India Not Giving Up Mother Teresa
When Mother Teresa died in 1997, she was buried at the Missionaries of Charity headquarters in Calcutta. Now that she is expected to be canonized as a saint, the government of Albania has asked that her remains be disinterred and turned over to Albanian authorities. India has formally rejected the demand.
“Mother Teresa was an Indian citizen and she is resting in her own country, her own land,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash said.
A spokeswoman for the nun’s Missionaries of Charity described the Albanian request as “absurd”.
Mother Teresa, an ethnic Albanian, was born in Skopje, now part of Macedonia.
Correspondents say that the row over her resting place could develop into an ugly three-way squabble between India, where she worked most of her life, Albania where her parents came from and Macedonia where she lived the first 18 years of her life.
Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha said his country will continue the quest to regain Mother Teresa’s remains before the 100th anniversary of her birth next year. Link -via Arbroath
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The Monkey Riot and Other Weird Riots in History
Our pal Asylum blog has a fantastic article about how some of the world’s most bizarre riots got started. Like this one in New Delhi, India in 2007, that was caused by … monkeys!
In New Delhi, where monkeys are a touch more revered and tolerated than they would be in most countries, rhesus macaques, numbering over 20,000 in the city, have a history of biting people. They’ve also been known to break into hospitals to pull out I.V. feeding tubes and drink the liquid themselves (because monkeys are diabolical like that). Somewhat more impressive is that the monkeys have a political agenda and actually killed the deputy mayor of New Delhi by pushing him off a balcony.
Unlike most riots, this one was fought the old-fashioned way, with more monkeys. Langurs, which are just bigger monkeys, have been brought into the city and strategically placed around important buildings to scare off the nuisance monkeys. Never has a more awesome solution to a problem been devised.
Check out the article here: 5 Unlikely Reason for Riots – Thanks Alex!
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Hunt For The Poo Squirter of India
It’s like a modern day version of Captain Ahab’s quest for the white whale Moby Dick. But ickier. A whole lot ickier and much more intriguing.
Sam Miller, BBC’s former South Asia correspondent, has been obsessed with finding a man "whose dexterity and gall [he] admires beyond reason," … the New Delhi Poo Squirter:
I was in Connaught Place, in the heart of New Delhi, and as I emerged from an underpass a shoe-shine man came up to me, and whispered into my ear.
He then pointed at my right shoe on which sat, to my amazement, a small worm of brownish goo. He offered to wipe it off, but I knew that something was, well, afoot, and cleaned my shoe with a few leaves.
Some months later it happened again and I had a minor altercation with the shoe-shine man. Then one day, I decided I would take a photograph of the person who squirted my shoe. But I was daydreaming as I wandered through the underpass and was squirted again.
Link – via Cabinet of Wonders
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Untrained Monkey Herds Goats
Some jobs could be done by a trained monkey. So it’s all the more impressive that an untrained monkey on a farm in India herds 75 goats out to and back from the fields every day. National Geographic reports:
Martin K, Estate Manager- “She takes out the goats for grazing and brings them back. A shepherd is usually required to accompany the goats all day long and bring them back in these hills. But because of her, manpower can be spared. She is as good as a shepherd. The only thing is that she does not speak, but otherwise carries out all responsibilities.”
They say they feel confident that the goats will be safe when Mani accompanies them.
Mani is said to make a strange sound when she discovers a goat is missing or when danger lurks.
There’s a (non-embeddable) video of the monkey at the link.
image by flickr user eirikref used under creative commons license
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World's Cheapest Car Goes On Sale
The world’s cheapest car is set to go on sale in India as the first customer receives the key to the vehicle, handed to him personally by the chairman of the car company.
The Tata Nano, created by Tata Motors costs only 123,360 rupees ($2,531), with upgrades such as air conditioning and cup holders available for up to $3,536 more. The Nano is set to revolutionize the transport industry in India.
From the 203,000 people who pre-ordered the Nano, 100,000 of them were selected from a ballot to be the first to get their hands on the car.
With an engine of just 624 cubic centimeters, it is smaller than those found in motorcycles and has been compared to the European Smart Car and the Volkswagen Beetle.
The vehicle is set to come to the U.S. in two years…Just in time for us to be out of the recession?
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Rainbow Frog is Worshipped as God
In India, a newly discovered color-changing frog has been worshipped as a god. Reji Kumar, the person who found it, keeps the frog in a glass jar at his home where hundreds of people come to see it every day.
Apart from the obvious biological findings this hopping lava lamp can provide, it also gives an additional insight as to how religions and spiritual groups can emerge. I don’t blame them either. Who needs color-saturating hallucinogens for spiritual transcendence when you have a kaleidoscopic animal?
I say this new rainbow frog will become the new symbol for racial equality, just as long as it doesn’t croak (which is actually a concern).
The frog was a dazzling white colour when Reji, who is from Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of Kerala, in south India, first spotted it.
Then it changed to yellow and had gone grey by the time he got it home.
“By night the frog was dark yellow, and then it became transparent so you could see its internal organs,” Reji, a life worker, reportedly said.
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Snake Charming School for Kids
When other kids are going to kindergarten, the children of the nomadic Indian tribe of Vadi are also going to school of sorts. Except that the ABCs aren’t in the curriculum – instead, these kids are learning to be snake charmers with real cobras:
Divided between the sexes, the act of snake charming with traditional flute is the role of the men, while the Vadi women care for the snakes and handle them when their husbands or brothers are not around.
‘The training begins at two, the children then are then taught the ancient ways of snake charming until they are ready to take up their roles in our community,’ said chief snake charmer Babanath Mithunath Madari, 60.
‘At twelve the children will know everything that they can know about snakes.
