varnam

There are many bloggers who take potshots at us Mallus. We don't like to name names, so instead, we will provide a hyperlink. But guess what. Quietly, the Malayalee takes over

The roll call is a veritable who�??s who in power�??in the PMO, it is the Numero Uno, National Security Advisor (NSA) M K Narayanan, a former Intelligence Bureau chief. Initially, while Narayanan looked after the commanding internal security, it was a fellow-Malayalee, the late J N (Mani) Dixit, former foreign secretary, who was the NSA, until he passed away this January. Narayanan simply moved into the job later.

Then there is T K A Nair, principal secretary to the PM, a post which had assumed intoxicating power when Brajesh Mishra occupied the post during A B Vajpayee�??s time. Nair, a former Punjab cadre IAS officer, was handpicked by Dr Singh when they served together in the bureaucracy.

The present RAW (our CIA) chief Hormis Tharakan is a Kerala cadre IPS officer�??he was pulled out from the state where he was DGP. The Secretary to President A P J Abdul Kalam is Madhavan Nair�??he was former Secretary, Defence Production [Quietly, the Malayalee takes over]

With IT and airline industry booming in India and people seem to be really misusing the freedom

Every day for the last four months I have been hiring. I come to office each day, hassle my recruitment team, agencies and consultancies for resumes, perform interviews, negotiate salaries and make offers. It's amazing to see how people negotiate for salaries and perks, no one asks anything anymore about what the job entails, what they can contribute, or how they can grow and realize their dreams here. It's about pay, and people are eagerly willing to display unbridled stupidity in managing their careers by focusing incessantly on money. Heck, the time it takes to finalize an offer nowadays, I could send out an offer letter, go have several children, watch them grow, put them through school and then head back to office, the candidate is likely to have finished negotiating his pay and ready to join.

We need to wake up and smell the stink of the decay we are creating all around us in the IT job market.Year-on-year end people here expect nothing less than 30 to 45% salary increases, where as the average salary hike in the US per year is 3% and Eastern Europe is 4%. I could go on and on about the quality of the flotsam and jetsam that washes on to my desk in response to job ads, but we all know it. Sometimes it takes as many as 40+ interviews to close one position.[A very interesting note!]

That was the IT industry. Air Sahara is now offering a 40% salary hike to its employees to retain them. Lo oks like it is a great time to be an "employee" and a bad time to be running a company. For those of you in the software field, I have a question. How do you deliver a project on time?

Since most of us are stupid and cannot decide what is good or bad for us, the all knowing benevolent Government has decided to step in

The Indian government is to outlaw all images of smoking in Bollywood films and television shows in a move praised by campaigners as a "sensible step" but attacked by film-makers as a curb on artistic freedom.

The ban, the most comprehensive of its kind in the world, will outlaw shots showing cigarette packs and advertising hoardings. Foreign movies and serials, increasingly popular especially when dubbed into local Indian languages, will have the offending images electronically blurred.[India to ban smoking in films and TV shows ]

So if James Bond is making love to a naked woman who is smoking, just the image of the cigarette will be blurred and that is the way it should be. Movies predating the ban are supposed to run a series of health warnings across the bottom of the screen. So when Shah Rukh Khan is about to beat up Amrish Puri, everything will pause and the hero, villain and sidekicks will wait till the health warnings flash below. This should heighten the tension in the scene.

Next the minister should ban guns. These can kill instantly and I don't know why no one has campaigned against it. In predated movies, guns should be blurred. Some villains and sidekicks have bad teeth caused by paan chewing. Paan scenes should be banned. The entire song of Khaike Paan Banaraswala should be shown blurred. The word Paan should be bleeped. Did I forget to say this, a health warning should also be flashed. MNC products like Coke and Pepsi should only be shown blurred. Lassi can be shown un-blurred.

Most movies end in violence with one hero murdering lot of innocent sidekicks. This is not at all good. A sensible step would be to ban it, and predated movies will show it all blurred. With blurring you may think it is a porn movie, but hey it is a risk we have to take.

