Indian Graffiti

DDA may start allotment process of DDA Housing Scheme 2008 Flats by December 2009

2009-11-13T20:22:00.001+05:30

[NewsofUse]: DDA may start allotment process of DDA Housing Scheme 2008 Flats by December 2009

According to media reports, certain sources in the Union Urban Development Ministry (UDM) have quoted that the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT), where the software report of the draw has been sent for investigation, is expected to submit its report by October end. It has been reportedly said that the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) will start the allotment process once C-DOT submits its report and a green signal from the Union Urban Development Ministry is obtained.

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[Fwd: Google Alert - How India has "ruined" my life | Explore Travel Answers ]

2009-10-29T12:16:00.001+05:30

Reading variety of stuff through Google's random keyword selected posts has been a good timepass since long for me. This one below was received today which caught my attention and made me to read the stuff. Made me think... Hmmmmm... aisa bhi hota hai!!!

Sharing the same with you. Read in your free time.

How india has "ruined" my life | Explore Travel Answers

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	Google Alert - india, indian, delhi, shimla
Date:	Thu, 29 Oct 2009 06:10:33 +0000
From:	Google Alerts <googlealerts-noreply@google.com>

Google Blogs Alert

How india has "ruined" my life | Explore Travel Answers
By admin
About 2 years ago my company sent me to Bangalore for a few weeks for business, it was then my affair with ...
Read full post

This as-it-happens Google Alert is brought to you by Google.

Snapshots of the famous Ridge at Shimla, Himachal Pradesh (India)

2009-07-08T19:39:00.001+05:30

The famous Ridge at Shimla, Himachal Pradesh (India)

The Ridge is a large open space, carved and finished out of the apex of one of the major hills making part of the historically and mythologically famous Jakhu Hills. It is located in the heart of Shimla, the capital city of Himachal Pradesh, India, and is unarguably the hubspot of this 'Queen of Hill tations' besides the even more famous 'Mall Road'.

The Ridge has witnessed inumerous historical gatherings, eminent VVIPs and VIPs, elitest of elite, and also the common men through thick and thin. It has also played a major part in the defining of the statehood for Himachal, which once was part of the larger Punjab province even in post-independence era.

The snow-clad plains of the Ridge look most beautiful of all with the tourists and the residents alike enjoying the white-snowy-blanket. The horse ride in every season is another delite all want to have at least once in his/her lifetime.

The Ridge is also the venue for state's summer festival, government functions and other local celebrations. It is marked by the landmarks like a neo-Gothic structure of Church from 1844 and a tudorbethan styled library building built in 1910. The Scandal Point ends the stretches of the Ridge towards the West, while the Lakkar Bazaar and the US Club marks the end of it towards the East.

The Ridge is that lively place of the beautiful hill station Shimla (earlier also called, Simla) which no one can miss out while visiting here.

Do share your pictures, stories, anecdotes, etc of your Shimla visit too for letting others share your feelings.

TATA NANO l NANO price list l World’s cheapest car launched in India l NANO bookings to start soon

2009-03-23T23:58:00.008+05:30

‘nano’ – the Rs. 1 lac (approx. $2000) car and the much-much hyped and awaited peoples’ car from the house of TATA MOTORS has finally been officially and formally launched here in

India

today, the 23rd day of March, 2009 --- the day that will perhaps be bookmarked as a landmark day in the history of the automobile industry at least.

Mr. Ratan N. Tata, Chairman of the flagship TATA Group formally launched the ‘TATA nano’ today in India. The booking for the ‘nano’ will start from April 9 to April 25, 2009 with the forms being made available at an upfront nominal cost of Rs. 300 (about $6) from the State Bank of India branches spread across the length and breadth of the country, TATA’s own franchisee stores (Titan, Chroma, Westside), besides other likely outlets that may be announced in the days to come assuming the high numbers of people looking to lay their hands on the booking form.

The ‘nano’ – arguably the world’s cheapest full version car till date - may also be booked directly on the newly launched dedicated website for the car --- http://tatanano.com

(A quick note: the website, a screenshot of which is presented hereunder, is already reporting enormous traffic and reporting error message due to more-than-expected internet traffic!)

Here are a few salient features of the NANO :

The ‘nano’ is to be launched in three petrol engine versions initially - the base version (costing about Rs. 1.12 lakh), the executive version (costing about Rs. 1.55 lakh) and the fully loaded luxury version (costing about Rs. 1.73 lakh).
The CX and LX higher end versions of the petrol engine version cars will have air conditioning (AC) features besides having power steering and/or power windows depending upon the respective models.
The booking of the Nano will begin on April 9 and remain open till April 25.
The delivery of the first lot of Nano cars are expected to begin in early July, while the applications for booking of the car will be available in 30,000 locations in 1,000 cities across India.
State Bank of India will be the qualified banker for collection of bookings in 850 cities, he said.
The car can be booked by just paying Rs. 3,000 (some report it as Rs. 2,999) upfront while the rest can be secured by way of loan, he said.
There will be 15 preferred financiers for the booking whose names will be disclosed in three days.

