Developed or Dumb & Dumber?

The hype around doomsday was generated by some fools and supported by some useless TV channels. No wonder there some TV channels surviving only for spreading rumour and creating panic. Finally, we got over it and I think 21^st, 2012 was as good as it gets. When the urban Indian took it quite coolly, people from some of the so-called developed countries were having petty immature approach towards it. The precaution taken by some of them were so ridiculous that you only doubt about their sanity. The doomsday bunkers, the ship (Noah’s Ark) and many more that we have seen or heard during past few days or rather almost a year.  Every civilization left some footprint behind and it was same with the Mayan. The Mayan never invented the calendar was in question but they developed it further and still used in some of the Mayan countries. The calendar is over 5000 years old and ended on 21^st December, 2012. The Mayans never predicted the end of the world.

Mayan Calendar

The Maya kept historical records such as civil events, their calendar and astronomical knowledge. They maintain a distinctive set of traditions and beliefs due to the combination of pre-Columbian and post-Conquest ideas and cultures. The Maya and their descendants still form sizable populations that include regions encompassing present day Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador and parts of Mexico. The essentials of the Maya calendar are based upon a system which had been in common use throughout the region, dating back to at least the 5th century BCE. It shares many aspects with calendars employed by other earlier Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Zapotec and Olmec, and contemporary or later ones such as the Mixtec and Aztec calendars.

Designed

The Mayan Calendar consists of three separate corresponding calendars, the Long Count, the Tzolkin (divine calendar) and the Haab (civil calendar). Time is cyclical in the calendars and a set number of days must occur before a new cycle can begin.

Tzolk'in

The tzolk'in  or tzolkin is the name commonly employed by Mayanist researchers for the Maya Sacred Round or 260-day calendar. The word tzolk'in is a neologism coined in Yucatec Maya, to mean "count of days". The various names of this calendar as used by precolumbian Maya peoples are still debated by scholars.

Haab'

The Haab' was the Maya solar calendar made up of eighteen months of twenty days each plus a period of five days at the end of the year known as Wayeb'. The five days of Wayeb', were thought to be a dangerous time. Maya had customs and rituals they practiced during Wayeb'. For example, people avoided leaving their houses and washing or combing their hair.

The Long Count

The Long Count is an astronomical calendar which was used to track longer periods of time, what the Maya called the “universal cycle”. Each such cycle is calculated to be 2,880,000 days (about 7885 solar years). The Mayans believed that the universe is destroyed and then recreated at the start of each universal cycle. This belief still inspires a countless of prophesies about the end of the world.

The Mayan calendar completes its current “Great Cycle” of the Long Count on the  December 21, 2012, hence the innumerable of doomsday prediction was surrounding on this date.

Doomsday’s fear is all in the mind of a person and only for those who are having a very weak frame of mind.

!!!I In due time Life will die its own death, fear cannot prevent it!!!

The Sun sets in the west!

In the work culture front, we always took the beating from the west but not in the cultural front. India is one of the oldest and its uniqueness lies within its multi-cultural society.  A billion plus population who speak different languages and if go by the book then it comes to be a several hundred of languages spoken around India yet we are one.

In musical front too India is very different from other countries. The various folk music always played an important part in our life. India also have two form of classical music, North Indian is known as Hindustani and South Indian as Carnatic music. Both streams are very different and both consists complex 'raga' frame. Some starlets who ruled the roost of Indian classical music are no more with us. Like Ustad Bade Gulam Ali Khan, Amir Khan, Ali Akbar Khan, Ustad Allrekha, Ustad Bismillah Khan, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi and recently we lost Pandit Ravishankar too.  Apart from oldies like Jakir Hussein, Amjad Ali Khan, Hari Prsad Chawrasia, Pandit Jasraj, Pandit Shivkumar Sharma,  there is dearth of talent in the current generation and there are no such flag bearer can be seen like the mentioned ones. This page a tribute to the one and only Pandit Ravishankar.

Pandit Ravi Shankar

Early Life

Ravi Shankar was born Robindro Shankar Chowdhury on 7 April 1920 in Varanasi to a Bengali Brahmin family. He was the youngest among the seven sibling.