One of the essential scenes in a movie is a rain song and much water is wasted. The warning sign should be flashed before such scenes, so that residents of Chennai and Rajasthan do not attempt it at home, not to forget that the water should be blurred.

Ram Gopal Varma has been making many scary movies and it scares the bejeesus out of me. There should be a mandatory warning sign before each scare. If ghost like characters or Bobby Deol is in the movie, they should be blurred.

Finally with all this blurring, the only things that will remain unblurred are these. But they should not be banned since they cannot corrupt young minds.

Aligarh Muslim University's Executive Committee decided to grant 50 percent reservation to Muslims from all over India and many people were opposed to reservation based on religion for a university funded with the tax payers money. But Shabana Azmi, says

"It is unfortunate that it has been given a communal colour. It should not have had any political ramification," she told reporters here on the sidelines of the launch of a book `Jama Masjid, Call of the Soul'.[Shabana Azmi backs reservation at AMU]

Yes, reserving half the seats for Muslims is not at all communal. By the same definition of communal by these secularists, Muslim League is not a communal party.

When panchayats start playing political games, the High Court has to step in. Remember the Coke plant in Kerala which was sanctioned by the Communists and then later opposed by them. The panchayat then refused to renew the licence and Coke went to court. The Court then gave permission for the plant to pump a fixed amount of water, but still the panchayat would not renew the licence since panchayats in Kerala follow the Klingon legal system. But, Kerala High Court was not amused.

In a major relief to the soft drinks major Coca Cola, the Kerala high court today directed the Perumatty panchayat, where the company�??s bottling plant is located, to renew its license within a week. The direction was issued by a division bench comprising justice M Ramachandran and justice K P Balachandran while allowing a petition by the Hindustan Coca Cola Beverages complaining that despite a high court order, the panchayat was refusing to renew their licence. The bench held that if a formal licence was not issued by the panchayat within a week, it should be deemed that the company�??s licence had been renewed from june 10, 2004 for two years. It would be within the company�??s rights to carry on its functioning.[HC asks panchayat to renew Coke licence]

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Recently the Kerala High Court told the Coke authorities that they can consider the plant in Kerala open even if the local panchayat does not renew the licence. Many people suggested that the courts have gone anti-people because they did not issue the order they wanted to hear. But then why did the Court issue such an order ?

The court allowed the plant to reopen after an expert committee concluded that drawing 500,000 liters of groundwater (5% of the available water in the area) a day would not cause drought as claimed by protesters. According to the company management, the plant was drawing 460,000 liters of water a day at the time of its closure and water supplies continued to decline even after the facility was shut down a year ago.It said the panchayat made its decision without the benefit of any scientific review of the plant’s actual impact on the local aquifer.

The court also said the panchayat was not authorised nor did it have the expertise to consider allegations that the wastewater sludge from the plant were contaminating the land, or that company’s products in India contained pesticide residues.The judge ruled that any private person or company has the right to extract groundwater within reasonable limits. According to the company, the maximum groundwater usage at the Kerala plant has not exceeded 460,000 liters per day.[Court allows Coke to reopen Kerala plant]

Update: Guess who is going to benefit from this judgement? - The Communists, of course. They are going to start a water theme park in Parassinikadavu in Kannur district and face the same allegation as Coke.

The CPI(M) has been leading the protests against the Coca-Cola plant in Plachimada, Paalakkad, on the grounds that the soft drink company is exploiting the area�??s drinking water. But now it faces the same charge in Parassinikadavu, where its water theme park is predicted to guzzle millions of litres of water.

�??�??The party will probably use the same High Court judgement that allowed Coca-Cola to continue in Plachimada as a precedent to run its own water park,�??�?? points out an activist of the Kannur District Environment Committee. [Cola Communism via Twenty Onwards]

Legislation that would have increased the scope of Stem Cell research in Massachusetts was vetoed by the Governor, Mitt Romney because he is opposed to the idea of human embryo cloning.

