Posts Tagged ‘india’
evawhite on July 14th, 2008
What is Mount Everest? The highest mountain in the world you will answer. Well it is that, but dismayingly, what Mount Everest is now increasingly being known as is The Worlds’ Highest Garbage dump. It is hard to reconcile the image of the pristine, snow covered, wind-swept crags of the mountaineer’s ultimate challenge with that of a rubbish tip, but that is grave concern right now. The roof of the world is filthy dirty place!
When I read this news story here, about China’s plans to clean up Mt Everest, I realized what problem climbers can pose to the very peaks that they look to conquer. When people climb Everest, they inevitably leave behind climbing equipment, food, plastics, tins, aluminum cans, glass, clothes, papers, tents, specially along the most popular route to the summit—the Southeast Ridge. The trail consists of a base camp at 17,600 feet and four additional camps closer to the summit. Since the first successful expedition, at least 50 tons of trash has accumulated.
Admittedly, collecting litter becomes rather less of a priority when you are struggling for survival at the higher altitudes when your body and brain is severely oxygen deprived and hypothermia a constant threat. Some estimates suggest that there is some 120 tons of litter on Mt Everest!
Apart from litter there is another rather grim leftover of climbing expeditions to Everest: there are about 120 dead bodies of climbers claimed by the mountain who are frozen in eternity somewhere along the slopes of the mountain.
So according to reports, China is now planning to restrict access to the summit to climbers to allow for a clean up by several of their environmental teams. This will clean up at least some of the litter that has accumulated on the Chinese side of the Everest which is in fact the less popular access route. The Nepalese side evidently is even more popular and presumably more littered.
One person, Jeff Clapp had a good idea, to collect some of that litter (oxygen tanks etc) and turn it them into bells such as this picture, bowls and other stuff such as this glitter ball. Great idea I thought, make a statement against the litter which represents our historical negligence of one of the world’s treasures and make some money while you’re at it!
evawhite on June 17th, 2008
This article I read in the Washington Post about the apology tendered by the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to its indigenous people shocked me. The reason it shocked me is because I did not know that Canada, a country I perceived to a benign, egalitarian and welcoming democracy has actually been guilty of a kind of abuse of human rights that Tibet is accusing China of doing today!
The Prime Minister tendered an apology to tens of thousands of native Canadians, mainly of the Inuit and Métis communities who as children were torn from their families and sent to boarding schools, where many were abused as part of official government policy to “kill the Indian in the child.” This almost barbaric attempt to ‘assimilate’ or ‘integrate’ the aboriginal people of North America into the ‘main stream’ (read European, Caucasian way of life) I found to be most repugnant.
The aim of the government in the early part of the 20th century was, to quote Duncan Campbell Scott, Canada’s deputy superintendent of Indian Affairs “I want to get rid of the Indian problem. . . . Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic.” Scott is said to have coined the phrase “kill the Indian in the child”.
We are now living in more enlightened times when European Imperialistic policies and colonization of the past have no place. Earlier, might was right and there were no agencies in the world to redress the balance in favor of invaded and colonized peoples. In the last 500 years Europeans conquered and colonized Africa, Asia, America and Australia, often wiping out or at any rate perilously marginalizing ethnic cultures and endangering their way of life.
The tide has turned in the other direction today there is an attempt to preserve tribal customs and social structures, to preserve rather than wipe out aboriginal cultures and native communities. Tribal cultures of Africa are sought to be preserved, there are certain aboriginal tribes on the Andaman and Nicobar islands of India whose islands people are not even allowed to set foot on lest they disturb their fragile social structure and way of life.
For, if centuries old cultures and ethnicities are permitted to be wiped out, they are lost for ever and we as citizens of the world are much the poorer for it. Your thoughts?
evawhite on May 30th, 2008
Give the world a celebrity wedding and all eyes are riveted on every move that the wedding couple makes. The venue, the outfits, the cuisine, the decorations, it all comes under the closest scrutiny and as for the celebrity guest list; well that is perhaps the single more important item on the celebrity wedding agenda, because if the right celebrities don’t attend, then it isn’t really a celebrity wedding is it!?
