The romance of letters

The romance of letters

Travelling through time, as we grow up, is an interesting experience . As you look back in time you see the sharp contrasts in how we have lived our daily life in the distant past.

Recently my niece went to Britain for higher studies. The momemt the plane landed there we got the message of her arrival , with photographs, on our mobiles.That's the magic of smartphones.

In 1952 my fufajee went to England. In those days  there were no mobiles, no internet and travel by air was uncommon and prohibitively expensives and so were the international telephone calls. He went by ship and took a long time arriving there , posted a letter which arrived here after so many more days.

But those were the days of the fine art of letter writing. His letter described his journey by ship, the people on board, the food he ate and so many other experiences. It was a delightful eight page letter on light blue writing pad sheets in his beautiful handwrting. We read that letter, and those that followed, so many times over the years.

we don't write family letters anymore ! Those were the days when the call  of   P.O.S.T.M.A.N.N.N . . . .
made us rush out in excitement !
we seldom see a postman now. He is a vanishing species. The telegram man has already passed into history.

Letters have a great value as historical records. Here is Mahatma Gandhi writing about the condition of the third class railway compartment as he travelled in one.

https://www.catalign.in/2012/10/gandhis-3rd-class-railway-travel-during.html?m=1

And there was a time, earlier still,  when there were no toilets in railway bogies! One had to rush out at a station to attend to a call of nature and rush back in time to catch the train before it moved out of the station. Here is the historically important and very funny  letter that resulted in introduction of toilets in train bogies.This 1909 letter from Okhil Chandra Sen to the Sahibganj divisional railway office in West Bengal is credited with  installing toilets on India's trains. The image presented here is the version displayed at India's Railway Museum.(see photocopy of the letter below)

Alas there will now be no such  letters to preserve for posterity !

# letter #postman #telegram #railway #Britain #England #Gandhi #OkhilChandraSen #1952 #mobile #railway #toilets #1909 #WritingPad

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HAS MAN A FUTURE

HAS MAN A FUTURE

When I was a kid there were no fertilisers. There were no pesticides in use in agriculture. All that was grown was Organic. There were no chemical colours or preservstives in food nor any taste enhancers.

In one lifetime of scientific "progress" the world has changed. Apart from food loaded with harmful chemical, we have contaminated air , contaminated soil and contaminated  water.

The last fifty years has also seen how plastic menace has spread like wildfire. GM crops is another disturbing development.

Has Man a future ? Is human race moving towards extinction on this planet ?

DONT TRUST US

DON'T TRUST US

Long time back  Delhi city bus service was called Delhi Transport Undertaking (DTU).

People used to wait endlessly at the bus stops for these WILL 'O THE WISP buses. For long hours the bus would not come and at times would not stop at all at the bus stop and go racing past it.

These DTU buses never ran on schedule, never stopped where the queue was and where packed, as the saying goes, like sardines. Delhi walas had a name for these buses - Dont Trust Us (DTU)!

The driver of the bus would invariably stop the bus either several meters before the queue  or some distance ahead of it with the result that the queue was always broken. Even when the bus stopped near the head of the queue there was such  a mad rush to get in that  the queue had no meaning. Law abiding commuters were always left behind and so were most women.

In most cases there would be no queue to begin with unless some public spirited person tried to form one.

Here is a video aptly showing the state of affairs.

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IS ASTROLOGY FAKE ? (Part 1)

IS ASTROLIGY FAKE ? (talk 1)

There are two distinct things - the system and those who pratice that system. Medical science may be superb but a doctor may be wanting in its use . You cant blame medical science If a doctor does not test the sensivity of pencillin before injecting it for the first time and the patient dies

The focus of this article is on Astrology.. To practice medicine you need an MBBS. To practice law You need an LLB. To practice engineering you need a B.Tech. To practice Astrology you need nothing.

The result is that the world is full of astrologers. Every newspaper tells your future daily. There are roadside astrologers. And there are hi- fi astrologers catering to rich people. There are popular books on astrology. They are just making money.

Intuition is a mysterious process of getting to solve an intriguing issue. Some doctors intuitively know, in baffling cases, that a particular organ may be at fault. So is with astrology to a greater measure as it is a more complicated process.. The interpretation part of the science of astrology needs a highly analytical and intuitive mind. If you do not have this, you cannot analyse a horoscope properly.

What we have today is CUT and DRIED astrology. Sunsigns books are a case in point. They divide the 7.2 billion people of the world into twelve categories of results. That means tens of millions of people have the same fate which is so absurd.

