I have been living (150 kilometers) away from Hoshiarpur city, my home-town since 3 years now, and for most of the part – without any troubles, thanks to the support of my family and friends. The hectic student life at Chandigarh (where I currently live), my job and various other factors don’t even permit me to visit my home often. Everything has been such for 3 years, and I miss being here. I am in fond love with this place and thought it’d be great to blog about Hoshiarpur.

About Hoshiarpur, the City:

Hoshiarpur is a city and a municipal council in Hoshiarpur district in the Indian state of Punjab. It was founded, according to tradition, during the early part of the 4th century. In 1809 it was occupied by the forces of Maharaja Karanvir Singh and was united under the greater state of Punjab. Hoshiarpur is also known as an ancient manufacturing town where colorful lacquer (formerly ivory) finished plastic inlay furniture is made.

Hoshiarpur is also known as City of Saints as many of great saints belong to this city. Hoshiarpur district has the largest number of villages in Punjab state under its administration, but the city is well known for its highly developed urban culture and sense. Did you know that Hoshiar is a Hindi (and Punjabi) word that means Intelligent and Alert.

Notable People from Hoshiarpur:

You got to believe this.

• Dr. Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of India is the alumni of the Government College, Hoshiarpur.
• Lord Swaraj Paul, a successful businessman from United Kingdom belongs to this district.
• Noted Punjabi Folk and popular singer Manmohan Waris is from Halluwal village in this district.
• Famous Punjabi music director Sukshinder Shinda belongs to a village called Dhmiya in Hoshiarpor district.
• Noted Punjabi Folk and popular singer Late Kulwinder Dhillon was born and brought up in this district.
• Noted Punjabi Folk and popular singer Shankar Shawney is from Kamalpur area of the city.
• Former Pakistani air force Chief Kaleem Sadaat belonged to this city.
• J.P.SINGH, the only Sikh businessman in Chile, South America.
• Mogambo or Amrish Puri, a noted artist in Bollywood, had studied at D.A.V. College Hoshiarpur.
• Former President of India, Late Giani Zail Singh, was associated with Hoshiarpur for a good period of his life.
• Shri Hari a great saint belonged to this district. One of area in the city is named after his name i.e. Hari Nagar.
• Gauri Khan (Chhibber) wife of Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan was born in Hoshiarpur. Her father moved to Delhi when she was a kid. Her cousins still live in Hoshiarpur.
• Sant Baba Jawala Singh Ji lived in village Harkhowal, near Hoshiarpur, for a good period of his life.
• Bollywood Actors Avinash Wadhawan & Upasna Singh belongs to Hoshiarpur

Demographics:

As of 2001 India census, Hoshiarpur had a population of 148,243. Males constitute 53% of the population and females 47%. Hoshiarpur has an average literacy rate of 78%, higher than the national average of 59.5%: male literacy is 81%, and female literacy is 76%. In Hoshiarpur, 11% of the population is under 6 years of age.

* Female per 1000 males -  935 – which is quite better than the rest of the state
* Density of population (per km²) – 439
* Percentage increase in population (1991-2001) – 13.81

Climate of Hoshiarpur:

The district of Hoshiarpur has a mild climate compared to other districts in the state of Punjab. Much of this is due to the abundance of hilly terrain and sizeable forest cover. Temperatures drop as low as -5^oC in the winter while the mercury is known to cross 45 °C in hot summer months of May and June.

The pattern of seasons in the district is similar to that of other districts in Punjab, except slight variations at the terminals. The year may be divided into three main seasons in the district of Hoshiarpur. The summer season lasts from April to June followed by the rainy season (July to September end) during which time it becomes hot and humid. The winter season starts after the rains are over from October and lasts up until March’s end.

Rainfall:

75% of the rainfall is experienced within the period between July and September. 15% of the total rainfall is experienced in the winter months of January and February during which time the climate is under the influence of western disturbances in the Persian Gulf. Hail storms may occur in the closing period of winter. (It’s raining outside as I am writing this – from the monsoon that set in early, this year in North India.)

Fruits:

This is the tastiest part of this post – – Farming is practiced in villages bordering the city (Hoshiarpur has the largest number of villages in Punjab state). The local climate is very suitable for citrus fruit cultivation and a large area is covered with the same. Although, Hoshiarpur has always been known for the distinctive variety of Mangoes – as is referred in this popular Punjabi song: “Ambiyaan nu tarsengi chadd ke des doaba.”

