Indian Summer

I just ordered Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire written by Alex Tunzelmann. Below is the first paragraph from the book:
In the beginning there were two nations. One was a vast, mighty and magnificent empire, brilliantly organized and culturally unified, which dominated a massive swath of the earth. The other [...]

Beyond Reasonable Doubt

In an extract from his upcoming book, The Greatest Show on Earth (that I am eagerly awaiting to read) Richard Dawkins explains that it’s the ‘proof beyond doubt’ that established a scientific theory as a “fact” – unlike, say in Mathematics, where a rigorous, impeccable, ultimate proof is (a) possible, and (b) required to prove [...]

Blaming Nehru

Here we go again. Nehru-bashing has been quite a popular fad nowadays (especially among the rightists) and so far he had been blamed for myriad things. But this recent assault, has a new edge.
I was quite excited when I heard about this new book on Jinnah written by Jaswant Singh: Jinnah – India, Partition, Independence. But then [...]

Science Never Proves Anything

The validity of one the most (if not the most) beautiful and groundbreaking scientific discoveries of all time – Darwinism – is often disputed with a common argument that it is, after all, just a theory. This not-so-rare refrain, especially popular among Creationists, is based on a flawed notion, a misunderstanding of what a scientific [...]

A Sense of Scale

If the entire course of evolution were compressed into a single year, the earliest bacteria would appear at the end of March, but we wouldn’t see the first human ancestors until 6 a.m. on December 31.
That’s from Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne (which I am reading right now).
P.S. The first organism – simple [...]

Repurcussions of Uncertainty

In a brief interview with the Economist magazine, Farzana Shaikh, the author of Making Sense of Pakistan, talks about the root causes of current problems in Pakistan. According to her, while the proximate cause of the current mess is the process of State Islamization, emphasized by Zia ul Haq in the 80’s, the ultimate cause [...]

Recent Reads

I read A Case of Exploding Mangoes few months ago, and absolutely loved it. The story is set in Pakistan in the late 80’s — several months before the death of General Zia ul-Haq. It revolves around some very interesting characters – many of which would, one way or the other, get associated with that [...]

Reaching, Gathering In, Relinquishing

My newfound interest in poker is thriving… the more I play and learn about this game, the more it delights me.
To that, here’s a passage from John Updike’s short essay My Life in Poker from Due Considerations, a compilation of his essays and criticism.
I am careless, neglecting to count cards, preferring to sit there in a [...]

Working with Available Light

In the introductory chapter of the book, The Hindus: An Alternate History, Doniger cites the Sufi parable of Mulla Nasrudin — the one in which after having lost his key inside his home during a night, Nasrudin was searching for it outside under a lamp post, because there was more light there than in his [...]

The Hindus: An Alternative History

I can’t wait to get hold of this new book The Hindus: An Alternative History written byWendy Doniger. She’s an ex-professor at the University of Chicago who has translated several ancient books written in Sanskrit.
It will be interesting to see a philologist’s, as opposed to say a historian’s, interpretation of the cultural history of the Hindus. Here’s one review.
Below is an excerpt [...]