The Goonch River Monster

Goonch

    There are people who hunt for pleasure but there are also other who hunt because they have to kill a dangerous beast. The Goonch catfish is such a beast. It lives in central Asia – India and Pakistan and it is one of the most dangerous animals in its region.
   
    What makes this fish so special?

   
    It is bigger than the normal catfishes and it is a predator. On top of that, it has a taste for human flesh and that makes it so dangerous and therefore popular.
   
    Why this fish became so different?

    The main reason is that in the past, when people in India died, their corpses were burned and then thrown into the river. However, not always the bodies were completely burned, so the remains were for the fishes and therefore now this big monster likes our meat. This, of course does not hold true for all of the Indian rivers but mostly for the Kali river.
   
    How does it look like?
    It is usually around 2 metres long, it has teeth (something which the other similar fishes do not), its barbs are longer than the one of the normal catfish and at their end they were transformed to bones. So, they look more like spikes than barbs.
   
    According to some specialists, this fish can reach over 80 kilograms and can be over 2 metres long, which means that it can easily eat a small child or even a teenager.

Really Amazing India

 Ancient India is a very fascinating place which gave a lot to the world. In order to take the picture, hare are some facts.

The 6th century, the time when Europe was continent hosting only 3 to 5 countries or even Empires, a man in India calculated the number Pi very precisely and used it to calculate circumference of the planet, and to put the cherry on top, he succeed in that so much that his calculations were only 70 miles from what appeared to be the circumference when the 20th century scientists calculated it.

15th century was the time when Madawar found a way to calculate Pi with even greater precision. His formula was π/4=1−1/3+1/5−1/7+1/9 etc. However, according to the official information that you will find in many places, this formula was found by Leibniz in the 17th century.

One more thing:

There is a story about Varaha Avatar, more than 10 thousands years old, which tells about big flood and how a boar saved the earth. However, what is interesting about this is story is something else. It's the pictures related with it and that on them, the Earth was drawn round, which means that 10 thousands years ago the people on the Indian continent knew about the real shape of the Earth.

There are many other clues that ancient India was the place where many of the modern things were created but which glory was taken away during the years.

Check the video and learn more. I personally consider that interesting and if you do not agree about something, subscribe.

The Ancient Vimanas and Their Capabilities

It looks like more and more people start to believe that the world will not end in 2012 and that the ancient people were not a bunch of drugged hunters and shamans but actually well educated people with knowledge way more developed than we ever thought.

Vimana

So, what I found these days is some info about flying machines mentioned numerous times in ancient texts as “Ramayana” and “Rigveda”. Those texts describe not only how the machines looked but also the sounds they made and the destinations which the people were capable to reach with them.

The outside was shiny, made of special metals, wood and alloys. The engines used mercury and they were driven by men. The people were inside the machines, staying in well looking and comfortable room. It is described that they had special costumes and that they had to eat special things because of the flights.

It is said that the machines were different for the different purposes. The writer describes the sounds these were making. Some were very loud while other sounded like birds' song.

Here is what one of the texts say:

“Thanks to powers hidden inside the mercury, which creates air vortex, the person inside the machine can travel to the end of the sky. Thanks to the mercury we can produce power equivalent to the one of the thunder. You only have to fill the engine with mercury and heat its top. This creates the needed amount of power for the flight.“

Other interesting thing is that these “planes” can move in all directions and can be very fast. According some texts, thanks to these, people had reached the moon.

Other interesting fact is that during the 30s, officers from Hitler's army bought many Indian books where this sort of machines were described and according some people they've tried to build them.

Will you believe to this, it is up to you, but it certainly very interesting hypotheses.

Sri Sathya Sai Baba- the Avatar

How advanced are we today? Do we believe in things that we cannot see or we are material people and if we cannot touch something it does not exist for us? Well, this question may have different answers depending on the place where we ask.

