Information on blood donation (with a focus on Bangalore)

In the hustle of daily life, can we make time for the humanistic activity of blood donation. Like voting, its a duty of every citizen. 

Here are some resources that help in donating and receiving blood. If you can add to the information here to make it more comprehensive and useful, please leave a comment 

For finding blood when someone is is need:

1.) Call this number 94800 44444 where they know the blood availability situation at blood banks in most areas of Karnataka and can tell you if there is a nearby bank that can supply your need. 

The facility is run by Sankalp Foundation sankalpfoundation.org  and Comprehensive Trauma Consortium 

2.) Check the following donor databases: 

http://friends2support.org  

http://blooddonors.in/ 

For donating blood:

1.) See the useful primer at Citizen Matters http://bangalore.citizenmatters.in/articles/blood-donation-faq-guide on eligibility to donate etc. 

2.) Register at the same databases above 

http://friends2support.org 

http://blooddonors.in/ 

3.) This Google map view shows some of the blood banks in Bangalore, and can help you find one near you

https://www.google.co.in/maps/search/blood+bank/@12.9505056,77.5763924,13z?hl=en 

4.) Serial blood donor Rudresh Kalyani (www.facebooks.com/rudresh.kalyani) says its very simple to donate, nearly every area of Bangalore has a hospital and/or a blood bank that accepts blood. 

5.)From a quick web search I could find only one hospital that had a webpage for those who want to donate blood at the hospital:

Vydehi (http://www.vims.ac.in/healthcare/blood-bank.html) 

General information about blood donation:

India still has a blood shortage, though hearteningly it seems to be quickly coming down (from 17% in 2013-14 to 9% in 2016). However there is a lot of variation geographically - some areas have an excess and some areas have a severe deficiency. Of course rural areas have a much bigger problem than urban areas. The law says that paid blood donations are not allowed, but in practice this still seems to happen. Some articles:

http://www.indiaspend.com/cover-story/why-india-needs-35-tankers-of-blood-89887

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/health-news/India-facing-a-blood-shortage-of-3-million-units/articleshow/36492006.cms

http://www.sankalpindia.net 

Responsible tourism

When you travel, you have an opportunity to use your money in a way that supports the local people in their livelihoods. There are two theoretical concepts in this connection:

1)leakage: this is related to how much tourism money stays in the local economy and how much goes out. If the money goes to local people and they in turn use that to pay other local people, the money benefits the local economy more and more. This is good.

2.) who benefits locally. Ideally it would be nice if our money could support those lower on the economic ladder as much as possible 

As an example, I noticed that the comparatively small town of Aurangabad has some pretty fancy hotels. Of course this is because its the nearest base for the Ajantha and Ellora caves. So I can visualise that rich tourists would fly into Aurangabad, go to a fancy hotel, then take a rental car, go to Ajantha and Ellora and then back to the hotel and then back to the airport and out. If you analyse the money they spend, you can see that most of it leaks or doesn't stay in the local economy:

- flight : money mostly goes to aviation fuel, trained airline and airport personnel 

- vehicle : mostly towards fuel (a good that comes from outside) and the driver (money stays locally hopefully)

- hotel : high-end hotels usually use a lot of men and material from outside the local area, both in their construction and running. 

When you think about it, responsible tourism is pretty hard to do in India. We would like to stay in reasonably decent places, which are clean, hygienic and pleasant. Unfortunately, this isn't part of the culture in India generally it seems (see : http://despoki.blogspot.in/2016/08/a-new-kind-of-hotel.html     ) . In our food too,  given low food hygiene standards in India , we obviously would tend to try to go to as upscale a place as possible to be safe, and give the local mom-and-pop shops a miss. 

