Why I love Mumbai

Well, to begin with, you can’t smoke here, neither a fag nor a joint. Cigarettes are banned most places. Joints, everywhere, barring prison where you can buy them openly. Now you can’t drink as well. Not unless you are 18 with a licence. You can’t go a bar and watch pretty girls dance. That’s banned too, even if they dance the Kathakali. The more exciting dancing girls have long gone. Their kothas have shut down. Sahir’s sorrowful poems have died with them. Bling shops have hijacked the red light district.

Eating out late is not permissible. Last orders are at 11. Even with a licence you can’t drink after 1. Lady Gaga can’t come because concerts shut down at 10 even if you take 342 days to get all 137 permits required. If you marry at 17 you get rapped for rape. If you neck by the sea. Dhoble’s goon squad will beat you with hockey sticks for immoral conduct. (Cops can however pick up college girls on Marine Drive and rape them in the chowky at will.)

Our CMs with a long dhobi list of scams can whoosh into the Taj with a cavalcade. You and I must wait in queue till our chaddis are checked. Wherever we go, our chaddis are checked because every hotel, restaurant, mall and Government office suspects we carry bombs between our testicles. Bombs? Moustache trimming scissors and pickles are banned on flights. As for gun licences, no one’s allowed one ever since Mallika’s duh brother tried to teach Mahesh Bhatt’s son how to fire one and missed his hapless neighbour. The cops won’t help you either, even if your life is threatened. So you sit at home, waiting for some idiot to come and kill you because they can’t find anything worth stealing in your flat.

And why can’t they find anything worth stealing? Because after paying so many taxes, no one has any money left to steal. Never look closely at your bill in a 5 star restaurant. You may get a cardiac arrest seeing the taxes and duties slapped on. And, when you recover, you will get another one seeing the hospital bill. If you enter Mumbai by road, you have to pay octroi on all that you bring in, even if it’s your own. If you are a Muslim, you won’t get a flat to stay in. If you eat meat, Malabar Hill won’t have you. If you are a Hindu, Byculla won’t. And if you are young and unmarried, no one will. If you have a pet, it gets worse.

Muslims have got Satanic Verses banned. Hindus have banned Husain. So no gallery dares to show the art of the city’s greatest son. You can’t show sculptures with genitals, not even Michaelangelo’s David, though you can see any number of genitals on the streets where people openly pee. You can’t watch The Dirty Picture on 9 pm TV. That’s outlawed though it won Vidya the National Award and every kid has loved it. You are lucky Donald Duck ain’t banned because comics and cartoons in text books are banned. My Savita Bhabhi is too. So are, sneakily, many websites.

You can’t call friends home because after they've gone, guys from the local police will come and demand a bribe. You can’t keep 3 whisky bottles at home or carry Rs 20,001 in cash even if your mother’s sick and may need sudden hospitalisation. No hospitals take you in without cash, or allow you out even as a corpse. You can’t fly into Mumbai with an iPad. The Customs demand duty even if it’s your own. If you carry in personal stuff worth Rs 26,000, which is $400 today (and could well be $100 tomorrow) you must pay duty and penalty. They have announced that the punishment will soon be stiffer. Maybe they will hang you for it.

There are no open air street cafes. No dance bars. No nightlife. Even Voodoo’s shut down. A few asphixiated trees gasp for breath. There are no sparrows left. You can’t see stars at night. All we see are vast crowds of people rushing nowhere. Footpaths have vanished. So has free speech and live music. The State eavesdrops on your sex chats, be it on phone, chat, BBM or social networking sites. Try courier pigeons.

`Welcome to Mumbai. I simply love it.

By: Pritish Nandy (http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/extraordinaryissue/entry/why-i-love-mumbai)
 

ETYMOLOGY OF THE NAME INDIA

The name of India is a corruption of the word Sindhu. Neighbouring Arabs, Iranians uttered‘s’ as ‘h’ and called this land Hindu. Greeks pronounced this name as Indus.