All in all, my home is in a wonderful city. Being the city capital of Hoshiarpur district, Hoshiarpur is such a fabulous place as compared to the surrounding region. Eating joints across the Mall Road, the well planned and developed Civil Lines area, the markets, newly set up retail stores and shopping malls will always keep you engaged. Besides, the kind of respect and authority that my family has in Hoshiarpur… I feel so protected and secure than anywhere else in this world. Then everyone is so caring, the social culture is amazing and the night life though not as flashy as in many big cities (like Chandigarh) but is so much better.

Home Sweet Home. I love it.

If you follow me on Twitter, you might already know that I had a serious road accident while returning from college on Saturday, on a bike with my friend.

Here’s an account of what exactly happened.

Shahid Udham Singh College of Engineering and Technology is located on a busy highway at about 25 kilometers from Chandigarh City, where I live with my younger brother. The heavy traffic on this highway is mainly comprised of heavy duty vehicles like buses, tractors and transport trucks that carry cement, heavy machinery and other goods across the Punjab and Haryana border.

I and my friend, Ranchit, were riding back after appearing for our last of the external examinations, Manufacturing Practices *Feeling Lucky*. Half-way through the distance there is this stop called Landran from where we take a turn to the city. We had barely covered another mile, when we saw 2 guys riding another bike right in the middle of the road, just in front of us. Asking for side, Ranchit blew the horn of our bike and seeing them slow down a bit, accelerated to overtake them.

Its summer time in India and the weather is unexceptionally hot and humid. These are the days when the busiest roads are lined with more stalls than the eucalyptus trees and interspersed with wild grass. Stalls that sell fruits like orange n mango in bulk at prices less than the city fruit markets and stalls that sell refreshing glasses of ice-chilled Sugarcane Juice.

The guys on the other bike probably had neither heard us blowing horn behind them, nor did they notice that we were speeding to overtake them. This generally happens when people use cheap helmets (from the road side vendors, again…) that are stuffed with thermocol like vegetables in a burger from McDonalds.

Anyways! When we were crossing the bikers, the pillion rider shouted out to his mate to pull aside for a glass of sugar cane juice from one of the stalls. His right arm that he stretched out to signal to the other side of the road, almost hit Ranchit in face. The driver was shocked by the unexpected order that was conveyed as some emergency signal! He turned the handle to the left and then right like a flickering tube light. He soon lost control over the bike and started skidding to his right.

The tail of their bike crashed into the fairing of our ‘Karizma’ (that’s the bike). Then our handle got locked in their rear stock and this is from where the disaster started. Along with theirs, our bike too started skidding to the right. Because we were at a greater speed our bike crashed on the road with me skidding ahead of it. Ranchit was still on the bike trying to brake so that we don’t hit any of the trees or stalls at much speed. The pillion rider on the other bike fell upon him and dismounted Ranchit from the bike.

We crossed the 2-lane road to come to a halt on the other side of it. I and Ranchit were feeling just too lucky because our own bike would have crushed us if it didn’t stop by crashing into the tree we fell behind at an arm’s length from us. The other bike crashed into the next tree.

Ranchit got his right knee injured badly, with deep cuts on the right foot and bruises on both arms. I couldn’t move my right fist and had some bruises on my right arm. I wasn’t feeling much pain from the wounds, but from the fear that I might not be able to appear for the final 2^nd semester exams starting this 29^th.

The other guys weren’t hurt much and came over to help us and washed our wounds along with the people from the near-by stalls who came with jugs of water. The guys were pleading sorry about all that happened and suggested that we go and get tetanus injections. Ranchit was about to start shouting on them when I took them aside and told them that now the worst had happened and fighting over it or scolding them won’t heal us… so they better leave.

Ranchit was in pain and soon after we washed his wounds, I signaled him to get his helmet and we all should leave before we get involved in a police case. The handle of the bike got displaced but I somehow rode Ranchit back to the city. We went to a doctor who charged INR 250 for just 2 tetanus injections and unasked consultation (my parents are doctors, and I don’t trust many others.) Because I couldn’t move my wrist much, I thought it was a hair line fracture. The X-Ray showed nothing like that however, and I concluded that it was just an internal injury.

At home, my brother washed our wounds, cut Ranchit’s denims from his knee to remove them and served us with water to drink and then some jokes to make us feel better. Then he applied some butadiene on my wounds and fixed my wrist with a crape-bandage after applying anti-inflammatory lotion.

This is the first road accident that I have been involved in, in my life, that too without me being at fault. It wasn’t Ranchit’s either.

At the end of the day, any way, we are feeling lucky enough that

· First of all, we were alive!

· There was no truck or trailer coming from the opposite side to crush us. Generally, this road is TOO busy, but this Saturday it was empty for sometime because of a traffic jam in the city.

· It was our last external examination of the semester that day.

