Vineet Aggarwal runs a blog, Decode Hindu Mythology, which has a dedicated readership. His book, Bharat: The Man Who Built a Nation talks about the man who changed the destiny of our country and gave it a brand new name-Bharat!
Here’s a quiz to treat the mythology aficionados.
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Category: Features
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She Who Knew How the Caged Birds Sang
With the guidance of her friend, the novelist James Baldwin, Maya Angelou began work on the book that would become I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Published in 1970, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings received international acclaim and made the bestseller list. The book was also banned in many schools during that time as Maya Angelou’s honesty about having been sexually abused opened a subject matter that had long been taboo in the culture. Later, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings would become a course adoption at college campuses around the world
On her birthday, we take a look at her famed work through the various poignant quotes by her:
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8 Facts about the Islamic Flows between the Gulf and South Asia
Over the last fifty years, pan-Islamic ties have intensified between the Gulf and South Asia. Gathering together some of the best specialists on the subject, The Islamic Connection, edited by Christophe Jaffrelot and Laurence Louër, explore these ideological, educational and spiritual networks, which have gained momentum due to political strategies, migration flows and increased communications. At stake are both the resilience of the civilization that imbued South Asia with a specific identity and the relations between Sunnis and Shias in a region where Saudi Arabia and Iran are fighting a cultural proxy war.
Here are some facts about the Islamic Flows between the Gulf and South Asia:
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A Fools Paradise with Shakespeare
Like the real fools and jesters of the time, Shakespearean fools were common individuals that outwitted people of higher social status. They find place in many of William Shakespeare’s works:
“Shakespeare’s fools are subtle teachers, reality instructors one might say, who often come close to playing the part that Socrates, himself an inspired clown, played on the streets of Athens. They tickle, coax and cajole their supposed betters into truth, or something akin to it. They take the spirit of April Fools’ Day to an inspired zenith.” (Edmundson, 2000)
This April Fool’s day, here’s our literary take on the Shakespeare’s fools:
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Edmundson, M. (2000). Playing the Fool. New York Times, Retrieved from www.nytimes.com.
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/04/02/bookend/bookend.html
5 Tips on Work Life Balance From A Techie-Turned-Farmer
Disheartened by his stressful life in the city, Venkat Iyer decided to quit his job at IBM and take up organic farming at his Dahanu farm. He soon went from wielding microchips to sowing moong dal. But this transition wasn’t easy. With no experience in agriculture, his journey was wrapped around uncertainty. Iyer’s debut novel, Moong over Microchips follows his extraordinary experience battling erratic weather conditions and stubborn farm animals to stumbling upon a world of fresh air, organic food and sheer joy.
Here are five tips from Iyer’s book that will help you achieve the perfect work- life balance:
Tip one: Make use of liberal leave policy
Tip two: The 5 Cs
Tip three: You should know when gadgets need to be turned off
Tip four: True wealth is in being happy, healthy and content with what one has
Tip five: Wellness is based on these five parameters
A Dash of Poetry from Some of the Finest Indian Poets
Immensely admired for the sensitivity with which they portray human emotions and with a popularity that since decades has remained at an all-time high, this World Poetry Day we present to you a poem from some of these finest Indian poets. Their voice will tug at the heart of every poetry lover.
Let’s have a look at these fantastic voices.
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5 sure-shot mantras to attain happiness; The Dalai Lama shows the way
His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of Tibetan people. In 1989, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his non-violent struggle for the liberation of Tibet. In Happiness, the Dalai Lama opens a window into the attainment of absolute happiness in day to day life.
Let’s look at these 5 poignant quotes from Happiness, where the Dalai Lama shows us the way to attain happiness.
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A Flair to Carve Ingenious Characters; Who Else but Philip Roth
Philip Roth is the author of 31 books and has won the Pulitzer Prize, the International Man Booker Prize and many other literary awards, making him arguably America’s greatest living writer. The characters carved by this stellar author, have always invited a wide audience and been a subject of interest.
In this blog piece we celebrate this genius’ birthday through 5 of his characters.
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1. Lucy Nelson, When She Was Good
2. Alexander Portnoy, Portnoy’s Complaint
3. Peter Tamopol, My Life as a Man
4. Libby Herz, Letting Go
5. David Kepesh, The Breast
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The Fever by Sonia Shah – An Excerpt
Humans have suffered from mosquito-borne diseases for more than 500,000 years. Not only do they still plague us, but they have also become more lethal. In The Fever, journalist Sonia Shah sets out to address this concern, delivering a timely, inquisitive chronicle of malaria and its influence on human lives. In her book, she mentions the delayed study of a drop of blood that lead to the discovery of the microbe responsible for malaria.
Here is an excerpt from her book about the accidental discovery of the microbe.
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One day in the late 1870s, two pathologists, Corrado Tommasi-Crudeli and Edwin Klebs, collected air and mud samples from the Roman Campagna. From the samples, they isolated ten-micro millimeter-long rods, which from the vantage point of their crude microscopes, seemed to develop into long threads. When injected into lab rabbits, the long threads soon had the bunnies heaving with chills and fever. Inside their slaughtered bodies, the pathologists found the ten-micro millimeter-long rods, once again.
The two scientists decided that they’d found the microbe responsible for malaria. It was a germ, it lived in the soil and the air, and they called it Bacillus malariae. They announced their findings in 1879.
The scientific method is not infallible, of course, and such mistakes are made, even when the entire economy of a newly formed nation depends on the results.
Counterevidence soon emerged.
In November 1880, Alphonse Laveran, a French surgeon stationed in Constantine, Algeria, peered at a crimson blob on a glass slide. How he found what he did is a bit of a mystery. Most nineteenth century microscopists soaked their slides in chemicals, their cutting-edge techniques thus unknowingly kill ing the malaria parasites in their samples and rendering them all but invisible amid the scattered debris of the magnified blood. Those who did examine blood from malaria victims while still fresh, as Laveran did, presumably did so more promptly than he did on this particular day. The blood was still warm when Laveran excused himself from its notice. What precisely he did upon abandoning his slide nobody knows, but whatever it was, it took about fifteen minutes. Maybe it was a cup of coffee.
In any case, during the lull, the drop of malarial blood on the glass cooled. The change in temperature roused the parasites in the sample, which now considered that they had left the warm-blooded human for the cool environs of a mosquito body. Male forms of the parasite would soon be called upon to fertilize female ones, and each started to sprout long flagella and wave them about, in lascivious preparation. Laveran returned to his microscope expecting yet another static scene. Instead, the shocked surgeon caught sight of tiny spheres propelling themselves with fine, transparent filaments, wrigglingly alive.
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7 Astounding facts about Gandhi from this critical-edition of An Autobiography
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is among the most enigmatic, charismatic, deeply revered and equally reviled figures of the twentieth century. His Autobiography, one of the most widely read and translated Indian books of all time, is a classic that allows us to glimpse the transformation of a well-meaning lawyer into a Satyagrahi and an ashramite. In this first-ever Critical Edition, written by the eminent scholar, Tridip Suhrud shines new light on Gandhi’s life and thought. The deeply researched notes elucidate the contexts and characters of the Autobiography, while the alternative translations capture the flavour, cadence and quirkiness of the Gujarati.
Let’s have a look at some of the facts from this critical version that you may not have known:
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