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The Lockdown begins

· 2 min read

Today, Prime Minister Modi announced lock down of the whole nation for 21 days. Apparently the threat of corona virus is much higher than it was envisaged to be.

More crucially, the US is having  hard time coping with it. India, with a much poorer healthcare infra is at a much higher risk.

What this means for us is:

  • More time spent locked down in front of computer
  • No outside running & exercises

Since, there will be lot more time at hand, and looking into screens gets boring & stressful after sometime. I have decided 2 things

  • Spend the extra time after work on reading books. I went through my personal library and dug out some older books which I always wanted to read. Hopefully, will post notes from them here in coming days.
  • Write a blog daily at night till the lock down is in effect. This would help me clear my head and hopefully share some notes here

Today I picked upon Glimpses of World History by Nehru. Its amazing how long term he plans. He is in a jail near Allahabad circa 1931 but is writing letters to his daughter Indira - to educate her.

I am still in the early history of ancient world. Two points which stuck with me:

  • India & China are the only civilizations which have continued in some form or other throughout the last 5000 years. Other ancient civilizations like Egypt only have some remains from the past, but there's no thread of culture/traditions running from the ancient Egyptian civilization to modern day Egypt.
  • Greece, though a very advanced civilization, always preferred to have City states. They never had a large kingdom like Persia or later day India. Is it because of any geographical factors or is it just that they are fiercely independent? Also, the Ancient Greeks are from a branch of Aryan race - Greek Aryans. Similar to the branch which came to India and was called Indo-Aryans.