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…
Plan We have not been travelling for more than 2 years now and there was a family event and we managed to travel to Lucknow. We didn’t had lot of time at our hand and our three year old daughter didn’t allow us lot of flexibility. Limited time there but the city is very intriguing. City The city has two sides, the Old Lucknow that is on one side of the Gomti River which is stuck in time. Then there…
100th Post I started to write on a blog 10 years back and registered shabdh.com about 8 years back. Its my humble attempt to share something useful or interesting. Since this is somewhat like a milestone for me I thought I will just do some giveaway to mark the occasion. Here is a book that I am planning to giveaway to a randomly chosen person who has liked the post. Since I can ship only in India, this is limited…
Mother Tongue There must be a reason why we call the language that one speaks as a kid as mother tongue. In ancient times women folks were generally no that mobile and were not migrating as much as men. So when a bunch of men migrated and displaced local population, they took the local women as their wives and the young kids learnt first the language of their mother and hence the mother tongue. India and its languages कोस-कोस पर…
Calculus – A little Personal Background Calculus was introduced to us in India in Plus 1 is the CBSE curriculum (we have a 10 +2 system, where one spends 12 years in School + 3 years in Nursery, KG1/2 before getting to school). I am an engineer and have taken many courses in mathematics but unfortunately my interest started waning down quite a bit and I missed the fun in doing mathematics and it became a very dry subject for…