Features

PARIS — Removing cars from an expanse around the Eiffel Tower to create a green pathway sounds pretty good on paper, but the mayor of Paris is struggling to win over residents and above all the police force to revamp one of the city’s most celebrated views.

Thousands of tourists jostle every day to snap the Eiffel Tower from across the River Seine on the hill at Trocadero, with its magnificent gardens and a modernist palace housing museums.

Walking to Trocadero is less romantic, however, requiring the crossing of two major intersections and the often traffic-clogged Pont d’Iena Bridge.

Mayor Anne Hidalgo said to general surprise this week that she wants to push ahead with a project to kick out the cars and create a continuous garden between the Eiffel Tower and the Trocadero esplanade.

But while she hopes to take advantage of the 2024 Summer Olympics to begin the project as soon as the Games end, her critics — and most importantly the Paris police chief — are resisting the plan.

The proposal is in keeping with other efforts by the Socialist mayor to squeeze cars out of Paris and make the city greener, a push that has divided residents and political opponents who say her policies go too far.

A trio of Japanese tourists taking photos next to the busy Pont d’Iena bridge agreed that the plan would make a difference.

The view was “disappointing”, Mahiro told AFP, saying the vista would be “more beautiful with less cars”.

‘Pedestrian-friendly’ 

Hidalgo launched the project in 2019 but soon clashed with the city’s police chief at the time, Didier Lallement, and right-wing mayors of three of the city’s districts over concerns about traffic disruptions.

But Hidalgo, who announced a similar plan in January to ban cars on half of the central Place de la Concorde, site of the iconic Luxor Obelisk, is hoping the fervour of the Olympics will garner support for the ambitious project.

“After the Olympic Games, there will no longer be cars passing in front of the Eiffel Tower,” Hidalgo said in an interview with the Ouest-France newspaper.

A “green” Trocadero, a “pedestrian-friendly” Lena Bridge and a “reforested” Champ-de-Mars, the expansive lawn in the shadow of the Tower, “will all together form a large park in the heart of Paris”, she said.

Supporters have lauded the efforts by Hidalgo, a former presidential candidate, to reduce pollution and increase green areas in the densely populated city, which can become unbearable when increasingly frequent summer heatwaves hit.

During her first term in office, Hidalgo scored her biggest urbanisation win with the pedestrianisation of the embankment on the right bank of the Seine after a two-year battle.

But the Trocadero project was rejected by an administrative court in 2022 and 2023, and the mayor’s office acknowledged that the initial project was not destined to be implemented.

Hidalgo has submitted a “modified” plan to the police authorities, hoping the preparations ahead of the Olympics would provide a new window of opportunity.

France’s new right-wing Culture Minister Rachida Dati, an arch-foe of Hidalgo who says she will run for Paris mayor in 2026, branded the new plan a “coup”.

And Paris police chief Laurent Nunez maintained his administration’s opposition, saying “there remain many questions... on several points”.

In May 2022, his predecessor Lallement said he feared “significant traffic delays” and “hold-ups” that would slow down response times for emergency services.

Everton, a Brazilian photographer who has been living in France for 15 years, said he was worried about how Hidalgo’s plan would impact commuters in Paris.

“That’s going to block the bridge and there are people who need to drive in Paris,” he told AFP. “I believe we need to do something, but it’s important not to go overboard.”

Police authorities have said they are open to reviewing the new proposal promised by the mayor’s office.

The Eiffel Tower is one of the most popular monuments in the world, with 6.3 million tourists visiting last year.

Around 15 million visitors are expected for the Olympics in July and August, and the Paralympics in August and early September.

JAIJAIPUR, India — While India’s great and good gather for the opening of a controversial temple to the Hindu god Ram, some of his most fervent but least privileged adherents gather separately to celebrate the deity — covered from head to toe in tattoos of his name.

Once barred from entering holy sites because of their place at the bottom of India’s millennia-old caste hierarchy, members of the Ramnami religious movement aim to show that all can worship their beloved Ram.

But as India prepares to inaugurate the temple at Ayodhya — built on the site of an ancient mosque torn down by Hindu zealots in 1992 — the Ramnamis say they have made an even bolder display of their faith.

