Having started in 1997, the concept of annual birding fair adopted in Rajasthan for conservation of birds is proving successful with the 25th fair going to be organised this month-end on the banks of the historic Man Sagar lake in Jaipur. Wildlife enthusiasts and environmental activists in the State have joined hands for giving a lifetime experience to avid bird watchers.
Rajasthan
An estimated four lakh devotees have already visited Medaram during the last few days ahead of the Jatara.
Also known as Sammakka-Sarakka Jatara, the fair got underway with the customary arrival of Sarakka’s image from Kannepally village which was placed on a platform in Medaram. The image idol covered in red cloth was brought in a vessel laden with vermilion and turmeric powder.
He was a former BSF soldier and also won four medals, including two golds, in the Asian Games for India. And as they mourned his demise his former team-mates recalled the ‘caring, jolly man’ that Sobti was
With the first caravan park in the State coming up at Wagamon in the district, the tourism sector in Idukki is expected to get a boost.
The authorities plan to launch caravan tourism under the Keravan Kerala project before the start of the monsoon and it will be implemented by the Tourism department with private partnership. The beautiful locations in the State, including hills, forests, backwaters and rivers can be experienced while travelling in the caravan.
The QR-code based label will capture vital parameters of the carpet such as GI user, manufacturer, artisan, knots per square inch, the material used, among others.
Lt Governor Manoj Sinha launched the QR-code for handmade Kashmir carpets, claiming to be first-of-its-kind in the country. Customers could now verify the authenticity and other requisite details of carpets produced in Jammu and Kashmir and assure themselves that the product they purchased was not fake.
The QR code-based system can help in checking the cheating and misbranding that has badly dented the carpet Industry in Kashmir.
More than 350 bullock carts took part in a race at Landewadi in Ambegaon tehsil of Pune district on Friday.
She was named Hema at birth and was later renamed Lata, after a character in her father’s play ‘BhaawBandhan’ called Latika. Her family name Mangeshkar was derived from the Mangeshi village in Goa.
Lata Mangeshkar was the first female singer who demanded better pay and royalties in Bollywood.
In 1979, she was the first Indian to perform with the Wren Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
These days, ‘Queen of Tabla’ Anuradha Pal is playing a different taal. Her instrumental composition, ‘Bharat Vandan’, released on the occasion of Republic Day, is an ode to India’s rich heritage, spirituality and other cultural practices. In it, the first female tabla player of India combines the piano, sarod, and the tabla to present the diversity that makes the country special. Available on her YouTube channel and music streaming platforms, this acclaimed percussion artiste’s robust bols are played to the Vande Mataram tune.
Mumbai
Regulars on Instagram would have shared Abhijeet Kain’s Reel more than once. Especially during Lockdown 2.0 and 2.1. Videos of him doing a lip sync to Bollywood music, while educating and entertaining social media regulars on physical distancing, right mask usage, other COVID-19 safety protocols and vaccination were shared by many of his 917k Insta followers. Apart from his regular videos, ones, Abhijeet has also made some videos on the Omicron variant.
The 26-year-old content creator from Lucknow says, “My Instagram becoming what it is now, is a lockdown miracle. I call myself an extroverted introvert; so I’m very selectively social., but when I started creating content I felt as though a new part of me was acting in front of the camera. I’m grateful my audience was so kind and encouraging; that kept me going.”
EYE ON ENGLAND: Why Tariq Ali’s book on Winston Churchill won’t be a hagiography; and in Britain, no one objects when Tagore’s poem, ‘Farewell my friends’ is routinely read at Christian funerals.
reasured heirloom
The Repair Shop is a programme on BBC that restores family heirlooms. It has done just that with a painting of the Jain preacher, Rishabhadeva. The artwork had belonged to Mukta Shah, who had brought it from Uganda rolled in her sari when Idi Amin expelled Indians in 1972. The painting, which had been removed from its frame, was badly creased in the process. It had been bought for Mukta by her father during a pilgrimage to Palitana in Gujarat in 1959 and gave her great comfort over the years.
