The Marquis of Queen to c5 rules
World Chess Boxing Organisation
You know how some boxers are regarded as being thinkers, not just sluggers? And how chess aficionados say the game is gruelling, physically draining, and all that? Well, this sport puts the two of them together - eleven rounds (six of chess, played according to “blitz” rules, and five of boxing, AIBA rules), with chess and boxing alternating. Wins are by Knock Out or Checkmate (er, in the chess and boxing rounds respectively) and some other refinements. They need contenders, by the way. I think neither Mike Tyson or our Vishy will be clambering into the ring soon, so all you cerebral pugilists and violent chess players, here’s your chance.
What would Betty Bowers do?
Betty Bowers - America’s Best Christian
We first saw this site - hm, well, ages ago. Went back to it recently to find that though you’re now plagued by pop-ups and huge links to the shop section (which, to be fair, sells funny stuff), it still has all the good stuff fairly close to the surface. Just scroll way down on the home page, and you can go straight to a lot of the links. What’s Mrs (yes, not “Ms”) Bowers about? The entire site is a very witty spoof of the sanctimonious right in the USA. Mucho laughs. Not entirely child-safe.
Argot finder
Glossarist.com
Dictionaries are all very well, when you’re looking for random words. But when you want to look up specific categories, you would be better off checking out a specialist glossary. This site helpfully lists industries and categories, and then links to glossaries in those niches. Not all links work, but it’s still a might useful site. Horrid thought: I’m shooting myself in the foot here - there are enough links listed here for me to fill out the next few columns. Mutter, mutter, grumble grumble.
***
Blog of the week
No refugees, please
Style Asylum
I am pleased to note distressed jeans have a place. Mine are past distress, they’re traumatised wrecks. But I’m going to need an Argyle-pattern sweater too, alas. So I will never make it to page three. You, on the other hand, could go read this blog (even though the Mumbai fashion consultant behind it seems to have lost interest in keeping it updated) and get ready for the party season. At least you’ll only be “so last month,” unlike your correspondent, who is so behind that he may just be next season’s look.
Reader suggestions welcome, and will be acknowledged. Go to http://o3.indiatimes.com/mousetrap for past columns, and to comment, or mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com. The writer blogs at http://zigzackly.blogspot.com.
Published in the Times of India, Mumbai edition, 18th December, 2005.
Tags: The Times of India, Mousetrap
Sunday, 18 December 2005
Sunday, 11 December 2005
Mousetrap - 31
Really!
i used to believe
Did you once think that plastic surgery involved the use of plastic? That hypotenuse and hyperbole were animals, rather like the hippopotamus? Or even that the bogeyman would come and get you, or that if you frowned, your face would stay that way forever? You will be relieved to know that you are not alone. Go over to this site, and you can check out what other adults believed when they were children. Perhaps you’d care to contribute some of your own? The world (that’s the big round globe you saw in school) waits.
Sound minds
Inspired Indian Film Songs
Our film industry thinks nothing of lifting, without giving credit, tunes from other sources (heck, they lift entire films), usually western pop, but also picking on sources closer to home, like films from other regions. I once heard a friend play an album in which every song technically owed some other composer royalties. itwofs lists ’em in sequence of submission or discovery, and sorted by composer and language, and includes a small section on ad jingles that lift music. Most citations feature Real Media streams to help you compare copy with original. Nitpick: the site’s author credits singers rather than songwriters when referring to western pop. But, hey, music to the ears allasame.
Line Of Comedy
The Hot Spot Online
The story starts, according to the site, with an ice cream shop in Islamabad which has a cult following. The founders then brought out what they describe as an underground magazine, The Scream. Which grew in size and complexity until they decided to take the entire shebang online. Today, you have sections on Holly, Bolly and Lollywood, music, sound clips, underground flicks and, best of all, for ye of the free broadband connection in the office, a set of B- film extracts (look for Mini Flicks in the menu) which will yield much entertainment. We should sack the embassies, send our armies home, and let sites like these build our bridges. [Thank you, Vikram Joshi, Samit Basu]
***
Blog of the week
Cut-paste
Awful Plastic Surgery
Speaking of plastic surgery, this site is devoted to that uplifting industry’s bloopers. The nose jobs gone awry. The collagen injections overdone. The breast implants that have taken on a shape of their own. The focus is on celebrities, natch, mainly from the US and UK film, music and fashion worlds, and the site seems to have quite a following, with readers sending in before & after pictures with their notes. Neatly archived using a blog’s reverse chronological style, the side menu also has selected articles highlighted, to help you find out exactly how much your favourite celeb’s, um, charms, owe to science. Oddly enough, there doesn’t seem to be a special section devoted to M Jackson, Esquire.
Reader suggestions welcome, and will be acknowledged. Go to http://o3.indiatimes.com/mousetrap for past columns, and to comment, or mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com. The writer blogs at http://zigzackly.blogspot.com.
Published in the Times of India, Mumbai edition, 11th December, 2005.
Tags: The Times of India, Mousetrap
i used to believe
Did you once think that plastic surgery involved the use of plastic? That hypotenuse and hyperbole were animals, rather like the hippopotamus? Or even that the bogeyman would come and get you, or that if you frowned, your face would stay that way forever? You will be relieved to know that you are not alone. Go over to this site, and you can check out what other adults believed when they were children. Perhaps you’d care to contribute some of your own? The world (that’s the big round globe you saw in school) waits.
Sound minds
Inspired Indian Film Songs
Our film industry thinks nothing of lifting, without giving credit, tunes from other sources (heck, they lift entire films), usually western pop, but also picking on sources closer to home, like films from other regions. I once heard a friend play an album in which every song technically owed some other composer royalties. itwofs lists ’em in sequence of submission or discovery, and sorted by composer and language, and includes a small section on ad jingles that lift music. Most citations feature Real Media streams to help you compare copy with original. Nitpick: the site’s author credits singers rather than songwriters when referring to western pop. But, hey, music to the ears allasame.
Line Of Comedy
The Hot Spot Online
The story starts, according to the site, with an ice cream shop in Islamabad which has a cult following. The founders then brought out what they describe as an underground magazine, The Scream. Which grew in size and complexity until they decided to take the entire shebang online. Today, you have sections on Holly, Bolly and Lollywood, music, sound clips, underground flicks and, best of all, for ye of the free broadband connection in the office, a set of B- film extracts (look for Mini Flicks in the menu) which will yield much entertainment. We should sack the embassies, send our armies home, and let sites like these build our bridges. [Thank you, Vikram Joshi, Samit Basu]
***
Blog of the week
Cut-paste
Awful Plastic Surgery
Speaking of plastic surgery, this site is devoted to that uplifting industry’s bloopers. The nose jobs gone awry. The collagen injections overdone. The breast implants that have taken on a shape of their own. The focus is on celebrities, natch, mainly from the US and UK film, music and fashion worlds, and the site seems to have quite a following, with readers sending in before & after pictures with their notes. Neatly archived using a blog’s reverse chronological style, the side menu also has selected articles highlighted, to help you find out exactly how much your favourite celeb’s, um, charms, owe to science. Oddly enough, there doesn’t seem to be a special section devoted to M Jackson, Esquire.
