Gladly Beyond Any Distance

Dumbledore is gay.

Hey, so I’m back from a really interesting Multi-Generational Feminist Dialogue, held by CWGL, CREA and Youth Coalition at Rutgers University. Followed by a hysterical performance of Fat, Feminist and Free by Pramada Menon (of CREA) in Noo Yaark.

I certainly will blog about the dialogue over the next few days, but in the meantime, I found that Anindita had ‘awarded’ me with the ‘rockin girl blogger’ title… hmm… what it means to be appreciated by your peers (especially your gorgeous sis-in-law). sniff. :)

So I am proudly - and puckishly - passing it on to:

Bint Battuta (who writes a fascinating blog based in Bahrain, but she’s originally from Bengaluru)

Black Mamba (who’s already had things to say about pink, and this will clearly add to her collection)

DYSfunctional Wisdom (my crazy cousin Divya)

Kauntext {}  (a complex look into identity politics in Gujarat and what that means for Raahi herself; again another Bangalorean friend) and

Refraction (Mangs; co-founder of Blank Noise [update: lowly coordinator, says she!] always with a unique perspective on liff, the universe and everything)

This photograph is a week old, but I can’t get it out of my head. Torrential rain, and Bangaloreans have to find innovative ways of staying afloat. sigh.

Btw, this is a photograph of Hosur Road, taken by S Eashwar, Deccan Herald, 15 September 2007.

From xkcd, once more…

Well, we did it. Unbelievably, amazingly so. We moved. Right now, I’m sitting in our ‘cozy’ (Bay area euphemism for tiny) apartment somewhere in Bezerkly, Caaalifornia. We moved from the city that was home for so many years, home both real and imagined, home both bliss and bane. Bengaluru.

We moved for so many reasons, all practical, well-thought out, but it doesn’t help the goodbyes. Bangalore was getting really rough on my asthma (wait, the increasing pollution was actually one of the *causes* for my asthma), and the craziness of the chaos, the traffic, the change in lifestyles, in attitudes, in the Bangalore spirit, was moving beyond we-can-manage-this-because-we-love-the-city to we-might-love-it-but-we-can’t-cope-anymore. Even our time with the Koramangala Initiative (a citizen’s forum in Koramangala) made us feel that without sustained political will, well-intentioned citizens’ efforts can feel frustrating rather than empowering.

Also, it’s been ten years of working for both Ashwin and me, and we felt the need to reflect on those ten years, and to challenge ourselves in different ways for the next ten. So Ashwin chose to go back to university (’school’ as they call it here in the usofa), and I chose to finish that darn, never-ending doctoral thesis of mine.

All good reasons. Still hard to say goodbye. So I’m going to resort to what I know to be true: misquoting Bob Dylan always works. Goodbye’s too sad a word, babe, so I’ll just say fare thee well.

Besides, as the Governor of our newly inhabited state (Arnold Shivajinagar) is fond of saying, I Will Be Back. And he’s just following namma Bharatiya samskruti, where you never say ‘I’m leaving’, you always wave tata and say, ‘Bartheevi’, ‘Aashbo’, ‘Varen’, ‘Aathe hai’. We’ll be back. Bartheevi, Bengaluru.

In the midst of craziness and chaos, some chuckles. As Ashwin says, it’s a tribute to my pun-tastic family.

From xkcd, a webcomic of ‘romance, sarcasm, math and language’. Just up my street. :)

Once again, from one of my favourite cartoonists, Stephanie McMillan, a telling cartoon:

I guess we Bangaloreans (and other Indians) should be grateful to BESCOM (or our respective power companies), for the many unexpected ‘loadsheddings’ and outages we have. Do we talk more because of them? At least we type less… :)

Since I had such a positive response to my earlier post on old pictures of Bangalore, I thought this announcement from Jackfruit Research & Design would also interest readers:

LIFE AND TIMES OF BANGALORE AT THE TURN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY – a collection of postcards of the city as it was at the turn of the 20th century. Views of commercial areas, government, civic, cultural and religious institutions, parks, lakes and daily life, form an urban archive of Bangalore as imagined by the British eighty or more years ago. These souvenirs of the past provide a sense of the city as a colonial government and trading centre in the Mysore princely state.

With Umrao Jaan take 2 releasing yesterday, I thought I’d make my vote clear. If I can’t have Rekha again, give me mol Lola Kutty over Barbie-face Aishwarya any day.

Via email, and I believe from VIndia: