Land of Lime

Here are some interesting science book recommendations for children.

I picked up Amartya Sen’s new book Identity and Violence a few days ago and it looks quite interesting. I hope to review it later this week. Allen Lane reviews it in the Prospect magazine.
Jhumpa Lahiri writes on the Malgudi Days in the Boston Review. Please do read it. Sepoy, thanks for the tip.
For the cricket afficianados, here are two articles ( by Martin Williamson and Stephen Chalke) from Cricinfo
on one of the greatest cricketing moments: Jim Laker taking 19 wickets for 90 runs in a test match.
Parents introduced us, couples tell NYTimes.

Jeremy Seabrook has a nice OPED in the Guardian (also reproduced in The Hindu) entitled ‘In a world of wealth, poverty has become a necessity’. This is a relevant critique of existing development models, billionaire-philanthrophist poverty elimination programs and government programs. As Seabrook concludes:

The most damning critique of the existing development paradigm is not so much that it is unable to “cure” poverty, damning though that is; it is rather that out of the very abundance of its ability to produce, it manages to create new forms of poverty. Poverty is not a question of the laggards and the left-behind of globalisation, but remains an inescapable structural necessity - required to justify continued growth and expansion beyond sufficiency. Natural scarcity gives way to human-made impoverishments: this is recognised in the word “deprivation” which, like many terms in the lexicon of poverty, betrays its meaning. “Deprivation” means something is taken away from people, in order to maintain them in a state of poverty to which they will never become accustomed; thereby justifying a system that lays waste a world without meeting more than a fraction of human need.

Will we ever be honest about the necessity of poverty for our first ‘world existence and lifestyles’, be it in Bangalore or Boston?

New Yorker has an evaluative piece on Wikipedia, whereas The Onion’s funny take offers the same somewhat differently.

ASIDE: apologies for lack of postings. I hope to make amends soon.

Joseph Frank, that heroic Dostoevsky Chronicler, reviews in the New Republic a recently published volume of Albert Camu’s artciles written between 1944-47. As he says:

They provide the English reader with a rewarding immersion in a little-known part of Camus’s work as he was blossoming into a writer of world fame, and also in the social and political questions that provoked Camus’s pieces, which have lost none of their acuity. It is astonishing to see how many of the issues on which Camus comments, and which were broached by the situation in which he was writing, anticipate and prefigure problems that continue to afflict us today. In his commentaries, Camus never stays on the surface of the events that provide his starting point; he is always searching for the deeper causes–moral, social, psychological, or ultimately religious (though he was not a believer of any kind)–that motivate human behavior. For this reason, many of these occasional writings still live. 

London Review of Books has this long essay entitled Blood for Oil. Read it for an interesting, plausible and even compelling explanation of US adventure in Iraq.

One of my favorite writers, E.L.Doctorow reviews The Iliad.

Homer (or the stable of poets incorporated under the name Homer) was either given to polytheistic fantasy or was the genius adapter of a system of cosmological metaphors that no one — not Dante, not Shakespeare, not Cervantes — has ever matched for sheer imaginative insanity. Read Homer’s hexameters and you find gods made in the image of man — jealous, mendacious, erotically charged, vengefully disposed, gender-specific know-it-alls, with empowering aptitudes that they wield as weapons in heaven as they do on earth. …… But who would give up the Iliad for the historical record? Evidence suggests the Homeric epic was transcribed after generations of oral transmission. The historical facts came down through the ages fused into blinding bardic revelation.

The novelist is not alone in understanding that reality is amenable to any construction placed upon it. … The historian and the novelist both work to deconstruct the aggregate fictions of their societies. The scholarship of the historian does this incrementally, the novelist more abruptly, from his unforgivable (but exciting) transgressions, as he writes his way in and around and under the historian’s work, animating it with the words that turn into the flesh and blood of living, feeling people. ….. The consanguinity of historians and novelists may be indicated by recent efforts of distinguished historians who, feeling themselves constrained by their discipline, have taken to writing novels. One presidential biographer has discovered no other way to accomplish his task than by yielding to unattributable flights of fancy. We should not be surprised by these border crossings. Who among writers of any genre would not want to see into the unseen?

Finally on some reflections on Happiness,  which Aristotle defines as “an activity of the soul that expresses virtue.” But as a commentator told the essayist, Jennifer Senior, “anyone who could maintain a state of happiness, given the state of the world, is living in a delusion.”

Question of the week: You think the Soul can express Virtue today or anyone who thinks thus is delusional?

Pulakeshi II (610-42) is not the most glamorous of Kannada heroes. In comparison to other Kannada emperors such as Krishnadevaraya and Amoghavarsha or even Hoysala Vishnuvardhana and Ranadhira Kanthirava of Mysore, Pulakeshi hasn’t captured the attention of Kannadigas to the same extent. If Mayura (see this, this and this) was the founder of the first Kannada dynasty (Kadambas), then in the 7^th century, Pulakeshi established the first pan-Indian Kannada kingdom; Pulakeshi II and Chalukyas were the first Kannada family to establish their control beyond their core area of northern Kannada speaking regions, effectively into all the south Indian regions, south of the Vindhyas. His success in stopping Harsha, the celebrated emperor of north India, on the banks of Narmada adds to his legend as a great Kannada hero. Yet, possibly because of the absence of popular legends and folk narratives, Pulakeshi doesn’t hold the same romantic appeal, as is the case with Mayura. His association with Kannada nationalism too seems to be contrived and forced.

Still, Pulakeshi is a Kannada hero and the subject of a Rajkumar film. His father, Kirtivarma I (566-596 AD) passed away when Pulakeshi and his brother Vishnuvardhana were young. Their ambitious and capable uncle, Mangalesha (596-610 AD), ruled the Chalukya kingdom efficiently until the young prince Pulakeshi rebelled against his uncle and snatched the Chalukya throne in 610 AD. Immediately, he had to subjugate rebellious feudatories who had been emboldened by the internal power struggle among Chalukyas. The Aihole inscription written by Ravikirti, Pulakeshi’s court poet, provides details of Pulakeshi’s conquests, including the context of each campaign. Among his campaigns, a major dimension of his life long struggle against the Pallava king and well known author, Mahendravarma and his son, Narasimhavarma. He captured the Vengi region from the Pallavas, before sacking Kanchi, the Pallava capital. If this earned him the life long enmity of Narasimhavarma, the conquest of Vengi enabled him to establish Vishnuvardhana as a king in that region. However, towards the end of Pulakeshi’s reign, Narasimhavarma sacked and destroyed Badami, the Chalukya capital. Pulakeshi’s sons had to struggle for more than a decade to re-establish the Chalukya power and regain the lost glory.

Pulakeshi’s tragic end doesn’t take away the luster of his achievements yet surely it does seem to affect his legend and status as a Kannada hero. Still, descriptions of his kingdom, its people and the capital city of Badami in Chinese traveler Hiuen Tsang are quite flattering. Pulakeshi also received a Persian ambassador from the court of Khusro, a scene depicted in the Ajanta caves. Ravikirti’s following concluding description attests to Pulakeshi’s qualities and achievements:

While He, Satyashraya, endowed with the powers of energy, mastery and good counsel,–having conquered all the quarters, having dismissed the kings full of honours, having done homage to gods and Brahmans, having entered the city of Vatapi–is ruling, like one city, this earth which has the dark-blue waters of the surging sea for its moat;

I hope this historical note would be of some help for the review of the film Pulakeshi II.

Other online sources:

Pulakesi wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulakeshi_II

Israeli school kids autograph artillery shells.

(Photograph from siegeoflebanon.blogspot.com)