Of folk tales, love stories, and blue mountains
With curtains of mist on its blue-green mountains, the land is home to a haunted cliff, a demonic lake and a skully cave. You will actually feel the thrill in your bones as you learn of the ancient lores the tiny landlocked state, Mizoram, is steeped in.
They are grandmother’s tales taking you back in time and place. And as you wind your way up the steep and rolling inclines, the zestful gasps of the clean, fresh mountain air remind you of the once pristine earth. But, to reach the loftiest peak in the state, barely 2,157 metres high, one has to travel down to the southernmost tip of Chhimtuipui district, close to the Burma border.
The sacred peak is believed to be the abode of the gods and Mizos call it the Phawngpui or the Blue Mountain. The Phawngpui commands a majestic view of the surrounding hills and valleys. There is a semi-circular cliff, supposedly haunted, on the western side called Thlazuang Khamm.
The mills and our loss
A disaster becomes a farce when the underlying tragedy gets buried, for whatever be the reason. That is just what has happened with the Supreme Court order paving the way for more malls and luxury apartments in the congested metropolis of Mumbai that should translate into billions of rupees for mill owners.
It is not just the court ruling which will be environmentally calamitous for Mumbai. The real tragedy lies in the fact that all voices of reason have been drowned in the Babel of eulogies that have been flooding the newspapers and the news channels. Trust the media to slut themselves for the shortsighted interests of the real estate mafia.
The poverty of myths
• Sections:
When the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) launched its India Shining campaign, it had a fertile ground on which to sow the seeds of its electoral sloganeering. Newspaper editorials were going dizzy with India’s forever rising gross domestic product (GDP). Pundits were engaged in animated discussions over India being the economic superpower of the new century, nay millennium. Headlines every day would hysterically tell us that the Sensex had scaled a new high. Everyone was happy. Everyone was richer today than the day before. If what you saw or read in the media was anything to go by, India was indeed shining. Quite brightly at that. What the BJP-NDA only did was prop up an effort to capitalise on the apocryphal myth of resplendence that was already being perpetuated by the news media.
The mills and our loss
• Sections:
A disaster becomes a farce when the underlying tragedy gets buried, for whatever be the reason. That is just what has happened with the Supreme Court order paving the way for more malls and luxury apartments in the congested metropolis of Mumbai that should translate into billions of rupees for mill owners.
It is not just the court ruling which will be environmentally calamitous for Mumbai. The real tragedy lies in the fact that all voices of reason have been drowned in the Babel of eulogies that have been flooding the newspapers and the news channels. Trust the media to slut themselves for the shortsighted interests of the real estate mafia.