Mahashweta-Sudha Murty

A woman with a serious heart condition had gone into labour, and Dr. Anand had stayed at her side the whole night. By the time the child was delivered, Anand was exhausted. He gazed at mother and child, wondering whether the precise moment of birth was determined by the baby or its mother.

Both parents play a equally significant roles in the birth of a child. But at the moment of birth-the moment of truth-the only reality is the mother. She is the one who sheltered and nurtured the baby withing her body while the father watched the sidelines.

Initially Anupama did not bother much about the patch. But as the days passed, she realized that it was growing bigger. Anupama had seen many people with leukoderma, but had hardly given them a fleeting thought. Anupama could not share her agony with Anand.

Anu hesitated for a momet then raised her sari, so that her foot was exposed. The doctor was aware that tiny white patches like that had ruined many marriages, shattered many hearts, broken mant engagements. He did not try to stop her from crying. These patches may come anywhere at any age. There is no explanation for them at all. Some women even get them during pregnancy.

Shammana was called."Take ur daughter back with u; she need not come back until she is completely cured and my son returns and send for her. we have been deceived. Make sure u leave all the expensive gifts we have given u in your room, and take only what is yours when u go". Knowing that Radakka would humiliate him further, Anu went up to her father & stopped him from falling at Radhkka's feet. She wnet o her room collected a few things that beloned to her, Anand's photo's and left with tears in her eyes and did not look back even once.

Days passed and there was no reply from Anand. Anu sat down on a stone outside the temple. If anyone jumped from there, they would definitely die. She thought-how would it matter once she was dead? Nothing would hurt her. would anybody feel sorry for her? Miss her? Anand....he would be relieved once she was gone. Her mind was made up now. Some unseen power was holding her back. Anupama was better than Girija (SIL), but a small white patch was pushing her to her death. Was it fair? She had finally discovered the real Anand. He had loved her beauty and married her for it. He was not ready to accept her if her beauty was marred. Ppl would pity him and that would be unbearable for him.
She looked down at the valley again, and saw it in a different light. Life had begun to have new meaning for her. She was now ready to face the word. She looked back and prayed to Goddess, give me courage to live no matter what happens. Anu returned home and walked up her father to say----Appa I am getting bored here. I want to go to B'bay and stay with Sumi (her college freind).

Hari was surprized when he saw her. From Sumi's description, he had imagined Anupama as an ordinary girk with white patches marring her face and body. But the girl he saw standing b4 him was breathtakingly beautiful; she was like a heavenly vision come down to earth. Compared to Anu, Sumi looked plainer than ever.

Anu was invited to a wedding..a grand one. What was the use of all that expense? The real success of a marriage depended not on superficial factors such as those, but upon love and mutual understanding btw husband and wife.

Hari reached for anupama while she was changing her sari. She slapped him across his face. "u should be ashamed of urself. U have called me ur sister..will u behave wit ur sister like this?"
Hari reurned home from work and found Sumi cooking dinner. The house was quiet.Where is Anu?....Sumi replied--Oh!! She left this morning. She got a PG accommodation in Bandra.

Vasant was concentrating on the unconscious woman in front of him. She looked in her early 20's. What a blemish on this beautiful portrait! One of the para's from the book found in the patients purse was something Vasant still remembered reading from his school time--
There is no perfection in anything in life.
Even in the great river Ganga there are black serpents.
The beautiful saraswati has jet black curls;
The moon has a dark spot
Because even in nature perfection is not possible.

Anupama do u consider urself unfortunate?
No Satya--Ofthe 1000's of flowers that blossom on a tree a few will bear fruit. And out of those few fruits, insects and squirrels will eat some. Th etree does not keep anything for itself. Does that mean that the life of the tree is wasted? I have great freinds and good students, and I am econimically independent.

When did u come from england?...Anand---"2 yrs back. Anu plz forgive me Every1 makes msitakes"
Pls sit down. Which mistake are u seeking forgiveness for? Pls remember that saying the right thing at the right time is waht makes a conversation meaningful. Language is a tool we use to express ourselves. It is what differentiate animals from animals.
Anand found courage to say--Anu, Avva is old fashioned. She was worried that if we had daughters their future would be difficult.
U were worried abt ur unborn daughters' futures. I am also sombodies daughter, did u worry abt my future. U have never treated me as a human being. I was only a beautiful object u wished to possess and flaunt. Had I known ur attitude towards life, I would have told u to marry simebady else. Suppose u got leukoderma, do u think I woludl have left you for some other man?.

I have excellent friends who trust me and will not hesitate to help me if I am in trouble. Their unconditional love has never made me think of myself as blemished. I cannot help feeling sad for those women who are still at the mercy of their husbans and in laws, and are emotionally and economically dependent on them. I am independent and I thank God for having been so fortunate".

Anupama, think one more time about what I have said..come back to me!

Anupama picked her books, "U are a well educated man from a good family. But there is one thing u have not learnt..U should never call a woman whom u do not know by her given name"
Anand watced and Anupama walked awa

Vasant was supposed to leave for his village in 3 weeks. He still wanted to know what Anupama had decided to accept his proposal.
I am sorry Vasant, but pls forget ur idea. I dont want to get entangled in the same circle of husband and family.
Anupama u won't be 4ever young. Who will ook after u in ur old age?
Do u think we should marry and have children so that we have simeone to look after us in our oldage? This is not right..others have their own lives to lead.
Anupma smiled and Vanst tried hard to hide his unhappiness. Oh goD! If only I had known her before her husband ruined her life, I would not have lost this priceless jewel!

Freako-nOmics

• What do School Teachers and Sumo wrestlers have in common?

We all learn to respond to incentives, -ve and +ve, from the outset of life. An incentive is a bullet, a lever, a key:an often tiny object with astonishing power to change a situation. It simply means of urging people to do more of a good thing and less of a bad thing. There are basic 3 flavors of incentive: economic, social and moral. Very often a single incentive scheme will include all 3 varieties.
So if sumo wrestlers, schoolteachers,and day care parents all cheat, are we to assume that mankind is innately & universally corrupt? And if so..how corrupt?

• Where have all the Criminals gone?

In 1966, one yr after Nicolae Ceausescu became the communist dictator of Romania, he made abortion illegal. "The fetus is the property of the entire society,". Anyone who avoids having children is a deserter who abandons the laws of national continuity."
Ceausescu's ban on abortion was designed to achieve one of his major aims:to rapidly strengthen Romania by boosting its population. Abortion was in fact the main form of birth control, with four abortions for every live birth. Now virtually overnight, abortion was forbidden. The only exemption were mothers who already had four children or women with significant standing in the communist party. At the same time, all contraception and sex education were banned. Govt agents sardonically known as the Menstrual Police regularly rounded up women in their woek places to administer pregnancy tests. If woman repeatedly failed to concieve, she was forced to pay a steep "celibacy tax"

Crime drop explanations: Tougher gun laws.
Debates on this subject are rarely coolheaded. Gun advocates believe that gun laws are too strict: opponents believe exactly the opp. What is gun? - Its a tool that can be used to kill someone, of course, but more significantly, a gun is a great disrupter of the natural order.

What the link between abortion and crime does say is this: when the govt gives a woman the opportunity to make her own decisions about abortion, she generally does a good job of figuring out if she is in a position to raise the baby well. If she decides she can't she often chooses the abortion.

