To the CENTER OF THE WORLD and back

I cherish this trip as it is not common that you get to visit ISRAEL. It is place that was visited by most number of invaders than any place on earth. English ruled India for spices and gold, US invaded Iraq for oil, and many other places were ravaged for its riches or military advantage, fertile land etc. But what brought all these invaders to Jerusalem which had no fertile land, no gold or oil was the first question our guide to Jerusalem asked. My answer was the obvious one that “it was the sacred place of three religions”, but then it could not explain the interest shown by impious like Alexander the great and others.

Thus explains the Traditional Theory:
As it was considered to be a flat world, Israel was considered the center of the world and ruling it was important to rule the world, and to rule the world was one desire that all the invaders had in common.

Just 7.1 million strong Israel has seen many more wars than India. It has left India far behind in development in the same 60 years of independence. It presents visitors a great amalgam of Historic and Modern structures. The extensive use of Jerusalem stone (or limestone like stones) gives most of it cities specially Jerusalem a golden yellow hue. It does look like a place out of history books. I thought India was the most religiously confused place before I saw Jerusalem. Like here the same building contains Tomb of David on ground floor (sacred to Jews), the last supper hall on first floor (sacred to Christianity) and the building itself is a Mosque. Courtesy its conflict stained history and present, security at all places is quite strict often to dismay of tourist but they do compensate by recruiting all beautiful girls :-) . The well timed rains(irony ofcourse ...!) did stop me from enjoying beauties of/on the beaches to full :-(. Definitely the Mall culture has caught up too much with Israel. Food probably due to Arab influence does looks similar to India at places. I tried a different place or a different dish everyday and that most people understood English made it easier to place the order :-) .

And I did find MALLUS even there.

Ref : Internet and wikipedia and "word of mouth" info from friends in Israel

I Miss You

It is said Boys grow to become Big Boys. This blog is dedicated to one author who brought me from boys gang to big boys in reading.

For avid readers the genre of book one reads marks that period of life. Life started with color nursery story books, then to Champak, Chaca Choudhari and Tinkle (Courtesy my fathers Air force job which kept me away form kerala, Balarama and poompata took a late entry into my life). This was the kids section. Then came the days of secret seven, famous five and hardy boys.

But one author who brought me to the Big Boys gang in reading was sidney sheldon. He caught me with his book “Master of the Game” (but Jamie McGregor and not kate was my favorite in it…). Strong protagonist and equally competent adversaries, fast pace, good, simple narration, sense of direction and enough of Masala ( :-) :-) has any of his book ever missed it..!!!). This was the beginning of my tryst with all different categories of books from history, to science fiction. As life passes by I may still wander about trying more flavours (Bhagavath geetha, and Ramaya after sometime... ;-) ). But still I can never get a Sidney Sheldon to pass by me unread. He has definitely made an indispensable position in my “I READ list”.

As the golden era of his came to an end on 30 January (Author Sidney Sheldon dead), it has left a huge gap in my favourite list.