For example, if you go to some advanced and well economically developed country, then the chances for the people to find you crazy for asking this is pretty big. Most of us, in the modern, west civilization, are not very spiritual and hardly believe in things that we cannot touch or see.

However, in places like India, the people, maybe because their way of thinking or because of the level of their education, still believe in spirits and modern gods. So, it is no wonder then, that even today, they are capable to find and to determine Avatars ( a god in a human body). According the beliefs, a god becomes an Avatar because of its advancement, which makes the incarnation in a human body impossible. So, the god makes links with beings on the earth and incarnates in them, and therefore they stand in for him.

One of those gods is Sri Sathya Sai Baba. This man, according different sources, has from 6 to over 100 million devotees. He created an organisation named after him, which has branches in over 100 countries.

Many people considered him god, so it is no wonder that many photos of him can be seen on the shelves in the houses and in the cars of the people.

How Sri Sathya Sai Baba made the people believe?

The materialization was the strongest weapon, which the man-god was using. Things like rings, necklaces and watches were created from thin air and that was enough for his followers to believe in him. He also raised dead people and healed the sick. His organisation built one hospital, an university and several schools.

According the beliefs, Sri Sathya Sai Baba will reborn as Prema Sai Baba.

So, no matter that some of us are sceptical and do not believe in such spiritual things, there are people in the world that are ready to prove their love to god in different ways and to follow him in everything.

Yoga- Mind,Soul and Body in Perfect Harmony

Yoga Practice

Talking about India means talking spiritual. This land is soaked with things created to bring joy not to the body but to the soul of the human.

The most wonderful architectural achievements in India were built to worship Love or God. That is why you can visit wonderful temples and monuments, but very little forts. Every little thing in India is usually connected in some way to a specific tradition or belief.

So today i will make you familiar with the highest form of spiritual behaviour – Yoga.

What is yoga actually?

The word yoga comes from Sanskrit and it literally means “union”. A way to make your soul, mind and body one whole. However, the western civilisation usually uses the words asana and yoga as interchangeably terms, because for many people yoga is only a physical exercise and nothing more. Actually, the true is that asana is only a small part of yoga. It is one of the 8 limbs of this practice which includes also:

Yama- Universal morality

Nyama- self observance

Pranayama – a special exercises for proper breathing

Pratyahara - a way of controlling the senses

Dharana – concentration

Dhyana – devotion, meditation and divine

Samadhy – union of the divine

The 8 Limbs of Yoga

The origins of Yoga practice date back in the first millennium before the common era. In these times the seers were meditating in order to discover the secrets of nature. The main goal of yoga is liberation from the cycle of live.

The Yoga practice has 2 main divisions:

Karma-yoga – which comes for work. This means that the person who practices it will achieve yoga with a lot of hard work.

Jnana-yoga - means yoga through knowledge.

Today yoga is practised all over the world by people from different ages. They all find different reasons for this but they all say that it helps them a lot. So, if I caught your attention you may try it also.

Indian Political System

India has over 700 people of electorate. This makes it the largest democracy in the world. Unlike the American and the British democracies the Indian one is much younger.

Pratibha Patil

It was established in 1947 when the constitution of the country came into force. It is one of the most emended constitutions in the world with more than 80 changes over the short period of it's existence,only 60 years. This means that it was changed more than once a year. The government structure has two levels. The lower house is called Lok Sabha. It is copied from the British house of commons. The second one is the federal system. It borrows experience from USA, Canada and etc.

The main political figure in India is the president. He is the head of the state. However he has more of a ceremonial role than actual rights of taking political decisions. He can also return bills to the parliament for reconsidering, this is also called veto. The current president of India is Pratibha Patil.

The Parliament;
The lower house (Lok Sabha) has 552 members according to the constitution. They represent the people of India and united territories. Today the total number of members is 545. Each of these members represents a single constituency. Each constituency can be represented by 1 member.