But once a woman decides she will have her baby, a pressing question arises, what are parents supposed to do once a child is born??

• What makes a perfect parent?

What I don;t agree to :Moms and dads achieving excellence in parenting, stressing how imp it is to train a baby , early on to sleep alone through the night.

What I agree: Co- Sleeping. Sleeping alone is harmful for a baby's psyche and that he shoould be brought into the "family bed".

It is also believed that a crying baby should never be picked up unless it is in pain. As Holt, explained , a baby should be left to cry for 15-30 minutes a day as it's the baby's exercise.

Consider the parents of an 8yr old girl named, say Molly. Her 2 best friends, Amy and Imani each live nearby. Molly;s parents know that Amy's parents keep a gun in their house, so they have forbidden Molly to play there. Instead, Molly spend a lot of time at Imani's house, which has a swimming pool in the backyard. Molly's parents feel good about having made such a smart choice to protect their daughter.

But acc to the data their choice isn't smart at all. In a given year, there is one drowning of a child for every 11,000 residential pools in the US. Mean while there is 1 child killed by gun for every 1 million plus guns. So why is a swimming pool less frightening than a gun? The thought of a child being shot through the chest with a neighbor's gun is gruesome, dramatic, horrifying-in a word, outrageous. Swimming pools do not inspire outrage. This is due in part to the familiarity factor. Just as most people spend more time in cars than in airplanes, most of us have a lot more exp swimming in pools than shooting guns. But it takes only about thirty seconds for a child to drown, and it often happens noiselessly. An infant can drown in water as shallow as a few inches. The steps to prevent drowning, meanwhile are pretty straightforward: a watchful adult, a fence around the pool, a locked back door so a toddler doesn't slip outside unnoticed.

The Kite Runner- Khalid Hosseini

Reading this book was a good experience. Normally, men are generalized to be 'Baba' type's. The one's who are macho and ready to go, always on toes for any sort of struggle or challenge. But the way the character of Amir has been portrayed, we see a very rare disposition of man, where he does not want to confront things but just let them pass by without being a part of the storm even while being in the amidst of a twister. Amir's constant struggle with his pricking conscience to forget the bitter truth about Hassan is greatly shown in bits and pieces. His ill deed of witnessing the horrible scene, which ultimately tortured both his and Hassan's companionship has followed him till the end of the novel.

The emotional being in both Amir and Hassan while being cruel and kind respectively is what I liked reading. Amir tries hell lot so that Hassan leaves their house and once and for all he can get rid of the monsters in his head that remind him of the day Hassan fought for his master's kite..His 'Amir Agha's' kite. The same day when Amir was acclaimed as a winner, but in stead the toll of events made him feel nothing more than a looser.
The protagonist here is Amir, but if I would make a film.. :-))..(allow yourself to laugh!!)...in my film the lead character would be Hassan. As the story revolves around his mystery and the unexplained love from Baba for him.

Although after knowing about Hassan being Baba's son, I thought how come I could not guess it. But I was really amazed to know that twist in the story.
Also it made me sad to comprehend how Amir must have felt after knowing, how could he be a silent spectator to the wrongness that took place with Hassan. Somehow, the portrayal of his
calm and unoffensive nature makes me think, even if he knew, the truth about Hassan and Baba, would he have the nerves to fight Assef and his friends and stop the injustice??

From the beginning of the book, the beauty about the town Kabul and then Afghanistan is very stunning. Rahim Khan, Ali, Soraya, Sanauber, The General, Jamila Jaan, Baba and Amir and of course Sohrab and Farid....they all have their own small stories that gives air to the entire tale of The KiTe Runner. The afgani words are something to hold on to. Tashakor...for means Thank U....Many more that I would like to list at the end.

Hassan though not a literate is depicted to more wiser and considerate than Amir. He comprehends Amir's virgin stories and dreams even much aptly than Amir himself.
"The same night I wrote my first story. It took me 30 minutes. It was a drak tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. Buteven though he had always been poor, he was happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himslef sad so that his tears could make him rich The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in his hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife's slain bosy in his arms "
Amir narrates his story to Hassan in the middle of the night.
"Someday Inshallah, you will be a great writer. But will you permit me to ask a ? about the story, he said shyly. If I may ask,why did the man kill his wife? In fact, why did he ever have to feel sad to shed tears? Couldn't he have just smelled an onion?"
I was stunned. That particular point, so obvious it was utterly stupid, hadnt even occurred to me. I moved my lips soundlessly. The plot hole. Taught by Hassan of all people. Hassan who couldn't had never written a single word in his entire life. A voice, cold and dark, suddenly whispered in my ear,What does he know, that illeterate Hazara. Well..I began and never got to finish my sentence.

They'd both been crying: I could tell from their red, puffed up eyes. Baba came right out and asked, "Did u steal that money? Did u steal amir's watch Hassan?" Hassan replied in a resly voice-Yes!

I flinched, like I'd been slapped. My heart sank and I almost blurted out the truth. Then I understood:this was Hassan's final sacrifice for me. If he has said NO, Babab would have believed him because we all knew Hassan never lied. He knew I'd seen everything in that alley, tat I'd stood there and done nothing. he knew I had betrayed him and yet he once again, maybe for the las time. I loved him in that moment, loved him more than I'd ever loved anyone, and I wanted to tell them that I was the snake in the grass, the monster in the lake. I wasn't worthy of sacrifice, I was a liar, a cheat, and a thief. I wanted to bearth again. Except Baba stunned me by saying"I forgive u Hassan."

Forgive? But theft was the one unforgivable sin, the common de nominator of all sins. When U kill a man, u steal alife. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. when U tell a lie u steal someone from the right to the truth. When u cheat, u steal th eright to fairness. There is no act more wretched than stealing. Hadn't Baba sat me on his lap and said these words?. Then how could he forgive me for not being the son he'd always wanted? Why?

We are leaving, why don;t u leave us to the bus station to Hazarajat?

Then I saw Baba do something I had never seen him doing before: he cried. It scared me a little, seeing a grown man sob. Fathers weren't supposed to cry.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The skirting finally came to end over the dinner, when the general put down his fork and aid, " So amirJan, you're going to tell us why you have brought back this boy with you?"Jamila Jan and Soraya both objected at General's inquisitiveness....

"Its Ok SOraya, Is Ok General sahib is quite right. People will ask. "

U see genral Sahib, my father slept with his servan;t wfe. she bore him a son named Hassan. Hassan is dead ow. that boy sleeping on my couch is Hassan's son. he's my nephew. thats what u tell people when they ask"

They were all staring at me. "And one more thing General Sahib, U will never again refer to him as Hazara boy in my presence. he has a name and its Sohrab"

At this point of time I wonder, that was this confession(Where he accepts Sohrab as a nephew from his father's illegitimate relation) more painful to Amir or would in his childhood having the courage to tell that he was there when Hassan was molested, that would have been more gruesome. I guess as one's Ego grows with time, definitely he must have been more hurt to let his wife and her family know about the truth. But high time that he realized, not everything can be covered under the gloominess of night and slept over on. His wife Soraya was a doll to accept Sohrab and was patient, despite her gestures to bestow Sohrab with motherhood, which she failed every time she maintained her cool and gave all the time and space to both Amir and Sohrab to come above their insecurities relating to their respective kite running childhood's.

