Category: Uncategorized

“Mark tells you that you may know this person! 

He or she is a mutual pal!

Of course he or she may be close to you!

Or you may not know him or her at all!”

Being the son of an army officer, shifting and getting uprooted from a place was a routine affair! I have known friends who have stayed in the same place and same school for ages or since they were born! I would have changed at least six schools and many more places in my life! Every two to three years just when friendships are getting strong and may be for life time, you are separated and may never see those kids ever again in your life!

Of course if you spend more than two years in a place and in senior grades like after 6 then in all probability you can still contact your old friends and may be get in touch! A reunion here and there and may be remember the good old days!

Your college mates of course will be more in touch since we spend more than five years (six if you count residency!) with them! Then your hostel mates or room mates or medically BODY MATES! Yes! That was not a typo! Body mates are literally the ones with whom you share a BODY! The dissection which is done in the first year is done and usually a single body (it is known as a cadaver!) is shared by a group of people! 

Usually these people would be facing the exams and the stress and the whole course together! Usually they are close and maybe for a long time!

Having suffered the uprooting and shifting in army life, you may know a lot of people! Your Facebook and other social media list of friends would be huge! But with all the friends in the world and in your friend list, there may be only a few whom you can call close! 

Now I was used to this shifting and not forming close bonds for long but for my children the shift from India to another country was tough! They had spent all their time in a single school and in a single place! They had actually spent all their conscious part of their life in the same house with the same neighbor! So  when they shifted out, it was a big shock especially to my son who had a big group of friend! 

The initial enthusiasm of new place and new stuff and being with family made way to the realisation that he may not see his old friends again! 

Of course unlike us, the phone makes sure that you may not lose touch with them but still nothing can replace the Human touch! Then again kids are amazing! They take very little time to get over stuff! They make new friends in an instant and then the whole cycle starts again! 

That is life and change is life! In spite of all these I still remember those amazing time when we used to watch a single movie with friends and enjoy not only the movie but also the company! One such movie was Maine Pyar Kiya! Talking about that movie reminds me not only of my friends but also birthday celebrity the dear mom Reema Lagoo! 

Now say good nigh to your friend WhatsApp group and sleep!

Shubh Ratri!

“It’s always blue as the sky and white as milk!

The colour of innocence and purity is white!

White is the colour of your proper choice!

Which is why milk in any other colour is just ain’t right!”

Now before you pick up the colour swords! My favourite colour is not white! Nor is my favourite drink white milk! 

The other day we were shifting our house and boiled milk for the first time and allowed it to flow over! The tradition and modern cross was not that proper since it fell over the infra red heater and now the poor heater may not see another dish for a long time! Of course we drank that hot milk with nothing but a little sugar but the memories of milk and my mother simply gushed out like an emotional tsunami!

Remember how your mother would give you a glass of warm milk early in the morning everyday! Many times I would drink only the milk to get it over with and later eat the Horlicks or Boost powder! The worst would be when a single drop of water or even a damp spoon would be left in the jar and the whole thing used to become a hard rock! Of course we boys would still like to lick it and eat the rubbery but sweet mess! Others would put hot milk or hot water into the jar and voila you will have an instant chocolate drink like the way we used to get on special occasions!

Milk is something which is very close to the average Indian household! No one can survive without that! Starting from the coffee or tea and then getting that extra milk if it is your birthday or some holiday! Or even if you have an extra guest in the house or one fine day you are in the mood for a glass of tea! Since ours was a typical coffee drinking family! This used to make drinking tea special! My mother used to love the tea I used to make and she never liked to make tea! One of the few things like rasam which she can make very well but used to like what others make! 

Every holiday had its own special milk variation! 

If it was a kerala festival then more of jaggery with milk so that the sweet would be brown! If it is white then it was her famed Paladda payasam which is made with rice but her added magic was the coconut milk in the end! Even now when I make it like her, my kids come rushing for the coconut payasam!

In Tamil or Kannada festivals the sweet payasam would be white! Of course this is not a rigid rule! My mother used to love making semiya payasam and this is a sweet which can absorb as much milk you can throw at it! 

The simplest dish to make is the rice payasam though the best rice payasam is the one which has a little bit of condensed milk!