Following expectations that he would again reject the Legislature's plan to sanction embryonic stem cell research, Romney announced his veto of the bill last week. In his veto message, the governor said he could not "in good conscience" allow the bill to become law due to his objections to embryonic cloning and changing the definition of when human life begins.[Gov vetoes stem cell bill]

Iin California, there was a voter initiative to fund stem cell research and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his support for it. Now here is the interesting thing - both Mitt Romney and Arnold Schwarzenegger are Republicans.

It is a sign of maturity in politics that two diametrically opposite view points can be held by people in the same party and they can express it publicly without fear of retribution from the high-command. The freedom of expression that Americans have is not curtailed by the leadership of political parties

Did you know that the Communists, who made a fortune fighting for the poor, is against the Asian Development Bank. When ADB officials visited Kerala, the DYFI, which is the monkey brigade of the Communists gave them such a reception that they literally ran away. But in West Bengal, the Communists are taking money from World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and Japan�??s JBIC. Did you also know that Communists are anti-imperialists, but at the same time they have no problems taking money from imperial countries like Israel and Britain. Are you bored with Communist hypocrisy? There is one more

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) is the revolutionary vanguard of the working class of India. Its aim is socialism and communism through the establishment of the state of dictatorship of the proletariat. In all its activities the Party is guided by the philosophy and principles of Marxism-Leninism which shows to the toiling masses the correct way to the ending of exploitation of man by man, their complete emancipation. The Party keeps high the banner of proletarian internationalism.[Communist Party Constitution]

One case is particularly embarrassing. Some 17,000 workers at Kannur�??s CPI(M)-controlled Dinesh Beedi Cooperative have been agitating against hefty wage and work cuts. They see �??�??management�??�?? as too busy and insensitive.[Cola Communism]

The shore temple at Mahabalipuram survived the tsunami and now the waters have revealed some carvings on two rocks which has been interpreted by K.T. Narasimhan, Superintending Archaeologist of ASI.

..the west-facing carving inside a socket on the smaller rock was that of Yoga Narasimha. This beautiful carving depicted the Yoga Narasimha squatting and doing penance.

The socket is framed by a lion's carving, typical of the Pallava dynasty, which built the monuments at Mamallapuram. On the socket's right side on the rock face is a carving, depicting a Varaha (Boar) lifting Boodevi (earth). Varaha is visible but not Boodevi.

The adjacent bigger rock has carvings on both sides. On the western side is a socket with a carving of seated Siva.

This socket is also framed by a lion's sculpture. On the rock face are Siva ganas such as Singhi and Bringhi. There is also a carving of Mahishamardini, riding a lioness and slaying a buffalo. On the eastern face (that is towards the sea) are carved an elephant and a horse.

Above the elephant's head is a socket with a carving of Siva depicted as Gajasamharamurthy �?? the elephant is shown in a posture of surrender with its trunk bent towards its left side and embedded in the earth. "This clearly indicates surrender. This is called `atmaarpanam'. The elephant has totally surrendered to Siva. The elephant is called Gajasuran. That is why Siva is called Gajantakamurthy or Gajasamharamurthy, that is destroying his enemies," said Mr. Narasimhan. Near the elephant are a few soldiers. The adjacent bas relief shows an imported horse.
[New interpretation to bas-relief sculptures]

Related Links: Tsumani treasures: Not really Buddha, More tsunami treasures, Tsunami and Mahabalipuram

Q: How do two Mallu strangers get to know each other?
A: Zimbly using GMail.

It all started when one G.S. Kutty started getting GMails meant for a Narayanan Kutty. If those emails contained some juicy information, it would have been interesting, but these emails contained photos of fish farms and technical papers as Narayanan Kutty was a former United Nations official specializing in acqaculture. G.S.Kutty knew something was fishy and he wrote to Narayanan Kutty's correspondents that they stop sending mail, which Narayanan Kutty did not like.

N. Kutty contacted Google for help, but never heard back. Maybe he is still on hold. But finally the mystery was solved by N. Kutty himself.

Kutty has found some relief. At a certain columnist's suggestion, he checked his GMail settings and found his account was set to forward mail to an E-mail address that was one letter off from his own alternative address. One letter.

Kutty says he doesn't recall choosing the forwarding option, but he is glad the problem is fixed. So is G.S. Kutty.