Some afgani words and their meanings-

• Laaf- Tendency to exaggerate
• Saratan- Cancer
• Qiyamat- The Judgement Day
• Chapandaz- Highly skilled horesmen
• Shahnamah- 10th century Epic of ancient persian heroes.
• Goshtakhar - Ear eater
• Kunis- Fag
• Moftakhir - Proud
• Khannum- Wife
• Tassali- Condolence
• Parchami - Communist
• Salaam Bachem- Hello my child
• Zinda Mirgaza- Lofe goes on
• Khastegars- Suitors
• Yelda- First night of winter
• Nang Namoos- Honor & Pride
• Mojarad- Single yound man
• Moalem- Teacher
• Komak- Somebody help
• Iftikhar- Pride
• Khar Khara Mishnassah- Takes a donkey to know a donley
• Khoshteep- Handsome
  
• Shirni Khori- Eating of Sweets
• Kochech Morgha- Chicken Bazaar
• Qishla- Military Barracks
• Ihtiram- Respect
• Hadia - Gift
  

Indian Railways

I was searching for a site which can provide current status of any train. And I got many sites which provide lot of information about trains in India. So here I am sharing all the information that I have gathered.

www.indianrail.gov.in/

This is most widely used site. Everybody knows about it. You can search train timings and availability but you cannot book tickets.
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www.irctc.co.in/

This is second most popular railway site. It provides all the facilities of first site and you can book tickets also on this site.
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http://www.cleartrip.com/trains

This is newly launched private site. It is very fast in comparison to above sites. And the interface is also very user friendly. It provides all the facilities as above sites.
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http://www.railticketonline.com/

Another site to book train tickets online.

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http://erail.in/

This is somewhat similar to the first site but has better interface. And it is fast also.
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http://www.trainenquiry.com/indexNS.aspx

This site provides some extra information like all the trains passing through a particular station, and usual platform numbers of all trains at some major station in all four zones. And the most important use of this site is, it tells u exact arrival and departure of any train at any station with exact delay(if any).
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www.railtourismindia.com/

Its a tourism site having information of railway tour packages and special tourist trains.
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http://www.indianrailways.gov.in/

It is official site which has railway programs, press releases, budgets etc. And of course trains related information is also available.
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http://www.konkanrailway.com/

This site is exclusively for Konkan Railway.
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http://www.southernrailway.org/

It is similar to first site. Just the URL is different.
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http://indian-railways.rediff.com/

Its a rediff site which provide search in railways database. And its very quick.
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http://www.indianrailwaytickets.net.in/

This site provides general information about procedures , rules and regulation, and all.
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Different ways to check the status of your PNR.

1. Use www.indianrail.gov.in/
2. Use www.irctc.co.in/
3. Use http://erail.in/
4. Send an message using SMS on your mobile to 9-77-33-00000
To get PNR status of Indian Railways train ticket, enter your 10 digit pnr number (ex: 2342345587).
5. Add PNR Status google gadget in the Google desktop.
6. Use http://www.cleartrip.com/trains/pnr
7. Call 139 from land line or mobile for any railway inquiry.


I hope this information will be useful to many.

Thanks,
Manish

Freedom At Midnight

Yesterday only I finished this book "Freedom at Midnight" by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins. The Book was first published in the year 1975 but even today it is very refreshing. There is no doubt that authors have done a tremendous research about all the related historic events. It can be very well claimed as a book of facts, which are usually very informative but too boring to keep the reader engrossed, but this book is an exception. On one hand you will get to know about the history of India during Independence while on the other hand you will cherish the each and every word of it.
First few chapters give an account of all the important figures who took part in the process of Independence of India. I found this book somewhat inclined towards Louis Mountbatten. His role in the transfer of power and as a first Governor General of free India has been too glorified. This could be because of the reason that when the book was written very few people involved in the process Indian independence were alive. And the last Viceroy of India was among those fortunate ones. Authors had lot of discussions with him so they got to know his version of events that took place during the independence.
One of the most interesting chapters in the book is about the Maharajas and Nawabs of India. It includes lot of fascinating stories about the passions, opulence and grandeur. Some of the incidents are really very hilarious. Raja of Dhenkanal, a state in eastern India, used to organize a big function in which he used to show copulation of elephants to his distinguished guests. India's ruling princess had on an average 11 titles, 5.8 wives, 12.6 children, 9.2 elephants, 2.8 railway cars, 3.4 Rolls Royces and 22.9 tigers killed.
Some chapters in the middle show the barbarism and cruelity of rioters during partition. Few incidents are so gruesome that they could bring tears to your eyes. The trains coming from Pakistan were full of blood and mutilated bodies of Hindus leaving pakistan and trains full of Muslims leaving India also got slaughtered even before they could cross the Indian borders. Amidst this chaos a small and heart touching love story of Boota Singh is like a oasis in dessert.

And the last chapters unfold the mystery of murder of Mahatma Gandhi. The murder was first attempted on 20th Jan 1948 but failed. After that the laggard police could not arrest a single person. Which gave the culprits more time to plan another attempt on 30th Jan 1948 only 10 days after the first attempt. And this time the attempt was successful. Condolence messages came from whole world. Mountbatten said "Mahatma Gandhi will go down in history on a par with Buddha and Jesus Christ.".The most stirring message was from Hindustan Standard which termed the murder as Second Crucifixion. They left the editorial page blank with black border. At its center was a single paragraph set in bold type. It read:

"Gandhi Ji has been killed by his own people for whose redemption he lived. This second crucifixion in the history of the world hasbeen enacted on a Friday - the same day Jesus was done to death one thousand nine hundred and fifteen years ago. Father, forgive us."

More facts about Gandhi Ji murder can be found at http://www.mkgandhi.org/assassin.htm

Gandhi Ji's Fundaas

Gandhi Ji's Truth

Gandhi Ji's truth had two faces, the absolute and the relative. Man, as long as he was in the flesh, had only fleeting intimations of absolute truth. He had to deal with relative truth in his daily existence. Gandhi Ji liked to employ a parable to illustrate the difference between his two truths. Put your left hand in a bowl of ice-cold water, then in a bowl of luke warm water, he would say. The luke warm water feels hot. Then put the right hand in a bowl of hot water and into the same bowl of luke warm water. Now the luke warm water feels cold; yet its temperature is constant. The absolute truth is waters constant temperature, he would observe, but the relative truth perceived by the human hands varied.

Gandhi Ji on Sex

Gandhi Ji had some different views on sex. According to him the act of sex should be performed solely for the purpose of re-production and not for enjoyment. He advocated that the sex diffuses human energy which should be conserved and utilized in proper direction. He himself took the vow of Brahmcharya at the age of 37. And he followed sexual continence afterwords through out his life.

Life of PI : by Yann Martel

Life of PI : by Yann Martel

Amazing piece of imagination by Yann Martel. I still don’t know or believe ,that it is actually a true story. Never mind, it is written in such a way that even if you try to disprove the entire story or parts of it, like those Japanese try to do in the end, you'll find it difficult.

For me "Life of PI" was a perfect blend of Facts with Fiction.

