Qutub Minar Delhi has been center of many dynasties and been capital of Independent India. Qutub minar is a famous monument and I guess every Indian would know about it. This time I got a chance to see it and one thing stood out was that many of the pillars used in the structure around Qutub Minar were part of Hindu/Jain temples and this is very much evident from whatever has remained there. So this made me dwell a little…
RSVPing R.S.V.P. is a short form for “répondez s’il vous plaît” which translates to “respond please” and is actually a French phrase which is considered old fashioned and formal and not used these days. But you would see the use of RSVP in India for many wedding cards. I am no French expert but here is a pronounciation snippet for R.S.V.P But how a French word became a common parlance in India and continue to do so. Lets try…
Cryptocurrency and Exchange like WazirX If you are looking for a primer on Bitcoin, I wrote this years back. Feel free to check it out. Recently on July 18 2024 WazirX, an Indian Crypto Exchange, was hacked and there was $230 million dollars heist (2000 crores in Indian rupees) which was about 40% of its over crypto assets. Indian Crypto scene is still in infancy and many earlier exchanges like Zebpay, Coinex shut their operations owing to regulatory challenges or…
Sharda Sinha: Doyen of Bhojpuri Music I am not sure but maybe it’s somewhere in 1990s. We used to live in a place called Boleng in Arunachal Pradesh. There were many times when our days began with music of Sharda Sinha. Imagine a morning, sun shining through the lush green hills, bright blue sky and rays coming in through the windows. In the morning sun you could see the dust in the air and it was a Philips Tape Recorder…
What really is Old Bengaluru? History of Bengaluru for many starts with Kempegowda and there is no doubt Kempegowda clan (Yelahanka Nadaprabhus) played a major role in 16th century building of city of Bengaluru. But the history of Bengaluru goes way back in the time. It is also true that today’s central business district MG Road or the so called old Bangalore is more like a misnomer because to be precise the ones that we call new Bangalore like Sarjapur…
Dutch the Colonizers There is a lot of noise about British rule and history being written and read about them. But have you heard about the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC) or the Dutch East India Company, one of the first joint stock companies. They were the most profitable companies of their time 1602 to 1796 and sent more people and ships during that period. They were the leaders and even bigger than British East India company. They had presence all over…
I write in English probably because of ease of the qwerty keyboard and also I read in English most of the times. But for long I wanted to change that. So my friends this is a request for all people who read “even today” to read Indian in Indian languages as well. This is not really just for Indian people to read in their local languages but for all across the world, but many places like China, Japan and many…
Sahib, Sindh and Sultan: Steam Engines of the First Passenger Train Its 3:35PM on April 16th, 1853 and Sahib, Sindh and Sultan, three steam engines of India’s first passenger train were ready, all spick and span new, between then Bombay now Mumbai, then Victoria Terminus now Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus to cover 21 miles in 57 minutes to Thane. The train was filled with more than 400 invited dignitaries including the Amelia Cary, Viscountess Falkland, wife of Governor of Mumbai Lucius…
Not Exercising is normal Personally I hate going to a gym and have wondered is this really something humans like doing. Exercise as we know is relatively new phenomena and probably started less than 50 years ago when humans started to lead industrialized life which made day to day life sedentary. Running tens of kilometers of treadmill going nowhere seemed to me last thing to do. All the huffing and puffing in order to get your body exercised. ]If you…
Mughals and Daudnagar Recently I had a chance travel through a small town of Daudnagar in Bihar, about 100 kms from Patna. I was not planning to visit that place but found out that it had a fort built between 1664 to 1673 by Daud Khan and his grandson Ahmed Khan and we went inside the town to see this place. Now like other places in Bihar even this place is in a dilapidated condition that you can see in…
A brief Intro Jagadish Chandra Bose was an Indian scientist whom I knew more about his research on plant physiology but it never came to my notice that he was a pioneer in wireless technology. Before he changed his attention to botany he was into physics and electromagnetics. What we know today as the latest 5G technology (millimeter waves) in mobile communication, he was working on such stuff in in the last decade of 19th Century. It was common for…
Panchatantra – A project It was sometime during the Covid a thought came to my mind about starting a Podcast. I have been a listener to Podcast for a while. It was probably a lost love that I rediscovered again. As a kid, I remember listening to BBC Hindi News under the night sky. Also I remember listening to Hello Farmaish ( हेलो फर्माइश) with my mother in the afternoons after the school. I still remember a road trip where…
Entangled Life Recently I started reading Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake and one thing that stuck with me is the Carpenter Ants and their relation with a family of fungi Ophiocordyceps. Now the world of fungi and how they affect our lives is amazing. As a kid I remember there was a sensational story of few ladies dying after eating some wild mushrooms that turned out to be poisonous. The more you read about the world around that is not…
8:00 AM Anand realizes that he has a meeting in another half an hour. Today he also needs to drop his daughter Anu to the school bus. “Anu, Anu!! Wake up its time for the school.” Anand hurriedly calls out. Anu reluctantly gets out of the bed and starts with “I don’t want to go school” as usual. Anand picks her up and goes through the morning chores quickly enough and gets Anu dressed up. A quick breakfast for her…
QWERTY For the story of Qwerty keyboards, we will have to go back 150 years to late 1880 when one Mr. Christopher Latham Sholes was tinkering in his lab in Milwaukee to develop the prototype for typewriters. Now the legend has that the Sholes was trying to develop a layout such the expensive typewriting machines won’t get jammed. There is no conclusive evidence to suggest that this was the case and some research has debunked this theory. But whatever may…