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[1] From: Sukla Sen <suklasen@yahoo.com> Date: Sun Jul 31, 2005 Subject: The Flood, the Floodmakers and the Brutes! National Alliance of People??s Movements Haji Habib Bldg. Naigaon Cross Rd. Dadar East. Mumbai 400 014 Ph : 24150529 Press Note ?? 31-7-2005 Maharashtra Police Attack Women in Mandala, mankhurd, Mumbai, who were trying to take shelter from the incessant rains under plastic shelters ?? including a pregnant lady ?? Mrs. Maina. Confiscate relief material collected and kept in the Community Kitchen. Break- down plastic shelters People trying to take shelter in SRA blocks and Transit Colonies unceremoniously driven out. People left with no option but to re-build on the original land from which they were evicted in order to simply survive. ALSO Given Below Are Some Of The Real Reasons For The Flooding In Mumbai. Sr. Inspector Kale with his posse of more than 15 policemen entered the Mandala slum in Mankhurd, this morning around 7.00 a.m., and proceeded very efficiently and systematically to demolish all shelter which the people were constructing with plastics donated by relief organizations and individuals , in order to stay dry in to-day??s torrential rains. Twelve brave policemen lathicharged 3 women , including a pregnant one, demolished the community kitchen set up with tremendous effort in the pouring rain, confiscated rice and other food material donated by the concerned citizens of Mumbai who could not bear to witness the plight of the slum dwellers in these weather conditions. About 1500 families of Mandala have therefore been left with no option but to return to the lands they were evicted from before their huts were demolished, just in order to survive. They are putting up plastic shelters there at the moment. After the original demolitions, they had taken shelter with other families whose houses are now submerged and are shelterless themselves. Flooding In Bombay ?? Myth and Reality !!!! We were appalled to learn how ignorant we all were when we were informed that the slums are the cause of the flooding in Bombay!!!!! It??s not the rains ?? stupid !!!! Bombay has a massive expanse of sea into which any amount of water can drain without the water level rising even an inch. Why then is there this kind of flooding, especially in certain areas of the financial capital of India ? The Truth seems to lie with the MMRDA ???digging before dialing??? and reclaiming large tracts of land against all rules, laws and expert advise ?? thereby disturbing the entire drainage of the area. ?· The Airport Authority has succeeded in diverting the Mithi River to an extent that it has now submerged its own employees! ?· The Bandra - Kurla Complex seems to be an excellent example of bad planning ?? it has reclaimed 730 acres of land , ignoring the recommendations of the K.G. Paranjape Committee of 1987; Dr. Kulkarni??s Report done for the Central Institute of Fisheries 1992; The Mangrove Committee of 1993 ; NEERI Report 1994 ?? 96 ; BNHS Report for the MOEF . Warnings against reclamation have been loud, clear and repeated. The Mahim Creek is also a biological filter. Despite all this, the MMRDA and related agencies treated the ???Wet-lands??? of Mumbai as ???Waste-lands???, called the Mithi River and it??s tributaries ??? Nallahs??? and treated them as gutters instead of estuaries which are breeding grounds for fish and proceeded to disturb the entire drainage system of the area. The much advertised ??? Environmentally ?? Friendly??? Bandra ?? Worli Sea ?? Link , despite protests, has gone ahead and built the foot of the bridge in a manner that blocks the outlet of the Mithi River into the sea ?? sending the waters back to flood the interiors. The Western Express Highways, Link Roads, road expansion are undertaken on fast track basis for Transport and Communication , blocking natural drainage and resulting in a total collapse of the same. All this and other such ???development projects??? have resulted in the current developments in the city. The complete collapse of disaster management excused by A.N. Roy with a cursory ???disaster cannot be expected???, is patently false, as repeated warnings even in black and white have been given to the Government even by Committees set up by the Government itself. The lack of police in the streets, no divers, no rations, no drinking water, no doctors to help the sick, have left the onus of helping their fellow bretheren on the shoulders of the common man on the streets. The least the government and its agencies can do is not destroy what has been donated on humanitarian grounds and let the people