Glimpses of World History: Part 1

I have been reading "Glimpses of World History". Running over thousand pages, the book is a collection of about two hundred letters written by Jawaharlal Nehru to his daughter Indira Gandhi. Nehru was incarcerated at that time by the British Government and Indira was in her early teens. The letters provide us with a panoramic view of world history, starting from the civilization of Harappa-Mahenjo daro and concluding with the rise of Nazism in Germany. It will take more than a month to finish this monumental volume. The more you read, the more it becomes impossible, regardless of your political inclinations, not to get mesmerized by the sheer erudition of the man whom we were lucky to have as our first prime minister. He was not a historian by profession, and surely had no access to a library inside a prison. Yet "Glimpses of World History" is rated as arguably one of the best popular history books of all time.

Let me share a couple of amazing facts that I came to know while perusing the book.

India was exposed to Christianity way before Western Europe accepted it. At around late 1st century AC, several Christian missionaries arrived at south India via the sea route. They were welcomed by the natives and lot of people got converted. This was at a time when Christianity was a proscribed religion even within the Roman empire. Descendants of these early Christians have survived to this day in India.

Marco Polo, the great traveler from Venice, along with his father and uncle spent more than fifteen years at the court of Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan in China in 13th century AC. Marco, who was a favorite of the Emperor, wanted to go home but it was difficult to get Khan's permission. At last there came an opportunity. The Mongol ruler of Persia (modern day Iran), who was also Kublai's cousin, lost his wife and wished to remarry some girl from his own clan. So he requested Kublai to send him a prospective bride. Kublai chose a beautiful Mongol princes and agreed to let the three Polos escort her safely to Persia. The Polos were supposed to return to Venice after discharging this final duty. They took the sea route and came to south India. The Polos were avid travelers, and they, along with the princes, seemed to have no major concern regarding the impending wedding. Having spent quite some time touring south India, the trio and the princes finally arrived at Persia two years after they had started.

If you are a true romantic at heart, dare to imagine: A beautiful princes, a young Marco Polo, embarking on a voyage, touring an exotic land, for as long as two years! Try to think about the romantic potential of the saga! Can it ever be possible that the princes will eventually marry some old King whom she has never seen?

Of course not!

Great! So Marco gets the girl??

Errrr no. Actually the prospective bridegroom (King of Persia) dies before the party can reach his kingdom. So the King's son, younger and more attractive than his father, marries the princes. Marco heads off towards Venice with his father and uncle.

To set the record straight, there is no historical evidence of a romance between Marco Polo and the Princess.

Hopeless Marco!!

PS: As the title suggests, I plan to write at least one more post based on this book.

Writer's Block

I am enjoying a lazy vacation since the beginning of August. In spite of having plenty of free time, I was not able to produce a single post, and I sincerely apologize for this terrible disaster to the superior race of people consisting of regular readers of my blog.

Any post in this blog is an output of the following simple program.

• Write some garbage that instantaneously comes to your mind.

• FOR( ; ; ){

• IF(satisfied with the write-up) BREAK.
  

• ELSE edit post. }

• Publish post.
  

A "writer's block" is encountered if the program runs into an infinite for loop during execution time. I decided to modify the program a little bit in order to get out of "writer's block".

• Write some garbage that instantaneously comes to your mind.

• FOR(i = 1 ; i <= 0 ; i++){

• IF(satisfied with the write-up) BREAK.

• ELSE edit post. }

• Publish post.

Moral of the story: This post is garbage. Furthermore, one way to get out of writer's block is to write a post on writer's block.

Alma Mater

I did my undergrad from a university in Kolkata. I made some great friends, was lucky to be mentored by a bright young professor, and spent some wonderful time dreaming about algorithms, girls and my future as a researcher in theoretical computer science. It has been more than two years since graduation, and with the benefit of hindsight, I have to confess everything was not all right in my alma mater.

We put too much premium on success in competitive exams. One becomes a superstar if she manages to crack IIT. As an ordinary mortal, I was not able to attain this extraordinary feat. But I somehow got into a university of reasonable repute that guarantees a job in the software profession. There students (including myself) used to bunk classes on a regular basis; most of the classes were not worth attending anyway. Copying was rampant in class tests, occasionally even in semester exams. I was guilty in this count as usual. Majority of the professors were bad teachers, majority of the students did not consider studying to be one of the top priorities.

Ours is a peculiar society that judges people by their ranks in competitive exams. I sometime wonder about the extent to which professional success and exam scores are correlated. Yet I have seen people boasting of their academic backgrounds quite often. A person should be evaluated on the basis of her professional achievement after she gets out of college, not by the name of the college she managed to get into. The education system can do with some reform.

