The walls of an Indian temple dedicated to the Hindu deity Krishna and his consort Radha are covered with thousands of messages asking for help with exams and to open the doors to top universities.
The pleas, written in English and Hindi, are from aspiring students desperate to be accepted at prestigious engineering and medical institutions.
The words reach the ceilings of the temple in Kota, a city in India’s north-western state of Rajasthan.
Among the messages are calls to be granted a place at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and to be given help with entrance exams to study medicine.
The Radha Krishna Temple's “wall of belief” exemplifies the pressure many people feel when they take exams with the hope of pursuing a prosperous career in a country with a high level of unemployment.
People believe that writing on the walls of the temple will ensure their success.
“I came last year and visited the temple after I heard that all the wishes come true,” Ankit Raj told The National. "I have written my message to God. I am waiting for it to be fulfilled."
He travelled to Kota from the eastern state of Bihar and is planning to take an exam to study engineering.
Pressure of studies
Kota is known as India’s “coaching factory”, where thousands of centres prepare hundreds of thousands of aspiring medical and engineering students to take university entrance exams.
About 1.5 million people in India graduate with engineering degrees every year, more than any other country.
Many dream of enrolling at one of the 23 IITs, institutions that have produced business leaders including Google chief executive Sundar Pichai and Parag Agrawal, former chief executive of Twitter, now known as X.
Competition is fierce. This year, more than 1.1 million students took the Joint Entrance Exams, with only about 40,000 places available. More than two million took admission exams for state medical colleges, with about 40,000 places on offer.
The immense pressure means students often rely on divine powers.
Dreams and aspirations
While many of the messages on the walls are pleas for personal success, some are dedicated to siblings and friends who are also preparing for the entrance exams, while others are written by students who want to make their parents proud.
The temple was built in 1992 and soon became a hot spot for students seeking help and comfort.
Some gather outside temple during lunch breaks or in the evenings after leaving a coaching centre, where they can study for up to six hours at a time.
Once the doors of the temple open, they rush inside with a pen and write their messages.
“I feel at peace here. This temple is filled with messages written by students. I can't tell you my wish, but it was fulfilled,” said Garima Govind Rao, who attended the Allen Career Institute, a coaching centre in Kota.
"After that, I came back again and wrote 10 messages in a single day. There was no space left."
The temple priests said the volume of messages written in the temple meant the walls were repainted every two weeks.
“This temple is the epicentre of the students’ faith,” a priest, Dharmendra Acharya, told The National.
"Students come to this temple in large numbers every day. The trend started in the late 1990s, when some students wrote down their wishes. It soon became a ritual.
“The students say that their wishes come true. They write on the windows, the walls and even the ceilings, so we repaint the walls every two weeks to give every student an opportunity to write their wish.”
Sinopharm vaccine explained
The Sinopharm vaccine was created using techniques that have been around for decades.
“This is an inactivated vaccine. Simply what it means is that the virus is taken, cultured and inactivated," said Dr Nawal Al Kaabi, chair of the UAE's National Covid-19 Clinical Management Committee.
"What is left is a skeleton of the virus so it looks like a virus, but it is not live."
This is then injected into the body.
"The body will recognise it and form antibodies but because it is inactive, we will need more than one dose. The body will not develop immunity with one dose," she said.
"You have to be exposed more than one time to what we call the antigen."
The vaccine should offer protection for at least months, but no one knows how long beyond that.
Dr Al Kaabi said early vaccine volunteers in China were given shots last spring and still have antibodies today.
“Since it is inactivated, it will not last forever," she said.
Teachers' pay - what you need to know
Pay varies significantly depending on the school, its rating and the curriculum. Here's a rough guide as of January 2021:
- top end schools tend to pay Dh16,000-17,000 a month - plus a monthly housing allowance of up to Dh6,000. These tend to be British curriculum schools rated 'outstanding' or 'very good', followed by American schools
- average salary across curriculums and skill levels is about Dh10,000, recruiters say
- it is becoming more common for schools to provide accommodation, sometimes in an apartment block with other teachers, rather than hand teachers a cash housing allowance
- some strong performing schools have cut back on salaries since the pandemic began, sometimes offering Dh16,000 including the housing allowance, which reflects the slump in rental costs, and sheer demand for jobs
- maths and science teachers are most in demand and some schools will pay up to Dh3,000 more than other teachers in recognition of their technical skills
- at the other end of the market, teachers in some Indian schools, where fees are lower and competition among applicants is intense, can be paid as low as Dh3,000 per month
- in Indian schools, it has also become common for teachers to share residential accommodation, living in a block with colleagues
In numbers: China in Dubai
The number of Chinese people living in Dubai: An estimated 200,000
Number of Chinese people in International City: Almost 50,000
Daily visitors to Dragon Mart in 2018/19: 120,000
Daily visitors to Dragon Mart in 2010: 20,000
Percentage increase in visitors in eight years: 500 per cent
From exhibitions to the battlefield
In 2016, the Shaded Dome was awarded with the 'De Vernufteling' people's choice award, an annual prize by the Dutch Association of Consulting Engineers and the Royal Netherlands Society of Engineers for the most innovative project by a Dutch engineering firm.
It was assigned by the Dutch Ministry of Defence to modify the Shaded Dome to make it suitable for ballistic protection. Royal HaskoningDHV, one of the companies which designed the dome, is an independent international engineering and project management consultancy, leading the way in sustainable development and innovation.
It is driving positive change through innovation and technology, helping use resources more efficiently.
It aims to minimise the impact on the environment by leading by example in its projects in sustainable development and innovation, to become part of the solution to a more sustainable society now and into the future.
Coming soon
Torno Subito by Massimo Bottura
When the W Dubai – The Palm hotel opens at the end of this year, one of the highlights will be Massimo Bottura’s new restaurant, Torno Subito, which promises “to take guests on a journey back to 1960s Italy”. It is the three Michelinstarred chef’s first venture in Dubai and should be every bit as ambitious as you would expect from the man whose restaurant in Italy, Osteria Francescana, was crowned number one in this year’s list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants.
Akira Back Dubai
Another exciting opening at the W Dubai – The Palm hotel is South Korean chef Akira Back’s new restaurant, which will continue to showcase some of the finest Asian food in the world. Back, whose Seoul restaurant, Dosa, won a Michelin star last year, describes his menu as, “an innovative Japanese cuisine prepared with a Korean accent”.
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal
The highly experimental chef, whose dishes are as much about spectacle as taste, opens his first restaurant in Dubai next year. Housed at The Royal Atlantis Resort & Residences, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal will feature contemporary twists on recipes that date back to the 1300s, including goats’ milk cheesecake. Always remember with a Blumenthal dish: nothing is quite as it seems.
