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.
Here are a few points to consider:
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.
Full credit will be given to the writer, 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 of the article to be published will be made by Partha Bhattacharya. He may edit an article if required, and may at a future time remove an article from the blog if such situation arises.
Writers may not receive any payment for the articles they send. If however a writer consistently writes good articles supplemented with photos, videos, etc. KM may decide to link payment for further submissions.
Please send your articles to mahanagar.net[at]gmail[dot]com with the subject as 'Article for KM'.
Thank you.
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.
Pictures/videos are must, plus a write-up of about 200 words. Of course all of those ought to belong to the submitter only.
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'.
Thank you.
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Since when the double-decker buses plied in the city? The Statesman informs us that the British brought them to Kolkata way back in 1926.
83 years have passed since. Many Kolkattans will have nostalgic memories about riding in these buses. And now the double-deckers can be seen on city roads for 2 more days in keeping with High Court's order to not ply 15-year old commercial vehicles from August 1.
Does this mean double-decker buses have no future in the city? Not necessarily because they do ply in many cities of the world. Those that ply in various Japanese cities are nicely designed - both exterior and interior - unlike the rickety conditions of Kolkata double-deckers.
Here is the picture of a double-decker that runs in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada from 2000 for the public transit system.
It's hardly a surprise that Bollywood makes more than what Hollywood makes in a year. But if the 'more' is nearly double, then one needs to sit up and take note.
I said 'nearly', because according to the figures by Times Insight Group, India with prime producing centers at Mumbai, Chennai, and Hyderabad made 1132 films in 2007 compared to 520 from US, 418 from Japan, and 400 from China. So the less-than-half Hollywood production doesn't strictly compare with Bollywood's output.
Over 3 billion people in India saw films in theaters in the same period compared to a little over 1.3 billion in the US. The figures for Japan and China are dismally low at 161 million and 196 million respectively.
Let me now share a surprise. This ClickAfrique report says that in 2006 Nollywood - the Nigerian film industry - produced 872 motion pictures compared to Bollywood's 1091, and Hollywood's 485.
However, despite apparent numerical strength, the ClickAfrique report reveals that the US movies continue to dominate cinema admissions around the world. All of the top 10 films seen in Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Costa Rica, Namibia, Romania and Slovenia in 2006 were US made.
A decade or 2 from today, Kolkata may become a city where commuters may depend less on errant road transport system like one now finds.
Metro may have started in Kolkata in 1984, but its route never extended beyond Dum Dum in the north, and Tollygunge to the south. This is about to change when Tollygunge will give way to Garia as the southernmost destination.
There will be further change when the East-West Metro takes shape from Salt Lake to Howrah passing below the river Hooghly.
But all that may look like blips once the massive network of Metro being planned over the entire city actually happens on ground.
The 1982 Asian Games brought a major facelift to the capital. And now the 2011 Commonwealth Games is seeing frenzied expansion of the metro in Delhi.
Kolkata is singularly unlucky for various reasons. The proposed Metro network encircling the city will therefore be a big boost. See the picture below, taken from The Telegraph.
Compliance with orderly living is a rarity in today's Bengal, and the city of Kolkata is no exception.
This coming Friday, 31st July, is the last day for commercial vehicles in the city to go green. This is an order from the Calcutta High Court that seeks to save millions in the city from poisonous fumes these vehicles emit while traveling.
If that seems logical in any civilized society, hold for a moment. In Kolkata it's just the reverse. Maybe we are not civil enough to live in what is constitutionally agreed as an environment where all human beings live with dignity and equal rights.
These pious words are however long lost in the inward-looking, labyrinthine lifestyle in Kolkata. For, what else can justify the likely agitation by most autos from August 1 to thwart implementation of HC order?
The Times Of India reports that only a few auto operators in the Kolkata Metropolitan Area (KMA) have bothered to make the green switch, never mind the Calcutta High Court order. Most of them, instead, are banking on assurances from their respective unions of starting a stir from that date.
Since when do the self-serving unions of some thousand members dictate the terms to millions of citizens for their right to healthy living? The answer is 'long, long back' in Kolkata.
Does it matter? In an over-reactive web world where opportunities are seldom let go, Nandan Nilekani's leaving Twitter is certainly a news.
Twitter is popular. It has recently broken into top-50 most visited websites in the US. It now has 20 million users. See my article, Twitternama.
