The coffee of anger

A brimming bowl of the bitterest beans
A savage surge of current: heedlessness
Are all that it takes to
Brew
A frothing, simmering decoction
Of the coffee of
Anger.

The crushing of the roasted beans
And the gnashing of incensed teeth
Lo! bitterness smashed into angry
Smithereens.
Of brittle brown brutish
Grains of sleeping
Rancor.

Which by fierce, flaming water-
Undoused by the voice of reason
Or the sway of temperance is
Piqued
Into caramel espresso: as
The distilled essence of
Fury.

In time, the powdered bean weaned
Off sparks of kindling water
Turns slowly sodden-
Awkward;
Arranging itself into the ash of regret
Of the Coffee of
Anger.

In search of the lost City: travels in Angkor

"The rain god Indra seems to be angry today," said our tour guide, only half-jokingly, leaving me surprised by his ready reference to the Hindu god, as we skirted gathering puddles on the embankment of the moat surrounding the Angkor Wat.

Through my travels in the Angkorian lands, I was to discover how keenly Hinduism and Buddhism alternately waxed and waned across centuries under the reign of the powerful Khmer kings over large parts of mainland Southeast Asia. The Chinese wielded hard power, extracting tributes in return for peace, but the source of soft power was undoubtedly India, exporting culture, religions and folklore to ancient Angkor.

Holding umbrellas aloft, we legged it quickly into the first level of the famed structure to be led into a seemingly endless corridor to inspect the bas-relief on the walls. We joined a group of tourists examining the panels, spellbound by the size and detailing of the marvels commissioned by the Khmer king Suryavarman  II.

On a whirlwind tour, we cruised past a yellow-clad towering Vishnu statue, past panels depicting the Kurukshetra war, the king and his retinue, snapshots from the epics and the past the occasional pock-marked segments of the walls where bullets had once landed.

Finally, we joined the long queue for the ascent to the third and final level. At the topmost level of the temple complex, high above the humdrum of the mortal life of his subjects, the king was thought to receive divine inspiration to conduct the affairs of his kingdom. It was believed that the kings of the Khmer empire were no mere mortals, deriving their authority from god, with even images of gods being modelled after the king of the day in these temples.

After a rather steep climb, I surveyed the environs from a vantage point, at the sweeping views of the temple complex and the jungles beyond, the simple beauty of the carvings around me and I understood why the king had visited this tower to commune with the divine.

High up in the Angkor Wat towers

Soon, it was time to head a few centuries forward to the rajavihara or royal monastery of Ta Prohm, said to be dedicated to King Jayavarman VII's mother.

A Mahayana Buddhist, this king established a welfare state on Buddhist principles and left behind a legacy of a vast network of Buddhist temples. Religious u-turns appeared to  commonplace in this land, with the king of any given time dictating beliefs, swapping Hindu and Buddhist images and sculptures at will.

In contrast to the towering Angkor Wat that spans dizzying heights, Ta Prohm is almost all flat. Where Angkor Wat has been carefully restored by men, Ta Prohm has been left to the artistry of nature. Giant trees have sprung from the laterite walls, with their coiling roots gripping the structures with a firm grasp. The combination of the exquisite ruins and the towering trees lent an ethereal quality to this monument. It has been carefully restored, with attention paid to retaining its quaint atmosphere.

 Ta Prohm - unshakeable Nature vs. frail man-made structures

We left Ta Prohm for Bayon, another temple of the same period. On a smaller scale than Angkor Wat but no less impressive, the Bayon temple was said to have had 54 towers originally, with giant faces carved on to each of the four sides of the towers. The impression, on arrival, is of being greeted by a serene army watching over the city of Angkor Thom from all directions. We walked through the winding corridors, encountering apsaras, garudas and scenes from mythology, under the benign gaze of the multitude of faces.

Were the faces those of Brahma of four faces? Or of the Boddhisattva Avalokitesvara? Maybe both- to push religious transformation in a non-disruptive manner, according to our guide.

