Big and clumsy enough for the English or Americans

Interesting history (that I did not know about). Seems the Eiffel Tower wasn't always a beloved icon in France.

'Odious Column' of Metal - T

On May 15, the Eiffel Tower, the world's most celebrated monument and the iconic symbol of Paris, celebrates its 120th anniversary. Strikingly, the fame and allure of this improbable wrought-iron masterpiece have only grown with the passing decades....

 

The Eiffel Tower during construction. © Getty Images

... Open to the elements, enveloped in Eiffel's distinctive design, visitors can see and touch parts of the 18,038 pieces of iron (welded together with 2.5 million rivets) as they ascend heavenward.

The tower is so beloved that few today remember the storm of vitriol, mockery and lawsuits provoked by its selection as the startling centerpiece of the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle. (One of the losing entries was a gigantic working guillotine!) Even as Eiffel was breaking ground by the Seine River in February 1887, 47 of France's greatest names decried in a letter to Le Temps the "odious column of bolted metal." What person of good taste, this flock of intellectuals asked, could endure the thought of this "dizzily ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a black and gigantic factory chimney, crushing [all] beneath its barbarous mass"? The revered painters Ernest Meissonier and William-Adolphe Bouguereau, writers Guy de Maupassant and Alexandre Dumas fils, composer Charles Gounod and architect Charles Garnier all signed this epistolary call to arms, stating that "the Eiffel Tower, which even commercial America would not have, is without a doubt the dishonor of Paris."

Gustave Eiffel, a self-made millionaire whose firm constructed much-admired bridges all over the world, happily twitted his critics: "They begin by declaring that my tower is not French. It is big enough and clumsy enough for the English or Americans, but it is not our style, they say. We are more occupied by little artistic bibelots. . . . Why should we not show the world what we can do in the way of great engineering projects?"

More at link above...

Of Greek Gods & Roman Emperors

I wish I knew more about Greek and Roman history. The MFA here in Boston has many historic artifacts from those two eras, which I have unfortunately not had the time to go through in detail on the two occasions I was there. Both times I reached those sections towards the end of my visit and was tiring of information fatigue by the time I got there. More than time at a museum, I need to sit down and read a good book on these two civilizations some day, though I have a feeling it is going to be almost impossible to remember and keep track of all the different Roman emperors and the "Gods" in Greek mythology.

Just some thoughts as I read just now about archaeologists digging in Turkey finding...

... the colossal marble head of a Roman empress. The discovery, at the ancient site of Sagalassos, is thought to show Faustina the Elder, wife of Roman emperor Antoninus Pius. The head of Faustina was lying face down in rubble that fills the ruins of a bath house that was partially destroyed by an earthquake between AD 540 and AD 620.

I am sure I could research this online but any suggestions for books on the subject from anyone who may read this? [I am more interested in history than mythology (1, 2) actually... though it may well be that the two intermingle sometimes, as they do with a lot of Indian history. And I would rather read a book written by a historian than acclaimed textbooks on the subject.]

Reconstructing history

Two interesting pieces of news that I found read yesterday.

1) A research team including a British scientist believes that Machu-Pichu, the lost city of the Incas, was "discovered" by a German adventurer, who looted the site with the help of the Peruvian government, more than four decades before its discovery in 1991 by the American explorer Hiram Bingham.

Oh... so now we're debating who looted it first? (I say this because, as wikipedia enlightens us:

Peru has long sought the return of the estimated 40,000 artifacts, including mummies, ceramics and bones, Bingham had removed from the Machu Picchu site. On 14 September, 2007, an agreement was made between Yale University and the Peruvian government for the return of the objects.[1] though on April 12, 2008, the Peruvian government stated that they had revised previous estimates of 4,000 pieces up to 40,000.^[3]

Earlier this year:
Sacred ruins older than Incas found in Peru
No more room on the Inca Trail (Also, this related older news from 2001: Lost city of the Incas in peril from landslide)


2) The Stasi jigsaw puzzle:

In the dying days of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Stasi officers were ordered to destroy their reports by shredding and then burning them. So numerous were the reports, that shredding machines stopped working, and officers were forced to tear the documents by hand. A problem with transport meant that the estimated 45 million A4 sheets of paper were not burned. Since 1991, a team of 30 workers has been carrying out the painstaking task of reconstructing the documents, revealing new information on the activities of the Stasi and its collaborators. The team has now reconstructed the contents of 350 sacks, but with over 16,000 remaining, the task would require a further 400 to 800 years to complete by hand.

