The Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike’s coffers aren’t Bruhat, it seems. For the up-coming road widening project, for which considerable amounts of land need to be acquired, it seems like the BBMP can’t afford to pay in cash. Hence, it has been proposed that compensation will be paid in terms of Transferable Development Rights (TDRs). The [...]
Exactly ten years ago, they used to give a sum total of 3400 ranks for IIT-JEE. Typically, to get an engineering branch at one of the “big 5″ IITs you needed to be in the early 2000s or better. Back then, there were ~40 people from Bangalore who made it to the merit list (I’ve [...]
Reading Deepak Shenoy’s excellent article on insurance this afternoon the first thing I wondered was about why I had never read anything like it before. It was so intuitive and insightful, and so obvious, yet I didn’t recall reading anything like it elsewhere in the “mainstream media” (quotes because that implicitly implies Yahoo! is not [...]
Flipping channels an hour back, I happened to stop at this never-heard-before channel called “DD Bharati”. Usha Uthup was giving a concert that was clearly recorded for television. Looking at her, and considering that the program had been recorded in black-and-white film, I would suppose that it was ancient indeed. Maybe from some time in [...]
Long ago (I don’t know how long ago) I had argued that dowry is a contract between two families (effectively) and the government has no business regulating it, and that all “dowry harassment” cases need to be reclassified as just “harassment”. Now, thinking about property succession and the Hindu Succession Act, I realize why the [...]
One major point of difference I’ve noticed between Indian and Western classical music is about the starting point of scales. Western music has a fixed starting frequency, and all instruments and voices are supposed to be tuned to that. Every guitar is tuned identically, and I’m talking about absolute frequencies of various strings here. Similarly [...]
With random ulemas here, there, everywhere (and maybe nowhere) issuing fatwas left, right and centre, I wonder if the value of the fatwa hasn’t gone down. The thing with religion is anyone who is mildly religious will try to follow as much of the traditions and customs are possible. However, if one puts way too [...]
Have you noticed – about how most Indian fried snacks are protein rich? Vada – check (urad dal) Maddur Vade – check (besan) Boondi – check (besan) Pakoda – check (besan) Bajji – check (besan) Sev – check (besan) Papad – check (urad dal) (you have several varieties of papad, and most are heavy in [...]
So next Saturday Shivamma, my aunt’s full-time maid, is going all the way back to her village near Challakere (Chitradurga district, Karnataka; six hours away from Bangalore) just to cast her vote in the Gram Panchayat (village council) elections. My aunt can’t let go of her for more than a day but Shivamma’s relatives are [...]
Ever since I shed roughly 20 kilos over the course of the second half of last year, I’ve become extremely weight-conscious. Given how quickly I shed so much weight, I’m paranoid that I might gain back so much again as quickly. This means I monitor my weight as closely as I can, limit myself in [...]
Bad Behavior has blocked 128 access attempts in the last 7 days.