take shelter in the empty transit camps and SRA blocks ?? even on a temporary basis. Medha patkar , Arif Kadri, kaushalya Salvi -------------------------- [2] From: Regi P George <george_regi@yahoo.com> Date: Sun Jul 31, 2005 Subject: NRI millionaire who doesn't own car buys a ghost town for $ 5.7 million NRI millionaire who doesn't own car buys a ghost town for $ 5.7 million Sunday July 31 2005 00:00 IST KITSAULT: The Millionaire Who Bought a Town likes to save a buck. He breakfasts at McDonald's, flies economy class and asks for a doggie bag when he doesn't finish his meal at cheap motel restaurants. But when, several months ago, the Virginia-based businessman saw a news story about a whole town up for sale in remote western Canada, he called the same day to offer a check for $5.7 million, site unseen. Today, Krishnan Suthanthiran owns Kitsault, a ghost town abandoned by miners' families more than 22 years ago and preserved like a museum display of suburbia, though one through which bears occasionally wander. Suthanthiran, who was born in India and made his fortune selling medical devices and real estate in the Washington area, said he jumped at the chance to buy Kitsault because, ???one, it is beautiful up there, and two, I couldn't believe it wasn't being used. I said if nobody else could figure out what to do with a town, I can.'' Kitsault will become an eco-tourist destination or an artist's colony. He will hold conferences, gathering scientists for forums and evening salmon-roasts on the beach. Wedding receptions. A corporate retreat. A movie set. Skiing, hiking, a spa, bans on smoking and cars, maybe a high-speed hydrofoil to bring tourists 85 miles from Prince Rupert. ???I feel like a kid in a candy shop,'' he said. Suthanthiran has avoided publicity in the past, content with his work and a growing list of philanthropy projects in India, Canada and the United States. Many involve small scholarships, the kind of boost that enabled him to leave home for college at 15 with only a collection of donations from neighbours in his pocket. At 56, after quietly building his businesses for 28 years, Suthanthiran has plunged into a flurry of financial acquisitions. In the last year, he has moved to buy half-a-dozen companies. Most are medical concerns that complement his own, Best Medical International. But the purchases also include a Vancouver video production company and now, the splashiest buy, a ghost town. ???I guess Kitsault will bring me more into the open,'' he says. Kitsault, 500 miles northwest of Vancouver, was to be a model mining town. Instead, it became a monument to corporate misjudgment. In the late 1970s, Amax of Canada Limited chose to reopen a local mine, dormant since 1972, that produced molybdenum, a metal used to harden steel. The setting is stunning: Green-cloaked mountains crested with streaks of snow plunge toward lakes and river gorges. A tidal estuary by the town teems with shrimp and salmon. Curious harbor seals poke up their heads from the water beneath the swiftly moving shadows of bald eagles. Amax created a modern, planned community to house 1,200 miners and their families. The company built seven apartment buildings and 92 suburban homes with aluminium siding and green lawns. The town boasted a recreation centre with a gleaming hardwood-floor gym and a swimming pool, health clinic, community centre, library and day-care facility. ???It was an ideal place for a family,'' said Larry Payjack, who opened a sporting goods store in the town's small mall. There was no crime; residents formed a bear watch to collect the kids when a bear wandered through. But just as the families were getting settled, the price of molybdenum plunged, from a $15-a-ton high to $3. An oversupply of the ore from competing mines and the recession of the 1980s killed off the ???moly'' market. The company stockpiled the ore in one-ton bags on the beach for a while, recalled Art Hill, an electrician. Then, in November 1982, it ordered the operation closed, and within months, the town was abandoned. Kitsault was left empty and eerie. Amax and the successive owner, the giant mining company Phelps Dodge, kept a caretaker there who mowed the lawns and kept the heat on in the winter, keeping the town surprisingly intact. ???It's nice and peaceful here in the winter,'' said Jim Essay, 65, who lived with his wife, Maggie, as a Kitsault caretaker for the past two years. ???Maggie did a lot of cross-stitching. We played cards a lot.'' There were occasional attempts to sell the property but no takers until the price dropped and Suthanthiran noticed the ghost town for sale. He had a history