history

General ravings, Musings, Potshots

The redness of Sindhoor – 2

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Asim Munir’s Dump Truck, Trump’s Grump, Pakistan’s Bhagavad Gita Inspiration, and How Pakistan Won the Asia Cup  

Believe it or not, O Dear Gentle Reader, I started to write this a few days after the Indian Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) granted  the Pakistan’s DGMO’s pleas for an end to hostilities; and that,  after the Indian military administered a much-deserved thrashing to the  Pakistan military during Operation Sindhoor, May 7–10, 2025. 

But I’ve kept adding to this rant, and subtracting from it, and amending it, all these weeks and months because so much has been happening so fast since then: between India and Pakistan, and between  India and the USA, and Pakistan and USA, and India and China, and Israel and Iran, and Pakistan and Iran, and Pakistan and Bangladesh, and India and Afghanistan, and Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Russia and Ukraine and the EU and the USA, and the USA and Israel and Iran and China and Myanmar and Russia and Bangladesh and …well…the USA and the rest of the world. And it’s been hard staying up to date and keeping tabs on all of these developments and events and discerning patterns in them.

Because they’re all closely, weirdly related, and not at all in a nice and friendly way for India and you and I and the Resident Lizard who, as usual, even now reads over my shoulder and chuckles derisively as I type this.  

That’s why, in the interim, I only posted a kind of foreword to this long rant titled “The redness of Sindhoor-1” in August : a kind of grim remembrance of the Indian civilian establishment’s collective cowardice following the Pakistan-sponsored terrorist attack on Mumbai in November 2008.

But now, driven by impatience and exhausted by Cacoethes Scribendi,  I scribble the last few words and post this rant before Dilli’s toxic air drives the last ergs of energy from body and last vestiges of rationality from mind.

First, in the warm and generous spirit of Deepavali, may I offer a (mercifully) short poem to Pakistan’s Field Marshal Asim Munir (though I suspect Munir-bhai may not like to be reminded of things like bright lights, flames and explosions after Operation Sindhoor):

Cast away thy angst, O Munir-Bhai

Abandon thy well-trodden Path of Sigh and Cry

For, Ignoble Laureate Trump shall soon free thee of Tamas

With his calling on Pakistan’s military to disarm Hamas

And Deepavali’s Warm Light shall cure all…even thy ISI

By and by

I post this just over four months after Pakistan, led by the devout  Gen. Munir and the beatific Pak Prime Minister Shabaz Sharief, snatched  victory from India in Operation Sindhoor in May 2025; and barely a month after Pakistan snatched the Asia Cricket Cup from India in September 2025.

Let me hasten to explain, before I’m pilloried by my Adored Readers for being high on smooth whiskey and/or good ganja, or arrested by the Indian government or assassinated by Indian vigilantes for expressing ‘anti-Bharatiya sentiments’.

Asim Munir’s dump truck

Consider Operation Sindhoor.

Sure, during Operation Sindhoor, India flattened terrorist training camps in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir as well as the headquarters of Jaish e Mohammed and Lashkar e Tayyeba in Pakistan itself, killing a hundred or more terrorists of different degrees of murderousness and kookiness in the process.

Sure, the Indian Air Force (IAF) destroyed 12, possibly 13, Pakistani air force planes, including F16 and JF17 fighters and at least one AWACS and ELINT aircraft each—some of them shot out of the air, others incinerated in their hangars or on the tarmac in airbases across and deep within Pakistan by drones and rockets and long-range missiles. Sure, India attacked and destroyed assorted high-value infrastructure in at least 11 strategic (N-strike) Pak airbases including the runways, hangars with aircraft in them, air defence systems, and strategic command-and-control infrastructure, killing a hundred or more Pak military personnel in the process. Sure, evidence of all the havoc caused by the Indian military has been presented in public, not just by the Indian military but by defense/strategic analysts worldwide, and the evidence is still available to you and me and Pakistan and the world in public domain, in satellite imagery and on the Net and in print.