I am neither proud nor ashamed of my college days. I simply cherish the sweet memories.

Girls

Last few posts dealt with the rather interesting topic of politics. This one is to cheer myself (and the multitude of four people who still follow this blog) up.

Suppose a man in his early twenties embarks on a grand voyage in India by public transport; and providence dictates that he has to sit right next to a young member of the fairer sex. Without loss (lots?) of generality, his fellow traveler will fall into one of the four categories.

1. Normal type: She spends most of her time reading books, looking outside through the window, or sleeping, and can be easily put up with.

2. How Dare You type: She feels every single (pun intended) gentleman on this planet earth is eagerly waiting for the opportune moment to propose to her, and it is her holy duty to nip in the bud even the most innocuous looking approaches. For example, if she has occupied the window seat in a bus, and the poor mortal asks where her destination is just to know when he can grab the vantage point, she will deliberate vehemently in her mind before (if at all) condescending to give an answer.

3. I have a Boyfriend type: She loudly chats on her cellphone, consciously conveying the message to people around her that she is talking to her boyfriend.

4. I am a Princess type: She travels by train, and cannot stoop to carry her own luggage. Moreover, it is incumbent upon her fellow passengers to place her bags in the upper bunks before settling down themselves.

PS:

1) Types 2, 3 and 4 are not mutually exclusive.

2) This post is entirely in good humor. No offense meant.

3) Feel free to point out if I missed some other types. :)

NRI puja

I came across an interesting article by Ramchandra Guha.

Idle Worship, Or The Non-Resident's Role Play

It is surely worth some introspection.

Freedom of Expression

I was watching this week's The Big Fight on NDTV. Vikram Chandra is one of the few anchors I admire; he is composed, articulate, and unlike most of his ilk, is not in the habit of shouting at the pitch of his voice or rudely interrupting the invited guests. Having enjoyed the show, I decided to convert my thoughts on the topic into a blog post.

Vikram asked an intriguing question that can be briefly summarized as follows. A democracy cannot function properly without freedom of speech. However, consider the following situations. 1) A person makes a hate speech instigating the audience to kill members of a certain religious community. 2) A person makes a comment that is clearly racist, or derogatory to women. 3) A person writes a book offending religious sentiments, people throng the streets demanding a ban on the book, and riots may ensue if the government doesn't succumb to their demands. Shouldn't we be better off by restricting freedom of expression under such circumstances? Can a country ever accord unfettered freedom of speech to her citizens?

I do not hope to settle such a nuanced question in a short essay. Nevertheless, I state my point of view. Freedom of expression necessarily implies the freedom to offend. If I am only allowed to praise you, and you will put me in jail whenever I say something that you consider offensive; it should be called freedom of sycophancy, not freedom of speech. Moreover, if I am allowed to offend your political sentiments, reason dictates you must allow me to offend your religion (or in case of atheists, the lack thereof), as well as race, gender, and every other identity. This provides an answer to the second and third questions: No, freedom of expression should not be curtailed under these situations.

As an aside, I should mention that being a liberal, I get deeply offended to hear someone make a racist or sexist statement. And sometimes a sensible government might have no choice other than proscribing a sacrilegious book, though such incidents will further highlight the fact that we have a long way to go in order to become a mature, tolerant and progressive society.

Finally, freedom of expression does not imply the freedom to kill or physically hurt someone. Hate speeches and inciting riots don't fall under the purview of freedom of speech; there should be separate laws to deal with religious fanatics.

Life as it is

I haven't blogged for a while; in fact, did not even check the blogs I usually follow. It is Friday afternoon. I skipped office in favor of work from home, and this post is clear evidence of my penchant for hard work.

I am eagerly waiting for my trip to Kolkata in August. Furthermore, there are plans to visit Arunachal Pradesh, Mumbai and Durgapur. The countdown has begun.

During the last few weeks I felt extremely motivated to master the art of procrastination, read some Bengali novels by Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay, and finally finish the 900 page volume "India After Gandhi". I want to dedicate a blog post for reviewing this fascinating account of independent India, together with "The Last Mughal", a book on the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 that I read couple of months back. Unfortunately, right now I am too lazy to do any serious writing.

Perhaps I should start teaching a crash course on procrastination; prospective students will be able to get inspiration from my unmatched personal achievements in this front, accrued over a period of no less than two years of graduate study. Let me know if you are interested.

Before signing off, here is my first attempt at a short (micro?) story.

Once upon a time there was a boy.
He loved a girl.
She did not reciprocate his feelings.
Yet he could not stop loving her. WHY??









Because he was fond of wasting a whole lot of time. :)