with Canada. He had come to Carleton University in Ottawa in 1969 at age 20 on a postgraduate scholarship after leaving India, where a friend's father had taken up a collection to rescue the smart young man from his family grocery store and send him to college. Suthanthiran got a master's degree in engineering and then went to Washington to make medical devices with an oncologist. He started his own company in 1977, specializing in sophisticated radiation treatment catheters used to fight cancer, the disease that had claimed his father in India. The company now employs a staff of 130 in Virginia and 100 in Europe. Its owner is not a flashy millionaire. No gold Rolex, he wears a plastic sports watch and white socks. He says he hasn't been shopping in three years. He does not own a car. He spends more than half his time on the road, so when he flies back to Virginia, he rents a car to drive to the house he bought 22 years ago in quiet Mason Neck. The only extravagance he admits to is a two-bedroom apartment in Las Vegas. He doesn't gamble, he says, but likes the shows and marvels at the operation of the giant hotels. Suthanthiran has neither a wife nor children. He works seven days a week, his ear joined to a telephone. He hasn't borrowed money in 20 years, he said. But something about Kitsault has brought out the dreamer in him. ???Just look at this place,'' Suthanthiran gushed as he wandered around the empty buildings of his town. The frozen-in-time look of the town is deceptive, though. Ants are chewing away at the wood foundations; mould has crept into the eaves. The electrical wiring is brittle, and the sewage system, which runs straight into the estuary, probably will not pass today's standards. ???I don't think he really knows what he's got into,'' mused Edmond Wright, secretary-treasurer of the Nisga'a Lisims native government, which represents the aboriginal villages that are Kitsault's closest neighbours. ???We're really out in the boondocks here.'' Over a hospitable lunch of wild salmon, the Nisga'a officials politely scolded Suthanthiran for rushing ahead without consulting them. ???You've got too much money,'' Wright chided him. Suthanthiran is undeterred by sceptics. ???If I wasn't an optimist, I'd still be in my home town in India running a grocery, with 10 kids,'' he said. ???Land development is not for the fainthearted.'' His plans do not include capitalizing on Kitsault's ghost-town history, however. ???We're going to focus on the future,'' he said. ???People are going to say, `Wow.' And they will forget about the past. The ghosts will be exorcised.'' --------------- [3] From: Regi P George <george_regi@yahoo.com> Date: Sun Jul 31, 2005 Subject: The joy of kanji The joy of kanji Thursday July 28 2005 21:52 IST Ratna Rajaiah Jook or zuk in China and Korea, Chao Bo in Vietnam, lugaw in Philippines, Okayu in Japan, Khao Tom gung in Thailand. From Sydney to New York ?? and there are even several restaurants dedicated just to it! Served piping hot or ?????overnight???? cold. Fresh or fermented. Savoury, sweet or often, even sour. Eaten with almost anything ?? eggs, chicken or shrimp, mushrooms, bamboo shoots or almost any vegetable from bitter beans to brinjal. And sometimes, even with milk or coconut! Flavoured and spiced with almost anything ?? sesame seeds, roasted peanuts, dates, ginger, chili paste, garlic, black pepper, cumin or roasted red chilis. Or then, just by itself, laced with a spoonful of ghee and a dash of salt. Eaten as breakfast, lunch, brunch or dinner. Or in between any of these as a delicious, nourishing snack. For digestion as delicate as a baby??s, as frail as its grandma??s. Medicine, nourishment, healing food and gourmet??s delight. When you??re sick or cold or hungry or all three. A poor man??s staple, an emperor??s feast. And its most popular Chinese and now English name ?? comes from an Indian word. ??????Congee???? ?? from the Tamil word ??????kanji????. And even though kanji also refers to the starchy water that is drained off after rice is cooked, today I speak of that wondrous, marvelous broth or rice gruel, as global as the UN, as Indian as you and me. Kanji. Naturally, kanji derives all its nourishing, therapeutic value from rice. (For the uninitiated, kanji or congee is rice cooked in 4-6 times its volume in water, till it becomes a thick, porridge like consistency.) Ancient, sacred, beloved, wonderful rice. To try and say anything about rice in anything less than at least 4 books is both a sacrilege and an impossibility. But, today, without a few words about it, this article can??t even begin. In Sanskrit (and in Kannda), the generic