Innholdsfortegnelse for September 12, 2016 i India Today

October 26, 1947 Hari Singh, the Maharaja of Kashmir, signs the Instrument of Accession (IOA) with India. The first Indo-Pak war breaks out 1948-1949 The UN Security Council calls for a plebiscite, but Pakistan refuses to withdraw its troops. Kashmir is effectively partitioned October 17, 1949 India adopts Article 370, giving a special status to J&K. Jurisdiction is restricted to defence, foreign affairs and communications 1951 Sheikh Abdullah-led National Conference wins a majority in the first elections held post Independence. A resolution by the UN declares that the elections cannot substitute for a plebiscite 1953-1954 Sheikh Abdullah arrested after he dithers over accession to India. A new regime under Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad ratifies the IOA 1956-1957 J&K adopts a constitution defining itself as part of India. UN says this cannot…

 When Prime Minister Narendra Modi travels to Vietnam, China and then the East Asia Summit in Laos in the first week of September, he will be fly ing over what is emerging as the world’s most contested waterway — and also India’s newest diplomatic challenge. The South China Sea will be the elephant in the room as the PM visits the three countries. In Vietnam, which is involved in a bitter maritime dispute with China, India is moving forward with both military and comm ercial ties, including exploration of the South China Sea’s vast oil and gas resources. China, meanwhile, is working over time to ensure that its controversial new moves to fortify some of the contested islands and reefs in the region will not overshadow the G20 summit (September…

Mary Beard’s new ‘history of ancient Rome’ is already an international bestseller. It appears in an age when Gibbon may have fallen from grace but Michael Apted’s Rome features prominently on hotstar; when the wilful destruction of the Roman ruins of Palmyra is still fresh in our globalised memories, and sword-and-sandal movies, from a remake of Ben Hur to Ashutosh Gowariker’s Mohenjo Daro, are staging an unlikely comeback. Indeed, Beard herself is a notable exemplar of this revival. A paid-up classical scholar, she’s also a bankably popular public intellectual in the UK, feted for her TV documentaries (Pompeii, Meet the Romans) as much as her affably irreverent newspaper column ‘A Don’s Life’. SPQR is likely to propel her to even greater prominence as one of a small set of bestselling…

Lo Phir Bahaar Aayi sung by the legendary Malika Pukhraj wafts out of the auditorium. Inside, a riot of vivid colours escapes the stage and finds a place next to the audience. It is after all Basant for the actors, an important Punjabi festival banned by Pakistan. There is live singing, innocent love brewing between characters. There is also an 82-year-old actor who can’t help move his body every time a song comes alive. There is talk about rising Islamic fundamentalism. Noted director Madeeha Gauhar, of Lahore-based theatre group Ajoka, is sitting in the first row. A smile never leaves her face. She knows the audience is loving every moment of her play Lo Phir Basant Ayee written by Shahid Nadeem, which was staged in Chandigarh in late July. Post…

It all started in 1982, when his mother got him a German Lego. It was the first time he saw little vehicles with working pistons and engines. There has been no looking back ever since. Kharar (Punjab) based Ranjit Randhawa, who made the unique motorcycle for the recently released Punjabi film Bambukat with majority of parts sourced from old jeeps from scrap yards insists that going back in time was an interesting experience. Known across the region and beyond for modifying and enhancing performances of some of the most complicated motorcycles like the BMWs, Harley Davidsons, Triumphs and Indian, Randhawa who recently restored an Aston Martin sports car at his farmhouse which houses a huge workshop, says, “The producers had heard about me from a common friend. Their brief was…

 In 2000, a few months after the Kargil War, an Indian submarine slipped out of her moorings in Mumbai harbour and headed into the north Arabian Sea. The INS Shalki, one of the navy’s quietest submarines, was on a specific mission. It was to track Pakistan’s newest acquisition, the French-built PNS Khalid, whose deployment had been indicated by Indian intelligence. The Shalki located the Khalid and tailed it for 45 minutes, her passive sonar stealthily recording acoustic readings and frequencies. The Khalid was oblivious to the shadowing and maintained normal transit speed, which allowed the Indian vessel to record its parameters. The Shalki had, in a single patrol, gained valuable data on Pakistan’s newest undersea combatant, the critical noise and equipment ‘signatures’ that would help the navy’s warships and aircraft…

