Lesson from History

Restaurant @ Rishikesh –Dehradun road

Now closed restaurant in Mumbai

I sincerely believe history has many things to teach us and if we follow the trend we observe history blatantly repeats itself. Crime committed by one generation haunts the history of mankind. Examples are their everywhere we only have to closely observe them. That’s where the lessons learnt from previous experience should help us so that we avoid such kind of anguish and holocaust in the coming future.

But the seed of evil is also as devil as a rotten bacteria they keeps us hunting forever.

Take the recent instance of racial slur by fashion moughal John Galliano praising Hitler

Or public acknowledgement Bal Thackeray that ‘I am a great admirer of Hitler’

Or naming a café after Hitler  in Navi Mumbai few years back.

What all these rejected fanatic idea of century bygone  doing in India ?

Events in last century proved all the evil face of Hitler still (like a rotten bacteria I was mentioning) his idea keep on popping up. Few might be by fanatics utopians and many of might be due to simple ignorance or glamour (publicity!) quotient.

Take the example of a small taste fully decorated restaurant (otherwise!) in the Rishikesh –Dehradun road where to my utter disbelieve I saw a Nazi flag hanging out just for show, or may be to attack the young crowd out their.

I am sure the owner, and the so called young crowd whom they are suppose to attract doesn’t have any clue what that flag signify.

It would have been okay otherwise (as in India until hype is created –chab kuch chalta haien yaar!)

But why don’t we think that we are encouraging tourist with the slogan of ‘Atithi debo bhaba’, and many of our tourist to rishikesh Dehradun road are Jew from Israel and many are Germans, I sincerely believe it don’t make any of us (Indian, Jew or German or human race as a whole)

I believe this fatal combo of –ignorance and extreme idealism is a threat to the coming time and only reason for it is we have started disregarding the lessons of history.

Creator of our childhood dreamland

Before we fell in love with words what attracted us were pictures ,cartoons and as we got familiar to words but were young enough to comprehend big big words we referred everything to world of comics (From knowledge ,entertainment , learning about history ,art culture ,folklore or everything ) .Comics were our :TV ,internet, grandma, novel .
I am using we not me because what I am referring to is true for whole of our generation.

Whenever we finish exam, or fall sick or if some one ask what do you want: Answer was invariably: Comics.
For us though we liked Hergé’s Tintin it was too expensive, Lee Falk's and Sy Barry's Phantom was also a bid out of our culture so most of our appetite for comics were looked after by Uncle Pi.
I am referring to Amar Chitra Katha and later on Tinkle.
For our knowledge about Purana, Mahabharta, History and folklore the credits must go to Uncle Pi’s immortal creation.
After two decade what amaze me about his creations is that at the dept of research home work he did for each of the photographs, I am sure he didn’t had the liberty of using computers and Photoshop at that time so every picture had to be drawn in blocks as in old printing technology .But When we look at Lachit Borphukan and dress of Swrgadeu or the background picture of Brmahaputra .Be it Joymotee or Sankradeb (It has familiarity to the drawing of Bisnhu Rabha ) all the characters were live and vivid.
And we often give reference to Sikhari Sambhu, Supandi, and Nassiruddin Hoza till today
Antanta Pi, (or popularly known as Uncle Pi) creator of our childhood dreamland breaths his last on 24th February, 2011,
But what he left behind is a legacy of his own.
We will miss you Uncle Pi.