They have inked Ram’s name over and over on their bodies in flowing rhythmic script.

“I devoted my body in his name,” said Setbai Ramnami, wearing a crown of peacock feathers and draped in a white shawl also covered with Ram’s name.

“I have never been to a temple... I have not even offered flowers to a Ram idol,” said Setbai, who is in her 70s and a member of India’s 200-million-strong Dalit castes, those once known as “untouchables”.

As well as tattoos, members take the movement’s name as their surname to show their total commitment.

Defiant message 

When Setbai’s ancestors were denied entry to temples more than a century ago, they fought back with a needle and ink made from the residue of kerosene lamps.

The tattoos were a defiant message to higher caste Hindus that the god they were being prevented from worshipping was for everyone, irrespective of caste and gender.

For many Hindus, the temple opening on Monday will be a long-held dream come true.

In the early 1990s, the party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi backed the campaign to destroy the mosque where the temple now sits — triggering modern India’s worst religious riots that killed 2,000 people, most of them Muslims.

Now the $240 million structure is set to consolidate Modi’s Hindu base as he seeks a third term in general elections later this year.

But the Ramnamis say their devotion, etched on their skin, is stronger than any physical structure built in the god’s name.

“For us, Ram is everywhere, in every particle, in every sound,” said 52-year-old Gularam Ramnami, adding that for those celebrating the Ayodhya temple Ram “resides in an idol”.

“We made our bodies a temple.”

Many of the scores of Ramnamis meeting Sunday for an annual gathering in Chhattisgarh state said they welcomed the Ram temple’s opening.

But they also urged caution and pointed to the violent history of the structure.

“Ram never says break a mosque, and Allah never says break a temple,” Gularam said.

“We have always said never hurt anybody through thoughts, words or actions.”

‘An ideology’ 

It took a whole day for Setbai to have her face tattooed, but she insists she did not feel pain because it was done in devotion.

“There will come a day when we will all leave,” she said. “It is good that I have immersed myself in devotion... this is exactly how I want to die.”

But times are changing for the Ramnamis too.

Full-body tattoos are becoming less common, as some younger devotees looking for jobs limit the etchings to body areas they can cover, although they say they maintain the other strict rules of the group.

Ramnamis are vegetarians, do not drink alcohol or smoke, and mostly grow everything that they eat.

Unlike most Hindus who choose cremation, Ramnamis bury their dead because they do not want Ram’s name to burn.

Many Dalits and other marginalised groups still face violence and discrimination, but Ramnamis say their tattoos show their support of a god all can worship.

“We do not care who thinks we are lower caste, we belong to a land where caste and class hold no significance,” Gularam said.

“Ramnami is an ideology... it is not caste or religion bound.”

TOKYO — Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg met Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during a visit to Japan, discussing the risks of generative AI, a government spokesman said on Wednesday.

Zuckerberg is on a mini-tour of Asia that includes stops in Japan, India and South Korea, where he travelled on Tuesday night.

The 39-year-old mixed business with pleasure while in Japan, going skiing with his family and learning about sword-making from a master craftsman. Zuckerberg and Kishida met on Tuesday and “discussed a broad range of topics including the status of AI’s technological advancement... [and] the risk surrounding generative AI”, top Japanese government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters on Wednesday. Japanese media quoted Zuckerberg as saying: “We had a good, productive conversation about AI and the future of technology. I’m really excited for the work that is happening here in Japan,” he said after the 30-minute meeting.

Spearheaded by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, generative artificial intelligence is a technology that can conjure up text, images and audio from simple prompts in just seconds.

Its rapid development has been heralded as potentially revolutionary for everything from video games to politics — but with negative as well as positive consequences.

Meta was one of 20 major tech firms, including OpenAI, to sign a pledge this month to crack down on AI content intended to deceive voters ahead of crucial elections around the world this year.

Tech groups had previously agreed to use a common watermarking standard that would tag images generated by AI applications such as ChatGPT, Meta’s Llama, Microsoft’s Copilot and Google’s Gemini.

LG, Samsung meetings 

Zuckerberg arrived in Seoul on a private flight on Tuesday night for the second leg of his Asia trip and is expected to meet South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, local media reported.

