DailyOh! When was Delhi’s strongest earthquake, to who caught Dawood Ibrahim
Hi there,
It’s Friday today, but more importantly, it is the World Environment Day. Friday comes once every week, Environment Day just once every year, on June 5. In the present work order of Work From Home, Friday counts little. So, we don’t want to make this about Friday, but the more important day – World Environment Day (WED).
How to mark the day, from our houses? Here are a few tips:
We can ignore world environment at our own risk because it’s not like once we spoilt everything here, we can go there. There is no there for now. Only one Earth is what we have. To highlight this precise point, in 1974, the first WED was held with the theme "Only One Earth".
On Earth, in Pakistan's Karachi, Dawood Ibrahim and his wife Mehajabin have been caught. Not by Interpol or India, but reportedly by the virus that is not scared of the don. The man, believed to have the protection of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, is reportedly being treated in a military hospital. He may not be a military man, but he sure is an ISI man.
In 2013, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) terrorist Abdul Karim Tunda told Indian investigators that the ISI promised Ibrahim protection and sanctuary if he invested at least 30 per cent of his earnings to fund terror activities. They then arranged houses for Dawood both in Karachi and Islamabad. We will talk more about Dawood some other day because today we want to talk about the World Environment Day.
WED was established in 1972 by the United Nations on the first day of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. WED birthed from discussions on the integration of human interactions and the environment. Devastation caused by floods and earthquakes are a natural phenomenon, but our interactions with the environment have not gone down well with the environment. This has brought more devastating floods, and quakes at increased frequency.
People in the Delhi-NCR (National Capital Region) have been reporting about mild-intensity earthquakes as quickly as they have struck, on social media platforms. The speed with which people post updates about earthquakes is faster than the earthquake itself. You are still feeling the tremor and thinking if you are feeling dizzy or an earthquake has actually struck; by then your question has been answered on social media.
So many low-intensity earthquakes have made us believe it’s just another low-intensity one. If a big one strikes and we end up ignoring it, blame the Boy Who Cried Wolf. The Boy being the earthquake itself. The National Centre of Seismology has reported as many as 10 mild earthquakes in and around Delhi-NCR between April 12 and May 29. But can a big one strike? Earth scientists say a big earthquake is imminent in the Himalayan foothills. Waves caused by it will reach Delhi too. They have been saying that for long now. An earthquake measuring about 6.0 on the Richter Scale could be devastating for Delhi and neighbouring areas where most buildings are built in violation of norms.
But the worst one (so far) that shook Delhi came on July 27, 1960. It registered 5.6 on the Richter scale. This was the worst Delhi had faced in over a century. The damage cause by it calculated to about Rs 5 lakh (back then). What was damaged? Some buildings in the New Delhi area, only partially. But a big one could raze most of the capital city to the ground. Can it happen? From what Coronavirus has told us, anything can.
Some of the damage done to the environment is irreversible. We will keep feeling its impact in the times to come. A lot of it we are already feeling. But we can stop more from happening. To stop that, we need to improve our interactions with the environment. And you thought only human interaction was your problem!
No humans today, because today, as we told you, is World Environment Day.
To interact with the environment, we must first know what environment is.
Environment, our Word Of The Day, has a French connection. Its origin can be traced to the French word ‘environ’, which means surrounding. Our surrounding includes biotic factors like human beings, plants, animals and microbes, etc. It also includes abiotic factors such as light, air, water and soil, etc. In early 17th century, when the word ‘environment’ first appeared in English, it simply meant “the act or state of being encircled”. We are now encircled by the consequences of what we have done to the environment. World Environment Day is supposed to remind us what we can do to fix it, or at least not damage it further.
Virologists say coronavirus is also a result of how we interacted with the environment. Coronavirus existed in bats in some parts of the world. Then humans began expanding and the expansion led to intrusion into places where bats lived. So, coronavirus intruded our bodies.
