Lucknow

TOS: Invisible Cities

Invisible cities was written by Italo Calvino, an essayist and journalist as well as a novelist, who was born in Cuba in 1923 and grew up in San Remo, Italy. This book was first published in 1972 in Italian and then William weaver translated into English.
Invisible cities the brief, often fantastic accounts of the cities Polo visits. the book is framed as a conversation between the aging and busy emperor Kublai Khan.
When Polo is explaining the various cities, he uses objects from the city to tell the story.
In his first memory, he reached Diomira and he explained the beauty of the city with sixty silver domes, bronze statues of all the Gods, street paved with lead, a crystal theatre, a golden cock that crows each morning on a tower, the special quality of this city is that the days are growing shorter and the multicolor lamps are lighted all at once at the door of the food stalls.
Second memory was described about Isidora where buildings had spiral staircases encrusted with spiral sea shells, where perfect telescopes and violins are made.
Zaira city was his third memory which could tell us how many steps makes up the streets rising like stairways and degree of the arcade curves, zinc scales cover the roof.
Fourth memory, a city named Zora no one having seen it, can forget because the quality of houses along streets, and of doors and windows in the houses, though nothing in them possess a special beauty or rarity.
In fifth memory, Maurilia city which is talking about the same identical square with a hand in the place of the bus station, a band stand in the place of the over pass, two young ladies with white parasols in the place of the munitions factory.
The imagination was the extreme description of the architectural elements in the city.

TOS: Urban

SUMMER ASSIGNMENT

Glimpses of Bengal by Sir Rabindranath Tagore

Glimpses of Bengal is a well defined book about the village scenes in Bengal written by Sir Ravindranath Tagore. In this book Sir Ravindranath had written his thought and view about Bengal.
Bengal as known is having a large part of India’s population and also ranks in the poor states of India. Capital of Bengal is Kolkata which was earlier called “Calcutta”. The historical name of Kolkata is Kalikatta which was kept on the mean of Goddess Kali. Kolkata is situated on the bank of river Hugli which is a branch of the Ganges. Hugli is the main river which irrigates the land of Bengal and fulfils the need of water of tropical living there. Kolkata being the capital of Bengal is also the cultural capital of India and the commercial capital of Eastern India. During the British rule, Kolkata was the capital for a long time before it was shifted to Delhi. It is a metropolitan area including suburbs and has a population exceeding fifteen million making it the third most populous metropolitan city in India and one of the most populous urban areas in the world. It is also classified as the eighth largest urban agglomeration in the world.
It has famous monuments and places like Victoria Palace, national Library, Eden Gardens, Kali Mandir, etc. Kolkata is having a revolutionary history from struggle of Independence to trade union movement. Kolkata is also a launch pad of Bengal as it boasts of Eastern India’s only IT hub. It is one of the fastest growing in leaps and bounds transforming itself in hotbeds of India IT sector and growing rapidly in software sector. Durgapur, Asansole, Titanagar, Bardaman, Howrah are some other big cities of Bengal, which are highly industrial and agricultural. Rice and fish is the main food of the people of Bengal, because fishing and cultivation of rice is done in abundance there. Bengali is the regional language and people mostly worship Goddess Kali and Durga Puja is the main festival.
Beside all this qualities and merits. Bengal is very poor and literacy rate is very low. Most of the villages are still backward and lack facilities regarding proper water supply, electricity, education etc. every year flood causes lots of destruction.
Government is trying much to improve the condition of Bengal but it is still not satisfactory.

Gupt Godavari, Madhya Pradesh

In the age of 13yrs, I had visited to 'Gupt Godavari' with my family and this place is most remember able place of my childhood because of its name which is having mystery still im my mind.
Actually this place (Gupt Godavari) is situated at a distance of 18 km from chitrakoot, Madhya Pradesh near Uttar Pradesh.
I had visited to chitrakoot also which is a town of religious, culture and historical place situated in the region of Bundelkhand.
About Gupt Godavari people believed that RAM and his brother LAKSHMAN held here when they was searching SITA. This place having pairs of caves, one high and one wide entrance where only one person can barely pass through it and other cave is very narrow and long with stream of water upto 3 feet height. Where these two  caves connecting there is a huge stone hanging from the roof which if someone touch it then it shakes and it comes to its pervious place and there is no clue how this stone works like that even people from there does not know about that from which time it is remain over there.
 In our childhood I and my brother liked this place because of its narrow and long cave running water with the mystery of that stone.
Mystery of gupt Godavari
    Here Gupt means Hidden and Godavari is a river that is hidden Godavari which runs from Western India to South India and it is a second longest river in India with a length of 1465 km (only after ganges). It is originates  near Trimbak in Nashik district of Maharastra state and flows east across the Deccan plateau into the Bay of Bengal near narasapuram in West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh.
How Godavari river comes here in this cave and ended here only !
This is the Mystery which no one could get to know from where it is coming and where it is going.
This is the one thing which makes me to remember this place from my childhood.