http://www.deccanherald.com/archives/no
If any of you can, do book at Bandipur JLR, and ask for the cottages with the murals in them!
- Article on the Murals at JLR Bandipur
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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
deponti- March 11th, 10:17
rushed
An article I wrote some time ago:
http://www.deccanherald.com/archives/nov192006/finearts1942320061118.asp
If any of you can, do book at Bandipur JLR, and ask for the cottages with the murals in them!
- Good article...
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- deponti
- February 10th, 23:38
I generally do not write about current affairs because I always feel that many others say it better than I could. And here, indeed, are two people who have said what I want to say, and have done it so well...
http://www.deccanherald.com/Content/Feb82009/sundayherald20090207117139.asp
I am, sometimes, seriously worried about this country of mine...my mother seems to have the canker of hate and hypocrisy rotting her from inside.
....and it doesn't help when even goddesses are caged. What's that, you ask? Well, here they are....at the Balaji Temple on Avenue Road, the temple has the "ashta lakshmi" (eight Lakshmis or Goddesses of Prosperity), four on either wall...and here's how they look:
Made me feel, for a minute, that the Rama Sene were here, too, protecting the goddesses against "western pub culture"!
I feel that the "pink chaddi" (pink panties) campaign (sending pink panties to the Rama Sene people) is, in its own way, as ridiculous as what the Rama Sene people are saying and doing. But perhaps, such a ridiculous protest brings home the folly of the Sene members....
My personal solution? I would crown myself Queen of Hearts, and like she did in "Alice in Wonderland", would shout, "Off with his head!" meaning, every Rama Sene worker, of course.
Here's where I would go before I had my coronation, to get my crown:
So from now, you lot can address me as "Your Majesty"....
- An old Deccan Herald article
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- deponti
- February 9th, 20:45
I wrote several articles and "middles" regularly for the Deccan Herald before I started writing for Citizen Matters, and after having met Sangeetha Kadur and hijacked her and Madhukar (another expert birder whose work with the digiscope can be found here ) home,I
went and googled for the article about the artists who painted the beautiful murals at Bandipur...it's at
http://www.deccanherald.com/archives/nov192006/finearts1942320061118.asp
Oh, I have referred to it in
this post
Alas, that last mural remains unfinished, and JLR never continued with this great initiative....but Sangeetha continues with her wildlife painting, and is at present working on a book on humming birds! More power to her brush...
Hmm...I thought I had lost all the articles that I wrote, I realize I can hunt for them...these simple things take the Concrete Cauliflower a while to understand!
The Wildscreen Festival proved far more interesting than I budgeted for; the masterclass by Jeremy Bristow was riveting, and the one by Laura Marshall on managing productions, applies to so many situations that demand good scheduling to ensure a successful outcome. More in my writeup for Citizen Matters! :)
- shivakumar_l in the Deccan Herald today
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- deponti
- May 18th, 2008
happy
Here's an article I really enjoyed reading in the Sunday Herald, which is the Sunday supplement of the Deccan Herald:
http://www.deccanherald.com/Content/May182008/sundayherald2008051768487.asp
All these people post their photographs regularly on INW
But Shiva, especially, has been very, very helpful to me about photography and post-processing (though I have decided not to do much of post-processing on my photos.)...and this was well before he met me personally.
However, Shiva had this comment to make:
"The press guys have messed up a lot with the content....
something and all they have written -- compared to what we told them....'Bar headed geese @ TGHalli'... what the neck band ?!?!? It was supposed to be Somanathpura!"
Accurate reporting or not....great going, guys! :)
- (no subject)
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- deponti
- August 29th, 2007
Another confession, another "uncool" thing about me...I am a cryptic crossword fanatic!
Here's my post about cryptic crosswords in Bengaluru newspapers...
http://bangalore.metblogs.com/archives/2007/08/to_cross_swords.phtml
I do love cryptic crosswords, and do any crosswords that I come across...from the very Brit crossword of the Statesman, to the sometimes-ok-sometimes-awful Hindu, to the tickle-my-wits Indian Express or the Deccan Herald...but the Saturday crossword remains my favourite!
- Moblog article in D H
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- deponti
- May 7th, 2007
'Twas good to seejacebeing quoted about moblogging in today's Deccan Herald.
