This is life ! (Ei to Jibon!)

Kashmir Conflict - Timeline

2010-08-23T22:27:00.000-07:00

From 1947 to 2002

August 15, 1947 - India and Pakistan gain independence from Britain.

October 27, 1947 - Kashmir becomes part of India.

January 1948 - India and Pakistan go to war over Kashmir and finally agree to withdraw all troops behind a mutually agreed ceasefire line, later known as the Line of Control.

August 5, 1965 - India and Pakistan at war again over Kashmir. The war ends when both countries decide to adopt a UN-sponsored resolution to stick to the Line of Control.

May 7, 1999 - The Indian Army patrols detect intruders on Kargil ridges in Kashmir. India fights to regain lost territory.

March 19, 2000 - Then U.S. President Bill Clinton arrives in India, beginning his six-day visit to South Asia, partly in an attempt to ease relations between Pakistan and India over the disputed region of Kashmir.

July 25, 2000 - Hizbul Mujahedeen, a pro-Pakistan Kashmiri militant group, declares a unilateral ceasefire for three months in Jammu and Kashmir.

August 3, 2000 - India begins peace talks with Hizbul Mujahedeen, in Srinagar.

August 8, 2000 - Hizbul Mujahedeen calls off its 2-week-old ceasefire and orders its forces to resume fighting against Indian troops.

November 19, 2000 - Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee announces that security forces will suspend combat operations against militants in Jammu and Kashmir state during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

27 November 2000 - India puts a ceasefire into effect in Kashmir.

December 23, 2000 - Pakistan-based guerrilla group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, claims responsibility for a deadly attack on New Delhi's historic Red Fort.

February 22, 2000 - Prime Minister Vajpayee extends the unilateral ceasefire by three months.

April 27, 2001 - An executive from Kashmir's separatist All Parties Huriyat Conference (APHC), which claims to be the premier political representative of the Kashmiri people, rejects an Indian offer for a dialogue.

May 23, 2001 - India ends a six-month military ceasefire against Islamic guerillas in Kashmir while also inviting Pakistani military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, to peace talks aimed at ending five decades of hostilities between the two countries.

May 28, 2001 - India's peace negotiator for Kashmir, Krishan Chander Pant, visits the territory to meet a cross-section of people from Pakistan and Kashmir.

India refuses to yield any ground in talks and insists that the territory is an integral part of India and rejects Pakistan's calls for a referendum on the future of Kashmir.

May 28, 2001 - Pakistan's military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, formally accepts an Indian invitation for summit talks focused firmly on the Kashmir dispute.

June 18, 2001- Pakistan's military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, announces a visit to India from July 14 to 16 for the first summit talks between the neighboring states in two years.

June 20, 2001 - Musharraf dismisses President Rafiq Tarar as the nation's ceremonial head of state, dissolves the national and provisional assemblies and declares himself as new Pakistani president.

July 4, 2001 - India says it is releasing more than 400 Pakistani prisoners from its jails as a goodwill gesture 10 days ahead of the India-Pakistan summit meeting in New Delhi.

July 4, 2001 - President Musharraf issues an executive order, giving the president boundless powers through a newly devised National Security Council.

July 14-16, 2001 - President General Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee meet in Agra, India for a three-day summit. The talks fail to produce a joint statement on Kashmir.

July 24, 2001 - Abdul Hamid Tantray, chief spokesman of the Hizbul Mujahadeen, one of Kashmir's largest militant groups, dies in what Indian authorities call an "encounter" with police in the village of Paloo.

August 8, 2001 - India imposes an indefinite curfew in Jammu as tension runs high in the city after the massacre of 11 people at a railway station.

October 1, 2001 - Militants attack the Kashmiri assembly in Srinagar, leaving 38 people dead. Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah urges the Indian government to launch a crackdown on militant training camps across the border in Pakistan.

October 18, 2001 -- The United States says its campaign against terrorism will pursue Kashmiri militants.

December 13, 2001 - Unidentified men attack the Indian parliament in New Delhi. Fourteen people are killed, including the five assailants.

December 20, 2001 - The Indian army deploys troops on its border with Pakistan in the northern states of Kashmir and Punjab in response to a Pakistani troop build-up across the frontier.

December 25, 2001 - Pakistan detains the leader of an Islamic organization blamed by India for the suicide attack on the Indian parliament.

December 27, 2001 - Indian police verify reports that a group of al Qaeda members led by a close associate of Osama bin Laden entered Kashmir.

January 2, 2002 - India stops long-distance calls from all public telephone offices in Kashmir to prevent militants from communicating with each other.

New Delhi tells Pakistan to wipe out Pakistan-based Kashmir separatist groups Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad. Row triggers military build-up, diplomatic sanctions, and closure of transport links.

January 7, 2002 - After weeks of heated rhetoric, accusations and military posturing, Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee says at the South Asian Regional Cooperation meeting in Kathmandu, Nepal, that his nation is ready for "dialogue" with its fellow nuclear power.

January 9, 2002 - A siege between Indian troops and two militants holed up in a mosque in Kashmir ends after one of the gunmen was killed and the other surrendered.

January 11, 2002 - India's army chief says the nation is ready for war with Pakistan and would use its nuclear weapons if its neighbor were to launch a nuclear strike first.

January 13, 2002 - Welcoming Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's pledge to crack down on religious extremists, India says it will judge its neighbor's actions before it begins a military de-escalation or resumes dialogue.

January 13, 2002 -- Two suspected militants were shot dead after they allegedly tried to attack a paramilitary camp in Srinigar.

January 16, 2002 - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell visits Islamabad on the first stage of a South Asian tour designed to kickstart a dialogue between India and Pakistan.

January 21, 2002 - Unidentified gunmen kill eight members of a family including several women and children in a small village in Kashmir.

February 4, 2002 - The radical Kashmiri group Jaish-e-Mohammed suspend operations in the rest of India in order to focus on Kashmir.

February 17, 2002 - Militants kill eight Hindus in Kashmir.

February 25, 2002 - India's parliament resumes for the first time since a suicide attack in December with a new strategy from the government on Kashmir designed to stamp out terrorism.

March 25, 2002 - A Kashmiri separatist leader was arrested under an anti-terrorism law in connection with the seizure of large sums of cash India says was smuggled into the region from Nepal by two activists.

May 14, 2002 - Suspected Islamic militants open fire on an army camp in Indian Kashmir, killing at least 30 people and wounding 40, marring a new effort to ease the tension between India and Pakistan.

May 17, 2002 - A blast rips through the capital of Kashmir as India's parliament debates how to respond to an earlier deadly attack in the disputed region.

May 19, 2002 - Fourteen people, including eight security personnel, were killed and 17 injured in fresh rebel attacks Kashmir.

May 20, 2002 - Three Pakistani villagers were killed after Pakistani and Indian troops traded fire across their tense border in Kashmir, a Pakistani official said.

May 21, 2002 - Gunmen open fire on a meeting of Indian Kashmir's main separatist Hurriyat alliance, killing separatist leader Abdul Gani Lone.

May 22, 2002 - A Pakistani girl was killed and three people wounded as Indian and Pakistani forces face off in Kashmir trade fire. India Prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee heads for India's front lines.

Ref: http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/south/05/24/kashmir.timeline/index.html

Cure for cancer - Imitinef Mercilet or Imatinib mesylate - medicine for Blood Cancer

2010-08-11T15:39:00.001-07:00

I just came to know about this amazing new medicine which is able to treat CLL type of Blood Cancer. I have no clue what this terms mean at this point. But I am just publishing this information with proper link to the source of the news in this blog. This might help those invisible readers (if any) of my blog.

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I first came across this news in a email forwarded by a friend. Before proceeding to fwd it to other people I did some google search on the topic. I found 2 responses which looks genuine.

----------------------http://www.hoax-slayer.com/free-blood-cancer-medicine.shtml --
Outline
Message advises recipients that "Imitinef Mercilet", a medicine that cures blood cancer, is available free of charge from the Adyar Cancer Institute in Chennai, India.
Brief Analysis
The Adyar Cancer Institute is a real health facility. "Imitinef Mercilet" is apparently an alternative spelling of the cancer drug, Imatinib mesylate. It is true that Imatinib (or "Imitinef") is available free of charge for patients who have been admitted to the Adyar Cancer Institute hospital for cancer treatment. However, the Institute is not handing out the drug freely to all as suggested in the message. Moreover, the drug does not actually cure all blood cancers as claimed in the message.

Example

Subject: Free Medicine for Blood Cancer!!!! Please don't delete this without forwarding

Dear all,

I have forwarded it to the maximum I can.

Let it reach the 110 crores Indians and the remaining if any.

Put yourself, if you or your brother or sister or your mom and dad or any x, y, z near you, got affected, then how u would have reacted, think it, Forward it.

'Imitinef Mercilet' is a medicine which cures blood cancer. Its available free of cost at "Adyar Cancer Institute in Chennai". Create Awareness. It might help someone.

Forward to as many as u can, kindness cost nothing.

----------
Detailed Analysis
According to this message, India's Adyar Cancer Institute is distributing, free of charge, a medicine named 'Imitinef Mercilet' that cures blood cancer. The message is circulating rapidly via email and is also making its way around the Internet via blogs, forums and social networking websites.

The Adyar Cancer Institute is a real health facility located in the city of Chennai, India and, as its name implies, it indeed specializes in cancer treatment and research. The Adyar Cancer Institute has achieved great results in the treatment and research of cancer since its establishment in 1954.

I contacted a spokesperson at the Adyar Cancer Institute to ask about the veracity of the message. He sent me the following reply:

Only the Part of this message is true. The medicine Imitinef is available free for only qualified persons and not for all. It is free for those who have admitted in the hospital for treatment.

'Imitinef Mercilet' is apparently an alternative spelling of the drug Imatinib mesylate which is used in the treatment of some forms of leukemia along with other types of cancer. Imatinib, often referred to a "Gleevec", has proved to be an effective treatment for some forms of cancers. However, "blood cancer" is a generalized term for cancers that affect the blood, lymphatic system or bone marrow. The three types of blood cancer are listed as leukemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma. These three malignancies require quite different kinds of treatments. While drugs (including Imatinib), along with other treatments such as radiation can help to slow or even stop the progress of these cancers, there is currently no single drug treatment that can be said to actually cure all such cancers.

Moreover, it should be noted that Imatinib is available for cancer patients in many different health facilities around the world, not just the Adyar Cancer Institute.

Thus, although there are some elements of truth to this message, its is also potentially misleading and contains inaccurate information.

Imatinib is a drug used treat certain types of cancer. Imatinib works by overcrowding an abnormal enzyme feature of the disease. Imatinib is the first accepted drug to directly turn off the signal of a protein well-known to cause a cancer. Imatinib is swiftly engrossed when given by mouth, as well as is highly bioavailable: 98% of an oral dose reach the bloodstream. Metabolism of imatinib occur in the liver .Though the long-term side effects of imatinib contain not yet been ascertain, research suggests that it is usually very in good health tolerated. Broadly, side effects such at the same time as edema, nausea, rash and musculoskeletal pain are general but soft.Hhardly ever it has been associated by means of damage to heart muscles.

References
Adyar Cancer Institute
Imatinib mesylate
What is Blood Cancer?

---------------------------

- Response of a person at a forum about this news being hoax----
@ http://www.healthcaremagic.com/community/Cancer/IMITINEF-MERCILET/76773

Re: IMITINEF MERCILET

That is not a hoax.
But med is effective for CLL type blood cancer only.
Contact number: 044 22350131.
It is free of cost but only for poor patients.

I've confirmed it myself.

police

2010-05-19T08:08:00.000-07:00

Reference: www.rediff.com

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Ayaskant Das
As far as the states are concerned, the acceptance of the seven directives of the Supreme Court to reform policing has been uneven at best or, at worst, ignored completely, say Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Ayaskant Das.

The image of the policeman in popular Indian cinema has hardly changed over the decades. He is either a bungling buffoon. Or he is corrupt to the core. The honest cop who is also efficient is hard to find -- and even he is certain to be in a woefully small minority in a battalion where jokers and crooks proliferate.

Compared to many countries the number of police personnel per person in India is quite low: Roughly 130 for every 100,000 residents, against around 350 in the United States, Australia, Thailand and Malaysia, over 550 in Italy, 280 in South Africa and 180 in Japan. The norm suggested by the United Nations is 220 per 100,000.

The issue is not merely the number but the quality of people who become part of the police force, the facilities provided to them and, perhaps most importantly, the laws that govern policing -- laws that are, at least in India, frequently subverted and manipulated by politicians and bureaucrats holding positions of power and authority.

It is common knowledge that the Indian Police Act, 1860, was formulated by the colonial rulers of the country to check mass uprisings that started with the revolt of 1857, which the British described as the 'Sepoy Mutiny' and nationalist historians called the 'First War of Independence'.

After 1947, there was widespread consensus across different sections of Indian society that the colonial act would have to be amended and comprehensive reforms ushered in to improve the system of policing in a democracy. Unfortunately, despite the recommendations of many commissions and expert bodies appointed by the central and state governments over the years, very little has been achieved in reforming the policing system.

Policing is a subject listed under the state list in the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution of India and hence, it is largely the prerogative of state governments to bring about policing reforms. As for Union territories, there has been a persistent demand from civil society organisations that the Union government take the lead in enacting a new police law or a Model Police Act (MPA) for all Union territories based on directions that were laid down by the Supreme Court.

On September 22, 2006, the Supreme Court of India delivered a historic judgment in the Prakash Singh vs Union of India case (on the basis of a petition that had been moved a decade earlier) instructing the central and state governments to comply with a set of seven directives to reform policing in the country. One of these directives concerned the Union government, namely, to establish a National Security Commission.

The court sought to achieve two broad sets of objectives: First, to ensure functional autonomy for the police through security of tenure, streamlined appointments and transfer processes and the creation of a 'buffer body' between the police and the government and to enhance accountability of the police at an organisational level and also to curb individual misconduct.

The Supreme Court required all governments, at the Centre and in the states, to comply with the seven directives by the end of 2006 and to file affidavits of compliance by January 3, 2007. Whereas a few state governments complied with the directives on time through executive orders, there were many that were vehemently opposed to the directives and perceived these to be measures that would erode the autonomy of state governments.

The short point: As far as states are concerned, the acceptance of the seven directives of the Supreme Court has been uneven at best or, at worst, ignored completely.

Prakash Singh, former director general of the Border Security Force and the Uttar Pradesh police, told rediff.com that the states that have been the "most defiant" in accepting the directives of the Supreme Court are Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. The Bihar government has enacted a "perverse law that makes a mockery of the Supreme Court directives" while Uttar Pradesh has "perhaps been the worst in implementing the directives while making contrary claims."

Mr Singh added that certain states in north-east India such as Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram had promptly accepted the directives of the court but were tardy in implementation. "Rajasthan has passed the best law but this has not yet been implemented," he said.

The Union government formed a Police Act Drafting Committee (PADC) in 2005 under the chairmanship of Soli Sorabjee, the eminent jurist and former attorney general of India. The PADC submitted a proposition for a Model Police Act, MPA, in October 2006, the broad scheme of which was endorsed by the Second Administrative Reforms Commission, ARC, set up by the central government under the chairmanship of Veerappa Moily (who is now the Union law minister).

In its review of the system of policing and criminal justice, the ARC had suggested a few additional provisions in the proposed MPA, notably a penalty for illegal orders that were tantamount to interference in investigation by the police and obstruction of justice.

In September 2009, Union Home Secretary G K Pillai requested Delhi Lieutenant Governor Tejendra Khanna to send a legislative proposal for amendments to the Delhi Police Act, 1978, in conformity with the directions of the Supreme Court and the provisions of the MPA. In February 23 this year, the lieutenant governor forwarded a draft Delhi Police (Amendment) Bill, 2010, to the home ministry. This bill was also placed in the public domain for comments and objections.

Three civil society organisations keenly interested in police reforms -- Common Cause, the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, CHRI, and the Foundation for Restoration of National Values, FRNV -- did an independent study of the bill. They arrived at the conclusion that it is practically impossible to overcome the inherent limitations of the Delhi Police Act, 1978 through the amendment route.

These organisations have argued that the proposed amendments cannot give the Delhi Police Act 1978, adequate teeth to meet the contemporary needs of policing in the context of a hostile security environment, mounting social tensions and rapid urban expansion. Several eminent citizens echoed similar views at a workshop organised by the Bureau of Police Research & Development on April 10 in New Delhi.

The three civil society organisations have jointly drafted an alternate bill that has, among other provisions, provided for well-defined structures that would ensure operational autonomy of the police force along with institutional arrangements to assess performance and enforce accountability. The alternate bill seeks to clearly define the role, functions, duties and responsibilities of police personnel vis-a-vis other civilian authorities.

The alternate bill seeks to enhance levels of professionalism and leadership qualities in the police force through regular training and also by improving the infrastructure and facilities made available -- transport, computerised databases, communication networks, modern weapons, better police stations and so on.

The alternate bill emphasises core police functions and duties and argues for the need to phase out non-core functions to state and local institutions in accordance with the intent and provisions of the Constitution of India. It also argues for transparent procedures for recruitment, promotion and redressal of grievances and suggests various welfare measures for the lower ranks of police personnel.

The alternate bill was given on May 3 to Home Secretary Pillai who is known to be in favour of many of these suggestions for reforming the country's police system. Whether legislators would be responsive is another story altogether.

Real Reason behind India's freedom

2010-04-02T11:04:00.001-07:00

I just found this link .. a very interesting and convincing analyses of the streak of events that followed from 1942 to 1947 and that finally led to India's freedom from British Rule.

Please read on..

http://folks.co.in/2009/10/who-brought-freedom-gandhi-or-netaji/

Indo-US ties: A 26-Point Agenda

2009-11-22T18:45:00.000-08:00

Tarun Das, former chief mentor of The Confederation Of Indian Industry (CII), suggests a charter of action for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to US--- a report from TOI

Over five decades of distance and mistrust have been gradually replaced by an evolving friendship and partnership, cooperation and collaboration between India and the US. There is still much distance to travel because mutual suspicions still remain in different corners of the bilateral relationship. The visit of PM Manmohan Singh to the US could be the right time to move ahead, together. Here’s an A to Z roadmap for going forward
Aviation: Going beyond the few direct, non-stop flights connecting India and US,there should be 20 non-stop flights daily connecting different cities on both sides.
Business:The target for this,taking trade and investment, should be $100 billion (to move forward to $200 billion). We should have a bilateral investment treaty and an online portal for small enterprises on both sides to connect. The India-US CEO forum must make these happen.
Climate: There should be collaboration in energy and environment beyond where it is today. A private sector-led Indo-US Climate Change Centre would make sense, adding to the Green Business Centre (GBC) in Hyderabad which focuses on Indo-US cooperation in energy efficiency. C is also for capital markets, for cooperation in financial regulation, corporate governance, insider trading issues, etc.
Defence: A beginning has been made but progress is slow because of concerns and insecurities. This cooperation is critical for international security and must go beyond expanding dialogue, defence purchase by India, joint exercises and a somewhat flexible offset policy against US defence sales to India.
Education: The 100,000 plus Indian students in US could be raised by 50%; Indian investment in top American universities is desirable. American institutions also need to open in India. There should be cooperation in disabilities training, vocational education, curriculum flexibility and student-level exchanges.
Food: With 60% of India in the villages, the Green Revolution with US partnership in the 60s needs revisiting. This time, the focus should be on R&D, technology, productions, storage, warehousing, distribution, nutrition and high value agriculture. An industry-led Indo-US Institute of Agribusiness Management and Technology makes sense.
Going Green: Green factories, green homes, green schools, green buildings all of this should drive our environment agenda. The Indian Green Building Council and the US Green Building Council partnership is the foundation for this.
Healthcare: This is beyond medical tourism. India’s challenges to provide quality healthcare to a billion-plus means upgrading hospital standards, expanding training, developing R&D, NGO collaboration, all of which represent a massive joint agenda for mutual benefits.
Infrastructure: With India set to spend $500 billion on building infrastructure like roads, ports, railway, airports, etc, US participation through investments, sale of equipment, consultancy, and training, is crucial. A joint group on infrastructure needs to go beyond the macro and work on the micro and implement projects.
Judiciary: The American judicial experience, technology and systems would help immensely to clear the backlog of cases and usher in best practices.
Knowledge: This includes technology transfer, intellectual property rights (IPR) protection, innovation, nanotechnology, standards, all of which result in deep exchanges and mutual development at lower costs.
Leadership: Partnerships such as the one between Aspen Institute, USA and Aspen Institute, India, should be replicated to help build value-based young leaders using a unique methodology and encompassing all segment of society.
Media: And, of course, entertainment. The film industries of the two countries are the biggest in the world and cooperation is just about beginning. The potential here is huge.
Nuclear: The nuclear agreement dominated the bilateral landscape for over three years. It’ s now time to implement and establish, jointly, nuclear power plants that will promote clear energy.
0 not including mnipatient to lecture to : Or listen each to endure to other each . It all other will things be and a , new experience for both Indians and Americans. To be patient. To try to understand. To learn to trust.
People: People to people links have happened long before the two governments developed links or did businesses. It needs to be enlarged. India centres in American cities are required.
Quest: For R&D, space exploration, underwater exploration, ocean development technology, weather forecasting and much more that need to be central to the bilateral agenda.
Reforms: Both nations need these to happen, in a calibrated way and through consultation and collaboration. It should happen across economy and society. Two open democracies can support each other in minimizing mistakes and help make the future more stable.
Security: It’s an essential cooperation to deal with terrorism. It involves sharing intelligence and technology, training and equipment.
Training: Good training of both young and the old would empower people of the both countries. It’s an enormous area of potential partnership.
United Nations: History shows years of differences between India and US at UN. It’s time now to bridge the gap and help frame consensus on global issues. US support for India for a permanent seat on the UNSC would help move the process.
Visas:Actually,it’s more than just visas; it’s about freer travel both ways, especially since more and more Americans are relocating to India for work. The vision should be to converge on systems and standards and aim to reach a visa-free regime.
Water: The key to security of people, especially the poor, is access to safe drinking water. In the US, even tap water is safe to drink. Indians must have the same facility and the US can assist.
Xenogogue: This means guide. The two countries must evolve their strategic partnership to a level where, mutually, the role of guide is performed by each for the other.
Youth: That’s the future. The next generation. To harness the young Indians network and build connectivity with US counterparts and chart out future.
Zenith: Or the peak. President Obama and PM Manmohan Singh can take the Indo-US relationship to a new peak. This is the real possibility.
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Ref:-

(http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOI&BaseHref=TOIKM/2009/11/23&PageLabel=15&EntityId=Ar01500&ViewMode=HTML&GZ=T)

How to win Noble Peace Prize in just 12 days!!

2009-10-10T08:31:00.000-07:00

To all those readers who care to read this blog......

Here is a report from Fox News and their analysis on how President Obama won the Noble Prize within his first 12 days of Presidency. The facts are daunting .. and I expect that Dale Carnegie would re-written his best seller "How to win friends and influence people" .

Check this out .....
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Tommy De Seno, FOXNews.com, October 09, 2009

Let’s take a look at the president’s first 12 days in the White House according to his public schedule to see what he did to deserve a Nobel Peace Prize.

Editor's Note: Although President Obama had only been in office for 12 days before the nominations for this year's Nobel Peace prize closed the entire process actually takes a full year. According to the official Nobel Prize Web site invitation letters are sent out in September. Every year, the Norwegian Nobel Committee sends out thousands of letters inviting a qualified and select number of people to submit their nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize. The deadline to submit nominations is February 1. -- Two hundred five names were submitted for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, 33 of which are organizations. A short list of nominees is prepared in February and March. The short list is subject to adviser review from March until August. At the beginning of October, the Nobel Committee chooses the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates through a majority vote. The decision is final and without appeal. The names of the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates are then announced."

Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize this morning. Over the last decade the only requirement to win the prize was that the nominee had to be critical of George W. Bush (see Al Gore, Mohamed El Baradei and Jimmy Carter).

President Obama has broken new ground here. Nominations for potential winners of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize ended on February 1. The president took office only 12 days earlier on January 20.

Let’s take a look at the president’s first 12 days in the White House according to his public schedule to see what he did to deserve a Nobel Peace Prize:

January 20: Sworn in as president. Went to a parade. Partied.

January 21: Asked bureaucrats to re-write guidelines for information requests. Held an “open house” party at the White House.

January 22: Signed Executive Orders: Executive Branch workers to take ethics pledge; re-affirmed Army Field Manual techniques for interrogations; expressed desire to close Gitmo (how’s that working out?)

January 23: Ordered the release of federal funding to pay for abortions in foreign countries. Lunch with Joe Biden; met with Tim Geithner.

January 24: Budget meeting with economic team.

January 25: Skipped church.

January 26: Gave speech about jobs and energy. Met with Hillary Clinton. Attended Geithner's swearing in ceremony.

January 27: Met with Republicans. Spoke at a clock tower in Ohio.

January 28: Economic meetings in the morning, met with Defense secretary in the afternoon.

January 29: Signed Ledbetter Bill overturning Supreme Court decision on lawsuits over wages. Party in the State Room. Met with Biden.

January 30: Met economic advisers. Gave speech on Middle Class Working Families Task Force. Met with senior enlisted military officials.

January 31: Took the day off.

February 1: Skipped church. Threw a Super Bowl party.

So there you have it. The short path to the Nobel Peace Prize: Party, go to meetings, skip church, release federal funding to pay for abortions in foreign countries, party some more.

Good grief.

Read more Tommy De Seno at www.JustifiedRight.com

50 reasons not to marry......a Bengali man.

2009-10-05T00:51:00.000-07:00

A study by Metro ( http://www.telegraphindia.com/1091004/jsp/calcutta/story_11572595.jsp)

1. So much about Bengali men is about food. A significant number of contemporary Bengali men, unlike their forefathers, condemn fish. Excepting ilish, for the men love it too. “I don’t have fish, only ilish,” many men have been heard confessing in a tender moment. Since they love ilish, they will not care if others do so as well. Love makes them blind. The men will have the best peti (belly piece), for they say they are afraid of the kaantas, fishbones. Ilish abounds in them, which makes it a challenge. Women, at some point in their life, learn to tackle the kaantas, but confronting them able-bodied men become bashful and tremble. It pays off. Women are left to work their way through the thick-with-bones gaada pieces and men just sit back and allow the ilish to work on them. Eventually, the women get to liking chewing the bones and they are considered sexy while they are at it — remember the photographer-lover looking at Paroma in the film of the same name?

Anyway, if men won’t have fish, why do they relish the best parts of ilish? You see it rhymes, which is not a coincidence. Ilish is poetry — and Bengali men have exclusive rights over both.

They hog conversations the same way.

