Saturday, April 21, 2012

Mamata Banerjee---painting Kolkata blue

Mamata Banerjee has a plan--she wants Kolkata to be painted blue. Jaipur is the pink city, so why shouldn't Kolkata be the blue city? It brings back memories of the emergency of 1975-77. Very few may remember or even know, that at this time an order was passed to paint Dehradun blue. As the deadline approached, house painters were in great demand. Frantically, everyone was getting the buildings painted, often an inky, watery blue. Dehradun's ferocious monsoon, with incessant rain, is well known. Soon all the buildings had strange smudged streaks of blue, with the earlier colour showing through. The emergency ended. With another monsoon the blue was all washed off, the buildings were dirty and streaky. Finally they were repainted in their original colours.

Friday, April 20, 2012

The wolf and the goat -- a true story

In village Namner, in Dausa district of Rajasthan, India, a wolf from the neighbouring forests, chased a goat. The goat, running away, fell into a well, and the wolf, following, fell in too.
Both spent the night there. Did they communicate? Did they make friends? Whatever they did, the wolf did not attack and kill the goat.
The goat kept bleating, and in the morning villagers gathered around. Officials of the forest department reached there. Using ropes, they managed to bring both animals up, unharmed. The wolf was released and raced for shelter into the forest. The villagers hate wolves, but persuaded that it was only a hyena, they let it go. The goat was returned to its owners.
{the story is reported in several newspapers]