Indian society: Evils:
- Caste system:
- Plato, acknowledging the greatness of Indian literature -Vedas, Geeta etc attributes its limitations to rigid evils such as the caste system.
- Great poet Iqbal on India:
- Yunan-o-Misr-o-Roma sabmit gaye jahan se, Baqi abhi talak hai nam-o-nishan hamara. Kuch bat hai ke hasti mit-ti nahin hamari, Sadion raha hai dushman daur-e-zaman hamara
- Unity:
- Sri narayana guru -BY uniting drops of water that evaporate easily, we must become an ocean which is eternal, ‘one and yet many’.
Kalidasa in Raghuvamsa equates taxation power of king to
Crises (COVID)
- As Winston Churchill was working to form the United Nations after WWII, he famously said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste”
- Eg: Israel’s water crisis => It’s rise as a model in water management. Water Authority Law to stop illegal pumping of ground water, strict enforcement, sustainable agriculture.
Anecdotes:
- (Commodification, Gandhian ways, sustainability, environment, pricelessness:)
- Story of village Parra in Goa , Was once famous for growing delicious watermelons. Had a custom which allows children to eat as many watermelons from any farm for free, and save the seeds of the most delicious watermelons and give them to the grower. Farmer then planted only the seeds that children found sweetest. Over time, some people decided to instead sell the best watermelons in the market, and why “waste” them in free distribution to children => practise dwindled, quality of watermelons begun to decline. PRICELESSNESS. Gandhianism - Gandhi could predict - modern industry built on edifice of ends over means
- Economic sustainability: ‘I sympathize therefore, with those who would minimize rather than those who would maximize economic entanglement between nations. Ideas, knowledge, art, hospitality, travel – these are the things which should of their nature be international. But let goods be homespun whenever it is reasonably and conveniently possible; and, above all, let finance be primarily national’ - Keynes
- As each country tries to outdo the other, it cuts deeper into the ecological foundations of its organic life. In trying to build a 'smarter planet', we may not have one left in the end.
- growing centralization of economic decision making => far greater distances between places where ecologically sensitive decisions are made and where they have their impact. The city considers the countryside as a mere hinterland for its resources and dump for its industrial waste.
- An idea towards rationalization of economies:
- A cluster of 20-40 villages with a large urban centre as a hub - mostly self-reliant in meeting requirements and desires.
- Case study of Kuthumbakkam village in TN shows how a cluster of villages with their economies networked together in a kind of free-trade zone, rose to prosperity through evolving a self-dependent economy. Construction using locally available material, integrated housing for people from different castes, solar energy projects etc.
- Tagore described in his essay as ’Robbery of the Soil’
- World a stage (Shakespeare) , all of us merely players, data that data holders use. Natural resources- weapons, not for well-being but for power games, for the greater good of a smaller and smaller number.
- There is in us Indians a Patel, too practical to be all ‘ideals’ but too good to dismiss human values. When this Patel, real not virtual, tries to feel the pulse of truth, provocation fails to inflame, propaganda fails to ignite, gullibility does not delude. This is when the pulse revives of the man, whose death has made his birth priceless. (Gandhi, the man)
- “Laazim hai ke ham bhi dekhenge, vo din ke jiske vaade hain” - Faiz Ahmed Khan, great contemporary South Asian poet.
- Someone has rightly said, ’The future is not what happens but what we create'
- Water: You can present two different futures (above quote, write)
- Where most rivers have dried up, reduced to a seasonal trickle. Even that trickle contains mostly sewer. Groundwater exhausted, most sources heavily polluted leading to sickness & ill-health. Disease and social strife among poor, even rich won’t escape.
- Even when needs are being met, rivers as free flowing as possible. Wetlands not as wastelands, but an important part of the water system. Water in rivers, lakes - clean enough that people could just walk to it and drink it. Public commons - access a right of everyone. sustained groundwater use, recharge systems, traditional harvesting. Community riven regulation of groundwater use. Smart urban water management, total recycling of waster water. Agro-climatic cropping. Water saving methods - SRI. Transparent and reliable info sharing
- Phumdis of Loktak lake - irrigation, food security, animal and plant species supported. ‘ Lifeline of Manipur’. The construction of the Ithai Dam in the 1980s — built to provide power for India’s northeast states — has threatened the life of the islands. The dam south of Loktak Lake has caused water levels to remain high year-round, preventing the phumdis from sinking and reaching the lakebed for nutrients. As a result, the phumdis are slowly thinning and breaking apart.
