‘Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score; you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them - if you want to.’-
- Mr Antolini in Chapter 24 of the book ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ by
JD Salinger
Finally London has found a suitable challenger to the pride of Paris across the pond with its very own, brand new £19.1 million, 115m tall feat of technological......
The quickest way to knock up the prize of any ole clump would be to encrust it with a few carat diamonds and gems and embellish it with sheets of gold and silver and even........
Centuries ago an earthquake sank the entire island of Antirhodos tothe bottom of the Bay of Alexandria. The island housed the magnificent palace.......
Catherine the Great of Russia made her mark in history despite the many odds that she started out with. A teen bride to a half witted Peter III, the heir to the Russian throne.......
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Here is one sport that is as popular in Italy and southern Europe as it was with the Romans. Boce or Péntaque is a ball game that is all about testing the bowling.........
Why in Dicken’s does the Queen want to sell her car? This 2001 model has just done 14,000 miles but Her Majesty stopped using it after 2004.....
Jerome David Salinger, the celebrated author of the best-selling book in the entire 20th century passed away quietly in his home in rural Cornish, South Hampshire in England. The famous 91 year old writer, whose celebrated novel ‘The Catcher in the Rye’, published in 1951 is estimated to have sold 60 million copies worldwide and continues to sell 200,000 copies annually, lived without fanfare, as a recluse. He wrote several brilliant literary works like The Glass Family, ‘Nine Stories’’ (1953), ‘Franny and Zooey’ (1961), and ‘Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction’’ (1963), but it was Holden Caulfield, 16 year old narrator who has just been expelled from school and is around and about in Manhattan on his own, in the ‘Catcher in the Rye’, that made the book a staple with students and drew comparisons to the celebrated character of Huckleberry Finn. Despite having become the toast of the literati in hip New York, he shunned it all at the pinnacle of fame and chose to spend his last fifty years in the tiny rural outback in England, where people respected his privacy. A movie ‘Finding Forrester’ directed by Gus Van Sant and starring Sean Connery as a reclusive writer, William Forrester was released in 2000 and was said to be loosely based on Salinger.
Although Salinger was born in Manhattan, New York, in a Jewish family, he practiced Zen Buddhism for several years and later became an adherent of Ramakrishna’s Advaita Vedanta Hinduism and studied the writings of Vivekananda. He fought tooth and nail to protect his privacy from all biographers, including his own daughter.
Russian genius spurns $1million award
This is the headline that is grabbing all the media attention – that a Dr Grigori Perelman from Russia has turned down all of $1million being offered as award money from the Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge. Also mentioned in passing is that he solved one of the most complicated mathematical problems in the world, the Poincaré conjecture, which mathematicians across the world have been trying to crack for the past one humdred years. Some feat that! But the bigger one was the total lack of desire for the cash, practically being offered on a platter. And this was not a first. He has previously declined the prestigious Fields Medal and $7,000 award too. Not even fame is of any use to him. The man lives humbly with his mother and sister, in St.Petersburg with bare essentials. He had taught in American unversities in 2003 but quit in dismay over the intellectual and moral failings of his peers. So what does he do in his free time – play tabel tennis against the wall in his apartment or pick mushroom. If your are a journalist promising him cover page and extensive footage, don’t waste your time-he doesn’t like to be disturbed.
Interestingly, he had actually solved the mysterious Poincaré conjecture in 2002 itself and posted his proofs, but the global mathematicians at large took all of seven years to understand what he was saying
Last month we talked about the three ways of enjoying a Single Malt (Neat, with Water, with Ice) and their merits and demerits. This month the Glenfiddich Guide familiarizes you with the right way to appreciate and taste your single malt.
Getting Ready
To begin with, pour out a small measure of a single malt whisky of your choice. A glass with a wide base and narrow top works best as it helps catch the aroma of the whisky. Ideally a Glencairn whisky glass (a unique glass designed especially for whiskies) would be the best option but a brandy snifter or even a champagne flute could be used. Hold it by the stem and do not warm the glass in your hand. Have a bottle of Scottish spring water handy. Ideally the water should be still and should not be chilled.
Checking the Colour
Hold your glass of malt up to the light. The colour of the whisky is not necessarily an indication of a single malt’s age, but more an indication of how it was matured, as the cask in which a malt is matured imparts colour and flavour to it. For instance, a golden hued single malt has been matured in a sherry oak cask, while a pale whisky was probably matured in a Bourbon cask.
