But, strangely enough yesterday, after watching a video on YouTube about the Taj Mahal, I chanced upon a video about Tipu Sultan, The Tiger of Mysore, and there it was; the answer to the mysterious rockets in The Star Spangled Banner.

The story goes back to the three decade long Anglo-Mysore wars of 1766 to 1799, when first Haidar Ali and later his Son Tipu Sultan kept the invading British and neighboring princely states at bay. The main weapon which gave Tipu Sultan and his father the edge were rockets.

Even though rocket artillery were used by the Chinese, Mongols, Turks—and later found its way in to Europe; its use was limited. It was Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan who took it to the next level. Instead of the traditional bamboo casing, they used iron casings, with sharp blades and iron point attachments, making Tipu’s rockets a lethal and effective weapon.

The British received an unpleasant surprise in 1780 when Hyder Ali brought into action the Guntur iron-cased rockets weighing more than 12 pounds each, mounted a 10-ft bamboo pole, that had a range of nearly half a mile

Eventually, the relentless British defeated Tipu Sultan, seized some of his rockets and shipped them back to Britain for further scrutiny:

These experiences eventually led to the Royal Woolwich Arsenal’s beginning a military rocket R&D program in 1801, their first demonstration of solid-fuel rockets in 1805 and publication of A Concise Account of the Origin and Progress of the Rocket System in 1807 by William Congreve [31], son of the arsenal’s commandant. Congreve rockets were soon systematically used by the British during the Napoleonic Wars and their confrontation with the US during 1812-14. These descendants of Mysore rockets find mention in the Star Spangled Banner.

So there you have it, the story of the rockets in The Star Spangled Banner. A fascinating example of how precisely things had to happen in history to have affected the present and the future, and how a single word in a national anthem could have a story of epic proportions.

Even though I am glad I know this now, I am a little saddened too, for India has forgotten this wonderful part of her history. I remember learning about Tipu Sultan and the Mysore Wars in school, but I have never heard about his rockets and his brigades of rocket men being mentioned. But, the British have kept this history alive, and Tipu’s rockets can be seen on display at the Royal Artillery Museum in London.

PHOTO CREDIT: juvertson | NASA

In a slip-up barely hours after the Shamshabad airport opened for business, a KLM flight from Amsterdam, which was supposed to land at Hyderabad, skipped the airport and flew across the country — first to Delhi, and then to Mumbai.

Imagine the ordeal of the 243 passengers on board!

This reminded me of something similar which happened to me about ten years back. I was on an Indian Airlines flight from Delhi to Ranchi and somehow the pilot got confused and headed to Jamshedpur to land, which is about 132km southeast of Ranchi. On his final approach he realized he was at the wrong place, and quickly aborted the landing and turned towards Ranchi. Everyone familiar with Ranchi, who looked out the window could tell the pilot was in the wrong city. It was only a few days later when we saw the news of the pilot error in the newspaper, was our suspicion confirmed.

Photo by: Mark D. Martin

What really caught my attention was the concern of environmentalists, and their concern that a car this cheap will eventually result in more cars on the road, and hence add more pollution to India’s already polluted cities, plus more clogged up roads. Now, if cars were to sell like cell phones in India, then they are probably right, the future for India might be, worst case, a country of billion cars, and Indian roads may never be the same again.

But, in reality things might not be as bad as the pundits and environmentalists like to predict. For one, we are talking about a country which is already full of highly polluting and less efficient vehicles. If anything, a car this cheap, less polluting, and more efficient, would replace some of the older vehicles, and get them off the streets. The net surge in number of vehicles might not be as bad as people like to think, plus by replacing more polluting vehicles, there could be reduction in pollution. Tata has set the standard with the nano, and the competition will try to out do and better that mark. Which means, look forward to more efficient, and less polluting smaller vehicles for the Indian market.

On the other hand, there are only so many cars Tata can produce, with 250,000 to start with, and then upto one million a year. So, you are not going to see a billion cars on the streets overnight. And if it does get to those number, then the road systems in Indian cities, cannot support that many cars, and so no one will be driving them anyway. Either way environmentalists have nothing to worry about. They should probably spend their time more efficiently getting those big SUV’s off the streets.

