LEISURE

On the 29th of March, I went to Lalbagh to join the joint Max Mueller Bhavan /  Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) -organized Heritage Walk. Having taken many people around Lalbagh, I wanted to know if there was anything I had missed learning about....here's some of what I saw.We all met at the 3-billion-year-old (give or take a few hundreds!) sheet rock on which one of Kempe Gowda's towers stands, and marvelled at the range of pre-history to history; we then walked towards the Glass House, where the Lions of the Ashoka Pillar are etched into…

On the 29th of March, I went to Lalbagh to join the joint Max Mueller Bhavan /  Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) -organized Heritage Walk. Having taken many people around Lalbagh, I wanted to know if there was anything I had missed learning about....here's some of what I saw.We all met at the 3-billion-year-old (give or take a few hundreds!) sheet rock on which one of Kempe Gowda's towers stands, and marvelled at the range of pre-history to history; we then walked towards the Glass House, where the Lions of the Ashoka Pillar are etched into…

Tat Tvam is a young Bangalore theatre group; and "God", by Woody Allen, was their first production. They are a group of amateur artistes; many of them are IT professionals, but a few of them are students, too. For a first production, "God" was a fairly ambitious project to choose, and they did manage to do a good job of the production."God" is a half-absurd,half-metaphysical play, and the locale and the characters change with bewildering rapidity between ancient Greece and Manhattan!In the words of Miracle Entertainment, the group that had earlier staged this play:"Set in an empty Greek amphitheater, this…

Tat Tvam is a young Bangalore theatre group; and "God", by Woody Allen, was their first production. They are a group of amateur artistes; many of them are IT professionals, but a few of them are students, too. For a first production, "God" was a fairly ambitious project to choose, and they did manage to do a good job of the production."God" is a half-absurd,half-metaphysical play, and the locale and the characters change with bewildering rapidity between ancient Greece and Manhattan!In the words of Miracle Entertainment, the group that had earlier staged this play:"Set in an empty Greek amphitheater, this…

We went on the heritage walk on Avenue Road, organized by INTACH, this morning (watch Citizen Matters for a detailed report on how the shopkeepers of Avenue Road engaged with the walkers..a first-time combination!) and we took a bus back home. On the way home from the bus stop, we were amazed to see an entreprenurial iniatitive...a push-cart with pani puri! The young man, Raju, said that he was from UP and had come here to make a living. Since neither of us was in the mood for a full lunch after the excellent "prasad" of pulioygare and mosaranna provided…

Most of us agree that our tree cover is depleting alarmingly, and we cluck about it....but St Mark's School has done something...er...concrete, to choose an inappropriate word!They have planted 9 badam trees in front of their school in J P Nagar 3rd Phase.They had plenty of excuses NOT to plant trees. The Mini Forest, with lots of trees, is right opposite. There's hardly any footpath in front the school. But they went ahead and planted the trees anyway.And in a short time, the trees are providing shade on the hot street...Long live schools like St Mark's, which put their trees…

We went on the heritage walk on Avenue Road, organized by INTACH, this morning (watch Citizen Matters for a detailed report on how the shopkeepers of Avenue Road engaged with the walkers..a first-time combination!) and we took a bus back home. On the way home from the bus stop, we were amazed to see an entreprenurial iniatitive...a push-cart with pani puri! The young man, Raju, said that he was from UP and had come here to make a living. Since neither of us was in the mood for a full lunch after the excellent "prasad" of pulioygare and mosaranna provided…

Most of us agree that our tree cover is depleting alarmingly, and we cluck about it....but St Mark's School has done something...er...concrete, to choose an inappropriate word!They have planted 9 badam trees in front of their school in J P Nagar 3rd Phase.They had plenty of excuses NOT to plant trees. The Mini Forest, with lots of trees, is right opposite. There's hardly any footpath in front the school. But they went ahead and planted the trees anyway.And in a short time, the trees are providing shade on the hot street...Long live schools like St Mark's, which put their trees…

Since I was not sure if I would be able to go to the plays tomorrow, I decided to attend the press conference that was organized by India Foundation for the Arts (for which the plays are a fund-raiser).I wanted to hear what the actors who are going to be staging the playlets would have to say about the plays, which they have staged before, in Bangalore, way back in 2002.Both Ratna and Naseeruddin talked about how contemporary they found Ismat's ideas, and how Naseeruddin was inspired to stage her stories. Naseeruddin was very scornful about large production; " I despise…

Since I was not sure if I would be able to go to the plays tomorrow, I decided to attend the press conference that was organized by India Foundation for the Arts (for which the plays are a fund-raiser).I wanted to hear what the actors who are going to be staging the playlets would have to say about the plays, which they have staged before, in Bangalore, way back in 2002.Both Ratna and Naseeruddin talked about how contemporary they found Ismat's ideas, and how Naseeruddin was inspired to stage her stories. Naseeruddin was very scornful about large production; " I despise…