The Lost Wonder.

On the 11th of September,2001, the Taliban crashed two planes into the WTC, New York, sending tremors down the spine of the world....
The whole world described the event as one of the saddest, in the history of mankind...............
In the shadow of this event, however, the world also lost the memory of one of the greatest monuments in the history of mankind...the symbols of love and amity, serenity and reflections of our past.....THE BUDDHAS OF BAMIAN.
I'm sure most of you did'nt know that:
The Bamian region of Afghanistan was home to the tallest statues of Gautam Buddha in the whole world.......
These statues built by the Indo-European aryans were 180 and 121 ft. tall, and were collectively worshipped by the Indians, the Chinese, the Mongolians, and even the Greeks.....
Also, the Bamian region is home to the most peace loving tribe of Afghanistan. The Hazarat tribe.
It is compulsory in each Hazarat family to educate their children..
I'm not writing this blog to tell you the facts about The Bamian Buddhas...Even Wikipedia can do that...............
I'm writing this, to remind you of this wonderful monument and the beautiful people surrounding it........ALL OF WHOM WERE MERCILESSLY CRUSHED BY THE TALIBAN.

In March 2001, the taliban dynamited the Bamian buddhas for days,.....massacered thousands of innocent Hazarats............................. all because of the whims of a certain man called Mullah Omar, the de-facto head of the Taliban.
He did this, to uphold Islam...and to show that there is only one God.
He said that crushing other religions is the duty of the Islamists and they should be proud of the destruction of the statues.
Even today, the Hazarat people do not get jobs in the cities,cannot move freely, and are treated like dogs.........
I have pasted the Wikipedia pageto the Bamian Buddhas below....i urge you to read about these wonderful creations....

Bamyan lies on the Silk Road, a caravan route linking the markets of China & India with those of Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. Until the twelfth century AD, Bamiyan was part of the Indian kingdom of Gandhara. It was the site of several Buddhist and Hindu monasteries, and a thriving center for religion, philosophy, and Indo-Greek art. It was a Buddhist religious site from the second century up to the time of the Islamic invasion in the ninth century.

Monks at the monasteries lived as hermits in small caves carved into the side of the Bamyan cliffs. Many of these monks embellished their caves with religious statuary and elaborate, brightly-colored frescoes.

The two most prominent statues were the giant, standing Buddhas, measuring 55 and 37 metres (180 and 121 feet) high respectively, the largest examples of standing Buddha carvings in the world. They were perhaps the most famous cultural landmarks of the region and the site was listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site along with the surrounding cultural landscape and archaeological remains of the Bamyan Valley. The statues were represented wearing Hellenic tunics, an echo of Alexander the Great's contribution to the Central Asian mix almost a millennium earlier.

The smaller of the two statues was built in AD 507, the larger in 554.^[2] The statues are believed to have been built by the Kushans and Indo-Hephthalites (both eastern Indo-European peoples) at the heyday of their empires. The above mentioned groups were the ancestors of the Hazaras, the most persecuted ethnic group in Afghanistan.^[3] Physical and facial features of the Hazaras are greatly similar to those in the frescoes found in the ancient relics and caves. Furthermore, considering the historical importance of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, unsuccessful claims over the Buddha's heritage have been made by all the ethnic groups in Afghanistan.

A monumental sitting Buddha similar in style to those at Bamiyan still exists in the Bingling Temple caves in China's Gansu province

In March 2001, according to Agence France Presse in Kabul, a decree declared, "Based on the verdict of the clerics and the decision of the Supreme Court of the Islamic Emirate (of Afghanistan) all the statues around Afghanistan must be destroyed. All the statues in the country should be destroyed because these statues have been used as idols and worshipped by people. Only God, the Almighty, deserves to be worshipped, not anyone or anything else."

Information and Culture Minister Qadratullah Jamal told Associated Press of a decision by 400 religious clerics from across Afghanistan declaring the Buddhist statues against the tenets of Islam. "They came out with a consensus that the statues were against Islam," said Jamal.

