My Ramblings

The sizzle of the glooming, shrouding black balls of overwork, of work pressures, of social anxieties had made me completely irritable. I just had to travel to some place which could offer me some peace of mind. I was listless, to the extent that to be able to read a book in the comfort of a dark room with just the rains pouring from above, in the nuke of a hillock seemed like a 'living' dream. I had given in to my conversion into a "tourist" from being a "traveller" seeking just a changeeee of scene and place.  People don't realise this, but the trick to travel towards the east from Bihar is to start early. Leaving just an hour early in the morning saves around three hours in the evening. And, if you are driving diligently, not stopping much at every milestone you think you have achieved in this 600-kilometre drive, you save a lot of time.  The Asian Highway, the AH-1, starts in Bihar from Muzaffarpur at a spectacular ninety degrees, laying itself out a...

The way he wipes off my tears is very coarse. He spreads out his palm. While there is no cupping of his palm and the fingers, the whole of his palm seems to be wiping my eye. But he ensures that his palm extinguishes the pain of the eye it motions over. This action is almost always followed by a wholesome tightening of his hands around my face and into his chest. He has tried to smother me at times as well. I unequivocally prefer it over losing a second of that one embrace.  "Use me as your springboard. You have your base. Jump off in the air. Fly. Float. Glide. You will not fall prey to gravity. Be the bird.", he says with conviction. I stare at his face blankly, knowing not what to say.  I feel astounded by the idea of freedom just afforded to me. "Go off,   but you are not allowed to leave!",  I bite my lips at the ring of the irony of his words yet again while my head hangs and tears walk from my eyes.

CHAPTER II   Primitive Man North India 1.      Like prehistoric Europe, first surviving traces of the man left in the II Interglacial Period (more than 100,000 years BC). 2.      “Traces” = paleolithic pebble tools of the Soan Culture (named after a river in Punjab where they were found in large numbers).     ·       Resemble tools widely distributed all over the Old World, from England to Africa and China. Old World means that part of the world that was known before the discovery of the Americas, comprising Europe, Asia, and Africa. ·       No human remains found in association with the tools (unlike the industries which have shown to be the work of primitive anthropoid types, such as the Pithecanthropus of Java and China). South India (“Madras Industry”) (Industry =  In the  archaeology  of the  Stone Age , an  industry  or  technocomplex   i...

Allegations 1. The Himalayas were a significant cultural divide - overrated.         Counter-Evidence  - We know how the Himalayas were passable and how civilizations and cultures permeated across the mighty terrains. So, to put the highest currency on the importance of these as a marker that separated rather than integrated is flawed. The implication of presence of Himalayas was more as a climatic-geographical divide (source of two major rivers in two directions, clouds drifting northwards and westwards than a cultural divide, more as a source of two major rivers.  2. The 'Indian' character which is many a times alleged to lead to fatalism and quietism, accepting fortune and misfortune alike without any complaint.        Counter-Evidence  - The scale of natural phenomenon in India may have helped shape the character of her people -  The bountiful nature and total dependance on monsoons whic...

1. CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION: INDIA AND HER ANCIENT CULTURE 2. CHAPTER 2 - PREHISTORY: THE HARAPPAN CULTURE AND THE ARYANS

                                                Courtesy:  greecehighdefinition The pair was asleep with their backs glued to each other. Like the Platonian soulmates lying together in deep slumber, they were finally at peace. He had entangled one of her feet between his two to stay enmeshed while she looked to curl her other one into the mess. It was not coercive. They had both wanted to stay interlaced for as long as they could. It was going to be morning and they would be separated, not much different from the way Zeus had severed the soulmates to salvage the superiority of God. There was no other thought in their mind at that time. They never found time to boast about their love, their togetherness, or the joy they shared. They knew they didn’t possess the capacity for hubris. The time together was just not enough to sha...

Image Courtesy:  www.vecteezy.com I have started reading  The Picture of Dorian Gray. It is not an easy read; to speak fairly, philosophy cannot be. It is mostly because we aim to learn everything about the universe in minimum words. I remember the writings of Aurobindo, where pages would go flipped one after the other without a full stop in sight. Reading those lines felt taxing then. In those moments I had felt there was a need to ease philosophy. Just to let philosophy breathe; or somehow innoculate the student with more oxygen so they let philosophy in easy. One of my cousins posits that if one can't explain something in one or a maximum of two lines, he or she possesses only a vague amount of information about the subject. I had aligned with the same school of thought too only to be shied away when the same action was applied to explain philosophy. I have been a student of Philosophy for some time and have gathered some knowledge about a handful of philosophers. Comprehe...