Latte with Phoenix

THE  BODY  CLOCK In the present age of hectic life, whether you are a student, employed professional or self-employed professional life, male or female; the concept of time and the borderline between day and night has become blurred and sometimes non-existent. Demands of everyday life, work pressure, irregular meal times and late nights can push the body constitution and its adaptability beyond limits of tolerance. Even retired persons are no exception and are caught in the whirlpool of catching up on things they missed doing in their working life. There are parties you cannot avoid, get-togethers that you want to go, films and shows which you cannot leave (or you shall be left out in the social circuit). Sleeping during the day is not possible as the day has its schedule. It’s also not a solution as the body recognises night and wants to rest. The body recognises night, is also evident as Road and Factory accidents happen mostly beyond midnight and dawn as the...

THE  GREAT  HEDGE  of  INDIA It is often said that ‘Fact is stranger than fiction’, and it is indeed true beyond imagination in this case. The East India Company built an approximately 20ft wide and 12 ft high Hedge from Orrisa, encircling MP and going up to the end of Punjab. It can be called – The Great Hedge –     and surprisingly almost 100% of India’s populations have never heard of this. One wonders at the strategy used by the powers of the time to completely obliterate this mind boggling fact from public memory. A traveler in India in the 1870s would have come across a strange problem. He couldn’t walk from the western parts of India to the east in the Terai region without encountering an enormous hedge made of babool, prickly pear, karaunda and other shrubs! Where he could find paths to go across, a police chowki greeted him — which had both police and customs officials! If the poor traveller was to be carrying a precious commodity called sal...