deponti to the world

deponti

Wed, 14 May 2008 04:35:11 GMT

Interesting art event in Iceland

Tue, 13 May 2008 09:17:27 GMT

Someone I have got to know fairly well is off for this event:

http://www.artmuseum.is/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-2182/3368_read-1041/date-995/

Seems to be very interesting...waiting for an account when he returns.

One of my very few political posts.....

Tue, 13 May 2008 07:11:02 GMT

I do not like to post comments about politics or activist activities normally, even though I am involved with some of them and try to do the pitiful little that I can.

But I did go to a political meeting for Citizen Matters, and came away disappointed (and why is *that* not a surprise?)

Here's my view of what happened

It was really sad to see an academician of Dr Manmohan Singh's stature spouting political figures, casting political aspersions, and making political promises (the kind that are normally written on the surface of a pond). Instead of bringing forth leaders whom we can look up to, our political system ensures that even people who are worthy of respect are brought down to the level where the average citizen scorns them....

Have you had a Shek?

Mon, 12 May 2008 18:04:25 GMT

How conveniently placed this Devnarayan Badam Shek Ice Cream Center (note American spelling) is...

It's right in front of the Dheeksha Healthcare Centre, which presumably, will be required as the Shek makes its way down the consumer's system.....

And in case you thought a Shek was a big fat-nosed genial anti hero of a recent animated hit movie, you have your spelings orl rong....

The only thing I really miss...

Mon, 12 May 2008 13:01:43 GMT

Had a somewhat hectic weekend, with the JLRNTP, an excellent photography workshop by kalyan and the monthly QuizFamilies meet (which this time was a lunch quiz)....I never missed being off the net, but one thing I do have to catch up on is...friends' posts on both LJ and Blogger...and there is so much of interesting stuff that I feel frustrated that I don't have the time to consider them and write commments. Me, I love to talk!

So instead of my opinions or more words...here's a nice picture of Mr Bill and Ms Coo, on a balcony somewhere in my area....

I read somewhere once, "How nice if we were oviparious instead of viviparous...if we wanted to, we could have children, if we didn't want to, we could have breakfast!"

Conquest....

Mon, 12 May 2008 08:47:54 GMT

Someone I know has been agonizing over taking one particular professional exam for months now. She has worried about it, studied for it, taken a mock exam...and still continued to worry. I was wondering when she would stop thinking about how she would do on it, and take it,at last...because I was convinced that she would pass WFC...With Flying Colours. The trouble, and the psychological block of this exam is, that the pass mark is 85%!

Also, if she passed it, the company for which she works would pay the exam fees, otherwise, she would have to do so...

....So she finally did take it last week. And passed. (She got 196/200 but that I think may not be very material to her, though it's the kind of performance that I thought she would achieve, all along.)

The perception of a tough peak ahead is often more daunting to a mountaineer than the peak itself....

Very happy for shortindiangirl.

"Climb every mountain
Ford every stream
Follow every rainbow
Till you find your dream" (Sound of Music)

Swimming...Citizen Matters....

Fri, 09 May 2008 13:14:00 GMT

I was happy that Citizen Matters wanted one of my, er, humorous articles, and I wrote one on how my friends and I learnt to swim....

Here it is

OK, off to the pool now...!

Great inter-racial photograph

Fri, 09 May 2008 03:52:32 GMT

The photographs on India Nature Watch are a source of wonder, solace, interest, information-- and sometimes amusement.

Here's a "black and white" photograph with a witty caption...

http://www.indianaturewatch.net/displayimage.php?id=47550

What I like is the fact that someone had this thought when he took the photograph!

Off to Bannerghatta, where the next batch of the JLRNTP-1 is starting today...I do like meeting people who take the course (mohanvee is going to be one of them) and I hope to get in a little birding, too.

Meanwhile, here's one small flower from the raceme of the Queen's Flower:

The scientific name for the tree is LAGERSTROEMIA SPECIOSA....to me, that takes all the beauty and wonder and fun out of that tree...I know that scientific names are necessary, but...I would love to admire a Queen's Flower, but I don't think a LAGERSTROEMIA SPECIOSA would enthuse me too much. So a rose by another name might NOT smell as sweet!