``Thank the Lord,'' he said by phone from Mumbai.

The other bright side to the delayed solution? If Narayan Kutty had fixed the problem immediately, he never would have gotten to know the other Kutty.[A GMail fan bobbles his account settings, and brings strangers together in cyberspace]

Thanks to Surya for tagging me. This is part of the meme that is bouncing in the Indian Blogosphere.

Total number of books I own:I don't own lot of books. Right now the count will be less than 100. All the places I have lived had excellent libraries and I prefer borrowing.

Last book I bought: In Search of the Cradle of Civilization: New Light on Ancient India. After reading the columns of Subhash Kak in Sulekha, I had to get this book which offers revisions of Indian history by citing the latest archaeological, geological and linguistic evidence. This book demolishes the Aryan Invasion Theory convincingly.

Last book I read: The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman. After being impressed with his columns and two of his books, I was a bit disappointed with this one. This book is full of praise for India, but is preachy and full of irritating metaphors.

Five Books That Mean a Lot to Me: (today's opinion)

1. Randaam Oozham (Malayalam) by M T Vasudevan Nair: This novel is a retelling of the Mahabharata from Bhima's point of view. There is no change in the framework of the story as put by Vyasa, but instead MT (as he is popularly known) has filled in silences in some portions of the original.

   Dritharashtra said that the reason he could not sleep was because Bhima was on the other side. For MT, Bhima was the character who won the war for the Pandavas and the person who did not gain anything at the end. His son was sacrificed to save Arjuna. At the end of the war Yudhishtira said, "Let Bhima be the king", but later changed his mind. So what happened in all these situations and how Bhima reacts is the basis of the novel.

   You have to read the Malayalam version for the poetic language. But for non-Mallus, a bad English translation is also available.

2. The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization by Thomas L. Friedman. This book explains the fundamentals of globalization in an easy to read way. Friedman travels all around the world and interviews the movers and shakers to validate his theories. My detailed review is here.

3. The Asterix Series by Goscinny and Uderzo. The year is 50 BC and Gaul is occupied by the Romans. Well, not entirely. Every character in this series is likable, from the pony tailed Gauls, with names like Asterix, Unhygenix, Fullyautomatix, to Julius Caesar, to the pirates, to the Roman foot soldiers ("Join the army they said, It's a man's world they said"). The drawings are filled with so much detail that you discover something about Dogmatix during each read. I love this more than Tintin since it combines history and humor.

4. Dave Barry's books. I did not like his work of fiction much, but his non-fiction will have you rolling down a staircase laughing. Being a fan of his columns in Miami Herald, it was finally a dream come true when I finally met him in Los Angeles.

5. The Art of Living : Vipassana Meditation: As Taught by S. N. Goenka by William Hart. This was the technique by which Siddhartha became Buddha. This small book explains this 2500 year old technique which does not require the blessing of any God. The realization that 2500 years ago, a man was able to achieve such insights into human mind was actually, mindblowing.
   

You can read all my book reviews here.

Tag five people and have them do this on their blogs:

Niraj - tags
Parag
Babu
Ashish - tags
bhavane - tags

Archaeologists have unearthed the statue of Buddhist female monk dating 6th century in Chhattisgarh state. This woman, Haritika used to abduct children and kill them and was converted by Buddha himself, by kidnapping her child.

Arun Kumar Sharma, chief of the excavation project, said that it was for the first time they have discovered the image of Haritika, which proves that female deities were as popular as their male counterparts in that era.

"This is for the first time the image of Haritiki has been found in Sirpur. So far Jambal image was discovered but this Haritiki is first, which too inscribed in 6th century. It shows that female deities were as important as the male deities," Sharma said.

The archaeologists have also excavated a unique nine-room area with eight ladders leading to the rooms.

Rare emblems of Hindu lord Shiva have also been discovered for which the excavators are trying to trace the roots.

