di ·Commenti disabilitati su They share all the tasks on both farms

The neighbours have come to an understanding, a unique partnership. True, it is faster, but it also allows rampa (weed in Ladakhi) to grow unchecked, eating into the space of the cultivated crop. “Earlier tilling the land was a way of life for people; it sustained them. Now see what modern agriculture has done to our social bonding!”, she sighs.Ms Dolker’s lament is reflective of something larger playing itself out in the region. The animal strikes a lonely but imposing figure in a village where mechanisation has been edging it out. Says Ms Dolkar, 50, “The most important thing is that our bonds have become stronger.Communities living in the highland plateau have combatted the elements by evolving a unique way of life based on mutuality. There is a sharing of labour, tools and animals to a remarkable degree.

They strike a powerful image.  “Its very difficult for us; struggling to keep a dying tradition alive. Although the yak is a bigger, studier animal, locals prefer the dzo. The dzo is central to this. But now they don’t till at all and this is sad. Coming under fire today, this is also leading to traditional agricultural practices being abandoned. “Earlier we used to be all together. For centuries, communities here have stuck to traditional agricultural practices that conserve and replenish scarce natural resources to maintain this delicate balance.Ms Dolker has been witness to this, “It became each one for themselves. In Phyang, fields after fields are emptying out with farmers increasingly migrating to Leh for work. The lives they have chosen are a compelling narrative of contemporary Ladakh — the change sweeping over the “Land of the High Passes” and the small voice resisting this change.” Dressed in loose woollen garments, she moves about with a spring in her step “We are happy being together, doing this together. He quickly adds, “But this is what makes us different.”  In the churning that is taking place in Ladakh, Sonam Rigzin and Ishay Dorjay signify a drop in the ocean. Mr Wangail a farmer in his mid-eighties in Ullay village says: “The conditions of roads leading to our village at a height of 15,700 feet, is poor. Why would I rent a tractor and bring it up? It produces noise and fumes — bad for our environment.

There are other glaring disadvantages.”The families of Mr Rigzin and Mr Dorjay fully support this partnership and participate vigorously in the common tasks. Ploughing with the dzo on the other hand allows ample time for uprooting these. Much better to use a dzo. “Mr Wangail’s logic eludes many others but he is quick to dismiss it as herd mentality.People are losing their social and cultural traditions, their connect with the land, he believes.With mechanisation creeping in, more and more families have been replacing their trusted dzo with the mechanised version — the tractor. After paying them they’d hardly save anything and began losing interest in the land”, she says.”Interestingly Mr Dorjay’s farm lies adjacent to Sonam Rigzin’s — another old farmer.The two families and their dzo in Phyang village stand out in contrast to the emerging trends in the region.Charkha FeaturesThe writer is an awardee of the Sanjoy Ghose Rural Reporting Award 2016-17.Mr Wangail is pragmatic, belonging to a generation that has faced the elements, toiling on the fields with their hands, their animals and some tools. Farmers began to hire Nepali and Bihari labourers from Leh to work on their fields. It is more nimble and suited to plough the fields. Nor are we using chemical fertilisers”, says a beaming Phungchok Dolma from Gangles village. There wire forming machine are some who are taking their cue. Collectivisation not only makes work easier; it makes for cohesion within society.”Being closely bonded lies at the heart of Ladakhi society. “Now with fields lying fallow, what are people going to eat after some years? When will they realise how important it is to till the land, grow food and rear livestock.”, says Mr Dorjay. This defines the age-old “Bes System” where community members harvest the crop on each one’s field in turn.”This is the second year in a row when we are using the dzo for ploughing.The earlier system of grinding grains preserved nutrients.

They share all the tasks on both farms, sticking to traditional farming ways. Sonam Rigzin is worried. With mechanised grinding at high temperatures, this is being destroyed. But for Ishay Dorjay, 70, also a farmer living in Phyang village, the concerns go beyond the pragmatic.This vast ice desert lying in the lap of the Himalayas is an ecologically sensitive zone. Those who are rethinking have taken a step further to revert to traditional practices. Its like going against the tide.They are holding out in the face of relentless change; upholding a throw-back to the simpler and sustainable way of life of the yore. If villagers of Hemis Shukpachan see their neighbouring village using tractors, they will simply follow, without questioning why”, he remarks, clearly exasperated. “People just imitate other people.  The combined fall-out of these changes is now visible.Organic farming that was the norm, is giving way to increased use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides.Slowly this old culture has been fading out, replaced by a mechanised, individualised approach to work and social relations.A male hybrid of yak and cow, the dzo has always been crucial for agriculture in Ladakh that at 9,800 feet is easily one of the coldest, most daunting regions for farming.