 At the upper levels, I looked closer at one of the faces, fascinated by its stoic expression. Our guide drew my attention to another face, saying, “Doesn't this look like the face of a lady?" Of course. Then another, "Doesn't this look like a demon?" Sure enough, there was a foreboding expression on the one indicated. Despite being unable to peel eyes off these images all along, I had not noticed differences in their aspect. Suddenly, from an army of identical faces, the towers had been transformed into a horde of distinct sets of people. He pointed to yet another, this one calm and intriguing like the others. I felt the spell descending upon us again, and all faces seemed uniformly alike once more.

Faces at Bayon

I left Bayon, just as mystified and fascinated as I had been when I had arrived. As the tuk-tuk whirred out of the city gates, I shook myself off my reverie to hear the guide say, "This is the gate of Angkor Thom. Bayon is exactly at the centre of the city. And these," he waved to the human sized figures along either side of the causeway, "are the devas and asuras churning the ocean!" And indeed, the figures were holding what appeared to be a gigantic snake, evoking the well-known tale of the gods and demons churning the ocean for nectar.

And yet again, I felt a familiar thrill upon finding a well-known cultural reference thousands of miles from home in this lost city.

If cities were colours...

If cities were colours, Moscow would be a solid brick red, St.Petersburg a delicate mint-green.

Or so I mused, as I stood next to the towering Alexander column at Palace Square, awed by the beautiful mint green-white-gold exteriors of the Winter Palace, the home of the Tsars, and now part of the expansive Hermitage Museum.

Or wait…let me start from the beginning.

Our train rolled into St. Petersburg just as we had polished off the last morsels of a breakfast of blini (Russian pancakes) and kasha (buckwheat porridge) in our compact coupe on the Moscow-St.Petersburg Express.

An imposing bust of Peter the Great greeted us as we crossed over to the city metro from the train station and embarked upon the mini-adventure of procuring day passes.

Sankt Pieterburkh under Peter the Great, the Tsar who built this city of canals from the marshes of the Neva river after the Great Northern Wars with Sweden.  Petrograd during the Great War, when the people rejected the old German-sounding name. Leningrad under the soviets, to celebrate the father of their newly-adopted political philosophy. St.Petersburg to the rest of the world. Or just Piter. All of these names evoke heard memories of endless White Nights. Of fairytale castles and Tsars and princes (usually called Ivan) who rise to save the day. This Western end of the old Tsardom has seen more than its fair share of excitement in its (relatively) short history.

The soaring spire at
Ss.Peter & Paul Cathedral

Moscow was born at the wooden fortress that occupied the current Kremlin site, and St.Petersburg at Rabbit Island out of which was built the formidable Peter and Paul Fortress. A bright summer morning found us at Zayachy (Hare) Island, exploring the cathedrals, boathouse, workshops and guardhouse – many of which now house museums. The Fortress, ironically, was never required for the defence of the empire from a potential Swedish invasion- instead it became infamous as a political prison. The entrance to the fortress, St.Peter’s Gate, hinted at the very European nature of the structures that were housed inside. The Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul was our first stop:  the cathedral itself designed by Italian architects, but the icon screen, of course, could only be the work of expert Russian woodcarvers and gilders. Flags and banners, relics of the victory in the founding wars, were slung from the walls inside. As I craned my neck to look at the spire soaring high into the cloudless sky, it was only too easy to believe my audioguide which informed me that the spire was an easy target of German airstrikes in World War II, and consequently had to be camouflaged to avoid detection.

We took the seats conveniently placed right outside the cathedral and on cue from those around us, settled down to enjoy the warmth of the lovely summer afternoon, the sweeping views of the fortress bastions and the audio guide telling us of the various uses to which the fortress had been put. Apart from serving as a tomb for the royals, a high security prison and the site of Tsar Peter’s naval experiments, the fortress, we were told, was once home to a laboratory that saw pioneering moments in Russian rocket technology. So off we went to the museum that stands at the site, to trace the growth of Russia’s journey from experiments in gas dynamics to the search for the perfect space fuel. An entire panel was devoted to the space theorist Tsiolkovsky, whose ideas on space exploration put forth in the late 19^th century were, we discovered, far, far ahead of his time. For context, he developed a theory of jet propulsion in the 1880s, and wrote a book titled ‘Exploration of Outer Space by Means of Rocket Devices’ long before the idea of the commercial aircraft was even conceived and inspired many later day rocket pioneers such as Robert Goddard.