2. A similar Powerpoint presentation will explain why the leg piece of the chicken is also reserved for the man at the table. There is an additional reason here. Growing Bengali boys, who keep growing into growing Bengali boys, need more “protein”, which is good for the “brain”. The “brain”, when encased within the head of a boy, is a collective Bengali obsession. Nurtured by his parents, Horlicks and chicken legs, it will be a potent weapon when he grows up: it will be the highest point reached by a man with a steady, decent job, besides being the embodiment of sex appeal. A Bengali man draws women towards him with his “brain”. For these reasons the popular Bengali sayings: Maachher muro khao, brain-er pokkhe bhalo (Have fishhead, it’s good for the brain); TV dekho na, brain-er pokkhe kharap (Don’t watch TV, it’s bad for the brain); Beshi khela dhula brain-er pokkhe kharap (Too much sport is bad for the brain); Amartya Sen maachher maatha kheye boro hoyechhen (Amartya Sen grew up on fishheads). Fishheads being another powerful Bengali obsession.

3. But men actually look down on women for chewing fishbones. Or for eating green chillis on the side with their meals. There’s a suggestion of corruption or perversion about these two things — as if a clean piece of fish is morally superior and liking the bones is an unmentionable proclivity. Or liking a hot green chilli is slightly carnal. As a character in Tagore’s short story Khudhito Pashan, dismissive about women, put it: women love hot chillis, sour tamarind and a stern husband. Though he didn’t specify which was the worst for her.

4. Chicken roll.

5. Egg chicken roll.

6. Double egg chicken roll.

7. The Sunday mutton lunch. After which men can only go to sleep.

8. They really don’t want to go to the bajaar, not even to the AC retail stores for grocery or vegetable shopping. Especially the new-age Bengali man. The way he tiptoes through the fish market makes the wife cringe.

9. Many men still make that slurping sound as they eat. They sneeze, cough and yawn louder.

10. They expect women to serve them at the dinner table. At least she should be urging him on to the right bowls.

11. They expect the women will carry the dirty dishes to the sink, clear the table and put away the remnants in the right containers.

12. If they do put the food away, the fridge looks like a battlefield, with several things dismembered, dismantled and oozing liquids. In any case, they would never clean the refrigerator. Ditto for the cooking gas.

13. When they are drunk they invoke Robi Thakur. Then they tend to go for the cosmic, namely, Debabrata’s rendition of Akash bhora surjo tara, after which they have dinner.

14. But then when they are sober why are they still discussing Sachin Tendulkar versus Sourav Ganguly, and backing Dada to win?

15. In public, they admire Nandita Das. In secret, they want to be Salman Khan.

16. Rare is the Bengali man who looks good in a formal suit. He stops midway into it. He looks square. Or round. But proud. If you ask him why, he is likely to say that intellect is inversely proportional to height in his part of the world. He can be smug, very smug.

17. Which doesn’t take away from the fact that few Bengali men look good in jeans and a tee.

18. For the same reason, they seem to be rolling on the dance floor. From where they are often not picked up. Understandably.

19. They want biryani even at a Chinese restaurant. And chow mien at a mughlai eatery. Poor binary creatures.

20 . Only men can get to organise pujas and ignore everything else for four days.

21 .Their genjis.

22 .Their paijamas.

23 .Once they would only be doctors, engineers or IAS officers. Now they will be MBAs. The rest is “same to same”.

24 .Their stock of jokes is small and oft-repeated, especially in family circles. Such as the one on the various kinds of baldness. It ends with the variety in which only a few strands of hair remain. It is called Smritituku thak (forget me not). But as one has heard it since childhood, one has to remember to laugh hard. Outside family circles one common joke is: “Age no bar, caste no bar etc...”

25 .They will wear the dhuti for a wedding, but not before turning the household upside down. The dhuti has to be located first, sent to the laundry, and has to have the gile work done on it. Same for the addir punjabi. Then the gold punjabi buttons have to be located. In fact, every time a punjabi is worn, locating the buttons is the woman’s job.

The wearing of the dhuti itself is an event. There is at least one assistant, sometimes two, to help with it. Some men have worn the dhuti only on the occasion of their marriage — and their relatives still remember it, blow-by-blow.

The end-result is certainly not worth the fuss that goes into it.

26 .Romance means lots of poetry and sublimity.

27 .They think growing hair on their upper lip will make them more “manly”.

28 .Men are reluctant to make the bed, open the windows in the morning or make the morning pot of tea. Most of all they are uncooperative about hanging the mosquito net. It shakes the foundation of marriage.

29 .Their after-work activities include watching soaps like Bou Kotha Kao, Durga, Ekhane Akash Neel and game shows like Dadagiri, Dance Bangla Dance, but they pretend only the wives watch serials.

30 .They part their hair.

31 .They scoff at Dan Brown’s “poor language”, but devour his thrillers anyway.

32 .Dressed as they are in their executive suits, they are often sighted at a sweet shop gorging on langcha, mishti doi or telebhaja at the para shops, looking guilty, before returning home from work.

33 .They not only have an opinion about everything but they think they take the right decision in everything, though this could be a universal male trait.

34 .The television remote lands in his hands the moment he returns from work and stays there till he goes to sleep. But office phone calls don’t end. So he sits there with the remote in one hand and the phone in the other. This could be another universal male trait.

35 .Of course it’s okay to stay with his family. If she does, she is being a good woman in these selfish times. Of course it’s not okay to stay with hers. If he does, he is being a wimp in the traditional sense.

36 .He will insist that she looks beautiful, hot in fact, wearing sindur along with jeans, when she knows she is looking downright uncool.

37 .On online networking sites, Bengali men show a high tendency towards matrimony.

38 .They may not know the language. But they know the choicest Bangla gaalis and use them liberally.

39 .They like to pat their pot bellies in private. Sometimes in public.

40 .All nursery rhyme heroes are boys. Khoka goes fishing, goes to the river of milk, goes to hunt, goes to get married, while Khuku sits at home, learning to cook, waiting to get married or just plain crying. Obviously Khoka will face several adjustment problems when he grows up.

41. They are less chivalric compared with men from other Indian communities, many women report.

42. Many Bengali men think they are from Brazil. Which is why they go rabid during the World Cup.

43. During summer, they will smear their chests in slow motion with talcum powder before going to bed.

44 .If you are going to Digha, they will definitely advise you to have vodka mixed with coconut water on the beach.

45. If he’s there himself, he will drink it, wearing nothing but a beach hat and “baarmudas”.

46.-50 .The Bengali boy’s mother thinks he’s “flawless”. He secretly agrees.

OUR BUREAU
Don’t agree? Tell ttmetro@abpmail.com

Sanksrit Gram

2009-09-28T06:18:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Sanskrit, Jhiri re-discovers some lost technologies

Prem Narayan Chauhan pats his oxen, pushing them to go a little faster. Ziighrataram, ziighrataram chalanti, he urges them. The animals respond to their master's call, picking up pace on the muddy path that leads to his 10-acre cornfield.

Chauhan, 35, dropped out of school early, after Class II. He does not consider it remarkable that he speaks what is considered a dying language (or that his oxen respond to it). For him, Sanskrit is not a
devabhasha, the language of the gods, but one rooted in the commonplace, in the ebb and flow of everyday life in Jhiri, the remote hamlet in Madhya Pradesh, where he lives.

Mutterings under banyan trees, chit-chat in verandahs, pleasantries on village paths, disputes in the panchayat - in Jhiri, it's all in Sanskrit.

And then, a cellphone rings. The moment of contemporary reality is fleeting. Anachronism and Amar Chitra Katha take over as the conversation begins: "Namo, namah. Tvam kutra asi?" (Greetings. Where are you?)

A lost world rediscovered

Jhiri is India's own Jurassic Park. A lost world that has been recreated carefully and painstakingly, but lives a precarious existence, cut off from the compelling realities of the world outside.

The 1,000-odd residents of this hamlet, 150 km north of Indore, hardly speak the local dialect, Malwi, any longer. Ten years have been enough for the Sanskritisation of life here. Minus the Brahminical pride historically associated with the language - Jhiri has just one Brahmin family.

The much-admired 24-year-old Vimla Panna who teaches Sanskrit in the local school belongs to the Oraon tribe, which is spread over Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. And the village is an eclectic mix of
Kshatriyas, Thakurs, Sondhias, Sutars and the tribal Bhils. Panna has been key in popularising Sanskrit with the women of Jhiri. With mothers speaking the language, the children naturally follow.

Take 16-year-old unlettered Seema Chauhan. She speaks Sanskrit as fluently as Panna, who studied the language for seven years for her Master’s degree.

Chauhan is a livewire, humouring and abusing the village girls in Sanskrit. "I just listened to Vimla didi," she says. "In fact, I'm often at a loss for words in Malwi." Just married to a man from a neighbouring village, she says confidently, "My children will speak in Sanskrit because I will talk to them in it."

As eight-year-old Pinky Chauhan joins us, she greets me politely: "Namo namaha. Bhavaan kim karoti?" (What brings you here?) Her father Chander Singh Chauhan laughs and says, "My wife started speaking to me in this language, so I learnt it to figure out what she was saying behind my
back."

Let's get official

Mukesh Jain, CEO, Janpad Panchayat, Sarangpur tehsil (which includes Jhiri), recalls, "I could not believe it when I first came here. It can get difficult during official interactions, but we encourage them."

All kinds of logistical problems crop up in Jhiri. This year, 250 students did their school-leaving exams in Sanskrit. "A Sanskrit teacher had to work along with all the examiners of other subjects," says Jain.

But there are some positive offshoots too. Thanks to Sanskrit, Jhiri has re-discovered some lost technologies of irrigation, conservation and agriculture from the old scriptures. A siphon system of water recharging, for instance, resulted in uninterrupted water supply through the year in the fields. Small check-dams, wells and irrigation facilities followed.

"It is matter of pride for us to retrieve these old techniques from the scriptures. With no help from the government and without using any artificial systems, we've reaped great benefits," says Uday Singh
Chauhan, president of the Vidya Gram Vikash Samity, which runs development programmes in the village.
But Jhiri's pride stops at Sanskrit. The first doctor, engineer, economist, scientist or linguist is yet to walk out from it. After finishing school, most village youth join a political party.

Electricity is a matter of luxury, so is sanitation. Even the school does not have a toilet, which is the single biggest reason for girls dropping out at the senior secondary level. The average age of marriage
for women is 14. Even Panna, who was thinking of doing her PhD, had to give in to the wishes of the wise men of Jhiri who got her married to the other schoolteacher, Balaprasad Tiwari.

There is no public transport; an Internet connection is unimaginable. Jhiri desperately needs to connect to the rest of the world, to explore its infinite possibilities, to grow.

But Jhiri is still a success story, especially when you consider that a similar experiment, started a couple of decades ago in Muttur village of Karnataka's Shimoga district, failed, because of the caste factor - it remained caged with Brahmin patrons.

"About 80 per cent people of the village are Brahmins who know Sanskrit but won't speak it. This is because the carpenters and blacksmiths would not respond to it," says Dr Mathur Krishnaswami, head of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bangalore, who was involved with the movement.

"No language in the world can survive until the common man starts speaking it," he points out.
Muttur failed. Jurassic Park destroyed itself. Jhiri must not.

Aditya Ghosh
Hindustan Times
September 20, 2008
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=51aeb44c-438a-44b6-979b-baef18b83359

Dark Mission - BUSTED

2009-09-26T08:31:00.000-07:00

Many of us might have been watching these videos regarding NASA's Dark Mission, which claims that NASA has faked the lunar landing.

One of such claim is here :-
www.darkmission.net

http://darkmission.blogspot.com/

The arguments might appeal to someone being authentic, but there is a Mythbuster show dedicated entirely falsifying these claims.

Here is the link..

http://mythbustersresults.com/episode-104-nasa-moon-landing

I have not yet found a link to the video of the mythbuster show, may be they are still under copyright.

Enjoy ..

Bangali Sanskriti - 'Bengali Culture'

2009-09-22T02:11:00.000-07:00

WEST BENGAL: GEOGRAPHY

West Bengal is strategically placed with three international frontiers - Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan. A hinge between the bulk of Indian territory and the north-east of the country, West Bengal is located at 21o31' and 27o14' North Latitude at the head of the Bay of Bengal and 86o35' and 89o53' East Longitude, with the Tropic of Cancer running through it.

The great Himalayas start a distance of only 300 miles from the Bay of Bengal and the coastal tropical rain forest, Sundarbans.

BENGAL AT A GLANCE.

At the time of Partition Bengal was spilt into East and West Bengal. East Bengal became the eastern wing of Pakistan and later, with the disintegration of that country, Bangladesh. West Bengal became a state of India with Calcutta as the capital. The state is long and narrow, running from the delta of the Ganges river system at the Bay of Bengal in the south to the heights of the Himalayas at Darjeeling in the north.

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HISTORY : Referred to as Vanga in the Mahabharata, this area has a long history that predates the Aryan invasions of India. It was part of the Aryan invasions of India. It was part of the Maurayan Empire in the 3^rd century before being overrun by the Guptas. For three centuries around 800 AD The Pala dynasty controlled a large area based on Bengal and including parts of Orissa, Bihar and mordern Bangaladesh.

Bengal was brought under Muslim control by Qutab-ud-din, first of the sultans of Delhi, at the end of the 12^th century. Following the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, Bengal an independent Muslim state.

Britain had established a trading post in Calcutta in 1698, which quickly prospered. Sensing rich pickings, Siraj-ud-daula, the Nawab of Bengal, came down from his capital at Mushirdabad and easily took Calcutta in 1756. Clive defeated him the following year at the Battle of Plassey, helped by the treachery of Siraj-ud-daula's uncle,

Mir Jafar who commanded the greater part of the nawab's army. He

was rewarded by succeeding his nephew as nawab but after the battle of Buxar in 1764, the British took full control of Bengal.

CALCUTTA :

Densely populated and polluted,Calcutta suffers from lot of drawbacks. Calcutta has been plagued by chronic labour unrest resulting in a decline of productivity capacity. Despite all these drawbacks Calcutta is city with a soul. It is the city, which is the seat of art and cultural developments. All greats like Rabidranath Tagore, Bankim chandra, Vidyasagar, Vivekananda, Satayjit Chatterjee, Kalidas were from this very Bengal. Great freedom fighters like Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Chittranjan, Khudiram Bose were born here. Most of the world-renowned personalities like Mother Teresa to Amartya Sen belongs to the land of Bengal. Bengal welcomes all with its charm and gracious Hospitality.

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HISTORY : Calcutta isn't an ancient city like Delhi, with its impressive relics of the past. In fact, it's largely a British creation, which dates only some 300 years and was the capital of British India until the beginning of this century. In 1686, the British abanonded Hooghly, their trading post 38 km up the Hooghly River from present day Calcutta, and moved downriver to three small villages- Sutanati, Govindapur and Kalikata. Calcutta takes its name from the last of the three tiny settlements. Job Charnock, An English merchant who married a Brahmin's widow whom he dissuaded to becoming a sati, was the leader of the British merchant who made the move. At first the post was not a great success and was abandonent on a number of occasions, but 1696 a fort was laid out infront of the present -day BBD Bagh (Dalhousie Square) and in 1698, Aurangzeb's grandson gave the British official the permission to occupy the villages.

Calcutta then grew steadily until 1756, when Siraj-ud-duala, the Nawab of Mushirdabad, attacked the town. Most of the British inhabitants escaped, but those captured were packed into underground cellars, where during the night, most of them suffocated in what become known as 'the black hole of Calcutta'.

Early in 1757, the British, under Clive of India, retook Calcutta and made peace with the Nawab. Later the same year, however, Siraj-ud-duala sided with the French and was defeated at the Battle of Plassey, a turning point in the British- Indian history. A much stronger fort was built in Calcutta and the town become the capital of British India.

Much of Calcutta enduring development took place between 1780 and 1820. Later in the 19^th century, Bengal became an important Centre in the stuggle for Indian independence, and this was a major reason for the decision to transfer the capital to Delhi in 1911. Loss of political power did not alter Calcutta's economic control, and the city continued to prosper after World War II.

Partition affected Calcutta more than any thing else. Bengal and the Punjab where the Hindu and the Muslim populations were living in harmony, a drawing line was drawn between them. The result in Bengal was that Calcutta, the jute procuring and export centre of India, became a city without a hinterland, while across the border in Bangladesh, the jute was grown without anywhere to process or export it.

The massive influx of refugees, combined with India's own postwar population explosion, led to Calcutta becoming an International urban horror story.

Calcutta has many places of interests like the Indian Museum (biggest in India), the maidan, Fort William, Ochterlony Monument, the famous cricket ground

Eden Gardens, St Paul's Cathedral, Birla Planetarium, Victoria Memorial, Kali temple, Horticultural garden (biggest in India), Botanical garden, Howrah Bridge, Marble palace, Belur math and offcourse the New Market - the biggest shopping complex where almost anything under the sun could be purchased.

New Market has also the largest wholesale market for vegetables both grown locally and got from different states-specially Nasik and Pune. Here also, one gets to see whole carcass of beef, mutton, pigs being skinned and jointed into huge cuts ready for being sold as wholesale or retail cuts. One also has a separate fish market where various kinds of fishes, both locally grown in bheries (inland fish farming where different species of fishes are cultivated together, at the same time in a cultured environment so as to give a higher yield.), and also fresh catches from the rivers and the seas are all got here and then segregated. One is amazed by the total quantity of daily catches that are got in the market if one goes to the market early in the morning.

PHILOSOPHY OF FOOD : Just as man is said to be made up of the three gunas or quality which are reflected in his appearance and his appetites, food too is divided into three kinds. Satvic food is light, bland, usually vegetarian and white and gold in colour. The finest rice mixed with ghee(clarified butter), milk and the milk products, honey and fruits- fresh and sun-dried - are the foods for ascetics. Rajasic food is gold and red in colour, consists of meat, fish, eggs, wines and beer and are supposed to arouse passion in kings and warriors. Tasmasic food is red and black in colour, consists of flesh of small animals, pork and beef, scaleless fish and food cooked the day before.

The Brahmins at the apex of the socio-religious order are largely vegetarian and eat satvic foods. But the Bengali Brahmin found the flavour of Bengal's sweet water fish irresistible and fell to temptation and called the fish as 'fruit of the ocean'.

Food is classified into kancha (uncooked or unripe) and paka (cooked or ripe). Anna is the sanskrit word for rice which when cooked is bhaat in Bengali and is a central fact of Bengali cultural existence.

Dairy products became increasingly a part of the trappers and gatherers diet. Paramana was among the first food and the name given to rice and milk boiled together and has been the traditional offering to god for thousand of years.

Sweetened milk with sugar cane, the strength-giving properties of paramana makes it the auspicious food on important occasions. Popularly called payeesh, it is the solid food a child is offered at the annaprasan, the rice eating ceremony.

The vivid picture of the kitchen in medieval Bengali literature collected in Mangal Kavyas. A woman's culinary activity makes her a participant in the sacrificial aspect in which cooking is closely connected to religion. Preparation of a meal is also linked to Karma (desire). A young woman must study the rules of culinary erotica and develop them into an art to win over husband's attention- a universal feminine strategy. The best role model for a Bengali woman is Draupadi as it is believed that she used to keep all her five husbands happy and none used to return from her kitchen hungry.

The rules of do's and don'ts governing personal cleanliness and when to eat was effectively reinforced by religious sanctions and celestial occurrences. Bathing and changing into clean clothes dried

in the wind were perquisites for the daily puja. Women did not enter the kitchen at all times and before doing so head bath was mandatory. Before a solar or a lunar eclipse, the hearth is not lit. Food, cooked or uncooked is not eaten. After an eclipse, the kitchen is washed before it resumes its normal operations. The reasons given are that the absence of the main illuminating body - the sun and the moon- it is believed that contamination by insects and other harmful bodies may go unnoticed.

Calcutta is the rice bowl that stretches Eastward from China to Japan. The major festivals centre around rice. The goddess Durga's annual visit is the city's biggest festival. She comes riding on a lion with weapons in her ten hands. Another popular representation of Durga is Annapurna or Annada, the giver of rice. There are two kinds of rice depending on the method of dehusking the paddy - atap or sun-dried and siddha or parboiled rice. Each kind has many varieties known by different names and used for different occasions. Among the sun-dried varieties grown mainly in the adjoining district of Burdwan, are the small-grained scented Kamini, the fragrant Gopalbhog and Gobindabhog. Gopal and Gobindabhog are affectionate appellations of the god Krishna. Most people here are familiar with the famous basamati rice which is best used in pulao.

In Vedic times, dal is mentioned and identified by the word supa, similar to the English word soup. The cook was called supakar. Dal was the main source of vegetable protein and is the second most staple diet of Bengal.

The philosophy of food also gets deep entrenched into everyday lifestyle where food is still being used as prophylactic and antiseptic. Kalaidal or biuli dal are used as a contraceptive, and dumurer dalna (fig stew) was given to diabetics. Turmeric was used as an antiseptic and honey with ghee proves to be a throat soother and a laxative.The Bengali learnt to season his foods with many more spices that became available and he readily devised their own particular order, proportions and combinations in using the aromatic imports of asafoetida, cumin and saffron.

BENGALI CULTURE: ITS HISTORICAL HERITAGE WITH ITS INFLUENCE ON FOOD.

If you ask a Bengali for the shortest description of Bengali food, the answer is likely to be rice and fish, unless he is a vegetarian, in which case he may say subji (veg.) and rice. An invitee to a Bengali house for an elaborate, well-cooked meal includes varieties of fish, vegetables and meat, with off course sweets.

In this fertile, tropical delta that serves as a basin for innumerable rivers, rivulets and tributaries, it is rice that has been the common sustaining staple from pre-Aryan times until today. Thus the commonest way of enquiring if a person has had a meal, especially lunch is to ask if he has "taken rice". Mostly a basic

Bengali meal will consist of rice, pulses, vegetables, fish and sweets.

But once you get into the details of cooking, a starling polarization of ideas and approach begins to emerge. To talk, to someone from West Bengal, a Ghoti, he is likely to tell, that the uncivilized Bangals, from East Bengal know nothing about cooking, and that they ruin the food by drowning it in oil and spices, that they eat half-cooked fish and even the best of fish can be ruined by their peculiar habit of adding bitter to vegetables.

For, there part the East Bengali or the Bangal would decline, that the Ghotis are the greatest philistines on earth, who can cook nothing, without making it cloyingly sweet, or render all their dishes bland and colourless, and that they are hardly true Bengalis, for they prefer to eat wheat – flour chapaties instead of rice, especially at dinner. This distinct polarization is very, very dominant and vibrant especially in joint-families where Grandmother and Grandfather holds the crux for the family.

But if you have the mind, the heart, the taste to explore, you will find an enormous variety in a cuisine where richness and subtlety are closely interoven. With an array of ingredients ranging from water lilies and water hyacinth or even potatoes and gourd peel (Yes! Only the peel), to fish, meat, crab, tortoise and prawn, the Bengali has also devised a combination of spices, that’s very delicate and subtle. From the simplest mashed potato and mustard oil, green chillies or fried, crushed red chillies, raw onion and salt, to the exquisite ‘prawn malai curry’ to ‘bhapa Ilish’ – Bengali takes an equal delight in whatever he happens to have.

The gentle rotation of the seasons, the garnering of the earth’s resources have generated a large number of local rituals, some secular indicated in Bengali proverb of ‘thirteen festivals in twelve months’. For the pleasure of savouring the taste of fish, he needed to have his portion of rice. The spectra of an empty with no rice is dreadful to the Bengali, mind that he cannot even bring himself to articulate it. To indicate that the stock of rice is "increasing" – almost hoping the avert bad luck by the use of opposite word.

To the rural Hindi Bengali, rice is almost synonymous with Lakshmi, goddess of wealth and prosperity. Even today, many sophisticated urban Bengalis, who don’t directly participate in the cultivation or processing of rice, finds it irrationally difficult, to waste a single grain of rice. Even, when the portion of the plate is too much, they will try to finish it because wasting rice is almost tantament to insulting the goddess.

By medieval times, Bengalis literature began to contain elaborate description of available and cooked food, thus unfolding a picture of a leisurely lifestyle among a certain class who loved good food and devised many elaborate and subtle ways of cooking it. The noticeable thing was that most of them sweet-water or brackish-water fish, not any marine varieties – and the preference still remains.

The dual entity of rice – fish that is at the heart of Bengali cuisine is reflected in a thousand and one ways in the rituals and ceremonies of the Bengalis. Unhusked rice, called Dhan, is an inevitable part of any ceremonial offering to the gods. In parts of West Bengal there is a custom, that when a new bride drives with her husband to his house, she is welcomed with a platter of offerings containing dhan. For her part, she would have to hold a live fish in her left hand. This fish would later be released into the family fishpond to breed and multiply. During the ceremony of eating the shadh or derived foods, which takes place towards the end of pregnancy, probably based on the assumption that if the mother has no unsatisfied carvings left she will produce a healthy child, rice and fish are the compulsory items. From the preferences of living it is

not such a big transition to the preferences of the dead. The spirits of ancestors are appeased at funerals by a final offering called the pinda, cooked rice and fish mixed together in a lump.

Apart from rice and fish, Bengalis have always taken advantage of the green vegetables and tubers that grow all over the land. Historians, base their conclusions on a study of linguistics, think that modern vegetables like aubergines, several types of gourds and taro, as well as the bitters leaves of the jute plant, figured in the pre – Aryan Bengali diet. Even, the rice plant and the banana tree has strong mythical significance in Bengali life. A young specimen, is always placed outside the front door, together with a green coconut sitting a top an earthern pitcher, when a weeding or any other auspicious ceremony takes place.

But, one of the striking difference of staple between ancient and contemporary times is the absence of any kind of pulses in the food of ancient Bengal. The Charyapada, the earliest example of Bengali literature dating back approximately to the eleventh century, depict fishing and hunting for game, and mention rice, sugar-cane and many other crops. But there is no reference to the kind of dal. It is only in post-fifteenth-century literature that several kinds of dal, as well as ways of cooking them, begins to be mentioned. It seems that in this respect ancient Bengal had more in common with South-east Asia and China, where pulses are virtually unknown than the Bengal of today. Even now, most of dals consumed in West Bengal comes from other states in India.

Apart, from the natural cropping factor, the super abundant supply of fish made dal as a source of protein unnecessary.

A stable agricultural way of life also meant the presence of cattle. Milk and milk products become an important part of Bengali food from very early times. Apart, from being drunk by itself, milk was often served at the end of a simple meal, when it was mixed with a little cooked rice and white sugar or date palm sugar. In rural households nothing could be more welcome symbol of plenty than the cows standing in the bynes and the pitchers of foaming milk they produced.

Yogurt too, has been an important part of daily food, especially in the summer when the thought of aid the digestion. Aryan culture attributed auspiciousness to it. Well wishing mothers or sisters make a tikka or dot on the forehead with yoghurt whenever the child is setting out for an important undertaking. Unsweetened yoghurt was used in cooking from fairly early times. The Naishadhacharita, probably written before the Sena dynasty took over in Bengal, mentions a dish spiced with mustard and yogurt served at royal wedding. The Muslims later used yogurt as a wine substitute. They developed a drink called barhani, which is yogurt mixed water and whipped with salt and ground pepper. This continues to be served even today at Muslim feasts where a lot of rich meats and pulaos are supposed to be digested with the aid of the barhani. Many of their meat dishes require a little marinating in yogurt and the Korma and the nigella seeds of Bengal.