Economy: sustainability:
- Anecdote: A businesswoman considering the establishment of a glove factory. She is aware her workers will buy atleast some of the gloves, but won’t be enough to turn a profit sufficient to cover initial costs of investment. So, she may shelve her investment plan. Now imagine at the same time another another businessman sets up a factory making clothes for export. This would encourage our businesswoman in her plans as she realizes the workers of the cloth factory will buy her remaining She goes ahead with her investment plan and a business thrives - relation between ease of doing business and prosperity for all.
- Gandhian JC Kumarappa - 'An economy of permanence’ - importance of cohrence between human needs and rest of nature’s ecosystems, for sustainability. How nature ensures cooperation of all its units - the mobile helping the immobile, the sentient the insentient - dovetailed togther in a common cause.
- Decentralization: Self reliant , self sufficient successful communities -Ralegan Siddhi, Hivare Bazar, Mendha Lekha- societies that are still ‘dependent’ on centre, but began to gradually strengthen local economies, produce more and more locally, boycotting corporate enterprises. Goals - increasingly clearer and sharper - happiness for all members of community. Goals:
- Ever increasing freedom from dependence
- Increased longevity of life, freedom from morbidity
- Increased diversity, equality, tolerance
- reducing dependence on on-renewable. Sustainability
- Book ‘Limits to Growth’ by Donella Meadows and ors - The kind of development that ignores sustainability, will lead to decline in longevity and population and lead to catastrophic consequences. Small is Beautiful - E.F. Schumacher
- Adam smith - 'Theory of moral sentiments’ - balance of self-interest and natural human sympathy for fellow beings.
- 2015 IMF report - increase in income share of top 20% causes GDP growth to actually decline in medium term, while increase in income share of bottom 20% is associated with higher GDP growth
- An Uncertain Glory by Dreze and sen - India as a land of contrasts. India like islands of California in a sea of sub-saharan africa.
- Success of TN, Kerela, HP owed to "ambitious social programmes"
- Last chapter - The Need for Impatience. Similar to Greta’s 'I want you to panic'
- Stories:
- Grameen Banks of Bangladesh
- Subramaniam Swami’s New Book: ‘RESET: Regaining India’s Economic Legacy"
- By bleeding agriculture to the bone, exporting and draining natural resources estimated at $71 trillion at current prices, and by blocking native innovation, the British rule set India two centuries back in development
- Ch-1: 'Imperialism Uproots Agri’- Britain’s exploitative ‘revenue extracting zamindari system’ took a toll on India’s peasantry. Comparison with China: While in 1950, China had a comfortable food surplus enabling it to finance rapid industrial growth, India’s two century long decline in foodgrain yield left it lacking in such a cushion'
- Growth potential in the medium period depends on 3 things:
- Capacity to maintain high rate of investments and domestic savings
- Productive use of that capital investment
- deployment of innovation.
- Suggestions:
- Correct economic policy: One of incentive-based market system. Where the govt only acts as an umpire and enlightened patron, guiding market forces to equilibrium by incentive, whenever distortions take place.
- Abolish personal income tax (which disproportionately targets the salaried class, while the elite find loopholes and rich farmers don’t pay) to incentivize savings and demand.
- Fixed exchange rate of Rs. 50 per dollar, abolish p-notes
- Discards capitalism and socialism as material concepts and propounds integral humanism.(which elevates humans beyond straitjacket of hypnotized consumerism and recognizes and accomodates cultural and spiritual dimensions)
- "for the first time since liberalisation, India is witnessing a slowdown driven by a steep decline in private consumption'
- The degree of difference between an Amazon and the East India Company is in the extent of their monopolies that bring out the worst in corporations
Rivers:
- ’The Unquiet river’ by Arupjyoti Saikia - puts the Brahmaputra at the centre of Assam’s history.