These facts however may not look impressive unless you know that among frequent users of Twitter are the US President Barack Obama with nearly 2 million followers, and such important addresses like The White House, and 10 Downing Street.
There is no doubt Nilekani has thought that participating in Twitter may in some way affect his new, important duties. This may seem odd because if US Prez can be there, why can't Nandan Nilekani!
In my new role, I can no longer comment on government policy. So this means the end of this blog. The blogging format was new to me, and I greatly enjoyed writing here and listening to your thoughts these past few months.
How much does the heading convey a Bengali's anguish at the rarity of Bengali food joints I don't know, but several factors do stand out as to why that is so.
As Labonita Ghosh in her article in DNA points out, Bengalis are not too entrepreneurial, which probably explains why the number of eateries hasn't kept up with a growing population.
This she writes about Mumbai, but it's true for Kolkata as well. Yes there are a few classy restaurants that cook Bengali fares that make holes in the pocket, the types of which are there in other metros also. And there are those street-corner stalls that too cook machher jhol, spicy and watery enough to desist you from second help.
Between the 2 extremes, the space is virtually empty of any participation. In her article, Labonita mentions about Ujjal Das Gupta, a food consultant. This is what he has to say:
Today Bengali eateries are either fancy restaurants or street-corner joints. There's nothing in between, like an informal, sit-down place where you can entertain people. It's also sad that a rich, nuanced cuisine has had to be simplified into basic slots like fine dining, street and home cooked food, and not a single place in town offers all three together.
Pitha, from Pitha Utsab, Chittagong, Bangladesh [Image source]
Millions of enthusiasts across parts of India, China, and Japan yesterday witnessed the grand celestial spectacle.
If I may quote from the maker of the following YouTube video, the solar eclipse lasted as long as 6 minutes and 39 seconds in some places.
There is also the information that the video is from NHK--the Japanese National Broadcasting Corp., and taken aboard a cruise ship positioned off Iwo Jima in the South Pacific, about 1000 km south of Tokyo.
The video is a real education, an eye-opener. Apart from the eclipse itself which is usually mostly photographed, the video scans the horizon and beautifully shows how dark it becomes when the sun is fully covered by the moon. In fact it shows the Mercury and the Venus sparkling in the dark sky.
For many online watchers, nothing excites more than the latest episode from the Googlenama.
They won’t be disappointed to know that the world’s largest search engine – rather largest online marketer – is also the most popular among the US web users.
The search market has for long remained under Google’s overwhelming domination. But now it is also most visited in the US, though close behind is Yahoo.
Here are some figures I quote from The Big Money that quotes from comScore findings:
Total US online audience in June, 2009: 193 million Google: 156,871,000 Yahoo: 154 million Microsoft: 127 million AOL: 106 million Fox Interactive Media: 84 million Facebook: 77 million Ask: 73 million eBay: 71 million Amazon: 63 million Wikimedia sites: 60 million
Twitter enters the top 50 for the first time with 20 million visitors.
The blowy wind over Kolkata has somewhat ebbed in the evening bringing cheer to many souls across the city. The grand spectacle is just a little more than a day away, and the enthusiasts are bracing up to watch it.
The total solar eclipse is said to be the last that can be seen from India in this century. Actually there will be one on March 20, 2034, 25 years from today. But the moon’s shadow then will pass through a tiny portion of land in J&K.
That will be a non-event for most Indians, and so hope rests squarely on July 22 eclipse. After March, 2034 India’s turn to witness the celestial event comes on June 3, 2114, 105 years from today.
Gina Alzate in her article says that the July 22 eclipse will be the longest the Earth will experience in the 21st century until June 13, 2132. That really makes this eclipse very, very special indeed.
To quote from The Telegraph, the obscuration in the Calcutta sky will be about 90 per cent starting at 5.28am and ending at 7.30am. The maximum eclipse in Calcutta will be at 6.26am, when the sun will be obscured by 90.2 per cent. At the maximum phase of the eclipse in Calcutta, the sun will be at an altitude of about 17 degrees from the eastern horizon.
The eclipse will be visible from large parts of Japan, and that has prompted EclipseOfTheCentury.Com to promote a 6-night-cruise aboard the Costa Allegra from 16-24 July touching China, South Korea and Japan. Predictably all the tickets are sold out long back.
