Words From Vaish

Winston Churchill once said there are two reasons for anything happening; the popularly accepted reason and the real reason(s). So here are the REAL reasons behind the Decline And Fall of the Roman Empire (as outlined by Edward Gibbon, Arnold Toynbee and other eminent historians of the classical period) Imperial "Overstretch" : The Roman Empire at its height covered most of southern, central and western Europe (Gaul, Hispania, Italia, Britannia, parts of Germania, etc.), Asia Minor and North Africa. Centuries before the European Union, the Romans had succeeded in unifying most of Europe under the Pax Romana and instituted one currency (the Sessertii ) long before the Euro. A full three-fourths of humanity lived and died under the long reign of the Caesars. All the far-flung provinces of empire were linked by the famed Roman roads ("All roads lead to Rome ") and sea-going galleys in the Mediterranean sea and Atlantic ocean . Roman maritime expeditions fr

“Men who are perfectly satisfied with their own knowledge will never attempt to increase it.” -          Henry Thomas Buckle Nuclear power. Electricity. Aircraft. Missiles. Advanced medicine. Ancient India in the Vedic age had them all, if you believe Hindu religious radicals (and some otherwise sensible people). Noted Sanskrit scholars have yet to detect advanced treatises on nuclear physics or recipes for weapons technology encoded within the verses of the Vedas. Composed orally in Sanskrit between 1500 and 1000 BC, the Vedas are religious incantations formally set down in writing sometime during the 1 st millennium BC. Some of the Vedic verses are hauntingly poetic, while others are intricately sophisticated and subtle in their theology. However, according to Professor Amartya Sen, “Despite the richness of the Vedas in many other respects, there is no sophisticated mathematics in them, nor anything that can be called rigorous science.” How a civilization, whos

In The Valley Of Shadows Abhay Narayan Sapru Chlorophyll Books 2017                                             170 Pages The long guerrilla war waged against the British state by the IRA in Northern Ireland spawned a new literary sub-genre, “the troubles thriller” as practiced by authors such as Chris Petit ( The Psalm Killer ), Stephen Leather ( The Chinaman , The Bombmaker )  and Gerald Seymour ( Harry’s Game , Field Of Blood ) . The current conflict in Kashmir, with Pakistan-sponsored terrorist proxies attempting to wrest the state away from India, seems all set to follow suit .  Some of the growing tribe of authors in this nascent sub-genre have backgrounds in journalism covering the valley or have actually served in the Indian Army there. Major Abhay Narayan Sapru, late of the Indian Army Special Forces, belongs to the latter group. That’s what gives In The Valley Of Shadows it’s you-are-there ring of authenticity. The techniques and procedures u

The Billion Dollar Spy David E Hoffman Icon Books 2015                                                      391 Pages          19 th January 1991: The third day of the first Gulf War. Four McDonnell-Douglas F-15C Eagle fighters of the US Air Force’s 58 th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 33 rd Tactical Fighter Wing, were refuelling in the skies over Saudi Arabia when the call to combat finally came.  A Boeing E-3A Sentry AWACS (Airborne Warning & Control System) aircraft on patrol vectored the quartet of Eagles on four “bogies” – unidentified aircraft - over Iraqi airspace. As the Eagles closed in at slightly over the speed of sound, the bogies were positively identified as “bandits” -  enemy Iraqi fighters  - two MiG-29s “Fulcrums” and two MiG-25 “Foxbats”. The more agile Fulcrums veered away, but the Foxbats came barrelling straight tow ards Captain Rick Tollini and his wingman, Captain Larry Pitts.   Suddenly, the Foxbats turned at “beam” or a 90-

THE IMPROBABLE THEORY OF ANA & ZAK Brian Katcher Katherine Tegen Books 2015              328 Pages There’s a gap wider than the entire breadth of the alphabet between  A (Ana) and Z (Zak), the high school protagonists of this Young Adult comedy of escalating errors. A type A personality, driven overachiever and straight-A student Ana Watson resembles a proto-Margaret Thatcher. The product of  a strict upbringing, repressed Ana is meekly subservient to parental diktats while coming across as arrogant and aloof to everyone else.   Happy-go-lucky slacker Zakory “Duke” Duquette, on the other hand, has no clear goals in life and is happy to drift along; indulging his fondness for such geeky pastimes as role-playing games, comic books, science fiction movies and other such manifestations of American pop culture. Both characters are humanly flawed, somewhat irritating and fairly well-rounded. Not very likable initially, A and Z are reluctantly thrown together f

Jane Steele Lyndsay Faye Headline Review 2016                                                420 Pages The Gothic romance novel as practiced by Victoria Holt, Mary Stewart, Susan Howatch et al had a more respectable literary ancestor; Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Bronte. This landmark novel established the basic tropes of the genre – the much put-upon virtuous orphan-turned-governess who falls in love with her tall, dark and brooding employer whose gloomy, isolated estate harbors a mysterious dark secret. Much misadventure and travail usually culminates in the requisite happily-ever-after, with the lovers finally married. Reading the Charlotte Bronte original, I often experienced extreme irritation at the eponymous heroine’s unrivalled ability to self-sabotage her own happiness based on pious notions of propriety and morality, besides the prevailing Victorian conventions of the times. Her patiently suffering Griselda act wore thin pretty quickly. Jane

BORN A CRIME Stories From A South African Childhood Trevor Noah John Murray 2016       288 Pages “Racism is a problem everywhere else in the world, in South Africa it is the law”. Under that law (now happily defunct) the birth of comedian Trevor Noah to a black Xhosa woman and white Swiss father was nothing less than a crime; an act punishable by a five-year prison sentence. But people being people, and the pull of individual personal attraction being too strong, even the stringent enforcement of Apartheid failed to prevent widespread race-mixing. This is something our caste panchayats , moral police and anti-“love jihad” activists should also seriously consider. Despite the best efforts of these sundry worthies, inter-religious, inter-regional and inter-caste marriages DO take place. And that’s besides the many Indians with spouses who are foreign nationals... The best way to puncture the absurdities of this essentially untenable stand against consent