So it can be a challenge. But I think with a little thought and with crowdsourcing of ideas, we could come up with quite a lot of good ways to support the local economy as much as we can when travelling.  Here's some to start with:

1.) Homestay and hostels: These are quite interesting staying options until my "new kind of hotel" becomes a reality. The negatives of bad hotels don't seem to apply to a large extent to households in India. So the idea of homestays ( where you stay at someone's home, not a hotel) might work out quite well, though its still in its infancy now. Youth hostels tend to be decently maintained and run and are another option. So are hotels run by the tourism department, though the quality of these varies widely in practice. 

2.) Buying the local traditional arts and crafts: This is a no-brainer and something most of us love to do anyway. The more research we do before going on a trip, the better in this regard. For example, to find producers who give their workers a decent wage and to find genuine products rather than cheap ripoffs. 

3.) Hire a good tour guide please, when you go to a historical monument or area. This is an excellent way to contribute, while enhancing your own experience of the area

3.) Another idea, not for the faint-hearted, would be to give a fraction of the money you spend on your trip to an NGO or other deserving cause in the local area.  10% would be a nice starting point, and 50% would be pretty cool :-) 

In general, the longer you stay in the area and more you get to understand and appreciate the local people and culture, the better, it seems to me. Hurried in-and-out and weekend trips don't serve anyone very well, it seems to me 

I paid Rs350/- for this collection of nice geological specimens to a  random salesman on my recent trip to Aurangabad. Coral, quarts and agate he told me. I am quite happy about the purchase but I wonder how this thing works. How much time does it take to find these pieces, who does the search, whom does the money go to ?

Notes, References:

1. If you're going to Wayanad, staying at the Wayanad County resort directly contribute to the well-being of tribal workers at the associated plantation. Read the happy story:  
http://www.thebetterindia.com/66124/ias-officer-prasanth-nair-priyadarshini-tea-estate-tourism-hunger-malnutrition-tribal-people-wayanad/

Public art

While the classical vs. modern debate rages on, public art is one of the sites where it plays out in practice. Public art can be quite difficult to do well - you want to appeal to as wide a constituency of people, but serious art is often specialised and becomes inaccessible. 

Singapore seems to do quite well in doing good public art. Changi Airport always has something interesting going on. Below are three other pieces that I really liked:

This brilliant piece recently installed at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. It uses just layers of wire mesh to create a likeness of the man.  The artist must have taken years to build up his competence in doing this

This clever installation at Gardens by the Bay gives the impression of figures that are hanging in the air

This quirky piece at a mall was done as part of some robotics demonstration. Screams 'Japanese aesthetic' to me

See http://despoki.blogspot.in/2016/01/many-thoughts-about-art-triggered-by.html for the previous post in the 'art' thread

Kilikili

I had a very nice 'Eureka' moment recently. On Rainbow FM (the AIR FM channel?) there was a programme "Folks with Different Strokes" (?). It featured a lady whose child had a mental disability and how she and her husband coped with it and went on to found an NGO "KiliKili", to create playspaces for children with disabilities. The lady was simply fantastic. One could see that she had beautifully come to terms with the difficulty of having and raising a differently-abled child, and there was great spirit and strength and no bitterness whatsoever visible. The host was fantastic too, asking good questions, interjecting when needed, generally sensitive and soft-spoken. From the way the interview went, she seemed to have done a horrific amount of preparation. How wasteful and old-fashioned! To actually do research before going on air. Kudos to this hostess, whose name wasn't mentioned on air. The interviewee was Kavitha Krishnamoorthy and the organisation she co-founded can be found at www.kilikili.org .

The icing on the cake for me was a small personal connection through Chitra Vishwanath of Biome Solutions (www.biome-solutions.com), the redoubtable environmental architect who was mentioned on air as having worked with this group to design playgrounds that are usable by all kinds of children.

So - this was one of the best programmes I've heard on air (both TV and radio) in India. Truly an example of what TV and radio could be at its best. Not that these media should only show inspirational true stories, but the current fare on offer is mostly uninspired without depth or substance. The programme compared well with the best I've heard on radio in the US.

