North-East Trip – Day 7

Location: Dzongri Base Camp to Dzongri Peak
Distance: 2 Kms
Height: 4200 mts
Date: 6-Oct-09

Dzongri peak gives the best view of Mount Kanchenjunga, but to see it we had to reach there before sunrise.  After previous day’s high altitude sickness, I woke up fresh in the morning. Anything after midnight is morning, though it was still dark outside. At 4 AM in the morning, all I could hear was the occasional sound of yaks & horses and the stream flowing next to our tent.

We (Vishal & me) started moving uphill. On our way we found Maurice & Kim (trekkers from Singapore). It took us more than an hour to reach on the top. By the time we reached, dawn was just breaking. There was thick blanket of fog, which we expected to shed soon.

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We waited patiently for sun to come out. As the time passed we realized that the fog was there to stay and all our hopes of seeing the mighty Kanchenjunga may not be fulfilled. At around 7 am fog slowly started to move away and we could see Mt Black Kabaru. On its left was Mt. Pandim, and on its right was only the faint trace of Mt. Kanchenjunga.

After waiting there for another hour, we realized that we may have to finally return back without seeing Kanchenjunga so we started back for our base camp. We spent some time there on the locals, who stay there for only two months during the trekking season.

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We started back from Dzongri to Tshokha at around 11 am. I realized that climbing up was tiring but going down was painful. This realization is going to last for another 2 days… and probably for rest of the life.

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Maurice & Kim stayed back that day as they had to go to Goechala which was further up at a height of 5000 mtrs. Later they sent pictures of Mt. Kanchenjunga from Singapore.

BJP – Vinash kale vipreet buddhi!!

As all of you know I’m nonpolitical but I had a slight inclination toward BJP’s original policies, which most of them got diluted in last 10 years. I do not approve of their religion based politics, but they are more progressive than Congress. Off late BJP is in self destruction mode. By expelling its senior leaders like Jaswant Singh & Yashwant Sinha, it is not really setting a good example for others in the party. But I’m not concerned about their example setting. What is more worrying is that a strong opposition is must for a healthy democracy. In absence of BJP in parliament, Congress will be free to do what it likes.

I was especially surprised about Jaswant Singh’s expulsion, and it was probably not required. First he has only published a book and only expressed his own views, which may be different from BJP’s. What was more surprising was that they do not see they own benefit these days. The book criticizes Congress for creating a separate country and not Jinha for it was Nehru who refused to share power. This is not something new, and we have heard and seem this multiple times. For instance 8 Oscar winner movie Gandhi shows the same. So why make so much fuss about the book and expel a senior leader like Jaswant Singh!

Anyway, there is an old proverb in Hindi – “Vinash Kale Vipreet buddhi”, which means when your days are near your brain stops working!!!

Story on Religion & Stupidity!

Somewhere in India there was city, where people from all over the country come to work and earn there living. In that city was an apartment complex where people from all religion and different parts live together. They celebrated all festivals together, party & play together, to an extent that they used to fight together for a cause. They had a common mail group where everyone cribbed about the builder, share their thoughts, and ask for advice. Everyone had loads of fun on all festivals.

Someone suggested building a temple in the complex. Thought there were few who didn’t like the idea of having a temple but didn’t spoke thinking it will hurt others feelings. There was a grand celebration when the temple was constructed. Things were going on smoothly, until one day one old man installed two loudspeakers on the temple and started playing loud bhajans in early morning and evening. This was disturbing for many residents living close to temple and while many thought that it was refreshing in the morning.

Many people over the week requested to keep the volume low but no one listened, until one day few people came forward with a suggestion that the loudspeakers should be removed. There was a huge argument on why the loudspeakers should be there. People getting disturbed were outnumbered by people from all over the complex. Different people had different reason for the loudspeaker to be there.

1. Someone said it is the ritual in the state – is God deft?
2. Someone said it is refreshing in the morning to listen to bhajans – then why not play in you home
3. Someone said that people from one community played dhol in one of there festivals so loudspeaker has to be there
4. The extreme was when someone said that people who want to remove the loudspeakers have a hidden agenda… Agenda? ISI? Manybe?

Well, there were many more arguments as well but that issue was left unresolved. Once a peaceful and harmonious place to live was now divided between stupid and logical people.

So what is the moral of the story?

When it comes to religion, people can become irrational & stupid!

