There is, along a shelf of books in our house, a series of elephants bought by my mother over the years after she heard they were considered to be good luck in India. Black and brown wood, plastic, ivory (in India generally Elephants’ tusks are cut down like nails to regrow and elephants are not…
Category: Quotidial
Diaries
There are amongst ancient writers names that we know but for whom we have no written works. Sometimes we have a good idea of how they were thought of but all their work is lost and even for the greats we do know, we don’t have all their works. Very rarely amongst the archeology suddenly…
Defining Clothes
It is impossible for me to think about Rome without thinking about togas, or envisage a Greek without seeing a hoplite and understanding that whilst these clothes are so redolent of the ‘ancient’ cultures, they are there because these countries were warm countries. So the classic sheepskins of the Mongols or the heavy cloaks of…
An Obsession With Knowing
For most of our history on this planet when we haven’t known the reason for something we have made one up. It isn’t that we enjoy lying to ourselves, although myth making is rather fun, but because to have a vacuum in our knowledge frightens us. Not to know is to have no power, not…
Festivals
When my mother lived in India she had a friend who jokingly used to say he didn’t do any work because he enjoyed participating in everyone’s festivals and each one meant a day off. The festivals of so many religions and sects are bountiful in India but all over the world people celebrate. Celebrations can…
So So Secret
I was wondering about secrecy and realised that 99.99% of everything that happens in this world is a secret from me, and that’s over-estimating what I may know. I may know a great deal of the kind of things that happen by extension from my own reading and experience, but actually I don’t even know…
Missing The Obvious
The Hebrew bible story about the tower of Babel is an attempt to explain the different languages, and by extension, cultures of the human race. In many ways throughout the centuries thinkers have taken these differences as a rally cry to look at those aspects of human life that bring us together – as we…
Irony
I am told that Americans don’t do irony very well and it is one of the reasons why they don’t always enjoy British humour. So they probably wouldn’t see any irony in my saying Sarah Palin is a female Ronald Reagan but they do get angry at the fact that many ordinary people are suffering…
Where Politics Starts
I used to think that everything we do is political because politics starts with every interaction we have with the world outside our bodies. I am now of the opinion that this is naive because in actual fact, that is where ethics starts because we have to interact with the world around us in order…
The Right To Dream
People all around the world have discussed their rights for generations, which is another way of outlining their expectations vis-a-vis their relationship with others. But it worries me that these rights which have emerged through history as necessary concomitants to a healthy society have been clothed in the attractive garments of religion and even called…