KolkataMusing (KM) is read by a large section of Indian diaspora spread all over the world. Visitors feel KM offers information of value on many topics, and eagerly look forward to its posts.
It's now time to make KM more broadbased. As a part of that KM now accepts articles from guest writers.
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Please ensure the materials you send like article, photo, picture, video, etc. are only yours and not copied from any source. You as writer of an article own full responsibility for its correctness, and relevance.
Articles on travel, cooking, celebration, and other lifestyle topics will be preferred, especially when they are accompanied by pictures, videos, etc.
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Please send your articles to mahanagar.net[at]gmail[dot]com with the subject as 'Article for KM'.
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Announce An Event
Do you own a dancing school? Are you opening a restaurant? Is a program of yours going to be staged soon? Do you want to announce a college reunion? Is the Durga Puja in your para a success?
Please, please announce/share any such lifestyle/sport event with the readers of KolkataMusing. Bring delight to them.
A few guidelines for you before you send:
No non-lifestyle event.
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Write about any part of globe, but it must be about India/Indians. Preference though will be for Kolkata
Full credit will be given to the submitter, including name, website, email (if preferred), phone number (if preferred, but we do not suggest). This will make any visitor to the site directly contact the writer without any intervention from KM.
Final selection will be made by Partha Bhattacharya. He may edit a submission if needed and may at a future time remove a submission from the blog if such situation arises.
Submitters may not receive any payment for the announcements they send.
Please send your announcement to mahanagar.net[at]gmail[dot]com with the subject as 'Announcement for KM'.
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What do you think a knife in the stomach can do for you? For Amarendra Nath Ghosh, it was a good enough ploy to avoid extradition from Germany to India.
Ghosh is not an ordinary person. He can live peacefully with a knife nestling in his stomach for almost 4 years.
He is a yoga practitioner for over 5 years and that he says gives him an immense inner strength to ward off any inconvenience because of the knife. The smile on his lips is a testimony to that.
The path to Ghosh’s fame is however on account of his another expertise. He is an alleged swindler having smoked out nearly Rs.27.69 crore (~$7 million) from the city branches of several nationalized banks in 1994 and 1995.
He must have left a somewhat hot trail in his wake when he fled the city to land in Germany, for he was located there soon enough. And then his problems started.
Declared a proclaimed offender by the Alipore Court and an Interpol red corner notice issued against him as a result, Ghosh was picked up in Munich in December 2002.
Till then it was presumably okay with him, but when the German authorities initiated his extradition, he saw everything red. The best course Ghosh decided was to swallow a 10cm knife and then refuse to be operated upon.
Clever, no doubt. Ghosh remained a nonplussed Germany’s ‘state’ guest for as long as 5 years before his luck ran out. [Image source left]
Bringing him back has been a costly affair for the Indian government, because as German authorities insisted, a special aircraft, an ‘air ambulance’, was arranged for him with 3 CBI officers, 2 surgeons and an anesthetist in attendance armed with medicines and surgical equipments.
Ghosh says he is very happy to be back in Kolkata, though his request for surgical removal of knife in a private hospital at his ‘own’ expense has been turned down by the court.
Having already served about 5 years in German prison, it remains to be seen how long he serves here before coming out of the prison to live a wealthy life.
Amarendra Nath Ghosh is just 46. A colorful life awaits him after the jail term is over.
Who knows his deeds can inspire a blockbuster movie, he earning fabulous royalty in return! Lesser mortals of Ghosh’s ilk may even heave a sigh of jealousy, “Blessed are those who have brains between the eyes!”
Starting from the Race Course / Victoria Memorial, the AJC Bose Road flyover ends at Park Circus. It's a long journey of about 3 km, and the flyover is currently - and may be for a long time to come - the longest flyover in the city.
There are talks to add 2 arms to the presently armless flyover. One may be at the Beckbagan crossing, the other who knows where.
Here is a video of partial journey on the flyover.
YouTube became a household name after Google acquired it for $1.65 billion last October. YouTube, a 20-month old company before joining Google’s stable, has since been seeing a phenomenal popularity. So much so that it is today the 4th most visited website on the Internet.
In the 10 months that have passed since the famed acquisition, Google must have been evolving means to cash in on its investment, but none surfaced so far till last week.
An ad format for YouTube has just been formulated in which a translucent strip appears on the video that remains for 10 seconds. Click on it to see the ad and the video stops rolling. After the ad is over, the video commences from where it stopped.
To be sure, YouTube has opened the floodgates of companies promoting themselves through videos (such as the one below from DIET.com). It is not sure if YouTube gets any money from these videos.
In the meantime, as Google finalized the ad model, many more web video sites debuted on the scene that allow you to earn money by displaying their videos on your website.
Notable among them are Voxant’s TheNewsRoom (see the video below on discovery about treating colon cancer), and Veoh Video Network.
However experts who watch the web video space are nearly unanimous that Google’s new technique of ad earning can be yet another money-spinner for it, much on the lines of AdSense.
The downside of course is many videos on YouTube are of poor quality both in terms of picture and content. The other problem may be that unlike AdSense the videos may not show relevant ads, which in turn will not generate click-throughs.
Be that as it may, it’ll be fascinating to watch how the money-enabling videos shape up in the time to come.
Move over traditional job portals. It’s the time of job referrals. Wondering what this new ‘animal’ is? Make a short trip to NDTVJobs.
Through its tie-up with Bangkok-based Yellojobs.com, NDTVJobs is perhaps the first online job referral network in India. All you have to do is to refer a friend through the portal for a job you think you friend perfectly fits in, and if your friend does get the job you stand to earn fabulous award money.
As of this writing the total reward money on offer is a staggering Rs.11.25 crore. Sounds astounding? It is.
The minimum award money is Rs.5000 that scales up depending on the post you’re referring your friend to. NDTVJobs’ featured employers' list is a roll call of who’s who, including such worthies like Convergys, Nestle, Britannia, and of course NDTV itself.
While NDTVJobs doesn’t presumably require you as a referring person to be seeking jobs, the Michigan, US based WhoToTalkTo does. Brian McCullough, the erstwhile CEO of ResumeWriters.com, is the founder and the brain behind WhoToTalkTo (let me term it W3T). How does it work?
Well, here you’ve to be a jobseeker and must be able to contribute at least one job referral to gain entry. You gather points as you refer more. In return you get to search the job referrals the site has in store. Signing up is free.
But before you sign up with W3T remember the jobs are mostly based in US as I could follow. The plus point however is that the jobs look really real.
Coming back to India, how hot the job referral market is can be gauged by the entry of Naukri in the field. It’s the Brijj.com. Okay, Naukri doesn’t say it is a job referral site. The official objective of the site is: Professional Networking Site To Build Trusted Relationship Network.
