Mahabharata 1

Mahabharata “O Arjuna,”, “in this world I have taught a twofold way of life; the way of knowledge for men who engage in contemplation, & the way of works for men of actions. One cannot maintain even one’s physical life without action. Therefore, do your allotted work regardless of results, for men attain the highest good by doing work without attachment to its results. Resign yourself to me & fix your consciousness in the self, without desire or egoism, & then fight, freed from your fever.”Krishna Following is a gleaning from The Argumentative Indian Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity By Amartya Sen The Argumentative...

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Opium addiction

Opium addiction Ji, Sethji, said Neel. He ran his eye over the lines and said: It seems that these are excerpts from a memorandum written by a high-ranking Chinese official and sent to the Emperor. Yes, said Baharam. Go on. What does he say? Opium is a poisonous drug, brought from foreign countries. To the question, what are its virtues, the answer is: it raises the animal spirits and prevents lassitude. Hence the Chinese continually run into its toils. At first they merely strive to follow the fashion of the day; but in the sequel the poison takes effect, the habit become fixed, and the sleeping smokers are more like corpses-lean and haggard...

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Opium: Bombay to Canton

Opium: Bombay (Mumbai) to Canton (Guangzhou) Following text is a gleaning from River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh Later there would be much discussion on whether the Anahita was struck by the same storm that had hit the Ibis. Such information as was available then made it impossible to come to any reliable determination on this: what was certain was that the Anahita was less than a hundred miles west of Great Nicobar Island, heading for the Nicobar Channel, when she too an into bad weather. She had left Bombay sixteen days earlier and was on her way to Canton, by way of Singapore. Until then the voyage had been uneventful and the Anahita had...

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Poppy fields

Poppy fields, Opium, Taliban, Mujahadeen, Russians and Americans Following is an extraction from Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie The Russians were in Afghanistan and consuqently many Afghans had fled to Pakistan, and were even to be found at forward camp number 22 in the “free”-Azad-sector of Kashmir. In spite of the enormous numbers of refugees occupying huge, town-sized camps in the Pak northwest, the Afghans were not poor. There were extensive opium fields in the vicinity of the camps and the refugee chieftains brought their way into the poppy business, using the gold and jewelry they had brought across the border for capital and backing...

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Cold turkey off Heroin

Cold turkey off Heroin Following is a gleaning from Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts ISBN 0-349-11754-3 We all cope with anxiety and stress, to one degree or another, with the help of a cocktail of chemicals produced in the body and released in the brain. Chief among them is the endorphin group. The endorphins are peptide neurotransmitters that have pain-relieving properties. Anxiety and stress and pain bring on the endorphin response as a natural coping mechanism. When we take any of the opiates-morphine or opium or heroin, in particular-the body stops producing endorphins. When we stop talking opiates, there’s a lag of between five or...

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PAPILLON THEME-JERRY GOLDSMITH-SOUNDTRACK-MEMORIES MC QUEEN

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Editors - Papillon

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Karla and Shantaram at Goa

Karla and Shantaram at Goa is a gleaning  from Gregory David Roberts’s Shantaram ‘I love you , Karla,’ I said when we were alone again. ‘I loved you the first second I saw you. I think I’ve loved you for so long as there’s been love in the world. I love your voice. I love your face. I love your hands. I love everything you do, and I love the way your mind works, and the things you say. And even though it’s all true, all that, I don’t really understand it, and I can’t explain it-to you or to myself. I just love you. I just love you with all my heart. You do what God should do; you give me a reason to live. You give me reason to love...

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Bollywood

Bollywood Hindi movies aren’t to everyone’s taste. Some foreigners I’d dealt with had told me that they loathed the kaleidoscopic turmoil of musical numbers, bursting stochastically between weeping mothers, sighing infatuations, and brawling villains. I understood what they meant, but I didn’t agree with them. A year before, Johnny Cigar had told me that in former lives I must’ve been at least six different Indian personalities. I’d taken it as a high complement, but it wasn’t until I saw my first Bollywood movie shoot that I knew at last, and exactly, what he’d meant. I loved the singing, the dancing, and the music with the whole of my heart...

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Black Bombay: the Travel Racket

Black Bombay: the Travel Racket Following is a gleaning from Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. Pop star Madonna and her husband Guy Ritchie, wearing a cap, visit Mumbai’s Ambedkarnagar slums on Tuesday. Author Gregory David Roberts, (behind Madonna) who spent a long time in the slums, showed them around. The travel racket, he explained, was an especially lucrative part of the currency trade. It involved large numbers of people from the millions of Indians who worked in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Muscat, Bahrain, Kuwait, and elsewhere throughout the Arab Gulf. The Indian workers, employed on contracts for three, six, or twelve months...

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