Sirocco

The "Industrial revolution" started around 1800 and continued for over a century. During that century, the countries of Europe and the USA underwent fundamental changes as science was applied to create machines that made human labour more efficient. Steam power, mining, chemicals, spinning and weaving and metallurgy. Faster transport and communication, reliable ships, railways, the telegraph etc ensured that Europe and the US were industrial societies by 1900. Experimentation had led to the invention of the unpowered glider, and in 1903, the Wright brothers, who were IIRC bicycle makers built upon the concepts of a light and strong structure and the internal combustion engine and created the first powered aircraft. 11 years later, WW1 broke out and thousands of aircraft were manufactured to fight and concepts like recce, dogfights, air defence and bombing had all been "invented" before the end of the 1914-1918 war. By 1900, Europe and the US had already had 1...

What difference does OBL's death make for India? How will things be different? Was OBL involved in Pakistani terror against India? Suggested answers to some truly intriguing questions as well as a deeply informative timeline from user Rudradev @ http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5911&start=2360 [quote] OBL was never an enemy of India, except in the broadest ideological sense. Just because he became the poster-boy of "dangerous Islamism" for the west, we do ourselves a disservice by adopting that image wholesale and applying it to an Indian context where it is not at all relevant. Indeed, I believe the presence of OBL in our subcontinental neighbourhood was in fact a net gain for India. Let me explain why. 1) In the early 1990s, the US was full of hyperpower hubris. They had just won the cold war and destroyed the USSR, and Pakistan (via its support for the Afghan war) was appreciated as a key player in that campaign. These times were the apex of...

Don't fear the coming dark. Pluck the stars from the sky, little firefly. Watch them glow in your hands. They flutter as we cry, little firefly. This hope and hunger will not end. We'll just fade away and die, little firefly.

I hopped off the bus at Betelguese, hoping perhaps for a hot cup of coffee and some stellar company. Two dizzying years zipping around the Milky Way on the Quark Express left me with a deep-seated urge to feel the earth - any earth - under my feet and the burning desire to get the taste of space trucking meals from off of my taste buds. The man panhandling on the corner outside the busport grinned his crazy grin - the one that promises his undivided attention until you pay him to stop looking at you, stop creeping you out, stop pretending like he knows where you hid the body. You know the body that I'm talking about. The one in your closet only its a skeleton now, hidden and shameful and giving off a miasmic odour that you're scared will surround you until the day you're a skeleton in someone else's little pandora's box. The stench of doubt. You can travel the galaxy and stare stars in the face until the gamma radiation turns your pineal gland into an elastic leg g...

The inky blue of a deep dream of ocean depths and inhabited perhaps, by the same tentacled life swimming in and out of the beams of the weak lights that are our lives, our hopes and our regrets. I look at the night sky and sigh at the sight of the infinity that defies my reach and my understanding. It's the infinity that I swim through in the depths of my inky blue dream.

How how how do you say what I've locked away? Make me smile when it's been a while since I let go and replayed the one that went astray. I feel alive I'm still alive Your song plays in my veins I hit rewind and it begins again and in my head that life, that rage, that happy happy pain it's on again. It's in your voice. It's in your song. It's in the way you play It makes me scream along. Don't stop singing keep this world ringing to the sound of your voice.

I'm not going to waste my breath and dwell on how truly and myopically stupid ToI's 'Aman ki Asha' is. And how it's going to be just a venue for pseuds to sip wine and share kakori kebabs, while admiring each other's pashmina shawls and over-sized bindis . Ooh and clunky silver jewellery. To truly appreciate the complete idiocy of this whole 'initiative', let's imagine that the ToI had addressed their open letter to Mr. Girhotra, father of the late Ruchika G. You know, the one who was driven to suicide by the Rathore fellow. The following piece is a parody of what was on ToI's front page, and has been (re)written by user sanjaychoudhary at forums.bharat-rakshak.com . Love Rathore Feels odd to you -- Ruchika's father -- to see those two words side by side doesn’t it? Hatred and a desire for revenge somehow sit more comfortably in your mind when you think of him and what he did. Words that you’ve been fed in daily doses over the last 19 years. ...

