Bengaluru in shades of grey, green and blue

Jagdish Krishnaswamy remembers the barn owls that began nesting in his apartment complex after a long gap during the pandemic. “Some people complained about them. They can be screechy and make a lot of noise,” he agrees. However, other people in the same complex came to the defence of these birds, including a nature-loving resident who told folks that owls are the vahan of Goddess Lakshmi, recalls Krishnaswamy, the Dean of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements’ School of Environment and Sustainability. “They said that we were anyway exposed to a lot of noise from residents and children and asked why we couldn’t put up a little bit of noise from the owls,” he recalls.