FACING THE CPI HEAT Food inflation came in at a 23-month high in July, driving consumer price inflation above the 6 per cent mark  Situated at the heart of Vashi in Navi Mumbai, a few minutes’ drive from the Old Mumbai-Pune highway, is a 122 hectare fruit and vegetable mandi (market), the most bustling trading venue in this satellite city. Hundreds of trucks laden with farm produce arrive here every day from nearby districts. This is the Vashi APMC (Agriculture Produce Market Committee) market, one of Maharashtra’s 305 regulated mandis, originally established to help farmers find better prices for their produce (via auctions, therefore avoiding several middlemen.) The annual trade at this 5,000-trader mandi is estimated at over Rs 10,000 crore. Over the years, however, the APMCs have fallen into…

 Picture this: it was 5.30 am, and the moon still lit the sky above Corbett National Park. We were staying at the forest resthouse at Gairal on the banks of the Ramganga river. We had spent our mornings bird-watching and the afternoons splashing in the river. Each day, we were greeted with a fresh set of pugmarks leading down to the water’s edge. They belonged to a tigress who had moved here recently, cubs in tow. What didn’t occur to us blithe spirits was that we could have been in real danger, frolicking in the river with a tigress nearby. Only my grandmother, Savitri, showed any signs of alarm, having lived in Kenya’s wilds as a young girl. She begged us to stop,and when her warnings failed, insisted on accompanying…

1. Ajanta-Ellora Caves, Maharashtra Ellora comprises 34 Buddhist, Hindu and Jain cave temples built between the 6th and 10th century CE. Ajanta is believed to be much older, the earliest from 2nd century BCE 2. Tawang Monastery, Arunachal Pradesh The gompa (monastery) at Tawang is considered to be the largest in India. Like many other Buddhist monasteries, it has a superb hilltop location and is home to more than 450 monks 3. Nagarjunakonda, Andhra Pradesh This site found prominence thanks to Acharya Nagarjuna in the 2nd century CE. Artefacts from the original site have been reassembled in a museum on an island in the manmade Nagarjunasagar lake 4. Sanchi Stupa, Madhya Pradesh The Sanchi Mahastupa is believed to be the oldest surviving stone structure in India. It was built by…

TOPSY-TURVY LOGIC Millennials are too cool to want a smartphone to do any of these things: twitter tattle Depp-lorable The Advertising Standard Bureau in Australia has received comp laints on Christian Dior using Johnny Depp for their men’s perfume Sauvage. The ad, which has the actor rolling up his sleeves, comes at a specially bad time in the light of ex-wife Amber Heard’s allegations of physical assault. web wow Not So Smart, eh? Vanity got the better of 18-year-old Amy Smart. After she escaped from a corrective servi ces cell on Friday, a local Australian TV station put up a post on its Facebook page citing the police statement seeking to track her down. Smart asked them to post a better pic. And revealed her location in the bargain! instachatter…

Poetry’s Evening Out September 16 Alliance Francaise, Chandigarh will be presenting a bilingual poetry reading session of Kaiser Haq’s works. Haq is considered an outstanding poet of the subcontinent and known for poems such as A Happy Farewell, Starting Lines and A Little Ado. Olivier Litvine, currently heading the Pondicherry Alliance Française, translated a selection of Kaiser Haq’s poems when posted in Dhaka and will now present them in Chandigarh. At Alliance Francaise, Chandigarh Tel 01722668627 Timings 7 p.m. onwards Want to tell us about an event? A new store? A restaurant? People doing interesting things? Anything newsworthy? Please email us at: simplypunjabi@intoday.com…

Once upon a time in Punjab, girls would start making Phulkari from a young age to carry it to their husband’s house. It would be years of hard work --- intricate embroidery, peculiar stitches, but more than that, a story. A tale that she weaved on cloth. Her diary impregnated with stitched secrets. When the country split in 1947, some of these ‘girls’ carried their and their grandmothers’ secrets with them. They have now given them to Chandigarh-based Panjab Digital Library so that those tales can be preserved, forever. “Many of them are more than 100 years old. They may have been passed over generations. They leave you spellbound,” says Davinder Pal Singh, Executive Director and co-founder of Chandigarh-based Panjab Digital Library. Collected from families and collectors across the country…

