DESI Toothbrushes

A variety of oral hygiene measures have been used since before recorded history. This has been verified by various excavations done all over the world, in which chewsticks, tree twigs, bird feathers, animal bones and porcupine quills were recovered. Many people used different forms of toothbrushes. Indian medicine (Ayurveda) has used the neem tree (a.k.a. daatun) and its products to create toothbrushes and similar products for millennia. A person chews one end of the neem twig until it somewhat resembles the bristles of a toothbrush, and then uses it to brush the teeth. In the Muslim world, the miswak, or siwak, made from a twig or root with antiseptic properties has been widely used since the Islamic age.

West’s biggest misconceptions of India by Shashi Tharoor

Well there . . . there’s about three different sets of misperceptions.  The old one is, of course, the old cliché – the land of poverty, suffering, the begging bowl, the naked fakir on his bed of nails.  I mean that . . . that . . .  Those images of the snake charmer . . . that . . .  That image of India, which I think is gradually being supplanted, but it has still a . . . a . . . a hold on the popular imagination because it was drilled into people’s minds and . . . and . . . and eyes for . . . for decades if not centuries.  And that image is being gradually dispelled, I think, by the new India of . . . of software geeks and . . . and . . . and computer gurus.  So maybe that’s changing, but that’s certainly one image that I’d like to dispel. The second image is perhaps the . . . the paradoxical one of the land that’s stealing away American jobs.  There’s now an increasing sense of jobs being outsourced to Bangalore.  You know people get laid off and they say, “I’ve been Bangalored.”  In fact, India has only created one million IT jobs in the last 10 years.  And during that time America has shed three million jobs.  But each of those three million Americans is looking at those one million jobs in India and saying, “That’s my job.”  So there is that . . . that sense of stereotyping and misunderstanding which I think needs to be dispelled both because it’s not true, but also because it plays into a very negative and unconstructive view of today’s globalization – which I think . . . which I think is worth . . . worth dispelling in the interest of Americans and Indians. And the third set of images is probably of exotic India – the land of Yoga and . . . and . . . and . . . and of course the movies of Bollywood.  And the ashrams and retreats where people can go sit in the Himalayas and meditate.  That sort of image got a boost really in the late ‘60s with the Beatles going off and learning transcendental meditation from ____________.  And from then on, you’ve had the likes of ___________ and Goldie Hawn going off to India. You’ve heard Richard Gere discovering the Dalai Lama in India.  You’ve had a set of certain . . . opening up to this spirituality and otherworldly yearnings that come from Indian experience.  Now that’s not a bad thing.  In fact, each of these three stereotypes has some kernel of truth, and I don’t want to deny that.  Poverty is real.  There are 260 million Indians who live on . . . live on the wrong side of a poverty line that’s been drawn just this side of the funeral pyre.  So that’s . . .  It’s real, but it’s being overcome and the other India is sufficiently known.  The . . . the . . . the . . .  The second cliché as I said . . .  Yes.  Some jobs are being created in India that were lost in America, but it’s not the whole story.  And third, on the exoticism, and the spirituality, and the other worldliness, that’s true too.  We have more than our fair share of . . . of gurus, and “godmen”, and seekers of truth and so on.  And we do have something to offer the people of what to look for – that kind of truth back in India.  But having said that, it’s also true to say that India is, in many ways, not that different from any other country in the world.  It’s full of people who are trying to make a living; give their kids a decent education; get three meals a day; put a roof over their heads; try and achieve some conventional aspirations in life, including financial and material security.  And that aspect of India as a normal society, going beyond the clichés of the three kinds of stereotypes I described to you, is something that I would like people to be more conscious of.  And I think in America, the increasing numbers of . . . of Indian Americans are now up to about three million in this country is beginning to change that for the better.  Because when you see Indians are folks just like you – who dress like you, who talk like you, who work like you, but they’re Indian and they go back to families, or at least, at the very least ancestors and relatives in India – that changes the way that you think about India, too.  And I think that’s been positive.

