Reality of Borders: one of the most traumatic partition

 

The Golden Temple , Amritsar where people from all over the world come to bathe in its water , to look at the holy book inside the temple and to experience the holiness of this place.This place is the epicenter of Sikhism. Close by there is another important Sikh place called Kartarpur. It was established by Guru Nanak, founder of Sikhism  500 years ago. It is the place where Guru Nanak spent his last days and it is the 2nd holiest place in Sikhism. For centuries Sikhs were able to make pilgrimage between this place between their heartland but in 1947 a British lawyer drew a border here turning British India into two countries India and Pakistan with the Golden temple on one side and Kartarpur to another side. Thanks to this border India and Sikhs are now cut off with their holy site.

Dera Baba Nanak, India - a platform at the border site where Sikhs can look at their holy place through a telescope which is just 3-4 km away.

In addition to cutting off the two  communities from their sacred sites this border separated families cut across rivers , forests ,farms , etc. we know today this border is heavily fortified with 3000 km plus fence.

This is the story of violence separation, one.  of the most traumatic events of the 20th century.It’s the story of how the hastily drawn line on a map separated one people into two.

The British controlled parts of India for nearly 200 years. In 1947 an massive independent movement was swelling across the subcontinent  and while back in Britain the country was in massive debt after fighting world war 2 and didn’t have resources to hold on to their colony so they started making plans to leave India. British officials thought that a proper transfer of power would be around five years but British leader in charge Lord Mountbatten arrived in early 1947 , he hastily decided to shrink their exit timeline and so what needed five years would now need to be done in just 4 months.  British India was to be split into two independent Nations, a mostly Muslim Pakistan and Hindu majority ,but officially secular India. 

 To do the actual drawing of the border , the British brought in the lawyer from London. He arrived a month before the British were supposed to leave India. He hadn’t been to British India before and didn’t know much about the region. He had no Idea about India ,Indian geography and Indian politics. Yet he was the one drawing the lines on a map that would affect millions of lives.

During his visit this British lawyer looked at maps and census data , focusing on the maps that showed religious identity of people in India. India has a wide variety of religions and based on these census maps, you can see the people of all religions lived among  each other all over the region.

Below map shows how people from various religion lives together before partition.

So to draw the line British lawyer looked at individual districts putting any district that had Muslim majority population into the new country of Pakistan , while Hindu and Sikh majority districts would be kept within India. Based on this method the lawyer begins to see what the border looks like. He only had five weeks to do this. He later wrote that it would have taken years to settle on property boundary and that’s method of drawing a line conceals that within the district there were sizable communities of all religions that had been living side by side for centuries all through India.

On 15th august 1947 both countries got independence. The lawyer left India on that day and he would never return to India again. Two days after independence the borders were made public, prompting more than 14 millions people to leave their home, their lives for what was now their side of the border. Hindu and Sikhs from Pakistan moved to India and many Muslims in India moved to new Pakistan. These were the people who were indeed forced to lose their entire home , their memories , their childhood and the things they saw. It was one of the largest forced migrations of people ever and it was a chaos , a chaos that led to widespread unspeakable violence cities on fire , sexual violence against women , trains with full of dead bodies.

The division of subcontinent became known as partition of India. The phrase synonym with trauma fueled by the reckless management of Imperial power.

Mssania an small village near border in India to be muslim community before partition. And in the middle of the town is this shrine where resident would conduct ornate Muslim burial practices on the graves. 

The town was actually in Pakistan in most of the maps but in the end  the British lawyer decided to draw the line here.

People here discovered that they were part of new India and many of them fled just across the border of the new state of Pakistan and they left this place empty. But just as Muslim were leaving this village for Pakistan, Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan were coming across into India and some ended up here. The Hindus and Sikhs that now live in this community have taken it upon themselves to continue Muslim traditions that this community was based off of. They continued to maintain these graves and these symbols even though they not necessarily pertain to their own religion. This is a sign of respect, of common identity in spite of the border.

But this one side of the story. Within the few months after drawing the border India and Pakistan fighting an all out war and many other wars were fought between these two nations.

