GENRE: Voices

If you wondered why there was no special write up from Citizen Matters for the new year, here’s our excuse. Well, we did have a spectacular plan, however all the folks who needed to be on the same page as us, didn’t really come onboard. So this was our plan - to talk to key people involved in city administration and get them to look back on the past year and share with us their wish list for 2015. This turned out to be much more challenging than we thought. We had identified around ten eminent personalities and began a…

The recent tragic story of a three-year-old’s death after receiving dental care under local anesthesia in Bengaluru is heart-breaking. I am a surgeon who treats patients and performs procedures everyday. I am also a father of a three-year-old and an eight-month-old. The aftermath of the incident would have been unpleasant for the doctor and the family. I am sure this incident sent shivers down every patient that walked into a healthcare facility. I have received and delivered health care in India and in the United States. Where is it safer? What does quality mean? What does informed consent mean? How…

Organising a plant/tree/insects walk in the Arekere Reserve Forest was as interesting as taking a group for a birding or wildlife trail... In fact, it was more so, indeed, because a very knowledgeable and enthusisastic group came all the way from R T Nagar! It was a walk where all of us pitched in with what we knew.. and it wasn't even a walk, it was a slow inching forward, looking around and down, instead of the "up" of a birding trail. The Forest Department (the blue/green boards are theirs) has gone to town with the slogans, nailing them to…

“Sekaaaaaaarrr ... Go to the market and get me kottamalli for four annas,” amma called. Kottamalli is coriander, you know. Living near the Yediyur lake, the Lake Titicaca (so called because of all the caca that used to flow into it whenever it rained—I kid you not, that was a limnologist's, if that's the word I want, dream lake!) of Jayanagar, Bangalore, had many advantages. It's all geography, hon. We were right by the main road on which the various vegetable vendors from the south of Bangalore carried their fresh produce from the previous afternoon to the Krishna Rajendra Market—a.k.a.…

Respected Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, I was delighted to read yesterday’s newspaper report in The Times of India (Only 97 city high-rises have occupancy certificates) that said that your government would “take suitable action against builders who flout the building bye-laws”. As you have rightly said, those who have violated the laws need to be punished, but while this is being done, steps need to be taken to prevent this violation from happening in the first place. It is distressing to note that "only 97 high-rise buildings in the city have obtained OCs between 2009 and 2014". This means that there are…

Soumya Geetha, a consultant by profession, is extremely passionate about photographing culture and the streets, besides being a rabid traveller. She captured the above bull at the heart of the city - in the Pete. She writes: "During my street photography exploits in the city, I have often encountered traces of other cities in Bengaluru. This particular scene, deep in the by-lanes of the Pete, reminded me of the narrow streets of Varanasi where cows had the right of way. It was also strange because I assumed that given the location of the neighbourhood and its obvious lack of space,…

Most of us are familiar with the Reverse Osmosis (RO) water purifier technology that has been around for a few years now, even if not using it. While it seems to be widely accepted that RO-based purifiers are suitable for water supplies having high TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) content, debates have been on about the effects on our health due to the demineralized water that we consume after the RO-purification. Demineralisation aside, I would like to turn to one glaring feature of this technology in its current form: water runoff–that is, the non-potable water that an RO-purifier generates during the…

Pic: Bharath Rajshekhar I have been told time and again that the cow is holy, and I have believed it until I was witness to this... a shocker, the most disturbing incident. I had been to Chickpet to buy some electrical appliances and was sitting in the shop waiting for my things to be packed. Suddenly, a big cow appeared in front of the shop. The emptiness in its eyes gave me the impression that its stomach might be empty too. I proposed to the shopkeeper that we offer her something to eat, maybe some bananas. I was taken aback when he…

A 16-year-old tribal girl, an aging illiterate social worker in Rajasthan, a 23-year-old physiotherapist  in Delhi, a young journalist in Mumbai, a 50-year-old tourist from Europe, a six-year-old school girl in Bengaluru–what do these females, from different parts of the country, with diverse backgrounds, have in common ? They were all  victims of gruesome rapes that made “news”. One of the first lead stories that I wrote, over three decades ago (1979), was about the infamous Mathura rape case, in which the court released the accused policemen (who had raped Mathura at the police station) on grounds that the 16-year-old…

There was a commotion at the front gate. A woman crying and speaking at the same time. I, then a 1970s high school student, rushed to the living room to look out to see who it was and what was going on.  Just at the same moment as amma rushed out of the kitchen. The woman at the gate was Kamala. Amma rushed to the front door to ask what had happened. In between sobs and convulsive crying, Kamala said, “My anna (older brother) has died and they have brought the body to the village. Is my mother here?” “The…