Thucydides in Ukraine

 

It seems nobody actually thought the cornered bear would attack, but last week, it did.

Perhaps it was assumed that all the snarling and swiping was nothing more than political and military posturing, that the 200,000 troops amassed by Russia along Ukraine's borders would just complete their 'exercises' and go home...but nothing of that sort happened. Instead, what we have now is a full blown war - an invasion that has already turned a million people into refugees, thousands have been killed, buildings blown to bits, and countries struggling to prevent a nuclear war.

These developments have also been a revelation, and an unravelling of myths, at many levels. 

First of all there is this myth about "rules based global order". When a big country invades a smaller, weaker country, the only rule that works is the Thucydides dictum - "The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must". When USA invades other countries - Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan - it is packaged as a noble venture, to promote democracy, to usher in a free market economy,  as a saviour to the uncivilised, and so on. Turns out that this is a game other bullies can play as well.

Then there is this myth of "free speech". The Western media seems to have convinced itself that they alone know the difference between propaganda and news. BBC, CNN, and DW can barely hide their glee when news channels from other other side of the fence are banned or expelled. 

'Experts' from the western media hold forth on why blonde fair-skinned European deserve to be treated more humanely than the hapless people fleeing wars - initiated by their own governments -  in Africa and Asia. The levels of hypocrisy and racism has been just breathtaking!

It was also amazing to learn that over 20,000 students were trapped in the war-zone. While the government has managed to evacuate most of them, a few hundred still remain trapped in the war-zone. It seems a vast majority of them were studying medicine, revealing shortcomings in our own education system which seems to be better equipped at churning out engineers.

Then there is geography. Until last week I was aware of only a few cities - Kiev from Odgen Nash's famous poem - "The Muddlehead" from Petushkee, Odessa from Alister Maclain's files and novels, and, of course Chernobyl. The humanitarian crisis currently unfolding has made us aware of places far away, on the frozen steppes of Eurasia - Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Mariupol, Kheson...

As the father of political realism, Thycydides may have been right about the fact that relations between countries are dictated by just two factors - fear and self-interest. It seems not much has changed since 450 BCE.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/27/western-media-coverage-ukraine-russia-invasion-criticism

* https://www.wionews.com/world/ukraines-refugee-crisis-exposes-western-medias-hypocrisy-457831 

* Perhaps the clearest articulation of India's position - DBV Varma - "The Putin Pushback"

Sunny Days

 The precise shifting positions of the rising and setting sun through the year is a phenomenon observed thousands of years ago. The ancient Egyptians aligned their buildings - especially the pyramids - in such a way that sunlight entered the deepest passages only on certain days of the year, such as the summer equinox. The ancient Aztecs did the same, and so did the builders of Angkor Wat, and even the Padmanabha Swamy Temple in Kerala.

While it is relatively easy for communities that have lived at a particular location for many years to accurately predict the play of sunlight and shadows in their buildings through the year, the trick is to figure out how this would change in different parts of the globe. Consider this excerpt from an astronomy website - 

At 40°N latitude (Denver, Colorado / Beijing, China), the sun shifts 7° north. Since the sun's diameter equals 1/2 degrees, that means the sun has been traveling its own diameter (14 days x 1/2 degree = 7 degrees) northwards each day. At 60°N latitude (Fairbanks, Alaska / Siberia), the sun moves about 2 sun diameters or one degree daily.

How did they come to the conclusion that "the sun's diameter equals 1/2 degrees"? What exactly does this mean, especially when you consider the fact that the distance between the earth and the sun varies from summer to winter making it appear larger or smaller across the seasons? 

Things get a little more complicated here. Yet all this has been figured out with such amazing accuracy that we have websites that map the position of the sun to any given location on earth, any time of the year.

What we see here is a sun-path polar chart superimposed on an image from Google Maps. Each point on this is worked out by feeding in the local latitude in relation to the elevation of the sun and the time of day, for that location. For instance, Noida located at approx 28°N would see the sun at an elevation of 62° from the horizon  (90° - 28°) on equinox days (21 Mar., and 21 Sep.).

Solar Altitude (cc - Hartz ) 

This explains why cities located on or near the equator (eg., Singapore - 1.29°N) see very little variation in the position of the sun across seasons. So when a Singaporean stretches his neck to squint at the blazing sun right overhead on an equinox day, a Norwegian resident at the northern-most city in the world, Longyearbyne (78.22°N) would find the same mid-day sun hovering near the horizon all day!