Here's more info about the tree . You would think they would put up a colour photograph (or a colour painting) of such a beautiful flower, wouldn't you? Oh no, they put in a black-and-white sketch, which brings me back to the black-and-white photograph above....

What's this fruit called in English?

Thu, 08 May 2008 02:09:00 GMT

Here's what we call "Jamun" in Hindi, and "nAga pazham" ("snake fruit"!) in Tamizh...

I liked the way the pushcart vendor has arranged them in a basket of leaves of the rubber tree. You can see part of her scales, a couple of metric weight-stones, and her pretty bangles, too.

The poster under the leaf-basket is for a local mobile phone company.

The taste of this fruit is tangy, slightly astringent on the tongue. A purple tongue always gives away one's partiality for jamun...

First Lichi of the Year...

Thu, 08 May 2008 00:48:27 GMT

The Lichi (it is spelt in many ways..the name originates in the Chinese language) is one of my favourites.

Yesterday, KM got the first fruit of the season (which is all too short.)

YUMMMM.

I suppose I should go....?

Wed, 07 May 2008 23:42:23 GMT

As a concerned citizen, and as someone who writes for Citizen Matters , I have been invited to a citizens' meeting which will be addressed by the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh .

I have, in the past, avoided any meetings where political figures..er..figure, like the plague. The reasons are many....I find many politicians an unprincipled, lying lot, not worth the time spent in getting near them.

And the time spent is indeed awesome. No one can ever predict when a pol will arrive to address a meeting; odds are that there will be a huge delay. Today's meeting requirements are that attendees must go some vague house in the vicinity of the hall where the meeting will be held, collect the invitation, and then be in the hall by 11am. To do this reasonably comfortably, I must leave home at 9am. Why can invitations not be given, or attendees' names checked, at the venue? I have no clue, and neither, I think, have the organizers, who must go by the security requirements.

The security requirements....for a wait of several hours (I do not know when we will be allowed to leave after the meeting), one cannot take along one's mobile phone, laptop, or even water (water bottles are the new Evil Thing.) Obviously, no food either, because I might be carrying a Bomb Sandwich. Jokes apart, I must say that we faced far less of difficulties when, in the US, we went to listen to Barack Obama (ok, he is not the President...yet!) There was fairly strict security, but most of it was logical and certainly, mobiles were allowed.

If I can carry my mobile or laptop, I can certainly spend my waiting time quite usefully. But I will have to just sit and twiddle my thumbs, and all the other fingers, for a long while.

Add to this the fact that I am not a professional newshound. Perhaps someone sent from a newspaper would have the "must" factor about this, and would cheerfully resign themselves to half the day being spent in doing nothing much. But I am an Ordinary Citizen...a housewife whose husband has his weekly off today, and with whom I spend less time than I would like to....

So...I think I will finish off the morning chores and decide, in a couple of hours, what I am going to do...

Murphy's Law mandates that if I go, I will feel at the end that it was not worth, and if I don't, I will miss something interesting! After all, how often does a Prime Minister of the country address the Ordinary Citizen directly in a city far away from the capital?

Decision time approaches...I am off to the kitchen to finish the cooking of breakfast and lunch!

Volunteering...

Wed, 07 May 2008 14:06:52 GMT

I have always done some form or the other of voluntary work, but have been careful to let it occupy only my "spare" time and not let it encroach upon time that is devoted to the spouse and the household. But that is changing now....

For the past few years, I have been shaken out of my comfortable existence to not just do voluntary work, but take up the cause of a city that is rapidly degrading. I realize that I have the time and the energy to devote to this challenging and often frustrating task.

I have always written about things, and it came as a pleasant surprise to me that many people were interested in what *I* found interesting, and wrote about. So my writing on my own blog started, and satisfied me much more than writing articles for the newspaper, which never brought the kind of feedback and interaction that my blog does. Then I started writing the Bangalore-specific stuff for Metblogs, too, and that was nice. Then Citizen Matters happened, and the writing became a little bit more serious.