Education:
Anecdotes:
- “Come back soon Ammi” - a teary eyed Arhaan implored his mother, while she dropped him for his first day at school. He had qualified to study for free in an elite school of Lucknow under the RTE Act. His mother, a homemaker, and father a chauffeur, always dreamt of a better life for their two children.
2 mutually contradictory functions: Ensure stability, encourage change
Innovation, imagination:
Alan More in his graphic novel - Ideas are bulletproof
Isaac Asimov - novels on robotics in early 20th century, while all conventional scholars mocked him. Today, we’re at the cusp of a robotic and AI revolution.
Jane Austen wrote ’Sense and sensibility’ at a time of social oppression in Britain. She gave birth to female lit without undergoing any formal education.
’Students should be taught how to think, not what to think’ - Margaret Mead
Britisher F.W. Thomas on India - ‘Education is no exotic in India. There is no country where the love of learning had so early an origin or has exercised so lasting and powerful an influence. “
Sir Francis Bacon - "Knowledge is Power”
Rammohan Roy wrote in journal ’Sambad Kaumudi’ on founding the Calcutta Hindu college - Instilling rationality and empathy is the primary goal of education, and universities must adhere to it.
‘Reader today, leader tomorrow’ - Aristotle
Education alone can help nourish a generation committed to change and capable of effecting a change.
"Go out, go out, I beg of you
and taste the beauty of the wild.
Behold the miracle of the Earth.
With all the wonder of a child.” - Edna Jaques
“Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.” - Dreams, by Langsten Hughes. First African-American to support himself as a writer.
Source: https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/dreams-by-langston-hughes
Science:
’Structure of scientific revolutions” by Thomas Kuhn - scientific enquiry and scientists are part of a paradigm of belief systems.
Lines:
- By 2030, India is poised to become the world’s 3rd largest economy, with the largest young, working population globally. RTE could usher in ric hhdividents to its growth story.
- The basis of all religions - the Apostles of Christianity, the prophets of Islam, the rishi-munis of Hinduism - . ….
Globalization, collectivism:
“Good fenses make good neighbours” - Robert Frost - against individualism and selfishness. Neighbourliness and good will towards others.
“The love song” - by TS Eliot, in the wake of devastation brought by WW1 - importance of human connections, community over individuality.
Gender Justice:
"The pedestal on which women are made to stand is often a cage.” - Justice Ginsburg
Philosophy:
Rene Descartes - “Cogito ergo sum” - I think therefore I am.
Rousseau - “Man is born free but everywhere he goes, he is in chains”
Jaina doctrine of ‘Anekantavada’ - truth is always relative, may manifest in several forms
Buddhist ‘Ashtanga marga’
John stuart mill - paper ‘On Liberty’ - Greatest good for the greatest number.
“the future is made of the same stuff as the present” -Simone well
Happiness is a direction and not a place - Sydney Harris
Philosophical quotes - https://byjus.com/free-ias-prep/useful-quotes-for-upsc-mains-exam-gs-and-essay-papers/ anand gives a call to delve into social service.
Thomas hobbes - Self-interest and self-preservation are our fundamental instincts.
“Knowledge of the self is knowledge of the universe” - Upanishads
’There is no religion higher than truth’ - Gandhi
Nishkama karma - focussing on means more than ends - Gita
Gita teaches that Even evil depends upon goodness. Evil army of Duryodhana could only hold together by virtues of friendnship, loyalty, courage and sacrifice. Contained good people- Bhishma, Karna etc. Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement: by withdrawing goodness from eil, the latter would collapse of its own accord.
Einstein on Gandhi - Generations to come will scarce believe that such as one as this, ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.
