A towering seven footer Mongol Hui Muslim, who entered the Ming King’s (Yongle emperor Zhu Di – the third Ming king) service, Zheng He, is immortal for his astounding navigational quests. When the Ming army captured the Yunan province, the 11 year old Ma Sanpao was one of the many castrated and put…
Zheng He (Cheng Ho) in Calicut
A towering seven footer Mongol Hui Muslim, who entered the Ming King’s (Yongle emperor Zhu Di – the third Ming king) service, Zheng He, is immortal for his astounding navigational quests. When the Ming army captured the Yunan province, the 11 year old Ma Sanpao was one of the many castrated and put…
I spent most of my childhood vacations near the temples of Pallavur, the bigger one being the Thrippallavurappan temple, with Lord Siva as the main deity and I have been lucky to see & listen to the great Pallavur trinity comprising the brothers, Appu, Kunjukuttan & Manian. I introduced the…
I still remember our driver of yester years in India, with much fondness. He used a number of methods to help conserve fuel or for that matter to get more bang for the ‘small’ buck in those days where a car was a luxury and gas cost Rs 10-15 per liter in India. As a child I remember him saying “Ah!…
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's one worldly possession was an Ingersoll ‘Turnip’ pocket watch, which he wore tied on a string (somewhere along, he must have lost the chain, if it had one) around his waist, hidden between the folds of his dhoti. As he bent down or stopped, the watch would spring fr…
During the days of the radio, we used to have a perfectly boring period when a program called Kambola Nilavaram (Market situation) was aired. They droned out the prices per quintal of spices, and all kinds of commodities. Then I heard from my Badagara friends about how these prices were set or fixe…