From the feel of it Brijj does come across as a destination not only for jobseekers but for business seekers as well. Of course if you choose to 'Brijj' you may just remain ‘friends’ – a la MySpace or Facebook.
The job referral space is gradually warming up. There’s no reason why more innovations cannot come in not-so-distant future. But if you as a jobseeker still swear by the traditional job portals like Monster and Naukri, hear out what W3T’s Brian has to say:
The online job recruitment is very mechanized and impersonal. They don’t do anything to help people network! And they account for only 7% of all hires.
Now if someone would refer me as one seeking Internet research cum SEO cum website planning cum blogging cum content writing job…!
In his press declaration this afternoon to announce the decision arrived at earlier in the day by CPM’s central committee, Prakash Karat, the party’s general secretary, sounded reasonable. He said the phrase ‘withdrawal of support’ to the present government was never uttered since the controversy started.
Karat also said that let there be a mechanism to deal with the nuclear pact with the US, and till such time it is through, let the government not proceed with further negotiations with IAEA and NSG. The CPM general secretary was explicit in his view that his party did not want to destabilize the present government.
He said there was no reason why the government would not send its representative to the September meeting of the IAEA, which it does every year, except that there would be no discussions with respect to the nuclear deal in the present shape.
Now what is the mechanism that Prakash Karat may think is feasible? Since there is a hint that a mechanism has to be or can be worked out to counter the perceived flaw against India in the nuclear deal in the present form, it can perhaps be argued that the government will formulate a law similar to US’ Hyde Act to safeguard its interests. In fact this has been conjectured in some newspapers.
The absence of a rhetoric like ‘scrap the deal, come what may’ and the general secretary’s statement that his party did not want to destabilize the government are 2 silver linings in the looming dark cloud of political instability. All it now needs is some sort of tacit backtracking by the government on the issue while not budging from the main thrust of liaising with the US in the coming days.
It is significant that the Japanese PM in his address to the Parliament yesterday spoke about developing an ‘Arc of Freedom and Prosperity’ in the entirety of the Pacific Ocean and a broader Asia, but omitted mentioning China.
It is also significant that in a few days from now India will be participating in the largest naval war game in its territorial waters in the Bay of Bengal in which apart from the US the other participants are Japan, Australia and Singapore, all very close allies of the US.
The left fears that allying with the US will make India subservient to US’ wishes in all the country’s sovereign decisions including foreign policy. This reflects a complete lack of faith in India’s ability and position of influence in the global arena.
On the other hand, as I’ve written in my last post, the threat perception to India from its giant neighbor in the north is too real to ignore. In varying degrees China’s growing muscle is a threat to Japan and the US as well. Which is why is this coming together of these countries.
My own feeling is that the left too are aware of India’s strategic needs. But then as of now it is impossible for them to jettison the anti-US plank they so dearly nurtured over so many decades. What is the way out?
In my opinion the answer is Bengal and Kerala’s prosperity. If the 2 states prosper supposedly because of the left’s ‘alternative’ growth model, which they can then tom-tom to others, there will be less reason for them to fall back on extraneous factors like opposing everything US to fight an identity crisis.
If there is one trait the Indian left can be easily identified with, it is anti-Americanism. Those like me who have spent greater part of life in Kolkata would recall the left’s popular slogan, markin sambrajyabad, nipat jak (let the American imperialists perish!) that would rent the air till recent past in any meeting or procession they would hold.
In the 70s at the height of naxalite movement, my father sent me away to Dhanbad for college education as he feared that if I continued studying in a city college I might not be able to complete my education because of the turmoil.
The atmosphere then used to be charged with strong anti-American sentiments in Kolkata, and in fact so frequent and intense would the protests be on one pretext or the other especially in front of the US consulate that at one time during Jyoti Basu as CM the consulate was on the verge of closing down in the city.
After completing my education I traveled to many places in India on job, but surprisingly nowhere have I seen such rabid anti-Americanism among the people. Initially I used to believe that the people there were not as politically educated to the dangers of US imperialism to our country as the people of Bengal.
The fact that a higher number of Bengalis (compared to people from other states) laid down their lives during freedom struggle used to play in my mind making me feel proud that only we the Bengalis were the true torch-bearers of India’s destiny. After all, didn’t Gopalkrishna Gokhale once famously said, "What Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow!"
Only much later would my thinking be mature enough to conclude that people in other states in India simply failed to connect the American bombing in Vietnam or its threat to Cuba with their daily mundane living. It did not matter to them what the US did to countries they never visited or hoped to visit. What instead mattered was whether they were able to meet the simple daily needs of their lives.
This in essence was the bedrock of the left’s failure to make any dent in any state other than WB, Kerala and Tripura. Look at the cruel irony that despite ruling Bengal for 3 decades, the left are still in no position to win elections on their own in any of the adjoining states, not to speak of faraway states like Delhi, Gujarat or Punjab.
In Bengal for all these years since it came to power the left’s dogmatic stance of having nothing to do with capital, which in effect meant money and job, drove away business from the state, and made it a graveyard of anything that was associated with merit and money (the two 'M's are interlinked because if there is disrespect for merit, the money dries up, and vice-versa).
Now that the state is running after capital is nothing but the result of the realization that no matter how else they try, they just cannot create jobs unless new industries are set up in the state.
Set on the newly found path of big money and industrialization, what makes the left in the present circumstance any different from the other secular political parties in India that don’t pursue caste issues? The answer is ‘Nothing’.
Seen in this perspective, the adamant attitude of the left going as far as threatening to pull down the UPA government makes perfect sense because anti-Americanism is all that remains of its distinct identity.
Is the left concerned that the 123 agreement with the US will be undermined by the Hyde Act – highly unlikely because according to experts the 123 agreement being an ‘international’ regulation will always have precedence over the Hyde Act, which is US’ domestic act – so much so that India cannot undertake nuclear tests in the future?
Not really. If the mammoth protest march in Kolkata in August 1998 after NDA government’s nuclear tests is any indication, there is no reason to believe that the left will be unduly concerned on the matter.
If not this, then what is the all-important reason which is so strong that the left can consider pulling the carpet from under the UPA government knowing that it cannot possibly win those many seats it presently has if the elections are held now?
It is the increasing closeness between India and US that the left dreads. The absence of anti-US plank will be a monumental loss of identity for the left. Because then there’ll be nothing, just nothing with which to differentiate the left from other similar political parties.