And Kiruba Shankar is quoted.too...
But what's this big deal about being amongst "the top 10" anywhere? I am not for these countdown parades...a person with a few readers can write as well as one with a larger readership...
- The Wildlife Murals of Bandipur...renamed, hacked down, photo credits not given
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- deponti
- November 20th, 2006
...
Well, you can read the article ( re-titled with a bad pun of course) in the Deccan Herald of Sunday, November 19th, 2006:
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/nov192006/finearts1942320061118.asp
Photo credits have not been given (as usual.) Sainath Vellal took these pictures so that I could share these lovely murals with the world.
But do check out all the paintings (and the excellent photos bysainath at
- After a long interval...apparently my credentials at Deccan Herald are only peccable
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- deponti
- November 14th, 2006
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/nov132006/editpage2052620061112.asp
I emailed this to DH on Oct 2, got an "accepted" on Oct 3....that bleep newspaper...I have two more articles that have been aceepted, I suppose they will be published posthumously...
- Quiz Families.....a repeat
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- deponti
- October 5th, 2006
....
For an informal, fun, not-serious family quizzing, join QuizFamiles at Bangalore (no, there is no money involved.) The following article appeared in the Deccan Herald last year...and we made several new friends.( details about QuizFamilies under the cut )
The next meeting of QF is on Saturday, 7th of October; if anyone is interested, let me know.
- Menu article in DH
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- deponti
- August 10th, 2006
- cheerful
- Article on badly maintained archeological sites
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- deponti
- July 3rd, 2006
..
Found the URL to another article of mine in the Deccan Herald, a long time ago....
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/july202004/spectrum.asp
- What's on the Menu?
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- deponti
- June 30th, 2006
hungry
..
What comes to mind as soon as one says the magic (especially to a housewife) words, "Eating out"? Lovely ambience, certainly, the smell of good food, definitely...but more than all these, I think of one thing in the restaurant that is an essential adjunct to a good meal....and that's the menu card.Menus vary from a laminated sheet of paper (sometimes bearing traces of the actual dishes on it!) listing the dishes quite unemotionally, to .a fascinating, ornate piece of art.
Very often, menu cards in the "better" restaurants resemble a photo album more than a menu card! Each dish is described in a veritable prose poem, and my rule of restaurant eating is: "The size of the bill is inversely proportional to the wattage of the lights...and directly proportional to the size, and weight, of the menu." Effusions can really touch poetic heights. Who would not like to try " gently simmered lentils and a combination of ground ethnic spices in a piquant tamarind sauce"...until one found out that what was being talked about was the humble "sambar"?
Sometimes, though, it seems as if the menu has been written only for visiting foreigners, and not for the local population.I am particularly irked if I am sitting in Chennai and I am informed that parathas are "Indian unleavened bread". "Sun-fermented South Indian rice pancakes"....humph, can you recognize the every-morning-smile-at-you idlis in that description?
Another reason for fancy descriptions, I feel, is that the price factor can be bumped up quite a bit. Plain parathas cost perhaps ten rupees, but "Indian unleavened bread" would cost at least four times that! If my rasam is " a combination of fragrant Indian herbs, spices and condiments in a tamarind sauce, tempered with mustard seeds in clarified butter" then I probably can't afford it.
I sometimes think they should have a separate menu for foreign tourists. I have yet to read, on any menu in Germany, a description of wurst as "German sausage"....or an explanation of meals in the UK like "Toad in the Hole"(imagine wanting to eat something with that name!). We go and take our chances there...why not let the foreigners discover our dishes for themselves, authentically, rather than have a huge menu card in a 5-star hotel with allegedly "authentic" (ironic...the word "authentic" on anything means it isn't!) essays about the dish?
In several restaurants, particularly in the US, I find that menus have gone "digital"...that is, we just order " a main course of no.24 with a side order of no. 49." Well...this is taking things to the other extreme, I think! I do love looking at the menu and sometimes, some names are huge sources of entertainment. Many years ago, Lake View Ice Cream Parlour on M G Road used to offer a "honeymoon special for four". I like "Chainiaees" food, "fish fray", "Cauliflower Manjuri"(Manchurian),and for dessert I could do with a "milk sweat".
