The South Diary

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'Grooming' them right After a hectic fortnight of politics and another hectic fortnight of Anna Hazare's fast-protest, Heggadadevanakote was heaven on earth. A little bit of rustic fervour, a larger bit of forest, good-ol'-Mysore food and some very simple and nice people... and the story of Manju. I met Manju at one of the tribal 'haadis' (hamlets) in HD Kote. He's working as a naturalist at a resort; was earlier working at the same resort as a tribal dancer-entertainer. But that's just by-the-way. Manju, I was told, married a childhood sweetheart of his a few years back. His wife, I was told, had earlier eloped with another man for six months and later come back to her family and then married Manju. Now in a typical Gowda set-up, a tactful description would've termed this a scandal. But among the Kadu Kurubas, that was quite all-right. In fact, it....

After The Deluge

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Sacred lives For two days, the government did yoga and meditated on how to improve its standing among the people. For two whole days after Dasara, when lakhs of farmers were fleeing their flooded homes, the sarkar was busy in its refresher camp at the Suttur math in Mysore. And then suddenly, on the morning of October 2nd, high level meetings were called and strategies discussed as the seriousness of the deluge in north Karnataka sank in. One of the first measures? Send a chopper with the Rural Development Minister Shoba Karandlaje to rescue the sacred swamis of Mantralaya. There were hundreds stranded on the top floors of lodges and hotels at the same time in Mantralaya - which by the way does not even exist within the State's jurisdiction - though it's easier to reach there from Raichur in Karnataka, the temple town is in Andhra....

From here and there

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Management funda It was once a clean white board - now filled with belligerant figures (I mean, of the number kind) and symbols of every language from the Greeks. I'm talking about a white board I found in the chamber of an IIM Professor whom I had gone to interview - it was a six-by-six white board up on a wall, with blue-marker markings of what I thought was a complicated mathematical formula. The professor explained that it was a theory put forward by a PhD student of his... I was impressed... this is the stuff PhDs from IIMs are made of! 'What theory, oh mighty prof?' I wanted to know. "Well, he wanted to explain a marketing phenomenon... some products - like say, cooking oil, are priced lesser if you buy it in bulk. Some products - mainly luxury products like cosmetics and....

Things you didn't know about Krishna, Moily and Kharge

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Some things you may not know about... S M Krishna a) The suave, US-educated lawyer saw politics first-hand first in America - when he was part of John F Kennedy's campaign in student days. b) He rode a cycle to court on his first day to work as a lawyer. c) He has a keen interest in fashion designing - so much that Kannada tabloids labelled him 'Tailor Krishna' and speculated that he'd have been a tailor (for want of a Kannada translation for 'designer') if he hadn't taken up politics. d)'Sullu Helisida Krishna' (The Krishna who got people to tell 'lies') is the headline that ran in some Kannada papers when he allowed, as Assembly speaker, the word 'lie' ('sullu' in Kannada) to be used in the Assembly. Until then, 'lying' or 'lies' were considered 'unparliamentary' and MLAs were asked to use the term 'far from the....

Amar Akbar Anthony in Bangalore

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Whew! The sparring and the name-calling is over. And at the end of all that 'breaking your arm' and 'cutting your head' speeches that we've endured in the last few weeks from our (yes, 'honourable') netas, I'm left feeling sick. Maybe I haven't seen enough of the past 14 General Elections, but as gruesome speeches go, this election has certainly been like some mafia novel, live. Amar, Akbar, Anthony And at the very core of all this 'hand-cutting' and 'head-splitting,' are Amar, Akbar and Anthony. And I actually mean core - the Bangalore Central constituency. To many, this constituency has come to mean a remake of that Amitabh-Bachchan film. For, the candidates are PC Mohan (a Hindu) from the BJP, Zameer Ahmed Khan (a Muslim) from the JD(S) and HT Sangliana (a Christian) from the Congress. It's an even fight and a tough fight.....

All the Cong's horses

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There were no proclamations of 'Soniaaaaa... I love you' from the crowd, but let's admit it - there was one thing the Sonia Gandhi rally did to all the Cong's horses and all the Cong's men in Karnataka - they sat together for a good hour and a half, which is no mean achievement! The 'Bharat Nirman rally' (yes, that's what it was called, though everyone thought it was just called the 'Sonia Gandhi rally') in Davangere saw some 2 lakh plus people from across Karnataka coming together to listen to the desh ki bahu. (Or perhaps they just came to see her helicopter... there was certainly a clamour to take a look at that.) That's got to be good news for a party that's been a divided house for a long time in the state - one joke goes that there are more factions of the Karnataka Congress....

Always deny the truth...

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That's the basic tenet that most politicians build on. Well, after claiming, explaining, exclaiming and re-claiming to the media everyday for the last 30 days that, no, his son won't be the Lok Sabha candidate from Shimoga, Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa has gone (to dilli durbar) and done the predictable. He's ensured his son IS contesting. The state BJP unit had been asked to send a short-list of possible candidates to the party's Central election committee to finalise the names of its Lok Sabha candidates. From Shimoga, the short-list was really short -- it had one name -- B Y Raghavendra. So, after living in denial for weeks together, the BJP has finally proved itself wrong in saying it won't go by dynastic polity. In fact, the short-lists from various districts are filled with sons, nephews, sisters and brothers of the party's MLAs. We....

Jaago Bangalore, jaago

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Sons and heirs For the last few weeks, the biggest buzz in Karnataka politics has been of Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa's son B Y Raghavendra contesting this Lok Sabha election. From the CM's home-district, Shimoga. After intense speculation (by the media, of course) and outcry among the BJP's other aspirants, the CM-avaru was forced to say his son won't contest as that's not in keeping with party policy. That is, there's to be no dynastic polity, it seems. Raghavendra, who's been voted to the Shikaripura Town Municipal Council earlier, is, alas, out of the game as of now. The JD(S) is another party where dynasties are honoured. While patriarch and MP Deve Gowda's two sons are in the Assembly now, his daughter-in-law Anitha too passed the test of the ballot in a recent by-election to join the Assembly. Party circles were soon talking about....

Some science and some religion

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Vishwa He was your typical awkward teenager - uncomfortable with 'girls' all around, not sure if what he had done was great, yet liking some of the limelight. The kid I'm talking about is Vishwanath B Hiremath - the class IX student whose rocket flew the highest in his intra-school rocket-making competition. It was just an experiment to give their students an idea of what rocket science is all about, that led me to this boy. The school had decided to teach them rocket-building, albeit rocket-firecrackers - and asked each batch of students to demonstrate their capability at the school grounds. 'Vishwa,' as he is called, struck me not because he came first - but because he cried. Soon after getting the certificate from the chief guest - in this case, Isro chairman Madhavan Nair - he was surrounded by mikes and cameras. Every channel wanted to....

Say boo

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Terrorised Bangalore It's over a month since the Bangalore blasts, but there's no denying that it's left people jittery all over. Picture this - we were coming back from a shoot and there was this loud explosive sound just in front of our building (ours being an MNC-type building, we're likely targets for everything from Kannada Vedike protests to terrorists). Vehicles suddenly screeched with brakes, the few techies waiting for autos ran in the direction opposite to the sound, about 27 security personnel posted from ground to sixth floor of our building ran out on to the roads to see if they could save the lives of all the techies working in our building so that they (the techies) could continue to boost America's economy (which sure needs some help now). We wondered if we were up against another of those looong 'terror-strikes-Bangalore' days,' when out....