Survival Lessons

I have always loved Discovery Channel and some of the shows there are truly fantastic. Many of them are my favourites. I shouldn't be alive, Man vs wild are just a few of them which can teach you a lot and also inspire you. Thus, with the reference of Discovery channel, here, I am going to tell you a few survival lessons. You never know when you might need them.

IN THE JUNGLE :

Kites- movie review

10 interesting incidents with me

Here are 10 interesting things that I have done, or have happened to me, worth telling -

( Not in any particular order)

Myriad Mumbai

Cuffe Parade, downtown of Mumbai

Call it Mumbai, call it Bombay, or Bombaim (for the Portuguese), whatever you call it, the name does not matter.

Mumbai which was basically named after the Hindu goddess ‘Mumba devi’ and ‘Aai’ meaning mother in Marathi was earlier famous as Bombay- meaning ‘good bay’, a name which a lot of people outside India still know it by. A group of seven islands was merged into one to have what today is Mumbai. Appropriated by the Portuguese, ceded to Charles II of England, and in turn leased to the East India Company, Mumbai has imbibed from a lot of influences and as it stands today it’s an amalgamation- a cocktail, a concoction. You can clearly find the mark of the Portuguese and English mainly on some of the monuments and structures still present.

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (Victoria terminus), H.Q of Central Railway and UNESCO World Heritage site

I have been here for 16 months and it has been an enriching experience to say the least. It is the ‘Mumbai’ I had always heard of in television, read in the papers and heard in conversations. Even now, suddenly once in a while I seem to remind myself that I am in THE Mumbai because once you are at any place for a certain amount of time, you do get used to it and start taking it for granted. This is the place where you are very likely to spot a celebrity- an actor or a cricketer; or anybody famous for that matter because they all seem to reside here. This is the place where by the time you realize it’s raining and you take out your brolly (umbrella) or your raincoat, you would have been already drenched by the downpour and by the time you put it on, it would have already stopped raining.

Called as the’ Maximum City’ or ‘The city that never sleeps’, one of the world's top ten centers of commerce, home to important financial institutions as the Reserve Bank of India, the Stock Exchanges and the corporate headquarters of many Indian companies and numerous multinational corporations, the city that houses India's Hindi film and television industry, known as Bollywood, featuring in the Top ten in the world in Financial hubs, expensive streets, office rents, world’s largest billionaire cities and even in filthiest cities. Mumbai is a city of dreams, despair, drama and dazzle; heartbreaking poverty amongst staggering grandness. It is the bubblegum glamour of Bollywood cinema, shopping malls full of designer labels, cricket on the Oval Maidan, promenading families eating bhelpuri on the beach at Chowpatty, red double-decker buses queuing in grinding traffic. This pungent drama is played out against a Victorian townscape more reminiscent of a prosperous 19th-century English industrial city than anything you'd expect to find on the edge of the Arabian Sea. It's a city with vibrant street life, India's best nightlife, and a wealth of bazaars. Millions travel everyday by trains and buses. Nearly eighteen million people live here - wealthy industrialists, flashy film stars, internationally acclaimed artists, workers, teachers and clerks - all existing cheek by jowl in soaring skyscrapers and sprawling slums. They come from diverse ethnic backgrounds and speak over a dozen tongues adding colour, flavour and texture to the Great Mumbai Melting Pot...........

Solve Rubik's cube without any external help

* Even if you don't have a Rubik's cube, you can use a Java virtual Rubik's cube HERE

What I am giving here won't be the fastest way to solve a Rubik's cube, you won't need to understand the whole mechanics but neither will you have to refer to anything or need external help after this help of mine of course! This is for those who can solve a bit of the cube, not whole or those who can do it by following a lot of algorithms from somewhere. With this, you will be able to solve the whole cube and only remembering a few easy algorithms.

Poetry- Words from my heart

* This is the original work of Achyut Telang and you may not reproduce or distribute this information in whole or in part and the content on this blog post cannot be copied, edited, reproduced or used without the prior written permission of Achyut Telang.

BLISSFUL EXISTENCE :

What a wonderful world
This Existence has provided us with
But even to know it that way,
You will need the eyes and ears for it.

Where every day as the night ends,
The whole world comes to life
From the birds to all creatures,
All become active and throbbing with life.

Where the sun everyday rises punctually,
Without even a single holiday
Light and warmth that it provides with,
Gives comfort to everyone day after day.

Where a lot of different climates
Are there for us to experience,
And for such variety of seasons,
Nature takes nothing, not even once.

Where there is beautiful greenery
And flowers of all colour and shade
From the lotus to rose are different smells
And even colours like yellow and red.

Where every day the sunset creates
The most largest and natural canvas
Whose painter is really unknown but
Every other painter, he definitely does surpass.

Where an unknown musician creates music
Through the orchestra of a river or a bird
which is of divine quality and the best
But to know this, it has to be heard.

Where every day the night falls,
And everything goes into a deep sleep,
It is a moment of complete rest
And eternal peace so profound and deep.

Achyut Telang.

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Fact: Every day 50 to 100 species of plants and animals become extinct as their habitat and human influences destroy them.

My cooking experiment- Madeleines

Hou la! c'est délicieux.

There does seem to be some French connection with me because after dabbling a bit with the French language, today I made The madeleine or petite madeleine, which is a traditional small cake from northeastern France.

Original Madeleines (the way it should be)