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Bewitching Sea Beaches in Odisha

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  Share Odisha the state of great heritage and culture, where the green paddy fields speak of the pastoral idyll is full of natural beauty . The landscape of Odisha has always been able to win the heart of everybody. This Eastern state of India shares about a coastal length of of 450 kilometre and lies along the Bay of Bengal. The most important part of sea life in Odisha is the beaches and fishing activities. Odisha has its own recognition of sea beaches that offer a perfect charm and an exotic feel of the setting sun. What makes the beaches of Odisha so special are its blue coloured water , the crystalline blue sky, a neat and clean beachy surface, silver coloured sand where the observer gets ...
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Sohrai Parba: The Festival of Santhals of Odisha

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  Santhals of the Mayurbhanj district look forward to the Sohrai cattle festival every year, which is also known  as Bandhana. The festival is celebrated with great gusto by the Santhal tribe in the districts of Sundargarh, Keonjhar and Mayurbhanj and also by Santhals from the surrounding states of West Bengal, Jharkhand and Bihar. For the tribals in Mayurbhanj district, the festival, coinciding with the harvest of early varieties of paddy, is significant. The Santhals celebrate the festival while other cultures worship Goddess Kali, one day after the new moon (Amavasya) and it lasts for a fortnight. Steps of the Festival The first step of the Sohrai or Bandhana festival starts with ‘Goth Puja,’ during which villagers give fowl and rice to the cattle. The deities are often served with cow-dung, sun-dried corn, vermilion, mithi (a kind of spice) and powdered corn. These are all set on a window and held in his right hand by a priest while he holds a p...
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Onion Substitutes To The Rescue

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  A Different Approach As the obvious solution is not viable, let’s approach this problem from a different direction. What do we use onions in our dishes for? If we break it down like this we could take a blend of different methods to reach an ideal solution. Thinking like that, we use onions for three different reasons Texture Thickening gravies Taste Texture Onions are used in many dishes to add texture like in salads. Here you can use radishes in place of onions. The taste is a little sharp for an onion substitute but it can be mitigated by quick pickling radish slices in diluted vinegar and letting rest for 15 minutes. Personally, I don’t bother as I like the taste. The other substitute is bell pepper or as we call it capsicum. The texture is similar, be it raw or cooked. However, bell peppers taste a bit different and you will need to spice up the food to mask the taste.
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Pathani Samanta

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  This almanac itself is based on the calculations provided in the book Siddhanta Darpana which was written in 1899 by the renowned naked eye astronomer  Mahamahopadhyaya Chandrasekhar Singh Harichandan Mahapatra Samanta , better known to us as  Pathani Samanta . Siddhanta Darpana is a masterpiece of observational astronomy and the calculations made here by Pathani Samanta are very close to the modern values observed via telescopes. And all of this was done without any telescopes. But the question now arises, who is Pathani Samanta? In this post, we would try to chart out his life’s work and his genius as a way to answer this question. Beginnings Very little is known of the early life of Samanta Chandra Sekhar. He was born in the royal house of Khandapara on the 13th of December 1835. Khandapara was a princely state in Odisha, in what is now the district of Nayagarh. He was nicknamed Pathani by his parents and thus came to known as Pathani Samanta....
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Uttam Mohanty

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  Uttam established himself as a romantic lead actor with his natural charisma and effortless acting. He starred against many leading ladies like Rita Chand, Sujata Ananda, Tandra Roy, Mahasweta Ray, Deepa Sahu, Subhra Pati, Aparajeeta, Baisali, Sangeeta Das and even Bengali actresses. The 80s were his most successful decade as he was considered a dependable hit maker. With most of his movies in the early part of the decade paired with Mahasweta Ray (over 20 films), an off-screen romance was inevitable. Sadly it did not last with the pair separating in 1985. This however did not prevent them from acting together in 1988 and later in the nineties. The later part of the decade he was involved with actress Aparajita Mohanty who he married in 1987. They continued acting movies and as of now Uttam has over 50 movies starring with his wife. The Nineties and the New Millennium Uttam continued his hit streak but he was getting older. In 1990 he starred in his only H...
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Stories of Odisha: The First Martyr

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  The Background Jayi Krushna Mohapatra was born in 1739 to Haramani Devi and Chandrashekar Rajguru. He was born in Biraharekrushnapur, a village near Puri and was educated at the Emaramath and Gobardha Peetha at Puri. Upon coming of age, he journeyed to Kasi (Patna) to debate with the scholars there. From there, he went to Benaras (Varanasi) to learn from a  Tantrasadhak . Finally returning to Khurda, he immersed himself in social work. The king in those days was Birakeshari Dev I. In 1760, the Gajapati of Paralakhemundi, Jagannath Narayan Dev invaded Khurda. To repel his armies, the king of Khurda sought the help of the Marathas. Alas, the price of this help was to give up the prosperous paraganas (districts) of Lembai, Sirai, Rahanga and Chabiskud to the Marathas. The loss of these lands weakened the economy of Khurda and drove the king mad.
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Hello and Wellcome

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  A new day dawns and a new week beckons us forward, so we begin this endeavour with a hearty welcome to one and all.  We are a group of friends who have travelled all over India for work and fun and have finally returned to our home state to settle down.  However, as much as we would like to say that, we’re still at heart travellers. But as we cannot stray far from home anymore, we decided to start this blog to record our future experiences and give voice to the untold stories hidden from view in our verdant state. Ah, Odisha . Or Kalinga if prefer the old ways. This blog intends to bridge the gaping void that is the state’s infoscape. There is an appalling lack of information available on everything except for occasional features in TV and print media. Our intention is to collect and collate all available information at a single spot to make it easy to index and search, making us the one-shop-stop for all things Odisha.
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