Random ponderings

Listening to Unni Menon singing a song from the movie rhythm wondering to mellifluous Rehman music whether "river arent you a lady, ask me reasons I shall give you a hundred."He goes on to soliloquoise about the various ways in which water enters the lives of man...nectar of fresh bloom, milk of cow...and about all that is pretty and fruitful in life being feminine..lovely listening for me ...my half baked tamil and kulturlos sensibilities help me get a half baked but beautiful message.

Another Tamil guy, Shanmuga ( I dont recollect how I got in his mailing list) does me a great favor every week.Is he a veshti Mama or a FabIndia dude I dont know...but his posts are always so grounded to reality....random observations about life, art and activism...both of which I am a cipher in,health and humanities...all compiled in one weekly dose.I would delete his mails without opening them initially. Kaun nastar TP karta I used to think.But somewhere sometime I read one of his postings....couldnt help marvel how good a service this guy is doing, and how and why he does it.

When the Rivers Run Dry: Water--The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-First Century
by Fred Pearce
320 pages, Beacon Press (March 9, 2006)

Highlights from this book:
97% of the world is sea water--this suggests that we need a MASSIVE global desalination program to protect aquifers from further salination and deterioration $100M will buy a desalination plant capable of desalinating 100M cubic meters of
water a year, or Navy ship nor an Army brigade with tanks and artillery, or 1000 diplomats, or 10000 Peace Corps missions, or a day of war over water.
Kashmir is about Pakistan's Achilles heel,
water.India is on a path to destruction. Water mines are selling water for $4.00 (four dollars) a Truck Tanker Load, and basically mining India dry.
Dams produce methane from rotting vegetation, with 8X the greenhouse \neffect of a coal powered plan of the same capacity.

Some more Rehman. Thillana thillana......
My brother Ram told me bout this great site itwofs.com that gives you the many rip offs that Indian music directors get away with.The wierd cooings of a female before the song begins are straight from Deep Forest's song...forget the name.Et tu Rehman!! Anyways he aint so blatant as some of the other guys...check Dhoom machanewala music director Pritam and our own favorite Anu Malik.The Idea cellular tune rip off is a revelation.Illayaraja deserves commission for all the big bucks tht the ad agency made with the 98 tara ra blah blah blah....blah blah blah.


Delhi's Rashtrapati Bhawan has a rooftop rainwater-harvesting system that accounts for the sizeable daily demand, even if it is for ancillary consumption activities such as irrigating gardens and washing floors.

Reminds me of Melghat in Gadchiroli where I stayed for 3 days as a part of a health education trip with Prachiti, student organisation at BJ.There is no electricity in Melghat though electricity poles were laid way back in 1984 when Indira Gandhi visited the place. There were no access roads then ( even today!!) and she had landed there on a helicopter.That was the first time the village folk had seen anything like tht( Sounds like Pather Panchali?)Even now the poles bear stand mute witness to how easily a gullible rural folk can be taken for a ride...and continue to be for 20 some years.Their fault? They live on the border between Maharashtra State and Madhya Pradesh. And each is undecided about who will supply power.So what do people do? They get solar cells and harvest the sunshine. Aint they smart? Wait!! Dont jump to conclusions.What do they do with their valuable solar cell harvested energy- they hook it up to a cassette player and speaker and play lewd marathi folk songs and dance to the music. Am unable to upload a photo I have of that.But, iske jaat ka baida maru....what the hell!!

Pritam ...Halka halka sa yeh nasha......out and out copy of Breeze from Saintes Maries by James Cook.I am deleting this song from my favorites list man.