A nice Valentine's Day

Nothing beats putting smiles on people's faces. This Valentine's Day I guess we must have done a couple of dozen or hundreds with the program we had at Amritsar - giving out roses to ladies.... err and to the occasional kid.

A smiling face makes the whole day's hard work worthwhile.

What do you call a small shopping mall ?

No prize for guessing but you remember this old riddle asking "what do you call a small pig ?" "Piglet".

Ok, a small bull is not called a "bullet".

But yea, a small mall is called.........

Blue Turban, White Turban

Sometime ago friends used to ask me, does the colour of a turban mean anything ? I actually went to ask. And no, it doesn't. Well, just that when the Sikhs attend like a formal dinner or something they don't wear bright pink of course, they just stick to the black and the dark blue.

Well, till today. The Punjab elections are going on. And it seems supporters of the Akali party don Blue & Safron colours and Supporters of the Ruling Congress Party don white turbans. Interesting eh. Good news for turban sellers.

Guess what colour Ah Long would wear ?

Charminar

The beauty is in this place if you just stop and enjoy, truly.

Went over to Hyderabad a couple of weeks back and met a good mate there.

Charminar is a major landmark in Hyderabad and is 400 years old. Built by Mohammed Quli Qutub Shah in 1591, it was built to commerate the eradication of the plaque, shortly after he had shifted his capital from Golkonda to what now is known as Hyderabad.

Charminar is a squarish structure with four towers in the four corners of the square, each of whose sides is 20 metres in length. Every side opens into a plaza through giant arches, which overlook four major thoroughfares and dwarf other features of the building except the minarets. Each arch is 11 metres wide and rises 20 metres to the pinnacle from the plinth. The minarets soar skywards by 24 metres from the roof of Charminar. Each minaret has four storeys, each looking like a delicately carved ring around the minaret. Some Anglophiles call Charminar the Arc de Triomphe of the East. From the ground to the apex, the minarets cover a length of 48.7 metres.