Sure, there is also clear evidence that in the course of its attack on Pakistan’s Nur Khan and Sargodha strategic air bases, the IAF severely damaged an undeclared (i.e., secret) underground N-reactor complex in  the nearby Kirana Hills along with an unknown number of dis-assembled N- warheads. Judging by reports, these N-warheads were plutonium-239  (Pu-239) devices. [This conclusion is based on a simple fact:  unlike uranium-235 warheads which are very stable once shaped and pre-assembled, plutonium-239 warheads constantly decay to non-fissile isotopes like Pu-240, Pu-241 etc. which ‘contaminate’ the Pu-239 over time, till the warheads become like soggy Deepavali crackers that go ‘Phuuussss’ instead of creating a hole the size of Delhi.  And so, Pu-239 warheads require a dedicated N-reactor to refine the plutonium in them back to fissile-grade, in a  complex never-ending cycle. ]

Most interestingly, there is also damning evidence that some or all the N-warheads in the underground N-facility in Kirana Hills—and indeed the entire Nur Khan air base— was under the direct command and control, if not full OWNERSHIP, of the US Air Force (USAF) and had been so for at least 15 years, perhaps ever since the so-called ‘War Against Terror’ launched by the USA under George Bush Jr.  And that the USA set up and controlled Nur Khan to keep a baleful N-watch on China, just as the USA had set up the Bagram base in Afghanistan to keep a strategic eye on China.

In effect, then, India not only delivered several painful kicks to Pakistan’s collective military butt during Operation Sindhoor; India also knowingly or unknowingly (I suspect the former) attacked and destroyed or severely damaged a secret and fully operational USA-run  N- strike air base located in Nur Khan, along with USA-built F-16 fighters and a secret, USA-owned ,underground N-complex including  N-warheads and  N-reactor in Kirana Hills.

But Pakistan declared – and continues to declare – that it defeated India in the battles of May 2025.

Pakistan’s Field Marshal described the inevitability of Pakistan’s victory over India as follows while addressing a Pakistani community event in Florida, USA in August 2025:

“India is like a shining Mercedes coming on a highway like Ferrari, but we (Pakistan) are a dump truck…If the truck hits the car, who is going to be the loser?”

Trump’s Grump

In destroying the USA-owned N-assets in Nur Khan and Kirana Hills in Pakistan, India has put not only Pakistan but Trump and the USA in a hell of a hot spot—militarily, diplomatically and politically.

There’s the money angle, of course…so important to Trump and his cronies. The USA set up the Nur Khan air base alone for over 550 million dollars—and that was only the capital cost.  The annual recurring costs would have been many times that figure. The Kirana Hills N-infrastructure would have cost billions of dollars.

That’s a lot of money, even for a do-numberi  builder-don like Donald Trump.

 Losing all that money to Indian strikes must be terribly painful to Trump and his Deep State cronies, especially when all those beautiful American assets have been reduced to piles of radioactive rubble underground.   

In fact, Trump et al. must be feeling the same pain as Iran did, when Trump’s USAF reduced Iran’s N-complexes in Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz to piles of radioactive rubble underground…

But it’s much more serious than that for Trump and the Americans.

On the one hand, the USA simply cannot ever admit that it owned and ran these N-weapon facilities in Kirana Hills or owned and managed Nur Khan N-strike airbase in Pakistan. Because, to do so would be to admit that the USA had installed N-weapons and N-delivery assets targeted at China  in a secret US base located right next to China—in Pakistan, ostensibly, a  ‘friendly’ neighbouring country of China!

And THAT would put the USA exactly where the Soviet Union had put itself when it started to establish Soviet N-missile bases very close to the USA, in Cuba, in 1962…bringing all humankind close to thermonuclear incineration before better sense prevailed thanks to John F Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev…but that’s another story.

On the other hand, the USA cannot hide the evidence of its perfidious ownership and management of the Nur Khan air base or the Kirana Hills N-weapon facilities for long—because not only is all the evidence out there for the world to see, but N-radiation has an inexorable and horrible way of revealing itself in time…however deeply it might be buried

Most important, Pakistan is not going to let the USA escape responsibility and leave Pakistan to bear  the fallout—nuclear and figuratively—of the devastated underground N-facility and the remnants of N-warheads lying inside there, and its ruined air bases and related military losses. 