The long period of Muslim rule from the eleventh century to the demise of the Mughal Empire and the take-over by the British in the mid-eighteenth century firmly established Islam as the second most important religion of Bengal. Mass conversion took place and the lower castes of Hindu society whose members had been oppressed and exploited by the higher castes under the well-entrenched forces of orthodox Brahminism.The remnants of the Buddhist who had servived the tyranny of aggressive Hinduism under the Sena dynasty, were also tempted to accept the faith of the Muslim rulers. This process continued until, by the later half of the nineteenth century, Muslims contributed almost half the population of Bengal. In northern and eastern Bengal they were the majority, but they had little besides their strength of number. Land, power,

good education and professional opportunities were all mostly for the Hindus. This inequality and geographical concentration saved the seeds of discontent, which eventually led to East Bengal becoming East Pakistan, when the Indian subcontinent gained independence in 1947.

Culinarily , the impact of Muslim cooking was at first mostly to be seen among the leisured and affluent classes, especially the Nawabs who represented the Mughal empire in Bengal. But, however restricted initially, it led to development of a Bengali Muslim cuisine of Northern India and the Nizami cuisine of Hyderabad. It is less rich and subtler than both of them, tending to substitute yogurt and lemon juice for cream and solid kheer, of other Muslim cooking. Beef and chicken were also introduced into the diet; the former a bitter bone of contention even today, the latter becoming a part of the Hindu households, one of the best-known specialties developed by the Bengali Muslims is the Rezala made with Khasi(castrated goat), in which lemon, yogurt, milk and spices and chillies. Fragrant and sharp, the chillies produce an uplifting sensation for a potato cloyed with an excess of ghee or other ground spices.

The last Nawab of Bengal lost his throne and his life after the Battle of Plassey in June 1757. But the two centuries of British presence in Bengal not really made much difference to the way urban or rural Bengal continued to eat. In common with the rest of India, the colonial presence have resulted in an Anglo-Indian cuisine which remained confined by and large to the ruling race and the mixed breed of Anglo-Indians. The one noticeable contribution this had made to the everyday Bengali food is the inclusion of two extra ordinary misnomers, chop and cutlet.the English words, which have now become Bengali, were probably adopted by the cooks who worked in British households to denote their crossbreed. The chop today means a round or oval potato cake, with a fish or meat stuffing, which is dipped in egg and breadcrumbs, then fried crisply. The cutlet, which can meat, chicken or prawn, usually means one of those elements seasoned lightly and pounded to form a long flat,oval which is then coated and fried the same way. From the kitchen it did not take long for these two items to end up in urban eating joints, and there are many shops in Bengali towns that specializes in ‘chop-cutlet’ as a snack outlet. Mustard, that is inevitably served with these is not the Colman’s mustard favoured by the British; it is Bengali Kasundi, mixture of pungent mustard paste, mustard oil, lemon juice or sour green mango.

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Eating and Serving Bengali Foods.

The Bengalis are perhaps the greatest food lovers in the Indian subcontinent. A long leisurely meal of many items which requires long hours of labour and ingenuity in the kitchen to be produced, has been as much a part of Bengali culture as ceremonious eating in France. The traditional way of serving food is on the floor where individual pieces of carpet, called asans, would be spread for each person to sit on. Infront of this seat would be placed a large platter, made of bell metal or silver depending on the family’s economic status. Around this platter would be arranged a number of small metal or silver bowls in which portions of dal, vegetable, fish, meat, chutney, and dessert would be served. In the center of the platter there would be a small mound of piping hot rice flanked by vegetable fritters, wedges of lime, whole green chillies and perhaps a bit of pickle. Finally, in the center of the mound, a little hole would be made to pour a spoonful of ghee or classified butter to flavour the initial mouthful of rice.

The star of the eating scene was inevitably the male: husband, father, son, son-in-law and others. The women would move around, anxiously serving extra helpings or directing the servants to bring them. Some of the women would sit and ply palm-leaf fans to cool the heated male as the pleasure of intake intensified. But, in traditional homes, there would always be the secondary-eating scene where the women could finally sit down and enjoy their meal. But, the best portion of fish and meat would be gone, devoured by the superior sex, but that did not detract significantly from their enjoyment. The long-establish female tradition of savoring the ultimate pleasure from concoctions of vegetables and fish bones or succlent stalks cooked with tiny shrimps of various kinds of pickles and chutneys is rooted in this practice of making the best of secondary resources.

The approach to food is essentially tactile as in all of India; Bengalis eat everything with their fingers. Neither table sliver nor chopsticks are used as aid to convey food to the mouth. What, after

all, could be better than one’s own sensitive fingers to pick out the bones of fish like hilsa or koi? Quick apart from the functional aspects, the fingers also provide an awareness of which becomes as important as that felt by the tongue. The fingers appreciate all the various mashed vegetables or the different kinds of rice or varieties of fish we eat before they enter the mouth.

Each individual has a peculiar style of dealing with his food. Some people pick up their rice and accompaniments very daintily, their fingers barely touching the food. This is supposed to be the style of elite. Other prefers to mash their rice in their fingers before mixing it with the other items. Yet, other will forms balls of rice and other items in their palms before popping it in their mouth. Their mothers inevitably feed children in this way. And then there are those hearty, somewhat course eaters who can be seen licking their palms, all the way to their wrist. The other peculiarity about the Bengali-eating scene is the unashamed accumulation of remnants.

Since succlent vegetables stalks, fish bones and fish heads, meat and chicken bones are all meticulously chewed until a drop of juice is left inside, heaps of chewed remnants, besides each plate are an inevitable part of a meal. The custom of immediately and scrupulously wiping clear the part of the floor – now the table – where food has been eaten is probably related to the presence of such remnants.

Bengalis associate too much of there foods with festivals and a popular saying goes that Bengalis has 13 festivals in 12 months. Hence, all the year round, something to do with food is always in air. All the major Bengali festivals (household) are held in the dalan, which serves as informal gathering, place for the family and old friends. The flooring of the dalan is quite artistically painted or alpana draw, incredibly with flowers, fruits, leaves and couch shells drawn with a rag dipped in rice flour butter. Well, after the event is over, they lingered as a memento of festivity.

But apart from festivities a routine of daily shopping for fish and vegetables, grinding of spices, cutting of vegetables and cooking of rice, dal, macher jhal makes up for the day. Vegetables are got from the market, with extreme scrutiny, as to there freshness, shape, size and off course the price by the head of the family, most usually early in the morning. If the vegetables were not the right shape, the dish would never taste, such was the long flat slices for the fish jhol; tiny cubes for the dry bhaji spiced with salt, dry red chillies and a pinch of panchphoron; the combination of five whole spices so dear to the Bengali nose and potato; slanting but small pieces for the mixed vegetables, halved for the meat and or chicken curry, quarters or whole new potatoes for the cooked slowly in a thick spicy sauce. Another quite striking fact of Bengali household, is being the absence of refrigerators, as most of the food that are cooked for the day are consumed in that day itself, and any left-over are had early-in the morning as panta-bhaat. The very, idea of not having a refrigerator is to buy fresh vegetables and fishes from the market, which are in abundance. Bengali culture has a set of rules which is every much intertwined with a set of rules regarding food habits, called ‘achar-bichar’. It was a set of taboos centered around the basic item, the pot of rice. Anything that touched the pot or grains of cooked rice, became entho, and had to be washed to be reusable. Serving spoons, glasses, serving dishes of vegetables, even hands and mouth, all had to be rinsed after contact. Even a sick-person is

not allowed to eat rice, or anything that touched cooked rice, while sitting on bed, for that would mean washing the bed-clothes and sprinkling the holy water of the Ganga on the wooden frame! And, in keeping with the irrationality of the whole system, uncooked rice as well as puffed rice or popped rice was not considered entho. Bengali, is probably one of the few languages that has two different words for raw and cooked rice: - chaal and bhaat.

With the influence of urbanization, now the Bengali households have chairs and dinning tables. But still few years ago dinning was essential on floors, with few asans (mats) spread in a row and banana leaves (in festivity) or the brass plates laid in front of the guests. Before the guest sat down, the leaves would be embellished in the corners with a bit of salt, and a wedge of lime, fried aubergines split lengthwise in the middle, and with the stem still attached, a little dab of fried spinach and some fried potatoes. As the guest sat down, the serving would begin, each server carrying brass buckets in which the cooks had heaped the food. Hot rice, cauliflower and potato dalna, the moong dal cooked with the heads of carp, followed by the carp kalia and the fries. Then came the meat curry served with those flaky, puffy luchis. And, finally the dessert or ‘misti’, with ‘Rossogollas’ almost being compulsory! It is a real feast to watch the little drama that inevitably resulted with some of the guests, who really loved to eat but had to pretend, for the sake of good manners, that they did not. Whenever seconds or thirds helpings were offered, they would extend both hands over the banana leaf, look panic stricken and deny vehemently that they couldn’t eat another morsel. The server, who used to be in dhoti and gangee (vest) with a gamcha (muslin rag) tied to his waist, would off course refuse to accept this and threaten to pour the food over his hands until, good manners having being observed, the guest would remove their hands in mock dismay and allow the food to be served and consumed with relish. After the meat came the chutney, a common winter favourite, and hot crisp salty papars. These were supposed to cleanse the mouth and prepare you for desserts.

The most important aspect of a joint family in Bengal is eating together, food from same handi (cooking pot) prepared in the same henshel (hearth). The bunch of keys to the bhandar ghar

(storeroom) was secured tied to the sari of the ginni or chotelaine – controller of household. Depending on the size and station of family, there were one or more storerooms. The staple rice, was stored for the year in enormous terracotta jars and allowed to age.

Pure golden mustard oil, the pungent Bengali cooking medium is stored in zinc lined tins. Ghee (clarified butter) was usually stored in large glass jars. Spices are kept fresh in glazed brown and white jars. Also, some identical jars were used for storing chutneys and pickles.

Before cold storage days, some of the shelves were lined with a layer of sand on which the new potatoes were laid in neat rows. During the mango season spaces was found for baskets of these summer delights from the mango orchards of North Bengal.

Clay pots of molasses, casein and homemade sweetmeats were suspended on giant hooks from the ceiling safe from marauders of all kinds.

Times have changed and the storerooms have shrunk to a cupboard, tucked away in a corner of an apartment in multi-storied complex anywhere in the concrete jungle. The contents remain the same on a diminishing scale with addition of varieties of patent sauces, pastas, soup cubes and packets of pre-cooked foods.

Use of brass, copper and bell metal has gradually replaced the lighter aluminum until health hawks began to pontificate on the hazardrous reaction of the containers and contents. The convenience of packed spice powders has almost silenced the gourmet’s cry for the finesse of freshly ground spices. But, die-hards insist on hard-grinding mustard with chilli and a little sugar and salt to dispel the bitterness and bring out the real punch. While, food processors and blenders have wiped away the tears from chopping and grinding onions, the twin corner stone of most Calcutta kitchens is the sil-nora.

It is really amazing that in a mega-city at the end of twentieth century heads pop out of the windows whenever the cries of bikriwala (rag-and-bone-man), the quilt-maker, the knife-grinder and the grinding stone cutter are heard in the street below. The stone cutter re-notches the geometric patterns and the lucky fish motif worn smooth by use of the heavy sil, the pentagonal stone slab. The Nora is the smooth black stone moving partner. The inseparable pair is often handed drawn from mother-in-law to daughter-in-law. With the nuclear family gaining ground, a housewife setting up her home will take along an experienced matron to buy the best silnora at the fair.

Calcutta’s annual religious melas (fairs) are among the many rural vestiges that the city will never outgrow. Many of the villages in West Bengal are identified by a particular craft, usually utilization and always beautiful. Crafts persons come into setup shop at the charak mela at Poddoppukur in South Calcutta and on Beadon street in the north. The accent is on traditional kitchenware of stone, clay, wood and bamboo. Old wooden chaki-belan (round party-board and rolling pin) are replaced. And one of the crazy item of these fairs or melas is munching of bhajas, starting from begun bhaja, to papor bhaja and all sorts of varied bhajas.

In traditional joint families, the ginni sits cross-legged before her own personal boti. The cutting of vegetables is an important facet of her preparation. Each dish, demands that its vegetables be cut in a particular shape. Gourd, brinjal, wax gourd and potatoes must be cut uniformly cubed for chhenkki, quartered for jhole and halved horizontally for dalna, with a mental calculation, as to how much for jhole, and how much for bhaja.

SEASONAL INFLUENCES.

The land of these food-loving characters, Bengal is made up of the Indian state of West Bengal and the sovereign country of Bangladesh (formerly East Bengal or East Pakistan), altogether an area of 228,000 sq.km. (88,000 sq. miles). Most of the terrain is flat, delta land, crisscrossed with rivers, with a few hills especially North Bengal and forests dotted here and there. Parts of North and bordered by the Himalayas and the Western part of neighboring State of Bihar. Overwhelmingly, though this is a flat green land, most of it cultivated and divided into fields, primarily growing rice, the staple food crop. In the Northern districts, of Bangladesh and West Bengal, the land is dried, a red laterite soil replacing the alluvial richness of the central areas. To the east where Bengal slopes down to meet the Bay of Bengal are the famous mangrove swamps, the Sunderbans, home of the Royal Bengal tigers and the huge gharial or Bengali crocodiles. Like the rain forests of Brazil, or the Evergreens of Florida ,(which they resemble in appearance), the Sunderbans are one of the few places where the mushy, beauty and terror of nature are still to be felt. Yet, men can coexist with nature, for these mangrove swamps are the home of a whole community of boat people who live by the catch they haul in from the Bay of Bengal.

The rivers of Bengal have served many purposes in sustaining life and prosperity. The great rivers – the Ganga, Padma, Meghna, Jamuna or Brahmaputra, Damodar, Ajay, Tista, Karnaphuli and others – have always been conduits for goods moving from one place to another, while the Bay of Bengal has provided a natural entry for the incoming seen trade. Their fascination has been perennial, whether in the imagination of the poet or the mind of ordinary peasant. Through the seasons their mood and appearance change dramatically. Attenuated in summer, they swell with life and energy with the monsoon rains and often become forces of destructive fury, only to be tranquil fullness under an autumn sky. In winter the waters start shrinking, yielding the best possible catch of many kinds of fish for the food lovers of Bengal. Though the raging fury of a great river in flood during the height of the monsoon strikes terror in the hearts of the people, those same floods leave rich deposits of silt when they withdraw, replenishing the earth which has been over-cultivated. Sometimes shoals of land appear in the middle of the river and traditionally people have fought and committed crimes over the control of this fertile plain of land and to Bengal acquiring the reputation of a golden granary in later years – ‘Sonar Bangla’ by Rabindra Nath Tagore.

The Bengali calendar is a solar one based on the six seasons – two months for each of Grishma, Summer; Barsha, Monsoon; Sharat and Hemanta, early and late Autumn; Sheet, Winter and Basanta, Spring. The year begins with the month of Baisakh in mid-April, when the heat of summer is on full-blast. The whole landscape looks parched, the leaves of the trees start dropping and any cultivated plot that is not irrigated seems for less. Of course in terms of felt temperatures and other natural manifestations, spring and summer overlap considerably. The heat of the summer is palpable even in March. The most important season in Bengal is Barsha, the monsoon, which lasts well into what is supposed to be early autumn. The torrential rains infuse the parched earth with new life and wash away the dust and grime of previous months. Everything glows with green vibrancy and the life-sustaining rice crop is planted, transplanted and lovingly nurtured throughout the season. Nothing can be more beautiful than stretches of emerald green rice fields under the slate-grey monsoon sky. The rivers assume their full majesty at this time, and rush along at full spate towards the sea. The autumn is a quite time when the excessive moisture of the late monsoon starts to evaporate and the golden harvest stands ready in the fields. This is followed by the slow aridity of winter when balmy temperatures makes the tropical delta a desirable resort.

Summer – Grishma :-

Food in a Bengali household takes on the summer pattern fairly early in the spring. Daytime temperatures are hot enough for the housewife to buy and serve ‘cool’ items to her family. They would serve vegetables like lau, white gourd, or okra or potol, the small striped gourd or parwal, in other parts of India, during the summer, with the these will keep the body cool. Meat, eggs, onions and garlic, on the other hand, are studiously avoided. Ginger, though, is encouraged because it is believed to increase appetite and aid digestion if taken before meals with a little salt. Ayurvedic practitioners which some local physicians practices will recommend potals, cucumbers and the two varieties of bitter gourd, karola and uchche. Neembegun – where small dices of aubergines are fried with the leaves of neem trees is said to have anti-chicken pox properly. This association of healthful properties with a bitter taste and the subsequent appreciation of that bitterness as a taste is a Bengali trait that outsiders finds incomprensiible. And especially for lunch menus during summer sukto (a stew of seasonal vegetables, with bitterish in taste) is an integral part of every household menu. And, among the other dishes which makes up the menu, are Moong dal, Masoor dal and lemon, Macher jhol, lau-chingiri, lau-ghanto, Rezela and Aloo posto being the favourites.

Barsha – Monsoon :-

During the last few days of summer, each longer than the previous one, the endurance of man, land, animals and vegetation is stretched to the breaking point. As the people of Bengal live through this scorching humid hell, waiting for Barsha – (Monsoon) to find some comfort, the first day of Barsha is generally honoured with the eating of a special meal, made enjoyable by the drastic drop in temperature created by the rains and cloud-covered sky. The most well-known Bengali dish associated with the monsoon is Khichuri, rice and dal cooked together and panchphoran and ghee. This is the housewife’s response to sudden arrival of monsoon rains or heavy rain at any other time of the year. Though simple, it is a superb dish that requires care and does not survive neglect or in attention and probably one of the oldest dishes in the Bengali repertoire. From, the beggars, who begged for their food, to various religious orders that observed a strict simplicity of diet, countless people have depended on khichuri for there balanced diet. Without any trimmings, it can be even rice and dal boiled together in a pot. Slum dwellers in Indian cities can still be seen doing that on the sidewalks. With the delicate, refinements of certain spices, it became a delicacy. After 200 years of colonial rule, the British also took it back with them as kedgree. Like the curry, kedgeree probably was a contribution of the Indian (often Muslims) chef working in the British officers’ home. The simplest form of khichuri can also be used as a porridge course.

There are of course many kinds of khichuris, depending on what kind of dal is being used. The consistency may be thin, thick or dry and fluffy like a pilaf, plain or with seasonal winter vegetables like new potatoes, green peas and cauliflower added to the basic rice-dal mixture. The one constant factor is the use of atap rice, usually of the short-grained variety. Although khichuri is almost a complete meal in itself, most Bengalis would be disappointed not to have certain well-loved accompaniments; slices of aubergines or halves of patols deep-fried, papors and red chillies. Among the other monsoon vegetables that Bengalis love are

varieties of kachu or taro, pumpkin, kumro, green like shashni shak, puishak, kachu shak. The monsoon is also associated with the ilish, called hilsa by the British, that Bengalis have given the name ilish guri, the hilsa’s life-cycle is something like that of salmon. After starting life in the sea, the fish comes to spawn, in the estuarine waters where the rivers meets the Bay of Bengal, and slowly moves upwards along the rivers to the northern regions of India, in the Hooghly basin, growing in size upto 2.5 kg. Many of the hilsa caught during the monsoon are big with roe, which is a delicacy in its own right and considered a cavair of tropics, though the Padma specimens of Bangladesh are considered to be an absolute delicacy.

The monsoon is the most dramatically beautiful season in West Bengal and the emotional Bengali Express himself through, recitations, songs and eating. Football is another monsoon madness and office attendance is even thin on the afternoons when two are rival teams. Mohun Bagan and East Bengal, kick-off on the Maidan. Victory for East Bengal means a run on hilsa as fans get together to celebrate with shorsey ilish (Hilsa in Mustard). Prawns hit the high-water menu when Mohun Bagan wins.

Sharat – Hemanta – Autumn :-

As an old Bengali proverb says that if the Kash has started flowering, you know that rains are over and the autumn has begun. More than spring, it is this season, compounded of early autumn or Sharat and late autumn or Hemanta, is a time of hope. One more monsoon has been lived through. One morning harvest awaits the grower of rice. In the countryside the white, broom like kash flowers grow besides the ponds and rivers mirroring blue skies with fleecy white clouds.

It’s the season of festivity. First too come is Lord Biswakarma (god of tools) in which day fire is not lighted in any household. So, all the foods are cooked a day prior and hard. Next, to come is goddess Durga – goddess of deliverance. Daughter of Himalayas, she symbolizes the triumph of good over bad. The day of astami is purely vegetarian, whereby for lunch we have khichuri, with papors and pickles, and at dinner after spending the whole evening Pandal hopping, there would be round golden fried luchis, puffed up like a balloon. However, if a lot of fat is observed during the process of making the dough, the bread instead of becoming puffy becomes flaky and is known as khasta luchi. Though luchis, can be eaten with anything, the two classical vegetarian dishes associated with this ceremonial occasion; a potato dish called alur dam, and a dal made with yellow splitpeas and tiny pieces of coconut. Alur dam to Bengali means a dish of potatoes, usually whole or quartered, cooked with a thick spicy sauce. It is usually eaten with luchis or wheat-flour chapatis, but not rice. And the dessert course being kheer (simply reduced milk) or payeesh (rice cooked in milk and cardamoms flavour). Navami, being the last day of Durga’s stay, is gastronomically opposite of Ashtami, meat eating is the order of the day, but without any onion or garlic. And on the evening of Bijoya Dashami, the images in the community pandals are loaded on to trucks and taken to the nearest river, the Hooghly in Calcutta, for the final site of bhashan – throwing them into water. It is then in the wake of departed Goddess, that the most beautiful aspect of Bijoya Dashami comes discarding all ill-feelings of hostility, anger and enimity. Within the family the younger people touch their elders’ feet (pranom) and receive their blessings, while contemporaries embrace each other with good wishes. As the evening deepens, relative's friends and neighbours drop in to convey their Bijoya greetings. They are offered sweets, which cannot be refused and even the diabetics put fragement into their mouth to

honour the custom. The most commonest sweet is the sandesh, because it is dry and easy to carry. But there is nothing to stop you from bringing an earthen pot of rosogollas swimming in syrup, or even like rajbhog or pantua. Next comes Lakshmi Puja (goddess of rice) and then the Kali Puja.

By the end of the month of Kartik (October), urban Bengalis resume there normal pattern of life in school, college and offices. But in rural Bengal this is a time of great expectation. For the following month, Agrahayan (November), is also the time to harvest the rice that gave the region its soubriquet, ‘Golden Bengal’ (Sonar Bangla). The name itself, Agrahayan, is compounded of two words – agra (best or foremost) and hayan (unhusked rice).

In the countryside, Agrahayan is full time of hard work outdoors. In good years, when the monsoon has been just right, the fields are full of the standing rice crops that needs to be harvested and brought home. Under the bearable autumn sun, the peasants cut the rice with their sickles and tie it in golden bunches to be transported by bullock carts. Slowly, as the days progress, the once golden fields become stretches of shebbles, the dead remnants of the plant being later gathered for animal feed and supplementary fuel. In the evenings, as the first chill of oncoming winter is felt, some of the rice straw is used for small fires in front of which people can sit and warm themselves. Once the rice has been harvested and stored in woven-straw, covered bins, the work of threshing, husking and milling begins. Once the rice has been harvested and stored in woven-straw covered bins, the work of threshing, husking and milling begins.

In the olden days, before mills or any kind of technology, it was the women who did the backbreaking job of husking the rice. The tradition Bengali instrument of taking the husk off the rice is called dhenki, a long wooden board mounted on a short pedestal, in the middle, much like a sea-saw. One end of the board has a short pestle-like attachment ground where the unhusked rice is kept. It requires two women to handle a dhenki. One stands near the end without the pestle and presses it down with her foot. As soon as she releases her foot, the board dips down to the other end, the pestle hitting the rice with force, thus separating the husk from the grain. As she press with her foot and lifts the board from the rice, then other woman turns the rice over with her hand, so that all the grains can be hit evenly. It is an infinitely time-consuming process, and is no longer viable. But, some food aficionados claim that rice husked by a dhenkis far superior in taste to rice processed in a mill. This may be based on the fact that the dhenki always leaves some of the inner husk on the grain, whether parboiled or atap, thus making it more nutritious.

Once the rice has been harvested, rural Bengal propitiates the gods for their bounty through the joyful festival of nabanno, which literally means ‘new rice’. An offering to god of milk, gur, pieces of sugar cane, bananas and above all the new rice.

Puja holidays are also the time for picnics. When, the weather is very pleasant, gentle cool breeze blowing and the sun shinning with the utmost modest, any outing besides running streams, in dak bungalows or in the mangrove forests, seems to be an ideal destination. And despite the presence of driving cars, the best part of this journey usually consisted of opening up your ‘tiffin carrier’ and consuming the luchis, alur dam, dry curried meat and the mistis brought from home. Added to it, the tranquil fullness, of nature in the autumn also imbues the water of Bengal and people can sometimes indulge themselves with amateur fishing, and spending contemplative afternoons with bait and live.

Bori making is another way of living exclusively feminine art, during the months of autumn. As with all art, the boris reflected the hand that made them. The consistency of the dal, the degree of spicing and the intensity of whipping the paste before making the pellets, all varied from woman to woman. Kalaidal (urad dal) for instance, is used to make variety called phulboris, which are feather light and melt in the mouth once fried in oil.

And with the chilly winter ahead, everybody quite unwillingly let the autumn pass by and wait for the advent of sheet – winter.

Sheet – Winter :-

Brief, invigorating, with vibrant colour standing out in a dry and rough landscape, winter in Bengal is like the perfect love affair. It is our season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, two short months of bliss. The flowers of winter are not like the demure white blossoms of the monsoon and the autumn. Crimson roses, yellow and bronze chrysanthemums, blazing marigolds and multicolored dahlias clamor for attention. In the country you can feast your eyes on fields of mustard awash in yellow blossom, on patches of maroony-red lalshak, on the subtle greens of cabbages on the earth and the climbing vine of the lau spreading over thatched roofs and bamboo frames. In the city markets the rich, purple aubergines are offset by snowy-white cauliflower's peeking from within their leaves, carrots, tomatoes, beet, cucumbers, scallions and bunches of delicate corriander leaves invite you to stop cooking and make only salads. And the infinite variety of leafy, green spinach, mustard, laushka, betoshak, muloshak, methishak – makes you wonder if the impoverished Bengali widow is to be pitied or envied for her vegetarian diet.