Now new technology developed by the Fraunhofer Institute of Production Facilities and Construction Technology (IPK) could complete the work in a fraction of the time. The E-Puzzler, the world's most sophisticated pattern-recognition machine, was completed in 2003, and has now received Government funding for a pilot project to reconstruct the contents of 44 sacks.

Those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it, says I. So, this project should be a real fascinating one!

Jodha Akbar

No... not the recent movie by Ashutosh Gowarikar but a short story by Salman Rushdie (published in the New Yorker recently).

Although I have merely seen trailers of the movie and so far have read only the first paragraph* of the story and although I have immense appreciation for the amount of work that goes into making a visual spectacle of a movie like the one made by Gowarikar, I would rather indulge and luxuriate in this orgy of seductive words than be seduced by the visual feast of Aishwarya Rai and Hrithik Roshan on the silver screen. That said, in the last decade or more, Rushdie's recent novels have left me horribly unsatisfied.

* At dawn the haunting sandstone palaces of the new “victory city” of Akbar the Great looked as if they were made of red smoke. Most cities start giving the impression of being eternal almost as soon as they are born, but Sikri would always look like a mirage. As the sun rose to its zenith, the great bludgeon of the day’s heat pounded the flagstones, deafening human ears to all sounds, making the air quiver like a frightened blackbuck, and weakening the border between sanity and delirium, between what was fanciful and what was real.

And then there was one

One surviving French veteran (poilu) from World War I, that is.

Louis de Cazenave, one of the last two official surviving French WWII veterans, died two days ago at age 110. Following his death, Lazare Ponticelli has become the last fully verified French veteran of World War I. (Apparently, the French government has approved a state funeral for the last official World War I French veteran to die. I'm sure he's not holding his breath in anticipation! ;))

Interestingly, Germany's last known veteran of WWI, Kästner, Erich, died on new years day this year at age 1008 and so did Poland's last known WWI veteran -Wycech, Stanisław - who died on Jan 12th, 2008 at age 108.

Lucky guys to live so long (90 + years!) after being involved in a war that claimed an estimated 20 million people (9.7 million military deaths and about 10 million civilian deaths) around the world!

Wikipedia has a link about surviving veterans of WWI. There are three living in the US - aged 106, 107, and 108 - of which one of them (the 106 year old) had "completed basic training, but did not see action: he was held back in reserves in England due to age." Actually the link says he was Canadian then - not American - but lives in the US now.

And the 108 year old, Harry Landis, apparently is in a nursing home in Florida, where he lives with his 100-year-old wife. Nice.

Incidentally, the last woman veteran from WWI, Charlotte Winters , died last year at age 109. Gladys Powers of Canada (age 108), who served for Britain, is now the last surviving female veteran of WWI.

P.S. More factoids about WWI.... if you be so inclined.

Wikipedia also has a link that discusses last surviving US war veterans in various wars over history.

A nice summary of tables at this article:

36: Countries involved in fighting

65 million: Soldiers served

4.7 million: U.S. veterans of war

2 million: U.S. troops sent overseas

25,000: American women who served overseas

53,402: Americans killed in action

63,114: Americans died of disease and other causes

1: Out of three French men age 13-30 died

3.5 million: Estimated prisoners of war by 1917

Sources: National World War I Museum, Congressional Research Service

Last Spanish-American War veteran:Nathan Cook died at 106 on Sept. 10, 1992, nearly 94 years after the war ended.

Last Civil War Union veteran:Albert Woolson died at 109 on Aug. 2, 1956, or 91 years after the war ended.

Last Civil War Confederate veteran:John Salling died at 112 on March 16, 1958, nearly 93 years after the war ended.

Last Revolutionary War veteran:Daniel Bakeman died at 109 on April 5, 1869, nearly 86 years after the war ended.

Source: Department of Veterans Affairs

How the United States' major modern wars compare

War	Duration	Number served	U.S. military deaths	U.S. military wounded	Major weapons introduced
World War I	1917-18{+1}	4.7 million	116,516	204,002	Airplane, tank, chemical warfare
World War II	1941-45{+1}	16.1 million	405,399	671,846	Amphibious assault ships, paratroops, atom bomb
Korean War	1950-53	5.7 million	54,246	103,284	Helicopters, first jet aircraft in combat
Vietnam War	1964-73	8.7 million	58,209	153,303	Rapid-fire assault rifles, laser-guided bombs, unmanned aerial vehicles
Persian Gulf War	1990-91	2.2 million	382	467	Spy satellites, stealth aircraft
Afghanistan and Iraq	October 2001-present	1.5 million	3,599	25,455	Satellite-guided bombs

Sources: Congressional Research Service, GlobalSecurity.org, Defense Department.

A Riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a cookie

Haah... Not everything is made in China! :)

Some 3 billion fortune cookies are made each year, almost all in the United States. They are served in Chinese restaurants in Britain, Mexico, Italy, France and elsewhere. In India, they taste more like butter cookies.

But there is one place where fortune cookies are conspicuously absent: China.

Now a researcher in Japan believes she can explain the disconnect, which has long perplexed American tourists in China. Fortune cookies, Yasuko Nakamachi says, are almost certainly originally from Japan.

Related: Read NYT readers comments to the question: What's the most memorable fortune you've found in a fortune cookie?

10 deadliest natural disasters ever

Its amazing that other than #10 (which happened way back in 1138 in Syria!) and the 2004 tsunami which was across a huge area, which included the Indian sub-continent to a significant extent, all other disasters on the list are from the Indian sub-continent or China. Especially amazing that 6 of the 10 occurred in China. Comments about 'respect for the value of a life' come to mind but I will stop here.

History's 10 deadliest natural disasters... via the Futility Closet

1. Yellow River flood, China, summer 1931: 1 million to 2 million dead
2. Yellow River flood, China, September-October 1887: 900,000 to 2 million dead
3. Bhola cyclone, East Pakistan, Nov. 13, 1970: 500,000 to 1 million dead
4. Shaanxi earthquake, China, Jan. 23, 1556: 830,000 dead
5. Cyclone, Coringa, India, Nov. 25, 1839: 300,000 dead
6. Kaifeng flood, China, 1642: 300,000 dead
7. Indian Ocean earthquake/tsunami, Dec. 26, 2004: 283,100 dead
8. Tangshan earthquake, China, July 28, 1976: 242,000 dead
9. Banqiao Dam failure, China, August 1975: 231,000 dead
10. Aleppo earthquake, Syria, 1138: 230,000 dead

See also Death Tolls.

The original blogger

The confessional diary-writing blogger that is..

From Garrison Keillor's Writers Almanac for 23rd February, 2007

It's the birthday of one of the greatest diarists in the English language, Samuel Pepys, born in London (1633). Pepys began his diary in 1659, and he would keep it for almost 10 years. It wasn't uncommon at the time for well-educated men to keep a journal, but most of these men wrote dry descriptions of their travels, politics, and public affairs. As far as we know, Pepys was the first Englishman to fill his diary with descriptions of his most personal and ordinary experiences: his aches and pains, what he liked to eat, going to the bathroom, his marital love life, and his extramarital affairs, graphic details that novelists wouldn't start incorporating into their work for more than 200 years. He also wrote about historical events like the Great Plague of 1665, the Great Fire of London of 1666 and the Dutch attack on the Medway in 1667. Pepys quit writing the diary in 1669, because his eyesight was failing and he was worried that he was going to go blind. He bound it in six volumes and gave it to a college in Cambridge. The first edition of it was published in 1825, and it kept being republished again and again, with more and more of the explicit entries included. The complete diary was finally published in 1970.

Note that Pepys was a English naval administrator and Member of Parliament but is today more known because of his diary. How some of us wish we could find fame because of our blogs! :)

A new book, Richard and Adolf: Did Richard Wagner Incite Adolf Hitler to Commit the Holocaust? by Christopher Nicholson tries to pin Hitler's love of Wagner's music to his crazy delusions of racial supremacy.

Did Richard Wagner incite Adolf Hitler to commit the Holocaust? Is there such a thing as Nazi Music, Third Reich Music or proto-nazi or otherwise anti-Semitic music and art? Can music be evil?

Wagner (1813-1883) may have had racial supremacy delusions and Hitler may have been a fan of Wagner..but I do not see how Hitler can be said to have been influenced by Wagner in his megalomaniacal and genocidal ventures. Or rather, a person is subject to the environment and society he grows up in, can be influenced by history and people - present and past - but trying to share the blame of Hitler's misdeeds around does not make sense.

Humboldt

Not too many people in the Western world knew about the aforementioned Russian scientist Varnadsky until recently but I am ashamed to say I had not really known much about Humboldt till I briefly read up about him just now. Being a student of science for many years now, I understand the realms of physics and chemistry to some extent and have from time to time read* about the lives and achievements of famous scientists who contributed to these fields over the years but somehow my exposure has been limited in the fields of geography, biology, ecology, and their intersection - fields to which Humboldt and Varnadsky contributed greatly. (A few different books about Darwin - this on in particular - as well as Darwin's own writings and his autobiography, wait patiently on my to-read list!) Humboldt is known today as the founder of modern geography but as wikipedia enlightens, he was more than that...

