GENRE: LN

Education Namma Bengaluru mispresented in ICSC text book How is Bangalore- it is a city of traffic jams; how does Kannada sound- it sounds like mix of Tamil and Telugu… You will find such startling revealations about Namma Bengaluru in the 4th standard Geography ICSC text book. There are many such derogatory comments about Kannada, Bangalore and Karnataka in this text book called 'New starting Geography'. The book is published by Oxford Publications, New Delhi. (Vijaya Karnataka, Monday, Mar 9) 9 quota seats in MBBS go 'missing' Nine MBBS seats reserved for talented poor students are found unaccounted for in…

On 8th March, the Fearless Karnataka group, in collaboration with the Blank Noise Project, responded to the attacks on women in Bengaluru between 6th and 28th February. They marked Women’s Day by conducting street plays and opinion polls, conversed with men and women on the streets, and distributed posters at Rest House Road, Vasanthnagar, CMH Road, Ulsoor and Cunningham Road. These were the very localities where attacks on the women were reported. The group wanted to spread awareness about the violence, and more importantly, to sensitise bystanders to respond proactively to such situations. Pranesh Prakash, a volunteer for the activities…

Sadrushya - the exhibition at Chitrakala Parishat, held from 28th February to 5th March, was an unusual one. It was a collection of paintings by Ashok V Bhandare, Ramesh Babu, Ramaiah, Raju D P and Venugopala A, all of whom once worked as artists for film banners. With the advent of digital printing and computer aided advertising having effectively wiped out the art of manual painting, these talented artists had to move onto other platforms to keep their art alive. Clockwise from top-left: Ganesha by Ashok V Bhandare, Shapes by Ramaiah, Mural by Ramesh Babu and Abstract by Raju D…

A Carnatic music aficionado new to Bengaluru may wonder how to go about attending Carnatic music concerts. In this city, Carnatic music festivals are oriented towards some commonly celebrated Hindu festivals. The concept of a season-specific festival, such as the ‘Margazhi festival', in Chennai, which always happens from mid-December to January, is not there in Bangalore. Sri Rama Lalitha Kala MandiraDifferent organizations and groups across Bangalore have been organizing music concerts and festivals for a long time now. These past few years have witnessed the likes of well known artistes like Dr. Balamuralikrishna, Sudha Raghunathan, Sanjay Subramaniam, Vishaka Hari, Kadri…

Runners For Life, a community of people who run to get fit announced their new event ‘Feet on the Street', a 5km run to be held in the city. The organisers will share a portion of the proceeds from the event with Dream A Dream, a local NGO working with some of Bangalore's most vulnerable children including orphans, street kids and other children in slum communities. The format of Feet on the Street is unique. These are monthly runs. It is not a track and field event, but will be held in a central location, Cubbon Park. In addition to…

I had been told about the Fireflies festival, an all-night event filled with music and gaiety. I had heard about the singers who come here and perform for 20-25 minutes but remain in the minds of the audience for the rest of the year. I had always wanted to go to Fireflies but could not do so due to various reasons. This time, on 22nd Feb, determination set the course and I made myself free for the event. My friends and I packed our bags well as we were told that we'd need mattresses, cushions, blankets and whatever it took…

It was good to see flights take-off once again at the old HAL airport last Sunday. Only, the planes that had a smooth takeoff and landing were made of paper. And the pilots were college students dressed casually in jeans and T-shirts. Redbull Paperwings contest underway (pic:PD) Red Bull, the energy drink maker, had organized a paper plane flying contest for college students in India for the first time, as part of a worldwide contest, held first in 2006. The qualifying rounds that were conducted in five major cities - New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai, over January-February, attracted…

Ulsoor, Indiranagar, Vasanthnagar and Rest House Road! Six incidents of attacks on women in Bengaluru reported in the media in the last 20 days. The attackers in all the cases were either a pair of men on bikes or in groups of four in cars. In most cases, the women were in jeans or western clothing but in one of the cases, a woman attired in Salwar Kameez was also subject to attack. In the cases where the women retaliated by slapping the attackers, the latter became further infuriated and became more violent. In fact, in the incident at Indiranagar,…

In Bangalore, Yours Truly Theatre (YTT) has been working on a form of theatre that has been tried in a few places around the globe; it's called Interactive Theatre, where the members of the audience are active participants in the production. In several plays, so far, Yours Truly Theatre has stopped the storyline at some point, asked the audience for inputs and the cast then act out the denouement of the play according to the directions that the audience members give. Scene of a play at YTT (pic: Deepa Mohan) Taking this initiative further, on 22nd February 2009, at the…

Arts and Culture 'Throw stones at bad Kannada films' says actor Rajesh Senior Kannada actor Rajesh expressed anger about distasteful Kannada films and said "People should discard and throw stones at the films that spoil our culture and taste". He was unhappy with the kind of films made today, and said, "what message do songs like 'hale patre, hale kabbina, hale paper thara hoyi...' give to the society? It is really shameful. it is very unfortunate that such films are coming out during the occasion of the platinum jubilee of the Kannada film industry. If Rajkumar and Kalyan Kumar were…