The Upper house is called Rajya Sabha and it is much smaller than Lok Sabha, with total of 250 members. 12 of these members are chosen by the president and they usually are artists or other popular people. These two houses share their powers, except in the specific are of money supply. Here the main powers are in the hands of Lok Sabha. The parties in India are divided in national and state parties. The national parties are bigger and today there are 6 of them.

This is how the political system in India looks like. It is a mixture of several other system and it continues it's development today.

Elephas Maximus

Indian elephants are actually the race called “Elephas Maximus” of the Asian elephant. Its specials features are the large body and the longer front legs. The population of Indian elephants was counted in the year of 2003 and it was below the 30 000 mark. But still the Indian elephant population is the biggest in Asia.

The basic information for this species tells us that the Indian elephant has very dexterous trunk equipped with 100 000 muscles with which the elephant can use its trunk for a variety of functions . The most visible part of the Elephas Maximus is its ears. There are very different from their African cousins because their ears are not exceeding the height of the neck. The Indian elephant has a very poor eye sigh reaching only to 10 m. but the interesting thing about the eye sigh is that it can improve in shady areas. The elephants do not have the usual canine teeth but they have special molars with a complex structure which helps the animal to grind its food more easily.

Today the highest concentration of Indian elephants (over 6 000) is found in the jungles of Myanmar. The Elephas Maximus needs very vast areas in which it can feed on especially when there are many animals and they form a horde.

Now the most heavy task is to preserved this species of Asian elephants. It is hard because the Indian elephants are breeding very slowly with only 4 offspring for 60 years. The Indian government give a hand in this elephant crisis but still methods such as indoor breeding are very expensive but the good thing is that there is a very low progress with the artificial insemination.

Today in modern India the Elephas Maximus is still used as a national symbol in some temples and forest tourism departments but most importantly it stands as a symbol of the country.

Indian Railways

Maybe the main way of transport in India is the rail transport. The Indian railway system is the biggest in Asia with total covered distance of more than 63 000 kilometers of track. Everyday more than 7000 train stations services approximately 13 million passengers. The IR employs 1.6 million people which makes it the third largest employer in the world after the Peoples Liberation army (the Chinese army) and WalMart with 2.3 millions employees and 2.1 million employees. The Indian Railways has more than 3 million wagons, 7800 locomotives and 40 000 coaches.

History of Indian Railways.
They had been established in 1853. Since 1947, when was India's independence proclaimed, IR owned more than 43 rail systems. After that, in 1953 the railways were nationalised and since then they are the biggest in the world.

In order to be easier to manage the IR are divided into zones and after that again subdivided into divisions. Today there are 17 big zones in IR and 67 divisions. The management structure of IR is very simple and logic. In head of each zone is a manager and above him is only the Railway Board. Below the zone manager is the division manager who is in control of the division structure.

The accommodation trains in India are divided also in trains which travel between the cities and suburban trains (including the metro trains). Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and etc. have their own suburban railway system. The accommodation trains are divided in classes. You can choose between 10 different classes. The 1A is the highest of them all and it offers to the passengers very comfortable travel. The coaches are air conditioned, carpeted and very spaces. These coaches are also the most expensive. However IR has also UR class. It is the lowest class and it is also the cheapest. The seats are made of wood and usually aren't cushioned. These coaches are very crowded and you can hardly find a place to sit.

Today the company has a surplus of more than $6 billion. The salaries in the company also increases and as general it's future looks bright.

The Gupta Era

After the fall of the Kushan empire, India was invaded by foreign nations like the Mlechchhas. The Gupta dynasty emerge as a result of the merging of the foreign tribes. Chandra Gupta the First was the responsible man for this event.

The Gupta Era is now known to be the golden saga of the classic Indian history. Also this period is famous for its beautiful architectures and paintings. For example the many wall-paintings in the cave of Ajanta are one of the most precious piece of the Indian arts some of which were created in the forth century AD. Elephanta temple is the place where you can see the big stone statue of the three-headed god Shiva. Every temple build and carved in the Gupta period can be identified by their hall and tower.