Alexander von Humboldt or Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt (1769-1859) was a Prussian naturalist and explorer.... His quantitative work on botanical geography was foundational to the field of biogeography. He was one of the first to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic were once joined (South America and Africa in particular). Late in life, in his five-volume work Kosmos, he attempted to unify the various branches involved in knowledge of the world.

BBC's In our Time had a special show dedicated to him.

Darwin described him as 'the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived'. Goethe declared that one learned more from an hour in his company than eight days of studying books and even Napoleon was reputed to be envious of his celebrity. We're talking about the Prussian scientist and explorer Alexander Von Humboldt. If you haven't heard of him you're not alone and yet, at the time of his death in 1859, the year Darwin published On the Origin of Species, Humboldt was probably the most famous scientist in Europe. Add to this shipwrecks, homosexuality and Spanish American revolutionary politics and you have the ingredients for one of the more extraordinary lives lived in Europe (and elsewhere) in the 18th and 19th centuries.

* I should say...I have read and own a copy of Primo Levi's book, Periodic Table, recently awarded the title of best science book ever written!

Indians in the news - 3

I had never heard of Judge Pal before!

Decades After War Trials, Japan Still Honors a Dissenting Judge

An Indian judge, remembered by fewer and fewer of his own countrymen 40 years after his death, is still big in Japan. Among the memorials at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo is a monument to Judge Radhabinod Pal of India.

Radhabinod Pal, the only one out of 11 Allied justices who handed down a not guilty verdict for Japan’s top wartime leaders at the post-World War II International Military Tribunal for the Far East, or the Tokyo trials.

In recent weeks alone, NHK, the public broadcaster, devoted 55 minutes of prime time to his life, and a scholar came out with a 309-page book exploring his thinking and its impact on Japan. Capping it all, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, during a visit to India last week, paid tribute to him in a speech to the Indian Parliament in New Delhi and then traveled to Calcutta to meet the judge’s 81-year-old son.

Previously: 1, 2

Endurance

Some years ago I had read The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition by Caroline Alexander and later even seen a documentary about this amazing story. While the latter was so-so (I never like documentaries where they re-create scenarios using actors), Caroline Alexander's book was a great retelling and left me breathless and in awe for many days after the reading. I was totally consumed by the story - as if, I myself were on a great expedition - and the story stayed with me long after the book was returned to the library.

Seems there are other books & documentaries that also cover this expedition

- Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing
- Shackleton - The Greatest Survival Story of All Time (3-Disc Collector's Edition)

Shackleton's bravery in a real tough situation seems to have spawned a few business/leadership books also:

- Leading at the edge - Leadership Lessons from the Extraordinary Saga of Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition - by Dennis N. T. Perkins, Margaret P. Holtman, Paul R. Kessler, & Catherine McCarthy

- Shackleton's Way: Leadership Lessons from the Great Antarctic Explorer by Margot Morrell

CIA's Family Jewels

What a great headline... how could one resist clicking on this link to read more!

CIA releases the 'family jewels'

Gold in a country with a ban on gold teeth

One delusional leader to another....

Saparmurat Niyazov, authoritarian head of Turkmenistan from 1985-2006 (history and timeline from 6th century) , has been officially succeeded by Gurbanguly Mälikgulyýewiç Berdimuhammedow and how do the so-called people's representatives, the "Parliament" welcome the new leader?

With a 1 kg gold-and-diamond award! Having all that oil (and natural gas) money must be good!

--
Maybe 1 kg of gold and diamond is not a big deal according to some but I am ticked because of Turkmenistan's history of abuse of power. Here is a quick recent-history lesson of this less known country...

Berdymukhamedov's predecessor Niyazov, who was appointed by Gorbachev in 1985 after a cotton-scandal replaced the then regional leader, Muhammad Gapusov after 14 years of rule, was one of the most delusional, autocratic, and repressive rulers in the world. He took the title of Turkmenbashi (Head of the Turkmen) the Great and had thousands of portraits and statues of him set up throughout the country. They include a statue in gold leaf that rotates to face the sun in the capital Ashgabat. He named the month of January after himself and April after his mother! He banned ballet, gold teeth and recorded music; he ordered the construction of a lake in the midst of the desert and a ski resort on the snowless foothills of the Iranian border. Cities, airports and even a meteorite were named after him. He introduced increasingly personal laws, and a book he wrote to be a "spiritual guide" for the nation was made required reading. There are very few textbooks in Turkmenistan's schools apart from works by Mr Niyazov such as his Ruhnama - a mix of history and spiritual guidance. Known as the Book of the Soul, the Ruhnama was required reading and was treated with the reverence normally reserved for religious works. Isolated from the rest of the world under Nyazov and criticised in the West for human rights violations, Turkmenistan has sought to reverse its isolationist policies and pursue more contacts with its neighbours. Berdymukhamedov has also pledged to improve education, healthcare and pension provision -- cut back under Niyazov -- prompting some to hope for a wider liberalisation in the tightly controlled society.- via 1, 2, 3 and the link to the portraits & statues above.