I concentrate on things that are of interest to the causes dear to my heart. trying to save the trees, improve the roads, introduce more cycling, and preserve the lakes...and reporting about all of it...it's beginning to take HUGE chunks out of my time, and not just my free time, which is what I wanted to do as a voluntary worker...

It has not helped that KM's off day has been ...er..involuntarily (!) changed to Thursdays, because of the power staggering at the industrial complex where his unit is. Very often I find that thanks to meetings being scheduled at odd times, or watching plays, I am sitting and writing articles and reviews at times when I was never at the computer earlier.

I am NOT interested in writing/reporting as a career, but at the same time, do enjoy writing, and really like the experience of gathering information and views and writing about it all. This, alas, does not happen to be a 9 to 5 kind of activity...

At what point should I draw the line and say, no more? I find that when I am committed to write something, I do have a compulsion to finish it within the deadline. If there is no power through the day (as happened today) I have to sit and write in the evenings. The words "have to" have appeared here...and those are not words that I want.

When "want to" starts turning into "have to", I have to pause and reflect...but I do enjoy looking around and photographing things and writing about them, and the fit is so good...

Can you hear that honking noise? That comes from the horns...of my dilemma. (And that does not Emma's Hindi heart, either.)

And meanwhile..here's an absolutely delightful scene that I caught...

This was on my way home from the eternal war against the way things are done here (the alleged Uninterrupted Power Supply, the lack of power the whole day at home, the bank, the BSNL internet connection...) I remember a tagline from some insurance ad that said, "Daddy to dolly, everyone jolly". Here, it's Mom, the daughters (twins? I couldn't catch up with them to find out) and their dollies....it lifted my heart after a long and frustrating day.

I am almost always sheltered from this world....

Tue, 06 May 2008 09:10:45 GMT

http://bangalore.metblogs.com/2008/05/05/conversations-with-a-cab-driver/

Flash on the Pan....

Tue, 06 May 2008 04:19:28 GMT

No, I don't have that subject title wrong...

Every day, as I go about my morning chores, I take out one pan to heat my morning thimbleful (all I allow myself! caffeine! caffeine!) coffee, and I love the effect of the morning sunlight on it.

So yesterday I wasted some time capturing the effect...here it is on a towel:

Here, with the coffee in it:

and here, on the polished granite of the kitchen counter (there's the green of the plants in my kitchen window, reflected in the granite too:

There's so much beauty in the kitchen in the morning....I don't feel it's drudgery at all! If only Cinderella had an S3, I think she would not be moping amongst the cinders, but trying to catch the glow of the embers and seeing if a high ISO would help....of course then, like me, she would be behindhand with her work and her stepmother would have something to say about that...

Mendicants.....

Mon, 05 May 2008 18:01:02 GMT

Here's a picture I like against all the rules.

The rules are:

1. Don't have a tree in the middle of the photograph.

2. Do not have a distracting element (like the gate-post) at one side of the photograph.

...and some others, too.

But...

I love that tree, and the steady stride those sadhus (religious mendicants) are keeping up, the casual curiosity of one, and the open road that lies beyond the gate of the JLR property; the gate and the wall stand for what is enclosed,known, secure; the road stands for what is open, unknown, a mystery... and those mendicants, with no worldly possessions, are off on that road...a road, hopefully, to the discovery of the universe within themselves.

On the way back, we also saw several Buddhists monks travelling. But these are Jain monks, I think, or Hindu ones...I don't know.

Bandipur...always something to intrigue one, and make one think.

I do wish *I* could shed my worldly possessions and stride off towards the forests like these monks are doing....!

Here's the cropped photo; no gate, only the tree, the monks, and the song of the open road:

This may not be a "distracting" photograph, but to me the unworldliness of the road and the monks lacks a counterpoint.

That's the difference between the content of a photograph and its artistic composition!

