Traveller Cows

Cows looking for empty seats in Taj express at Mathura Railway Station going towards New Delhi.

I took this shot with my 1.3 megapixel Nokia 6630 cameraphone, in night mode.

Indians having a tryst with destiny

A family having food before catching a train. The gentleman? on the right almost kicked the provider. Took this photo with my Nokia 6630 cameraphone 1.3 MP. Time was 17:30 PM, 6th June, Ghaziabad Railway station. So close to New Delhi where promises were made on the midnight of August 14, 1947 to the nation. Photo in Black & White.

Jawaharlal Nehru : Speech On the Granting of Indian Independence, August 14, 1947

Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long supressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of Inida and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.

At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals, which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?

Freedom and power bring responsibility. The responsibility rests upon this Assembly, a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India. Before the birth of freedom we have endured all the pains of labour and our hearts are heavy with the memory of this sorrow. Some of those pains continue even now. Nevertheless, the past is over and it is the future that beckons to us now.

That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfil the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.

And so we have to labour and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.

To the people of India, whose representatives we are, we make an appeal to join us with faith and confidence in this great adventure. This is no time for petty and destructive criticism, no time for ill-will or blaming others. We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell.

II
The appointed day has come-the day appointed by destiny-and India stands forth again, after long slumber and struggle, awake, vital, free and independent. The past clings on to us still in some measure and we have to do much before we redeem the pledges we have so often taken. Yet the turning-point is past, and history begins anew for us, the history which we shall live and act and others will write about.

It is a fateful moment for us in India, for all Asia and for the world. A new star rises, the star of freedom in the East, a new hope comes into being, a vision long cherished materializes. May the star never set and that hope never be betrayed!

We rejoice in that freedom, even though clouds surround us, and many of our people are sorrowstricken and difficult problems encompass us. But freedom brings responsibilities and burdens and we have to face them in the spirit of a free and disciplined people.

On this day our first thoughts go to the architect of this freedom, the Father of our Nation [Gandhi], who, embodying the old spirit of India, held aloft the torch of freedom and lighted up the darkness that surrounded us. We have often been unworthy followers of his and have strayed from his message, but not only we but also succeeding generations will remember this message and bear the imprint in their hearts of this great son of India, magnificent in his faith and strength and courage and humility. We shall never allow that torch of freedom to be blown out, however high the wind or stormy the tempest.

Our next thoughts must be of the unknown volunteers and soldiers of freedom who, without praise or reward, have served India even unto death.

We think also of our brothers and sisters who have been cut off from us by political boundaries and who unhappily cannot share at present in the freedom that has come. They are of us and will remain of us whatever may happen, and we shall be sharers in their good [or] ill fortune alike.

The future beckons to us. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavour? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.

We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of India what destiny intended them to be. We are citizens of a great country on the verge of bold advance, and we have to live up to that high standard. All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations. We cannot encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or in action.

To the nations and peoples of the world we send greetings and pledge ourselves to cooperate with them in furthering peace, freedom and democracy.

And to India, our much-loved motherland, the ancient, the eternal and the ever-new, we pay our reverent homage and we bind ourselves afresh to her service.

JAIHIND.

The story of civilization

Build, Live and desert...........the story of civilization will continue.

Took this photo in the ruins of Machhkund, a mythological, religious and historical place in Dholpur, Rajasthan.

TATA Tiger TATA

It was 2:00 am, and i fell down and slept, that night I saw an episode on National Geographic Channel about dwindling Tiger population in Indian jungles. It was a nice programme with almost everyone related to things like Project Tiger etc, saying something or the other and making a genuine point. We arrived on the bank of a lake where a Tigress gave birth to three beautiful cubs. Me and my friend Karn took out our Cameras and start to roll our Video and still cameras, i was holding that Sony digital Camcorder and my focus was on the little cub still not making any move we waited for three hours and suddenly it moved its fore feets and there it is yawning and looking around, i got a pat on my right shoulder and turned my head and saw Karn with a Pale yellow face and with his eyes he told me to look behind his back and what i saw stunned me so much that i couldnot take a breath.

It was there, a huge, gigantic Cat, the national animal of my beloved country, the Cat which produced innumerable tales down the centuries and has been the most beautiful of all the Cats, standing ten feet away sniffing like a dog and with a lot of curiosity in her eyes made a move forward towards me as i made an eye contact with her, one good thing happened that i kept the focus on her and didnt stop my camera and it was all getting recorded, she came right upto my body and as i lay over Karn(he was looking away in the other direction), i never felt so Dead before in my life not even when i saw someone being runover by a WHITE TATA INDICA. That Tiger licked my fingers and suddenly turned away and there she was with her three cubs and how happy she was to see her third cub moving and alive, she the Royal Bengal Tigress possessing the strongest Jaws of all cats and having strength with which she can hold a giant Sambhar in her mouth for hours, sat down beside them like a good dedicated mother and they were all over her, she and her three cubs are alive and happy in that difficult place called jungle What a great mother this beast is.

Suddenly i saw a reflection of a giant dog leaping on the wall facing me but that dog didnt land on my stomach and wake me up sharp at 6:00 AM, like it used to do for the last 8 years, i stood up on my bed and realised that Sheru our pet dog was no more, she died a day before , running ahead of me, wanted to run outside and smell all over the place, i couldnot even tell her to slow down, that WHITE TATA INDICA, the call center CAB, was faster, running over Sheru crushing her face, she couldnt even make a noice, leaving her 7 month old pup behind, we have named him.....Sheru. He has bark and impatience of his mother.

I had this dream about being among the Tigers (wanted to bringing forth, soft corners of their nature) this was after the death of Sheru, and this is how it happened. I think this happened with me because i love animals, I LOVE TIGER.