The Derelict Harbour at Alleppey !

The Derelict Harbour at Alleppey !, originally uploaded by ezee as hell out for a few days.

Alleppey for everyone who travels to Kerala is the destination for the back water cruises.


Alleppey is a much older town compared to Cochin and it had a prosperous harbour once upon a time. This now lies ruined and is crumbling away as the harbour has been turned redundant by the comparatively newer Cochin port.


A building stands in solitary splendor and weathers the forces of nature. Surely it will get annihlated with time but for now it exists.

Roll On Down ! Gentle waters of Kerala.

Roll On Down ! Gentle waters of Kerala., originally uploaded by ezee as hell out for a few days.

A lovely light lit up the last section of the boat race at Panangad.

It had been grey and desultory all day but then Brave Helius broke through the pallid clouds and lit up this bevy of Kerala girls as they did a dance on the boat in a rhythm of languid grace.

The boat moves gently and with infinte leisure up the riverine waterways of Kerala.

Panangad is at the southern end of Cochin and it hosts a boat race for Onam. This shot taken during the boat race.

Demi Moore uses leach therapy for glowing skin

Hollywood actor Demi Moore recently admitted that she covered herself in blood-sucking leeches to keep her skin looking fresh and young. It is the secret of her glowing skin and beauty, she said. Weeks after Demi Moore publicly admitted to her undergoing leech therapy, the Department of Ayush (under the Health Ministry, Government of India) has decided to standardize and market leech therapy. There are many such ancient medicines systems often referred to as alternative medicines, herbal medicines, nature cure, holistic healing, etc., practiced in India and other Asian countries, and now in practice and demand in many other countries.

Leech therapy is an ancient technique in Unani medicine system. According to news reports, a high-level meeting of Unani medicine experts finalized the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) specifying rules that are to be followed by all leech therapists practicing in India.

The meeting attended by experts from National Institute of Unani Medicine (Bangalore), Research Institute of Unani Medicine (Srinagar), Aligarh and Kashmir University’s department of zoology, also finalized training modules to popularize leech therapy in four national Unani colleges at Bangalore, Aligarh, Delhi and Hyderabad. The Director of Central Council for Research in Unani Medicine, Mohammed Khalid Siddiqui, who chaired the meeting, said leech therapy had proved to be a highly effective technique against arthritis, sinusitis, migraine, hypertension and frostbite.

Experts say over 100 bioactive substances present in the saliva of the leech helps improve disease conditions through extraction of impure blood from human body (leech bites, hangs on the body and sucks blood). The meeting finalized treatment protocol and teaching models for Unani students interested in specializing in leech therapy. The technique had already gained tremendous acceptance among people in Jammu & Kashmir, coastal Orissa and Andhra Pradesh. Many people from other countries, including celebrities like Demi Moore, also endorse leech therapy. As such, the Council is planning to document the system of leech therapy and provide standard guidelines for all leech therapists. It also had plans to send the SOP to the Union Health Ministry for notifying.

“At present there are no defined procedures. Therefore, there is always the risk of quacks. To bring a regulation we are publishing a compilation for all leech therapists. We have also finished carrying out clinical trials to study the effect of leech therapy on various diseases”, he said.

The application of medicinal leeches, Hirudo medicinalis, for clearing poison was in fashion in Egypt around 2500 years ago. In 2004, use of blood sucking leeches was approved by the USFDA as a tool for healing skin grafts. The general indications for leech therapy are Inflammatory Reactions, Heart Diseases, Rheumatic Diseases, Tendovaginitis and Tendinitis, Venous Disease and Varicose Veins, Arthrosis, Arthritis, Muscle Tension, Antidyscratic therapy ( blood purification and regeneration) of toxicoses and mental, illnesses, Thrombosis and embolism, Passive congestions and spastic conditions, Vertebrogenic Pain Syndromes, Transudates and exudates.

Where to find online info on India

The national portal of India, http://india.gov.in, will give you the most relevant and authoritative information about India.
Then the directory of official web sites of various departments in the government, http://goidirectory.nic.in, will give you more sites that cater to the accurate info you seek. Incredible India, http://www.incredibleindia.org, is the portal of The Department of Tourism, Government of India, to help you plan your Indian holiday, with destination information, holiday themes and all that you need to know to know, see or visit India.
Additionally, if you type India in the search box, Yahoo will give 1,270,000,000 sites related to India and 11,959,933 images. Google will give 520,000,000 sites and 63,800,000 images (as on 24 May 2008). Type in related words to India, you will get several billion search results, perhaps one of the largest for any country.

India: a brief introduction

India is in South Asia. It is the seventh largest country by geographical area, the second most populous country and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal on the east, India has a coastline of 7,517 kilometers (4,671 miles). It borders Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal and Bhutan to the north-east; and Bangladesh and Burma to the east. Sri Lanka and Maldives lie just to the south of India in the Indian Ocean.
Home to the Indus Valley Civilization and a region of historic trade routes and vast empires, the Indian subcontinent was identified with its commercial and cultural wealth for much of its long history. Four major world religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism originated here, while Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam arrived in the first millennium CE and shaped the region's diverse culture. Gradually annexed by the British East India Company from the early eighteenth century and colonized by the United Kingdom from the mid-nineteenth century, India became a modern nation state in 1947 after a struggle for independence that was marked by widespread nonviolent resistance.
India is the world's twelfth largest economy at market exchange rates and the fourth largest in purchasing power. Economic reforms have transformed it into the second fastest growing large economy. A pluralistic, multilingual and multiethnic society, India is also home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats.
You can find a lot of information about India in wikipedia

Scene India

This journal just contains some glimpses of India that I see in my own perspective. There are a lot of great books and other sources authored by well-known and scholarly persons, if you are looking for authentic and accurate information about India. I will always try to present only the correct information and, wherever possible, I will quote the source too.