Dynamiting and destruction, March 2001

Photograph of a statue being dynamited on March 21, 2001

The statues were destroyed by dynamite over several weeks, starting in early March, carried out in different stages. Initially, the statues were fired at for several days using anti-aircraft guns and artillery. This damaged them but did not obliterate them. Then the Taliban placed anti-tank mines at the bottom of the niches, so that when chunks of rock broke off from artillery fire, the statues would fall and be blown up again. In the end, the Taliban tied ropes around some local Hazara men, lowered them down the cliff face, and forced them to place explosives into holes in the Buddhas.^[8]

On March 6, 2001 The Times quoted Mullah Mohammed Omar as stating, "Muslims should be proud of smashing idols. It has given praise to God that we have destroyed them." He had clearly changed his position from being in favor of the statues to being against them. During a March 13 interview for Japan's Mainichi Shimbun, Afghan Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Mutawakel stated that the destruction was anything but a retaliation against the international community for economic sanctions: "We are destroying the Buddha statues in accordance with Islamic law and it is purely a religious issue".
Then Taliban ambassador-at-large, Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, said that the destruction of the statues was carried out by the Head Council of Scholars after a single Swedish monuments expert proposed to restore the statues' heads. Hashimi is reported as saying: "When the Afghani head council asked them to provide the money to feed the children instead of fixing the statues, they refused and said, 'No, the money is just for the statues, not for the children'. Herein, they made the decision to destroy the statues".^[10]

INDIAN PAISA LEAGUE (IPL)

The players auction and the huge amount that various franchisee spent on buying cricket players actually drove me to write this article. The highest bid was for the present India ODI captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni of about Rs 6crores. Many other players fetched round Rs 3 crores to be a part of a particular team. Forget the players earning money, the main revenue generated will go in the account of our very own BCCI which is led by none other than Sharad Pawar.

Sharad Pawar, out Hon. Minister for Agriculture can fetch over 1000crores for the IPL but when it comes to debt ridden farmers, there is no way we can fetch money. BCCI was never as rich as it is now. If Sharad Pawar, as the President of BCCI can bring about this change in BCCI, why can't he do the same thing for our farmers? Certainly, there is lack of will power. Any ways, the purpose of this article was to highlight, the way cricket has progressed and has been changed into a money making business.

It all actually started with Sachin Tendulkar bagging the 100crore contract from World Tel in the year 1998. There mite be (as I was too young, I don't know) many people opposing this or voicing their concern over this contract during those days. But why should our sportsmen not earn as other sportsmen for other countries do? From then on cricket has seen a number of changes and more and more money has been involved in cricket. The recent one being, BCCI's idea to form a Indian Premier League, which will have a 20-20 tournament between 8 teams and players from all round the world. Basically, BCCI got to earn more money through this. They just had to give out television contract, a sponsorship deal and lease out the teasm to private players and sit back and count the mullah generated. That's what the BCCI has been doing for the past 3 years from the time Sharad Pawar came into power in BCCI. Where has all the money generated gone? Isn't the BCCI responsible to asnwer this question. It;s good that the players are earning more, but thats only the international players, who already get hell lot of money through sponsorships. What about the Ranji players who don't have enough talent to come upto the international level. what has the BCCI done for them?
We all know the pathetic condition out stadium's are in. You cannot walk inside the Wankhede Stadium during the match. There are no facilities for the spectators. This is the condition,just because the BCCI knows the spectators are going to come in no matter what is the state of the stands. Can't the BCCI shell out its money to change this state? We all know, how school cricket is played. 4-5 matches are on on a ground that is not even as big as one full ground. The outfield is in a even more pathetic state. Well, changing this isn's going to bring in moolah for BCCI, itz only going to bring in good players. Who cares about good players. money is all that matters.
Coming to the pathetic state of other sports in India. The shooters don't have ammunation and the shuttlers don't have shuttles. One big country cant afford even these small things. I am fed up of writing against our pathetic politicians. The reason why Sharad Pawar became the president of BCCI was that he was intrested in sports and not cricket as such. If this is his interest in sports, why cant he even hand out 5% share of BCCI's earning to other sport bodies. I feel, even if that part is put to good use we can have world class sports persons. I personally feel the recent committee in BCCI is doing a fabulous job in getting in money for BCCI, but they have been a total failure in channelizing this money. We can have a separate group of people ie. ex cricket players to channelize this money. I am pretty much sure, we will be able to change the standard of cricket in India and take it to a new level.
BCCI has been turning into the Indian Paisa League. It is a good change, but the Paisa has to be put to proper use. That is what has not been happening. Lets hope, by the end of this decade, at least we have a very good cricketing authority and India is the number 1 team in the world.
~Harshad

Howdy!