Writing in the Gupta age was centered around the religion, lyric and historical poetry. One of the most decorated writers of that period was Kalidasa. Also the famous Kamasutra was written in the golden age. Mathematicians also took historical step during the age of Gupta, like the greatest mathematician of India - Aryabhatta.

Today only several monuments from the Gupta age were able to survive. Some examples of the golden Indian age architecture is preserved in the temple of Tigawa and in the temple at Deogarhnear, respectively build in 415 and 510 AD. Some of the remaining ruins of Gupta architectures can be found in Bhita (Pradesh State) but most of them are in ruins.

The Gupta period was one of the most successive age of the Indian history. It sets the base for the period of “Greater India” which was the time when Indian culture started to influence the surrounding countries.

Richest People in India

India can sometimes surprise you with the diversity of lifestyles. Most of the time when we mention India the first thing that comes in our mind is poverty. Today i'll present you the other side of the coin – the richest people in India. Some of them are not rich only by Indian standards but by world standards. I will represent the top 3 richest businessmen in the subcontinent for 2011 starting with number 3 and moving upwards.

Number 3 – Azim Premji. He owns an IT company called Wipro. It is one of the largest IT companies in India and also one of the biggest in the world. It has more than 100 000 employers world wide. The wealth of Mr. Premji is more than 16 Billion dollars. He was in top 50 richest men in the world every year for 1999 to 2005.






Number 2 – Mukesh Ambani. Today he is ninth richest in the world with personal wealth of more than 27 billion dollars. He is a chairman and major stakeholder of one of the largest conglomerates in the world- Reliance Industries.

Number 1 – Lakshmi Mittal. The richest in India and 4th richest in the world. He owns a steel company named ArcelorMittal. It is the biggest producer of steel in the world. The personal wealth of Mr. Mittal is more than 31 billion US dollars. Here are some interesting facts about the way all these money are being spent. Mr. Mittal's daughter had the most expensive wedding in the recorded history of the world. The new home of Mr. Mittal has more square metres of space than Verasailles. The price of this impressive home – 670 million pounds.

So, next time when you think about the poverty in India have in mind that this country is also home to one of the richest people on Earth.

The History of Indian Football

The game of football was brought to India by the British. The first known matches were played between the army teams. During the British ruling some football teams were created, like Calcutta Club, and set the historical record for the oldest clubs in the world. In 1872 Calcutta FC was the first Indian football team to be established.

IFA or Indian Football Association was created in the year of 1893 and it organized one of the oldest football tournaments in the world (1898) which was called Durand Cup. The first ever victory in Indian football history was in 1911 when the Mohun Began won the IFA - Shield Trophy and for the first time give the glory to the Indian nations because previously it was held only by British teams. All India Football Federation or AIFF was created due to the increasing number of the country's football teams. In 1954 AIFF started the Asian Football Confederation.

The golden era of Indian football was between 1951 and 1962. During that period, India saw its talents winning the gold medals in the Asian Games and became the first nation to reach the semi-finals of the Olympic football games in Melbourne (1956). Nowadays India is considered as a worthy opponent in Asia but even though the Indian national football teams still can not make good presence in the other international tournaments.

The game of football is one of the most watched sport in India. In the popularity table football seats next to the cricket sport. Every football tournament is viewed by the football lovers and with the interest growing by every year India earns a good value of money which can help the development of the training bases in the country.

Indian Martial Arts

India is home of different martial arts and fighting styles. They all can be generalized in two divisions - dhanurveda and sastravidya. Dhanurveda means knowledge of archery. Sastravidya means the art of sword or the knowledge of the weapon. The martial arts can be also divided by the region if their occurrence in two groups south and north. Today I will present you some of them.