Yep folks, Pakistan has really got Trump and the USA by their short and curly N-hairs this time. For a while, at least.

And that’s why Trump toadies up to and ingratiates himself with Munir-bhai and Shabbaz-bhai of Pakistan  by the passing day, even as his rage against India intensifies by the passing second and by the midnight tweet.

The USA will never admit any of this:  they dare not, for their own reasons.

Pakistan will never admit any of this; they dare not either, for their own reasons.

Pakistan’s Bhagavad Gita Inspiration

A related question arises: why did Pak PM Shehbaz Sharif promote Pak military chief Asim Munir to Field Marshal and felicitate him for ‘defeating India ’ in  Operation Sindhoor?

Well…let’s empathize with Shabbaz Sharief on this one. Sharief had no choice but to promote Munir to Field Marshal; because to demote or court-martial Munir— as any other country in the world with a microgram of self-respect would have done after Munir led his military to such a humiliating defeat— would be to admit that Pakistan’s military had suffered defeat at the hands of India’s military.

And that admission simply cannot be made by any Pakistani PM.

As Pakistan’s brief but bloody history shows, such an admission, however truthful it might be, would lead to a speedy and unpleasant end for that Pak PM.

Whatever little poor Shabbaz Sharief understands about anything else in life, he certainly remembers what happened to erstwhile Pak PMs Zulfikar Bhutto and to Benazir Bhutto, even nearly to his own brother Nawaz Sharief….

Pakistan believes its supremacy over India, making ‘peace’ with India an absurd proposition. This belief is non-negotiable; it is, in Pakistan’s collective psyche, so deeply ingrained that it is the God-given Truth.

It is taught in Pakistani schools upwards. It is taught in religious seminaries. It is naturally, understandably, echoed in the Pakistani media, in the civilian and military streets of Pakistan.

That is why Pakistan declares that it won the conflict against India in May 2025; as it has won every earlier conflict with India since 1947.  

For Pakistan, eternal victory against India is the Holy Hallowed Truth.  However Holey and Hollow that ‘truth’ is.

This is Pakistan’s strength.  In a weird and wonderful way (though Munir might not like the analogy), Pakistan is in fact practising a fundamental tenet of Hindu philosophy: a tenet taught by Krishna to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita:

You cannot ever be defeated if you believe strongly enough that you haven’t ever been defeated and can’t ever be defeated.

“All that’s very well,” the Patient and Revered Reader might justifiably ask: “But why should this false, hole-ridden Pakistani version of the truth be published as the Truth in the Supreme Court of the World, also popularly known as Western English Media which includes BBC, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and affiliated rags?”

The answer to this is best illustrated by the old joke about God and Devil.

Once upon a time there was a long and fruitless argument between God and Devil over which one of them was the greatest.

Finally, an Impartial Mediator (who some say was Brahma’s son Narada on a White Horse, and others say was a direct ancestor of Donald Trump in a White House) proposed that God and Devil should settle the matter once and for all through a game of football.

Naturally, there was great excitement throughout the Universe among the respective fans and followers of Devil and God (the former, of course, far outnumbered the latter). Tickets for the Greatest Ever Football Game were bought and resold at stellar premiums in galactic black markets, astrologers made astronomical fortunes predicting who would win, and lawyers, investment bankers, Congressmen from the USA and India, and other scoundrels staked entire galaxies (which usually they didn’t own) on outcomes like who would score the maximum goals and how many, who would be red-carded first, and so on.

As for God and Devil, they remained busy with their Holy Heavenly duties and Unholy Hellish duties respectively till, on the eve of the Great Game, they met for a friendly cup of Single Malt Soma.