· We are hurt, but we’d be OK by the time our exams start. At least, our right hands would be fine.

· We were wise enough not to spoil anyone’s day by indulging in a fight with the other party. Fighting wouldn’t heal our wounds.

· We weren’t caught up in a police case. The policemen in India are robbers in disguise! Big ones!

2 days after the accident, I am able to move my wrist and hold a pen. Phew! I’d be able to write my exams…

Accidents are bad. Drive safely. Do not over-speed. If you’re a pillion rider, take care that you do not disturb or shock the driver. Always use quality-checked safety helmets. Keep Safe.

Also, there are currently 66 posts and 356 comments at Inspirit which implies 5.39 comments per post that is published here. This is an amazing part of Inspirit Stats, and I attribute such a success to the appreciable participation spirit of the solid Inspirit readership. 5 comments a post means a lot to me, as it convinces me that you the posts at inspirit interest you and you take your time to read and comment to them. I am highly grateful to you for your support.

You’ll also be glad to know that till today I have published 15 blog reviews, absolutely FREE! And the service still continues for anyone who’s interested. Apart from honest opinion about your blog, you get a few links for free as a bonus. You can request a Free Blog Review and I’ll get back to you through a comment at your blog when I am done with it. I don’t plan to charge for the service in near future because nothing makes me more happy to help my fellow bloggers and that too for free, saving them the good bucks they might otherwise have to spend at other blogs offering reviews for a fee.

Google PR hasn’t moved a point up from 0 after the recent update. While it’d have been lovely if Inspirit enjoyed a higher PR but I don’t see any benefits coming with PR except when you are into link exchanging and writing paid or sponsored reviews where the offers get better with a higher PR. So, I really don’t care much.

I believe, however, that things will change in the times to come. I hope to build more quality links to Inspirit and become an authority in the meta-blogging niche. All that is needed is your support and we’ll rock!

Chad and Stacey lost their beloved 15 years old son, Dustin, in an unfortunate accident at the hands of a reckless driver. Dustin’s parents blog about their feelings, their losses and their road to recovery at Boiled Over. For them, their blog has become a vent for stress and anger of their everyday life and helps them to release the volcano of disturbances inside them.

But, instead of keeping it personal, the strong couple provides a chance to boil over to anyone who needs to vent out his/her frustration, stress or anger and complain about what’s wrong with the world around! Everyone’s Heard at Boiled Over and I must say, there can’t be a more community-oriented approach to writing such a blog. A truly remarkable blogger couple.

So you get an idea that Boiled Over is basically a place where you’ll find random well-based and well meaning rants and rumbles. But yesterday was a very different day at Boiled Over. Chad & Stacey published an Enormous Thank You in which they flash a huge smile instead of what they generally do at their blog, that is, Boiling Over!

Its such a surprise & pleasure for the couple to be chosen as the opening stars for the remarkable bloggers section started at Debbie’s, Bird On A Wire . Besides a thanks to Debbie, the post mentions special thanks to BlogEngage social network & Bloggeries forums that help them promote their articles and gets them some traffic.

I am glad to know that Inspirit is one of the blogs that impacts Boiled Over and its authors in someway. In the most positive tone of their thank-you post, my blog has been linked to in the post with a few other blogs that share enough of their love to find a place in the Boiled Over blogroll.

I wish the Boiled-Over blogger couple the best of luck with their blog and life. Wish them lots of smiles and happiness for their life. May God Bless them.

We have this lady-lecturer taking our physics class who shouted out these very words while we were deriving a formula. Just 10 minutes later, while dictating an experiment students wrote, “Light strikes mirror M₁ and passes through Lens L₁” when she screamed at us ,”You just want to waste time by writing crap! Don’t you think no one is so dumb not to understand that M stands for mirror and L for lens! Skip words, pace up and be effective!”

I don’t know if she had a fight with her husband before she left for college in the morning. Is it mental fatigue of lecturing continuously through the day or frustration of handling the craziest students around the college that make teachers act weird! Whatever it is! I haven’t seen a crazier species!

P.S: If you are a teacher and reading this, please understand that I respect you & all the like, for the great job you’re doing by educating this world for making it a better place to live in. I am not being derogatory in any way, but I do believe! you’re crazier than anyone around…

All of you must have heard of PayPerPlay by this time. Its not news anymore. For those who don’t know, PayPerPlay is an advertising program, that requires you to put your unique ad code in your blog template that will play audio ads for every visitor on your website/blog. There is no clicking involved at any point of generating revenue for you, as you are paid every time an audio ad is played on your website, that simply means each visit on your site pays you! Besides the audio-ads concept of revenue generation, you can promote the program using your referral link and earn more money by bringing in, more affiliates and partners for the program.