"So far I have excavated nearly seven mounds and this (includes) Shiva temples. This Buddha Vihar (residence) is unique. You have to climb eight steps to enter the Buddha Vihar and there are nine rooms and 12 pillared Mandapa (a columned hall) in the centre and in the south there is a sanctum sanctorum where Buddha statue must have been there, which is stolen," Sharma said. [Sixth century Buddhist statue discovered]

Kalaripayattu, according to Wikipedia is probably the oldest martial artform in the world (video here). It is now mainly practiced in Kerala and said to be the basis for most of the Chinese martial arts. Around the 16th century, chekavars (people trained in Kalari) were used to settle disputes between people, kind of surrogate warriors and they have been immortalized in Kerala folklore. (If you want to see life of people of that era, the best movie to watch is Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha, written by M T Vasudevan Nair in which Mammotty played the best role of his career)

While there have been many Malayalam movies about Kalari only one Tamil movie (Indian by Shankar) I know of and no Hindi movie has shown this martial artform. Now thanks to Jackie Chan, Kalari is getting a world audience.

Last year, Chan happened to see a CD the Kerala Tourism Department sent him, requesting him to be the brand ambassador of its tourism initiatives.

Kerala Tourism could not get Chan, but Sathyanarayanan -- who performed the traditional Kerala martial art Kalaripayattu in the CD -- impressed Chan so much that the superstar invited him to be part of his new film.

Sathyanarayanan flew to Shanghai for a 30-day shoot with Chan for The Myth; the film includes Tony Leung Ka Fai, Bollywood actress Mallika Sherawat and television actor Sudhanshu Pandey.

Since then, Sathyanarayanan has not looked back. "I am getting a number of offers from Hollywood. All because of Jackie Chan only," he told rediff.com.[Jackie Chan and the art of Kalaripayattu]

This may not happen in any other country - a college dropout being asked to give the commencement speech in one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Steve Jobs gave the speech at Stanford University's 114th commencement this weekend and our local TV channel which specializes in human and animal deaths around the world spent a segment on it.

Jobs began by rehashing the fact that he dropped out of college, and that Sunday's ceremony was the closest he had ever gotten to a university graduation. He then launched into the first part of his address, which focused on having faith that the dots of one's life will connect down the road, even if the journey so far has not followed a clear pattern.

Jobs said his biological mother was an unwed graduate student who had planned to have him adopted. She had chosen a professional couple to be the adoptive parents, but because they wanted a girl, he was adopted by a husband and wife who didn't have college degrees, Jobs said.

They pledged to send the boy to college, and when the time came, he chose Reed College in Portland, Ore. But because all of their savings was going toward his tuition, Jobs dropped out and began taking courses that interested him instead of those that were required—such as a calligraphy course that later inspired him to design different fonts in the first Macintosh.

The last part of his speech was about death. When he was diagnosed with cancer about a year ago, Jobs said doctors expected him to live no longer than six months. He had surgery not long after and has since recovered, but the experience nonetheless taught him another lesson.

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life," Jobs said. "Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice."[After traditional Commencement antics, Jobs imparts straightforward advice]

Jobs also recounted founding Apple in his parent's basement and his tough times after being forced out of the company he founded when he was only 30. "I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the valley," Jobs said. Instead, he founded Pixar Studios, which recently released enormously popular films such as "Madagascar," and "Finding Nemo.""It was awful tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it," Jobs said.[Apple CEO tells Stanford graduates to pursue their passions]

Here is the full transcript of the speech

Meditation, whose ultimate goal is to take you beyond all sensory experiences has been found to reduce physical ailments like asthma and depression and help even in anger management. Researchers of meditation have also found higher mental activity, a sort that has not been in neuroscience literature, happening in long term meditators.

Now new research done on meditating Tibetan Buddhist monks in India show how the basic responses of the brain can be overridden

However, the monks - who carried out "one-point" meditation, where they focus attention on a single object or thought - were able to focus on one image. Monks who had undergone the longest and most intense meditative training were able to focus their attention on just one of the images for up to 12 minutes. Olivia Carter, of the University of Queensland, said: "The monks showed they were able to block out external information.

"This is an initial step in understanding how their brains work. "It would now be good to carry out further tests using imaging techniques to see exactly what the differences are in the brains of the monks."