At the age of ten, after spending his first decade in Varanasi, Ravi Shankar went to Paris with the dance group of his brother, choreographer Uday Shankar. By the age of 13 he had become a member of the group, accompanied its members on tour and learned to dance and play various Indian instruments. Uday Shankar's dance group toured Europe and the United States of America in the early to mid-1930s and Ravi Shankar learned French, discovered Western classical music, jazz, cinema and became acquainted with Western customs. Ravi Shankar heard the lead musician for the Maihar court, Allauddin Khan, in December 1934 at a music conference in Kolkata and Uday convinced the Maharaja of Maihar in 1935 to allow Khan to become his group's soloist for a tour of Europe. Ravi Shankar was sporadically trained by Khan on tour, and Khan offered Ravi Shankar training to become a serious musician under the condition that he abandon touring and come to Maihar. Ravi Shankar gave up his dancing career in 1938 to go to Maihar and study Indian classical music as Khan's pupil, living with his family in the traditional gurukul system. Khan was a rigorous teacher and Shankar had training on sitar and surbahar, learned ragas and the musical styles dhrupad, dhamar, and khyal, and was taught the techniques of the instruments rudra veena, rubab, and sursingar. Ravi Shankar began to perform publicly on sitar in December 1939 and his debut performance was a jugalbandi  with Ali Akbar Khan, who played the string instrument sarod.

Marriages and Affairs.

Shankar married Allauddin Khan's daughter Annapurna Devi in 1941 and a son, Shubhendra Shankar, was born in 1942. Ravi Shankar separated from Devi during the 1940s and had a relationship with Kamala Shastri, a danseuse, beginning in the late 1940s. An affair with Sue Jones, a New York concert producer, led to the birth of Norah Jones in 1979. After separating from Kamala Shastri in 1981, Ravi Shankar lived with Sue Jones until 1986. He married Sukanya Rajan in 1989. Anoushka Shankar was born to Shankar and Sukanya Rajan.

Liaison with George Harrison

George Harrison of The Beatles became interested in Indian classical music, bought a sitar and used it to record the song "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)". This led to Indian music being used by other musicians and created the raga rock trend. Harrison then met Ravi Shankar in London in 1966 and visited India for six weeks to study sitar under Ravi Shankar. Apart from others Ravi Shankar was also associated with many musical institution in USA

Awards

Shankar won the Silver Bear Extraordinary Prize of the Jury at the 1957 Berlin International Film Festival for composing the music for the movie Kabuliwala. He was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for 1962, and was named a Fellow of the academy for 1975. Shankar was awarded the three highest national civil honours of India: Padma Bhushan, in 1967, Padma Vibhushan, in 1981, and Bharat Ratna, in 1999.

Death

He died on 11 December 2012 at a hospital near his home in Encinitas, California.

!!!“The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our separate ways, I to die, and you to live. Which of these two is better only God knows.” ― Socrates!!!

Extreme Greed for Fame ended with A Murder!

Having fun is no crime, but not at others' expense.  It is not an advise or a sort of idiom, it is just a caution. But, how many of us follow it? We are living in a society,  where it doesn’t matter who are the scapegoat but all matter that you had what you wanted. Sorry to see that the tolerance and feelings are fading from the face of the earth. We end up living in a ruthless world. People are least bothered about others to achieve personal gain or glory. Last week we witnessed how two Djs from Australia forced a women to end her life. The people who are related to any sort of media are dying for overnight glory which finally it took away an innocent life.

It happened many times, everyone aware of the circumstances under which Princes Diana died. In our country we have seen before how renowned journalist Barkha Dutt of NDTV linked to 2G scam with lobbyist Neera Radia. In recent, how two editors of a prime channel demanded a whopping hundred crore from a minister  to drop a news item regarding coal scam. All sorts of media are in a a rotten mess and people around it needs some soul searching to do.

Jacintha Saldanha

Jacintha Saldanha an Indian from Manglore, she was 46 years, a nurse at the King Edward VII's Hospital in central London, answered a call on December 4 morning, with any suspicion. The call was from the Sydney-based 2Day FM station, whose two DJs pretended to be the Queen and Prince Charles. Ms Saldanha put them through to a colleague who provided details of the Duchess's condition.