Even in  individual horoscope the final result is the resultant effect of so many influences ! A full moon in the fourth house means a happy , anxietyless life. But there may be factors to the contrary in the totality of the horoscope. A 'pedestrian' astrologer will cater to your emotion and psychlogically exploit you as he may lack the intuitive capacity to know the truth.

(we will continue with "the ancient Indian astrologers and there research" in Talk 2)

MAYA - THE DECEPTION

MAYA  -  THE DECEPTION
You watch the Sun rising in the east in the morning. . . .  Well, in fact, it is not rising. It is a perfect case of #deception. It is just the other way round. You are in fact moving and the irony is that you can't  even feel it.. . . . .

You see a bright star in the moonless dark sky at night. Well it is quite likely that it is not at all there. If the star  is five thousand light years away from the Earth , what you are witnessing was there five thousand years back.   The #star may have by now disintegrated though you are still  "Seeing" it !  . . . . .

You lie in your cot under the soundless stillness of a  starry night. The silence is there because you cannot hear that constant deafening #cosmic noise of exploding stars and Stellar Storms  because there is no medium in the outer Space to transmit those sound waves . Even otherwise your Power of hearing is very limited to only a small range of frequencies .

And there may be  #ALIENS  sitting right next to you  in your room, watching you. Your power to "see" is also limited to the range of frequencies within the #spectrum  known as #VIBGYOR and you would not see them if they are in vibrations outside this range.

No doubt the ancients of India called it all a #MAYA !!

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Inviting Trouble

"Inviting trouble"

We all know that there is a mass of water under the ground all over the world. There are petroleum coal and other minerals too. In other words the ground in the cities and villages is resting on these subsoil solids and liquids.

The earth is millions of years old and  until  a couple of hundred years back  there was negligible extraction of subsoil stuff . Then the Age of Science dawned.

In the last hundred years in particular, we have removed massive amount of coal, water and petroleum products from under the sub soil of earth.

A number of lakes throughout  the world are drying or are completely dry due to irrigation and other urban uses .When you slowly keep removing the  subsoil  water, trees start dying. because the water sustains the trees. Land turns barren.Lakes dry  up ( eg. Badkhal lake in Faridabad .)

With the support becoming almost  hollow, the ground surfaces starts sinking very slowly but steadily. To add to the woes of the earth we are now replacing old one or two storey houses with multistorey towers thus putting immence pressure on already sinking land.

A time comes when , particularly in sea shore cities, you will find sea level rising in relation to the city surfaces. SanFrancisco   is already witnessing this.

while we are worried about Climate Change the plunder of the subsoil stuff contimues unabated.

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The psychopathy of tattered clothes

The #psychopathy of tattered clothes

He was an old begger in #TatteredClothes. He stumbled into the compound of our house and we were sorry to see his plight. He was given food, a few coins and some  old clothes to cover himself bup properly.. .

That was in my #childhood. Long long ago.

I saw a person in tattered clothes again recently. I was pained again, not because he was poor (he was not). I was in pain because things have come to such a pass that #rich people are wearing such clothes.

It is perhaps a psychological problem. I do not know. May be, it is because they want to be noticed. Everyone if the Western world can afford to be well dressed now and good dress does not get you noticed.  So either you  expose yourself to an indecent level to get noticed or your wear clothes that draw attention.

But the joke has gone a little too far because now everybody who is young is trying to follow this fashion.  Recently I engaged a  young boy for a day's work on daily wages basis. While he was tending the plants in  my garden I noticed that he was wearing  tattered jeans. I had a pair of new trousers which I bought by mistake in the much lower size and could not retuen. I offered him these trousers . He carefully inspected the trousers and returned it to me saying 'I don't wear this type of clothes'.  On my asking 'what type of clothes do you wear ?'  he pointed towards his tattered jeans proudly.

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Disaster in waiting

This summer, in the hill station of Nainital, a portion of  the lower mall road connecting tallital to mallital caved in . In the last few years there have been other such incidents including substantial landslides.

There was a time when no automobiles were permitted into the city  beyond the Tallital bus and taxi stop . There was a time when there were strict building construction regulations in place. These were meant to save the fragile hills of the city from damage. These regulations need reimplementation.

Only e- rikshawa should be permitted  inside the city. Further construction activities need also to be stopped to save it from a disaster similar to the catastrophe of 1880  when devastating landslides  destroyed buildings and claimed hundreds of lives.

Sher-ka-Danda ridge, a densely populated area with houses, commercial properties like hotels and shops, government offices, schools, is particularly at risk of a major landslide. Recent studies have warned of a disaster in waiting.

