HERITAGE

Mother and father are discussing family matters. They deplore the mischief of their two boys, and also express wry amusement at the younger one's original thinking, that lies behind the mischief. However, the father predicts that this boy will leave footprints on the sands of time, and go on to become famous. Almost a scene played out in every home, one may feel...but it was, actually, a scene from a play on Tipu Sultan, by the late Dina Mehta, who was an award-winning playwright and Fiction Editor at the Illustrated Weekly of India. The father in question in this play…

Come this weekend and there are a bunch of interesting events waiting for you! Bangalore film festival, Bangalore book fest and Abhinaya 2013 - Kannada theatre festival are a few of the events to look out for!The 5th edition of Bangalore Film Festival is one such event that nobody wishes to miss. The festival is being organised by the Karnataka Chalanachitra Academy for Government of Karnataka supported by Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce. The festival started on Dec 20th and will go on till Dec 27th. You can register for the event here. Venue: Theatres across Bangalore. From movies to…

Ganjam in association with Bangalore Little Theatre presents `Tiger ! Tiger ! ‘ by (the late) Dina Mehta, a site-specific theatre exploration that is being performed at the Bangalore Fort. The performance is a part of the prestigious History of Ideas programme of Bangalore Little Theatre and is in partnership with the Centre for Public History as a part of the `Tiger comes to Town'.The performance marks the first time a heritage site in the city will open itself out to a unique experiment that will enable an audience to experience a historical event at its very location.`Tiger ! Tiger…

You live in the third largest city in India by population. The city's GDP exceeds 10 billion dollars (Rs 54,000 crores). The largest chunk of Karnataka's GDP and tax collections come from Bengaluru alone. The city has the third largest number of crorepathis in India and by some accounts, the highest median income level in the country. It isn't just that. An emerging civic and green movement led by old and young alike is fighting back to take back lost public spaces - lakes and trees for instance - with a resolute willingness to checkmate corrupt administrators in the High…

Timber Depot, Dandeli, Karnataka, 251012The sun slants into the groveIn a million rays.The leaves take beautyIn a million ways.We, who see it, cannot hope to createA hundredth part of such a scene.We can only capture and share...And be awed by what we have seen.A salute to Karnataka, my home,my mother, and my muse...She came into being on this day. ⊕

On 8th September every year tens of thousands of people throng the St Mary's Church to celebrate St Mary's feast. This 130 year old church has been attracting devotees since its inception. History of the churchIt is said that christians from Tamil Nadu came down here during the 17th Century and built a small village, ‘Bili akki palli.' Thus named for the white rice they cultivated and also a number of white birds were found in those rice fields. The people, in order to practice their religion, built a hut and named it ‘Chapel of Kannakai Madha.' Eventually this became…

Just in case you are bored with Bangalore Ganeshas, here's a good offer for you:If you walk down Jaya Chamarendra Road (J C Road), you can find a variety of images:Including this one, which I have not seen before, which is one of Ganesha as Balaji!I wonder if we will have some Olympian Ganeshas this time...must take another walk down J C Road!  ⊕

Two photo contests are open for all enthusiastic shutterbugs. One is focussed on city-nature interaction and other is for photographs of Kaikondrahalli lake.The contests are open to all and there is no entry fee. Selected photographs from both contests will also be exhibited in Hyderabad during the second week of October, at the eleventh meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 11) to the United Nation's Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The pictures get a chance to be seen and discussed by the hundreds of government officials, policy makers and other delegates from around the world who will attend…

On Id-ul-Adha, the Moon, too, seems to have sacrificed some of Herself:The festival is also called Bakrid, and this is not because the Bakri (Goat) is beingvenerated, it's because it is going to be sacrificed...I was musing on how the concept of sacrificing something to appease a Higher Power came about... this is what the Wiki had to say.I wonder if the gentle, repressed people of today's urban societies realize that the pumpkins that they smash into the roads after smearing them with vermilion....are a symbol of blood sacrifice? I listened to one elderly gentleman ("I am proud to be…

The waves of nostalgia that wash over me when I think about "My Bangalore" can sometimes be overwhelming. There is no other city on the planet that I am as attached to in a deep psychic sense. After all, I spent some of my most formative years there. Those parts of Bangalore I knew well, I knew because I had a bicycle and I cycled all over the city. I think I probably knew about half the city intimately and the other half not at all. Before the bicycle, there were the 131 and 7 doubledeckers, and the occasional 131D and 7A singledeckers. I distinctly remember…