tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63236762011-09-05T09:52:20.831+04:00WAYFARERUnderstanding life as a halting place on the road going homeMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18205012351917675064noreply@blogger.comBlogger211100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6323676.post-50320868435237486912008-04-15T10:46:00.007+04:002008-04-15T15:34:16.390+04:00Imaan: Takmeel al-InsaanImaan: Takmeel al-InsaanMankind in turmoil,From ages immemorial.For what, then, this memory undying?What, indeed, is its lesson unyielding?The battle for the Soul of Man -Has it not raged off and on?How often, indeed, has history seen it wax and wane!Between the forces two: of Divine Spirit and the Demon's Mane!What then the battle-cry of the One in his Mane of Vanity?"For that Thou hast cursed Maximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18205012351917675064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6323676.post-10788012257682808902008-04-12T13:45:00.003+04:002008-04-13T12:40:19.815+04:00'Conform, Not Reform!' The Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), or the National Center for Scientific Research, is a government-funded research organization, under the administrative authority of France's Ministry of Research. Founded in 1939 by governmental decree, CNRS has the following missions: evaluating and carrying out all research capable of advancing knowledge as well as Maximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18205012351917675064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6323676.post-1146037202178838592006-04-26T11:23:00.000+04:002006-04-26T12:02:55.953+04:00MERCY FOR MANKINDOf recent days, in myriad ways,A million controversiesHas risen today: all in chorus for an image;Even as in bygone days, in a bygone age.Not anything new then,These controversies.In their message too,They recall but time's travesties.Round and round a person they float.A person unlike any time has witnessed.Born within history's darkest slot,Redeemer of Man in God and the AngelsMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18205012351917675064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6323676.post-1129976724458213242005-10-22T13:53:00.000+04:002005-10-22T15:45:47.193+04:00A REVIEW FOR AN INTERVIEWHe had known her since the past many years.He had known her ever since his interest in Islam had found its first expression in the particular books that he sought out for his reading. To be precise, however, to know a person isn't exactly the same thing as knowing of a person. And for Max, this had been so very sadly true. It was sad because he had wished to have known Maximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18205012351917675064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6323676.post-1110090959243952292005-03-06T10:05:00.000+04:002005-03-06T14:41:44.020+04:00First principlesThere was something about the park that struck him as being oddly nostalgic since the time he first entered its precincts more than two years ago. The flat that was allocated as his residential apartment by the publishing company that employed him was just a few hundred meters down the western side of the park. Richard's park, of course, had four very well defined sides, being theMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18205012351917675064noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6323676.post-1101532967322044082004-11-27T09:18:00.000+04:002004-11-27T09:39:54.586+04:00HISTORY'S END ?
As I turn to the mirror of my heart,
Always then the last resort;
As I ask it in its agony,
'Mirror, mirror, of my heart;
How, indeed, has the year gone by?'
For the December of another year
Is finally, finally, all but here.
'Good master, then,' my heart weeps out loud,
'Remember not how, over your scribbling bowed,
Your piteous self in yesteryear,
Penned a poem in pain you Maximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18205012351917675064noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6323676.post-1095913915134237422004-09-23T07:53:00.000+04:002004-09-23T08:52:46.866+04:00GROWING PAINS: FATHER AND SON He wasn't fully the type that his son would have wanted to see as a father.But was the poor man solely to be blamed? Max wondered. He was, after all that can be said about him, the quintessential family man. Loyal to immediate family bonds almost to the exclusion of all others in society. Perhaps, unknown to his own self, a materialist even.More of an introvert.QuickMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18205012351917675064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6323676.post-1090829406575939152004-07-26T10:33:00.000+04:002004-08-03T15:16:48.276+04:00Madrassa-e-Yusufiye
He re-read the paragraphs that he had scribbled down one last time.
Arabic had never been his particular strength. At least, not in the way that English was. Sadly, to Max's thinking, this was despite the fact that he had just missed being born in a nation that had Arabic as its mother tongue; despite the fact that he had almost all the happiest memories of his childhood andMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18205012351917675064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6323676.post-1087102880834682672004-06-13T08:10:00.000+04:002004-07-01T14:22:29.066+04:00VIGILANTE JOURNALISM
Sunday.
That's the day for, what they call in journalistic circles, 'slow news.' The day of the week when most of the authorized sources of information are at relative rest. That's when, as the internationally acclaimed John Pilger once put it, 'nothing happens..apart from acts of God and disorder in far-away places.'
'Pilger sure got that one right.' Max sighed as he Maximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18205012351917675064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6323676.post-1083648414201340432004-05-04T07:54:00.000+04:002004-05-04T12:39:52.763+04:00TIGER, TIGER, BURNING BRIGHT!
FRENCH REPUBLIC
Liberty Equality
Headquarters at Cairo,
7th Pluviose
7th Year of the Republic, One and Invincible
BONAPARTE, Member of the National Convention, General in Chief, to the most magnificent SULTAN, our greatest friend TIPPOO SAIB.