If you take away the geopolitical bluster , the nukes , the barrier, the trauma of partition, you can still see how much these two  countries have in common. Same language , same food , same taste Hindu , Muslim and Sikh use to live together , attend each other social functions, marriages , everything. If you stand in the wall city in Amritsar and you stand in the walled city in Lahore , the smell that gives away is the same.

He rise 1000 times : a true story of world's famous cook

 

This is the story about a boy from Henryville Indiana. In 1895 , When he was six years old his father passed away. His mother had to start working in a tomato cannery , leaving him to cook and care for his siblings. Life hit him hard at a very young age and because of the difficult situations he faced.

 

 He had to work as a farmhand at the age of ten. When he was in sixth grade , he dropped out of high school and left his home. He started working as a painter of horse carriages. When he was 16 , he faked his age to enlist in the US army. After being honourably discharged a year later he started working as a railway laborer and studied law at nearby university until he ruined his legal career by getting into a fight.

He was forced to move back in with his mom and get a job selling life insurances. After sometime, he got fired for not following orders. Some years later he established a ferry boat company and it was an instant success. Later on he tried cashing in on his FERRY BOAT BUSINESS to create a chemical lamp manufacturing company only to find out that another company was already selling electrical lamps much better than his company’s lamp.

 

All this hardship in life but this guy wouldn’t give up. He moved to work as a salesman for a tier company. But again he lost his job when the company closed its manufacturing plant. 

 

By the age of 40 he met the general manager of an oil company who asked him to run a service station for him but the station had to close down as a result of the great depression. That same year the shell oil company offered him a service station , rent-free. In return for paying the company a percentage of sales. He started operating the service station and also began to serve chicken dishes and other simple meals for people who were stopping by at the station. His pan-fried chicken soon became a Favourite with the people of the area and made him famous in the region.

Few years later he took out the station and started a proper restaurant. After fairly succeeding at his venture he started to advertise his food and to his shock , an argument erupted out of the blue with a local competitor and resulted in a fatal shootout with one of his employees dying.

 

Four years later he bought a motel next to his chicken restaurant hoping for better  business but it got fired and burnt down to the ground together with his restaurant. Yet this ambitious man rebuilt and ran a new motel with a 140- seat restaurant until world war-2 forced him to close it down again. When war ended, he tried selling  his recipes to other restaurants. His recipe was rejected 1009 times. When finally in 1952 , he sold his secret recipe  “KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN” for the first time to the city’s largest restaurants. It quickly became a hit and as a result several restaurant owners franchised the concept and paid him $0.04 per chicken.

 

However , good times didn’t last very long. His own restaurant was crippeled when an interesting highway reduced customer traffic.he sold it and was left only with his savings and $105 a month from social security. So finally he pursued his dream to franchise his chicken concept nationwide and travelled the US looking for suitable restaurants. He opened a new restaurant and a company headquarters in 1959. He often slept in the back of his car. He visited a restaurant offer to cook his chicken and if the owner liked it then he negotiated a franchise right. In 1965, at the age of 75 , he was just getting started! 

 

After years of rejection , failure , and misfortunes COLONEL SANDERS’ franchise approach became highly successful. KFC was one of the first fast food chains to expand globally, opening outlets in Canada , UK , Mexico and Jamaica. By the mid-1960s, the COLONEL remained the company’s symbol after selling it. He travelled over 400000 KM a year visiting KFC restaurants and delighting customers around the world. At the age of 90 COLONEL SANDNER passed away. At that time there were 6000 KFC locations in 48 different countries. In 2020 there are more than 23000 KFC restaurants in 150 countries worldwide.

 

If you are overwhelmed by rejection or discouraged by setbacks remember the story of COLONEL SANDERS

• A SIX GRADE DROPOUT
• FIRED FROM MULTIPLE JOBS 
• RUINED HIS LEGAL CAREER
• SETBACK BY THE GREAT DEPRESSION , FIRE AND WORLD WAR-2

 And yet became the world's most famous cook after reaching “Retirement Age”.

