GENRE: Voices

In my last post I spoke of what stress is. In this post I want to describe how a dog could react under stress. We have often heard of the “flight or fight” response to fear or stress. In dogs there are actually, at least 4 responses to fear – Fight, Flight, Freeze and Fiddle. In this blog I want to describe each of these. Flight: This is the easiest response to recognise as fear. We see a dog running away, with it’s tail tucked between it’s legs and we know it’s fear. During Diwali, it’s not unheard of for…

We spend a lot of time talking about national politics in India, with the general elections in 2014 being a subject of conversations for well over a year now. Conversations on state level politics take up the remainder of our time. In contrast, many of the problems that we face in Bengaluru on a day to day basis are municipal in nature: be it the lack of good roads and public transport, unreliable power supply, unsafe drinking water or garbage that lines our streets. Who becomes your next corporator or local council member is perhaps as important as who becomes…

Online voter roll registrations in Beengaluru were closed for sometime, on September 26, 2013. Those who logged in to the Karnataka Election Commission website received a message, saying that the voter registration will reopen after the publishing of the draft electoral roll. Now it is that time of the cycle when the draft rolls will be out soon and registrations will re-open. Karnataka Chief Election Officer Anil Kumar Jha talks about the Election Commission's plans, in an interview with Citizen Matters. Voters registration was suppossed to be open from August 10 till November 11, 2013. Why did it close now?…

Problems in Bengaluru • There is no leadership of the city. Most of the important public services are in the hands of the State government, which is more concerned with its State-level priorities than with the city’s. Mayors serve short, uneventful terms. • There is hardly any planning. BDA does no more than zoning of areas for different uses, and even this is very poorly enforced. Other agencies plan-as-they-go, without any reference to a regional or city-level perspective. There is no commonality of jurisdiction among agencies, either. • The legal steps (outlined in the 74th Constitution Amendment Act, 1992) to…

ROADS AND TRANSPORT - 2013 - PROBLEMS • BBMP and BDA have been slow to develop Priority Corridors (BIG 10, Outer Ring Road). As a result, vehicles don’t choose to stay on arterial roads. • Road surface quality is extremely poor, and is made worse by inadequate planning for rains. • Speed of construction is ridiculously slow. BDA /BBMP /Metro all seem in slow mode. • Over-emphasis on vehicular movement. Pedestrians and cyclists suffer as a result. • Inadequate bus fleet, plus weak last mile connectivity. At least 1500 per year needed to be added. • TTMCs in wrong locations,…

Diwali is almost upon us and as most of us are aware, dogs’ stress levels shoot through the roof during this period. So this month I am going to dig deep into all my education that had to do with stress in dogs and put forth every bit of information that might help you help your dogs. To handle stress, we first need to understand stress. Obviously, the first question is “What is stress?” In very simple terms, it’s the body’s mechanism to cope with danger. This mechanism is activated either when danger is perceived or even anticipated. Hence, even…

Over 68 lakh people out of total 96 lakh have already enrolled for Aadhaar card in Bengaluru. Most are waiting for the Direct Benefit Transfer scheme to roll out, and for the LPG subsidy to come to the bank accounts mapped. While everyone was under the impression that Aadhaar card is mandatory for all government subsidies and services, a Supreme Court interim order issued on September 23, 2013, ruled that Aadhaar card cannot be made mandatory, it has to be voluntary. Retired justice Puttaswamy, the man behind the PIL filed in Supreme Court against UIDAI. Pic: Bosky Khanna Justice Puttaswamy,…

She’s naked, covered with ashes, her hair matted with snakes in them, a garland of skulls and freshly cut heads around her neck. She laughs like madness herself, dancing to the chaotic rhythm of death, dragging a corpse behind her which she licks with her blood-red tongue from time to time. Now imagine meeting her in the middle of the night on a dark lonely path. Here’s an old description - a dhyana mantra of Guhya Kali, one of the forms of Kali. The tantric text is called Tantrasaara and is written by Krishnananda Aagamavgisa. “She is dark as a great cloud, clad in…

With the Namma Railu project to connect Bengaluru to the surrounding towns moving forward, there is talk of 'land value capture' to finance it. I.e, can we find the money for this project (and others like it) by either giving additional FSI at a price to land-owners in the area, or by higher property taxes after the completion of the project? This is a standard financing technique that is used by many countries. But in Bangalore we have a dubious record on this front. We have arbitrarily increased FSI in some areas (e.g. near Metro stations) in violation of the…

Once again, it was time to shift; once again, it was time to fret over the collection of used/unused/sparingly used but ‘not being used’ items at home. That we were moving to a smaller rented house, made it evidently clear that I do away with some of that stuff. In the past I have been accomplishing this by donating the items to NGOs. During voluntary works, I have often noticed people adopting the easiest route to de-clogging their homes: they bundle all and sundry items together and dump at the nearest venue willing to accept their surplus. Concerned at this…