Alka Dwivedi

Image Source: Gogomummy.com [Don’t feel offended about the authenticity of the vegetables. Here in India we get somewhat similar quality (unless you have your own kitchen garden or farm) than depicted in the above picture]

No matter how much research you conduct and how many subjects you include for your study and how prestigious or obscure your university is, the results are always same, those damn green vegetables which your grandmothers never failed to remind you to eat. What our grandparents knew the secretes without any Harvard professor telling them with his scholarly findings. I have omitted the current crop of mothers. They seem a bit different. When I see a metro mom, it looks they are raising a pizza burger generation who comes out shivering from a swimming pool after half an hour when the allotted time slot is one hour.

What the study claim is:

Professor Dimitrios Trichopoulos at the Harvard School of Public Health explains that they have surveyed over 23,000 men and women who were participants in the Greek segment of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC).

Eating more vegetables, fruits, nuts, pulses and olive oil, and drinking moderate amounts of alcohol, while not consuming a lot of meat or excessive amounts of alcohol is linked to people living longer.

Xeros has introducing environmentally friendly washing machine that will use very little water to wash clothes. But common consumers have to wait for such a washing machine. Xeros will produce it for hotels and drycleaners first.

The appliance, which could save billions of litres of water a year, has been developed at the University of Leeds.

It uses less than 10 per cent of the water of conventional machines and 30 per cent less energy by replacing most of the water with thousands of tiny reusable plastic beads to attract and absorb dirt under humid conditions.

Image Source: Telegraph.co.uk

I was just wondering what MNS supremo Mr. Raj Thackeray has to say about these incidents in Australia. He might say that Indians sorry Maharashtrians shouldn’t go to Australia or any other place in this world. They should stay in Maharashtra.
Anyway Mr. Raj Thackeray, your silence is deafening.

Photoshop of the day

Image Source: The Daily Dish

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad afraid of the Power of Communication!

Hats off to those who invested sleepless nights to invent this modern day communication tool called internet. The brutal regimes and their perpetrators trembles before this mighty tool. Visit this link http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=88660934117&h=F3jNG&u=uexbx&ref=mf to see what this  president in the above picture is doing to his people. And how he banned internet and social media in Iran.

I accidently came across this article, The Vertical Farm Project – Agriculture for the 21st Century and Beyond. I find the concept of vertical farming simply amazing. They are planning to execute it in 2060. But it seems that vertical farming will meet the need of the growing population. After all we have started living in skyscrapers so why not start farming in such type of buildings too. Someone has rightfully said that a picture is worth a thousand words. 

Image Source: World Culture Pictorial

It always amazes me to see what a human mind is capable of. Going by this rate, it seems, the day is not far off, when humans will arrange their food from wind or sun directly.

Zero Emissions Motorbike

Kingston University’s six final year engineering students have designed this zero emission motorbike. They have used recycled material in this battery powered motorbike. What is astonishing about this bike is it has the ability to reach speeds of 102mph, race around a 38 mile mountainous course. But the icing on the cake is you can charge this zero emission motorbike from a standard household socket! No need to run to the petrol pump and spend exorbitant amount of money on refilling it.

I get another piece of news about this clean and green motorbike

To prove its prowess, the bike will compete in the world’s first zero-emissions Grand Prix this summer. With this new bike, the Kingston team will participate with 24 eco-bikes riding in from America, India, Italy, Germany and Austria on the start line at the 2009 Isle of Man TTXGP.

What makes me sad is, in some part of India this kind of non polluting bike is being prepared somewhere by some people. But our media doesn’t give space to these types of news. But wherever you people are, all the best for the 2009 Isle of Man TTXGP. Hope you people win the race so that environment too can find a space in our media.
Image Source: Science Daily

What was the reply of the mom?

“When my mum walked out on my dad, she said to him, ‘One day this girl will make me proud’. All my life I’ve wanted my mum to be proud of the decision that she chose me,” Pooja said.

