beauty of a flower !

பூக்கள் செடிகளிலும்,  மங்கையர் கூந்தலிலும் தான் அழகுற இருக்கும் என நினைத்து இருந்தேன். 

இதோ ஒரு உதிர்ந்த பூவும் - சில கப்பீஸ் மீன்களும் -  திருவல்லிக்கேணி கைரவிணி திருக்குளத்தில். !! 

Parental love !

 ஸ்ரீபார்த்தசாரதியாக சேவை சாதிக்கும் கிருஷ்ண பகவானுக்கு மாடுகள் என்றால் கொள்ளை ஆசை.  ஆவினத்திற்க்கு தம் சிறு கன்றுக்குட்டி மீது வாத்சல்யம்.  அவற்றை நாவினால் நக்கி, மெய் தீண்டி, தங்கள் அருகிலேயே வைத்து பார்துக்கொள்ளும்.

 

நேற்று (28.2.2022)  கண்ணாடி பல்லக்கு புறப்பாடு சமயம் சற்று இருட்டு ! - மக்கள் நடமாட்டம் அதிகம், மேலும் பேண்ட் நாதஸ்வர - மக்கள் குரல் சத்தங்கள் வேறு !  .. .. பிறந்து சில நாட்களே ஆன தம் கன்றுக்குட்டியை விட்டு அகலாமல், மற்றவர் அதன் அருகில் வாராமல் பாதுகாத்த தாய் பசு -  திருவள்ளுவர் வாக்கில் :

 

மக்கள்மெய் தீண்டல் உடற்கின்பம் மற்றுஅவர்

சொற்கேட்டல் இன்பம் செவிக்கு.

'Wet-bulb' temperature ! .. a threshold hotter than the human body can withstand

Today a post on Pakistan – though it starts with Covid 19 – this is no post on the dreaded disease but something on Summer heat !!

Hundreds of desperate Pakistanis overwhelmed a government-run coronavirus vaccination centre in the capital on Monday as the nation grapples with a shortage of life-saving shots even as a decline in new infections has seen some restrictions eased. Most of those clamouring to be vaccinated were Pakistanis who work overseas — mainly in the Gulf Arab nations such as Saudi Arabia — who need a shot of the hard-to-find AstraZeneca vaccine to travel there. “We have a very limited capacity here, but for the past few days the centre has been overwhelmed by those wanting to travel abroad,” senior police official  told AFP.

Pakistan has so far fully or partially vaccinated nearly 12 million people from a population of 220 million, and mostly with the Chinese Sinopharm or Sinovac jabs. Most Gulf nations, however, require incoming foreign workers to be vaccinated with the AstraZeneca or Pfizer brands, which are in short supply in Pakistan.

Moving away, heard of ‘Jacobabad’ -  a city in Sindh, Pakistan, serving as both the capital city of Jacobabad District and the administrative center of Jacobabad Taluka,  the 43rd most populous city in Pakistan. The city itself is subdivided into eight Union Councils. Sitting very far away to the provincial boundaries of Sindh and Balochistan, Jacobabad became a city on the site of an existing village (Khangarh), and is crossed by the Pakistan Railway and many main roads of the province.

Often we hear from people, that temperatures are rising and it is hotter this year that it was before !  Chennaites are lucky – the  ‘agni natchathiram or katri’ this year passed off somewhat ordinarily without harming much in Chennai.   Not so, for many other parts of the Nation. Sad news is that the stifling heat has killed hundreds of people too.  Many parts of Andhra / Telengana experience ‘heat waves’.  During my stay in Kakinada, Wednesdays in Summer would be horrible – there would be 12 hours power cut – 8am to 8pm [there would be more unscheduled power cuts too] – as one returns from outside, one could feel the heat on the walls, in the water from taps and everywhere ! Places like Vijayawada would be hotter still !!

Those who love train travel and have travelled a lot -  would vouch - Travel by Grand Trunk Express from Delhi to Chennai would take 3 days (36 hours – if one starts on a Sat around 7 pm at Delhi – entire Sunday and would reach Chennai Central by 7 am on Monday).  By the time, train crosses Balharshah and Sirpur Kagaznagar – darkness would envelop and by Mancheral, one could experience the climate getting very hot .. .. it would peak at Ramagundam, then Warangal, Khammam and by midnight at Vijayawada, people would sweat in heat.

During peak summer – it would be torrid time for people of Andhra and Telengana as roads would melt in the heat.  Ramagundam, some 225 km from Hyderabad in Karimnagar district of Telangana, has always seen scorching summers. The city boasts of National Thermal Power Corporation’s 2,600 MW Ramagundam Super Thermal Power Station, the largest in South India. Besides, there are several open-cast coal mines run by the Singareni Collieries Company Limited.  On May 11, 2010, Ramagundam had recorded 49°Celsius, the highest in the last decade. 