Reader suggestions welcome, and will be acknowledged. Go to http://o3.indiatimes.com/mousetrap for past columns, and to comment, or mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com. The writer blogs at http://zigzackly.blogspot.com.
Published in the Times of India, Mumbai edition, 11th December, 2005.
Tags: The Times of India, Mousetrap
Sunday, 4 December 2005
Mousetrap - 30
All for you
The Free Site
Long years ago – like maybe ten – The Free Site was a beacon of hope for this impoverished writer. I outfitted my system with all manner of software found here. Web veterans know, of course, that there’s a lot of free stuff available, if you know where to look. (No, we’re not talking cracked programs or bootleg mp3s, we mean genuinely free.) For the newbie, this is a great place to start looking. You’ll find games, graphics, web space, add-ons for your cellphone, tech support, useful little apps, even links to other free listings. Consider this a thank you for your coming to the party we have with this column. Your "return gift," if you will. Enjoy! Yeah, we’re cheap.
What’s the opposite of “upgrade?”
OldVersion.com
If you’ve used a computer for a while, chances are that you have also upgraded software fairly often, usually for the better. Sometimes, though, you land up with an app that is worse than its predecessor: bloatware with bells and whistles that confuse even your friendly neighbourhood geek, or it’s spiked with spyware that reports back to it maker using your bandwidth, or maybe you have an older computer whose OS or hardware don’t support the upgrade. You want the older version back, but unless you have the original install set stowed away safe, you’re out of luck – most companies don’t keep old versions available. You rage, but you can do nothing. Or so you thought. Head over here. The programs available aren’t too many at the moment, but the site is also looking for donations. So if you have old versions stored somewhere, you could give something back to the world.
Found in translation
Cipher Journal
The web is a helpful place when it comes to helping you understand other languages. Automated translators, freely available, can give you the gist without too much pain. But without the flavour, the nuances that only a professional equally at home on both languages can provide. This site aims believes that translation inspires better literature, and it publishes “creative works of art & literature that call attention to the process of translation. We will also include reviews of translated literature—both new and old—with a special emphasis on the merits of the translation.” What’s available online thus far isn’t, um, voluminous, but it should be site worth watching.
For the varlets
Shakespearean Insulter
Hast thou need of oaths with which to insult thy workmates and boon companions? Hie thee post haste, then, to this most excellent webbe syte, and enlist, to your task, the Barde himself. Point thou thy pointing device at the gray buttone, and thou will be served up fare such as this: “You starvelling, you eel-skin, you dried neat's-tongue, you bull's-pizzle, you stock-fish--O for breath to utter what is like thee!-you tailor's-yard, you sheath, you bow-case, you vile standing tuck!” Fare thee well.
***
Blog of the week
There was a blogger from Kolkata...
newsmerick
In the blog world, everyone’s searching for new ways to find readers. This blogger has found her niche with her takes on news items, all in limerick form. Worth a visit just for the interesting links she dredges up, just in case limericks aren’t your thing. And no, the fact that she mentioned this column in one of her posts has nothing to do with it featuring here. Really.
Reader suggestions welcome, and will be acknowledged. Go to http://o3.indiatimes.com/mousetrap for past columns, and to comment, or mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com. The writer blogs at http://zigzackly.blogspot.com.
Published in the Times of India, Mumbai edition, 4th December, 2005.
Tags: The Times of India, Mousetrap
The Free Site
Long years ago – like maybe ten – The Free Site was a beacon of hope for this impoverished writer. I outfitted my system with all manner of software found here. Web veterans know, of course, that there’s a lot of free stuff available, if you know where to look. (No, we’re not talking cracked programs or bootleg mp3s, we mean genuinely free.) For the newbie, this is a great place to start looking. You’ll find games, graphics, web space, add-ons for your cellphone, tech support, useful little apps, even links to other free listings. Consider this a thank you for your coming to the party we have with this column. Your "return gift," if you will. Enjoy! Yeah, we’re cheap.
What’s the opposite of “upgrade?”
OldVersion.com
If you’ve used a computer for a while, chances are that you have also upgraded software fairly often, usually for the better. Sometimes, though, you land up with an app that is worse than its predecessor: bloatware with bells and whistles that confuse even your friendly neighbourhood geek, or it’s spiked with spyware that reports back to it maker using your bandwidth, or maybe you have an older computer whose OS or hardware don’t support the upgrade. You want the older version back, but unless you have the original install set stowed away safe, you’re out of luck – most companies don’t keep old versions available. You rage, but you can do nothing. Or so you thought. Head over here. The programs available aren’t too many at the moment, but the site is also looking for donations. So if you have old versions stored somewhere, you could give something back to the world.
Found in translation
Cipher Journal
The web is a helpful place when it comes to helping you understand other languages. Automated translators, freely available, can give you the gist without too much pain. But without the flavour, the nuances that only a professional equally at home on both languages can provide. This site aims believes that translation inspires better literature, and it publishes “creative works of art & literature that call attention to the process of translation. We will also include reviews of translated literature—both new and old—with a special emphasis on the merits of the translation.” What’s available online thus far isn’t, um, voluminous, but it should be site worth watching.
For the varlets
Shakespearean Insulter
Hast thou need of oaths with which to insult thy workmates and boon companions? Hie thee post haste, then, to this most excellent webbe syte, and enlist, to your task, the Barde himself. Point thou thy pointing device at the gray buttone, and thou will be served up fare such as this: “You starvelling, you eel-skin, you dried neat's-tongue, you bull's-pizzle, you stock-fish--O for breath to utter what is like thee!-you tailor's-yard, you sheath, you bow-case, you vile standing tuck!” Fare thee well.
***
Blog of the week
There was a blogger from Kolkata...
newsmerick
In the blog world, everyone’s searching for new ways to find readers. This blogger has found her niche with her takes on news items, all in limerick form. Worth a visit just for the interesting links she dredges up, just in case limericks aren’t your thing. And no, the fact that she mentioned this column in one of her posts has nothing to do with it featuring here. Really.
Reader suggestions welcome, and will be acknowledged. Go to http://o3.indiatimes.com/mousetrap for past columns, and to comment, or mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com. The writer blogs at http://zigzackly.blogspot.com.
Published in the Times of India, Mumbai edition, 4th December, 2005.
Tags: The Times of India, Mousetrap
Thursday, 1 December 2005
We are the world [Cybertrack 4]
Wikitravel
Imagine a whiteboard on a roadside, markers and eraser easy to hand. Random passers-by write whatever they want to, or erase or modify stuff others have written. That, in essence, is a wiki, except that it’s on a website. Famous examples: Wikipedia and Wikinews.
