yet again ... getting lost ... then enjoying self-discovery ...

Bird by Bird ( With respects to Anne Lamott ) Published in the April 2018 issue of Palash.  Thanks are due to the Editorial Team of Palash. We are also indebted to Binoculars for Charity for the support with equipment. The location of the Rajghat campus and the vegetation it boasts of made the decision to take up bird watching very easy. The crux lay in moving around and enjoying with the birds; there was little to plan. We began with 1 pair of binoculars and 6 species on the first day. Design was to discuss birds, talk about their colours, size, actions and else, and not bestow inordinate attention on names and lists. 7 sisters or noisy birds after a while became babblers and some weeks later we were in a position to determine whether they were the Large Grey Babblers or the Jungle Babblers; 2 babbler species occur on campus. Time put in with the bird book ( or the field guide ) to figure out what they saw also allowed the group to get familiar with sp...

Varanasi's Sankat Mochan Sangeet Samaroh celebrates the city, and the Indian classical music tradition Published by First Post on 16th April here .  Thanks are due to friends and colleagues for the ( almost ) daily trips to Sankat Mochan during the event, sharing music, sweets and else;  First Post and Rohini. Ghulam Mustafa Khan, mesmerising at 88 and a recent recipient of the Padma Vibhushan, sang a bhajan in Bhairvi. Nizami Brothers, of the Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah fame, sang Amir Khusrau’s Chaap Tilap, one of the few songs that elicited requests for an encore. Rashid Khan had the audience requesting specific songs and when he got up after his allotted time successfully urge him to take the stage again for yet another rendition.    Moinuddin Khan was also among the performers. Artists of this stature may often be a part of an event’s line up so why it is worth writing about? Well, because the event was held in a temple – the Sankat Mochan Temp...

Title: Why should I save water? ( A Smart kid’s guide to a green world ) Author: Shweta Sinha Publisher: The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) Year: 2016   Price: 250/- ISBN: 978 - 81-7993 -369 – 5     Shekar Kapur, the film director, during his TED Talk, narrated an incident around water. He had gone to meet a friend at an upscale Bombay locality. The friend kept on enjoying his shower for more than 20 minutes and Kapur left without meeting him. On his way back, not far from his friends place, he crossed a slum where people stood in queues, for multiple hours, to fetch water! This incident I recall even a few years after listening to the talk. A similar connect with this book I am unsure of; for one the book steers clear of the social and economic issues touching water. The book does touch upon issues critical in our urban areas today ; issues which question our consumption patterns and those we can take up action on in ou...