Society

Bangalore Literature Festival (BLF), Bengaluru’s flagship community-funded literary event on the cultural calendar of the city, is all set for a sixth edition on October 28 and 29 at the Hotel Lalit Ashok lawns in Kumara Krupa High Grounds, Bengaluru. Building on the success of over the past five years, this year Bangalore Literature Festival (#blrlitfest) has a “Speak Up, Speak Out” theme and will feature a host of distinguished authors, speakers and artistes including Ramachandra Guha, Perumal Murugan, Paul Zacharia, Ambai, Hardeep Singh Puri, Suketu Mehta, Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble, NS Madhavan, Girish Karnad, Sonal Mansingh, Gideon Haigh, Twinkle…

I remember the day well. Several of us had received a Whatsapp message asking us to participate in a silent protest on Besant Nagar beach on February 26, 2017.  The message said the protest idea had been mooted by a group of women. I remember thinking to myself – Who are these women? Are they really going to do something? Maybe the message is a hoax... And I did not go. I wish I had gone to Besant Nagar beach that day. I would have witnessed the birth of an all-women initiative that calls itself VoiceOfPeople. No leader, no followers,…

Once a year, Bengaluru becomes busy, being the poor cousin of Mysore, the grand-dasara city. The capital lives her dual life with Navrathris, the festive flashes of silk sarees and gold jewellery, surrounded by dry, autumn days of brown trees and dead leaves among trash piles. You do see women visiting each other hurriedly to exchange prasadams and if you peep into their houses, you can also catch glimpses of their droll doll sets, assorted gifts and the sound of bhajans. Still, the seasons run in parallel and it’s a bipolar city. The Durga, Laxmi and Saraswathi idols are prayed…

It is that time of the year again. Of Devi puja, and bombe habba. Of Garbha and Sindhoor Khela. Of celebration and food. I was a 11-year-old in the steel city of Vizag when I first experienced Durga Puja celebrated the Bengali way. For a Kannada / Tamizh speaking girl used to dolls being arranged in homes during Navaratri (and being prodded in the back to sing a carnatic song while visiting others’ homes for Golu), the community celebration of Durga Puja was a revelation. During the next few years of my stay there, my friends and I learnt to…

There is one thing to be said for the Bengaluru monsoons – it pulls down the curtains on the city and puts you back into the float of your memories. If you wade through the waterlogged streets during the rains, you at least need not see the crowds, smell the traffic or taste the garbage. You just have to squint through your half-shut eyes as you walk under a straggly umbrella in the pouring rains and understand that this year, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagar Palike has not undertaken the recharge that you did not expect it to pursue, anyway. Not…

A few months into my first job as reporter in The Times of India, Bangalore, in the 1990s, Gauri joined the desk, on transfer from the Delhi office. “Hello, mari..” (that's Kannada for pet, or little one) she said, and gold-flecked brown eyes twinkled with the promise of much mischief, great humor and the thrill of a million little rebellions. Gauri wasted no time in taking charge, and now I had two shoulders to cry on, which I did a lot of in those days, for the same reasons that most 23-year-olds need a shoulder to cry on that is…

Bengaḷūru, today, is bursting at its seams trying to provide for a population well beyond the capacity of its infrastructure. One would assume any proposed remedy would refer to planning methods adopted in the early settlements and respond to the city’s unique topography. Instead, the authorities concerned seem to have divorced themselves from local wisdom as they go about creating land parcels catering to commercial, and opportunistic interests, ignoring heritage and ecology. A few years ago, when I started my research on Bengaḷūru, the journey took me to the oldest labyrinths of the city, the past reached out across the…

As Indian cities expand at breakneck speed, they gobble up surrounding villages at a blistering pace. Mumbai is no different.  However, if you look for it, you will still find traces of several villages, older than the city itself, that have survived the onslaught of urbanisation. Some maintain their way of life, because they are fishing villages and depend on the sea for survival. Others are not so lucky and have become sites for low-income housing in a city where real estate is one of the most expensive in the country. These images bring us snatches of life from a…

The compound wall of the AMM Matriculation Higher Secondary School in Kotturpuram was as bad as any other compound wall in the city, till a few months ago. The wall was filled with political posters, making it an eyesore.   Some time last year, three 10th grade students - Ritvik Roy, Siddharth Kumar and Sai Muthuraman thought their school compound wall urgently needed a facelift. In the words of Ritvik, he and his friends were fed up with political posters all over and they wanted to replace it with something meaningful. Thus an idea took shape in the mind of…

If you Google ‘traveling to India’, you’ll be flooded with blog posts written by Americans or Europeans discussing their “spiritual journey to India”, “how to overcome Delhi belly” and “advice to avoid being scammed”. But what does not often pop up on your search results are blogs and perspectives from anyone with a darker skin tone than white. There are blogs upon blogs written by white women traveling to India for one reason or another who share their stories of first impressions, challenges, advice on what to wear, how to eat and what to say. There is a never ending…