Wikitravel, one of the newer resources built on this platform, aims to be a free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide. As of this writing, the English version (five other languages available, several more in progress) features over six thousand destination guides, contributed by “Wikitravellers” who get paid only in reader gratitude (hope Outlook Traveller’s accounts department isn’t reading this). And it being an open platform, sometimes not even that, because information can get deleted or edited by anyone. It seems like a recipe for chaos – after all, some idiot could come mess it up any time. Which does happen. But, like all successful wikis, it relies on basic human goodness. To quote the site’s FAQs, “People who care about having well-written travel articles ... are the majority. People who just want to vandalize or delete things eventually get bored with it ... and the rest of us come in and clean up.”
Ideal for trip planning, you can assemble a guidebook customised to your itinerary, and carry a hard- or soft-copy with you. Since it is accessible wherever you can find a net connection, you can find info even while travelling. There are also phrase books in various languages. Quality of information? I checked a few places I’m familiar with; coverage ranged from excellent to earnest-but-not-quite-there. And in the period that I have monitored the site, even those have improved.
All of this is yours, free.
I really shouldn’t be writing about this here.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Cybertrack
Imagine a whiteboard on a roadside, markers and eraser easy to hand. Random passers-by write whatever they want to, or erase or modify stuff others have written. That, in essence, is a wiki, except that it’s on a website. Famous examples: Wikipedia and Wikinews.
Wikitravel, one of the newer resources built on this platform, aims to be a free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide. As of this writing, the English version (five other languages available, several more in progress) features over six thousand destination guides, contributed by “Wikitravellers” who get paid only in reader gratitude (hope Outlook Traveller’s accounts department isn’t reading this). And it being an open platform, sometimes not even that, because information can get deleted or edited by anyone. It seems like a recipe for chaos – after all, some idiot could come mess it up any time. Which does happen. But, like all successful wikis, it relies on basic human goodness. To quote the site’s FAQs, “People who care about having well-written travel articles ... are the majority. People who just want to vandalize or delete things eventually get bored with it ... and the rest of us come in and clean up.”
Ideal for trip planning, you can assemble a guidebook customised to your itinerary, and carry a hard- or soft-copy with you. Since it is accessible wherever you can find a net connection, you can find info even while travelling. There are also phrase books in various languages. Quality of information? I checked a few places I’m familiar with; coverage ranged from excellent to earnest-but-not-quite-there. And in the period that I have monitored the site, even those have improved.
All of this is yours, free.
I really shouldn’t be writing about this here.
Published in the December edition of Outlook Traveller, in a column called Cybertrack
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Cybertrack
Sunday, 27 November 2005
Mousetrap - 29
So fa so good
CouchSurfing
An online trading zone isn’t an original idea, but, I believe, this site was the first to adapt it to the needs of travellers looking for cheap, but rich travel experiences. It lets you connect with other members, and, hopefully, find someone in your desired destination who is willing to host you. (“Host” could mean you get to sleep on their couch, natch, but it could also mean a guest room, a place to pitch a tent, or even the floor.) Members are vouched for by a tiered verification system. You’d have to start at zilch, of course, and build cred for yourself by being a good guest. They haven’t got every country in the world covered (so don’t plan on Siberia or Antarctica just yet) but they’re getting there. Happy Trails!
Quick bytes
Del.icio.us
If you use different PCs at home and the office, or, perchance, find yourself at a strange computer, and need to get to a site that you just know you have bookmarked elsewhere, you’ll know the agony of having all your Favorites in one basket. This site seeks to ease your pain by storing your Bookmarks online. You’ll need to sign up, of course, but after that, you have an always on online bookmark system. Tags help you differentiate your bookmarks, and if you use them well, they make finding information a breeze. What’s more, you can share your tags with friends, and take advantage of the tags that other people have created to help you find stuff.
Wee Wee Web
TinyURL & durl.us
Large sites with automated content management systems generate file names on the fly, usually using lots of numbers. So, when you see an interesting link and, full of the milk of human kindness, decide to widen the horizons of your 127 closest friends by forwarding the link to them, you wind up with http://subdomain.domain.tld/topic/subtopic/month/date/hour/articleshow/veryveryverylongnumber.smthng which won’t fit into one line. And, if you have HTML mail turned off, it may look okay to you, but when your victims get your mail, they find the URL broken up into two lines, with only the first bit clickable, and naturally, leading nowhere except to a “page not found” notice. Way out? Go to one of these sites, paste in that address and instantly get something like http://tinyurl.com/az3v7 or http://www.durl.us/86which you can then send to your buddies, and no one will swear at you. Both those, by the way, will take you to this column’s web archive.
***
Blog of the week
Whoops
The Accidental Elephant
Less than a month old, but this collaboration is already showing immense promise. Three bloggers in different corners of the world write and illustrate for children. While they keep it simple, they don’t condescend to their audiences, and there’s much to enjoy even by more cynical adults. The writing is warm and full of whimsy, and the illustrations charming. I see a book deal in this blog’s future!
Reader suggestions welcome, and will be acknowledged. Go to http://o3.indiatimes.com/mousetrap for past columns, and to comment, or mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com. The writer blogs at http://zigzackly.blogspot.com.
Published in the Times of India, Mumbai edition, 27th November, 2005.
Tags: The Times of India, Mousetrap
CouchSurfing
An online trading zone isn’t an original idea, but, I believe, this site was the first to adapt it to the needs of travellers looking for cheap, but rich travel experiences. It lets you connect with other members, and, hopefully, find someone in your desired destination who is willing to host you. (“Host” could mean you get to sleep on their couch, natch, but it could also mean a guest room, a place to pitch a tent, or even the floor.) Members are vouched for by a tiered verification system. You’d have to start at zilch, of course, and build cred for yourself by being a good guest. They haven’t got every country in the world covered (so don’t plan on Siberia or Antarctica just yet) but they’re getting there. Happy Trails!
Quick bytes
Del.icio.us
If you use different PCs at home and the office, or, perchance, find yourself at a strange computer, and need to get to a site that you just know you have bookmarked elsewhere, you’ll know the agony of having all your Favorites in one basket. This site seeks to ease your pain by storing your Bookmarks online. You’ll need to sign up, of course, but after that, you have an always on online bookmark system. Tags help you differentiate your bookmarks, and if you use them well, they make finding information a breeze. What’s more, you can share your tags with friends, and take advantage of the tags that other people have created to help you find stuff.
Wee Wee Web
TinyURL & durl.us
Large sites with automated content management systems generate file names on the fly, usually using lots of numbers. So, when you see an interesting link and, full of the milk of human kindness, decide to widen the horizons of your 127 closest friends by forwarding the link to them, you wind up with http://subdomain.domain.tld/topic/subtopic/month/date/hour/articleshow/veryveryverylongnumber.smthng which won’t fit into one line. And, if you have HTML mail turned off, it may look okay to you, but when your victims get your mail, they find the URL broken up into two lines, with only the first bit clickable, and naturally, leading nowhere except to a “page not found” notice. Way out? Go to one of these sites, paste in that address and instantly get something like http://tinyurl.com/az3v7 or http://www.durl.us/86which you can then send to your buddies, and no one will swear at you. Both those, by the way, will take you to this column’s web archive.