 

COLONEL SANDERS created one of the largest food chains in the world with many things, but above all he was a great success story! 

With his story we can learn that  despite thousands of rejections and misfortunes, dedication along with hard work can create success ; regardless of age.

 

Guys tried to cover the whole story , so if you like it do share and comment from whose story you are inspired the most.

 

 

The story behind BEIRUT BLAST

LEBANON is a country in western Asia with a population of 68.5 lakhs. The main two religions are Islam with 54 % of citizens and Christanity with 40.7% of the citizens. Beirut is the capital of Lebanon.

 

There is a port which is known as  Beirut port silos where 2750 tonnes of Ammonium Nitrate were stored. From this warehouse a huge blast occurred and its impact was felt till 20 km.Till now 100 people were reported dead and more than 4000 people were wounded and more than 100 people are missing.

Main question arises how did this blast occur ?

It all started in september 2013 , when a ship headed from Georgia to Mozambique faced technical problems and had to dock in the Beirut port. Ship was carrying 2750 tonnes of Ammonium Nitrate .

Ammonium Nitrate is generally used as a fertilizer. However it readily forms explosive mixtures with varying properties when combined with primary explosives such as azide or with fuels such as aluminium powder or fuel oil and because of this its use and trade is restricted by many countries.

When Beirut’s port authority found Ammonium Nitrate in the ship they said that this ship would be not allowed to go further as it stored Ammonium Nitrate without proper paperwork. The owner of the ship abandoned the project by saying that this ship doesn’t belong to them and Lebanon can keep this ship.

Now Lebanon faced the problem of what to do with this huge amount of Ammonium Nitrate ?

So in 2015 they decided to keep this in a storage house located at Beirut port silos and they will look after this matter later This was the extreme negligence to keep huge amounts of Ammonium Nitrate at the port which is one of the busiest places. Ammonium Nitrate which was stored here since 2014 suddenly blasted and it was horrific.

Now the reason given by authorities of this blast is due to negligence and carelessness. But this took another angle when Trump made a comment on the Beirut blast. He said that this was an attack. So a question arises: who can do this? First culprit comes to mind is Israel but through its various sources confirms that they had nothing to do with this blast. Why israel?  Because there is a group called HEZBOLLAH in Lebanon which is involved in their internal affairs and politics and this is a militant group many countries declared them as a terrorist including Israel and they constantly attack Israel. So this theory arises that Israel was the reason behind the blast but Israel confidently denies this.

Presently it makes it more difficult for Lebanon with covid 19 infections on the rise , hospitals were already struggling to cope.

2020 is a curse for human race .

Increasing trend in E- SPORT

 

 

Esports (also known as electronic sports, e-sports, or eSports) is a form of sport competition using video games.Esports often takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions, particularly between professional players, individually or as teams.

Yes now time has come where gaming is also considered skilfull. Any interested and passionate gamer has plenty of data and proof to show to their parents that gaming is not useless and time wasting and currently in India professional gamers earn a huge amount of money , even more than IIM passout. This is because E-SPORT is getting recognition and also the popularity of E-SPORT has increased.

HISTORY

The earliest known video game competition took place on 19 October 1972 at Stanford University for the game Spacewar. Stanford students were invited to an "Intergalactic spacewar olympics" whose grand prize was a year's subscription for Rolling Stone, with Bruce Baumgart winning the five-man-free-for-all tournament and Tovar and Robert E. Maas winning the team competition.

The fighting game Street Fighter II (1991) popularized the concept of direct, tournament-level competition between two players. Previously, video games most often relied on high scores to determine the best player, but this changed with Street Fighter II, where players would instead challenge each other directly, "face-to-face," to determine the best player, paving the way for the competitive multiplayer and deathmatch modes found in modern action games. The popularity of fighting games such as Street Fighter and Marvel vs. Capcom in the 1990s led to the foundation of the international Evolution Championship Series (EVO) esports tournament in 1996.

In the 1990s, many games benefited from increasing internet connectivity, especially PC games. Tournaments established in the late 1990s include the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL), QuakeCon, and the Professional Gamers League. PC games played at the CPL included the Counter-Strike series, Quake series, and Warcraft.