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REFERENCES & LINKS

- https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/india/new-delhi?month=6&year=2021

- Noida coordinates - 28.5355° N, 77.3910° E

- https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/01/01/this-is-how-the-sun-moves-in-the-sky-throughout-the-year/?sh=c3af3c573037

- TED Talk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm13Kq_E1ik

- https://www.sunearthtools.com/dp/tools/pos_sun.php

- https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/how-far-does-sun-move-on-your-horizon-each-day/

- Sun path - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_path

- https://www.syedshiyazmirza.com/2019/03/sree-padmanabhaswamy-temple-during.html

- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/fall-equinox-secret-pyramids-near-perfect-alignment-180968223/

- https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/five-ancient-sites-to-celebrate-the-spring-equinox

Trek to Kaylong Kartik Temple and Kugti Pass

I'm sitting at my desk, with my eyes on a glowing laptop screen, but my mind is still in the Himalayan mountains.

Having spent the whole of last week trekking through the stunning Chamba valley, attempting my first Cross-Over trek through the Kugti Pass to Lahaul-Spiti in Ladakh, I realize that this trip has been an eye-opener is more ways than one.

I did not know, for instance, that affordable trekking was possible for a small group of five, with the support of two guides, one porter and a cook! Since much of the grunt work of setting up camp, cooking food and foraging for fuel is outsourced, it leaves you with enough and more time to take in the scenery, observe the birds and insects, and enjoy the journey.

This trek passed through the Manikaran Kailash area, an ancient pilgrimage circuit. It was therefore not surprising to see the route dotted with tiny roadside shrines and larger temples. What was intriguing, however, was the set of beliefs and traditions that blended so well with that of the nomadic shepherds who form the economic lifeline of this remote district.

The Keylang Kartik Temple is an excellent example. It is open only from 13 April to 30 November every year - the time when the shepherds are taking their flock from their summer grazing grounds in Lahaul-Spiti down the green meadows and fields of the Chamba valley and the plains, to escape the harsh winters in the mountains.

The temple itself is at multiple levels, blending with the steep slope on which it is located. At the lowest area are the toilets, a little further up, attached to the main building is a shop selling votive's and offerings. This shop is run by the same family that takes care of the temple - priests from the Kugti Village. At the next level you have the temple with a large courtyard, attached to a cooking shed and a little spring-water pool purported to contain the footprints of the presiding deity.

The main temple is a wooden structure divided into two areas - a prayer hall with a window on each of its three walls, facing the towering snow-peaks, and the sanctum containing three idols, one each of silver, panchadhatu (?) and marble. As in most North Indian temples, devotees can walk right into the sanctum and touch the idols before going around the narrow passageway surrounding the sanctum.

The evening Aarti takes place at 7 PM. The priest corrals whoever is around to help with the puja. I was handed a Yak-hair fly-whisk while our guide took charge of the cymbals as we walked around clanging numerous bells hanging overhead. We all then stepped out to offer prayers to two more deities in the courtyard area - Ganesha and Kartik again represented by his vaahana, the peacock.

One thing you will not miss at the temple is the iron chains and tridents along the temple walls. While most of the tridents / trishuls are offerings from the pilgrims on the Manikaran Kailash circuit, the chains are more than just symbolic. They are used by soothsayers from the nearby villages to flagellate themselves as they go into a frenzy while "talking" to the mountain spirits. They become the medium through which the Gods speak to the villagers, and vice versa.

According to the temple priest, the older chains are considered more potent by the villagers. If they need to borrow the older chains to be used in the village temples, they have to deposit two new ones as security. Also, a chain borrowed from the temple is to be carried "without touching the ground", even if it is tucked away inside a bag.

Animal sacrifice is the most accepted form of thanksgiving here. Villagers and shepherds come here to offer animals in gratitude for a successful crossing, or after surviving another winter in the mountains. Perhaps quite appropriately, the main prasad here is mutton-curry and rice. While this may not be to the liking of many Hindu purists in the plains, its best to leave those who survive in the mountains to frame their own rules!

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Unanswered Qs:

* Is there any other temple in India where Kartik is considered the protective diety of nomads and shepherds?
* Mythology says that Kartik lost a bet to his brother, Ganesha, and destroyed himself. Does it talk of a sister named Matala-Devi who sits atop a craggy peak on the opposite side of the river?

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REFERENCES & LINKS

Manimahesh Parikrama - http://www.bharmourtreks.com/show_tour.php?tourid=3&cat=1
Kaylong Kartik Temple - Mythology - http://www.bharmourtreks.com/show_tour.php?tourid=3&cat=1

Travelers to Tibet

The Great Himalayan Range has always been a formidable barrier that limited India's interaction with Tibet and China.