Next up was Nevsky Prospekt, the arterial road of the city, which counts amongst its impressive lineup centuries-old malls and stores, picture-perfect cathedrals, parks, monuments and the characteristic bridges that serve as gateways for tours of its canals. After a visit to Kazan Cathedral, built in the likeness of St.Peter’s at the Vatican, we headed towards the Church of our Saviour on Spilled blood. 

Church of our Saviour on Spilled blood

As we crossed the Griboedov bridge to catch our first glimpse of this landmark structure, we were struck by its resemblance to St.Basil’s. As a monument to Tsar Alexander the Liberator, this church, of course, had to be Russian in its design. Built at the site where Tsar Alexander was mortally wounded by an anarchist, this church stood out for its Russian style that would be more at home in Moscow. A shrine studded with precious stones marks the precise site of the assassination. Alexander was known for his reforms, particularly for freeing the serfs in 1861. More famously, it was he who sold Alaska to the States in 1867.  We were dazzled by the interiors swathed in mosaic work- every inch of the walls, pillars and ceiling was wrapped in the most intricate and strikingly colourful mosaic painting representing many Biblical scenes.

Mosaic art at the Church

Not for nothing is St.Petersburg called the ‘Venice of the North’. Filled with hundreds of bridges and embankments, criss-crossed by a network of canals, water to St.Petersburg is almost as essential as it is to Venice. A tour by its canals is most rewarding in the white nights of its literally never-ending summer days, we had been told, and we proceeded to make the most of the late summer evening sunshine by getting on to a boat at the Anichkov most (bridge) on Nevsky Prospekt, spending an enjoyable hour drifting from island to island, spotting cathedrals, palaces and gardens.

Where Moscow is all office blocks and essentially Russian onion domes, St.Petersburg is all classical palaces and European spires. Moscow is as old as Russia itself, and certainly older than its Tsardom. St. Petersburg is as old as the Romanov Tsars’ fascination with Europe and with empire-building. Moscow is an amalgam of many kinds of Russian-ness across the ages. St. Petersburg is a window to Europe, to nostalgia of an imperial past. If cities were colours, Moscow would be a solid brick red, St. Petersburg a delicate mint-green.

Mint-green and white and gold: Winter Palace

Or so I mused, as I stood next to the towering Alexander column at Palace Square the following day, awed by the beautiful mint green-white-gold exteriors of the Winter Palace, the home of the Romanov dynasty, and now part of the expansive Hermitage Museum.

The royals had lavished Italian architecture on this palace, studded it with sculptures and decorative arts from across the world, and bathed its walls with paintings by every known master. What Empress Catherine II had begun as a collection of paintings over 200 years ago has now expanded to include every form of collectible (art, coins, books, tools, banners) from all corners of the world housed in palace bulidings whose spectacular architecture vies with the displays themselves for attention.One of the most arresting features of the palace was the abundance of the towering sculptures of Atlantes, or pillars in the form of men that appear to support the ceiling.  As we fanned out across its large spaces, going from Roman heroes to Greek temples, from Egyptian relics to Russian pavilion halls, from Italian loggias to Buddhist frescos, from massive urns and vases to majestic stairways, I felt exactly as I had at the Louvre, overwhelmed, exhilarated, doggedly keeping up my spirited venture to take in as many great gulps of its vast array of exhibits as I could in the precious little time spent inside. 

Hermitage - the world in brief 

After walking many miles through these seemingly endless caverns, imagine our astonishment on finding out that this was only a fraction of the collection, and that there was much, much more kept aside in the Hermitage Storage facility in another part of the city!