The popularity and emergence of online streaming services have helped the growth of esports in this period, and are the most common method of watching tournaments. Video game live streaming is an activity where people record themselves playing games to a live audience online. The practice became popular in the mid-2010s on sites such as Twitch and later, YouTube, Facebook and other services. By 2014, Twitch streams had more traffic than HBO's online service.

In 2015, the first Esports Arena was launched in Santa Ana, California, as the United States' first dedicated esports facility.

The most recent iteration of the event, The International 9, is now underway. Teams all over the world are fighting for a slice of an over $33 million prize pool. annual world championship in Dota 2 . This was in 2019 and the total winning prize of wimbledon was $44.9 million.

E- SPORT IN INDIA

If you examine the global data on gaming, you’ll see that the biggest consumer in the gaming industry is China with $34.4 million in revenues. Consequently, Tencent, the largest gaming company on the planet that has a market share of 32.86% and has stakes in majorly popular games such as League of Legends, Fortnite, and Clash Royale is also based in China. Now, it may not come as a surprise knowing how China has evolved into the global powerhouse it is today, but more than that, we are also seeing other Asian countries catching up to this trend; and India, in particular, has been receiving a lot of attention for its dramatic increase in mobile gaming and its significant growth in the local eSports scene.

The past decade has been a pivotal time for competitive gaming as it began capturing the attention of the global market in recent years, but no country has been making remarkable progress as fascinating and as appealing as the Indian gaming scene. From $253.6 million in game revenues in 2014, it gradually picked up speed to an astounding $1.1 billion in 2019 and is predicted by Statista to double its pace by this year with a projection of $2.4 billion. Is that too ambitious? We don’t think so. As a matter of fact, leading company in games and eSports analytics, Newzoo, reported that India has now secured the second spot next to China in the top list of countries with most smartphone users thereby accounting for 345,916,000 users with 25.3% smartphone penetration rate. For India, this means a bigger market brimming with so much untapped potential.

For the past few years, the Indian eSports landscape has been in tremendous growth especially just last year which is its strongest feat so far, when it reached a 180% combined growth across all prize pools for local eSports leagues.

Currently PUBG is the hot favourite in India in E- SPORT and you can trace the reason by looking following table.

1. India	more than 45 crores users
2. The United States	more than 35 crores users
3. China	more than 32 crores users
4. Russia	more than 30 Crores users
5. Germany	more than 22 crores users
6. South Korea	more than 20 crores users
7. The United Kingdom	more than 12 crores users

PMWL(PUBG MOBILE WORLD LEAGUE 2020) East boasts a massive prize pool of $425,000.

Earnings of Indian streamers

If we just talk about tournaments winning than highest price earned by SOUL team in PUBG tournament of $ 60000

But this doesn’t reflect overall earnings of Indian streamers this is just tournament winning. Just take example of Virat Kohli his fixed BCCI package is of 7 crores annually but we all know his total yearly earnings is much more than that.

Naman Mathur, aka Mortal, is one of the most popular PUBG Mobile streamers not only in India but also in the entire world.

Mortal is the In-Game Leader (IGL) of the SouL team that twice represented India in the PMCO Global Finals. Mortal started his YouTube career in September 2016 by uploading Mini Militia gameplay videos, and later on shifted to PUBG Mobile owing to its increasing popularity. Now, he has around 5.57 Million.

 According to Social Blade, Mortal received around 37 Million views on his YouTube channel in the last 30 days. His estimated monthly earnings are about $9.4K - $150.8K, and his estimated yearly earnings are $113.1K - $1.8M.Apart from this, It is not the only source of his income as there are sponsors, super chats, etc. that pay him for promotions, shout outs, and more. SouL Mortal has become the first Indian to be nominated for the Esports Awards.

 You can also checkout income of DYNAMO , SCOUT , SOUL REGALTOS , CARRY MINATI , etc.