Initially I thought, while I was reading the first part, that it’s just an account of a Zoologist and someone who is too much fascinated with Religion. But gladly, I was wrong. Second part was amazing. It had an amazing mixture of almost all human emotions: Hope, despair, Innovation, Dejection. Plus you get to feel the Joy of Friendship (even with a beast), different roles of Nature and finally a Happy Ending.

So I selected some of the pieces from the novel which I loved, inclusive of few Facts and mostly Literary Gems, specially the one which describes Fear. There are which i found on WIKI


My greatest wish—other than salvation—was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story. One I could read again and again, with new eyes and a fresh understanding each time. Alas, there was no scripture in the lifeboat. I was a disconsolate Arjuna in a battered chariot without the benefit of Krishna's words. The first time I came upon a Bible in the bedside table of a hotel room in Canada, I burst into tears. I sent a contribution to the Gideons the very next day, with a note urging them to spread the range of their activity to all places where worn and weary travelers might lay down their heads, not just to hotel rooms, and that they should leave not only Bibles, but other sacred writings as well. I cannot think of a better way to spread the faith. No thundering from a pulpit, no condemnation from bad churches, no peer pressure, just a book of scripture quietly waiting to say hello, as gentle and powerful as a little girl's kiss on your cheek.

Sea is a city

Just below me, all around, unsuspected by me, were highways, boulevards, streets and roundabouts bustling with submarine traffic. In water that was dense, glassy and flecked by millions of lit-up specks of plankton, fish like trucks and buses and cars and bicycles and pedestrians were madly racing about, no doubt honking and hollering at each other. The predominant colour was green. At multiple depths, as far as I could see, there were evanescent trails of phosphorescent green bubbles, the wake of speeding fish. As soon as one trail faded, another appeared. These trails came from all directions and disappeared in all directions. They were like those time-exposure photographs you see of cities at night, with the long red streaks made by the tail lights of cars. Except that here the cars were driving above and under each other as if they were on interchanges that were stacked ten storeys high. And here the cars were of the craziest colours. The dorados—there must have been over fifty patrolling beneath the raft—showed off their bright gold, blue and green as they whisked by. Other fish that I could not identify were yellow, brown, silver, blue, red, pink, green, white, in all kinds of combinations, solid, streaked and speckled. Only the sharks stubbornly refused to be colourful.
But whatever the size or colour of a vehicle, one thing was constant: the furious driving. There were many collisions—all involving fatalities, I'm afraid—and a number of cars spun wildly out of control and collided against barriers, bursting above the surface of the water and splashing down in showers of luminescence. I gazed upon this urban hurly-burly like someone observing a city from a hot-air balloon. It was a spectacle wondrous and awe-inspiring. This is surely what Tokyo must look like at rush hour.

Fear

I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread.

Fear next turns fully to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, while your sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of your body. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear. Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you've defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.

The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.

Seas and Skies:

There were many skies. The sky was invaded by great white clouds, flat on the bottom but round and billowy on top. The sky was completely cloudless, of a blue quite shattering to the senses. The sky was a heavy, suffocating blanket of grey cloud, but without promise of rain. The sky was thinly overcast. The sky was dappled with small, white, fleecy clouds. The sky was streaked with high, thin clouds that looked like a cotton ball stretched apart. The sky was a featureless milky haze. The sky was a density of dark and blustery rain clouds that passed by without delivering rain. The sky was painted with a small number of flat clouds that looked like sandbars. The sky was a mere block to allow a visual effect on the horizon: sunlight flooding the ocean, the vertical edges between light and shadow perfectly distinct. The sky was a distant black curtain of falling rain. The sky was many clouds at many levels, some thick and opaque, others looking like smoke. The sky was black and spitting rain on my smiling face. The sky was nothing but falling water, a ceaseless deluge that wrinkled and bloated my skin and froze me stiff.

There were many seas. The sea roared like a tiger. The sea whispered in your ear like a friend telling you secrets. The sea clinked like small change in a pocket. The sea thundered like avalanches. The sea hissed like sandpaper working on wood. The sea sounded like someone vomiting. The sea was dead silent. And in between the two, in between the sky and the sea, were all the winds.

And there were all the nights and all the moons.


Hyena:

I am not one to hold a prejudice against any animal, but it is a plain fact that the spotted hyena is not well served by its appearance. It is ugly beyond redemption. Its thick neck and high shoulders that slope to the hindquarters look as if they've come from a discarded prototype for the giraffe, and its shaggy, coarse coat seems to have been patched together from the leftovers of creation. The colour is a bungled mix of tan, black, yellow, grey, with the spots having none of the classy ostentation of a leopard's rosettes; they look rather like the symptoms of a skin disease, a virulent form of mange. The head is broad and too massive, with a high forehead, like that of a bear, but suffering from a receding hairline, and with ears that look ridiculously mouse-like, large and round, when they haven't been torn off in battle. The mouth is forever open and panting. The nostrils are too big. The tail is scraggly and unwagging. The gait is shambling. All the parts put together look doglike, but like no dog anyone would want as a pet.

But I had not forgotten Father's words. These were not cowardly carrion-eaters. If National Geographic portrayed them as such, it was because National Geographic filmed during the day. It is when the moon rises that the hyena's day starts, and it proves to be a devastating hunter. Hyenas attack in packs whatever animal can be run down, its flanks opened while still in full motion. They go for zebras, gnus and water buffaloes, and not only the old or the infirm in a herd—full-grown members too. They are hardy attackers, rising up from buttings and kickings immediately, never giving up for simple lack of will. And they are clever; anything that can be distracted from its mother is good. The ten-minute-old gnu is a favourite dish, but hyenas also eat young lions and young rhinoceros. They are diligent when their efforts are rewarded. In fifteen minutes flat, all that will be left of a zebra is the skull, which may yet be dragged away and gnawed down at leisure by young ones in the lair. Nothing goes to waste; even grass upon which blood has been spill will be eaten. Hyenas' stomachs swell visibly as they swallow huge chunks of kill. If they are lucky, they become so full they have difficulty moving. Once they've digested their kill, they cough up dense hairballs, which they pick clean of edibles before rolling in them. Accidental cannibalism is a common occurrence during the excitement of a feeding; in reaching for a bite of zebra, a hyena will take in the ear or nostril of a clan member, no hard feelings intended. The hyena feels no disgust at this mistake. Its delights are too many to admit to disgust at anything.

In fact, a hyena's catholicity of taste is so indiscriminate it nearly forces admiration. A hyena will drink from water even as it is urinating in it. The animal has another original use for its urine: in hot, dry weather it will cool itself by relieving its bladder on the ground and stirring up a refreshing mud bath with its paws. Hyenas snack on the excrement of herbivores with clucks of pleasure. It's an open question as to what hyenas won't eat. They eat their own kind (the rest of those whose ears and noses they gobbled down as appetizers) once they're dead, after a period of aversion that lasts about one day. They will even attack motor vehicles—the headlights, the exhaust pipe, the side mirrors. It is not their gastric juices that limit hyenas, but the power of their jaws, which is formidable. That was the animal I had racing around in circles before me. An animal to pain the eye and chill the heart.

