Govind Gujar: entomologist's journey to understand the Society we live in

                      23 January 2022   Route: Western India 2021-22 >Delhi-Jaipur-Ajmer-Udaipur-Bharuch-Mumbai-Lothal-Ahmedabad-Adalaj-Udaipur-Haldi ghati-Ranakpur-Ajmer-Jaipur-Delhi< Prelude: I am quite fond of travelling and exploring. Talking to strangers brings new perspectives and hence, some time, I do so. My wife Nalini too loved this idea of travelling on road with our own mini-SUV. I am not sure if she shared my vision of exploration, places of tourist interests, ancient temples, monuments, forts, museums related to history. But certainly, her idea included visits to temples of Gods and Goddesses, and may be modern temples like those of malls and bazars. Every time, I travel I get in to doubt mode briefly. Will everything will go well as planned? Did I do enough to plan our visits? Normally, once I decide the places I wish to visit, then I plan a route that should be more of straight kind. I will avoid the deserted roads. An idea of travelling was borne when I saw

  It must have been in early 2000s that I started suffering from knee pains. One of my colleagues observed that I did not walk straight and commented on my uneven walking. I thought it is due to continued sitting in one posture on chair for long time. Slowly, it dawned on me that I am regularly suffering from knee pain. A visit to the doctor confirmed it. He called it arthritis after an X-ray of knees. Most Indians start suffering from knee pain from the age of 50 years onwards. In my case, it could be so plus minus few years. A friend of mine from Germany who himself happens to be physician thought its occurrence relatively early as compared to most Europeans, who he said, suffer from late 60s or early 70s of their lives. Fortunately, it is osteoarthritis, suffering at knee joints. The other kind of arthritis is related to pains at every bone joints. I heard, it’s terrible and can occur at any age. Knee pain is reportedly due to heavy weight that legs have to bear over many year

2 January 2022 Recent news that Parag Agrawal is chosen as CEO of Twitter Inc has brought cheers to the Indian diaspora abroad and Indians at large in the country. Sometime back, I was listening to the TV programme. The TV anchor said that what India exports is the talents as she listed many Indians like Indra Nooyi and others heading the multinationals in USA and other developed countries. Most of them were educated here in the prestigious educational institutions, before they migrated for greener pastures abroad. Some call it a brain drain, which we suffer economically as the country spent for their education. Others feel that it is better than to have brain-in-drain here. Yesterday, one of my colleagues posted a whatsapp note on this aspect listing all CEOs of Indian origin and commenting that merit gets recognised abroad unlike in India. Naturally it meant to show the consequences of as to how caste-based reservation is affecting merit based hierarchy in the country. Many just jott

After visiting the Great Wall of China in 2006 and later knowing that second longest wall exists in my own country, India at Kumbhalgarh (Rajasthan), it was my wish to visit this place. And this wish has come true in December 2021. So, we reached Kumbhalgarh from Ajmer, about 220 km by road. Kumbhalgarh is in Mewar, westerly range of Aravali hills in Rajsamand district of Rajasthan. It is about 50 km from Udaipur. It is the most elaborate and grand fort built by Rana Kumbha in the 15 th century and has served to guard kings of the region in the most difficult times. Probably, fort was buiIt earlier, but not its present form. It is also a birth place of Maharana Pratap, legendary king of Rajasthan who fought with Mughal king, Akbar in the 16 th century. Reportedly, this battle was inconclusive, but now believed to be won by Maharana Pratap of Mewar. It has temples devoted to Vedi, Brahma-Vishnu-Mahesh. There appears to be more of Jainism during that period. The fort is surrounded by