Now condensed milk was a sweet nectar sent from heaven! Whenever mom used to use the condensed milk can, we used to eagerly wait for her to finish the can knowing fully well that the end and the sides would be sweet and yummy to lick!

When mom was in a generous mood she would give a spoon full for us to use as we wish! I used to love putting that over milk bread and eating to my heart’s delight!

Another amazing milky nectar was this dish called the Therattipal! This was apparently better with a spoilt milk! My dear Padma ATHAI (dad’s sister) was known to make the best therattipal ever! This was a mammoth undertaking since you have to stir and stir! Slowly and steadily you have to keep on adding sugar and make it thicken!

Interestingly many of the famous milk sweets are made by ‘breaking’ the milk!  

Now the most popular milk variant which kids love is the cheese which in our days was not so popular! In fact we used to get canned cheese which was like a greasy sour variant of butter! Better left alone for a long time till the pizza revolution!

Many houses even make ghee with the butter collected from the milk and other places but then that is a long tedious process and my mother of two boys never even dared to venture into it!

Of course after all use is done, the leftover milk is used for making curd for the curd rice or thayir saadam without which any meal is incomplete!

My mother had a dish which we used to make with even excess curds! She used to heat it and curdle it further! That used to give rise to a dish which is similar to curd sambar but more sour! We used to call it Kurki! When there was no side dish or sambar in the house my mother used to simply grind some coconut (even when I say we have no side it still means that an average Indian house would still have some coconut or even some old dish lying in the fridge somewhere!) with jeera and some chillies and mix with the Kurki and we would have a feast! 

My dear mother was a great lady and another great lady is birthday celebrity Droupadi Murmu!

Now if you have a glass of warm milk given by your mother in your hand, consider yourself as the luckiest person in the world and sleep!

Shubh ratri…

“Two misers having a tiff!

Who can save more dime!

It could never be sorted of course!

’cause they could squeeze the last drop of even a lime!”

An interesting article on one of the richest but most frugal woman ever!

This woman used to stink! Literally and figuratively! She used to wear the same dress for years till it started disintegrating! She The press called her “The Witch of Wall Street.” 

The basis for the name was her irascibility and her personal hygiene! She stunk. In summertime the odor would be so foul that people working in the same bank office where she kept a desk would scheme to stay as far away from her as possible!

 Her long black dresses, decades out of style, would turn green and ragged from wear and filth!

Her fingernails were crusty dirty. She went around for 20 years beleaguered by a painful hernia before she finally had to see the doctor.

She was outraged by his fee for surgery ($150 – this was a century ago), but so desperate that she agreed!

And later she tried to stiff the doctor, as was her wont whenever it came to paying for anybody’s services!

Hetty Green, often dubbed the most stingy woman in history, amassed a fortune estimated at over $2.3 billion! 

Despite marrying a fellow millionaire, she lived frugally, consuming leftover cakes and broken biscuits from grocery stores, and arguing daily for a free bone for her dog!

Her miserliness had severe consequences, such as when her son’s leg had to be amputated after she delayed treatment while seeking free medical care. Hetty Green passed away in 1916 at 81 in New York City, earning a place in the Guinness Book of World Records as the “most stingy person in the world.” She died following a stroke triggered by a quarrel with her maid over a salary increase!

Being a miser is miserable sometimes! Let’s try to get a balance! A balancing act is the sketch of the day! Done in between a super busy day! 

Have a Shubh ratri!

“He could hear voices in his head! 

The thoughts of going insane filled him with dread!

The medic then examined his hat!

There was a small speaker underneath that!”

This is a tech which is an integral part of our tech armamentarium but did you know that this was invented way back in the 1990s but came into the market only in the 2000s!?

read on!

The Bluetooth technology covers everything from audio for wireless headphones and speakers, pairing gaming controllers and keyboards, tethering internet connections, and even occasionally transferring files over the air. Even to the extent that it can be used for remote controlling!

Like everything else, Apple always tries to do things different and by default even the first iPhones and subsequent ones do not use Bluetooth tech for file transfer! They introduced their wifi transfer which was better and faster and later taken up by others!

But still Bluetooth is a valuable tool and much energy efficient since the power consumed and the tech required is much basic! 

The Bluetooth standard was originally conceived by Dr. Jaap Haartsen at Ericsson back in 1994. Everyone knows the story how it was named for a renowned Viking and king who united Denmark and Norway in the 10th century!