word for food is also the word for cooked rice ?? ??????anna????. (As it is in many Asian cultures ?? in Japanese, for example, the word for a meal is ??????gohan???? which also means cooked rice.) The modern English word ??????rice???? originates from ancient Greek word ??????arizi???? which in turn was borrowed from the Tamil word ??????arhi???? which in turn comes from the Sanskrit ??????vrihi????. Life, for us Indians begins with rice and stays with us through life. The ceremony of giving a child its first solid food is called anna prasannam. In the namakarana ceremony, the child??s name is announced by writing it in a spread of rice grains. The child??s first lesson begins with writing an alphabet in rice. And no puja or ritual is complete without the presence and offering of rice ?? cooked or grain. Perhaps, one of the reasons for rice??s hallowed, all pervading presence in our lives is because of its very high nutritional value. In Ayurveda, there are two grains in the list of earth??s first foods ?? rice and barley. And so it is considered the perfect healing food. Confirmed by modern day nutritionists. Brown rice, for example ?? or rice with the bran and germ layers intact ?? is one of the healthiest foods you can eat. Low in fat, sodium and cholesterol, low sodium, a slow digesting complex-carbohydrate, making it not just enormously healthy but also the perfect diet to prevent and manage hypertension, obesity and high cholesterol. Yup, I did say ??????rice???? and ??????prevent obesity???? in the same sentence. If you notice, predominantly rice eating societies both in India and the Far East have had fewer fat people ?? even though rice is eaten at every meal. And the misconception of rice being ??????fattening???? is because we eat it wrong and make it (and other nutritive foods like potato and ghee) the scapegoat for our sedentary, couch potato life styles. Brown rice is also high in Vitamin B complex and many vital minerals like selenium, magnesium and manganese. Parboiled rice ?? India??s contribution to world health and also one of the best kinds of rice for kanji ?? is equally nutritious. Which brings us to the much-maligned white rice. Well, while it is true that the milling and processing which makes rice ??????white???? does knock off over 50-60 percent of many nutrients, white rice still doesn??t do too badly nutrition wise. For example, one cup of white rice still gives you 88 percent of the selenium in one egg, 80 percent folate (a B-complex vitamin most publicized for its importance in pregnancy and prevention of pregnancy defects) contained in one papaya and as much manganese as half a cup of spinach. In Ayurveda, white basmati rice is considered ??????easy to digest, cooling the digestive fires and held in high regard Ayurvedically as a cleansing and healing food for all body types.???? And so, many recipes in the Ayurvedic healing diet are based on basmati rice. So, when rice, this wonderful grain, as nourishing as Mother Nature herself, is cooked to become rice gruel or congee or kanji, all its nutritional benefits become available in a much more easy-to-assimilate and digestible form. Which is fantastic because rice itself is considered as one of the gentlest of foods ?? non allergenic and very easy to digest, since 98 percent of it is digestible. No wonder then that congee is considered everything from comfort food for the sick to nourishment for nursing mothers to a baby??s first solid. By whom? Well, by both Ayurveda and Chinese traditional medicine, to start with. In Ayurveda, healing diets are considered absolutely vital during and after panchakarma treatments because of ??????the need to cosset and mollify the body, mind and spirit of the patient.???? And in them, 64 food preparations are listed in the shamana or strengthening treatments-congee is one of them. And since it is seen to have a stabilising, even strengthening influence on the stomach and digestive tract, rice gruel is also the prescribed diet during digestive ailments. For example, a version made with ginger and pomegranate juice is recommended for diarrhea. In Chinese medicine, where like in Ayurveda, food is as much medicine as nutrition, congee occupies no less a place of importance in the medicine chest. Combined with various different foods is used to treat a whole host of ailments ?? high cholesterol, insomnia, fever, induce sleep and generally bolster weak constitutions. Congee with asparagus, for example, is believed to be a diuretic, while spinach congee was used as a sedative! In Basic Questions of Internal Medicine, also known as the Niejing, the basis of Chinese food