Things from the fire

A man on a shooting trip got lost in the jungle. The man looked for a clue to his whereabouts, but the jungle was thick and the trees looked all the same to him. Soon it grew dark. The man decided to camp for the night. By a clearing near a stream, he set down the bag on his shoulders and his gadgets. He cleaned the ground and gathered firewood. When the moon rose in the sky and fireflies flirted with the darkness, he lit a fire.

It was a long night, made longer. A mist hung above the trees, a white, loamy curtain floating in the air chilling the air around. The jungle slowly filled with the sounds of animals. The man was not afraid. He cooked himself food and rested. The fire burned bright in the night.

Why 2014 is going to be better

It is dark outside. The sun has set for the last time in 2013. A gentle wind is blowing. The moon is a distant light, its brightness blighted by dark clouds. Another year is about to end in a few hours. Time taking another step into the future. Today someone dumped a man in front of our house. The man is in his mid thirties, drugged, with eyes puffed and swollen shut. There are blisters on his skin and cake blood splattered on his jacket and face. Nobody knows who is responsible. How they managed to dump the man on such a busy road is beyond belief. A crowd quickly gathered. Everyone hovered around deciding what needed to be done. My brother called the police and someone else an ambulance.

The Man Who Grew a Forest

Once upon a time, in the year 1979, great floods washed across both banks of the mighty Brahmaputra. A sandbar in the river was crawling with visitors washed ashore by strong river currents. A few days later, when the water receded, a 16-year-old lad found it dotted with dead snakes. The snakes had died in the heat for the sandbar had no trees. The lad was so overcome with grief that he wept over the lifeless snakes. When he returned home, he talked to those who knew about growing trees in the sandbar. 'No,' he was told. 'Nothing would grow there.'

The Year That Was

The sun is setting. Already it grows dark. It is that time of the year when another year gives way to yet another. In four days time we will bid adieu to 2011 forever. For so many it was the last year of their lives. For so many others, it marked new beginnings, of hope, togetherness and renewal. The world will welcome the new year with fireworks and merrymaking. Many will be waiting to start something anew. Many will make promises to themselves they will not keep.

Twenty eleven was a landmark year in so many ways. Things changed. The Apple is no longer the same. It's a year since J D Salinger died. For the first time...

The Word of the Year 2011

It is the time of the year to select the word or phrase which best defines 2011. What word or phrase reflects the ideas and events which occupied the world this year? How do you select such a word? According to the American Dialect Society, the best word of the year candidates will be: demonstrably new or newly popular in 2011,widely and/or prominently used in 2011, indicative or reflective of the popular discourse, and not a peeve or a complaint about overuse or misuse.

The Oxford English Dictionary has already made its choice. The one word or phrase that characterized the past 12 months is squeezed middle, a phrase first suggested...

The Longest Words…

The longest word in any of the major English language dictionaries at 45 letters is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, which refers to a lung disease from inhalation of fine silica particles. The word was deliberately coined to be the longest word in English. The longest non-technical word in major dictionaries is floccinaucinihilipilification at 29 letters. It is 'the act of estimating something as worthless.' The next longest word at 28 letters is antidisestablishmentarianism. Antidisestablishmentarianism is often accepted as the best-known 'longest word.'

Literary Hoaxes: The Genius of Thomas Chatterton

English poet and forger Thomas Chatterton or ‘the Marvellous Boy’ was only 12 when in 1765, he started producing poems, which he claimed to have found in an old chest the local church. He passed them on to be written by a priest named Thomas Rowley, possibly around Chaucer’s time - 400 years earlier, a name he adopted later as his pseudonym. Scholars and experts in his native Bristol were not only convinced of their antiquity, but the works also received critical acclaim. Encouraged by his success, Thomas left his native Bristol for London, but the London experts declared his work as forgeries.

Although he achieved moderate success with his own poems and political satire...

The Alchemist for free!

Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist in Arabic has now been made available as a free download by the author.

This was what he wrote in his blog: 'Due to the current circumstances, several readers tell me that they can’t find my books in some Arab countries. Therefore, I went to a “pirate” site and found the current edition. I don’t know if the translation is good, but I think it is my duty to facilitate the access of my books.I trust you: only download this edition if you can’t find my books in bookstores.'

Nice gesture. I like the bit about facilitating 'access to my books.' But what I found grotesque was...

The Greater Fool

One day, a horse trader came to the court of a famous king. He told the king he has some fine horses for sale. The king offered to buy them. The man took an advance of two thousand gold coins and left, promising to return with the horses within a week.
That evening the king saw his court jester writing on a sheet of paper.
"What are you writing?" he asked.
"I'm making a list of the greatest fools in the kingdom," said the jester.
The king was astonished to see his own name on top of the list. "What is the meaning of this? You think I’m a fool!" he said.

Thank goodness for March 6!

March 6 gave me two things I could do without: Aspirin and the books of Gabriel García Márquez.

On this very day in 1899, the Imperial Patent Office in Berlin registered Aspirin, the brand name for acetylsalicylic acid, on behalf of the German pharmaceutical company Bayer & Co. Originally derived from the bark of willow trees, the active ingredient salicin has been in use for centuries serving as traditional medicine since ancient Greece. A Bayer employee, Felix Hoffman, created a stable form of the drug in 1897. After obtaining the patent rights, Bayer began distributing aspirin in powder form to physicians to give to their patients one gram at a time...

And then? Bhurrah!

Writing posts for your blog can sometimes become tedious. It reminds me of a story my grandmother used to tell me every night when I was quite young. I never quite stayed awake to learn what happened at the end, but this was how it went.

A storyteller was tired of telling stories, but those around kept on asking for more. He began to describe how a large number of birds sat on a tree: “One bird flew from the tree with a sound like bhurrah!”
“And then?” said those in the audience when he paused.
“Bhurrah! Went another bird, flying from the tree.”
“And then?”
“Another bird flew away. Bhurrah!”