What you’re seeing is not a casting call for Gandhi: The Musical, nor is it a collection of Mahatma Gandhi clones popping out of some strange moustachioed alternate dimension, but rather the making of a world record!

To mark the 64th anniversary of Gandhi’s passing, 485 kids gathered together to celebrate their fallen leader by dressing up like him, complete with glasses, moustache and bald cap, and in doing so set a world record.

I wonder if any of the students who took place in the world record costume party went on to become Groucho Marx impersonators?

Link

In 2012, and Keith Pariat is fighting for equal rights for men in Meghalaya, India. You read that right: men. See, in that part of the world, women rule:

Mr Pariat, who ignored age-old customs by taking his father's surname is adamant that matriliny is breeding generations of Khasi men who fall short of their inherent potential, citing alcoholism and drug abuse among its negative side-effects.

"If you want to know how much the Khasis favour women just take a trip to the labour ward at the hospital," he says.

"If it's a girl, there will be great cheers from the family outside. If it's a boy, you will hear them mutter politely that, 'Whatever God gives us is quite all right.'"

That, Neatoramanauts, is the 2,065 miles-long border fence between India and Pakistan:

A striking feature is the line of lights, with a distinctly orange hue, snaking across the center of the image. It appears to be more continuous and brighter than most highways in the view. This is the fenced and floodlit border zone between India and Pakistan. The fence is designed to discourage smuggling and arms trafficking. A similar fenced zone separates India’s eastern border from Bangladesh (not visible).

The photo was taken by the crew at the International Space Station: Link - via TYWKIWDBI

He devised a prototype and set about trying to find female test subjects. His failed efforts cost him greatly:

He tried to get female medical students to wear them and fill out feedback sheets, but no woman wanted to talk to a man about such a taboo topic. His wife, thinking his project was all an excuse to meet younger women, left him. After repeated unsuccessful research attempts, including wearing panties with his do-it-yourself uterus, he eventually hit upon the idea of distributing free napkins to the students and collecting the used ones for study. That was the last straw for his mother. When she encountered a storeroom full of bloody sanitary napkins, she left too.

Muruganantham discovered that turning pine wood into a maxi pad is actually a complex and expensive process, so he spent years trying to simplify and cheapen it. He was successful:

Powered by electricity and foot pedals, the machine de-fibers the cellulose, compresses it into napkin form, seals it with non-woven fabrics, and finally sterilizes it with ultraviolet light. He can now make 1,000 napkins a day, which retail for about $.25 for a package of eight.

Though he’s won numerous awards (and won his wife back) he doesn’t sell his product commercially. “It’s a service,” he says. His company, Jayaashree Industries, helps rural women buy one of the $2,500 machines through NGOs, government loans, and rural self-help groups. “My vision is to make India a 100% napkin-using country,” said Muruganantham at the INK conference in Jaipur. “We can create 1 million employment opportunities for rural women and expand the model to other developing nations.” Today, there are about 600 machines deployed in 23 states across India and in a few countries abroad.

Link -via Gizmodo | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user scaredy_cat

We read about the adventures of Dave Prager and his wife Jenny on their blog Our Delhi Struggle, which we’ve linked to several times here at Neatorama. Now Prager’s book, Delirious Delhi, is available for purchase, and he’s launched a blog about the book, in which you can follow his adventures in publicity and read some excerpts as well. Link

The guys start out with light, easy tricks such as smashing fluorescent bulbs on themselves and slapping each other with sledgehammers. Then they get serious about their routine. It ends with a human pyramid on spiked boards and one guy on top of it waving the Indian flag in the weirdest and greatest display of patriotism the world has seen.

-via Kottke

Before they say yes to the dress, a growing number of Indians are saying yes to "wedding detectives":

Agencies say they've seen a huge rise in pre-matrimonial investigations to check a suitor's background, because more people are meeting online and families are less involved.