At the time, it was designed to replace RS-232 telecommunication cables, a much older standard conceived in 1960, by using short-range UHF radio waves between 2.4 and 2.485 GHz. 

In 1998 the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) was formed, which to this day publishes and promotes the standard and its subsequent revisions. Bluetooth SIG initially only included Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia, and Toshiba, but reached 4,000 members by the end of its first year. Shortly after the inception of the Bluetooth SIG, devices began making their way to markets. The group now contains over 30,000 member companies at various levels of influence!

The first consumer Bluetooth launched in 1999. It was a hands-free mobile headset that earned the technology the “Best of Show Technology Award” at COMDEX. The Bluetooth 1.0 specification also officially launched that year, leading to the release of the first Bluetooth-equipped chipsets, dongles, mice, wireless PC cards, and mobile phones in 2000!

The latest Bluetooth version, the Bluetooth 5 offers the flexibility to make IoT solutions better because of 2x speed, 4x range 8x data capacity. It offers better IoT connection as the range increased up to 4 times. So not only home but whole building, industry, factory, office surrounding would be possible to connect properly. In case you are wondering what is IoT; well the term IoT, or Internet of Things, refers to the collective network of connected devices and the technology that facilitates communication between devices and the cloud, as well as between the devices themselves!

Bluetooth was originally conceived with wireless voice calls in mind but not high-quality music streaming which is its primary use now! Bluetooth now has had competition from Infrared tech which soon became outdated and slow, NFC, WIFI and others! But still, even after more than 30 years of its first invention, it continues to be the first choice in audio! Reminds me of the day’s celebrity who was also the best choice for good roles Mangal Singh Dhillon! 

Now turn off all bluetooth devices and sleep!

Shubh Ratri!

Camino Ghosts by John Grisham!

Fictional thriller genre 

Ebook review

No spoilers; not a murder mystery anyways!

I fail to see the love John has with the Camino! This is the third in the series starting with Camino island which was in fact an introduction to the island but very soon departed to stolen books and introduction of the character called Bruce and Mercer! Then you had some thrill with stolen rare books and an exciting ending but the best part of that novel was how to write a novel and get over a slump!

It was followed by Camino winds which like the name suggests is about Camino Wind or cyclone Leo and then a murder mystery which was a frank let down!

After that debacle (according to me) this is a resurrection of sorts for some characters and also the story!

Now although the title points to Ghosts, and the stories do too; it may not be the essence of the story!

The depiction of the slave trade even in passing was really bold and heart wrenching! Some parts are really truthful and those are the places in which John shines!

I really wonder though how he writes and generates novels like a factory on steroids! Just some time back I had written the review of the sequel to the firm!

In fact even his gray mountain series has some books! Not to mention his Kid lawyer series of Theodore Boone! And here I am struggling to finish one novel!

John may be the one author who writes faster than I can read!

Now coming to the story proper, Mercer who was missing in the second novel is now a popular novelist who has two great books under her sleeve and a marriage and a god job to boot! Her friend then introduces her to a non fictional novel written by a debutant who had written it as a memoir to her people in some island near Caimino!

That island then gets into the radar of developers while Lovely the last inhabitant of that island which is like a sacred spot to her, gets in the way!

Between the court and the field, what happens is the rest of the story!

Of course it is fast paced and gripping in places and apart from some serious stuff in the middle, the novel in fact moves according to the plan!

There are no surpsises and it is a fairly predictable ending!

You do not have to read the first two novels to read this one since even though many characters are same and in chronology, the stories are independent. Of course if you are a stickler to series like me then please read the first two novels or at least read my summary of them or use the wiki!

A good time pass but nothing much to write home about!

I Miss John of the Firm and The Pelican brief and the King of tort days! 

Luckily Camino Ghost is tolerable and not ghastly!

“I washed my hands but they were still dirty!
The stain was so dark and deep!
I rubbed with the saop all night long!
Only to realise t’was a dream in my sleep!”

Remember how you have always been told to wash your hands before you eat? Of course frequent washing became an obsession after COVID!
I still remember the days of Cadaveric dissection in our MBBS! Our initial days we used to wash and wash with all sorts of soaps and cleanser to feel clean and mainly to get that smell of formalin out! If the lunch was after dissection then we of course would not be in a mood to eat! Later on adaptation set in and we used to just have a quick wash with or without soap! And rush for a hearty lunch!