FUTURE

By 2021, Newzoo predicts that the annual growth rate of e-sport viewership will be approximately 14%. They also predict that the number of casual viewers will grow to 307 million. And that there will be 250 million eSports enthusiasts, making the total audience 557 million.

In 2018, the average year-on-year increase in total revenue was at an impressive 38.2%. The eSports industry made a total of $906 million in revenue. Out of this, $694 million came from brand investments – both direct and indirect. That’s a 48% increase in brand investment from the previous year. Newzoo predicts that by 2021, eSports will generate more than $1.6 billion in total revenue with $1.3 billion coming from brand investments.

The Olympic Games are also seen as a potential method to legitimize esports. A summit held by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in October 2017 acknowledged the growing popularity of esports, concluding that "Competitive 'esports' could be considered as a sporting activity, and the players involved prepare and train with an intensity which may be comparable to athletes in traditional sports" but would require any games used for the Olympics fitting "with the rules and regulations of the Olympic movement".The sporting world is changing! Esports is becoming so large that even the International Olympic committee (IOC) is beginning to host events.

CONCLUSION

There is no doubt that E-SPORT has a bright future. Especially in India E-SPORT got hype due to the JIO data revolution and PUBG and Indian team has also started  performing better in World leagues. If anybody thinks that e-sport is not a real sport or it is easy, then just try to play one PUBG game and compare your gameplay with professional or watch world leagues. 

Because  playing this type of game required a plan , strategy , team work , reflexes , etc. many teams and players have their analyst and in future you will see that these players will have their coaches , PS , etc. it would be as big as any sport.

We should be happy tha now gaming is also considered as a skill and talent. Because , the pie is growing rather than sliced. So these will create more opportunity for the country and youth.

If you see the story of most popular gaming streamers of India especially  of DYNAMO (Aditya Sawant with highest subscribed gaming channel of India). He started streaming from 2010 and till  2016 he has less than 200 subscribers but he didn’t gave up currently he has more than

 8 million subscribers. His journey was very difficult as he was from a middle class family.  I am attaching a link to a small video where he describes his journey. I insist you watch it. You will find it interesting and inspiring.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9WiFoHDNLw

Determination has no limits: Arunima Sinha and Károly Takács

ARUNIMA SINHA: the girl who defeated the mountain.

World's first female amputee to scale Mount Everest, Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Elbrus, Mount Kosciuszko, Mount Aconcagua, Carstensz Pyramid and Mount Vinson.

As a national level volleyball player, Arunima from Ambedkarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, was an unstoppable soul.

In 2011 , she was travelling in a train from Lucknow to Delhi. Some robbers came to her for the gold chain she was wearing but she tried to fight with them and nobody in that compound tried to intervene and the robbers threw her out of the train. Unfortunately another train was coming from the adjacent track and first she banged with that train and then she fell on the track. Both trains passed. After a while she tried to lift herself up and saw that her leg had cut off. She lifted her thigh and saw it was hanging with jeans, blood flowing profusely and bones of other leg were all broken and had come out. All night she kept shouting in pain on the tracks and crying for help. Nobody came to rescue her.all night because of shouting so much she could no longer see. When the train used to pass the track would vibrate and small rats were chewing on her injured leg. Every second she was thinking how I could save myself. The whole night passed, in the morning some villagers took her  to a hospital.

Now the doctor , pharmacist and everyone were discussing that they don’t have anesthesia or blood and how they could start her treatment. Though she couldn’t see but could hear all this. She said, “Sir, my whole leg is crushed , and for so long I was on the tracks and I endured my pain, but for my good you will cut off my leg.” And after that they gave their blood and amputated her leg without any anesthesia.

This all things spread in the media and the sports minister shifted her to AIIMS Delhi. When she got well after 25 days she came out and read all the twisted stories in the newspaper, “Arunima Sinha didn’t have a train ticket , and jumped from the train.” And “ She was rejected by her family” and even , “Arunima Sinha attempted sucide.at that point she decided its ok today is your day say how much you want to but a day will come when I will prove myself.this when she decided to do mountaineering.

