The death of the conscience of human kind

Gandhi

Since October 2^nd would be birth anniversary of Mohandas. K. Gandhi, this post is about him. Mahatma Gandhi, Bapu, Gandhiji are some of the names by which he is addressed by more than a billion people of India. Gandhi was born in Porbandar, which is in the state of Gujarat in India.

Gandhi’s inspiration to always follow truth was from a drama about the king Harichandra. The drama was about a King, who vowed to be always truthful. Due to his promise, he lost his kingdom, sold his wife, child and himself as slaves. In the end, he didn’t even have the money to cremate and do the final rites to his only son. But still he did not lie. Gandhi’s inspiration to always speak the truth came from this drama.

Gandhi studied law in England, but before he was allowed to go, his mother asked three promises from him. They were he should not drink alcohol, should not get into a relationship with any women, and should not meat. He followed this till his death. Since he was vegan, his wife was one too. When she fell sick and the doctors informed her that only by giving her medicines made from animals, she could be saved. But she refused those medicines and chose death.

Gandhi’s worst days were his last days. Before he was shot, all that Gandhi wanted was harmony between Hindus and Muslims of India. After the partition between India and Pakistan in 1947, there were huge religious clashes all over India. No one knows who started it, but the horrors can never be forgotten. Young babies barely 8 months were literally torn into two pieces, young kids were thrown alive into fire, women were raped, and men were slaughtered. All of it only stopped, after Gandhi sat for a fast unto death. But it did not stop immediately, but after hearing the news that Gandhi was going to die. Gandhi was ready to give up his life, if these religious violence ended. After a few months, he was shot dead by a religious lunatic.

Second Blog

Since last week I wrote about an architectural marvel, this week I would like to talk about the golden temple of India. There is one temple located at Amritsar and, the other at Sripuram. In India gold is a fascination for everyone. Most people spend their entire life savings in their daughter’s marriage, where the major purchases are jewels.

  In India I would say the general population is mad about gold. Sometimes one could see the markets are empty but, the jewelry shops are never empty.

So, let me move into this golden temple at sripuram. No one knows the exact cost for this construction of this place. But it was estimated to be around $ 250,000,000. All the money for this construction was donated by people.

Here is a picture of the temple.

The outer pathway is star shaped, which signifies that anyone who walks that path would be successful and happy. This structure was constructed in 2006. This is an interior picture of the temple.

Every single design has gold. The most surprising thing is in India 25% of the population lives on less than a dollar a day. But we import gold worth more than a billion dollars every month. One thing which I don’t like about this temple is that it is controlled by one single man. I am not sure whether you liked it, but I just didn’t get any other topic.

Architecture

Since this is my first blog, I would like to talk about my home country India. As soon as we think of India, the first thing that comes to our mind is the Taj Mahal. But Taj Mahal is like a grain of sand in a desert. There are many more architectural wonders in India. Now I would like to talk about the Tanjore “Big Temple”. This was built in 1009 A.D. It has crossed over one thousand years and is still stable. This temple has been declared as a UNESCO “World Heritage” site.

I would call this temple an architectural wonder.  This temple was constructed by the Cholan king Rajaraja, which means king of kings. This temple was built with only granite stones. Granite is one of the hardest stones in the world. But there are lots of carvings of statues and inscriptions on the walls. The temple is 216ft high and at the time it was constructed, this was the largest building on earth, of its kind.

The top most part of the temple is made up of a single stone, which weighs around 80 tons. But the question is how they lifted an 80 ton stone to a height of 216ft in 1010 A.D. They used simple Mechanics and rolled the stone over an inclined plane of 6 degrees and this inclined plane stretched a whopping 6.44 km. A small part of the inclined could still be found.

The most intriguing phenomenon is that on any given day at noon this temple will not have a shadow. But even a small stick will have its shadow on the earth except on two days a year. There is no magic involved in here. This temple was constructed in such a way that the shadow falls on the structure itself and doesn’t fall on the ground.

This temple also has a one hundred and eight statues of different dance poses of the classical dance of that region called Bharatanatyam. The structures are so clear and precise, that they are still used today to teach young students, the various stances involved in dancing.

This is a must visit place for anyone who comes to India. It would be a breath taking view and an awesome experience of walking through history would be yours.