Check Out the Legs on it
Hold the glass by the stem, tilt it at an angle and rotate it briskly coating the walls of the glass with whisky. Now hold the glass up straight and watch the whisky forming the "legs" as it runs down the sides of the glass. It is believed that the slower the legs, the older the whisky.
Nosing the Whisky
Hold your glass away from you, then pass it smoothly under your nose taking a deep breath through your nose as it passes. Think about what you can smell and try to imagine what the smell reminds you of. Make a mental note of what you detected and then repeat the process a couple more times to see if your mind throws up more associations!
Tasting the Whisky
Take a small sip of the single malt from you glass and let the whisky rest on your tongue. You may feel a little overwhelmed at first as your mind tries to identify the constantly changing complex aromas and flavours. Try to think what these aromas and flavours remind you of. It could be chocolate, apples, oranges, the sea, bonfires, freshly cut grass, summer, etc! This association in your mind will help you recognize the malt, the next time you try it!
Add a little Scottish Spring Water
Adding a little Scottish spring water can enhance the aroma and flavour of a whisky and bring out the hidden characteristics of the single malt. Make sure you do not add excessive amounts of water as it would dilute the single malt. Swirl the glass, to mix the water and the whisky. You should now find the resulting mixture mellower and more drinkable.
In conclusion, while the above mentioned suggestions can be used as guidelines to appreciating and enjoying your single malt, it works just as well to drink your scotch whisky just the way you want to!
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Didgeridoo-The Song of the Jungle By Ritu Jain
Search for self and yearning for the sublime is as old as human existence. To connect with the universality of existence, people have pursued their passions or callings, walking through personal, cultural and traditional boundaries through the practice of their crafts and relentless study. And as old as human existence is the yearning for music, a rhythm, a sublime note, that unifies the soul with nature and thereby, with the divine. The ancient man found ways to create music from whatever nature offered. The aboriginal people of Northern Australia have been playing one such instrument, the didgeridoo, which could easily be credited to being the oldest instrument played by man. While no reliable data provides the exact age of the didgeridoo, archeological studies have dated the rock art of the Kakadu region of the Northern territory of Australia to date back 1,500 years. Another clear rock painting in Ginga Wardelirrhmeng, located on the northern edge of the Arnhem Land plateau is said to show a didgeridoo player and two singers participating in an Ubarr Ceremony. Further research revealed that no such rock painting existed. For an instrument that appears rather simplistic, almost crude in its design, the myths surrounding it are several. And while most of us may not even have heard about it, thousands of didgeridoos are made in Australia for sale.
The didgeridoo is a wind instrument, not a flute, more a ‘drone pipe’ or an aerophone. It is usually made from the stem of a Eucalyptus tree that has been naturally hollowed out by termites. The traditional method followed by the Aborigines of spotting such trees entails walking for miles through the bush until they are able to identify hollowed out trees by the smell of the termites or the shape of the tree or its leaves. They than selectively chop a few trees without ravaging the jungle unlike some modern hack-saw happy sorts. Interestingly, only the stems of live, young Eucalyptuses whose hard core is hollowed out by termites make for good didgeridoos and not old dead trees. The hard wood of the Eucalyptus gives good resonance and timbre to the sound of a didgeridoo. The bark of the hollow tree is removed and the interior is cleaned of dirt and termites, the outside is sanded, holes are sealed and the mouth end is covered with beeswax for protections. Playing technique involves continuously vibrating lips to produce the drone while using a special method of breathing called circular breathing (breathing in through the nose while simultaneously expelling stored air out of the mouth using the tongue and cheeks). A trained player is able to sustain a note for as long as half an hour. It is traditionally played as an accompaniment to ceremonial dancing and singing and for surviving cultural ceremonies.
One such didgeridoo master, William Barton, performed in Delhi last month at the Indira Gandhi National Center for Arts. As he settled down on the open stage, under the huge ‘peepal’ tree, the audience gathered hadn’t a clue as to what to expect. Until he started playing – the mystical sounds of a dense forest, leaves rustling in a gentle breeze under a starlit sky, birds tweeting, sounds of animals like a kangaroo or other assorted types hopping about the jungle. The pleasant weather and the open-air stage made the audience participants in an intriguing journey as he playfully pulled them in by ‘teaching’ them sounds of various jungle birds and had them all rumbling, clapping and whistling to his signals along with the intriguing deep drone. Barton is from Australia and is of Aboriginal descent. He was taught to play the instrument early by his uncle who is an elder of the Wannyi, Kalkadunga and Lardil tribes of Western Queensland. By age 12 he was playing for Aboriginal dance troupes and by age 15 he had toured America. He has since played with various Symphony Orchestras including the London Philharmonic. The music album, ‘Songs Of Sea and Sky’ by Peter Sculthorpe, released in May 2004 by ABC Classics was revised for didgeridoo and orchestra. His accomplishments have been several and he is acclaimed as one of the finest didgeridoo players in Australia. He is frequently invited to distant lands to perform. The reason he gives makes perfect sense - "I want to show people, no matter what your background is, music is a universal language, and it can relate to different people in different ways."