Now, how would you feel when I tell you that one of the biggest inventions happened because this scientist rushed to have food without washing his hands!?

So the Scientist in question is Constantin Fahlberg! The overworked guy (who isn’t!?)
was working for a long time on the compound radicals and substitution products of coal tar, and he had made a number of scientific discoveries, that were , so far as he knew, of no commercial value!

One evening he was so interested in his laboratory that he forgot about his supper till quite late, and then rushed off for a meal without stopping to wash his hands!
Since it was pre Covid days, I guess it was still not the norm!

So he sat down, broke a piece of bread, and put it to his lips. It tasted unspeakably sweet! He did not ask why it was so, probably because he thought it was some cake or sweetmeat.

He rinsed his mouth with water, and dried his moustache (yes, that was also the norm!) with his napkin, when, to his surprise the napkin tasted sweeter than the bread!

Then he was puzzled and he again raised his goblet, and, as fortune would have it, applied his mouth where his fingers had touched it before. The water seemed syrup!

It flashed on him that it was the cause of the singular universal sweetness, and he accordingly tasted the end of his thumb, and found it surpassed any confectionery he had ever eaten!

He saw the whole thing at once and had discovered some coal tar substance which out-sugared sugar! He then dropped his dinner, and ran back to the laboratory!
There, in his excitement, he tasted the contents of every beaker and evaporating dish on the table. Luckily for him, none contained any corrosive or poisonous liquid or then we would not have heard about it! I still wonder if many such inventions have been missed because the inventor at that time was not so lucky!

So anyway one of them contained an impure solution of this new product. On this he worked then for weeks and months till I had determined its chemical composition, its characteristics and reactions, and the best modes of making it, scientifically and commercially!

When he first published my researches, some people laughed as if it were a scientific joke, others, of a more skeptical turn, doubted the discovery and the discoverer, and still others proclaimed the work as being of no practical value!

But when the public first saw this product and tasted it, everything changed!

The product is proving a wonderful success. It is used already in many ways. Prof. Leyden, of Berlin, recommended it to sweeten fine wafers and other foods for invalids, and wrote a formula for it in such cases. This is used by bakers and confectioners, and more specially by Mannl & Co., the great wafer manufacturers of Carlsbad, Bohemia. It is also employed by the makers of glucose and beet sugar!

The product is so sweet that two or three teaspoonfuls converts a barrel of water into syrup! A small wafer of it converts the bitterest quinine solution or acid drink into a regular molasses!

Yes! The sweet sugar substitute is Saccharin!

It is not a sugar, but contains carbon, hydrogen, sulphur, oxygen, and nitrogen; and its chemical name is benzoyl sulphuric imide. It is neither a nutrient nor a poison. It is derived from the toluene of coal tar, by a process comprising at least seven distinct steps! It has a far sweeter taste than sugar, and a faint, delicate flavor of bitter almonds. Of course, the side effects and other profile has to be researched further but overall sometimes even not washing your hands may lead to lottery! Of it may not work everytime like when sometimes the lamp burns while sometimes or somewhere your heart! Which reminds me of the famous song of birthday celebrity Hemanta Mukhopadhyay; Kahin Deep Jale Kahin Dil!

Listen to it and you will get a good sleep! Of course if your heart is burning when you are old then it may not be love, but more likely acidity!

Shubh Ratri!

“The slow and steady may win the race

Only in stories or to save the face! 

‘Cause in real life speed is the king! 

Without that you can’t talk an’ can’t sing!”

When we were learning to sail using the small sail boats in the Hussain Sagar Lake boating club in Hyderabad; our instructor was a funny guy! He used to tell us that sailing a boat and flying a plane are only for people who drive a car fast!

Previously he was a flight instructor and he used to laugh when parents used to urge him to take the students in the flight slowly! 

He used to tell them that if you fly a plane slow and low then you will crash! 

Same thing for boats with a sail! You have to accept the wind as much as you can! If the wind direction is opposite then that’s the only time you are forced to sail slow!

So not everything which is slow is good! If you are making Upma for example, when the water is boiling if you don’t put the rava fast and mix fast then it will either form lumps of be unevenly cooked! 