Unfortunately, according to me, the left is once again slated to loose the game of relevance. The present geo-political reality keeping in mind the China-Pakistan axis on one hand and China’s growing muscle on the other demands that the US and India come closer. If this does not happen overtly, it will happen covertly. But happen it will.
The US is as interested to close the nuclear deal as the Indian government is. Many may argue that the US interest is mainly because of lucrative contracts for conglomerates like GE that may result if the deal goes through.
While that may be true, what is truer is that the US will simply not do as important as the nuclear deal if it doesn’t fit into their strategic interests. One may be reasonably certain that the chance of Democrats coming to power in November 2008 in US may not change the deal with India.
The question is will this benefit India without it becoming a US ‘subject’ such that it has to obey all US instructions like sending troops to Iraq? My answer is ‘Yes’. India is just too big and proud a country to be cowed down by selfish US interests.
What about the left’s protests? Let me venture into saying that if the left comes to power at the center, it may have to do precisely the same as the present government is doing. Why? Because it has to for otherwise it may be seen acting against the nation’s strategic interests.
Meanwhile, short of being actually able to decide the nation’s destiny, the left will go on with its anti-US protests. The time however may not be far when the people of India, seeing the ill-effects of frequent elections and not knowing how the reasons affect them, will look at the left as a disruptor instead of a builder of the nation.
The time is slipping for the left, slowly but irrevocably.
Confined at home on a rainy Sunday staring disparagingly at TV news disgustingly predicting looming possibility of mid-term general elections, what would a lazy person like me otherwise do?
Most certainly topping the list would be walloping plateful of delicious khichuri with elish maachh bhaja, while coming a close second would be none other than clicking away some nondescript scenes of water logging from the safety of covered balcony, fresh elections be damned.
Last week the term ‘sub-prime’ engaged the attention of stock market investors in India. Not having heard the curiously sounding term before – agreed I’m not an investing expert who ought to have known it – I banked on the info-spewing Internet search.
What I learn is that in US (may be in other big markets too) hedge funds offer financial package as loans to that section of populace who are considered as having low creditworthiness. May be interests charged for such loans are more than the usual going rates. This is referred to as the ‘sub-prime mortgage market’.
Crisis erupts when the sub-prime loans start defaulting en masse presumably for reasons such as interest rate hike. When that happens as it has currently, the hedge funds that are basically those that manage private investments start offloading stocks in other markets in order to cut/cover their losses.
Analysts say this is the prime reason behind stock market debacle in India last week. But next week may unfold a radically different story. Why? Here are the reasons:
First the US Federal Reserve, the world’s most powerful monetary authority, has reduced the interest rate at which it lends to banks by half a percent to 5.75%. This will have immediate effect in cooling down the storm on account of sub-prime default.
Second, the inflation rate here has reduced to 4.05% from 4.45% a week before, which is lower by 1% than the corresponding rate in previous year of 5.08%.
Third, contrary to popular expectations, the value of Indian Rupee has decreased against the US Dollar to 41.37 yesterday, which is a welcome news for high-forex earning companies like those in the IT sector.
Fourth, India’s growth story continues unabated. There is a surge in FDI (foreign direct investment) in the current fiscal. Q1 inflow is $4.9 billion, 185% higher than $1.7 billion received in Q1 of last fiscal, while the first 6 months of calendar year 2007 have seen FDI worth $11.4 billion compared to just $3.6 billion a year ago.
Of the current year’s FDI bonanza the first place goes to UK’s Vodafone, which has contributed $801 million for buying into Hutch (see my post, Vodafone on call).
Fifth, despite occasional hiccups the rainfall thus far this year has been pretty good, thus brightening the prospect of agriculture output. Good monsoon has traditionally been a welcome development for Indian bourses.
What do all these mean? Among others a likely rally in the bourses next week is a possibility.
If that happens, and if the markets do open with a large higher gap from their closings yesterday, it may prove to be another opportunity lost for many investors who haven’t bought lucrative stocks at lower levels during the turmoil last week.
Sometime back I wrote on TutorVista, an online tutoring venture owned by Krishnan Ganesh. The story dealt on the supply side of a pent-up demand that a skilled entrepreneur like Ganesh is successfully exploiting.
TutorVista however doesn’t award a degree, which online institutes like Ellis College does. Ellis College, an accredited online college attached to the prestigious New York Institute of Technology (NYIT), offers over 50 degree programs on a wide range of subjects including Computer Science, Criminal Justice, Human Resources, Public Relations, Sociology and Telecommunications to name a few.
Ellis’ programs are tailor-made for busy professionals who need to advance their careers with specialized learning utilizing free times they can manage. True, many companies scoff at online degrees, which they believe lack the vigor of education as obtained in regular institutes.
But coupled with shortage of sufficiently skilled manpower and the need to enhance the knowledge level of existing employees, online education is no longer the pariah it once was when the concept had just begun.
That doesn’t take away the fact that online institutes like Ellis College have meanwhile vastly improved upon the quality of education they impart. What are those measures of superiority that sets apart Ellis College? Here they’re briefly:
Ellis enables you to what it calls ‘learn by doing’ thereby acquiring skills that you can apply immediately.
Its unique, interactive web-based online learning platform delivers an enriching and enjoyable experience through dynamic Flash exercises, videos and demonstrations.
In a way similar to traditional offline institutes, Ellis offers a virtual campus that enables students and professors to maintain close interaction, and share ideas and mutual interests that are so important in today's economy.
For busy executives Ellis has short course terms that start every 3 weeks to enable them to finish quickly.
There are many advantages to learn and earn the much-cherished online degree from Ellis, an MBA for example from the School of Business & Technology. But you need not take this article on its face value.
As always, isn’t it better to know from the ‘horse’s mouth’! Here is a small banner from Ellis College. Just click on it to proceed. If you’re the one for whom the bell of an online MBA is tolling, Ellis College could very well be the answer.
Today completes 60 years of India’s independence from the colonial rule of the British. As the usual celebrations take place all over the country, for the first time I notice a marked departure from the ritual reference to the sacrifice made by the freedom fighters at the time of Independence.
Whether it is the Prime Minister’s address to the nation from the Red Fort or the absence of decades-old patriotic films shown on the TV on this day or the newspaper supplements that are loaded with post-Independence achievements or the body language of the general people on the street, the message is loud and clear: India has learned to stand on its feet.
This gradual yet dramatic change in Indians’ attitude reflects a newly found confidence in their ability to compete and perform in the global arena.
For too long we were bogged down by the lack in self-confidence. We looked at others to understand and acknowledge our strengths, not having the belief that what we’re able to do can indeed be the best in the world.
It would be tempting to allude to a clutch of reasons for our collective rejuvenation. But I believe it all boils down to just one factor, which is economic self-sufficiency. As they say, if you have food in the belly and money in the pocket, you dare to dream and achieve.