All this should have inspired an artistic frenzy of still lifes on canvas. But somehow the most important and joyful thing about winter to a Bengali is the opportunity and ability to eat far more abundantly than during any other season, to indulge in all the rich meats, prawns, eggs and fish dishes. The colonial years have left behind the festivities of Christmas and New Year which the Bengali has enthusiastically adopted and the early winter month of Poush sees the pithaparban, a folk festival designed specially for the making and eating of large quantities of sweet. And even if cannot afford too much of these, he still has a wonderful array of vegetables and fruits from which to choose.

The olden days menus, consisted of bitter shukto made with aubergines, shim (flat beans) margosa leaves as a first course; a combination dish of aubergines, our native pumpkin, jackfruit seeds and phul boris, all seasoned with the juice of ginger, mustard greens and betoshak fried in pungent mustard oil, two kinds of dal, ghonta made with moan, boris, flavoured and cumin and sweet chutney of sour karamcha.

But where are the cabbages, cauliflower's, potatoes, tomatoes, beets or green peas? Nowhere in sight, and the Bengalis managed very well without them. Many vegetables, which are now part of the daily diet, were imported into Bengal during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by Dutch, French and Portuguese traders. Like the potatoes as most scholars concede, were the contribution of the Portuguese, while the cabbage was got from the Frenchmen, the tomatoes known as ‘English aubergine’ used in fish and vegetable recipes to create a sweet and sour taste, can definitely be attributed to the British presence. The concept of serving raw vegetables as salad was introduced by our colonial rulers. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the culinary genius of Bengal slowly developed the modern vegetarian classics by combining the old and the new. Cabbages, potatoes and peas became the base for a spicy winter ghanto which rivals the mochar ghanta has been a favourite since medieval times. Cauliflower's, combined with potatoes, were made into a rich and fragrant dalna that was a wonderful variation of the summer specialty, the potal and potato dalna. As for green peas, the Bengali spurned the plain boiled version served on the dinner tables of his British ruler and made delectable savories like matarshutir kachuri or chirar pulao or the filling for shingara (Samosas) with them, aside from adding them to other vegetable dishes.

But, the most amazing import of course is the potato. And, next to the Irish, Bengalis are probably the largest potato eaters in the world, and yet this is such a relative upstart in the hierarchy of our food. With rice, it is an inevitable daily ingredient in the diets of vegetarians and non-vegetarians, alike. And, in no other time does the Bengali do as much with the potatoes as in winter, when the small new potatoes are available in addition to the old ones. From the plain boiled potatoes, to bhaja, bharta to alur dam all are savoured by the Bengalis.

Perhaps, one of the major festivals of winter is the Saraswati puja – goddesses of books and the official harbinger of spring. During Saraswati Puja, eating of Gotasheddho is compulsory, whereby none of the vegetables are cut and one just boiled whole. The goddess is offered fruits like apple, shakalu, sugar-cane bits, bananas, dates and kul (a kind of plum) that would be offered to the goddess. The bananas offered to Saraswati are special type, very sweet, but full of large black seeds. The kul cannot be touched before being offered to the goddess. Since, it has very short season, Bengalis eagerly look forward to the sanction to eat this sweet and sour fruit. This variety of kul is called a narkel kul. A sour red species, the topa kul, can be made into lovely sweet pickles with gur or salted and dried in the sun.

Like all other goddess, Saraswati also leaves in the evening for the final ceremony of the immersion in the river.the lavish garlanding of marigold round her neck, signaling the blazing sunshine of the summer to come – summer too is waiting to pounce, behind the immediacy of spring.

BENGALI KITCHEN

Bonti :-

A curved raised blade attached to a long, flat cutting vegetables, fish and meat. The bonti used for fish and meat is kept separate from vegetable bonti and the non-veg ansh-bonti (ansh implies scales of fish).

Hari :-

A cooking pot with a rounded bottom, slightly narrowed at the neck with a wide rim to facilitate holding, while draining excess of rice water.

Dekchi :-

Referred as saucepan without a handle, usually of greater depth. Used for boiling, sautéing

Karai :-

A cooking pot shaped like a Chinese wok, but much deeper. Used for deep frying, stir-frying as well as for preparations and sauces and gravy. It’s usually made of iron or aluminium and usually has two-looped handles.

Tawa :-

It’s a griddle, used for making porothas.

Thala :-

A circular plate of authentically brass, but now a days of steel, on which food is served.

Khunti :-

Long handled implement of steel or iron with a flat thin belt-shaped piece, used as stirrers.

Hatha :-

A metal spoon with indention, used as stirrers and also for transferring food stuffs.

Sarashi :-

An equipment, used for holding vessels hot on range.

Chakni :-

A sieve.

Chamuch :-

A spoon.

Sheel nora :-

Grinding stone, slab of 16 inches * 10 inches and a small bolster-shaped stone roller 9 inches long. Both the slab and roller are chipped from time to time as they are worn smooth.

Hamal Dista :-

Motar and pestle, which could be used in place of sheelnora. Usually used for grinding spices to a fine powder or to a fine paste with the addition of water.

BENGALI FISHES :

In tranquil fullness of nature in the autumn also imbues the waters of Bengal and rural people can sometimes indulge themselves with amateur fishing, spending contemplative afternoons and bait and live. Fishes found in autumn : small fishes like punti, maurola, tangra and bele, the round-bellied pomfret, the pankal, baan and gule of the eel family, shingi and magur of the cat fish family, estuarine delectable like parshe, bhetki, bhangan and of course the specimen of King prawn, the galda chingri. Many of these fishes are cooked in strong, pungent sauces because they themselves have

strong flavours and very firm flesh. Green chillies are added for extra zest and the phoron is either kalo jeera or panchphoron. Barring macher jhol (literally fish stew) fish kalia – rich, dark, gravy spiced with freshly ground cumins, corianders,ginger, turmeric, red chillies and garam mashala!

Winter of course is also the time, when the great rivers are at their tamest, without having totally lost their character or potency. Fisherman, have an easy time hauling in their catch, whether it is a big fish like rui,katla or hilsa, but the most prized catch during winters are the shrimps and shell fishes, like the hilsa, the prawns has an elevated status and its price reflects it. The striped tiger prawn or bagda chingri is cooked with ground coconut, or with

winter vegetables or made into a paturi like the hilsa, while the big, flat galda chingri – king prawns (cray fish) are cherished for their wonderful juicy tar and added to a rich cauliflower and potato kalia, made into malaikari. The malaikari, which make every Bengali salivate with pleasure, is a red rich preparation where the sauce, enriched with thick coconut milk, ghee, spices. Another gustatory delight being the dab chingri, a preparation where the prawns are mixed with a pungent mustard paste, salt, mustard oil, and green chillies and stuffed inside a tender coconut, from which water has been drained off. The coconut, is then plastered and baked in a wood fire.

The monsoon is so associated with the ilish, called hilsa (British). The hilsa life-cycle is something like that of salmon. After starting life in the sea, the fish comes to the spawn in the estuarine waters, where the rivers meet the Bay of Bengal, and slowly moves upwards along the rivers to the northern regions of India, growing in size upto 2.5 kg. Many of the hilsa caught during monsoon are big with roe, which is a delicacy in its own right and considered a caviar of tropics. The roes are just simply fried, to obtain the delicate taste. But, compared to the Ganga specimen, this silvery-scaled fish variety of Padma is better in terms of softness and flavour.

But the major carps Rohu, Catla and Bhetki are the most popular and are available through out the year in abundance, due to the Bheri culture. "Bheris" are a kind of inland fishing done in close water, where fishes are reared and cultured throughout the year, in various parts of West Bengal, especially near the Ganga basin.

Fishes are not only substaintial source of protein, but are also easy to cook. Any fish, has predominantly for parts, - the head (which is either used whole or are cut into smaller pieces, to be used with vegetables), secondly the peti (stomach), which has comparatively lesser number of bones, but more of fat and third the gada (or the back) which lodges the treacherous bones and lastly the tail.

It is customary for the head of the family to go everyday morning to the fish market, and get varied kinds of fishes each day, and savour it as Manch Bhaja, Macher Jhol, Macher Kalia, Sorshe Macch, Macch Paturi or in someway else.

BENGALI BREADS :-

Though Bengalis, primarily loves to eat rice, yet there are a few typical Bengali Breads, which are quite famous in various parts of Bengal. Some of the prominent among these are,

Luchi :-

Eaten for mainly snacks,equivalent to the north Indian poories and taken with bhajas.

Khasta Luchi :-

The dough is much richer with fat and flaky. Hence, known as khasta kachuri.

Porotha :-

It is a kind of flaky bread, made out of whole wheat flour and is essentially triangular in shape.

Roti :-

Whole wheat flour bread, toasted on griddle.

Radhabollobbi :-

A stuffed poori made out if whole wheat flour.

Dhakai porotha :-

Flaky, layered bread from Dhaka in Bangladesh.

Matter kachuri :-

Flaky bread, stuffed with matter paste and deep-fried.

BENGALI SWEETS :-

The Bengalis call their desserts course as mishti. It was many years ago that every household made its own sweet dishes. The principles of economy and the skilled required for the popular preparations led to families specializing in confectionery – making, where expertise was handed down from father to son.

The community, known as Moiras, has developed sweet-making into a fine art and specialities like rosogulla and sandesh are made.

The winter is the season for gur or jaggery. The arrival of gur in the market is the signal for the professional sweet-makers to start preparing, their most popular products, sandesh flavoured with gur. The nalen gurer sandesh has a browny pink tinge and is very dear to the Bengalis. At the beginning gur is sold in its liquid form, jhola gur, which is poured over hot luchis and chapaties, much like the American maple syrup on pancake,

But, to one’s belief, Bengali sweets are not Sandesh, Rosogulla or Misti Doi. There are even lots more varieties to Bengali Desserts, which might not be available, commercially in the market, nor in the sweet shops, but typically home made.

At the first month of winter, Poush, rolls on, the occasional north wind becomes a little too nippy in the mornings, and the dust flies around to settle in a poll over available surfaces. This month of Poush is the specific month for eating two things – one being mulo, and the other thing being of rice-wheat-coconut based sweets, described collectively as pitha.

Of the thirteen festivals in twelve months that have become a Bengali proverb, the last day of Poush is probably the only one that is purely based on the pleasure of eating. In the old days, when rural and feudal life meant, extended families and communal festivities, there was a great scope of making pithas. One of the simplest rasbara, is made from pasted kalaidal, whipped till frothy, then fried in round balls and finally soaked in syrup. Another very simple pitha, the chitoi pitha, is made from rice flour mixed with water and left in a covered, heated, earthern ware saucer.

Then there is rutipitha or chaler ruti(literally meaning rice bread) – where rice is soaked, grinded and boiling water is added to make a sticky dough. Finally, it is shaped into ruti and served piping hot with any desserts.

The other is pulipitha, where a rich dough of wheat flour is stuffed with grated coconut, jaggery and creams, folded into a triangle and simmered in reduced milk flavoured with cardamoms.

The other most popular mishti of festivities being the

Naru :

Which is simply grated coconut in melted jaggery and made into round .

The sweet shops of Bengal known as "Mistannan Bhandar" (Sweet House) sells some of the ever-popular sweets.

Darbesh :-

Chickpea pellets fried and cooked in sugar syrup. Served with raisins, nuts and pistachio.

Sandesh :-

It’s a generic term for a group of sweets, which has infinite varieties, like, aam sadness (mango), kamlanebur sandesh (orange), notan gurer sandesh, chocolate sandesh, kaurapaker sandesh.

It is made by frying chenna and sugar in a karai over until the sugar dissolves.

Rosogulla :-

The ever-famous cheese balls in sugar syrup, is ever popular and is the most common in item of any sweet shop. But, the houses like K.C.Das which specializes in rosogulla, now has rosogulla available in tins of 1 kg. 2kg and 5 kg and has a major chunk exported.

Malpoa :-

Another popular sweet made with a batter of dahi and flour, deep-fried and served as rabri.

METHODS OF COOKING.

Unlike other cuisine the Bengalis also have some of there typical ways of cooking, which not only depends on the type of ingredients available, but also on the seasonal influence. As, during summers, when there is lot of humidity and the temperature scaling, the Bengalis prefer light stew (jhol) kind of preparations. Whereas, in monsoon or during the rainy season lot of bhajas (fried items) and khichuri (rice and lentil porridge) are the most popular. While, in winter, kalia (thick gravy) sort of preparation enjoys popularity.

Hence, we have cooking methods like,

Bhapa :-

Literally, means streamed, which is most common for fishes like hilsa, Bagda (Tiger prawns), where fishes are smeared with a rich coconut and mustard gray and then steamed. Bhapa bagda and Bhapa ilish (steamed and smoked Hilsa) are some of the specialities.The later is the signature dish of the Oberoi Grand - Calcutta, and also one of the most popular.

Kassa :-

This is a way of cooking for specially red meats like lamb or mutton is bhunooed in a very thick spicy masala of onion, ginger, garlic, chilli powder, turmeric powder and cumin powder and made into a gravy sort.

Jhol :-

It is a kind of preparation, where the cooked fish or meat is served accompanied with stew kind of preparation. It is supposed to be very nutritive, eaten with morsels of rice especially during the summers.

Phoron :

It is predominantly the kind of tempering, which is used in the preparation of lentils, with various lentils having their own tempering.

Bhaja :-

Especially snack it ever or the appetizer course of Bengali luncheon menu, includes vegetables like brinjal, potal (parwal), alu (potato) which are dipped in a latter of besan and deep-fried.

Ambal :-

A sour dish made either with several vegetables or with fish, the sourness being produced by the addition of tamarind pulp. Ambals are meant to be eaten at the end of a meal, before dessert and are more common in summers.

Bhaja :-

Anything fried by itself or in batter.

Bharta :-

Any vegetables, such as potatoes, beans, aubergines, pumpkins or even dal, first boiled whole, then mashed and seasoned with mustard oil and spices.

Bhuna :-

A Muslim term, meaning fried for a long time with ground and whole spices over high heat. Usually applied to meat.

Charchari :-

Usually a vegetable dish of one or more varieties of vegetables cut into strips, seasoned with ground spices like mustard/poppy seeds and flavored with phoron.

Chhenchkki :-

Tiny pieces of one or many vegetables or sometimes even the peel (potato, pumpkin etc.) – usually flavoured with panch phoran or whole mustard seeds or kalo jeera, chopped onions and garlic can also be used.

Dalna :-

Mixed vegetables, with a thick gravy seasoned with ground spices and ghee.

Ghanto :-

Different vegetables (cabbage, pear, potatoes, chickpeas), are chopped or grated fine and cooked with both a phoron and a complex ground spices. Boris are added to ghanto.

Jhal :-

A hot dish especially for the meats. First, lightly fried and then cooked in a light sauce, of ground chilli, ground mustard and panchphoran.

Jhol :-

A lightly fish stew, seasoned with ground spices like ginger, cumin, coriander, chilli and turmeric. Extremely thin, yet flavorful, meant to be eaten with rice.

Kalia :-

A very rich preparation of fish or meat or vegetables, using a lot of oil and ghee with a sauce of onion paste, garlic-ginger paste, tomato puree and garam mashala.

Korma :-

A Muslim term meaning meat or chicken cooked in a mild yogurt based sauce and ghee.

Pora :-

Literally burnt. Where vegetables are burnt over direct fire, mixed with oil and spices. Especially begun-pora during winters are pretty popular.

Meals of the Day

BREAKFAST :-

Normally the day of an average Bengali household starts, with the head of the family getting up early in the morning and before going to the market has a sip of tea with moori (puffed rice). And once he comes, the breakfast is ready. On weekdays, its roti and alu potaler tarkari, porotha with ghat tarkari,or even for a shortcut breakfast like puffed rice and milk or bread with ghugni (thick pea curry). On weekends, breakfast are more leisurely taken and are usually heavy which in addition to the above has luchi (puri) with alur dam and some sweets like hot jelabis to finish off. As such there is neither any course nor much variety to a normal breakfast menu.

Loochi / Paratha / Roti

Ghat tarkari / Alu and potaler tarkari

Milk / tea

LUNCH :

The luncheon menu in an average Bengali household, is the meal of the day, and especially in holidays, utmost attention is attached to it. Lots of efforts, right from going to the market early morning to buy perishables, preparing, to cooking, to dishing and upto clearance , is all done with extreme passion.

The luncheon menu varies drastically and changes with seasons. Like for example, during summer month it starts with a cooler water, then appetizers like neem patha (bhaja), sukto (bitter stew) which has supposed to have a cooling effect. Followed by rice, lentil, one dry vegetable and are gravy vegetable, meat/fish and chutney. Special occasions call for mishti; like misti doi and rasogulla as the dessert course. Usually rice is places as a heap of mound in the center of the plate and all the main courses dishes are placed in small bowls, right next to the plate, all at a time.

Usually, the guests have a few morsels of rice with each of the courses.

Sukto

Boiled rice

Lau-chingri

Masoor dal

Aloo pasta

Macher jhol

Aam chutney

---------------------

Neem and Begun bhaja

Boiled rice

Ghat tarkari

Mochar ghanta

Sorshe ilish

Tomato chutney

----------------------

During the monsoon, especially during the rainy seasons, nothing seems to be more appetizing than khichuri and begun bhaja and ghat tarkari (mainly pumpkin) and papad and pickle.

While during winters, heavy foods stuffs like Macher kalia, kasa Mangsho, pulao, Ghee Bhaat are much more used. Seasonal vegetables in winter like beet root, carrot, cabbage are also popular.

Snack menu :-

Though in Bengal we don’t have any well-defined snack items, yet items like vegetable cutlet ( mashed potato cake tempered with mustard,dipped in besan batter and deep -fried), egg roll, chicken roll, puckha (puffed mini stuffed with mashed potato and dipped in tamarind water), jhal moori are all time favourites. Some special savouries like, nimkis (maida dough rice with black onion seeds shaped into triangles and deep fried), shingara (samosa), chanachur goes very well with evening tea.

Dinner menu :-

The dinner menu of an average Bengali household is not a very elaborate affair. Most of the items of the lunch are left-overs and are rechauffed and served. One or two minor additions like begun bhaja, aloo bhaja might come in.But one of the major change is breads, like roti, poori coming in place of rice. But most of the households have an option for rice and bread, which depends upon the family.

Special menus :-

Cosmopolitan Calcutta rejoices, mourns and celebrates the festivals of it’s communities with a joie de vivre. During the four days puja fiesta the city does not go to be and eating is a feast.

The first two days of the puja, Saptami and Ashtami, is vegetarian. Lunch in these days consists of khichuri, with ghat tarkari, fried pappad with pickle – a sort of Bhog. While at dinner after a whole afternoon and evening of trampling around the city, visiting goddess in there pandals, there would be round golden luchis, puffed up like balloons. The evocation of ashtami with the drums beating and the bell ringing for the evening rituals of arati performed before the goddess by the priest, has a special association in many Bengali with luchis – even with plain sugar or it can also be eaten with alur dam, flavoured with a pinch of asafoetida or cholar dal. The luchis are usually deep fried and has a diameter of 3" – 5". And the desserts from the dinner include kheer or payesh.

Navami and Bijoya the last two days of the puja are gastronomically opposite to each other, where meat eating is the order of the day. Bangals has a custom of getting whole fish from the market and them cutting it into individual sewing portions.

On the evening of Bijoya, the images of the communities are ready for Bhasan (immersion) in the rivers. Sweet eating is a must, where everyone shed their ill feelings and embraces each other with open arms. Rosogulla, pantua, misti-doi, sandesh mostly run of stock.

SPECIAL MENUS

Wedding :-

Social occasions are of paramount importance to the businessmen of the city. Previous all festival and special occasions were catered by ‘Thakur’ – group of barwachis, but new with modernization coming in these occasion are handed-over to professional caterers. The wedding menu in Bengali household are almost the same selection of dishes.

Fish cutlet / Vegetable cutlet (crumbed and deep fried)

Radhaballavi

Alur dam / Cholar dal narkel diya

Fried rice (steamed rice with vegetables and nuts in ghee)

Macher Kalia

Kassa Mangsho

Chutney

Mishti doi / Rosagulla

Paan

.RECEPIES

Cereals :-

Dal :-

Maach :-

Mangsho :-

Torkari :-

Bhaja / pora :-

Misti :-

Snacks:

FIELD STUDY :

A field study was conducted at random among the local people in Calcutta, to find out the popularity of a cuisine, on an outing.

SAMPLE : 40 people

Bengali North-Indian South-Indian Chinese Others

6 people 12people 3 people 16 people 3 people

(5%) (30%) (7.5%) (40%) (7.5%)

ANALYSIS : Most of the people said that they wanted to dine out for a change of taste and hence Bengali food was not there first choice. North-Indian food was pretty popular as most of the Bengalis found it as a good alternative for a change in taste from there regular stuff and Marawaris found there typical home made food.

The South-Indian food was mostly preferred as a snacks rather than a main meal. Idlli, dosa and vada are a very popular evening snack item.

But, above all Chinese food was most preferred as it was not only a change in taste but also was very quick to be served and eaten. Some said they simply liked it. While people did'nt want to try out other cuisine as they were not knowledgeable about it.

ISSUES :-

Non-popularity of authentic Bengali restaurants :-

Not a very well accepted and well publicised cuisine.

Very much adapted to suit the taste of the people from a certain region.

Exposure to wider range of foods and cuisine.

Traditionally, dinning out for the Bengalis, means something new, something different from normal stuff like :- Italian, Chinese, South Indian or North Indian.

Refrigerators not popular :

Going to the market and getting fresh ingredients, is kind of ritual, early morning for the head of the family.

Refrigerated food is not very well accepted.

Don’t want to get 3-4 days ingredients and block money.

Bengali Sweets :-

Widely accepted.

Lot of variety.

Rosogulla in vacuum packed tins now widely exported.

An industry of thirteen crores, sweet-making is well set to gain industrial status in West Bengal to make it more organised.

GLOSSARY OF INDIAN WORDS

English Bengali Hindi Suggested

Alternatives

Spices and Condiments

Aniseed Mauri Saunf

Asafoetida Hing Hing

Bay leaves Tej Pata Tej Patta

Cardamom (green) Choto Elachi Hara Elaychi

Cardamom (black) Boro Elachi Bara Elaychi

Carom Seeds Jowan Ajwain

Chilli (red) Sookno Lanka Mirchi

Cinnamon Dalchini Dalchini

Cloves Labango Laung

Coriander Dhone Dhaniya

Cumin (white) Shada Jeera Jeera

Onion Seeds Kalo Jeera Kalonji

Fenugreek Methi Methi

Garlic Roshun Lhsun

Ginger Ada Adrak

Kashmiri Chilli Kashmiri Lanka Rogni Mirch

Mace Jayetri Javitri

Mint Pudina Podina

Mustard (black/white) Sorse Sarson, Rai

Nutmeg Joiphol Jaiphal

Parsley Parsley Pata Ajmode ke patta

Peppercorns Gol Mirich Kali Mirich (Sabat)

Pepper Powder Golmirch Guro Kali Mirich

Poppy Seed Posto Khus Khus

Saffron Jaffran Zaffran or Kesar

Rose water Golaper Jal Gulab Jal

Sesame Til Til

Tamarind Tetul Imli

Turmeric Holud Haldi

Vinegar Sirka Sirka

English Bengali Hindi

Mango Ginger Amada Aamhaldi

Gram masala Gorom mashla.

Panch phoron

(5 whole spices - fenugrek,fennel,cumin,kalonji & radhuni )

Radhuni Radhuni

FRUITS, VEGETABLES AND NUTS

Aubergines, eggplant

Or Brinjal Begun Baingun

Almonds Badam Badam

Banana (ripe) Kola Kela

Banana (green) Kanch Kola Kacchha Kela

Banana flower Mocha Kela ka phul

Banana pith Thora Gahar

Bitter gourd Korola, Uchhe Karela

Bottle gourd or

Vegetable marrow Lau Lauki,dudhi

English Bengali Hindi

Broad been family Sheem Sem/papri Mange-tout

Cabbage Bandhakopi Band Gobi

Capsicum or Capsicum Bara or

Green peppers Shimla Mirch

Carrots Gajor Gajar

Cauliflower Phulkopi Phul Gobi

Chilli (green) Kancha Lanka Sabz or hari mirch

Climbing spinach Pui sag Poy Sag

Coconut Narkol Nariyal

Colacassia tuber Kochu Arvi

Coriander leaves Dhone pata Hara Dhanya

Drum sticks Sajne Danta Shinjan

Horse Radish Mulo Muli

Jackfruit (green) Echor Kachha Kathal

Jackfruit (ripe) Kanthal Kathal

Knol Khol Olkopi Ganth Gobi

Lime or Lemon Pati Lebu Nimbu

English Bengali Hindi

Mango (green or raw) Kacha Aam Kacha Aam

Mango (ripe) Aam Aam

New potatoes Natun Alu Naya Alu

Okra or ladies Dharosh Bhindi

Finger

Onions Piyaj Piaz

Papaya Pepe Papita

Peas Matarshurti Matar ki Phaliyan/ matar.

Pistachio nut Pesta Pista

Plum, dried Alubokhara Alubukhara

Plum (Indian) Topa Kool Ber

Parwal Potal Parwal

Parwal leaves Palta Pata Parwal Patti

Potato Alu Alu

Pumpkin (red) Lal kumro Kaddu

Pumpkin (white) Chal Kumro Kumhra/petha Marrow

Raisins Kishmish Kishmish

Spinach Palong Sag Palak

English Bengali Hindi

Spring onions Gach Piaj Hara Piaz

Sponge/rigid gourd Jhinge Tori,Turai Courgettes/ zucchini

Sweet potatoes Misti Alu Shakarkand

Tomato Tomato Tamatar

Vegetables Tarkari, Sobji Tarkari Sabji

Vegetable peel Khosha Chhilka

Types of edible greens Lal sag/Note sag Denga Shag Spinach

(lal sag is red in colour) Patsan Shag

CEREALS AND LENTILS :-

Rice uncooked Chal Chawal

Rice cooked Bhat Chawal, Bhat

Flaked rice Chira Chura

Popped Rice Khoi Khoi

Puffed Rice Muri Murmura/mumra

Flour Moida Maida

Flour wholemeal Atta Atta

English Bengali Hindi

Rice flour Sabeda Chawal ka atta

Semolina Suji Suji/Rawa

Chich-pea flour/ Beshon Besan

Bengal Gram flour

PULSES :-

Lentils Masur dal Masur dal

Split black gram Kalai dal Urhad dal

Split Bengal Gram Cholar dal Channa dal

Split peas Mator dal Mar dal

Split green gram Moog dal Mung dal

A variety of pulse Arhor dal Toor dal/Arhar dal

Sun-dried small Bori Bari

Pulse cakes

MISCELLANEOUS :-

Butter Makhon Makkhan

Chicken Murgi Murgh

Yogurt flavoured Doi Dahi

English Bengali Hindi

Egg Dim Anda

Fish Maach Machli (Machhali)

Fresh cottage cheese Chhana Panir

Meat Mangsho Gosht

Mince Keema Kheema

Mustard oil Sorse Tel Sarsan ka Tel

Pork Suyorer Mangsho Suwar ka Gosth

Sugar Chini Shakar, Chini

TERMS OF VARIOUS FISH AND SEA FOOD

Bekti Betki Betki

Cat fish (fresh water) Magur, Shinghi Singhara

Climbing perch Koi

Crab Kakkra Kakkra

Cray fish (fresh water) Galda chingri Bura jhinga Small lobster

Hilsa Elish Palla, Bhing Indian Salmon Salmon Rawas Pacific Salmon

Prawns/Shrimps Chingri Jhinga

Carp Rui, Mrigel, Katla Rohu Halibut

Turtle Kethe Kachhua

Mullet Parshe Boi

GLOSSARY OF BENGALI TERMS.

