Women's current position

Lessons from 3 cities

London
Great smog of London in 1952 claimed about 4,000 lives.
•Clean Air Act, 1956 restricted burning of coal in urban areas, encouraged homes to shift to electricity and gas for heating.
•New toxicity charge of 10 pounds introduced in October, for cars bought before 2006, in addition to long-standing 11.50 pounds congestion charge, to enter central London between 7am and 6pm.
•New plan to ban petrol and Diesel cars from 2040.

Los Angeles
In the 1970s, LA air hit unhealthy levels
•Federal Clean Air Act,1970, introduced strict emission limits. It is estimated to have prevented 160,000 premature deaths

Mexico City
In 1992, UN named Mexico City the most polluted city on the planet
•Old cars, fuel with lead banned, public transport expanded.
•Refineries and factories relocated
•Follows odd-even formula; when pollution rises, car use limited to once a week.
Bicycle network integrated with bus and metro system to encourage cyclists.

UN Peacekeeping

Interesting statistics

ICAN

Laureates who did not write in their mother tongue

Tungnath

United Nations

Circadian rhythm

https://youtu.be/AZUeKoD_3y0

https://youtu.be/UbQ0RxQu2gM

I was shocked to see these two videos and the next day, I chanced upon an article of the same and was glad to find it all true.

Jeffrey C. Hall of the university of Maine, Michael Rosbash of Brandeis University and Michael W. Young of Rockefeller University won the medical Nobel in 2017 for this.

Living without toxins

These are some points from an article written by Luke Coutinho, who is a fitness expert and has a MD, in alternate medicine.

He says we breathe carcinogens everyday and it's because of pollution. Some ways to lead a healthy lifestyle in this time and age are:

1.Breathe cleaner: Swap all your household items with natural alternatives like baking soda and vinegar(as floor cleaners), light Himalayan salt lamps, bring plants within our living spaces, use essential oils (as room freshers), burn sage and light bee wax candles instead of cancer causing petroleum byproducts.

2. Reduce dry cleaning: If you dry clean your clothes, once you get them back from the cleaner, air them out for at least 24 hours before wearing them. Keep them out of the plastic covering they come in.

3. Safer utensils: Plastic and aluminum foil aren't safe. Always choose glass and clay pots. Copper and silver tumblers are good for drinking water, not food. The good old cast iron is safe to cook in.

4. Pick natural fabrics: Avoid synthetic fabrics like polymer, nylon. All natural fabrics like cotton, wool and linen are safest.

5. Get natural cosmetics: Pick essential oils, herbal shampoos and henna instead.  Apple cider vinegar works like a natural deodorant and castor oil is a fabulous mascara

PS: It's advisable to consult a doctor before trying out any remedy.

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Look at this beautiful caricature in JK Tyre's newspaper ad. on India's Independence Day 2018

Machli documentaries

The Ranthambore National Park attracts a lot of visitors, and of the prime reasons for that was this living tigeress Machli, her zeal, power and qualities were so enchanting that even the film-maker S. Nallamuthhu couldn't resist himself, and filmed her for a period of nine years.

You can always find her videos on national geographic, the names of the films you can find about her are:
"Tiger revenge"
"Tiger dynasty"
"Tiger queen"

Her whole life can be seen in the documentary, "World's most famous tiger 🐅". The plot follows the rise, fall and ultimate death of this star. She lived till 19 years and till death, remained the unparalleled Queen of Ranthambore having outwitted many opponents and living longer than any tiger.

Pulitzer prize for feature photography

Mumbai based photographer Danish Siddiqui won the award documenting the Rohingya refugee crisis in Myanmar and Bangladesh.

Monumental mosque

Assam, Silchar, Cachar district, Jama Masjid, second floor, Sabir Ahmed Chaudhary (mosque's secretary) pushes open a door to reveal a room with about a dozen almirahs. They're filled with more than 300 books in Bengali and English on Hinduism, Christianity and Islam.

The secretary has made an effort to educate people about other religions and philosophies. Alonside the Koran and books on Islam, are tomes on Christian philosophy, the Vedas and Upanishads, biographies of Ramakrishna Paramhinsa and Swami Vivekananda, and novels by Rabindranath Tagore and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay.

Hence, it is said truly that the ones who read sacred religious texts, do not differentiate between religions.

The world's most traded goods

According to Statista 2016 by Teletrac Navman, cars accounted fornthe most traded goods by Germany imported in the USA.

TOP EXPORTERS

1. CARS - $1350BN
                  GERMANY

2. REFINED PETROLEUM - $825BN
                                                  USA

3. INTEGRATED CIRCUITS - $804BN
                                                   HONG KONG

4. VEHICLE PARTS - $685BN
                                      GERMANY

5. COMPUTERS -$614BN
                               CHINA

6. PHARMACEUTICALS - $613BN
                                               GERMANY

7. GOLD - $576BN
                   SWITZERLAND

8. CRUDE PETROLEUM - $579BN
                                              RUSSIA

9. TELEPHONES - $510BN
                                  CHINA

10. BROADCASTING EQUIPMENT - $395BN
CHINA

Conditions of NIKAH

Nikah Halala
A Muslim woman who wishes to restore her marriage after divorce is required to marry someone else and consummate the marriage before divorcing him to remarry her previous husband.