This year’s Miss India Pooja Chopra’s father was a commander in the Indian Navy. What an image a girl conjure up of a commander in the Indian Navy? Dashing, smart, suave? None in their wildest dream would think about a wife beater and female infanticidal, philanderer manic who can burn her daughter’s hand when she tried to save her mother from his blows? But that was exactly current Miss India Pooja Chopra’s father.
What Pooja Chopra, sister Shubhra says about her father,

Shubhra, who was seven when her mother walked out, remembers it all too clearly. “He used to hammer my mother… When I used to try to save her, he would burn out his cigarette on my hands.” The reason she remembers, Shubhra says, is because she still has the burn scars.

How her mother Neera Chopra brought them up?

Now a mother to a girl child herself, Shubhra says, “I want to be the kind of mother my mother was to us. I remember her giving us all the food in the house — we never slept hungry — and tying a dupatta around her stomach. She would say ‘my stomach is paining’, but I knew.”

What Miss India Pooja Chopra says about her mother?

“Today, when people call to congratulate me, it’s not me they pay tribute to, but to [my mother’s] life and her struggle. She’s the true woman of substance.”

But the thing is we have many unsung Neera Chopras who are struggling everyday to bring up their children with dignity and care. Their children might not be thrust into limelight like Pooja Chopra. But still these women of substance are going on with their fight against injustice and cruelty and bringing up their children to live a dignified life. They ought to be saluted too.

I was trying to grow vegetables in my balcony. First I took some unused buckets, put some soil in it and for two years threw fruit and vegetable peels, egg shells and chicken bones in those buckets and watered it almost everyday. We bought some bhindi seeds (ladyfingers seeds) planted those and waited eagerly. We were not disappointed. They came out looking so eager to grow up.

After a while they start bearing flowers. When I saw the first flower, I was simply elated.

Some of the ladyfingers sprang up soon. Our effort is bearing fruits.

These are bitter gourd plants. My camera couldn’t catch the small buds it is having right now. Subhanjan you are being missed here. But when it will start having karelas I will post those images in near future.

Two years back, we had a melon from our balcony.

Susan Boyle singing in Reality TV Show Britain’s Got Talent

Today Amrit showed me this video and I was stunned for a while. PLEASE DO CLICK on this video and I promise you that you will not be disappointed. You will start believing that external beauty really doesn’t matter after few minutes and what counts is the inner beauty. Sometimes you believe that few things are good for textbooks only and practical life is entirely different. But this 47 years old Scottish lady Susan Boyle from a village dared NOT to forget her dream. Susan Boyle at the age of 47 has the courage to appear in a reality TV show Britain’s Got Talent. We all know that these days at reality TV shows you have to have that total package in you. You should have a ‘personality’, connect to the audience, a model like figure and a stunning face. A contestant like Susan Boyle, who is 47 year-old and not a very stunning figure and face to go with this type of reality shows, stood tall and held her dignity. Judges mocked her and but she took it all in her stride.
If you are curious to know what happened when she started singing, please WATCH THE VIDEO. I can’t embed the video here because this feature was disabled by youtube. You might find the courage to rediscover your long forgotten dream. Watch the reactions of the judges when Susan Boyle completed the song.

Hollywood star Demi Moore has reportedly revealed that she cried watching Susan Boyle’s audition on Britain’s Got Talent.

Increased demand from music downloaders has sent the original cast recording of the song she performed up the iTunes singles chart, and to top it all off, Boyle has said she has already had a meeting with Sony BMG with a view to releasing an album. “I can’t say much about it. It’s early days and I’m taking baby steps.”

Image Source: My Park Magazine

No, no I am not hallucinating. It is true. Scientists are hopeful that in near future our body movements or blood movement inside our body will be enough to recharge our mobiles or i-Pods! Researchers are banking on nanogenerators that will do the unthinkable. You can see details here: A light breeze, a beating heart could power mobile gadgets: research or here: The next not-so-big thing: Nanogenerators

Its a fantastic suggestion by Kamal Meattle. I am definitely going to try this out. If possible, follow these simple suggestions and live healthy and lightly on this earth.

When doctors told Kamal Meattle, SM ‘67, that the air in New Delhi was killing him, he was not persuaded to leave his lifelong home. Pollution in Delhi is reported to contribute to the deaths of 10,000 people each year, but Meattle was determined that he would not become a statistic. He set out to create his own healthy climate–and prove his doctors wrong. Ten years later, Meattle runs an office hotel for dozens of clients, and its air is among the purest on the planet.