Lets hope all that gold and diamond doesn't go to his head. (Naah..its not a hope.... there is not much hope. We all know power corrupts but absolute power like this corrupts absolutely. The personality cult authoritarian rule of Niyazov, where he essentially enriched himself by keeping his countrymen poor, uneducated, and without the basic needs of life and looted the country's vast natural resources for personal profit* is not much different than the North Korean Papa and Lil Kim Jung cults. Big difference though - Turkmenistan has the oil and hence the US and European countries have friendly ties (also see update (2) below) with them (and even gave them ~8 million $s in 2006 for various programs - all of which likely ended up in the individual leaders pockets!), whereas the much reviled North Koreans have the freaking nukes! (or at least they want some!). Even countries like India and China are friendly towards this country due to their energy needs. The currently stalled Trans-Afghanistan pipeline project (being installed by Unocal, now a part of Chevron-Texaco) is a proposed natural gas pipeline that will transport Caspian sea natural gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan into Pakistan and then India. There is news that work on this is being accelerated again but the project remains at risk since it passes through some Taliban-controlled areas on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and not to forget the blowing-hot-and-cold nature of India-Pakistan relationships.

-
* Global Witness, a London-based human rights organization, reported that money under Niyazov's control and held overseas may be in excess of US$3 billion, of which $2 billion is supposedly situated in the Foreign Exchange Reserve Fund at Deutsche Bank in Germany. Income from natural gas deals rarely finds its way into state coffers, most of his five million citizens live in poverty and life expectancy is on a par with some of the poorest parts of Africa. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said the country was on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe in a report it published on Turkmenistan's healthcare, which it described as poor even by the "grossly inadequate" standards of post-Soviet countries. It said the culture of secrecy under Niyazov's dictatorship extended to banning the reporting of infectious diseases such as anthrax, HIV/Aids and the bubonic plague. - via wiki & this article

===
Update (1): I just realized that I had provided a link some months back about a crack in the isolation of Turkmenistan..

A new world in Turkmenistan: The first two internet cafes have opened in reclusive Turkmenistan, as Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov, the new President, declares that all schools will soon have Internet access - once they learn to spell his name. (Just kidding.)

Aah...maybe there is hope? (Naah... they'll learn from the Chinese to "cleanse" the internet of things that are critical of their government!)

Update (2): via Metafilter

"Even the best-endowed regimes need help navigating the shoals of Washington, and it is their great fortune that, for the right price, countless lobbyists are willing to steer even the foulest of ships." Journalist Ken Silverstein poses as a representative of the government of Turkmenistan to see if Washington lobbying firms will take on the job of making a country with a considerably less-than-stellar human rights record more palatable. The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials calls Silverstein's work disingenuous; others disagree.

RIP

Two Holocaust related stories in the news today

- A mass grave holding the remains of thousands of Jews killed by the Nazis has been found in southern Ukraine near the site of what was once a concentration camp...

- The diary of a 14-year-old Jewish girl dubbed the "Polish Anne Frank" was unveiled on Monday, chronicling the horrors she witnessed in a Jewish ghetto

--
Labeling this post, I ruminate that history is not the past. History still lives. And this is current and affects all of us. I have always been highly irritated by those that do not respect or want to understand the past.

An ocean of shame

Here is a movie recommendation, if you have not seen it already...though admittedly it will not be a feel-good comforting movie!

I just read an interview at rediff.com today with the director, Shonali Bose, about her 2005 film, Amu, which is finally in release in select theaters in North America. It stars the phenomenal actress - arguably the best in India today - Konkona Sen Sharma.

The film, as you may know, is about the previous dark chapter in independent India's recent history before the Gujarat massacres this decade - the 1984 riots in Delhi following Indira Gandhi's assassination, in which Sikhs were systematically targeted and butchered in cold blood. (Sepia Mutiny had blogged about the movie way back when the movie was released and there are other earlier interviews with Shonali Bose online.)

