Author: wellnmed@gmail.com

** Folk artist Basavalingaiah Hiremath passes away

The Karnataka government had honoured him with a Karnataka Rajyotsava award for his life time achievement in the field of folk theatre

Basavalingaiah Hiremath, senior theatre personality, actor, singer, director and folklore expert, died in Bengaluru on January 9 morning.

The Karnataka Rajyotsava award winning folk artist was known across the country for his performance of `Sri Krishna Parijata’, the classic Kannada play. The three-hour-long drama about the life of Lord Krishna and his wives Rukmini and Satyabhama was peppered with song -dance and long dialogues. The performance was in Doddata folk theatre style.

The original play was 12 hours long and was written by Kulgod Tammanna, a folk artist who imagined it to be an overnight performance. Hiremath reshaped it to under three hours, to give the viewer the experience of watching a movie. His team presented over 1,000 performances of Sri Krishna Parijata, in India, U.A.E., Europe and U.S.A.

** ‘This Is Us’ Honours Nasir Ahmed in Ep 8, Season 5 – Who is He?

Nasir is the man behind Discrete Cosine Transform – the technology which makes it possible to share photos & videos.

Nasir Ahmed hails from the southern city of Bengaluru, in India. He was born in 1940, and subsequently completed his schooling from Bishop Cotton Boys School. He earned his Bachelors in electrical engineering from the University College of Engineering in Bengaluru in 1961. Thereafter, he moved to the US for his higher studies and pursued both his MS and Ph.D at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

Inventor – DCT Technology

** Bike expedition to Delhi seeking recognition for Tulu flagged off

Vikith Manjunath and Sharan Shetty’s motorbike expedition to New Delhi in order to create awareness about Tuluva culture, script and justify the need to include Tulu language in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution, was flagged-off by Mangaluru Commissioner of Police N Shashi Kumar at police parade ground on Friday.

** Karnataka’s Covid war room wins national award

“We are the support network for the Covid warriors in the forefront. We make their lives easy by giving the details they want to act upon.

The Karnataka State Covid-19 war room on Friday received the national award under the category of using Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in management of the Covid-19 at the 24th national conference on e- governance in Hyderabad. War room head Munish Moudgil, who received the award, told TNIE that the facility is an e-governance solution for effective management, integrated response and approach. 

** Bengaluru virologist’s test kit ‘Omisure’ for Omicron variant cuts delays

“Globally, all other test kits for Omicron are either made for gene dropout or mutation specific detection. Omisure is the first test kit combining both.”

In a major and global breakthrough towards cutting down procedural delays in genome sequencing to ascertain the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV2, Dr V Ravi, former head of the Department of Neurovirology at National Institute of Mental Health & Neuro Sciences and Head, Research & Development, Tata Medical & Diagnostic Centre, Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, and his team have developed the world’s first test kit, Omisure, that can detect the Omicron variant by combining S-gene target failure (SGTF) and S-gene mutation amplification (SGMA).

** Business on the plates

Two Bengaluru-based entrepreneurs, who source ethnic food from different states, qualify for reality show – Shark Tank India  .

After graduating from SRCC Delhi, Bengaluru-based Muskan Sancheti and Raghav Jhawar, landed a job in a management consultancy firm. Thanks to the pandemic, there was a prolonged deferment in recruiting the two. However, this came as a blessing in disguise with the duo creating and shaping their own entrepreneurial journey — which sprouted out of the problem of ‘expensive and limited access’ of Rajasthani papad in Bengaluru. 

This gave birth to The State Plate, a Bengaluru-based startup that sources ethnic food products from different states like Gujarat, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Kerala among others. “We felt that there was enough demand among people staying in different cities who missed eating their local food

** Heritage music festival from today

The heritage music festival to mark 60 years of Sri Prasanna Vidya Ganapathi Mandali Charitable (SPVGMC) Trust will commence from Thursday.

Trust secretary C.R. Himamshu said the festival to be held at 8th Cross, V.V.Mohalla and the inaugural concert will be a vocal-nagaswara jugalbandi featuring by T.M.Krishnan and Sheik Mahabook Subhani and Sheik Kalleshabi. The concert, to commence from 6.45 p.m, will be preceded by Kavya Vachana at 5.30 p.m.

** Yaduveer Wadiyar launches Kalisu’s 50th library in Mysuru

Kalisu Foundation, an NGO working for improving reading habits among the children of government schools through building libraries, has built its 50th library at the government high school in Udbur village near Mysuru.

Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar, scion of the erstwhile Mysuru royal family, who is also the brand ambassador for Kalisu Foundation, inaugurated the library on Thursday.

Till date, Kalisu has touched the lives of more than 12,000 students studying in government schools in Mysuru, Bengaluru, Kushalnagar and Mandya. The 50th library has more than 3,000 books in different categories and has artwork of all the important places and culture of Karnataka.

** NGO to work with Devadasis

“Civil society needs towork with the Government to bringDevadasisinto the mainstream,”Satish Jarkiholi, MLA and founder of Manava Bandhutva Vedike,an NGO, said in Gokak on Friday.

“We should all be dedicated towards eradicating this social evil. Society should drop the stigma attached to Devadasis and the Government should help them enter other professions by giving them skill training and easy loans to take up small businesses,” he said.

He was speaking after inaugurating a multi-skill centre and community hall of Shakti Aids Control Association in Gokak.

Dr. Sampige said this was the first such centre in the country. “It will help women who have suffered ridicule, insult, and abuse for decades, turn into self-reliant employees and entrepreneurs,’’ she said.

She said that the centre would start short-term and long-term skill training courses and entrepreneurship development programmes.