***
Blog of the week
Whoops
The Accidental Elephant
Less than a month old, but this collaboration is already showing immense promise. Three bloggers in different corners of the world write and illustrate for children. While they keep it simple, they don’t condescend to their audiences, and there’s much to enjoy even by more cynical adults. The writing is warm and full of whimsy, and the illustrations charming. I see a book deal in this blog’s future!
Reader suggestions welcome, and will be acknowledged. Go to http://o3.indiatimes.com/mousetrap for past columns, and to comment, or mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com. The writer blogs at http://zigzackly.blogspot.com.
Published in the Times of India, Mumbai edition, 27th November, 2005.
Tags: The Times of India, Mousetrap
Sunday, 20 November 2005
Mousetrap - 28
By all that’s holy
The Internet Sacred Text Archive
I’m not big on religion, but this site’s first lines hooked me: “This is a quiet place in cyberspace devoted to religious tolerance and scholarship.” Not a rant in sight, just texts (mostly in English translation, but some with in the original language too) from just about every religion, tradition and belief that produced texts that we know of, from African religions to Zoroastrianism. The archive pulls together material from a huge variety of sources: scans from books and articles, material from early internet FTP archives and BBSes, even transcripts and retellings from religions with an oral tradition. It has over 45,000 files, some of them unique. For instance, comprehensive translations of the Upanishads and the Rig Veda that are unavailable online elsewhere. Amen.
And some ketchup
Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
You’ve heard about the whole battle being waged by Dubya & disciples to have “Intelligent Design” taught in schools in the US, right? (Of course we wouldn’t dream of doing the same in this great and free land of many thousands of years of culture, right?) Anyway. A chap called Bobby Henderson wrote to the Kansas School Board, tongue firmly in cheek, demanding not only that ID be taught, but that his theory of ID be taught as well: that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Read the rest on the site, and follow the, er, evolution of this “religion” and its “splinter” groups, each funnier than the last (they include Pastafarians, Linguinists, Pirations and Ninjaists), all poking fun at religion in general. Another great source for lots of links is the Uncyclopedia page on the cult.
Where knowledge is free
National Portal of India
The Indian Government’s very own portal. A much overdue, and for those of us used to making fun of government offerings, surprisingly good site. Its aim is to provide “single window access to the information and services being provided by the Indian Government for the citizens and other stakeholders.” It has sections aimed at citizens, business interests and overseas readers, listings of people in government, voluminous directories, important documents, downloads of forms searchable by state, tenders, maps (disappointing geographically speaking, considering what’s available online totally free, but compensates with maps you wouldn’t find easily elsewhere, like demographic info) and links to other government sites. The design and the interface are a bit grotty, in my arrogant opinion, but they do promise continue the “enhancement and enrichment” of the site, so there is hope. Into that heaven of freedom, my father...
Ego scraping
Googlism
A neat little gimmick that uses search results from Google to amusing effect. Pick a name, a place, an object or even days, dates and events, and let Googlism loose. Based on the search engine’s results, the page gives you a series of statements that are “what Google.com thinks of you.” For more fun, check out the links just below the search box (Who is, What is, Where is, When is) for the top searches and the results thereof.
***
Blog of the week
No, really!
Literally
That’s the wonderful thing about the web. You can take your pet peeve and devote an entire blog to it. And if it’s a word that’s misused as often as “literally” is, hey, there’s a lot to blog about. Here, you get examples from the media and elsewhere of the word’s incorrect and unnecessary usage, and, just to be fair, its proper use too. Good fun. Literally.
Reader suggestions welcome, and will be acknowledged. Go to http://o3.indiatimes.com/mousetrap for past columns, and to comment, or mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com. The writer blogs at http://zigzackly.blogspot.com.
Published in the Times of India, Mumbai edition, 20th November, 2005.
Tags: The Times of India, Mousetrap
The Internet Sacred Text Archive
I’m not big on religion, but this site’s first lines hooked me: “This is a quiet place in cyberspace devoted to religious tolerance and scholarship.” Not a rant in sight, just texts (mostly in English translation, but some with in the original language too) from just about every religion, tradition and belief that produced texts that we know of, from African religions to Zoroastrianism. The archive pulls together material from a huge variety of sources: scans from books and articles, material from early internet FTP archives and BBSes, even transcripts and retellings from religions with an oral tradition. It has over 45,000 files, some of them unique. For instance, comprehensive translations of the Upanishads and the Rig Veda that are unavailable online elsewhere. Amen.
And some ketchup
Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
You’ve heard about the whole battle being waged by Dubya & disciples to have “Intelligent Design” taught in schools in the US, right? (Of course we wouldn’t dream of doing the same in this great and free land of many thousands of years of culture, right?) Anyway. A chap called Bobby Henderson wrote to the Kansas School Board, tongue firmly in cheek, demanding not only that ID be taught, but that his theory of ID be taught as well: that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Read the rest on the site, and follow the, er, evolution of this “religion” and its “splinter” groups, each funnier than the last (they include Pastafarians, Linguinists, Pirations and Ninjaists), all poking fun at religion in general. Another great source for lots of links is the Uncyclopedia page on the cult.
Where knowledge is free
National Portal of India
The Indian Government’s very own portal. A much overdue, and for those of us used to making fun of government offerings, surprisingly good site. Its aim is to provide “single window access to the information and services being provided by the Indian Government for the citizens and other stakeholders.” It has sections aimed at citizens, business interests and overseas readers, listings of people in government, voluminous directories, important documents, downloads of forms searchable by state, tenders, maps (disappointing geographically speaking, considering what’s available online totally free, but compensates with maps you wouldn’t find easily elsewhere, like demographic info) and links to other government sites. The design and the interface are a bit grotty, in my arrogant opinion, but they do promise continue the “enhancement and enrichment” of the site, so there is hope. Into that heaven of freedom, my father...
Ego scraping
Googlism
A neat little gimmick that uses search results from Google to amusing effect. Pick a name, a place, an object or even days, dates and events, and let Googlism loose. Based on the search engine’s results, the page gives you a series of statements that are “what Google.com thinks of you.” For more fun, check out the links just below the search box (Who is, What is, Where is, When is) for the top searches and the results thereof.
***
Blog of the week
No, really!
Literally
That’s the wonderful thing about the web. You can take your pet peeve and devote an entire blog to it. And if it’s a word that’s misused as often as “literally” is, hey, there’s a lot to blog about. Here, you get examples from the media and elsewhere of the word’s incorrect and unnecessary usage, and, just to be fair, its proper use too. Good fun. Literally.
Reader suggestions welcome, and will be acknowledged. Go to http://o3.indiatimes.com/mousetrap for past columns, and to comment, or mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com. The writer blogs at http://zigzackly.blogspot.com.