“Listen, old friend,” murmured God, who was actually quite fond of Devil (though he didn’t care too much for Devil’s horned head, red eyes and sulphurous breath), “you’re going to lose the game tomorrow, you know.  Just look at my Divine Team! I’ve got guys like Diego Maradona, Johann Cruyff, Didi, Silvio Piola, Lev Yashin, Bobby Moore, and Zoltan Czibor playing for me…and as captain I’ve got Edson Arantes do Nascimento, whom the Universe knows as Pele!” God paused for a breath (creating a hundred million new galaxies in the process), smiled and murmured: “You don’t stand a chance in Hell of winning, O Devil!”

Devil chuckled, and replied: “Ah, dear God, you’ve forgotten that the Referee and the Linesmen are playing for me!”

The Asia Cricket Cup

And lastly (phew, at last), consider the Asia Cricket Cup, September 2025.

Sure, India and Pakistan played each other thrice during the tournament. Sure, India defeated Pakistan all three times, including in the Final.

But guess where the Asia Cup is?

The Asia Cup is NOT with the Indian cricket team. The Cup is not even in India.

The Asia Cricket Cup  is in fact in Pakistan, in the grubby hands of one Mohsin Naqvi who is the Chief of the Pakistani Cricket Board, and also works as Pakistan’s Interior Minister when he is not otherwise preoccupied stealing cups, awards and affiliated symbols of victory that belong to other nations.

How come Pakistan and this Mohsin Naqvi fellow snatched the Asia Cup from India after losing the Asia Cup tournament to India?

Well…now we know…

Because Pakistan can never be defeated by India. Pakistan always must win… one way or the other.

Jai Hind!

Beastly encounters, General ravings, Musings, Potshots

What’s in a Mane?

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Once upon a time, not so long ago, while on a stroll in my neighbourhood, I met a girl, aged about 15, long-faced and short-haired, wearing that sulky, world-weary and prematurely cynical expression that’s so fashionable among today’s young urban elite activist-revolutionaries.

“Have you seen Bombshell?” she asked. Her tone was imperious, peremptory; her accent a pleasant blend of the USA’s North-East and India’s North-West.

I gaped at her. “Bombshell? Which…what…whose bombshell?”

She frowned. “Bombshell’s a cat,” she snapped.

“Oh..ah..yes, I see, your cat! You call it…er… Bombshell? “

“Bombshell’s a He or Him, not an It,” she replied in the withering tone youngsters reserve for dinosaurs like me who come from a time when Tweets were what birds did and Spotify was what leaking fountain pens did. “And you’re saying his name all wrong; his name’s pronounced Zhomm-Shell, not Bombshell. “

I gaped some more and her frown deepened. “Well, have you seen him?” she demanded.

“No, no,” I mumbled. “Meaning, I know a few cats around here, we get along quite well, but I don’t think I’ve met your cat…er…Zhomm-Shell. What a nice name…ah… how do you spell it?”

“Why, J-E-A-N -M-I-C-H-E-L, of course…how else could one spell it for Chrissake?” she snapped.

Wisdom dawned in my foggy brain. “Ah, so you’ve named your cat Jean-Michel?!”

“Yeah, yeah, his name is Jean-Michel,” she replied, slowly and patiently, stressing each word and syllable as a primary school teacher would while explaining something to a particularly dense child. “And Jean-Michel’s not MY cat; he’s a stray. He’s just one of the many stray cats that live here, I’ve given them all names, do you understand? So that I can keep an eye on them…”

“Ah, I see,” I muttered weakly, not seeing at all.

“I think I’ll have to change Jean-Michel’s name, ” she went on, shaking her head sadly. “People are so dumb …especially grown-ups…they can’t even pronounce Jean-Michel properly…”

“But does Jean-Michel know that you’ve named him Jean-Michel?” I asked. I was genuinely interested to know, because I like cats and do believe cats are extremely sharp and sensitive creatures. I also wanted to ask her whether Jean-Michel the cat had learned to pronounce his own name properly, but alas, I didn’t get the chance. Her face turned deep red at my query, she stamped her foot hard, glared at me, let out an explosive “Ooff!” which sounded exactly like a bombshell or rather a Jean-Michel (and even that “Ooff” had a Californian twang in it, mixed with a trace of a Scottish burr, or maybe it was a Karol Bagh rasp)… and then, with a snort of disgust she stormed off looking for the elusive feline.