AKHNI : A kind of perfume water made by boiling sereval spices in a bundle until the original volume of water is reduced to a third. This perfume water is used to cook the rice for a pulao.

ALU : Potato.

ALUR CHOP : A kind of fried potato cake made by dipping balls of spiced mashed potatoes in batter and deep-frying in oil.

ANNAPRASAN : A ceremony that formally marks a childs transition in diet from milk to solid foods, including rice, anna.

ATTA : A kind of fruit with a green and black knobby surface and creamy white flesh inside with large black seeds. Available only during the autumn. Atar payesh is the flesh of this fruit cooked in milk as a dessert.

ATAP : Literally, untouched by heat. The term denotes husked rice, which has not been parboiled.

BALAM : A variety of long-grained rice from the Bangladesh district of Barishal, much prized for its taste.

BANGAL : A person from East-Bengal, now in Bangladesh.

BARA/BORA : Round balls of fish or vegetables, usually deep-fried.

BARSHA : The rainy season, the monsoon.

BASANTA : Spring.

BHABRA : A savoury snack made with spiced ground fermented chickpeas flour in oil. These used to be fairly common in parts of rural West-Bengal.

CHAL : Uncooked husked rice.

CHARAK : A summer festival .

BHAKTI : Literally, devotion. The medieval Bhakti movement in Bengal was started by Sri Chaitanaya who declared that god could be reached only the deepest and purest love, not through knowledge or rituals.

BHASAN : Literally, setting afloat in water. All images of gods and goddesses are put into the nearest river after the end of their particular festival.

BHAT : Plain boiled rice.

BHOG : An offering of food given to the gods.

BICHAR-ACHAR : A complex set of rules governing the purity of the kitchen and the home. Most of the rules centre around the pot of cooked rice and vegetarian and non-vegetarian food.

BIRAHA : Seperation. One of the great themes of the medieval poetry is the painful seperation between Radha and Krishna after the latter leaves his native birndaban and assumes the kingship of Mathura.

BONTI : A curved, raised blade attached to a long, flat piece of wood or a metal frame, and used for cutting vegetables, fish and meat. Knives are a relatively recent import in the Bengali kitchen. The bonti used for fish and meat is kept separate from the vegetable bonti and is called an ansh-bonti. The word ansh literally means the scales of fish.

CHAITANYA : Also called Shri Chaitanaya, the founder of the bhakti movement in medieval Bengal. His followers were from the Vaishnav sect.

CHAL : Uncooked husked rice.

CHARAK : A summer festival in the honour of lord Shiva.

CHHANA : The solid part of milk curdled by the addition of acid. Chhana is used to make a host of Bengali sweets.

CHHOLAR DAL : Yellow spilt peas.

CHINGRI : A generic term denoting all kinds of shrimps and prawns. Striped tiger prawns are called bagada chingri, while the top-heavy king sized prawns are called galda chingri. Very small shirmps are called kuncho chingri.

CHIRA : Flattened rice.

CHITOL : A large fish, with a very soft oily stomach or frontal portion, prized especially by the people of East- Bengal, and a very bony back portion.

CHOURUIBHATI : Literally, rice for the sparrows. The term means a picnic meal cooked for outdoors.

DAB : The green coconut.

DAGA : The back portion of the fish, longitudinally seperated from the frontal portion, peti. This portion is usually more bony.

DAL : A generic term denoting any kind of lentils.

DALAN : A space in the house.

DANTA : Any kind of succlent stalk that is eaten without or without its leaves as a vegetable.

DHAN : Unhusked paddy rice.

DHENKI : Instrument for manual rice threshing, now almost obsolete.

DHENKISHAK : A fern like leafy green, much prized as a vegetable.

DHONKA : Dhonkas are made out of ground, pressed dal to from sqares which are then cooked in a rich sauce served in place of meat.

DOI : Yogurt.

DOLJATRA : The great festivals of Hindus, where people each other with coloured powders, commemorating the game of colours played by Krishna and Radha and her friends.

DURGAPUJA : The most important Hindu festival in Bengal, the three day workship of Durga, wife of lord Shiva, goddess of deliverance.

ENTHHO : Literally, contaminated by mouth or touch. Awhole complex set of rules governs the subject of enthho and the orthodox Hindu kitchen is run along those strictures. Associated with bichar-achar. Enthho para means to clean or wipe the place where the food is eaten.

GAROM MASHLA : Literally, hot spice. Usually it means the combination of cinnamom, cardamom and cloves, with black peppercorns .

GAYE HALUD : Literally, turmeric on the body, the word halud meaning both the spice and the colour yellow. This is an important ceremony preceding a Hindu wedding paste of oil and ground turmeric is smeared on the foreheads of both bride and groom as a symbol of auspiciousness. The ceremonial

Gift of a whole fish send by the West-Bengali groom to his bride is also smeared with the same paste. Fresh turmeric is also considered an aid to beauty and traditionally Bengali girls used to anoint their whole bodies with turmeric paste before their bath so that the skin retain a golden glow.

GHEE : Clarified butter.

GHOTI : A person from West-Bengal.

GOBINDABHOG : A similar kind of atap chal.

GOTASHEDHDHO : Literally, boiled whole. Specifically, this term means several winter vegetables boiled whole and seasoned with salt, oil and green chillies which are eaten by the Bengali Hindus on the day after the winter festival of Saraswati Puja.

GRISHMA : Summer.

GUR : Indigenous sugar. Aakher gur means unrefined cane sugar. Khejur gur means the sugar obtained from processing the sap from the trunks of Khejur or date-palm tree during winter.

HABISHANNO : Rice and vegetable boiled in an earthen pot , prescribed for mourners after the death of a family member.

HALUA : A sweet dish made by cooking cream of wheat, eggs, flour and other things in ghee and sugar. Like, the Middle Eastern halva.

HANDI : A cooking pot with a rounded bottom, slightly narrowed at the neck with a wide rim to facilitate holding. Rice is traditionally cooked in handi.

HARAM : Among Muslims, a term denoting something absolutely forbidden.

HEMENTA : Late autumn, usually when the main rice crop is harvested.

ID-UL-FITR : The biggest Muslim festival, it comes after the month long fasting of ramzan

ID-UZ-ZOHA : The second biggest Muslim festival, also called Bakr-Id in Bangladesh. This commemorates the prophet Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son to allah. The son was changed to lamb, bakri which was sacrificed. Animals are still sacrificed on this occasion and their meat is called korbani, sacrifical meat.

IFTAAR : The breaking of the daily fast during the month of Ramzan among the Muslims. This is usually a lightly evening meal of cool drinks and snacks, preceding dinner.

ILISH : The Bengali name for Hilsa.

ILISH GURI : A very fine misty rain during the monsoon, the season for Hilsa.

JALKHABAR : Usually a light afternoon snack, the equivalent of the English tea.

JAMAISHATHI : The sixth day after the new moon during the second calendar month, Jaishtha. This is a day of Jamai, when the son-in-law is ceremonial welcomed by his parents-in-law and fed an elaborate meal and given gifts.

JARDA : Perfumed tobacco taken from betel leaves . In Bangladesh the term also means a kind of dessert made with rice, cooked in ghee and syrup, often with shredded fruits like pineapple and orange.

JHOLAGUR : This is liquid gur, made by boiling the sap from the date palm tree to a thick liquid consistency like that of maple syrup.

KACHCHI BIRYANI : A Muslim preparation from uncooked rice where meat and rice are cooked together a over a low flame.

KACHU : Any of several kinds of taro.

KACHUSHAK : The stems and not the leaves of taro eaten as vegetables.

KACHURI : A stuffed fried bread.

KAGJI : A variety of lemon used with dal or making lemonade.

KALAI DAL : This is a kind of pulse very popular specially in the summers. Supposed to keep the body cool.

KALBAISAKHI : This is a short, violent northwestern storm, usually happening in the early part of summer.

KALIPUJA : The worship of goddess Kali during the autumn new moon.

KALOJAM : A small berry, black on the outside and purple on the inside.

The word also applies to a kind of sweet known as ' pantua ' fried very dark on the outside.

KALOJEERA : Meaning black cumin. A small black seed with the delicate flavour used in cooking of fish and vegetables.

KAMALA : Orange.

KAMINI ATAP : A small grained variety of atap rice.

KANCHA : Raw or uncooked. Kancha moong dal means unroasted moong dal.

KARAI : A cooking pot like the Chinese wok much deeper used for stir frying as well as for gravies. Made out of iron or aluminium and usually has two loop shaped handles.

KARAMCHA : A pinkish white very sour berry available during the monsoon. Used in making sour fish dishes, chutneys or pickles.

KAROLA : The larger variety of bitter gourd.

KASUNDI : A sour mustard pickle, made in the summers eaten with rice or shak.

KATLA : One of the several kinds of fresh water carp.

KEORA WATER : Artificially perfumed water used in Muslim meat and rice dishes.

KHASHI : Castrated goat.

KHEER : Reduced milk.

KICHURI : Rice and dal cooked together with a variety of spices usually associated with rainy seasons.

KHOI : Popped rice.

KHUNTI : Kind of spatula usually brass or iron with a thin long handle.

KIRTAN : Religious songs, mostly about the love between Radha and Krishna.

KOI : Kind of fish called as climbing perch available in rainy seasons.

KOJAGORI : Goddess Lakshmi is worshipped, the term literally means "who is awake" and devotees are not supposed to sleep.

KORBANI : Sacrifical meat.

KRISHNA : Incarnation of Vishnu, the Vaishnav sect of Bengal are the devotees of Krishna.

KUL : Plum like fruit available in the winters. The sweet variety is called narkel kul and is used as an offering to goddess Saraswati while the sour variety topa kul are used for making pickles and chutneys.

KUMOR : The potter.

KUMRO : Pumpkin. Chal kumro, literally pumpkin on the roof is a native Bengali gourd. The pumpkin was a late import and was originally called biliti kumro.

LAKSHMI PUJA : The workship of goddess lakshmi, godesses of wealth and prosperity on the autumn of full moon.

LANCHA : A kind of sweet like a pantua. But shaped like a bloster.

LANGRA : A variety of mango.

LAU : It's a favourite bengali gourd, pale green on the outside and white on the inside.

LUCHI : A circular fried bread, puffy.

MAAN KACHU : A kind of very large taro, and is considered to be a delicacy. 'maan' means repute.

]MAACH : Fish.

MACHER JHOL : Fish stew.

MAGUR : A kind of fish of the catfish variety.

MALAIKARAI : A preparation of prawns of prawns made with coconut milk.

MALPUA : A home made sweet made of semolina and dipped in sugar syrup

MALSHA : an earthen pot in which rice, dal or vegetables are cooked, especially for religious purpose.

MASOOR DAL : The lentil.

MATTAR DAL : Dal made from green peas.

MATTARSHUTI : Green peas. Mattarshutir kachuri has ground green peas as the filling inside the bread.

MELA : Fair.

MIRGEL : Small variety of carp.

MISIHTI : Sweet (adj.) or sweets as a collective noun.

MISIHTI DOI : Sweet yogurt.

MOA : Round balls of puffed rice or popped rice sweetened with date palm sugar and flavored with kheer or cardamom seeds.

MOCHA : Banana blossom.

MOIRA : Professional sweet maker.

MOONG DAL : A small yellow pulse cooked plain in a metal pan after being roasted.

MUITHYA : A term used by the people of East Bengal to denote fish balls made by shaping them as fist or muthi.

MULO : The native radish available during the winters

MURI : Puffed rice.

MUROR DAL : A preparation combining roasted moong dal with a muro or fish head and spices.

NABANNO : Literally, new rice. A rural festival, especially, especially among the Hindus, to celebrate the harvesting of the main rice crop during the winters.

NALENGUR : The new gur.

NECHI : Small balls of dough which are patted between the palms before being rolled out.

NEEM : The margosa tree, whose small, bitter leaves are considered beneficial to they health during the spring and the summer. The leaves are fried crisp and combined with tiny pieces of aubergine to make neembegun, a first item served with rice.

NORA : The stone pestle rubbed horizontally against a flat stone to grind spices.

PAAN : Betel leaves. These are spiced with betel nuts, cardamoms, fennel seeds, lime solution and sometimes tobacco, and chewed after a meal as a chaser. Real addicts will have paan with tobacco many times a day, like smokers.

PANCHPHORAN : Literally, five flavors. Usually a combination of five whole spices, cumin, kalojeera, radhuni(kind of mustard), fenugrek, fennel.

PANDAL : An area covered with an awning of bamboo shoots in which the image of a god or goddesses are kept for community workship. Pandals are also made for weddings and other festivals, mostly to feed people.

PANTABHAT : Leftover fermented rice, eaten mostly by the poor people out of necessity, but also considered to be cooling and benefical in the summers.

PAPOR : The Bengali word for papadum, thin sheets of ground dal, spiced dried in the sun and fried just before serving.

PAROTA : The Bengali word for paratha. Fried bread, circular or triangular in shape, often with two or three layers. The famous Dhakai porota is flaky and has twenty to thirty layers.

PATALI GUR : The solidified sap of the date-palm tree, made by repeated boiling.

PATISHAPTA : A home made sweet, like crepes, usually stuffed with grounded coconut and jaggery.

PATOL : A small, green, gourd shaped vegetable mostly available mostly during the summers and the monsoons.

PATURI : Anything cooked wrapped in a leaf (pata) and left over a low flame in the embers of coal.

PAYESH : Anything, usually rice, cooked in milk.

PETI : The front or the stomach portion of fish.

PHAL AHAAR : Meaning a meal of fruit combined with puffed rice, milk or yogurt.

PHAN : The gruel drained out rice water.

PHORON : A flavouring agent. All dals are flavoured with phoron fried in ghee or oil.

PHULBORI : A particularly light bori, made with kalaidal.

PINDA : This literally means a lump. Usually this means an offering of cooked rice and fish, made into light balls and set to appease the ancestors and the dead persons during a Hindu funeral.

PITHA : Sweet or savoury items made from rice flour or cream of wheat, usually during the winters when the newly harvested atap rice is grounded to make the flour.

PITHA PARBAN : The winter festival of making pitha's.

POLAO : The Bengali word for pulao.

POSTO : Poppy seeds.

PUISHAK : A succulent, leafy, astringent vegetable available during the monsoons. Hindu widows are forbidden to eat this vegetable.

PUJA : Act of worship. In Bengal however the word by itself also denotes Durga puja.

PULI PITHA : A kind of stuffed pitha in a sweetened milky syrup.

PRONAM : A respectful gesture of touching the feet of elders.

RADHA : The milkmaid in brindavan who was Krishna's beloved though she was not his wife. To Vaishnav's in Bengal radha is the ultimate symbol of selfless love.

RAITA : Among the Bengali muslims, a salad of yogurt and cucumber.

RAJBHOG : A large spherical sweet made with chhana floating in syrup similar to rasgulla.

RAS : Literally juice specifically means the first tapping of syrup from the trunk of the date palm tree.

ROSOGULLAS : The most famous Bengali sweets, which are made of chhana and boiled in plain syrup.

ROSOMALAI : A kind of sweet with rosogullas floating in sweetened evaporated milk.

RATHJATRA : A chariot festival, the major event during the monsoons

RUI : The most famous variety of fresh water carp.

SANDESH: Like the rosogulla, a famous Bengali sweet made with chhana. But it is sweetened with sugar or gur in the cooking instead of being boiled in syrup.

SANKARANTI : The last day of every month, which coincides with a holy dip in the gang sager.

SARASWATI PUJA : The goddess of learning worshipped during the springs.

SHAB-E-BARAT : Literally the night of destiny.

SHADH : Literally a wish or desire. It is also the term used for a special elaborate meal served to a pregnant woman towards the end of her pregnancy

in the belief that if all her cravings are satisfied, she will bear a healthy child.

SHAK : Any kind of leafy green, eaten as a vegetable.

SHAKTO : A Hindu sect, followers of shakti, and the mother goddess.

SHALPA : The water lily, whose stems are eaten as vegetables.

SHARAT : Early autumn.

SHASHTHI : The sixth day of the moon.

SHEET : Winter.

SHEETAL : Cool.

SHIDDHA : Boiled. Parboiled rice is called siddha chal.

SHIL : The flattened, pitted stone on which the spices are grounded with nora.

SHIM : A kind of buttery textured flat, broad bean available in the winters.

SHINGARA : Triangular flour shells stuffed with vegetables or meat and deep fried in oil. A favourite with afternoon snacks.

SHOJNE : Drumsticks. Much prized as a delicacy and used in fish stews or mixed vegetables dishes.

SHOL : A kind of fish, mostly available in the winters and not eaten unless alive.

SHORSHE : Mustard. Hilsa cooked in a mustard sauce is called sorshe ilish.

SHRADHA : The funeral ceremony of the Hindus.

SUKTO : A bitter vegetable dish, served as a first course with rice, especially during the summer. Sukto is never served at dinner, only at lunch.

SINDUR : A vermilion powder worn by the Hindu married women on their partings. Also an auspicious element, used to decorate the foreheads of goddesses.

SUPURI : Betel nuts. These are chopped fine and put inside paan to be chewed slowly. Sometimes, chopped betel nuts are also chewed by themselves.

TAAL : The fruit of the palm tree. Taaler bora means the small balls made by combining the pulp of the ripe with coconut, flour and sugar and deep frying them.

TATTO : The ceremonial array of gifts sent by the groom to his bride before the wedding occurs.

TELEBHAJA : Literally, fried in oil. A collective term denoting any of several vegetables dipped in batter and fried in oil as a savoury snack or to be served with rice.

THAKURGHAR : The room of a Hindu home where the images of gods are kept.

UCHCHE : The smaller variety of bitter gourd.

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Ref:- http://jng_chef.tripod.com/Bengali_Culture.htm

UNION COUNCIL OF MINISTERS - from NDTV.com

2009-05-29T08:22:00.000-07:00

Total ministers: 79 including the PM
Cabinet Ministers: 33 - 7 new faces
Ministers of State with Independent Charge: 7 - 1 new face
Ministers of State: 38 - 26 new faces
First-timers: 29
Total women ministers: 9
4 ministers under 40
7 ministers above 70
Average age: 62
Total Muslim ministers: 5
Total Dalit ministers: 13
Youngest minister: Agatha Sangma
Oldest minister: SM Krishna

IN THE CABINET
23 are Lok Sabha members
9 from Rajya Sabha
1 not a member of Parliament

4 women: Ambika Soni, Meira Kumar, Mamata Banerjee, Kumari Selja
5 Dalits: A Raja, Sushil Shinde, Meira Kumar, Mukul Wasnik and Kumari Selja
1 Tribal: Kantilal Bhuria
2 Muslims: Farooq Abdullah, Ghulam Nabi Axad

9 former Chief Ministers: Farooq Abdullah, SM Krishna, Sharad Pawar, AK Antony, Sushil Shinde, Veerappa Moily, Veerbhadra Singh, Ghulam Nabi Azad and Vilasrao Deshmukh

Low Point
No Cabinet minister from the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh where Congress scripted a remarkable comeback winning 21 Lok Sabha seats.

STATEWISE STANDINGS

Lion's Share
Tamil Nadu - 9 ministers
Maharashtra - 9 ministers
West Bengal - 8 ministers
Andhra Pradesh - 6 ministers
Kerala - 6 ministers
Karnataka - 4

Tough Luck
Bihar - 1
Orissa - 1
Uttar Pradesh - 5, but no Cabinet-rank minister

Fallen through the Cracks
Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Chhattisgarh, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura

PARTYWISE PORTIONS

Congress: 59 ministers - 27 in Cabinet, 6 MoS (Independent), 26 MoS
DMK: 7 ministers - 3 in Cabinet, 4 MoS
NCP: 3 ministers - 1 in Cabinet, 1 MoS (Independent), 1 MoS
Trinamool Congress: 7 ministers - 1 in Cabinet, 6 MoS
National Conference: 1 in Cabinet
Muslim League Kerala State Committee: 1 MoS

15th LokSabha for India - from NDTV.com

2009-05-28T17:32:00.000-07:00

Cabinet Ministers: Portfolio

Pranab Mukherjee: Finance

Sharad Pawar: Agriculture, Food & Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs & Public Distribution

A K Antony: Defence

P Chidambaram: Home Affairs

Mamata Banerjee: Railways

S M Krishna: External Affairs

Virbhadra Singh: Steel

Vilasrao Deshmukh: Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises

Ghulam Nabi Azad: Health and Family Welfare

Sushil Kumar Shinde: Power

M Veerappa Moily: Law and Justice

Farooq Abdullah: New and Renewable Energy

S Jaipal Reddy: Urban Development

Kamal Nath: Road Transport and Highways

Vayalar Ravi: Overseas Indian Affairs

Meira Kumar: Water Resources

Dayanidhi Maran: Textiles

A Raja: Communications and Information Technology

Murli Deora: Petroleum and Natural Gas

Ambika Soni: Information and Broadcasting

Mallikarjun Kharge: Labour and Employment

Kapil Sibal: Human Resource Development

B K Handique: Mines and Development of North Eastern Region

Anand Sharma: Commerce and Industry

C P Joshi: Rural Development and Panchayati Raj

Selja: Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation; Tourism

Subodh Kant Sahay: Food Processing Industries

M S Gill: Youth Affairs and Sports

G K Vasan: Shipping

Pawan K Bansal: Parliamentary Affairs

Mukul Wasnik: Social Justice and Empowerment

Kantilal Bhuria: Tribal Affairs

M K Azhagiri: Chemicals and Fertilizers

Ministers of State (Independent Charge)

Praful Patel: Civil Aviation
Prithviraj Chavan: Science and Technology; Earth Sciences and Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office; Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions and Parliamentary Affairs
Sriprakash Jaiswal: Coal; Statistics and Programme Implementation
Salman Khursheed: Corporate Affairs; Minority Affairs
Dinsha J Patel: Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises
Krishna Tirath: Women and Child Development
Jairam Ramesh: Environment and Forests.

Ministers of State

Srikant Jena: Chemicals and Fertilizers
E. Ahamed Minister : Railways
Mullappally Ramachandran : Home Affairs
V. Narayansamy : Planning, and Parliamentary Affairs
Jyotiraditya Scindia : Commerce and Industry
D.Purandeswari Minister : Human Resource Development
K.H. Muniyappa Minister : Railways
Ajay Maken Minister : Home Affairs
Panabaka Lakshmi : Textiles
Namo Narain Meena : Finance
M.M. Pallam Raju : Defence
Saugata Ray : Urban Development
S.S. Palanimanickam : Finance
Jitin Prasad : Petroleum and Natural Gas
A. Sai Prathap : Steel
Preneet Kaur : External Affairs
Gurdas Kamat : Communications and IT
Harish Rawat : Labour and Employment
K.V. Thomas : Agriculture, and Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution
Bharatsinh Solanki : Power
Mahadev S. Khandela : Road Transport and Highways
Dinesh Trivedi Minister : Health and Family Welfare
Sisir Adhikari : Rural Development
Sultan Ahmed : Tourism
Mukul Roy : Shipping
Mohan Jatua : Information and Broadcasting
D. Napoleon Minister : Social Justice and Empowerment
Dr. S. Jagathrakshakan : Information and Broadcasting
S. Gandhiselvan : Health and Family Welfare
Tusharbhai Chaudhary : Tribal Affairs
Sachin Pilot : Communications and IT
Arun Yadav : Youth Affairs and Sports
Pratik Patil : Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises
R.P.N. Singh : Road Transport and Highways
Shashi Tharoor : External Affairs
Vincent Pala : Water Resources
Pradeep Jain : Rural Development
Agatha Sangma : Rural Development

Science After Aryabhatta-I

2009-04-17T11:37:00.000-07:00

In the earliest period of Indian science, it is exceptional when we know the authorship of a text or an idea. For example, although Yajnavalkya and Lagadha describe considerable astronomy, we do not know if this was developed by them or they merely summarized what was then well known. Likewise we are not sure of the individual contributions in the Shulba Sutras--- of Baudhayana, Apastamba, and other authors--- which describe geometry, or in Pingala's Chhandahsutra which shows how to count in a binary manner. The major exception to the anonymous nature of early Indian science is the grammatical tradition starting with Panini. This tradition is an application of the scientific method where the infinite variety of linguistic data is generated by means of a limited number of rules.

With Aryabhata, we enter a new phase in which it becomes easier to trace the authorship of specific ideas. But even here there remain other aspects which are not so well understood. For example, the evolution of Indian medicine is not as well documented as that of Indian mathematics. Neither do we understand well the manner in which the philosophical basis underlying Indian science evolved.

Thus many texts speak of the relativity of time and space---abstract concepts that developed in the scientific context just a hundred years ago. The Puranas speak of countless universes, time flowing at different rates for different observers and so on.

The Mahabharata speaks of an embryo being divided into one hundred parts each becoming, after maturation in a separate pot, a healthy baby; this is how the Kaurava brothers are born. There is also mention of an embryo, conceived in one womb, being transferred to the womb of another woman from where it is born; the transferred embryo is Balarama and this is how he is a brother to Krishna although he was born to Rohini and not to Devaki. There is an ancient mention of space travellers wearing airtight suits in the epic Mahabharata which may be classified as an early form of science fiction.

Universes defined recursively are described in the famous episode of Indra and the ants in Brahmavaivarta Purana. Here Vishnu, in the guise of a boy, explains to Indra that the ants he sees walking on the ground have all been Indras in their own solar systems in different times! These flights of imagination are to be traced to more than a straightforward generalization of the motions of the planets into a cyclic universe. They must be viewed in the background of an amazingly sophisticated tradition of cognitive and analytical thought.

The context of modern science fiction books is clear: it is the liberation of the earlier modes of thought by the revolutionary developments of the 20th century science and technology. But how was science fiction integrated into the mainstream of Indian literary tradition two thousand years ago? What was the intellectual ferment in which such sophisticated ideas arose?

Of the eighteen early siddhantas the summaries of only five are available now. In addition to these siddhantas, practical manuals, astronomical tables, description of instruments, and other miscellaneous writings have also come down to us. The Puranas also have some material on astronomy. Here we just list some of the main names in astronomy after 450 CE.

Aryabhata (born 476) is the author of the first of the later siddhantas called Aryabhatiyam which sketches his mathematical, planetary, and cosmic theories. This book is divided into four chapters: (i) the astronomical constants and the sine table, (ii) mathematics required for computations, (iii) division of time and rules for computing the longitudes of planets using eccentrics and epicycles, (iv) the armillary sphere, rules relating to problems of trigonometry and the computation of eclipses.

