On Mothers.

The amount of sheer love most mothers hold for their kids is so much that it scares me how someone can be so selfless. It's so palpable in every wrinkle that our dress sometimes withholds because we pressed it for ourselves and we know if it was for her, she would never have allowed it to stay on. The food she makes while preparing roti on the side has taste of her hurried concern that her children don't have to bear another hunger pang. The acceptance in her disapproving sighs and the love hidden in desperate plea for not picking up her incessant calls tell tales of her protectiveness.The redness of her eyes and pain of her feet every night bear witness to irreplaceable capacity to work every minute for sake of her children. When I see most mothers around me, their life is all about their children.

I belong to a generation who thinks it might not be a good idea devoting our whole-selves to nurture the next generation (doesn't mean I consider it wrong. Self-love is important) and I think it's partly because we are extremely afraid of the idea and example of selflessness set by generation of own mothers. Of course, fathers have their own set of struggles but the kind of love mothers have doesn't seem to be something that belong to this harsh, stony cold world. It's terrifyingly beautiful.

The Last Mughal

Two months in and I was finally able to come out of depressing and miserable existential crisis that final prof left on me as an aftermath. The book that helped me come out of my worse readers block was not this, it was "Eat, Pray, Love" (yes, the famous healing memoir) but I have yet to complete it and once I was in form, I hurriedly switched to a book I had aspired to read for a long time. It's about last Mughal emperor and his dynasty crumbling to the grounds after war of 1857 that left Delhi in ruins and utter chaos. The amazing thing about this book is its readability. Its 10/10.
Anyone who has read history books would agree that history books have a tendency to become boring very quickly. I've read excellent historians who are terrible writers but William Darlymple knows how to write a gripping story. He practically builds Delhi in your imagination and then set it on fire the way rebels and British did back in 1857. He vividly narrates smallest details of mutiny, war and its chaos. So vividly that often you forget you are reading history, not an imaginative fiction. This aspect stirred the skeptic inside me and made me doubt its accuracy at some points but when it comes to history, you can seldom find absolute truth.
The second most amazing thing about this book is writer's empathetic yet unbiased tone. William makes an effort not to offend readers from subcontinent, in fact he gives them lots of things to relate to. From Ghalib's love of mangoes to mushairaas held in Red fort until late night, a reader from sub continent does not take it as a commentary by a foreigner but a friend narrating those experiences. This is probably because the book's sources were heavily taken from Indian national archives and was emphatically written from an Indian perspective.
Last and my favorite point, writer stays empathetic but doesn't flinch while delivering facts. He didn't flinch while talking about christian missionaries and their insensitive and sometimes relentless effort to convert Muslims and Hindus to Christianity. Nor he hesitated to point out the fact that after Muslims and Hindus rebelled against East India company together (as a consequence of British attacking their religious sensitivities) imam of Jamia Masjid Delhi issued a fatwa about extending same jihad against Hindus which lead to utter chaos along with so many other factors that contributed towards this rebellion becoming a failure.
In short, its a must read for a beginner interested in Mughal history.