Hindustan: open for all licentiousness
Hindustan is a wide place; where there is an open field for all licentiousness, and no one interferes with another's business, so that every one can do just as he pleases.
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Quotable quotes
Akbar never denied his mother anything but this …
Ecbar Shaugh [Emperor Akbar] … never denyed [his mother] any thing but this, that shee demanded of him, that our Bible might be hanged about an asses necke and beaten about the towne of Agra, for that the Portugals … tyed [the Quran] about the necke of a dogge and beat the same dogge about the towne of Ormuz. But hee denyed her request, saying that, if it were ill in the Portugals to doe so to the Alcoran, being it became not a King to requite ill with ill, for that the contempt of any religion was the contempt of God.
Mulligatawny memories
Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is wiser not to stir them.
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Did you know?
The bearded hermaphrodite
पोटा (pōṭā) in Sanskrit is a word that represents a masculine woman, or a bearded woman or one with other such masculine features. Alternatively, it can also mean hermaphrodite or simply, a female servant.
The Loo and the Roo
The Loo is a hot, debilitating wind that sweeps across Western India, particularly Rajasthan in the months of May and June. Heatstrokes are referred to as Loo lagna (लू लगना). Apparently, Hamdard's Rooh-afza is based on a unani recipe for a drink with cooling properties recommended during this time.
Saffron
The word saffron, a colour often associated with Hinduism, is believed to have its root in the Arabic word, az-za'faran which is itself of unknown origin.
Fela Kuti and his Professor Hindu
Fela Kuti, often called Africa's Bob Marley, had a spiritual advisor named Professor Hindu who had the power to "kill and wake"—to kill a man and bring him back to life. Kuti turned down a million dollar deal with an American record label on Hindu advice.
Whitman's Gita and the Herald
When the first edition of the American poet, Walt Whitman’s, Leaves of Grass was published in 1855, Ralph Waldo Emerson commented that it read like “a mixture of the Bhagavat Ghita [sic] and the New York Herald”.
100 cow man-price
In Vedic times, if you killed a man, you had to offer 100 cows as restitution.
Beer and the Butcher
Reginald Dyer, the Butcher of Amritsar, of Jallianwala Bagh infamy, was the youngest son of one Edward Dyer, the man often credited with establishing India's first successful brewery at Kasauli in Himachal Pradesh. It would eventually become Mohan Meakin Breweries.
Akbar The Great
Akbar, the greatest of the Mughals, could not read or write and was possibly also dyslexic.
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