I remember Jean-Michel the cat now, as I contemplate the national hysteria that’s brewing around the names given to two slightly larger cats in Bengal: a lion named Akbar and a lioness named Sita.

For the benefit of readers who might not be familiar with the facts of this case – which, judging by the saturation media coverage it’s receiving, is a case of supreme national importance that might well determine India’s Standing in the World as a Secular Democracy – here is a quick summary:

  • On 12th February, 2024, two large cats – a lion named Akbar and a lioness named Sita – were transferred from the Sepahijala Zoo in Tripura to the Siliguri Zoo in West Bengal.
  • According to the West Bengal government, the cats had been given their respective names while in Tripura. However, an official from Sepahijala Zoo refuted this allegation, saying: “We had sent a lion and a lioness named Ram and Sita respectively from Sepahijala to Siliguri. We are not aware of what happened at the destination.”
  • On 17th February the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) filed a case in the Calcutta High Court urging the Court to take immediate corrective action, including “changing the lioness’s name to a non-religious one and directing authorities to refrain from using religious names for animals in zoological parks.”
  • On 22nd February a single-judge bench of the High Court directed the West Bengal government to “reconsider” the names of the two hapless cats. During the proceedings, the judge asked the state government’s counsel: “Mr Counsel, will you yourself name your own pet after some Hindu God or Muslim Prophet … I think, if any one of us would have been the authority, none of us would have named them [the cats] as Akbar and Sita...goddess Sita is worshipped by a large majority of people in the country and Akbar was a successful and secular Mughal Emperor.”
  • Meanwhile, West Bengal Forest Minister and TMC leader Birbaha Hansda added her own twist to this cats’ tale by declaring that the whole issue was ‘dirty politics’ by VHP. “We didn’t name the animals which came to us from Tripura Zoo…It is our Chief Minister (Mamata Bannerjee) who will formally give names to the animals...”

On 24th February, the Tripura government suspended Shri Prabin Lal Agarwal, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests and Ecotourism, for his alleged role in the lion-naming controversy. While a copy of the suspension order against the unfortunate Mr Agarwal is not readily available, highly misplaced and usually uncreditable sources say that he is being accused of “not following the Prescribed Guidebook on Secular Methodologies and Practices for Naming Plants, Insects, Terrestrial and Aquatic Animals, Birds, and other non-Human Species, thereby hurting the religious feelings of the lion and lioness concerned as well as upsetting the secular feelings and communal harmony of India’s citizens as a Hole.”

Seriously, O Sinless Reader, this whole business is so very distressful and confusing.

How sad, that all it takes to set a cat among the pigeons in India is to name a cat – a cat!!! – after some historical and/or revered figure.

Surely Akbar the lion would still grunt and belch in his leonine manner and laze around scratching his ample belly if he had instead been named Subramanian, or Sukhwinder, or Prafullah, or Jalaluddin, or Joseph? Surely Sita the lioness would still wolf down her daily rations with feminine growls of contentment had she been named Yvonne or Shahnaz or Jaswanti or Girija or Harbans Kaur?

Now I fondly recall a monitor lizard that used to hang about our terrace here in Delhi, in the 1990s. We named him Ruknuddin. Why Ruknuddin? We don’t know…but it seemed the perfect name for him. Ruknuddin never knew he was called Ruknuddin, of course; nor did he care…he was too busy being a monitor lizard, which role included regular shikar of sparrows, mynahs, pigeons, squirrels, and other citizens that visited the birdbath on the terrace. [To know more about Ruknuddin, please do click here].

What’s in a name, after all? Or in a mane, for that matter?

Especially, we Hindus ought to understand this….considering the joyous elan with which we attach the names of our Gods and Goddesses and Saints to virtually every sphere of existence, from our own names to our business undertakings. Whether we live in Agartala or Alapuzha, Delhi or Dibrugarh, Madurai or Morena, all we need do is step outside to see a plethora of establishments with names like Shiva Wines, Vishnu Hair Dressers, Sai Stationers, Krishna Dental Clinic, Parvati Shoe Store, Ganesh Liquors, Uma Opticals, Murugan Pathology Lab…

To me it’s not ‘wrong’ to do this; it’s not ‘blasphemous’; it’s simply wonderful! Because it reflects a healthy carelessness and irreverence for blind obeisance, unthinking religious orthodoxy.

