Memories of the mountain kingdom

It was nice to read in this morning's newspaper that His Majesty The King of Bhutan is the Chief Guest of this year's Republic Day Parade. I vividly remember the sight of snow capped mountains basking in Divine Sunlight when pulling my window curtains in early winter mornings, melodious  music from the flutes of nearby villagers as their cattle grazed perfectly organic dew drops-laden grass in our school grassland and the unparalleled aroma of Darjeeling tea in my kitchen, even after 30 years!

In front of my house (1978) 

 I'll write more in this post when I find time. Thanks.  

Saturday Musing about Southern Africa

As I was browsing through the websites of my favourite broadcasters, I came to know that Radio Lotus celebrated their 30th anniversary yesterday. I nostalgically remember the radio station for having kept me away from homesickness in the late '80s and early '90s when I was teaching physics in schools in the region. As far as I knew, it was the largest Indian radio station in terms of the number of listeners, outside India at that time. It used to broadcast in English, Telugu, Tamil, Hindi and Gujarati. It was very popular for broadcasting good old film songs.  

I remember very good friends such as Dayanad Sharma (who hailed from Dehra Doon and taught design technology in a nearby school), Mr Krishna Moorthy (from Bangalore who taught mathematics in a nearby College of Education), Srinivasan (a Telugu gentleman who served as Director in a Government Ministry in South Africa), Dr Ram Devineni (Medical Superintendent of the local hospital and a very soft-spoken gentleman), Srinivasan (known as `Srini', he was a Sr Finance Officer in a Government Ministry), Balasubramaniam (an IAF Officer of Thanjavur ancestry who was on deputation in Southern Africa), Dwivedi (my colleague from Dehra Doon who taught agriculture in the school) and Manjunath (who hailed from Bangalore and taught mathematics at a nearby high school). We shared similar interests. 

DW via digital waves

Hello fellow readers. After several days, I had some free time to spare this afternoon on my favourite pastime of listening to or watching travellogues. Thanks to an interesting website, which enabled me to watch a program on Deutsche Welle (one of my most favourite TV stations for the past three decades, preceded by `Radio Deutsche Welle', which I have been listening to, for the past four decades).  

Screenshot of DW program

Reflection of my love for RDW

So, Vielen Dank und Auf Wiedersehn.

Sights and Sounds of Africa

Hello folks. Its nice to be back here, taking a brief post-lunch break after a strenuous work schedule. I don't usually skip or postpone my lunch time; but today, I had to, due to an extra pressure of work.

As I was at the dining table (from around 0300 to 0345 PM IST) I had the pleasure of watching a very interesting business program (titled `Exchanging Ideas) on BBC World. It was an exchange of business ideas between the CEOs of LEGO (popular toy building blocks company headquartered in Europe) and a handicrafts and shoes manufacturing unit based in Ethiopia.

I liked both the companies: LEGO for motivating numerous children to work with `real' objects to develop relevant skills, and the Ethiopian Company as it reminded me of my stint as a Physics teacher in the region 30 years back.

Later in the day, at around 9 PM, I was delighted to bump into another interesting BBC program titled `Have You Heard From Johannesburgh?' featuring South Africa with inputs from leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Julius Nyere and Kwame Nkrumah. This program reminded me of the wonderful years which I had spent in the region 20 years back. It was nice to listen to authentic African folk music after a long time.

(I tried to provide a link to the programs but couldn't locate them on the BBC World website easily).