Sandalwood is one of the most expensive woods in the world. But its really one portion of sandalwood log that makes it so valuable. To get it, the workers tirelessly chop away the lighter outer layer of sapwood, until they are left with the dark inner core that makes a kilogram of Indian sandalwood cost $200 today.

This is where the sandalwood uniqueness come from. And when its distilled it’s used in all kinds of products I.e., from bath soaps to luxury brand perfumes.

 So, the main question is what makes sandalwood aroma so special? And why the wood is so expensive?

Native to south India, Santalum album or Indian sandalwood was used for hundreds of years before becoming a go to scent for expensive perfumes.

Today it’s also used for wood carvings and medicines and it is even considered a sacred tree in several religions. Once distilled,sandalwood’s sweet, woodsy aroma retains it’s scent for decades.

Hollow heart wood logs are classified as jajpokel I.e., one od the 28 classes of indian sandalwood. Factories can purchase pure heartwood like jajpokel or raw sandalwood logs. But If they buy the raw wood, they will need to break down each log themselves.although machine helps split the sandalwood into more manageable pieces, stripping the logs down to their heartwood core requires the effort of several employees.

In some trees, pure heartwood is easy to extract, because it forms in one circle at the center. In other trees, the heartwood mixes together with sapwood, which impacts the final value of the oil.

A machine breaks down the strips of wood into chips and these are shifted to another area to grab if there are any usable heartwood. Then the pieces are shifted into another machine which makes the wood into powder form. Now distillation can begin. The process is long and it starts injecting steam  into distillation stills. After the oil is extracted, it is left with a large pile of matter which emits a mild smell of sandalwood. This leftover powder is again used in preparation of incense sticks, a dhoop or a common form of incense in india.

During the final stages, workers separate the oil from water and purify it until they are left with a totally clean tank of sandalwood oil.

For distilling one metric ton of oil it takes around one week for normal workforce.

The oil later is sent for testing in labs for the quality checks. Later after the checking is done, it is sent to factories where it will be used to make soaps and other items.

One 10gram bottle of sandalwood oil costs around  5500 rupees or about $74.

Out of 10 sandalwood species, Indian sandalwood and australian sandalwood have the largest commercial value. The difference is the Indian species has higher level of alpha and beta santalol, the components in sandalwood responsible for its lasting scent.

India used to dominate the market for sandalwood oil and oil based products. In recent days, the Indian and Australian sandalwood species has gained significant ground in the market.

Since 2018, the species are considered vulnerable- one level above endangered. Another factor that limits supply and increases the price is  inherent the way the tree grows. Older trees tend to yield more oil which makes them more preferable for oil production

The Growers  will wait around 20years  for the tree to mature.

“We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us”.

Interior Designing is the Art and Science of enhancing the interiors of the building to achieve a healthier and more aesthetically pleasing environment for the people using the space.

The person who plans, researches, coordinates and manages such enhancement projects, is an interior designer.

It is an art of creating aesthetically functional spaces pleasing with the client’s choice integration and understanding including the person’s creativity. It is basically underlying the layout of one’s personal choice and preferences of designing and decorating one’s home as per his/her needs and taste.

But for this, interior designers must be highly skilled and professional in their work and adhere to the norms and regulations of their professionalism.

It is essential for interior designers to acquire a deep experience with colors, understand their psychological effects and learn and apply the meaning of each color in different locations and situations in order to create suitable combinations for each place.

Specialties of interior designing includes:

• Residential
• Commercial
• Self-employment
• Sports
• Traffic building
• others

Interior Designing is a professional course requiring a professional experience and required degree to continue with the passion and the work. A formal education program, particularly one accredited by or developed by a professional organization of interior designers, can provide training that meets a minimum standard of excellence and therefore gives a student an education of high standards.

The interior designing requires a wide range of working conditions and golden employment opportunities. Some work on regular basis i.e., some may have a permanent job, enjoying all the perks of professionalism, while others usually work on a contract or per-job basis.

In some cases, licensed professionals review the work and sign it before submitting the design for approval by clients or construction permitting.

Not forgetting some of the famous early interior decorators, here we have name of some:

• Sibyl Colefax
• Dorothy Draper
• Syrie Maugham
• Elsie De Wolfe

And, last but not the least the foremost important principles of interior designing:

• Balance
• Unity
• Rhythm
• Emphasis
• Contrast
• Scale and proportion
• Details

The essence of interior designing will always be about people and how they live. It is about the realities what makes for an attractive, civilized, meaningful environment, not about fashion or what’s in or what’s out. This is not an easy job.

“The details are not details. They make design.”

Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj born on 19 February 1630 at the Shivneri Fort

He was an Indian ruler and a member of the Bhonsle Maratha clan.

Shivaji Maharaj carved out an enclave from the declining Adilshahi sultanate of Bijapur that formed the genesis of the Maratha Empire.

In 1674, he was formally crowned the Chhatrapati of his realm at Raigad Fort.

Over the course of his life, Shivaji Maharaj engaged in both alliances and hostilities with the Mughal Empire, the Sultanate of Golkonda, Sultanate of Bijapur and the European colonial powers.

His military forces expanded the Maratha sphere of influence, capturing and building forts, and forming a Maratha navy.

Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj is known as ‘Father of Indian Navy‘

Shivaji Maharaj established a competent and progressive civil rule with well-structured administrative organisations.He revived ancient Hindu political traditions, court conventions and promoted the usage of the Marathi and Sanskrit languages, replacing Persian in court and administration.

His legacy was to vary by observer and time, but nearly two centuries after his death, he began to take on increased importance with the emergence of the Indian independence movement, as many Indian nationalists elevated him as a proto-nationalist and hero of the Hindus

He established a competent and progressive civil rule with the help of disciplined military and well-structured administrative organisations.

He innovated military tactics, pioneering non-conventional methods(guerrilla warfare) and leveraged strategic factors like geography, speed, and surprise.

He focused on pinpoint attacks to defeat his larger and more powerful enemies.

He placed the well-being of his people above everything. A brave and genuinely secular ruler, he respected women and cared for the downtrodden and farmers.

Accession & Reign

• He made his first military conquest at the age of 16 in 1645 by attacking and capturing Torna Fort in the Bijapur Sultanate, followed by conquest of other forts – Chakan, Kondana, and Rajgad.
• Fearing his rising power, the Bijapur Sutlan, Mohammed Adil Shah imprisoned his father, following which he halted his conquests and built a stronger army until his father’s release in 1653 or 1655.
• The Bijapur Sultan sent his general, Afzal Khan, to supress Shivaji in November 1659, who, fearing Afzal’s deceitful plans, came armed with bagh nakh (tiger claw) in one hand and a dagger in the other, and slayed him at the Pratapgar Fort.
• He was attacked by the army of Adilshah’s general, Siddi Jauhar, while camping at Panhala Fort, near present-day Kolhapur, in 1660, but Shivaji escape to Vishalgad fort to regroup his large army for a battle. Backed by his Maratha sardar Baji Prabhu Deshpande, who wounded himself while holding back the army at the Battle of Pavan
• Khind, he reached Vishalgad safely, resulting in a truce between him and Adilshah in July 1660.
• He resumed his raids after his father’s death in 1664-65 and seized the northern parts of Konkon and forts of Purandar and Javali.
• His peaceful relations with the Mughals saw conflicts in 1657 when he raided the Mughal territories in Ahmednagar and Junnar, following which Aurangzeb sent a 150,000-force under Shaista Khan, in 1660, to chastise him.
• The Mughal army captured Pune. When they encamped there, Shivaji made a surprise attack killing Mughal soldiers and guards, with Shaista Khan narrowly escaping. Soon after in 1664, he raided Surat and looted its treasure.
• He made a visit to Agra, along with his nine-year old son Sambhaji, upon Aurangzeb’s invitation in 1666, who planned to send him to Kandahar (now in Afghanistan) to handle the Mughal empire’s northwestern frontier.
• He was ill-treated by Aurangzeb at his court and offended. He was taken into custody and put under house arrest. However, he managed to escape with his son and spent the next three years strengthening his administration.
• With the end of the Treaty of Purandar in 1670, he attacked the Mughal forces in Maharashtra and re-captured the forts he had surrendered to them.
• In 1670, he launched an expedition under Tanaji Malusare to capture Kondana For, which was under Mughal possession, in the Battle of Sinhagad. While the fort was seized, Malusare died and hence, the fort was renamed Sinhagad.
• He raided Surat for a second time in 1670 and defeated the Mughal army under Daud Khan in the Battle of Vani-Dindori (close to present-day Nasik) while returning back.
• After spending the early 1670s in capturing land and expanding his domain, he crowned himself as the king of the Marathas at Raigad in 1674, earning the title Kshatriya Kulavantas Sinhasanadheeshwar Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj.
• He went on an extensive campaign of raiding more territories in the later half of 1674, capturing Khandesh, followed by Bijapuri Ponda, Karwar, Kolhapur and Janjira in 1675, and Ramnagar, Athani, Belgaum and Vayem Rayim in 1676.
• He moved southwards at the end of 1676, seizing the forts at Vellore and Gingee (in present-day Tamil Nadu), once ruled by the Adilshahi Dynasty.
• Despite being a devoted Hindu, he showed great respect to all religions, including Islam and Christianity, and was unbiased towards other castes and communities.

