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India set a new world record planting over 66 million trees in 12 hours. The Madhya Pradesh state used 1.5 million volunteers to plant the saplings along the Narmada river. – WTF Fun Facts Source: https://www.theyouth.in/2019/02/05/india-breaks-guinness-world-record-plants-66-million-trees-in-just-12-hours/

#10345 #66 million #Awesome #funny facts #india #Madhya Pradesh #Narmada River #Places #random fact #random facts #random funny fact #trees #volunteers #wtf fun fact

India, Il fiume Narmada, 1978 Gianni Berengo Gardin

#gianni berengo gardin #india #fotografie #1978 #narmada river #narmada #photography #black and white photography #diving #swimming #river

When The God of Small Things won the Booker prize, I was trotted out along with the Miss Worlds as a manifestation of a triumphant, newly globalised, free-market India, stepping with confidence on to the world’s stage. I was being used in a way, which is okay. But very soon after that, the BJP came to power and immediately did the nuclear tests to great and vulgar applause from the most unexpected quarters.

I was horrified. I was such a public figure then that keeping quiet was a kind of endorsement of the tests, it was as political as speaking out. And so I wrote The End of Imagination (August 3, 1998). I was immediately kicked off the pedestal—the fairy queen-Miss India-prize-winning writer pedestal. The dumb drumbeat of hatred and abuse began. I believe that those nuclear tests changed the tone of public discourse. It became uglier, more stridently nationalistic and has remained like that. But while I was being trashed by one set of people, I was embraced by others. And that set me off on a journey that still goes on. Soon after the nuclear tests, the Supreme Court lifted its long-standing stay on the construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam. I travelled to the Narmada valley and wrote The Greater Common Good (May 24, 1999).

Each journey, each essay I wrote deepened my understanding. The Parliament attack, even when it happened, seemed utterly hokey to me. The lawyer Nandita Haksar did a brilliant job of uncovering things. Around that time, I was sent to jail for committing contempt of court. Afsan Guru, wife of Shaukat Guru, one of the accused in the Parliament attack was there too. She was pregnant, wild-eyed, weeping and had no idea why she was in jail. Other prisoners were treating her like some great traitor. I tried to talk to her. I said, “I will be released soon, is there anything I can do for you?” She just looked at me blankly and said, “Can you organise a towel for me? I don’t have a towel.” She was acquitted a few years later but her life was ruined.

Nobody talks about her any more. After that I followed the case carefully. When S.A.R. Geelani was acquitted and Afzal was sentenced to death, I collected all the court papers of the case and I went off to Goa by myself with this suitcase full of papers. It was the monsoon, there were few people there, and I just sat in a shack and read the whole thing. I was appalled. So I wrote ‘...'And His Life Should Become Extinct' (October 30, 2006) about how evidence was manufactured, no process was followed, how Afzal never had a lawyer to represent him. The Supreme Court said confessions extracted in police custody were inadmissible as evidence, but the media used various videos of his various “confessions”, extracted from him by the Delhi Police’s Special Cell. The police videotaped him, right here in Lodi Estate. In one confession he was made to implicate Geelani, in another someone else.

They could pick and choose which confession to show. They decided which one suited them. The media showed them seven years later when he was still alive, and as the video played SMS messages from viewers rolled along the bottom of the screen saying: “Hang him by the balls in Lal Chowk” and so on. It was such bestiality. If one lived in a crazed banana republic, one could accept it but here we go about pretending to be something else. I remember letters to Outlook where the essay was published saying things like, “Spare Afzal Guru but hang Arundhati Roy”. Despite everything, the government—the Congress government—hanged him, knowing fully well that he was innocent. It was a political move, they were trying to curry favour with the mob that was baying for his blood, fishing for votes, it was a terrible, cowardly thing to do. They should be so ashamed.... They can’t even give his body back to his family. The letter that they wrote was deliberately delayed so that it would reach the family after he was hanged. See, things like this are not ‘issues’. The barbarity perpetrated in Kashmir by the Indian government is not an “issue”—it’s life itself. And if as a society we are prepared to digest it, we corrode ourselves. We curse ourselves.