Prusten

Tigers make a variety of sounds. They include a number of roars and growls, the loudest of these being most likely the full-throated aaonh, usually made during the mating season by males and oestrous females. It's a cry that travels far and wide, and is absolutely petrifying when heard close up. Tigers go woof when they are caught unawares, a short, sharp detonation of fury that would instantly make your legs jump up and run away if they weren't frozen to the spot. When they charge, tigers put out throaty, coughing roars. The growl they use for purposes of threatening has yet another guttural quality. And tigers hiss and snarl, which, depending on the emotion behind it, sounds either like autumn leaves rustling on the ground, but a little more resonant, or, when it's an infuriated snarl, like a giant door with rusty hinges slowly opening—in both cases, utterly spinechilling. Tigers make other sounds too. They grunt and they moan. They purr, though not as melodiously or as frequently as small cats, and only as they breathe out. (Only small cats purr breathing both ways. It is one of the characteristics that distinguishes big cats from small cats. Another is that only big cats can roar. A good thing that is. I'm afraid the popularity of the domestic cat would drop very quickly if little kitty could roar its displeasure.) Tigers even go meow, with an inflection similar to that of domestic cats, but louder and in a deeper range, not as encouraging to one to bend down and pick them up. And tigers can be utterly, majestically silent, that too.

I had heard all these sounds growing up. Except for prusten. If I knew of it, it was because Father had told me about it. He had read descriptions of it in the literature. But he had heard it only once, while on a working visit to the Mysore Zoo, in their animal hospital, from a young male being treated for pneumonia. Prusten is the quietest of tiger calls, a puff through the nose to express friendliness and harmless intentions.

Survival Manual for Castaways:

• Always read instructions carefully.
• Do not drink urine. Or sea water. Or bird blood.
• Do not eat jellyfish. Or fish that are armed with spikes. Or that have parrot-like beaks. Or that puff up like balloons.
• Pressing the eyes of fish will paralyze them.
• The body can be a hero in battle. If a castaway is injured, beware of well-meaning but ill-founded medical treatment. Ignorance is the worst doctor, while rest and sleep are the best nurses.
• Put up your feet at least five minutes every hour.
• Unnecessary exertion should be avoided. But an idle mind tends to sink, so the mind should be kept occupied with whatever light distraction may suggest itself. Playing card games, Twenty Questions and I Spy With My Little Eye are excellent forms of simple recreation. Community singing is another sure-fire way to lift the spirits. Yarn spinning is also highly recommended.
• Green water is shallower than blue water.
• Beware of far-off clouds that look like mountains. Look for green. Ultimately, a foot is the only good judge of land.
• Do not go swimming. It wastes energy. Besides, a survival craft may drift faster than you can swim. Not to mention the danger of sea life. If you are hot, wet your clothes instead.
• Do not urinate in your clothes. The momentary warmth is not worth the nappy rash.
• Shelter yourself. Exposure can kill faster than thirst or hunger.
• So long as no excessive water is lost through perspiration, the body can survive up to fourteen days without water. If you feel thirsty, suck a button.
• Turtles are an easy catch and make for excellent meals. Their blood is a good, nutritious, salt-free drink; their flesh is tasty and filling; their fat has many uses; and the castaway will find turtle eggs a real treat.Mind the beak and the claws.
• Don't let your morale flag. Be daunted, but not defeated. Remember: the spirit, above all else, counts. If you have the will to live, you will.

Good luck!

Solar Still: A solar still is a device to produce fresh water from salt water. It consists of an inflatable transparent cone set upon a round lifebuoy-like buoyancy chamber that has a surface of black rubberized canvas stretched across its centre. The still operates on the principle of distillation: sea water lying beneath the sealed cone on the black canvas is heated by the sun and evaporates, gathering on the inside surface of the cone. This salt-free water trickles down and collects in a gully on the perimeter of the cone, from which it drains into a pouch.

How to TRY to tame a Tiger:

1. Choose a day when the waves are small but regular. You want a sea that will put on a good show when your lifeboat is broadside to it, though without capsizing your boat.
2. Stream your sea anchor full out to make your lifeboat as stable and comfortable as possible. Prepare your safe haven from the lifeboat in case you should need it (you most likely will). If you can, devise some means of bodily protection. Almost anything can make a shield. Wrapping clothes or blankets around your limbs will make for a minimal form of armour.
3. Now comes the difficult part: you must provoke the animal that is afflicting you. Tiger, rhinoceros, ostrich, wild boar, brown bear—no matter the beast, you must get its goat. The best way to do this will most likely be to go to the edge of your territory and noisily intrude into the neutral zone. I did just that: I went to the edge of the tarpaulin and stamped upon the middle bench as I mildly blew into the whistle. It is important that you make a consistent, recognizable noise to signal your aggression. But you must be careful. You want to provoke your animal, but only so much. You don't want it to attack you outright. If it does, God be with you. You will be torn to pieces, trampled flat, disembowelled, very likely eaten. You don't want that. You want an animal that is piqued, peeved, vexed, bothered, irked, annoyed—but not homicidal. Under no circumstances should you step into your animal's territory. Contain your aggression to staring into its eyes and hurling toots and taunts.
4. When your animal has been roused, work in all bad faith to provoke a border intrusion. A good way of bringing this about in my experience is to back off slowly as you are making your noises. BE SURE NOT TO BREAK EYE CONTACT! As soon as the animal has laid a paw in your territory, or even made a determined advance into the neutral territory, you have achieved your goal. Don't be picky or legalistic as to where its paw actually landed. Be quick to be affronted. Don't wait to construe—misconstrue as fast as you can. The point here is to make your animal understand that its upstairs neighbour is exceptionally persnickety about territory.
5. Once your animal has trespassed upon your territory, be unflagging in your outrage. Whether you have fled to your safe haven off the lifeboat or retreated to the back of your territory on the lifeboat, START BLOWING YOUR WHISTLE AT FULL BLAST and IMMEDIATELY TRIP THE SEA ANCHOR. These two actions are of pivotal importance. You must not delay putting them into effect. If you can help your lifeboat get broadside to the waves by other means, with an oar for example, apply yourself right away. The faster your lifeboat broaches to the waves, the better.
6. Blowing a whistle continuously is exhausting for the weakened castaway, but you must not falter. Your alarmed animal must associate its increasing nausea with the shrill cries of the whistle. You can help things move along by standing at the end of your boat, feet on opposing gunnels, and swaying in rhythm to the motion imparted by the sea. However slight you are, however large your lifeboat, you will be amazed at the difference this will make. I assure you, in no time you'll have your lifeboat rocking and rolling like Elvis Presley. Just don't forget to be blowing your whistle all the while, and mind you don't make your lifeboat capsize.
7. You want to keep going until the animal that is your burden—your tiger, your rhinoceros, whatever—is properly green about the gills with seasickness. You want to hear it heaving and dry retching. You want to see it lying at the bottom of the lifeboat, limbs trembling, eyes rolled back, a deathly rattle coming from its gaping mouth. And all the while you must be shattering the animal's ears with the piercing blows of your whistle. If you become sick yourself, don't waste your vomit by sending it overboard. Vomit makes an excellent border guard. Puke on the edges of your territory.
8. When your animal appears good and sick, you can stop. Seasickness comes on quickly, but it takes a long while to go away. You don't want to overstate your case. No one dies of nausea, but it can seriously sap the will to live. When enough is enough, stream the sea anchor, try to give shade to your animal if it has collapsed in direct sunlight, and make sure it has water available when it recovers, with anti-seasickness tablets dissolved in it, if you have any. Dehydration is a serious danger at this point. Otherwise retreat to your territory and leave your animal in peace. Water, rest and relaxation, besides a stable lifeboat, will bring it back to life. The animal should be allowed to recover fully before going through steps 1 to 8 again.
9. Treatment should be repeated until the association in the animal's mind between the sound of the whistle and the feeling of intense, incapacitating nausea is fixed and totally unambiguous. Thereafter, the whistle alone will deal with trespassing or any other untoward behaviour. Just one shrill blow and you will see your animal shudder with malaise and repair at top speed to the safest, furthest part of its territory. Once this level of training is reached, use of the whistle should be sparing.