Even in the expensive world of spices, saffron stands out and the real saffron can cost you over $10000 per kilogram. Sought after for thousands of years as a spice, a dye and a medicine.

For making just 1 gram of saffron you need over 150 flowers. Some times the product we use in name of saffron may be false. So, just what makes this spice so expensive?

Saffron is the red stigma of the Crocus Sativus. Each crocus have 3 small stigmas, that have to be picked carefully by hand.

This minuscule harvest means that the amount you get from each flower is roughly 0.006 grams. No machine can do this delicate work to harvest these thin threads and it can take 40 hours of hard manual labor to produce just 1 kilogram of high quality saffron.

Growing the plants isn’t exactly easy either. The buds are actually called corms but, they are like a bulb basically like a flower bulb. So, the more flowers per bulb you can get and bigger the flowers are and this all depends on how you look after that, like growing , climatic conditions.

So. Once the flowers started growing, harvesters have to work fast to make sure they can pick it all in time. Almost all the saffron that is planted can flower within one week of the year and to maintain the quality, the flowers are best picked during the morning.  Quality is key when growing such a precise crop and the taste of the saffron depends on the rainfall, temperature and soil.

Kashmir is famed for producing some of the highest quality saffron in the world. In Kashmir, red soil is mostly found and this is fertilized and good for saffron.

 The most  expensive highest grade saffron is generally made up of just the very tips of the Stigma.

In Iran,where over 90% of the saffron is produced. There are 4 grades. The lowest grade is the bunch I.e., the entire strand that’s pulled from the flower, from the dark red tips to the yellow base. In higher grades, the yellow strand is removed leaving a long strand of pure red.

One kilo of saffron is made up of around 4,50,000 strands and you need 1,50,000 flowers and to grow these flowers, it needs a large space.

Over 200 metric tons of saffron threads are harvested worldwide each year. This is the result of over 30billion flowers. The demand for the threads is so high that some might produce fake saffron.Some threads are even made of corn silks, coconut fibers or even horse hair, and to made it look real- synthetic colors are used to dye the lower grade stigmas and sell them as high grade saffron.

 The main reason for the increasing demand of saffron is climate change which is drastically changing. In Kashmir, production has dropped significantly and many farmers are selling their land instead.

Between 2017 and 2018, saffron production in the region fell almost 70% from 16.5 metric tonnes down to 5.2 and with continuing droughts and climate change the current harvest could become even more rare

Cut throat competition and consumerism are the bones of the fast-paced modern life, born out of advancement in Science and Technology.

Everyone is busy and focused to secure a career and bright future for themselves. In this business, everyone seems to have forgotten the basic morality and ethics.

It must be kept in mind, if our means are wrong, our ends can never be right. Competition can never bring anyone in seeking. The most valuable treasure in the world is Peace, Happiness and Health. They can be in hand only through righteousness. Competition are antithesis of peace, health and happiness.

So. the most ideal approach to live a great life should be doing one’s best without compromising with the morals and ethics. One must never do mean things; think mean thoughts and speak words of any type.

“The outcome will always be grand if one’s thoughts, words and acts are garnd,”

In recent era, the most hyped and commonly used application which is being used by millions of people all around the world, is namely INSTAGRAM.

It is basically a social networking site service which allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging.

This is done by the people for getting likes and fame on social media in lieu of becoming an influencer or famous among people by show casing their talents and to be more specific by out bursting their thousands and millions of followers.

For increasing name and fame on social media, people especially the youth literally buy likes on their pictures, videos by requesting their followers to re-post, re-share their posts on their stories. They literally allow the strangers to openly and freely invade in their privacy and life and allow them to judge on the basis of their posts and likes.

‘Likes on Instagram’ is rapidly becoming a trend to become popular like the famous celebrities.

People just for few likes on their posts either accept money, offer money or indulge in unfair means just to show how important, supreme or popular they are among millions of people.

While surfing the internet, we can see many sites and applications offering opportunities to people to grow and boost their followers and likes on any social media by paying just a handsome amount of money.’

This needs to stop, as in lieu of boosting followers and likes, many innocent people are trapped and later some are blackmailed too.

Likes from strangers or the people you don’t even know can be dangerous for you only. A few numbers of likes can’t tell how important, good-looking or what you are capable of.

It’s just you and you only.

“Existence wants you to be you.”

