noise pollution
The frustrating wait for quiet in Chennai
Deepavali is less than a month away — then again it will only be a storm amid a steady drizzle of noises
Chennai
Cyclone Biparjoy and Chennai
When is a natural disaster a natural disaster? It began raining in Chennai last evening and hasn’t stopped as of this morning. But it’s been intermittent, with highly variable intensity. In my area, the wind has been feeble. I don’t know the situation in other areas because
asphalt road
India – where repairing a bad road could make life worse
There is a long road that runs from Mantri Mall to Sankey Road, in Malleshwaram, Bengaluru, called Sampige Road. There are eighteen smaller roads that branch off from it on either side (straightforwardly numbered one through 18), and both the main stem and almost all of these side roads, or
A Brahmin wedding
I was at a wedding this weekend. It had a distinct Omelas-like quality throughout. For most of the elders present, it was an oru naal koothu — a single-day celebration that has been many weeks in the making. But the bride, whom I knew, didn’t want to get married, especially
Groundwater extinction
In a report published on June 14, 2018, NITI Aayog, a policy think-tank established by the Government of India, claimed that 21 Indian cities would run out of their supply of groundwater by 2020. The report, especially this statistic, went on to be widely cited as a figure representing the
Happy new year!
2017 was a blast. Lots of things happened. The world became a shittier place in many ways and better in a few. Mostly, Earth just went around the Sun once more, and from what we know, it’s going to be doing that for a while. But here’s to
Chennai
The marching coloumns
Every day is a swing between highs and lows, and in the last two months that I’ve experienced them, they’ve never been periodic. Setting off the work, the mood depends on the weather: cloudy is good, buoyant, rain is more than welcome, but a clear, blue sky and