Great Story

Once upon a time there was a banana and it grew. It grew until it was large, firm, yellow and fragrant. Then it fell to the ground and someone came upon it and ate it and afterwards that person felt better.


Creatures, about whom I didn’t know a thing before reading Life of PI.

Meerkats:











Dorado:












Shearwater:

Wilson’s Petrels:

Flying Fish:

Hawksbill:

Albatross:

And finally the all important

Lifeboat:

Da Vinci Code - Part II

In continuation to previous post, this one describes the other important keywords used in “Da Vinci Code”. Some of the additional information I have picked up from Wikipedia, although it was
not as descriptive as I had imagined. Some of the concepts which Dan Brown has described in the book, were mind boggling for me, like Pentacle, PHI, Atbash Cipher and many more.

Part – II
Corporal mortification
Sénéchaux
Clef de voûte
Paganism
Pentacle
The Vitruvian Man
Tarot
PHI - The Divine Proportion - 1.618
The Anagrams
The Rose Line
fleur-de-lis
Phallus and the Chalice
End of Days
Atbash Cipher

Corporal mortification: Father Josemaría Escrivá a Catholic priest from Spain, was the founder of Opus Dei.-the Teacher of all Teachers. Although Escrivá had died in 1975, his wisdom
lived on; his words still whispered by thousands of faithful servants around the globe as they knelt on the floor and performed the sacred practice known as "Corporal Mortification."

Sénéchaux: The location of the Holy Grail is one of the best kept secrets in history. Priory members wait decades proving themselves trustworthy before being elevated to the highest echelons of the fraternity and learning where the Grail is. That secret is protected by an intricate system of compartmentalized knowledge, and although the Priory brotherhood is very large, only members at any given time know where the Grail is hidden—the Grand Master and his three sénéchaux.

Clef de voûte: Key for the Vault. Clef de voûte is a common architectural term. Voûte refers not to a bank vault, but to a vault in an archway. Like a vaulted ceiling. Every stone archway requires a central, wedge-shaped stone at the top which locks the pieces together and carries all the weight. This stone is, in an architectural sense, the key to the vault. In English we call it a keystone.Keystones as a masonry technique for building stone archways had been one of the best-kept secrets of the early Masonic brotherhood. The Royal Arch Degree. Architecture. Keystones. It was all interconnected. The secret knowledge of how to use a wedged keystone to build a vaulted archway was part of the wisdom that had made the Masons such wealthy craftsmen, and it was a secret they guarded carefully. Keystones had always had a tradition of secrecy.

It is a common used by Grail researchers for referring to the Keystone. According to Priory lore, the keystone is an encoded map... a map that reveals the hiding place of the Holy Grail.

Paganism: Nowadays, the term pagan had become almost synonymous with devil worship—a gross misconception. The word's roots actually reached back to the Latin paganus, meaning country-dwellers. "Pagans" were literally unindoctrinated country-folk who clung to the old, rural religions of Nature worship. In fact, so strong was the Church's fear of those who lived in the rural villes that the once innocuous word for "villager"—villain—came to mean a wicked soul.

Pentacle: The Pentacle is a pre-Christian symbol that relates to Nature worship. The ancients
envisioned their world in two halves—masculine and feminine. Their gods and goddesses worked to keep a balance of power. Yin and yang. When male and female were balanced, there was harmony in the world. When they were unbalanced, there was chaos. This pentacle is representative of the female half of all things—a concept religious historians call the 'sacred
feminine' or the 'divine goddess.' In its most specific interpretation, the pentacle symbolizes Venus—the goddess of female sexual love and beauty. Early religion was based on the divine order of Nature. The goddess Venus and the planet Venus were one and the same. The goddess had a place in the nighttime sky and was known by many names—Venus, the Eastern Star, Ishtar, Astarte—all of them powerful female concepts with ties to Nature and Mother Earth.

Pentacle's most astonishing property—the graphic origin of its ties to Venus. The planet Venus traces a perfect entacle across the ecliptic sky every four years. So astonished were the ancients to observe this phenomenon, that Venus and her pentacle became symbols of perfection, beauty, and the cyclic qualities of sexual love.

As a tribute to the magic of Venus, the Greeks used her four-year cycle to organize their Olympiads. Nowadays, few people realized that the four-year schedule of modern Olympic Games still followed the cycles of Venus. Even fewer people knew that the five-pointed star had almost become the official Olympic seal but was modified at the last moment—its five points exchanged for five intersecting rings to better reflect the games' spirit of inclusion and harmony.

But not many people know these things about the Pentacle and they relate Pentacle to “Devil Worship”. The five-pointed star is now a virtual cliché in Satanic serial killer movies, usually scrawled on the wall of some Satanist's apartment along with other alleged demonic symbology. But the irony is that the Pentacle's true origins are actually quite godly. Symbols are very resilient, but the pentacle was altered by the early Roman Catholic Church. As part of the Vatican's campaign to eradicate pagan religions and convert the masses to Christianity, the Church launched a smear campaign against the pagan gods and goddesses, recasting their divine symbols as evil.

This is very common in times of turmoil. A newly emerging power will take over the existing symbols and degrade them over time in an attempt to erase their meaning. In the battle between the pagan symbols and Christian symbols, the pagans lost; Poseidon's trident became the devil's pitchfork, the wise crone's pointed hat became the symbol of a witch, and Venus's pentacle became a sign of the devil. Unfortunately, the United States military has also perverted the pentacle; it's now our foremost symbol of war. We paint it on all our fighter jets and hang it on the shoulders of all our generals. So much for the goddess of love and beauty.

The Vitruvian Man:

Considered the most anatomically correct drawing of its day, Da Vinci's The Vitruvian Man had become a modern-day icon ofculture, appearing on posters, mouse pads, and T-shirts around the world. The celebrated sketch consisted of a perfect circle in which was inscribed a nude male... his arms and legs outstretched in a naked spread eagle.This image exemplifies the blend of art and science during the Renaissance and provides the perfect example of da Vinci's keen interest in proportion. In addition, this picture represents a cornerstone of Da Vinci's attempts to relate man to nature. Encyclopaedia Britannica online states,"Leonardo envisaged the great picture chart of the human body he had produced through his anatomical drawings and Vitruvian Man as a cosmografia del minor mondo(cosmography of the microcosm). He believed the workings of the human body tobe an analogy for the workings of the universe." It is also believed by some that Leonardo symbolized the material existence by the square and spiritual existence by the circle. Thus he attempted to depict the correlation between these two aspects of human existence.

