GENRE: Voices

A view of the lake in the Lalbagh Botanical Gardens. Pic: Christopher Martin Lopaze Here are a few things listed by a Bangalorean for a first-time visitor to namma Bengaluru. Bangalore is the capital city of Karnataka state in South India. Kannada is the local language spoken in the city though in the current times, most are well-versed with English and Hindi as well. There are a significant number of people who can speak Tamil, Telugu and other Indian languages, even though it may not be their native language. Similarly, there are migrants to this city who are from various…

The road between C V Raman House and MES College is near-empty and traffic-free. This makes it an ideal location for a food street. Pic: Ramesh Sreekantan Which Malleshwaram resident is not familiar with the Chinese food stalls set up every evening on 15th Cross, between 8th Main and 10th Main? They occupy the footpath in front of Panchavati, the house of the well-known Nobel Prize winning Physicist, C V Raman. The food stalls, which started with an auto rickshaw selling `Hot hot Chinese food' in the evening, have now increased. Now there is a stall serving meals at lunchtime,…

Today, I’m writing about the vitally important topic of whether Indian cinemas should have intermissions just for the sake of tradition. (Spoiler alert: I don’t think they should.) I watched my first movie, How to Train Your Dragon 2, in Bengaluru at Forum Mall about two months ago. As an American, everything has been new in India, but this cinematic experience felt familiar as I sat in a comfortable chair absorbed by the on-screen action. Then the lights turned on abruptly. The screen image flickered and froze before turning green. I thought the projector had broken. But it was only…

  ‘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…