So what does William Barton really love about the didgeridoo? He was quoted to have said, ‘What I really enjoyed was the story telling properties of the instrument and how the person could tell the story through the sound and the elements of the Australian landscape. The resonance of the instrument, especially when you’re out in the bush, it sort of cascades around because it echoes off the trees as well.” So does he teach others to play too? Barton points out that in his tribal language there is no word for ‘teach’. The equivalent terminology is ‘guntha’, which means ‘inner spirit’.
At the recently held International Sacred Art Festival organised in Delhi by the Attic, one of the performances held at the India International Centre was the rare and first-ever-outside-of-their-region Sword Dance by the Buzhens of Spiti, who traveled from their beautiful mountain top to the thick concrete jungles of Delhi for the very first time, facilitated by Kishore Thukral. The audience was won over by the untutored raw innocence of these mountain people. With an introduction of the sword dance ritual by Thukral, egged on by his words of encouragement, struggling to overcome their bewilderment that shone in their eyes, the Buzhens put up a fine performance in the confines of a demarcated stage, as against the lofty open lands surrounded by mountains where they usually perform. We bring for you the description of the legend and lore of the exotic Buzhen, written for us by Kishore Thukral, the man himself.
Kishore Thukral is a financial whiz turned mountaineer, photographer and writer whose travels and research of the western Himalyan region have resulted in his book ‘Spiti through Legend and Lore’ (Mosaic Books, Delhi,2006).
The Buzhens of Spiti – Keeping alive a 700 year old tradition
By Kishore Thukral
Fluttering with the flags in the stark and beautiful Himalayan landscape of Lahaul and Spiti, and the regions around Tibet, Ladakh and Kinnaur in the upper reaches of Himachal Pradesh is a lore that is seven hundred years old. Keeping the legend alive is a rare group of dancers, the Buzhens, the last surviving members of a tantric Buddhist cult whose history goes back to a time when the people of the region had started to ignore the teachings of the Buddha. It was at that
point that an esteemed mahasiddha (great accomplished master), Tangthon Gyalpo, took it upon himself to revive the faith. He recruited a band of devoted young men, who would wear colourful attire and go from village to village enacting anecdotes from the life of the Buddha and other great teachers. Over time the efforts of Tangthon Gyalpo and his dedicated troops bore fruit, and Buddhism once again attained its wonted place in the hearts and minds of the people of these regions.
The Buzhens are renowned throughout the areas dominated by Himalayan Buddhism for their sword dance. A traditional Buzhen performance may last up to three hours, beginning with the setting up of an altar dedicated to Tangthon Gyalpo. Commencing with a prayer, the Buzhen act also comprises singing and playing the gokpo (lute), a dance by the entire group, and some lively banter between the Lochen, the head Buzhen, and the Lugzhi, a shepherd. As in many folk art forms, inspired by the occasion and the audience, the exchange between the two artistes is hilarious and often improvised. Slowly, but definitely, their act crescendos towards the inimitable sword dance wherein the Lochen, digging the hilts of his two swords into the ground and their tips into his flanks, balances himself horizontally upon them. The movement is swift and rhythmic. The performance climaxes with the phowa dochak (breaking of a stone shaped like a stomach). One Buzhen lies down on his back and the nehdag (a 35kilo stone housing an evil spirit) is positioned on his chest. Two others hold him to the ground, and to the incantation of mantras, the Lochen lifts another big stone, weighing 10kilos, symbolic of the dorje phurba (a ritual dagger emblematic of a wrathful tutelary deity) and brings it crashing down upon the supine Buzhen’s chest. The nehdag splits; the evil spirit is dead.