It underlines the idiocy of reading ‘sacrilege’ into the naming of a lioness as Sita.

So, get off your moralistic and hobbled hobby-horse, O ye VHP comrades..your outlook and behaviour are almost absurd enough to make a Mamata Bannerjee laugh.

To help my VHP colleagues – and indeed the learned judge who presided over the single-judge bench of the Calcutta High Court – appreciate the irrelevance of names as understood in ancient Hindu culture, and thereby shed their needless anthropomorphism and soothe their over-heated cerebro-neural systems, I urge them to listen to ‘Madalasa’s lullaby’ from the Markandeya Purana…here’s a nice rendition with English sub-titling.

Oh…and just to help my friends experience the healing effects of a chuckle, I also offer an ancient, much-disavowed and universally applicable joke on the fleeting importance of names when it comes to the deeper aspects of Life (apologies to those who might find it a trifle risque):

A man boards a flight from Delhi to Mumbai and takes his seat. As he settles in, he glances up and sees a gorgeous woman boarding the plane.He soon realizes she’s heading straight towards his seat. Lo and behold, she takes the seat right next to his.

.Eager to strike up a conversation, he asks: “Business trip or vacation?”

She turns, smiles & says, “Business. I’m going to the Annual World Sexologists’ Convention in Navi Mumbai.”

He swallows hard. Here is the most gorgeous woman he has ever seen, sitting next to him, and she’s a sexologist!

With superhuman effort he maintains his composure, and calmly asks, “What’s your role at this convention?”

“Oh, I’m delivering the keynote address,” she replies brightly. “I’ll draw on my research as well as personal experience to debunk some of the popular myths about sexuality.”

“Really?’ he says, swallowing hard. “Er…what myths are those?”

“Well,” she replies, “for example, there’s this popular myth that men from the African continent are the best endowed, when in fact, it’s the Indian Punjabi Sikh who is most likely to possess that trait. Another popular myth is that Spanish men make the most gentle lovers, whereas in fact the Bengali man is far gentler in lovemaking. However, in general women have found that the best all-round lover, scoring the maximum in all erotic criteria, is the Tamilian man…”

At this point the woman suddenly pauses and blushes deeply. “I’m sorry, I might be sounding a little forward,” she murmurs. “Perhaps I shouldn’t be discussing all this with you…why, I don’t even know your name!”

“Venkataswami!” the man yells. “Venkataswami Chidambaram Mukherjee! But all my friends call me Gurvinder Singh…”

General ravings, Remembering

Rewriting History, and Historical Mam…er…Memories

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History is back in the news.

As the Union Education Ministry, the NCERT et al. embark on yet another exercise at rewriting Indian history, ostensibly with the noble purpose of creating better history textbooks for our school kids, yet again do we see the usual culprits—a plethora of netas and academia and intellectuals and activists and journalists and social media influencers cutting across ideological, political, religious, ignorance and idiocy spectra— snarling at one another over what should or should not be depicted in the history textbooks, and how the depictions should be done, and by whom, and so on ad nauseum.

Sounds familiar, no?

It’s always been like this. Since Independence. Every time a new political formation comes to power in Dilli, our netas and their chelas at once develop acute hysteria over history and  proceed to rewrite and re-rewrite already rewritten history … till the next elections come along and they are thrown out and the next lot comes in and does the same.

Over 25 years ago, my dear departed friend and colleague-writer Ghatotkacha had suggested what I still believe is a fine and most sustainable solution to the problem of how to depict our history…but sadly, no-one paid attention to him and he passed into history.  [You can, if you like, read about Ghatotkacha’s solution here…be warned, not for the faint-hearted or politically correct]

My own earliest yet most vivid and enduring memories of history are of historical mammaries.