Nano’s dimensions : (length = 3.1 meters, width = 1.5 meters, height = 1.6 meters)
Reasonably high ground clearance of 180mm
Weighs only about 600 kg (on an average), which makes it about 50 kg lighter than the present day nearest competitor, Maruti 800.
The company cites an average of about 20 km per litre, which is one of the highest in its class. The high fuel efficiency also ensures that the car has low carbon dioxide.
The car is about 8% smaller in size but about 21% higher in inside space volume when compared to the yesteryear small wonder from the house of Maruti Suzuki – the Maruti 800
All four tyres will be tubeless tyres but the front two ones will be smaller than the two rear ones, thereby requiring two steepeneyes.
The people’s car’s tailpipe emission performance exceeds regulatory requirements, the company boasts.
The nano is designed driving a family in mind; has a roomy passenger compartment with generous leg space and head room. It can comfortably seat four persons. Four doors with high seating position make ingress and egress easy
Sports a rear-wheel drive and an all-aluminium, two-cylinder, 623 cc, 33 PS, multi point fuel injection petrol engine
It has an all sheet-metal body, with safety features such as crumple zones, intrusion-resistant doors, seat belts, strong seats and anchorages, and the rear tailgate glass bonded to the body.
The fuel tank capacity is about 15 liters

Colour Variants available:

Comparison of Nano with Maruti 800 (dimensionwise)
Comparison of Nano with Maruti 800 (overall specifications)

The top 5 richest men of India / Indian Origin as in early 2009

2009-03-20T18:08:00.006+05:30

The Forbes magazine states India being home to the largest number of billionaires in Asia with a total of 54 personalities gracing the list therein.

With the world markets, and especially the Indian markets (bourses) climbing to the very highs in mid-to-late 2008, these billionaires saw their worth skyrocketing, making new highs and benchmarks for others to get awed of.

Though the recent decline in the world economics has seen the worth of these rich men being eroded in some scale, the magnitude of their respective worth is still enormous thanks to their robust earnings and/or worth in other forms.

According to the BBC's article "Rich list hit by economic crisis" published on 12 March 2009, the three richest men in India all saw their fortunes plummet by more than half with Anil Ambani experiencing the biggest reversal of fortunes (he slipped to number 34 on the list from number 6 last year in the Forbes magazine's list of billionaires of the world).

Indicative List of top 5 Indian billionaires by net worth as in Mar 2009

Rank	Name	City	Main Source	Industry
1 / 2	Lakshmi Mittal	London	Arcelor Mittal	Steel
1 / 2	Mukesh Ambani	Mumbai	Reliance Industries	Diversified
3	Anil Ambani	Mumbai	Reliance - Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group	Diversified
4 / 5	Kushal Pal Singh	Delhi	DLF Universal	Real Estate, Construction
4 / 5	Sunil Mittal	Delhi	Bharti Airtel	Telecommunications

[References/Source: BBC, Moneycontrol, Wikipedia, etc.]

[Web-Share] : Indians Love their Babies

2009-01-14T16:09:00.001+05:30

Sometime back.. may be around 4-5 weeks before or so.. I stumbled upon a blog post title through my customized google alerts with 'India' as one of the keywords therein that I've subscribed to in my inbox. The title - "Indians Love their Babies" attracted my attention immediately as it was an unusual topic of sorts that one could find in the blogosphere, and that too when the author is shown as a non Indian. [By the way, in case somebody's intrigued what I mean by these alerts here above, let me tell you that subscribing to google alerts (or any other similar internet service alert as a matter of fact) is a good way that I got to know from one of my pals to receive alerts from internet search results and/or indexing results etc. which keep updating with new and old web stuff in their respective servers.]

Coming back to the topic, the post was really good. I followed the link.. nah!.. now i remember there wasn't any link.. and in fact searched for the blog post author Susan Weis on facebook (as she had suggested at the end of her post), and am proud to be a pal of hers now. She had a couple of photos uploaded there, and they were simply good. I strongly suggest all of you reading the following shared blog post of hers to visit her pages and read more good stuff. The blog post that I'm referring to is reproduced hereunder for the sake of sharing nice web stuff (of course with her permission only, so to mention :-D )

READ HER POST HERE BELOW...

susan's musings:

Indians Love their Babies

This thought just keeps swirling around my head. I never saw a stroller in India. I saw parents holding their babies everywhere. Passing them on to other relatives. Kissing them. Tickling them. Smiling into their eyes. Never letting them go. Indians love their babies. On the trains, in restaurants, at tourist sites, walking on the street - moms and dads holding their kids’ hands, reassuring them, cuddling them, nuzzling them. I was so struck by the love, the acceptance, the humor, the smiles, the eyes. Such beautiful, amazing people.