 Imagining an eventful past at Palace Square

When we could walk no more, we came back to the late evening sunshine of the Palace Square, surprised by its near-emptiness, where I gave myself to imagining that day in a long ago December when demonstrators were shot down as they surged into a square in protest. 
Or that day in this very square when a mob swept in to capture the Winter Palace, tossed out a monarchy, shrugged off a War and flung the country headlong into Revolution.   
Or those 900 days when a down but definitely not out Leningrad willed itself through a siege by collective superhuman effort, valiantly refusing to surrender.

Old head on young shoulders, indeed.


.

The Moskva chronicles- Part Odno

“Two tickets to St.Petersburg.” He articulated each syllable slowly, hoping to make himself clear. The lady at the counter nodded doubtfully, and asked a question. Both he and I turned blank faces to her, and then looked at each other. She repeated her question. “Sankt Pieterburg,” I answered in the deepest tone I could muster, hoping that my faux accent would somehow get the message across. Then we realised that she was asking us for the date of travel. He wrote it out on a piece of paper, and slid it under the counter. She looked at it for a long time. I glanced back anxiously at the queue building up behind us, wondering how long it would be before the murmurs of impatience began, as the locals wearied of the stuttering tourists at the counter.

We had landed at the Domodedevo airport at midnight, blurry eyes scanning the still-unfamiliar Cyrillic script, joined an amorphous huddle that we later understood to be the queue at the immigration counter. An hour later, we were taking an hour-long taxi ride to the hotel, whizzing through the Moscovite pre-dawn darkness.

Now, after 35 minutes of testing the patience of the lady at the counter, we left the Kievskaya station with our tickets, marvelling at the forbearance of the people in the queue. We were ready for our day at Moscow.  

A country but almost a continent, European but almost Asian, insular yet surprisingly warm, a land of fairytales that turned to realism, of Orthodox Christianity giving way to atheist communism, a history of tug-of-war with the Western European powers: a country of many, many paradoxes. Fiercely nationalist, possessed of a steely determination and spirit that would prefer to let the capital burn than fall into Napoleon’s hands, that could survive a near-3 year siege laid by Hitler and live to tell the tale. A kaleidoscope of cultures, ethnicities and a (mostly) shared history. How can a traveller dare to make sense of this whimsical being in a matter of days? 

Cathedral Square

Resurrection Gate, Red Square

We set out  later that morning to find out what being Russian was all about- apart from displaying infinite patience while in a queue.  If you want to look Russian, pore over an e-reader on the train. Or a book. Or play chess on your smartphone – or that’s what we found out on our short Metro ride to the Biblioteka Lenini stop. We spent the better part of the morning winding our way through the pristine white, golden-domed cathedrals of Kremlin, the mammoth Bell from Ivan’s Bell Tower, getting our first impressions of Russian ikon painting and of the many unique elements of Eastern Orthodox Christian architecture. The Iconostasis, a stand of religious paintings,that was placed to separate the altar from the rest of the church reminded me of the veil that is usually drawn across the sanctum sanctorum of Hindu temples.

After a cloudy morning in the Kremlin cathedrals, I was walking past triangular-domed spires of the Kremlin towers, when, with a suddenness that took the breath away, I found myself staring straight down the jumble of shapes, spires, domes and colours that make up the iconic St.Basil’s Cathedral. Peaked domes, onion-shaped swirled domes, prickly domes, multiple arches, gilded ornamentation, golden spires and colours of every imaginable hue made it a visual spectacle too complex for the brain to process in a few moments.  It looked like a church, a multi-coloured bonfire, and a fairytale castle all rolled into one. It took a few minutes to take in its intricate details, the fact that there were really ten churches of various shapes and sizes interwoven into that extraordinary structure. The cathedral’s interiors were as unique as its external appearance. Apart from the abundance of medieval-style painting, gilding and iconography, we were treated to a performance by the Russian Men’s Choir as well. Like many churches in Russia, St.Basil’s Cathedral was built to commemorate a military victory- this one was for the defeat of the Khanate of Kazan, an event that spelt the beginning of the end of the Mongol-Turkic dominance and affirmed the power of the Russian Tsardom under Ivan the Terrible.

