Deepa's Jottings

Manidip Mandal shows how it's more expensive to travel from Majestic (Kempegowda Bus Station) bus terminus to Hulimavu (15 km) than to travel from Mysuru to Bengaluru (148 km).     BMTC has become an exploitative and expensive organization, and urban commuters have no choice. I only use public transport, and as a general commuter and a woman citizen, I generally find the drivers and conductors very rude, harassing passengers.

I thirst...Not for love, money orEven happiness.I thirst for waterTo quench the parched earthTo bring green to the brownTo bring fresh hope to those Who raise crops and food for us.I need waterTo fill the potsOf each slum-dwellerWho puts her (it's never a he)Vessel in a long line of colours,Waiting to drink, wash and live.I have had enough of grishma ritu.I want varsha...not just the odd showerOr thunderstorm, but a steady,Cloudy, drumming seasonThat will replenish the depletedPlateau,that we live onAnd call home.

Today's youngsters have many more job and career opportunities opening up, rather than the usual aspiration to be a doctor, lawyer or engineer. But as they dream about the ways they will make their living, I wonder how people get into far less noticed jobs. Here are two young men I noticed today The first one, along with another young man of about the same age, was suspended from the terrace of a building, painting the outside walls. It was quite hot in the open sun, and I am sure the entire day was spent this way, with perhaps breaks…

One of the inequalities of life is that children may not be allowed for many theatre productions...but adults can certainly go and enjoy children’s theatre. The enjoyment is all the more, when one goes with one’s own child...or grandchildren, because there are then multiple layers to the experience. There was a fairly large audience of children, accompanied by their parents or relatives,  to watch “How Cow Now Cow” by the Sandbox Collective a group that has just crossed its second birthday.   I have not watched the work of this young theatre group before, and I am always interested in…

I've been visiting a few schools lately, and I am rather disturbed by some of the things I see on the campuses. One school has no playground at all. Pointing to a tiny handkerchief of space, the  person talking to me says, "That is enough for our children." Another campus of the same school has a few small ornamental trees near the entrance gate. The entire campus is covered in concrete and the green of the trees are those which are in the neighbouring apartment buildiings. One school has very professional loops of  barbed wire on its compound wall.  …

There are two strong points of view about stray dogs in our city. One is that they are living beings, and deserve to live like many other creatures who share our living space. The other is that they are pests that must be removed. This view is especially held by those, and those whose children, have been bitten, sometimes fatally, by some of these animals. The method of removal most advocated is to sterlize the dogs, and BBMP, is not doing much about it. The numbers of the stray dogs on our roads is inversely proportional to the political will…

I got this photo of a stray dog, with a plastic juice or shake container in its mouth.     We have now conditioned even the animals around us to like processed food, lots of sugar. They have learnt to try and ingest plastic in a bid to get that food. I wonder where we are headed....

We are, according to the traditional calendar,only in Vasant Ritu. But in Bangalore, this is the hot season. The temperature is rising steadily, and so, too, is the demand for water. Sitting on a plateau, having depleted our water-table alarmingly, we are facing tremendous difficulties for water, and the fact was brought home to me by the sight of these women (it's still a sad fact of life that you will hardly find men queueing up with pots) sharing a water source, on this occasion, for washing.   How are we going to fare during Grishma Ritu, I wonder?

Having watched an excellent play staged by Tadpole Repertory earlier (you can see the review here if you wish to) I was eager to watch the production of  “This Will Only Take Several Minutes”, which this group was staging as a joint effort with Hanchu-Yuei, a Tokyo-based theatre collective. The introduction on the Ranga Shankara website was very intriguing. A play in Hindi, Japanese and English! Off I went, with three friends.  The play is the result of a joint effort between two playwrights, and deals with six characters, who interact with each other (not all at the same time),…

I was walking along in Jayanagar 4th T Block, when I noticed these young men selling "fresh honey from the hive, madam, do you want?" I looked down; the broken pieces of the honeycomb were there and pieces of it had been put into containers for the honey to drip down into them. This was, probably, the freshest honey one could get one's hands on. Alas for me, I still had a lot of walking to do. I noticed a few dead bees on the hive and this saddened me until I realized that this was, indeed, a humane way…