Curiosity kindled

A few months ago, I was tempted to get myself a Kindle, Amazon's ebook reader. I saw the price tag of just over USD 300 well worth it to optimize shelf space at home and further domestic harmony.

But then I read stories on the Internet of how the ebook reader market was still nascent, there was more to come, and so on. I felt my research about the rival product offered by Sony was inadequate. So I deferred my decision to buy.

Now the Kindle 2.0 is out, launched by Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Stephen King, who has written 'UR', a novella which will be available first on the Kindle 2.0. Kindle works wirelessly in USA. In Europe, it works with the Internet. It is yet to be launched in Asia, and there is some confusion if the Kindle will work in our continent at all.

The Economist has a couple of informative stories about it in the Feb 12th issue. Go to www.economist.com and search for 'Kindle'. For a practical view of the whole thing, visit http://www.pcworld.com/article/159926/costjustifying_the_kindle_2.html, a blog on PC World by James Martin.

As for me I think I'll wait for the Kindle 3.0. But I doubt if it can be a substitute for a plush, leather-bound volume of Alice in Wonderland I am reading right now.

Bangalore's first flyover, laid a decade ago, connects the area housing the Town Hall and the Bangalore City Corporation buildings with the beginning of Mysore Road. True to criticism that the causeway is underutilised, not many vehicles ply on it. But the flyover's underbelly is a study in contrast. Teeming with people and vehicles at all times of night and day, this is City Market, a hub for local and out-of-town buses and goods carriers.

If you are courageous enough to take your eyes off the autorickshaws, trucks and buses that jostle for room and threaten to squash you in between, you will see some of the oldest buildings and institutions of Bangalore.

There are the remains of Bangalore Fort, a structure fortified by Haider Ali, the commander of the armies of the former kingdom of Mysore and then its de facto ruler. Its walls are crumbling and whatever stands is plastered with cinema posters and moss. Across the street from the fort is the Fort Venkataramanaswamy Temple (Kote Kovil to Srivaishnavas and Kote Venkataramanaswamy Devasthana to other locals), a temple whose flagstaff bears bullet marks from the time of the Siege of Bangalore by Lord Cornwallis in 1790-91 (during the third of the four Anglo-Mysore Wars).

Next to the temple on the perpendicular is the palace of Tipu Sultan (Haider's son and the 'Tiger of Mysore'). It is a protected monument but is in a sad state of disrepair, needing an urgent facelift.

Opposite the palace is Victoria Hospital, the first port-of-call to lakhs of poor people unable to afford private healthcare. Then there is Bangalore Medical College opposite the temple, an institution that is alma mater to generations of doctors. Round the corner is the Kannada Sahitya Parishat, a once-venerable institution promoting Kannada language that has lately lost its shine.

The flyover separates all these buildings from Bangalore's oldest mosque, the Jumma Masjid, whose tall minarets rise up to the sky and present a majestic view to the few motorists hurtling along on the flyover towards the city centre.

Most of the sites I have mentioned find a place in tourist guidebooks and websites about Bangalore. However, it is unlikely that the cosmopolitan Bangalorean of today has ever heard of them, leave alone visited them. Even among old Bangaloreans, 'Kalasipalya', that area comprising City Market and surrounding localities, is synonymous with goods lorries, buses, rowdies and filth.

One of the buildings in the area that does not figure in tourist maps is the Government Girls School. It is on the right side of the road as you come down from the temple towards the flyover. By the time you have realised it is there, you will have passed it.

The school is the official centre for the carnatic music exams conducted annually by the state government. Once a year during the summer, the old classrooms and rickety desks bear witness to candidates who sing and play on a variety of instruments. Their talent and ability vary widely but their enthusiasm and sincerity are uniformly high.

My wife and I went there a few weeks ago to enroll for the exams scheduled for this April. As we entered I observed that this was a girls school; I didn't know that till then. I also saw that the overwhelming majority of girls were Muslim. That day we saw two long lines of bright, laughing girls waiting to have their teeth examined by a mobile dental van of a private hospital.

We were directed to the computer room on the first floor. There we saw a Hindu gentleman at a desk. Along the walls in front of him there were PCs set up on creaking tables. At each PC was a huddle of Urdu speaking girls, chattering subduedly, while one of them typed away god-knows-what. When we told the computer teacher - that was who the gentleman was - of our purpose, he called out to the girl nearest him. Young Nilofer walked confidently up, and told us exactly where to sign, where to paste our photos and when to expect intimation of the exams. Nilofer knew everything there was to know about the procedure prescribed for the forthcoming carnatic music exams.

As we completed the formalities, I struck up a conversation with the computer teacher. He said that most of the PCs were unusable because they were virus-ridden. Even otherwise their configuration was outdated. The school did not have funds to upgrade. Another school nearby had done better. A corporate donor had given that school PCs with more contemporary configurations. Girls in this school found it difficult to type anything sensible, so badly infected were the systems. I murmered my sympathies.

As we thanked them and left, we thought we should do something more about that computer room, for Nilofer and her friends, than merely nod in sympathy. Just as somebody else was doing something about their teeth.

Three Europeans and the Forgotten Buddha

I picked up the book attracted by its unusual title, The Buddha And The Sahibs. Until then I had not read any other book by its author, Charles Allen. The book opened up for me a historical perspective of Buddhism in India that I had not imagined existed. From Charles Allen, I read of how the Buddha was all but forgotten in India and how a few Englishmen rediscovered him and his religion not only for themselves but for the rest of India as well, and most often by chance than by design.

I am now reading Pankaj Mishra's "An End To Suffering - The Buddha In The World" which also contains an account of how a few eccentric Europeans who had no interest in Buddhism per se, and who in fact were not even aware of such a person as the Buddha, were instrumental in resurrecting knowledge about the Buddha and Buddhism.

There is the French botanist Victor Jacquemont who camps at Simla soon after that hill-station was settled by the British in 1820, and who writes detailed accounts of the Buddhist religion practised in the inner Himalayas in what is present-day Himachal Pradesh and Ladakh. Jacquemont does not realise at the time that the Buddha is yet a mysterious figure not only to Europe but the rest of India as well.

In his letters to his father, Jacquemont writes of the remarkable Hungarian, Alexander de Koros. Like many nationalists of his time, de Koros tries to trace the origins and establish the independent identity of the Hungarians as a people, separate from the imperial Austrians. He believes his roots lie in Central Asia and sets off on his search. He travels through Egypt and Iran and ends up at Kashmir, from where he moves towards the Tibetan side of the Himalayas and lives there in isolation for nine years under the assumed name of Secunder Beg, studying Tibetan manuscripts and learning the language. Eventually de Koros supervises the publication of a Tibetan dictionary in Calcutta.

de Koros stays on in the Himalayan region longer than he may have wished to because of his chance meeting with an English veterinarian, William Moorcroft, who is managing the East India Company's stud farm. Moorcroft is paranoid about the possibility of Russia's influence over the region and sees Koros as a man who could help in understanding Tibetan language and culture. With that understanding he hopes to lay the ground to preempt the Russians and prevent a possible takeover of Tibet by Russia. Therefore he convinces de Koros to stay on in the Himalayan region bordering Tibet and even sponsors him to an extent.

Jacquemont, de Koros and Moorcroft all die in India without seeing Europe again.

You can read more about these gentlemen in "The Invention of 'Buddhism'", the first chapter of Mishra's book.