She said that could direct researchers to a broader understanding of how meditation influences what happens in the brain when someone is deciding whether to give something their attention, and what happens when they choose not to dwell on bad news, or to calm down. Ms Carter added: "Buddhist monks often report that if something negative happens they are able to digest it and move on.

"People who use meditation, including the Dalai Lama have said that the ability to control and direct your thoughts can be very beneficial in terms of mental health." Dr Toby Collins, of the Oxford Centre for the Science of the Mind, told the BBC News website: "Meditation is a way of tapping into a process of manipulating brain activity." He said the idea that meditation trained the brain to attend to just one thing at a time fitted in with previous research. He added: "How that's done, we don't yet know. But studies using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) can show what's happening in the brain." [ Meditation 'brain training' clues]

Ayaz Amir writes

STRANGE that one of history's cradles, the Indian peninsula, should have so little truck with genuine history, as opposed to myth-making and mythology.

Is there any Indian Herodotus? Or Thucydides or Tacitus? One of the richest histories of the world, full of blood, conquest and great achievement without any chronicler, not even an apology of a Gibbon. Before Alberuni who accompanied the armies of Mahmud Ghaznavi, we have the Hindu holy texts, the Upanishads, Kautilya's Arthashastra and Megasthene's account of the court of Chandragupta Maurya. But nothing that can be credited as historical writing.

Indian history - that is, historical writing - begins with the coming of the Muslims. This is a remark made not in the spirit of drum-beating because we of the sub-continent are prickly to an inordinate degree, apt to stand on our dignity and pick quarrels about the wrong things, but just a bald statement of fact.[A travesty of history via an email from The Acorn]

He accompanied Mahmud of Ghazni to India and stayed there for many years, chiefly, in all probability in the Punjab, studied the Sanskrit language and translated into it some works from the Arabic, and translated from it two treatises into Arabic (Elliot and Dowson:5). Sachau, translator of Alberuni's Indica believes Alberuni "composed about twenty books on India (Sachau:xxvii), both translations and original compositions, and a number of tales and legends, mostly derived from the ancient lore of Eran and India." He was indeed a prolific writer and his works are stated to have exceeded a camel-load. (Elliot and Dowson:3)

Let me also make another observation about Alberuni. He regards Hindus as excellent philosophers and he felt strong inclination towards Hindu philosophy but still he was a Muslim and at times does not fail to point out the superiority of Islam over Brahmanic India[India as Alberuni saw it]

Huen Tsang was a Chinese scholar who visited India in 630 A.D at the age of 26. Huen Tsang returned to China with enough statuary and texts to load twenty horses and wrote a long account of India which was based on personal observation[1]. It seems his accounts had more detail than his predecessors and was meticulous in detail [3]. Alberuni carried one camel load of books and Huen Tsang required twenty horses and so the winner is...

Around the same time Banabhatta wrote Harshacarita which provided a descriptions of significant events during the reign of Harshavardhana [3] This was the first biography in Sanskrit as well as a masterpiece of literature.[1]. At this time Alberuni's grandfather was not even born.

Other marquee names expected to perform at Netru Indru Naalai 2005 are actors Kamal Hassan, Abhishek Bachchan and Madhavan, and a whole lot of other stars. The technical team behind the event include Mani Ratnam's wife and ace director in her own right, Revathy, director Vasanth and choreographers Brinda and Kala, among others.[Mani Ratnam to direct Star Vijay's extravaganza]

Update: Rediff has updated the article with the correct name.

Many people have commented on this blog's anti-Communist stance. For example, when we pointed out that the Communists are a bunch of rich anti-national hypocrites, there were comments that all that was true, but our attitude was wrong. But now I am grateful to some Communists for bringing to life something I had seen only in James Bond movies.

I think the film was Spy Who Loved Me, where Roger Moore and his girlfriend are in a car and is chased by a helicopter which is showering bullets all around the neighbourhood, except the car. They drive thorugh a boardwalk on the beach and the car falls into the ocean. The girlfriend is terrified, but Bond flicks a few switches and the car turns into a submarine.

Recently some people from the Communist paradise Cuba have resorted to similar, but low cost technique to get to the capitalist paradise United States.