St.Basil's Cathdral

Up close- St.Basil's 

The State Historical Museum, where we had our fill of Russian history, was more detailed than we could have hoped for – ranging from prehistoric artifacts and ancient scrolls, the age of the Khans and the Tsars to the present day.

Mayakovskaya station

Reaching for the planes (not stars!)-  mosaic art at the Metro

Up next was a free (almost) course in Russian art and history through its fascinating Metro stations. No two stations were alike, and each successive one was more splendid than the other in its concept, art, architecture and manner of execution. The pink rhodonite-and-stainless steel arches of the Mayakovskaya station competed with the beautiful ceiling mosaic art representing 24 hours in the Soviet day. The themes in these mosaic panels were mostly built around rockets (zooming past the red ruby star of the Spasskaya Tower of the Red Square), planes (that a child in the arms of its mother was reaching out for), parachutes and other such images that reminded one of the age of the great Space race. We got off at station after station, passing porcelain figures depicting Belarusian life (Belarosskaya), large bronze statues depicting people in the Soviet (Ploschad Revolyutsii), stained glass panels representing (Novoslobodskaya) the intellectual professions, palatial spaces with vaulted ceilings and ornate, gilded mosaics (Komsomolskaya). All around us, as we stood around gaping, and clicking pictures, busy commuters walked briskly by, through the weekday evening rushhour, unmindful of the art galleries that they have to walk through to and from work everyday.

By now, my instincts had led me to pick up the bits of Russian script essential for survival, and as we stepped out of the Smonlenskaya station, I breezed into a restaurant, identifying the now-familiar sign that I transliterated into “pectopah” and settled down to coax vegan names off the menu.

Desert Verse

Like shifting grains of sand upon a wind-blown dune

Sprightly golden deer fleet in these yellow lands

Peacocks of vibrant hues startle into view

As I ramble through this boundless expanse

Dunes I traverse as I clamber onward

Soon drift away, melting into the arid air

Only to storm together into a newer herd

Evermoving scapes, now filled, now bare

Humped beasts plodding docile, slow

Flick the sands off their luscious lashes.

As dirt jeeps lurch clamorously through,

Cleaving paths in this sandy wilderness

In this unending sea of remorseless heat

I cast my mind upon warriors of old

Whom this desert could scarce impede

From forging a majestic, stately world

Their invincible fortresses - to your drifting dunes

Their scorching valour- to your ferocious heat

Their palaces of splendor - to your flitting illusions

Ah dogged desert, your match you thus meet!

Empowered

She steps out of her house, even as her mother  shoots meaning glances at the clock. It's 11 pm. She glowers, sallying out of the front door, even atom of her eighteen-year old self spelling rebellion. Her mother sighs, and gets back to the TV. It's futile to talk to her. Her daughter has a predictable counter to anything-  "Empowerment" She hoped her husband would not turn up early- that would mean another argument,  a bitter quarrel.

In the wee hours of the morning, in another part of town, he walks briskly towards his tenement. He finds his sister sprawled over her books, breathing evenly. As he enters, she wakes with a start, an expression of panic writ over her face. It’s just me- he calls out. She recovers, and looking around, goes into a fresh bout of panic as she realizes that she's lost precious hours of study. He raises an eyebrow. Exam. Tomorrow. I have another chapter to go- she frets. He shrugs.

I couldn't leave early today- she volunteers.  From the gym nearby where she cleans. It's not a great place to work in, but it pays for her evening college. And the hours are decent. What happened to you? 

A scene at the bar. Where he helps in the kitchen. A daughter-father duo. Father insists on her leaving. Daughter refuses. Angry words. A fight. Broken glass. Took him all night to help clean up the mess.

