Story behind Onam - Kerala's Biggest Festival

Come September 9, 2011. The day would happen to be the most popular and big festival of my native state, Kerala. It is called Onam or Tiruvonam. Almost all the local channels, hoardings and shopping malls would be buzzling with the offers, discounts and debits - to happen from the shopping cards !!!

Well, to commemorate the advent of Onam, here's the real story behind the festivities in God's Own Country.

It marks the advent of a great demon King, called Mahabali(grandson of Bhakt Prahlad), who used to reside in Kerala long time ago. It is said that everyone in his kingdom were happy and prosperous and no one was touched with the sadness or unhappy quotient.

His rule and vigor became so famous that he was thought to be a replacement of Indra, the God of Gods. Maha Vishnu then took the Vamana (Dwarf) avataram and came with the intention of tricking him

When he came, he asked Mahabali to grant him some land. The majestic king humbly agreed and asked him to take as much land as he wants. The Vamana then started increasing in size in cosmic proportions and in first step, he measured the whole of earth. On the second step, he measured the whole of skies.

Third step was still to be kept and there was no place to keep or measure anything. The noble king asked Mahavishnu, in disguise, to keep the third step on him and he was pushed to Patala (the nether world).

It is said that Mahavishnu was so touched by his generousity that he asked him any wish he wanted. And the king, as he was attached to his kingdom, asked him to let him come and visit his kingdom atleast once a year.

The day happens to be now called "Onam". To wish any Keralite, here's the magic age-old mantra "Hridaya Neranja Onam Ashamsakal" which means "Heartful wishes for Onam to You"

Story of Statue of Liberty

Statue of Liberty is one of the old, beautiful and magnanimous sculpture in the present world. It is situated in Liberty island in New York harbour, New York, United States.

The statue is of a robed female figure representing Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom, who bears a torch and a tabula ansata (a tablet evoking the law) upon which is inscribed the date of the American Declaration of Independence. A broken chain lies at her feet.



The statue was designed by Frederic Bartholdi, in France, in parts and there were initial hiccups for raising funds. The statue was made in parts for eg, head, waist , hands, etc. and the parts were later sent thorugh oceanic voyage to U.S. as it was considered to be a gift from the people of France to United States. The statue, since then, became the icon of Independence and freedom.

It has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Spectacular piece of art, indeed!!!

Mojave Phone Booth

Mojave Phone Booth was a phone booth, installed in 1960. So, what's the big deal!!! There were many phone booth's before the advent of mobiles and wireless stuff. But read on to find the uniqueness.

This phone booth was located at Majave National Reserve in California. When it was placed, it was eight miles (13 km) from the nearest paved road, fifteen miles (24 km) from the nearest numbered highway, and miles from any buildings. Its telephone number was originally (714) 733-9969, before the area code changed to 619 and then to 760. It was originally built to provide telephone services to local miners and other living in the area.



In 1997, a Los Angeles man spotted a telephone icon on a map of the Mojave and decided to visit it. After his visit, he sent a letter of his adventure to a local computer enterpreneur, who started the first of the few websites on the phone booth. The booth became an instant hit on World Wide Web



Soon, people started going to the phone booth as an adventure trip. Calls will be received and called from the booth to signal the start and end of the trip.

The booth has been removed at 2000 as it was decomissioned for the obvious reasons and the phone number was permanently retired.

Interesting indeed!!!

What do you mean by a Geoglyph on the ground ?

In NGC or Discovery there would be episodes which would say about unknown mysterious presence in the world. Geoglyphs happen to be one of a kind. Thought of uncovering the real meaning of such figures


A geoglyph is a drawing on the ground, or a large motif, (generally greater than 4 metres) or design produced on the ground, either by arranging clasts (stones, stone fragments, gravel or earth) to create a positive geoglyph (stone arrangement/alignment, petroform, earth mound) or by removing patinated clasts to expose unpatinated ground (negative geoglyph).

Some of the well known Geoglyphs made by Nazca Civilization guys ages ago were :

Nazca Lines


Nazca Monkey


Nazca Desert Spider


Just imagine the discipline and the real-time thinking of these old civilizations. No airplanes or so at that time but still managed to carve and niche their humongous drwaings on the ground...Impressive

Cricket World Cup 2011 Trivia

India -- as we all know is a land where everything seems to be a magic. And one of the magic is called CRICKET...And the magicians in India are named, Sachin, Gavaskar...They are like Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh of Hindu mythology. World Cup 2011 Fever has caught everyone in its frenzy!!! Cricket buffs are always constantly reviewing the Points system which gets interesting after every match completed.

Some of the lesser known interesting facts about the Cricket World Cup is :
1) The official mascot for the 2011 Cricket World Cup is called Stumpy, which is an young elephant.(the image displayed above)

2) Winning team takes home a whooping sum of 3 million $ and runner's home take home 1.5 million $.

3) There are 14 participants in this World Cup version. The 10 are Test Playing nations. Rest 4 were chosen based on their rankings in the qualifying matches...Ireland was first, Canada was second, Netherlands were third and Kenya were fourth. There were in total 104 entries.

4) Sachin, by appearing in this World Cup now shares the most number of World Cup tournament appearances with Pakistan's Javed Miandad

5) Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai would host this year;s World Cup finals. Interesting it was built in 6 months and was opened in 1975.

6) The record for the most number of ‘ducks’ in World Cup is shared by Nathan Astle of New Zealand and Ijaz Ahmed of Pakistan in 22 and 26 innings respectively.

How did Harry Potter Came Into Being

I know that the whole world has heard the word, Harry Potter, sometimes in their life. But I am sure not many of you would know about Harry Potter's originator...Yes I am talking about J.K.Rowling. She happens to be the author of all Harry Potter books.
Here's a brief excerpts about her rags to riches life :

She got the first idea of Harry Potter on a train trip from Manchestor to London in 1990. At that time, she had a small baby to look after and was surviving on the state benefits given to the unemployed. For the first Harry Potter book, the name being "Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone", she used a manual typewriter to write the whole manuscript.

Her script was rejected by 12 publishing houses and then a small publishing house from London, called Bloomsbury, gave the green signal to publish. The strange part was that the decison to publish the book owes much to an 8 year old, Alice Newton, the daughter of the publishing house owner, as she was given the first chapter to be read by her father. After reading it, she immediately asked for the second, which was ample proof that the script was good enough to engage the children in it.

And then, it is all history. Now she is one of the most richest woman to have walked on earth on her own merit.

That's why they say no matter what when the time comes, everything including the most jeopardized piece in your life would fall in place...Just go on living and rest would follow.

What are QWERTY Keyboards ?

QWERTY is the most used modern-day keyboard layout on English-language computer and typewriter keyboards. It takes its name from the first six characters seen in the far left of the keyboard's top row of letters. The QWERTY design is based on a layout designed by Christopher Latham Sholes in 1873.



I never happened to take a serious note on this fact that the keyboards which I am using and in fact, I guess, if I am right most of us are using are of the type "QWERTY". Now, have a look at your keyboard and now you would have a reason to say as to how some letters placements have significance