Bangalore Bird Race 2008

Here it is finally the trip report of the Bangalore Bird Race 2008! I had pre-post on this here!

This time around we missed Raghu but had Mr. Harish Bhat instead! Harish is the lead author of Pakshi Prapancha (World of Birds), a handbook of Birds in Kannada. Read the book review here. And that made our team, a scholarly one!

We had sort of pre-race planning meeting at IISc on Saturday and broadly zeroed in on the places we may want to visit. Puttenahalli (near Yelahanka), Hesaraghatta and TG Halli reservoir were on the cards. IISc was certainly on the cards. On Sunday morning, by 6 am, I had to pick Gururaja from Sanjay Nagar and get back to campus where Karthick would join. Harish Bhat was on his way and joined us by 7:30 am. Formally, we started from CES, IISc at around 6:45 am and went around Jubilee Gardens via the Swimming Pool. While we looked around for birds, the morning rays making past the remnant dense patch was simply enjoyable.



I guess this is an abrupt end to the report. For I have taken a bit too long to complete the report. Anyways, the map I had prepared for the Bird Race was graduated a few days later as "Guide to Birdwatching Places in Bangalore". This has been now accessed 7,633 times :)

Follow-up on Life Skills Valedictory Function

Apologies for the delay in posting this update/follow-up on Life-Skills Valedictory Function that happened. I don't think I have enough words to describe the event. And so, please check out the photos of the event!

Very briefly, as we reached the venue by 3 pm, the students were practicing outside and inside we witnessed a beautifully decorated Inaugural lamp. Gunavathi was the master of the ceremony and she took charge of the day's proceedings. The Guests for the event included: Mr. Venkatesh, Ms. Bhagya, Ms. Prameela, Mr. Ranga, Mr. Kiran Kumar, Mr. Shanmugam and Mr. Sashi Kumar. Parents of few students did make it to the function as well.

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After this event, few of us (ILP volunteers) proceeded to Tea Board at IISc to discuss on how do we take this to our rural students in Magadi, Harapanahalli and Raichur. We all decided to follow-up on them in the coming months and operationalise by April/May in these places. Expect more information on them as it happens!

Bangalore Bird Race 2008 on 20th Jan

Last year (2007), for the first time we had the Bangalore Bird Race on 11th February. Our team, EAGLES with Dr. Gururaja (as Captain), Dr. Raghurama, Karthick and myself participated and logged about 88 species of birds in 12 hours. The highest that was logged that day was a whopping 125 species! There were around 40 teams and nearly 130 participants in all. This was also probably the first time all birders came under one roof! That was indeed a great feat by the organisers. Read the detailed report of last year's Bird Race by Raghu here.

This year too, the Bangalore Bird Race 2008 is scheduled for 20th January. This year again, our team has retained the same name (EAGLES) and Captain :) But we have some changes. With Raghu away, we have Harish Bhat with us. With less than a day away for the bird race, two of our team members are out of town and we are only hoping to assemble at least on Sunday morning! Today, Gururaja and myself had some initial discussions on probable places for setting out. Since I will be driving and the rest have to look out for birds, I need to take care of the destinations, routes and the corresponding travel times to plan them properly. That implies one needs to be aware of all the places and routes.

One of my friend and a keen birder, Prashanth MB, had prepared a detailed note of all the major bird habitats and even prepared a sort of map on MS Excel with relative locations. This was shared to all participants of the Bird Race last year as an aid to destinations and routes of birding places in and around Bangalore. As a trained map-maker I felt ashamed of not being able to help them make a better map. I did communicate this to one of the organisers, Dr. S Subramanya (Subbu) after the Bird Race last year. Sometime last month, Subbu called me up and reminded me that I had volunteered for something (prepare a better map...). With the details for the habitats obtained from Prashanth, I prepared a map using a combination of Quantum GIS and Google Earth, which is later hosted on to Google Maps here. At the time of posting this, the map has, believe it or not, 2,304 views in a span of only 6 days!

I only hope now that we will be able to sight a decent number of species on Sunday! Of course, expect another post after the Bird Race!

Life Skills Valedictory Function on 19th Jan 2008

In 2004, Sindhu Naik, now a volunteer of ILP had authored a report called: "Project Saamarthya: Empowering Young People for Life". Project Saamarthya aimed at imparting the Life Skills to adolescent boys and girls. One of the key concerns noted in their report was that education coupled with life coping orientation for adolescents is an urgent/imperative need of the day, in a changing socio-economic-political-cultural milieu. Essentially, it meant to impart the social, emotional and cognitive skills to children.

For various reasons, the gaps identified in the report and hence the necessary action to address them could not be initiated. Sometime last year (2007), Shanmugam and Kiran, two of our ILP volunteers brought back life to this initiative. They went around first to Vivekananda Yoga Kendra at Yeshwantpur exploring whether they could deliver the requisite training. In the meantime, they discovered Unnati an organisation more devoted to imparting training of this kind and other many meaningful vocational training and job-oriented courses. When they approached them, Ranga from Unnati readily offered to help they designed the curriculum together. In a few weeks time, they set a 14 week workshop for about 15 of our students by ILP's Puraskara scholarship programme.. Paraspara Trust, the partner for scholarship programme in Yeshwantpur, Mathikere and Malleshwaram readily agreed to part with a classroom space to facilitate the workshop.