"Folks with different strokes" airs every alternate Saturday between 6 and 8 pm.

========
I was delighted to see the following comment on this post from Rashmi Shetty :

Hi VK,
I was directed to your blog by a friend. You sure write well.I am Rashmi Shetty, the hostess of Folks with different strokes. Thank you for the feedback:-)
From the second saturday of May this year, Folks with different strokes has changed to INSPIRE .It is on air from 7p.m- 8p.m every alternate saturday. 
On reading your feedback thought I'd give you the update.
Thanks again.

Rework The World

I went to the Rework the World conference, www.reworktheworld.org in early June, representing Arghyam. The conference was in Leksand, a lakeside resort a few hours north of Stockholm. The conference was a very good experience. The next and last edition of the conference , which is one of a series is going to be held in Alexandria , Egypt in 2012 and I heartily recommend that to any young person, though needless to say, it would be quite expensive.

As luck would have it, my passport was quite close to expiring and I needed to get it renewed. I had a difficult time getting the renewal done ; worth its own blog post!

I flew out of Delhi and back to Delhi which make the overall trip more strenuous.

The event was on youth and social entrepreneurship. It was co-organised by two interesting groups the Yes Foundation (one of whose key people is an Indian American, Poonam Ahluwalia), and the Tallberg Foundation, a wellknown think-tank in Sweden. The trip expenses were sponsored by the organisers which was really nice of them, though I think they were hoping I would play a more active role than I did.

From Stockholm Airport, I drove down to the conference location by car with Thomas Bjelkeman-Petersson of Akvo.org, who's visited us in India a few times. It was a great drive through open sparsely populated countryside. A very welcome break from the crush and the dirt of Bangalore and India which gets to me.

There was a huge amount of infectious energy in the gathering ; so many people, especially youth (1500+), all trying to make the world a better place, all over the world.

Lots of particulars that bear a passing comment but maybe in a later post.

Some videos below:
1.) The Max hamburger chain in Sweden now tracks the carbon footprint of each kind of burger and lets you know !



2.) There was a lot of great music at the event:

The vegetable pushcart man as hero

As you drive on the streets of Bangalore you often come across vegetable pushcarts. These are flat 4 wheeled contraptions, loaded with vegetables and being trundled around the city. Sometimes its just piled high with tomatoes and potatoes, sometimes its a wide range of vegetables. Consider the life of the vegetable pushcart man:

-- the daily pollution and dust
-- being completely at the mercy of the weather ; from hot sun to sudden showers. Imagine trundling your way home maybe 5 kilometers away in one of Bangalore's thunderstorms in roads running full of water with your business day washed out.
-- reducing business as the big shops like Reliance undercut everyone else
-- negotiating Bangalore's traffic and intersections where to the man in the CAR the pedestrians and pushcarts are irritants to be honked angrily out of the way as they interrupt the smooth flow of traffic.

Despite all these obstacles, the pushcart man endures. Why does he do it? Does he go home to a loving family that makes it all worth it for him? Does he feel he has no choice? Or does drink do the trick? Where does he draw the strength from, to continue his useful but uneviable role? Does he fall prey at some point to the many options for a spiral into self-destruction that a city offers? Does he feel a proud sense of dignity in doing a honest day's work?

Vegetable pushcart man: I don't (yet) have the humanity to stop my vehicle and have a real conversation with you, so I just have to imagine all the above. But I salute you.

Friend roundup

Arvind and Nandita in Tokyo and visiting Mt. Fuji

http://picasaweb.google.com/goestoinfinity/NanditaTokyo?

and some more:

http://picasaweb.google.com/goestoinfinity/GinzaDeptStore?

PS: Privacy issues? Let me know and I'll remove the photo...

