Z-Blogs

They are everywhere...on the pavements, weaving in and out of the traffic at signals...people who sell a variety of known and unknown things...cotton buds, lights, windshield screens, remote control protectors, dusters.....The latest "item" to be sold is this "solar flower", which comes out with waving petals in sunlight: Most of these things are cheap, shoddy pieces, which, I feel, are made in China (ok, Taiwan, to be precise!)...and they are sold for a few dozen rupees...we seem not to mind the very poor quality of the stuff, and sometimes, it's our way of supporting the people who sell them.But I wonder…

As I was going to Mysore, I got this by-now-very-familiar scene of huge trees (oxygen-giving) being hacked down to make way for more cars (carbon dioxide-giving):The earthmovers have arrived in Cubbon Park, and I am organizing a photowalk on Ambedkar Veedhi (the stretch from GPO to the High Court) tomorrow at 4pm, to photodocument what we are about to lose. If you are interested, please come along (with or without camera!) to the GPO main gate at 4pm tomorrow, 9th October. ⊕

I had to be at Cantonment Station early one morning, and I was happy to see that an old friend still exists there:There was a time in the not too distant past when one communicated a lot by "snail mail"...someone had recently posted that the post-boxes are hardly to be seen! Well, here's a beautiful example, still well-maintained and in use....Red nostalgia, for a time when a post-card was an inexpensive way to communicate! ⊕

Even as the BJP government totters this weekend, yet another scam in the government's favourite playground - Bengaluru city - stands exposed. For over three years now the spectre of the Akrama Sakrama Bill has been hanging over the city. The bill is meant to 'regularise' illegal buildings in return for owners paying penalties. The premise of such a bill is that the BBMP will otherwise put all measures in place to bring the percentage of violations down to the single digits (some percentage in every society will flout the law) with stiff penalties. Regularising illegal buildings is therefore imagined…

Golden Goddess. Pic: Ravi Kaushik. The various festivals that we celebrate in Bangalore ensure that we have an ever changing landscape dotted with electric goddesses like the above one.⊕ 

It's now the time of the year, when the Mahogany trees in the city put out their lovely "chocolate ice-cream" fruit-pods.... here's what they look like:If you find these pods upon the ground, pick them up and see the beautiful red striations inside!I wish the BBMP would start planting the saplings of such life-sustaining, shade-giving, and long-lived trees once again in our city.... ⊕

"Love is Slow Poison" said an auto that nearly killed me yesterday; I would have normally belted some un-pleasantries to nobody in particular and forgotten the close-shave. But how can one not stop and mull over a near-death-experience that comes with such succinct wisdom? I assure the auto-driver that no love is lost between him and I now. May all his passengers readily pay him 'double meter'. We must make haste in claiming credit for any pop-culture phenomena that may have emerged from the city and label it 'city-chic' or some such; you will agree that this sort of thing…

Everywhere in J P Nagar, I am coming across trees carved with the symbol of a political party, and then coloured:Is there no better way for the political party to flaunt their symbol? Carving the symbol into the tree saves them printing and posting costs, I suppose. Who cares what happens to the living tree? After all, we nail umpteen posters on to their trunks anyway....These are the people who are wanting to govern us.... :( ⊕

Several people ease the difficulties of our daily lives, and provide fairly inexpensive services. Mr K Subramaniam is one such person, plying his trade of cobbler, at a stall on Bannerghatta Road, near the BTM Checkpost bus-stop, for nearly 15 years now."Both this stall, and another one I sometimes go to, in Koramangala, belong to Mr Madheswara," says he. "All the income from the bag and footwear repair comes to me, and from the sale of the footwear go to him," he explains, pointing to the footwear that he makes, behind him, at the "Samatha Sainik Dal" stall. "I belong to…

The J P Nagar branch of Corporation Bank recently shifted to the 3rd Phase, in the Mini-forest area, and I was happy to photograph their gesture in having a ramp for wheelchairs.However, yeaterday, I found that they had put up illegal notices on the public road in front of their branch, "reserving" parking for their customers.  How can a bank reserve parking on a public road? And not just one, but quite a lot of space, witness this photograph:I sincerely hope they take away their signs soon. If the Bank wanted reserved parking for its customers, it should have rented…