 “We are coordinating with Meta to arrange a meeting,” a spokesperson for Yoon’s office told AFP on Wednesday. Zuckerberg met the CEO of consumer tech giant LG Electronics to discuss extended reality (XR) projects, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported. Meta is collaborating with LG to develop a premium headset that will compete with Apple’s Vision Pro, the Korea Economic Daily reported.

South Korean media said the Meta boss also plans to meet the head of Samsung Electronics, one of the world’s biggest producers of smartphones and computer chips. Yonhap said Zuckerberg will also hold talks with XR startups at Meta’s Seoul office. The agency said he will leave for India on Thursday.

Zuckerberg will attend the lavish March 1-3 pre-wedding celebrations of the son of Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Indian oil-to-telecoms giant Reliance, reports said.  Meta, Google and others have invested billions of dollars in Reliance’s digital unit Jio Platforms as it seeks to take on Amazon and Walmart in India’s vast e-commerce market

LOS ANGELES — As a journalist, Augusto Gongora fought to chronicle Chile’s violent military dictatorship. But it was his battle to hold onto his own memories that made him the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary.

“The Eternal Memory” charts the progression of Alzheimer’s disease through the lens of a couple who had to work every day to keep alive the memory of their love, just as their country strives not to forget its own violent past.

“The film became a metaphor for the loss of memory of an entire country, told through what was happening to Gongora,” its Chilean director Maite Alberdi told AFP.

“But it is also a great reminder that when you lose your rational memory, there is an emotional memory that transcends — and that historic pain remains even when you lose your memory.”

The movie, which will compete for best documentary at the Oscars on March 10, follows for five years the daily lives of Gongora, who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and his wife Paulina Urrutia, an actress and former Chilean culture minister who became his caregiver.

Alberdi, 40, sought to bring a fresh perspective on the impact of a devastating disease.

“I saw a very special way of dealing with Alzheimer’s through love — without seeing Alzheimer’s as a tragedy, but only as a context. And understanding that fragility is part of life,” she said.

For the director — who was also nominated for an Oscar in 2021 for “The Mole Agent”, a documentary about loneliness in old age — the experience of filming her latest project was bittersweet.

“It affected me, because I was experiencing his deterioration. But at the same time, it was a couple that I had a great time being with,” she said.

“For me, it was not painful to film. It was a great lesson in love.”

‘I’m no longer here’ 

As a journalist, Gongora had built his career in front of cameras. During Augusto Pinochet’s brutal government, he was part of a clandestine news service.

He later co-wrote the book “Chile: La Memoria Prohibida” (“Chile: The Forbidden Memory”), which recounts the early years of the country’s dictatorship.

After the regime ended in 1990, he went on to work in national television.

Having spent decades entering other people’s homes to tell their stories, Gongora opened up the doors of his own for Alberdi’s film, relinquishing his privacy at a highly vulnerable moment.

“He above all understood that he wanted to make this chronicle, that he wanted to tell the story of his fragility,” said Alberdi.

“They threw themselves in, and got used to the presence of the camera.”

The film intersperses scenes of the couple’s daily routines following Gongora’s diagnosis with archival images of their travels, important life events and clips from his career.

In one scene, Urrutia reads to her husband the dedication that he signed in a copy of his book that he gave to her when they started dating in the 1990s.

It hauntingly reads: “Without memory we do not know who we are... Without memory, there is no identity.”

The pandemic interrupted filming, but Alberdi improvised by sending a camera to Urrutia to continue the project in isolation.

“I initially thought we wouldn’t be able to use the material,” recalled the director. “But it turned out to be such deep material — so intimate, so full of emotion — that only a partner could have gotten it, when they were alone together.

“So this problem of the pandemic turned out to be a gift for the film.”

The decision on when to stop filming was also a spontaneous response to circumstances.

“You see a scene in the movie where he says, ‘I’m no longer here,’” said Alberdi.

“It was the first time in five years that I felt like he was uncomfortable with himself. And for me, when he felt that he was losing his identity, that was the limit.”

Gongora died in May 2023, four months after the premiere of “The Eternal Memory” at the Sundance film festival, where it received the top jury prize for documentaries.