And then there is this lovely tradition of Indians wanting to have their photo taken with foreigners. I can just imagine their photo albums filled with faces of white strangers – “Look ! We met these lovely people at the Taj Mahal. They love our country.” Schoolboys on a field trip shyly approached us at the Agra Fort – “photo?” Soon most of the class was upon us, crouching down to form rows to fit them all in! Families on vacation from the south, “photo?”

Often we would take photos of the kids posing for us – they didn’t seem that interested in seeing the digital picture – they were just so happy to have their photo taken! It was so sweet.

But back to the Indians loving their babies. I mentioned this to a woman on the trip and she said everyone loves their babies. I wish that was true. What I witness everyday on 36th Street, in the neighborhood where my shop is, makes me doubt that sometimes. I know they love their babies – but they most certainly don’t know how to express it. The aggression and anger I see from these parents is heartbreaking. I know it’s the way they were raised so I fear their kids have no chance. I rarely see love and affection between mothers and their babies on 36th Street. I see anger and frustration. I see drinking and smoking. I hear yelling and cursing. I wonder why it’s this way.

So this is why I was so struck by the love and warmth I saw in India. The biggest smiles I’ve ever seen were on the faces of these children held so closely by their mom or dad, or auntie, or uncle, or cousin, or friend. Passing babies back and forth from one loved one to another – never letting them go. On the airplane from Newark to Delhi. On the train from Delhi to Amritsar. In the market place in Jaipur. On the colonial streets of Shimla. In the quiet pathways in Dharamsala. By the Ganges in Haridwar. I’ll never forget this. Indians so love their babies.

To see photos from the trip, go to facebook.com, search for Susan Weis, and proceed from there…

About India's first high-profile skiing village in Kullu - Manali (Himachal Pradesh, India)

2009-01-07T20:47:00.004+05:30

This article, published in the 'Financial Times Deutschland', is about the state of the long-proposed India's first high-profile skiing village in the suburbs of Kullu - Manali in the state of Himachal Pradesh, India. The places are famous tourist destinations in Indian tourist circuit and are thronged by millions of visitors and tourists from round the world and within India alike. The higher reaches of Kullu - Manali receive heavy snowfall in winters and are foreseen to be developed into a world class ski resort by international entrepreneurs and business houses of the likes of Alfred Ford (the great-grandson of US industrialist Henry Ford) and other well known personalities.

The article caught my attention while surfing the internet as its keywords must have been SEOed as related to 'India'. The article essays the difficulties that the proposed project has undergone in past couple of years resulting in its much hyped delay, the government's slow working procedures, and most of all the faith of the local people in their respective local deities in deciding if the project is good or bad for the people / region.

But, the thing that had my eyeballs snapped the most was this glitzy picture of some dancing damsels in flashy filmy costumes highlighting the article (in other words representing the picture of India to the FTD's readers). The article has nothing to do with bollywood or entertainment yet it is correlated with colourful picture of some dancing beauties.

WHAT DO YOU THINK? IS IT REALLY THE PICTURE THAT THE WESTERNERS MUST RELATE INDIA TO WHEN THEY READ ABOUT HER?
OR IS THIS THE TRANSFORMATION OF IMAGE FROM INDIA BEING PROJECTED AS THE LAND OF SNAKES, COWS, SAINTS ROAMING ON ROADS?
ALL IN ALL, DO VISIT THE FTD's SITE TO READ THIS ARTICLE IN FULL AND SEE THE PICTURE IN LARGER VIEW.

[WebShare]: The Highest Structural Position of the World at present!

2009-01-02T19:22:00.003+05:30

Do you know who is sitting at
The Highest Position of the World right now ?

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.

.

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[WebShare]: The Highest Structural Position of the World at present!

[pic-source: 'unknown'... from mail doing the rounds in webworld]

[I-Tax India]: Web address to know your Assessing Officer (Ward / Circle)

2008-07-30T17:57:00.002+05:30

Web address to know your Assessing Officer (Ward / Circle)

http://www.incometaxindia.gov.in/ao/Firstlevel.asp

[Delhi-NCR]: Filing MCD's Property Tax for 2008-09

2008-06-28T17:09:00.001+05:30

If you are an Indian and own a property in Delhi, then be reminded that you need to pay your municipal corporation department's PROPERTY TAX by June 30, 2008 so as to avail the requisite 15% rebate on the overall tax amount.Here's what you need to do...

read more | digg story

Taj Mahal ~~~ [Then & Now]

2008-03-17T17:09:00.001+05:30

Taj Mahal : [Then]

Taj Mahal : [Now]

[Thought 4 d Day] ::: NEVER GIVE UP!

2008-03-15T00:37:00.000+05:30

Its a best known saying that:
"God helps those who help themselves"

Take a positive cue out of it. Whatever it may take, but never be short of putting up your 100% in any kind of situation.

NEVER GIVE UP!.... that's the message to sum it up!

"AUOM" - The auspicious start to any worldly affair

2008-03-13T23:05:00.000+05:30