SOUTHASIA Online

Come summer and the South Asians welcome a guest so rich and abundant that it almost seems to be a part of their lives for the next couple of months. I am talking about none other than the monsoon season when heavy rains pound South Asia and swamp the region with floods, disrupting life and slashing the daily routine, leaving behind waterborne diseases, food crisis and a considerable loss to infrastructure.

Sri Lanka, the country of continuous golden sunshine and superb tea, is also known as the Island of Serendipity. Located in the Indian Ocean and separated from India by the Palk Strait to the south, the country has the longest history of Theravada Buddhism with more than 70% of its population being ethnic Sinhalese.

Theravada, which literally means "the Teaching of the Elders", is a school of Buddhism which reveres the Lord Buddha as the teacher, unlike the Mahayana form which venerates Buddha as a super-human or God-like entity. 

Ceylon, or modern-day Sri Lanka, with the meticulous and careful preservation of its archaic monuments, gives a good peek into the history of Buddhism which flourished as early as 2500 years ago within the country.

The first train in South Asia huffed and puffed its way from Bombay to Thane on April 16, 1853, covering a distance of 34 kilometers and bringing a revolution in transportation in India which would over time boast of a railway network of more than 60,000 kilometers. Gradually, private Indian investors joined the British government in an effort to build India's rail network and today IR boasts a fleet of 7,800 locomotives, 40,000 coaches and 3,26,000 wagons. In addition, nine pairs of Rajdhani and 13 pairs of Shatabdi Express Trains run on the rail tracks all over India. Carrying 15 million Indians daily, the railway has become an intrinsic aspect of life of the common Indian and the quintessence of Indian culture.

The country governed by Taliban and then torn by a decade of war was nothing but mountains vs. men. Communication was a big issue but only a few years back. Afghanistan is now emerging as a huge telecommunications market, as the people have started to realize the importance of technology. It was not long ago that even the Afghan Taliban - when ruled - used to travel all the way to Pakistan, just to express their thoughts, plans and strategies to the world. Obviously, that had to happen after they destroyed all the sources of telecommunication in the country.