"It's not spying, we just wanted to know about my sister's boyfriend before she married him," says Anita (not her real name). She hired a private investigator to verify her now brother-in-law's background. Her sister met and fell in love with him at work, but Anita and her parents wanted to "authenticate" his family's status and finances before the wedding went ahead.

She enlisted the services of one of India's many pre-matrimonial detective agencies, which spent a month drawing up a report into his earnings, family history and past relationships, among other things.

"He told us he was from a good family, but we needed to ensure he was telling the truth.

"Earlier in India with arranged marriages which were set up by the family, relatives would know about a partner, but now you don't know if he's married or has children or whatever, so we needed to hire someone to check all this," says Anita, adding her still-happily-married sister never knew about the detectives.

Link (Photo: Shutterstock)

But amidst the squalor is a remarkable tale of slum dwellers who have lived lives of the lowest degradation and of the highest luxury. Perplexing as it may sound, the Indian government bandies the community’s greatest puppeteers and magicians around the world anytime they needs to showcase the cultural excellence of India.

As the filmmakers tell us, “you’ll sit in someone’s ramshackle home and watch as they flip through photo albums where they are pictured alongside [former Prime Minister] Rajeev Gandhi or Laura Bush.”

But now the land has been sold to a developer who plans to bulldoze the slums and set up a shopping mall. The plight of the Kathputli Colony is shown in a video called Tomorrow We Disappear, which you can see, along with more pictures, at Atlas Obscura. Link -Thanks, Seth!

(Image credit: Joshua Cogan)

For more than fifty years after the formation of the Indian Railways in 1857, there was one crucial element that was missing on the nation's trains: toilets.

Passengers had to wait till till the stations to answer the call of nature, and it was not until a passenger named Okhil Chandra Sen wrote this angry yet amusing letter in 1909 that toilets were installed on Indian trains.

So if you're in India, and you have to go to the bathroom aboard one of their trains, you have Mr. Sen to thank:

Image: Richard Fellowes

From the notable Letters of Note

That’s right, if you’ve always wanted to see the stunning Indian landmark, you’d better make plans to see it soon because experts are warning that it could fall down in as little as two years thanks to a crumbling wooden foundation. Cracks are already showing up in the monument’s marble walls.

Have you seen the Taj Mahal? If so, is it worth a visit in your opinion?

Link Via Flavorwire

We've got Books on Wheels, so why not the Internet on Wheels? Here comes the Google Internet Bus, a free, mobile cybercafe that roams the backroads of India, bringing the joy of the Interweb to many:

LIKE the travelling fairs that still roam India, a snazzy white bus trundles along the subcontinent's B-roads, stopping in small towns for a few days at a time and inviting locals into another world. But in place of tightrope-walking girls and performing monkeys, its main attraction is access to the internet. For some visitors, it is their first time online.

The Google Internet bus is a free, mobile cybercafe dreamed up by the search giant and run in association with BSNL, a large state-owned internet service provider (ISP). It has covered over 43,000km and passed through 120 towns in 11 states since it hit the road on February 3rd, 2009. Google estimates that 1.6m people have been offered their first online experience as a result. Of those, 100,000 have signed up for an internet connection of their own.

There is, however, a dark side to the project:

Like a high-school drug dealer, though admittedly less nefarious, the idea is to hook them young and keep them coming back. In return for its efforts, Google says it gains a better understanding of their needs. That, in turn, lets it develop products for the potentially huge local market.

Link

The 13-ounce touch-screen device can handle basic computing, including email, social networking, surfing, online banking, instant messaging and multimedia. The stripped-down system uses Google’s Android 2.2 operating system and comes with headphones, Wi-Fi access, two USB slots, 256 megabytes of internal memory and a 7-inch screen. It is not considered on the same level of the more advanced tablets available to consumers.

“This will allow basic computing beyond the mobile phone,” said Vishal Tripathi, an analyst with Gartner, a high-tech research firm.

Although the tablets were designed in the UK, they’re being assembled in India in the hope of spurring domestic production of computer hardware.