White was born in Pelton, County Durham, England on June 14, 1949. He began piano lessons at age six, took up drums at age 12, and started performing publicly when he was 13. White and the surviving members of Yes were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2017. Their hits include “Roundabout” and “Owner of a Lonely Heart.”

‘Yes’ are an English progressive rock band formed in London in 1968 by lead singer and frontman Jon Anderson, bassist Chris Squire, guitarist Peter Banks, keyboardist Tony Kaye, and drummer Bill Bruford. The band has undergone numerous line-up changes throughout its history; 19 musicians have been full-time members. Since May 2022, it has consisted of guitarist Steve Howe, keyboardist Geoff Downes, singer Jon Davison, and bassist Billy Sherwood. Yes have explored several musical styles over the years and are most notably regarded as progressive rock pioneers.

‘YES’ Drummer Alan White died at the age of 72 peacefully at his home after a ‘short illness’, the English prog-rock band announced on 26 May.

Alan is considered to be one of the greatest rock drummers of all time. He was born in 1949 in County Durham and joined YES on 30th July 1972 for the Close to the Edge Tour. He had previously worked with John Lennon’s Plastic Ono band after a phone call in 1969 to play at the Toronto Rock Festival. Alan continued working with Lennon including on the Imagine album and with George Harrison on All Things Must Pass. He also worked with several other musicians over the years, including Ginger Baker’s Air Force, Joe Cocker, Gary Wright, Doris Troy and Billy Preston to name but a few. Alan White was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of YES in 2017.

A number of health setbacks since 2016, had restricted Alan’s time on stage with YES on recent tours with Jay Schellen filling in and Alan joining the band, to great applause, towards the end of each set.

Some people are disappointed when they first see the most famous painting in the world.

Maybe at first glance it doesn’t give you the wow factor that other paintings give when you see. But the truth is, when you see how many people are surrounded every time just to see the masterpiece is on different level.

But the fact what we see is quite a contemplative portrait. A portrait which is the greatest psychological portrait ever painted. A portrait so ahead of its time, that centuries later we are still trying to figure it out.

In 1517, the French king, King Francis I offered Leonardo a job, court painter and engineer and architect to the king. Leonardo now in his sixties moved to the chateau of Amboise in France and never went back to Italy. He brought with him dozens of sketch books, but one painting i.e., Mona Lisa. leonardo knew how important it was. He know it was a master piece

Mona Lisa is the end product of the greatest inquisitive mind in history. A self made man with a voracious appetite for knowledge, a man who dedicated himself to the study of anatomy, geology and philosophy

For Mona Lisa he used a thin grained piece of popular tree and applied an undercoat of lead white. he painted with glazes that had a very small amount of pigment mixed with the oil. So, how dark you want your glass to be, depends on how much pigment you use. He used more like a wash, which he applied thin, layer by layer.

As we move around the painting, that light shifts around. he used tiny, almost invisible brushstrokes applied super slowly over months, or in Mona Lisa case, it’s years.

By contrast, on her skin, brush strokes were applied in an irregular way and that makes the grain of the skin, look more life like. All of these techniques pioneered by Leonardo, bring the painting to life. He made sure, we would not be distracted from the face of Mona Lisa.

Leonardo uses the classic pyramid shaped composition that was introduced during the renaissance. It is an important change from the paintings of the 15th century. The structure provides stability but more importantly it provides a clear center of focus and directs your gaze.

In Mona Lisa’s case, it is pulling us into her face. The Mona Lisa is the earliest Italian portrait to focus on the sitter in a 3 quarter length pose, rather than full length. But why? because he completely fills the frame with his subject, making the painting more intimate and cutting down on distractions.

The another thing is, portraits were usually done with an open sky as the background, a monotone background or a simple room. Mona Lisa is in front of a complicated landscape that only existed in Leonardo’s imagination. Paintings that are drawn during that period had both the subject and the background in sharp focus. Whereas the background of Mona Lisa seems to fade or become more blurred and out of focus. This is Arial perspective and Leonardo invented it

The peak power demand in the national capital rose to 7,334 MW on Wednesday afternoon, the highest ever in June, amid increased use of cooling appliances to beat the intense heat, discom officials said.It is expected to hover around 8,200 MW in the coming days, they added.

“Before June 9, Delhi’s peak power demand had never crossed the 7,000 MW-mark during June.

However, on May 19 this year, it clocked 7,070 MW. It has already crossed 7,000 MW six times in June this year and once in May,” a power distribution company (discom) official said.

The power demand peaked to 7,334 MW at 3.35 pm on Wednesday.Delhi’s power demand crossed the 6,000 MW-mark on every single day this June, the official said.In 2021, it crossed the 6K mark on nine occasions through the month, five-times in 2020 and thrice in 2019.