GENRE: Voices

  ‘Development’! This term sends chills down my spine these days! I want to just run away from this once beautiful city of Bengaluru which is being ransacked from all sides.  As I drive past any highway, it is nauseating to see huge hoardings of various builders – 3 BHK, 4 BHK apartments/villas with all modern facilities such as gyms, parks, swimming pools, clubs, malls and what not for sale starting from Rs.1 crore!   ‘Crore’ was a figure which I saw only in a bank’s day book when I worked for a Bank!  But today all Tom, Dick and…

As a fervent traveller around the country, having visited most of the megalopolises, often I have been asked to elucidate on those places which I had visited. The queries time and again revolved around some of the aspects like beauty, development, fashion, modernity, people etc of those places. However during my recent visit to my ancestral home for a wedding, I have been asked by a fifteen-year-old girl, a question that left me in thoughts. Since the wedding was more like a platform for rebuilding the lost relations, I was keen in talking with the 10th standard girl, who was…

A screenshot of the Mandur countdown timer as on September 4th, 10:20 am. Less than 57 days for the Mandur landfill to shut down. The government seems to have no visible plan as to how to handle the piles of garbage that will still need to go somewhere. The people supposed to be on top of the situation are still waiting for the system to evolve, by when we will probably see the evolution of a new species from tons of rotting garbage! India does not have excess of space for landfills like the US or some other countries. Landfills…

I was at T John College on Saturday, speaking to students of media and journalism from different institutions, who were attending a seminar at the college. A lot of the young men and women in these colleges are quite hopeful of making an impact through their work, and helping to build a better society and country through their roles as watchdogs and reporters. But they are also running into a delusion. By their own admission, media is not a well-liked profession. The public has a dim view of what the media does, and thinks that a lot of it is…

Love them or hate them, apartment residents cannot survive without them. Pic: Sankar C G Most Management Committee members of apartment complexes in Bengaluru are familiar with water problems — many of them find themselves in an unenviable tight corner between water tanker vendors and demanding residents!. Who are these water vendors? For a scholarly understanding of 'water tanker mafia', see this article. It would seem that vendors are a privileged set of a few who have nearly unlimited access to the most exploited resource in the city - ground water, and have made a livelihood/business out of it. In…

A young mother was sitting on a bench, in a park at the heart of Bengaluru. Her two kids had some eatables on their hands in cardboard plates. In spite of them sitting very close to a ‘Use Me’ dust bin, the children scattered their plates and tissues all over the place. ‘The bin is just here child, why can’t you put them in there?’ – I said casually. She looked at me askance and looked at her mother. The mother looked at me as though I did something wrong and with an expression of annoyance said “ಯಾಕ್ ಮೇಡಮ್, ಈ…

Since the beginning of May, my life has taken a turn. Late evenings which would have been typically spent as a sloth, are now reserved for exercising at Namma Crossfit. To call it addictive is an understatement. It also helps that I go with a bunch of my closest friends, each of us in varying degrees of fitness; it really is super-fun. The days that I don’t go, I feel miserable. There have been times where I have worked out at home and have had to mop the floor soon after, to ensure I don’t slip on my sweat. For…

  Mutilated Ganeshas at Sankey Tank. Pic: Vani Murthy  Lord Ganesha is my favourite childhood friend, my saviour at all times - when I met with a road accident on a highway, during my illness, when I am in despair.  He is the one who comes to my rescue. I do know many others too love him, respect him, look up at him as their friend in need, but for me he is something special. As I grew up I realised what makes him so special to all. Everything he did evoked fun in the mind of young ones. His…

If you ask people about their local RWA or apartment association, they'll tell you a lot of uncharitable things. Words like 'bickering,' 'clueless,' 'no communication' etc. will dominate the response. And if you stop to think about it, you'll realise that there are a lot of parallels between this and how they think about politics and governance of the country itself. What's going on? First, solving public problems isn't the responsibility of a few people. For legal and practical reasons we have formed these things - RWAs, industry associations, religious trusts, ward committees, city councils, state legislatures, parliament - but…

Pigeons feeding in the Ram-Anjenaya temple premises. Picture: Ashok Kumar S I saw a person on the premises of Ramanjaneya temple at Basavangudi, Bengaluru. He looked to me like a middle-aged person; he must have been in his 50s. He had come there to walk, like everybody else. He carried with him a bag of food. The bag contained wheat grains, bread, milk and water. I wondered why he had brought along all this food, and whom did he bring it for. I continued watching him, to know what he was up to, and find out what he was going to…