For India this is just the beginning. The politicians, the left-minded economists, and those who have vested interests in so saying never cease to remind us that more than half the country’s population live in abject poverty.
But then we’ve seen that 60 years of Independence have not really changed their lives, not even in vast areas of Bengal where the communists are ruling for 3 decades. They can shout anything from the rooftops but the facts speak for themselves.
It’s now the turn of capital to change India’s destiny, which even the leftists are following in Bengal, never mind their alternating postures at times.
Make no mistake however that those with capital will not deploy their money for the betterment of poor peoples’ lives if they do not see even bigger money at the end of the tunnel. It is the government’s duty to ensure that this tunnel is short and conducive enough for the capitalists to risk their money.
But what can a government do if it itself doesn’t have money to smoothen the passage for those who want to sink their capital? It’s here that the biggest transformation is happening over the past several years.
By unshackling private initiatives and streamlining its revenue earnings, the government is having good sum in its coffers to build up infrastructure like never before. The result is there for all to see.
In today’s address to the nation the PM has spoken of investing a whopping Rs.25,000 crore in the agriculture sector. This is a mind-boggling amount, something the country could never dream even a few years back.
Eminent sociologist Prof Dipankar Gupta points out at a NDTV panel-talk, the Prime Minister has been long on promises but short on showing how the noble intentions can be delivered on the ground. He may be right but I’m not as skeptical as him.
Because after all without anyone’s prompting and stringent scrutiny the same Prime Minister is trying his best to set up the course for spread and improvement in education (see my post, On the holy trail of knowledge).
What to me this means is that if anything our present PM is not short of sincerity.
Coming to what I said when I began, India on the 61st year of Independence has indeed found its own feet – the feet of steel and not clay as has been for all these years.
I wish my fellow countrymen all the very best in the time ahead.
The markets are ‘life-center’ of Kolkattans. If there are no markets, half the city’s life is gone. If you’re new to the city and haven’t been to its markets, especially the fish markets, you haven’t seen a vivid image of the city.
Fish markets there are plenty. Having been to many places in the country, I can safely say nowhere would you see fish markets of the scale you see in Kolkata.
The image below is that of a fish stall in Gariahat fish market. The vendor has just spread his fare for sale. You can see Hilsa in the foreground flanked by Gurjali on the left, a plate of shrimps ahead, and tiger prawns on the right. At the far end are carps cut into various sizes.
The activity in a fish market is to be seen to be believed. Kolkattans love fresh stock and the ideal time to buy is early morning. An average buyer will check the fins and ears and press the belly of fish to confirm its freshness before buying. Regulars have fixed vendors from whom they buy. A video here showing the bustle at a city fish market.
Talking of fish market, the story remains unfinished without a reference to the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, said to be the world’s biggest fish market and home to the largest fish auction.
Auction, mainly of Tuna, starts at 5 in the morning, and by 9 all activities get over. Tsukiji fish market is a must-see place for foreign tourists though average Japanese rarely visits the place. See the photo of fish market after an auction has ended (image source), and below is a live video of an auction.
If you’re in Kolkata, you’ll not likely to miss the Victoria Memorial. Built from 1906 to 1921, the elegant white marble edifice is located at the southern end of the Maidan, surrounded by the vast expanse of a sprawling garden.
It is a memorial of Queen Victoria, who was Empress of India when she passed away in January 2001. The memorial’s foundation stone was laid by the Prince of Wales on 4 January 1906. Designed by Sir William Emerson, the building was constructed by Messrs Martin & Co.
Here is a grand image of Victoria Memorial [image source]. Below it comes a nice video created by Tej Kogekar. Enjoy.
As such if this site attracts about 60 unique visitors on a day, I reach out with my tired-from-keyboard-hitting hand to pat my back. But today was different. Sundays are usually dull but that didn’t prevent my site to receive nearly 230 visitors with open arms.
It’s rather receiving them to my post, Effect of worms and viruses. It’s my post yet I ‘stumbled upon’ it, which in effect means I bookmarked the post with StumbleUpon, the famous social network site acquired by eBay in April.
I did it some 15 minutes to 12 late in the morning shortly after posting the article in the site. From 12 the torrent of visitors started and in just 2 hours some 180 of them arrived to my site from StumbleUpon.
My guests though didn’t stay much longer, which is perfectly in order. Because that’s what most ‘social’ visitors do when they chance upon a new site they haven’t visited before and perhaps will not visit again.
I hurried to check if they clicked on any of AdSense ads displayed in my site. That’s important because that gives me money. Well they did click – a handsome 20 clicks that correspond to 11% CTR for 180 visitors. Not bad that, but wait.
I promptly proceeded to my AdSense control panel to see how much money I’ve netted. Too bad, AdSense recognized just 2 clicks out of those 20. You know why?
AdSense doesn’t like a sudden spurt in click-throughs, which they look at with suspicion. Not surprisingly, all I could gain from the sudden StumbleUpon traffic is practically nothing.
Did I spend anything? Oh yes, the large volume of traffic gifted by SU did eat away a good part of my precious bandwidth.
By the way, if you wonder how do I know the traffic figures with such precision, let me reveal it’s thanks to PMetrics stats program that I find so useful.
And before I leave, here is a poser. Did you know StumbleUpon has a distant cousin by the name StumbledUpon? I happen to stumble upon the latter today that reserves copyrights of all materials in the site from 1997. Now, isn’t that interesting? You bet.
How do you think a man with $2 million in bank, living in a fully paid-off $1.3 million villa overlooking the Pacific, and having a net worth of $3.5 million with his wife will be leading his everyday life?
Well, if you’re Hal Steger, a Silicon Valley resident, you’ll continue to work hard 12 hours a day and an additional 10 hours in the weekends to earn more money.
Sounds strange? Perhaps, but surrounded by people with staggeringly high wealth in a money-seeking neighborhood, Hal’s case will seem perfectly normal. As will Gary Kremen’s, the 43-year old founder of Match.Com, a popular online dating service.
Kremen is worth $10 million, making him as moneyed as top half of 1% Americans according to wealth data from US’ Federal Reserve, but that hasn’t stopped him from logging a strenuous 60 to 80-hour working weeks.
Kremen says, “You're nobody here at $10m.” He doesn’t think he has enough money to ease up. Ah well, why doesn’t he leave to live in a more down-to-earth place? He doesn’t because he’s bitten by the magnetic lure of the Silicon Valley, the eternal dream destination that attracts hundreds of thousands of techies from all over the world.
Do hoardings create visual pollution? In Kolkata, yes. Certainly not in other big cities, especially in western countries.
