As you eat, so shall you poop The trees on the island at our Puttenahalli Puttakere have turned white with splotches of bird poop. At first, we attributed it to the Brahminy kite which was then nesting on the tall Terminalia arjuna. We saw the chick grow and hop from one branch to another. WhenContinue reading “Bird tales from Puttakere”
Author Archives: Usha Rajagopalan ("Lakeika")
Artist A Ramachandran (1935 – 10 Feb. 2024)
In the mid-1990s, I was doing research for my first novel. I wanted to flesh out a nebulous idea of two sisters, one taking care of the other. The title, My Sister’s Keeper, had sprung like magic. It was a difficult theme and even after I had collected enough material, I was filled with doubtContinue reading “Artist A Ramachandran (1935 – 10 Feb. 2024)”
End of the year greetings
We wish you all a wonderful holiday season and a great new year. We wish ourselves the same too! For, truth be told, 2023 was a period of endless challenges for us at PNLIT. Puttenahalli Puttakere sailed through the year but we had to fight hard to protect it, help it thrive. Officers changed and weContinue reading “End of the year greetings”
The Boy and The Plastic Bottle
I saw the boy as soon as he turned the corner but he was too busy kicking an empty plastic bottle along the pathway to see anything else or anyone. Each time he ran towards it, the knapsack slipped from his shoulders. He hitched it back and sent the bottle flying. I wanted to catchContinue reading “The Boy and The Plastic Bottle”
PNLIT – Caretakers of Puttenahalli Lake for 13 years
Today, 11th June, we complete 13 years of nurturing Puttenahalli Lake in south Bengaluru. Our team was registered as Puttenahalli Neighbourhood Lake Improvement Trust (PNLIT) on this day in 2010 with Prasanna Vynatheya, Arathi Manay, OP Ramaswamy and me as founder trustees. Prasanna stepped down. Other residents, Nupur Jain, Sangeetha Agrawal, Divya Shetty and Nandhini Sriraaman joined the Trust. Our Vision was to: Encourage localContinue reading “PNLIT – Caretakers of Puttenahalli Lake for 13 years”
What Dreams Are Made Of
On 14th April 2012, we had as many as 65 volunteers which included residents from the neighbourhood and employees from Genpact. My fellow trustee, Arathi, and I supervised the work which started quite early in the morning. The volunteers’ enthusiasm translated into a great deal of weeding, piling it into baskets and taking it forContinue reading “What Dreams Are Made Of “
Stung By a Woman
7 March 2013. We were at the last leg of an ambitious project, diverting surface runoff from the Brigade Millennium Avenue nearby into the lake. It was a calculated risk BBMP was taking at our behest. Everything depended on the force of the water entering the trench because the road sloped sharply away to theContinue reading “Stung By a Woman”
Death of a Great Cormorant
Several people in our locality are as deeply attached to our Puttenahalli Puttakere as we trustees are. One of them is S K Srinivas, our inhouse water expert, bird watcher, and photographer. In his recent blog post, a heartbreaking, angry, helpless narrative, he has written about the agonizing death of a Great cormorant at the lake yesterday. Continue reading “Death of a Great Cormorant”
That First Monsoon
While rejuvenating our Puttenahalli lake in 2010, BBMP had provided five inlets for rainwater to enter and one waste weir for the excess to flow out. Of the five inlets, one was at the entrance, another further down, roughly midway to where the white silk cotton tree now towers over the walking track like aContinue reading “That First Monsoon”
A Narrow Escape for our Precious Lake
The vigilance of our gardeners is to be applauded. On 3rd Aug, at around 5.30 p.m., they telephoned to say that “black oil” was entering the lake. We replied that it may be from the two-wheeler mechanic shop across the road and asked them to get it stopped. We were wrong. Our gardeners followed theContinue reading “A Narrow Escape for our Precious Lake”
Usha Rajagopalan "Lakeika" 