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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ISC Day...

Any international event here is never complete without the Indian community taking part. India is a part and parcel of the Rolla life.

I guess that's what is happening even at the international level. We are going miles ahead! Last week we celebrated the ISC day. ISC by the way stands for International Students Council. This is one of the important events held every year showcasing the cultural aspect of many countries. The work leading to the event was hectic.

We had to collect the traditional and Indian items from many people here in Rolla. The whole point is everyone had to be convinced that their items would be returned in exactly the same way as we have borrowed it. That's a tough promise and the problem is even the lenders know it! That doesn't mean we did not return the items back. It was given back to them on time.

We also prepared a collage on India. This required a lot of efforts, collecting pictures on everything associated with India. It involved two nights of hard labour to stick the pictures in the right place and get it to shape.

There were a lot of exhibits that we displayed. Others were really dumbstruck at the amount of stuffs we had gathered. Even the cultural show was truly amazing in the end.

It was a great opportunity to interact with people from other countries and view their exhibits. It was a great learning experience and truly fun-filled.

The Indian food as usual went down well with the masses. The menu from India was Jeera Rice and Malai Kofta! Slurp! Slurp! The Indian stall was awarded the first prize for the exhibits. The Malai Kofta ranked second in terms of the popularity. The first rank was missed by 10 votes out of 600 votes. Totally it was a great day with a lot of fun!

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