Nikah Misyar
The husband and wife renounce several marital rights, such as living together, the wife's rights to housing and maintenance money and the husband's right to home-keeping and access.

Nikah Mutah
Literally, "pleasure marriage", is a temporary marriage contract in which the duration of the marriage and the mahr(money or possessions promised to be paid to the bride by the groom or his father at the time of marriage) must be specified and agreed upon in advance. It is a private contract made in verbal or written format and does not confer any right on the woman.

Man with the golden arm

This is not some fantasy where you will find a man with an arm made of gold, but this man, James Harrison, is a man with superpowers.

He saved the lives of 2.4 million babies after giving blood almost every week for sixty years. It is not just any blood, his blood has unique disease-fighting antibodies.

He was awarded the Order of Australia in 1999.

He discovered about this unique feature of his blood when he had a lung removed, he was 14. It is believed to have been created due to the transfusions after operations.

Kilauea Volcano

People taking boat rides to see lava from the Kilauea Volcano fall into the Pacific Ocean at Kapoho in Hawaii.

Dublin, may 25

Laws of abortion in Dublin, a pro-choice mural.

Ireland legslises abortion.

Sleeping Lion Pearl sold

World's largest known freshwater pearl, which once belonged to Catherine the Great, was sold in Netherlands for $3,74,000.

It was called the Sleeping Lion pearly due to it's distinctive shape, it was formed in the first half of the 18th century in Chinese waters.

ReUnite

Every eighth minute a child goes missing and is either forced into child labour, or abandoned on streets.

This mobile application ReUnite, developed by Capgemini-a French IT firm, in collaboration with Bachpan Bachao Andolan(BBA) founded by Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi will soon become functional to eradicate the national level issue of missing children.

Citizens can upload the image of the missing child. Parents/caretakers can lodge a report. It can be very useful in case of toddlers and differently abled.
It will be available on Google and apple play store by the end of August 2018

Good thing about google

Kanpur : A college student was arrested for a murder believed to have taken place around 6pm, but a Google report showed his IP address was in use between 4pm and 11pm, which meant he could not be at the scene of the crime, thus, saving an innocent from being arrested or charged guilty.

Worth knowing information

Entrainment theory (biomusicology)
You guessed it right, I got to know about this in the movie "My name is Khan", if you haven't seen the movie, you can always search this thing. It's worth reading, trust me.

Anthropologists have coined a term called the Daughter Guarding hypothesis. It is a concern around the sexual lives of young women because of the possibility of pregnancy and reproduction. From the family's perspective, this control is positive as they are trying to protect them. But no one likes to be controlled, hence leading to conflict and tensions.

Serotonin

After watching 13 Reasons Why 2, I kept on wondering why did Clay Jensen get a semicolon tattooed on his hand?

Well, a semicolon is for mental health warriors. Similarly, a dandelion tells one to move on from the past, a lotus represents growth from hardships just like the flower that grows from muddy waters. A swallow signifies newly achieved independence from a disease or anyone. An anchor basically urges one to 'never sink'.

Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur quotes

you were so afraid of my voice I decided to be afraid of it too

the thing about having an alcoholic parent is an alcoholic parent does not exist
simply an alcoholic who could not stay sober long enough to raise their kids

you might not have been my first love but you were the love that made all the other loves irrelevant.

you were so distant i forgot you were there at all

i had to leave i was tired of allowing you to make me feel anything less than whole

you whisper i love you what you mean is i don't want you to leave

i will not have you build me into your life when what i want is to build a life with you~the difference

we began with honesty let us end in it too

neither of us is happy but neither of us wants to leave so we keep breaking one another and calling it love

i am losing parts of you like i lose eyelashes unknowingly and everywhere

just because you recognized my traits didn't mean I did not have them(modified)

loneliness is a sign you are in desperate need of yourself

another person cannot complete you, only complement(modified)

do not look for healing at the feet of those who broke you

accept yourself as you were designed

losing you was the becoming of myself

(we are at war with what comes most naturally to us)

ps: no punctuation marks or capital letters are in this blog as the writer herself writes in gurumukhi script in which both of these are avoided

Die Brautigamseiche(German)

Cannot write it's name properly, so search for it.

It is said to be one of the most romantic postboxes around the globe. 23701 is it's postcode and it's situated in a town called Eutin in Germany, since 1927. It's the only tree in the world with its own postcode.

1891 was the year when singles started writing letters to the tree hoping to find a match. Anyone can open a letter left in the round knothole and write a reply.

It gets an average of a thousand letters a year, and has arranged hundred marriages so far.

