The Radio

Once upon a time there was The radio ! We had a tesla1952 model set.

In the fifties and sixties we listened to Voice Of America at short wave16 meter band, the BBC London at 19 meter band and All India Radio in all the meter bands.  There were hit  parades from all over the world, Quiz programmes,  Binaca geet mala and radio skits. RADIO Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) was a rage in Asia. Ameen Sayani was a Superstar  -- of Binaca Geet Mala.

It was a real world where friends gathered around radio set to listen to cricket commentaries, celebrate the top of the hit parade songs over steaming hot cups of coffee and tea and hot spicy aloo (Potato) Pakoda.It was not the virtual world of faceless friends of today's smartphone social networking.

Sometime later, in early 60s Transistor radio became popular and we bought a BUSH transistor set.

Then came TV. Radio lost popularity. Doordarshan became a craze and TV news readers became super stars. There were so many of them. All very graceful and proficient.

Smartphone seems to have  now replaced everything - radio, calculators, tape recorders, cameras and, may, be even the TV. And an overload of commercials is now taking away people from TV sets.

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Virupaksha Temple

Virupaksha Temple is located in Hampi in the Ballari district of Karnataka, India. It is part of the Group of Monuments at Hampi, designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The temple is dedicated to Virupaksha, a form of Shiva.

Located in Karnataka near the modern-era city of Hosapete, Hampi's ruins are spread over 4,100 hectares (16 sq mi) and it has been described by UNESCO as an "austere, grandiose site" of more than 1,600 surviving remains of the last great Hindu kingdom in South India that includes "forts, riverside features, royal and sacred complexes, temples, shrines, pillared halls, mandapas, memorial structures, water structures and others"

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Inviting Trouble

"Inviting trouble"

We all know that there is a mass of sub-soil water  all over the world. There is petroleum, there is 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 the subsoil of earth.

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

With the supporting subsoil water levels rapidly sinking, 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.

https://www.google.co.in/m?q=is+san+fransisco+sinking&client=ms-opera-mobile&channel=new&espv=1

Climate change is not just because of pollution. It is a cumulative result of a number of factors. while we are worried about car emissions and use of coal, the plunder of the subsoil stuff contimues unabated.

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The Savoy Mystery

A mysterious death in India at Mussoorie’s  Savoy Hotel gave Agatha Christie material for her first novel, "The Mysterious Affair at Styles"  (1920).

In 1911, a British spiritualist was found dead under mysterious circumstances at the Savoy in her room, which was locked from inside.

Agatha Christe came to know of the details and created  Hercule Poirot to resolve the mystery in her novel "The Mysterious Affair at Styles".

A little ahead of Mussoorie Library, on the road to Happy Valley, lies the Savoy. The hotel was built by Cecil D Lincoln, an Irish barrister from Lucknow, on the site of Reverend Maddock’s Mussoorie School, and was completed in 1902.

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