My favorite mythical character – an Honest Politician

Well the label says it all – myths cannot be real and politicians cannot be honest. Time and again many of our respected politicians keep proving how shallow they are, without any principles & ethics. The recent example was shown by Kalyan Singh, ex-Chief Minister of UP when he left BJP to join SP. The man who was responsible for what happened in Ayodhya cannot now just wash off his hands by just saying sorry. If he has believed in something in 1991 then he should have stood by it today, but that is not the case. Our politicians are so hungry for power and money that they can change their principles and morals to satisfy their hunger.

There’s an old saying in hindi ‘be pendi ka lota’… Kalyan Singh has hopped from one plate to another (BJP to BSP, then back to BJP, and now to SP) without sticking to his principles and he should be abandoned!

My last train journey

In our school days we used to write essays on train journey. Most of the time they were not the original account, but one thing that was true is that we get to meet new people.

Due to drop in airfares I did not travel in trains for almost 4 years, but the recent rise in the airfare again made me go back to the old way of traveling. In last couple of months I traveled from Hyderabad to Chennai and Haridwar to Delhi by train, and in both the journeys I had interesting company.

During my last journey I met a French lady who was coming from Rishikesh. Our conversation started because of the book I was reading – Jesus Lived in India. She looked at the book and said jokingly “you have so many Gods we just have one, now you want to take that also”.

She had a connecting train from Delhi to Nasik, where she was heading to attend a Yoga camp for 4 weeks. In the course of 5 hours I got to know more about her & her association with India. She was visiting India since 1992 and in last 16 years she has traveled most of the parts in India. Since her retirement couple of years back, she has been spending almost 6 months in year in India. She knew more about India than I do. During her stays she usually stayed in ashrams, due to which she knew a lot about Hinduism & Vedanta. She has been practicing yoga for last 20 years and that was the reason for her initially few visits, but later she fell in love with the country.

There were lots of things she disliked about India, like the way people cheat or treat a foreigner. In fact she told me couple of incidences, like the one when she was going to Rishikesh from Haridwar in the state transport bus and the conductor asked her Rs. 70/- when the normal fare was Rs. 20/-. Another similar incidence was when in Rishikesh a tempo driver asked her Rs. 50/- where the actual fare was Rs. 5/-. Now these kinds of incidences are common across the world, because last year when I went to US, the cab driver asked $100 against the usual fare of $65 between San Francisco & Redwood City. Something else she disliked was the way people drive. According to her, people in India drive with their heart & emotions. I cannot agree more.

The inhuman face of media and locals in Mumbai Attack…

Life has become so much uncertain that one never knows what may happen. The brutal act of killing civilians has been never seen before. At the time of national crisis when whole India was praying for the safety of the hostages and glued to TV, there were few  trying to increase the TRP of their channel or put their face on TV.

I m not trying to be generic but many of the media people and locals were insensitive to the whole situation in Mumbai.

Yesterday night, while many of the journalists were reporting on the camera about the operation at Taj hotel, many people standing behind them were smiling and waving at the camera… I just can’t stop wondering how someone can be so insensitive to the whole situation. On another channel CNN a foreign journalist was reporting from the Taj area, and people standing behind were more interested in her than in anything else. How can someone be so stupid to be on an international channel and behave so stupidly?

The news media only worry about their TRP ratings and how to make things sensationalized. It was pretty evident the way they were approaching the released hostages asking them stupid questions, when none of them were interested in answering them. It has also come to light that ATS chief Hemant Karkare died while trying to protect one journalist who was not moving from the scene.

Aliens’ contirbutions in morden science?

Egyptian and Indian culture are the testimony of the power and intelligence that was with the people of these civilization thousands of years back. Perhaps the science was more advance then, than it is now. I was recently reading a book on Teleportation – the science of moving from one place to another with the blink of an eye, remember watching Star trek. Incidences related to teleportation are widely used in Indian mythology. Other few technological marvels like Pushpak Viman, Lost City of Dwarka, weapons like Bramastra (equivalent to today’s Atom bomb) are abundant in many of the Hindu epics as Ramayana, Mahabharata. Incidences related to Dwarka mentioned in Mahabharata are now scientifically proven to be correct.

I believe that more than 5000 years ago science was at its peak in these civilizations. If we were so advance then, than why do we have to reinvent the wheel? In all the famous & old civilizations, say Egyptians or Mesopotamian or Indian, people believed that the knowledge was passed to them by Gods. Who were these Gods? Where did they come from? Where did they go?

There are no answers to the above questions.

