Deepa's Jottings

All schools have festive occasions when the parents and children celebrate with the school. But at Magic Puddles, a playschool in J P Nagar in Bangalore, the annual mela this year, on the 5th of December, 2016, recycled a lot of stuff that would otherwise end up in waste dumps."This year, we decided to set 'Skills' as the theme," says Nandini Rammohan, of the playschool. "Rather than an activity which the children started just before the mela, we decided that we would teach them some skills throughout the year, and have them teach it to the parents, and instruct them,…

For some time now,    eBird     has emerged as an application that is easy and convenient for birdwatchers (commonly referred to as birders) to record their bird-lists and allied observations."We are working (through a partnership called Bird Count India) to promote birding and bird documentation in India," says Dr Suhel Quader. "We suggest that birdwatchers use eBird as a convenient tool; and we also advise local/regional groups who wish to implement more systematic projects."The idea is to develop a country-wide database of bird sightings and observations, on an open platform, which can be used for analysis or research. Each birder's use of the tool is…

I thought about how we house our pets when we have to travel or cannot take  care of them for short periods for any other reason. Enquiring for one friend, I found that two others mentioned that they had put their dogs in the following kennels:   Petstepin #38, Rustam Bagh, Behind Manipal Hospital, Old Airport Road, Bangalore – 560075 +91 98865 84925 | +91 97422 79644 petstepin@gmail.com and 666 Kennels #34/2, Kanakapura Road, Adjoining Nice Road Bangalore-560062 +91 9740007070 666kennels@gmail.com Both do mention cats, but I do wonder how other people manage to arrange for the stay of their…

After many visits and several polite requests and "Please"s and "Thank You"s, I finally got some money. Here is my first sighting of the 2K note.     Now comes the problem of trying to get change for Rs.2000 from a vegetable vendor or a chaatwalla!  

On a road trip to Mysore, I spotted this beautiful old house being demolished:   One can see the beautiful facade of the building (a porch was demolished some years earlier)...and the deer above the window. We seem to be destroying so much...trees, our micro-climate, our water resources, our quality of life, in the mame of "development" which only seems to denote more roads for more motorized transport,or more buildings with glass and air-conditioning. I wonder when we will reach the tipping point?  

There are times when the production of a play makes the task easy for the reviewer. When there are plenty of criticisms to be made, it always grieves me to have to make negative comments, when I know that each stage production has so much of passion, dedication and sheer hard work that has gone into it.  But when a production is, from both artistic, aesthetic, and technical standpoints, excellent and highly professional, the critic’s task is just to enumerate the good points.  The play, “Krishna’s Dairy”, by Jacob Rajan, who also essayed the two characters who feature in it,…

For children….   Once a year, Children’s Day (celebrated on Nov 14 in India) comes around, and we have many initiatives just for them. One of these was   “Maya Bazaar” a story of mythology and fantasy, which was made into an epic movie in both Tamil and Telugu.   Over the years, this story (loosely based on characters in the Mahabharata) has been treated as a subject on many stages...folk, street, and mainstream theatre.   So, when Bangalore Little Theatre sent an invitation to the staging of the original English language adapation  of this tale, on the 13th of…

A friend writes: No body questions the intent behind the recent move to demonetize Rs.500 and Rs.1000 notes.   It is the ham handed  implementation by the Babus, living in their 7th Pay commision cocooned largesse,  who did not consider the following points,  and who were blind to the intended consequences,because they have never lived lives of the common man.   1) Absence of card swiping machines in most villages.   2)The honesty of the vast majority, for whom the only avenue was exchange in banks,apart from topping up their vehicles with equivalent  value of demonetised notes,and foregoing the balance.The acceptance…

Day before yesterday (22nd June, 2016) my driving licence (along with many other cards and quite a lot of cash, but that's another story) was stolen. The website told me, I needed to get a notarised statement to the effect that I'd lost the licence, along with three photographs, and go to the Regional Transport Office (RTO) where it had been issued, and submit my application. Part 1.I started off with a visit to the photo shop (not Photoshop!) to get my passport photos. It took about half an hour and some extra charges, but I got 16 photos (Rs.120)…

On the 15th of October, 2016, as my friends and I were returning from a nature and birding trip to Nandi Hills, we saw these Yakshagana artistes on the road back (which is also the road from the airport into the city.) That was the goddess of power, Shakti, herself, stepping out into a city, state and country that had just finished celebrating Her in the form of Navaratri or Dashera.   I realized that I would never know why these people were dressed up, and where they were going...was it for a performance, or something else? Yakshagana is a…