I am glad there are brave people in this world who stand up and speak up about these unseemly inhumane acts that dot India's recent history through documentaries, movies, and books! One has to indeed wonder what has happened to Gandhi's legacy in India - ironically at its worst in his home state of Gujarat!

As a wise man insightfully said - we who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it - and though we do not seem to learn, to shove these events under the dusty unseemly rug of history and not bring it up again would be a great crime too!

Like the very erudite Eugene Debs once said:

Thousands of years ago the question was asked; ''Am I my brother's keeper?'' That question has never yet been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society. Yes, I am my brother's keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by any maudlin sentimentality but by the higher duty I owe myself.

Also:

Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. - Paulo Freire

Fear grows in darkness; if you think there's a bogeyman around, turn on the light. - Dorothy Thompson

I have learned two lessons in my life: first, there are no sufficient literary, psychological, or historical answers to human tragedy, only moral ones. Second, just as despair can come to one another only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings. - Elie Wiesel

---
Like I wrote in rambling and melancholy mood last Sunday....

Sometimes, in the throes of cynicism and despair, I do wonder if we are hard-wired to hate rather than to love...though it would seem it should be the reverse - i.e. compassion and love should be the norm and hate the exception. A look around the world certainly does not always give one that feeling.

Between re-reading some of the facts about the 1984 riots at the links above and more news of violence in Iraq, the new mess in Palestine, Darfur, and so on and so forth.......I despair that there is not much hope for this world in the long run! WHY would one want to live a 1000 years in such a world indeed!

I need to take a break now and go clear my head and "wash my soul."*. Mel Hill's wonderful Jazz program on BBC radio beckons...

* Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. ~Berthold Auerbach

---
The title of this post refers to a quote from Mahatma Gandhi, who said:

"You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty."

So..despite all the despair permeating this post... I want to hope the Mahatma was right.

History repeats itself?

The 'war on terror' that ruined Rome

In the autumn of 68 B.C. the world's only military superpower was dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on its very heart. Rome's port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular war fleet destroyed, and two prominent senators, together with their bodyguards and staff, kidnapped. The incident, dramatic though it was, has not attracted much attention from modern historians. But an event that was merely a footnote five years ago has now, in our post-9/11 world, assumed a fresh and ominous significance. For in the panicky aftermath of the attack, the Roman people made decisions that set them on the path to the destruction of their Constitution, their democracy and their liberty. One cannot help wondering if history is repeating itself.

Zoroastrianism

Although I hail from Bombay (now Mumbai), home of > 50% of the world's Parsees, I did not have any Parsee friends growing up and other than the fact that they had come to India fleeing persecution in Iran many many centuries back, there was little I knew about the history of Zorastrians, exposure to silly stereotypes in movies and familiarity with legendary names in Indian history, aside . My 2c on this is that I have always thought of them as a very anachronistic sect of people, albeit very talented, honest, hard-working and great human beings, who are doomed to dwindle to extinction sooner rather than later... thanks to their strict narrow-minded ways!

Today, I happened to read on Parsi Khabar (new blog I just found through my daily reading of India Uncut!) about a recent controversy in the Parsee community, that stems from their rather 'bizarre and morbid' custom of disposing the dead*...

The controversy stems from the fact that there is a growing pile of bodies in Bombay's Towers of Silence’... and this was highlighted to the Parsee community by pictures taken by a 65-year-old Parsee, Dhan Baria, of the Tower of Silence. Another Parsikhabar post has a video from CNN-IBN on the Towers of Silence Controversy - some disturbing imagery and therefore caution is needed when viewing the video.



Though the problem of undisposed bodies in the ‘Towers of Silence’ has been known, the matter came to limelight last fortnight after a community member clandestinely took photographs of the pile up in the Mumbai’s ‘Tower of Silence.’ “Vultures are supposed to eat away the bodies. But they have become virtually extinct because they consume diclofenic while feeding on cattle carcasses and disappearance of their habitat,” said an analyst. Sources in the Parsi community say that not only in Mumbai but even in Hyderabad there could be a pile up of bodies in the two ‘Towers of Silence’ (or dakhmas) located in Bhoiguda and Parsigutta. Vultures were last seen in Hyderabad two decades ago.



The problem has been recognized by the Parsee community and some solutions have been sought
In Bombay, the Parsi council has installed giant solar reflectors to hasten the process of decomposition of corpses because there are just not enough vultures around to consume all the bodies. It is also starting a vulture aviary on the premises with help from an overseas expert. Currently in Bombay there is an average of three Parsees dying every day and the handful of vultures at the towers are overfed. Experts say about 100-120 birds would be needed to deal with the daily intake of bodies.