Published in the Times of India, Mumbai edition, 20th November, 2005.
Tags: The Times of India, Mousetrap
Sunday, 13 November 2005
Mousetrap - 27
MS Orifice
Microsuck
For many years, this site was known as [censored]microsoft.com, under which name it gloried till, I think, last year or the year before, when it also became available under the more socially acceptable URL you see here. (For the curious – not you, junior, go back to the previous item, there’s a good lad – you can still find it under the name that begins with “F.”) No prizes for guessing that the site’s founder is not part of Bill’s fan club. Aside from articles telling you what various people think is wrong with MS products, the site also has a long list of alternatives for those who’d rather not be in thrall to Redmond. And there’s also a forum. Viva la revolution.
Peer review
guimp
All the action happens in an area 18pixels square. News, games, downloads, a gallery (!), some graphics, links... Go see. Just remember not to set your monitor to very high resolution.
Feed for thought
http://www.bloglines.com/, http://reader.google.com/
Most blogs (and many news sites), offer you free feeds. So, instead of visiting each site, you get updates from all of them in a single window, via a feed reader service or application like these. Bloglines is a great service I’ve been using for ages. Google’s new Reader is making waves, and is worth checking out. The open-source browser, Firefox, offers you instant subscriptions via a little orange button in the bottom-right corner, and also via its Thunderbird mail and newsreader. To subscribe to a site’s feed, look for icons for “RSS,” “RDF,” “Atom,” “Site Feed,” etc. Most applications can also help you auto-discover feeds – simply feed in the URL, and the app will find its feed. Once you line up your subscriptions, it’s as easy as checking email. (Nudge, nudge, wink, wink: here’s a feed you could subscribe to: http://o3.indiatimes.com/mousetrap/Rss.aspx)
In your hands
Phone Feeds
If you hold you cellphone far, far more than you do the hand of your Significant Other, baby, you have trouble. But never mind. If that handset can do the WAP thing, you can use it to subscribe to news and blog feeds (see previous item), thanks to this free service. You’ll have to first go to the site via your computer, and find out whether it offers a WAP-compatible feed. If not, you can enter the RSS or Atom feed URL into the box on this page, and it will generate a free WAP-accessible feed that you can then access via your phone.
***
Non-Blog of the week
Since I’ve already hit you with two blog-related items, no blog this week. Instead, hehehehe...
Patron saint
The Diary of Samuel Pepys
Blogs didn’t start out as personal diaries, but now that’s the norm, rather then the exception. This site brings you the writing of a man whose name is practically synonymous with the diary: Samuel Pepys, the 17th Century Englishman who faithfully recorded his thoughts on his life and times. It presents his diaries as if he were writing them in the present, rather than in the 1600s, with the diary entry of January 1st, 1660 posted on January 1st 2003, and succeeding entries following on from there. Pepys’s writing habits are faithfully followed – he wrote about each day’s events late every night, so expect fresh entries at 11 p.m. UK time. It’s much more than a straight reproduction, though: there are summaries, notes, lots of background information, all profusely hyperlinked and easy to navigate. If old Sam had been alive today, he’d have been a blogger.
Reader suggestions welcome, and will be acknowledged. Go to http://o3.indiatimes.com/mousetrap for past columns, and to comment, or mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com. The writer blogs at http://zigzackly.blogspot.com.
Published in the Times of India, Mumbai edition, 13th November, 2005.
Tags: The Times of India, Mousetrap
Microsuck
For many years, this site was known as [censored]microsoft.com, under which name it gloried till, I think, last year or the year before, when it also became available under the more socially acceptable URL you see here. (For the curious – not you, junior, go back to the previous item, there’s a good lad – you can still find it under the name that begins with “F.”) No prizes for guessing that the site’s founder is not part of Bill’s fan club. Aside from articles telling you what various people think is wrong with MS products, the site also has a long list of alternatives for those who’d rather not be in thrall to Redmond. And there’s also a forum. Viva la revolution.
Peer review
guimp
All the action happens in an area 18pixels square. News, games, downloads, a gallery (!), some graphics, links... Go see. Just remember not to set your monitor to very high resolution.
Feed for thought
http://www.bloglines.com/, http://reader.google.com/
Most blogs (and many news sites), offer you free feeds. So, instead of visiting each site, you get updates from all of them in a single window, via a feed reader service or application like these. Bloglines is a great service I’ve been using for ages. Google’s new Reader is making waves, and is worth checking out. The open-source browser, Firefox, offers you instant subscriptions via a little orange button in the bottom-right corner, and also via its Thunderbird mail and newsreader. To subscribe to a site’s feed, look for icons for “RSS,” “RDF,” “Atom,” “Site Feed,” etc. Most applications can also help you auto-discover feeds – simply feed in the URL, and the app will find its feed. Once you line up your subscriptions, it’s as easy as checking email. (Nudge, nudge, wink, wink: here’s a feed you could subscribe to: http://o3.indiatimes.com/mousetrap/Rss.aspx)
In your hands
Phone Feeds
If you hold you cellphone far, far more than you do the hand of your Significant Other, baby, you have trouble. But never mind. If that handset can do the WAP thing, you can use it to subscribe to news and blog feeds (see previous item), thanks to this free service. You’ll have to first go to the site via your computer, and find out whether it offers a WAP-compatible feed. If not, you can enter the RSS or Atom feed URL into the box on this page, and it will generate a free WAP-accessible feed that you can then access via your phone.
***
Non-Blog of the week
Since I’ve already hit you with two blog-related items, no blog this week. Instead, hehehehe...
Patron saint
The Diary of Samuel Pepys
Blogs didn’t start out as personal diaries, but now that’s the norm, rather then the exception. This site brings you the writing of a man whose name is practically synonymous with the diary: Samuel Pepys, the 17th Century Englishman who faithfully recorded his thoughts on his life and times. It presents his diaries as if he were writing them in the present, rather than in the 1600s, with the diary entry of January 1st, 1660 posted on January 1st 2003, and succeeding entries following on from there. Pepys’s writing habits are faithfully followed – he wrote about each day’s events late every night, so expect fresh entries at 11 p.m. UK time. It’s much more than a straight reproduction, though: there are summaries, notes, lots of background information, all profusely hyperlinked and easy to navigate. If old Sam had been alive today, he’d have been a blogger.
Reader suggestions welcome, and will be acknowledged. Go to http://o3.indiatimes.com/mousetrap for past columns, and to comment, or mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com. The writer blogs at http://zigzackly.blogspot.com.
Published in the Times of India, Mumbai edition, 13th November, 2005.
Tags: The Times of India, Mousetrap
Sunday, 6 November 2005
Mousetrap - 26
Blog in Space
Of course you know that television signals and radio broadcasts don’t just come to our receivers; they also stream out to space... So, somewhere, some time, some poor alien will shrug its antennae and give up trying to figure out saas-bahu soaps. Never mind. Now, citizens of cyber space, you too can inflict your thoughts on the universe at large. Simply feed in your URL and RSS feed, and on to Andromeda. If you don’t have a blog, you can send an email message instead. And either way, there are snazzy badges you can display on your site. Go for it. In space, no one knows you’re a Sirius.