He hesitates, then asks- What's 'empowered'? The girl at the bar repeated it several times : 'I'm empowered, I'm empowered',  while refusing to leave with her father.

Her eyes brighten. Oh yes, I know.  It means strong, having power to do what you like. He frowns, confused. You mean like the trainer at your gym?

She laughs- No, not at all. Not physical power- it means ability to make your own decisions, develop your skills and be independent.

His face clears. Isn't that what you are going to college for?  To get a good job and run your life? She smiles- Yes.

He returns- That girl certainly looked like she was 'empowered' then.  I still don't see why she had to break furniture at my bar to prove that.

She shrugs, returning to her books. 

-

The Net debate

From indignant teenagers clamouring for ‘freedom of expression’ (read half-hourly Facebook updates) to the neighbourhood auntie worried about her calls to her son abroad turning dearer, almost everyone I know has taken the issue of Net neutrality to heart. In fact, I won’t be surprised if my 4-year old nephew starts asking whether his daily dose of Peppa Pig would turn a victim of this raging battle.

Much has been said (not to mention argued, screamed, bellowed) on an assortment of news media, but the lack of discernment on the part of many jumping onto the NN debate is alarming.

Net Neutrality (NN) aims to treat the internet as a simple carrier tube with no intelligence, no ability to discriminate amongst the content that it carries, and no means to control access points, speed or pricing. Sounds simple. At first. But do we understand what a completely neutral Net entails? 

The NN debate has been given an irresistibly dramatic spin by the media – it’s been projected as a struggle for freedom of information and expression. However captivating the imagery of a citizen challenging corporate tyranny may be, the issue at hand isn’t so black-and-white.  There are several interlinked issues, and we may be in danger of failing to give these due consideration in our hurry to sign mass petitions. Here are some of them: 

§  Inherent traffic management: The current form of the internet isn’t particularly neutral. Some form of traffic management is essential to give you the quality of service that you take for granted- like prioritising your IPTV streams over e-mail delivery. Real time data is essentially different from non-time sensitive data, and this discrimination is key to intelligent service delivery.

§  Externalities: The economists’ favourite! If your usage generates negative externalities for other users, should telecom service providers (TSPs) be allowed to make you internalise the cost? Fair use policies and bandwidth cap that reduce speeds for a particular user for cornering prodigious amounts of bandwidth/breaching a set data limit may be desirable to help maintain fair levels of service for all users. Indeed, why should my weekend binge-watching of Game of Thrones degrade the network for the student browsing Wikipedia pages?

§  Need for speed: A significant portion of the debate is focussed on creation of fast and slow lanes. Quite obviously, a telecom service provider should by no means be allowed to apportion the internet into fast and slow lanes based on preferential treatment of certain content providers. However, there are some applications where a fast lane is absolutely critical- think telemedicine. Is it fair to axe this for NN?

§  Widening the Net: We are a country with less than 30% internet penetration, and the poorer sections of society are yet to reap the benefits of being able to access to the internet.  I find it difficult to comprehend the opposition to data packages designed to make the internet affordable to the economically weaker strata. To a seasoned Internet user, to whom a ‘lite’ internet package smacks of discrimination: feel free to subscribe to another package/TSP if you find this restraining- it’s an open, free market. To a first-time internet user, this is freedom unbound! Would you grudge him/her that?

§  Towards a faster, better Internet: As our dependence on the Internet increases, our expectations  increase too -exponentially. If we need a faster, better and reliable Internet, it means that the service providers need to make significant investment in network infrastructure. Ever spared a thought to who should bear these costs? I notice that there is an aversion to encouraging content providers (apps/websites) to pay to host their content- as owners of intellectual property,  they seem to be expected to have it their way on the information highway. Are providers of service any less worthy? Is it wrong to ask Content and Application Providers (CAPs) (who, incidentally, are recipients of PE funding) to play a part? As long as there is no deliberate blocking of services of newbies to favour deep-pocketed incumbents, innovative content-providers should find themselves well-patronized. If TSPs are able to price services better (not just to the consumer but also the content provider), won’t they be better incentivised/paid to make performance-enhancing capital investments? 