Siddhu celebrates Mothers' Day:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sidwork/3512828816/

Zenrainman laments the lamentable hacking down of Bangalore's beloved trees:

From a Water Portal event this weekend

From here and there

1.) I started tagging my older posts (scroll down and look for the "Labels" section on the right hand side of this page). Still a huge task if I want to tag all the posts from day 1. However, I'm quite happy to see on going through some of the older posts that I actually like them and find it worth looking at them again. Too often, when I go back to look at something I wrote, I feel nauseated, so this is a good surprise. If/when this exercise is completed it might show some interesting patterns about the kind of things that interest me and that I write about

2.) I went to the other end of town for a meeting today, and bought organic mangoes from the lady of the house who runs a small shop out of the house selling organics. This seems to be a cool idea. Organic food seems particularly amenable to having lots of small neighbourhood shops selling them. I want to set up one

3.) And a note on one of the bees in my bonnet (or should I say closet): clothes. Think about this: you could evaluate your clothes by dividing the cost of the item by the number of times you wore it. You'd look for a low number to come out of the ratio as that would indicate that it didn't cost you much and you used it a lot. It seems an interesting way to evaluate the worth or the value you get out of it. Couple of points: especially for women, I think the value would be concentrated on a low end and a high end, with a dip in the middle, rather than evenly distributed. This is because there would be some pretty expensive thing, and then precisely because it was so expensive, we would wear it very few times, so that its worth by the above calculation would be very high. For eg. all the suits I've bought I've used only a couple of times, and then they've gotten too tight for me :-(. And then you'd have stuff like jeans, whose worth would be very low.

4.) We were at the doctor's clinic over the weekend, when a couple rushed in. Shockingly the lower portion of the woman's sari was completely stained in blood and she was in great pain and moaning. The doctor was quite upset -- this was her consultation clinic with no facilities for taking care of patients and the lady had been sent there mistakenly by a hospital. They were sent off to another nearby nursing home.
It was painful to watch. Since the doctor was a ob/gyn, it was probably a pregnancy or an abortion related problem. The couple was from a lower economic background. A sad reminder of how the other half lives, which we are insulated from, most of the time.

Our man in Tokyo...

Arvind Narayanan's recent photos from Tokyo can be viewed here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/goestoinfinity/EbisuNearMuseumOfPhotography#slideshow

Above photo is from that set. When will we in India ever figure out the attention to detail that went into the pavement in the picture ?

Tickettttt !!!!

I feel bad for BMTC bus drivers (and the traffic policemen, but that's a post for another day). They have to deal with so much crap on the road; scooterists (like me) weaving in and out, stupid-ass pedestrians (like me) crossing right in front of them, arrogant car drivers who think they take priority over the proles in a BMTC bus (not like me) and so on.
Wouldn't it be interesting if bus drivers in India got paid very well. Like say 60,000/- a month. Reflect on the effect of such an action.

Driving quality would improve a lot, roads would be safer for everyone. The socio-economic hierarchy would get some nice churning. Society would be placing the right value on human life and safety. And not the last, several kids who excitedly say "bus driver" or "train driver" when asked what they'll be when they grow up, will end up fulfilling their childhood dreams.

Seems like a good idea, no?


Image by kumar_08 on flickr; click through for more

Hindu Muslim

We're never going to resolve the Hindu Muslim conflicts in India without understanding more about each other and where are these avenues for understanding? I don't know of any.

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Photo by audi_jo, clickthrough

Beautiful Minds

I don't know how many of you'll know about TED , http://www.ted.com.  Its a unique event that happens every year in California where a bunch of smart people are invited to present their ideas ; "Ideas Worth Spreading" its called. Anyway its become a kind of cultish thing. The talks themselves are generally prettty good, though on a wide range of topics so that they might not interest everyone. They archive the talks at their site, releasing a new one every day. Nandan Nilekani spoke there this year.