Knot your ordinary website
How to Tie a Tie
So, running dog of western values and slave to imperialism, a piece of coloured cloth knotted around your neck makes you feel well-dressed? And round-and-round-and-back-and-through (more formally known, I’m told, as a Four in Hand, or as we used to say in school, the samosa) getting to be a bit tedious? This site will show you variations such as the Windsor, half-Windsor, and Pratt, and for good measure, how to tie a bow tie. The rest of the site looks promising, but merely serves up search engine results for the various headings, some of them hilariously off-topic. For light amusement, see Animal Ties > Cairn Terrier (as a random example). You’ll find instructions on how not to choke your German Shepherd pretty high on the list.
Life under the microscope
Stalking the mysterious microbe
This one’s for the kiddies. Sam Sleuth has fun ways to teach them about the smaller inhabitants of our planet, with simple – albeit Americanised – analogies and colourful illustrations. Plus there’s news, experiments to do (no, Mummyji, they won’t get pond scum on the sofa), advice on what to study to become a microbiologist, and yes (this Mummyji will like), plenty of reasons why the progeny should wash their hands regularly.
***
Blog of the week
Ignored lives
Lives in Focus
A writer and a photographer bring attention to people who rarely get visibility in mainstream media. Their current focus is the impact of India’s new patent law (passed earlier this year, as a step towards our acceptance into the WTO) on HIV-infected people who depend on Indian versions of patented Anti-retro Viral (ARV) drugs to survive. They are using the site to release over 2,000 photographs and 13 hours of video interviews they collected from AIDS shelters and hospices in Mumbai, Bangalore, and Hyderabad. In their words, they want to “harness the Internet to showcase an issue with global ramifications—not just as information but as a way to involve viewers.”
Reader suggestions welcome, and will be acknowledged. Go to http://o3.indiatimes.com/mousetrap for past columns, and to comment, or mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com. The writer blogs at http://zigzackly.blogspot.com.
Published in the Times of India, Mumbai edition, 6th November, 2005.
Tags: The Times of India, Mousetrap
Tuesday, 1 November 2005
I can see your house from here! [Cybertrack - 3]
Google Earth
Google Earth has caused significant undergarment torsion to the establishment, with even our First Rocket Scientist expressing concern at its freely available (to anyone with a whacking great broadband connection and Win2K or XP, that is) close-ups of the earth’s surface.
A clever mix of animation and actual satellite photography, and the globe is your plaything; spin it, flip it, fly around it, do a vertiginous zoom from outer space to close enough to see an individual street, building or even a vehicle. (I picked out out the yellow smudges of the taxi lineoutside Nizamuddin railway station, and, nearer home, the white streak of concrete changing to the black of tar road near the Vashi creek bridge.)
Google takes this already magical experience, mixes in mapping software, and harnesses the collaborative efforts of online communities, letting you overlay road maps, locate specific addresses, restaurants, hospitals, get driving directions, even put a thumbtack on your own neighbourhood.
For the traveller, this means you get a perspective on the place you’re interested in, a sense of of being there, that you’d never get from even a detailed line map.
Easy landmarks to find: Manhattan’s skyscrapers and the Statue of Liberty, the London Eye, the Eiffel Tower, the Gateway of India, India Gate. And yes, Rashtrapati Bhavan is dead easy. You can even figure out when the shots were taken by the angle of the shadows. The White House, though, has been blurred out, at the request of Georgie’s underlings. Hm. I see your point, Kalamsaheb.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Cybertrack
Google Earth has caused significant undergarment torsion to the establishment, with even our First Rocket Scientist expressing concern at its freely available (to anyone with a whacking great broadband connection and Win2K or XP, that is) close-ups of the earth’s surface.
A clever mix of animation and actual satellite photography, and the globe is your plaything; spin it, flip it, fly around it, do a vertiginous zoom from outer space to close enough to see an individual street, building or even a vehicle. (I picked out out the yellow smudges of the taxi lineoutside Nizamuddin railway station, and, nearer home, the white streak of concrete changing to the black of tar road near the Vashi creek bridge.)
Google takes this already magical experience, mixes in mapping software, and harnesses the collaborative efforts of online communities, letting you overlay road maps, locate specific addresses, restaurants, hospitals, get driving directions, even put a thumbtack on your own neighbourhood.
For the traveller, this means you get a perspective on the place you’re interested in, a sense of of being there, that you’d never get from even a detailed line map.
Easy landmarks to find: Manhattan’s skyscrapers and the Statue of Liberty, the London Eye, the Eiffel Tower, the Gateway of India, India Gate. And yes, Rashtrapati Bhavan is dead easy. You can even figure out when the shots were taken by the angle of the shadows. The White House, though, has been blurred out, at the request of Georgie’s underlings. Hm. I see your point, Kalamsaheb.
Published in the November edition of Outlook Traveller, in a column called Cybertrack
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Cybertrack
Shock and Awe
Fifty thousand years ago – give or take a few centuries – a rather large chunk of rock came hurtling in from space. As it screamed through the atmosphere, it heated up, lost some of its mass. But enough of it was left over (a meteorite about 60 metres across, weighing in at about a million tonnes) to make a rather large thump when it hit the planet’s surface. Not surprisingly, it made a fairly decent sized hole where it landed - a crater close to two kilometers in diameter, with walls over 130 metres high. The meteor itself – or what’s left of it – is, various references tell me, buried deep in the earth’s crust in the centre of the crater.
The impact, a six megaton explosion (or six hundred times the explosive force released by first atomic bombs), say scientists, generated enough heat to not just shatter the basalt rock, but to melt and vapourise it. It would have, quite naturally, finished off any local flora and fauna in the ’hood without a trace.
But the long years since then have seen Mother Nature slowly reclaiming what was hers. Water from underground springs liberated by the explosion flowed into the crater, covering the bottom of he basin with a lake. Rain, sand and wind erosion and erosion saw tortured rock being covered with sand. Seeds flew in, worked their roots into the soil, held it together, raised grass and shrubs and bushes and trees into the sky, and the earth healed.
But it healed in unsual ways.
While the walls of the crater became densely wooded, the lake turned into something altogther unique. The waters that fed it had nowhere else to flow - it is a basin after all. And the only escape is evaporation. But the salts and minerals they brought with them had nowehere to go and the lake slowly turned turned brackish. It now has very high pH value, it’s saltier than sea water, and a veritable soup of minerals. A hostile environment for life as we know it. But in the same way as Science has found life near volcanic vents on ocean beds, where it has no business being, it has also found unique, hitherto unknown, and evolving life in the Lonar lake. A small consultation with Auntie Google reveals that there is a form of blue-green algae that is essentially a new life form.