Moving over to Pakistan, when  the full midsummer heat hits Jacobabad, the city retreats inside as if sheltering from attack. The streets are deserted and residents hunker down as best they can to weather temperatures that can top 52C (126F). Few have any air conditioning, and blackouts mean often there is no  electricity. The hospital fills with heatstroke cases from those whose livelihoods mean they must venture out.  Here is something excerpted from Telegraph UK. 

“When it gets that hot, you can't even stay on your feet,” explained one resident,  “It's a very, very difficult time when it goes beyond 50C. People do not come out of their houses and the streets are deserted,”  a shopkeeper, adds. This city of some 200,000 in Pakistan's Sindh province has long been renowned for its fierce heat, but recent research has conferred an unwelcome scientific distinction.  Its mixture of heat and humidity has made it one of only two places on earth to have now officially passed, albeit briefly, a threshold hotter than the human body can withstand.  With this region of Pakistan along the Indus Valley considered one of the places most vulnerable to climate change in the world, there are fears that Jacobabad's temperatures may increase further, or other cities may join the club.

“The Indus Valley is arguably close to being the number one spot worldwide,” says Tom Matthews, a lecturer in climate science at Loughborough University. “When you look at some of the things to worry about, from water security to extreme heat, it's really the epicentre.” Mr Matthews and colleagues last year analysed global weather station data and found that Jacobabad and Ras al Khaimah, north east of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, have both temporarily crossed the deadly threshold. The milestone had been surpassed decades ahead of predictions from climate change models. The researchers examined what are called wet bulb temperatures. These are taken from a thermometer covered in a water-soaked cloth so they take into account both heat and humidity.  Wet bulb thermometer readings are significantly lower than the more familiar dry bulb readings, which do not take humidity into account. Researchers say that at a wet bulb reading of 35C, the body can no longer cool itself by sweating and such a temperature can be fatal in a few hours, even to the fittest people. 

 “It approximates how warm it feels to humans because we cool via sweating,” Mr Matthews says. “We rely on that exclusively. When you use that measure, the wet bulb temperature, the two regions that stand out on earth are the shores of the Gulf and the Indus Valley in Pakistan. They are truly exceptional.”  Jacobabad crossed the 35C wet bulb threshold in July 1987, then again in June 2005, June 2010 and July 2012. Each time the boundary may have been breached for only a few hours, but a three-day average temperature has been recorded hovering around 34C in June 2010, June 2001 and July 2012. The dry bulb temperature is often over 50C in the summer.

Patchy death records mean it is not clear whether the crossing of the threshold resulted in a wave of fatalities. The effects of entering the danger zone are likely to be blurred, for example with cooler interiors of buildings temporarily sheltering residents from the worst. It also depends on how long the threshold is crossed. Jacobabad and Ras al Khaimah may share fierce temperatures, but they are otherwise very different and illustrate the different challenges that places will face under climate change. In the wealthy UAE, where electricity and air conditioning are plentiful, the threshold may have little effect on residents. In Jacobabad, where many subsist on wages of only a couple of pounds a day, residents must find other ways to adapt. Jacobabad's crown for unsurvivable temperatures may conjure pictures of Death Valley-like deserts, but it is an agricultural hub fed by irrigation canals.  Stretches of the town's bazaar are dedicated to keeping cool. Shops sell electric fans and low-tech washing machine-sized coolers that emit a refreshing mist. Electric solutions are undermined by frequent power cuts however. In the city centre, residents often lose power for three or four hours, while in more distant areas the gaps are longer.

The solution for some is a solar panel, though at £36 each they are expensive for many. Cheap Chinese batteries are also available. “Everyone needs electricity here. It's not for television, it's for keeping cool,” says one electrical goods trader.  Ice is also popular, with factories making huge blocks which are then hacked into 10p chunks at roadside stalls. When all else fails, there are hand fans and people also simply dunk buckets of water over their heads. For those who can afford it, there is the chance to spend the summer in Quetta or Karachi, which are still fiercely hot, but offer some relief. Most stay.

“The people are used to it, they have developed a resistance,” shrugs one administration official. People also said the heat was only one of many problems they faced. Price hikes have caused economic devastation, while there is a lack of fresh drinking water and the city's supplies are brackish. 

High temperatures have also recently made headlines in the US, where Portland, Oregon, hit an all-time local high of 42C (108F) on a dry bulb scale.  As temperatures rise and rainfall patterns shift, difficulties with farming, irrigation, disease and labour are predicted by 2050 to badly hit people's quality of living in many parts of the World, especially for poor people.

With regards – S. Sampathkumar
29^th June 2021 

Ben Gurion hut and airport

The airport began as an airstrip of two unpaved runways on the outskirts of the town of Lydda (now Lod), near the Templer colony of Wilhelma. It was built in 1934, during the British Mandate for Palestine. The first passenger service at the new airport was the Misr Airwork route Cairo—Lydda—Nicosia, inaugurated on 3 August 1935.  By 1937,  Lydda Airport boasted four fully operational concrete runways. In 1943, the airport was renamed "RAF Station Lydda". During World War II it served as a major airfield for military air transport and aircraft ferry operations between military bases in Europe, Africa, the Middle East (mainly Iraq and Persia) and South/Southeast Asia.  The first civilian transatlantic route, New York City to Lydda Airport, was inaugurated by TWA in 1946. The British gave up the airport at the end of April 1948. 