Environment
‘A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in” - Greek proverb
(Below - all Ralph)
Nature, in its common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf - Ralph
In the woods, we return to reason and faith
All parts of nature incessantly work into each other’s hands for the profit of man - the wind sows the seed, sun evaporates the sea, ice condenses rain, rain feeds the plants, and so on - and the endless circulations of the divine charity nourish man
“Daffodils” - by William Wordsworth - on the joys nature offers, and can even give you wealth - “I gazed and gazed - but little thought, what wealth the show to me had brought” (Show of daffodils dancing). “I wandered lonely as a cloud”
‘Al Gore’ - An Inconvenient truth - documentary
- Each one of us is a cause of global warming, but each one of us can make choices to change that with the things we buy, the electricity we use, the cars we drive; we can make choices to bring our individual carbon emissions to zero
Peace:
“Democratic peace theory” - War is less likely in a democratic state. It is the people who are most affected, and they can pressurise the govt against it. Eg - USA’s trend towards troops withdrawl.
Rousseau had said - British citizens are free only once in 5 yrs
Chanakya: ’throne’ is an embodiment of the will to govern, and not the will to satiate one’s own lust and greed. The king is “married to the law” and “yearn to work for the janapada”
Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’ - Peace and war as temporary and overlapping phases of human condition
Dreams of Martin Luther King, empathy of mother Teresa, courage of Malala and Spirituality of Gandhi
Nations consist of people. And with their effort, a nation can accomplish all it could ever want - APJ Abdul Kalam
Idea of one nation - Narayana Guru’s society of one caste - “Manusha jaati” . The idea as propounded by saints of Bhakti movement, sufi poets. Oneness in quality (of unity and togetherness), not quantity. Common humanity, independent of the language we speak, religion we practise.
Justice, laws:
Ashoka’s Dhamma, Akbar’s “Sulh-i-kul’ - historical modes of justice - alternative yet effective mechanisms of justice
PRS Legislative - reading down of obscure, obsolete and non-contemporaneous laws can lead to a 43% resolution capacity growth.
‘Redundancy of laws is a sign of an ailing democracy’
A law is only as effective as its execution.
Montesqieu - Law should not only be percieved in terms of its acceptability among those who determine it but also its expectability in time, in his “The spirit of the Laws’ . ‘Useless laws weaken useful laws’ and ‘weak laws obscure strong laws’
John Rawls - Theory of justice - rationality as the basis of law and justice
“Arabian nights’ fables - “Law is for fencing the pasture, not shearing the sheep”
Service:
"A statesman is a politician who places himself at the service of the nation. A politician is a statesman who places the nation at his service.”h
-- Georges Pompidou
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others’ - George orwell’s Animal farm - comment on hypocrisy of governments who favour elite
Plato’s ideal state in his writing ’The Republic’. Thomas Morre’s ‘Utopia’ .
Quest of establishing an ideal state: Samuel Beckett - “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
‘I alone cannot change the world but I can cast a stone across water to cause ripples in the water’ - Mother Teresa.
2002 Reith lectures, Onora O’Neil quoted confucius on imp of trust:
- Confucius tolddescuok Tze-kung that 3 things are needed for govt - weapons, food and trust. If the ruler can’t hold on to all three, shuld give up weapons first and food next. Trust should be guarded to the end, coz ‘Without trust we cannot stand’
Democracy, decentralization
Sir Charles Metcalfe called villages as ‘Little Republics"
“The democrat is a young conservative, the conservative is an old democrat” - Ralph.
Napolean Bonaparte - an example of however courageous, powerful, intelliigent one may be, if the motive is selfish, one will fall someday.
Gandhi-Vinoba concept of ‘people power’
Panchayats as ‘paradise on earth’
Joint Liability Group enterprises under Kudambashree - a Major self-help group in Kerela, set up in 2000s
Martin Luther King - ’negative peace’ - ‘absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice’
Case study: Mendha Lekha - First village in country to exercise community forest rights under FRA
In Gadchiroli distt, Mh. Started a movement towards ’self-rule; in 1980s, much before the 73rd C.A Act. Earlier marred by problems of unemployment, poverty, corruption and exploitation by traders and moneylenders, a model today.
Movement initiated by mohan Hirabai Hiralal, a Gandhian.
Full control of forest and forest produce. First village to have come under Joint Forest mgmt in Mh.