Link -via Geekologie | Photo: Gurinder Osan/AP

With waterborne illnesses affecting 40 million Indians each year, Sarvarjal has targeted a way to meet the need for clean water. The water “ATMs” are solar powered and franchised throughout villages. A liter of water on the average Indian’s income of $.60 a day is $.006 or less.

Link -via Gizmodo

This stomach churning tale is of an otherwise healthy man who went to the hospital suffering from abdominal pains. Only the doctors informed the father of two and farmer that he had a full set of female reproductive organs.

Doctors suspected a normal hernia, but when they carried out an exploratory operation they were shocked to discover it had been caused by a female uterus, ovaries, Fallopian tubes, a cervix and underdeveloped vaginal tissue.

Dr Pramod Kumar Shrivastava, a surgeon at the Chhindwara district hospital said the patient had external male organs, was fit from working in the fields, and lived a normal life.

Link

Andrew told his tale over at Mother Jones, which includes some rather interesting observations about Australian (apparently they’re touchy about their pets) and American cultures:

Next is "culture training," in which trainees memorize colloquialisms and state capitals, study clips of Seinfeld and photos of Walmarts, and eat in cafeterias serving paneer burgers and pizza topped with lamb pepperoni. Trainers aim to impart something they call "international culture"—which is, of course, no culture at all, but a garbled hybrid of Indian and Western signifiers designed to be recognizable to everyone and familiar to no one. The result is a comically botched translation—a multibillion dollar game of telephone. "The most marketable skill in India today," the Guardian wrote in 2003, "is the ability to abandon your identity and slip into someone else’s."

Link – via metafilter

For a man serving a life sentence for murder, Pradeep Deburma has a slightly unlikely dream: to work in a call centre like hundreds of thousands of other young ambitious Indians. Even more improbably, he has every chance of realising it while still behind bars.

Deburma, 24, is detained in a high-security prison near Hyderabad which is launching an innovative scheme to turn convicts into "outsourcing providers" for local firms and eventually, it is hoped, international clients.

The scheme is in its early stages, with prisoners being trained in basic data entry skills. Jail authorities hope that inmates will soon be just as likely to tap at a keyboard as dig vegetables, make carpets or stitch uniforms.

"We have got so many computer literates and professionals in our prison," said Gopinath Reddy, director general of prisons in the state of Andhra Pradesh.

Talk about being chained to the desk! Jason Burke of The Guardian has more: Link (Photo: Jason Burke)

Gohel isn’t a street cleaner. She’s a dhul dhoya, a dust washer. And not just any dirt. Although the streets in India aren’t exactly paved with gold, a few in Ahmadabad are at least flecked with it.

Motivating her are the estimated 5,000 gold and silver shops in this western city. As the 40,000 workers from the shops come and go, flecks of gold fall from their hair and clothes, to be scooped up by Gohel and other dhul dhoyas. Some enterprising collectors even follow workers home, raiding their sewer pipes for the muck from their showers. [...]

Once she and her mother separate the gold-specked dirt from the betel nut wrappers, cow manure, stained newspapers and other trash, it’s sold for about $8 per bag.

Mark Magnier of the Los Angeles Times has the story: Link

During my first visit to the USA I was put up at Hotel Hilton Garden Inn in Atlanta…being from India where generally there is only one hotel of any chain no matter how big … it was a shock for me when my cabbie drove me across the city for half an hour and I spotted 7 different hiltons before I reached the one where I was booked. I could spot the same pattern repeating every few miles … same Mc Donalds and KFC’s … same walmarts, circuit city and best buys …. it was very weird

If you have a story about your first thoughts upon arriving in the U.S, you are welcome to leave a comment here or at Our Delhi Struggle. Link -Thanks, Dave!

(Image credit: Flickr user Nick Sherman)

You’re looking at the Blue City of Jodhpur, India. Why are there so many blue houses? Kuriositas explains:

It is thought that Brahmins – members of the priestly class – first took to coloring their houses blue (yet perhaps it should really be called indigo) to signify their domicile and to set them apart from the rest of the population. Soon, however, the rest of the population followed suit. History does not tell us which brave non-Brahmin was the first to do it, yet it happened and since that day the people of Jodhpur have steadfastly maintained this tradition.

