Bangalore’s Graviky Labs develops tool to capture soot for recycling. BANGALORE — At a cafe in the Bangalore’s central district, artist Pavithra Chowdappa doodles on canvas with a marker labeled AIR-INK. “This is a special marker,” she says, making black strokes across the white surface. “It’s the only environmentally friendly ink around. And it’s so…
Read more Indian startup turns air pollutants into ink for art
“Toilet ek Prem Katha” does its best to please the powers that be, and it appears to have succeeded. But it is not the story of my village or the many others like it that had come a long way well before Swachh Bharat Mission became a buzzword, and long before Modi came to power.…
Shubhendu Sharma founded Afforrest after being inspired by a speech by botanist Akira Miyawaki in Bangalore. (Photo by Anuradha Sharma) BANGALORE — Close by a diesel locomotive shed at Krishnarajapura in eastern Bangalore, a dense forest of 2,000 trees is growing Huddled together in just 600 sq. meters, the 10-month-old trees have an average…
Gurung, the chief of Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, the party leading the fight for a separate Gorkhaland state in Darjeeling hills, has been literally smoked out of his home town, and state, by the Mamata Banerjee government. He was last seen in Sikkim, hurriedly winding up a meeting with his colleagues before being whisked from the…
Read more Will Bimal Gurung End Up Like His Mentor Subhash Ghisingh?
BANGALORE — “From 54 rupees, one bicycle, one room & a kitchen and a lot of love, we started our journey.” Ankit Anubhav pens the opening lines of a love letter on ivory Italian paper with his black gel pen. It is a special message from a husband to his wife on their 25th wedding…
Read more Busy Indians outsource love letters to Bangalore startup
It is a month now since ABN Network, India’s only satellite channel in Nepali language, went off air. On July 22, West Bengal police raided and sealed its corporate office and recording studio in Siliguri. The next day, Rachna Bhagat, the district magistrate of Jalpaiguri, issued an order restraining the channel from broadcasting news programmes…
The monsoons have just arrived, and Pothia is already a veritable wonderland. Clusters of jackfruit hang from trees, ready to ripen. Succulent gourds dangle from meshes of wiry branches. Green pineapples glisten, awaiting the yellow of maturity. Jute plants are a mutinous green. The last of the ripened corn fields are ready to be harvested.…
An otherwise-quiet community centre of a Roman Catholic religious order, some 5 km from Siliguri, in North Bengal, has recently taken up a new role. From last Wednesday, it started functioning as an off-site school for students of Classes 10 and 12 of a reputed century-old school from Darjeeling, 62 km away, run by the…
On a damp monsoon afternoon in July, a clutch of children were playing cricket in a lane in a residential area in Siliguri. Usually fond of football, which is more popular in the Darjeeling hills from where they had come, they had just discovered the joys of gully cricket – one of the ways in…
Forty-six days after a general strike began in the Darjeeling hills in support of the demand for a separate state, leaders of the 14 party-strong Gorkhaland Movement Coordination Committee are meeting in New Delhi on Tuesday. But well before the meeting, on July 27, they had already declared that the strike will continue. Beyond extending…
Read more Gorkhaland agitation: Weak leadership looms large over a strong mass movement
Anuradha Sharma 