The bigger concern is when ox carts get replaced with Tata Nanos. The potential for non polluting and less polluting vehicles being replaced by the Nano, can be considered a bigger concern, and can definitely put more cars on the streets. But, I wouldn’t worry too much, when companies like Tata start thinking of better solutions for the Indian Market, that’s a good sign. Instead of thinking of building a SUV for India, they thought of building the right car for India. That tells me that, the future is sound. When we face higher traffic and polluting problems in the future, we will not only think different to solve those issues, but also find solutions that will work well in India.

Who cares if the brothers are fighting, the markets are growing because the two are trying to outdo each other.
Finance Minister P. Chidambaram

Due to a small act by my mom, I have a great example of this turn around of the Reliance empire. So this is how the story goes. My grandfather, a freedom fighter and an INA soldier, used to get a substantial pension from both the Central Government of India, and Kerala State Government. Back in 1992, he was bedridden after suffering from a stroke, and my mom used to take care of him, and manage his pension. It was also the year I turned 18, and as an 18th birthday gift from my grandfather and her, she bought some Reliance stock in my name for Rs. 6000, which was money left over after expenses, from my grandfather’s pension.

A year and half back, when Reliance was split up between the two brothers, all those Reliance shares got converted into stocks for each of the companies created at the time of the split. Today, I still have those stocks, and they are worth over Rs. 86,000. That’s approximately an amazing 1300% gain, with most of the gain coming in just the last two years.

With India still growing economically, this sibling rivalry is no where from over, and there is still a lot more to come. So, as an experiment, I am going to hold on to my Reliance shares longer, and post it’s performance every few months.

I know most of us are overawed by the Indian growth story. There is no doubt about that India Shining thing but I have my reservations when it comes to the foundation on which our country is shining. Let me begin with a confused statement. The growth story in India didn’t happen soon. Rather it happened too fast. For people who are feeling that the intellectual fluid is coming from a broken head, be my guest. But be sure to take a look at it when you have overcome the intoxication of your success story typified by the gadgets and gizmos, the dream car and the dream apartment. Needless to say a fat paycheck which makes all this possible. When your loosened nerves are tightened, perhaps that day all of us would realize that though we had loaded guns we were using the bayonet.

When I say this, I ask myself are we using our full potential. Has the animation industry really come off age in India? Is India really the IT superpower? Have we really exploited the geographical advantages of Mumbai to make it the financial capital of South Asia?

The I Gen is gung ho about their recently acquired paraphernalia that the growing consumerism can justify. But think about it – Has consumerism in India become so big to pull the world economy as a locomotive. I say, we are still the small part that actuates the wheels in motion. We may be the ball bearings, but we are not the electric motor that rotates the blades in motion.

When I talk about growth in India, I talk about this growth. I dream of being in that league. When I talk about growth, I want to fire with my loaded gun and stash the bayonet away in my backpack.

We are one of the largest implementers of SAP and Oracles of the world. We are a giant machine which churns Buy and Sell side equity research reports for global corporate houses. We have our sunrise industry in India in the name of outsourced animation works in the country. But the hard fact remains. We are not SAP, Oracle, Bloomberg, Reuters or for that matter – Walt Disney. We are the sons and daughters of a large extended family. We are not the breadwinners. We certainly are not the head of the family. If I had to find an analogy for the growth story of India I would settle for this. From underprivileged and abused children we have graduated to be spoilt brats, with the daddies making our wishes come true.

I can see the eyebrows raising and people commenting on my blasphemy. Some would even say it’s the brainchild of a brain with no brains with the meaning as meaningless as a caviar made with quail eggs. What’s the point? It’s simple, I’m not asking Adam Smith to embrace Socialism, but accept that Socialism exists.

When I see the immense talent and potential of the workforce in India, I am convinced that we have the power and the resources to do something innovative that can be truly termed as a class apart. Somehow we haven’t attained that. I don’t know whether we are trying to do that or not. A school of thought emerges from one part of my brain, we have the talent, we have the resources, monetary and technical, but do we have the need? Our desires are so easily being fulfilled that we feel no need.