One still doesn’t understand the norm of billboards in Kolkata. At major crossings in the city there are billboards everywhere, notably those that adorn the buildings. Is it that the building owners only earn from them, or is it that the KMC (Kolkata Municipal Corporation) too earns a slice?
Whatever it is, more often than not they represent an ugly sighting. Sometime back at a certain patch on EM Bypass there was a series of billboards that light up in the evenings with the help of noisy generators.
The environmentalists complained that the combination of light and sound was wreaking havoc on birds that could not rest in peace once daylight was gone. Because of their furor many of those hoardings were later removed.
But hoardings and billboards can indeed be soothing to eyes if planned correctly as can be seen in western cities. There even public transport like buses sport giant ads that are aesthetically designed. If it is possible there then why not in Kolkata?
Here are 3 images of hoardings at important places in the city.
Trust Google to make it light for you even though beyond the veil it perhaps is a vastly different picture. Here’s a video that explains Google’s new avatar, Universal Search. This however is a creation of FathomSEO.
When you search Google the results page usually show a list web pages. At the top there are links like Web, Images, Video, News, Maps, etc. If you’re not happy with Web results you can click the links at the top for other result pages.
This though few people do. I’ve come across many avid surfers who’re not even aware of the links in Google’s result pages (SERPs or search engine result pages).
Marissa is among the first 20 employees Google hired way back in 1999 and is the first female engineer in Google. She is now the VP Search Products & User Experience at Google.
Often I run out of ideas what to write. Eminent bloggers say you write like hell everyday to make money from blog. I find that true enough. I run 3 blogs – one (Words2Content) scarcely attended to (short of time you see!) – and I have learned just about that much to say that content indeed brings traffic.
August 1 has seen the start of 2 month-long treats on how to make money from blogs. The ’30 Day Challenge’ will show you how to start your own Internet business and generate your first income online without spending a dime.
If that doesn’t satiate your hunger to know more, you’ve Darren Rowse’s 31 Days To Building A Better Blog. I’m a long-time fan of Darren’s blog and the more I read it the more I get fascinated by his techniques to get you hooked on his site. And yes the recent makeover of his website design is a welcome change.
There certainly are many ways to see your blog fetch money. Most popular for small website owners is perhaps through AdSense. Who doesn’t know how Joel Comm minted money from AdSense, so much so that he even wrote a book on it (The AdSense Code: What Google Never Told You About Making Money with AdSense)!
Earning by displaying 3rd party video – such as from MegaVideo or MetaCafe – is increasingly luring bloggers. And though MegaVideo claims it beats YouTube, you and I know that it is impossibly tall order to overtake the Google-owned broadcast platform with an Alexa Rank of just 4.
One of the early entrants in the video field is Voxant’s TheNewsRoom. The advantage here is that you deal with real news as they happen. Nearly all major news agencies have allied with TNR to distribute their video contents. I’ve had several of them in the past in this blog.
Lastly, before I let you view 2 fantastic videos – one taken from an Air India cockpit that shows 3 planes close by, and the other a gorgeous dancing Preity Zinta – here is a quiz for my viewers.
In the pages of The New York Times (an example), if you double-click on any word, phrase or name, a new window opens promptly with a dictionary definition or encyclopedia entry.
This is the message Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi conveyed to little girls of the A K Fazlul Haque Girls Higher Secondary School at Kidderpore in a function day before yesterday. His message is loaded with the call to the women of tomorrow from the weaker section to learn to negate social pressure to get married in their teens.
I used to think that this problem is prevalent only among Muslim families. But after shifting 2 years back to where we now stay near Jadavpur, I find that the custom is followed even among the poor Hindus.
In nearly all such cases the girls stop going to school after reaching puberty, and as their body undergoes transformation they are led to believe that studying is not what they can pursue any longer. Not that the girls complain.
They are too small in their capacity to think what disaster lack of education can bring onto themselves.
Just out of teens they are married, sometimes even before the ‘official’ age. A year on they bear child, and then the doom begins.
This was also the day that CITU, the dominant left union, called a strike in favor of unorganized labor. But that failed to include domestic help who are an exploited lot.
It’s time that the Governor’s message is heard not only by the little Muslim girls but also by the people from all walks of the society. After all for the entire nation to prosper, all sections of its populace will need to contribute to it.
Talking of heritage buildings, the Dalhousie Square area abounds in a number of them with depleted glory. ‘Depleted’ because the place is so congested with unruly and unplanned traffic that there is no chance of decently observing them and partaking their architectural beauty.
The din is too much for sanity to prevail, and the most unfortunate part is that there is no chance to expect any welcome change since the place is a conduit for a major amount of Howrah-bound traffic and there are just too many establishments catering to thousands of office goers and work seekers.
Presently, construction work for an underground parking facility is on bang opposite the Writers Building in the area before Laldighi. Once done, it will house the innumerable vehicles that the babus and ministers use. To that extent, the chaos will lessen a little. But perhaps that’s all that can be expected in the foreseeable future.
The powers-that-be is either clueless or pathetically reluctant to turn the historic place a pedestrian paradise that the city can be proud of. It’s not an impossible task per se, but then it’ll be too much of asking, keeping in view the all-pervasive mediocrity on part of the decision makers.
Here are images of Writers Building and High Court given to me by my friend, Sudeep Chakraborty.
Many newspapers today have headlined Bharti’s inking yesterday of deal with retail behemoth Wal-Mart. The left parties object to Wal-Mart’s supposedly ‘backdoor’ entry to the Indian retail scene, but perhaps there is little they can do other than lodging protests.
Bharti has an uncanny ability to tie up with global majors for its different ventures that speaks of management’s open-minded approach to the businesses it is involved in. Take the UK-based Vodafone for example.
It is the world’s largest mobile network operator that agreed to buy 10% stake in Bharti in October 2005 for $1.5 billion. Bharti dearly needed this money to expand its network. The Vodafone deal was sweet for it because the UK giant announced a grant of $12 million to Bharti Foundation for the growth of primary education throughout the country.
Later when the turn came for Vodafone to take control of Hutch, the ‘gentlemanly’ equation between it and Bharti again came into display. 2 months back Vodafone quietly agreed to hand back 5.6% stake to Bharti for $1.6 billion.
There are other examples as well. When Bharti decided to enter retail sector it reportedly first roped in UK’s Tesco, the world’s third largest grocery retailer. Then Wal-Mart entered the scene and Bharti very amicably parted ways with Tesco to partner with Wal-Mart, the result of which is the deal between the 2 yesterday.