At next month’s Academy Awards, it will contend with “20 Days in Mariupol”, “Bobi Wine: The People’s President”, “To Kill a Tiger” and “Four Daughters”.

AMMAN — HRH Prince Ali bin Al Hussein, chairman of the Royal Film Commission of Jordan (RFC) attended on Sunday the special screening of the second part of the American science fiction film “Dune”, which was partly filmed in Wadi Rum.

The event was attended by several princes and princesses and took place in the presence of the film’s director, Denis Villeneuve, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

Dune depicts a classic struggle of good versus evil; set on a desert planet resisting domination from another world. The film showcases the unique natural beauty of Wadi Rum, contributing to the promotion of Jordan and its regions as touristic destination.

By Sonia Salfity,
Desperate Dieter

One of the best ways we can help ourselves is by making healthy substitutions to our favourite meals. Instead of cutting out all our favourite recipes, we can make a few adjustments that will help us reach our goals.

Gradual change

If we want to have lasting success, we must put in place healthier habits that we can live with for a long period of time. Food and behavioural substitutions will eventually become part of our normal routines.

It’s very important that we don’t make all the changes at once. If we install these substitutions gradually then we will be less likely to reject them; they will become our friends instead of our foes.

Here is a list of substitutions I’ve come up with:

Almond milk: I switched from full cream to almond milk in my coffee. This was probably the hardest

change I’ve ever made and it took all my willpower,  but it was well worth it as it instantly reduced my excess calories and fat. I drink coffee three times a day so this one change made a huge impact. For those who don’t mind black coffee, this is not an issue. The only way I can take it black is if it’s Turkish coffee but my stomach is sensitive to make that my norm

Water: I switched from sodas to water. If you don’t like plain water, jazz it up with a slice of lemon, cucumber or blueberries. I love the smell of rosewater so when I feel like something different, I add a dash of it in my water

Smaller plates: I switched large dinner plates to the 

smaller dessert plates as research has shown that using smaller plates helps us to reduce the amount of food we consume. The trick is that the smaller portions seem normal when you present them in a smaller plate. It’s quite fascinating how easily our minds can be tricked and we will do well to make that work to our advantage!

Measured portions: I switched from trying to guess my portions to actually measuring them. I leave  my measuring cups and tablespoons on my kitchen counter and I always make sure they’re clean so 

there’s no excuse! Our eyes will always deceive us into thinking that was just a quarter cup of nuts we just had when in reality it’s double or triple that amount Olive oil: I switched salad dressings to extra virgin olive oil and lemon or vinegar and try to order the vinaigrette dressing when I’m dining at a restaurant Lettuce wraps: I switched from burger buns to lettuce wraps and enjoy that once in a while burger

without the added starch  Vegetables: I switched from fries to fresh vegetables even when every fibre of my being would rather taste those hot crunchy potatoes that keep calling my name! However, I must confess that now I realise just how much my body needed those veggie-rich nutrients and I learned to crave them.

There’s something very satisfying when we eat foods rich in vitamins and minerals instead of harmful empty calories Smaller meals: I switched from eating one or two large meals a day to eating 6 small ones. This helps me to recharge and never starve. Find what rhythm works for you and ensure not to starve yourself or you’ll eat everything in sight!

A change of heart: Perhaps the most important switch I’ve made is my attitude. I went from “this is way too hard and it’s easier to just give up” to “I can do this, I’m stronger than I thought I was!”  My body loves me and since it’s the only one I have, I’d better take good care of it! That’s the truth for all of us and it will help us to remember this every time we are tempted to consume unhealthy foods or have unhealthy thoughts. Let’s stop entertaining all the excuses we come up with and, instead, let’s be determined to be our own best friend and advocate.

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

MILAN — You enter a room and — gasp! — someone across from you is wearing the same outfit.

Relax, it happens. It’s Milan Fashion Week and guests have sported the same outfits in runway shows running from Wednesday to Sunday.

More than 50 catwalk shows on the women’s Fall/Winter 2024-2025 calendar from Diesel and Dolce & Gabbana to Gucci and Versace draw guests from all over the world but many of them end up looking near identical.

At Fendi on the opening day, two influencers from Dubai stood toe-to-toe chatting and wearing the exact same animal print lace-up boots.

