"The Roadmap is back on track"

"The Roadmap is back on track - Copyright Steve Bell 2005" 

God Module!?

Professor Vilayanur S Ramachandran (he of Phantom Limbs fame and Reith Lecturer) develops some earlier research into the relationship between the temporal lobe and religious experience.

...it might indicate that seizures in the temporal lobe strengthen certain neural pathways connected to the amygdala, meaning we attribute significance to the banal objects and occurrences. "If those pathways all strengthen indiscriminately, everything and anything acquires a deep significance, and when that happens, it starts resembling a religious experience," he says. "And if we can selectively enhance religious sentiments, then that seems to imply there is neural circuitry whose activity is conducive to religious belief. It's not that we have some God module in our brains, but we may have specialised circuits for belief."

Click here for the full story.

Mohali beckons as the rivalry is renewed - India vs Pakistan

Let the battle commence. As always, I'm supporting the winner (thereby simultaneously irritating as many people as possible AND failing the Tebbit test!)

The Indian Fiction Top 25

(Courtesy of Kitabkhana)

Jerry Pinto, poet, journalist Who Actually Reads, and author, recently put together a list of the 25 Best Books in Indian fiction (English language, no translations):

1. Vikram Chandra: Love and Longing in Bombay
2. Aubrey Menen: The Fig Tree
3. Rohinton Mistry: Tales from Firozhsha Baug
4. Jhumpa Lahiri: The Interpreter of Maladies
5. Hari Kunzru: The Impressionist
6. G V Desani: All About H Hatterr
7. Vikram Seth: The Golden Gate
8. Salman Rushdie: Midnight’s Children
9. R K Narayan: Swami and Friends
10. Mulk Raj Anand: Coolie
11. Kamala Markandaya: Nectar in a Sieve
12. Anita Desai: Baumgartner’s Bombay
13. Amitav Ghosh: The Shadow Lines
14. I Allan Sealy: The Trotternama
15. Shashi Tharoor: The Great Indian Novel
16. Githa Hariharan: When Dreams Travel
17. Kiran Nagarkar: Raavan & Eddie
18. Shashi Deshpande: That Long Silence
19. Arundhathi Roy: The God of Small Things
20. Raja Rao: Kanthapura
21. Khushwant Singh: Delhi
22. Nisha Da Cunha: Old Cypress
23. Ruskin Bond: The Room on the Roof
24. Gita Mehta: The River Sutra
25. Indi Rana: The Devil in the Dustbin

Hmmmm. I've read four of the 25 (4,5,8 and 19). It would have been five but for the fact that Khushwant Singh's Delhi (his Train to Pakistan would have been a better choice) was so unpalatable that I left it unfinished.

I'm surprised Vikram Seth gets a mention with The Golden Gate rather than his magnum opus, the veritable doorstep, A Suitable Boy. But alas, perhaps I only say that so I could at least claim to have read exactly 20% of the featured titles.

Time to stoke up some controversy: any suggestions for a Pakistani top 25? (Or should we start with 10 and see how far we get?)

I don't believe it!

'French booksellers are braced for a rush of interest after another book from the author of The Da Vinci Code is translated into French.' BBC News.

Perhaps more disturbingly, 'The Da Vinci Code is being made into a film starring Tom Hanks.'

I hadn't realised it's been banned in Lebanon.

Turks

Ok. I'm getting seriously tempted by the acclaimed exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. Not a bad excuse to head to the second city I suppose.

Levantine Lunacy

Hizbullah backs Syria to force political divide in Lebanon

Shias call for pro-Damascus protests in Beirut

Brian Whitaker in Beirut
Monday March 7, 2005

The Guardian

Hizbullah stepped dramatically into the Lebanese-Syrian crisis yesterday by calling a demonstration in support of Syria and raising the fear that a withdrawal of Syrian troops might not go smoothly.

The militant Lebanese Shia organisation, which is backed by Syria and Iran, said it planned to hold a mass demonstration tomorrow near the square where anti-Syrian protesters have been camped since the assassination of the former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri last month.

Until now Lebanon's Shia minority and their political organisations have stayed on the sidelines of arguments about the presence of 14,000 Syrian troops and intelligence officers.

Some observers had argued that Hizbullah's political interests would be best served by keeping quiet, because of the widespread unpopularity of Syrian influence in the country, but yesterday its leader, Hassan Nasrallah joined the fray.

Click here for the full story.

Majlis Memento

This particular post marks the beginning of a rather selfish initiative cloaked under a veil of altruism. I've decided to share a key point from each majlis [Arabic noun - meeting, session, gathering; initially established to commemorate the martyrdom of the 3rd Shi'a Imam, Hussein ibn Ali] I get the opportunity to attend. The hope being that by putting fingertips to keyboard, the neuronal connections responsible for that memory will be that little bit stronger.

This evening's take home point is an aphorism of Imam Hussein:

"Verily, people are the slaves of the world and their religion is superficial, only on their tongues. They are attentive to it as long as their material benefits are provided, but when they are tested, the number of true devotees dwindles."

Mothering Sunday

The perennial debate continues: capitalist exploitation or genuine appreciation? This is one occasion where I don't mind being socially manipulated. My sister and I opted for a hi-tech card with personalised message recording facility and the accompanying gift had, with the aid of the retrospectoscope, more than it's fair share of an ulterior motive!

Andalusian Facade

A wall of the Great Mosque of Cordoba ©Tauseef Mehrali 2005 

Welcome

Salaam alaykum! Welcome to the new look, post-Atkins diet, mehrali.com. As you can see, the revolutionary tremors have transformed into a Richter scale shattering paradigm shift - I've succumbed to the blogging fad. You can access most of the old stuff via the navigation bar to the left. Let's see where this takes us.