Sobha Althea-Azalea: Freedom from landfill, freedom from pesticides

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Our 100% organic garden pooh-poohs the superstition that it is impossible to live without pesticides and synthetic fertilisers on this earth. It’s high time naysayers and those who champion pesticides stopped rationalising the use of deadly cocktails on the soil.

The residents of Sobha Althea-Azalea, Yelahanka, Bangalore, will not forget this Independence Day for two important reasons:

  1. We are 100% successful in managing our waste. No waste goes out of our complex. All the garden waste gets vermi-composted. Kitchen waste is turned into super-rich organic manure using a simple, cost-effective composting method. All the dry waste is recycled and sent to factories as raw material. And, the hazardous bio-medical/sanitary waste is sent for incineration through Semb-Ramky.
  2. The Mysore Horticultural Society, Lalbagh, picked out our organic garden for ‘Best Ornamental Garden & Landscape” and awarded us with a trophy on August 14. Continue reading →

In this little republic, change is inevitable

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gummagol

(Clockwise) 1. The grama sabha ‘katte’. 2. The change-makers led by GP president Mahadevi Vali. 3. The GP office in Gummagol.

Waste-wise, water-wise, solar-powered roads, a composting yard, a nearly foolproof sanitation scheme and willingness to achieve a lot more by involving everyone in the village, especially children. To top it all, its Gram Panchayath (GP) is headed by a woman.

If I ever want to live in a village, this would be it. Period. Continue reading →

Devastated by floods, but drowned by corruption

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“When we tell them that the ration card was washed away in the floods, they say, ‘what can we do? If you want rice and kerosene, you have to show the card’.”

Bureaucratic response can be so downright callous! No wonder the scene was awash with such experiences when North Karnataka suffered the worst ever natural calamity in 2009.

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Continue reading →

Everybody loves a good flood

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The torrential rains battering Shimoga district have had parts of Hampi and surrounding towns and villages submerged. The Tungabhadra is in full flow. So is the suffering of the poor. It brought back the bitter memories of covering the 2009 North Karnataka floods. For those interested in reading first-hand field reports, here’s a series I wrote for ‘India Together’.

Cooking must go on even in this messed-up, roofless kitchen in Hiresindhogi of Koppal district.

Cooking must go on even in this messed-up, roofless kitchen in Hiresindhogi of Koppal district.

When all hell breaks loose, make merry.

This is exactly what some flood victims in Koppal district resorted to once they were distributed compensation for partially damaged houses—not because it was plenty, but too paltry to be put to good use. In the worst-hit Hachcholli of Bellary district, many poor people hit arrack shops or gambled away the relief fund. Paradoxically, amid its ruins stands a wine shop—all intact. Continue reading →

The pleasure of an image called ‘Roger Federer’ & why it ain’t over yet

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fed3Wimbledon is over and hard court season has set in. The ‘write-off Roger’ brigade seems to have suffered a setback after his heroic 4th set comeback at SW19 a few weeks ago. It will resurrect itself if he fails to float above the fray in the upcoming US Open.

I am presenting excerpts from my writings for Bleacher Report and it will tell you why for fans like me, it ain’t over until the man hangs up his boots and calls it a day. Continue reading →

A bale of jasmine

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jas2

“How do you wash your hair?”

“Hmmm… just like you wash yours, Rashmi,” replied Nalina.

“Mine is thin and short. But yours! Everyone at the wedding said it touches your bum.” Continue reading →

Eid mubaarak, Khan uncle!

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“Long ago, I jumped off my ship which caught fire. Not a bruise or a burn on my body. I swam to the shore. But the land didn’t agree with me.”

As Khan uncle sat against the blameless blue skies on an extraordinarily beautiful sunny morning with that charming smile, it was difficult to agree with what he said. Continue reading →

Packaging pollution: Taco Bell, can you reduce the burden on Mandur?

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taco4

Food overloaded with fat can be a put-off especially when all you want is a bowl of salad and a bigger bowl of soup on a rainy afternoon. With those very few relatively healthier eating options shutting shops one after another in Mantri Mall, I had no other go but to drag my friend to Taco Bell for a fill yesterday. Continue reading →

Pains of parenting amidst Vibgyor School rape incident & the like

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Pic source: TOI

Pic source: TOI

So, it began all over again this morning. A “how to keep yourself safe from marauding rapists” session with my little girl.

I cannot define what the crime is in the four-letter word, no definitive answer to “why are you telling me this?” one-liners, can’t answer all her “whys?” each time I hold a ‘good touch and bad touch’ session, and cannot suppress the gut-wrenching pain when she starts giggling each time I tell her where strangers are not supposed to touch her. Continue reading →

Massive beehive built in 8 minutes: A gift on World Environment Day?