I am most happy with what I call the "audio menu", which consists of sitting at the table and asking the waiter when he appears "Bisiyaaga yenithey, swami?"(What's hot, boss?) and hearing the litany of available dishes, and choosing what appeals to me at that moment...none of the fancy menus will offer me a lovely "baitu" ( which actually means, one cup divided by two ) coffee....or the crisp, terse menus written up on the walls of Darshinis. Now, of course, the word "menu" has spread to non-gastronomic environments too....but to me, it will always be associated, first and foremost, with food!
(500-odd words, all of them copyright! Have just sent this off to good old DH, which doesn't stand for Dear Husband!)
- Right in the Middle....29th June, 2006, Deccan Herald
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- deponti
- June 29th, 2006
- content
..
They didn't hack this down because *I* hacked it and sent it in!
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/jun292006/editpage1524422006628.asp
The original article is at
http://deponti.livejournal.com/758.html
Good to excavate articles and send the already dead bodies in for publication!
- The article on the Jungle Lodges and Resorts Naturalists' Training Programme...a pic
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- deponti
- April 22nd, 2006
It was nice to see thatsainath has scanned the newspaper article I wrote:
http://sainath.livejournal.com/64853.html?view=177237#t177237
It is sad that a good photographer hasn't been given credit for his photographs. But you can visit his LJ to see them (they look much better than on the printed page!)
The URL of the article still doesn't work properly, it takes one to the March 17th issue of the newspaper....and there are some factual errors in the article which *I* certainly didn't make, for example, saying that I started an egroup to preserve wildlife, which is a hilarious statement!
Oh well...that's the real world! Put this behind you and get on with the next article!
- Going up!
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- deponti
- April 16th, 2006
One of the features of apartment living which no builder talks about, but which is an everyday occurrence, is the interaction of the residents, not in the clubhouse, swimming pool, gym or lawns, but in the lifts.
Every apartment building has three types of residents: the "Push-the-Button-Even-to-Go-Down-One-Floor"ers, the "I-Avoid-Lifts-Look-How-Healthy-I-Am" ers, and the general majority, who use the lifts and go to the stairs when the lifts don't work. While in the process of going down or up in the lift, it is, to me, a microcosm of life....there are sometimes strangers and sometimes friends, sometimes people from the workforce whose space coincides with your own for just those brief few minutes that you share the lift.
Sometimes people feel awkward about even these few minutes...should they smile at the other person in the lift? What if s/he doesn't smile back? Where should one look while the lift is in motion? Stare into space? Often one has to stand facing the other person...avoiding eye contact is sometimes raised to an art form, until one or the other attains the blessed nirvana of the desired floor! What a strange intimacy it is to be for a few minutes in a completely closed space with a total stranger!
Sometimes, too, one may be the only outsider in a group of people using the lift; here, one is privileged to listen to tantalizing bits of conversation that never get finished, leaving one speculating about what it was all about. If you hear scraps like "You know, it was that operation that he didn't like", or " I always prefer it toasted, you know!", or some totally random comment like that, as you get off, your mind keeps wandering back to the remark and wondering what the context could have been!
Lifts in several buildings make excellent physical specimens of the residents by working erratically. If you live on the 6th floor and the lift has a tendency to stop at, say, three-and-a-half floors, you will walk the rest of the way up...and on later occasions, you may actually start walking up all six floors! In the same way, stranding of the lifts in between floors fosters goodwill in ways never envisaged by the builder...as you stand there, wondering why the alarm bell didn't work, and yelling for help, you feel very friendly towards the neighbour you never knew before, who helpfully went and brought the security guard who ultimately helps you out!
A lift would give a very accurate picture of what has been happening in the building in the immediate past. There are the drops of milk from the morning's delivery bags. Yes, you nod to yourself as you spot the leaves, the "Soppu" seller has been by today as well. Debris from the flat on the third floor, whose occupants have gone to San Jose( like twenty three other couples in the recent pas)t…you wonder how much the rent will be hiked up for the new tenants!
Lifts also seem to bring out the artistic, and less-than-artistic self-expressions of their users…who has not seen the ubiquitous "Pooja loves Kumar" messages as well as drawings that rival anything the ancients thought of in Khajuraho, before an exasperated residents' association have the graffiti erased or painted over?
