Skip to main content

An archaeological expedition

The vacations are coming to an end. The vacation for education is the human civilizational equivalent of disappearing cities. The books have all been covered with layers of mud, forests and infested with dangerous animals - mostly amnesia inducing. But the schools are about to reopen. And those ancient cities need to be discovered. Again. Now.

The discovery is not easy though. The locals say that such cities never existed. The little ones deny that they were ever educated in the alphabet. In fact they are quite sure that certain alphabets do not exist in the Devanagari script. Satellite images clearly show the presence of lost cities under the earth, but the people around are not convinced. Old books have been produced, with their own writing to show that they were once educated in this language. However, a combination of amnesia and denial can do many things to civilization. And only the bravest of the brave archaeologists can delve deep into the mounds, brave the snakes and animals and dig out those forgotten artefacts of civilization.

Two alphabets which were reported missing have been found after much effort. There is still an attempt to deny that these alphabets never existed in the Devanagari script. These are the two alphabets that were needed. If alphabets can disappear, you can imagine that the grammar structure which held the language must have vanished altogether.

All in all, we are now ready for the great archaeological expedition. Armed with tools, we need to dig deep and discover those alphabets. Rebuild those grammar structure so that at some point in time, the edifices stand up to their erstwhile glory. (Pardon the euphemism, but there were no edifices - they were just fragile structures that needed a bit of a light breeze to topple them over.) But yes, we have begun. Two missing alphabets have been traced. The range of other discoveries will be known only as we undertake this perilous expedition.

The expedition to unearth the forgotten cities of Hindi. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The man who saved Pumpelsdrop

This was a story we had in college if I am not mistaken. Perhaps it was in school, but a delightful story it was. The story goes somewhat like this ( reproduced from here ), but the college version we had was slightly different from this.  I t was a dull, gloomy and a depressing morning in a town named Pumpelsdrop in northern England. The Great Depression had brought all the businesses to a standstill. The bored automobile dealer was spending time alone, as usual. But, this seems to be an unusual morning as an odd entity (customer) appeared on the horizon. A man in a bright suit walks up to the dealer and says, "I need to buy a Rolls Royce Phantom II. We have a business conference coming up and I need to impress my customers". Then proceeds to pay 10% of the deal with a single check for 2000 pounds. The rest he says will pay when he takes the delivery.   The auto dealer was stunned. He was delighted to hear that someone is holding a business conference of some kind and ...

The Most Powerful Idea in the World

The above titled book by William Rosen (and I am still reading it) has set me thinking. As it goes through the industrial revolution (rather, the beginning of it) - it explores as to why the industrial revolution happened when it happened. Rather, how a lot of factors came to play in making it happen. For that alone this book is worth a read. It is worth reading how a 'dotcom' kind of ecosystem existed in England with the combination of tinkerers, rich patrons, correspondence and of course, the right kind of institutions. When one studies engineering, or even science, what we hear are the rock star stories. For instance, we know that Archimedes had a 'Eureka' moment. Likewise, in this book, I realized how a 'Eureka' moment helped James Watt resolve the problematic steam engine into a workable design. While it is very romantic to believe that discoveries happen accidentally, the fact remains that somebody like a James Watt (or others) slogged through many man...

Narendra Modi, Presentation Skills

This is the latest speech by Narendra Modi which was delivered yesterday at the India Today Conclave. Much analysis has been carried out on this speech, but here is a different perspective. I have written about Presentation skills - and to me this is a video that touches upon almost all aspects of presentation skills. For someone who wants to learn public speaking, presentation skills this speech is a great example. It is well worth your time, if you want to see presentation skills in action (and the bonus of a great speech). The speech is largely in Hindi, though there are parts in English as well.  Mr. Modi uses a video at the start (which is missing here) - so the speech uses other media as well - surprising the audience - since politicians arent generally given to videos. That initial video has made the audience look forward to more. The speech is extempore - which can only happen when one knows the subject thoroughly. I personally don't know how much Mr. Modi practices...