Kumarakom: Capital of God’s own country!

By Clint Thomas | Yahoo! India News – Tue, Jun 21, 2011

By early June the southwest monsoon breaks and there are three months of wind and water with short spells of sharp, glittering sunshine that thrilled children snatch to play with. The countryside turns an immodest green. Boundaries blur as tapioca fences take root and bloom. Brick walls turn mossgreen. Pepper vines snake up electric poles. Wild creepers burst through latente banks and spill across the flooded roads. Boats ply in the bazaars…thus Arundhati Roy begins her Booker Prize winner – The God of Small Things. Although the novel - which is set in Ayemenem village adjoining Kumarakom - does not render the unspeakable beauty of Kumarakom, aren’t the aforementioned words enough to lure you to the most beautiful place in Kerala (arguably)? And If I say Kumarakom is the capital of the God's own country, will you disagree?

Well, honestly, this is my fourth trip to Kumarakom, with an intention of doing a photoblog on Yahoo! Strangely, it had been raining all these four times, maybe, to make me realize that the beauty and majesty of Kumarakom are at its best during monsoon.

And this time, I’m in a houseboat, the perfect place for chilling out -and much more ;-). Houseboats are big barges with five-star amenities –air conditioned bedrooms with contemporary bathrooms, modular kitchens that prepare the choicest Kerala-style food, home theatre and whatever else you want. Some of them have as many as five bedrooms, some have conference halls and some are even double-storied.

Every here and there you see a fisherman, hounding for Karimeen (pearl spot). The boat captain excitedly explained to us four different methods to catch a pearl spot fish and how clinically they do it. Interesting!

At the prow of the houseboat sits Sreehari, 15, after whose name the boat is named. He doesn’t just share his name with the boat, but he owns it! The young guy too has his share of knowledge to impart – about Tiger Prawns, another taste of the Kumarakom. He flashes his torch into the water, toward the stone wall of the canal’s side and I see two small bulbs flashing between two stones. And he says those are the eyes of a Tiger Prawn. Wow!

Before I clicked this photo, it never occurred to me that lightning is the best source of light for night photography. Yes, this photo was clicked at 11:40 pm, there was lightening and the photo came out like this.

It may be the company of boatmen, the palatable Karimeen (pearl spot) fry, mouth-watering tiger prawns curry, a bottle of chilled beer from the boatmen’s icebox, a romantic night with your other half, or the cruise across the Vembanad Lake, Kumarakom guarantees you something to cherish for a lifetime.

India won ICC world cup 2011

By defeating Sri Lanka , India emerged the champions of international cricket defeating Sri Lanka by 6 wickets. It was all cheers to skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who won the man of the match for his unbeaten 91 and Gautam Gambhir scoring 97.

Chasing 275, India managed to score the runs in 48-2 overs inspite of Sachin and Sehwag falling early. Yuvraj Singh, who won four man of the matches in the tournament, was adjudged man of the series.

Indians who are the number one in Test cricket are now the number one in One Day cricket too.

All-rounder Yuvraj Singh, was named "man-tournament" for this World Cup 2011. With him, the

the most celebrated players were batsmanSachin Tendulkar and captain and wicket-keeper Mahi Dhoni. Mahi is considered by fans and by his teammates as the best captain of the "men in blue", as the Indian national cricket team are known

Polythene Pollution

Every year, around 500 billion plastic bags are used worldwide. 500,000,000,000. Five hundred followed by nine zeros. That's a lot of bags. So many that over one million bags are being used every minute and they're damaging our environment.

Big numbers can be daunting so let's put it another way. Every man, woman and child on our planet uses 83 plastic bags every year. That's one bag per person every four and half days. Of those 500 billion bags, 100 billion are consumed in the United States alone.

Causes of Plastic Pollution

Plastics are used because they are easy and cheap to make and they can last a long time. Unfortunately these same useful qualities can make plastic a huge pollution problem. Because the plastic is cheap it gets discarded easily and its persistence in the environment can do great harm. Urbanisation has added to the plastic pollution in concentrated form in cities. Plastic thrown on land can enter into drainage lines and chokes them resulting into floods in local areas in cities as experienced in Mumbai, India in 1998. It was claimed in one of the programmes on TV Channel that eating plastic bags results in death of 100 cattles per day in U.P. in India. In stomach of one dead cow, as much as 35 kg of plastic was found. Because plastic does not decompose, and requires high energy ultra-violet light to break down, the amount of plastic waste in our oceans is steadily increasing. More than 90% of the articles found on the sea beaches contained plastic. The plastic rubbish found on beaches near urban areas tends to originate from use on land, such as packaging material used to wrap around other goods

Control Measures

• REDUCE

The weight of a plastic bag is about one-tenth the weight of a paper bag. Besides using less material, plastic bags produce less than half the greenhouse gas emissions (a lower carbon footprint), require 70 per cent less energy to manufacture and generate 80 per cent less waste than paper alternatives. Proper bagging can help reduce waste even further.


• REUSE

Plastic bags are arguably one of the most reused products in our society. Over 90 per cent of families reuse plastic bags around their homes for a wide range of purposes, such as bringing lunch to work, lining garbage bins, disposing of diapers and for other sundry usages. The high percentage of reuse enables shoppers to avoid the added environmental impacts associated with using a new bag.


• RECYCLE

Plastic bags are fully recyclable. They are a valuable resource that can be reused and recycled several times over. These are used in building & construction, roads and new plastic bags. (Wal-Mart reportedly recycles about 120 million pounds or approx. 54 KT per year). While recycling helps in protecting the environment and in recovery of energy, it also provides immense employment generation opportunities.

Kidney stones

What is Kidney stones?

Kidney stones are one of the most painful disorders that affect humans. Kidney stones are solid masses of mineral salt deposits that are normally filtered through the kidney and emptied via urine. Urine has a natural substance, which dissolves these minerals, thereby preventing them into becoming solids or calculi. Sometimes due to dehydration, these salts don’t get dissolved and crystallization takes place. It grows large enough to obstruct the renal ducts or stuck in the uterus, causing sharp and severe pain in the urinary tract. Untreated, kidney stones can cause renal failure.

Common Causes of Kidney stones

• Urinary tract infection (UTI)
• Overdoses of Vitamin D
• Mineral imbalance
• Kidney disease
• Dehydration
• Gout
• Diet

Home Remedies for Kidney stones

Tip 1:

Boil two figs in a cup of water. Drink this first thing in the morning for one month.

Tip 2:

Mix 1 tspn of Holy basil leaves juice with 1 tspn of honey. Have this every morning for 5-6 months.
Eat 2-3 Apples a day.

Tip 3:

Watermelon, either eaten as a fruit or had a juice is very good.

Tip 4:

1 cup of juice made with radish leaves taken 2 times a day.

Tip 5:

First thing in the morning, drink 1 glass of fresh Tomato juice. Add a pinch of salt and pepper to this.