Normal And Abnormal

Curry leaves  are indispensable part of Indian cuisine. This is widely used in southern and western coast of India. It is also used in other parts of Asia too. In Combodia and Indonesia it is dried and used as flavour for food items. Curry leaf plant is a native of Indian subcontinent. It is commercially planted in India. Of late Australia has started large cultivation of this plant. While it is a household plant in Kerala, large plantations can be found in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and other parts of India.  During the 1980s there were number of large plantations in Guntur region of AP. Many women reach these plantations early in the morning from nearby villages. They pluck the leaves and fill the bags tied on their backs. Many trucks were found parked on the side roads to carry the leaves to Chennai market. Murraya koenigii is the botanical name of curry leaf plant. It belong to the Rutaceae family. Other members of the family are, Rue, Citrus and Satinwood. The...

       Clean water in a German town According to global health index 2024 the healthiest countries are: Spain, Italy, Iceland, Japan, Switzerland and Sweden.  India ranks 39th in the list. Oman, South Africa and Costa Rica are the lowest in the health index.  Cuba has the highest number of doctors per 1,000 population with 8.4 (2023). In the year 2023, in the case of least number of doctors per 1,000 people, Somalia was placed on top with 0.20 doctors per 1,000 people followed by Niger with 0.30 and South Sudan with 0.40. Guinea Bisau, Monaco, Nauru, Aserbaijan, Cyprus and Belarus are the countries with highest number of hospitals per capita in the world. Taiwan, Netherlands, Switzerland, Australia, Germany and Ireland are the top countries in the world who provide insurance coverage to most of their people. The cleanest countries in the world as per EPI index 2024 are:  Estonia, Luxembourg, Germany, Finland, UK and Sweden. In the same EPI ...

Natwar Lal was the greatest con man India has ever seen. He had sold Taj Mahal thrice, Red fort twice, Rashtrapati Bhavan and Indian Parliament with its 545 members once to foreigners. Mithilesh Kumar Srivastava alias Natwar Lal was born in Siwan, Bihar in 1912 and died in 2009. There may be over hundred stories of intelligent cheating by this great con man. During the later years of his life when he was in Pune jail a letter was received from his wife from the native place. She wrote that she had no money for the daily needs and was in short of food too as there was no money to engage someone to delve the land for some cultivation. So she asked him to send some money immediately to deploy some workers to dig and set the land for different crops. As usual the jail officials read the letter and given to him. Nutwar Lal gave a reply to this letter saying that anticipating this situation he had kept large quantity of gold in a bag in their land just one foot below the ground l...

Chateau de Trecesson in France is one of the most haunted houses in the world. A young woman who was believed to be buried alive on the premises of For decades this place is believed to be visited by many ghosts. People even now feared to visit the mansion. Chaonei Church in Beijing, China is a terribly haunted house. Numerous people have been disappeared from this property. At the entrance of the building a notice is placed stating that there is no ghosts on the property, but the legends say otherwise. One of the most common tales about the house is that of a mistress of a government official who committed suicide in the house. Another story purports that the house was built by a British priest who wanted this building to be a church but the priest was found missing before the completion of the construction. However, the property still remains as a haunted place. K V George 

While some sweat blood to get a few chips of money, there are others who do their level best to spend the large money in hand but they are unable to do so. Some years ago during a train journey, a co-passenger, might be a recently retired government official, during casual discussion, said the following. Some parents give over Rs 10,000/- to their young children studying in high school every month as pocket money. A family of husband and wife with young kids and old parents have six new cars in the house. A person  who is doing business abroad visit his home town in Kerala a few times every year. Before every visit he sends his high cost car ahead of him and takes it back when returns. I am told that there are many families who are going abroad every year for a period of one week to three weeks. It is a routine affair for them. I was surprised to hear that there are many people around us who can get Rs 100/- crores or more in cash any time . I have heard about a foreign...

Before and after images of the Hawaii Hawaii fire According to a CNN report the  arctic winter storm of the past couple of years y has spread havoc in United States. 22 people have already been died. Over three lakhs houses spent their Christmas without power. Food supply has been interrupted at different parts. Snow has been mounted on houses, roads and market places. Burning of fossil fuel,  destruction of forests and the warming up by greenhouse gases are pointed out by climatologists as the prime causes for climate change  on earth. According to a global study about 45% warming up has happened in the past few decades. While 4% of warming takes place caused by the whole African continent and one third of the world warming is caused by China alone. The wild fire of the past year in Hawaii killing large number of people is also reported to have caused by the climatic change. The ongoing flood in various parts of India is also the after effects of climatic cha...