435 items in this section. Displaying page 29 of 44
High Performance, Low Pollution
With the number of vehicles and industries growing at an alarming rate in India, pollution levels are also shooting up. Most of us go about our daily lives feeling the impact of pollution in smarting eyes and asthmatic sighs, but we do not do much beyond talking about it. But there are some people who are actually thinking of ways in which to preserve a green environment so that we can all breathe cleaner air....
Silence that Spoke of Protest
October 16: A few days ago, seven villages in Aurangabad district of Maharashtra, wore a ghostly look for an entire day. Not one of the 40,000 people inhabiting the villages could be seen outside their homes. The villagers were on a first ever self-imposed ‘janata (people’s) curfew’ in the country. Their purpose – to attract government attention to the serious state of unemployment in the villages. Their grievance – a futile wait for over 25 years for jobs promised by the state government, reported ‘The Indian Express’....
Villagers go Online
October 28: The internet is quietly transforming the lives of over 20,000 people in six villages around the South Indian state of Pondicherry. Whether it’s sugarcane farmers in Kizhur village using the net to consult an entomologist ( one who fights bugs ) online, to save their crops from being ravaged by bugs, or a farm-worker making incense sticks under a government-sponsored scheme about which she found out on the net, the internet has become crucial to the lives of all the villagers....
Indian Children on US Mars Project
October 6: The planet Mars, or the ‘red-planet’ as it’s called, has fascinated people on earth for centuries. The fourth planet from the sun, Mars is the nearest planet to earth. This stunning landmass of craters, an uneven surface and dark skies has been a highly favoured destination for space travelers in science fiction, the body of literature that deals with stories of exploration into alien worlds. The possibility of humans visiting Mars and even colonizing it some day, is the dream of astronomers and space scientists the world over....
The Olympic Gold Rush
September 30: At the Millennium Olympics in Sydney, Barbados, the tiny island nation in the Caribbean, has overtaken the United States and China to head the medals tally – if you calculate the number of medals against the population. When sprinter Obadele Thompson won the bronze in the 100-metre race in 10.04 seconds, on September 23, Barbados topped the medal table list maintained by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). This is because Barbados has a population of only 270,000....
No Dalmatians Please
Have you seen the movie ‘101 Dalmatians?’ Remember the cute cuddly spotted puppies scampering around and performing tricks? Well, if you loved the movie, here’s some news for you – Disney is coming out with yet another puppy-filled movie and it is going to be called ‘102 Dalmatians’ – a sequel to the original movie. No Dalmatians Please [Illustration by Anup Singh] Dalmatians are believed to have originated in Dalmatia (now in Croatia, Europe), long, long ago....
Hanoi's Good Samaritan
Hanoi’s Good Samaritan [Illustration by Shiju George] November 4:The streets of cities in Vietnam teem with young boys who, despite their sad eyes, have dazzling smiles on their faces, and speak halting, broken English, that sounds charming to the ears. They sell postcards, shine shoes and hassle tourists with remarkably impressive sob-stories about needing money for sick parents, school fees and English lessons. It’s a combination that never fails to move the tourist for whose benefit of course, the entire performance is staged....
The Common Man's Film-maker
September 23: From the rollicking ‘Chupke Chupke’ and ‘Golmaal’ to the shades of jealousy in ‘Abhimaan’, from the quiet seriousness of ‘Anupama’ to the tragic ‘Anand’, veteran film maker Hrishikesh Mukherjee has covered an entire range of emotions and relationships in his films. In a career spanning more than four decades, he became known as the man who touched a chord in the common man – the middle class in particular. And the ordinary film viewer responded to his quiet flowering in the only way he or she knew – by seeing Hrishi_da_‘s films again and again....
Messing Up, Alphabetically
November 4: Central Asian countries that proclaimed independence after the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) disintegrated in 1991 are not merely beset by the usual political and economic uncertainties that mark all new nations. They are uncertain about their alphabets too. At the root of all this confusion is an identity crisis that the countries are suffering. Messing Up, Alphabetically [Illustration by Sudheer Nath] Take Azerbaijan, for instance. Since most people here speak Azeri, verbal communication is not a problem....
Worming into the Olympics
The organisers of the 2000 Sydney Olympics are very serious about projecting the Olympics as an eco-friendly event. So the Olympics village in Sydney, where the athletes are living, is entirely solar-powered. But the organisers haven’t stopped at that. They’re ensuring that even the garbage generated by people at the Olympics is eco-friendly. For this, they’ve enlisted the help of the humble earthworm — three varieties of the earthworm, in fact. Thousands of these worms cluster behind eating areas at the Olympics....