A related news item that I recall reading at the BBC website some time back reported the virtual disappearence of vultures in India, with the population declining from 45 million only a few years ago to the verge of extinction.

Wildlife experts in India have been urging the Indian government to ban a widely used veterinary drug in order to save vultures from extinction after New Scientist reported studies that proved that the catastrophic decline of griffon vultures in south Asia was caused not by a mysterious disease, as had been thought, but a common painkiller given to sick cattle. 

Anyways, reading this led me to think that it is a shame that I do not know much of the history of the Parsee people or the reasons for the customs of the Parsees. So, I set upon an expedition through Wikipedia (Not to add fuel to the fire, but in today's world where information is only a mouse-click away, subscriptions to Britannica do not make sense when you have the power of wiki and the collective wisdom of experts from around the world at hand!), to learn more about Parsees, their culture, and their history.


Here is a short snippet from the wiki article on Zoroastrianism

The Avesta is the collection of the sacred texts of Zoroastrianism. The contents of the Avesta are generally divided into five categories. The divisions are topical and are by no means fixed or
canonical. Some scholars prefer to place the five categories in two groups, the one liturgical, and the other general.

• The Yasna, the primary liturgical collection; includes the Gathas, which are thought to have
  been composed by Zarathushtra (Zoroaster) himself.
• The Visparad, a collection of supplements to the Yasna.
• The Yashts, hymns in honor of the divinities of Zoroastrian angelology.
• The Vendidād, describes the various forms of evil spirits and ways to confound them.
• Shorter texts and prayers, the five nyaishes "worship, praise", the siroze "thirty days" (see Zoroastrian calendar) and the afringans "blessings".

Ahura Mazda is the beginning and the end, the creator of everything which can and cannot be seen, the Eternal, the Pure and the only Truth.

Some major Zoroastrian precepts:

• Equalism: Equality of all, irrespective of gender, race, or religion
• Respect and kindness towards all living things. Condemnation of the oppression of human beings, cruelty against animals and sacrifice of animals.
• Environmentalism: Nature is central to the practice of Zoroastrianism and many important Zoroastrian annual festivals are in celebration of nature: new year on the first day of spring, the water festival in summer, the autumn festival at the end of the season, and the mid-winter fire festival.
• Hard work and charity: Laziness and sloth are frowned upon. Zoroastrians are encouraged to part with a little of what would otherwise be their own.
• Loyalty and faithfulness to "family, settlement, tribe, and country."

Central to Zoroastrianism is the emphasis on moral choice, to choose between the responsibility and duty for which one is in the mortal world, or to abjure this duty and so facilitate the work of druj. Similarly, predestination is rejected in Zoroastrian teaching. Humans bear responsibility for all situations they are in, and in the way they act to one another. Reward, punishment, happiness and grief all depend on how individuals live their life. Good transpires for those who do righteous deeds. Those who do evil have themselves to blame for their ruin. Zoroastrian morality is then be summed up in the simple phrase, "good thoughts, good words, good deeds" (Humata, Hukhta, Hvarshta in Avestan), for it is through these that asha is maintained and druj is kept in check.

It was Achaemenid era (648–330 BCE) Zoroastrianism that later developed the abstract concepts of heaven, hell, personal and final judgement, all of which are only alluded to in the Gathas.

And this insight into their belief system and customs followed to date..
Inter-faith marriages: As in many other faiths, Zoroastrians are strongly encouraged to marry others of the same faith, but this is not a requirement of the religion itself. Some members of the Indian Zoroastrian community (the Parsis) contend that a child must have a Parsi father to be eligible for introduction into the faith, but this assertion is considered by most to be a violation of the Zoroastrian tenets of gender equality, and may be a remnant of an old legal definition (since overruled) of Parsi. However, to this day, some priests will not perform the Navjote ceremony - i.e. the rites of admission into the religion - for children of mixed-marriages, irrespective of which parent is a non-Parsi. This issue is a matter of great debate within the Parsi community, but with the increasingly global nature of modern society and the dwindling number of Zoroastrians, such opinions are less vociferous than they previously were.




Death and burial: Religious rituals related to death are all concerned with the person's soul and not the body. Zoroastrians believe that on the fourth day after death, the human soul leaves the body and the body remains as an empty shell. Traditionally, Zoroastrians disposed of their dead by leaving them atop open-topped enclosures, called Towers of Silence, or Dokhmas. Vultures and the weather would clean the flesh off the bones, which were then placed into an ossuary at the center of the Tower. Fire and Earth were considered too sacred for the dead to be placed in them. While this practice is continued in India by some Parsis, it had ended by the beginning of the twentieth century in Iran. In India, burial and cremation are becoming increasingly popular alternatives.