The parameters of Aryabhatiyam have, as their origin, the commencement of Kaliyuga on Friday, 18th February, 3102 BCE. He wrote another book where the epoch is a bit different.

Aryabhata took the earth to spin on its axis; this idea appears to have been his innovation. He also considered the heavenly motions to go through a cycle of 4.32 billion years; here he went with an older tradition, but he introduced a new scheme of subdivisions within this great cycle.

That Aryabhata was aware of the relativity of motion is clear from this passage in his book,``Just as a man in a boat sees the trees on the bank move in the opposite direction, so an observer on the equator sees the stationary stars as moving precisely toward the west.''

Varahamihira

Varahamihira (died 587) lived in Ujjain and he wrote three important books: Panchasiddhantika, Brihat Samhita, and Brihat Jataka. The first is a summary of five early astronomical systems including the Surya Siddhanta. (Incidently, the modern Surya Siddhanta is different in many details from this ancient one.) Another system described by him, the Paitamaha Siddhanta, appears to have many similarities with the ancient Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha.

Brihat Samhita is a compilataion of an assortment of topics that provides interesting details of the beliefs of those times. Brihat Jataka is a book on astrology which appears to be considerably influenced by Greek astrology.

Brahmagupta

Brahmagupta of Bhilamala in Rajasthan, who was born in 598, wrote his masterpiece, Brahmasphuta Siddhanta, in 628. His school, which was a rival to that of Aryabhata, has been very influential in western and northern India. Brahmagupta's work was translated into Arabic in 771 or 773 at Baghdad and it became famous in the Arabic world as Sindhind.

One of Brahmagupta's chief contributions is the solution of a certain second order indeterminate equation which is of great significance in number theory.

Another of his books, the Khandakhadyaka, remained a popular handbook for astronomical computations for centuries.

Bhaskara

Bhaskara (born 1114), who was from the Karnataka region, was an outstanding mathematician and astronomer. Amongst his mathematical contributions is the concept of differentials. He was the author of Siddhanta Shiromani, a book in four parts: (i) Lilavati on arithmetic, (ii) Bijaganita on algebra, (iii) Ganitadhyaya, (iv) Goladhyaya on astronomy. He epicyclic-eccentric theories of planetary motions are more developed than in the earlier siddhantas.

Subsequent to Bhaskara we see a flourishing tradition of mathematics and astronomy in Kerala which saw itself as a successor to the school of Aryabhata. We know of the contributions of very many scholars in this tradition, of whom we will speak only of two below.

Madhava

Madhava (c. 1340-1425) developed a procedure to determine the positions of the moon every 36 minutes. He also provided methods to estimate the motions of the planets. He gave power series expansions for trigonometric functions, and for pi correct to eleven decimal places.

Nilakantha Somayaji

Nilakantha (c. 1444-1545) was a very prolific scholar who wrote several works on astronomy. It appears that Nilakantha found the correct formulation for the equation of the center of the planets and his model must be considered a true heliocentric model of the solar system. He also improved upon the power series techniques of Madhava.

The methods developed by the Kerala mathematicians were far ahead of the European mathematics of the day.

Source: T.R.N. Rao and S. Kak, Computing Science in Ancient India. USL Press, Lafayette, 1998.

Open letter from Ratan Tata to WB citizens. - The Telegraph

2008-10-17T09:52:00.000-07:00

Soleckshaw!!! Discovery Report

2008-10-13T13:21:00.000-07:00

Solar Power Replaces Human Toil in New Rickshaws

Elizabeth Roche, AFP

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/10/13/solar-rickshaw.html

Oct. 13, 2008 -- A state-of-the-art, solar powered version of the humble cycle-rickshaw promises to offer a solution to urban India's traffic woes, chronic pollution and fossil fuel dependence, as well as an escape from backbreaking human toil.

The "soleckshaw," unveiled this month in New Delhi, is a motorized cycle rickshaw that can be pedalled normally or run on a 36-volt solar battery.

Developed by the state-run Center for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), prototypes are receiving a baptism of fire by being road-tested in Old Delhi's Chandni Chowk area.

One of the city's oldest and busiest markets, dating back to the Moghul era, Chandni Chowk comprises a byzantine maze of narrow, winding streets, choked with buses, cars, scooters, cyclists and brave pedestrians.

"The most important achievement will be improving the lot of rickshaw drivers," said Pradip Kumar Sarmah, head of the non-profit Center for Rural Development.

"It will dignify the job and reduce the labor of pedalling. From rickshaw pullers, they will become rickshaw drivers," Sarmah said.

India has an estimated eight million cycle-rickshaws.

Laxmi Panda joins Netaji gallery

2008-10-10T22:26:00.000-07:00

Laxmi Panda joins Netaji gallery

Express News Service
First Published : 11 Oct 2008 07:17:00 AM IST

CUTTACK: For LAXMI Indira Panda, the first Oriya soldier and one of the youngest in Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army (INA), the recognition might have come too late.But if she was alive, the plans of the authorities of the Netaji Subash Chandra Bose Birthplace Museum could alone have fulfilled all her wishes inlife. Occupying space alongside among the most towering personality of India’s freedom struggle, and her exploits described to the visitors who come to know about Netaji would certainly have been beyond her wildest dreams.The Museum has set on work to dedicate a whole gallery to Laxmi Panda and her ilk, who had served in the INA, both dead or alive. People should not only know about Netaji but also the people who constituted the INA. Like Panda, there are many others like Laxmi Sehgal who had served in the INA. The Museum would search for such people across the country and give them their due space with Netaji, sources said.

As a first step, the Museum on Friday unveiled a portrait of Panda, which would adorn the gallery. The display would include vivid but brief descriptions on her life and contribution to the freedom struggle.The portrait (oil on canvas) has been created by Delhi-based artist Md Anwar, who hails from Kazi Bazaar in the town. ‘‘Dedicating the work of art to the heroism of Panda, he has donated it to the Museum,’’ said in-charge JP Das, who presided over a prayer meeting at the Museum premises on Friday.The 76-year-old from Jeypore in Kendrapara district, passed away in New Delhi recently after prolonged illness.Migrating to Rangoon in Burma with her parents from a very early age, she had joined INA at 12 or 13 under ‘Balsenani’. Her heroism and valour had also drawn great appreciation from Netaji himself. But misfortune befell after she returned to Jeypore as she faded into obscurity. She even worked as a domestic help to fend for herself before she was recognised. She received money under Indira Awas Yojana and the President had recently sanctioned the eminent freedom fighter grant of pension under Swatantra Sainik Samman Pension (SSSP) scheme-1980.The Museum, meanwhile, has readied three more galleries to be added to the existing eight depicting various phases and aspects of Netaji’s life.

Dada - Phire dekha

2008-10-07T22:45:00.000-07:00

Dada's Numbers

3: Players in the world with the unique distinction of completing a treble of over 10,000 runs, 100 wickets and 100 catches. The other players are Sachin Tendulkar and Sanath Jayasuriya.

3: Times he has the distinction of posting the fastest 1000-run mark in ODIs. They are: 7000 runs in 174 innings, 8000 runs in 200 innings and 9000 runs in 228 innings.

11: One of 11 Indians to score a century on debut in Test cricket. The others are: Lala Amarnath, Deepak Shodhan, Kripal Singh, Abbas Ali Baig, Hanumant Singh, Gundappa Viswanath, Surinder Amarnath, Mohammad Azharuddin, Praveen Amre and Virender Sehwag.

11: Tests won by India abroad remains the most under his captaincy

21: Tests won as captain remains Indian record. At second position with 14 victories is Md Azharuddin.

49: Tests as captain remains the most by an Indian. Azharuddin and Sunil Gavaskar with 47 each are at the second spot

6609: Runs in association with Sachin Tendulkar for the first wicket in ODIs, the highest ever

Maharaja - Tomare Selaam (CRICINFO)

2008-10-07T11:04:00.000-07:00

Sourav Ganguly

India

Full name Sourav Chandidas Ganguly
Born July 8, 1972, Calcutta (now Kolkata), Bengal
Current age 36 years 91 days
Major teams India, Asia XI, Bengal, Glamorgan, Kolkata Knight Riders, Lancashire
Batting style Left-hand bat
Bowling style Right-arm medium
Height 5 ft 11 in
Education St Xavier's College
Relations Brother - Snehasish C Ganguly

Timeline

January 11, 1992
Inauspicious debut
Makes his ODI debut, his only international on the tour of Australia. Scores 3 and is duly dropped. His highest score on the tour is 29, against Queensland.

June 21 and 22, 1996
Test debut is different
In his first Test, at Lord's, scores an imperious century. Follows it up with another century in the very next Test at Trent Bridge, on July 4.

October 23, 1996
Quite a sighter
In his 11th one-dayer, in Jaipur, opens the innings for the first time, against South Africa. This is the first time the greatest opening combination in ODI history, him and Sachin Tendulkar, comes together. He scores 54, Tendulkar 64, in a 126-run stand.

August 20, 1997
Has a ball in Sri Lanka
Playing against Sri Lanka, scores his first ODI century, in his 32nd match, in Colombo. This innings follows a 147 in the second Test, an innings instrumental in drawing the Test.

September, 1997
If it's Toronto, it has to be Ganguly
High point of his career. Is the leading scorer and wicket-taker in the Sahara Cup. With 222 runs at 55.5 and 15 wickets at 10.66, he wins four Man-of-the-Match awards in five matches, and is the most unanimous Man of the Series, as India beat Pakistan 4-1.

November-December, 1997
Whipping Sri Lanka, round 2
With 392 runs at an average of 98, ends the three-Test home series against Sri Lanka as top scorer and Man of the Series.

January 18, 1998
Setting up a famous chase
Scores 124 against Pakistan in the then highest successful run-chase in ODI history, as India score 316 in 47.5 overs to win the Independence Cup in Dhaka.

July 7, 1998
Whipping Sri Lanka, round 3
Scores 109 against Sri Lanka in Colombo, in the then highest opening stand in ODIs. He and Tendulkar (128) put together 252 runs as India win the Singer-Akai-Nidahas Trophy final by six runs.

May 26, 1999
Whipping Sri Lanka, round 4
A day when he, in partnership, looks like breaking every batting record in the book. His 183 in Taunton is the then highest ODI score by an Indian; the 318-run partnership with Rahul Dravid (145) is the then highest partnership ever; and India's 373 for 6 is the then second-largest ODI total.

September, 1999
Captaincy calibre
Captains India for the first time in the Coca-Cola Singapore Challenge tournament, against West Indies, as Tendulkar is rested due to a sore back. Barely a week later, he leads India again in the DMC Cup - with Tendulkar skipping the tournament due to an injury - against West Indies. India win the series 2-1.

February, 2000
County calling
Signs up to replace Muttiah Muralitharan as Lancashire's overseas cricketer.

February 26, 2000
Tendulkar resigns, Ganguly obliges
Is named captain of the Indian team for the five-ODI home series against South Africa. The announcement comes after Tendulkar has resigned from captaincy. At the prime of his one-day form, he ends the series as top run-getter, and India win a closely fought series. Is named full-time captain after the series.

March 21, 2001
Final frontier remains
End of a month of enthralling Test cricket. Ganguly is the leading face of a brash, aggressive Indian team who come back from an impossible situation to beat Australia 2-1. Is vindicated as a captain.

November, 2001
Tête-à-tête with match-referee
In an unprecedented and highly controversial action, Ganguly and five other Indian players are summoned by Mike Denness, the match-referee, and warned for excessive appealing during the Port Elizabeth Test. He is also accused of not controlling his players, and is punished with a suspended ban for one Test match and two one-day international matches. India lose the three-Test series 2-0, and the third is deemed unofficial by the ICC amid threats of a revolt by India and the BCCI.

July 13, 2002
Paying them in the same currency
Is seen waving his shirt emphatically at the Lord's balcony as an incredible win in the NatWest Series final caps off impressive back-to-back tours of West Indies and England. India had lost their last nine finals in a row, six under Ganguly. He scores a century in the Test series that follows. India draw the series 1-1.

March 20, 2003
Promised land
Scores a century in the World Cup semi-final as India make it to the final for the first time since 1983.

December 7, 2003
Leading from the front
In Brisbane, scores a brilliant counter-attacking century in a tricky situation to set the tone for Indian batsmen on the Australian tour.

April 16, 2004
Neighbours won over
Becomes the first Indian captain to win a Test series in Pakistan. Also with 15 Test wins, he becomes India's most successful captain. India win the five-ODI series too by a margin of 3-2.

October 10, 2004
Beginning of the false end
India lose the first Test against Australia in Bangalore by 217 runs. He struggles both as a batsman and as a captain, and his withdrawal from the last two Tests due to injury leads to much media speculation and controversy. Australia capture the final frontier with a 2-1 series win.

March 28, 2005
Decline continues
The signs of his decline are obvious after a dismal showing in a drawn series at home against Pakistan. Pakistan side triumphs in the decider at Bangalore, virtually signalling the end of the successful Ganguly-Wright relationship. Ganguly scores 48 runs in the series, at 9.60.

April 12, 2005
Bad gets worse
After the fourth ODI against Pakistan, with the six-match ODI series tied 2-2, he is banned for six matches for a slow-over rate and has to watch from the sidelines as India go down 2-4 to Pakistan.

September 15, 2005
After hundred, comes nadir
A slow hundred against a depleted Zimbabwe sends the critics into raptures, only for the controversial Ganguly-Greg Chappell saga to blow up in everyone's faces. Ganguly goes public with his dismay at Chappell's suggestions during the match that he step down from the captaincy, and the media goes wild. Chappell is not amused, maintaining that the Indian captain asked him for his honest opinion on his form and leadership in a private meeting between the two. The tour goes on, with India unsurprisingly beating Zimbabwe 2-0. On the team's return to India Ganguly is publicly ostracised and there are more and more calls for his sacking. Forty-eight hours after saying that he respected the Indian captain and looked forward to working with him in the future, Chappell fires off a damning memorandum to the BCCI.

October 21, 2005
Refusal to die
Hits a century in the Duleep Trophy match against a strong North Zone attack to remind the world that he is not done yet.

November 22, 2005
Passes the thorny baton
The selectors end his five-year reign as Test captain when they pick Rahul Dravid to lead India in the Tests against Sri Lanka.

January to March, 2006
Uninvited
Is picked for the Test series in Pakistan. Does not bat in the first Test, is dropped for the second, and scores 34 and 37 in the third in Karachi. His performance isn't enough to secure a spot in the one-day series that followed. Is not picked for the home Tests against England.

December 7, 2006
Beginning of the end of the end
India are doing miserably in South Africa, having lost all the one-dayers. Ganguly is picked for the Tests. India are 1 for 2, 37 for 3, 59 for 4 against Rest of South Africa in Potchefstroom. Ganguly comes in and scores 83, India win, and take momentum into the Test series.

December 15, 2006
Riposte continues
Scores a half-century with the tail in the Johannesburg Test, as India reach a crucial 249 and bowl South Africa out for 84. They go on to win by 123 runs, but lose in the final Test to squander an opportunity for a rare series win. Ganguly is the leading run-getter for India.

January 21, 2007
ODIs, here I come, again
In Nagpur, on his ODI comeback, scores 98 against West Indies. India go on to score 338 and win by 14 runs.

May 18-19, 2007
I have been expecting you, Test ton
Scores an even 100 in Chittagong, his third century in three-and-a-half years. His last two centuries are Bulawayo, 2005 and Brisbane, 2003.

July-August, 2007
Feels like home in England
Scores 249 runs at 49.80 in India's series win in England, and has secured his place in both Test and ODI sides.

November-December, 2007
E-done and double delight
Scores his first Test century at Eden Gardens, his home ground, and follows it up with his first double-century, in Bangalore. Pakistan are at the receiving end, as he top-scores with 534 runs in three Tests at an average of 89, and is the Man of the Series.

December 2007-January 2008
Beginning of another false end?
A mixed Test series in Australia (235 runs at 29.37, two half-centuries) is followed up by the ODI axe for the CB Series in Australia.

April 12, 2008
Mastering the Mean Street
On an under-prepared, dual-paced pitch in Kanpur, Ganguly scores a serene 87 to help India level the three-Test series against South Africa. Later calls it one of his best Test innings.

October 7, 2008
'I've decided to quit'
Two days before the start of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, announces it will be his last series. There have been talks doing the rounds that the BCCI has been trying to force the seniors into retirmement. He first denies such notions in a press conference, and then when the presser is over, makes the announcement. "Just one last thing lads, before I leave," he says. "I just want to say that this is going to be my last series. I've decided to quit. I told my team-mates before coming here. These four Test matches are going to be my last and hopefully we'll go on a winning note."

Sourav Ganguly: God on the off-side

2008-10-07T11:02:00.000-07:00

Sourav Ganguly: God on the off-side

Press Trust of India
Tuesday, October 07, 2008 (New Delhi)

Sourav Ganguly's decision to retire after the current Test series against Australia will bring the curtains down on the fascinating career of not only India's most successful captain but of a player who made news equally for his cricketing skills as well as off-field controversies.

Arguably one of the greatest players on the off-side, Ganguly's career has been a roller coaster ride since making a dream debut on the hallowed turf of the Lord's in 1996.

Ganguly's ability to polarise public opinion kept him in the media glare for most part of his career -- love him or hate him but you just could not ignore him.

His sudden decision to quit international cricket will again raise speculation on whether a compromise formula was indeed worked out by the selectors to ease him out gracefully. It will also trigger a debate on whether he still had some cricket left in him and also on the future of the other seniors in the team.

Whether he still has cricket left in him is a matter of conjecture, but the feisty 36-year-old Ganguly will always be remembered for his never-say-die spirit and his tenacity to overcome obstacles.

He had his weaknesses as a batsman, particularly against the short-pitched stuff, and his running between the wickets and his fielding were not of a very high standard. But few can argue of his batting genius. 'God on the off-side' was an apt expression for the 'Prince of Kolkata'.

Ganguly has scored 6888 runs in 109 Tests, with 15 hundreds. In one-dayers he has scored 11363 in 311 matches. He played 49 Tests as captain, the most by an Indian.

The 21 matches won during his tenure as captain is also an Indian record, and his win percentage of over 40 is the highest for anyone who has captained India in more than one Test.

Starting with a hundred on debut, Ganguly's Test average has never dipped below 40.

The elegant left hander had his own methods of leading the team and he was successful in creating a winning unit from a bunch of talented cricketers. He supported his players to the hilt and they responded by giving their best for the captain on the field.

Despite being a batsman who combined grace with perfect timing, his career had not managed to make much headway before being resurrected by a historic century on debut at Lord's in 1996. Later that year, he was promoted to the top of the order in ODIs and, along with Sachin Tendulkar, formed one of the most lethal opening pairs in the game.

When he took over the captaincy after the match-fixing exposes in 2000, he quickly proved to be an intuitive leader. Under his leadership, India started winning Test matches away, and played exceptionally well to reach the final of the 2003 World Cup in South Africa.

His career graph saw a dip in 2004 and from then on it has always been a struggle for him to retain his place in both the Test and ODI teams.

In Nagpur, his last-minute withdrawal played a part in Australia clinching the series and things went awry for the left hander with luck also deserting him. His famous spat with then coach Greg Chappell only compounded his misery and he was subsequently dropped from the team.

After being in the wilderness for some time, Ganguly forced his way back in the Test team but his gritty 30s in Karachi, when India succumbed to a humiliating defeat in early 2006, was not enough to help him retain his place in the team.

Ganguly was included in the Test squad for the away series in South Africa in 2006-2007. He ended as the highest run-scorer for India in that series and capped his stunning comeback with four half-centuries on his return to ODIs.

He continued his fine run in England, where he finished as the second highest scorer in Tests, and went on to hit back-to-back hundreds against Pakistan at home, the second of which was a glorious 239 in Bangalore.

Response to Allan Border

2008-10-03T09:55:00.000-07:00

In a recent interview that feature in Times of India (TOI) on October 3rd Edition, Allan Border commented on Indian selectors picking up 5 oldies in the side. He claimed this Indian Side to be a very very old side, 'Daddy's Army'. Even if I put aside the punn he made, just following pure statistics I found the present Australian team that is playing against the Board Pres. XI has 8 players in their line up who are above 30 years. So should we claim that this Australian side is a 'Grand Daddy's Army' ?

Singur - a boon in disguise!!!

2008-09-25T15:50:00.000-07:00

In recent days the main drama that is surrounding the politics of West Bengal is Singur and Nandigram. While Nandigram incident is hardly a past, Singur exercise has been revamped and up to a level where Tata Motors are threatening to pull out of the project. Incidentally, West Bengal's Leftist Govt. led by Buddhadeb Bhattacharya has given up usable farmlands to let Tata build this dream Nano Car project. About 1000 acres of land has been acquired and now the opposition Trinamool Congress led by Mamata Banerjee is up with a fanatic demand of return of 300 acres of land to the unwilling farmers from within the main factory area.

I am sure Mamata Banerjee's crazy demand not only portrays her characteristics but has been a reflection of her entire career. But I am not sure why the entire party do not have guts to go against her. If finally Tatas pull out of Singur the burden will fall on the TMC. I do not know but what political tricks they will show this deadlock as the failure of Leftist Govt. only. So as far as TMC goes the deal should have gone through with some decent compensation package, where TMC could have demanded to be present in some committee which will supervise the correct way to compensate the farmers. But till date TMC hasn't shown any sign of having any interest in breaking the deadlock, they have always come up as the party who wants to maximise in the political benefit out of this deadlock. Some of my dear friends who are anti-left, by fashion, will voice for Mamatadi since she is only one who is taking care of the interest of the farmers. I would still reason tall against them. Where was Mamatadi in Singur when the land was taken ? Only after the Nandigram episode ended and she found Leftist Govt. is again finding their grip in the soil, she triggered back with Singur. So should we term this movement as humanitarian or political. I guess any average IQ ed person will understand the difference and for those who are below that well they should not reason anything in life, period.

Now, coming back to the Leftist Govt. point of view. I am amazed when Govt. is not in control of the land that has been acquired then why is the Govt. trying to solve the problem. They should just put the ball in the court of the Tatas. Finally, at the end of the day Tatas will make insurmountable amount of profit out of this factory. So why are they not coming forward to any of these talks. Are they trying to portray they are just doing a favor on WB in building this factory. They should have shown some more solidarity. Are these the same Tatas that have built Tatanagar out of Jamshedpur?

I am not sure why the ancillory factory cannot be build in some other place than the main factory site. While many stalwarts have given the justification that is usually the case, so it should be now as well. Well there are lots of exception to this theory. Maruti factory in Pune has the two at different sites. Moreover, even if it is true there are so many new things in this Nano Project which have not been heard before like the price of the car. So will this different site concept does not deserve even a single consideration. I think this project is not a deal for ego, no matter who's ego, be it Ratan Tata's or Mamata Banerjee's or Buddhadeb Bhattacharya's. This project is above all and should have been dealt with some more solidarity and consciousness.

Moreover, the legal viewpoint of land acquisition is same all over India so the same trouble will be there in Karnataka and Gujarat as well. So why is the Central Govt. mum when the other states are offering 1000 acres land to attract the Tatas to pull out from Singur. Wont this be a blow to India as well? I think its high time we rise above our regional feelings and state wise politics and think of the India as a whole. India needs to rise and when the crisis comes Central Govt. cannot just take their hands off clean since this is the state whose ruling party has shown motion of no-confidence to them a couple fo months back.

Finally, even if we put the blames on all of out political and corporate parties for this extreme deadlock, we should consider the effect of Nano on India. A one lakh rupees car, who will and who will not buy this one. I would say almost 50% of people over age of 30 in urban India has the ability to spend one lakh for a car. Are Indian roads still ready for so many cars at a go. The answer is NO. One might argue that the cars will push the Govt. to build new roads and highways. I will ask where is the process? If everything would have went well for Tatas, Nano would have hit the roads by October 2008. Are our roads still good enough to handle this pressure? Is there any long term plan which will be start executing from now in phases, not only in urban India but also in connecting them ?

Ultimately, a major question to the world. Is the world ready for a cheaper car which runs on gasoline, in this age of rising gasoline prices and lowering of the supply?

I think we should find these answers first before we get hit by a Nano or sulk over the rotten deal in Singur. I am just a commoner and an average IQ ed Indian, what are our stalwarts thinking?

English, August

2008-09-14T20:32:00.000-07:00

I never thought that a story can be told in such a leisurely fashion, with nothing particular plot in mind, just narrating the day to day incidence of someone at some job at some remote place in some country. Especially if the country is India, the job is that of an IAS and the person is none other than Upamanyu Chatterjee. His 'English, August' is one of the most relaxed narratives I have ever read. It does not rush through a plot to tell or some moral message to convey or some high voltage drama destined to be scripted in an upcoming Bollywood movie. Its just about daily life of an IAS officer in a remote town in central India. The story should be a reflection of Chatterjee's own life as an IAS.

'English, August' revolves round the main protagonist Agastya Sen (August), who is in this town of Central India to get his IAS training as a BDO in an Indian summer. The author tells us about the experience of a bachelor like Agastya in a god forsaken town of Madna and relentlessly judged by the married bosses and their wives. Overall its a nice time pass story to be read, specially by people like me who are in their 20s and still have not "settled down".

I am also looking forward to read the sequel to this, "The mammaries of the welfare state".

Calcutta Chromosome!!

2008-09-14T20:19:00.001-07:00

I just finished reading the book 'Calcutta Chromosome' by Amitav Ghosh. This is my second read by this author. This book was written much before he wrote 'The Hungry Tide'.

This book deals about the story of Ronald Ross and his discovery of malaria being caused by anopheles bite. The author tries to link up the discovery of Ross as the contribution from a group of mystic people who prefers to stay silent in their operation and where up to researching a more complicated use of malaria virus in curing diseases like syphilis.

Over all the story is very readable and thrilling, specially the moments where slowly the role of this mystic society were uncovered by the two main protagonist of the story (Murugan and urmila). But at some places the plots where too obnoxious and it became evident that they were set up by force to justify the impression of being coincidental. The role of Antar and Tara as revealed at the end was a sudden shock.

It was nice experience reading this book, but I did not enjoyed it as anyway near I found 'The Hungry Tide'. The next one in the line is 'The Glass Palace". I have already heard good stuff about this one and really looking forward to read it.

Durga Puja - Missing Home !!!

2008-08-18T11:46:00.000-07:00

For all Bongs (Bengalis to the world), Durga Puja is not only an annual ritual, when you want to spend time with your dear friends and relatives, but also a celebration of new. People used to paint their houses, buy new utensils and clothes before the Puja. The last one is still prevalent, but I think its mostly now a days another routine excuse to visit South City Mall or Forum in Calcutta to buy some more clothes, which anyways we buy year round. But for Bongs who are not staying in Calcutta or other Metropolis in India or abroad, to the Bongs from rural Bengal Puja is still the sole occasion for them to buy new clothes for them and their families and repair their houses, if needed.