The only time we felt the need, our government was too caring to assume all the responsibilities of building the nation and breast feed us for the decades to come. Of course the mammaries of the welfare state proved to be too unproductive to satisfy our hunger and by the time realization crept in, it was too late. The global reservoir in the garb of the IMF was too pestering and opened its flood gates and we had to lift our barrages that shielded us for all these years. We had no time to innovate but very soon we identified where the opportunity lied. It was a bane which became a boon. It was a blessing in disguise. We could certainly be the workers who would man the machines and run the factory. Management was not our cup of tea.

Originality of ideas and innovativeness still defies us. Bazee.com came into picture only when eBay proved the viability of its business and later Bazee was too happy to give in to the offer of its holy matrimony with ebay. Mingle street sprang up only into action when Google proved the world with its open community of Orkut. A one stop shop for marketing, catching up with long lost friends, business, dating. My imagination will be as good as yours.

An original and innovative idea becomes a common sense over a period of time. We Indians have an excellent common sense which is quite uncommon in some other parts of the world. Our brains are good popcorn pop-ups, but somehow we have managed to stop the process of evolution and deny them the title of Incubators.

I don’t know how many of you agree or disagree. What I know that this article is making a lot of you uncomfortable. The technocrats would say to hell with it. They are the innovators in their own right. They got together and made the simputer which is a famous story of shattered dreams. We have a guy as a high school dropout who developed a cow dung powered battery which is highly successful. That guy is far from being labeled a technocrat, but an Innovator – damn he is.

Gone are the days when the techno savvy lad from the IITs and the disciple chanting management mantras from the IIMs were the blue eyed pupils of corporate India. Today all of us are riding the wave and we think we are flying too high. For this time let not realization creep in at midnight. We have followed the crowd during the wee hours of morning. Its time to take a lunch break and forget everything we had though. Let’s rethink. Its time to unlearn what we have been taught. Let’s start drawing our learning curve from today. I have thought over it sometimes, though it may not pass over as a deep thought. The fact remains, we are still lurching in the realms of Mediocrity. I would wait for the native talents to recognize their genius.

For the less fortunate, follow the live text commentary of the match over at BBC.

Scorecard

Here are some snippets of the very expressive text commentray from BBC:

“Nightmarish times for Pup Broad as Dravid dispenses with his Wall alter-ego in favour of some Henry Heave-Ho.”

“Dravid smashes Jimmy off the front foot for an extraordinary six over the cover boundary. The ball travels so fast that it knocks a full pint straight out of a stunned spectator’s hands. Soaked in beer, the fan turns to the gallery and raises his arms in unmerited triumph.”

“There are, sadly, people out there who will try to tell you that this clash will be as forgettable as Daphne and Celeste. Ignore them – for they are fools who know nothing of the ways of cricket.”

“I’m still here! I am the unfortunate fool who has to work the late shift today until seven; I am manically pressing the refresh button in same kind of attempt at happiness.”

More

“The moos of a cow, bleating of a goat from the phone has proved effective to trap leopards,” said D. Vasani, a senior forest official in Gujarat. “This trick works.”

PHOTO: Kiran Kumar

Photographs:
Flickr, Yahoo!, Black Bombay

From the Blogs:

• Bomb blasts in Mumbai’s railway stations
  India Uncut
• Blasts in Bombay: A timeline
  Vantage Point
• Bombay’s rush hour rocked by blasts
  Sepia Mutiny
• Terrorists blow up Bombay trains
  Ultrabrown
• Terrorists strike Mumbai again
  Varnam
• Multiple bombs detonated on Bombay rail system
  Counterterrorism blog
• Bombs in Mumbai!
  Gateway Pundit
• Mumbai Blasts
  Pajamas Media

Update:
Find more information on Mumbai Help, a blog created for information about this horrific attack.
Metroblogging Mumbai has a series of posts and an open thread on the train bomb blasts topic.
Check out the various newspaper front pages on Newsdesigner: Mumbai Bombings, More from India

BlogSwara is a collaborative musical endeavor by a group of Indian bloggers around the world. For the first version we have songs in 3 different Indian languages. Malayalam, Tamil and Hindi. Everything is done by the bloggers themselves. Lyrics, Music, Orchestration, Vocals, Recording and Mixing. Everything is done online. Everybody works from their own place that is in different parts of the world.

Blogswara Blog
Via: Kiruba