Here is a graphic (taken from The Telegraph) of the likely trail of the moon’s shadow as it passes over India, and below that is an animated video of the solar eclipse of July 22, 2009.
Readers are welcome to send pictures and/or their experience of the momentous event. Here is wishing you all the best.
The QS is a leading network for top careers and education.
13 universities rank in the world’s top 20, headed by Harvard University, and followed by universities of Yale, Cambridge and Oxford in that order. See the image below.
In the world’s top 100 universities none from India finds a place. Yet one would feel that at least the IITs should have found place(s) there.
Not all hope is however lost. Indian universities do rank in the Asia’s 2008 top-100 rankings starting from serial 30 where IIT, Mumbai comes.
After that IIT Kanpur is at 34, IIT Delhi at 36, and IIT Chennai at 49. 3 more universities come in the top-100 list – University of Delhi at 60, IIT Roorkee at 63, and University of Pune at 100.
Between 101 and 200 there are more Indian universities – Calcutta University at 110, co-holding the position with Beijing Normal University (Peking University is there at 10, and at 50 in the global list), University of Mumbai at 130, sharing with 2 more there, IIT Kharagpur at 141, and IIT Guwahati at 171.
Students willing to study abroad may consult the study abroad guide among other places.
Jyoti Basu, the CPM patriarch, is now ill, recuperating at a Salt Lake hospital. He is a tall leader, the tallest among the India’s communists thus far some would argue.
He has just completed 95 years (born in 1914), and the remarkable thing is that he still has very good memory. When the finance minister of India rang him up on his birthday, Jyoti Basu surprised him by mentioning about the general budget that the FM had just submitted in the parliament.
Upon his illness people from the upper echelons of life, those who wield power are coming to see him and wish him well. That is something quite natural.
Yesterday though a visitor came calling who incidentally is 2 years older than Jyoti Basu. He is the bodybuilder Manohar Aich (born in 1912).
Manohar Aich is short, 5 feet, but retains an excellent physique. He continues to train for 90 minutes at his own gym, called what else but Studio de Physique in Kolkata.
A 97-year-old came to wish 95-year-old Jyoti Basu well in hospital on Tuesday. Manohar Aich, who became Mr. Universe the year Basu would have voted for the first time in a general election (1952), flaunted his wrinkled but rippling muscles.
Bridging Kolkata & Howrah - the 3 prides! [Image source]
There are many expletives that can be hurled at Kolkata for its abysmal failure to protect human lives on the road, and for permitting the most lawless road transport that one could think of.
But notwithstanding the pervading gloom that descends after every road accident which the dwellers have learned to silently take in their stride, the city can still boast its river, some magnificent edifices like the Howrah railway station, and the 3 bridges over the river among those in the fast dwindling list of city’s pride.
The urban decay because of long years of missed governance is writ large on almost every public facet of the city. But when you consider the 3 bridges you cannot help but wonder at the sheer technological feat of their making.
Howrah Station, in front of which lies the filth of pettiness, is perhaps the only major railway station in India that stands on the bank of a beautiful river. No one will know this unless he gazes wonderstruck at the Howrah Bridge that makes him realize that perhaps a wide waterway has passed underneath.
Howrah Bridge, aka Rabindra Setu, is a tad over 66 years in operation. The second Hooghly Bridge, the Vidyasagar Setu, was opened to public by late PM PV Narasimha Rao in October 1992. 2 years back in July 2007 came the third bridge, the Nivedita Setu, alongside the Vivekananda Bridge in Dakhshineswar.
All the 3 inspire awe, specially the first 2. Though Howrah Bridge is the oldest, traffic is still the most there because it is a vital link at a very vital place.
In comparison to 112.162 vehicles a week on Howrah Bridge, the Vidyasagar Setu plies 48,667 vehicles every week. The figure is just 17,038 for the Nivedita Setu – one-seventh that of Howrah Bridge. See the graphics below.
Early this month the railway minister announced plan of upgrading Howrah Station to international standard – whatever that is – in this year’s budget. This is a welcome move, but a major hitch still remains.
Will the upgrading remain confined to the station building only? It must not be so, because the outside of the Howrah Station is in a very bad shape and in crying need of improvement.
