True Inspiration

On the Samana Range of the Hindu Kush mountains in Pakistan, the British Army built a small communications post at Saragarhi, to be housed by an equally small contingent of soldiers. The region had always been a troubled area, and during the last quarter of the 19th century, British India’s hold on the North West Frontier was tenuous. In fact, several expeditions had been sent to maintain control and suppress rebellion in the region in the years immediately preceding the Saragarhi battle. Equipped with a heliograph, Saragarhi transmitted messages by using flashes of sunlight, sent much like telegraphic communication (read: Morse code). The flashes themselves were made by either pivoting a mirror or interrupting a beam of light. In the summer of 1897, things were getting tense in the region, and the British had only recently ended an uprising of Pashtun tribesmen in the Malakand region (known later as the Siege of Malakand) in early August. By the end of the month, there

Narayanan Krishnan, an award winning chef at the Taj, a five star hotel in India, was on his way to take up a job in an elite hotel in Switzerland after being shortlisted from thousands of hopefuls.In 2002, Krishnan witnessed an incident which had lead him to give up his dream job and dedicate his life to provide support and food to the homeless and destitute people in his home town of Madurai, India. "I saw a very old man eating his own human waste for food," Krishnan said. "It really hurt me so much. I was literally shocked for a second. After that, I started feeding that man and decided this is what I should do the rest of my lifetime." Krishnan was visiting a temple in the south Indian city of Madurai in 2002 when he saw the man under a bridge. Krishnan quit his job within the week and returned home for good, convinced of his new destiny. "That spark and that inspiration is a driving force still inside me as a flame -- to serve all the mentally ill desti