 

http://www.ted.com/index.php/themes/top_10_tedtalks.html  might be a good beginning point, Top 10 talks. I haven't seen all of them yet, but here's one that's really cool:

 

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html 

 

I and Priya were at a similiar event in Bangalore called "Beautiful Minds" this weekend . The list of speakers is up here (http://www.beautifulminds.co.in/who.htm) . It was pretty good ! Not a lot of better ways to spend a Saturday than listen to a bunch of smart committed people talking about their passions. I think it would be excellent if a lot more of these happened in India, since life tends to be pretty humdrum otherwise (!) and offer relatively little intellectual stimulation or exposure to new ideas. Huge bonus was the location, Our Native Village, an eco-resort. They had *great* organic food for lunch. And it was all free.

 

 

 

Movie on farm crisis in Vidharbha

I am so glad somebody did this :

 

http://www.indiatogether.org/2008/jun/rvw-agrarian.htm 

 

 

More on HDFC

Here is the latest communication between me and HDFC. Unbelievable stonewalling:

=============

Dear Mr. Keerthi,
Really, I must say HDFC Customer Complaint representatives and managers seem to be highly trained in avoiding the substantive issues and deflecting complaints. None of the points I have raised below have been addressed. So let me start with just one point and I would like the Banks' response to it:

To state the issue under dispute in the simplest terms: There were fradulent transactions on my credit card in early May 2008 and these transactions were credited back to my account in November 2008. I have the following questions regarding this:

1.) Does the Bank consider this an acceptable quality of service ? (I was told by the Bank representative that 45 days was the turnaround time for action on this. Clearly this was not met). If the Bank agrees that this is not acceptable quality of service, what then should the Bank do about it ?

2.) During the period from May to November, there was no proactive communication from the Bank's side at any point regarding the status of this matter (other than one written communication in July/August that said that the amount would be credited in the next cycle. This did not happen so this is worse than non-communication, this is a promise that was not followed through on).
Does the Bank consider this acceptable quality of service ? If not, what then should the Bank do about it ?

I look forward to an honest answer to these two questions,

Best wishes,
Vijay Krishna G

===========

Dear Mr. Guntur,

This is further to your e-mail dated 12.02.09 regarding your HDFC Bank credit card account. It is disappointing to note that we are unable to convince you despite the best efforts taken by the bank. We once again wish to summarize our findings with the bank for your ready reference.

We are deeply concerned to note your feedback on the previous interactions with the Bank. We wish to reaffirm that it is our constant endeavor to ensure that each and every interaction of our customers are made pleasant and satisfactory. Your feedback has enabled us to introspect and reinforce our efforts further in this direction.

We regret to note your concerns expressed with regard to the credit of disputed transactions on your card account We wish to clarify that post completion of the investigation at our end, we had credited your card account for the disputed transactions amounting to Rs.33376.00 along with the associated finance charges. Please be rest assured that your specific feedback has been shared with the concerned for appropriate review.

We reaffirm your credit card is invalidated from further usage and there is an outstanding balance of Rs.10622.09 as per your February'09 statement. We acknowledge receipt of your payment of Rs.9869.24 towards your February'09 statement. We request you to effect payment towards the remaining due of Rs.752.85 as on date within the stipulated payment due date to preclude levy of further bank charges.

Mr. Guntur, please feel free to get in touch with our customer service representatives at the contact number: 080 – 66224332 or write to us at customerservices.cards@hdfcbank.com for any further assistance / clarification that you may require and we shall be glad to assist you.

We trust we have addressed your grievance in a fair and equitable manner and that the issue has been resolved to your fullest satisfaction. As part of regulatory requirements, we also mention that if you are not satisfied with our response, you may approach the Banking Ombudsman appointed by Reserve Bank of India.

Kindly log on to http://www.hdfcbank.com/common/customer_center.htm for details of the Banking Ombudsman Scheme - 2006 and procedure for lodging complaints.

Assuring you of our best attention at all the times.

Regards,


Rajeswari Jayasekar
Senior Manager - Service Quality
============

HDFC Bank sucks...

..and the Reserve Bank of India Ombudsman Scheme is not much better either.

