GENRE: Voices

As I walk to work, I pass by one of the intersections on 17th Cross every day. This is a one way road and therefore attracts a good amount of traffic. Luckily the road has still retained its old charm and has not deteriorated into the chaos that is 15th cross.  In the last few months, a house that stood at the intersection has been undergoing renovations. I did not pay much attention to it till it was completed. There is so much building and re-building happening in Malleshwaram that unless it is the demise of a grand old house,…

The one who strove relentlessly to fill in the state's coffers, himself has landed up in a coffin. Tragic. Shocking. The sudden death of an upright officer, DK Ravi, brings to the focus, the conditions, constraints and challenges of officers chasing taxes, evaders and hoodlums, in general, and upright officers like Ravi, in particular. We don't know yet the reason or the cause of his death, but conscious citizens like me ponder what could be behind it. And the most haunting question is, did his crusade cost his life? While that question is yet to be answered, this throws open…

DK Ravi interacting with students in Kolar. Pic: Basu Raju The news of the death of D.K. Ravi, former Deputy Commissioner of Kolar District, has come as an absolute shock. Ravi was transferred from his position in Kolar to Bengaluru, where, as Deputy Commissioner in the Commercial taxes (intelligence) wing, he launched a series of raids and investigations into Bangalore’s builder companies. It is said that these raids had discovered huge levels of tax evasion. Ravi is said to have committed suicide in his flat yesterday (March 16th 2015). However, as far as we know, there is no suicide note.…

Members of the Whitefield Rising group with the Namma Bengaluru award We gave no consent and we got awarded for that! You read that right. On March 14th, Whitefield Rising won the Namma Bengaluru Foundation award for disagreeing and sometimes being disagreeable! Strange, isn’t it? Read on to find out why. We all agree that the state of affairs around us is, putting it mildly, not good. Child rape, sewage in the lakes, garbage on the streets, inequality in our society and many more civic and humanitarian issues. As Ela Bhatt says, this is 'violence to our own with the consent of state and…

Way back in 2007, a Comprehensive Traffic and Transport Proposal was given by Government of India. As per that, we had the Phase 1 Metro in Bengaluru, which is now being constructed, feeder Monorail / Light Rail, Bus Rapid Transit and Suburban Rail. This can be found here: CTTP 2007 From 2007 till 2015, the population has grown tremendously. So many vehicles have added to Bangalore Roads. New comers to Bangalore, especially bachelors who come from other cities come with some clothes  and documents after they get their first job or in search of the job. Initially they manage with…

Do they not look delightful Perched upon the wire, Chatting together Against the sky? When I see the same birds Through the twisted wire Of bird-cages, penned up... I ask..why? (Picture of Munias in a bird cage from the FB page of Gopakumar Namboothiri, with his permission) Why can we not just admire? The flower set upon the bush Or smiling from its tree? Why do we need to cage and tie down beings That look so much better, when they are free? The first photo was taken on Bannerghatta Road, near the Police Station; the second in a house…

After attending six meetings of a Federation of RWAs over, I thought I’d scream if I heard  the word “segregate” one more time. Nonetheless, I decided to attend their  monthly meeting  in February. And I did end up screaming—even before I got to this meeting at Sanjaynagar’s RMV Club where residents of ward nos. 18, 19 and 100 meet regularly. On the way, I passed by the road along ISRO’s east wall (where Ramesh Dutt, secretary of the Federation, and Kala Sunder, an active  member, live) and saw two pourakarmikas pushing their garbage carts and converging on an eyesore-of-a-dump, and…

Very early every morning, from the west, I would hear Sri Thirumale’s voice. He would have washed some clothes and would be putting these up to dry on the bamboo poles hung horizontally from the ceiling. All the while, he would be reciting something. One day, while I was in class 2, I found myself sitting in front of Aththi as she taught me the first shloka of the Sri Venkatesha Suprabhaatam (or just ‘Suprabhaatam’ as it is even now known). How this came about, I don’t remember. This is what Sri Thirumale used to recite every morning. After some…

From Sureshbhai Patel, who was left paralysed due to excessive physical force from overzealous policemen in the USA for being a “coloured” human being walking on the streets of a xenophobic town, to Nirbhaya who was brutally raped in a moving bus in New Delhi, it is apparent there is an erosion of the basic and universal values that we perhaps tend to take for granted. It is left to us to salvage this state of anomie by inculcating in children universal values such as respect, compassion, treating people the way one wants to be treated and helping those who…

Even as the State government is gearing up to implement the Akrama Sakrama scheme that allows the regularisation of the building byelaw and certain land use violation in urban areas including Bengaluru, the new rules have raised several concerns. While a section of the civic society opposes the concept of regularisation as a whole, a few others find lacunae in the new rules which they say might prove disastrous if the scheme is implemented. In fact, there are serious doubts over the new rules of being big developer-friendly, rather than being people-friendly. There is not much difference between the 2007…