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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Holi He...

It was Holi, the festival of colours and everyone was in good spirits. We, at Rolla celebrated Holi this year too by the Schuman Lake. It was freezing but nobody was complaining. The Holi colours were purchased in Chicago. Everyone tore open the colour packets and started spraying it around on others in glee. It was supposed to be a dry Holi celebration. We weren't supposed to splash water simply because of the sub-zero temperature. But nobody was listening. People got cans to fill water from the lake to wet others. More than the colours, it was the water we had to escape from. I reached the venue about fifteen minutes late and by that time, all the colours were depleted. I had to bear the wrath of the cold water and I was literally freezing. Then I saw my friend standing. She was literally numb, thanks to the buckets of water poured. She was immediately whisked from the place by others. I realised I was lucky to be late.


After the Schuman lake, the crowd headed to the South West Bell Center(SBC) to have a snack. The menu was Pav Bhaji, Congress Masala and Laddu. Of course, people went home for a changeover.


By the way, Who will be cleaning the Schuman Lake if everybody went to SBC? So, we had to immediately find people who could do this. I along with four others got stuck with the task of cleaning up the colours. Believe me, it is no easy task!





After about an hour and a half of hectic cleaning, we headed to the SBC to have our fill of all the goodies! It was another fun filled day at Rolla away from the usual blues! If you are wondering why there are so many pictures on cleaning, your guess is as good as anybody else's - I was a part of the cleaning!!!

Comments

  1. AnonymousMarch 23, 2006 at 4:56 PM

    Holi in sub-zero - guess we were the first. Thankfully no hypothermia. Yea and twas fun cleaning Schuman .Darn green color.

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  2. AnonymousMarch 26, 2006 at 6:18 PM

    That was real nice!!
    Man you should eat more Dosas in order to move that Table ;-)

    I missed Holi in Pittsburgh this time :-(

    Hey will mail Amit and Shashank tom. Lets check whats these buggers are upto.

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