Enduring false facts of history
Charles Darwin averred, “False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science for they often endure long”.
This is true of history too, in which case they endure longer with the active patronage of rulers and various other kinds of powerful lobbies. This phenomenon is more pronounced in countries like India, where politics of twisting history (and just everything) to humour committed vote banks is a cottage industry!
A case in point is the canard that the famous Taj Mahal was a structure devoted to carnal love by the “Great” Moghul king Shah Jahan to his favorite wife Mumtaz Mahal. Please keep in my mind that this is the same Shah Jahan who had a harem of 5,000 women and the same Shah Jahan who had a incestuous relationship with his daughter justifing it by saying, “a gardner has every right to taste the fruit he has planted”! Is such a person even capable of imagining such a wondrous structure as the Taj Mahal let alone be the architect of it?
The answer is an emphatic NO. It just cannot be. And there isn’t even an iota of proof for that “official version”. The Taj Mahal is as much a Islamic structure as is mathematics a Muslim discovery! The famous historian Shri P.N. Oak has proven that Taj Mahal is actually “Tejo Mahalaya”, a Shiva temple-palace. His work was published in 1965 in the book, “Taj Mahal - The True Story”. However, we have not heard much about it because it was banned by the powers that be who did not want to alienate their precious vote bank- the Muslims.
You may like to know more about this from this web site.
Less is More
The renowned phrase, “Less is More” represents the notion that simplicity and clarity lead to good design. It is the driving force behind the evolution of minimalism (and “reductionism”) in art, music, design, literature, architecture et al.
Origin of the phrase:
This is a 19th century proverbial phrase. It is often associated with the German-born American architect and furniture designer Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe (1886-1969), one of the founders of modern architecture and a proponent of simplicity of style.
He developed the use of exposed steel structure and glass to enclose and define space, striving for an architecture with a minimal framework of structural order balanced against the implied freedom of open space. He called his buildings “skin and bones” eliminating interior walls and adopting an open plan. His architectural design was strong, aesthetic, flattened, transparent and elegant! He was a true follower of the aphorisms “Less is more†and “God is in the details”.
Yet another artist who adopted a similar saying, “Doing more with less” was designer Buckminster Fuller towards technology and engineering.
But the phrase “Less is More” was actually used first by poet Robert Browning (1812-1889) in his work, “Andrea del Sarto“ describing a faultless painter. The relevant part of the poem goes thus:-
. . .you don’t know how the others strive
To paint a little thing like that you smeared
Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,–
Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says,
(I know his name, no matter)–so much less!
Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.
The American psychologist Barry Schwartz talks on how to do “more with less” in this podcast:-
(From IT Conversations)
Remember the KISS principle!
Design - simple vs complex!
One of the simplest and yet most elegant designs tackles a job that millions of women and girls spend many hours doing each year — fetching water. Balancing heavy jerry cans on the head may lead to elegant posture, but it is backbreaking work and sometimes causes crippling injuries. The Q-Drum, a circular jerry can, holds 20 gallons, and it rolls smoothly enough for a child to tow it on a rope!
Compare this to a (needlessly) complex design of a Japanese toilet with 17 buttons! Will you do the potty thing, or try to figure out which button does what!!
Exotic birds at Rangan Thittu.
Photos taken at the Rangan Thittu Bird Sanctuary near Mysore on the river Cauvery 4 kms from Srirangapatna and 18 kms from Mysore in South India. It houses exotic birds from as far away as Siberia and even North America. Crocodiles basking in the sun are also a familiar sight.
Ranganthittu is indeed a visual delight. And the excitement continues. Wherever you turn, you’ll find exotic birds. It may be the open-bill stork, the white ibis, egret, heron, partridge or even the cormorant trying to say hello!
Click on the images to get a bigger picture (Please allow pop-ups!)
Photos © K.Srividya 2004-2005.
More pictures in the next edition! 
Aromatic Poetry!
