Bangalore Rising

This desire to not let the ball drop is egging us on. This time,  Ramanan  & I went over to Prerana's office last evening. Prerana (introduced to me by both  Madhulika  and Kab) is an NGO that is doing yeoman service in educating meritorious students from financially disadvantaged families. The idea was to meet Mr. Pramod Kulkarni who founded Prerana over a decade ago in Banashankari, Bangalore, to figure out ways we could work togeth er. We came back with loads of ideas, dos and don'ts, and enormous respect for the man who is quite literally building lives and giving hopes to talented youngsters.  I won't bore you with the details of our conversation, but we now have some good inputs to start the organisation we desire to start, helping disadvantaged children get education - a slight departure from Prerana's focus on meritorious students. Three girls who are finishing their 12th grade thanks to Prerana happened to be at the Prerana ...

I had to write this. And share. I am truly tormented. Our cook Subramaniam, who has been with us for nearly eight years, is a nice, quiet man. He lives with his mother, wife and three kids. The oldest, a girl, is starting her final year of B of Comp App degree program, and the second, also a girl, will start her 12th grade, come April.  Like a lot of people of his ilk, he struggles to make ends meet, primarily due to mounting school fees (about 1.8L this year). We do cover some of those fees, to relieve some of his financial burden. The second child is especially bright, and we would hate to see her drop out to take up some menial job. The last couple of weeks have been particularly odd though. Shanthi noticed that Subramaniam was forgetful; his quality was inconsistent, and seemed too lost. So today, since I stayed back home first half to tend to my mother who has been somewhat under the weather, I met him after a very long time. As he was walking out, I enquired like I us...

It is but natural that we are a nation of cynics. Of course it is not at all surprising we are this way, since we have been governed by a bunch of corrupt, self-seeking megalomaniacs for a long time - primarily Congress in the centre, and a ragtag bunch of opportunists in the states, who denuded the state exchequer for personal gains.  We also are a generation of fools and cowards, who either stayed away from the political spectrum for fear of backlash, or were mere v oters who toed the family line - for stability, and safety. From the time our umbilical cords have been cut, we have been trained to obey, and never stray. Our parents drummed into our collective heads, that in order to survive, and possibly thrive, hard work and anonymity paid more dividends than independent thought and leadership. If middle-class India epitomised this culture, the average TamBram family took this as the holy grail and never strayed from this straight and narrow path. Of course, it served its pur...

This is not exactly the way I would have loved to start my first post for the year. But this post was prompted by today's news that Bangalore much touted Namma Metro Rail project's Phase 1 Corridor rollout is about a year behind schedule ("will be operational by Sep 2015, promised Chief Minister Siddharamiah"), and burning ~Rs 2.5 crore additionally for every day of delay. And there is absolutely no accountability. BMRCL, the agency that is building and operating the rail project is let off, and there is no single government agency that has been tasked with oversight. I have always felt that India lacks project management skills. None of our projects - public or private, end up being completed on time, within costs, as per quality norms. We don't have processes, we don't have good caliber specialists, we don't have the honesty to accept our shortcomings, and we don't have the will to learn. This malaise is evident in every project across the ...

The report on my twenty-four hour whirlwind trip to Chennai this weekend can wait. But I must tell you about the cabbie that dropped me off home from Cantonment Railway Station late last night. Cheerful Sudhakar Shanthakumar got chatty no sooner I hopped into his Toyota Etios cab outside the noisy & chaotic station. After the usual conversation starter “Aiyoo…baala traffic saar illi, parking maddakkey kooda kashta..”, we got talking about his car, his profession, his family, and life in general. When I eventually hopped off sixteen kilometres, and forty minutes later, close to midnight, I walked out shaking hands with a winner. Sudhakar is 41 years old, has a teacher for a wife, and a son who is a 7 th grader at Baldwin High near Hennur. Coming from a pretty poor background, he proudly claimed that he was self-made. With nothing more than a commercial driver’s license as his asset, he became a long-distance bus driver for nearly a dozen years, ferrying passengers to and ...

Religion: My classmate, Artemizia Vaz fell for it hook, line, and sinker. I told her that I was a Roman Hindu. She said she never knew such a denomination existed. Roman Hindus, I explained, were a small sect from Southern India, who went to temples Sunday mornings, decked up in dhoti and kurta, attended mass bhajan sessions at the temple, and celebrated Diwali on December 25. I lived a Roman Hindu for the rest of my college life. You don’t want an ill-tempered, large, strong woman as an enemy, do you? Godmen. I was deep asleep when my dad and mom woke me up. It was a tented waiting area somewhere near Manohar Pukur Road I think (or could be Sarat Bose Road…who cares anyway). Our turn to meet Elimbichapazham (Limbu) baba had come. At a godforsaken 1am. When we were ushered into this tiny room, the baba was seated on a low stage, with a couple of his ‘bhaktas’ next to him. I have a hazy recollection of this young man with a stubble, probably wearing kaavi thundu…he listened to my ...

Back in the ‘70s, Southern Avenue was a tree lined, quiet street. Jolkhabar was across the street, famous for its spongy rosogolla, divine lal-dhoi, and yummy dhakai porota. The pantu-da’ar chaa-aar-singara’ar dokan   was diagonally opposite, sharing a wall with the panwallah who also made mouth-watering begun-bhaja; the puchka-wala sat right next to them at the corner of Southern Avenue and Lake Place. There was also the uniquely-Cal bhelpuri wallah who sat outside Mehta House, with just the 30-feet width of Lake Place separating him from the puchka-wallah. The bhelpuri-wallah had this gigantic, yellow, metal trunk with wheels. When he set up shop by opening the humungous lid, it exposed a massive tray with a million compartments. He would pull out two sheets from a glossy magazine tucked on the side, convert them into a short wide cone, put a handful of various lip-smacking stuff into the cone, toss in some gooey liquid, give it a nice swirl, garnish it with some sev and c...