The Fury of a Sleeping Giant!

The modern amenities too good to resists yet given a chance then certainly will prefer to live in a place which very close to the nature sans all comfort. I was lucky that a quite a few time I had the chance to visit places of such which can be call as ‘virgin nature’. Be it a waterfront or a thick forest or  mountains all attract me equally. Unfortunately most of my journey took me to the places that only can be described as  concrete jungle. My ultimate dream was to visit Himalaya but only three years back I able to fulfill my long cherished dream. That tour was more memorable because I travelled all by myself to the Valley of Flower and Hemkund Sahib. While returning  I stopped at Badrinath for a night. Things was not good even that year, a couple of days before I started my Trekking expedition, the weather was very bad and local peoples from Haridwar warned us against the expedition but miraculously we completed our expedition with any fuss and trouble but once I returned to Kolkata weather at Himalayan state was turned very hostile and many tourist got struck. Even our tour too was delayed everyday and every point for landslides. During my journey what surprised me more was the multi-stored buildings that either situated on the hilltop or on the river bank and finally today I am not surprised to see the structures are falling in the river like a pack of cards.

Most of the tourist who travel to Uttarakhand are on pilgrimage tour to Char Dham or on a trekking expedition. The peoples who touring to upper Himalaya to Char Dham are mainly families and hardly can cope with any natural disaster that can happen anytime there but people go for trekking are better prepared for it.

Basically the Char Dham are the names of four pilgrimage places in India that are widely revered by most of the Hindus: Badrinath in north, Dwarka in west, Jagannath Puri in east, and Rameshwaram in the south. However the char dham of Himalayan state widely trevelled and was known as Chota Char Dham. The Chota Char Dham  or  'the small circuit of four abodes/seats', is an important Hindu pilgrimage circuit in the Indian Himalayas. Located in the Garhwal region of the state of Uttarakhand, the circuit consists of four sites - Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath is also one of the four destinations of the longer Char Dham from which the Chota Char Dham likely draws its name. While each of these sites is unique in its own fashion, inclusion in the Char Dham has, over time, caused them be viewed together in popular imagination and in pilgrimage practice.

The Chota Char Dham included representatives from all three major Hindu sectarian traditions, with two Shakta (goddess) sites, (Yamunotri and Gangotri), one Shaiva site (Kedarnath), and one Vaishnava site (Badrinath). Accessible until 1950s only by arduous and lengthy walking trails in hilly area with height repeatedly exceeded 4000 meters, the Chota Char Dham was regularly done by wandering ascetics and other religious professionals, and those who could afford a traveling entourage. While the individual sites and the circuit as a whole were well known to Hindus on the plains below, they were not a particularly visible aspect of yearly religious culture. After the 1962 war between India and China, accessibility to the Chota Char Dham improved, as India undertook massive road building to border area and other infrastructure investments. As pilgrims were able to travel in mini buses, jeeps and cares to nearest points of four shrines, the Chota Char Dam circuit was within the reach of people with middle income. Vehicles reach upto Badrinath temple and Gangotri,Yamunotri and Kedarnath are at a distance of 10 to 15 k.m. from nearest motorable road.

¨  Yamunotri, the source of the Yamuna River and the seat of the goddess Yamuna.   

¨  Gangotri, the source of the Ganges (River Ganga) and seat of the goddess Ganga.   

¨  Kedarnath, where a form of the Hindu god Shiva is venerated as one of the twelve jyotirling (linga of light).   

¨  Badrinath, the seat of the Hindu god Vishnu in his aspect of Badrinarayan.

!!!Man's dominion over inanimate and other living beings granted by the Creator is not absolute; it is limited by concern for the quality of life of his neighbor, including generations to come; it requires a religious respect for the integrity of creation. - Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2415!!!

The End of an Era of Suspense!!!

In our school going days having a telephone was a distant dream. But I consider the life was more peaceful without the device than with the device, because it hardly worked on those days. I remember often we used to go to the local post office to make a call. However, my blog is not about the telephone, I already spared a page for it before. I am writing about Telegrame,  a service too provided by the same company, I mean BSNL.

Telegram or Telegraph

Telegraphy derived from Greek word Tele "at a distance", and graphein "to write" is the long-distance transmission of messages without the physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus semaphore is a method of telegraphy whereas pigeon post is not.

Telegraphy requires that the method used for encoding the message be known to both sender and receiver. Such methods are designed according to the limits of the signaling medium used. The use of smoke signals, beacons, reflected light signals, and flag semaphore signals are early examples. In the 19th century, the harnessing of electricity brought about the means to transmit signals via electrical telegraph. The advent of radio in the early 1900s brought about radiotelegraphy and other forms of wireless telegraphy. In the Internet age, telegraphic means developed greatly in sophistication and ease of use, with natural language interfaces that hide the underlying code, allowing such technologies as electronic mail and instant messaging.

Telegraphs have existed in Europe from as early as 1792 in the form of semaphore lines, or optical telegraphs, that sent messages to a distant observer through line-of-sight signals. In 1837, American artist-turned inventor Samuel F. B. Morse conducted the first successful experiment with an electrical recording telegraph.

The story of Indian telecom began with the telegraph when the first experimental electric telegraph line was started between Calcutta and Diamond Harbour in 1850.