The unsavoury results of turning away from Net neutrality have been given plenty of airtime. Many of the concerns are bona fide, and we truly ignore them at our own peril.

A neutral net is easier to regulate, is low on rules (save one- “keep it neutral”!), and hence may well turn out to be the path of least resistance from the implementer’s perspective. A non-neutral net, on the other hand, will necessitate a host of rules. To keep TSPs from providing preferential treatment to CAPs to the detriment of users. Anti-competition concerns. To detect and penalise deliberate degrading of lower-tier service with an intent to force the subscriber to switch to a premium plan. Prevent abuse of fast and slow lanes by TSPs in a bid to favor CAPs who pay a premium. Stop unwarranted blocking of sites. And so on.

Many of the concerns are likely to be taken care of by natural competition. (Suspect your access to an e-commerce site is being throttled by your TSP in favour of the site’s competitor? Switch to another provider!) In a free market, with rational players, and a regulator with teeth, the doomsday scenario projected by some is unlikely to materialise.

And while we rant about deprivation of neutrality of access, don’t forget that there are other gatekeepers of the Internet- what about device makers who don’t support certain formats (Flash)? Or search providers who plan to rank mobile sites higher in search results, irrespective of your preference. There’s data discrimination everywhere; we need to choose our battles well and not let slapdash reports drive our thinking on this vital debate. 

It needs a regulator with foresight to identify possible sources of abuse in advance, detect discriminatory behaviour on an ongoing basis, and ensure fair competition. And as users of the Internet, we need to understand all aspects of NN so that the level of debate is raised to address all underlying concerns - rather than swaying to popular narratives which espouse a rather superficial "all or nothing" approach.

There is certainly a substantially large grey area – but then again, providing and managing services through a behemoth such as the Internet is not expected to be a simple task. Sadly, specious analogies and dramatized listicles that make stories newsworthy rarely display an appreciation of the finer details.  

Net Neutrality (in its current, misunderstood form)  may come to pass. But after the celebrations die down…we may find ourselves in a very neutral world indeed- where everyone is accessing a free, unfettered, uniformly slow net with non-discriminatorily poor quality of service.

If stones could speak...



...of the glories of Hampi



Storied halls, Vittala Temple, Hampi



Twin elephants at the chariot's head
Stare at me, in unblinking gaze
Pillars that sang to fingers' tunes
Now stand guard, in silent strength

This winter morn, the placid sun
Shines upon my kin in stone-
Deities and heroes of folklore,
Gods, goddesses, avatars galore  
Mythical birds with mighty wings,
Monkey lords and majestic kings
Seers, ministers, battle scenes,
Vimanas, wheels, interlocking stone 

Languorous winds, nodding trees,
Scented earth, eucalyptus breeze.





Shadows and stone



Amidst us all, they ebb and flow,
Those that seek the long ago:

The echoes of emperors past

Shadows of the kingdom lost



Carving of a Yali



My elephant-tusks and lion-mane
Granite body and serpent's tail
Have seen all in their span of time-
Victory parades, untold wealth,
The empire rise, the empire fall,
Battles, treachery, forsaken cause
Temples plundered, silenced faith
Glorious city to hamlets shrunk


My proud town is in ruins, it is said
Laid to waste over sweeping spread. 
But the fire, the spirit, vital force
Endures, returns, living through Us all.


Us, the creatures in deathless granite
Us, the defiant slabs of stony might
Us, unspeaking warriors of our Truth
Not in ruins, never to be rued.

                                                            

        - Musings of a granite Yali, Hampi

Yali (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yali_%28Hindu_mythology%29)Yali ([jaːɭi]; also known as Vyala or Vidala in Sanskrit) is a mythical creature seen in many Hindu temples, often sculpted onto the pillars. In its iconography and image the yali has a catlike graceful body, but the head of a lion with tusks of an elephant (gaja) and tail of a serpent.



The sentinels of Hampi