Also via Parsi khabar - A very interesting slide show on Zoroastrianism from the New York Times, as an interactive accompaniment to the article - Zoroastrians Keep the Faith, and Keep Dwindling
And this article provides a brief account of the Parsis after the downfall of the Sasanian Empire at the hands of the Arabs and gives possible reasons as to why only those migrants to the West Coast of India have managed to survive while others have disappeared without trace

* Per the Dakhma-nashini is the only method of corpse-destruction: this is the destruction of the dead body in the stone-enclosed Dakhma, by the flesh-eating bird or the rays of the Sun, the most spiritually powerful method as commanded by Ahura Mazda to Zarathushtra. Dakhma-nashini is believed to be hygienic and ecologically-sound, because it prevents the world from being spiritually or materially polluted by decaying dead matter

Related quote but I do not think of it as being reflective in any way of the character of the Parsee community or their customs!

"There is perhaps nothing else so distinctive of the condition and character of a people as the method in which they treat their dead." - William Tegg 1876 (Quote via.)

Tibet

I was reading a book - The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2002 (ed. Dave Eggers, review) - first in a new series started by the Best American series) - and just read a short article by someone called Meenakshi Ganguly called Generation Exile about Tibet and Tibetians in exile in Dharamsala.

Anyways, reason I am writing about it is that I did not know about Tibetians who settled in the south of India. Though with Tibetan influences, Dharamsala it seems has become a commercialized town, like any other in India... I think many thanks also to Western sympathizers and hippies. Anyways, here is the relevant excerpt from the story..am actually typing it out from the book..so just a short one!

With the town's resources taxed to the limit, Dharamsala is becoming a kind of exclusive political resort. The refugee reception center still allows children to settle in Dharamsala, since they are the best hope for a Tibetan future. But the only adult refugees who are allowed to remain are religious officials. Others can visit, but they can't stay. Tourism has brought prosperity - and, perhaps, complacency, - to Dharamsala. Afterall, the city is the Tibetan Babylon, filled with bars, Internet cafes, and curio stalls. ......

....Perhaps you have to go still farther south to find the real Tibet. Many of the earliest Tibetan refugees settled in the south of India, where they live in scattered villages seldom visited by Western spiritual pilgrims. The settlers here still speak Tibetan and wear traditional garb. They have recreated monasteries that were destroyed by the Chinese. The illustrious Sera Monastic University, once the main school for Tibetan monks in Lhasa, has opened again in Bylakuppe, a village in the Indian state of Karnataka. Nearly five thousand monbks are enrolled today, many of them young
boys fresh out of Tibet.

More later..

Two thoughts

two blogposts by Amit Varma today lead me to two very interesting articles.

1. Adam Gopnik writes in the New Yorker (via India Uncut)

As “Camus at Combat,” a new collection of his editorials—he was a working journalist—makes plain, the experience, first, of the Nazi occupation of France, and then of the struggle of Algerian independence against France led him to conclude that the “primitive” impulse to kill and torture shared a taproot with the habit of abstraction, of thinking of other people as a class of entities. Camus was no pacifist, but he deplored the logic of thinking in categories. “We have witnessed lying, humiliation, killing, deportation and torture, and in each instance it was impossible to persuade the people who were doing these things not to do them, because they were sure of themselves and because there is no way of persuading an abstraction, or, to put it another way, the representative of an ideology,” he wrote. Terror makes fear, and fear stops thinking.

2) In an essay on John Updike's Terrorist, and on terrorism in general, Theodore Dalrymple
writes:

It is not the personal that is political, but the political that is personal. People with unusually thin skins ascribe the small insults, humiliations, and setbacks consequent upon human existence to vast and malign political forces; and, projecting their own suffering onto the whole of mankind, conceive of schemes, usually involving violence, to remedy the situation that has so wounded them.

Updike’s Terrorist has much in common with Conrad’s The Secret Agent, published 99 years previously. In both books, a double agent tries to get a third party to commit a bomb outrage; in both books, the secret agent ends up slain. In both books, the terrorists operate in a free society unsure how far it may go in restricting freedom to protect itself from those who wish to destroy it. The terrorists in Conrad are European anarchists and socialists; in Updike they are Muslims in America: but in neither case does the righting of any “objective” injustice motivate them. They act from a mixture of personal angst and resentment, which easily attaches itself to abstract grievances about the whole of society, thus disguising the real source of their consuming but sublimated rage.

Read more at Amit's original post