But why only Vodafone and Wal-Mart? In a development couple of days back less widely reported but one that is expected to have a big ramification in coming days, Bharti has tied up with search giant Google for broadband service.
It is recently (Aug 2) reported by Reuters in The New York Times that Google is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in its cell phone project for which it is tying up with US and UK telecom majors. According to the report Vodafone too figures in the list though perhaps no formal agreement has been reached so far.
I’ve been of late doing financial analyses of various GPS stocks on US bourses for a US-based web publication. These companies provide satellite based navigation information that can be sourced via web applications like Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps and MapQuest.
In US and Europe cars fitted with GPS devices use these information to offer virtual roadmaps that effortlessly guide people to their destinations.
One GPS stock I’ve written on, Navteq, has come out with spectacular results in the last quarter (Q2/06-07) on the back of record sale of their GPS maps. This has ensued re-rating of these stocks on the bourses.
With that in perspective and because of the likely move by cell phone makers like Nokia to soon come out with feature-rich handsets, there is every chance that the markets of digital maps and location-based-content-services both on fixed and portable devices will explode in near future.
Bharti’s importance comes here. It is already investing $100 million for what it calls a Service Delivery Platform (SDP) that will distribute a clutch of contents through multiple channels like SMS, MMS, WAP and web. Living up to its reputation, the SDP too is being built, and later is to be managed by IBM, another global biggie.
Interestingly, unlike RComm, Bharti is said to be planning to hive off its tower business. This means Bharti will concentrate more on supplying high quality contents.
Overall, one feels the Bharti stock presents a good investment option. Savvy analysts opine that the market hasn’t kept up with the pace of change in India’s telecom sector. When that happens won’t the select telecom stocks like Bharti see a spike in their prices?
Wikimedia Foundation, that has several ongoing ‘online collaborative projects’ like the Wikipedia, organizes a yearly fest of wiki-inclined Internet geeks called Wikimania. This year the event just concluded in Taipei, Taiwan from 3-5 Aug.
Wikimania started in 2005 in Germany. The second edition took place in US. For the third conference there were willing hosts like London, Turin and Alexandria, but Taipei got the nod to hold it. The bidding for hosting the 2008 event is currently on.
2-3 interesting points emerge from it. Wikipedia already has nearly 2 million topics in English and there is still no sign of its abating. By the way, it has about 7.9 million articles in 253 languages including Bengali (see the article on Kolkata in Bengali).
The reason why Wikipedia is growing and will continue to grow is because it is being increasingly seen as a giant global encyclopedia. In the interview Jimmy gives the example of a Polish participant who carried a book of biographies of 20,000 notable Polish people to last year’s Wikimania.
The man randomly selected 100 personalities from the exhaustive volume, and on checking it was found that less than 2% of them found mention in the English Wikipedia.
The other reason of Wikipedia’s overwhelming relevance arises from the fact that its volunteering editors constantly upgrade the information already there. For example, as Jimmy says, the article on Julius Caesar would have been edited several times in the past week.
This explains that as their evaluation changes over time even the historical figures and events long past are still edited. Isn’t that the reason why history as a subject is considered as being under constant evolution?
The Wikipedia site is one of the 10 most visited websites worldwide. This is not surprising given that starting from a school goer doing her project work to an Internet researcher attending to a complex financial analysis, the journey for seeking information ends at Wikipedia.
Watching the red-and-gold play will shortly be possible even if you’re in Pune, Mumbai or Bangalore. The East Bengal club (I dislike using the word ‘Kingfisher’ before the name of my favorite club) is soon going to start football merchandising in major Indian cities holding the fingers of US-based Indthalia Corp.
There will be dedicated outlets – to be called East Bengal Indthalia Fan Zones – where a range of mementos and collectibles like logo-embossed caps to coffee mugs to what not will be sold.
The icing on the cake is of course the plan to show direct telecast of East Bengal matches on giant screens whatever the tourney. This means the fans can see the matches in groups in faraway cities rekindling the camaraderie one sees on the field.
East Bengal’s plans come close on the heels of near similar plan of the other football giant, Mohun Bagan. The latter has already identified Baggu – tiger headed man – as its mascot. In the current Calcutta Football League matches that Mohun Bagan is playing, several ‘Baggus’ dot the field dancing and swaying to fans’ applause.
Seems the idea of entertaining fans has come from the FIFA via AIFF and IFA. The practice is widely prevalent in virtually all football loving nations. There even songs are created and sung in the field in support of club teams and also when national teams play.
It’s not yet a fever, but if the going gets good, may be in the not-too-distant future we’ll have quite a few ‘national’ songs for my favorite club, East Bengal.
[Collated from HT, Aug 5]
East Bengal fans in Singapore - here, there, everywhere! [Image source]
Without them the city lacks charm, or so we the Kolkattans have come to believe. The street hawkers are a tough lot. For each rupee they earn they’ve to toil hard. There are many pay-offs to be made including at least a decent something to arrange for food, cloth and shelter.
The hawkers are seen mostly where there is some crowd. The office areas and business centers come first in the list, followed by plazas and entertainment places. Some locales are however evergreen for them like Gariahat, Esplanade, Burrabazaar, etc.
The attraction of these places never pales and the hawkers just refuse to budge from the important junctions come what may. It helps that the municipal authority continues to remain lax in its effort to keep these vital places clutter-free.
The 3 snaps here are a reflection of what it really looks like as the day starts for street hawkers.
If ever you come to a place you’ve never been to, and you hear the names of localities that end with words like pur, para, gunj, ghata, palli, bazaar, nagar, or danga, you can rest assured that you’re in the city of Kolkata.
Each of these words in Bengali means places where people have come together to live. The prefixes to these endings could be as diverse as Jadav, Santosh, Purba and Ali on one hand that convey some sense, to some like Sod, Jaj, Bele, and Bally on the other that mean practically nothing.
My family has moved from one ‘pur’ to another in recent years, but if chance permits we do not mind moving to a ‘gunj’ or may be a ‘para’ for that matter. However, going by the new trend of naming places, I’ve an odd feeling that we would soon be rendered ‘out of style’ with those age-old extensions.
Take Hiland Park for example. It has come up in the locality called Chowkgaria, but ask someone where Chowkgaria is, you’re likely to be staring at a blank face. Mention Hiland Park, and you’ll have anybody directing you.
It’s the same story at South City, Mandeville Gardens, Diamond Enclave and so on, never mind each of them is located at either a gunj or a para or suchlike.
My friend, an old Kolkata hand, feels that the old names, howsoever out of tune, will just not vanish like that. They’ll remain in the reckoning because all the police stations, post offices and similar such entities will continue to use them.
The other reason is Kolkata hasn’t really expanded in the past so many decades, and so there have been no occasions to try out new names for localities.