Writing about lifts reminds me of the cub reporter who was told by his editor to be as terse and to-the-point as she could in reporting on someone's death. His news report read: "Mr Swami looked up the lift shaft to see if the lift was coming down.It was. Age 48."
Think of me when you step into the next Otis or Johnson lift...and may your spirits get a lift as well as the rest of you!
This was inspired by a post inyodha's LJ about lifts..thanks yodha!
- URLs...and something I read and remembered...
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- deponti
- April 13th, 2006
giggly
Today's Deccan Herald:
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/apr132006/metrothurs1410182006412.asp
this is what the Deccan Herald calls the detailed article and what *I*call the derailed article...the original piece is on my Live Journal...
entry for Feb 27th (that's how long it's taken to get into print!)
the last middle I wrote is ...
This is an article from newspaper Deccan Herald appeared on Mar 25, 2006 in page 10. Click the following link to read : http://67.18.142.206/dhpdf/epaper/svww_showarticle.php?art=20060325a_010100005
the original article in on my Live Journal, Mar 20.
.....and I was readingyodha's post on lifts, and I responded that it made easy for some of us to always use the stairs, because in my aparment building the lift is very likely to stop at Floor 3.5 or 3.75 and people have to yell to be let out! So most of us who are fit have got into the habit of avoiding the lift. I am 52, and can do the 11 floors in my friend's apartment easily, thanks to my apartment "training"!
The post on lifts, along with my interest in writing for the newspapers, reminds me of the cub reporter who was asked to be as brief as he could in reporting a death. His report read: "Mr W looked up the lift shaft to see if the lift was coming down. It was. Age 38."
- Landmark Spotting...
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- deponti
- March 20th, 2006
- content
One of the aspects of air travel that I have never stopped enjoying, is being able to spot landmarks of cities from the air, as we land or take off. After decades of flying, I still feel thrilled if I am able to spot buildings, lakes, or other major sights from the aircraft.
Alas, most airlines make it a point of telling you which seats are the best from the point of view of smoking,movie-watching, pinching the stewardess, and so on...but no one tells you whether it would be better to sit on the right-hand side or the left-hand side of an aircraft to see the sights your aircraft is flying over. So nowadays, I first find out if the flight is going full, in which case, of course, I take the seat allotted to me and hope for the best...but if it isn't, I always ask the stewardess when boarding, if she could find out from the pilot which would be the best side to sit on. As the weather dictates which way the aircraft will take off, the pilot is often able to give me this information. This has, over the years, ensured in some memorable sights during take-offs and landings.
I remember one beautifully clear day when the pilot did a complete circuit of Manhattan Island after taking off from JFK, at such a low altitude that I could even spot the Chrysler Building, the Lincoln Center and the Empire State, apart from the proudly-standing Twin Towers....little did I know that the skyline would change within a year of my leaving New York on that visit.
I took a flight from Chennai via Tiruchirapalli and Thiruvananthapuram to Colombo....on each stage I asked the pilot where I should sit, and got to see, as a result, the beautiful Rock Temple of Tiruchi, the squat Gopuram of the Anantha Padmanabha Swamy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram, and then the Galle Sea Face and its beautiful hotels as we glided in to land at Colombo!
This piece was prompted by the flight to Pune I took a few days ago. As we rose into the air, the pilot did practically a "Bangalore Darshan" circuit of the city...there was Vidhan Soudha, the Utility Building, the Ulsoor Lake, the TV Tower....I had my "paisa vasool" for the flight in the first ten minutes!
Even on long night-flights, I love looking at the map the airline provides, and speculating about the cities we must be flying over. And indeed, sometimes, the sight of the Alps, the Grand Canyon, or the Great Arabian Desert called the Rub-al-Khali (the Empty Quarter) in the evening or the early morning light rewards my sleeplessness.....frustration, for me, is sitting in the left-hand side when the pilot announces, "Those of you who are sitting in the right-hand side...we are passing over X landmark", or vice-versa!
Having a daughter living in St Louis, I always like to see the Gateway Arch both on my way in and out.., and make sure that I am sitting where I can see it. It is a most inspring construction and the sight of it never fails to thrill me.
