Deepa's Jottings

As my bus was passing through Jayanagar, in south Bangalore, this sign caught my eye and I clicked it out of the window. It says that the Jayadeva General Hospital was inspected by "Lanchamukta Karnataka Nirmana" and found to have many staff who were demanding bribes to do their work, and gives a number to call in case someone finds a bribe being asked for. It was a very heartening poster to see, with at least the ability to make a complaint and the possiblity of redressal. I wish the organization success in its efforts. I do hope prospective patients…

I went to visit Lalbagh on 3rd March, and was pleasantly surprised, at the area where the majestic Ficus benjamina trees are (leading from Kempe Gowda's tower to the Glass Hoouse) being used to set up some beautiful wood carvings, done on solid tree trunks. This seems to me to be a beautiful way of making a dead tree come alive again. Here are some of the carvings. The work is only one month old The installation is still under way. Less appealing was the fact that the title of at least one work and the name of the artist…

Today (Tuesday, 20th Feb '18), I took the children of Pramiti School, aged between 8 and 12 years, to the Government Museum on Kasturba Road. It took us nearly an hour in the traffic to get to the Museum from J P Nagar. So when we reached the Museum, we had to take the children to the toilets before the visit. I was told that the Museum building does not have toilets and was asked to go to the Venkatappa Art Gallery next door, so we took the children there. The staff kept on giving us instructions to "put a…

As I conducted the World Campus Bird Count (it happens throughout the world between Feb 16 and 19, 2018) the sighting of the day was seeing a line of young trees at the campus of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB). The trees did not, to a casual obsever, look very pleasing. With their crowns and branches lopped off, and wrapped around in hay and chemicals, they were not the stuff of leafy, shade-giving, bird-nesting dreams. But since I had seen these trees, growing along Bannerghatta Road, being wrapped in preservative chemicals and wrapped to keep them alive, and…

I received the following email from Indane (the cooking gas supply company of Indianoil, a Government agency) Safety Instructions For LPG Customers: Here are a few tips to use your LPG in the right and safe way: 1.Take delivery of Refill only after checking weight of the cylinder. Also check the valve or O-ring for leakage. 2.Put the Safety cap on valve if the cylinder is not in use. 3.Use Suraksha LPG hose of ISI mark. 4.Light ignition source before opening the burner. 5.Turn off regulator when not in use. 6.Don't place the cylinder in water or in a horizantal…

An initiative where everyone who is a birdwatcher, can contribute to the database of a worldwide organization that logs the birds seen during this time. The annual Great Backyard Bird Count is back and birdwatchers and enthusiasts can help in the enumeration by uploading their sightings on the eBird India website between February 16 and 19. The largest citizen-science project to enumerate bird species, organised by Bird Count India and eBird India, uses the information on birds for a better understanding of seasonal patterns of movement of birds and for monitoring changes in distribution and abundance of birds over long…

When one goes to see a play,one goes with certain constructs; one, that there will be a linear narrative, that one may be entertained while also made to think, and that one will connect to the action on the stage. But recent visits to experimental performances have made me realize that all of these may not happen at some performances, and it was in this frame of mind that I went to watch "RamaNaya", by Sandbox Collective, at Ranga Shankara, on Friday, 9 Feb '18. The play drew quite a good house for a Friday evening, especially when it had…

We have thousands of runners but no place to just walk from A to B. I can no longer walk the less-than-a-kilometre stretch from my home to that of a friend on Bannerghatta Road. The road has been dug up for widening ( though it quickly ends in a bottleneck at an immoveable temple opposite a newly- minted mall), and leave alone the demise of several young trees, there is no footpath any more, nor is there likely to be, for the foreseeable future. Critically endangered species: the Common Pedestrian. Update: My friend Shiv Sastry tells me that there is…

At any Darshini restaurant in Bangalore, the south Indian "filter kaapi" (coffee that has been percolated through a filter, and always made with milk) is first poured into the glasses, where the colour gleams invitingly in the sunlight. Then, boiling, frothing milk (with or without sugar , as per the customer's requirement) is added. One is one, the other one waits... This was taken at Vidyarthi Grand, on Kanakapura Road, one of my favourite post-birding-outing favourites.

Today, the 2nd of Dec, 2017, saw the residents of several apartment buildings which are part of the Bangalore Apartment Federation (BAF) taking to a silent protest in the streets. The protest was against the continuous and endless barrage of harassment they are being subjected to by the government and civic agencies of Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) As R Balasubramanian, President of BAF, says, "Older apartments constructed in the '70s, '80s & '90s, which are not in any way polluting, have been mandated to install STPs retrospectively, which is impossible. And for apartments built since 2007 with properly…