Sindhu is the name of the Indus River, mentioned in the Rig-Veda, one of the oldest extant Indo-European texts, composed in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent roughly between 1700-1100 BC. 

There are strong linguistic and cultural similarities with the Iranian Avesta, often associated with the early culture of 2200-1600 BC.

The English term is from Greek Ἰνδία (Indía), via Latin India. Iindía in Byzantine ethnography denotes the region beyond the Indus (Ἰνδός) River, since Herodotus alluded to "Indian land". Ἰνδός, Indos, "an Indian", from Avestan Hinduš refers to Sindh and is listed as a conquered territory by Persian emperor Darius I (550-486 BC) in the Persepolis terrace inscription.

The name India was known in Old English (between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century AD) and was used in King Alfred's translation of Orosius. The name was, under French influence, replaced by Yndeor Inde. It went into Early Modern English (the latter half of the 15th century to 1650 AD). Thus, Indie appeared the first edition of the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare - both belong to the late phase of Early Modern English. The name India then came back to English usage from the 17th century onwards, may be due to the influence of Latin, or Spanish or Portuguese.

Here is a timeline of the name beginning with the ancient Persian dynasty:

Date	Name	Source	Definition
c. 486 BC	Hidush	Naksh-i-Rustam	"Says Darius the King: By the grace of Ormazd these (are) the countries which I have acquired besides Persia. I have established my power over them. They have brought tribute to me. That which has been said to them by me they have done. They have obeyed my law. Medea... Arachotia (Harauvatish), Sattagydia (Thatagush), Gandaria (Gadára), India (Hidush)...."
c. 440 BC	India	Herodotus	"Eastward of India lies a tract which is entirely sand. Indeed, of all the inhabitants of Asia, concerning whom anything is known, the Indians dwell nearest to the east, and the rising of the Sun."
c. 300 BC	India/Indikē	Megasthenes	"India then being four-sided in plan, the side which looks to the Orient and that to the South, the Great Sea compasseth; that towards the Arctic is divided by the mountain chain of Hēmōdus from Scythia, inhabited by that tribe of Scythians who are called Sakai; and on the fourth side, turned towards the West, the Indus marks the boundary, the biggest or nearly so of all rivers after the Nile."
c. 140 AD	Indoi, Indou	Arrian	"The boundary of the land of India towards the north is Mount Taurus. It is not still called Taurus in this land; but Taurus begins from the sea over against Pamphylia and Lycia and Cilicia; and reaches as far as the Eastern Ocean, running right across Asia. But the mountain has different names in different places; in one, Parapamisus, in another Hemodus; elsewhere it is called Imaon, and perhaps has all sorts of other names; but the Macedonians who fought with Alexander called it Caucasus; another Caucasus, that is, not the Scythian; so that the story ran that Alexander came even to the far side of the Caucasus. The western part of India is bounded by the river Indus right down to the ocean, where the river runs out by two mouths, not joined together as are the five mouths of the Ister; but like those of the Nile, by which the Egyptian delta is formed; thus also the Indian delta is formed by the river Indus, not less than the Egyptian; and this in the Indian tongue is called Pattala. Towards the south this ocean bounds the land of India, and eastward the sea itself is the boundary. The southern part near Pattala and the mouths of the Indus were surveyed by Alexander and Macedonians, and many Greeks; as for the eastern part, Alexander did not traverse this beyond the river Hyphasis. A few historians have described the parts which are this side of the Ganges and where are the mouths of the Ganges and the city of Palimbothra, the greatest Indian city on the Ganges. (...) The Indian rivers are greater than any others in Asia; greatest are the Ganges and the Indus, whence the land gets its name; each of these is greater than the Nile of Egypt and the Scythian Ister, even were these put together; my own idea is that even the Acesines is greater than the Ister and the Nile, where the Acesines having taken in the Hydaspes, Hydraotes, and Hyphasis, runs into the Indus, so that its breadth there becomes thirty stades. Possibly also other greater rivers run through the land of India."
c. 590 AD	Hind	Istakhri	"As for the land of the Hind it is bounded on the East by the Persian Sea (i.e. the Indian Ocean), on the W. and S. by the countries of Islām, and on the N. by the Chinese Empire. . . . The length of the land of the Hind from the government of Mokrān, the country of Mansūra and Bodha and the rest of Sind, till thou comest to Kannūj and thence passest on to Tibet, is about 4 months, and its breadth from the Indian Ocean to the country of Kannūj about three months."
c. 650 AD	Five Indies	Xuanzang	"The circumference of 五印 (Modern Chinese: Wǔ Yìn, the Five Indies) is about 90,000 li; on three sides it is bounded by a great sea; on the north it is backed by snowy mountains. It is wide at the north and narrow at the south; its figure is that of a half-moon."
c. 944 AD	Hind, Sind	Masudi	"For the nonce let us confine ourselves to summary notices concerning the kings of Sind and Hind. The language of Sind is different from that of Hind. . . ."
c.1020 AD	Hind	Al-Birūnī	"Hind is surrounded on the East by Chín and Máchín, on the West by Sind and Kábul, and on the South by the Sea."-
1205 AD	Hind	Hasan Nizāmī	"The whole country of Hind, from Peshawar in the north, to the Indian Ocean in the south; from Sehwan (on the west bank of the Indus) to the mountains on the east dividing from China."
1298 AD	India the Greater India the Minor Middle India	Marco Polo	"India the Greater is that which extends from Maabar to Kesmacoran (i.e. from Coromandel to Mekran), and it contains 13 great kingdoms. . . . India the Lesser extends from the Province of Champa to Mutfili (i.e. from Cochin-China to the Kistna Delta), and contains 8 great Kingdoms. . . . Abash (Abyssinia) is a very great province, and you must know that it constitutes the Middle India."
c. 1328 AD	India	Friar Jordanus	"What shall I say? The great- ness of this India is beyond description. But let this much suffice concerning India the Greater and the Less. Of India Tertia I will say this, that I have not indeed seen its many marvels, not having been there. . . ."
1404 AD	India Minor	Clavijo	"And this same Thursday that the said Ambassadors arrived at this great River (the Oxus) they crossed to the other side. And the same day . . . came in the evening to a great city which is called Tenmit (Termez), and this used to belong to India Minor, but now belongs to the empire of Samarkand, having been conquered by Tamurbec."