Extreme usefulness

Mon, 05 May 2008 11:35:53 GMT

This is a pean of praise to something that is so extremly useful in our lives; we just could not get along without these little cylinders. Could one have imagined, a few decades ago, that one could carry stored energy along in tiny little packs, that would then faithfully deliver a steady supply to it to whatever one wanted to keep working...!

I look up at the clock on my wall as I type this. Once upon a time, people ( generallythe male, while the females clucked at him to be careful!) would pull up a stool and climb on it, and wind up the clock each week. Now, I pop in one of these little magic cylinders, and the clock quietly and faithfully shows the right time for more than a year after I do so.

I can take along my mobile phone, my landphone all over the house, my little music gadgets, and my MLC...knowing that these, too, will not fail me as long as their little juice-supply has been ensured.

In fact, even the power supply in my car depends on them, and for two years, at least, I can depend on being mobile as long as I have them installed and cared for... They power my home, too, when the regular power fails; they light up the processions that wend their way around the city.

I still do not know WHY they are classified as A, AA, AA, and so on (yes, I know, I should google for it.) But they are, surely, amongst the most useful of human inventions.

If only they could also be disposed of in as safe a way as they are manufactured....or to ensure that they do not die on you precisely when the need is greatest!

My little and large batteries...this is my word of thanks to you. You ease my life so unobtrusively...

Security....

Sat, 03 May 2008 05:58:49 GMT

I want to be safe and secure. To this end, I lock my front door when I am away, or asleep. But how secure IS the front door?

Once my friend got locked out of her flat, and I called a locksmith, who demonstrated that her front door locks (both the navtal and the yale door lock) could be picked within a matter of minutes! He made a profound observation...Madam, these locks are only for YOUR self-satisfaction!
So actually I think shutting the door and locking it is not to deter ..er...determined thieves, but to deter the casual ones, and the rest..for my own mental satisfaction.

So..the real security exists (mainly) in our perception of it....and resides in the general network of amorphous trust that exists between the people around me. I am fairly sure that though someone can, if s/he wants, break open my front door within minutes, it won't happen within the apartment building. My neighbours opposite are away, and I do check casually that their door is properly locked...

Also, I think that I must assess the value of what I have to be protected, how important it is to me, and what the replacement-ability (er, you know what I mean) and the replacement-value would be, and take measures accordingly. Jewellery cannot be stored at home; it must be kept in a bank locker, for example. Neither should large amounts of cash be kept at home. Credit cards and cheque books should generally be kept locked up even within the home...and so it goes.

And sometimes, I do use two reasonably known entities as a check on each other. Right now, the building electrician (whom I have known for several years) is working in my home. And I need to step out to buy vegetables. So when my maid (whom,also, I know very well, including exactly where she lives) comes to clean the flat, I will tell her, "just keep an eye out, Prakash is working", and go out for about 20 minutes and get my work done. Each will keep an eye on the other (or at least, I hope that they will not form an unholy and rapacious alliance to loot me!) and I too will be able to step out for a bit without worry. I use my knowledge of the risks, or lack of them, and construct my security according to that. I know that no security can withstand the determined security-breaker (so many novels and films are based just on this opinion!), but I trust that the security will hold up to a reasonable level. What is reasonable, though? That...varies from person to person.

I think internet security is also similar to this...one takes a reasonable level of precaution against being spammed or hacked...and trusts that the rest will go well, too.

What say, kalyan? If everyone did this, security firms might not come into existence at all...obviously, this solution will not work for everyone!

The best security systems, though, are ones that rely what is unique to the user: fingerprints, for example, or iris-of-the-eye. I can never understand why passports do not have the fingerprints of the holder, it is such an easy and unique parameter to have and the passport holder can never say s/he hasn't brought hes fingers along! And they could be so easily compared, too. In fact I am amazed that such a simple way of eliminating the use of stolen passports (forged passports with matching fingerprints are of course possible) is not carried out...