Recorded on: 9/18/07

How has the West changed its view of India? by Cyril Shroff:

If one looks at the history of India after independence in 1947, for the first 30 to 40 years I think we were effectively given up as a basket case because we made various attempts through socialism to effectively alleviate poverty and keep growing but that model didn't work.  So even when the pre-90s when we spoke to foreign corporation of foreign businessmen who wanted to do business with us, we were always a land of opportunity but an opportunity whose time have not yet come. The attitude I think really changed from the early 90s when the liberalization or our second economic freedom really began and this picked up momentum I would say into the latter half of the period between 91 till now.
Currently, I think India is looked at with a lot of respect across a number of dimensions. Let me enumerate a few. It’s looked at as a safe environment in which, thanks to the rule of law, one can do business and no one really has lost a lot of money in India. On the contrary, people have made enormous profits. The fact that we are built upon private sector concepts is also a great comfort.
The second dimension I think is the India people are regarded as very intelligent, skilled in maths and science, very comfortable with things ranging from philosophy to music to the arts and that’s something which fascinates the world as well.
India is developing a lot of soft power, and it’s not just about us providing outsourcing and call centers to the world. We are providing a lot of thought and a way of life. I think we’re also respected for fundamentally a non-violent belief thanks to our religious roots whether it’s Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, we contributed more religions to the world than any part of the world and that’s something which does find its way into how the world looks at it.
At some point of time everybody has a spiritual need and somewhere or the other you find that Indian connection. So our culture is making a big difference and, whether it’s our curries or movies like "Slumdog Millionaire" or whether it’s just the Bollywood numbers to which a lot of the world is rocking, I think India's soft power is going up. And we are contributing a lot of entrepreneurs to the world as well whether it’s people like Lakshmi Mittal or Indra Nooyi or thinkers like Amalti Singh. This is all happening because of there’s something fundamentally right and thoughtful about Indian society. That’s how I see it. I may be wrong, but that’s how I see it.
Recorded on: April 29, 2009

What Americans Should Know About India by Neelam Deo Neelam Deo

Neelam Deo:    I wish that more Americans and more everybody including more Indians, knew our philosophy, that they had read our epics, that they knew our literature, both ancient and modern. Because, I think, that as such an old civilization, we really have something to share with the world. I wish that, as we speak, people will use a phrase out of a well-known English writer like Shakespeare or for instance for me, it’s a pleasure to read an American writer, I would wish that people would have those perspectives as well which come out of the great Indian epics, the Mahabharata, the Ramayana.
For example, if you consider war, then if you are talking about a just war then you really have to read the Gita which is, you know, the Lord Krishna talking about the sadness of war but also the duty that is involved. So in order to know this and to have a more profound perspective, I would wish that people knew more of our epics, our history, and our modern philosophers and writers.

India's Prehistoric Insects

"Beautifully preserved bees, ants, spiders and other small prehistoric creatures that lived 50 million years ago have been unearthed in a huge amber deposit in India." "Already, the scientists have shown that the similarities of the species in the amber to species living in Asia and Europe have exploded a theory known as the 'biotic island ferry', where India was thought to have carried much of its wildlife to Asia, where it then escaped to populate the Eurasian landmass." "The amber shows, similar to an old photo, what life looked like in India just before the collision with the Asian continent."

  Read it at The Independent

most polluted places

Sukinda, India

Sukinda, India-Home to one of the world’s largest chromite mines—used to make steel stainless, among other things—and 2.6 million people, the waters of this valley contain carcinogenic hexavalent chromium compounds courtesy of 30 million tons of waste rock lining the Brahmani River. “Hexavalent chromium is very toxic and very mobile,” notes David Hanrahan, Blacksmith’s London-based director of global programs.

Vapi, India

Vapi, India-This town at the end of India’s industrial belt in the state of Gujarat houses the dumped remnant waste of more than 1,000 manufacturers, including petrochemicals, pesticides, pharmaceuticals and other chemicals. “The companies treat wastewater and get most of the muck out,” Hanrahan says. “But there’s nowhere to put the muck, so it ends up getting dumped.”

world’s earliest dockyards

The world’s earliest dockyards were built in the Harappan port city of Lothal circa 2400 BC in Gujarat, India. Lothal’s dockyards connected to an ancient course of the Sabarmati river on the trade route between Harappan cities in Sindh and the peninsula of Saurashtra when the surrounding Kutch desert was a part of the Arabian Sea. Lothal engineers accorded high priority to the creation of a dockyard and a warehouse to serve the purposes of naval trade. The dock was built on the eastern flank of the town, and is regarded by archaeologists as an engineering feat of the highest order. It was located away from the main current of the river to avoid silting, but provided access to ships in high tide as well. The name of the ancient Greek city of Naupactus means “shipyeard”. Naupactus’ repuation in this field extends to the time of legend, where it is depicted as the place where the Heraclidae built a fleet to invade the Peloponnesus.

NOTE:Please refer Indian Scripts, writings - you can find an age where these science are at extreme.