Journalists and their family life

Parents, faced with their children's dream to be journalists, ask us: 'how good is the career, is it safe, is there family life for a journalist?'....My answer: Families where parents have the perfect 10 to 5 job aren't free of problems, are they? I know a family: the husband and the wife are officers in banks; but they are in two cities and their daughter stays with her grandmother...More...

Life in the 60s

We, therefore, decided to travel to Bombay....The route was Mysore – Bangalore (Change Train) – Guntakal (Change Train) – Poona (present day – Pune – Change Engine) – Bombay. It would take two nights – two days to complete this journey...More...

Divine strokes

She uses natural colors from rocks, earth and vegetable sources, and brushes from kora grass to squirrel hair. She learned the skills of making brushes and gold and natural colors from the legendary master, Sri Deoki Nandan Sharma...More...

A silent reunion

I wanted a precise confession, complete understanding of my accumulated guilt. Guess what I did? I wrote a five page ‘sorry’. It’s the biggest letter I have written to anyone. Writing, I believe is the best form of expression, better than talking...More...

Dick Francis - Under Orders

Its very sad and disconcerting when you go 'off' an author you've enjoyed for years. Dick Francis has been a prime favorite for years. I would walk for miles to get one.
But now his latest, Under Orders seems so so-so...More...

A different Diwali

I was quickly updated on what’s stirring in the bollywood world when Uma mam was teaching Mechanical effect of electric current and also understood the entire storyline of Om Shanti Om and Saawariya, because a dear friend was kind enough to narrate them...More...

Charity at Diwali Time

It reaches out to the elderly in 'homes' across the city and the state. The idea to do works of charity popped up when the women realised there was more that people in 'homes' needed than just bhajans and pleasant exchanges...More...

B and a Malayalam song

SK,worried that Vayalar had not written the lyrics yet, went across to the bar where the poet was and requested him to speed up. Perhaps, Vayalar was irritated at being chased. He asked for a piece of paper and sitting on the bar stool, wrote ‘Chakravarthini’....More...

E-magazine for women

I hope there is nothing stopping a man giving publicity to a women's venture! From Shruthi's blog I came to know of JustFemme, what's perhaps India's first e-magazine "by women for women"....More...

Mysore bloggers milan; a modest affair

It was modest enough to be a drawing-room affair; but it brought together a mixed bunch – a Singapore-based aviator, a builder, cardiologist, a techie company CEO, a biz journalist, Lions Club activist, a bureaucrat and a ‘was-man’ (has-been newsman). The binding factor is they all blog or read blogs...More...

A Thousand Splendid Suns

The link between the first two parts of the book is a blue Benz car that is once seen before Mariam’s house for a few hours. The thread wears thin as the pages are turned but still holds. Here Hosseini takes the risk of the readers loosing interest, but survives...More...

Less noisy Diwali

Diwali, after all, is a festival of light. But during the past years it had become a festival of noise, not even sound. The worst affected are children, elders, pets and patients...More...

Still missing 'em - II

I'm finally with my son. Seven teachers are clustered around him, convinced that an ambulance would be in order. The injured party is lying on a couch and reveling in the attention...Gautham has the martyr look. My suspicion is that there's nothing wrong with him...More...

Now what - Kerala special tea!!

A tea stall is not for the loner. Never would you be left alone, somebody is bound to ask you the time, or the state of life or for that matter the state of the nation, which you must be prepared to answer, eloquently...More...

Still missing 'em

Gautham is the major inquisitor. Vyaas is a little close to puberty and is fast acquiring the teenage penchant for maintaining long periods of silence when parents are around. Gautham, however, has an analytical mind and answers to his questions usually beget more questions...More...

We have a haircut

But somehow, I would get away with it. My relations with my sisters were like Musharraf's with the US. The US keeps telling Musharraf don't do this, don't do that and so on. Musharraf says yes and then goes ahead and does precisely that...More...

Singapore-type car quota in Bangalore ?

In our democracy simplest of matters are settled through a long-drawn consultative process. It may be someone’s considered opinion that 2 and 2 make 4; but there may be others holding a different view...More...

Letting go

I’ve been giving away things, big and small recently and they never stayed in my mind. But giving away the old TV is reverberating in my mind. It’s like parting with a member of the family...More...

Around Bangalore and in Kolar

As we drove into the city, his initial comments were that traffic in Bangalore was much more organised and less chaotic than in Delhi. But the next day, Friday, his impressions changed. He discovered how it had deteriorated since the last time he was in the city a year back...More...

Blogs and our cops

The police blogs that are in place in Karnataka – Udupi, Dakshin Karnataka and Chitradurga , though it hasn’t been active for over a year now, – prove that there are, in our police force, some doers who blog as well...More...

Pills, pills & even more pills

Something interesting - do you remember the much hyped bird flu hysteria?? How many of you know that the chairman of the Tamiflu (the only medicine for Bird flu) company Gilead Sciences Inc was Donald Rumsfeld till he became US defense secretary...More...

Market on a roll !

Of the things I understand the least, the pride of place goes to the stock market. It's not that I understand the theory of relativity any better, or the theory of which color goes with what. Its just that everybody seems to understand the stock market and I haven't a clue...More...

Five minutes, please....

Get up. It is time to get ready.
Ma, 5 minutes, please!
I have no idea how many times I would have played out this situation in my life. It all started during my school days, when I had to get up early in the morning...More...

Rahul Dravid's 'colonel'

There are some weird things about dropping Rahul Dravid from the Indian ODI team against Pakistan. We saw a player management company defending the team selection. What is their business in this matter? Well, they handle ‘Colonel’ Dilip Vengsarkar’s column...More...

Cub Reporters at Work!

There were at least 20 school students in the room. And they listened to Anusha, a student of Padma Seshadri, K. K. Nagar; of how the pigeons used to nest in the house of her friend's neighbour...Any good story is good for a community newspaper.And this is what we encourage senior students to report for the month of November..More...

Rock Star Rocket Scientist

Something seems to happen to you guys when you cross the Atlantic. You become a changed personality. I wanted to find out why?" said Dr Kalam...The large audience just loved the opening...More...

On man-woman relationships

There is something very special when men take to looking after their wives. Maybe it’s because nurturing is not the gender role usually allotted to them. No one remarks very much when women do the caring...More...

Mysore Bloggers Milan

Wouldn’t you say, it would be nice if we have a MBP-ers get-together in Mysore, say, on Nov. 9 or 10, five-ish in the evening? We could meet at my place, if our numbers could fit into a living room...More...

Windows Vista R in a circle

Ironically, and this is where I put my most original observation that there is no justice in this world, the less people understood the computer, the richer Bill Gates and the software clan got...More...

Blog Summit, Las Vegas

Over 120 thousand blogs are created every day; 22 of the 100 most popular websites in the world are blogs.Blog readers average 23 hours online each week...it's like someone spends to close to one day out of every seven days in the blog world, for reading, writing, commenting, etc all related to blogs...More...