Seriously.

I schooled in Shillong from 1962 to 1972, at the St Edmund’s School. The Irish Christian Brothers who ran the school were among the finest of teachers; but they were as thoroughly confused and clueless about the history curriculum prescribed for Indian schools as were the Powers-That- Were: meaning, the political leaders, academics, administrators, and affiliated geniuses at the Union and state levels who were responsible for deciding what kind of history we Indian kids were to be taught in Independent India.

And so, in the absence of any sensible guidance from the Powers-That-Were and non-availability of any decent standardized textbook on history for junior school kids, the Irish Brothers in their wisdom decided that we kids would read from a history book that was a kind of supplementary reader for kids our age in the United Kingdom.  And so in the mid-1960s, from Class 3 to Class 5 if I remember correctly, we kids read from a hardbound history textbook titled ‘The March of Time’, authored by the rather interestingly- named E C T Horniblow and published in Britain in 1932.

The March of Time was a work of extraordinary beauty to us; well written, with large-sized text in attractive font  and many full-page illustrations in colour.

The March of Time was also a work of extraordinary irrelevance to us.

It taught us of historical characters we’d never heard our parents or anyone else ever mention before. We read of characters like Canute, and Ethelred, and Alfred the Great, and Angles, Saxons and Jutes; of Vikings; of Magna Carta (no, not the rock band), of Romulus and Remus being brought up by wolves and roaming around till they founded Rome (or perhaps I got it all wrong and they were actually lost till they found Rome?); of a Roman soldier named Horatio who stood on a narrow bridge over the Tiber with two other soldiers and fought off a million-strong army of horrible villains called ‘Goths’ (or were they Huns?).

I was particularly thrilled by the full-page depiction of Horatio and his friends fighting off the Goths/Huns; because some of the Goths/Huns   bore striking resemblance to adults I knew, including a couple of teachers and relatives.

All in all I found The March of Time very interesting, but quite mystifying.  I just couldn’t figure out what all those blue-eyed fair and lovely people and their stories in The March of Time had to do with my life or my past.

But I didn’t care—nor did any of my dishevelled-collared, muddy-shoed, classmates.

Because The March of Time also gifted us, on page 23 (or was it 25?), with a full-page depiction, in glorious colours, of the Celtic Queen Boadecia.  

Boadecia the Great, Boadecia the Beautiful, Boadecia the Warrior, who led the common people of Britain to revolt against their Roman rulers! Boadecia, who wielded a sword and possessed not only a courageous heart but the most magnificent and gravity-defying pair of mammaries we had ever seen in our less-than- ten-year-old lives.

No textbook in the world has ever been opened as frequently to page number 23 (or was it 25?) as we did The March of Time; no textbook page has ever been studied more intensely, pored over more devotedly or dog-eared more severely than that page with its full-colour depiction of Boadecia the Bodacious baring all (and Boadecia had a lot to bare, and she bared it very well indeed).

Boadecia left a lifelong impression on my/our young minds; she opened our eyes and minds to the beauty of history.

Even while writing this, I took five minutes off to try and find The March of Time’s incredible depiction of her on the Net…alas, to no avail. The portraits of Boadecia in Wikipedia etc. are pitiful, pathetic, fifth-rate imitations of the supremely endowed Boadecia we were privileged to gape at all those decades ago. 

Even today, whenever the word ‘bodice’ is uttered by anyone (admittedly a rare occurrence), all thoughts are instantly swept away from my disintegrating mind by a mighty flood that rises from the Cache of Ancient Memory; and in the flood’s wake there remains only one shining crystalline cerebro-neural vision, untarnished by decades—of  Boadecia the Bodacious, She of the Magnificent DD-scale natural resources.

Sadly, the March of Time itself is now but a mam…er…memory.

Still, considering the ghastly never-ending  arguments in India over how history should be written and taught,  I do believe I and my classmates were luckier than today’s school kids. We had a glimpse of a much better depiction of global history—rather, many glimpses of one glorious depiction of global (if not globular) history—during our school days in the 1960s.

Jai Hind. Hail Boadecia!