Category Archives: Notes

COVID-19 in Karnataka: Strengthening primary health care & action on social determinants of health

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On invitation by Societal Action Group of Experts to Combat COVID Calamity in Karnataka (SAGE), I joined few other speakers in this webinar event. In my talk I focused mainly on strengthening primary health care and social determinants of health. Given a wider audience, I anchor my presentation within a wider systemic view of public health and health systems, a perspective often lost in framing most recommendations.

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The hand and the mind

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A chemical soup churns an ancient recipe,
a salad of acids nuceic,
a pattern so oft flawed,
a twist & a turn,
livin’ up to the font of a God?

A nurture awaits the soup,
hands not always gentle, words not often soothing,
parsing the salad with a shifting key,
an encryption undefined, unbroken.

A million years of evolution,
moments, minutes and years punctuated by revolution,
ossify thoughts, behaviours and attitudes,
that season the salad, nay even shape its constitution.

What is one life? What of its experience lived?
Where does it come from, this feeling of uniqueness?
This yearning for a kinship amidst a fist of fingers alike?
As if the punch was conceived in the hand…

but willed in a far-away mind?

The original from my notes


At NIF day 2 8 Sept 2018 & finished on Tippu Express 16 Sept 2018; edited

ಸೋಲಿಗ ಸಿರಿ/Soliga Siri

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I have been wanting to upload this book written by Somasundaram and Jade Gowda about various aspects of the day-to-day life of the Soliga people (ಜನಜೀವನ), their folk-songs (ಜಾನಪದ), some extracts of their cultural heritage (ಪರಂಪರೆ) and reflections on the theme of world peace based on the Adivasi culture. The first author has literally built (along with Dr. Sudarshan and various other people) the Vivekananda Girijana Kalyana Kendra in BR Hills, an organisation that has been working with the Soliga people in the district on various issues.

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Bird Brains Open Quiz @ Bangalore Bird Day 2019

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Bird Brain: The Open Bird Quiz announced on the Bangalore Bird Day 2019 site

Since 2016, Bangalore has had the distinction of hosting the Bangalore Bird Day every year. This year, they introduced a Bird Quiz which was put together by L Shyamal & me. The quiz had an enthusiastic participation with over 50 teams of two who took up the written prelims, followed by a very engaging finals. With Shyamal’s help. we hopefully achieved the important aim of making the quiz as much fun as it was competitive and engaging.

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An anthem for the times: Madara’s Tukde Tukde gang

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Nothing like music to communicate the anger and passion which sparks within. As the year winds down and the anger runs high, hip-hop artist Rahul Negi, who raps under the name Madara has released what I think will find a huge following among the political churning ongoing among several young people in the country. The rap communicates what has been said in many ways in the last months to year: that a manipulative, divisive and malicious narrative of pitting people against one another will eventually be exposed for what it is.

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