It’s not just the micro-biologists who will salivate though. Geologists spent decades debating the origins of the crater. It was once assumed to be volcanic in origin, considering that it was in the middle of the Deccan Plateau, which high school geography will have told you is the result of a steady build-up of lava oozing from the earth’s innards. It was only in the twentieth century that it was agreed that it was an astrobleme, not a geobleme. (Ooh, how knowledgeable search engines can make one sound! Those words mean, respectively, the scars on the earth’s surface formed by collision with extra-terrestrial objects, and those formed by internal explosions, like ’quakes or eruptions.)
Even now, with its provenance agreed upon, Lonar is a happy hunting ground for the rock-heads. Aside from being the third-largest impact crater on earth, it is the only one in basaltic rock. For more examples, you’d have to travel quite a bit. Like to the Moon, or Mars.
That’s all very well, I can hear you (and the editor) say, what of those of us who are not working on our theses? This is a travel magazine, not a Bill Bryson wannabe piece.
Very well.
Shun the carved out steps near the town - they’re for wussies. Make your way down any of the other paths, following the hoofprints of cattle, and, sigh, the trail of paan masala sachets down any other part of the crater. Start out from the East, where the gradient is less steep, and the walls less high. That’s because the meteor came in from the East, at an angle, causing the West side to pile up a little higher and steeper. Throw a large ballbearing into smoothened beach sand at an angle, and then look at the results to see what I mean.
Pick your way through the rocks (wear non-slip soles, please!) and look down around your feet frequently. For the collector of oddities, a five-minute stroll near the lip of the crater will yield a handfull of unusual pebbles in various shades and shapes. Glazed, fractured, veined, translucent, crystalline, pitted, deformed, they are the remnants of one our planet’s last known arguments with the solar system. That’s practically stardust you’re holding there, laddie!
(They, I tell Abhijit, are the merely surprised pebbles as opposed to what the boffins call “shocked rock” that sticks out of the earth walls like oversize warts. Abhijit is not amused. Photographers are a hard room to play.)
Oh right. Enough already with the Short History.
As the walls begin to level out, the shrubs grow thicker, till all of a sudden you’re walking through the undergrowth of the trees that were so far below you. Insects hum, birds converse loudly, and the sun is there somewhere – you can feel the heat – but it’s dim and damp here. In a short while, you break through to the broader path, flattened by bare feet over the millennia, that circumscribes the lake. Decide whether you want to go clockwise or anti, get your bearings (so you know when you’re back here to find our way back up), and stroll. Go soft, and you’ll come upon birds of various feathers. And you’ll regret not going for those BNHS walks, because all you can say is “Look, a red one!” and “There! A yellow and black one!” You can hear peacocks, their calls clear across the flat expanse of water. If you’re lucky, you might see one. The closest we got was a peahen, which raced off into shelter, giving us offended looks, at our approach. The Greater Flamingo stops over here, I have read, and even I can recognise one of those, but it’s too early in the year for them. For the birder, there’s much to see. A photocopied sheet from the manager of the MTDC resort tells me that you’ll find: dabchick, red-wattled lapwing, dusky reed warbler, rufouse-backed shrike, golden oriole, spot-bill duck, small green bea-eater, ashy wren warbler, and much more. And for the non-aviphiliacs (yes, I just made that up), squirrels, rabbits, langurs, signature spiders, funnel spiders and, if you’re lucky, maybe deer.
As you walk around, at regular intervals, you come upon the ruins of temples, thousands of years old some of them, going by the MTDC manager’s handouts. More modern hands have left their mark too, informing us of Sanju’s deep affection for Rita in white paint on the ancient blocks. The horror. Aside from twelve temples there’s also supposed to be a dargah here somewhere, but we seem to have managed to miss it. One temple, at about a third of the way around, is in frequent use: an electric wire and a water pipe emerge from the trees, saffron flags flutter, a garbage pit buzzes with flies, litter everywhere. We move on. Or rather, I move on – my intrepid photographer picks his way through the mudflats, to take photos through the branches of a dead tree. “Surreal!” he says, breathlessly. “Get real!” I growl back at him. The sun is beginning to disappear behind the crater, and Abhijit wants a sunset shot. He gallops off, fatigue forgotten, leaving his writer panting in his wake, as photographers are wont to do.
By the time I break through the tree line he’s a distant figure near the lip of the crater.
I stop to take stock. Also to catch my breath. And as the sun turns the sky technicolour a realisation dawns on me. This is the furthest I’ve been from other human beings since a day, more than ten years ago, when I went off climbing a peak near McLeodganj, In Himachal.
I find a nice rock, apologise for adding to its trauma, and lie back to look at the sky.
Aah.
The information
Getting there.
By Air: Aurangabad, 170 km.
By Rail: Aurangabad or Jalna (98km)
Road distances: From Mumbai, 553km, Pune 401km, Nagpur 388km
Places to Stay
MTDC’s guest house is on the lip of the crater - Lonar has very few other half-decent options.
The service is warm and friendly, but the food is decidely erratic. Meals ranged from uncrecognisable, fiery, oily glop to a sublime fried fish delicately flavoured and done just right.
Tariffs: Rs 550 per 2-bed room, with attached bath with hot and cold running water, each room with a small front porch and a balcony/sit-out at the other end. (8 rooms) Two 16-bed dorms also available, at Rs 1250 per room. These rates will drop to Rs 450 and Rs 1000 respectively, February to April.
Booking via MTDC Central Reservation Division, Mumbai: (+91 22) 22026713, 22027762
Things to do.
The Crater is it. Ancient temples, some in ruins, dotted around the circumference of the lake, lush greenery, a profusion of bird life, some animals, interesting pebbles to collect, unique algae if you have your slides and microscope. MTDC’s staff will gladly arrange for you to be accompanied by an energetic local lad who will ensure that the hopelessly direction-challenged do not get lost on the one circular road around the top or the mud path around the lake. Carry drinking water and a snack.
If that won’t suffice, don’t go. Lonar, the town, offers little else: an ancient step well that has run dry and has become a rubbish dump, and a few temples near the Crater lip, a movie house. Oh yes, a wine shop of two.
You could take day trips to Ajanta and Ellora, but otherwise the nearest refuge for the all-mod-cons type is Aurangabad, several hours away by road.
Tags: Outlook Traveller
The impact, a six megaton explosion (or six hundred times the explosive force released by first atomic bombs), say scientists, generated enough heat to not just shatter the basalt rock, but to melt and vapourise it. It would have, quite naturally, finished off any local flora and fauna in the ’hood without a trace.
But the long years since then have seen Mother Nature slowly reclaiming what was hers. Water from underground springs liberated by the explosion flowed into the crater, covering the bottom of he basin with a lake. Rain, sand and wind erosion and erosion saw tortured rock being covered with sand. Seeds flew in, worked their roots into the soil, held it together, raised grass and shrubs and bushes and trees into the sky, and the earth healed.
But it healed in unsual ways.