Blotter Cards

BLOTTER CARDS

No one is now familiar with a #BlotterCard .

Blotters cards were popular before the #BallPens came into use in the #1950s.  Everyone from a school child writing an essay to a man doing office work wrote with a #HolderPen, dipping the nib into the ink pot frequently. And they kept drying the extra ink on the paper with a blotting paper which soaked the extra ink.

Advertisers developed these beauriful  Blotter cards . These had blotting paper on one side and a beautiful glossy #advertisement on the other side. These were usually of the size of a picture post card.

We as children used to get our quota of these beautiful cards from our family doctor , Capt (Retd.) Dr. J.N.Sinha. But Dr. Sinha himself preferred to use the regular common blotter ! He had a beautiful #GlassInkwell for red and blue inks and for resting his holder pens.

These #vintage Blotter cards are available online for a hefty price !

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Advertising- Then and now

#Advertising - then and now

A #hawker who yells , " #Tomato 30 rupees a kg, #Potato 20 rupees a kg" as he walks past your house is advertising his products.

When I was a child #Cinema halls in the town used to inform about their new films with a #Joker walking down the road pushing a #BillBoard of the new film on wheels. He was followed by laughing and yelling urchins.

Those were the days of simple advertising. Products were known for their quality As #RalphEmersom maintained , " If you  build a better #mousetrap  the world will beat a path to your door."

You did not mind ads in those days. Senior citizens would recall Binaca Geet Mala of Ameen Sayani which advertised the #BINACA tooth paste.Then there was that sweet #LIRIL Girl and also that #Nirma girl with a " doodh ki safedi ... nirma se aaye ... rangeen kapda bhi khil khil  jaye ..." jingle. And who will forget Lalita  ji of Surf detergent or the " I am the #COMPLAN  boy ..." ad !

Exess of anything is bad . Newspapers have now become advertising pamphlets, TV is giving more ads than useful programmes. And now ads are popping up even on your mobile phones.

The days of enchanting ads are no more !

Vintage travel contraptions

The Ekkah and other contraptions of yore"

Its much easier now ! Just tap a few buttons on your smartphone and a slick OLA cab appears within minutes at your place to take you to your destination in comfort !!

It was different sixty years back, particularly in the small towns. You had to walk down the road looking for a transportation and suddenly you heard the jingling of bells and an Ekkah would be seen comimg.

Ekkah was common in Northern India for many centuries. It had a hard flat wooden platform of about four square feet on which you sqatted along with half a dozen more persons
It was drawn by a half nourished small horse. The driver sat on the bamboo shafts. It could go almost anywhere. It was a cheap transport.An ekkah ride thououghly jolted your bones. The Ekkah had no springs or seats, most passengers having to sit on their haunches on that springless flat wooden board and bear constant jolts transmitted by the wooden  wheels. In my younger days I just once rode an Ekkah and that was a nightmare enough to drive me crazy.

The Delhi iron contraption driven by a powerful motorcycle was another nightmarish ride of the fifties. It was a four or five seater autorikshaw which made a huge noise and vibrations. It usually  left a heavy  trail of black smoke in its wake as it moved along the road.

Then there was "The Tempo" . It resembled a huge black fish and made a shattering engine noise as it started. It carried eight passengers  or so. I travelled in these tempos for a few years in the sixties  before the present auto rikshaws were introduced.

Another tortuous ride was the calcutta hand pulled rikshaw. I once sat in one in early sixties.  It was a precarious ride on  a vehicle without brakes on a busy calcutta road.. And I felt so sorry for the poor rikshaw pullar that I never used it again.

The British time Nainital hand pulled rikshaw was quite another type. It was a very comfortable luxury ride pulled by four or five sturdy Dotiyal  men . And they were paid well for a kilometer trip from Tallital to Mallital on a perfect metalled road of those days. The rate for a trip was rupee one which is equivalent to rupees 150 of today.

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The Donkey Years

The Donkey Days

There was a time when all #clothes were #cotton. There was no #detergent powder or detergent soap.No #WashingMachine. No electric irons. Home  washing was tedious.

It was a common sight in those days to spot a washerman moving down rhe road, his #donkey carrying a load of clothes.

Washed clothes were starched and ironed with the traditional heavy iron and delivered home once a week.  Buttons were usually missing after the thrashing the clothes received on stone slabs at the hands of the #washerman at the washing sites.

#Toddy was the favourite evening drink of a washerman after the weary day . Toddy was collected from  #ToddyPalmTree by men skilled in climbing up those tall trees.

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