Ms Saldanha was found unconscious at a nurses' residence close to the private hospital in Marylebone at about 9.35am and despite the efforts of paramedics could not be revived. Police said the death was not being treated as suspicious, and a source said she had taken her own life. Mental health experts cautioned against any assumptions about factors contributing to her death. The nurse, a mother of two children, who started working at the hospital in 2008, is the first member of staff heard to answer on a recording of the hoax call from presenters Mel Greig and Michael Christian.

Ms Greig, seeking to impersonate the Queen, asked to be put through to "my grand-daughter", prompting Ms Saldanha to pass the phone to another nurse who was looking after the duchess. The hospital, which is rated as one of London's best private medical establishments and has a reputation for closely guarding the privacy of its patients.

In addition to the inherent humiliation caused by the prank, Saldanha was further humiliated by the DJs, who gloated that she fell for the "easiest prank ever made." They never expected their absurdist British accents to succeed. On the morning of the tragedy they were still gloating on Twitter. Doing a job is not mean taking an innocent life. It is so painful to think that how horrifying it was for the woman with a loving husband and two kids to come to the extreme decision.

The obsession for the royal family by the Brits should partially blame for the sad incident. People of Britain should realize that the members of royal family are not god but a normal person like others. At the same time royal family too has some responsibility, instead of enjoying the craze around them, they themselves should make people become conscious that they are nothing more than an ordinary human.

!!!Who lives with disproportionate of excuses should prepare to die with the same amount of regrets !!!

Murdered By The Law!!

An innocent woman was sentenced to death by the law of the land and executed perfectly by the doctors. It sounds bizarre but it is true. It is not something that happened in some backward countries from Africa or Asia but happened very much in a so-called developed country and I am not talking about euthanasia. The incident happened in much developed country like Ireland.

Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old citizen of India, originally from Belgaum, in the Indian State of Karnataka, and who was working in Ireland as a dentist, died at University Hospital Galway. On October 21, Savita, a 31-year-old Indian dentist, was admitted to Galway University Hospital in severe pain. She was 17 weeks pregnant; within hours, doctors determined she was miscarrying. Nevertheless, they could hear a faint fetal heartbeat and refused to perform an abortion.

As Savita’s condition worsened and her suffering increased, she begged for the operation. She was told: “This is a Catholic country.” By the time the fetus was declared dead and removed, Savita had advanced blood poisoning. On October 28, she, too, was pronounced dead. Murdered is the correct word.

Ireland’s constitution bans all abortions, but 20 years ago the country’s high court ruled that an exception had to be made when there was a “real and substantial risk” of maternal death. That risk must be balanced against the risk to the fetus — even, apparently, if the fetus has no chance of surviving.

It reminds, the infamous case of 1992 involved a 14-year-old rape victim who became suicidal after the state had prohibited her from traveling to England for an abortion. Her case led to mass demonstrations of support for abortion reform in Ireland and the unequivocal Irish Supreme Court ruling that lifesaving abortion services are legal. In other words, the Supreme Court interpreted the Irish Constitution to require abortion when necessary to save a woman’s life.

Under Irish law, according to the Offences against the Person Act 1861, as amended, an unlawful act of abortion is a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment. Following a ruling of the Supreme Court of Ireland in 1992—now known in Ireland as the X case—terminations are allowed under certain circumstances, where "a pregnant woman's life was at risk because of pregnancy, including the risk of suicide".

The human rights court found this to be a clear violation of my client’s rights under the European Convention on Human Rights and in 2010 demanded that Ireland reform its abortion laws. The case was considered a major victory for women.

The court ruling has not been codified into law. Halappanavar's death led to protests at Galway, particularly from the local Indian expatriate community. The University Hospital is currently a subject of several investigations. Halappanavar had been one of the organisers of the annual Galway Diwali festival, which was cancelled in response to her death.

The big question was how the doctors can perform such acts and how can be a noble professional turned to a so unethical. How come a doctor take out the rule book to a patients who is dying, why then they denied the euthanasia. So, it is not Muslims or Hindus but in the name of religion, murder committed everywhere.

!!!It is not the matter that how many years you are permitted to lived on but in the end, it is all about, how many years are taken away from you.!!!