Kallola

A flood of relief from North Bangalore - Kodagu shall overcome.   PC: Annapoorna Kamath PC: Charmaine Kenita  PC: Uma Santhosh PC: DPS BN PC: MR Cariappa Over 2000 houses are lost, entire villages are wiped out, around 5000 acres of plantations stand destroyed and as many residents have been displaced in the rains, floods and landslides that have ravaged Kodagu over the past few days. While the hilly district reels under the aftermath of the worst natural disaster in the region since 1924, the situation has been expertly managed by volunteers on ground zero and around. They have made it their mission to provide maximum relief to the affected, and aid restoration efforts.  Though the government machinery has now kicked in, voluntary work remains indispensable. To support the heroes on ground, along with many others in the city and beyond, some citizen groups of North Bangalore have been an inseparable part of the ongoing re...

VS Naipaul departs, leaving a legacy that reflects, in its melange, wondrous worlds known and unknown, lived and untried, and explored and unmitigated by his readers. A writer who became a part of my journey through the pages he vicariously took me along in his early works of fiction, remains dear for those accounts. In those words of fiction, lay truths of lands and longings that gave his craft, credence. These hard truths, entwined with other assimilations of birth and descent, reflected worlds that fascinated and stoked the initiated and not, alike. I am in a quandry, though, with his commentaries. There is a lot of dark disdain and a disconnection typical to those who left before India became what it is today. A lot comes from obvious disappointments of lost lands and what was lost with them, and despair at what can be seen today - this seems true of the Trinidad and Tobago narrative as well. To have consistently moved away from his ethnic origins into more convenient id...