Tarot: The medieval Italian card game was so replete with hidden heretical symbolism that Langdon had dedicated an entire chapter in his new manuscript to the Tarot. The game's twenty-two cards bore names like The Female Pope, The Empress, and The Star. Originally,
Tarot had been devised as a secret means to pass along ideologies banned by the Church. Now, Tarot's mystical qualities were passed on by modern fortune-tellers. The Tarot indicator suit for feminine divinity is pentacles.

PHI - The Divine Proportion -1.618

That's the number PHI, "As the mathematicians like to say: PHI is one H of a lot cooler than PI!"

PHI is generally considered the most beautiful number in the universe. Number PHI was derived from the Fibonacci sequence—a progression famous not only because the sum of adjacent terms equaled the next term, but because the quotients of adjacent terms possessed the astonishing property of approaching the number 1.618—PHI!

Despite PHI's seemingly mystical mathematical origins, the truly mind-boggling aspect of PHI was its role as a fundamental building block in nature.Plants, animals, and even human beings all possessed dimensional properties that adhered with eerie exactitude to the ratio of PHI
to 1. PHI's ubiquity in nature, clearly exceeds coincidence, and so the ancients assumed the number PHI must have been preordained by the Creator of the universe. Early scientists heralded one-point-six-one-eight as the Divine Proportion.

"Hold on," said a young woman in the front row. "I'm a bio major and I've never seen this Divine Proportion in nature."
"No?" Langdon grinned. "Ever study the relationship between females and males in a honeybee community?"
"Sure. The female bees always outnumber the male bees."
"Correct. And did you know that if you divide the number of female bees by the number of male bees in any beehive in the world, you always get the same number?"
"You do?"
"Yup. PHI."
The girl gaped. "NO WAY!"
"Way!" Langdon fired back, smiling as he projected a slide of a spiral seashell.
"Recognize this?"
"It's a nautilus," the bio major said. "A cephalopod mollusk that pumps gas into its chambered shell to adjust its buoyancy."
"Correct. And can you guess what the ratio is of each spiral's diameter to the next?"

The girl looked uncertain as she eyed the concentric arcs of the nautilus spiral.

Langdon nodded. "PHI. The Divine Proportion. One-point-six-one-eight to one."
The girl looked amazed. Langdon advanced to the next slide—a close-up of a sunflower's seed head.
"Sunflower seeds grow in opposing spirals. Can you guess the ratio of each rotation's diameter to the next?"
"PHI?" everyone said.
"Bingo." Langdon began racing through slides now—spiraled pinecone petals, leaf arrangement on plant stalks, insect segmentation—all displaying astonishing obedience to
the Divine Proportion.
"This is amazing!" someone cried out.
"Yeah," someone else said, "but what does it have to do with art?"

"Aha!" Langdon said. "Glad you asked." He pulled up another slide—a pale yellow parchment displaying Leonardo da Vinci's famous male nude—The Vitruvian Man—named for Marcus Vitruvius, the brilliant Roman architect who praised the Divine Proportion in his text De Architectura.

"Nobody understood better than Da Vinci the divine structure of the human body. Da Vinci actually exhumed corpses to measure the exact proportions of human bone structure. He was the first to show that the human body is literally made of building blocks whose proportional ratios always equal PHI."

Everyone in class gave him a dubious look.

"Don't believe me?" Langdon challenged. "Next time you're in the shower, take a tape measure."
A couple of football players snickered.
"Not just you insecure jocks," Langdon prompted. "All of you. Guys and girls. Try it. Measure the distance from the tip of your head to the floor. Then divide that by the distance from your belly button to the floor. Guess what number you get."
"Not PHI!" one of the jocks blurted out in disbelief.
"Yes, PHI," Langdon replied. "One-point-six-one-eight. Want another example?

Measure the distance from your shoulder to your fingertips, and then divide it by the distance from your elbow to your fingertips. PHI again. Another? Hip to floor divided by knee to floor. PHI again. Finger joints. Toes. Spinal divisions. PHI. PHI. PHI. My friends, each of you is a walking tribute to the Divine Proportion."

Even in the darkness, Langdon could see they were all astounded. He felt a familiar warmth inside. This is why he taught. "My friends, as you can see, the chaos of the world has an underlying order. When the ancients discovered PHI, they were certain they had stumbled
across God's building block for the world, and they worshipped Nature because of that. And one can understand why. God's hand is evident in Nature, and even to this day there exist pagan, Mother Earth-revering religions. Many of us celebrate nature the way the pagans did, and don't even know it. May Day is a perfect example, the celebration of spring... the earth coming back to life to produce her bounty. The mysterious magic inherent in the Divine Proportion was written at the beginning of time. Man is simply playing by Nature's rules, and
because art is man's attempt to imitate the beauty of the Creator's hand, you can imagine we might be seeing a lot of instances of the Divine Proportion in art this semester."

Over the next half hour, Langdon showed them slides of artwork by Michelangelo, Albrecht Dürer, Da Vinci, and many others, demonstrating each artist's intentional and rigorous adherence to the Divine Proportion in the layout of his compositions. Langdon unveiled PHI in the architectural dimensions of the Greek Parthenon, the pyramids of Egypt, and even the United Nations Building in New York.

PHI appeared in the organizational structures of Mozart's sonatas, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, as well as the works of Bartók, Debussy, and Schubert. The number PHI, Langdon told them, was even used by Stradivarius to calculate the exact placement of the f-holes in the construction of his famous violins. "In closing," Langdon said, walking to the chalkboard, "we
return to symbols" He drew five intersecting lines that formed a five-pointed star. "This symbol is one of the most powerful images you will see this term. Formally known as a pentagram—or pentacle, as the ancients called it—this symbol is considered both divine
and magical by many cultures. Can anyone tell me why that might be?"


Stettner, the math major, raised his hand. "Because if you draw a pentagram, the lines automatically divide themselves into segments according to the Divine Proportion."

Langdon gave the kid a proud nod. "Nice job. Yes, the ratios of line segments in a pentacle all equal PHI, making this symbol the ultimate expression of the Divine Proportion. For this reason, the five-pointed star has always been the symbol for beauty and perfection associated with the goddess and the sacred feminine."

The girls in class beamed.

"One note, folks. We've only touched on Da Vinci today, but we'll be seeing a lot more of him this semester. Leonardo was a well-documented devotee of the ancient ways of the goddess. Tomorrow, I'll show you his fresco The Last Supper, which is one of the most astonishing tributes to the sacred feminine you will ever see."

"You're kidding, right?" somebody said. "I thought The Last Supper was about Jesus!"

Langdon winked. "There are symbols hidden in places you would never imagine."

The Anagrams: Few people realized that anagrams, despite being a trite modern amusement, had a rich history of sacred symbolism. The mystical teachings of the Kabbala drew heavily on anagrams—rearranging the letters of Hebrew words to derive new meanings. French kings throughout the Renaissance were so convinced that anagrams held magic power that they appointed royal anagrammatists to help them make better decisions by analyzing words in important documents. The Romans actually referred to the study of anagrams as ars magna—"the great art."

O, Draconian devil! Oh, lame saint! - Leonardo da Vinci! The Mona Lisa!

