“” THE KRAAL”” :: Mahatma Gandhi's House In South Africa Up For Sale

Monday, July 27, 2009

http://www.hotklix.com/link/news/India/Gandhis-house-in-S-Africa-up-for-Sale

A house in Johannesburg, where Mahatma Gandhi had lived for three years when he was in South Africa, has been put up for sale by the owner, but it has so far found no takers with even the Indian-origin community members showing little interest in buying it.
Hidden away on a quiet street in Orchards, north of central Johannesburg, the house was designed by Gandhi's confidant and architect Hermann Kallenbach.
Its distinct thatched roofs and rondavel style gave the house its informal name "The Kraal". Gandhi lived in the house with Kallenbach for three years from 1908.
The owner of the house Nancy Ball, who has been living in the house for the past 25 years, wants to move to Cape Town and she has put the house on the market after failing to attract someone with an interest in preserving its historical legacy, the Times newspaper reported.
However, she did not reveal the price of the house.
She enlisted the support of Stephen Gelb, founding director of the Centre of Indian Studies in Africa at the University of Witwatersrand, on a voluntary basis, to try to find a suitable buyer.
Gelb tried to solicit the interest of prominent Indians in South Africa and even explored the possibility of Wits acquiring the property for use as a residence for visiting professors.
"There is little interest among members of the Indian-origin community and also from Wits University," Gelb told the Times.
Ball said: "Mahatma Gandhi left a lot of his peace here. It's a very special place."
The House in Orchards in Johannesburg is one of several legacies left by Gandhi in South Africa. In Johannesburg, there is another area known as Gandhi Farm, where Mahatma Gandhi and his followers stayed and practiced their philosophy of Satyagraha.
In Durban, the most famous Gandhi legacy is the Mahatma Gandhi Settlement in Phoenix, north of Durban, where Gandhi initially devised his Satyagraha philosophy.
Gandhi's fight against racial discrimination in South Africa in the late 1800s and early 1900s is today recognized with several institutions, streets and religious and cultural organisations named after him.

 

30 Jul 2009

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Philanthropist-to-buy-Gandhis-house-in-S-Africa-gift-to-GOI/articleshow/4838460.cms

MUMBAI: A philanthropist plans to buy the house in Johannesburg where Mahatma Gandhi had stayed for over three years and give it to the Government of India for preserving the same as a memorial.
City-based businessman Pradeep Bhavnani, in a letter to President Pratibha Patil, has requested her to give him permission through the official channel for transferring money to the owner of the house in order to finalize the deal.
Bhavnani said in the letter that he would donate the house to the government so that it could be preserved as a museum or a memorial as a tribute to the nation.
"The buyer has accepted my offer of Rs 2.5 crore for the house. I now look upon the government to grant me official permission so that I can dedicate this house to the nation", Bhavnani said.
The owner of the house, Nancy Ball, who lived in this house for the last two decades, has decided to move out and put it up for sale.
Known as "The Kraal", the house is located on a quiet street in northern Johannesburg suburb of Orchids. Mahatma Gandhi had stayed there for three years since 1907.

 

Can someone sent me pictures of Mahatma's House in South Africa. Kindly mail the pictures at >> rmbawa@hotmail.com. Will upload the pictures on this blog.

Antarang :: India’s First Sex Museum

Antarang, India’s first Sex Museum, opened in Mumbai in 2002. Antarang is the country’s only sex museum, but surprisingly very few people know about its whereabouts. It is purposefully located in Kamathipura, Mumbai's red-light area. “It is ironic that in the land of Kamasutra, we have sex dealt with in a prudish way. Very few people are aware of the museum's existence. The museum is run by the government as a part of anti-HIV program.

Antarang is a one-room exhibition displaying models of human anatomy and illustrations. This is the only sex museum in India. Since the museum is located in the red light district a great bulk of its visitors are prostitutes who visit the museum together with their partners being taken there by health workers.

Antarang, whose floor tiles are painted to look like sperm, was opened in 2003. It became popular among prostitutes and some of their clients after health workers began taking them there.

