435 items in this section. Displaying page 20 of 44
Pickpocket
December 9: Small children on streets running around, darting in and out of traffic seemingly without a care in the world. They are usually homeless and all alone. Even at such a young age they have a profession, where they earn at least Rs 20 a day – pickpocketing. Not a profession any of you would like to practise, would you? But not having much else to fall back upon, some poor young children in Calcutta were lured into stealing....
Human Robots
Human Robots [Illustration by Shinod AP] March 27: At one time we considered robots as machines to do our work. But now we have begun to think of them differently. We want them to be more human than humans themselves! Or else why would the Japanese have designed a new robot to help humans interact with each other? One significant feature of most industrialised societies in the developed world is the breaking-up of the family and the rise of individualism....
These Bold Police Women
April 21: These days Nirbhay (Fearless) Singh Gujjar, is not really living up to his name. This dreaded outlaw who operates in India’s most notorious dacoit-infested region, the Chambal Valley in the Bhind district of northern Madhya Pradesh, is on the run because he is scared of a 28 year-old police officer. Her name is Priyanka Mishra and she is the first woman police officer to be posted in the Chambal range. Gujjar is wanted by the police of two states – Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh....
The Peacocks are Dying
May 11: The residents of the Rajasthan State Electricity Board colony in Heerapur, 12 km from Jaipur, are in shock. They don’t know how to reconcile to the sudden, unexplained deaths of 19 peacocks in their colony in the first week of May. The priest at the Radha Krishna temple in the colony is inconsolable: there are no more peacocks to peck at the vessel filled with jowar. In the first week of May, at Sirsiya village in Phagi district, a villager saw six of the birds die, foaming at their mouth as they tried to dance....
The Kiwi is Australian!
The Kiwi is Australian! [Illustration by Shinod AP] March 14: The kiwi bird is one of the most common symbols of New Zealand. It is also the country’s national bird. And that’s not all. It features as an insignia on New Zealand’s coat of arms as well. New Zealanders consider the kiwi their most enduring national symbol and until now, they believed that the bird did not even exist outside New Zealand....
Coconut Oil + Kerosene = Fuel
Coconut Oil + Kerosene = Fuel [Illustration by Shinod AP] March 27: Fossil fuels or fuels that are naturally found in the earth, are being rapidly consumed by humans. And the world has begun searching for an ‘alternative fuel’. Necessity is the mother of invention. And out of necessity, a coconut farmer in a village in Thailand has ‘invented’ an alternate fuel. Guess what this ‘invention’ is – a little kerosene mixed with a lot of coconut oil!...
All for One
February 26: What happens when someone in authority takes advantage of the position that he is in, to harass someone weaker? In India, more often than not, the victim ends up doing nothing about it. Why not? Fear forces him or her to keep quiet. But not everyone believes in living up to the image of the powerless Indian. And when that ‘someone’ turns out to be an entire village, generally thought to be unchanging, it demands our attention....
The Circle of Life
February 5: Young Vittal Partani is one of many volunteers who has been engaged in a singleminded task these last few days in the town of Bhachau that was devastated by the January 26 earthquake, in Gujarat. But there is something special about the 20 year-old and the youngsters accompanying him on the rescue mission. All of them are orphans of the Latur earthquake disaster of 1993. Only this time around, their roles have reversed – from victims to rescuers....
A Debt Repaid
February 14: More than 60 years ago, the Maharaja of Jamnagar, a princely state in Gujarat, offered shelter to 600 Polish child refugees who had got orphaned during the Second World War. The children were housed near Balachadi, near Jamnagar. It was a deed that the Poles did not forget. For, as the news of the devastating earthquake that hit Gujarat spread across the world on January 26, the Polish government was among the first foreign nations to rush in with aid....
This Bird Paradise Stinks!
March 19: Are you a bird lover? If you live in Delhi, then the river Yamuna is the place to go to. Yes, that same river that was once Delhi’s pride but has got reduced to a polluted dump with mounds of plastic islands floating on its surface and toxic effluents flowing in from fields. And yet, birds flock to the Yamuna. Perhaps because there is no other river or wetland region in Delhi, which is predominantly a dry city, says a report in The Hindu....