While the walls of the crater became densely wooded, the lake turned into something altogther unique. The waters that fed it had nowhere else to flow - it is a basin after all. And the only escape is evaporation. But the salts and minerals they brought with them had nowehere to go and the lake slowly turned turned brackish. It now has very high pH value, it’s saltier than sea water, and a veritable soup of minerals. A hostile environment for life as we know it. But in the same way as Science has found life near volcanic vents on ocean beds, where it has no business being, it has also found unique, hitherto unknown, and evolving life in the Lonar lake. A small consultation with Auntie Google reveals that there is a form of blue-green algae that is essentially a new life form.
It’s not just the micro-biologists who will salivate though. Geologists spent decades debating the origins of the crater. It was once assumed to be volcanic in origin, considering that it was in the middle of the Deccan Plateau, which high school geography will have told you is the result of a steady build-up of lava oozing from the earth’s innards. It was only in the twentieth century that it was agreed that it was an astrobleme, not a geobleme. (Ooh, how knowledgeable search engines can make one sound! Those words mean, respectively, the scars on the earth’s surface formed by collision with extra-terrestrial objects, and those formed by internal explosions, like ’quakes or eruptions.)
Even now, with its provenance agreed upon, Lonar is a happy hunting ground for the rock-heads. Aside from being the third-largest impact crater on earth, it is the only one in basaltic rock. For more examples, you’d have to travel quite a bit. Like to the Moon, or Mars.
That’s all very well, I can hear you (and the editor) say, what of those of us who are not working on our theses? This is a travel magazine, not a Bill Bryson wannabe piece.
Very well.
Shun the carved out steps near the town - they’re for wussies. Make your way down any of the other paths, following the hoofprints of cattle, and, sigh, the trail of paan masala sachets down any other part of the crater. Start out from the East, where the gradient is less steep, and the walls less high. That’s because the meteor came in from the East, at an angle, causing the West side to pile up a little higher and steeper. Throw a large ballbearing into smoothened beach sand at an angle, and then look at the results to see what I mean.
Pick your way through the rocks (wear non-slip soles, please!) and look down around your feet frequently. For the collector of oddities, a five-minute stroll near the lip of the crater will yield a handfull of unusual pebbles in various shades and shapes. Glazed, fractured, veined, translucent, crystalline, pitted, deformed, they are the remnants of one our planet’s last known arguments with the solar system. That’s practically stardust you’re holding there, laddie!
(They, I tell Abhijit, are the merely surprised pebbles as opposed to what the boffins call “shocked rock” that sticks out of the earth walls like oversize warts. Abhijit is not amused. Photographers are a hard room to play.)
Oh right. Enough already with the Short History.
As the walls begin to level out, the shrubs grow thicker, till all of a sudden you’re walking through the undergrowth of the trees that were so far below you. Insects hum, birds converse loudly, and the sun is there somewhere – you can feel the heat – but it’s dim and damp here. In a short while, you break through to the broader path, flattened by bare feet over the millennia, that circumscribes the lake. Decide whether you want to go clockwise or anti, get your bearings (so you know when you’re back here to find our way back up), and stroll. Go soft, and you’ll come upon birds of various feathers. And you’ll regret not going for those BNHS walks, because all you can say is “Look, a red one!” and “There! A yellow and black one!” You can hear peacocks, their calls clear across the flat expanse of water. If you’re lucky, you might see one. The closest we got was a peahen, which raced off into shelter, giving us offended looks, at our approach. The Greater Flamingo stops over here, I have read, and even I can recognise one of those, but it’s too early in the year for them. For the birder, there’s much to see. A photocopied sheet from the manager of the MTDC resort tells me that you’ll find: dabchick, red-wattled lapwing, dusky reed warbler, rufouse-backed shrike, golden oriole, spot-bill duck, small green bea-eater, ashy wren warbler, and much more. And for the non-aviphiliacs (yes, I just made that up), squirrels, rabbits, langurs, signature spiders, funnel spiders and, if you’re lucky, maybe deer.
As you walk around, at regular intervals, you come upon the ruins of temples, thousands of years old some of them, going by the MTDC manager’s handouts. More modern hands have left their mark too, informing us of Sanju’s deep affection for Rita in white paint on the ancient blocks. The horror. Aside from twelve temples there’s also supposed to be a dargah here somewhere, but we seem to have managed to miss it. One temple, at about a third of the way around, is in frequent use: an electric wire and a water pipe emerge from the trees, saffron flags flutter, a garbage pit buzzes with flies, litter everywhere. We move on. Or rather, I move on – my intrepid photographer picks his way through the mudflats, to take photos through the branches of a dead tree. “Surreal!” he says, breathlessly. “Get real!” I growl back at him. The sun is beginning to disappear behind the crater, and Abhijit wants a sunset shot. He gallops off, fatigue forgotten, leaving his writer panting in his wake, as photographers are wont to do.
By the time I break through the tree line he’s a distant figure near the lip of the crater.
I stop to take stock. Also to catch my breath. And as the sun turns the sky technicolour a realisation dawns on me. This is the furthest I’ve been from other human beings since a day, more than ten years ago, when I went off climbing a peak near McLeodganj, In Himachal.
I find a nice rock, apologise for adding to its trauma, and lie back to look at the sky.
Aah.
The information
Getting there.
By Air: Aurangabad, 170 km.
By Rail: Aurangabad or Jalna (98km)
Road distances: From Mumbai, 553km, Pune 401km, Nagpur 388km
Places to Stay
MTDC’s guest house is on the lip of the crater - Lonar has very few other half-decent options.
The service is warm and friendly, but the food is decidely erratic. Meals ranged from uncrecognisable, fiery, oily glop to a sublime fried fish delicately flavoured and done just right.
Tariffs: Rs 550 per 2-bed room, with attached bath with hot and cold running water, each room with a small front porch and a balcony/sit-out at the other end. (8 rooms) Two 16-bed dorms also available, at Rs 1250 per room. These rates will drop to Rs 450 and Rs 1000 respectively, February to April.
Booking via MTDC Central Reservation Division, Mumbai: (+91 22) 22026713, 22027762
Things to do.
The Crater is it. Ancient temples, some in ruins, dotted around the circumference of the lake, lush greenery, a profusion of bird life, some animals, interesting pebbles to collect, unique algae if you have your slides and microscope. MTDC’s staff will gladly arrange for you to be accompanied by an energetic local lad who will ensure that the hopelessly direction-challenged do not get lost on the one circular road around the top or the mud path around the lake. Carry drinking water and a snack.
If that won’t suffice, don’t go. Lonar, the town, offers little else: an ancient step well that has run dry and has become a rubbish dump, and a few temples near the Crater lip, a movie house. Oh yes, a wine shop of two.
You could take day trips to Ajanta and Ellora, but otherwise the nearest refuge for the all-mod-cons type is Aurangabad, several hours away by road.
Published in Outlook Traveller, November 2005 edition.
Tags: Outlook Traveller
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