Z-Blogs

 A walk in City Market on a Sunday evening is very challenging. It involves dodging shoppers, beggars, garbage dumped on the road and the occasional hungry aggressive cow. Pic by Ravi Kaushik ⊕

Road is to be widened for 3.3 kms between Yeshwanthpur circle (NH4) and Cauvery junction in Bellary road (NH7), via CNR Rao circle, Maramma Temple circle, Sankey tank road and Bhashyam circle. The entire stretch would be made a six-lane road of 30 m width. BBMP will cut 501 trees and acquire 27,590 sq m of land during the project. Total project cost is around Rs 33 cr. BBMP held a Bhoomi Pooja for Sankey road widening on December 7th. Last week High Court had given BBMP the go-ahead for widening. Pic: BBMP Work on the stretch is divided into…

With the soaring gold prices one would want to find a substitute which looks as elegant as the yellow metal. So here it is... the substitute can be Kundan jewellery, silver jewellery, antique and imitation jewellery which looks graceful. Not everybody can shell out `2915 (24 carat gold, as on 29th November) per gram. With the marriage and festival season coming up, these are a few alternatives that you can try at a lower price. Pure silver (gold plated) Italian mesh design set, priced at Rs 13,950, The Gallery, Jayanagar Pic: Nagashree Gururaj Kundan earring with meenakari work, priced at…

 Apples and Oranges for sale at City market. Pic by Ravi Kaushik. ⊕

Jayalakshmi and her husband are the founders of Basavangudi based Asha Dollmakers which highlight tradition as well as creativity during weddings. According to old Mysore wedding traditions, it is considered auspicious to give dry coconut, roasted chana, jaggery and arishina-kumkuma (turmeric and vermilion) to the bride during Vara pooje, a function to welcome the groom to the wedding. Over the years, innovations have led to creative figurines dressed to look like traditional dolls.Wedding contractors and marriage halls place bulk orders with individuals or small-scale units producing such figurines. Although the price varies depending on customer specifications and quantity, the cost…

 An unusual play: "The Water Station" is a theatre production co-produced by The Japan Foundation, a Japanese government cultural agency, and Theatre Roots & Wings, Kerala. It is written by an award-winning Japanese playwright Shogo Ohta, and directed by Sankar Venkateswaran, with an all-India castselected by auditions across the country.The play will be premiered in Ranga Shankara, Bangalore on 29 & 30 November 2011, and is set to tour several cities in India and Southeast Asian countries including Colombo and Jaffna, Sri anka in 2012.Synopsis of the Play"The Water Station" is a two-hour, wordless performance. Walking through a barren andscape, eighteen…

Very urgent, just 20 hours to go.... Amit Gupta, an Indian entrepreneur in Newyork, a friend and a kind soul needs a bone marrow match for a Peripheral Blood Stem cells donation and you can help.If you live in Bangalore India, chances are you can help not only Amit, but the many, many other people around the world. South Asians have a dramatically lower chance of finding a match in the worldwide bone marrow registries than other populations. While this is a big and often tragic problem, it's one that can be fixed!So what can you do? Get to the nearest…

Flowers for Sale at Basavanagudi. A colourful range of flowers awaits any customer who would have to venture out in the morning while the flowers are still fresh.Pic by Ravi Kaushik.⊕

Who doesn't want to buy new footwear often? But there is such a thing called ‘wallet factor.' Many youngsters cannot afford to spend too much on footwear - so small time footwear shops are an affordable alternative. Flip flops Pic: Nagashree Gururaj I buy sandals sold on the roadside; they are classy and affordable too. I don't like to wear same footwear for a long time, so this is the best deal, I can buy these for just `100", says Shruti Gombi, 22, a student. College students favour these shops the most. "We have all the latest things which customers…

 A memorable meeting... On the 6th of November,2011, I was privileged to be at a gathering of some of eminent birdwatchers of Bangalore. The gracious host was none other than the doyen of birdwatching in Bangalore, Zafar Futehally who has been instrumental in popularizing birding as a hobby in our city; ironically, the hobbby seems to be catching on in ever-increasing numbers as the number of species of birds in the City's shrinking parks and vanishing lakes are steadily decreasing.Here's Zafar Sahib, whose long years of service to ornithology cannot be understated: Several other eminent ornithologists and scientists, all of whom share…