Anagha Speaks

Walkers and lots of walking space! On our last night in Stockholm, the students and faculty of the Royal University of Arts, treated us to a special Swedish music and dinner at a Rowing Club. After the day long conference at the school, we were taken for an hour long boat ride, to watch the islands of Stockholm. We, about 50 of us, disembarked near the Rowing Club, a very quaint and wood log cabin, right on the water. All around us, the Stockholmers were enjoying the summer evening, some fishing, some boating. It was wonderful to see the leisure and an attractive appeal of the ‘rural’ right in the centre of Stockholm. Walking in Twilight @ 10:30 pm After 2-3 hours of fun and revelry, we were urged by all our Stockholm friends to take a walk along the water front, to reach our hotel. Most of them accompanied us too. For Puneites, a ‘short’ walk would mean 15-20 minutes, right? Well, the short walk turned out to be good 40 minutes to our hotel. But I was not complaining, as the...

Its Official! The 'billion plus' term that was being used since the end of the past decade has been validated by the 1.2 billion count as concluded by Census of India 2011. Here is a quick glance at the numbers (whew!) and some interesting comparisons that I thought I should share with you: 1. We added 181 million or about 18 crore of people in the past 10 years, since 2001. So we produced about 1.8 crore babies per year; 50,000 babies per day; 2000 babies per hour and about 35 babies per minute!!! 2. Indians constitute about 17.5 % of the world's population, while Chinese constitute for 19.4%. Together, Indians and Chinese account for almost 37% of the world's entire population.  3. If we add the entire populations of United States, Brazil, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Japan, their total would come to about 1.2 billion. 4. The population of Uttar Pradesh (about 20 crores or 199 million) and Maharashtra (about 10 crores or 100 million), two most populous states,...