Previous posts about this here:
http://vk-writtenword.blogspot.com/search/label/hdfcsucks

I went to the Reserve Bank of India Ombudsman scheme to get this redressed and they ruled in favour of the bank. I'm not happy and I think they were wrong and didn't understand the details of the case. I'll stomach the decision but I'm glad I went through the process and pushed the matter to a conclusion.

To recap:
There were fraudulent charges on my credit card in April. These wern't taken off till November and after repeated calls and complaints. In the meantime, since they were not responding to repeated calls regarding the status of the fraudulent charges, I decided to stop making payments as I no longer had any faith that they would redress the matter, and they were charging me for the fraudulent charges also. At the same time, there was a separate issue where they turned on automatic withdrawal from my bank account for a cash loan that I had taken and continued to apply that direct withdrawal even after the loan had been paid off. They also have an interesting system where you can turn on the automatic withdrawal on the phone but you have to write or fax in to turn it off. They gave lots of instructions to turn it off through the online account none of which worked.
Overall a whole bunch of fines and late charges had piled up which they refused to withdraw. Oh well, I'll pay off and cancel the card and never use their services again. But wait -- that's expecting too much of them. I closed a bank account with them 2 years back but it stretched their capabilities too much to do it and the account is still alive and waiting to be misused.

Rudeness and harrassment from the customer service personnel trying to recover the money were in evidence right through my dealings with them, but an apology for the incredible delay in dealing with the matter was never ever forthcoming.

From Vishweshwareya Museum

Images from Vishweshwareya science museum (sic) -- Ultra cool science museum in Bangalore.



Face on a platter !!




A tap hanging in midair and pouring water !




Artistic light arrangement thingy




Priya's niece (does that make her my neice too?)



Forget what this was

From Balaji

A good friend's (R.Balaji, IITM 92 Chem) bad experience with a mover, would like to spread this information widely. I 100% vouch for the veracity of the story below.

Customer service in India is absymal -- I am fighting with HDFC Bank Credit Cards currently.

============

Dear Friends,

I have recently moved over from Mumbai to Kolkata and engaged M/s Caravan Packers & Movers (CPM), http://www.caravanpackers.com for Door To Door shifting of my House hold Items and Maruthi Zen car on 25th Dec'08. I had a very bad and traumatic experience with them and could recover my belongings only after approaching the local Police. I am sharing my experience here below for the benefit of all of you. Request your HR Department to Black List this particular Transporter from your company's list. Also advise your friends and relatives to avoid such rouge Transporters to avoid loss of property and mental trauma.

This was one of the transporters (ISO 9001:200 & IBA Approved Company and claim to be in this business since 1971) who contacted me after I registered for my requirements in the website "Sulekha.com" (advise you to avoid using this site too). They have shown attractive catalogues, Brochures and references.

The terms of contract agreed were that they would engage a 17 feet exclusive truck from door to door for house hold items and a car career for transporting my car. The final contract price negotiated was Rs. 50,000/-, that includes insurance for Rs. 1,50,000/- worth and service Tax etc. 70% of the amount to be paid by cheque at the time of loading and the balance 30% to be paid by cheque after the delivery of the last item (car) at my residence in Kolkata.

After handing over my goods to them in Mumbai, the attitude and behavior of the transporter has completely changed. They have unilaterally changed all the terms of contract agreed upon earlier. It was the worst kind of service I had ever received from a transporter and a brief summary of my experience is recollected here:


1. The truck was unloaded in between and moved over into a different container.
2. The goods were not delivered at my residence and instead unloaded at an unknown destination in the outskirts of Kolkata.
3. M/S CPM demanded for the balance payment in cash even before delivering my goods.
4. All my items were ransacked, searched for valuables, some items were stolen, and others were damaged.
5. After getting the involvement of local police, they have repacked the loose items in haphazard manner and dispatched.
6. Almost all the 32 cartons were in open position and they even tried to put the tape and seal them while unloading from the truck.
7. I tried to contact their offices at Delhi, Mumbai as well as Kolkata but the response was never positive and they all talked the same language.
8. None of their offices could provide me the phone number of their C&MD.
9. They have a website, where there is no provision for customer feed back or complaint.
10. Though I have paid for insurance coverage and reported the damages, there was no response from them after receiving the balance amount.
11. They never responded to any of my emails and subsequent reminders.