Meanwhile, the colour-block print shirt adorned with the Fendi logo that 29-year-old Fatma Husam sported was the one chosen by multiple other women.

Did that bother her?

“It’s completely normal,” Husam said. “Because after all, how many clothes do these brands make anyway?”

Her friend, Deema Alasadi, 35, agreed.

“At a party I would be a bit busted, but at Fashion Week it’s totally normal.”

Japanese musicians Aya and Ami, known collectively as Amiaya, took it to the next level as only twins can with matching cherry red bob hairstyles and identical high black Fendi boots with gold heels.

Later Wednesday at Roberto Cavalli, a blonde woman in a long flowy gown printed with lemons from designer Fausto Puglisi’s 2024 Resort collection smiled coyly for the cameras.

Nearby, another guest pouted and posed in a bodysuit sewn of cheetah fabric — a mainstay of the brand — that left little to the imagination.

But those not the only lemons and animal prints in the room.

Luxury brands personally dress the A-list celebrities who attend their fashion shows in up-to-the-minute looks — such as the all-black-clad Uma Thurman and Sharon Stone at Tom Ford Thursday night — making sure not to duplicate looks in the front rows.

But influencers — who are sometimes sent the most coveted “it” items by the labels — and other guests are left to rummage through their own closets, making duplications from past seasons inevitable.

But the devil is in the details, said Husam at the Fendi show.

“Everyone may be wearing the same pieces, but styling them differently,” she said.

Copycat looks are most obvious when it comes to brands with in-your-face logos, such as Gucci and Versace, but harder to detect with those taking a subtler approach, such as Prada and Armani.

It is common among fashion editors who attend shows, said Godfrey Deeny, global editor-in-chief of FashionNetwork.com.

“If you’re an editor you’re always looking for the new, but you also have a herd instinct that you want everyone to know you know what the new thing is,” he said.

“So you collectively all wear the same clothes.”

Many in the industry take comfort, he said, in knowing that “when you go, you’ll all be wearing the same absurd sneaker”.

Of course when it comes to the brand’s employees, security guards and ushers at fashion shows, it is standard to wear the same thing: black.

PARIS — Saturn’s small moon Mimas seems an unlikely suspect in the hunt for life in Earth’s backyard — it is probably best known for looking like the “Death Star” in the Star Wars films.

But scientists said on Wednesday that underneath the unassuming moon’s icy shell is a vast hidden ocean that has many of the ingredients necessary to host primitive alien life.

Mimas is the latest to join a growing family of icy moons thought to harbour inner oceans in our Solar System which also includes fellow Saturn satellites Enceladus and Titan as well as Jupiter’s Europa and Ganymede.

But the inclusion of Mimas in this list has come as a surprise.

“If there is one place in the universe where we did not expect to find conditions favourable to life, it is Mimas,” said Paris Observatory astronomer Valery Lainey, the lead author of a new study in the journal Nature.

Mimas, which is only 400 kilometres in diameter, was “not at all suitable for the job”, Lainey told a press conference.

Discovered by English astronomer William Herschel in 1789, the moon has the nickname “Death Star” because one particularly huge crater makes it look eerily similar to the space station used by Darth Vader and the villainous Empire in Star Wars.

Its craggy, crater-riddled surface is inert, showing no sign of underlying geologic activity that would suggest a hidden ocean.

‘Something happening inside’

Other water worlds such as Mimas’ big sibling Enceladus have smooth surfaces due to their rumbling internal oceans and many geysers.

These geysers, which shoot out material from the surface, also demonstrate that there is enough heat below to keep the water in a liquid state.

Despite its seemingly desolate exterior, Lainey said the researchers suspected that “something was happening inside” Mimas.

They studied how the moon’s rotation is affected by its interior structure, first publishing research in 2014 which was not strong enough to prove the presence of a hidden ocean.

Most scientists remained convinced by the other main hypothesis: that Mimas has a solid core of rock.

“We could have left it there,” Lainey said, adding that they were “frustrated”.

For the new study, the team carefully analysed the moon’s rotation and orbit in dozens of images taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017.