Legend has it that the phowa dochak ceremony was first performed in the fourteenth century, at the time of construction of the Chung Riwoche monastery in Tibet. It is said that whatever was built during the day by human endeavour would be destroyed at night by evil spirits. It was only after Tangthon Gyalpo performed the phowa dochak that the monastery could be completed. Meanwhile a demon called Hala Tabgyad was perpetrating an epidemic in Lhasa that was causing its residents to die from an ailment of the intestines and bowels. Having tried both medicine and magician’s charm, and failed, the precious lord of Lhasa, Je Tsongkhapa Rinpoche at last despatched a messenger to the Chung Riwoche monastery to request the great mahasiddha for help. (Je Tsongkhapa Rinpoche was a highly revered teacher of Vajrayana Buddhism, and the founder of the Gelug pa order, the order to which the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama both belong.) Wasting no time, Tangthon Gyalpo arrived at the gates of Tsongkhapa’s abode, and at once realized that the spirit was hiding at the threshold, under the door. He captured it in a brown stone shaped like a stomach and drove it to the market place where, in the presence of the elderly, he smashed the stone with his dorje phurba. Hala Tabgyad was dead; Lhasa was rid of the scourge.
The Buzhen tradition itself is now dead in Tibet, for reasons not difficult to guess. In Ladakh too it is extinct, because practitioners of the art found it impossible to eke out a living from it. The only Buzhens that survive today are in the Pin valley of Spiti, in the border district of Lahaul-Spiti in the north-western Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. The Pin is the largest tributary of the Spiti River that, in turn, joins the Sutlej at Khab in the neighbouring district of Kinnaur. Spiti has, at various times in history, been a part of the western Tibetan kingdom of Guge. Himalayan Buddhism has, as a result, flourished here for over one thousand years, a period that also saw the founding of the great monasteries at Tabo, Dangkhar, Ghungri, Key and Gomic.
Presently there are only five troupes of five Buzhens each, none having ever performed anywhere other than Ladakh, Lahaul-Spiti and Kinnaur; until 11 March 2010 when, as a culminating offering of the Sacred Arts Festival of India, Delhi was treated to its first glimpse of this fascinating tantric tradition at the India International Centre. Six days of travel from the remote valley to the bustling metropolis, through snowbound mountains and slippery roads, yielded the desired result for the visiting ensemble. Perhaps this visit might signal a possible revival of the Buzhen tradition. We hope so.
How green is my world? A lot more green if you shun the fuel guzzlers and hit the road atop a neat looking bike. The recently held 2010 Taipei International Cycle Show in March and events like the International Bicycle Design Competition (IBDC) that gave away the awards for its 14th year at Taipei, evince a huge response from the bicycle industry and other players in the line, bringing forth amazing innovations and designs. There is one for all types. The urban dweller will love Eric Stoddard’s zoomla folding bike, or the more stable trikE. The autovelo charges its batteries as you push along, the cutting edge sleekness of Spine, the folding RESC U perfect for ailing patients, the CG that is inspired by the Swiss Army Knife in its ability to fold, ergonomically designed TakeOn with a frame made of compound bamboo material with metal, the ultimate beach and city cruiser INFINITY that is driven by a revolutionary monotype-clip ensemble that forms automatically a temporary rim in the wheel area and a dented belt drive in the center area. The options are a plenty. Hopefully Delhi will get its special bicycle corridor in place soon.
When all around is being digitalized and automated, the skeletonised watches, almost erotic in their beauty as they show off the sculpted movements, gliding gears, oscillating springs, undulating pinions, become luxury icons of tradition and craftsmanship of a watchmaker. Almost since the advent of the wristwatch, watchmakers have wondered how to flaunt their exquisite fine art, which goes mostly hidden inside a case. Progressive trends and hi-tech stereotyping finally let the watchmakers to dare the open-worked watch, which first appeared in 1980. With the two major horology events, the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie (SIHH) held from January 18-22, 2010 in Geneva and the very recent Basel World from March 18-25, 2010 in Switzerland, it seemed most appropriate we bring you a showcase of some of the recent beauties of this kind.
Daniel Roth Tourbillon Lumiere
Daniel Roth (now merged with Bulgari) has created a symphony of light that is all about airiness and luminosity in this new skeleton tourbillon. The movement is hand-wound mechanical, entirely hand-engraved and hand decorated with 22 rubies. The plate, bridges, ratchet wheel are made f 18K red gold and mobile parts are plated in red gold. The case is polished 18K red gold, as is the dial with 18K gold minute circle, circular satin finishing and engraved hour markers and logo. A brown alligator strap, hand sewn on both sides, is held together with a 18K gold folding clasp.