The planned world class development must not cease at the gate of the Howrah Station. It must at least extend up to the river bank and till the approach of the bridge. That is why the integrated plan as given in yesterday’s Anandabazar Patrika assumes a lot of significance.
A little over 3 months back NDTV conducted a survey to choose 7 wonders of India. The grand finale took place in a glittering function in New Delhi on April 3 last.
Taj Mahal was also one of the New 7 Wonders of the World that was declared on 07/07/07 (July 7, 2007) in Lisbon, Portugal in a star-studded function which the Indians would remember as one where Christiano Ronaldo allegedly kissed Bipasha Basu.
While there is nothing wrong about Taj Mahal, it’s an irony that in the NDTV contest no natural place made it to the final list. India is blessed by having the highest mountain range as its crown and an ocean at its feet. Yet the voters couldn’t get at least one natural wonder in the final list.
Now the New7Wonders have embarked on finding 7 new natural wonders. The process has commenced last year, and the initial list of 440 places is now pruned to 77 last Thursday.
There are only 2 places from India in the list – the Sunderbans Forest, and the Kaziranga National Park in Nagaon district of Assam. The Sunderbans Forest is jointly under India and Bangladesh, while Cox’s Bazar is also in the list from Bangladesh.
No other natural place qualified in the list from India, though initially the Ganges and Nepal’s Mount Everest did figure in it.
Among the other places selected, and one I’ve been to, is the magnificent Table Mountain of Cape Town, South Africa.
The list 77 selections will be further pruned to 28 finalists in a function on July 21 at the New7Wonders headquarters in Switzerland. The final voting will start after that while the grand finale is expected in 2011.
Amid the quest for discovering newer wonders, not many perhaps remember the great The Great Pyramid of Giza in Cairo, Egypt, the only wonder of the ancient world that nearly survives intact.
It’s been several months that I visited south of South Africa with family. The pictures we took remained unattended for various reasons until I decided to do something with them some time back.
The video below (the first one) puts together 14 still images of Table Mountain, that fantastic ageless wonder in Cape Town.
Below it is yet another video of the Table Mountain, a fantastic time-lapse video of 560 individual images, done by Keith Pickersgill.
Some things are better ‘now’ than ‘never’. Take change for example. I resisted social networking for months – ages in cyber parlance – hoping better sense would prevail to the gung-ho enthusiasts of modern web generation.
But no, no amount of my ill-wishing could do any harm to the Facebooks and Twitters striding ahead. People laughed at me. Mocked they, “How could a silly, pot-bellied, do-nothing Kolkattan could ever wish such a thing!”
I tried to hold my own even as sand slipped below my feet so rapidly that I almost went off-balanced at times. “To hell with my wish…” I said at long last and joined the bandwagon that rode piggy-back on Facebook and Twitter.
Oh, dear me, look how I’ve deviated from what I was to write! What was I saying? Yes, change is something that is better done now than kept pending for long. Today’s TOI reports that the schools in Kolkata are now favoring US spellings.
That shouldn’t be a big story, because frankly who cares! But some still do like Sunirmal Chakraborty, the principal of La Martiniere for Boys. He says, "We discourage US spellings. Even though marks are not deducted, we do not encourage students to use them."
Aha, there lies the catch. You don’t deduct marks, which is like taking the side route to the main road, admitting that US spellings are not wrong after all.
Devi Kar of Modern High School is more practical. "Students have to be consistent in following the UK or US spellings," she says. That’s it, really.
Wonder what the fuss? Well these are the words spoken in the American society, and yes like it or not, we’re now more ruled by the US societal spellings than the Queen’s English. Ahem.
Interested readers will require Adobe Reader to read the downloaded PDF ebooks. There will however be no grief once the fair gets over. One can enjoy access to over 500,000 ebooks at the World eBook Fair website for just $8.95 a year.
Old memories must have been passing through his mind when he rose to present this year’s budget in the parliament. The man on his left as he spoke was the Governor of the RBI when he last presented the budget. Now he is the Prime Minister.
Pranab Mukherjee was perhaps setting a record of sorts being the only person in the history of India to hold the high-profile finance portfolio for a second time after a gap of quarter of a century. History will remember that but Pranab Mukherjee is a person of different league.
He is a man of learning, his awesome talent of deep understanding of a wide gamut of issues overshadowing the small stocky built of his.