Shastar Vidiya – this is an ancient martial art specifically designed for battlefield. It is part of the Sastravidya group. It Can be deadly that is why when the British came in India in 19th century they banned it and replaced it with their own way of leading a battle. Today the Shastar Vidiya is not forgotten and it can be seen even the UK. Just in matter of understanding how dangerous this martial art is i'll tell you that masters in Shastar Gvidiya can brake both arms of their opponent in 1 second with just 3 simple moves.

Kalaripayattu – It is an ancient martial art originally crated in Kerala state. Kalari means legs and it refers to kicks. For some people this martial art looks like dance because it develops swiftness of the body and helps for better concentration. There are 3 types of Kalaripayattu – Northern, Southern, and Mid-Kerala. This Martial art can be practiced by people in all ages. Usually the students begin practice when they are only 7 years old. Kalaripayattu should be trained in a Kalari. This is training hall built in specific way in the direction from East to West.

In most of the Indian martial arts are used weapons like katara, urumi and otta. Urumi is one of the unique. It is a flexible blade which can behave almost like a whip.

Indian Airports

Today India is a developing country. The total population of India is approximately 1 billion people. All these people have to be able to travel with no problems. In addition to that the tourism in India is developing with very fast rates. Each year more tourists are visiting India. All these facts are leading us to the conclusion that India will need not only more but also bigger airports in the next years. The government is working hard to find a solution to this problem. They invest billions of dollars each year in expanding of the old airports and in building new one's.

Nowadays India has several big airports which are located throughout the entire country. Here I will present some of them with their specifications:

Rajiv Gandhi International Airport – It stays around 25km from Hyderabad city. It has a capacity of 40 million passengers per year. It is designed to handle the biggest planes in the world today, like Airbus A380. This airport was commissioned only in 31 months. The RGIA was awarded for it's eco-friendly design with a silver rating.

Terminal 3 at Indira Gandhi International Airport

Indira Gandhi International Airport – It is designed with 5 big terminals. Terminal 3 is the 8th largest passenger terminal in the world with a capacity of 34 million passengers annually. This terminal also has the first automated parking management in India. The parking can handle 4.300 cars. It has 7 levels and today is the most modern parking in India. T3 will handle more than 90% of the passengers using the airport.

Chatrapatti Shivaji International Airport, Mumbai – This is one of the busiest airports of South Asia with more than 25 million passengers and 533 000 tonnes of cargo. This airport along with the Indira Ghandi International Airport handles more then a half of the air traffic in South Asia.

The Bengaluru International Airport – It handled more than 9 million passengers in 2009 and it is expected to handle more than 17 million in 2015. For 2009 more than 280 traffic movements were done each day.

We can mention also the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport, Chennai International Airport and etc. How this business will develop in the next years? We will have to wait to find out.

Rabindranath Tagore - a Poet, a Novelist, a Composer and a Painter

Each nation has its special and most worshipped people. They have the respect of its countrymen and represent the best qualities of the national character. Rabindranath Tagore is such a man for India and the Indians.

He was born in 1861 in Bengal (today Calcutta). He was the youngest child in the family of Debendranath Tagore and Sarada Devi. His father was a leader of a new religious movement called Brahma Samaj. The family was wealthy and the young Rabindranath had the chance to live better, than many of its coevals. As a boy he wanted to become a lawyer so he was sent to teach in University Collage London but never actually graduated. After the time spent in England he came back to India and started to work with his father. He married to a woman called Mrinalini and they had 5 children among which 3 survived to adulthood.

Work
Mr. Tagore wrote 8 novels like “Ghare Baire”, “Shesher Kobita”, “Gora”. He wrote also many essays, lectures, stories and poems. Big part of his work is in Bengali language.
Rabindranath Tagore has influence on music also, with his compositions like the national anthem of India for example whose words were also written be him. He is the author of the national anthem of Bangladesh also and this makes him the first person ever whose songs were chosen for anthems of two different countries.

Political carrier and views
Although he was a friend and supporter of Gandhi and wrote many songs about the independence movement, he didn't supported the Swadeshi Movement. Furthermore he wrote and essay named “Cult of the Chakra” in which he denounced this movement.

