often pop up on your search results are blogs and perspectives from anyone with a darker skin tone than white. There are blogs upon blogs written by white women traveling to India for one reason or another who share their stories of first impressions, challenges, advice on what to wear, how to eat and what to say. There is a never ending…

The glass doors slid open, an air-conditioned breeze hitting our faces. It was less cold and much less forceful than San Francisco’s winds on the street. Some of my classmates and I (students from around the world) had come to the San Francisco Planning Department’s office on one of our weekly co-curricular visits. Our university would take us to different organizations in the city each week, for a chance to learn about their work and how it was impacting the city that we had arrived in only very recently. Just like how we stood at the foot of the Golden…

Karnataka Legislative Assembly elections are just a year away, and it’s time for residents in Bengaluru to register themselves in the electoral rolls. In Mahadevapura Legislative Assembly Constituency that is home to a large number of migrant population in the Information Technology and other sectors, it’s a huge challenge to get people registered in electoral rolls and make them vote in elections. Citizens in Whitefield and surrounding areas in Mahadevapura have come up with an initiative to fix this problem. Million Voter Rising, a campaign by Whitefield Rising, aims at enrolling at least one lakh voters to the electoral rolls…