Donkey Welfare Concern by Karnataka Politician

Sat, 03 May 2008 04:20:53 GMT

I put it into one of my replies to a comment on my spinach post, but it is tooooo good not to make a separate post about...

he loves donkeys

Vatal Nagaraj once decided to emulate the "rasta roko" which others had done, and decided to do an "aircraft roko" at the airport.

No, the effort was not successful, if you are asking!

I T Companies are diversifying...

Thu, 01 May 2008 20:19:42 GMT

I suddenly caught sight of this and had to whip out my MLC as the bus passed the sign at speed; so the pic is very shaky and blurred....

This is for mmk, yathin, sunson and knutties... and others whom I may not know!

What next? Yahoo! Ice cream? lingerie? detergent?

Spinach

Thu, 01 May 2008 10:06:33 GMT

Of all the multitudinous varieties of greens that are available (I could not begin to list them...there are so many....!), my favourite is spinach.

I have a very sweet young woman who brings bunches of spinach to my front door. It's fresh and green and I drool just looking at it....so this time I thought I would photograph it, too.

Just look at it...fresh and so wholesome, deliciousness is written all over it!

Of course, the bunches generally come attached with what sometimes appears to be most of the soil of Karnataka...washing has to be a careful business, and I take extra care because I am mindful of pesticides, too...

I googled for spinach washers and got either industrial stuff or this patent info

I usually make either a north Indian dish (Palak, with or without panneer or matar or alu), or a very simple south Indian dish, for which the recipe is as follows:

Cut off roots of spinach. Wash thoroughly, and chop not too fine (I generally buy three bunches at a time...what you see in that photo above.) Add some water, and boil with a little salt, just enough, so that the green colour (lovely!) is not lost. (generally, 4 to 5 min.). Drain and reserve the water. Take a little of the spinach and grind it well.

In the water that the spinach has been cooked, and mix in two tbsp of rice flour, and set aside.

Add 1 tsp oil in a pan, and sputter some mustard seeds, and 2 red chillies. Add the boiled spinach and the ground spinach (which, along with the rice flour, will bind the dish together.) Add pounded jeera and black pepper...about 1 tbsp each. Thoroughly mix the rice flour in the water and add to the pan, and let the whole thing simmer for just a minute or two, and switch off the heat.

This is fantastic with vathal kuzhambu and rice....but I could eat it on its own!

Spinach is NOT easily available in Chennai, for some reason, the plant (or herb) doesn't grow well there. But in Bangalore...it's just great.

Here's the Wiki entry for Spinach

And here's an entire cookbook devoted to it!

It's obviously high in Chrolophyll , which was once touted as the "fresh-breath" ingredient in toothpastes, prompting one wag to ask this:

"Why stinks the goat on yonder hill...
That only feeds on chlorophyll?"

...oh well, jokes apart... here, by sheer coincidence, is an LJ friend's post

Popeye...you were on to a real good thing, all those years ago! I may not have bulgy arms or one eye or a pipe stuck in my mouth...but...I *LURRRV* spinach!

I do also like the frozen variety that I can get abroad, which has all the cleaning, chopping and labour removed...I have never tried canned spinach, though.

Here's the nutrition part

Waiting for all your comments, including all you lurkers!! Do you like it? Do you hate it? How do you eat it or avoid it? Is there anyone who is allergic to it ?

I rarely make food posts....I am not one of those creative cooks, I cook to get by.

And, by the way...that colander in the picture, I have had for 32 years, and the towel, for 12 years....

Next time she comes home, I will photograph Chitra the spinach (and lemons and murungakkAi and sweetcorn in season) seller, and introduce you to her, too.

Oh, and the cost? Three bunches cost Rs.10...that is...about 25 cents...

Good to see....

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:30:33 GMT

http://bangalore.metblogs.com/2008/04/30/calligraphy-exhibition-at-ethos-art-gallery/

Bandipur flora

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 10:01:05 GMT

Two of the flowers on the Bandipur JLR campus:

I wanted to use the backlight on that lovely creeper and its flower; they are trained to grow around the cottages.

and this one below is the Pongaemia tree (HongE in Kannada), which is a common avenue tree in Bangalore, also; biodiesel is supposed to be extracted from this tree.

