Lessons from history

Hey friends ! Guess what, just watched a wonderful movie from 2007 called Man From Earth. One word amigos.......Awesome !!! "Refreshing" might be another! In spite of being into science, I kind of always liked history (thankfully initiated in the subject by a couple of wonderful teachers in school), which graduated into love in the last 2 years.

Unlike the way the subject is taught and evaluated in school, it's actually quite an interesting thing.........i mean, after all, its about the PAST ! And who on earth is not interested in knowing it? We always want to know in everyday conversation "what happened, dude?" or "where were you?" or "have you done this before"?.........its just part of normal human curiosity, I guess....... most of us celebrate birthdays , anniversaries, golden (and other metallic) jubilees and so on......and all of this is nothing but implicit references to things of the PAST or HISTORY. And still those same people piously claim "I don't like history" or better still "History is not for me"...........how absurd, right ? And the weirdest thing is often how people have this mental "time cap"on HISTORY, as if 20 years back is not history but as it starts to go above 30 it does become so. Time has been forever continuous right from the day one of us rubbed stones a little harder to today when we are trying to rub electrons together ! In this enormous length (or space, courtesy Hawkins) of time a lot of things have happened............. and those many many occurences, no matter how archaic and insignificant, have a lot to tell us today.

I always felt the murder of history in our textbooks should be discussed in some serious forum.......like maybe the parliament (maybe not, after watching Lok Sabha TV)........ or the UN (but even they distort history)........ or better still if children grow up knowing REAL HISTORY rather than the mug-books that roll out year after year in this country.
By reading on the internet and collecting information from various sources, I have known so much more and dispelled so many widespread myths that we inculcate about our own history, right from the Aryans to the British. And it doesn't give me a high saying this, but just a sense of clear understanding and quiet respect for the past we inherit.......i was fascinated to know bits and pieces about the egyptians, parthians, romans, nubians, greeks, saracens, crusades and so on.........and then when i tried to relate the diffrent histories from different geographies, a completely new and enthralling picture of the world emerges from various periods of her past - ancient, medieval and modern!

Just to give you an example how we miss the real flavour of history by missing the relative historical picture worldwide..........we are all taught that india had her temples and sculpture and so forth during Samudragupta's rule.......but unless we understand what was happening across the Hindukush or in the late Roman empire during that time, the real relative picture of the world never emerges.........you know why ? Because at about that time the huns (who helped in destroying the gupta empire) were wrecking havoc across Roman Europe........and the western world we know today might not have existed if the hun leader Atilla was not assassinated by his wife, because they had almost destroyed Rome and ended all western civilization at about that time.

But that was a long time ago......who cares what happened then ? Lets think of religion or even science........history of either has immediate bearing on our lives today. Religion itself is mostly history.......isnt it? History which has been rewritten and modified and coaxed and finally flavoured till it tasted and smelled right ......... almost like a well-cooked dish !!! It doesnt require a historian to tell you that the one thing that has been falsified the most by man is his PAST.......... lots of things to cover up, maybe........... hmmm, but we thought noone cared for history, right ? So why is history worth killing for/waging war for/spending fortunes for/devoting lives for .......... if it really wasnt that important? Friends, there's a thought to leave you with ........... there must be something in the seemingly boring HISTORY that affects how we are and what we do in everyday life.......something we are very busy to notice...... something that can teach us what a lot of textbooks cannot !!!

"We learn from history that we learn nothing from history." - George Bernard Shaw

Let's change that part of history for the better, at least.