Writtenby Sanujit, published on 13 January 2011 under the following license: Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms.

Bathroom Statistics

Yesterday while driving back home from office, I heard on radio that a government department has done its bathroom renovation for Rs. 35 lakhs. The RJ followed the news with discussion with some contractor and asked him if he fits all world's best bathroom items how much a government office big bathroom can be renovated in. The maximum figure, till I signed off, came Rs. 12 lakhs. 


My elder brother (Nalin Saxena, https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1012273344), taking a short break from is IT job and interest in photography, history and flute, has done some interesting calculations which I thought should be blogged and shared. So here it is - 


Now that's called statistics!!!!

Assume a person goes for pissing 4 times a day in office.
In a year of 250 working days he pisses about 1000 times (250*4)
In 5 years (assuming bathroom renovation happens in 5 years), he pisses 5000 times.
Hence 60 people in planning commission would have pissed 60*5000 = 3 lakh times in the office bathroom (that too when you assume that they are coming for 250 days a year to office and are not on any foreign trips)
Now they have spent 35 lakh for renovating the bathrooms. This means it is costing Rs 12 for every piss (35 lakhs for 3 lakh pisses) these guys undertake!

That means it cost Rs 12*4 = Rs 48 per day for pissing 4 times in office alone.....more than the 32/day poverty line...just to satisfy basic pissing needs!