Author: manuscrypts

  • Brothers at War

    Alex Rutherford

    ‘Brothers at War’ is the second of the ‘Empire of the Moghul’ series and begins in 1530, right where the first one ended. Babur is dead, and despite naming Humayun successor to the wealth and the new empire he has founded, and asking him not to do anything against his half brothers, there is dissension among them. Humayun thwarts an early attempt by his brothers to grab the throne, but spares their lives and sends them away to rule far away regions.

    Despite early successes, Humayun fails to hold the empire together, and his preoccupation with stars coupled with an opium addiction ensures that he loses the hard earned empire to Sher Shah. After losing several strongholds including Delhi and Lahore, Humayun becomes an emperor without a kingdom. In addition to scheming feudal lords and other relatives, he also has to deal with the treachery of his brothers yet again. In the meantime, he marries Hamida, thus alienating Hindal, (who also loved her) the only (half) brother who had allied with him.

    Humayun wanders further away from Hindustan, fueled by a belief in his destiny – to rule the empire again. He finally gets help from the Shah of Persia, to whom he gifts the Koh-i-noor, but who also extracts a bigger price. From then begins Humayun’s journey back.

    The books seems to be showing a pattern – starting with a prince who has just ascended the throne and ending with the heir in the same position. Humayun’s failures are a tad repetitive, and are not helped by the fact that many of his journeys share similarities with Babur’s experiences, but the pace is more or less maintained and there are reasonable twists to keep the reader engrossed. Except for a few characters and events, history has been not tampered with much. Humayun comes across as a courageous, intelligent and driven man who, though lost the empire to begin with, ensured that he rectified his mistakes. If you’re interested in history, this does infuse life to the characters familiar from textbooks. 🙂

  • Posture child

    I guess that’s the reason why Calvin & Hobbes is so utterly loved by so many folks. Profound, timeless, universal truths expressed in such a unique way!

    I had never seen this one until recently. Why blame Instagram for filters? They existed long before anyway 🙂 I thought this strip found great application in all kinds of posturing from time immemorial, and especially so now – in the social media context, when everyone is a publisher. Over a period of time, I wonder how fast we would forget who we really are (if ever we come to know it or knew it) It would probably be irrelevant in the real-time era. We would be the statuses and photos and everything else we like and share every minute. After all, I’m no longer the person who wrote it anyway, and who’s to say the non posturing self is the real deal?

    until next time, impostor 🙂

  • Hunan

    Thanks to Chinese stalwarts around, and home delivery doses of Delicacy, Hunan has always been ignored. But a casual glance at the menu on Zomato and the spotting of some Thai fare meant that it was quickly chosen for dinner.

    Hunan is above Costa Coffee on 1st A Cross, the road that goes to Jyoti Nivas from 100 feet Road, Koramangala. (map) This is the area that has the maximum number of eating options per square km in Bangalore. Yes, not even Church Street can beat it. 2 wheeler parking is relatively simple, if you have a 4 wheeler, you should probably use the parking lot next to Empire unless you want to try your luck with basement parking.

    2 flights of stairs (there is a lift I read about but didn’t bother to find – probably from the basement) leads you to a cosy, well utilised space that does have the mandatory dose of red and the television, but also plays soothing music and has 3 tables that give you a street view. Yay! Two were already taken, but we were just in time for the third. The place is neat, exudes a charm and generally gives a feeling of being well run.

    We went in quite sure that we would start with the Tom Kha but got a googly in the form of a special menu that featured a Thai Chicken Coconut soup. It had all the usual suspects – galangal, lemon grass, chillies, and so we switched allegiance for the night. The addition was glass noodles. Fantastic soup, with rich coconut milk flavours. Slightly sweet, but a few chillies helped restore the balance. We didn’t miss the Tom Kha at all. Since we were satisfied with the Thai, we agreed to go ahead with the main course we had planned, but it was a combo dish – with rice – and we weren’t sure of the quantity. So we asked for a starter –  Chicken Red Dragon dumplings. Orange -red in colour, we got 10 momos with a good tomato-chilli sauce. The momos were excellent, mildly spicy and cooked really well.

     

    For the main course, we ordered the Kang Pet Gai – Thai red curry chicken. (comes with steamed rice) I must say that given the culinary strangeness in that part of the world, the word ‘Pet’ is not very reassuring. 😉 We also ordered a Roast Pork with Red and Green Chillies. The rice was sticky but that worked well with the curry. Again, the chicken curry was sweet, but we were saved by the spicy pork! All of this was exactly the right fit for our appetite, so we didn’t have space for desserts!

     

    Quite a good experience, and we’ll be sure to drop in again, because the menu does have much more. All of the above cost us just over Rs.1400.

    Hunan, 123, 1st Floor, 1st Main, JNC Road, 5th Block, Koramangala Ph: 9739130000

    PS: Happened to notice that Adaa has shut down! 🙁

  • Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India

    William Dalrymple

    In his introduction to the book, William Dalrymple explains how he has tried to invert the travel writing style of the eighties, highlighting the subject and relegating the narrator and his journey to the shadows. And that’s how this book manages to be a set of nine mini-biographies that are linked by the book’s tagline – ‘In Search of the Sacred in Modern India’. Each ‘story’ not only manages to show the protagonist, his/her belief systems, trade/artform in the context of a region that’s rapidly changing the way it looks at religion, spirituality and the world in general, but also manages to trace its (artform/trade) evolution across the centuries of its existence, and the inividual’s outlook towards his own journey. In that sense, it is also my favourite kind of travel writing – across time.

    From Kerala to Dharmasala and Tarapith to Sehwan, the characters flow, and though all of them are interesting in their own way, my favourites were the ‘The Singer of Epics’ – the story of a bhopa in Rajasthan, and “The Monk’s Tale”, the story of a Buddhist monk who takes up arms against the Chinese, is then forced to fight for the Bangladeshis against Pakistan and finally spends his last years in Dharmasala atoning for his acts by hand printing prayer flags.

    The narrative and the prose make the book very accessible, and the only concern I had was whether the author had let romanticism affect the truth of the stories a tiny bit. A great read.

  • In Principle

    Stannis Baratheon is probably the least charismatic among the contenders in the Game of Thrones, but I have liked him for his stubborn, unwavering sense of duty and justice – even in those situations when a compromise might have helped him meet his objectives. Even his claim for the throne is not borne by desire, but by his belief that he is the rightful heir. I am on Part 2 of Book 3, so I have no idea how this is all going to pan out, or whether his character will change later, but for now I can relate to it, though in my daily existence, I’m not able to shake off the pragmatist in me many a time.

    That is also why I loved this Gaping Void poster, and identified with it immediately.

    As I’d written in the 1000th post in another context, perhaps the joy is in doing something because it is the right thing to do.

    until next time, first principles 🙂