When The Building Came Alive

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Kasturi Dhama Apartments — the play area where many evenings came alive. The lights would go out without warning. For a brief second, the entire building would fall silent. Then, from somewhere in Kasturi Dhama Apartments, a chorus would erupt. “Yayyy!” It is difficult to imagine children celebrating a power failure today. But in the Bangalore of the nineties and early 2000s, a power cut did not always feel like an inconvenience. Especially in the late evenings, it felt like permission. Permission to stop whatever we were doing, leave the darkness inside our homes, and step into the building outside. Before Kasturi Dhama became home, we had moved through a few different parts of Bangalore. My family had begun in Srirampuram and Vyalikaval before gradually cementing ourselves in Malleswaram for the next few decades. My earliest memory is of living in a vatara —a Kannada word loosely used for a building or a cluster of homes—on 15th Cross, near Karur Vy...
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Mandal II

The medical students have really taken the attack to the government. The quota issue has launched a scathing tirade from the student community, particularly from the medical fraternity. They have organized widespread protests in India, expressing their displeasure against the proposed quota system. This begs us to raise this question - What are people from the other sectors doing? Where are the Engineers, arts, science, commerce and economics graduates, literateurs, botanists, researchers, mathematicians, statisticians, socialists, historicans, physicists, chemists and others doing? Why don't we see much from the other sector of the educationists apart from the medicos? It doesn't make much sense for only one group to be fighting it out while the others are relaxing and waiting for things to happen. Things can never happen, and the "waiting" will definitely be extended to eternity.

I think Arjun Singh has made a mess of a move by bringing out the reservation policy. He has brought considerable damage to the Congress party. I am not sure how our honourable Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh is watching all these atrocities happening in front of his eyes. There are times, when the leader of the country has to take tough decisions, and Dr. Manmohan Singh is doing no good by just allowing things to take its course. Being a hardline reformer he should have nipped the issue at the bud. Arjun Singh talks as though he is the champion of the backward masses and their cause. What he doesn't realise is that this issue is going to pulverize the Congress party helter skelter. I still remember when the BJP was interfering with the IITs and IIMs, people did not take it lightly. Now, Arjun Singh has kindled the entirel education sector and the Congress can definitely not harbour hopes of coming back to power with plans of introducing such an outrageous policy. Everybody knows it is a political gimmick, but the Congress will realise that during the next elections. The whole country is feeling let down with the way the government has handled this issue. It remains to be seen what happens from now on. The country is witnessing a spate of protests from different parts and it is only going to intensify as time goes on. No sane person is going to swallow this easily, and there is no doubt that in the next few days, we will witness more of such protests. This certainly is one of the darkest periods of Indian history, with MANDAL II in the offing.

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