Srinivas Padma: Personal Musings on Life, Growth, and Connections

If you've been the long drawn fisticuff between the dollar and the rupee you know this already It is six pack season and the rupee is flexing its muscles like SRK in OSO. In the recently concluded Indian Economic Summit, Gerard Lyons, chief economist & group head (global research), Standard Chartered Bank said, "The rupee we maintain its unrelenting march and possibly climb to Rs 30 to a dollar in the next five years." But not everyone is swooning. And this bit of news has not come easy to the foreign tourists who prefer paying in dollars. A couple from Texas, Beth and Tim Warner went to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and were surprised when they were asked to pay in rupees, as they knew they can pay in dollars. Until now, foreign tourists to sites like the Taj Mahal have had the option of paying in dollars or rupees. They had to pay Rs 250 per head to enter the mausoleum. "The ruling is aimed at safeguarding tourism revenues, following the recent fall in the dollar,...

The Taj Mahal, regarded as one of the world's most beautiful monuments, was voted in a global online poll as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World . Three of the other six chosen are from South America: Peru's Machu Picchu, Brazil's Statue of Christ Redeemer and Mexico's Chichen Itza pyramid . The remaining three are the Great Wall of China, the Colosseum in Rome and Jordan's Petra . There is no pucca list of wonders of the world in existence. You could take your pick from among the Stonehenge, the Colosseum, the Catacombs of Komel Shoqafa, the Great Wall of China, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Porcelain Tower of Nanjing, the Hagia Sophia, the Taj Mahal, Cairo Citadel, Ely Cathedral and Cluny Abbey. Except for the Taj Mahal, the Colosseum and the Great Wall of China, all others dropped out of the list. There is another list, that of ancient wonders. This includes the Great

By ELIANE ENGELER and ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS Geneva: A global competition to name the New Wonders of the World is attracting widespread interest, with more than 20 million people voting so far in the poll conducted by Internet and telephone, organisers said. The list of candidate has been whittled down to 21, and the winner will be announced on Sunday in Lisbon. The Egyptian pyramids at Giza are the only structures still remaining from the original list of seven architectural marvels put together by different observers of the ancient Mediterranean and the West Asia. Long gone are the Hanging Gardens of Babylon , the Statue of Zeus at Olympia , the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Pharos lighthouse off Alexandria . Choosing world wonders has been a continuing fascination over the centuries. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, or Unesco, keeps updating its list of world heritage sites, which now ...