They detected tiny oscillations — rotations of just a few hundred metres — which could not have occurred if the moon had a solid rock interior.

“The only viable conclusion is that Mimas has a subsurface ocean,” said two US-based scientists not involved in the study.

“The finding calls for a fresh take on what constitutes an ocean moon,” Matija Cuk of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and planetary scientist Alyssa Rose Rhoden wrote in a comment article in Nature.

Mimas’ ice-covered shell is between 20 and 30 kilometres thick, similar to Enceladus, the study estimated.

The researchers believe the ocean formed relatively recently — between 5 to 15 million years ago — which could explain why signs of its existence have yet to rise and smooth the moon’s surface.

The ocean likely exists due to the influence of Saturn’s many other moons, whose tidal effects shook Mimas and created the necessary heat, they said.

Mimas “brings together all the conditions necessary for habitability: water maintained by a heat source that is in contact with rocks so that chemical exchanges develop”, said study co-author Nicolas Rambaux, also of the Paris Observatory.

So could this nearby water world harbour primitive forms of life such as bacteria?

“That question will be addressed by future space missions over the coming decades,” Lainey said.

“One thing is certain: if you are looking for the most recent conditions of habitability to have formed in the Solar System, Mimas is the place to look.”

FLORENCE, Italy — Even the David gets dusty.

Every two months, Michelangelo’s masterpiece completed in 1504 undergoes a careful cleaning at its home in Florence’s Accademia Gallery, where it has resided for over 150 years.

Considered by many awestruck viewers to represent the perfect man, the 5.1 metre sculpture carved from a single block of marble stands alone under the skylight of the domed gallery on Mondays, when the museum is closed.

His personal restorer, Eleonora Pucci, climbs on a scaffolding for an up-close view — part of a monitoring and cleaning ritual necessary for the preservation of the Renaissance icon visited by over 2 million visitors last year.

Despite David’s good looks and Biblical heritage, the slayer of Goliath needs upkeep.

“A statue that doesn’t get dusted regularly, if you get close and look at it from bottom to top, you’ll see a form of lint,” the museum’s director, Cecilie Hollberg, told a group of journalists on Monday.

“It’s not pretty and it’s not worthy of the work of art that we preserve in this museum,” Hollberg said.

David’s bi-monthly cleaning, then, is “a form of respect, a form of dignity that we want to give to every work”.

‘Delicate work’

With a furrow in his brow, a vein bulging on his neck, his weight squarely on his right foot and his sling held in his left hand, David remains focused on Goliath, oblivious to the primping going on around him.

Pucci, a petite woman wearing a white laboratory coat, white hard hat, jeans and sneakers, scrambles to the top of the scaffolding where she begins taking photos to monitor David’s “state of health”, Hollberg said.

After strapping a portable vacuum onto her back, the dusting begins.

With careful sweeping motions, Pucci glides a soft synthetic brush across the David’s bent left arm, steering the particles from his forearm into the nozzle of the vacuum, which never touches the statue.

Next is his left thigh, where her delicate brush traces the muscles carved by Michelangelo into the Carrara marble, before the scaffolding is shifted and Pucci is once again at work on David’s back.

As the scaffold wiggles despite being locked, Pucci strokes David’s shoulders with her brush while leaning in to examine his curly locks — where spiders sometimes leave tiny webs.

“It’s very delicate work, requiring a lot of concentration, and it needs monitoring centimetre by centimetre in order to control the state of preservation of the work — which is in great condition,” Hollberg said.

Dust deposits left behind are capable of compromising the marble’s lustre, rendering it greyer and duller.

Smooth parts are easier to clean than the rougher areas, which are more apt to grab dust.

The filters in the museum’s state-of-the-art air conditioning system have cut back considerably on air particles, however, while sensors help control temperature and humidity levels, Hollberg said.

The cleaning takes at least half a day due to the scaffolding involved and other statues and paintings in the museum get similar treatment, she said.

The first colossus since ancient times and the symbol of Florence, Michelangelo’s David was unveiled at the dawn of the 16th century to a rapt public in the Renaissance city’s main square, the Piazza della Signoria.

Michelangelo was only 29 when he finished his masterpiece.

It stayed in the piazza until 1873 when it was moved to its current location, with the museum literally built around it.