Ask a local why all the houses are painted thus and the usual reply is that the color keeps the interiors cool and fends of mosquitoes. Yet if this truly worked then it would be quite likely that the whole subcontinent would be awash in various hues of indigo.

More likely is symbolism. Although an unscientific response, what answer would most give when asked the color of water? It is likely that the ubiquitous blueness of Jodhpur is an exuberant display of human resilience against the stark Thar desert which surrounds the town. Against the bleak backdrop of parched brown earth the blue city exerts itself magnificently.

Link

That’s what the management of the United Commercial Bank in Shani Shinganapur, Maharashtra, India, thought when they opened the first lockless bank:

"We took note of the general belief and faith of the people. Ever since the most revered temple came into existence several years ago, the village has not witnessed a single crime. In fact, all houses in the entire village have no doors. We took the risk and started the lockless bank a week ago," a senior bank official said. [...]

Gadakh explained that, by and large, it is believed that because of Lord Shani’s power, the village has not witnessed a single theft or robbery in the recent past. "People here fear that if there is a theft or robbery, then the culprit and their family have to bear the wrath of Lord Shani," he said.

Meanwhile, the cops aren’t too happy:

… unhappy local cops said the branch has been started in violation of norms prescribed by the Centre. "In view of increasing bank robberies, the Centre has made it mandatory for all banks to provide state-of-the-art security. If a bank opens a lockless branch, it amounts to a breach of conditions. We will take it up with the DGP and RBI," a senior police official said.

Link

“Wives of these people help them in crushing stones and breed two-three goats for additional income,” Singh said.

“Though the area is best suited for goat breeding, no effort was made to establish it as a full fledged business activity,” he said.

“We provide goats to women having interest in taking up breeding as a full-time activity as loan. When a goat gives birth to kids, generally two to three in numbers, one of them is deposited with the bank again,” Prema explained.

Goats in the bank are medically examined every week.

“In case a goat dies, then it is either replaced from the market or from the bank depending upon the availability,” Prema said.

Link via J-Walk Blog | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user Pete Markham used under Creative Commons license

From Wednesday, 10 langurs will be put on duty outside several Games venues in the Indian capital, with the swimming complex seen as particularly vulnerable to monkey misbehavior, an official said.

The New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) has a regular team of 28 langurs which are used to scare away their weaker brethren in VIP areas of the city.[...]

Monkeys are a common sight in the verdant Indian capital, where they routinely scamper through government offices, courts and even police stations and hospitals.

Link via Hit & Run | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user mckaysavage used under Creative Commons license

Well, if you think about it, many of us drink cow’s milk, so this Indian villager is just returning the favor:

Since the death of the calf’s mother when it was only three days old, Chouthi Bai has breastfed the animal three or four times a day.

"After her mother died, I held her in my arms and breastfed her. I nurtured her by feeding her my milk. She was so young when the cow died. For me there is no difference between a calf and an infant," Bai, a resident of Kilchu village in India’s desert state of Rajasthan, said on Saturday.

Link [video clip in the article shows breastfeeding in action] – Thanks Tiffany!

Have you ever seen a squirrel like this? You might, in the forests of India. This is Ratufa indica, or the Malabar Giant Squirrel. They grow up to 16 inches long, and that doesn’t count the tail! Learn more about the Malabar Giant Squirrel at The Ark in Space. Link

(Image credit: Wikimedia user Bishancm)

The $35 tablet computer made headlines a few weeks ago, and some had dismissed it as vaporware. Now, NDTV has a video clip of a prototype of the tablet computer in action: Link [embedded YouTube]

It’s actually called mallakhamb (translation: pole gymnastics) and is quite a competitive sport in India.