Elisabeth Fritzl

What can one expect from a person who is raped 3000 times for 24 years by her own father and kept in a dungeon when she was just eighteen years old and escaped from that underground hell when she turned 41? Elisabeth Fritzl bore seven children from her own father. Three of her children still wear glasses because they can’t face sunlight. They have never seen sky or felt grass beneath their feet.

Why that rapist monster chose her daughter? In his words, because she was strong, determined and iron willed. The tougher the victim the greater the victory.

I was reading all the gory details of rape of this beautiful women whose life could have been completely different if… What amazed me most was this woman’s courage. I was wondering what kept Elisabeth Fritzl alive? Optimistic? Loving to her children? Why didn’t she committed suicide when her own father told her to watch pornography and act accordingly? Why didn’t Elisabeth Fritzl died from internal injury when she gave birth seven times on her own? What ray of hope was keeping her alive when her own father stuffed her with oversized sex toys for hours and relished every moment seeing her writhe in agony? If Elisabeth Fritzl can be courageous under such hellish circumstances then no one has the business to give up on life.

What she is like? How Elisabeth Fritzl is coping now? I was curious to know. I found details here:

Berthold Kepplinger, the psychologist in charge of the mental health of the cellar tribe, said of Elisabeth: ‘She is nothing short of heroic. She persevered down there, only keeping going out of love for her children. The mothering instinct saved them all.’

Those who deal with her have their breath taken away by her courage, love, dignity and pride. In a world of instant fame and celebrity, it came as no surprise when in January this year she was approached by one of the world’s biggest media companies and offered £5 million for an exclusive deal spanning newspapers, magazines, talk shows, a movie and a book. There was no hesitation from Elisabeth: ‘No thanks. Please leave us alone.’

I wish this courageous woman and her children to find the same strength to survive above the ground which they exhibited in the windowless, concrete grave below the ground. Its true, life starts at 42.

When I heard this song, “Main Pal Do Pal Ka Shaayar Hoon” and these lines, “Kal aur aayenge nagmon ki
Khilti kaliya chunne waale
Mujhse behtar kehne waale
Tumse behtar sunne waale!”
I used to think how true! Well, Sahir Ludhianvi was wrong on that account. We don’t have a genius like you till now. What lies in the womb of future, no one knows.
Recently I read this:

Zapping through television channels a few days back, I came across a programme on Urdu poet and Hindi film lyricist Sahir Ludhianvi, on a channel called E24.

The reason for suddenly remembering Sahir, nearly three decades after his death, was his 88th birth anniversary. He was born on March 8, 1921.

The programme showed the bad state of Sahir’s flats in this building called Parchaiyan that he had got built after demolishing a bungalow of the same name that stood on the same plot.

The camera panned into his flat which is in a state of absolute disrepair. There were dead pigoens lying all around and cobwebs all over the place. Most of his books and writings have been sold off as raddi. And of what remains, a majority have been eaten by termites. So many years of hard work, sold for a few rupees more or just turned into dust. How criminal.

Well, we are like this. Its our national trait. That’s how we treat our legends. Please bear with us Sahir Ludhianvi sahib and if possible forgive us. You are DEFINITELY NOT, “Pal Do Pal Ka Shaayar” but “Har Eak Pal Ka Shaayar.”

When I first heard the news at BBC, my first reaction was extremely selfish. thank God! Our cricket team had canceled the Pakistan Tour!!!! Our Sachin Tendulkar and team members are safe. But soon my human element took over and I begin to find out the damage. But it was a huge relief that Sri Lankan cricket team is safe after this terror attack by some freedom fighters. But policemen were killed in this “incident.” Who cares for them? they are just numbers who died with their boots on. Sometimes ago it was considered an honor to die with your boots on. Now too many are dying with their boots on. So dying with your boots on have lost its sheen.

Zaheer Abbas at “Times Now” TV channel is saying I am not sure if this is a terrorist attack. Wow! All a commoner like me can say is that thank you for the insight! Thank you for enlightening us. We will always be greatful to you.

