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