Colour me purple

A brief history of bus service in London In England the first bus service which was launched in 1662 was more like horse carriages and was invented by French mathematician Blaise Pascal. D ecades after this invention took place,  prototypical British gentleman scientist and inventor   Sir Goldsworthy Gurney designed the steam-powered bus in 1830. Blaise  Pascal named his public bus service in Paris ‘carriages’ but those buses ceased to operate after 15 years and they did not appear again until horse-powered multi-person carriages emerged in Paris again in about 1819 or 1820. "Omnibus" is a Latin word meaning "for all." They were more like modern-day buses custom made for passengers’ comfort, to transport multiple people along a route and allow them to board or debark at locations along the route without the necessity of having stations. The first regular bus route appears to have started from Manchester to Liverpool, beginning in 1824. ...

Criminal Justice Dhananjay Chatterjee was a guard in a building where a teen-aged girl named Hetal Parekh was found dead in March 1990. He was convicted of having raped and killed her and was hanged on his 39th birthday, August 14, 2004, protesting his innocence until the end. His execution followed a shrill campaign waged by the wife of the then West Bengal chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya. Chatterjee’s appeals were rejected by the then president APJ Abdul Kalam on the advice of arguably India’s worst home minister, Shivraj Patil, going by historian Ramachandra Guha’s estimation . In a similar situation, his predecessor in Rashtrapati Bhavan, KR Narayanan, had applied his mind wonderfully, as emerges from an anecdote narrated by his secretary, Gopalkrishna Gandhi. Delivering the People’s Union of Civil Liberties’ 35th JP Memorial Lecture in Bangalore on March 23 in 2015 earlier this year, Gandhi described how he had received a call late at night from Chennai regarding ...

House pigeons in the neighbourhood.

Spurt of colours: Marigold and Calendula flowers bloomed in my hanging garden that winter. A house mynah sits comfortably on top of a pipe.

Man indicted for commenting on Thai King's pet King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand and the dog he rescued from an alley, Tongdaeng, at a boat race in 2008. A factory worker in Thailand has been reportedly punished for being disrespectful towards their King Bhumibol Adulyadej's pet dog. He might have to be in the jail for thirty seven years for posting sarcastic comments about the innocent animal on the internet. The military court of Thailand has seriously dealt with the case by asking the worker Thanakorn Siripaiboon to explain why he had made such remarks. Failing to give any answer to the military court, the Thai worker will now have to spend long time behind the bars. Thailand's strict laws that make it a crime to insult the monarchy entered new territory after the verdict was given a few weeks ago to indict the uncourteous man. Thanakorn could face a total of 37 years in prison for his social media posts, highlighting what has become a feverish campaign t...

No legal ban on surrogacy for Chinese women China had publicly declared to ban surrogacy but now it has decided to drop the idea since the initial plan can have a negative impact on the society. The idea of banning surrogacy will encourage a black market business of surrogate pregnancies patronised by wealthy Chinese. Even if there was a law banning this process of child birth, rich Chinese will opt for foreign countries like the US and get it done at the cost of $ 125,000 since there is no such inhibition and prohibition in the land of America. On the other hand, according to experts, banning surrogacy can lead to exploitation of poor women in China, and can be detrimental to their rights.