The telegram also known as taar, disappear for once and for all on July 15, outpaced in the age of text messages and emails. The telegraphic service began in India in 1850  by cable, later wireless but what spurred the Indian telecom revolution has eventually been overtaken by it. It is the end of an era. The last telegram was sent on July 15. After that, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has decided to discontinue the service which started the Indian telecom revolution in 1850.

Whenever, I think of a telegram my mind swipe away to the days when a telegram means either good news or bad news. It also bring back the memory of a friend who was my neighbour too in Mumbai. How terrified she used to be only by sighting a khaki clad man armed with a telegram at her doorstep, as if she was going get a heart attack.

!!!This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last. - Oscar Wilde!!!

!!!The courage to imagine the otherwise is our greatest resource, adding color and suspense to all our life. -  Daniel J. Boorstin !!!

The Buzzing Bees that doesn’t Sting.

It is hearting to see the PIO’s ( Person from Indian Origin) and NRI’s to prosper in a big way. We feel proud with their success stories even they prefer to distance themselves from us like Venkataraman Ramakrishnan. For your kind information that Venkataraman Ramakrishnan an Indo-American has shared Nobel Prize for Chemistry along with a co-American Thomas Steitz and Ada Yonath of Israel for mapping ribosomes, the protein procuring factories within cells at the atomic level. He was immensely irritated by the accolades generated from India and mostly from his native state. We are equally proud for Sunita Williams and she generously acknowledge it, that divide between best and better.  However, that is another story but when we get up to find the young faces flashed over the television from Indian origin we may be still shameless to rejoice it selflessly and feel proud. So, congrats to Arvind Mahakali for winning Scrips Spelling Bee.

The Scrips Spelling Bee

Nine newspapers collaborated to start the National Spelling Bee in 1925. In 1941, Scripps took over sponsorship of the National Spelling Bee. There was no Scripps National Spelling Bee during the war years of 1943–45.

The word bee, as used in spelling bee, is one of those language puzzles that has never been satisfactorily accounted for. A fairly old and widely-used word, it refers to a community social gathering at which friends and neighbors join together in a single activity

The program experienced steady growth between the between 1980 and 1990 the number of participants doubled. In recent years the program underwent a second growth spurt and a significant surge in popularity  thanks to live coverage on ESPN.

The first winner of an official spelling bee was Frank Neuhauser, who won the 1st National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. in 1925 at age eleven.

Controversy

Arvind Mahankali, successfully spelled the word "knaidel", which refers to a small mass of leavened dough, to win the high-profile contest. But linguists at the New York-based YIVO Institute for Jewish Research have told the New York Times that the preferred historical spelling of the word is "kneydl."

Eleven of the last fifteen winners including the last six years have been Indian Americans, reflecting the recent dominance of students of this community in this competition. Indian Americans make up less than one percent of the U.S. population.

Year	Name	Winning Word
1985	Balu Natarajan	milieu
1988	Rageshree Ramachandran	elegiacal
1999	Nupur Lala[G]	logorrhea
2002	Pratyush Buddiga	prospicience
2003	Sai Gunturi	pococurante
2005	Anurag Kashyap	appoggiatura
2008	Sameer Mishra	guerdon
2009	Kavya Shivashankar	Laodicean
2010	Anamika Veeramani	stromuhr
2011	Sukanya Roy	cymotrichous
2012	Snigdha Nandipati	guetapens
2013	Arvind Mahankali	knaidel

!!!Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. - Eleanor Roosevelt!!!

!!!If you can imagine it, you can achieve it; if you can dream it, you can become it. - William Arthur Ward!!!

Not! Just Another Love Story!!

Sad to see that more often inhabitants overlook greatness of the other people and try to dig into their personal life to ridicule them for some or other aspect. We have to wakeup to the realization that what is normal for me may be abnormal for others. Not only in my state alone, or in India but as a citizen of the world we are yet to accept certain things what we called as abnormal. We, collectively always failed to understand the peoples with different sexual orientations or preferences. Often peoples from different walks of the life never failed to humiliate them without bothering that it is none of their business. After sad demise of renown director Rituparno Ghosh, it is time for us to realize that a human should be treated by his or her merit. Rituparno Ghosh was a genius of his own right. When he made award wining movie ‘Unishe April’, Bengali cinema was going through dire straits and the movie can be described  as trailblazer. A small tribute to the genius who died on 30^th May, 2013.

Rituparno Ghosh was born on 31 August 1963. He completed his schooling from South Point High School, and obtained a degree in economics from Jadavpur University. In 1992, his first film 'Hirer Angti' released. His next was 'Unishe April' in 1994 and won National Film Award for Best Feature Film.

He has won 12 National Film Awards in India and several awards at international film festivals abroad. He also have 19 awards in his name for work in advertisement he worked for. Here listing is some of his works :

Year	Flim
1994	Hirer Angti
1994	Unishe April
1997	Dahan
1999	Bariwali
1999	Asukh
2000	Utsab
2002	Titli
2003	Shubho Mahurat
2003	Chokher Bali
2004	Raincoat
2005	Antarmahal
2006	Dosar
2007	The Last Lear
2008	Khela
2008	Shob Charitro Kalponik
2010	Abohoman
2010	Noukadubi
2012	Chitrangada
2012	Sunglass
2013	Satyanwyashi- Unreleased
2013	Mumbai Cutting - Unreleased

He also worked as an actor in the following movies.

Year	Flim
2011	Arekti Premer Golpo (Just Another Love Story)
2011	Memories March
2012	Chitrangada

!!!The Best Way To Get Praise Is To Die.!!!