Should you be using PayPerPlay?

Talking about myself, I have never liked any websites that start playing music or “promotional lectures” when loaded. It is so un-cool to play voices when you are casually surfing with your own kind of music playing in your favorite media player.It will be such an irritation to keep on hearing coarse voices every time you visit a site of interest with PPP audio-ad code installed. And what when you visit 10 websites in a day and 8 out of them play these kind of audio ads?

While this can be a good source of revenue as no clicking is involved anywhere, but I wont like to hear silly voices that I will not be interested in, often. It would be impossible to tolerate voice ads when I view my own website again and again when I am playing with my theme and widgets. And certainly not possible to manually remove-and-insert ad code every other while!

Similar is the opinion of majority of people I came across in a discussion on PP, on various forums.

Will you be using PPP?

PayPerPlay wants me to be dishonest !

I had signed up for PPP a while ago, on the request of a friend through his referral ID. I got my own referral link on signing up and added one of my blogs and installed the add code, just for testing it as I am not going to use PPP in any way. Yesterday, I got an email from PPP that asks me to be dishonest with my readers.

PPP: You May Be Losing Your Sign-Ups

Hello Abhinav,

… some text … some text … some text …

The reason I bring this up is because the only way that
sellingppp.com would get any traffic is because of you.
With this fact in mind we find it interesting that we
continue to get sign-ups by the thousands under the main
account. Very little traffic comes from the search engines,
the rest is coming from affiliates.

The point I am trying to make is the only way we could be
getting that many direct sign-ups is because people are
ripping the affiliate ID off of affiliate links and just
going straight to sellingppp.com and bypassing the affiliate
all together.

This is a strong case for the fact that you should

“absolutely” cloak your affiliate link.

This is just a heads-up … If you are not cloaking then
you are losing sign-ups.

A free tutorial on cloaking your affiliate link is
available here:
http://www.seo2020.com/ppp/cloaking-your-affiliate-link.html

If you already have a web host then you should take the
time to get your affiliate link cloaked. It only takes a
few minutes.

If you don’t have a web host or your own PPP domain name
then we will set everything up for you at a price that
is lower than you can find anywhere else for similar
services. Further, we will set up your website, email and
cloaking for you.

PPP is in its beta currently and is gathering affiliates from the referrals its members are making. When I had talked about Getting 1 Million Real Visitors in NEXT 30 Days, I had clearly mentioned that the link I have used in my entire post is a referral link, to the T2000Ultra network.

I am not tricking my readers into a fraud that I should cloak my links. I have always been honest in everything that I have talked about on my blog. And it is certainly of no use to cloak links and push unwilling readers into any of the networks. And if they are willing to enjoy the benefits that a website talks about, they will even join with the referral link, no matter what… This is not a very appreciable approach to building a base, by PPP! And its discouraging me further from using PayPerPlay anytime in future.

Let me know what you think. Leave me a comment.

First, let us have a look at some of the first-time experiences with me, that I talked about above.

• I passed my 12th grade (Non Medical) and for the first-time experienced how it feels to get rid of school forever; where I had to study the subjects that I never liked because the education AUTHORITY, the Indian Education System, wants us to do so. We have to study subjects like physics & chemistry, etc. and have to clear engineering exams based on these to get into streams that don’t involve these in any way! I am currently a Computer Science & Engineering student and I didn’t have computers as a subject in the last two years of school, nor did any of the entrance exams that I cleared for this course had anything to do with computers.
• For the first time in my life, I entered a college. My college is located near the City Beautiful- Chandigarh, and is an awesome place. A campus bigger than any of the schools I ever attended, faculty with more experience and knowledge than the school-teachers I have known, a really close-to-the-heart group of friends and very big laboratories are a first-time experience. Then, mass-bunks are a entirely new concept to me. For the first time, I made some amount of AUTHORITY for myself in my class, shunning my finger-on-your-lips kind image at school. Its great to be a central figure.
• I bought a domain for myself, for the first time; & also moved to a self-hosted blog for the first-time. I felt a little AUTHORITY over my fellows who are still stuck at blogs hosted on Blogger or WordPress. Also, I managed to get as much number of average visitors a day, as much I couldn’t gather on my most successful post ever at the other blogs, and I have managed to get as much readers in about a month, as much I couldn’t have the whole year! So, in 2007 I was on a new way of learning and the time to start implementing what all I gained has started now.

There are many other such experiences, that I can cite, but let us keep it short.

What is Authority?