A copy now stands in the Piazza della Signoria.

Other masterpieces of the museum, Michelangelo’s Slaves — which were designed for the tomb of Pope Julius II but never completed — arrived later in 1939.

BENGALURU, India — Ancient lake systems once provided Bengaluru with critical water supplies, but the Indian tech hub’s breakneck expansion left many waterways covered over or used as dumps.

In the rush to modernise, the city once known for its abundance of water largely forgot the centuries-old reservoirs it depended upon to survive, with the number of lakes shrinking by more than three-quarters.

But after experts warned the city of nearly 12 million — today dubbed “India’s Silicon Valley” — would not be able to meet its water needs with existing resources, mechanical engineer Anand Malligavad decided to take action.

“Lakes are lungs of the earth,” said the 43-year-old, known to some as the “lake man” for his campaign to bring scores of them back to life.

“I tell people if you have money, better to spend it on lakes. Decades later, it will serve you.”

Water shortages are a chronic problem in India, which has nearly a fifth of the world’s population but only 4 per cent of its water resources, according to government think tank NITI Aayog.

Malligavad’s first target was a trash-filled and dried-out site he passed on his way to work at an automotive components maker.

“I thought instead of inspiring people... let me start doing it,” Malligavad said. “Let it start with me.”

‘Simple cost’ 

He began by studying the skills used during the centuries-long rule of the mediaeval Chola Dynasty, who turned low-lying areas into shallow reservoirs that provided water for drinking and irrigation.

The lakes stored the heavy monsoon rains and helped to replenish groundwater.

But of the 1,850 that once dotted the city, fewer than 450 remain today.

Many were destroyed to make room for high-rise towers, while canals were filled in with concrete — meaning heavy rainfall now sparks flooding and is not stored for the future.

Nearly half of Bengaluru depends on water sucked from intensive groundwater boreholes that often run dry in the summer heat, according to the city’s Water, Environment, Land and Livelihoods (WELL) Labs research centre.

Many residents already rely on expensive water trucked in from afar, and the problem is likely to get worse as climate change pushes global temperatures higher and alters weather patterns.

“We’re dependent on a precarious groundwater table, and that is going to get even more precarious as you have a more unreliable rainfall,” said WELL Labs chief Veena Srinivasan.

“We already don’t have enough water to drink,” she added, noting that “the water sources that we do have, we are polluting”.

Fixing lakes can ease the problem, though the city still needs a large-scale urban water management plan, she said.

Malligavad, trekking out to visit more than 180 ancient lakes, said he saw the “simple cost” they had taken to construct.

They did not use expensive materials but only “soil, water, botanicals [plants] and canals”, he said.

He persuaded his company to stump up around $120,000 to fund his first project, the restoration of the 14-hectare  Kyalasanahalli Lake.

Using excavators, Malligavad and his workers took around 45 days to clear the site back in 2017.

When the monsoon rains came months later, he went boating in the cool and clean waters.

Natural process 

The restoration process is simple, Malligavad said.

He first drains the remaining lake water and removes the silt and weeds.

Then he strengthens the dams, restores the surrounding canals and creates lagoons, before replanting the site with native trees and aquatic plants.

After that, he says: “Don’t put anything into it. Naturally, rain will come and naturally, an ecosystem will be built.”

His initial success eventually led him to work full-time in cleaning lakes, raising cash from company corporate social responsibility funds.

So far, he has restored more than 80 lakes covering over 360 hectares in total, and expanded into nine other Indian states.

The renewed reservoirs help supply water to hundreds of thousands of people, according to Malligavad.

Bengaluru resident Mohammed Masood, 34, often fills giant drums of water from one such lake.

He said he typically uses a water tanker, but supplies can be uncertain and expensive.

“If the lake was not built, the hardship would not go away,” Masood said. “We would have to go further away for water.”

Malligavad said his work has carried some risk — he has been threatened by land grabbers and real estate moguls, and was beaten by a gang wanting him to stop.

But the sight of people enjoying a restored lake gave him his “biggest happiness”, he told AFP.

“Kids are swimming and enjoying it”, he said, beside a restored lake.

“More than this, what do you want?”