The curse of a Tantrik - Hindustan Times

The curse of a Tantrik - Hindustan Times

Lindbergh’s feat eclipsed earlier heroic transatlantic flights

Lindbergh’s feat eclipsed earlier heroic transatlantic flights

Guns, Germs and Steel

Guns, Germs and Steel: a short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years by Jared Diamond [first published 1997]. [A review]



This book tries to understand European colonialism, and European domination of the world, beginning in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
The title of the book is a brief summary of the answer-- the Americas and Australia, conquered and resettled by Europeans, did not have either guns or steel to defend themselves. Nor did they have horses, which were often crucial in early warfare. Disease germs such as small pox and tuberculosis brought by Europeans, were new to the regions they conquered, and the native people were decimated by diseases they had never encountered before.
Of course, the almost 500 page book has much more than this. It attempts to present a broad sweep of history, beginning with the occupation of the world. It provides examples of how weapons and germs devastated certain groups, and then goes on to try and understand how these weapons and germs came to be in Europe. Food production, leading to a surplus, was the basis for sedentary, complex societies, which led to diversification and the development of technology, as well as of writing and political organisation. Animal domestication was the basis for certain germs. Climate, terrain, and naturally available plants and animals were a crucial aspect of where agriculture would develop, how much it could increase, and how it could spread.
This winner of the 1998 Rhone-Poulenc Science Book Prize is vast in its scope.
Some of its ideas are now outdated or disproved, as for instance the view that agriculture spread through Eurasia from the Fertile Crescent.
Why did Europe suddenly overtake Asia in development and technology? Why did Europeans and not the great Asian empires colonise the world? These questions need more analysis, but the book is still an interesting read.

The Water Snakes

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, is a great poem. Rereading it, the following verses struck me. Though he is in misery after killing the albatross, he forgets this for a moment, watching the water snakes. And love rises within him. After that moment, he could pray, he could sleep.

'Beyond the shadow of the ship
I watched the water-snakes:
They moved in tracks of shining white,
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.

Within the shadow of the ship
I watched their rich attire:
Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coiled and swam; and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.

O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware:
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.

The selfsame moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea."


Part V

"Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole!
To Mary Queen the praise be given!
She sent the gentle sleep from heaven,
That slid into my soul.'

Mamata Banerjee---painting Kolkata blue

Mamata Banerjee has a plan--she wants Kolkata to be painted blue. Jaipur is the pink city, so why shouldn't Kolkata be the blue city? It brings back memories of the emergency of 1975-77. Very few may remember or even know, that at this time an order was passed to paint Dehradun blue. As the deadline approached, house painters were in great demand. Frantically, everyone was getting the buildings painted, often an inky, watery blue. Dehradun's ferocious monsoon, with incessant rain, is well known. Soon all the buildings had strange smudged streaks of blue, with the earlier colour showing through. The emergency ended. With another monsoon the blue was all washed off, the buildings were dirty and streaky. Finally they were repainted in their original colours.

The wolf and the goat -- a true story

In village Namner, in Dausa district of Rajasthan, India, a wolf from the neighbouring forests, chased a goat. The goat, running away, fell into a well, and the wolf, following, fell in too.
Both spent the night there. Did they communicate? Did they make friends? Whatever they did, the wolf did not attack and kill the goat.
The goat kept bleating, and in the morning villagers gathered around. Officials of the forest department reached there. Using ropes, they managed to bring both animals up, unharmed. The wolf was released and raced for shelter into the forest. The villagers hate wolves, but persuaded that it was only a hyena, they let it go. The goat was returned to its owners.
{the story is reported in several newspapers]

A cow has breakfast

The car was parked near a nondescript small restaurant in Dehradun, and I watched the scenes around me. A black cow, looking dirty and uncared for, came and stood with its front legs on the single stair leading to the restaurant. Soon a young worker, perhaps just out of his teens, came and fed the cow with left over rotis and naans. Another young worker came and put a pile at the cow's feet. It did not take her long to eat them all--there must have been twenty to thirty rotis, left over from the previous night's dinner. The two workers went inside, and the cow eyed the huge bag of tomatoes on the counter. Catching it with her teeth, she dropped it to the ground and began eating them. A worker from a neighbouring shop called out to them, and the two young fellows came out. They pushed the cow away a bit, picked up whatever they could, and then urged the cow to finish off the squashed tomatoes at her feet. Sorting through what they had picked up, they even threw her a few more squashed ones.
Such a pleasant sight--they were amused and not angry, and allowed the cow a good breakfast.