It is just about at the end of its flowering cycle now; a few weeks ago, the roads were carpeted with these flowers!

Gold, Mammals and others at Bandipur....

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 08:06:29 GMT

First, the gold that I struck in Bandipur. Gold comes in many forms in the forest. Here's a GOLDEN DRAGONFLY:

And then there was the gold shower of the INDIAN LABURNUM, with its cascades of petals everywhere:

And of course, the gold of the sunset as we finished the evening safari, shot (with some difficulty) through the foliage:

Then come

GAUR, or the INDIAN BISON, were really plentiful this time. I had one fellow pose for me..."you want my great haircut?"

"Or a slightly different angle?"

"Would you like to meet the others in my family? Here's the Missus.."

"And if you would like to see Junior, too...."

The conversation with the gaur over, I wanted to say hello to this beautiful SAMBAR DEER, but in true "show-the-backside-to-deponti" jungle behaviour (I think all animals and birds have to sign some kind of bond about this as soon as they are born...they have some unspecified doom coming to them if they face me or my camera from up close) he quickly went off in the opposite direction:

Then along came this handsome CHITAL (spotted deer) stag and posed with great aplomb;I clicked before he saw it was ME, and went off:

LANGURS are always the picture of grace as they lope across the forest with their tail in the characteristic "loop", or sit around calmly. Here's the tale of a tail:

The langur was feeding on leaves and after the heavy shower that we had, it must have been a "clean" diet!

Bandipur is extra beautiful to me because of the murals at JLR. I revisited the LEOPARD that Sunni Dhairyam has painted so well:

Then, of course, were the other mammals that I went to meet; here are two wild females of the most dangerous mammal species there is, displaying typical feeding behaviour:

And two wild males, displaying typical snapping behaviour:

Had a wonderful time, saying hello to Bomma, Loki, Basavanna, Ganesh, and others, too....if only I had not had my wallet picked on the way to Bandipur, things would have been perfect...but..these things happen!

Birds at Bandipur.....

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 09:08:23 GMT

Well, since That Mammal is still grimly determined that I will never see its visage (or even a twitch of its tail), let me share all the other wonderful sights of Bandipur.... Here are some of the birds (all pretty common, no Darwinian discoveries here!) that I saw.

Very common at this time of the year is the BLACK-RUMPED FLAMEBACK WOODPECKER (Dinopium benghalense...dunno why it's called "Din-OPIUM"!!), which can be seen flying about, and boring the tree-trunks (you can see a small piece falling to the ground from its work, if you look carefully!)

Also fairly easy to sight were the CRESTED SERPENT EAGLEs; this one was sitting not too far away for a brief while:

Here's a closer shot...love that sharp look!

And then the eagle flew away, but I loved the picture the bird's wings and the tree-branch made (even though not terribly in focus!)

Also easily spotted was the GREY JUNGLE FOWL:

Of course, many birds kept to their rule of keeping their back to me at all times. Here's the CHANGEABLE HAWK EAGLE; I struggled to get a decent shot in the low light:

The amazing thing was, this eagle was being mobbed by this RUFOUS TREEPIE! But ultimately, it was the treepie who flew away, and the Hawk Eagle remained...

The PEAFOWL were out in full breeding plumage at Bandipur. Here's a female, showing the typical orange under-feathers:

The beauty of a full-grown male is...incredible, no matter how many times one sees it:

Here's the beautiful horizontal arc the bird makes against the ground:

As I went to the gate to leave, I caught sight of this LARGE GREY BABBLER making a meal of someone's banana on the JLR campus:

We did see several other birds, but these were the photographs I got! As always, the mammal sightings were great too, but that's going to be another post....

What's the significance?

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:05:59 GMT

Can't understand why....

http://bangalore.metblogs.com/2008/04/29/whats-the-significance/

Is it to ward off any "evil eye"? Doesn't seem likely, either...has the KSRTC confiscated a ghatam from a Carnatic musician and put it up there as a lesson to him?