At least five members of the Sri Lankan cricket team have been injured in a shooting incident in the Pakistani city of Lahore, a Sri Lankan minister says.

The incident happened when unidentified gunmen fired on a convoy carrying Sri Lankan cricketers.

Pakistani officials said about 12 gunmen were involved and grenades and rocket launchers were recovered from the scene.

At least five policemen have been killed in the attack, police say.

Sri Lanka Sports Minister Gamini Lokuge told the BBC that early reports indicated that the injuries to five players and a coach were minor.

So Sri Lankan Cricket team is safe and we can thank god for that. Now media circus will start about this terror attack on Sri Lankan cricket team. We will have sound bytes about the “incident.” Speculations will be rife whether it was LTTE or some other freedom fighters group who chose to spot Sri Lankan Cricket team so easily for its good deed. So welcome to the media circus and sickular games. The show must go on!

Music maestro A.R. Rahman has added another first in his cap. Rahman has become the first Indian composer to win an Oscar for his music in Slumdog Milllionaire. Rahman was nominated in the Best Original Score and the Best Original Song categories for the Oscars and he won both. He has won best original score along with lyricist Gulzar. Rahman has already received the Golden Globe Award for the same.

Another Indian documentary film by Megan Mylan, “Smile Pinki” won an Oscar in the Best Short Documentary category.
It seems the 24-hour news channels and Internet has really converted this planet into a small global village. Its not that we didn’t have great composers before Rehman or “Jai Ho” is Gulzar’s best creation. But these days we have better means of exposure, communication, transportation and event management companies. These things put concerned people at the right place at the right time with right people. A “JAI HO” for technocrats who make this connectivity possible!

I was ecstatic while reading about $10 laptop at International Business Times. After all, this $10 laptop will spread the use of technology and internet to common man . We were going to challenge MIT who developed a laptop at the cost of $100. India showcases low-cost laptop to bridge digital divide

The low-cost device, developed jointly by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai, and Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, for the human resource development (HRD) ministry, is aimed at bridging the digital divide and making access to computer literacy affordable to the masses.

I often think that when I want the advice of a grandmother or grandfather or parents, internet often fill the vacuum as far as information is concerned. But what I read today about $10 laptop?
Govt’s much-awaited $10 laptop turns out be a joke

The talk of the “invention” had raised expectations of bridging the technological divide between rural and urban India. Talking to TOI, a Professor from Sri Venkateswara University said (on the condition of anonymity), “How can just a computing device bridge the digital divide and make access to computer literacy affordable to the masses? Where will poor students get computers to jack this gizmo with? Will MHRD provide computers and internet connectivity in rural and remote areas? There is no clarity among the officials themselves,” he said.

I think as long as the HRD Minister Arjun Singh’s image is intact as Social Equality Guru and his party’s “prototype” is unchallenged as “secular”, our image in international community as buffoons (with due apology to buffoons) hardly matters! Jai Ho $10 laptop!

I read this post here.

Here’s the apology published by Chyetanya Kunte, and here is how different bloggers have responded.

I’m reproducing here a part of his unconditional apology:

Consequently, I hereby repudiate and withdraw my post dated November 27, 2008 titled "Shoddy Journalism" and, more specifically, the following allegations / statements made in the post titled "Shoddy Journalism" namely:

• a lack of ethics, responsibility and professionalism by Ms. Dutt and NDTV Limited;
• that Ms. Dutt and NDTV’s reporting at the scene of the Mumbai attacks during November 2008, resulted in jeopardizing the safety and lives of civilians and / or security personnel caught up in and / or involved in defending against the attacks in Mumbai in November 2008;
• that Ms. Dutt was responsible for the death of Indian Servicemen during the Kargil Conflict.

See how cleverly he has repeated everything in the apology :-).

I think he has taken the right decision to take down the blog post because he wanted to make a point and he made it and now he is getting ample coverage. Had he been sued by Barkha Dutt and company he would have had to bear the cost unnecessarily, unless of course there were people to help him out or if he himself had enough resources. “Big-shot journalists” like M/s Barkha Dutt wouldn’t have to spend from her own pocket because the TV channel would take care of the entire hassle while she carried on with her routine job. In fact they must be having a separate legal department for such things.