You have already been informed of my arrival on the borders of the Red Sea, withMaximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18205012351917675064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6323676.post-1081400246888703222004-04-08T08:26:00.000+04:002004-04-08T09:21:04.296+04:00Refuge in art
The sea green eyes glared back at him with a ferocity that he had never seen before. No wonder then that those were the eyes that had captured the attention of the world ever since they were first discovered almost two decades ago amidst the pain and suffering of an Afghan refugee camp.
Was it the pain - the indescribable pain of one whose innocence was snatched away - that Maximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18205012351917675064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6323676.post-1077377345852382862004-02-21T18:24:00.000+04:002004-02-21T19:59:29.890+04:00Exile: Living History
A cave.
'Good Lord! A cave in a hill. In this...in this..desert!'
Max felt himself turning around in alarm, staring incredulously at the landscape around him: this hot, humid terrain that he suddenly found himself in.
'Where has my room gone? My apartment? Richard's park? The buildings of the city? The greenery? Bangalore?' His voice was desperate. 'Where in God's name Maximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18205012351917675064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6323676.post-1076819812288669192004-02-15T07:51:00.000+04:002004-02-15T08:55:43.780+04:00Stagnant Waters
The dust had to settle, of course.
For, with the dust of the restoration work hanging in the air, the strange, haunting attraction of the lake was diminished this time in the late evening. The time of the day when Max would sometimes go walking the five kilometers that separated his office from his residential apartment. The times when he wouldn't take his trusted bike to his Maximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18205012351917675064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6323676.post-1076601043979313972004-02-12T19:11:00.000+04:002004-02-12T20:00:53.390+04:00Song of the Nightingale
It is one of the more hallowed cliches of our time that the life of a writer is a lonely one: Max had known that much anyway. But he was sure that he was not lonely simply because he could, or did, write. No. He was lonely because of something else. For, he never did write for the sake of writing or for being published. In fact, he was an engineer by training, if not by Maximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18205012351917675064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6323676.post-1076168663147197622004-02-07T19:20:00.000+04:002004-02-09T17:36:24.466+04:00The Heraclian Syndrome
The Instrument mere and the Obedient true.
'Yes.' Max was sure. Those were the words that the Wayfarer had used. And how many years ago was that?
Was it in 2000? No. Much earlier than that, surely.
1999, then? No. That still seemed too late.
1998, possibly? The year Max graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Karnatak University at Dharwad. No, Max Maximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18205012351917675064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6323676.post-1075825841748465372004-02-03T19:43:00.000+04:002004-02-04T08:19:59.903+04:00Call of the Cube
It was that time of the year again and Max had half expected it to happen anyway: at least two hundred and fifty dead in the stampede at the stoning ritual.
Some were so young - as young as thirty: Max observed.
Thirty.
Not too young
Not too old
But a 'vie-able, dieable' age. For what one believed in.
Two hundred and fifty dead. And that was the official Saudi figure. It Maximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18205012351917675064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6323676.post-1074786735849443202004-01-22T19:52:00.001+04:002004-01-23T08:59:50.716+04:00The wretched of the earth
The outstretched little hand pleaded with him; with his conscience. It was a scene that touched the very fibre of his being on occasions too numerous for him to recollect from the past. It was still the very image of India. Despite the liberalizations. Despite the globalizations. Despite the privatizations. Despite the economic restructuring that almost always only Maximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18205012351917675064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6323676.post-1074500996776193302004-01-19T12:18:00.000+04:002004-01-20T17:56:19.966+04:00Dreams and Reality
The cup of tea on his table was going cold. Not that Max minded that too much. Tea was, after all, Tea, whether that was hot or cold. And Max needed that round the clock and especially when he was at his workplace in the chair behind the Editor's desk. Caffiene was one thing he couldn't live without, he was sure. And more importantly, think without.
George Soros's treatment Maximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18205012351917675064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6323676.post-1074335900435255732004-01-17T14:36:00.000+04:002004-01-20T17:57:33.060+04:00BETWEEN THE VULTURE AND THE WOLF
December and January are known to be the coldest months in Bangalore. But Max knew there were other places much, much colder than this: places where people talked of having fun at 34 degrees below zero!
The thought itself gave him the chills, like the one that gripped him as he sped down from work on his Honda.
But then Bangalore was known to have been Maximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18205012351917675064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6323676.post-1074169662378345332004-01-15T16:17:00.000+04:002004-01-15T16:36:34.873+04:00THE BURNT OUT OF HEART
Few people ever knew him as Maximus. Fewer still ever called him Max. But then, that was the arrangement with the Wayfarer. Not that Max ever troubled himself too much with the anonymity.
For, to Max, getting the Wayfarer into blog country had become a recent obsession: one for which he would, and could, pay the price of anonymity.
The Wayfarer had insisted that Max Maximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18205012351917675064noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6323676.post-1074002894401368292004-01-13T18:05:00.000+04:002004-01-13T18:10:57.373+04:00The Wayfarer enters upon the roads through blog country, taking him home...
'Country roads..Take me home!'Maximushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18205012351917675064noreply@blogger.com0