 It was born a child of rebellion. And for over a century, it has maintained that spirit. Not so long ago, a fleeting glance through an 8B bus window would offer a glimpse of tall trees, still sap-green ponds, a little footbridge and gaggles of students going about their day. A picture of college life idyll. Today, you may spot posters declaring: “We debate. We dissent. We unite against oppression. We are JU.” Tune in and you may just hear the protest music floating through the campus air: “Amra noi gerua laal, sabuj kimba saada-neel…Kolorob hok (We are not saffron, red, green or white-andblue…. Let there be noise).” Jadavpur University (JU) in Kol kata is once again in the eye of a storm. In confrontation mode with Mamata Banerjee’s ruling…

1. Hemis National Park, Ladakh Track snow leopards along ridge-lines with nature guides trained by the wonderful Snow Leopard Conservancy India Trust whilst staying at Ladakhi village homestays en route. Also keep an eye out for the iconic ibex, Tibetan Argali, Him a layan marmots, bearded vultures 2. Indira Gandhi Wildlife Sanctuary, Tamil Nadu In the Annamalai hills of Tamil Nadu, the forests of Topslip in the northeastern section of the park are home to some fascinating animals, including the endangered lion-tailed macaques, Indian pangolins, Nilgiri langurs and the Indian giant squirrels 3. Bhitarkanika National Park, Odisha In Feb-March each year, Bhitarkanika’s Gahrimatha beach witnesses the awe-inspiring ‘arribada’ of tens of thousands of nesting Olive Ridley Turtles. Two months later, swarms of hatchlings emerge at night to make their life-or-death…

LIKE SO MANY FATHERS IN INDIAN FICTION, ADIGA’S MOHAN IS SOMETHING OF A MONSTER, CONSUMED BY AMBITION FOR HIS SONS AND HIMSELF  People, like countries, are imagined into being, are wilful acts of self-creation. In the 18thcentury bildungsroman, say, Tom Jones, the personal maturation of the young protagonist was concomitant with socialisation, with assuming the responsibilities of one’s place in society. The journey was from foundling to squire, the boy who came from nowhere to become a pillar of society. Later bildungsromans have recognised the difficulty, sometimes the impossibility, of reconciling the self with society, the tension between teleological purpose and one’s societal role, or the role others have in mind for you. Aravind Adiga’s third novel, Selection Day, is that rare thing, a subcontinental bildungsroman in English that is…

1 RESORTREVIEW / GAJ RETREAT WHERE RUSTIC AND LUXURY COME TOGETHER If you are looking for a peaceful sojourn amidst a rural backdrop, yet do not want to compromise on luxury and hospitality, head straight for the newly inaugurated Gaj Retreat in Hoshiarpur in Punjab. A two-hour drive from Chandigarh (20 minutes drive from Nangal), the topography changes as soon as one enters village Manaswal. The village where the resort has been set up is situated on Punjab’s border with Himachal, and has been blessed with an extremely picturesque setting— located on the foothills of the Shivalik range, surrounded by forests and river-beds. What is striking about the place is that minimal concrete has been used in building the resort, solar energy provides hot water, biogas is employed for cooking…

FOR THIS 25-YEAR-OLD, THE real estate business is not just about making a fast buck, but in fact an amalgamation of well thought of strategies, brand building, winning customer confidence and providing state-of-the-art products. “A major reason why the real estate market has suffered so much in the past few years can be attributed to the fact that the previous generation of builders did things in a haphazard way and seldom chalked out longterm strategies,” he says. Talking about the Chandigarh City Centre (CCC) in Zirakpur, a fully commercial venture spread over 10 acres which offers four products including showrooms, office suites, residential suites and professional suites, the entrepreneur says, “An intelligently developed commercial area that offers parking, security and entertainment is bound to do well here.” After the year…