An Indian Poem

Why We Really Cheer For THE PUNISHER

The modern antihero is this age’s response in art, to the growing number of grey areas we are now forced to acknowledge in every aspect of societal existence. Things that were previously accepted to be self-evident in their moral implications are now troublingly complex to us.

The advances in data gathering and analysis in all branches of science and humanities have revealed to the masses more variables in play than ever before, in almost every problem that occupies the public forums.

As filtered and unfiltered information along with contradicting perspectives on its conclusions bombard us from every direction, we are left in constant inner turmoil fuelled by an inability to answer the questions raised. We are put at odds with a world averse to authoritatively objective solutions.

While the ideal hero served his purpose in the ages before, he no longer suffices as our champion in such a reality of competing subjectivities and we now look to the antihero to be our symbolic saviour.

Who is the modern antihero?

He is the central character of a story, its protagonist, who is not chained to the simple, straight forward morality and noble character traits of the ideal hero.

The antihero of today remains every bit as impressive as the ideal hero of bygone days in his strength and courage, but he is flawed and damaged as a moral and social being. His origins, the world he inhabits, his personality and the choices he makes serve to amplify his raw humanity. They also make him more relatable to us.

We are drawn to the antihero in spite of his glaring imperfections, as we attempt to settle some of the psycho-social debates raging within us, vicariously through his actions.

None of this of course overwhelms his ability to entertain us. Without the pleasure he so efficiently delivers to the consuming audience, his power and influence in popular culture would be severely diminished. Popularity is in fact one of the key factors in the evolution of nuanced depictions of the antiheroes. Supply meeting demand in the commercial sphere of art and entertainment, urged on by the increasing profits.

In this light of reasoning, I think of the Punisher or Frank Castle as the perfect antihero of our time.

Frank Castle is a decorated ex-soldier and a hero of war. He is transformed into a vigilante killing machine, driven by a peculiar moral code which mandates a brutal dispatching of often lethal punishment to anyone who ‘deserves’ it, by his own judgment.

The deserving here are hardened criminals who have taken lives, or other malicious individuals who cause deaths, and spread misery among the ‘innocent’ general public.

This code of Castle’s was born out of, and is sustained by, immense emotional trauma which he carries within him. This trauma which broke him down and then reformed his psyche, creating the Punisher, came about when his family was murdered without reason, caught in a crossfire between rival criminal factions.

He starts out as any vengeful man does, seeking justice for his loved ones by eliminating those responsible for their demise using his military skills and his innate aptitude for warfare and violence. After accomplishing that, he realizes his bloody quest to right the wrong done to his family had not sated his pain. The deep sorrow and raging anger remained still, burning fiercely beneath the surface. He then proceeds to turn his fundamental life purpose in to something more than the pursuit of a personal vendetta, and adopts the title of The Punisher.

Many subtle variations of the Punisher have appeared in the comic books and graphic novels in the decades since his first appearance but the elements mentioned above have remained more or less the same in all of them.

In mainstream live action movies, the Punisher has been portrayed three times, and in each case, there were significant failures in execution of core concepts compounded by the lack of a cohesive and compelling vision. The movies had little to no impact, both commercially and critically.

It was only recently that the Punisher was thrust back into the spotlight before a worldwide audience, with a powerful performance by actor Jon Bernthal in the well written and marvellously directed adaptation of Daredevil on Netflix.

So positive was the response of the masses to this depiction of Frank Castle on screen that Netflix have since had to change their initial game plan, and were forced to give The Punisher his own independent show on their platform.

Now the global fan community eagerly wait for this phenomenon to air in the not too distant future.

What makes The Punisher resonate so deeply with us?

One need only examine the character, his world and the structural make up of his story, to see the obvious. We cheer for him because he is a perfect blend of who we are morally in our social roles, what really makes us tick deep within and who we want to be in our fantasies.

Let us break this idea down.

The Punisher strikes a chord with us at the very basic level, as he lives and wages his battles in a world much like our own. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the setting for his story is a more streamlined version of the world that we have become used to. It might not be an objectively real world, but it is one that we have accepted by being exposed to the consistently polarized narrative of the news media.

In this semi-fictitious world, he does not fight aliens or gods or larger than life supervillains. The war the Punisher wages is against the very same things and people that we ourselves have come to fear and loathe. The monsters of our own world, who come in the form of merciless criminals, terrorists and other repulsive deviants.