Mahila Mandals implement liquor prohibition
Have gobar gas plants, cottage industries
’Study circles’ - informal groups - deliberate on issues and help gram sabha in informed decision making.
People actively involved in all decisions. “
Democracy is not just about insituttions, law making, popular suffrage. it is a way of life. Where violence is tamed, non-violent political and social arrangements replace oppressive modes of suppressing individuals to power of govt.
Utopian communities - Auroville in Puducherry, Christiania in Copenhagen
Case study of Kuthumbakkam, TN: Village self-governance: After years of work, the villagers of Kuthambakkam now enjoy good concrete roads, an effective drainage system, safe drinking water, and energy-efficient street lighting, in addition to having pucca (houses constructed with bricks/stone/concrete) houses. The various cost- effective and energy-saving technologies that we have promoted in his village have in turn provided employment to many villagers. It is possible to achieve the same results elsewhere as long as adequate infrastructural facilities are provided to rural populations, leading to an ‘economy of permanence’. - could be an essay beginning
- Realization that most things sold by indian villages are ‘unfinished’ products- harvested crops, unpasteurised milk, nuts for oil. In Kuthumbakkam , a Panchayat Academy - centre for vilage industries - processing machines, livelihood
- NGE model - cluster of 15-20 villages, different items are produced by separate villages based on mutual understanding and such produce is then marketed to each others’ villages on a reciprocal basis.
Henry Lefebvre in The Right of the City - provided a clarion call to challenge the structures of capitalism and articulate an alternative “contract of citizenship” - whereby all inhabitants (not just formal citizens) collectively reappropriate urban space - came out in the wake of worldwide protest movements of 1968.
Benyamin’s Novel Al Arabian Novel Factory: (backdrop of Arab Spring) unravels in a nameless Arab country referred to as the City, a land where authoritarian regime is using brute force to subdue the sparks of Arab Spring. Shows how obscene silence can be in times of strife and resistance. Also, highlights the repercussions on such unrest on tourism, business etc. Excerpt:
- "How is business?” I asked Reji. “Very bad. No one comes here anymore. You should have seen it here in the old days. Tourists everywhere! In a single weekend I would rent two to three hundred cars.” Reji’s voice expressed his distress. “I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this. It’s been seven months since I got my salary. I forget the last time I sent any money home. The landlord keeps asking for rent and I have nothing to give him. I am just holding on, hoping things will get better.”
- Novel is a recognition of the power of books in the face of state repression. (Novel talks about a mysterious book which tells of the arab spring and its failure)
- “Fear has enveloped the city like morning fog” - Pratap, an Indo-canadian in whose first-person narration the book is written
Democracy and dissent / protest
“Real Swaraj will come not by the acquisition of authority by a few, but by the capacity by all to resist authority when it is abused. In other words, Swaraj is to be attained by educating the masses to a sense of their capacity to regulate and control authority” - Gandhi
SC in Shaheen Bagh “ Democracy is not democarcy if dissent is disallowed. But protests cannot be indefinite and have to be done in designated spaces"
Women
The Kudumbashree movement. Kudumbashree translates to ‘Prosperity of the family’. Organizes poor women at grassroots level, enables their socio-economic empowerment through micro-credits, initiatives for vocational training, education, and healthcare. Today - 5 mn women are part of Kudumbshree, making it world’s largest women empowerment project
Not mass production, but production by the masses.
Countryside of Thrissur - rich in coconut trees. If you glance up a tree - an unusual sight - women plucking coconuts. How was this made possible? A special device - which helps climb women without human aid, preventing chest pains and other issues. Who made this possible - Kudambashree. Thus, women once relegated to society's backwaters, were now scaling new heights.
Kudumbashree’s Neighbourhood Groups (NHGs) - main focal points. Have an active involvement in panchayats also.
Kamala Harris - Memoir ’The Truths we hold’ - Dont let anybody tell you who you are. YOu tell them who you are
Freedom
'O Captain, My Captain’ - a tribute by Walt Whitman to Abraham Lincoln.
"O Captain! My Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;”
Karl Marx’s “a mess of pottage” - Taking something of immediate attraction but less value in exchange for something more distant but immensely valuable. Development vs freedom .