The product of emotionally turbulent period in my life. At least, that's what it looks like. left to myself I see what this has made of me before the end I'll change another way forward for another day old man waiting dripping blood couldn't see the lies from where I stood fuck it all so I can find peace in what's left of my mind what's left inside is residue that fucking taste of the hate you spew in my mouth and in my brain it's the residue it's all that remains street corner on a dark night asking strangers for a light the rain puts out my cigarette another bitch I wasn't done with... yet (over and over and over and) one of my little episodes (over and over and over and) tell my mind to leave me alone (over and over and over and) bird's eye view of me a dot a spot a nothing no not a lot (over and over and over and) not again (again) what's left inside is residue that fucking taste of the hate you spew in my mouth and in my brain it's the ...

*Sigh* ancient history. Written on hearing of some agency's copy test a long, long time ago, on a piece of paper at what was then Pizza Express in Juhu in about 30 minutes. The brief was simple: write a short piece involving the Dalai Lama, a Duckback raincoat, an ashtray and a dinosaur. Here goes. His Holiness put the cigarette out in the Bowl of the Ninth Heaven. This was taking too damn long and his old DuckBack raincoat was getting itchy. He liked the feel of cloth against his naked buttocks as much as the next holy man, but that twerp Tsering had better hurry up with his robes. He had to meet a man about a thing. There was a knock at the door. “Come in!” The door opened to admit a large, purple and thoroughly wet Deinonychus. “Rainy, isn’t it?” “How should I know?” asked the Dalai Lama “Well you’re the one with the rain coat” “True… but that’s only because my robes are being laundered.” “Chinese laundry down the road?” “You’re kidding right?” “Ah. Sorry. I’m Barney.” “No shit?...

From January 2005. Serendipitously found in my Gmail archives. old men wait where young men die to pick up the pieces and plot again another generation lost to hate another woman's son not coming home and still they plot the filth of destruction leave no grave unopened no tombstone unturned old men have waited since the dawn of time to regain lost youth bathe in youthful blood we rebel against the ways of the past a millstone round the future's neck a hopeful future untouched by tradition where age is a state of mind and philosophy an anachronism may we never age in spirit lest we become old men. waiting.

as the layered bite of stone's guitar crunches down and eddie makes words catalyze passion I relive the fractured innocence of a decadent decade. a generation's hopes couched in anger and disbelief ephemeral geniuses cut short by blade of unsought fame we had a voice that spoke to the world with words of our own unrestrained and undefined by the boundaries of commercial creation a sound unsullied by that so-perfect production raw emotion unhindered by your fucking expectations.

*It's a day for songs, it is... a couple more days like this and I'll have an album. Anyone want to form a band? :) Here goes: I was in my usual place right at the back of the line when she comes and throws it all in my face like it happens every time. She says "listen baby, my life is a mess and i don't know what to do you're not the first to know, i must confess but y'know this really isn't about you" And I said "hell whatcha know, I've been down this road before I hate to think that's where we're going Because I really thought this was more" So she stops and she looks like I'm levitating "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" And I stumble a bit - it's a little intimidating! And she tells me what she feels - "This is my prerogative, I hope you can understand I don't need another talking to, It's more than I can stand "It's my prerogative What I think and what I say Don't make it ab...

Foolish, nowhere, Johnny-head-in-air Open. Read like a book, cover to cover; Nothing to hide, make every reader a lover. Reciprocity though, is so hard to find; So hard to unveil a reader's mind. And so, trusting pages begin to wrinkle; Smooth corners curl and paper crinkles. Lines & names hidden in a creased fold; so young and yet the book feels old. Reader be kind to a simple book; It's open about everything Perhaps you could share more than a friendly look?

The image falls of its own volition. Smashed against the floor, staining the carpet as the paint seeps out. I kept it fresh, that paint, adding new layers as they seemed to occur to me. And now, they run together and merge into an unfathomable murkiness. I lift the image up and stare; faded lines and blurred colours stare back. The layers I painted, I realise, Were merely my perception. The truth stares up at me from the carpet. Stain.