The legend behind this tree, is that in 1890, local girl Minna's father forbad sher to see her lover Wilhelm. For a year they kept in touch by leaving letters to each other inside a hole in the tree. The finally married under the tree on June 2, 1891.

Before you call yourself a feminist/equalist

One day, my friend told me that look at these girls riding two wheelers', and now look at the boys riding the two wheelers'. Do you see the difference?

I couldn't spot anything, and then, she told me on how girls drive it by looking downwards and not making eye contacts. Whereas, the guys look up straight and even into people's eyes. I laughed at her ludicrous analogy and told her to shut up.

Then, I read an interview of Deepa Narayan, about her book Chup.

90% of Indian women say they dislike their bodies,
98% admit they have been molested, and
95% say they have hidden this fact from their parents.

Here are some excerpts from the text:
◆The words women use to describe themselves are nice, loving, nurturing.
Women also use a lot of negative words, wiz, sacrificing, suffering, not achieving your dreams.
No woman used the word 'leadership'.
On the other hand, men described themselves as fun, adventurous and leaders.

◆ Women were trained to not laugh loudly. Smiling is good, because you're pleasing others, but laughing isn't because it indicates a strong independent self.
In film award functions, you see some women laughing with their head down and mouths covered, but the men will throw their head back and laugh.

◆ When one is trained to please, it become easier to be quiet and let it happen than say no. This makes consent a very complex issue.

◆ Women can express their sexual desire outside their homes, but not in there, this gives rise to a very unequal culture of silence.

Also, remember, the are only two words:
●Rape
●Sex
Non-consensual sex is rape, as you haven't asked for consent, and sex is by consent only, so it's consensual sex.

Lastly, whenever you want to know who is more adjustable, walk in a narrow lane and make sure someone is coming from the other side, now, in order to avoid collision the person who stops and turns first, is more adjustable, and according to statistics, it's women, here, too.

Today

Just as I was about to cancel a plan today, I re-read something by one of my favorite author, Vinita Dawra Nangia.

She wrote some weeks before, that one has to learn to say "No" to wasteful moments. But, sometimes, one cannot say 'No' to people precious to them. Sometimes, we have to make compromises for the happiness of our loved ones. This is a Golden Mean, when it concerns those we love,sensible people try and patch and maintain rather than fight, oppose or even break-off. And evolved souls even learn to be happy about the compromise, despite their own differing beliefs.

One must know when to bow and when to stand firm, that's my take for today.

Directors in Bollywood

I cannot find the name of this director/writer/actor but I had read one of his interview where he was asked about other directors, he said it with such precision, that I will just quote him.

"I love Akshat Verma's madness and desire to be experimental. Vishal Bhardwaj's films intrigue me because they revolve around the personal-political spheres and the works of Shakespeare. Anurag Kashyap's films try to dig deep into the world of crime. Aanand L Rai has a great hold over narratives that center on rom-coms."

He hadn't mentioned Anurag Basu, Gauri Shinde, Ayan Mukerji, Anand Gandhi, or even Imtiaz Ali, but the ones he did were enough.

Heroes

It's been more than 2 weeks since this news came out.

Tom Hanks or Forrest Gump, as we should call him did something that left me in awe of him.
A girl named Jessica Khera could not believe her eyes when she received a typewriter in her academy in Texas, by Hanks. She had written a letter to him, after watching the documentary, "California Typewriting", where the actor had said he will gift a typewriter to anyone who asks for one. Note on the gift read, "Don't merely type on this machine. Create, dream,wax, and make....Let me know how it goes......Tom Hanks".

You must have fallen for the song God's plan by Drake, I didn't but I fell for the video. Just watch it naa.

Albus Dumbledore quotes

Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if only one remembers to switch on the light.
                                       
It is our choices, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

Help will always be given, to only those who ask for it.

Curiosity is not a sin, but, we should exercise caution with our curiosity.

Size is no guarantee of power- George Weasley

"There are all kinds of courage", said Dumbledore, smiling. "It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends".

If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.
                         Sirius Black (Harry Potter 4)

Musing

Aksar sochti hun
Agar uss din woh baat nahi hui hoti
Toh kya hum ab bhi dost hote?
Aksar sochti hun
Tumhaari harkaton ke baad,
Kya kya nahi kiya maine,
Move on karne ke liye social hui aur fir anti-social bhi
Din bhar khush rahi aur raat bhar dukhi
Dard kya tha yeh toh baad mein samjh aaya
Jaane kitna waqt toh realisation mein nikal gayaa
Kya batau tumhe, kya karaa hai tumne?

Darr itna baitha diya ki, 'i don't know', mera fav ans ho gayaa
Depression aur repression mein farak zyaada lagta nahi abb
Mere lost old friend insomnia se fir se milaa diya
Trust toh abb zakhmon pe bhi nahi hota
Aur tum apnon ki baat kar rahe hoo

Khudki galati maan ke khudd ko hi bhul baithi
Compare karne lagi woh banne ke liye joh tumne chaaha hoga, aur dekho aaj kahan reh gayi,
Aksar sochti hun....