Let’s make this an Olympics sport! Who’s with me? Link

The stretch of the Mumbai-Kolkata National Highway near Nagpur city was among 12 spots identified as most accident-prone but now the stretch is considered safe. “No accidents have occurred in these accident-prone spots in the past six months,” Bernama quoted Nagpur Commissioner of Police (Rural) Yashasvi Yadav as saying.

“I am no great propagator of Vasthu Sastra but, in the public interest, we will try to adopt new ideas,” he said. If the experiment proved successful, police would install Vasthu pyramids in 30 to 40 “killer” stretches, he added.

This may sound illogical to some people but not for Nagpur police who are serious about saving lives on the roads. The number of accidents in the city, home to 2.5 million people, had been increasing since 2003, with about 500 human casualties on the road a year.

“Most accidents happen because of the negative energy surrounding these places. Suicides, accidents and murders happen when people are surrounded by negative energy. Using pyramids, we can try to correct the negative energy,” said Vasthu expert Sushil Fatehpuria, 50, who offered his service for free to Nagpur police.

Link

“We’d be lying if we didn’t admit skin-based advantages are bestowed on foreigners in India. Autorickshaw drivers, for instance, would hone in on us at the expense of everyone else waving their arms at them. (And they’d give us choice grumbles when we’d refuse to cut ahead of those who’d been bypassed their rightful ride.) The sidewalk chaiwallah near my office would always boil a fresh batch for me, even as he poured from a premade kettle for the factory workers who arrived the same time as I did. And while the guards at Saket Citywalk would grope us for poorly-hidden bombs just like every Indian shopper — as if Al Qaeda’s training manuals advised keeping their explosives in their front pockets — their hands always seemed to linger more tenderly with us.”

Wait, that’s not a good thing.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by mmmmdave1870.

More than 1 billion people of diverse cultures, languages and religions are united by India’s national borders. Between 2010 and 2011, the country’s census will not only count and categorize them by gender, religion and occupation, but also probe their access to technology, toilets and personal transport. In a monumental orchestration, aided by a newly designed census form, government departments, local councils and 2.5 million census collectors will continue the increasingly complex national effort to tally India’s inhabitants, which it has conducted every decade since the late 1800s.

What an enormous undertaking! 2.5 million census collectors and forms in 16 different languages! This article focuses on the challenges involved in designing a census form that is user-friendly to a huge and diverse population.

Link

Before the "green" movement became trendy, there is a village in India that takes eco-conservation to the level of religion.

Bishnois, a community following the tenets prescribed by Jambeshwar in the 15th century, teaches its followers to respect nature, be kind to animals and not to cut trees. The followers are so principled as to lay down their lives to protect a tree.

Bishnois do not cut or lop green trees; instead they use dried cow dung as fuel. They do not cremate their dead as Hindus normally do, because it involves the use of firewood; instead, they bury them. Agriculture is the mainstay of the people; they also carve wood during the time they are not busy on their fields. The required wood comes from trees that have have fallen during storms. Each Bishnoi family creates a tank in their field to provide water for black bucks and antelopes
in the arid summer months. They maintain groves for the animals to graze and birds to feed. Solar energy is used to extract underground water to irrigate the groves. The region where they live is a desert (Thar desert), and these groves help to recharge rain water in the aquifers in the desert.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by ushankari.

The young man, his life changed by Chaplin’s cinema, dropped out of college and applied for an actor’s course in India’s most famous cinema school in the western city of Pune. He passed the admission test, joined the school but was thrown out after six months when he failed his tests.

Returning to Adipur, Mr Aswani opened the Charlie Circle club in 1973. He became a practitioner of indigenous medicine, giving away free Chaplin CDs with his potions.

The annual celebration includes a street party and procession and the showing of a Chaplin film. Link -via Fortean Times

(image credit: Sanjoy Ghosh)

Her pupils are among the 10 million Indian children who are outside the state education system because their parents are so poor that they need them to work or no schools are nearby. Earlier this month the Indian government pledged £3.6 billion for a “right to education” scheme which aims to provide free schooling for all.

