The review in two words? …the two words are…..excellent production.

Now for some more words….

At Ranga Shankara, I was in the minority on two counts: one, I was probably the only one not to have seen this production earlier at Chowdiah Memorial Hall…and more importantly, I was, very probably, the only one not to have read the book, “Five Point Someone”, earlier.

I had missed out on reading this book earlier (a slight aversion to “IIT lit”!) and took a considered decision not to read the book before seeing the play, and I think it was a good decision for me. The plot, the characters, the denouement, were all fresh and new to me.

Whatever the genre of the play, Evam produces a well-wrapped package. Sunil Vishnu came up on stage and talked about the play, mentioning that Evam had been around for four years, 14 plays, and this was the 200th performance by them. He stressed that the 50th, 150th, and now the 200th performance were all at their favourite theatre space, Ranga Shankara.

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Being more used to writing for the newspapers, it was nice to be featured in two newspapers today; but I have an observation to make about that….

Today’s “Mint” newspaper carried an article by carries an article Kirti Pandey, in the “Life” section, about birdwatching in Bangalore. I have been quoted in the article, as have the two other youngsters who went with me for the associated shoot at Lalbagh.

It’s here

There’s a photograph of the three of us, though it does not show up in the online version.

Also, today’s Economic Times carried an article called “Bird Whisperers”, carries an article Kirti Pandey, about a birdwatching trip that I had organized in Lalbagh a few days ago.

It’s here

(Click on “Live it up” in the list on the left-hand side, and the article will appear.)

The photographs, for which proper credit has been given, were all taken by me during the course of that morning.

But…the thing is…both these articles, are, in a sense, not “real”.

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This is a vegetarian’s perspective of the restaurant. 

Here on, I will not be labeling my outings with my stomach this explicitly, unless they include someone with a meat tooth. My trip to this Italian restaurant, I must admit, was light on my purse because a friend paid for this indulgence. That is the least you expect of someone who has made it to Stanford. And again, hoping that he will turn out to be another Larry Page, you expect a little more. Read more

India Foundation for the Arts, which recently had their Performance Festival at Ranga Shankara, is sponsoring an interactive performance, called “Rajesh Weds Menaka! aka the Wedding Party” on March 7,8 and 9, on M G Road.
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” Lucknow ‘76″,staged at Ranga Shankara on 2nd and 3rd March, 2007, is written and directed by Abhishek Majumdar. The play draws comparisons between the historic events of 1876 and the Emergency imposed in 1976, and looks at the way event impact the lives of ordinary people.

It was obvious from the very first scene that we were privileged to have a cast of really fine actors, who acquitted themselves extremely well indeed. They held us with the power of their acting right through the evening, and the delivery and diction were excellent.
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Working in an office on Bannerghatta road, we aren’t actually pampered for choice when it comes to eating out, especially when the time you get to eat in that place is an hour or so. The closest places are Sahib Sindh Sultan at Forum, Bay leaf and another restaurant at Raheja Arcade, Kormangala, and Rampur ka something, again at Kormangala. We have been to these places so many times that the waiters can now tell exactly how many shirts we repeat in a week.
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For the young and the restless and those new to the city, here are things you could do this weekend in Bangalore:
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I happened to visit “Nalapaka” , , a restaurant that serves authentic north Karnataka food The moment you enter the restaurant, you find a placard.

It says ‘Sharanu Banni’ in Kannada. In simple English it means ‘Welcome’You get in and check out for availability of seats and go ahead and sit down to enjoy some authentic food.
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We wanted to try out a restaurant serving Oriental cuisine, exclusive of Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi cooking, and decided to try out Tai Tai Restaurant, on M G Road:

We did go on a Tuesday (8th of January), but were rather surprised to find the place deserted except for one table in the upper outdoor area. However, perhaps we were early, and perhaps Tuesday is not a popular day for eating out!

The decor was very warm, uncluttered and inviting, and made good use of the triangular space under the eaves of the EGK building:

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To make your life more convenient and simple, here’s one more service that’s been launched in Bangalore city. To know more about this voice-based service, here are a few lines from the folks who have developed this technology and service.

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“Few months back a few of us got together to form Ubona with the mission to create killer application which can be used by the people of our country. This drive has prompted us to envision a new medium which will be able to comprehend human speech and trigger the action or services based on the same. We knew understanding human speech is a complex subject but the team have taken up the challenge as we wanted to follow the path where we create substantial intellectual properties as well as provide value to the humanity.

Although there are a few speech activated, limited vocabulary applications in India, the dimension of our problem is completely different, as the need is to address a very large vocabulary to comprehensively address the names of the businesses, products etc spoken by millions of people with different accents and pronunciation. With our technology developed by team Ubona, we are more or less there and we will perfect that with more and more users using our system.

The restaurant service currently launched at Bangalore is the first expression of our medium of bringing value by using the state of art, indigenous and world-class technologies. We are committed to bring more and more useful and innovative application. Finally if it works (which we are confident it will,) at some time in future people of India will just speak over his phone to get things done.

To use our first service launched for Bangaloreans on this new medium please call Ubona at (+91 80 4070 0000) and say the name of the wine and dine place you are looking for.”

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Life made simpler? You decide! Do give this new service a try and get back to the folks at Ubona with your feedback!