Gods and Goddesses of Nainital

  A Boat Race on Nainital Lake B oat races on the Nainital Lake are celebrated events of Nainital for more than a century now. Here is an old classical photo of one shared by a friend Harish Bhatt on Facebook. It was originally a black and white picture but has been retouched with digital color by this blogger. Nainital is best described as a blue lake surrounded by lush green hills of oaks and pine and undergrowth of ferns and sweet wild flowers with mountain springs and snow covered peaks, the abode of the goddess Naini Mata when not resting in the snow white peaks of Nanda Devi with her sister Sunanda Devi. May Nainital be protected from the ravages of human lust and greed, may the goddess not be compelled again to wash the town and its people into the lake once again as she did more than a hundred years ago but instead grant them heavenly peace, contentment and tranquility filled with beauty, and may Nainital forever remain the place from where a cry f...

Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cannabis_ruderalis_%28wild_marijuana,_habitus%29.jpg Although cannabis is presently an IILEGAL substance in India, around much of Nainital district as well as adjoining districts of Tehri Garwhal and   Almora, wild cannabis of a good variety grows freely as a wild herb. For millenniums the herb was used by local persons and herbalists for many purposes from medicinal to meditation and from recreational to a relaxant. Then somewhere far away in USA in 1930’s it was made illegal. It is said although not proven that it was because of commercial interests of Du Pont that had come up with new fiber nylon and that another produced from hemp a taller variety of the plant was a competition.  In the ensuing years, other far more powerful commercial interests from the legal and illegal drug industries appear to have developed to keep it illegal. So powerful were these interests that it seems even research was made near ...