News as on January 12, 2008 >> Antarang, India’s only sex museum at Kamathipura, will be shifted inside the premises of Wadala's leprosy hospital for the next two years.  A ward inside the leprosy hospital will be the new  house the museum. The  museum was started by the Mumbai State Government in 2002, following a sudden surge in HIV/AIDS cases in the city. It was abruptly shutdown in July last year citing maintenance problems.

Akshardham

The Akshardham temple, in New Delhi, built without steel, is entirely composed of sandstone and marble. It consists of 234 ornately carved pillars, 9 ornate domes, 20 quadrangled shikhars, a spectacular Gajendra Pith (plinth of stone elephants) and 20,000 murtis and statues of India’s great sadhus, devotees, acharyas and divine personalities.

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The monument is a fusion of several architectural styles of pink stone and pure white marble. Pink stone symbolizes bhakti (devotion) in eternal bloom and white marble of absolute purity and eternal peace. The monument was built after over 300 million man hours of services rendered by 11,000 volunteers, sadhus and artisans.
It is the one of the wonders of the modern world, and the wonders of modern India.It is one of the biggest and most intricate religious places of worship ever constructed. Combining several completely different and contrasting architectural styles of Hindu temple architecture of northern India -- Rajasthani, Oriya, Gujarati, Mughal and Jain -- the Akshardham Monument is entirely constructed of marble and the red-sandstone that Delhi is famous for, and that so many of her monuments are constructed of.

Built in 5 years of non-stop, round-the-clock construction, the massive and awesome Akshardham Temple Monument to World Peace was completed. The Akshardham Temple in New Delhi, India, has been constructed by the BAPS foundation -- the builders of the various Swaminaryan Temples across the world, is truly a modern day Wonder of the World.

Sonic Boom : Audio Visual Phenomenon.

U.S. Navy photo by Ensign John Gay:::Off the coast of Pusan, South Korea, July 7, 1999 -- An F/A-18 Hornet assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron One Five One (VFA-151) breaks the sound barrier in the skies over the Pacific Ocean. VFA-151 is deployed aboard USS Constellation (CVN 64).

The term sonic boom is commonly used to refer to the shocks caused by the supersonic flight of an aircraft. Sonic booms generate enormous amounts of sound energy, sounding much like an explosion.

The term supersonic is used to define a speed that is over the speed of sound (Mach 1). Mach 1 speed is when an object in dry air at 20 °C (68 °F) travels at 343 m/s, (1,125 ft/s, 768 mph or 1,236 km/h). Speeds greater than 5 times the speed of sound are often referred to as hypersonic. Mach 1 barrier when crossed by supersonic jets can be an interesting visual as well as an audible phenomenon.

This picture shows an Air Force F-22 Raptor aircraft participating in an exercise in the Gulf of Alaska June 22, 2009 as it executes a supersonic flyby over the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis.

This kind of visual phenomenon can also be seen with nuclear blasts, at the time of space shuttle launches, modern firearm bullets and rifle shots. The phenomenon is not well studied. Scientists refer to it as a vapor cone, shock collar, or shock egg, and it's thought to be created by what's called a Prandtl–Glauert singularity.

As per the scientists a layer of water droplets gets trapped between two high-pressure surfaces of air. In humid conditions, condensation can gather in the trough between two crests of the sound waves produced by the jet. This effect does not necessarily coincide with the breaking of the sound barrier, although it can.

Most modern fighter aircraft are supersonic, but Concorde and the Tupolev Tu-144 were the only supersonic passenger aircraft. Since Concorde's final retirement flight on November 26, 2003, there are no supersonic passenger aircraft left in service. Some large bombers, such as the Tupolev Tu-160 and Rockwell/Boeing B-1B are also supersonic-capable.

Original Story: What Supersonic Looks Like :: www.livescience.com The site chronicles the daily advances and innovations made in science and technology. They take on the misconceptions that often pop up around scientific discoveries and deliver short, provocative explanations with a certain wit and style.