Allô Chatrath

  I, along with my batch mate in the IAS and tough trekker Gopal Ganesh, climbed up the Rainbow Mountain in Peru in July 2017. Till 2015, one of the most fascinating wonders of this planet, the Rainbow Mountain was practically unknown, except to a small number of indigenous Peruvians living around it. Then the information appeared on the social media and soon travel enthusiasts around the world were talking about it. Now it has become a preferred destination for adventure lovers.   The mountain has stripes of colours of the rainbow and hence the name. These colours are natural geographical formations and are due to prolonged impact of weather conditions and mineralogy. Red colour indicates presence of iron oxide, rust and brownish colour are said to indicate goethite or oxidized These coloured strips are called stratigraphic formations or defined layers.   Ausangate or Auzangate, as this mountain is called, is a part of the Vilcanota mountain range in the Peruvian Andes.

We generally know that France had a colony in India- Pondicherry, but not many may know that it had four other small colonies in India. These were Chandernagore near Calcutta (Kolkata), Yanam in erstwhile Madras Presidency area, and Karaikal near Madras (Chennai), and Mahe’ in the western coast in what is now Kerala. These four are considered a part of Pondicherry, now called by its old name Puducherry.    A few years back I visited the French cemeteries in those five places and took photos of the grave stones on which names and other details of the decease French were taken. The idea was to build up a documentation before these graves deteriorate.  I published it in a book form which was well appreciated. https://store.pothi.com/book/dr-k-j-s-chatrath-last-post-inscriptions-french-graves-india-0/  I am sharing some photos from the Yanam cemetery, which the French pronounced as Yanaon. I had taken these photos in 2003.

I went to Paris in May 2022 by Vistara. It being a joint effort of TATAs & Singapore Airlines, I was expecting an impeccable journey. Alas it was not to be. At the time of checking in, the young gentleman at the counter looked at me and my new passport and asked me 'Ah Sir. going abroad for the first time? I was taken aback at this unwarranted show of bonhomie and told him that I have been to 62 countries of the world, to many of these more than once, and put my 5 old passports which included one Diplomatic, two official and two general passports overflowing with visas on his desk. He mumbled something like 'sorry' but it was not even audible clearly. Service inside the plane was just average. And then came the second shock- the lunch. I had requested for a Hindu Veg meal as it is called in the airlines language. Believe you me, the quantity was so little that it could not have filled the stomach of a little bird, much less of an adult human being. And to top it, it wa

 I visited Louvre in May this year and spent some time admiring the paintings. To a non-expert like me, all paintings looked extraordinarily beautiful. 'The Virgin and Child Accompanied by Three Saints' was one such painting that I was glued to for quite some time. What fascinated me most was the use of different shades of blue in the painting.   In this painting the Virgin and Child are accompanied by three saints: Stephen, dressed as a deacon, is holding the palm branch of martyrdom and looking ardently at the   Virgin: Jerome is reading the Bible, which he translated into Latin; Maurice dressed in armour, is gazing at the Infant Jesus. This is a 1576 oil painting  by Tiziano Vecellio Titian. Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio, known in English as Titian, was an Italian painter during the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school.                                                  This is a 1572 self portrait of the Master - Titian