Words From Vaish

War At The Edge Of The World Ian Ross Head Of Zeus 2015                                       387 Pages The long twilight of the Roman Empire during the period of late antiquity continues to exert a peculiar fascination on historians, novelists - and the reading public. Ian James Ross is the latest entrant in this field, with his military adventure War At The Edge Of The World set in Roman Britain during the twilight of the Tetrarchy (305 AD) and before the rise of the Emperor Constantine. The Tetrarchy was the reform inaugurated by the Emperor Diocletian in which the Roman Empire was divided into Eastern and Western provinces for administrative convenience, each ruled by an Emperor assisted by a junior colleague.   This system of four co-emperors held good for over twenty years before eventually breaking down. This action-packed, blood-spattered novel opens in June 298 AD at the battle of Oxsa in Central Armenia against the massed forces of the Persian

Looking down the slope, I could see the tiny figures of the people who’d opted for the short flight. Their parachutes were spread out behind them like saris drying out on a dhobi ghat . Their pilots were connecting the rigging lines to the tandem harnesses they’d use for paragliding. My family was somewhere down there but at that distance I couldn’t distinguish them from the ant-like figures milling around. I’d opted for the medium flight that could extend anywhere from seven to ten minutes. This required taking off from a higher altitude. A sturdy, shaggy hill pony had taken me up most of the way. Despite the smelly animal’s sure-footed way over the narrow mountain trail, I’d been apprehensive of falling off; especially when it balked midway up. The guide had encouraged me to whack its sides with my legs and that seemed to work. I had no wish to share the fate of the late Superman actor Christopher Reeve, who ended up a quadriplegic after a fall from a horse. Luckily, th

The Dog Defenders “The dogs have gone to their kin, the sons of dogs,” growled the Pathan scornfully. He had reasons for his displeasure. The prowling pack of pi-dogs that patrolled the main portal of the fort ranged in colour from a dirty jaundice-yellow to the dull khaki of the native regiment that manned it. These animals made surprise attacks and incursions difficult. A long time ago, a kindly cook from a bygone regiment had set out boiled leftover scraps from the cookhouse in a large terracotta plate for the dogs. This individual act of charity had since become a tradition set in stone. In the customary way of the Indian Army, cooks from the regiments that followed had continued the practice. They had even extended it, by adding a crude trough that was periodically filled with the dishwater left after cleaning utensils used in the mess. The dogs, while not allowed within the precincts of the fort, were very grateful for this particular amenity. Especially during

The Secrets Of Wishtide A Laetitia Rodd Mystery       Kate Saunders Bloomsbury 2017                                                              336 Pages England, 1850. Sherlock Holmes had the street urchin Wiggins and the Baker Street Irregulars to assist him in his cases. Frederick Tyson, a celebrated Victorian criminal barrister, has his sister, the redoubtable widow Mrs Laetitia Rodd. This relic of a much-loved archdeacon, the late Reverend Matthew Rodd, is not quite the harmless old biddy that she seems. Reduced to shabby genteel poverty by the passing of her husband, the resourceful Mrs Rodd avoids the usual fate of being a poor relation dependent on more prosperous relatives, by working as an independent private investigator for her much younger brother. As she says - “My work could be described as the Management and Prevention of Scandal (my brother used to enjoy making up facetious advertisements for my services – ‘Blushes Spared and Broken Commandme

Bus journeys in India usually leave one irritated, uncomfortable and bored... This one, courtesy UP State Tourism, was no different despite the “de luxe” tag. The air conditioning had broken down and the passengers – serving members of the armed forces and their dependents – were sloshing somnolently in their own sweat. Cramped, with both legs gone to sleep and a throbbing headache, my then 16-year-old self glumly contemplated a wasted weekend at a Corbett National Park overrun with day trippers scaring away the wildlife. As we approached Ramnagar, the situation began to look up. The dessicated plains with their forlorn stands of withered mango trees and scraggy eucalyptus   gave way to denser growths of Sal, Kikar and Mohua trees. It was very like being in some medieval European cathedral, with shafts of dim emerald light lancing dramatically through the vaults of the majestic trees as though filtered through stained glass windows. The cool scented air was better than a

A Bhil tribal hunter patiently tracks a wounded mouse deer through the jungles of central India. He’s living fully in the moment, senses wholly attuned to the job in hand - and nothing else . Virtually a planet away, his urban Indian counterpart sits at a desk tracking and answering multiple, often unrelated, emails and text messages. Unfortunately, the evolution of his very human brain hasn’t caught up with the devices he’s using. For the machines that sit on his desktop have been designed to work on multiple tracks simultaneously... And as any neuro-scientist can tell you, human brains have been designed by nature to focus on just one thing at a time. Bombarding them with streams of diverse information only slows them down. When people think they’re multitasking, they’re actually switching very fast; from one task after another. And there’s a cognitive cost to all this. For men, multitasking can drop IQ as much as 15 points, essentially turning them into the cognitiv