Karnataka - Bangalore

Reporter's Diary

Those good old days

IT IS holiday season again with schools and colleges closed for vacation. For children who cannot travel to other places because of their parents' work commitments, there are summer camps all over Bangalore.

Clay modelling, origami, painting, contemporary dance, theatre, cricket and tennis coaching, aquatics... the list of possibilities is endless. For those who cannot afford expensive camps, there are those run by the Bal Bhavan and the City YMCA. The ISKCON too has culture camps for children who like to connect with their roots.

The days when summer meant a visit to grandparents far away and weeks or romping around rural areas or small towns and tasting the stolen fruit, in this case mangoes picked from a garden, now exist only in memory. Holidays, like many other things, now need to be planned and structured. Perhaps, taking away some of the fun.

A chaotic ride

WE SHOULD have a world record soon at the Airport Road-Indiranagar 100-Foot Road junction flyover for the most delayed infrastructure project in the world.

But before that happens, spare a thought for the poor commuters using that stretch. Vehicles which once sped past the road from Koramangala Ring Road, now have to take a left and struggle through narrow lanes before crossing the Airport Road at the chaotic Domlur Junction, get on to a half completed flyover stretch and then take the 100-foot road and proceed.

For those headed towards the Airport, the flyover site offers a sudden elevation at the bridge. Vehicles have to virtually stop at the elevation, switch to a lower gear and then ascend. For those zooming past the junction, the elevation is bound to make butterflies flutter violently in the stomach.

Red-tapism

YOU SHOULD donate blood because Bangalore has shortage of blood. Patients and their attendants toil hard to get a sachet of blood. Surgery is a testing time for patients and relatives. Agreed.

But you cannot agree with the way blood bank keepers of some of the hospitals treat voluntary blood donors (those invited by the attendants of patients). Some of the hospitals continue to send back voluntary blood donors saying that the letter requisitioning blood had not reached them. In this age of technology and speed, the blood banks continue to refuse to make a call to the department concerned and find out whether blood is needed. Formalities can follow.

Red-tapism? Or is it blood red-tapism?

K. Satyamurty,

Rasheed Kappan,

Govind D. Belgaumkar

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