Critics often mention that urban Bongs are slowly diffusing the real celebration of the Puja in their so-called busy schedule of life and night-life. It seems, they spend these five days of the Puja in the same manner they will spend any other weekends, when they get time to hangout with friends or family. They might add that Puja comes and goes almost perfunctorily in the lives of these Bongs. I am not sure how and what to reply to these critics and intellectual stalwarts. But one thing which I feel is that time changes at its own pace so does people. Durga Puja has always been special to people of India especially to us who are acclaimed as Bongs and will continue to do so for times to come. We celebrate Puja all over the world now. Wherever Bongs have spread, Puja has spread too.

For instance, many of us still awaits the publication of the annual 'Pujabarshiki', which is a collection of new novels, stories and poems written by noted authors and poets of contemporary Bengali literature. Puja is a celebration of new, so this collection of publications includes most of the new writings by these authors. There used to be similar craze with the music industry as well. Before Puja there were several new albums from famous singers and music directors of different genre, that were launched in order to mark the occasion.

Coming back to Pujabarshikis, we still buy them online from abroad and try to finish them up before the publication of the next years' version. Although some of us are shameless enough to not been able to finish the last year's publication, but still will be eager to buy the new edition with new stories. To us it is a passion, a stimulus to joy and celebration named 'Durga Puja'. I am not sure whether there is any parallel to this same among any other over the world, but if it is there should be handful of events like this which has this enduring impression among us which makes these five days of the year leave us enough joy and ecstasy for the remaining 360 days of the year to wait for the next event.

For me Puja has always been very special. We always used to go to our ancestral home in Matiari, Nadia where we still manage to celebrate our own puja. Unlike the Pujas in Calcutta, the Pujas celebrated at home are vastly different. Here the rituals are the main attraction and we need to work for organizing those. Since childhood we have been trained to participate in different rituals starting from ornamentation of the deity, before the day of reception, to de-ornamentation on the day of immersion. Durga Puja also marks the gathering of our entire family and close relatives at our ancestral home. These seven days we stay as a unit, share our lives and important events that happened through. Since most of us don't get much time to finally meet up in person throughout most of the year to follow, so Puja is an unique opportunity to share our lives with each other. Even at this age of emails and cellphones you will be amazed to learn how much we missed to communicate to one another about our day to day life.

Now, for the last 4 years I have been in USA for my PHD, I have missed this occasion to visit home. One cannot imagine how much I sulk and miss in these four days over here while my entire family celebrates Puja as usual. They miss me too, but I miss them the most.

"Oh Calcutta ! " -- Vir Sanghvi on Calcutta

2008-08-14T13:14:00.001-07:00

Vir Sanghvi

Oh, not to be in Calcutta

Of the last three weekends, this is the first that I will not be spending in Calcutta. As much as I love the City of Joy, this is not, on balance, such a bad thing. I spent last weekend stuck in an endless traffic jam. And the weekend before that, I watched openmouthed as the Calcutta police shut down much of the centre of the city and inconvenienced thousand of citizens.

Let me explain. On the weekend before last, I was part of the press party that accompanied A B Vajpayee to Calcutta. As we drove into the city, I noticed that the roads were suspiciously free of traffic. On the bypass, there were no cars even on the other side of the road. Park Circus was bereft of vehicles. Park Street had been shut down for the benefit of our motorcade. So, it turned out, had Chowringhee. And Red Road. And the entire route to Raj Bhavan.

When the prime minister left Raj Bhavan for his public meeting -- half an hour before it, actually -- a similar exercise was undertaken and whole roads sealed off. All this, I was told, was done unilaterally by the Calcutta police in the name of VIP security.

As somebody who was fortunate enough to be part of the VIP motorcade, I have to say that I was put to no inconvenience -- rather, others were inconvenience because of us. Motorists were stranded for hours, some went round and round in search of alternative routes and at hotels, they were advising guests to leave for the airport four hours in advance.

All this because the prime minister was in town.

The following Saturday, I was back in Calcutta to moderate the Calcutta Club debate. This time we should be okay, I thought to myself, Vajpayee is in Lucknow. But I had forgotten something: Sonia Gandhi was in town.

Even so, I was not unduly perturbed. Sonia travels in New Delhi with minimal security. She uses two unmarked Ambassadors and no uniformed policemen are associated with her protection detail. So, there should be no problem.

No way. That may be how Sonia moves around in New Delhi, but things are very different in Calcutta. On Saturday morning, she attended a Spastic Society function at the Taj Bengal. The overzealous Calcutta police promptly shut down the entire route from Raj Bhavan to the Taj and flooded the hotel's lobby with a hundred policemen. Nor were they shy about admitting this. They used the press to advise motorists to take alternative routes because they were shutting the roads for over an hour.

That evening, on my way to the Calcutta Club I noticed that police pickets were preventing cars from entering AJC Bose Road. As you can't get to the club without traversing AJC Bose Road, I wondered how anybody would make it to the debate -- and inevitably, I silently cursed Sonia's security.

It turned out I was wrong. The disruption had nothing to do with Sonia. AJC Bose Road was not only closed, it was also jammed. The cars that had made it on to the road through a variety of devious routes found themselves stuck for hours. We couldn't start the debate till an hour and a half after the advertised time. And even then, guests kept trickling in throughout the first few speeches.

And why was AJC Bose Road jammed/closed? It turned out that a procession celebrating the tercentenary of the founding of the Khalsa Panth had decided to wander through the centre of the city during rush hour. The obliging police force had promptly closed all the roads and stopped traffic.

I couldn't help feeling sorry for the folks at the Calcutta Club. They had already postponed the debate by a week fearing traffic disruptions during Vajpayee's visit. They had spent sleepless nights hoping that Sonia's security would not lead to road closures and jams.

But in the end, it wasn't VIP security that got them. Right there, in the centre of Calcutta, they were done in by a parade of Sardarjis.

I recall these instances not to make the usual points about VIP security. Yes, such security is intrusive and a nuisance, but equally, there is no denying that some VIPs need protection. For instance, Rajiv Gandhi would still be alive today if he had been granted SPG protection.

The trick is to find a balance that allows you to protect the VIP without needlessly inconveniencing everybody else. It is not that difficult a balance to achieve. They have found it in England and the United States. And even in New Delhi -- where hundreds of jokers on whom nobody would waste a bullet get security -- traffic disruption is at a minimum. The Delhi police only stop traffic for the prime minister (not for Sonia or L K Advani or anybody else) and then too, only for seven to 10 minutes at a maximum. A police vehicle travels ahead of the motorcade, temporarily clears the roads, and then, after the motorcade has passed, it is traffic as usual for everyone. There are no half hour closure or diversions.

So my point is not about VIP security, it is about Calcutta. Why do the Calcutta Police adopt such extreme measures and treat citizens with such contempt when there is a simpler way of doing things?

Off the record, the SPG will tell you why the Calcutta police behave like this. If you want to stop traffic for only a few minutes, then you need to be well organised. You need a high level of coordination between police parties all along the route and you need to be certain your advance vehicles will reach 10 minutes before the motorcade. As far as the Calcutta police are concerned, this is too much trouble. Why bother with all these complicated arrangements when you can just shut down the whole city for a full hour? That way, there is no danger of going wrong.

It is wrong to assume that policemen do this at the behest of visiting VIPs. I know of at least one instance when Vajpayee looked out of his car and asked, "Kyon bhai, aaj koi hartal hai kya (Is there a strike today)?" He had to be told that he was the reason the road was empty.

I suppose the same is true of the deputy prime minister of Vietnam. Two years ago, I missed a flight because the intrepid Calcutta police shut down the bypass for a full four on the grounds that the Vietnamese dignitary was due to pass that way. I doubt very much if the poor deputy prime minister asked for this kind of security -- who in Calcutta would want to kill him anyhow? But, like all other VIPs, he was at the mercy of the Calcutta police.

Just as the citizens of Calcutta are.

I've never worked out why the police treat the people of Calcutta with such contempt. I used to think that it was a hangover of the colonial past. But there is another factor to consider. It isn't just VIP movement that causes traffic disruptions. A more frequent cause is demonstrations, morchas or michhils. The parading Sardarjis did not stop traffic because they were VIPs. They did so because it has become the fundamental right of any assembly of more than 20 people to bring life in Calcutta to a standstill.

I am willing to concede Calcutta sees more demonstrations than any other city. But the fact remains that all cities have their share of morchas and michhils. They just cope much better. In Mumbai, the police will not allow a procession to disrupt traffic in the city centre during rush hour: They will suggest that the morcha be held a few hours earlier, when the roads are less crowded. They will also refuse to stop traffic for a procession. If a morcha has to cross the road, they will allow one batch of demonstrators to do so, hold the rest back, let traffic run for a few minutes, and then allow the next batch to go across. This way, disruption is minimised.

In Calcutta, on the other hand, any procession can be held anywhere, at any time. There is no question of letting demonstrators cross the road in batches; they have right of way. All this is made worse by a peculiarly Bengali innovation: the propensity to agitate in single file. Everywhere else in the world, demonstrators crowd together. In Calcutta, they walk in single file. This way, even a small group of 200 people can form a long line and cause major traffic disruption.

What unites these two phenomena that so inconvenience ordinary people? How can a city that bends over backwards for rulers also shut itself down to please every roadside agitator? How can the egalitarian stoppages and the proletarian disruptions be reconciled?

I have a theory. When we associate a fawning respect for VIPs with monarchies and colonial societies, we forget there is -- or used to be -- another kind of society where the rulers demanded and received absolute respect: the so-called communist republics. They would close Red Square for Leonid Brezhnev and use batons to clear the streets for Nikolai Ceausescu.

West Bengal is not a Communist republic. But I suspect it draws its confused view of how to do things from some long defunct communist regime. Rule in the name of the people and let them agitate, but never forget the people must serve the rulers.

I can't really object to that. Much of West Bengal voted for the Communist Party of India-Marxist, and those that did deserve what they've got. But what about the rest of us? What about resolutely non-CPI-M Calcutta?

Our lot, I guess, is to suffer. Perhaps one day when the CPI-M follows its east European counterparts into obscurity, its epitaph will read: 'Nobody moved but we passed."

Passed into oblivion, if we're lucky.

Vir Sanghvi

The Hungry Tide - A journey to Sunderban !!!!

2008-08-11T13:50:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading 'The Hungry Tide' by Amitav Ghosh. Among the Indian authors who have become very famous in international English literature, Ghosh is a noted one.

The present novel is about two people who hold their ancestry to Bengali families but are brought up in different societies. The male protagonist 'Kanai' is born and brought up in Calcutta and relocated to Delhi for professional reasons. His female counterpart 'Piya' is brought up in Seattle by the parents whose only reason to stay together was their daughter. The story unfolds from these two strangers, who are both to some extent 'self-centered', making their headway to Canning and then to further south in the tide country of 'Sunderban'. While Kanai was visiting his aunt Nilima, Piya was on her research on river dolphins and their habitat in the tide country. Ghosh spells his mastery in story-telling by going back and forth between the events happening to Piya and Kanai as they proceeded through different routes but to meet at the end at Lusibari, one of the two hypothetical islands in the story which resembles slightly to Gosaba in reality.

The story takes its turn through different human emotions and the uncanny similarity in behavior of two pair of individuals Kanai-Moyna and Piya-Fokir, even though they are really from different worlds which never leads to one another. In fact, in the story Moyna is married to Fokir, who again happens to be the son of Kusum, a childhood friend of Kanai. The backbone of the story is Piya's expedition for the riverine dolphins, inter twinned with Kanai's search for Nirmal's (Nilima's husband) involvements with the settlers in one of the islands in Sunderban, against whom the Government had taken brutal action in the name of wild-life preservation. While Kanai found that most that involvement of Nirmal was related to his soft corner for Kusum, Piya discovered that her findings about dolphins matches with the colloquial god 'bon-bibi' and her legendary messengers.

The novel proceeds through the turns of human emotions and rationalism, often putting both in dramatic confrontations. Finally, a devastating cyclone and a near death experience for both Piya and Kanai yields them in changing their way of life and accommodating others emotion in their life. The story leaves us in a open end situation, where the reader might keep extrapolating and interpreting the next moves in their own way.

Having never read Ghosh before, this was a refreshing experience for me. Not only he details the plots in his writings but also enriches them by using real incidences and references. After reading this, I became to some extent familiar with the tide country which is just a couple of hours away from Calcutta.

Saving Money ... is a hoax !!!!

2008-07-30T11:03:00.000-07:00

Since the day I started earning, my parents, close friends and relatives always used a phrase against my spendthrift nature .. 'SAVE MONEY FOR FUTURE' . Even though I have been silently indifferent to their advices but, somehow, subconsciously I have always tried to follow them. But how can one deal with some 'bad days' when you happened to face one of the most unusual incidences life can offer.

On July 2, 2008 I was on my way back to Socorro from Albuquerque, the nearby city about 80 miles north of my university town in New Mexico (Nuevo Mejico). Just after finishing my grocery from an Indian store, I went to put them into the trunk of my Nissan 200SX. To my surprise, my ignition key broke and half of it stayed inside the trunk lock and the other half in my hand. For a moment I was at a loss of thoughts. I only can think of calling 911 (for the cops) to help me out. But then I thought of my AAA membership and called them up for a locksmith. They responded quite late and I had to call up a local locksmith who promised to come very soon to fix the situation, but at the cost of $200. "Great Lord !" so much for just a key, which under normal circumstances would have cost me no more than $3. Just because it is broken and its an emergency that I have to pay so much.

On the other hand, who could have imagined that the ignition key can break and under such an unusual circumstances. Is this a Cosmic Connection !! To what?? Nothing great happened to me other than losing some unusual dollars for a stupid reason. Ha ah!! For a moment it was tragic to me, but then it seemed like a well versed comedy. Think about this, how many on earth would have faced or will ever face such an unusual event that occurred to me. Of course, we all know from our great statisticians that there is always a finite, even though low, but non-zero probability to every happenings in life, but still I will claim chances are feeble. So should I consider myself as a (un)lucky one or otherwise?

It does not feel good to lose money under any circumstances, but it was different this time. This was one incidence that I will remember throughout my life as the most unprecedented event when the world seems to be turned against me, but still not leaving me in some bad taste at the end. As Hindu philosophers say there is a balance of good and bad times, so such a mishap may be balanced with a lucky 'Cosmic Connection'. I am waiting for it ... wondering 'in what form' ???

Shame on taste-less blogging !

2008-05-17T09:32:00.000-07:00

I have started writing blog in the last year. I think it is a nice medium of documenting your thoughts and views on different aspects of life and surroundings. If someone else manages to visit your blog, your blog will represent you as a person.

Aamir Khan and Mr. Amitabh Bachchan are quite respected as human being and their thoughts are valued as that of a dignified citizen of India. They have started to blog in their respective websites. Their primary goal is to keep in touch with their huge fan followings and write on some recent issues which interests them.

Recently, Aamir Khan commented on his dog being named after Shahrukh Khan. Big B also took a dig at SRK criticising the falling TRP ratings of SRK's new game show. To be very frank, I am personally not a big fan of SRK. Usually, I will bet my voice arguing against most of his moves. But this time I must say, isn't there any other topic that worries these two stalwarts of Indian Cinema than SRK ? Or are they just using their blogs to publicize their images, controversies? If the later is true, I would like to suggest we should stop visiting their blogs. Its a shame on us, that our so-called great guys are behaving in such childish, taste-less and ill-humored manner. We, the people of India, tirelessly criticize our politicians. We say they are corrupt, villains of Indian democracy. What will we term these so-called 'Idols', whom we tirelessly view on the silver-screen, follow their views ? It is due to us, their movies gets hit or dumped. But see how really they fare being proper human being. Instead of writing on how to tackle with lot of difficult issues in the rising India, or writing on something which will be of any use to upcoming generation, they are just writing to benefit themselves and their petty egos. So why are they claimed as public figures. They are just narrow minded professionals and deserve to be treated with no more respect than that. I wonder, if they even charge someone to write their blogs. That will be the height of insanity.

I generally have links of both of their blogs. After this I am deleting the links, so that no one feels encouraged to visit their sites from mine. This is minimum I can do. But I really would like to voice sincere resistance against these pseudo-idealistic people who are holding high respect and reverence in our minds and hearts.

Rediff News :- "Why Dr Binayak Sen must be released" by Apoorvanand

2008-05-17T09:29:00.000-07:00

This is an article I came across in Rediff News. I wanted to write on it. But could not do any better than the author himself. So I am just copying him as it is with proper reference.
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Dr Binayak Sen seems to have caught the imagination of the mainstream media in India at last. But one has to remember that he has spent a year in a Chhattisgarh jail.

An international award by the Global Heath Council named after Jonathan Mann to Dr Sen for his untiring work in the field of people's health and human rights followed by a strong appeal by 22 Nobel Laureates demanding his release seems to have convinced the media that there is something extraordinary about Dr Sen's arrest and that the issue needs to be probed.

Dr Sen, a paediatrician by training, was arrested on May 14 last year by the Chhattisgarh police under the dreaded Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act and Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, which are in many ways more draconian than the now repealed Prevention of Terrorist Activities Act.

The police claimed it had evidence to prove that Dr Sen was actively helping out Maoists by providing them logistic support. The only piece of evidence they have been able to show till date is the fact that he made 33 visits to Narayan Sanyal, an old, ailing Maoist leader in jail. They were perfectly legal visits and allowed under the jail manual, not something clandestine. Sanyal was suffering from many diseases and required regular medical support.

As a civil right activist and doctor it was not unusual for Dr Sen to come into contact with extremist Maoists, especially since he was in Chhattisgarh, which is reeling under the bloody conflict between the state and the Maoists.

His plea for bail in the Supreme Court was rejected, which did not find it necessary to verify the claims by the state counsel. It agreed with the state that a free Binayak was a threat to the national security in Chhattisgarh.

The state is a dangerous place for civil right activists. It is the most recent destination for rich capitalists eyeing its mineral rich land and want it to be made available. How do you do it unless the tribals are driven out of their lands?

This is a state where governance is traditionally and criminally tilted in favour of moneylenders and the land and forest mafia. And welfare schemes aimed at the poor, especially the tribals, do not trickle down.

In such a scenario there is bound to be an emergence of a movement for justice. It does not necessarily have to be non-violent as the exploitation of the poor, who have been forced to be part of the developmental state, is extremely violent. National prosperity stands in striking contrast to the increasing impoverishment of the tribals.

Chhattisgarh was fertile land for the Maoist movement as the state failed shamefully to make the mechanism of justice work for the poor. Its loyalty to rich, national and multinational companies creates a compelling urge to eliminate anyone coming in the way. A report by an expert group set by the Planning Commission to look at the developmental challenge in extremist affected areas, says, 'there is, however, failure of governance, which has multiple dimensions and is not confined to the inefficiency of the delivery systems only. It is not fortuitous that overwhelmingly large sections of bureaucracy/technocracy constituting the delivery systems come from the landowning dominant castes or middle classes, with their attachment to ownership of property, cultural superiority and a state of mind which rationalises and asserts their existing position of dominance in relation to others. This influences their attitudes, behaviour and performance.'

'Internal displacement caused by irrigation/mining/industrial projects, resulting in landlessness and hunger, is a major cause of distress among the poor, especially the Adivasis. It is well known that 40 per cent of all the people displaced by dams in the last 60 years are forest-dwelling Adivasis� The law and administration provides no succour to displaced people and often treats them with hostility since the displaced people tend to settle down again in some forest region, which is prohibited by law. The Naxalite movement has come to the aid of such victims of enforced migration in the teeth of the law.'

The report further states that the Adivasis displaced from Orissa and Chhattisgarh, settling in the forests of Andhra Pradesh would have been easily evicted by officials but for the presence of the Naxalite movement.

Suffering from continuing land loss and displacement, dwindling livelihood resources, acute malnutrition and pitched against a formidable combine of profit-hungry companies and a callous administration, Adivasis found some solace from the Maoists. The Maoists therefore are not the cause but a result of the miseries of the Adivasis.

Instead of addressing these issues, the state took recourse to a militarist shortcut by helping in creation of an armed campaign called Salwa Judum which vowed to eliminate the Maoists. It employed Adivasis in its ranks, most of the times forcibly. It is not a coincidence that Salwa Judum started days after the signing of contracts between the state and some companies.

Salwa Judum is a law unto itself. Though it is claimed to be a peaceful people's movement in reality it is a State-sponsored peoples' militia which marches into villages, forces people to join or burns their houses, destroys their cattle, livelihood and drives them out. More than 640 villages have been evacuated in this drive. Lakhs of Adivasis have been forcibly removed from their habitations and some 40,000 of them live in Salwa Judum camps set up by the government, living in hellish conditions as another state-sponsored Administrative Reform Committee report found out. The committee was lead by senior Congress leader Veerappa Moily.

The Supreme Court was forced to express its displeasure of Salwa Judum by observing that the government cannot arm people and instigate them to kill others. Defending Salwa Judum was not a state lawyer but counsel for the central government who made an astonishing admission that the state police were unequal to the might of the Maoists. They were employing as special police officers only those who have been at some point, in some way been victimised by the Maoists, he pleaded. It was extraordinary for a state to openly defend an army of revenge.

Dr Sen's consistent opposition to Salwa Judum is the real cause of the state's ire. It was all good and rosy till he confined himself to providing health services to the poor. In fact, the government had invited him to advise on its health programmes.

Binayak Sen was a gold medallist from the prestigious Christian Medical College, Vellore, Tamil Nadu. He decided to leave his teaching job at Jawaharlal University in New Delhi to move to Chhattisgarh in 1978 to work with the legendary trade union leader Shankar Guha Niyogi, who built up the formidable Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha. Niyogi was later killed by the industry mafia. Dr Sen moved around in villages, establishing clinics and providing healthcare to those who were damned by State-run systems.

But as Dr P Zachariah, his teacher at CMC, says, "His interest in civil activism grew out of witnessing malnutrition deaths among children. The lack of governance worried him deeply. Chhattisgarh is a complicated state with a complicated history. The government did not meet the people's needs and it was easy for Naxalites to exploit that. The government found it difficult to deal with militants who operated out of dense forests and took a very repressive stance. In the end, it led to the creation of Salwa Judum."

"The police machinery too was getting large funds to fight the Naxalites. In the dark days that followed, people began to disappear. As a member of the People's Union for Civil Liberties, Binayak couldn't help but get involved. The PUCL was constantly approached by villagers saying that their relatives had disappeared. The police had to be approached, FIRs had to be filed, and Binayak began to help," Dr Zacharaiah said.

Areas of disagreement between Dr Sen and the state government were bound to emerge. He could not have approved of measures like Salwa Judum. His work as the general secretary of the state's PUCL became a pain for the government. He was also staunchly anti-communal and critical of the activities of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad in Adivasi-dominated areas. Otherwise a quiet man, this English-speaking doctor was increasingly becoming a cause of worry for the state government. He was, like other law-abiding activists, a critic of unlawful encounters by the police and thus an impediment to national and multinational companies. He needed to be silenced and removed from the scene.

This was done by the state symmetrically, with an active help from the local media. In April and May last year, the Chhattisgarh police stared a vilification campaign against him when he was away in Kolkata to see his ailing mother. He was declared an absconding Naxalite doctor who had fled to evade arrest.

Dr Sen's brother circulated an open letter telling the world that he was not absconding, had gone to visit his mother and the police was in fact indulging in this vilification only to justify his arrest. His fears came true. Dr Sen returned to the state capital Raipur and was immediately arrested under the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

These laws do not need actual acts of conspiracy to make you criminal, even a perception that you may, even in future entertain thoughts which would be potentially against the state interest is sufficient reason for arrest.

Appeals by several civil right activists and individuals demanding the repeal of such absurd laws and the release of Dr Sen have been treated with disdain by the Chhattisgarh and central governments.

There is a strong belief in the establishment that all civil right activists are nothing but a respectable cover for extremists of all kinds, including the Maoists. They very conveniently ignore the criticism of Maoist violence by these individuals. What is disturbing is that if this liberal middle space is gone, there would not be a counter voice to violence.

It is only appropriate that the Global Health Council chose Dr Sen for its Jonathan Mann award. His international colleagues cutting across disciplines have asked the state and central governments to create situation for him to be able to receive this award in person which would be given in a public ceremony in the US on May 29. Given the arrogant insensitivity of our state institutions, it is unlikely that the appeals would be heard.

Can we expect our judiciary to help redeem the promise the Constitution makes to the people to safeguard their right to hold opinions and express it even if goes against the official line the state would like all of us to follow?

Apoorvanand is a literary critic and a Reader in Hindi at Delhi University

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Ref :- http://specials.rediff.com/news/2008/may/16guest1.htm

Jodha-Akbar - a looong love story !!

2008-04-23T08:05:00.000-07:00

Recently, 'Jodha Akbaar' was among the major releases from Bollywood. It was Ashutosh Gowarikar's 3rd venture on films. After Lagaan and Swades it was time for him to try with a periodical with Hrithik Roshan. I like A.G's previous two films. Although length is a major issue in his film, but Lagaan was quite justified to be long and Swades' theme was excellent.

Jodha Akbar ran into controversies regarding the lack of historical evidence of existence of Jodha Bai as Akbar's wife. There were demonstrations all over the country, specially in Rajasthan and the film was banned in two or three states. A.G fought back referring to his team of researchers and also sighted the example of 'Mughal-e-Azam' showcasing Jodha as Akbar's wife and still being in the epitome of success in Bollywood. I ran into Wiki quiet a number of times to verify 'Who is Jodha?'. The answer is : Jodha Bai's original name was Heera Kunwari and she was converted to Islam before her marriage with Akbar and got her new name Mariam-uz-Zamani. So most of the historical chronicles in Islam refers her by this name. She was indeed the daughter of Raja Bharmal of Amer. She never used the name Jodha during her lifetime. According to Wiki, "Jodha" was used for Akbar's wife for the first time by Lieutenant-Colonel James Tod, in his book Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan.

But even if the above fact is to be believed the content of the film 'Jodha Akbar' can be debated, since in the story Jodha neither changes her religion nor her name, after marriage with Akbar. In fact, this marriage is referred in the history books as an example of Akbar's tolerant relgious policies and makes him so different from Aurangzeb. If Akbar could have only married Jodha after changing her religion, why is he so much hyped then being tolerant to other religion ?

Anyways, I think its a debate due to lack of resonable amount of references. So one can look into the movie as a historical fiction and can value it on its power of story telling and technicality ! Hence, lets move to the actual movie assuming the story is real.

A.G.'s Lagaan got the nomination for Academy Awards. Since then he has been in limelight. I believe this is one director who has the courage to script what he wants to present. But Jodha Akbar seemed to me as losing some tracks here and there. Ultimately I would like to ask the question what was the story basically about ? If it was a story of Akbar-Jodha love and its consequence to Akbar's reign, then I will definitely question about spending so much time in the begining showing Akbar's relation with Bairam Khan. After all nothing was told in that segment about Akbar's character which has any resemblance to his dealings with Jodha issue. I agree if you are scripting a historical you should mention briefly about the background. But I thought that was the reason A.G. had involved Amitabh Bachchan as the narrator. Thats what A.B did in Lagaan and also in the past in 'Shatranj ke Khiladi', his sole experience with Satyajit Ray. So one would wonder why A.G. did not use him properly and cut the very essential length of the film short.

