Z-Blogs

As urban gardeners, we have several simple organic options for ensuring adequate input of nutrients to the soil and plants. Panchagavya One of the most effective and common liquid nutrients for the garden is Panchagavya. It consists of five main ingredients from the cow (ghee, milk, curd, cow dung and cow urine) and serves not just as a growth promoting hormone and immunity booster but also as a pesticide. It is also a good source of micronutrients for plants and the soil. The usage is as simple as spraying a three percent solution on plants every 10-15 days. Seeds can…

The Kaikondrahalli Lake team is paying tribute to the lake by inviting photographers to participate in a unique exhibition about the lake. In a photocontest held in September, Bangaloreans submitted the following entries: The 20 selected entries were submittted by: Achintya Guchhait Bhooshan.N.Iyer Deepak Kumar Faisal K Ananda Rajkumar Krishna I Nandagopal M K Vanila Manini Bansal Manjunath Prabhu Rajesh Balakrishnan Rajiv Manikoth Ravindra Kumar K R Sandeep Menon Shashi Pandharkar CK Subramanya The images were displayed in Hyderabad at the recently concluded eleventh meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 11) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).…

‘We care for Jayanagar, a voluntary group, organised a waste management awareness session, at Jayanagar 9th Block, on October 9th. Local Jayanagar East (Ward 170) corporator, Muni Sanjeeviah also attended. We care for Jayanagar is a group of residents from various apartments and neighbourhoods of Jayanagar including Adarsh Residency and Chitramala apartment (Byrasandra). Modeled after the "We care for Malleswaram" group, they help local residents get started with responsible waste management practice. We care for Jayanagar volunteers. Pic courtesy: Usha Shetty Residents presented information on various aspects of waste management. Suma Rao presented information on what is considered as waste,…

Going around, visiting my friends and also checking out the condition of lakes, I got some images I'd like to share with you.One of my friends, Hema, has a simple "golu" this time, without the kalasha that would make it mandatory for her to stay home all the nine days and offer worship:Here she is, contemplating it:Here's the rangoli she's done for it:and the decorated plate for it:Another of my friends, Arun, helped his mother set up a traditional golu, with the village next to the steps, and all the dolls on them, being symbolic of the universe that the…

It was the Joy of Giving Festival Week from October 2nd to 8th all over the the country. Children's Movement for Civic Awareness (CMCA) volunteers from Bangalore South Zone felt it was a good idea to put up a sale and generate some funds for the activities of CMCA. Volunteer Chaya with customers. Pic courtesy: Ravikala Baliga Apart from the usual gift items, there were loads of hand painted diyas, dupattas, sarees, wonderful homemade eatables like chaklis, kadale puri, cakes, chocolates, etc. on sale. Needless to say, it all disappeared in a jiffy and there was a demand for more!!The…

"Krafff", staged by La Compagnie du Théâtre Romette ( a collaboration between an artistic director, Johanny Bert and a choreographer Yan Raballand) cannot be called a "play" in the usual sense of the term. There are a team of five "actors"who, on stage, create a life-sized mannikin out of lengths of craft paper and a few rubber bands. Four of them ,(whom I must designate as puppeteers, though they claim not to be) then bring the marionette to life, and it interacts, for a riveting 35 minutes, with the fifth member, who is a dancer and acrobat, with all the…

When I realized that a play by the famous actor Steve Martin, which had also drawn more than its fair share of controversy, was going to be staged by   Tahatto   a young Bangalore-based theatre group, I was very intrigued, and contrary to my usual habit of not travelling across town for a play, did so...and was not disappointed. Set in a Parisian bar in 1904, the play imagines a comical encounter between Pablo Picasso and Albert Einstein, both of whom are in their early twenties and fully aware of their amazing potential. Not content with this, Steve Martin introduces…

I visited my friend Dr. Sanjeev Managoli today, and in idle curiosity, asked him, "Don't you have a landline in your home?" Sanjeev immediately took out this registration form where he has applied for a BSNL connection. It is dated June 2012:It's now four months, and he has heard nothing about the connection yet.I thought that BSNL were giving off-the-shelf connections now, after hordes of subscribers surrendered their connections with the advent of mobile phones, sick of the monopolistic pathetic service of BSNL.However, it seems that sometimes BSNL hasn't improved at all.... ⊕

Thanks to some archaic thing called the Communicable Diseases Act, the government has monopoly control of a lot of public health information. I.e. if three people die of plague in your school or neighbourhood, the hospital or clinic that tried to treat and cure them is not allowed to tell anyone that they are handling dengue cases. Instead, they have to report it to BBMP as a 'suspected dengue' case, which will be verified by another fossil called the National Institute of Virology in Hyderabad, after which dengue will be confirmed. If any hospital violates this protocol, it will get…

I've been doing this for years, and been reviled as "cheap"...but now recycling has become "cool" and here's my how-to....Requirements:Envelopes. This obviously works better with the long envelopes that arrive in the post. "Windowed" envelopes won't work (those with a cellophane window to display the name and address inside.) I use this method on invitation cards and thick envelopes, too, but be prepared for the occasional tearing and wastage.A sharp paper-knife, of the sort I have photographed. The blade needs to be thin, long and sharp.How:Slit open the glued folds of the envelope, on the width (after having opened it…