About the freedom of speech thing: I think many bloggers take this too far. Freedom comes with responsibility and like any other medium, when you say something that sort of accuses another person you have to back it up with enough data and evidence and shouldn’t base your blog post on unsubstantiated facts. But of course you can refer to other reports claiming the same things and this shouldn’t be illegal. I am not writing this in support of Barkha Dutt, I’m writing this so that bloggers don’t get in such kind of tight spots. Blogging being free or cheap doesn’t mean that you can publish anything. You have to be responsible if you are publishing something and your message is being read by many people and is publicly available. Whenever you are publishing insinuations on your blog always link to the source that you are basing your insinuation upon. This way you can always say, “I didn’t say that, I simply said what he said, how would I know it is not true?”

Regarding people like Barkha Dutt trying to throttle freedom of speech, I think by attributing such expressions to journalists like her is plain stupid. Even a kid would know that she and the news channel she works for don’t care a hoot about freedom of speech. They are simply mouth pieces of the pseudo-intellectual mafia that has been screwing the country ever since…forever.

I read this screaming headline. Girls assaulted at Mangalore pub

The activists of Sri Rama Sena entered the Amnesia Bar and Restaurant on Dr Shivaram Karanth Road on Saturday evening and threatened the women sitting inside. The men, who took objection to women drinking alcohol, pushed them outside, many women falling to the ground while they were being driven out.

Well what happened at Mangalore is a condemnable incident and events like this shouldn’t happen in a liberal society. But I am wondering about one thing. What the cool dudes accompanying these hapless girls were doing? Or for a change imagine, that these girls were visiting the bar alone or in a group. But what were the males present in Mangalore bar having higher conscious level than these hooligans were doing? Watching those girls being beaten up and pushed around? Or they were thinking on the similar lines of the goons of Sri Ram Sena, since they were drinking so they deserve such treatment? Come on cool dudes, you must had outnumbered those gundas at the Mangalore bar. So where were your biceps at that time?

What the media was doing apart from filming the Mangalore bar incident? Capturing the Sri Ram Sena’s Ravans’ act was more important than dialing to police? Where was that type of chest beating when Taslima Nasreen was attacked? Do they ever understand that this kind of selective reporting takes away their credibility?

Tanmoy has some real good suggestions for us. Terror attack in Mumbai has left us all dazed and shaken. But this time it will be good if we don’t move on and pretend if nothing has happened.

What is community service? What to my mind we can do instantaneously?

First, ask ourselves do we know how to fight an emergency / crisis situations ourselves? If the answer is no, let’s ask ourselves what can the emergency situations be. Fire in our apartment, may be! If we don’t know how to fight fire, do we know, if we write a letter to the nearest fire station, they will come and teach us some of the basic things.

People in fire service and police service often tend to feel that none cares for them unless one is affected. This can be a good exercise perhaps to get them involved.

Can anyone of us amongst ourselves take the responsibility of doing that for our own colony, apartment back in India?

Get yourself trained without really relying on tacit intelligence (we are tremendously over confident, I know!) and importantly help the women and children in our family / colony to get trained.

Secondly, can we start telling our children about our savings and teach them banking operations. In West, all children after the age of 10 tend to know about such things. We seem to protect themselves till eternity.
Thirdly, can we as a community go to the “lazy” police station across the street and tell them that we are scared. I know many of you loathe such police officials but trust me the feeling is mutual. They loathe you too but we must not assume they are utterly rubbish and stop involving them. If we make police / firemen a part of our community, after sometime they would become conscious of their existence too. We have to give them confidence, that we trust them. How many of us invite these people to our community functions? We don’t but why is that so?

Fourthly, can we be aware of things like Right to Information Act, Consumer Court, Public Grievance System in Government, Directorate of Public Grievances and many such organizations.
Fifthly, have a diary at home where emergency numbers are stored. I am sure most of our mobile phones don’t have them and same is for our family members. Why is that so? How long shall be inflict wounds on our families because of our callous attitude.

Sixthly, how many us have ever planted a tree or have helped someone to plant one?