And on other fronts ..

Ahem, moving right along folks, from the Jerry Springer episode below.
A few things that have been happening worth mentioning about:

My aunt who lives in a village a few hours from Bangalore fell seriously ill and was brought to Bangalore. They are not well-to-do people. In such a situation, there is a difficult choice, admit her to a very expensive place like Manipal hoping that it will maximize her chances or take her to a less expensive place and feel guilty about it. Luckily that decision didn't fall on me to make (her children live in Bangalore), and things seem to have turned out okay, it looks like it was not a serious illness after all. I would dearly like however to understand better the cost-benefit of varying levels of hospitals. One hears a lot about money-minded doctors but I've not seen anybody try to analyse the situation seriously.

We bought a couple of pillow covers from Fab India . This place focuses on ethnic/handicrafts/sustainable/organic kind of thing. And the difference is, it does it very well. It was started way back in the 1950s and at this point its a very mature, professional organization with retail outlets in good locations in big cities. The things they sell (clothing, linen, carpets, some furniture) are really gorgeous and hi-quality. Expensive too. I'm really happy that a place like this exists and would like to spend a lot more money there.

I went to an exhibition of paintings by about 70 painters based in Bangalore called "Art and the City" at Venkatappa Art Galleries. It was organized by Ananya, a local arts group. I liked the work, it was pretty stimulating. I'm glad to see the vibrant art/drama world in Bangalore. They were raising money for one of their projects, and they found a local industrialist Ravi Cavale who agreed to buy all 140 odd paintings to support their work. Pretty cool. It would have been upwards of 20Lakh I believe. I've been meaning to buy atleast one original piece of art, and there was one at the exhibition I liked that I might've bought if it was available. I also met one of the artists there, Ravikumar Kashi. He was an unassuming pleasant chap and it was good chatting with him. One of the bees in my bonnet is to meet cool/famous people, and this is a nice one. I haven't met many artists so far.