Deepa's Jottings

Bannerghatta Road is already a mess, as one-third of the road is blocked for the work on the Metro. There is no transparency on how long the work will take, and no timeline for completion, though a vague time of 2020 AD has been given. Meanwhile, residences and hospitals as well as malls and offices bear the brunt of the noise, often unbearable at night. Pedestrians, who were finding the road hard enough to cross after the grade separation, are now finding it impossible to do so. No thought has been given to the hapless people-who-walk; they fight for their…

Birds know no borders; the ones that we go to see in Karnataka fly off and can be seen once we cross over into Kerala! So when the birders of Kasargod announced the second Kidoor Bird Fest, to celebrate both the first sighting of the Orange-breasted Green Pigeon Photo credit: Sarala Jeevanthi Gamage and the birthday of Dr Salim Ali, the noted ornithologist, it was clear that this would be a productive birding weekend. The participants and the organizers. The festival was a bigger event than it was in 2017, because this time, birders from all over Karnataka (see featured…

Sometimes the shadow is just as interesting as the substance. I was privileged to peep in on a shadow puppet workshop that Michael and Wendy Dacre conducted at Kathalaya, BTM Layout, Bangalore, on 23rd November 2018. Nikhil from the Hindu interviews Michael and Wendy, while Geeta looks on. Shadow puppet theatre has long been a part of the traditional arts of many cultures,but when Wendy first got interested in it, she found that there was no tradition of it at all, in the United Kingdom. She built up her shadow puppets, and the shadow puppet theatre, from scratch, using any…

I was about to write something about this event for my blog, and realized my official report for the Karnataka Forest Dept would do just as well! The founder-members of Bangalore Butterfly Club (BBC), from Nagraj's slide presentation: The Karwar Swift, not very common. The second Butterfly Festival at Doresanipalya Forest Research Station, celebrated on 17th November, 2018, was very successful. These ladies, making the rangoli, brought as much of colour as the butterflies did, to the event. Though limitations on the space available at the venue, in terms of the hall for presentations, resulted in the event not being…

It says a lot for the wondrous variety of vehicles on our roads, that a silver chariot of the sun, drawn by seven horses (and, presumably a little more horsepower), with regulation headlights, does not make heads turn!

While walking home from my daughter's, I caught the sunlight, slanting in beams in the dusty morning air: Ironic that it's the pollution in our air which shows up the shafts of sunlight! The scene also illustrates why traffic problems in our city, and country, are rather more complicated than elsewhere. There is such a variety of vehicles, motorized and non-motorized; two-, three- and four-wheelers jostling for the road, and amidst all the chaos, the hapless pedestrians, making their way too. I wish I'd been able to capture the bullock-cart that went past just before I clicked! For all the…

We like to celebrate Kannada Rajyotsava Day with many symbols, including the flag of the state... But when we do, it would be good to remember those for whom such symbols are not merely a matter of emotion, but are a way to make a living. I was happy to see only cloth flags being sold...I couldn't see any plastic ones!

I was invited to inaugurate Pavitha Ashwin's solo show at Chitra Kala Parishath (CKP) on the 11th of October.     The artist was very welcoming, as was her friend Bharati Suraj, who curated her works, to come up with a stunning show that highlighted Pavitha's love for nature and birds in particular. Bharati also brought out the evolution of Pavitha's talent from 2006, when she started painting to her recent work. Pavitha with friends at her show I found that Pavitha's ouvre extended to more than just simple portraits; I was particularly struck by her "Eyes of the Owl" series, and…

When the roads are choked with traffic, why cannot such senseless vehicles, with just one person driving them, blocking up the road space, be banned? Such ad vehicles get my goat on all fronts: pollution, traffic congestion, and commercialism at the cost of everything else.

I was very happy to participate in the gathering to mark Citizen Matters' turning 10. Though on the fringe, I have followed "CitMat"'s (as I call it) fortunes, and it's not an easy "matter" to be uncompromising about one's principles while trying to survive as an e-magazine. We enjoyed the team talking about various incidents in the past, and what I liked was that the journey was depicted as it was...with the highs and the lows. The CitMat team celebrated in a heritage building, beautifully restored and maintained, and posed for a group photo. A radiant Meera with some of…