Actually it was the Jenna Bush wedding which was so uncharacteristically low key that set me thinking. This was one unusual celebrity wedding, being a quiet and private affair far from the madding media glare and the unrelenting public gaze. The reason that this wedding got me thinking is because it was definitely the exception to the rule.
Experts have suggested that the reason for this avid, even greedy appetite that the public has for celebrity weddings has something to do with the fact that the monarchy and nobility is a thing of the past. In the past the subjects used to look up their ruler to provide the pomp and circumstance for the amusement of the common citizen, now in the absence of real royalty, the celebrities have become the modern royalty who fill that void left by erstwhile monarchs or rulers.
Many celebrity weddings turn out to be free for the wedding couple and their families. The media willingly and joyfully picks up the tab in lieu of getting exclusive rights to covering the event. A case in point was the exotic Liz Hurley and Arun Nayar wedding. The two part media circus unfolded with part one staged at a castle in England and part two moving over countries and continents to another castle in Jodhpur, India. Two kinds of religious ceremonies, two sets on celebrity invitees, two castles, practically a paparazzi wet dream! Reportedly Hello magazine picked up the tab for the wedding extravaganza which included a procession of elephants, horses and camels, all elegantly decorated for the festivities in return for exclusively covering the Indian nuptials. The magazine gets what it wants the bridal couple have a free fantasy show and the public have their opportunity to enjoy all it their own voyeuristic fashion! A win-win situation if I ever saw one!
evawhite on April 19th, 2008
For persons of occidental extraction, the Orient retains a great deal of mystery and fascination. Counties such as India and China still evoke a sense of exoticism. Of all the places that I have travelled to, my travels within India caused in me the most extreme of reactions. For, in my opinion, India is the sort of place makes you react, either positively or negatively because of its amazing geographical, racial, economic, lingual, cultural, religious and culinary diversity. The color, the smells, the clamor, the chaos, the friendly, hospitable (and very curious) people tend to overwhelm the visitor. It is not a subtle country!
While this is perceived to be a predominantly Hindu nation, it is a very common sight to see a mosque share a common wall with a Hindu temple with perhaps a church or gurudrawa in the very next street! While Kashmir, the Northern most state of India is witness to snow with its landscape dominated by the mighty Himalayas, the southernmost state of Kerala seems to enjoy perpetual summer with its quaint backwaters and lush green landscape. The, Thar Desert in the North-western state of Rajasthan is one of the driest and Cherrapunji in the North east is one of the wettest places on earth!
While they say that viewing the Taj Mahal by moonlight is one of the must-dos in every persons’ life time, that is almost a cliché. Glorious though the Taj is, it is just one of a plethora of historical monuments that dot the entire country and bear mute testimony to its tumultuous past. Take a look, for instance at some of big cities like Mumbai or Kolkata and the residue of the British occupation is clear to see. Travelling around Delhi, you will see not only the symmetrical grandeur of Lutyen’s (the British architect who designed New Delhi) Delhi, you will see scattered everywhere ruins from the Mughal era or historical epochs even preceding that! The Incredible India website gives you an idea of just how amazing and varied this country is!
The caves of Ajanta Ellora near Aurangabad in Maharashtra are examples of truly ancient cave sculpture. You can see some of the most beautiful mosques and the most imposing stupas in India as well. Goa, the beach paradise is home to some of the most remarkable churches and cathedrals and the Bom Jesus Cathedral still has the mortal remains of St. Francis Xavier, the missionary largely responsible for the dissemination of Christianity and Jesuit schooling in India.
The Khajuraho temple is like an open air guide to the Kama Sutra. It seems the temple and its erotic sculpture was constructed by the then ruler in order to encourage the people to have more sex and produce more children. Evidently, there was an opposite crisis then from the one today, one of overpopulation.
Over population, grinding poverty and lack of education are perhaps the most pressing problems faced by India today. While you will see the most luxurious five star hotel, not far from it you will also see the people living on pavements and eking out a living by begging. While India exports the most highly educated and skilled professionals all over the world, a large proportion of the populace languishes in illiteracy. The maddening traffic and chaotic crowds you will see everywhere, are just some of the problems created by over population.
But experts have reason to be optimistic about India’s progress and development. Largely considered to be one of the fastest growing economies of the world, India is making great strides in industrial, economic and educational fields.