I have written about two valleys, the Narmada valley and Kashmir valley, and I do sometimes wonder why the ferocious quest for justice in one has not left it time to understand, or leave its mark on the other. Meaning that in the Narmada valley there is such a sophisticated understanding on environmental issues, of what a dam does, of the local economy, of the World Bank, of the grinding poverty, but there is little understanding of what the people of Kashmir suffer. And in Kashmir there is such a sophisticated understanding of what it means to live under a military occupation but very little of what a big dam is and does, very little about the ways in which neo-liberal policies grind people down. I’m just saying the thread of justice that I have followed...that may not be everyone’s thread but it is certainly mine. Together it all adds up to what John Berger calls “A Way of Seeing”. That is what literature is, what poetry is. That’s what it’s meant to be.

...

What we are living through today is something that had to happen at some point, given the history of the RSS. How we get through it will establish what stuff we’re really made of. Today there is a vicious, communal assault on every institution, the judiciary, educational institutions. Universities are being dismantled as places of learning, communal dunderheads appointed as teachers, syllabi are being emptied of scholarship and replaced with idiot-food. Everything is being engineered to this fascist point of view. It’s a short way down. It’s not just about political parties and power. There is tectonic shit going on. It’s an assault on the very soul, the imagination of this country. It’s serious.

- Arundhati Roy, written way back. Many many years ago.

#arundhati roy #Indian army #Parliament #afzal guru #Book #Reading #Narmada river #Dams #Water #River #Kashmir #God of Small Things #Essays #Writer

Arundhati Roy in 1999 / On the banks of India’s Narmada River, where she campaigned against a new dam / Photo Karen Robinson

#arundhati roy #narmada river #india #karen robinson

421 Shiva Lingham from India

weight 7g/35cts & dimensions 27x13x13mm

Shiva Lingam stones are egg-shaped stones made of cryptocrystalline Quartz. They are found in one of the seven holy sites of India - the Narmada River in Onkar Mandhata. The stones are gathered and hand-polished by local villagers.

#shiva lingham #india #egg-shaped #stone #cryptocrystalline #quartz #narmada river #onkar mandhata

'हम अविभाज्य थे, कसकर गले लगा रहे थे': गोताखोर ने दिल दहला देने वाले पल बताए, मां और बच्चा एमपी में मिले

मध्य प्रदेश में बचाव अभियान के दौरान एक दिल दहला देने वाले क्षण में, गोताखोरों ने बरगी बांध में पलटी हुई पर्यटक नाव के अंदर अपने बच्चे को गोद में लिए हुए एक महिला का शव बरामद किया, इस दृश्य ने अनुभवी बचावकर्मियों को भी हिलाकर रख दिया। शुक्रवार, 1 मई, 2026 को मध्य प्रदेश के जबलपुर जिले में अचानक आए तूफान के कारण बरगी बांध में एक क्रूज नाव के पलट जाने से एक बच्चे के साथ एक महिला मृत पाई गई। (एचटी…

#Bargi Dam #jabalpur boat tragedy #Madhya Pradesh #Narmada river #rescue operations #tourist boat capsized

MP: CM मोहन यादव ने अमरकंटक में निर्माण पर रोक लगाने के दिए निर्देश, शराब और प्लास्टिक पर भी प्रतिबंध

Madhya Pradesh News: मुख्यमंत्री डॉ. मोहन यादव ने अमरकंटक में नर्मदा समग्र मिशन की बैठक ली। उन्होंने नर्मदा के उद्गम स्थल अमरकंटक की अखंडता बनाए रखने के लिए जन जागृति बढ़ाने के निर्देश दिए। सीएम ने अमरकंटक क्षेत्र में ‘नो मूवमेंट’ और ‘नो कंस्ट्रक्शन’ जोन निर्धारित करने को कहा। उन्होंने प्लास्टिक और शराब के उपयोग पर कठोर प्रतिबंध लगाने के भी निर्देश दिए। सीएम ने नदी तटों पर अतिक्रमण हटाने की…