Egyptians are considered to be the source of birth of modern medical science. The Eye of Horus was believed to have healing and protective power, and it was used as a protective amulet, and as a medical measuring device, using the mathematical proportions of the eye to determine the proportions of ingredients in medical preparations) to prepare medications. The Egyptians did write prescriptions. Those prescriptions were first magical verses and then the real prescription. The Eye of Horus was an important part of the magical part of the prescription. With time the magical part became smaller, and the real prescription more important.  Eventually, all that was left of the magical verse was the Eye of Horus. The sign has remained in pharmacist’s shorthand to this day with Rx being the sign for a prescription! Archeologists have found many tools dated 4000 years old on bank of river Nile & other sights, which closely resembles modern surgical tools. These tools were made of volcanic glass, which on research have found to be much superior to surgical steel. Who gave all this knowledge to Egyptians and why did it all lost. If science was so advance then, than why do we have to reinvent all again?

Today’s science is still no able to find answers to many of the things. Like the iron pillar in Delhi that was built around 4-5 AD & still does not show any signs of rust and corrosion. It is testimony to the high level of skill achieved by ancient Indians. It was originally made in centeral India, but how it moved to Delhi 1000 years ago still remains a mystery.  It has been something of a riddle for people—historians, archaeologists, palaeographers, metallurgists, etc—for close to a century and a half.

“Nearly everything about the pillar is surrounded by acute controversy: For whom was it made? Exactly when? Where did it originally stand before it was moved to Delhi? What is the true import of the long inscription in Brahmi characters engraved upon it? Who placed the later inscriptions on it, and when? Who had the pillar moved to its present location, and why? What exact processes were followed in forging it into shape at that early a point of time, the 4th/5th century AD? Above all, from the scientists’ point of view, what is the secret, the great mystery, behind the fact of its being virtually non-rusting? There seems to be no end to the questions.” - Enigma of the Iron Pillar, B.N. Goswamy

 
Or consider magnificent pyramids built 4600 years ago. The three pyramids of Egypt were built at different times, the amazing fact is that the largest one is also the oldest and shows much finer work then the later two. It is still highly debatable who built the pyramids. Were they actually humans who designed and architected it or someone else designed and used humans as labors. Many people try to find answers of how it was build. You will find one of the links on my blog under “Great Mysteries”, which describes how the Great Pyramid was constructed. But given the time it was constructed, I doubt how 20000 people can complete the work in 20 years. Is it possible that the first pyramid was solely built by people from outer space and later the knowledge was passed to humans to built second and third and other pyramids?

These are just few of many mystries that show the grandure of science thousands of years ago. It is very likely that we have received help from somewhere in evolution of science.

Bad roads and bad traffic is killing our economy

I have been a strong advocate of following traffic rules. Indians have the best of brains in the world and I recently got a mail which tried to prove so by giving the statistics of number of Indian doctors in US, number of scientist of Indian Origin, or number of people who get H1B visa from India. And I don’t deny the fact that we Indians are sharp and are good learners.

That was the rosy side, but let’s faces this – other side of the story is not as beautiful. Rather I will say that it is too ugly to be shown to anyone. And we all should be ashamed of that.

Now, since I have given some vent to my anger and frustration, let’s talk about the actual subject. Over the last couple of months I have been observing a sharp increase in the traffic situation in Hyderabad. The city is close on its heels to becoming another disaster like Bangalore – Bad to worst roads and never improving traffic sense of hyderabadi drivers. The result is long traffic jams, rise in number of impatient people and above all loss of money.

Below are some key observations:
-    2 months back it took me 20-25 minutes to drive from my home to office, around 14 kms.
o    Today, the time has increased to 45 minutes
o    Even if I start as early as 8:30 AM, it takes 30 minutes
-    2 months back my car gave an average of 17 kmpl
o    Today it gives around 12 kmpl

Based on this if I calculate the loss of time than that comes to 40 to 60 minutes a day, which amount to roughly 20 hours a month.

Let’s see about the fuel – I am spending roughly around .5 liters extra everyday, which results in consuming an extra 10 liters a month. This doesn’t end here. Consuming more fuel also means that our contribution to global warming has also increased. This is the story of just me, imagine now for all the vehicles on the road.

So who is the culprit right now? Bad city planning, bad roads and worst drivers. Combine all three and you will find our new Hyderabad. All drains have been closed in the name of road expansion. Uneven roads with no proper slopes and water exits lead to water clogging. Potholes at some places are 1ft deep. After every rain, you may find a new pothole on the road.

And what are out local civic bodies doing? I guess enjoying mansoon and having samosa, mirchi bhaaji & tea.

According to one story, the world has roughly only enough fossil fuel to sustain for next 40 years. That study was done 5 years back. So what are we doing now? We are increasing the rate of consumption, why wait for another 40 years, lets finish it fast is the new mantra!!! Imagine a world without OIL in your lifetime. Life will be so calm, no traffic, no pollution. Back to stone age!