HI Fellas...this is Yash!And thanks to Harshad , I will, from now on, be sharing a bit of space with him on this blog.So, lemme give ya'll an intro..(though Harsh did a great job of it!)

I was in the King George School, Matunga.And then i was with Harshad in Khalsa College. And we had a great time together...troubling our dear Tronix Profs., right naa???

Well yes as Harshad writes...my hobby is writing.(though i won't be any better than Harshad...he gets all the best topics to write on!!!) . But i'm a dull writer on the comp. cuz i take a huge time writing a single goddamned virtual line!!!

So when i heard Harsh has started this blog...i volunteered to write!!!And so now i'm here!!!

So, Let's make this a revolution!!!

2 ARE BETTER THAN 1

Yash Chitalia, my Khalsa College friend also be contributing to the articles on this blog. He is a superb writer, with his stories being published in famous science magazines. You'll surely find his articles better than mine.

We may also be writing quite a lot of articles together.

YASH: Welcome you on this blog and let us try to make it a famous one as well!!!

~Harshad

NATIONAL ANIMAL ONLY 1411

The number of tigers in India:
Year: 1990s
Tigers: 40,000+

Year: 1972
Tigers: 1827

Year: 1997
Tigers: 3508

Year: 2002
Tigers: 3642

Year: 2007
Tigers: 1411

We, as a country with an area of 32,87,590 sq.km and a population of about 113crores have a tiger population of only 1411 in the year 2007. This fact recently gripped the headlines.

I generally have a habit of reading the entire article but when I first read the headline, I didn't want to read the article. I was rather sad and taken back after I read the headline. Can't India as one of the largest country and a country having most manpower in the world even protect 3000+ tigers that it has? Can't India as a country take care of the national animal of India? If this is the state of our national animal, what would be the condition of other animals?

As the facts suggest the tiger population was about 1827 in 1972 from 40,000 in the early 1900s. There is no one you can blame because about 2/3rd of this period we were ruled by the Britishers and the rest period was spent in organizing India. After the census in 1972, the government launched Project Tiger which I guess was instrumental for the increase in number of Tigers from 1827 to 3508 in 1997. But don't you think that 25 years is a lot of time and the number of tigers should have at least reached 7000 by the end of 1997. even if we consider 3508 to be a very good number, especially after 1827, there wasn't any significant rise from the year of 1997 to 2002. It was only increase of 134 in a span of 5 years. The shocker that came recently stated that the tiger number is India had dipped to 1411 from 3642 in just 5 years. Thats 2231 tigers gone and there is no record of where and how. The government is least interested in animals and their protection. The just want to shell out some quotas of cry foul over each other in order to influence their vote-bank. After all, Tigers don't vote. A government which doesn't address to population concerns (increase) in India will actually be happy that now they have 2231 tigers less to look after. Any ways, the government never cared of what happens to these tigers. After all, Tigers don't vote. A person in India who goes to a forest to see the Tiger has to return with the tigers foot-marks only. This is the condition of tigers in India. They are so less in number, that our future generation will only be looking at the tigers in photo frames. i really don't understand what the administration up to. If they can protect the 3000+ politicians in this country, why cant the protect the 3000+ tigers. If one politician can have 4-5 security officers around him, cant we have one person to look after 1 tiger at least. Can't these politicians (who if actually die is going to help the country) sacrifice one security guard for the tigers?

The government needs to take steps and quickly to protect this wild animal. One way out of this, as I have already mentioned is, assign one man per tiger. That person has to take care of the tiger, right from his food to his health. And even protect him. Eventually, there will be no way of the animal being killed for its skin because, one person will always be there to protect the tiger. A second option out is, allow private bodies to take up sanctuaries in India and in turn give them tax soaps. This way, the government won't have to take any extra effort in protecting the tiger. The private body has to be answerable to the media and the government. this will ensure there is no foul play involved. If given a chance, people will be ready to volunteer in order to protect this animal in what ever way they can. The forests in India are becoming small to smaller day by day. The government is giving away forests in form of SEZ's and there has been no regulation of forest area in India. There needs to be proper regulation of forest land. Any further sale of forest land has to be stopped and the forests in India have to be preserved. If required, artificial sanctuaries for tigers should be built even if it involves chunks and chunks of money and man power. We have loads of man power and money too only if it reaches proper channels. We even need to bring in life-in-prison punishment for tiger killing. Our laws against tiger killing need to me made more strict. The culprits are most often easily let-off. Due to this, once they are free, they are not scared to kill another tiger. The tiger needs to be given the same importance as a human. After all, it is our national animal. It would be a shame, if we cannot protect even 1411 tigers and cant increase their number to 14110 in the next decade. We have science to support us and if required, we can always take the help of science to increase the tiger's birthrate.