Mukta died in 2015 but the painting was delivered to the BBC by her schoolteacher daughter, Jaishmin, who was very emotional when she saw how lovingly it had been restored by Louise Drover, a paper conservator. Drover emphasized: “I quite often use a gelatine to consolidate gold. But to respect Jainism, no animal products should be near it. So I’m actually going to use a seaweed product… All these pigments I’m using are plant based just to respect the philosophy of Jainism.”
Such gentleness and respect shown for minority religions make me think that Britain, for all its faults, is the fairest and most civilized country in the world. “I feel like my Mum’s here,” said Jaishmin through her tears.
Chequered past
Tariq Ali’s forthcoming book on Winston Churchill clearly isn’t going to be a hagiography. The publisher, Verso, which is bringing out Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes in May, says that “Tariq Ali challenges Churchill’s vaulted record.” The book will say that “throughout his life, Churchill never bothered to conceal his White supremacist views or his passionate defence of the British Empire.” According to the author, who was once a fiery student leader, “Churchill’s crimes abroad include the brutal assault on the Greek Resistance during the last years of the war (‘Treat Athens as a colonial city’), the Bengal Famine that cost over three million Indian lives, the insistence on using nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (for which he was subjected to a mock war crimes trial in the Truman White House) and his staunch support in 1953 for the CIA/MI6 coup that toppled the democratic Mossadegh government in Iran.”
Churchill is understandably worshipped in Britain as a great wartime leader. But his statue was dubbed “racist” during the Black Lives Matter protests in London in 2020, after which Churchill College, Cambridge, held “[a] year-long programme of events to engage with the facts surrounding Sir Winston Churchill’s words, views and actions relating to empire and race”. And last year, the British journalist, Geoffrey Wheatcroft, also questioned the British prime minister’s legacy in his book, Churchill’s Shadow: An Astonishing Life and a Dangerous Legacy.
Old ties
Dinesh Dhamija, a well-known Indian entrepreneur in Britain, has just gifted £1 million to his alma mater — Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where he was an undergraduate student from 1971-74 — for computer sciences research. Dinesh set up ebookers, one of Europe’s first online travel firms, in 1999, and sold it for $471m in 2004. I asked him whether, during his Cambridge days, he knew that Subhas Chandra Bose had also been a student at Fitzwilliam. He had not.
Dinesh, who is due to be installed as a ‘Benefactor Fellow’ of Fitzwilliam on March 2, tells me: “The Indian government should fund a chair in Netaji’s name at Fitzwilliam.” He adds that in the college archives there exists a signature of Netaji from when he first joined as a student. The future freedom fighter was at Cambridge from 1919 to 1921 and studied Mental and Moral Sciences Tripos. He appears to have had a happy time on the whole at university.
Memorable walk
Corinne Fowler, a professor of postcolonial literature at Leicester University, has come up with a simple but very clever idea. She is walking and talking with experts who know about an area and writing a book, The Countryside: Ten Walks Through Colonial Britain. This is a major work which will be published by Penguin in the UK and across the Commonwealth and in America by Scribner, now part of Simon & Schuster.
She will learn about the politics of cotton by walking in Lancashire with the artist, Bharti Parmar, who reminds me that Gandhi visited millworkers in the area in 1931. Gandhi was invited by mill owners who hoped he would end his boycott of cotton fabric exports from the UK after witnessing how it was punishing ordinary British workers. Instead, the workers cheered Gandhi once he had explained that Indian poverty was a great deal worse than theirs. To the Lancashire millworkers, said Corinne, “Gandhi became a hero.” She is walking in Berkshire with Sathnam Sanghera, author of Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain. She has already done so in the Cotswolds with the historian and curator, Raj Pal. Corinne, who has discovered Indian connections everywhere, explains: “This book continues my mission to connect colonial experience with British rural life.”
Footnote
In reporting the dropping of “Abide with me”, the BBC quoted Kanchan Gupta, senior adviser to the information and broadcasting ministry: “There is really no reason why… we should still have our military bands playing tunes… introduced by the British.” In Britain, though, no one objects when Tagore’s poem, “Farewell my friends”, is routinely read at Christian funerals — as it was when Mark Shand, brother of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, was laid to rest.