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holi-festival of colors
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

The colorful festival of Holi is celebrated on Phalgun Purnima which comes in February end or early March. Holi festival has an ancient origin and celebrates the triumph of 'good' over 'bad'. The colorful festival bridges the social gap and renew sweet relationships. On this day, people hug and wish each other 'Happy Holi'.Holi celebration begins with lighting up of bonfire on the Holi eve. Numerous legends & stories associated with Holi celebration makes the festival more exuberant and vivid. People rub 'gulal' and 'abeer' on each others' faces and cheer up saying, "bura na maano Holi hai". Holi also gives a wonderful chance to send blessings and love to dear ones wrapped in a special Holi gift.In some parts of India, specially in Bengal and Orissa, Holi Purnima is also celebrated as the birthday of Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (A.D. 1486-1533). However, the literal meaning of the word 'Holi' is 'burning'. There are various legends to explain the meaning of this word, most prominent of all is the legend associated with demon king Hiranyakashyap.

Hiranyakashyap wanted everybody in his kingdom to worship only him but to his great disappointment, his son, Prahlad became an ardent devotee of Lord Naarayana. Hiaranyakashyap commanded his sister, Holika to enter a blazing fire with Prahlad in her lap. Holika had a boon whereby she could enter fire without any damage on herself. However, she was not aware that the boon worked only when she enters the fire alone. As a result she paid a price for her sinister desires, while Prahlad was saved by the grace of the god for his extreme devotion. The festival, therefore, celebrates the victory of good over evil and also the triumph of devotion.

Legend of Lord Krishna is also associated with play with colors as the Lord started the tradition of play with colours by applying colour on his beloved Radha and other gopis. Gradually, the play gained popularity with the people and became a tradition.

There are also a few other legends associated with the festival - like the legend of Shiva and Kaamadeva and those of Ogress Dhundhi and Pootana. All depict triumph of good over evil - lending a philosophy to the festival.

Besides having a detailed description in the Vedas and Puranas such as Narad Purana and Bhavishya Purana, the festival of Holi finds a mention in Jaimini Mimansa. A stone incription belonging to 300 BC found at Ramgarh in the province of Vindhya has mention of Holikotsav on it. King Harsha, too has mentioned about holikotsav in his work Ratnavali that was written during the 7th century.

The famous Muslim tourist - Ulbaruni too has mentioned about holikotsav in his historical memories. Other Muslim writers of that period have mentioned, that holikotsav were not only celebrated by the Hindus but also by the Muslims.


March 21, 2008 | 1:27 AM Comments  0 comments

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a rope trick in rural India
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Ashok Jhunjhunwala, along with Bhaskar Ramamurthi and Timothy Gonsalves founded the TeNeT group at IIT, Madras, to realise their dream of getting rural India connected.
Jhunjhunwala said of his plans, "Today, India has changed drastically and it is a very confident country. But this self confidence and growth is only urban. If you look at rural India, it is far behind. It is one of the biggest challenges for those of us who are dealing with science and technology. We believe when science and technology support business, it can change the face of rural India."

That was how he helped Saloni Malhotra start Desi Crew, one of the success stories of the TeNet group. Another one that has its roots in rural India is ROPE (Rural Outsourced Production Enterprise).

ROPE has outsourced work to rural Tamil Nadu for big companies through Information and Communication Technologies. The man who runs the company is N N Sreejith.

Sreejith was first exposed to rural India when he worked as an expert in the microfinance industry for a Self Help Group in Kerala. Trips to the villages made him aware of the business opportunities that are there but he also found that rural India was totally disconnected from urban India. Sreejith came to Chennai with the idea of opening a rural BPO and started working for Paul Basil's RIN (Rural Innovation Network). When he came to know about Saloni Malhotra who was trying to start a rural BPO, he joined her venture.
He decided to be an entrepreneur himself soon. "Saloni, coming all the way from Delhi and starting a venture of her own at a young age, was an inspiration for me. Jhunjhunwala was trying to start a project of outsourcing manufacturing from villages. So, I approached him with a business idea and he agreed." That was in January 2007.

His company ROPE started operating in April 2007.

A Bangalore based company called Indus Tree Crafts Foundation (that makes home fabrics and furnishings from different types of natural fibres) gave Sreejith his first order -- to supply natural banana yarn.

With Rs 25,000 as capital, he opened three units for banana fibre extraction -- Melakkal in Madurai district, Pasupathy Koil in Thanjavur district and Govindanagaram in Theni district.

"We chose the places based on the availability of banana in the area. As we wanted to connect the places through ICT, we chose places where N-Logue kiosks (started by the TeNet group) were available. The kiosk owners acted as entrepreneurs."

In Melakkal, Murugesan, a farmer by profession, decided to be one of the first entrepreneurs of ROPE. "The company taught me how to make yarn. Once I learnt the art, I taught my wife and we bought a machine. We then employed two women from the neighbourhood."
In the first week, he found it to be a loss making proposition. Instead of closing down the operation, he tried to find out the reason behind the loss. From 500 metres in the first week, they made 1000 metres in the next week. In the first month, he managed 5000 metres.

Today, Murugesan has 18 people working under him and they make 350,000 to 400,000 metres of yarn a month.

Murugesan's dream is to employ at least 50 people. "There are 3000 people in our village, out of which 1800 are adults. We have farming activities only three months a year. So, people need work for the remaining nine months, and if I can give work to as many people, it will be a boon. I want to change the face of my village!"

Soon Sreejith began approaching big companies like IKEA with the idea of customising his units to suit the requirements of the companies. For IKEA, ROPE makes mats from corey grass.

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A ROPE trick in rural India

March 19, 2008

Today, ROPE has a designer who designs as per the needs of the client. ROPE has so far supplied its products to more than thirty big and small clients, both within and outside India.
Some of the prominent names in its client list include IKEA (Chennai), Indus Tree Crafts (Bangalore), CwithCo (New York) and TiE (Chennai).

"Most of them approach us because we are cost competitive and not because we outsource from villages. We also want our clients to look at us as globally competitive and quality-wise good," Sreejith said.

With 7 units and 140 people working on many products, the company has invested around Rs 14 lakh (Rs 1.4 million) so far. The revenue is around Rs 75-80,000 a month. The turnover in the last one year is Rs 12 lakh (Rs 1.2 million).

As ROPE does not want to brand itself as a handicrafts company, it has diversified into textiles and started a unit in Kumbakonam for cotton and silk weaving. A designer group from Delhi has given ROPE orders to outsource traditional saris of Tamil Nadu.

"There is no shortage of skilled workers in rural India but there is a shortage of regular work. The problem is middlemen exploit them as the big clients do not approach these people directly. And big companies are slightly wary of middlemen too. We fill that space as they are comfortable with us. It has a huge industry potential, if we can make handmade items as per their needs."





March 21, 2008 | 1:24 AM Comments  0 comments

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i carry ur heart within me
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

ee cummings