Rabindranath Tagore died in 1941 after sever years of illness but for the people from Bengali he is still alive in his works.

Indian Radio

Do you remember which was the main way of informing before the internet? What were you doing, when you wanted to understand something in the time when google was not existing? How were you finding all the news? Maybe the answer will be identical for most of us - just listen to the radio. Even today, when everything is just a click from us we all listen to the radio.

So what is the most popular radio in India?

All Indian Radio or Akashvani, is the national radio of India. It was established in 1936 when India was still under British rule. It is a division of a bigger institution called Prasar Bharati (This the national broadcaster in India. It is also broadcasting the Indian National television).

The history of the radio starts in 1923 when the first radio broadcastings started. The station was located in Bombay. In the time when India became independent there were only six stations in the main cities – Bombay, Delhi, Calcutta and etc.

Today the AIR has stations all over the country. This may look strange to some people but do not forget how big India is and that all the regions are having their own language, so one station is just not enough. That is why AIR is broadcasting in eleven Indian languages and sixteen foreign languages. The radio is broadcasting even in Europe these days, thanks to the latest technologies. Akashvani is trying to be a modern and open minded radio station. That is why it has youth division, drama division it offers news on the phone service, direct to home service and many others.

Future.
The Akashvari or Sky's Voice (what actually akashvari means) will become bigger and more modern. How big exactly, we will have to wait to see.

Indian Television

The biggest media canal in the world is the television. It accumulates a massive income from commercials and broadcasting rights. I think we all will agree that the television today can even modify and determine the behaviour and the moods of the masses.

India, of course is no exception. The first broadcasting of the Indian television was in 1959. It was just an experimental broadcasting but the results were good and they decided to continue. Two years later started the daily transmission of the Indian television. For over ten years the television services were available only in 7 cities in India. Until the late 80s there were only one program available for the Indian viewers. Then the government introduced a second channel called DD 2 .

Today India has over 515 channels, however over a quarter of them are pay channels. The broadcasting today reaches the whole country and the viewers can choose what and when to watch.

The market of the broadcasting companies today is pretty open and anybody who can afford to have his own television can have it. This of course was not the case 30 years ago. Until the early 90s just the national television had the rights to broadcast. Then televisions like CNN and Star TV entered in the market. At this point more than seventy million homes had televisions.

According to the official information in 2010 more than 130 million households had television sets. Some of them, around 103 million, have a cable or satellite television.

So this , as we see is a fast growing market and we can surely expect to become more interesting over the next couple of years.

Indian Road Network

India has a road network which is 3 million kilometres long. This makes it the third largest in the world. The density of this system in India is higher then it is in the US (0.66 km to 0.65 km per square kilometre).

Highway Map of India

Part of these roads is highways but the condition of these highways is very bad. The government today plans to invest in infrastructure in order to modernise the roads. The government is ready to pay more than 70 billion US dollars for modernization of the roads in the next three years. However according to the calculations of international specialists this sum is way from enough. They think that 1.7 trillion dollars are needed for the full renovation of India's infrastructure. However , it is obvious that India is in big need for new, more modern roads. They are the key to economical growth and if the government wants to achieve such a goal they will need to spend some money.

India has a big historical background in road building as it has in almost every possible sphere. The first roads on the subcontinent were built 4000 years BC. They connected cities like Harrapa and Mohenjodaro. Later, in the first century AC the famous silk road was built. It passed the north lands of India and connected India and China with Europe.

The New National Highway

Today India has several major highways like North South corridor, the Golden Quadrilateral and etc. They are part of the national highway system ,which is very small part of the total road system, approximately 2%, but it handles around 40% of the whole traffic of the country.

Today India has developed a special project called “National Highway Development Project” which idea is to concentrate the main effords of the Indian government in highway modernization. We will have to wait to see what will come out of this major project.