I'm sick of the 'ogues'. You know, the demagogues and the pedagogues (which is just a horrible-sounding word for teacher actually) and the ideologues - oh brother the ideologues! Those guys really, really get my goat. Take this guy for instance: Biju Mathew He's written this long 'analysis' of the situation in Bombay, and with the title itself "As the Fires Die: The Terror of the Aftermath", you know you're in for a long read. And it doesn't disappoint you at all. This left-winger unleashes all the usual boogies - the facts are just emerging, however the story so far is all conjecture. He then goes on to insinuate that the Indian Government is lying about Pakistani involvement - or at least that he believes they're lying. And so on and so forth, with standard 'intellectual' bilge straight out of the red book in his head about the modern liberal state being a hollow shell filled with neo-conservative err... fillers. Of course, the li...

In my earlier note, I had pointed out that one of the duties of a citizen is to pledge allegiance to the state. I meant specifically to the Nation-State, whose identity may be represented by a Constitution and a legitimate form of government. A rule-of-thumb definition of a nation-state would be a certain form of state that derives its legitimacy from serving as a sovereign entity for a nation as a sovereign territorial unit. The state is a political and geopolitical entity; the nation is a cultural and/or ethnic entity. The term "nation-state" implies that the two geographically coincide, and this distinguishes the nation state from the other types of state, which historically preceded it. India is - or should aim to be - a nation-state in this sense. The government of our Republic is the persona of our geopolitical identity, and the current borders of our nation (including some of our neighbours) reflect our cultural, & ethnic boundaries. Some may claim that India as a ...

Thank you India. What a groundswell of support, of compassion, of unity. A giant has stirred in his sleep. Not an easy thing to achieve no doubt - but not enough, nowhere near enough. Kumbhkaran has merely heard the first blast of the first trumpet of those who wish to awake him, and he doesn't have the luxury of waiting for more. The lumpen Indian middle-class polity has a window - albeit a small one - to ensure that the 3 P's get the message: Thus far, and no further. The 3 P's are Pakistan, Politicians, and Preachers. Yes, unfortunately the holy ones do deserve inclusion in the Axis of Weasel. Mao may have believed that power flows from the barrel of a gun, but no one picks up a gun without a demagogue telling him he has to for religion/race/country/what ever. Silence the demagogues and the intellectuals by removing causes for discontent, and well, most people go back to doing what they really want to do - loving, working, living happily ever after. I believe that the f...

in india, we worship monkeys, so what's the issue if bhajji called symonds one? and hell, if we want to be racist we'd say things like 'kallu' or 'kalia' or something. not 'bandar'. see the ozzies are having an apoplectic attack because 'monkey' is what they'd call a black man. something they've been calling the aborigines ever since the first rapist or murderer forefather set foot in the land of his exile and imprisonment. 'sub-human', 'vermin', 'animalistic'... a range of zoological epithets have described the peoples whose land they've stolen and whose inheritance they have plundered. pot... kettle... monkey.

it's been less than ten generations since this land became ours. it took less than three to clear out the blackies. down in tasmania, we just wiped them out. shot them, poisoned them, burnt them... whatever it took to get the vermin out. hunt them like the animals they are. no worries, mate. we managed to keep it clean until 1973, when the liberals cleared out the last of the white australia legislation. for over a century, we'd managed to keep 'em out - the niggers and the sand niggers and the chinese and the brown islanders of the pacific. oh they laboured in our mines and in our fields and cleaned our muck, but they didn't live here, no worries about that mate. the few remaining abo's... well, them buggers got the vote in the sixties but they're all to drunk to do anything about it, the lazy black bastards. they don't mean nothing to this land anymore, and they know it. no worries, eh mate? so we sit at our pub nursing our victoria bitters and laughing ...

so rj's dead. muthafucker. the whole of the 1990s (well practically) following the events in randland and now the creator himself has passed on. i haven't gone back to my wot series for a while now, but hearing about it... you could've FINISHED THE GODDAMN 12th BOOK!!! FUCK!!! um... i don't know how to explain what i'm feeling really, but this feels like a whole section, timeline type thing of my life has now very definitely moved into the category of the 'past'. you want to know about robert jordan, move to subsection 'yesterdays'. there are... things, events, people... that fall into this section now. stuff i'd forgotten or people i haven't been in touch with or songs i haven't heard in a while... like 'ordinary world' or hanging out with vidisha munim. it's a postcard now, not the still-tangible taste of yesterday's dessert. not that i had any, it's just a metaphor, really. and pterry has alzheimer's. oh man, oh...