Unlike the North West frontier, it has not been a thoroughfare for invading armies. Instead, it has always been the doughty traders, monks and herdsmen who connected the tribes living in the Tibetan plateau to those on the vast, fertile plains of India. The rivers that cut through the plains have always always been important for us, but did we really care where exactly they originated from?

Among the 20 longest rivers in the world, five flow though in Asia. Three of these have unique names: Yang Tse (no.3, 6300km), Huang He (Yellow River, no. 6, 6464km), Mekong (no.12, 4350km). The remaining two are hyphenated because they by one name in one country, and another name as it flows into a distinctly different region - the Brahmaputra–Tsangpo (no.12, 3848km), and Indus–Sênggê Zangbo (no. 19, 3610km).

Charles Allen's book, "A Mountain in Tibet" tells the fascinating story of how these hyphenations came to be. It is about a few officers and agents of the British East India Company who are obsessed by shikaar (hunting), the desire to escape boring desk-jobs, and by the lure of the Great Unknowns. These young men (most, less than 27) venture into the mountains, hoping to accurately map new places, and opening new trade routes into Asia.



People and places come alive in Allen's narratives. It starts from the earliest expeditions by Moorcroft and Hearsey, the Schlagintweits, and then, to the undercover, spying expeditions undertaken by the Bhotia pundits from Milam village in the Kumaon mountains - Nain Singh Rawat, and his clansmen. It takes you through remote mountain villages and passes (Mana, Niti, Dakeo), across the the sacred lakes of Rakas Tal and Mansarovar, to Mt. Kailas and beyond.

One common thread that runs through Allen's narratives is that if it were not for the European - mainly British -  adventurers, armed with sextants, compasses- and musical snuff-boxes -  the world would not have known anything about the Tibet, or about the real origins of the great rivers that sustain life in South Asia.

Is this really true?

Some of the oldest surviving Sanskrit texts from India are being discovered in ancient Tibetan monastries. "Mulamadhyamakakarika", a 2nd century founding texts of Mahayana Buddhism, was found in Drepung Monastry. The Lankavatara Sutra was found in the Potala Palace in Lhasa. The Bhadrakalpika Sutra, dating back to the 4th century was found in Xinjiang. An Indian monk, Bodhidharma (5-6 century CE), is recorded as being one who popularized Buddhism in China, and then on, to Japan.

Obviously, a lot of people have been going to and fro, long before the first Europeans set foot on the Himalayas. And yet, Allen would like us to believe that until his heroes stepped in, Tibet was 'unknown to the world'.

Today, in the age of Google Earth and satellite pictures, this is common knowledge that can be verified by anybody sitting in front of a laptop screen. Yet, it is intriguing to know that despite a history spanning at least 4000 years, the origin of these rivers was not common knowledge.  People living in the Indus or Bramhapurta valley may not have known that their river originated in the barren Tibetan plateau, thousands of kilometers away. Then again, in the vast web of Himalayan rivulets and streams that feed a river, is it a significant discovery to claim a single-point source?

"A Mountain in Tibet" is a really interesting book. It is also another reminder that we continue to look at ourselves through the purple blinkers worn by the Europeans, and that this will continue until we start producing great non-fiction writers who tell our side of the story.

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LINKS

• Krishnan, Ananth (2017): The Lost Sanskrit Treasures of Tibet, India Today, 1 June 2017
• List of rivers by length - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rivers_by_length

Guwahati - Notes

At 8:30 in the morning we found ourselves in a big traffic jam in Guwahati. Our vehicle was on a road leading up a metal bridge across the Brahmaputra river. Traffic crawled on this narrow, single-lane bridge. "Why don't we try the next bridge?", I asked the driver.

He gives me the are-you-making-fun-of-me look. "The next bridge across this river", he says blandly, "Is 200 km away, in Tezpur".

As we finally get to the bridge (built after the 1962 war), I see that efforts are on to build a wider, concrete bridge. Work seems to be moving a lot slower than the traffic. They have been at it for the past four years...

This just about sums up Guwahati for you - a sprawling, shabby town with a municipality that seems pretty much dysfunctional.

This is, of course, not the city I expected to see. Impressions gathered from conversations, satellite maps and history notes had created a picture in my mind of a great city on the banks of the Brahmaputra river. A metropolis, a hub, a gateway to the seven colorful states of India's North-East.

All my expectations began to crumble as soon as we drove out of the airport, towards the city. Empty, uncertain plots of land line both sides of the road. As darkness sets in we drive past the old, crumbling buildings of Guwahati University.

