Arbit Scratchpad

A question was raised by my good friend Naveen a few days back: "I have always had this question. Did India even exist before the advent of the Europeans? Geographically at one point of time the entire Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanisthan was India and even more before that. There has been no dynasty that has been in absolute power nor there has been a defined geographical boundary to India until the britons took over. Even after their taking over, we were a big chunk of land divided and ruled by Nawabs, Rajas etc. So when we refer to India before independence what are we referring to?" At that point of time I had tended to accept the general idea that this question presupposes. However I was not fully convinced by what he had said and decided to investigate. On reading the same book further as also looking back on points that I had missed earlier, I find convincing evidence against the line of thought raised by the question. Discussed in the book in much more detail (read ...

The past three days saw a book fair at the workplace, thousands of books on a wide range of topics were on sale. There were discussions, a lecture and a quiz on reading habits and allied topics. There was a strange case of a person who asked a puzzling question - he says he is addicted to buying the best books, but is not able to proceed after reading a few pages; and many other cases and questions that the panel tried to address. Bought a few books from the 'Fountainhead' stall at the fair. I am having some trouble with the external Dlink dial-up modem (DFM-562E++ - V.92). KPPP is recognizing the modem - but on querying all the parameters are coming back as empty. Upto last sunday it was working fine on Mandrake Linux 10.2 Community. I am hoping the modem has not conked out. My internal modem works fine on Windows 98 - which I am using currently. Windows 98 shows the modem but on trying to query, says it did not respond and says it could be an interrupt issue.

Keep away from this restaurant at Airport Road called 'Royal Orchid' somewhere in the interior opposite The Leela Palace. Had gone for an official dinner to 'Limelight' @ 'Royal Orchid' on Friday, 5th May, had non-veg food and other stuff, but seems food is served stale and contaminated. God knows what they do - cooking up left over food ? Terrible. Friday night and Saturday whole day was a cycle of tremendous torment almost torture due to bacterial diarhhoea, watery motions and vomittings. I'll leave out the graphic details ... Things are better after the antibiotics and pain killers. But the point is it has to definitely be the food served at that restaurant, as even the doc I consulted confirmed. Currently reading 'My Name Is Red' by Orhan Pamuk, excellent translation from the Turkish novel, which seems to be part murder mystery, part reflections on art and philosophy and much more. Hardly 30 odd pages into this 500+ page book.