di ·Commenti disabilitati su The post-tsarist administration diverged

The “mad monk”, as he became known, claimed to be the sole individual capable of curing the tsarina’s only son’s haemophilia. Alexander Kerensky, for instance, who became justice minister and eventually led the provisional government was also a social revolutionary deputy in the Petrograd soviet.”There may be something in that, but the consequences of the revolution were also hard to handle for the disparate successor regime, which found itself increasingly at odds with the restive Soviets, who were beginning to spring up across the vast country. Many of their leaders were in exile.When Prince Felix Yusupov — one of Russia’s richest men, who had inherited his title via his mother from Tatar ancestors generously rewarded for converting from Islam — masterminded Rasputin’s assassination at the end of that year (when a massive dose of poison failed to have any discernible effect, the monk apparently survived a shooting and had to be drowned), it was with the express purpose of preserving the monarchy. In 1916 alone, according to a recent account by Christopher Danziger in Oxford Today, “He was responsible for dismissing four Prime Ministers, five ministers of the interior, three foreign ministers, three war ministers, three ministers of transport, and four ministers of agriculture”. He also came to exercise considerable control over affairs of state, making his wishes known to the tsar via his wife.None of the instigators knew they were sparking a revolution. And before long it became obvious that the primary group of deputies in the Soviet who were unequivocally demanding an end to Russia’s role in the war belonged to the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Within days, the tsar of all the Russias abdicated.The war had not been going well for Russia.As soon as he received news of events in Petrograd, the man better known as Lenin began plotting his return to Russia across war-driven Europe.

The post-tsarist administration diverged sharply from the popular will in deciding to persist with Russia’s role in the First World War. It wasn’t just her ethnicity though that earned the empress the growing mistrust of her subjects, but the fact that she was completely under the spell of a self-ordained and inordinately lecherous “holy man” by the name of Grigori Rasputin. Both of them were instrumental in the events that subsequently unfolded that year, culminating in the truly earth-shaking October Revolution.The February Revolution (thus known because Russia at the time followed the Julian calendar) tends to be looked upon as merely the prologue to that momentous year, but it was a crucial watershed — spearheaded by a largely female vanguard.By arrangement with Dawn.It was hardly a democratic institution, but its relations with the palace were nonetheless fraught. By desperately seeking to cast himself as a warrior-king, Tsar Nicholas II only served to provide further evidence of his widely catalogued weaknesses. The nation’s absolutist monarchy came to a sudden end. In 1905, in the wake of a revolutionary upsurge following a defeat against Japan, he had acceded, against his better judgment, to the demand for an assembly known as the Duma.

The revolution happened because I didn’t kill him in time to stop it.There spring in machine was some crossover between the two institutions. Bread, however, could not be won without peace. In far away New York, another revolutionary refugee, the recently arrived Lev Davidovich Bronstein, aka Leon Trotsky, began soliciting contributions to fund his passage to Russia.By many accounts, Nicky — as he was known to his royal cousins in Germany and England — was a reluctant emperor, well aware of his inadequacies in the autocratic role. Their most notable theoretician, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, had been caught on the hop, as in 1905, this time in Zurich.What eventually became known as International Women’s Day was something of a novelty 100 years ago today, when female workers took to the streets of Petrograd to voice their demands for bread and peace, prompting working men to follow suit. That did not, however, incline him towards meaningful reforms. St Petersburg was rechristened as Petrograd at the outset of the war because the original nomenclature seemed too German, but Nicholas could do little about the fact that his wife was also of German origin. Bolshevik deputies commanded a relatively inconsequential minority in the Petrograd soviet at the time. A provisional government was put in place, but it was obliged to share power with the already established Soviets of Soldiers’ and Workers’ Deputies.

di ·Commenti disabilitati su A certain quality of freedom and freshness

The Lilienfield Study and Thinking Guide suggests that there are around 100 billion neurons in the brain. You will become more sensitive, alive and open. It will never become a burden on you if you do so.Osho had suggested a technique to unburden the mind. Whatever you live unconsciously becomes a hangover because you never live it totally.’The results of daily visits down your memory lane are stupendous. As blocks disappear, your life will start flowing; anger will dissipate and love will flow in its purity.The new thinking is that memory hampers intelligence because memory is a storage, it cannot create anything original; intelligence, on the other hand, is a creative response to “now”. It is not a bad news though because memory is mechanical, and it is time to go beyond this level and use other dormant parts of the brain.

A certain quality of freedom and freshness will come to you, and you will feel you have touched the source of life.Unburdening is a process that needs to be done every day.Memory has been a highly important faculty of the human brain, so much so that it is believed to be equivalent to intelligence. Try this Osho tactic: “Every night for one hour, before you go to sleep, close your eyes and relive your past. If the consciousness has to grow vertically this burden has to be discarded. So if you want to develop creativity, spontaneity, intuitive faculty you have to go beyond the memory and awaken intelligence. Whatsoever you do consciously is lived through and is no longer a hangover.Nature has created this complex and sophisticated device because memory was a great learning tool, but now with the advent of artificial intelligence, memory has taken a backseat. The computer is doing almost all of the brain’s work and with greater efficiency. When something is incomplete it wants to be completed. It is amazing how the tiny brain encodes and retains every small bit of experience and reproduces it whenever needed. And this becomes your memory. Neurons are the Spring forming machine Manufacturers cells crucial in memory formation and retention. You will be surprised that you were unaware that these things are there and with such vitality and freshness, as if they had just happened!  Watch these memories as you watch a movie, move slowly, so that everything is covered. There will be a spring in your step and your touch will come alive again. Start with living you lives consciously. In neurological terms, it is the re-creation or reconstruction of past. You have to clean the debris of your experiences, so that you can be unburdened and be available to the future. By and by you will unearth many memories.