Flux of Time

(This piece has been published in The New Indian Express) A thick green forest, vast grassy stretches, and a river running through the undulating landscape. And to think all this is a mere 100 km away from Bangalore! Cross Kanakapura, and you will get to see hamlets of about 30-40 families punctuating the forest. As we go past Sathanur and take the Muthathi road (which by the way is an adventure in itself, considering the poor state of the road), we see stretches of mulberry plantations, banana crops, and all the pastoral scenes that jump straight out of a fourth-standard textbook chapter on rural life. Bheemeshwari Nature and Adventure Camp (was a fishing camping earlier) is an initiative of Jungle Lodges, Karnataka government's excellent eco-tourism project. The camp was earlier a fishing camp that attracted tons of visitors because of the Mahseer, the fish that has made the gushing and throbbing River Cauvery its home. Fishing (even catch and release) is banned now, but the c...

Re-plug of an article I wrote five years back ahead of Independence Day. On Vidurashwatha , which is known as the Jallianwalah Bagh of Karnataka. Vidurashwatha is actually very close to my hometown and the temple there is a much-visited one by my family. Of lives lost under the peepal  FREEDOM STRUGGLE Vidurashwatha is known as the Jallianwala Bagh of the south. At least nine people died in the summer of 1938, when British authorities fired indiscriminately at a fair held there, writes Savitha Karthik If the giant peepal trees here were to tell a story, what would that be? That of the Mahabharata character Vidura coming here to plant a sapling of ashwatha, or the ficus religiosa, in botanical terminology? That of the holy peepal being worshipped by generations here, along with hundreds of idols of the snake god installed by believers? Or would the peepal trees choose to tell another tale? Of nine brave souls who fell victim to an oppressor’s guns, right unde...

This is a travelogue I wrote last year after a visit to Chikmagalur-Belur-Halebeedu. It has since been published in The New Indian Express It is to coffee land, Chikmagalur, that we finally head to, after much deliberation. The idea is to take long walks in the coffee plantations, breathe the fresh spice-scented air, and unwind. Far away from the Internet noise that everyday life has come to mean for us ‘city types’. So, we land up at a homestay, a 13-km drive from the heart of Karnataka’s Chikmagalur town, also the district headquarters. While we manage to take a stroll or two in the coffee plantations, the constant rain means no trekking, and no outdoor activities. No signal on the phone, no signal on the iPad – leave us tearing our hair out wondering what to do, unused as we are to the silence and the sound of constant rain. It is then that the manager at the homestay comes up with the idea of  Belur - Halebeedu . Why not, we say. The husband and I both vag...