therapy, written by Huang Di or the Yellow Emperor (27th century B.C.), he describes congee as ??????the most nourishing food on earth????, because it is considered very nutritive and soothing for the digestive system and many problems related to it. I guess that??s why some Chinese claim it has the ability to bring back a person from the brink of death! And modern nutritionists agree with this ancient wisdom ?? you will find congee is quite a fad, health food wise, in the West. But medicine apart, ??????kanji???? is no less ubiquitous as a food in our country, especially in south India, as it is in the Far East. In the Indus Valley civilization, the first mention of rice was as ??????odana???? or rice gruel. According to K T Achaya in his Indian Food, A Historical Compendium, in South India, it was a food fit for kings. Urad dal vadas (vatakas) soaked in sour rice water ?? the origin of the modern day dahi vada ?? was royal fare in South India. Kankija or sour fermented rice gruel was both a relished drink like buttermilk and fortifying medicine. And to this very day, even after we have been introduced to the ?????joys???? of sliced bread, kanji ?? or ?????ganji???? as it is called in Karnataka ?? remains a favourite all across South India. Not just as breakfast, but lunch, brunch, supper, dinner or any other time! Some of the happiest parts of my childhood were spent in the Kanji heartland ?? summer holidays in my maternal grandmother??s home in coastal South Karnataka. Every morning, come breakfast time, a huge copper vessel shaped like an angry, fat, burnished red-gold onion would be ready and seething in the corner of the kitchen, impatient wisps of hot steam escaping from under its tight thick wooden lid. And every now and then, the lid would be opened and as fragrant, hot clouds of steam spewed out, large, piping hot dollops of kanji would be served onto a thali. Big, fat, pale pink rice grains flecked with deep maroon, so soft that they were barely keeping their shape, swimming in thick, steaming, pearly kanji liquid. The trick was to down it as hot as you could bear it, even in the height of summer and the sweating was part of the whole kanji experience! (Accompaniments varied ?? just a spoonful of ghee or mango pickle or some dry, spicy vegetable like jackfruit.) And with a bellyful of that kanji, you were ready to face anything that the day had in store. Incidentally, when you came back home, there would be more kanji waiting... For those initiated to the joys of kanji, there is nothing else like it. My mother??s eyes still glaze over with joy at the thought of it. And like so many of the best things in life, look at the breathtaking simplicity of it. All you need is a large pot, a few cups of rice and lots of water. You can make it anywhere (even overnight), eat it anytime and with anything. And for just a few rupees, you have one of the most delicious satisfying, nourishing meals ?? what more could you ask for in a food? Culture Food ??????In Kerala, the bounty of tropical summer is celebrated in a festival called Vishu. It is believed that what one sees first on Vishu morning influences one??s fortunes for the rest of the year. Vishu Kanji is a special rice soup traditionally served but once a year to celebrate this festival. It is made with a combination of parboiled and long grain rices and puliavarakka, a lima bean-type legume with a slightly sour taste, and cooked in coconut milk. The beans give tanginess and a bite to this soup. In parts of south India, as girls attain puberty they are given a four-day coming-of-age ceremony called Thirandu Kalyaanam. On the third day, guests are served Paalkanji, a rice soup cooked in milk and sweetened with sugar. Traditionally the soup is served in thadas, which are bowls made of plantain stems held together with the stems of coconut palm leaves. The soupspoons to eat this rice soup are made of folded jackfruit tree leaves pinned with stems of coconut palm leaves. Garnishes are served on a piece of banana leaf on the side and include fresh coconut slices, Indian brown sugar chunks and deep-fried pappadams. In old days, Kanji was served for supper on every new moon in south India and feeding rice or rice soup to the poor is considered the ultimate good deed. It was also offered to the poor in observance of annual Memorial Day of departed family members.???? http://www.newindpress.com/sunday/sundayitems.asp?id=SEL20050728122548&eTitle=Living&rLink=0 |
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July31, 2005 - [India Thinkers Net]Plachimada,Uzbek,Police cruelty etc >> |
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