How to get it out of the body is now a challenging task. In India, for now, the virus is intruding more and more bodies and the numbers look scary. Now, numbers tell a lot, but they can also hide a lot, till we have access to all the numbers. Mumbai, India’s hotspot for Covid-19, says 44,931 positive cases. Over 25,000 of which are active. Now, Mumbai is at the bottom in terms of the number of tests being performed. The city is performing only about 4,000 to 4,200 tests every day, while it has the capacity to conduct 10,000 tests daily. Lower testing means lower findings.
If the city ramps up testing, the spike would go higher. That could be the reason why the government isn’t testing more. India, meanwhile, has close to 2,30,000 cases - officially.
Since we are talking numbers, take a look at this number, 1,00,00,000 (one crore). This is the amont of money (in rupees) a teacher in Uttar Pradesh earned in just about 12 months. She may have been named Anamika (without a name) Shukla, but has made quite a name for herself in a police FIR. The government school teacher was employed in 25 different schools simultaneouly and drew salaries from all. Now, all records are digitised, but Shukla Ma'am managed to bluff the system for about a year, till she got caught.
Teaching in India is so unprofitable that people try to double it up by becoming tuition teachers at home for the same students whose class teacher they might be in school. Now, if you pay someone low, you can’t expect propriety out of them. Actually, you can expect, because expectations don’t cost money.
A country in this very world, however, pays about US$ 79,000 (Rs 59,62,920) per year to teachers even with zero experience. If you have experience, you get US$ 137,000. Where? In the tiny country called Luxembourg.
So, if you want to be a teacher and live a life of luxury, head to Luxembourg. How long before you can head out of India? Not before July. That’s when international flights could begin flying out of India again.
Ideas are still travelling, as is art. They never needed a flight because they ride on flights of imagination. January last year, a song flew from India to Nigeria, with Nigerian singer Samuel Adepoju adding to the song’s popularity. That song was ‘Rinkiya Ke Papa’.
We mention it to you today because the man behind that song, Dhananjay Mishra, is no more. He passed away yesterday. The song had become popular when Manoj Tiwari, recently ousted as Delhi BJP chief, jumped into the 2020 Delhi election arena. The song was used to ‘memefy’ Tiwari. On YouTube, the song crossed 43 million views.
Most have been singing it without understanding it because music needs no language. But lyrics are always written in some language. Like Rinkiya Ke Papa is in Bhojpuri, which is not a language but a dialect, used in eastern parts of UP and most of Bihar.
This is what the song means:
Chat deni maar deli khich ke tamacha
Hihi hihi hans delen
Chatt (sound of slap), she slapped him hard,
Hi hi hi, he laughed out loud
Rinkiya ke Papa Hihi hihi hans delen
Hi hi hi, laughed out loud Rinki’s father
Bikiiya ke papa Hihi hihi hans delen Bikiiya ke Papa
Hihi hihi hans delen
Bikii’s father hihi hihi laughed out loud Bikii’s father
Hihi hihi, laughed out loud
Sunila ki marad ka na naaw lihal jala
Enke bina na lihale kucho na kahala
I have heard you shouldn’t call your husband by his name
But when it comes to her, she always calls her husband by his name
Naaw leke kaheli ki chai do jara sa
She calls her husband by his name and tells him to go make tea
Jara sa hihi hihi hans dele
Rinkiya ke papa hihi hihi hans dele
Bikiiya ke papa hihi hihi hans dele
Hihi hihi laughed out loud a little
Rinki’s father hihi hihi laughed out loud
Bikii’s father hihi hihi laughed out loud...
If you are laughing out loud, keep laughing.
We will leave you laughing for the weekend.
What you can do on the weekend is watch Anurag Kashyap's Choked. How you find it is for you to decide, but here’s how someone who watched it found it.
You can also watch Chintu Ka Birthday. How’s it? Read this to know.
As you binge on OTT content, do remember there is no replacement for books. One of the bestsellers of 2019 will soon be adapted on screen by Vikramaditya Motwane, the man who wrote the scripts for Dev D, Udaan and Lootera. The book Motwane will be turning into a web series is Black Warrant, written by hamare zamane ke jailer Sunil Gupta and journalist Sunetra Choudhury. We will know how the series is when the series is out. But if you want to know what the book is about and why it is such a captivating read, read this.
We will see you on Monday.
Stay safe!