After spending my formative years in a terrorism scarred state, I feel almost invulnerable on the streets of Bangalore. This is a fundamentally gentle city, usually too diffident and polite to give offence. This is the city where I fell asleep during a bus commute in the early nineties and woke up in the middle […]
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Tag: bangalore
Ghulam Ali: Last Legend Standing
‘Dil ki choton ne kabhi chain se rehne na diya jab chali sard hawa maine tujhe yaad kiya’ (The wounded heart restlessly aches… Whenever the wind ripples, for you…I crave) ‘Iss ka rona nahi kyun tumne kiya dil barbaad Iss ka gham hai ki bahut der se barbaad kiya’ (I don’t mourn the fact that […]
Haku Shah:The Man Who Lives Gandhi
The National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), housed in the stately Manikyavelu Mansion on Palace Road distils the restful stillness of another time when unstructured life was not a luxury. To every visitor who walks in, the NGMA offers a communion with old trees, a reflection in the mirror pool, sunshine dappled silence and it […]
Bangalore is full of beans!
No, this is not about cricket, although cricket is a constant presence. Some days I could be watching it, some days not. But it is there. Like music, like the smell of jasmine or ‘agarbathi’ in the bylanes of Bangalore. Or even the loud ‘soppu’ cry of the vegetable vendor pushing his cart in my […]
Charles Correa: Cities are not just buildings and streets
Last year, over 100 Broadway stars, directors, producers, musicians, choreographers, designers and technicians gathered in front of the police station in Times Square, New York, while a poem titled ‘I Can’t Breathe‘ was rendered by Daniel J Watts. This was done to register a protest and start a conversation about police violence, which had claimed […]
Church Street: After The Blast
Every Bangalorean has a Church Street memory. From NASA, the grounded spaceship cum pub in the mid nineties to RR restaurant which was supposedly the favourite of Raj Kapoor for its Gongura chutney, avakai pickle, gunpowder and the secret recipes from Guntur and Nellore that sang to you from a plantain leaf. Dahlia, the little Japanese eatery […]
SG Vasudev: Art As The Tree Of Life
S G Vasudev’s retrospective Recollections Reconnections series will be on display at Gallery Sumukha in Bangalore till January 10. The national award-winning artist is reflective as he recalls the young man who once said, “My hands cannot stay idle. They either have to draw or paint.” The years have revealed his love for the […]
Charles Correa: The Wagner Of Architecture
It’s architect, planner, activist and theoretician Charles Correa himself on the stage of the JN Tata Auditorium in Bengaluru and what he once said about Corbusier’s architecture in Chandigarh, comes to mind, “Corbusier has sought to create an architecture of passion. No sotto-voce, no politeness but like Wagner-thunder in the concert hall.” * Correa’s voice is weak and broken but […]
Karunashraya: Death With Dignity
A single powerful thought can change the course of a life. Or many. Who would have imagined that 14,800 cancer patients would receive critical palliative care over 20 years only because in 1992, Kishore Rao, General Manager of Madura Coats, took early retirement to initiate the Karnataka Chapter of the Indian Cancer Society? The momentous […]
“Am I The One Lost?”
When a spokesperson for NDTV GROHE Design and Architecture Awards, called up Professor Krishna Rao Jaisim and told him that he had won a Lifetime Achievement Award, he hung up. Even though he is one of the country’s most eminent architects with a distinctively green design idiom, Jaisim’s immediate reaction to the good news […]
The Freedom To Muzzle
Have they come for you yet? They could be anyone. A new oraganisation committed to keeping women out of pubs, jeans, self-hoods and a sense of freedom. Khap elders calculating whether you can fall in love with a boy in the same village and if you do, whether you should be hung in public or […]
Karavalli: Always New
Spices, herbs, fruits, vegetables, pulses, grains, nuts, family favourites, history in a whiff and a mouthful. That sums up the experience of Syrian Christian food served recently in course after course at Karavalli (The Gateway Hotel), Bangalore’s favourite coastal food restaurant. The only thing missing was the wood fire smoke filling up the senses. […]