Fascinating History. Interesting Medieval Incidents from Indian and Middle Eastern past.

The US has lived a lie for over two hundred and fifty years. Now it is unraveling. US democracy is reverentially known as Jeffersonian democracy. The hallowed ‘Declaration of Independence’, ratified by the US Congress on 4th of July 1776, was principally authored by Thomas Jefferson, the 3rd president of the US. ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal …….,’ he declared on behalf of the US colonies; words that warm the heart of millions in the western world but they shield an underlying ugly fact; that the author of these deified words was a slave owner. Not only Jefferson, fully twelve of the first eighteen US presidents owned slaves, including the first, George Washington, who led the rebel army against the British colonizers, and the 18th, Ulysses Grant, who led the Unionist army against the secessionist states. Their words and deeds appear hollow in view of their conduct in their private life. The democracy they championed was flawed at inception. ...

With a population of 25 million, 5% of the population, Muslims form a large religious group in the European Union countries. According to Pew research, this figure is expected to grow, under different levels of immigration, to anywhere between 35 to 75 million representing 7.5 to 14% of the population in the next thirty years, while the white population is projected to decline. The growth of Muslims is unevenly distributed in the continent. The central Europe is projected to have 15% and the East Europeans less than 1% of their population professing Muslim faith. The corresponding numbers in the US are about 3.5 million representing about 1% of the population. The presence of a sizeable Muslim minority in western nations has had, unfortunately, an adverse effect on social harmony. While national leaders and thinkers are addressing this issue under their individual inclinations and biases, there are some scholars who are genuinely concerned on the deteriorating race relation and are ac...

As the world settles in to deal with the outbreak and spread of the corona virus, the future seems uncertain and unpredictable. Leading biologists, epidemiologist and statisticians of the world are in furtive search of a model that explains the behavior of Covid-19. The number of daily infections and deaths defy comprehension. If each count of death represents a life-story, then there are now nearly 30 thousand tragic stories. The print, social and electronic media is full of coverage of its deadly course, and eyes skip every other news to latch on to every tidbit about virus. This author too took up the laptop to write on an event of 813 AD but found it hard to concentrate on anything else than this raging affliction. There are vague estimates on the time that it would take for the virus to play out its course. While it is certain that all earlier virus epidemics and pandemics have ultimately outlived their dangerous course and that a combination of human biology and medical experti...

In his novel titled ‘Love in Time of Cholera’, published in 1985 and set for a probable timeframe of 1870 to 1930, Gabriel Garcia Marquez described in his skilful way, a sublime relationship that transcends being labelled as sensual or platonic. As cholera ravages the countryside of their native Venezuela and dead bodies float in the muddy waters around their ship, Florentino Ariza and his now widowed old flame Fermina Daza, both septuagenarians, ply ‘for ever’ up and down the River Magdalena. A great pestilence has descended upon the world. A miniscule virus, with a diameter of 120 nanometres (10-9) or a mere 10 thousandth of a millimetre, that is incapable of replicating itself without appropriating the cellular machinery of its unsuspecting host, has overwhelmed the medical facilities of the best equipped nations, shattered the prowess of economic giants, halted air, land and sea operations the world over, forced the closure of holiest places of all three Abrahamic religions and h...