Dedicated to Nepal and the Nepalis

This past week, yours truly spent some spare time studying about about and thinking about the following things.  Orientalism: Edward W Said's seminal book points that Orientalism is a western construct. Its premise, as far as yours truly understands, is that Western scholars involved in the study of this construct take orientals as an inferior race, as peoples, who need to be saved by westerners as they don't know what is good for them and what is not.  Said's Orientalism is centred around the biased, preconceived view of the Islamic world, seats of ancient civilisation like Egypt and Syria. Said, citing Western scholars' works, points that the latter do not take oriental men and women in high esteem. In the eyes of these scholars, the Orient is far inferior in comparison to the Occident.  Edison vs Tesla: Listening to the National Geographic documentary on the two great inventors -- Thomas Alba Edison and Nikola Tesla -- was indeed enlightening for yo...

The lazy, jaundiced, malnourished baby Sun is consistently late at 'school'.  The neighbourhood shopkeeper sets a small heap of waste consisting mostly of plastics on fire. Acrid fumes from the diminishing heap mix with smog sweeping through the Nagarjun Hills, diminishing further the small pleasure of morning walk through the countryside.  On cue, the lazy, jaundiced and malnourished baby called the Sun appears, drenched in the rains, perhaps taking the soot from the shopkeeper’s heap of waste as some ancient fire ritual dedicated to him.  These days, the Sun looks like one of those schoolchildren, who always arrives late in class and is found snoozing all too often. Is it partying too much these days? Or is its chariot broken?  The Sun’s chariot? Lemme do some explaining.  As per scriptures, in those good ole days, the Sun used to thunder through the high skies, seated on its blazing chariot pulled by seven horses -- the planets. May be the...