There were hardly any street lights, pavements or place-boards anywhere. Lights from hundreds of little shops lit the roadsides where people parked their bicycles and cars wherever randomly. Despite the apparent greenery and availability of water, there were no grand trees to be seen. Instead, the byepass was lined with famished, scrawny Ashoka trees, planted just two feet from each other...

Is this the city which sent Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the Rajya Sabha? Is this the state that has had a "stable" government for the past 13 years??

I Never Knew..

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As far as experiences go, is  there anything better than a short, sharp trip? After a quick, week-long visit to Kerala, I am convinced that intense road-travel is the best way to know soak in the contrasts that a place has to offer, without getting getting sucked into a vortex of ennui, nit-picking and petty politics.

This particular trip started with Indigo flight 6E-177 from Delhi to Thiruvananthapuram; it included a 650km drive across the length of the state, from Tvm to Kodungallur, Guruvayur and Trissur; a family get-together, and a return flight by the same airline back to Delhi.

All along, I found myself getting surprised time and again, by things I thought would never change, and by questions that never popped up earlier. And it all started at the new airport complex in Delhi.

I never knew the IGI Terminals had transformed so much. A drive down the airport road, past the Tibetan monastery, and suddenly you see that shabby buildings and ugly roundabouts have been swept away and replaced with a swank new building, with better security and much more efficient staff. Even the toilets sensors have little homilies on them! And just in case you feel completely disoriented, all you have to do is to look outside the glass windows to see "Airport Hotel". The relic is still there, perhaps as a reminder of the bad old days.

I had wondered why Indigo flights emerged as top-dog in the Indian skies until I checked in. The answer seems quite straightforward - over the past few years, while the competition has been falunting shorter skirts and pretty faces, Indigo has been hiring smart people and training them well in the art of continuous improvement. Who cares for hot meals and steel cutlery when the flights are handled efficiently and arrive well ahead of schedule!

Back on terra firma, the next big surprise was the highways in Kerala - they have improved so much! Except for a few, relatively short, painful stretches, both the trunk roads - the Main Central and the National Highway - have made road-travel so much more reliable.

And there were the elephant-questions. Until I sat for an hour gawking at the pachyderms, I never knew how leverage their tusks to crack palm fronds, or that they prefer to eat the stem like foot-long pieces of sugarcane, while completely ignoring the green leaves. I noticed this for the first time inside the Guruvayur temple during the Seiveli Puja. It never ceases to amaze me - the sight of five bedecked elephants standing in a confined space, amidst hundreds of people, in close proximity to oil lamps and their long, flickering flames.

Finally, I never knew that Trissur city was built around a huge 'traffic island' hillock, housing the famous Vadakkunathan temple. I always imagined it to be on a flat plain, separated from the Parasumeikkavu temple by the famous "pooram" ground. Even more suprising was the sheer size of the complex with its numerous sub-shrines. Most of these are in bad shape, thanks, no doubt, to the usual suspects - a Dewaswom Board with a damn-care attitude and the local populance which is unable or unwilling to take responsibility for its own heritage.

SAT-PICS:

lat=10.5249864&lon=76.2148941&z=17&l=0&ifr=1&m=b" width="730" height="536" frameborder="0">
The Thrissur Roundabout

lat=10.2799577&lon=76.7230225&z=13&l=0&ifr=1&m=b" width="846" height="525" frameborder="0">
Lakes wedged in between Mukurthi and Silent Valley National Parks

Trivandrum Skyline

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Which are the peaks in the Western Ghats range to the east of Thiruvananthapuram?

If one looks at a corresponding GoogleMap, it seems the ridges & peaks, going from Left to Right (or North to South) are:
* Agastyamala
* Mukkunimala
* Ponmudi Hills
* Kodayar Ranges


View Larger Map

Monsoons: Arrived On Time!

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Its a breathtaking sight from the seashore.

As far as the eye can see, a massive wall of dark grey clouds silently approaching the Kerala coast, bringing in a season of torrential rains. It is an event carefully monitored by the Met Department, for, in these clouds, hangs the fate of agricultural production in much of the Indian subcontinent.

Here are some pics from Valiyathura Pier in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala - 

A turbulent Arabian Sea

 A fishing boat being readied on Valiyathura Pier

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LINKS:

• Indian Meteorological Department: Monsoon Updates - http://www.imd.gov.in/section/nhac/dynamic/Monsoon_frame.htm
• Much awaited southwest monsoon sets in over Kerala, 3 days before normal . The Hindu 30 May 2011. http://www.hindu.com/2011/05/30/stories/2011053058901100.htm
• South-West Monsoon Active Over Kerala. ToI 31 May 2011. http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-05-31/india/29603548_1_meteorology-sources-kerala-and-lakshadweep-south-arabian-sea