I must say it was a long film. Personally, I am not against long films, if it is building up the story. In fact, I just watched the movie 'Once upon a time in America' casting Robert de Niro, which was way past 3 hours and still it was engrossing. But sometimes in Jodha Akbar I felt the length was getting too much and there were lose ends that could have been eliminated to make the story more coherent and tight. I am being too critical about this, since A.G. is one of the best directors we have in Bollywood and if he wants to compete with world cinema and be there in Oscar once again, I think these lose ends matter. I would not have been so critical if this movie was made by Vikram Bhatt or David Dhawan. Its quite an entertainer. So full marks in that category. Moreover, the gorgeous sets and beautiful Aishwarya steals the show. So I would say Jodha Akbar is good, but not as good as Lagaan or even Swades.

People might find my views slightly debatable, please comment. These are my views on the subject and after all its my blog .... :-) .. so enjoy reading.....

'Memento' is worth its name !

2008-04-21T18:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I watched this movie 'Memento' directed by Christopher Nolan. Memento, which is derived from Jonathan Nolan's 'Memento Mori' features Guy Pierce in the prime role. First of all, I am not a big fan of Guy Pierce. In fact, he stars in 'LA Confidential' and sort of steals the stage from two of my favourite actors Crowe and Spacey.

But this movie is much more that Guy Pierce. He is not at all important, infact anyone could have acted in this role. Wiki says that director approached Brad Pitt for this role before. One could really ask 'Why?'. He should have charged him much more that Guy. In this film, even Jim Carrey could have carried out this ultra-complex character of Leonard Shelby. Shelby is an investigator for an insurance company, who is sufering from short-term memory loss ( a simpler term for 'anterograde amnesia'), but also invetigating about the second among the two guys involved with his wife's murder. So he devices a complicated system of using a polaroid camera and leaving important notes as tattoo all over his body so that when he loses memory he atleast can remind him about the mission he is on. But he is sometimes tricked by his close friend to do something which has nothing to do with his wife's murder. Teddy, a cop and friend of Leonard, reminds him that he has already killed his wife's both murderers. At this point, he decides to kill Teddy and keeps a note for himself that Teddy is indeed his wife's murderer. Finally, he kills Teddy and lives on in his never ending mission.

This may be the end of the story, but this is the begining of the movie. The craft of the movie is divided into two narrations one which runs in a forward direction(in black and white film) and the one in reverse direction ( in color version). But they both meet at the end. I must say I did not read the description of the movie in the wiki before I started to watch it. I also suggest it is fun in this way. Later on, I verified with wiki what I got out of the movie, and was more or less on the right track. This is a lovely movie for those who really loves to criticize technicality of film-making and adores experimentation with the way the story to be revealed. I liked this movie, but also had to watch the entire movie without skipping a scene to really get it. This was more of an assignment than just a real past-time. So, beware trespassers !

Couple of years back, I watched another lovely movie called 'Run Lola Run', that was also a theme movie of showing multiple lives n every instances. But if I start about this now it will be another episode.. so some other day...

Manali to Chandigarh - truth is stranger than fiction !!

2008-03-11T12:03:00.000-07:00

"Where is snow ?" Guddu exclaimed. He is my dear brother and we all were in the narrow-gauge train from Kalka to Shimla. It was December of 1987 and we were a party of eight people to visit Shimla, Kulu and Manali. Just before we left from Calcutta, a close relative of ours reported that Shimla was having heavy snowfall and that the main priest of Shimla Kalibari had actually come down to the plains due to the heavy snow shower. So far our train was almost close to Shimla but still no sign of any snow. I remember we were mocking at the white paints on the conifers, which the forest division put on to keep a count or something, as the sign of snow. Upon our arrival in Shimla we could not find a single trace of snow. Ma got very upset with the bright sun and wanted to verify whether that priest ever existed or not.

Although there wasn't any snow at Shimla but still the cold was not ignorable. We have a habit of chatting on the dinner table long after the food is over without washing hands. That caused us immense trouble in Shimla. Long after chatting when we went to wash our hands none of the spices agreed to wash off and the severe cold water prevented us from using it for long. That was when we started using tissues to wipe off the hand, needless to mention that Ma and Dida didn't like it at all and waited eagerly for the morning to apply warm water supply from hotel. Nothing dramatic happened in the following two days we stayed in Shimla, and the Mall was not very attractive as compared to the one we used to visit in Darjeeling.

We left for Manali on day four. While we were getting close to Manali, it started to snow and we could feel that the bus-tyres had been screeching over traces of snow blocks on the road. You can understand being from the Gangetic plains of Calcutta how a trace snow can excite us and we all were indeed. We checked into Hotel Beas, which was just on the banks of river Beas ('Bipasha' in Bangla), one of the five rivers that makes Punjab the "land of five rivers" (Chenab, Jhelum, Sutlej, Beas and Ravi; the five tributaries of Indus). From our hotel rooms we can hear the gushing sound of the river flowing by. There was a bridge on the river, just beside the hotel, which you need to cross to go to Rohtang Pass, a lovely skying area in Gahrwal Himalayas. In fact, that road straight leads to Leh through one of the highest vehicular pass in world at a height of 5500m. Our plans for Rohtang Pass had a severe blow when it started to snow madly from the following evening. I witnessed the first snowfall in my life. We all went out in the snow and enjoyed the 3 feet of snow of the ground, it was an exceptional experience. We were taking pictures of anything and everything around. The snow didn't stop for about two days. It recorded the maximum snow ever in Manali and Shimla. The electricity went off after the first day, we used candles for our rooms. Thousands of tourists were stranded off in Manali as the road down to Kulu was covered with snow. The cities of Shimla and Manali were cut-off from the rest of the world for about three days and it continued to be so. These three days we spent mostly in appreciating the snowy nature but also some panic of not been able to left with our own will to go down to Kulu. According to the travel plans we had to catch the train back to Calcutta from Hardwar on January 4 and we were still stranded in Manali on December 29. Baba and Dadu were panicking a lot, I know now how it is like to be in-charge of a trip when the prospects of the plans are at stake, but back then me and my brother were not at all interested in that and wished we could hang on forever in this heavenly atmosphere. Finally, we got the good news that a convoy of cars will try to leave Manali for Kulu on 30th and we managed to be in one of the Maruti Gypsy's among the four. The driver was a ex-army man and very proficient in mountain roads with past experience of cutting the way through the snow. So our car headed the convoy. Every now and then we had to stop and cut off the snow from the road and move forward. No civic facilities had yet reached to clear the road off snow. It took us about five hours to come down to Kulu from Manali through a road which should take no more than 45 minutes in a normal day. But it was fun for us and an experience worth cherishing for life. We reached Kulu and checked into a hotel, while Baba went to enquire for the possible way to reach Hardwar in time. There was a bus leaving from Kulu next morning to Hardwar, so we should reach Hardwar on Dec 31, and stay there for three days in our flat over there and then board the train on Jan 4. To all of us it appeared to be the end of the adventure and feeling of reinstating order in the tour. But nature had something more to offer us.

The next day (December 31), we boarded the bus to Hardwar from Kulu and were enjoying a pleasant ride down the mountains to the plains of Hardwar. Suddenly the bus came to a halt. After some inspection we figured out that the driver of the bus took a shorter route to reach Mandi (a town on the way to Hardwar) early, not knowing enough that it had a damaged bridge on the way. So we were stranded once again in front of a damaged bridge with no way forward but to go back and take the usual road to Mandi. All the passengers were expecting that we have to go back, but suddenly our intelligent driver decided that the stream flowing below the bridge was not deep enough and he can see the scratches from the tyre of a truck on ice. That meant some vehicles actually had crossed the stream before. So the driver took the bus into the water hoping that the level was too shallow and we can easily reach the other side of the stream. But it did not work for us. Within a moment we found ourselves stuck in the middle of the stream with ice-cold water gushing into the bus through the main door of exit and the bus tilting slowly in one direction. "Is this the end ?" Most of us in the bus might have been thinking that at that moment. "This might be another of those accidents we often read in the newspapers and now we are in the middle of one of them."

There is a word in Bengali 'Rakhe Hari Mare Ke' meaning if GOD is in favor then everything will turn out good for you. I am not perfectly a pious person but definitely restore in GOD when in deep trouble. I think all of our prayers were answered when we got some help from the local people for the evacuation. They held the bus in its position by tying a rope to it and then carried on the evacuation through the driver's door. If you have ever travelled in Indian buses, you will understand the drivers door is pretty high up from the ground and its more than non-trivial for usual passengers, especially old people, to get out from there. But what we did not have a choice in the midst of such a disaster. Kudos to those local people who threw themselves into the ice-cold water to save the lives of many passengers who were put into a disaster by a crazy minded driver. After being evacuated through the ice-cold water and reaching the other side of the stream, we needed to change the clothes badly. We were shivering badly and could never ever had presumed about this darker consequence of the snowfall.

About an hour later, we slowly started to regain the warmth and composure back and saw the bus being pulled out of the stream. What went wrong in the calculation of the driver was that the tyre marks where from past day when it was not snowing up in the mountains, so the stream was shallow. But due to heavy snow in Manali, the snow from the mountains started melting and increased the level of the stream. This small error in judgement endangered lives of so many people. One should argue that if you are in-charge of so many people you should not be in a mood to be adventurous and take even a slightest risk. Finally the bus was pulled out and we made it to the nearest bus stand with stopping and halting every now and then. This bus could not go any farther and we have to get into some other bus. After lot of enquiry we managed to get into a bus which was going to Rishikesh, about 3 hours before Hardwar. One cannot be choosers in such situations. Since we were late entries, we could not find place next to each other in the bus. We were tired and starving, since there was no time to look for food with our priority fixed to find the immediate next connection to our destination.

But still there was one last peace in the mind that at least we were on our way back home. We all expected that enough of calamities had occured for a single trip and GOD is very gracious to put no more to us. But I think you should expect the unexpected. Just two hours from our journey this bus also stopped and the driver reported a landslide on the road and no vehicle can get beyond this point to the other side. It might take 3-4 days for the next vehicle service across this point. The only way forward was to walk up the mountainous path up to the other side of the road. There was coincidentally another bus stuck on the other side and so they can exchange their passengers if we can make it to the other side. The problem for our group was that Dida and Ma cannot travel up the hill on their feet and with these amount of luggage and no porter around its difficult for us to carry all the luggage up the mountain. There was only one way to the other side and it was not safe. We had to cross the narrow one feet wide road, the workers managed to clear up, to the other side. With the risk of sliding into the steep slope on the other side we all somehow managed to surpass this obstacle. Of course, it would not have been possible without the immense help from the workers on the road. But all of these took us time and when we reach the other end the bus already had left. May someone mention in here about some bad luck. There was only a small car on the other side, waiting for no reason that we knew, may be for us. But we were eight and that car was too small to fit only 5 at maximum. You will be amazed that how human beings can adapt in the crisis. All of us made it to fit in that small car and were on our way to Chandigarh. It was getting late in night and the driver was not ready to go beyond Chandigarh. So we decided to stop at Chandigarh and take the next bus in the morning to Hardwar.

We finally got some food in the restaurant adjacent to the Bus Stand were the car dropped us. Baba and Dadu went to search for hotel in the city. There was still a surprise waiting for us. It was the 31st night and the entire city was filled with tourist who could not make it to Shimla and Manali. So there was hardly any place in the city left to check in for the night. After about 2 hours Baba came back with the news of a possible vacancy in a Guest House. We checked in at 2 am in the morning of January 1, 1988. What a way to start a new year! Some people believe that what you do in the first day of the year reflects on the entire year. But none of us, I am sure, would have wanted to make that new year day as the model for the rest of the year to follow.

In the morning we boarded a bus to Hardwar, expecting some new adventure, but reached safely. The next two days we just slept in our flat in Hardwar, before taking the train to Calcutta.

This was a trip worth remembering throughout life. I wrote about this in our school magazine about two decades ago. Just thought about writing it again in my blog. I guess, here is another reason to believe in the statement that 'Truth is stranger than fiction' !

Daylight Savings !!! - Actually what does it save??

2008-03-10T21:46:00.000-07:00

Mar 9, 2008- After a long Saturday I woke up on Sunday having some plans to spend the day in a fun filled atmosphere, watch some movies, make a nice cuisine.... But just as I referred to my cell phone to see the time, my half open eyes just draw wider. What! The clock has gone one hour in advance due to daylight savings. The irony lies in the fact now that my windows mobile 6 manager is asking me whether it should advance the time or not. It seems as if I am in-charge of deciding that and if I negate the time will go back again. Phew!

Anyways , many of rational people out there would argue whats a big deal about this. So what if the time has advanced by an hour in March, it does not matter that much since its anyway on a Sunday. They might add also that I never complained when we gained one hour back in November. But the basic reason is no one complains if they gain something, they do only if they lose. Here I lost my valuable one hour, which I could have spent in idling activities such as watching a movie, or reading about Hollywood-Bollywood affairs, or even chatting over phone with my friends in different parts of USA. All of us have heard about the famous phrase from Thomas Kempis' Of the Imitation of Christ -- 'Man proposes but GOD disposes', but I think time has come to coin another phrase 'Man proposes but Man disposes'.

I was so depressed about losing this one hour that I could not work in proper frame and peace of mind for the rest of the day. This was one of the worst Sunday I have spent. Generally, I don't do anything substantial on any Sundays, but this Sunday was spent in doing absolutely nothing and most of it owes to the bad start. And what a way to end the day by watching 'Leaving Las Vegas', one of the most remorseful movies ever made, I guess . Anyways, in all this all owes to the 'Daylight Savings', at least it didn't save me from anything, but caused this extreme trauma and snatched away the Sunday from my life.

Today morning the first thing I did was to google for the daylight savings. Apart from coming across this wonderful website on the topic (http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/b.html), I also came across some interesting facts. One of them tells that daylight savings is indirectly a cause of a possible health hazard. Recently a study in Australia found that the number of male suicides increased in the weeks following daylight-saving time. Researchers believe that the shift in daily rhythms could put people at high risk for suicide in greater danger. The shift in the time may also severely affect your daily sleep routine. So in short one can ask the question what does it actually save?

Although my allegation can be termed as a biased one and mostly emotional but someone should better believe these health researches. So before saving daylight save your souls.

Youngistan !!

2008-03-08T07:58:00.001-08:00

I just came across Pepsi's new tag line 'Youngistan'. One of the add features Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone outwitting 'Badshah' Khan. The other one features young faces of Indian cricket team. To me this tag line emphasizes on the role of youth in India. The challenges from the young blood to the aged expertize of the old India, a country emerging out of the shackles of tradition and customs to the superpower of the new millennium. For now, lets look at new development in cricket.

The role of the youth in the recent victory of our cricket team against numer-uno team Australia showed the effects. The strategies that were chalked out where never too predictable; Dhoni leading from the front took some interesting decisions of dropping Sehwag and replacing an opening bat with an extra simmer. All our experts in cricket went on saying that was a mistake and some even commented that this may be Dhoni's tactics to keep Viru hungry for runs, whenever he is included in paying eleven. As we all saw, he never made it. Was it right or wrong in cricketing sense, I dont know. But the bottom-line is that it worked. Dhoni's decision to keep out the expertize of Ganguly and Dravid was also a shock to many of us, especially since the tour was overseas. If we keep in mind that neither Ganguly, Dravid or Tendulkar will make it to the World Cup 2011 and consider that to be the ultimate reward of playing one-dayers then it was a reasonable decision. But there was also risk of loosing the tournament. So under all these circumstances I would say Dhoni did a good job. He has his own vision and is ready to stand by it, very similar to what Ganguly did a couple of years back to revive the Indian team and giving a new title of 'Team India'. Ganguly's policy was to include new faces but also give the seniors enough chances they deserve. This might go back in keeping Dravid in the one-day team under immnese contradiction from the selectors. In fact, Ganguly went to the extent of using Dravid's wicket keeping abilities to retain him in World Cup 2003 team as a wicket-keeper batsman.
But after all these revolutionary changes Ganguly brought to Indian Team, they were still shy of the championship titles. In fact, under Ganguly Indian Team lost record number of championship finales, including the WC 2003. Its too early to comment on Dhoni's policies as a skipper, but from what we have seen so far we can say that he wants young guns in the team and is not shy of criticizing even legendary Sachin on his failure on the top order. The inclusion of new faces and giving them chances on a rotation basis might prove to be the best for the rise of Indian team and actually winning more championships. They even did that, they won T20 and now the last ever CB series in Australia. This was the last of these triangular nation tournament in Australia and Aussies are shocked to lose it to India. India proved they are the second best team in the world in Test cricket and a lot of potency to be the World No. 1 in one-dayers. Kudos to Dhoni and his men.

This is really a 'Youngistan' !!

Indian Professional League - potpouri!

2008-02-26T16:14:00.000-08:00

Even a reluctant cricket fan anywhere in the world should be aware of the recent buzz in the world of cricket - the 'Indian Professional League' (IPL). It is sported as cricket's reply to the English Premier League (in soccer) or English County cricket, which is based on one-day cricekt format and involves lot of foreign hires. All that we know so far about IPL is that it involves a huge amount of money transaction and is probably making everyone involved in it richer by a couple of magnitude in terms of their bank balances.

For the first time in the history of sports entertainment, at this level, we have witnessed the auctioning of players, i.e. players joining to different teams without their own will. They are getting paid in an ad-hoc basis according to the mood of the bidders. Even the teams are named as franchisee of a particular company or person. The sole authority in this venture is BCCI (Board of Cricket Control in India), one of the richest organization in the world of sports and its strongman Lalit Modi visualizes IPL to revolutionize the game of cricket and popularize it to the non-cricket crazy audience. Presently, it seems that the longer nature of the game of cricket is preventing it to become a popular game worldwide as compared to soccer or basketball. So IPL is based on the shortest version of cricket till date, i.e. Twenty20 cricket.
If you ask a cricket loyalist, he will still announce that the 5-day test cricket is the real format of cricket and these shorter versions are harming the spirit of the game.

For the time-being we assume that the Twenty20 cricket might turn out to be the crowd puller, following the history where the one-day internationals became really popular from the 5-day format. In fact, the most prestigious tournament in the world cricket so far is the World Cup and that is being played in one-day format. There exists no such counterpart in test cricket. So may be in coming decade the Twenty20 World Cup will overshadow the prestige of the one-day World Cup and India will be remembered as the first ever champions in this game, overthrowing the legacy set by West Indies in 1975.

But what good will IPL do to cricket, since it is not the only tournament that adopted T20 format, ICC already has started a World Cup in this shorter version. So one may ask what is the reason for IPL. The answer can be its a immediate reply to ICL (Indian Cricket League) which is formed under some former Indian players like Kapil Dev, Sandip Patil, etc who rebelled against the monopoly of BCCI in the game. One can argue that IPL was just a hasty reply to ICL from BCCI in order to reinstate the monopoly. According to me its really a difficult link to establish between IPL and its benefit to cricket. The players generally play under a nation out of their patriotic zeal, or play for their clubs out of their choice. But here they dont even know from before who will actually own them. Under these circumstances, I really wonder what will be the source of commitment of the players to their respective team. Of course, one cannot ignore the amount of money they are getting purchased for. But even the price is not set up on the basis of the caliber of the player. The incidence of Ricky Pointing getting paid much less than the new sensation Ishant Sharma, is already rising people's concern. Apart from the rich Indian cricketers getting richer, I see IPL will involve only return of some international talents who have retired recently.

BCCI have recently announced that they will share the huge amount of their profit with other cricket boards, and also deploy some amount for the benefit of other games in the country. It will be interesting to watch how much of that will happen in practice. Lets hope as spectators, we will be able to watch all the great matches of IPL in different TV networks and there will be no more fusses with the TV rights again.

Bong !! Connection

2008-02-20T13:56:00.000-08:00

Anjan Dutta's 'Bong Connection' is a smashit movie. The return of Sayan Munshi is really a great by-product of this film. Although some of my friends have risen their eyebrows on the version of 'Pagla Hawa' used here, I feel may be thats the need of the movie theme; it was not necessary but quite fits into the perspective.

Although I feel tremendously unattached to this word 'Bong', but people from other states refer like that and gradually you cannot do much than accept. Dont forget we also have shortties to every states and we call them by that. But anyways these are fun when they are used in right spirit. After all we are a large country with different culture and traditions, if we have freedom to respect each other, we should also have some freedom to make fun of each other, but ofcourse in the right spirit.

Perfect journey to USA

2008-02-17T23:29:00.000-08:00

My first journey to USA was a eventful one. I was flying Royal Jordan Airlines from Calcutta to Chicago. Although I came in perfect condition none of luggages made it till the end. I had to change a flight at Amman, from where I boarded a flight to Chicago but my baggages boarded a flight to Paris. So when I was waiting for my luggages at baggage claim, risking my next flight to Albuquerque they were never there. Finally, I lost hope and thought of filling a lost baggage claim. But I was advised to do it at my final destination, since I might even miss my next connecting flight due to spending excessive time in looking for my baggages. When I finally reached Albuquerque I did file my claim. The airlines authorities were very kind to me and described their extreme apology and handed me a travel kit in order to relieve my anxiety for the lost baggages. The kit only contained essential toiletries, but they might not have notice that I arrived at USA without a single pair of clothes except what I was wearing and a night set in my cabin luggage.

My colleagues at University told that losing a baggage is always a good thing and I should file for compensation from the airlines. The next day airlines confirmed about my baggages' safe journey to Paris and consoled me that they will soon be delivered to me. I waited eagerly for a week but no new updates on the baggage front. Finally, being disgusted asked the airlines for the compensation. They faxed me two 15 pages form to describe exactly the items in the baggages, their prices, date of purchase, place of purchase, manufacturer, etc. Now, who on earth remembers all these details. I dont believe even the toppers in my batch would have remembered the same and I am just an above-average performer. So I got even more disgusted and thought of doing nothing than waiting. Meanwhile, I visited a nearby Walmart to get two pairs of clothes to cover the waiting period. Finally, by GOD's grace the luggages reached me after 3 weeks. By that time I became so busy with my ongoing semester that totally became reluctant to start a new fight for the damaged baggages and delayed receipt of the same. But decided next time it happens I will go the full yard; but luckily still waiting .....

Dr. Ranjan Ray

2008-02-15T16:03:00.000-08:00

This article is about my recollection of Dr. Ranjan Ray, our physics professor at St. Xaviers College, Calcutta. I remember our first day of orientation at Xaviers, when Ranjan Ray came to introduce the department and various course related issues. He taught us thermodynamics in the first two years of B.Sc. I must say, I never bothered to read on this topic before the college exams, and still fared well. The credit goes to him. While we were awaiting our Part I results, he suffered from a cerebral attack and passed away the following week. Just before this shocking incidence took place, we were actually planning to visit GMRT and University of Pune as an excursion under his lead. It never happened.

Dr. Ray was not only an excellent teacher of Physics, but also a wonderful human being. He always encouraged dicussions on various subjects. I had some opportunities to discuss with him about personal and career related issues. I can say, it was probably from his advice I chose to join University of Pune for my M.Sc. His work on improving physics education through use of digital technologies was a unique effort during those days in Calcutta.

For details on Dr. Ray's career I would suggest readers to visit http://www.geocities.com/sitabhra/people/rray_bio.html.

Ballygunge Court

2008-02-15T11:28:00.000-08:00

I apologise to the hypothetical reader, who actually cares to visit this blog, for writing another consecutive movie review. I cant help it. I watched this bangla movie 'Ballygunge Court' a few days back. Its not a new release, but I only managed to watch it recently. The movie is directed by Pinaki Chowdhury and based on Bani Bose’s story Deepshikha. The casting includes Soumitra Chatterjee, Sabyasachi Chakraborty, Mamata and Tanusree Shankar in major roles.

Going by the trend, I will mention about the positives first. Its a film about the parents whose kids are leaving Calcutta (I still prefer to call her by this name) for better career prospects abroad. Nevertheless, they are leaving behind their parents in Calcutta, to suffer their rest of the life in lonelyness. The film is based on this appartment named 'Ballygunge Court' and builds up around the two couples played by Soumitra-Mamata and Sabyasachi-Tanusree.

The movie was great to watch, I never felt that it was stretching too much in length. The end was the most beautiful sequence, one really needs to watch it. It also deals with a social problem of the country losing its young brains to foreign nations. I think this was a major problem last decade and before that. The present trend says no one is too much excited to leave India permanently since the job offerings are becoming very lucrative at home also . Now, I think the problem is of equal opportunity. So in this respect the film actually should have been made a decade back. But anyways lets put aside the social criticism . The casting might have been made slightly better, or may be its just me; I am so used to seeing Mamata Shankar paired up with Dipankar Dey, that this sudden pairing with Soumitra was not taken very well by me, sorry for being conservative. The leads in the film where really great even the supporting casts like Biplab Chatterjee deserve special mention. I am very sad to see Manoj Mitra making such a inconsequential appearance in the movie.

Overall 'Ballygunge Court' is a good movie, worth watching and indeed supports the fact that commercial bangla movies are recovering better.

Anuranon - New Bangla Movie

2008-02-14T05:32:00.000-08:00

Recently, I watched this new bengali film named Anuranon (meaning Resonance). Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury (an ad film-maker) directed Rahul Bose, Rituparna Sengupta, Raima Sen and Rajat Kapoor in the pivotal roles in the movie.

Onething I liked about this film was the screenplay. After a long time (maybe the first time), I watched some beautiful outskirts of London in a bengali film. The shots at Sikkim reminded of Kanchenjangha (by Ray) and Titli (by Ghosh). The ecstatic view of Kanchenjangha was the best reward for me.

The music was not of particular interest but was not out of sort as well. Although I must comment on the length of the film, it could have been slightly shorter by 10-15 min. I could not find any on-screen chemistry between Rituparna and Rahul Bose at all, some how she looked like his elder sister. The mere attraction and compatibility between Raima and Rahul was evident. I am still finding a justification of casting Rajat Kapoor in this film and doing a complicated voice make-over. I thought Bangla film industry has couple of people who could have done complete justice to his part of the role.

Overall, as a cinegoer, I am really happy to see present commercial bangla movies are getting re-defined and not just by Rituparno Ghosh but others are also coming up with their own taste. Somehow, I feel that bangla movies have always been noted for its distinct features and its commercialization does not necessarily need the inclusion of the Bollywood potpouris in it.

About Me !

2006-04-08T19:24:00.001-07:00

Welcome to my blog... Let me introduce myself.
My name is Abhirup Datta, originally from Kolkata, India, presently staying in Albuquerque,USA.
I am pursuing my PHD in Physics(Astrophysics).