In the same way a common perception is that driving slow is good! Well that’s subjective! If you are driving a vehicle then you must stick to the average speed! Faster of course is bad but driving too slow is also not good! 

 In fact, driving too slowly can be almost as dangerous as going over the speed limit.

Although it is smart to take caution and drive slowly when it is foggy, raining, or while in a school zone, you should not drive too much under the speed limit during normal circumstances. 

The reason for this is because slow drivers can disrupt theflow of the traffic and cause congestion on the roads. When this happens, it causes other drivers to continuously slam on brakes or feel the need to pass, which puts all vehicles close by at risk of accidents!

Individuals who choose to drive 10 miles under the speed limit are six times more likely to be in a car accident! 

Other trouble spots will emerge when blind turns or low visibility conditions are involved; coming up on a slow driver on a foggy day, for instance, can present the approaching driver with a very limited opportunity to slow or otherwise avoid the accident! 

That’s why there are many places where you are fined even for driving slower than the limit! Of course out birthday celebrity will always be fine when he drives like a commando in his movies and ask, ‘doon kya!?’. 

Our own James bond Mithun da! Or  Chakraborty!

Now stick to the speed and all will be ok!

Shubh Ratri!

“A small puddle on the road filled with water! 

You would love to jump on it with laughter!

But right now you are too old you see!

Though your inner child will jump with glee!” 

One of the most popular books about longevity is “Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life,” written by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles.

Ikigai loosely translates to “the happiness of always being busy,” and is centered around a person’s true purpose in life. Finding your ikigai is said to make life more meaningful.

The book and all the hype and fame of Ikigai is actually based on this small place in  Okinawa, Japan, a blue zone with the highest concentration of centenarians in the world!  Which basically means that this is a place where you have the highest concentration of people more than a hundred years old! Imagine that!

In fact if you are around 80 years old then you may be probably one of the youngest in that area!

Here ikigai is a common theme, according to García and Miralles who interviewed some of the world’s oldest people.

In fact the village has been the center of study of many and there has been several attempts made to understand why or how they live so long! Even otherwise Japanese have been known to have big life expectancy! 

A Japanese proverb states: “Only staying active will make you want to live a hundred years.” 

In this village you will find things which are unlike other ‘old’ people places! Being old is not an excuse for them! In fact even the oldest of the lot work like it is not big deal! They do not simply take rest and drown themselves in nostalgic reminiscence (of course they do that also but not always!)!

Instead they work! The catchpoint here is another Ikigai concept! You do the work which is your Ikigai!

Now this has become a common theme in many courses all over the world! 

How do you find your Ikigai?

Well it is the junction point of four things! The first step is to find what you love! Make a big list! Then select the thing you are good at! Then make a list of things which will make the world a better place which you love and are good at! And finally list the thing which can make you rich! Now the last can be stuff which can make actual money but it should also be interpreted as which makes you rich in experience also and not just the cash!

Once you get the centre point of these four circles then you would have found your Ikigai and that will make you live life king-size! Remember what Anand says; “Babu moshai, Zindagi Badi honi chahiye, lambi nahi!” which means LIfe must be big and not simply long! The people in Okinawa have a long life because their life is big! A larger than life figure also is birthday celebrity Kisan Baburao “Anna” Hazare! 

It has also been said that sleep is very important for ‘big’ life! So sleep!

Shubh Ratri!!

“The train follows the track!

There is no looking back! 

Of course if there’s some slack 

Just Watch out for any crack!”

Some years back there was an interesting forward which was found to be more or less true which is a rarity in WhatsApp forwards which is why I have stopped forwarding any ‘facts’! This one was very interesting since it said that the modern rocket back is actually the size of two horse’s behind!

Read on!

Now the standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is four feet or 8.5 inches (US and their standards!). In normal human being terms; A standard-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge of 1,435 mm ( 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in). The standard gauge is also called Stephenson gauge (after George Stephenson), international gauge, UIC gauge, uniform gauge, normal gauge and European gauge in Europe, and SGR in East Africa!

The sequence described now is a famous one and is replicated more or less the same! 

Now most standards gauge was initially built in England! And it was replicated by them in other parts of the world!

Now why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used!

Why did “they” use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing!

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long-distance roads in England, because that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts!

So who built the old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe (including England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever since!