SO DARK THE CON OF MAN -Madonna of the Rocks

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon - vile meaningless doodles (Picasso's masterpiece)

The Rose Line - A strip of brass that segmented the sanctuary on a perfect north-south
axis. It was an ancient sundial of sorts, a vestige of the pagan temple that had once stood on this very spot. The sun's rays, shining through the oculus on the south wall, moved farther down the line every day, indicating the passage of time, from solstice to solstice. The north-south stripe had been known as the Rose Line. For centuries, the symbol of the Rose had been associated with maps and guiding souls in the proper direction. The Compass Rose—drawn on almost every map—indicated North, East, South, and West. Originally known as the Wind Rose, it denoted the directions of the thirty-two winds, blowing from the directions of eight major winds, eight half-winds, and sixteen quarterwinds. When diagrammed inside a circle, these thirty-two points of the compass perfectly resembled a traditional thirty-two petal rose bloom.

To this day, the fundamental navigational tool was still known as a Compass Rose, its northernmost direction still marked by an arrowhead... or, more commonly, the symbol of the fleur-de-lis. On a globe, a Rose Line—also called a meridian or longitude—was any imaginary
line drawn from the North Pole to the South Pole. There were, of course, an infinite number of Rose Lines because every point on the globe could have a longitude drawn through it connecting north and south poles. The question for early navigators was which of these lines would be called the Rose Line—the zero longitude—the line from which all other longitudes on earth would be
measured.

Today that line was in Greenwich, England. But it had not always been. Long before the establishment of Greenwich as the prime meridian, the zero longitude of the entire world had passed directly through Paris, and through the Church of Saint-Sulpice. The brass marker in Saint-Sulpice was a memorial to the world's first prime meridian, and although Greenwich had stripped Paris of the honor in 1888, the original Rose Line was still visible today. "And so the legend is true," the Teacher had told Silas. "The Priory keystone has been said to lie 'beneath the Sign of the Rose.' "

Sub rosa, The Romans hung a rose over meetings to indicate the meeting was confidential. Attendees understood that whatever was said under the rose—or sub rosa—had to remain a secret. Rosa rugosa, one of the oldest species of rose, had five petals and pentagonal symmetry, just like the guiding star of Venus, giving the Rose strong iconographic ties to womanhood. In addition, the Rose had close ties to the concept of "true direction" and navigating one's way. The Compass Rose helped
travelers navigate, as did Rose Lines, the longitudinal lines on maps. For this reason, the Rose was a symbol that spoke of the Grail on many levels—secrecy, womanhood, and guidance—the feminine chalice and guiding star that led to secret truth.

The Rose has always been the premiere symbol of female sexuality. In primitive goddess cults, the five petals represented the five stations of female life—birth, menstruation, motherhood,
menopause, and death. And in modern times, the flowering rose's ties to womanhood are considered more visual. The blossoming flower resembles the female genitalia, the sublime blossom from which all mankind enters the world.

Phallus and the Chalice: Many people incorrectly assume the male symbol is derived from a
shield and spear, while the female symbol represents a mirror reflecting beauty. In fact, the symbols originated as ancient astronomical symbols for the planet-god Mars and planet-goddess Venus. The original symbols are far simpler.

This symbol is the original icon for male, A rudimentary phallus. This icon is formally known as the blade, and it represents aggression and manhood. In fact, this exact phallus symbol is still used today on modern military uniforms to denote rank.

The female symbol, as you might imagine, is the exact opposite. This is called the chalice.

The chalice resembles a cup or vessel, and more important, it resembles the shape of a woman's womb. This symbol communicates femininity, womanhood, and fertility. Legend tells us the Holy
Grail is a chalice—a cup. But the Grail's description as a chalice is actually an allegory to protect the true nature of the Holy Grail. That is to say, the legend uses the chalice as a metaphor for something far more important.

The blade and chalice…….Fused as one.
The Star of David... the perfect union of male and female... Solomon's Seal...marking the Holy of
Holies, where the male and female deities—Yahweh and Shekinah—were thought to dwell.

End of Days: In terms of prophecy, we are currently in an epoch of enormous change. The millennium has recently passed, and with it has ended the two-thousand year- long astrological Age of Pisces—the fish, which is also the sign of Jesus. As any astrological symbologist will tell you, the Piscean ideal believes that man must be told what to do by higher powers because man is incapable of thinking for himself. Hence it has been a time of fervent religion. Now, however, we are entering the Age of Aquarius—the water bearer—whose ideals claim that man will learn the truth and be able to think for himself. The ideological shift is enormous, and it is occurring right now.

The Church calls this transitional period the End of Days.

That's a common misconception. Many religions speak of the End of Days. It refers not to the end of the world, but rather the end of our current age—Pisces, which began at the time of Christ's birth, spanned two thousand years, and waned with the passing of the millennium. Now
that we've passed into the Age of Aquarius, the End of Days has arrived.


The Church and the Priory have had a tacit understanding for years. That is, the Church does not attack the Priory, and the Priory keeps the Sangreal documents hidden. However, part of the Priory history has always included a plan to unveil the secret. With the arrival of a
specific date in history, the brotherhood plans to break the silence and carry out its ultimate triumph by unveiling the Sangreal documents to the world and shouting the true story of Jesus Christ from the mountaintops.

Why would members of the Catholic clergy murder Priory members in an effort to find and destroy documents they believe are false testimony anyway?

The clergy in Rome are blessed with potent faith, and because of this, their beliefs can weather any storm, including documents that contradict everything they hold dear. But what about the rest of the world? What about those who are not blessed with absolute certainty? What about those who look at the cruelty in the world and say, where is God today? Those who look at Church scandals and ask, who are these men who claim to speak the truth about Christ and yet lie to cover up the sexual abuse of children by their own priests? What happens to those people, if persuasive scientific evidence comes out that the Church's version of the Christ story is inaccurate, and that the greatest story ever told is, in fact, the greatest story ever sold.


Atbash Cipher: Atbash is one of the oldest codes known to man. The famous Hebrew encoding system. The cipher dated back to 500 B.C. and was now used as a classroom example of a basic rotational substitution scheme. A common form of Jewish cryptogram, the Atbash Cipher was a simple substitution code based on the twenty-two-letter Hebrew alphabet. In Atbash, the first letter was substituted by the last letter, the second letter by the next to last letter, and so on.

Atbash is sublimely appropriate, Text encrypted with Atbash is found throughout the Kabbala, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and even the Old Testament. Jewish scholars and mystics are still finding hidden meanings using Atbash. The Priory certainly would include the Atbash Cipher as
part of their teachings.

For years, religious scholars had been baffled by biblical references to a city called Sheshach. The city did not appear on any map nor in any other documents, and yet it was mentioned repeatedly in the Book of Jeremiah—the king of Sheshach, the city of Sheshach, the people of Sheshach. Finally, a scholar applied the Atbash Cipher to the word, and his results were mind-numbing. The cipher revealed that Sheshach was in fact a code word for another very well-known city.


The decryption process was simple. Sheshach, in Hebrew, was spelled: Sh-Sh-K.
Sh-Sh-K, when placed in the substitution matrix, became B-B-L.
B-B-L, in Hebrew, spelled Babel.

The mysterious city of Sheshach was revealed as the city of Babel, and a frenzy of biblical examination ensued.