Four of the 14 Cubans intercepted at sea aboard a vintage taxi converted into a boat will be allowed to stay in the United States because they have valid immigration documents, but the others will be sent back to Cuba, U.S. officials said Thursday.

Family members said Diaz was making his third attempt to reach the United States aboard a car converted into a boat.

In 2004, they said he was intercepted on a Buick sedan powering a barge and a decade earlier had to turn back because of electrical problems in a 1947 Buick.

Details about how the latest car-boat operated were not known. It was outfitted with a prow on the front that allowed it to cut through waves. Previous car-boats from Cuba have been powered by a propeller attached to the drive shaft.

Under U.S. policy, the car-boats are sunk at sea after being intercepted.[Four 'taxi-boat' Cubans get to stay in U.S.]

In an Op-Ed piece in New York Times, Peter Bergen and Swati Pandey argue that a myth has been perpetuated that madrassas are graduating students who become terrorists. They examined the background of 75 terrorists and found that most of them are college-educated and often in western countries. Madrassas produce fundamentalists, but they do not give the weapons training required to cause massive damage as the 9/11 terrorists or the Bali bombe. Also, according to their investigation only 1 percent of Pakistani students study in madrassas and not 10 percent as reported in the press.

To these people I have only one word - Taliban. These Afghans who were born in refugee camps in Pakistan, educated in madrassas learned their fighting skills from Mujaheddin parties in Pakistan. The madrassas belonged to Maulana Fazlur Rehman and his Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam which has support among Pashtuns in Balochistan and the North West Frontier Province. After they captured Khandahar, students from Afghani and Pakistani madrassas rushed to join the Taliban. It was these Taliban who gave a base for Osama Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda and few years later we got some 3000 dead Americans on Sept 11th.

So when Bergen and Pandey say madrassas don't provide weapons training, they might be right. But madrassas condition the mind and in Pakistan there are enough people to provide the required training.

Jammu and Kashmir Archaeology Department has made some discoveries in Anantnag

Excavators have stumbled into the remains of a bustling ancient urban settlement in Anantnag district of south Kashmir with tiled pavements "stamped in colourful human and animal motifs" and inscriptions in the now defunct Karoshti script.

It consisted of a tiled pavement in concentric circles with a "full-blown lotus" at the centre. "The pavement was laid out in such a wonderful sequence that it left the excavators baffled," Zahid told PTI.

He said it's tiles were "stamped in a variety of colourful motifs of humans, animals, mystical creatures, flowers and other abstract designs... Most of the tiles are inscribed in the Karoshthi script" prevalent in civilisations of north- western India circa AD 3rd-4th century. "The features speak of some highly advanced urban civilisation which looks to have flourished on this plateau in the ancient period," Zahid said and claimed the human-animal motifs on the few exposed tiles were the first to be noticed at any archaeological site. [KASHMIR-DISCOVERY via IndiaArchaeology]

When we Mallus are unhappy, we protest. Our only goal then is to make life unpleasant for others since we believe in a law called Equality of Suffering. First we call a bandh, and if bandhs are banned, we call a hartal. If all this is not possible, we take out street processions and block as much traffic as possible.

Recently a garment company closed down and many Malayalees lost their jobs. Immediately they took to the streets. In Kerala this would have been front page news with all other hartals and processions, but this happened in Baharin and UAE and quick came the consequences.

The Recruiting Agents Association of Kerala asked Keralites working in the Gulf to behave. "Strikes may be common here but not in the Gulf. We should see that we do not overreact and create problems for all Keralites," said B. Vivek, the association's president. "This is a dangerous trend. Now that 15 companies have decided not to recruit people from Kerala, one shouldn't be surprised if more companies resort to similar measures," he said.[Keralites in Gulf asked to behave]

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Few days back we reported on the discovery of a Haritika statue in Sirpur, a town in Chattisgarh state. This is a place which still has samples of Shaiva, Vaishnava, Buddhist and Jain architecture. Now a temple complex, much bigger than Nalanda has been discovered in Sirpur.