Ranga, Shanmugam and Kiran assisted by Arpana (of ILP) and Pramila (of Paraspara) have put in dedicatedly for seeing through this workshop. In spite of the many challenges each of them faced at times, the trio put a great show. Ranga had a personal loss at home, but still continued to come almost every Saturday. Shanmugam met with an unfortunate accident, which almost immobilised (with bed rest) him for weeks, yet amidst all these he continued to prepare the slides and content for delivering the course. Kiran, with his ever-smiling and tireless spirit sustained the activity chipping in at every need of the hour. Arpana promptly attended these sessions as well and in the meantime did get attend the Trainers course for this as well. Pramila took care of other logistics every week, adding with some light refreshments after the sessions every week.

Now, they have successfully completed this 14 week programme. What do we expect at the end of this rather new and different experiment? Check this invite here.



Last Saturday, while I was in Gubbi, Gunavathi called me up inviting for tomorrow's function. Earlier this week, I received this ppt, for which I learnt these students have taken initiative to get this rolling! Way to go!

All I have to say is, I take this opportunity to invite you to the Valedictory Function of Life Skills Programme on behalf of the students who have organised this event! See you at Paraspara's Office on 19th Jan 2008, 3 pm.

The Glocal Neighbourhood

Sometime ago, I was travelling to Gubbi from Bengaluru on a KSRTC bus. This incident occurred during the Deepavali festival season. All buses were running to their maximum capacities (~ no place to accommodate any more passengers even if they prefer to standing until the next stop, ie another 70 kms or 90 minutes journey!). I managed to sneak into one of the Shivamogga bound red bus from Bengaluru at the Govardhan stop near Yeshwantpura. The bus was full with mostly male passengers in the age-group of 20-45 years and few women and elderly passengers. I don't remember to have seen any children (age group: 6-16 years) on board :(

The bus took more than 45 minutes to make its way out of the city limits (reach Nelamangala). There were a group of friends (of about 4-5 guys), sitting together in two rows, close to where I was literally clinging on. We had just passed the toll-gate past Nelamangala and one of the guy received a call from one of his friends. I didn't bother for few minutes nor did wish to eavesdrop. As it turned out, he was speaking to one of his friends currently in the US of A, wishing him for the festival. In turns all of them spoke to their seemingly 'remote friend' as if he was calling from his house in Shivamogga. Learning that he is returning soon, they aired their wishlist to him without any hesitation! The conversation lasted until we had passed the next toll (which is easily 35 kms and a journey time of 30 mins at least). Some dozed of, while few of them flashing their jazzy mobile phones, played games or listened to music from FM Radio stations.

I stood there witnessing all these as yet another passenger on the overcrowded bus wondering how communication has transformed lives. I was happy on several counts. One, the fruits of transformation was being savoured by natives of a non-metropolitan city. Two, the youth group belonged to the seemingly elite IT bandwagon, but chose to connect to their roots (by way of going together and for a festival).

I was happy that the journey didn't pass of uninterestingly, but offered some food for thought and introspection.

Recently, about 10 days ago, I was again travelling back to Gubbi from Bengaluru. Except that this time the bus was not crowded and so had even managed to get a seat in spite of catching the bus from Govardhan again! Sometime during the journey, I received a call. I noticed it was from a friend of mine currently pursuing his post-doctoral research at NUS Singapore!

Now, does that ring a bell! You never know, you could be next!

What is GLOCALISATION?

Over the last few years, human-social organisation has been a witness to a strange transformation, either consciously or unconsciously. The forces of Industrialisation and Urbanisation have been until now responsible for how human societies organised and thus largely influenced their respective economies. On the one hand the world is experiencing the influences of a capitalist economy in democratic nation-states and socialist economy in communist nation-states on the other. The respective forms of governments and economies are all studied and debated. However, since the emergence of information and communication technologies (ICT), the outlook of humankind towards these has set a process of transformation.

Over the last two-weeks, our small town got access to BSNL's DataOne broadband internet connection! Voila! I am now posting on to this blog from Gubbi! Welcome, GLOCALISATION and hence this blog! :)

On wikipedia.org, GLOCALISATION is defined as...

'the term “glocal” refers to the individual, group, division, unit, organisation, and community which is willing and is able to “think globally act locally.” The term has been used to show the human capacity to bridge scales (from local to global) and to help overcome meso-scale, bounded, "little-box" thinking.'

Update: An excellent resource on Glocalisation is available here.

Well, to set the context straight, I have been intrigued by the rate of transformation human-societies are experiencing as a consequence of science & technology and of course the economy. The blog intends to present, analyse and characterise the process of this change through numerous personal encounters and observations. The setting ranges from urban, peri-urban, small towns and villages to encounters during travel (on road and rail).