It is a story of yore that happened long time ago. Want to know when? Well, those were times when windows were merely a part of the anatomy of a building and pulp-buffs were on the threshold of migrating from Erle Stanley Gardner to James Headly Chase.
There was a magazine in India that bore the name on its masthead as “The Illustrated Weekly of India” (Make the Illustrated a Weekly habit!). It was the darling of English-knowing Indian public. It had many illustrious editors viz. A.S.Raman (Chiaroscuro, anyone?) and the indomitable Kushwant Singh. It contained many sections that kindled the interest of youth of the time. One of them was “Poetry of the month” which was a medley of selected contribution from readers.
One such poem in that collection ran like this:-
Pissing Boy by Usha Rani
Here is a pissing boy
Pissing nonchalantly
Like an arc of waste
………………
………………
This was my repartee:-
This time it is a pissing boy
Next must be an easing girl
Call it a “Thread of waste”, Usha Rani
And dump it on the damned Weekly
And you know what?
The “Weekly” published mine too!
And another one was a little more pissed off!
He mused like this:
Sex-starved girls
Derive satisfaction
By viewing
Male urination
…………….
……………..
So much for Poetry!
Will Yama Dharma procrastinate?
One of my chief idiosyncrasies is compulsive procrastination. It is, perhaps, a serious affliction akin to schizophrenia. I tend to shilly-shally almost every act that is mandatory for no reason whatever. I think I am a psychic case fit enough to give a happy living to a practicing shrink. But that is not to be owing to the financial status of the victim which is just hovering around the solvency level. It is a wonder that I have survived these decades of existence in spite of this grave shortcoming thanks to chance, luck and my earthy better half (mostly bitter half!).
I seem to revel in this art of postponing just for the heck of it. I apply this fine art to reading, writing (including replying to letters and emails, form-filling and writing the appraisal reports which has a timeline), watching movies or listening to music. I do not play favourites in this matter. I have a terrible backlog in reading books to the extent of 25 waking years. I doubt I’ll finish it in this avatar. And what about all these racks of CD’s with Carnatic music MP3’s of past and present masters that I have collected so assiduously over decades. And those VCD’s and DVD’s! Gawd, give me more time - but no use! I’ll naturally put off the extra time too the same way I have done with the prime time.
I resolved to put up a fight and “put my shoulder to the wheel” and combat my psychic disorder with auto-suggestion. Thy will not postpone anything here afterwards. Done. But to what end? Halfway through I’ve started indulging in the favourite sport of mind wandering and heady fantasizing. Perils of being born with lopsided right brain! I inwardly eulogize my creative grey matter capable of envisioning situations beyond the parabola of thoughts. But to what avail? Have I created any work worth the name; any asset to speak about. It is all broth - no beer stuff.
One day I started drawing up a road map for what little time left for me in this incarnation and clear the backlog and keep things up to date and show the world that I too, am capable of bucking up my affairs. The plan was worth a military campaign - only the execution was a la WMD-Iraq fiasco!
My hard disk is full of saved .mht’s, Cogitum Co-Citers, .txt’s, .ppt’s and files of every possible file extension saved for future (sic) reading! But where is the future for them when it is getting bloated each day! Dunno what will come of this unread collection - either the next generation will format the HDD or it will self-destruct by crashing. But life goes on!
Well, I have just bought 2 books of Devan which are missing from my collection, 3 of S.V.V and one of Sujatha when I made a beeline to Higginbothams yesterday. May be I should visit Landmark for a couple of CD’s!
Tomorrow is another day!
-
-
About Me
I am S.K!
Ok, what's the big deal, you may ask! But you may miss a good deal if you do not dwell deep into this web site, specially hand-crafted for you. But what about me, the person? Wait, I am not good at making things up. If you stumble upon a good-sounding résumé, please pass it on to me!
-
Quirky something
When I give a lecture, I accept that people look at their watches, but what I do not tolerate is when they look at it and raise it to their ear to find out if it has stopped! -
Recent Posts
-
Blog network
-
Propagate
-
Extra