This however is fast changing and the day is not far when no matter what the police stations are named, people will recognize places with new landmarks like giant housing complexes and shopping plazas. The transition is already under way.
Air India's Boeing 747-400 - erstwhile Maharaja! Photo by Adrian Pingstone, May 2004 [source].
It’s the time of low-cost airlines. After clogging the domestic routes in the country, the tide is gradually turning in international sector too. And no one is complaining.
Next month Air India Express (or AIE), the low-cost offering from Air India, will commence short flights from Kolkata to international destinations. High on the list are Singapore, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur.
AIE already operates such flights from Mumbai and Trivandrum that fly to the Middle East to places like Dubai (Emirates), Doha (Qatar), Manama (Bahrain), and Abu Dhabi among others. There are flights from Mangalore and Chennai as well.
AIE flights are usually Boeing 737-800 that can fly to destinations that last thereabouts of 4 hours.
AIE will have commensurate tie-ups with Alliance Air that has strong presence in the northeastern sector from Kolkata. This means passengers from the North East can seamlessly avail journey to the Southeast Asian cities through Kolkata.
In fact there is a strong move to merge Indian Airlines and Alliance Air with Air India. Should that happen it’d be more hassle free to fly to these destinations.
In the meantime, Air India is really in high spirits having just completed (Aug 2) its maiden non-stop 16-hour flight, christened ‘Andhra Pradesh’, from Mumbai to JFK International Airport in New York.
In the large playground at Haral, Champahati in South 24 Parganas it was a novel meeting of sort on Friday evening last. The 3 groups of participants converging there included the makers of firecrackers, the environment department of the government and senior police officers. Also present was Sujon Chakraborty, the Member of Parliament from Jadavpur constituency.
The objective was noble: how to get rid of high-decibel crackers during Diwali. This incidentally is the time of the year when manufacturers in the countryside start making fireworks that are supplied to nearly the entire eastern region.
The meeting was felt necessary since no amount of arm-twisting and cajoling could stop people bursting high-decibel crackers during Kali Puja and Diwali. Not that the general public only suffered.
In the cat-n-mouse game between cracker makers and the police every year after Durga Puja, no one emerges the winner. As much as the police realize they just cannot plug all the leaking holes of supply, the makers too feel the heat of sudden seizures and steep fines by the lawmakers.
The need to meet each other to amicably discuss the issue and thrash out a solution was therefore long overdue. The Haral meeting served the purpose, and yes a solution did emerge.
Hopefully, gone would be days when the ear-splitting noise from the likes of ‘chocolate bombs’ would get the sleep out of your eyes. In their place you could expect to hear the muted sound of ‘aloo boma’ that passed the test at the meeting.
The environment officials came armed with instruments to measure the decibels, and ‘aloo boma’ emitted less than 88 decibels, just scraping through under the prescribed limit of 90 units.
The 500-odd cracker makers congregating in the meeting belted out the promise of not making high-decibel crackers this year. The environment safe-keepers though remained a skeptical lot. They felt the litmus test of their promise would unfold only in the nights of Kali Puja and Diwali. Indeed.
Meanwhile, for sound loving fireworks enthusiast like me, the development is certainly welcome. At least there will be some sound to keep company with the splendor of light. See my story, Dreading silent diwali.
[Collated from ABP, Aug 5]
Fireworks over Miami, Florida on Independence Day, 4 July 2007 Photo by Marc Averette [source].
Bizarre incidents surprise us now and then. I often wonder life would have had no color had there been no offbeat happenings that evoke awe and amusement. One such took place in the city yesterday.
It all started when a petty thief after successfully snatching a gold necklace from an old lady was caught by a hotfooting constable day before yesterday. Mohasin the thief then preferred to swallow it thinking that his act would go undetected.
That was not to be. The police took him to a hospital where an X-ray revealed what they thought had actually happened. The necklace was nestling inside his stomach.
The hard part now followed. Realizing that no amount of beating would fetch them the necklace, the police paid heed to what the doctors said. "Make him eat bananas", prescribed the doctors, "till the thing comes out with his stool."
3 dozen ripe bananas were purchased at government expense, and though Mohasin was eager to partake a few being hungry, he turned down the proposal to eat all of them. It was now police’s turn to tell him that unless he took the bananas, he would be taken to hospital where his stomach would be ‘cut’ to take out the necklace.
That did the trick. Mohasin started taking the bananas, and in course of a full evening ate the whole lot. Rice, rotis as much as he could be made to somehow swallow followed thereafter.
Now started the long wait for Mohasin responding to nature’s call. A constable was allotted duty to keep him company through the night.
Nearly 24 hours passed till ultimately Mohasin excreted the necklace on his third trip to the loo. Who but he was made to clean it himself and make it free of unsavory smell before the police took it for safe custody.
With relief visible on everyone’s face including Mohasin’s, he took the opportunity pleading for releasing him. The police however maintained it would do as the law says. Which is to produce him and the necklace in the court tomorrow to hear what the judge has to say.
Here’s an instance of an Indian bank voluntarily opting for brand-change. Axis Bank is the erstwhile UTI Bank, and the new name has just come into force from August 1.
The name UTI – rather Unit Trust of India – is average Indian’s first brush with capital market by proxy. Presently just UTIMF or UTI Mutual Fund, the yesteryears’ Unit Trust of India was directly under the control of finance ministry at the center. Many of its landmark schemes like the famous US-64 (later much degraded) have been household names for taxpaying Indian middleclass for many years.
UTI Bank, a UTI offshoot, has been increasingly getting out of tune with UTI’s core business. In fact the bank, as per government directive, could use the UTI brand only till January 2008.
Axis Bank, now in new avatar, has grandiose plans to expand beyond Indian shores in coming years even as it consolidates its Indian business. Of late the bank scrip is in good books of analysts and investors, what with turning around bank’s fortune under the able leadership of CEO PJ Nayak.
Quite a few market watchers opine Axis Bank is a good pick among bank scrips that are expected to show good promise in the future while riding the Indian growth story.
Sometime back (June 23 issue to be precise), The Economist ran a story on Krishnan Ganesh, an entrepreneur who owns TutorVista. The catchline was: If you want to see where Indian outsourcing is going, keep an eye on Krishnan Ganesh.
The Economist story is about the entrepreneurial acumen of Ganesh as he traveled from one online venture of his to another with effortless ease. But here we’ll talk about TutorVista.
I’m sure many readers of this blog who enjoy keeping track of web events would already know about how online tutoring is becoming the next big Indian outsourcing business. Let’s do a little number crunching.