About 200 mounds, 100 Buddha vihars, four Jain vihars and more than 100 Shiva temples spread across 25 sq km were found during excavations that began in February but have had to be suspended for the monsoon.

A 1.8-metre Shivalinga, believed to be the tallest in the state, has been found during the recent excavations.

Agreeing with Sharma, Muhhamed said Sirpur gave temple architecture in India a turning point. The Laxman Temple here is one of the country�??s finest brick temples and the only one of its time, after Bhitargaon in Kanpur, that has a shikhara.

The shikhara or kailash was not seen in temples built before the 7th century and its construction was a turning point in temple architecture, Muhhamed iterated.

Sirpur was an important centre of Buddhism from the 6th to the 10th century, and Chinese scholar and traveller Hiuen Tsang visited it in the 7th century.

A Buddha vihar with underground rooms and a six-foot Buddha statue was discovered here during earlier excavations. Mahashivgupt Balarjun, the most famous ruler of South Kosal of which Sirpur was the capital, was a Shaivaite but patronised the Buddha vihar.[Ancient complex bigger than Nalanda found near Raipur]

For the first time, stone carvings depicting sexual activity among animals have been found. �??This is the rarest of carvings seen in Indian archaeology,�?� said K.K. Muhhamed, superintending archaeologist with the Archaeological Survey of India. These are not seen even at Khajuraho and Ellora, he stressed.

Related Links: Tanushree Podder's wanderings around Sirpur, Laxman Temple at Sirpur, Buddhist troves

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Two years back the National Mission of Manuscripts was launched to catalogue India's ancient documents. These documents in temples, monasteries and mosques are decaying fast due to lack of proper care. For this project some 30,000 manuscript hunters are moving across the whole nation.

After Rana takes off his shoes and washes his hands, he prays at the shrine. Then Jain leads him to the temple's dimly lighted manuscript room. He opens a creaky steel cupboard and reveals rows of old texts, bundled in yellow cotton cloth. Rana squats on the ground and cautiously holds some pages up to the window light to examine the writing.

"It is in Prakrit language," he says, referring to a popular dialect of classical Sanskrit, no longer spoken. "The period is early 1600s. It prescribes a model code of living for Jain monks," a religious order that arose along with Buddhism in the 6th century B.C.

The manuscript project's officials say the nationwide survey will open a window to India's ancient knowledge systems: religion, astronomy, astrology, art, architecture, science, literature, philosophy and mathematics

The oldest manuscripts that India possesses are a set of 6th-century Buddhist texts that were found buried in the hills of Kashmir about 60 years ago. In the last two years, the surveyors have found rare ancient Sanskrit and Arabic treatises on such subjects as diabetes, astrophysics, interpretation of dreams, surgical instruments, concepts of time and the art of war. A 400-year-old handwritten Koran was also found in a locket measuring three inches..[In India, Marking the Paper Trail of History]

The article also credits some 18^th century European scholars for translating ancient Sanskrit and Buddhist manuscripts and making them available to the world. I hope he means the western world because there was this thing called the eastern world, which apparently does not qualify as a world.

Buddhism spread to China, Korea, Japan and Sri Lanka and many Indian manuscripts were translated into those languages. In fact the very technique which Buddha taught - Vipassana was lost in India and survived only in Myanmar[7]. A ninth-century Chinese translation of the Diamond Sutra was the oldest-known printed book in the world. In fourth century AD, Kumarajiva was invited by the Chinese emperor to translate Sanskrit texts into Chinese and he translated among other things, the Lotus Sutra. Around the same time the Indian scholar Buddhaghosa went to Sri Lanka. The Indian monk Paramartha went to China in 546 AD and Santarakshita translated lot of documents to Tibetan[6]. Besides this many Chinese and Korean students travelled to India and studied and translated documents.

It was in 1844 that the first attempt to explain Buddha's teachings to the west was done by Eugène Burnouf, an academic at the Collège de France. Only that seems to matter now.

Note: I am currently reading Pankaj Mishra's book on Buddha[6] and hence the focus on Buddhist history.

Related Links: On China and India, Alberuni, the father of Indian Historical writing?