In the last government, he started off as defense minister, shifting later to external affairs, and when the PM took ill in January this year, held both external affairs and finance portfolios simultaneously and effortlessly…all that in addition to being the head of the largest number of ministerial groups as well as trouble-shooting political crises whenever need arose.
There were and are tall persons in Indian politics of varying caliber, but Pranab Mukherjee’s caliber is the rarest of the rare even as he stands the tallest among his contemporaries.
The reason I think why he cannot hope to become the PM is not the dearth of talent – he has too much of that – but the fact that he has a mind of his own. And who knows better than him that nurturing ‘own mind’ is never a good quality in Indian politics.
Let me turn a little ‘parochial’ at this juncture. I am proud of him because like me Pranab Mukherjee is a Bengali, and I have no hesitation to say that he is yet another addition to the long list of luminaries from Bengal that perhaps no other state in India can (ever) boast of.
His was the world stage. He belonged to that vast humanity that has no geographical barriers.
No surprise then that Michael Jackson’s public memorial service to be held on coming Tuesday is going to have visitors from all over the world.
A total of 17500 tickets to the event to be distributed on the Internet already have half a million applicants. The figure is expected to be more as the registration has ended.
The Los Angeles police warn the fans and the media not to crowd the place without tickets or accreditation because they will not be allowed at the venue, the Staples Center.
Here are the details of the event:
Michael Jackson Public Memorial Service Tuesday, July 7, 2009, 10:00 a.m. STAPLES Center, Los Angeles, California
Below is the Michael Jackson Staples Center Rehearsals 2009 "This is it". Can you believe this is a rehearsal!
Not since the underground Metro did Bengal stand to receive so much from the Indian Railway. It’s stupendous by any standard, and what is a surprise is that not many from outside Bengal are wagging a finger at this shower of ‘gifts’ on Bengal.
Nitpickers may argue where from so much money will come, the railways will suffer loss, and so on! As if they are losing sleep over those concerns!
The reality is however different, and looking at the rush of people moving to and from Kolkata all through the day and deep into the evening, one can be reasonably certain that the new suburban/metro railway links announced will prove to be success.
Kolkata lacks decent infrastructure yet it hopes to attract investment in droves. Look at what other cities in India offer by way of easing commuting – the just opened Bandra-Worli sea link for example – and it’s a shame that Kolkata is still locked in the pride of a Bypass or 2.
Things have to improve…and fast. Bengal is economically too starved to refuse any help that comes in the way. In that respect the railway’s bounty is heartily welcome.
Who knows there may be more changes in the not-so-distant future! For better!
Yesterday, the t2 headline is a quote by Saina Nehwal:
I appeal to parents to allow their children to pursue their dreams. If they have the talent for badminton, please allow them to pursue it.
Saina is 19, which according to many doesn’t qualify her to be called an adult, though technically she is because in India 18 is the age of adulthood.
I bring in the talk of adulthood not to obfuscate Saina’s fervent appeal, rather to make the point that it required her to suffer pain to utter those words. It is not difficult to understand why.
Sports and games are hardly the first choice for most youngsters. Their parents will be happy to see them become doctors and engineers. The greedy parents make their young ones suffer the grind of reality shows in order to become rich overnight.
Cricket is another passion. It’s a funny game that is played in 3 formats, occupies more space in newspapers and time on the TV than any other game, and engages players who are long past their prime. The last happens because – no matter what anyone says – cricket hardly needs supreme fitness of body and mind.
Some time back the union sports minister made an immature remark about India’s football. Not to be outdone, the national football coach gave vent to his frustration at the state of affairs in the country.
I’m amused at times (when people talk about how poor the Indian team is). I remember the Sports Minister saying this Indian team would lose even to an Australian school team. I don’t know what prompted him to say that but I feel, instead of being cynical he should’ve asked himself why the facilities aren’t there.
How true! In his column, Free Kick, in The Telegraph, even the redoubtable PK Banerjee wrote:
A close look would reveal that top Indian sportspersons in almost every discipline train in foreign countries these days. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have made global impact. Even world chess champion, Viswanathan Anand mostly stays in Spain because of better training facilities.
The fact of the matter is that except cricket we the Indians don’t like sports or those who play them. Whenever there is a success the media rushes in to start the game of adulation making the sportsperson a temporary hero before dumping the news and the player altogether.