Taj Mahal - a Symbol of Eternal Love

Today Taj Mahal is known with one of the most beautiful buildings in the world. It is described as the “passion of an emperor's love” because it was built by emperor Shah Jahan from the Mughal dynasty in the memory of his second wife Mumtaz Mahal.

The story is quite interesting and started when Jahan's wife was still alive. She made a commitment with her husband that he has to build the Taj and visit it on the anniversary of her death. Bond on his promise to the love of his life the emperor ordered the building of the Taj Mahal to be started and so 20 000 Indians were employed for the job. The masterpiece was designed by Ustad who was an Iranian architect. The workmanship was so beautiful and perfect that people say the Taj Mahal was started by giants and it is finished by the finest jewellers in the world. After the death of Shah Jahan he was buried next to his wife in the Taj's chamber.

The monument was designed to provide different views of the beautiful woman. The main gate is like a big veil, covering the woman's face. The Indian tradition stated that the veil should be lifted gently so the beauty of the bride can be fully revealed.

Nowadays Taj Mahal is like a sparkling jewel in moonlight. It changes its colour during the daytime, for example the monument is pink during the sunrise and golden when the moon is shining. This design was made to show the changing mood of the woman.

Now the people have different views of the Taj Mahal, but they can not deny that it is a fine and a beautiful masterpiece of eternal and pure love.

The History of the European Power in India

There are many details in Indian history which are pointing to the fact that there was a solid European presence in India. The history reveals that the British were not the only one European power in the country. The first European nation which visited India was the Portuguese.

Vasco da Gama was the first ever European who was able to visit India (1498). Using the route which passes near the Cape of Good Hope the Portuguese started to monopolise the Indian trade with the continent of Europe. The control of this marine transport continued to the year of 1961 when the Portuguese were no longer able to maintain this worldwide empire and as a result they were quickly overshadowed by the French and the British.

The British assumed control over India back in 1600 when Queen Elisabeth the first granted the trading route with India to a London trading company. Surprisingly British India was ruled for 250 years not by a government but by a commercial trading company.

In 1672 the French arrived in India and immediately started the dispute between them and the British for the control of the Indian trade. In 1746 the French were able to take the lead in the century long rivalry by taking Madras. The French were the masters of India for only a four year period because in 1750 the French East India Company decided that trading is more important than the politics and all the representatives were called back. Even though the French company was able to raise its profits this decision was the final charter for the France's dominance over the Indian subcontinent.

Indian Music Instruments

India is separated in 28 states. Most of them have their own languages, traditions and even different folklore. The traditional music in these states is also different. Each state has it's own, typical melodies which are played on a specific instruments. Today I am going to meet you with some of these instruments and make you familiar with their specifications.

Bulbul tarang – this is a string instrument, which also can be seen in Pakistan. It has two sets of strings. One of the sets is for the main melody and the other one is for drone. The melody strings are set under a plate with keys. These keys are very similar to typewriter's keys. The sound of bulbul tarang is close to the sound of human voice and it is commonly used like accompaniment for singing. The name of the instrument literally means “waves of nightingales”.

Ektara – It is mostly used in Bangladesh. It has only one string and it is used in the mantra singing traditions. The instrument itself has a very simple structure. The only string is stretched between two wooden sticks which are fixed together in the ends. These stick are used for neck. When the neck is flexing the sound is changing. At the one end is placed a coconut. It's role is to create acoustic. The instrument has different sizes and it's purposes can vary from playing bass to playing soprano. As bigger it is as higher the tones are.

Santur – This is a string instrument mostly made of wood. On the wood are positioned metal bridges in order to keep the strings stretched. The strings of this instrument are made of steel and they are tied on pins on the left side. The santur has seventy strings and still, this is 30 less then it's predecessor.

Of course these instruments are not all of the instruments in India. There are also different flutes, bagpipes and many more. It can be interesting to learn about all of them in all of their varieties.