u/LingoNerd64

One can get decent ghee motichoor laddu in Kolkata but the traditional ukadiche modak must necessarily be made at home. The filling is grated coconut, cane jaggery, ghee, nutmeg shavings and green cardamom. The outer jacket or ukkad is made of equal parts of powdered ambemohar, indrayani and basmati rice and has a melty soft texture.

Recently sourced from Reddit. Naturally there are several others of silver, brass, crystal, sandalwood and ceramic.

त्वं गुणत्रयातीतः ॥
त्वं देहत्रयातीतः ॥
त्वं कालत्रयातीतः ॥
त्वं मूलाधार: स्थितोसि नित्यम ॥
त्वं शक्ति त्रयात्मकः ॥
त्वां योगिनो ध्यायन्ती नित्यम ॥

Rakhis have gotten modern and sleek now as in pic 1, but when I was much younger, the type in pic 2 was the most common. If I wore as many of those, they would go right up to the elbow, and back then they did - not to mention that those spiky metallic bristles at the base used to itch like the heck.

Laskarina Bouboulina neé Pinotsi, Arvanite Greek (1771 - 1825). She participated very actively in Greece's war of independence from Ottoman Turkey, then at the zenith of its territory and power. I have deliberately taken a copy of her actual contemporary portrait, though she's said to have laughed at its romanticisation.

Greek society was not very different from that of Rome, where the very word Patrician (or noble) originated from the word pater (father). The women were usually bound to traditional submissive roles, but Boboulina was a major exception.

She was born in a Turkish prison in Istanbul, then Constantinople, where the Ottomans had imprisoned her father for his part in the Russian instigated failed Orlov revolt. He died soon after and she moved back as a toddler to their native island of Hydra with her mother. There she acquired an education with her own efforts.

She was married twice and the surname Bouboulina comes from her second husband who was a very rich ship owner and captain, who died battling Algerian pirates. Later she gave nearly all the money for the cause of the Greek war of independence.

She built the first modern Greek warship, The Agamemnon with 18 cannons and sailed it to lay siege to the Peloponnesian city of Nafplion along with her son Yiannis. The revolutionaries greatly respected her and called her kapetanissa (captain) and Kyra (Lady). She fought herself and supplied the rebels with arms and money.

Her son was killed and when she collected his remains, she executed three Turkish prisoners. Eventually, Turkey surrendered in 1822, Greece became a sovereign nation state. This event is pivotal to modern Europe being what it is today.

She was shot dead in 1825, apparently in a family feud with her younger son's wife's family but it's likely that her unusual personality was seen as very threatening in those days. She was posthumously made into an honorary Admiral of the Russian navy even though there's no surviving document.

The festive season is not far off. Even if you disregard religion, we have a cultural way of life that's quite independent of whether you are observant or not. That's what we will hold on to and support. This is ours, not anything else. It's organically developed in this land.

Predictably, we went to the Sonar Bangla resort. The adjoining river is Ichhamati, and over here it forms the border with BD. The visible far shore is Bangladesh, where you can see BDF posts with BD flags.

All boats must fly their flags at all times for identification. We have BSF posts on our side with night vision equipment and searchlights. You can cross the center point of the river but not get closer than ten meters of their side of the bank.

A little ahead you can get to the confluence of Bidyadhari and Kalindi with Ichhamati, the Mohana point. The resort is nice and right on the river bank, but a bit overpriced. Given that it's always full of tourists, it's expected.

Sabiha Gökçen, born Ćorović (1913 - 2001) was a Turkish aviator. During her career, she flew around 8,000 hours and participated in 32 different military operations. She became the world's first female fighter pilot at age 23. Sabiha was an orphan and one of the nine children adopted by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

Her surname was given to her by Atatürk and it means "belonging to the sky". In fact, it's no exaggeration to say that Atatürk single handedly made her the first female aviator in an era when there were barely any female pilots, let alone fighter pilots. Amelia Earhart was much older when she disappeared around the same time that Sabiha became a combat pilot

Atatürk thought aviation was extremely important and oversaw the founding of the Turkish Aeronautical Association in 1925. He took Sabiha along with him to the opening ceremony of Türkkuşu Flight School. She was very excited during the airshow and when Atatürk asked her whether she wanted to become a skydiver, she said that she was ready right away.

Atatürk then asked the head of the school to enroll her as the first female trainee. She was intended to become a skydiver, but was much more interested in flying so she went on to earn her pilot's licence.

Together with seven male students, Sabiha was sent to Crimea for an advanced course in glider and powered aircraft piloting. While in Moscow, she learned that her sister Zehra had died, so she returned to Turkey and detached from social activities for a while.

Later at Atatürk's insistence, she got back to her training. She received special flight training and began flying motorized aircraft in 1936 at Eskişehir Aviation School. Atatürk was very happy and said he hoped she would be the first woman military pilot in the world from modern Turkey.

After receiving her flight diploma in 1937, she trained to become a war pilot at the 1st Airplane Regiment in Eskişehir for six months. She carried out several military sorties and air raids until 1938 and then went on to serve as a flight instructor until 1954 and trained four more Turkish female aviators, and continued flying around the world until 1964.

She died in the military academy hospital exactly on her 88th birthday. The Sabiha Gökçen International Airport in Istanbul is named after her and it opened two months before she died. The Guinness Book of World Records lists her as the first ever female combat pilot.

Just substitute the word employees with members and the word job with sub, then you could adopt it verbatim for any desi sub. We desis are among the worst globally when it comes to not littering and being well behaved in public. It's easy to understand why those traits become even worse under the mask of anonymity.

আমাদের পরিবারে এমন কোন রীতি নেই যে জন্মাষ্টমীর আগে তালের বড়া খাওয়া যায় না।

Albina Mali-Hočevar was born in Slovenia in 1925, and is a great example of resilience, strength and sheer courage at a very young age. At age 9 she started working to support her family. She then joined the resistance movement when she was just 16 years old.

The resistance group was led by Josip Broz Tito and fought against the Axis forces occupying Yugoslavia. Initially she was put on a nursing job but this was too boring for her, so she got into frontline action. She was brave from the start - by age 17, she had already been wounded twice in battle.

Right after turning 18, she sustained major injury that took out an eye and left her face permanently scarred when a mine exploded very close to her. Yet despite her injuries, she just kept on fighting. The given photo is a colourised version of her original black and white photo soon after the mine injury.

Later she became a nurse again, helping wounded soldiers while the war went on. Her case is representative of sacrifices that many made for freedom. Albina survived the war and lived to be 75, dying in 2001. Her legacy lives on as a symbol of bravery and resilience.

The bearded guy (foreground) is Mir Jafar (1691 - 1765) with his eldest son Mir Miran. He was a general to Siraj ud Daula, the nawab (regent / viceroy / plenipotentiary) of Bengal on behalf of the Mughal emperor in Delhi. He betrayed the nawab to Robert Clive of the British East India company in order to be nawab himself and Bengal passed into British hands. Now his name is used to mean traitor, a bit like Judas Iscariot in Christianity.

They are seen in all defence academies and military installations. We owe our security to them, no matter what destabilizing stunts the far left pulls in its own interests and that of those who fund them.