Request all of you to learn from my bad experience and avoid this particular transporter and be wiser before you engage any other transporter. They are real cheats and can cause a lot of headache. They do not understand the meaning of the word – Service.

Thank you for your co-operation and support.

Best Regards
Balaji Raparti

Bangalore roads

There seems to be a major inefficiency with Bangalore road repairs. Potholes are never fixed. But every now and then major roads get a big overhauling, but they get into bad shape very soon. I read in the newspaper once that contractors don't like to do pothole fixing ; they prefer to do the major overhauling (which seems pretty obvious, less painstaking, more expenses and more profits). But keeping contractors happy is hardly the city's first priority. And from the above it would seem the major resurfacing also is substandard.

Given the huge amount of money in road construction, it seems there are huge inefficiencies in this. I would love to see contractors reined in and forced to do a lot of pothole repairing. Certainly an area of civic engagement. I wonder if some people have already looked into this.



On a different note, the above is a bad quality video of a BMTC bus (the articulated type, which is almost double the length of the standard one) reversing on a narrow section of Indiranagar 100 feet road because a section of the road got suddenly shut off due to metro construction. Someone should be fired for the driver not being informed that the route was no longer available (alternatively the driver should be fired if he was illegally using that route which was anyway in pretty bad shape due to the construction). One of my background ideas is that some white collar jobs like bus and train driving should be paid a lot. Not only is this appropriate, because the drivers have peoples lives in their hands, but it also creates some nice churn in the traditional ideas of what occupations are cool to do and what are not. Remember how when we were kids we wanted to bus and train drivers and suchlike. It would be nice if these remained respectable career options on growing up.

Diwali (contd)

In most Indian cities Diwali has become a festival of noise and street pollution, rather than a festival of lights. I remember 3 or 4 years back we lived near Ulsoor lake and the Diwali there was horrendous. There were a group of young people bursting extremely loud crackers late into the night. It was just obscenely loud and it seemed that their parents also did not see either the pointlessness of the exercise or the insensitivity to the neighbours. (The neighbours should have protested, why that doesn't happen in India is a muse for a separate day, and why I personally don't protest, for yet another day).They have these grotesque electric crackers taken to the extreme that go on for ever (5, 10, 15 minutes and more). Nowadays its not so bad as they don't allow lighting crackers inside the apartment complex we live in, so we're shielded from the worst. Today I saw an amazing sight -- on a busy main road near my house near a messy traffic intersection, with 2 cops directing traffic, some IDIOT decided that he must prove his ownership of the road by lighting one of the 5 minute wallahs on the road. The traffic stopped for 5 minutes and the traffic cops did not feel it necessary to chastise the culprit. C'est la vie (en l'Indee).

Specific problem above apart, we need to reinvent our rituals and practices to be genuinely in tune and authentic to today's life. How does one practice Diwali or any other festival in the city in a way that makes sense ?
IIT Kharagpur used to have a contest between hostels for who does the best lighting up of the hostel with diyas for Diwali. That seems like a nice practice, encouraging beauty and creativity instead of sound.
The legends behind Diwali are pretty confusing to me atleast, they seem to be multiple stories and ideas. How does one relate to any of those in a modern rationalist world ? Can we find some essence of the festival and place it in a modern context ?

Another unrelated thought is how incredibly alive and vital some of our Indian festivals are, particularly Holi and Diwali. I can't recall such spectacular exhibitions of light (sound), and colour in any other country's celebrations.

Some self-indulgent photos below, as we played with a camera and diyas on Diwali