When I was thinking about all this today, I found a “common soul” linking all of these. The feeling of an upper-hand over the rest, a satisfying feeling of self-pride. The feeling of AUTHORITY! The dictionary meaning of the word “Authority” is:

The power to enforce laws, exact obedience, command, determine, or judge. OR Confidence derived from experience or practice; firm self-assurance

So, gaining AUTHORITY is one of my (important) goals for this year. I am feeling very hungry for power and command; both online and off-line.

How do I want to achieve it:

1. Off-Line
   • I am going to study harder, score better and be counted in the toppers’ list, as always except this first semester.
   • I am looking forward to find more time to spend with my friends, rather than being online 20 hours a day! I am going to call the meetings of The R.A.T.S, more frequently. The R.A.T.S. my group of friends at college. I am going to do more policy making and schedule OUR 2nd semester and 3rd semester.
2. Online
   • I intend to participate, to the maximum extent that I can, in social networking online. I am going to promote Inspirit Blog very effectively. So, if you want to join me in any network for gaining some authority for yourself also, then just leave me a comment with your profile link at the social network.
   • I am thinking about some more link building strategies like the one Promote Your Blog: Sponsor My Posts for FREE! Get Free Links to Your Blog/Posts I offered. If you want a place in my BlogRoll, just leave your Name and a link to your Blog in the comments.
   • I am going to hold some blog-contests, later this year. So, it will be a good idea to subscribe to my RSS feed and get the updates right in your mailbox. Want me to subscribe to you? Subscribe to me and leave me a link to your feed in the comments.
   • I’ll be trying out some new services and review them later and also share my experiences with the services that I am already using with my readers.

I hope to cultivate a healthy and active readership community for Inspirit Blog and thus create an AUTHORITY for my blog and myself, as a blogger, as well. And if you need any help with establishing your authority, on the internet then just drop me a comment. I’ll try to help you in every possible way I can.

By the way, I planned to write yesterday, but the whole afternoon was spent in sleeping as I needed a good dose of rest and in the evening some @$$hole spoiled my mood over the Yahoo messenger in the evening. He was a 3rd year student from a college in the city and had a real bad ego problem that I couldn’t help him with. I tried avoiding a chat after he had irritated me enough but the b@stard started spamming with IM. I reported him at last and blocked his IP, not considering that he was a friend’s friend. Whoever he was or whatever associations with my friends but I don’t really like entertaining dumb asses. I cannot work with this kind of shit on my head.

As for today, I plan to study for a few hours now as the next exam is Engineering Drawings on 16th, that I am poorest at. Its a good deal of days, you might be thinking, but when I couldn’t pack it in my head in 6 months of college, how the hell I am going to prepare in 6 days, I wonder. Then, I have to join a friend at a party late in the evening. We’ll have a drink or two with dinner, and then expect me to write something useful late at night according to the Indian Standard Time (GMT + 05.30 hours)

Till then, good day.
See ya’

Basically that is what, that had till now upheld the official launch of this Inspirit Blog. I had messed up with the codes, such that the sidebars showed below the post if you opened a single one. And then there were changes to be made to the template I chose, to give it an entirely mine touch; This included editing the images (basic, huh!) and changing their sizes from default to what appealed to me (and that I think will appeal to you too!) without disturbing the layout of the pages. I had almost screwed sometimes but luckily, everything is very fine as of now.

Another point I was considering was, whether to import techXtreme’s posts and comments to this blog and redirecting that blog hosted on Google’s Blogger platform to this one. Last whole week was spent in getting over the gazillions of error messages that I faced during the process, and was still unsuccessful; The error being on a Windows server(IIS server.) I wasn’t enjoying all the pleasures that a wordpress can give, when installed on a LAMP package (Linux-Apache-mySQL-PHP.) The import job was successfully established only after importing to a local clone installation on my laptop supported on XAMPP and then generating SQL queries to be run on my online server. They needed heavy modifications as in skipping CREATE TABLE queries as they were already there and replacing each and every reference to the localhost (my laptop) with this domain and setup! It certainly wasn’t very easy as I am a black-buffalo, in quest of learning at every moment though. And when all was done, there I went flushing every single post and comment I imported after taking so many pains, in a few seconds at the thought that I want to independently run and manage two blogs!

Heartiest THANKS go to the Feedest Guy : Leo for helping me through all these and many more (awfully boring) problems, and providing me hosting facility with him. Yes, there were many more problems! You’d probably run away only to never come back if I talked about all of them here. And those who are already leaving, “Don’t Dare You! Stay Tuned, I Won’t Scare You (anymore!)”

So here it comes! Inspirit Blog!
Breathe the freshness and bathe “in Spirit.”

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