On one such flight, I had a little girl sitting at the window in front of me...I pointed out the Arch to her and was delighted that I could share my joy with someone else. I was very tickled when the little girl's mother turned to me and said, "You must have been living in St Louis for much longer than I have, to be able to spot the Arch like that.... and it's nice to see you taking such pride in spotting your landmarks from the air!" I told her I was the visitor, and she the resident!
...So, whenver you take a flight, do take the time to ask the pilot if you can sit so that you can see the wonders that Man and Nature have created on the earth below you. The sights out of the window are more than compensation for the struggle to get into the aisle (or to the toilet) during the flight!
- Ms Murphy...
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- deponti
- March 16th, 2006
- grumpy
That's me....I wanted to send the URL of a middle of mine (about ribbons, see my earlier posts) published in the Deccan Herald to family members. So I clicked on the URL, which is
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/mar102006/editpage152843200639.asp
Click on it and you'll find the title of my middle...and below it, an article, incomplete at that, about "a fellow septuagenarian" who ordered a solar heater with a loan...
Have just written to the person in charge of "Right in the Middle" to correct this...will look at it again next week.
- An evening with Susmit Bose
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- deponti
- February 27th, 2006
contemplative
Those of us who took up Shangon Das Gupta of Communication for Development and Learning on her invitation to an evening of music by Susmit Bose, went there without really knowing what to expect. And the first thing that struck me was the beauty of the little hall that the event was held in. Mrs Ubhayankar, who runs the Smritinandan Foundation in memory of her son, hires out this small, beautifully-done up hall to people in the field of the arts.
The first part of the evening,,which was called "It's my right to draw" was an initiative by CDL; they had encouraged children to draw cartoons to promote communication through the visual medium.
As we settled down, Susmit Bose, his fellow-guitaritst (and sometimes, banjo player) Deepak Samson, and a lady from the Viveka Foundation who has been interacting with them, took their places, and Susmit explained how, hailing from a family of north Indian classical musicians (his father was a noted Thumri exponent) he took to the guitar, and wanted always to sing of present-day issues which touched his mind and heart. He had brought out an album called "Public Issue"...and he proceeded to give us a real feast of songs from the album. The lyrics were really excellent, and the music was very Simon-Garfunkel- and Beatles-ish...our generation related to it at once! He sang of children working with dimpled fingers on the loom, weaving carpet under forced labour; of the way daily life makes contradictions of us all; of existence and angst in the urban jungle. His songs reminded me of that gem that I love...."Another day in Paradise"...the same social themes running through them, without naming names or having prickly fingers pointing.
For an hour, he and his fellow-musicians kept us beating time to his catchy melodies and enjoying his sometimes poignant, and sometimes funny, lyrics;and he asked us to sing along with the refrains so that we felt completely that we, too, were part of the evening rather than just a passive audience. "There are certain thoughts I want to share with you..." he began, and went on with songs like "Friend of a friend" (indeed, that describes each and every one of us!)...on to Red Ribbon Express, which was written for UNICEF; "River of Life" , and "Public Issue", which brought smiles to our faces even as it made us think. Occasionally, he played on the mouth organ too. He had a vivid stage presence and his enjoyment of his own songs was infectious. The three of them made a good singing trio.
Finally, he spoke of how he had defined his genre of music as "urban folk music"...only to realize that more than a century ago, the Baul singers of Bengal had perfected this same art, being roving musicians, who, with their ektaras and bells on their feet, sang of issues like emancipation and widow-remarriage. He concluded his recital with a lovely Baul piece, "Niraakaar Noire Bhojon".
When he finished, we realized that the good times were not yet over....CDL ,Smriti Nandan and the Viveka Foundation had organized some lip-smacking chat, paav-bhaji and puchka (NOT pani puri!) and the softest rosogollas I have eaten since I attended my friend's daughter's Boubhaat in Kolkata last year...with our ears full, we made sure that our tummies were,too!
I didn't get to asking Susmit if he has a website or an email id...but I ran a Google search and found this link, just before he released his album, "Public Issue", last year:
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mp/2005/09/17/stories/2005091702420100.htm
- The Internet still staggers me...
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- deponti
- February 7th, 2006
Suddenly realized that if I want people the world over to read my article in a local paper, I can just send the link...I used to physically carry copies of the newspaper once upon a time...
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/feb42006/metrosat135436200623.asp
How wonderful ...and sobering...that one can be in touch on ww (world wide!) basis...