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IMG_20131026_072702The buzz started at around 2 pm yesterday with a just few bees. In the next couple of minutes, the swarm grew bigger and bigger and the bees started piling up on each other. Eight minutes of manic activity, this massive beehive took the shape of black icicles and then, everything went silent. Continue reading →

Sobha Althea-Azalea: Mandur crisis affects us, but just a little

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Giving back to where it belongs: All the kitchen waste and garden waste is turned into rich organic manure and given back to where it belongs.

Giving back to where it belongs: All the kitchen waste and garden waste is turned into rich organic manure and given back to where it belongs.

Going by the media reports, the Karnataka government certainly doesn’t have a solution in sight for the Mandur landfill crisis. No government wants to drag a reluctant multitude towards a safe future by roiling up the system and suffer the drubbing during elections. Better safe than sorry, right?

Amidst such a sordid state of affairs, I feel immensely proud to congratulate the residents of Sobha Althea-Azalea, Yelahanka, for achieving multiple milestones in just two years. Continue reading →

Mandur landfill crisis revisits: Luxury of peacetime over, let’s stop being deliberately callous

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The reality in Mandur. (Pic: The Hindu)

The reality in Mandur. (Pic: The Hindu)

Recently, I made an early-morning trip to some nurseries around Lalbagh with a friend to buy plants for our apartment garden. By forenoon, we had done most of our work but couldn’t resist the desire to step into yet another large nursery studded with beautiful succulents. As we went around enjoying the fragrance of those green little beauties, especially gardenias, the nursery staff got busy loading the green ‘waste’ into a BBMP vehicle. Some 4-5 workers went on feeding the truck for at least an hour.

When we asked, they said it was headed to Mandur landfill. Continue reading →

Katra gangrape & murder: Open defecation is only the proscenium. Gory scenes are on the backstage.

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WTD

The recent gangrape and ‘murder’ of two teenage Dalit girls in Katra in Uttar Pradesh allegedly by upper caste men spews out multiple questions. To attribute the entire tragedy to open defecation alone would mean refusing to see the issue in its eye. Stubborn patriarchy, dehumanising caste system, honour killing of innocent victims (the hush-hush allegation amongst the villagers who think there couldn’t have been a better end to the girls’ lives) and everything else that finds it normal to let half of its human race out to defecate…

What a magnificent desolation India has turned itself into! Continue reading →

Delhi gang-rape: Before, now and forever…

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Nothing can explain what drove those criminals to subject an innocent girl to such unimaginable violence in New Delhi last year. The nation erupted in retaliation, demanding the worst-possible punishment to the rapists. “Death to all” brought solace to some, justice to others. In some cases, both. In some other cases, neither.

English: Edited version of File:Indiagatelight...

But to call it “victory” or “justice” would mean belittling the brutality that countless women suffer at the hands of criminals who walk around guilt-free in every nook and corner of this country. How do we explain the oppression Dalit women often suffer? These crimes never even find a mention in the National Crime Report Bureau. They have happened before, they are happening now and will go on forever.

Rape comes in many forms. Here’s one that happened on August 29, 2001. A Dalit woman was paraded naked in her village for allegedly encouraging an inter-caste marriage between an ‘upper’ caste girl and ‘lower’ caste boy.

Nothing has changed in more than a decade. Not even the way we define rape and the degree of brutality. Because every case is “the rarest of rare” to those who have been subjected to it. Continue reading →

Saving sparrows: Dilawar’s nest box initiative has come a long way

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dilawarWhen I wrote about Sparrow Man Mohammed Dilawar in August 2010 for India Together, I did not know I would take his message out of my balcony with ample support and enthusiasm from fellow-residents at my apartment complex. Thanks to these bunch of bird-lovers, our small-scale initiative has been kicked off. We are excited and are about to install the nest boxes bought from Dilawar on our premises. Hope our dreams come true!

Here goes the story on Dilawar, his commitment and perseverence… Continue reading →

We manage 21 types of waste in Sobha Althea-Azalea, every day…

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How would you feel if a housekeeper trained by you gives back lessons on how to differentiate between many types of plastic waste?

This is what happened a week ago when I went down to the basement to check if things were in order. This is where secondary segregation of our dry waste collected from each household happens every day.

When I asked Lakshmi, our housekeeper, why plastic waste was lying in 3-4 separate bins, she said type A fetches more money than type B… She and the remaining 11 housekeepers know it better than perhaps I will ever know.

The result? We are segregating TWENTYONE types of waste every day at Sobha Althea-Azalea! Continue reading →

Jew hunter or bounty hunter, Christoph Waltz shines!