Panerai Radiomir Tourbillon Ceramic PAM348
This watch created waves at the SIHH and was the surprise entry, more so because Officine Panerai is known for it’s very strict design codes, almost military in appearance with the patent cushion shape, and has never ever indulged in skeletonised designs. While reaction to the new attempt were diverse, the buzz was huge. The watch is made of black ceramic (zirconium oxide); the movement is powered by Panerai P.2005/S caliber and provides a power reserve of six days. The chunky piece is 36.6mm in diameter, 10.05mm thick, 31 jewels, three mainspring barrel, comes with GMT, power reserve indicator, AM/PM indicator, 30-second tourbillon, a second time zone indication and a sapphire-crystal case back. It could be had for a price of $160,000.
Rotonde de Cartier Skeleton Flying Tourbillon
A fashionable and luxury label like Cartier keeps up the tempo of creating immensely desirable objects. Taking their line of watches to the next level, they have come out with the skeletonised watches like this Rotonde de Cartier Skeleton Flying Tourbillon watch, where the thin movement is suspended in the middle. In trademark Cartier fashion, the hours are marked in Roman numerals, which are part of the movement plate and the ‘C’ shaped bridge over the tourbillon is part of the 9455 MC caliber movement. The cut-away portion of the movement is sandwiched between two sapphire crystals. The watch is 45mm wide and polished with 18 carat white gold. A mere 100 pieces have been created for this limited edition to be sold worldwide, with each of the pieces being numbered individually. The price tag is $130,000 for this beauty that comes with blue steel minute/hour hands and black alligator straps with white gold buckle.
Omega Co-Axial Skeleton Tourbillon Platinum
Here is a masterpiece from one of the established names in horology. Their latest offering of skeletonised Tourbillon Co-Axial platinum, which comes with hand polished mechanisms and bridges is a limited edition with only 18 very exclusive pieces. Each watch is handcrafted in Omega’s Cellule Haut de Gamme in Bienne by a select group of horologists, Omega being the only watchmaker to have created an automatic central tourbillon. Its titanium cage rotates completely every 60 seconds, offsetting the effect of gravity on the performance of the watch. The complex tourbilon movement is assembled from 320 individual parts, which are housed in a platinum case with a black alligator bracelet. Each of these watches is worked on by just one watchmaker who might spend up to 540 hours to create, thus making each model unique. The watchmaker puts his initials on the bottom of the case to ensure that all parts can be made to watch after being galvanized. So should a Central Tourbillon come back to Omega, it will be automatically reset to the original watch. Each of the Skeletonized Central Tourbillon watches is a COSC-certified chronometer.
There is a ‘hero’ lurking in each one of us that defies common practice and reaches out to higher ideals and performance. The hero in us is often stopped at a critical juncture where we have to brave social censure, comfort deprivation or even risk of life and limb. Thus starts the quest for the elusive ‘hero’ qualities in others - the qualities that sets them apart from the average. This month we pay our respects to two such mighty men: the brilliant writer, late JD Salinger, who wrote only for the love of his craft and fought tooth and nail to shun the media attention, sometimes even having tried to keep his works from being published; the other being the mathematician Grigory Perelman, who proved the elusive Poincare conjecture which had dogged mathematicians for over a century, but refused the million dollar award. He worked for the love of his chosen field and cherished his simple life that had no need for the millions. Indeed, it is not for the average mind to easily identify the real luxuries that eventually bring the desired contentment and peace.
The wise ones recommend the need to introspect in solitude to make progress at all levels. In the daily struggle to meet deadlines and work relationships, this supposedly simple activity gets left out. But one factor that could make it work is the company of a fine spirit like Glenfiddich and as one watches the moon rise over the skyline, touches of wisdom seep through! .
The didgeridoo is a wind instrument, not a flute, more a ‘drone pipe’ or an aerophone. It is usually made from the stem of a Eucalyptus tree that has been naturally hollowed out by termites. The traditional method followed by the Aborigines of spotting such trees entails walking for miles through the bush until they are able to identify hollowed out trees by the smell of the termites or the shape of the tree or its leaves. They than selectively chop a few trees without ravaging the jungle unlike some modern hack-saw happy sorts. Interestingly, only the stems of live, young Eucalyptuses whose hard core is hollowed out by termites make for good didgeridoos and not old dead trees. The hard wood of the Eucalyptus gives good resonance and timbre to the sound of a didgeridoo. The bark of the hollow tree is removed and the interior is cleaned of dirt and termites, the outside is sanded, holes are sealed and the mouth end is covered with beeswax for protections. Playing technique involves continuously vibrating lips to produce the drone while using a special method of breathing called circular breathing (breathing in through the nose while simultaneously expelling stored air out of the mouth using the tongue and cheeks). A trained player is able to sustain a note for as long as half an hour. It is traditionally played as an accompaniment to ceremonial dancing and singing and for surviving cultural ceremonies.
