Worldly author’s unworldly tale of renunciation   ‘The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to passover Thus the wise say the path to salvation is hard’ Katha-Upanishad This epigraph opens the book Razor’s Edge , twentieth century English novelist, W. Somerset Maugham’s most successful novel. The edge of a razor symbolises the path to enlightenment, which is as painful and narrow.   Maugham was fascinated by the character who renounces worldly pleasures for a spiritual life of deep joys and lasting contentment. This theme recurs in his writings. Fall of Edward Barnard is one such fabulous tale of another American youth. In Of Human Bondage , his most acclaimed novel, protagonist Philip Carey is forever entangled in search of truth that will reveal to him the true nature of the world. In Moon and Six Pence , Charles Strickland, forswears life of a successful stockbroker and comfortable marriage, to follow his passion of painting. Maugham was taken by the idea of renu...

History was an endlessly boring subject in school. We crammed sacksful of dates that related to distant events, none of which made any sense. Textbooks listed – never discussed – causes of these allegedly momentous events. They enumerated attributes of various civilisations, empires, and dynasties, not unlike properties of elements in Mendeleev’s periodic table - only more lifelessly. We were to consign these to memory and pour them out in examinations. History was a matter of dates, names of rulers and their kingdoms; not a narrative or an endeavour to understand past. History and story come from the same Greek word historia , meaning enquiry, i.e., knowledge acquired by investigation. Many languages, like French and Italian, have the same word for both story and history. I am not suggesting that story, as is used in common parlance, is indistinguishable from history. I only stress that story had been missing from the history I read in school. This left the subject as dry as dust....

There was never such a threat to the integrity of our nation as now. Desh-drohis are planning rebellion in every street, every mohalla of the country. Urban centres are teeming with Naxalites , who are busy in upending the social-democratic structure of our society. State enemies have gang ed up and want to blow the country in tukade-tukade . India-bashers and Indian-haters, stooges of western ideology, the highbrow crowd of Lutyens’s Delhi and Khan Market , preach their seditious ideas with impunity. Harward trained pseudo-intellectuals spread calumnies about the hardworking , desh- sewaks . Descendants of nomadic invaders, a barbaric race, foreign to our culture, want to disrupt the harmony that characterises our diverse nation. Bob Dylan sang about the ‘times they are a-changin ` ’. And these times that ‘are a-changin ` ’ demand new interpretations of old concepts. Definition of patriotism has thus been revised. To sincerely work at your job all your life, to pay your tax...