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English: Christoph Waltz on the red carpet of ...

Great writers can bring a story alive. But it takes great actors to help us see the truth in a different light. I wonder if things would have been what they are if Christoph Waltz hadn’t played Col. Hans Landa, the sly Jew hunter in Inglourious Basterds, and the antebellum bounty hunter Dr King Schultz in Django Unchained. Continue reading →

‘English Vinglish’: Aren’t we permanently colonialised?

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Sridevi

A script freshly out of the oven, albeit peppered with its own set of stereotypes. A beautiful cast spearheaded by an actor with gigantic acting prowess. The coming-together of a debutant director and a comeback superstar…

English Vinglish was set for an all-out success when Gauri Shinde’s keen observation of her mother’s predicament of being a non-English speaking woman began to verbalise itself. It seems the rest was all bound to happen: Gauri’s meeting with Sridevi, the latter falling in love with the script and the resounding success that should shame half-baked, dim-witted multi-crore and multi-starred melodramas into submission. Continue reading →

Oh, Bangalore of yore!

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South Parade, Bangalore.

First came the plague, then pride and then ‘progress’. That quaint, obscure village where rural air refused to settle now wears a façade of inexorable modernity. Long back, behind this façade stood a different kind of past. Ducking under the mystic clouds of nostalgia is perhaps the only way to enjoy it. Continue reading →

Bangalore’s garbage explosion: Segregation at source is the only solution

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Recycle-get this...

Everything is garbage until it is segregated. However, despite a never-before crisis staring it in its face, the government doesn’t seem to have realised that there can be answers to what seem to be gigantic problems. As for the one that has pushed Bangalore and of course, surrounding villages like Mandur and Mavallipura over the edge, the answer is simple: The problem has to end where it begins. Continue reading →

US Open: Why Federer Will Win 18th Slam Despite Djokovic & Murray in His Way

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With two strong contenders—Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray—standing in the way of the World No. 1, some are already talking about how weakened Federer’s chances are. But, should it matter to the Swiss maestro?

Well-trodden path

This is not the first time that Federer has had to wade his way through younger opponents. Leave aside players like Stepanek, Haas, Hewitt and Roddick because most other players are younger and perhaps, stronger.

For the rest of the article, click Bleacher Report

Andy Murray: Will the US Open Be His Next Eureka Moment?

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Some of us can script our own life story, only a rare few of us can edit it. It is this editing in sportspersons’ lives that decides where they will eventually stand.

Federer has done it: from being a racket-smashing youngster to a man on a seemingly never-ending tennis campaign of seduction with his preternatural authority in shot-making. As for how influential he is as a human being and as an ambassador of sport, a lot of ink has already been spilled.

For the rest of the article, click Bleacher Report

The decline of Anna Hazare ‘movement’: why it is not surprising

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English: india against corruption

Silence, an awkward one at that, is impenetrable especially if it is preceded by euphoria. It is often dense. It leaves one impossibly lonely.

The Team Anna that would stop at nothing to drag the entire nation (most parts of it reluctant) towards a superstructure—its own fixed version of cure to all the maladies faced by an over-populated nation—is now left with the same option of fighting corruption through political process that it refused to be a part of just weeks ago. Continue reading →

Roger Federer: This Beauty Isn’t Just a Streak. It’s the Feast of the GOAT

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Many prayers have been heard. Many questions have been answered.

But, of all the solace one could savor having followed the Swiss genius loyally till his seventh Wimbledon title, the record 17th Slam and his march back to No.1, a blissful break from all the bunkum about his dying legacy tops the list. Period.

For the rest of the article, click ‘Bleacher Report’.

On the Tunga’s lap

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English: Tunga river in front of Sri Mata, Har...

Years of hiatus ended abruptly when I was compelled to visit my village in North Karnataka. Compelled I was because nothing else but only my uncle’s death could have taken me back there. A monstrous 10-wheeler truck had run over him and he had died with his eyes open. It felt as if he stared at death and slid into a world of his own. Continue reading →

Was Wimbledon 2010 loss a turning point in Roger Federer’s career?

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Sometimes, monumental losses prove not how far apart the talents of the winner and the runner-up were, but how agonizingly close.

The 2008 Wimbledon final between Federer and Nadal proved just that. On any other day, losing a match by five points (204 of Federer’s to 209 of Nadal’s) would not have turned out to be so colossal.

But it did. Such was the game and the rivalry.

For most of his fans, I think Federer’s first French Open in 2009 almost erased the pain caused by this loss. For me, it is still the most tragic moment. I knew he would win the FO some day.

Click Bleacher Report for the rest of the article.