Eventually, if the government even implements ahlf of the above suggestions, I am pretty much sure, the number of Tigers in India will be 40K+ by the end of 2030. Our target now should only be 40K+ and 2030. The should be no other number in our mind and even if there is, it should be more than 40K and less that 2030.

I sincerely hope that the tiger population in India rises and I am sure, if together, we try and persuade the government, we will be able to get the necessary changes.

Join my hand in protecting the TIGERS

SAVE TIGER!

ME MUMBAIKAR!!!!

The past two weeks have been quite eventful for Mumbaikars. Raj Thackareys provocative statements and then his arrest and finally being let out on bail has been gripping the headlines.

Let me clear my view first: Biharis and UP people are welcome in Mumbai as long as they are ready to live here legally and not in slums and shantis. Sorry! Mumbai cant take any more slums. More than 50% of Mumbai population live in slums and any increase in this will simply mean that Mumbai is going to crumble. The government is as reluctant to act against these slums as it was in arresting Raj Thackarey. The only difference in Raj's case was that finally people saw action being taken against him and that is never going to happen against slums. Come elections in state again and the government will again increase the deadline of slums to 2005. The massive vote bank that is generated from slums is a major factor in this. Lets be frank, a major proportion of these slums are occupied by Biharis and UPites who come here in search of jobs. Especially the slums that were built after 1995(which was the earlier deadline for legalizing slums) have a lot of "Bhaiyas" living in them. These "Bhaiyas" are responsible to a major extent to the awful state of the city that you see today. They have no discipline, they don't care about cleanliness and they don't respect the people of this city (the legal ones). Let me again tell you, I am no ways against any kind of people living in Mumbai legally. YOU ARE WELCOME. Why does no one have a problem against any gujurati or tamil person living here. The answer is the live here legally and respect the city. Every slum in this city has a UTTAR PRADESHIYA SEVA SANG. I don't understand the reason as to why we need a SEVA SANG (that too from UTTAR PRADESH) here in Mumbai. And moreover these SEVA SANG's are sponsored by political parties from UTTAR PRADESH. Wasn't Raj Thackarey right when he was against politics being played here on the cost of the city. The Maharashtra government was keen to make Mumbai slumfree when it was elected in 2003 but then the centre was more intrested in votebank politics. For the first time in India the opposition was supporting the ruling party in any state. If the Bihari politicians say that India is one and there should be no discrimination based on language, why were there reactions like "I'll give sticks to north Indians."
Well, as I write this article, thousands of people in Bihar are thinking of coming to Mumbai at this very moment. I don't want to blame these people because its the system that has failed in Bihar and not the common man. A person who doesn't even get money to fulfill his basic necessities like food clothing and shelter atleast gets all these three back here in Mumbai. No person in Mumbai dies of hunger. You eventually get some work and earn to have a meal at least once a day. The question is how many such people can Mumbai support. My answer is not many. A good solution to this problem is create a Mumbai in Bihar or rather every state of India. We have the workforce and the potential to do that. After that everyone will be proud to say "ME MUMBAIKAR" or we can have a new slogan "HUM MUMBAIKAR" When politicians from other states justify their state people presence in Mumbai they are accepting that their state has failed in every respect. There can be no other loss than having to leave your state in search of livelihood. That shows that the state has been a major failure.

I support Raj Thackeray's stand but don't support his techniques. Violence is not the way to sort an issue. We have room for discussion . the constitution in India is old and we need to change it to a small extent. Again the constitution doesn't endorse slums but the politicians cant see that they can only see Raj's statement being against constitution. Instead of giving their views on Raj's statement, why don't they concentrate on issues in their state?

i proudly say "ME MUMBAIKAR" and let all people living in Mumbai legally say the same!!!!!