And ruts in the roads? The initial ruts were formed by Roman war chariots, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing! 

Finally that distance is the standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches! Which derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot. 

The Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two warhorses! 

There is a new modern twist to this! 

A a space shuttle sitting on its launch pad has two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank!

These are Solid Rocket Boosters, or SRBs. 

The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site! The railroad line from the factory had to run through a tunnel in the mountains!

The SRBs, therefore, had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses’ behinds!

So over two thousand years ago, the width of two horses’ behinds turned out to be a major design feature of what is arguably the world’s most advanced transportation system! 

Am sure when we have an advanced vehicle developed for interplanetary transport, it will be the size of two horse’s behind! Now that may be music to a donkey! Music makes me think about the birthday celebrity Pritam Chakraborty!

Now do not think about a Meter gauge and sleep!

Shubh Ratri!

“All the houses clear and same!

May have different colour or name!

But the world outside is different you see! 

That’s why this flat works for me!”

When I was doing my MBBS in Kerala; and when I used to tell my friends that many people in Bengaluru live in apartments, it was a big shock to many! Now of course Kerala has some big swanky apartments but the average Keralite would not have seen himself or herself restricted in a closed space! 

They have such large houses with a courtyard and open spaces with a variety of trees in the back! The house was only a part of the whole system! 

Most of the houses were big and full of green! Many times there also will be a well and then some! The average house may not be bright much but the nature as its decoration, it used to feel grand!

We city folks of course know how to live in an apartment! Of course individual houses do have their charm and responsibilities but apartments have their own good stuff! If you are part of a township or society then it a very good deal especially in the early and later phases of life! 

As work increases in city though, these high-rises are the norm! I had seen one image of an apartment complex in China which made me dizzy!

Many family like to stay in independent houses if given a choice but the average worker is usually given an apartment which he or she has to share with others. That life is something different and the norm of the working class now. 

Now if you thought that the apartments were a new thing you would be surprised that they were here thousands of years ago!

It is believed that the first apartment buildings were built by the Romans two thousand years ago. These multi-story structures were called insulae (pronounced insul-eye) meaning islands, because they took up a lot of space equivalent to entire city blocks. These apartments were crafted from unforgiving materials such as timber and mud so fires and collapses were common. 

The rich continued to live in separate houses while the poor rented these apartment spaces from wealthy proprietors!

Bottom floors were usually taken up by shops and businesses with the upper sections reserved for residents which is so similar to the situations today!

Other evidence of vertical living has been shown around the world. In Arizona, for example, Montezuma’s cliff dwellings showcase buildings five stories high, while in the desert sands of Yemen vertical apartment buildings made of mud were beginning to show up. These buildings were built close together and are still functional today, needing additional plasterings of mud to keep the structure stable

In China’s Fujian province, squat circular structures called Tulou, three to five stories high, housed entire family clans. Looking like a pattern of radiating circles when viewed aerially, these structures housed living areas, storehouses and wells all fortified by strong exterior walls. The buildings followed the principles of feng shui and also served to keep inhabitants safe.

The elevator was a major game-changer in the history of the apartment building and a primitive model was commissioned by King Louis XV in 1743 so he could visit his ‘special friend’ housed in a different floor of the Versailles palace!

In large cities across the world, the Industrial Revolution spurred a rapid rise of the tenements with notorious living conditions. They gave way to to today’s fashionable condominium apartments especially after the building of the Dakota apartment building in New York City in the late nineteenth century, which changed people’s perceptions of apartment living as something only for the poor.

The first housing society in India started in 1914s in Grant road! While towns like Ahmedabad, Chennai, Bengaluru, & Delhi soon followed suit. Ahmedabad had its first housing society called Pritam Nagar developed under the guidance of Sri Sardar Vallabhai Patel in the year 1927. 

Bengaluru had its first housing society project in the 1970’s called Paresh Apartments Co-operative Housing society build in 1974 in Malleswaram town! Now of course apartments are mushrooming all over and the outlook towards them is slowly changing. What remained constant and that too for a long time was the chief ministership of Naveen Patnaik for the past 24 years! He is known as the Politician with no foes so much so that he has even been awarded the Ideal Chief Minister award!

Hoping for more administrators like him…

still praying for those affected by the apartment fire.

Shubh Ratri…