Basic pre-conditions for exercise of freedom - social goods like health, education sustainable living wage, food, decent standards of life etc. They are but milestones on the road to freedom and must not be given in exchange of curbing freedom.
“Hope is the thing with feathers” - Emily Dickenson
“You either tell them what to do or tell them what to think” - a classic excerpt from Orwellian dystopian novel “1984” - about a totalitarian state Oceania
Kautilya’s Arthashastra - shows how the king’s liberty and power is bound by the ultimate virtue of serving his subjects.
“Suffragette movement” - right for women to vote
Roman statesman Cicero - Freedom is participation in power.
Courage:
Revolt of Niyamgiri tribals against Vedanta’s bauxite mining, Odissa.
Brick walls are not to keep us out, they are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. They’re there to stop people who don’t want it badly enough - Randy Pausch in his ‘Last Lecture”
This wil remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave - Elmer Davis
Galileo - “Eppur si muovi” - meaning 'and yet it moves’ - when being forced in 1630s to recant his theory of the Earth’ rotation about sun
"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood” - Marie curie
"The man that conquers himself is superior to the one who conquers a thousand men in battle” - Gautam Buddha
"The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” - Nelson mandela
Our valors are our best Gods - Ralph
Columbus found the New World in an undecked boat - ralph
“Still I rise” - poem about African American Courage by Maya Angelou - lines:
- “You may tread me down in the very dirt, But still like dust I’ll rise"
“On his Blindness’ - poem by John Milton - became totally blind at 42, after having risen to the position of the most celebrated English writer. How he dispels sadness and sees an extraordinary purpose in his shortcoming.
"If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!” - If by Rudyard Kipling. His life was replete with trials, hardships. Poem written 3 years after winning Nobel prize.
"The man who wins, Is the man who thinks he can!” - Walter D. Wintle
“Once I knew only darkness and stillness. Now I know hope and joy” - Helen Keller. An American author, politicalactivist and campaigner for deaf and blind charities. Became first blind-deaf person to attain a bachelor’s degree in early 20th cent. ‘What is life, but a story of adventures’ - she writes, in ’The story of my Life’.
Emmeline Pankhurst, a leading British Suffragette, who played most active role in helping women gain right to vote in early 20th cent.
Malala Yousafzai - Shot in the head at close range in retaliation for her campaign for edu and criticism of Taliban.
Self-reliance:
The highest merit we ascribe to Plato, Milton etc is that they wrote and spoke not what men, but they thought. - Ralph
To be great is to be misunderstood. Pythagoras was misunderstood, Socrates, Jesus, Newton, Galileo. (=> Speak your mind, do not conform)
Nothing is at last sacred as the intensity of our own mind - Ralph
Shakspeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare. (Do not imitate. Carve your own path)
As great a stake depends on your private act today, as followed the renowned and public steps of greatest men.
“I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul” - Willian Ernest Henley, in Invictus - who refused to be crushed on account of hardships his life threw upon him. Tuberculosis twice, One leg amputated. Successfully fought to save the other
’Time’s definition of coal is the diamond’ - Kahlil Gibran
Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. - Poem Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson.
(On adventure, not giving up, wandering etc)
“ You've all that the greatest of men have had,
Two arms, two hands, two legs, two eyes,
And a brain to use if you would be wise” - Edgar Guest in Poem Equipment
Not all those who wander are lost. The Road Not taken, by Robert Frost, derives from his personal life and dilemnas. Aspirations of being a writer, vs a settled and secure life in future - the ‘American Dream’.
GS ESSAYS:
- Maritime:
- In Ancient Puranas, geographical defn of India is withr eference to the seas - ‘land to the north of the seas’
- Lothal - World’s oldest ports
- There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen. - Vladimar Lenin.
- For essay on UN:
- ALFRED Tennyson, the English poet, foresaw in his 1837 ‘Locksley Hall’ that nations, realising that they could destroy one another, might mutually agree to form a political federation, ‘the Parliament of Man’, to resolve disputes peacefully