Last month there was much media hype when Taj Mahal at Agra was announced to be at the top rung among the New 7 Wonders of the World during the official declaration ceremony in Lisbon, Portugal on July7,2007. This was solely decided by more than 100 million voters who took part in the voting. Though, I am not convinced by the polling process as any one could have participated in it irrespective of whether she has seen the place herself or not. How many of the voters do you think must had even heard of all the places which were being polled, leave aside the question of visiting them all? How can one vote in favour of a place or monument without comparing it with others? and how can one compare them without even visiting them to name them as wonders! It was all about the number game and commercial interests. From that aspect we, the Indians, the second most populated nation have lost the battle to some extent by making only one of our beautiful monuments to that list! Thus we have underperformed at the international platform to earn more foreign tourists.

Now this month, one of the leading international travel magazine of America “Travel + Leisure” has announced Udaipur as the 7th best city in the World. Udaipur has beaten Istanbul (8th), San Francisco (9th) and Cape Town (10th) to reach at the seventh spot of the best city of the world and became the only Indian city to get this honour. Its around a month ago, this result was made public in the US overnight, yet there is no mention of it on the Indian government’s tourism portal “Incredible India“.

Udaipur being my home town, I often bragged about its beauty. Now my words will be more credible than before. For many years, my office table-top always had a picture of Lake Palace - a Taj group Hotel seeming to be floating in the Lake Pichhola. The picture itself was so romantic that I always preferred it over the Taj Mahal. Though beauty is a subjective term and as the cliche goes, it lies in the eyes of the beholder, I would have voted this property above the Taj Mahal, if both of them were nominated for the polling!

Hotel Lake Palace, Udaipur

More Pictures: (Read the rest of this story.)

Assume if on one weekend, all of us starts discussing a particular subject or topic wherever and whoever we gossip with, what situation it could be? Well, it might signify a event, a danger or a news which has intensely influenced us all. So we had the urge to discuss it with whomever we interact. And more we discuss, more of the attention it gets from the society. That’s how society starts thinking about that issue, develops its ideology about it and work out some kind of solution or future measure to deal with it.

It is the human nature that she puts urgent priority to the matters which affect her the most, beginning with the personal matters and then comes in the issues related to the family, the relatives or the friends, the neighbours and then finally the society and the environment. Matters or issues common to all are dealt with the least priority as we are not the only one responsible for it and there are so many who could be blamed for the same. So we don’t feel any guilt if we ignore them altogether. We have a list of several excuses to defend ourselves. Over time ignoring social issues becomes our habit and even when we are in a position to contribute a bit, we can’t despite our wishes, because we get habitual to ignore them and we don’t have left with any strength in our wishes!

But here is a way to show you how a little of your effort can make a big impact

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Dear All Visitors & Subscribers of this blog!

I am really sorry that after the hacking of the servers where TheCenturyTimes was hosted, all data were lost and the site has been restored with the latest back up available. But unfortunately I’d lost all the posts & comments posted after the last backup taken. Efforts to restore the last post from the search-engine caches also failed as that page too disappeared from there and only partial post was recoverable through it, so I haven’t reproduced it here.

I am sorry for those unable to find this post trying to get it from their RSS feed reader or Feedblitz subscription mails.

Thanks for bearing with me.

(Free Country, Captive Citizens)

India is celebrating her 60 years of Independence today.

But what exactly “independence” mean? Are you really independent? How different is it from pre-independence era? These are some of the questions I was pondering over today. What have we earned as a common man after sacrificing a lot in the struggle for Independence? In retrospection did we gain more than what we lost in the freedom movement?

Well, we got the political independence on 15th August, 1947. But as an individual, I don’t feel independent most part of my life! We are not yet free. Not free from fear, not free from worries, not free from the survival problems, not free from the feelings of insecurity, not free from the dangers and perils (Read the rest of this story.)