She contacted Bachendri Pal in 2011 by telephone and signed up for training under her at the Uttarkashi camp of the Tata Steel Adventure Foundation (TSAF) 2012. Sinha climbed Island Peak (6150 metres) in 2012 as preparation for her ascent of Everest. Nothing could falter her from her dream. On her first deed while in transit to the summit, she was so cheerful to have achieved the base camp that she lost balance and tumbled to the ground, injuring herself in the process.

On the day she endeavoured to summit Mount Everest, she and her Sherpa were the first to leave the camp. When they were very close to the summit, her Sherpa gave her some terrible news. Their oxygen levels were quickly exhausting, and they needed to return the following day for another attempt. Sinha was adamant on completing the summit that very day. With the help of the Sherpa, after two hours, they were at the pinnacle of Mount Everest, and of her success at 10:55 am on 21 May 2013. Those 7 minutes atop the summit were the best moments of her life. She just wanted to shout out to the world that she had done it.

Arunima Sinha has been included as one of the ‘People of the Year’ by Limca Book of Records in 2016. She is now dedicated towards social welfare and she wants to open a free sports academy for the poor and differently-abled persons. She is donating all the financial aids she is getting through awards and seminars for the same cause. In her website arunimasinha.com, she is noted as saying, “I have achieved my goal but now I want to help physically challenged people to achieve their goal so that they can also become self-dependent and nobody looks at them with pity.”

Károly Takács-the man who gave his best shot

Károly Takács  was the first shooter to win two Olympics gold medals in the 25 meter rapid fire pistol event, both with his left hand after his right hand was seriously injured. 

 

This story is from 1938 of a person named Karoly in Hungarian army. He was the best pistol shooter of the country. By 1936, he was a world-class pistol shooter, but he was denied a place in the Hungarian shooting team for the 1936 Summer Olympics on the grounds that he was a sergeant, and only commissioned officers were allowed to compete. This prohibition was lifted in Hungary after the Berlin Games.  He has won all the national championships in the country. All was sure that he would get gold in the Olympic which was scheduled in 1940. He was practicing for many years . He has only one goal he wants to make his hand as the best shooting hand of the world and he almost achieved it, just two year are remaining. During army training in 1938, his right hand was badly injured when a faulty grenade exploded and that hand was gone.

 

All his dreams and focus was destroyed by this incident. Now he had two options :

1) Give up and cry for his  whole life and hide somewhere.

2) Or what he has thought , what was his goal should stick to that and achieve it.

 

He focused on what he has , not on what he didn’t. He had a left hand. A hand from which he can’t even write. For 1 month he went through treatment of his injured hand. After 1 month he started training with his left hand. After 1 year of training that is in 1939 he came back, National championship was going on in Hungary and many pistol shooters were there. They all went to Karoly To congratulate him they said that this is called sportsman’s spirit , after going through everything you are here to support us by cheering us. No one was aware that he was training for 1 year with his left hand and he answered “I AM NOT HERE TO SUPPORT YOU; I AM HERE TO COMPETE WITH YOU BE READY.” Competition started, everyone was competing with their best hand but Károly was competing with his only hand. Who won? The man with the only hand, he won. He didn’t stop here, his goal was clear: he wanted to make his hand world’s best pistol shooting hand. He focused on the 1940's Olympics but unfortunately the 1940's Olympic canceled due to world war. Then he shifted his focus on 1944’s Olympics but that also got canceled due to world war.

 

He again started focusing on the 1948 Olympics. In 1938 he was 28 year old and now he was 38 year old in 1948. Now he has to compete with younger players. He went there,  the world's best shooters were competing with their best hand but Károly was competing with his only hand. Who won? The man with the only hand, he won. He didn’t stop here he again went to 1952 Olympics and again won the

  Gold  medal and made history.

 

LEARNING

 These two stories always motivates me , this both gives an great example of focus , determination and never give up attitude.

If you go to any loser he will have a list of excuses I failed due to this and that. But if you go to the winner he will have a thousand reasons that he can’t do but he will find one reason to do that thing and will achieve it.

 

So NEVER GIVE UP and NEVER LOSE HOPE.

 

Do share your opinion in comments.