The Negev   is a desert in the  region of southern Israel. The region's largest city and administrative capital is Beersheba, in the north. At its southern end is the Gulf of Aqaba and the resort city of Eilat.  Although historically part of a separate region (known in Roman times as Arabia Petraea), the Negev was added to the proposed area of Mandatory Palestine, of which large parts later became Israel, on 10 July 1922, having been conceded by British representative St John Philby "in Trans-Jordan's name". Despite this, the region remained exclusively Arab until 1946;  the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine allotted the area to the Jewish State, later Israel.  The Negev contains the oldest discovered surface on Earth, with an approximate age of 1.8 million years.  It covers more than half of Israel, over some 13,000 km2 (4,700 sq mi) or at least 55% of the country's land area.  

On 14 May 1948, on the last day of the British Mandate, Ben-Gurion declared the independence of the state of Israel. In the Israeli declaration of independence, he stated that the new nation would "uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of religion, race".  In his War Diaries in February 1948, Ben-Gurion wrote: "The war shall give us the land. The concepts of 'ours' and 'not ours' are peace concepts only, and they lose their meaning during war."  Also later he confirmed this by stating that, "In the Negev we shall not buy the land. We shall conquer it.   

After leading Israel during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Ben-Gurion was elected Prime Minister of Israel when his Mapai (Labour) party won the largest number of Knesset seats in the first national election, held on 14 February 1949. He remained in that post until 1963, except for a period of nearly two years between 1954 and 1955. As prime minister, he oversaw the establishment of the state's institutions. He presided over various national projects aimed at the rapid development of the country and its population: Operation Magic Carpet, the airlift of Jews from Arab countries, the construction of the National Water Carrier, rural development projects and the establishment of new towns and cities. In particular, he called for pioneering settlement in outlying areas, especially in the Negev. Ben-Gurion saw the struggle to make the Negev desert bloom as an area where the Jewish people could make a major contribution to humanity as a whole.  

David Ben-Gurion  (1886 – 1973)  was the primary national founder of the State of Israel and the first Prime Minister of Israel. Adopting the name of Ben-Gurion in 1909, he rose to become the preeminent leader of the Jewish community in British-ruled Mandatory Palestine from 1935 until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, which he led until 1963 with a short break in 1954–55. 

In 1954 he resigned as prime minister and minister of defense but remained a member of the Knesset. He returned as minister of defense in 1955 after the Lavon Affair and the resignation of Pinhas Lavon. Later that year he became prime minister again, following the 1955 elections. Under his leadership, Israel responded aggressively to Arab guerrilla attacks, and in 1956, invaded Egypt along with British and French forces after Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal during what became known as the Suez Crisis. He stepped down from office in 1963, and retired from political life in 1970. He then moved to Sde Boker, a kibbutz in the Negev desert, where he lived until his death.  

Ben-Gurion's hut was the retirement home of Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and his wife Paula (Pola) from 1953 until Ben-Gurion's death in 1973. The "hut", located on Kibbutz Sde Boker, was preserved exactly as it was left by Ben-Gurion and now serves as a museum with a visitor's center operated by the Ben-Gurion Heritage Institute.  In 1952, on a tour of Southern Israel, Ben-Gurion passed by a small community with only a hut and a few tents – Sde Boker. He stopped to greet the founders of the community, who he believed were doing a great service to the newly-founded State by reclaiming the desert. Later, he sent a letter to the community wishing them luck and confiding in them his "jealousy" of their humble lifestyle.

In 1953, Ben-Gurion and his wife joined the kibbutz and moved into the hut. His move can be attributed to Ben-Gurion's wish to settle the Negev desert and lead by personal example. Additionally, he wished to disconnect from the pressures of his job and move to a remote part of the desert.  In 1955, Ben-Gurion was re-elected Prime Minister. Throughout his term which lasted until 1963, Ben-Gurion resided in his home in Sde Boker, and he continued living there until his death in 1973. Per Ben-Gurion's request in his will, the hut and everything inside remained intact and open to the public.  A museum documenting the life and writings of Ben-Gurion was built at the site of the hut and attracts many tourists each year.

The name of central airport of Israel described in the first para   was changed from Lod to Ben Gurion International Airport in 1973 to honour Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, who died that year.  Ben Gurion Airport is located on the northern outskirts of the city of Lod, about 45 km (28 mi) northwest of Jerusalem and 20 km (12 mi) southeast of Tel Aviv.  The airport serves as a hub for El Al, Israir Airlines, Arkia, and Sun D'Or and is operated by the Israel Airports Authority – a government-owned corporation that manages all public airports and border crossings in Israel.

With regards – S. Sampathkumar
5^th June 2021.