‘They are then ready to continue the traditions of the Vadi tribe which can be stretched back over one thousands years to India’s great Raja’s (kings).’
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Village of Twins
The worldwide rate of twins is one in every 80 births. In India, the normal rate is lower, only one 250 births. But in the village of Kodinhi, in the Indian state of Kerala, there are at least 250 sets of twins in a population of 2,000 families. And the rate of twin births has been increasing over the past decades. Dr Krishnan Sribiju has been studying the phenomenon.
“Without access to detailed biochemical analysis equipment I cannot say for certain what the reason for the twinning is, but I feel that it is something to do with what the villagers eat and drink.
“If that is the case then maybe whatever is causing this exceptional level of twinning can be bottled and provide help for infertile couples.” Categorising the twin phenomenon as a naturally occurring anomaly, Dr Sribiju has ruled out genetic factors as the cause due to the localised nature of the village.
He also dismisses any suggestion that the unusual level of twins could be caused by an unknown pollutant pointing to the high number of healthy twins born without any deformities.
Preciously at Neatorama: the village of Brazilian Twins.
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Cow Pee Cola?
It doesn’t sound very appetizing. But the Cow Protection Department of the Rashtriya Sawyamseval Sangh wants to make a cola from cow urine, claiming that the soda would taste good, be healthy and could cure diseases, even cancer.
The drink is undergoing lab testing in Lucknow and the group hopes to have it on the market by the end of the year.
Dr. Donald Hensrud, chairman of the Division of Preventive Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, remains skeptical of its supposed health benefits.
“I think I’m perfectly comfortable in saying that I’m aware of no data that cow’s urine– or any other species’ urine– holds any promise in treating or preventing cancer.”
– Dr. Donald Hensrud, Mayo Clinic
Link – via growabrain
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India Patenting Yoga Moves to Battle "Patent Pirates"
If you’re one of the millions of people practicing yoga for mental and physical health, you may soon run into legal trouble: a lot of the traditional poses are being patented and trademarked by Western yoga teachers.
So, India is fighting back: it has set up a team of yoga gurus and scientists to identify and patent all ancient yoga positions or asanas to stop "patent pirates."
… as the number of Western yoga teachers has grown, there has been a steady increase in patent applications claiming each pose in their class is not part of the ancient discipline of mind and body, but their own unique invention. In the United States alone, there have been more than 130 yoga-related patents, 150 copyrights and 2,300 trademarks. Now India’s Traditional Knowledge Digital Library is being made available to patents offices throughout the world so they can establish whether the claim is a genuine innovation or "prior art" from Indian systems of medicine.
[...] The attempt by US teachers to patent traditional poses has caused disbelief and anger in India, where it has been practiced for around 6,000 years.
"Copyrights over yoga postures and trademarks on yoga tools have become rampant in the West. Till now, we have traced 130 yoga-related patents in the US. We hope to finish putting on record at least 1500 yoga postures by the end of 2009," said Dr V.P Gupta, of the CSIR, who created the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library.
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Pink Underwear Protest
The Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women is a Facebook group formed to protest the actions of an Indian group called Sri Ram Sena (Army of Lord Ram). Members of the group were arrested for attacking women in a bar in Mangalore last month. The attack was caught on video.
Pramod Mutalik, who heads the little known Ram Sena and is now on bail after he was held following the attack, has said it is “not acceptable” for women to go to bars in India.
He has also said his men will protest against Valentine’s Day on Saturday.
The Facebook group urges its over 28,000 members to send pink chaddis (underpants) to Mutalik’s office on Valentines Day in protest. Link to story. Link to website. -via Arbroath
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Human-Powered Ferris Wheel
[YouTube - Link]
No motor? No problem! In India, this ferris wheel is powered by men climbing up and using their body weight to rotate the wheel.
I guess you’d want to try this ride early, since the operators must be exhausted at the end of the day!
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Slumdogs and Millionaires
Focussing on the seismic changes coming about as a result of the Golden Quadrilateral, a wildly ambitious superhighway project that will finally link the major cities of Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, New Delhi and Mumbai, the videos help you understand the pride of a young woman earning her living for the first time, the frustration of poor farmers losing their lands to a new auto plant, the stunning prosperity of families in million-dollar subdivisions, and the loneliness of long-distance truck drivers who describe their jobs as the filthiest in India.
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Two Minors Married Off to Frogs
In a strange traditional ceremony, two 7 year-old girls in Tamil Nadu, India were married off to two frogs.
The ceremony, an annual feature during the Pongal (harvest) festival, is conducted “to prevent the outbreak of mysterious diseases in the village”.
The girls, Vigneswari and Masiakanni, dressed up in traditional bridal finery — gilded sarees and gold jewelery — married the frog ‘princes’ in separate, elaborate ceremonies at two different temples in the presence of hundreds of villagers.
These are two frogs that will not be turning into fairytale princes, they actually got released back into temple ponds after the ceremony. I wonder if the girls are still allowed to get married when they grow up.
Link Image Via Somegl [Flickr]
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The New Taj Mahal
Photo: our_bangladesh [Flickr]
It took almost 20 years for the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan to build the Taj Mahal in the 1600s, but it took only 5 years for wealthy movie director Ahsanullah Moni to build his replica near Dhaka, Bangladesh:
He has imported marble and granite from Italy, diamonds from Belgium and used 160kg of bronze for the dome.
In support of his project, he said: "Everyone dreams about seeing the Taj Mahal but very few Bangladeshis can make the trip because it’s too expensive for them."
The Indians, however aren’t amused and are thinking of suing Moni for copyright infringement: Link | Reuter has the video – via Oddly Enough, Thanks Robert Basler !
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