Kumari has decided she wants to be a teacher, even after she grows up. Link -via Arbroath

“What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming,” said Professor Sugata Hazra of the School of Oceanographic Studies at Jadavpur University in Calcutta.

Anyone wishing to visit now, he observed, would have to think of travelling by submarine.

The island never rose more than about six feet above sea level. Professor Hazra predicts more islands in the Indian Ocean will vanish as sea levels rise. Link -via J-Walk Blog

It has more than 1,000,000 Scoville units, the scientific measurement of a chili’s spiciness. Classic Tabasco sauce ranges from 2,500 to 5,000 Scoville units, while jalapeno peppers measure anywhere from 2,500 to 8,000.

“The chili grenade has been found fit for use after trials in Indian defense laboratories, a fact confirmed by scientists at the Defense Research and Development Organization,” Col. R. Kalia, a defense spokesman in the northeastern state of Assam, told The Associated Press.

“This is definitely going to be an effective nontoxic weapon because its pungent smell can choke terrorists and force them out of their hide-outs,” R. B. Srivastava, the director of the Life Sciences Department at the New Delhi headquarters of the DRDO said.

Link via Say Uncle | Photo: (unrelated) US Department of Homeland Security

Six months after the complex operation to remove Lakshmi’s parasitic twin, doctors discovered she had developed scoliosis, or a curvature of the spine.

Without a complex operation to correct her spine doctors have warned her back will be forced into increasingly severe deformities as she grows, possibly leaving her disabled.

Separately, Lakshmi requires an operation to ‘detether’ her spine after it was discovered she was born with abnormal tissue connecting the spinal cord to her nervous system.

In a further operation orthopaedic surgeons must perform a procedure to ‘close her hips’, which are set too far apart and result in an unusual ‘gaited’ walk.

The charity that looks after Lakshmi’s progress is stretched to its limit, so a fund has been set up for her future operations. Link -via Digg

Fumiko Nagano of the World Bank writes that petty bribery is a normal part of government bureaucracy in India. If you need some license or form or permission, you’ll probably have to pay a bribe. An organization attempting to reform this practice has begun distributing rupee notes with a designated value of zero, to be offered to government officials when they ask for money:

According to Anand, the idea was first conceived by an Indian physics professor at the University of Maryland, who, in his travels around India, realized how widespread bribery was and wanted to do something about it. He came up with the idea of printing zero-denomination notes and handing them out to officials whenever he was asked for kickbacks as a way to show his resistance. Anand took this idea further: to print them en masse, widely publicize them, and give them out to the Indian people. He thought these notes would be a way to get people to show their disapproval of public service delivery dependent on bribes. The notes did just that. The first batch of 25,000 notes were met with such demand that 5th Pillar has ended up distributing one million zero-rupee notes to date since it began this initiative. Along the way, the organization has collected many stories from people using them to successfully resist engaging in bribery.

One such story was our earlier case about the old lady and her troubles with the Revenue Department official over a land title. Fed up with requests for bribes and equipped with a zero rupee note, the old lady handed the note to the official. He was stunned. Remarkably, the official stood up from his seat, offered her a chair, offered her tea and gave her the title she had been seeking for the last year and a half to obtain without success. Had the zero rupee note reached the old lady sooner, her granddaughter could have started college on schedule and avoided the consequence of delaying her education for two years. In another experience, a corrupt official in a district in Tamil Nadu was so frightened on seeing the zero rupee note that he returned all the bribe money he had collected for establishing a new electricity connection back to the no longer compliant citizen.

Link via Marginal Revolution | Image: 5th Pillar

“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

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!

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

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.

Link

image by flickr user eirikref used under creative commons license

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?

Link – via pigjockey

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by pigjockey.

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.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by robkullberg.

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).’

Link

“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.

Link -via Digg

Preciously at Neatorama: the village of Brazilian Twins.

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

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Marilyn Terrell.

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.

Link

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

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!

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Christophe.

Link

From the Upcoming Queue, submitted by Marilyn Terrell.

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]