The Economist article quotes a report from research firm Evalueserve (wonder how the alphabet ‘e’ has become conspicuous by its omnipresence!) that says:
Person-to-person offshoring by individuals and small businesses will top $2 billion by 2012, up from some $250 million now. In addition to tuition, other services that are suited to this model include tax planning, interior design, and administrative support.
There are many stories on the web about Indian tutors making it big through TutorVista, such as this one from IBNLive titled – not surprisingly – Want to make fast money? Be a (sic) online tutor.
Though such stories are a perfect foil to pump adrenalin in your body, just be aware of a small caveat. Promising though the possibilities are, exercise caution instead of throwing it to winds. Whatever you do online, it requires hard work. And yes, there are many (I don’t mean TutorVista!) who always wait in the wings to take you for a ride.
There is one another factor to be aware of before you rush in. The American students ready to doll out cash for your tutoring mainly need help in Science subjects – Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and the frightening of them all, Maths.
You an expert on English, History, Geography and suchlike? Well, no hope as yet.
To give credit to TutorVista, it’s not remaining idle with serving the American school/college goers only. As their Indian site reveals, they’re soon coming with customized test prep courses to get you (or your wards) ready for GRE, GMAT, SAT, and TOEFL. Now, how’s that!
If you’re to travel to Shanghai from Kolkata, there is no direct flight as yet. You have to detour via Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport or Hong Kong. In fact presently the air-connect between India and China is provided by China Eastern Airlines that flies between Mumbai and Delhi on this side and Beijing and Shanghai on China’s side.
This is now set to change come September. China Eastern plans to commence a daily flight from Kolkata to Shanghai via Kunming, the capital of China’s Yunan province by end of next month.
Incidentally, this will be the first time that a blue-blooded Chinese company will operate direct flights from the city to Chinese destinations. In the 80s there used to be a flight from Belgrade of erstwhile Yugoslavia (now capital and largest city of Serbia) to Kolkata via Beijing.
The Yugoslavian flight flew for just 3 months before discontinuing close on the heels of tragic happenings at Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Apart from China Eastern, at least 3 more companies have plans to start flights to/from Kolkata by this year end – Kuwait Airways, Qatar Airways and the low-cost Tiger Airways from Singapore.
It takes the breadth away. The collapse of the Interstate 35W (I-35W) over the Mississippi river is so total that it resembles as if there has been an earthquake.
The scene of the collapse reminds me of similar destruction caused by the Great Hanshin earthquake or the Kobe earthquake in Japan in January 1995 (see the picture below of the Earthquake Memorial Park built later near the Port of Kobe).
The I-35W was built in 1967, 65 feet high, 500 feet wide, spanning 8 lanes. Reports say about 200,000 vehicles ply on the bridge daily.
As is the case with most such disasters, postmortem has commenced in earnest. In one report by AP it is said that out of about 600,000 bridges across America nearly 75,000 are structurally deficient and need immediate repair.
Engineers have estimated that repairing all of them would cost more than $188 billion. This too takes the breadth away.
Here is a video of the bridge collapse as it happened.
The more I see the Howrah Bridge the more I feel awestruck by its magnificent façade, its imposing structure. If the bridge is an edifice that takes the breadth away notwithstanding the heavy rush of people of vehicles that ply on it, no less attractive is the river Hooghly flowing underneath.
2 days back the mighty I-35W bridge across the Mississippi at Minneapolis, US crashed during rush hour traffic (see a video in my next post). The I-35W is a very busy thoroughfare. Some estimates say it caters to a mammoth 2 lakh cars a day.
While that may be way beyond one would ever imagine what our own Howrah Bridge would cater to, the very word collapse does send shivers down the spine.
Recalling incidents like a launch grazing the belly of the bridge last year during high tide, one would like to feel assured that indeed the authorities keep constant vigil on the bridge.
After the Minnesota incident the question of the bridge’s safety has become important perhaps like never before.
The 2 pictures below taken from the bridge early in the morning give a glimpse of views around. In the second one, you can see Kolkata's skyline close to the river and a shadow-like impression of the Vidyasage Setu far ahead.
Have you watched this year’s calendar for the month of October? This is that month when the Bengalis all over the world go gaga over what is arguably the greatest community festival on earth, the Durga Puja.
To be fair, Durga Puja is not Kolkata or Bengal’s alone. It is now celebrated in perhaps all major countries, not to speak of nearly all towns and cities in India. In that sense Durga Puja is a pan-India festival, may be not comparable with big brother Diwali, but much larger in scale and festivity.
In Kolkata, there is no sign yet to suggest that 10 Sundays are all that lay between now and the grand festival. The countdown doesn’t seem to have commenced. Pandals of big community pujas like Ekdalia Evergreen have not been started, and the fever of puja shopping hasn’t yet caught on.
The picture however is markedly different at clay modelers’ places where people are very busy to make the idols. A few idols meant for overseas buyers have been completed and they are set to be shipped or are being shipped shortly.
The idol for the London Durga Puja Dusserah Committee (LDDC) of which noted industrialist LN Mittal is a patron, is also in the making in Pradyut Pal’s studio in Kumortuli. When completed this idol will be airlifted to London. See my post, Clay Durga Idol For LDDC.
In the paras, marathon meetings are being held to form puja committees, fix budgets, and to find ways to collect funds. After the first phase of setting the puja-related actions in motion will come the next phase when cultural programs will be finalized and likely participants will start rehearsing.
While this blog will track puja news as the days come near, readers are welcome to tell their stories about Durga Puja wherever that may be. Do send me them at mahanagar [at] gmail [dot] com. Like to send pictures only? You’re welcome.
Meanwhile here are a couple of pictures of near-empty shops waiting to spring to life in a month’s time.
It must be close to 50 years that suburban trains are plying from Sealdah and Howrah, but passenger amenities have hardly improved over the years. Take a look at the 2 photos below of Baghajatin station on Sealdah’s South section.
The platforms are narrow, and there is no decent seating arrangement for passengers. Further, unauthorized stalls at the back occupy nearly half of the space making it extremely difficult for passengers to move along the platform.
But then the platforms often serve as transit point for the people of the area with their bicycles to cross over from one side of the railway track to the other. They are not passengers but it doesn’t matter.
The most agonizing thing however is that the local trains seldom run in time. Often it’s a long wait for passengers as trains run late by 15-20 minutes or even more. The eager wait is so harrowing that you’d wonder perhaps you’re living in one of those banana republics of Africa where no rules rule.
Mind you this is a regular occurrence on certain routes especially in Sealdah division.
What do you think a knife in the stomach can do for you? For Amarendra Nath Ghosh, it was a good enough ploy to avoid extradition from Germany to India.
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