Once this connection is established between him and us, that we share a common dark and cruel reality in many ways, we look to him with hope, needing him to be someone who we are fundamentally incapable of being ourselves.

Someone who operates with a clear and singular purpose, unaffected by the distractions of normal human life, unfettered by crippling emotions or paralyzing doubts and almost super humanly effective in achieving his goals.

We appreciate and adore this side of him. This side which makes him a ruthless, unstoppable machine of sorts more than a human. There are many occasions in life where emotions have got in our way, and we have been brought to our knees, defeated by the harsh truths of how the world works. The Punisher is not bound by any of this, and so he earns our immediate respect.

How do we then try to process and approve of his actions, which by themselves are brutal and without remorse?

Surely we cannot all be just okay with The Punisher’s violent and bloody methods, let alone admire them. Not while we function as people within such an intricate and dynamic moral framework. Right?

This is where the other genius of this antihero’s storytelling technique comes into play.

The people he imposes his judgment on are often portrayed as nothing but vile beings without any redemptive qualities. The story reinforces this by illustrating over and over again how they cannot be saved from themselves and can only be punished. These are the same elements of our society that we, the audiences, detest and despise.

The Punisher’s story form highlights what we already hate about them and thus makes it okay for us to grant him the greenlight to enforce his punishment.

It is interesting when you think about the double standards of character depiction here. The Punisher is complex inside psychologically, at least as far as his history goes, but is driven by a singular and just cause – punish the wicked. The tragic loss of his family, is something we all feel enraged by and it softens our view on the course he chooses. It is justified we feel, and through him we start to indulge in our own need for vengeance and blood.

He is transformed from something we all are, into something we want to be.

On the other hand, his enemies or victims are shown as flat characters with no complexity of reasons, tangible or intangible, guiding their actions. These are the kind of people who we choose, in real life, to think of in one dimensional ways as well. We refuse to see them as complex entities like ourselves and cast them out of the protective spheres of our moral qualms and regulations, as just unworthy and evil.

All the complexity of the real world, like for example, the factors of socio-economics and dysfunctional familial environments, which are hugely influential in creating the ‘monsters’ we fear, are no longer an issue in this fantasy of primal instincts and desires.

While civilized society and its institutions prevent us from actually ‘punishing’ these people ourselves, our fictional antihero commits to doing what our baser instincts already urge us to do.

It is indeed a precarious balancing act of somewhat opposing, dual realities that the Punisher manages. His world is one that we know, and one that we crave, simultaneously.

Perhaps this is the most meaningful achievement of the antihero in our lives right now, that we can find a release for our deep, irrational wants and frustrations in his form. A form that allows creative liberties and personal representation, all the while providing us with harmless pleasure and inexpensive entertainment.

In that respect, the Punisher is not just a necessary creation for our turbulent times but one that reveals to us the many shades of grey we are made of, when it comes to the stark contrast between our overt, accepted beliefs and our covert, suppressed desire to break free of the cage that society and its rules confine us in.

Art becomes what we need it to be, so that we can continue our struggle with this life we are thrown in to, without losing our meaning or sanity.

Love, Murder and Maybe (Short Story)

Forty three years of marriage, and each year had been worse than the one before it. Why did they stay together? Forty three years is almost a lifetime. Jacob winced as the sheer sense of lost time hit him.

It was for the kids, wasn’t it? Yes. It definitely was, he tried to convince himself.

The truth that Jacob only ever admitted to himself after a few drinks of whiskey and in solitude, was that he had stayed with his wife Ruth because he had been too afraid to ask for a divorce. She could be a scary person when she wanted to. He had spent the better part of their marriage being intimidated and strong armed by her in to making various decisions. Including having kids.

Fuck it. He loved his kids. Though they weren’t kids anymore. Julie was almost forty and Nathan was thirty four. Full grown adults, who made their own decisions and stood their ground against their nightmare of a mother. They were sensible kids. The first thing they did when they turned eighteen, both of them, was to get away from home. Away from their mother’s destructive shadow and build their own lives.

At first Jacob had been dismayed with their decision to move to the city. He had even resisted it, especially with Julie. But then as time went on, he saw that it was a good decision for them. Yes, it meant that he wouldn’t get to see them as often, but at least he didn’t have to sit there and watch Ruth suck the joy out of their lives as she had done with his.

Let them enjoy their lives. His Julie and Nathan. He was a proud father.

Besides… his time wasn’t over yet. He still had a few good years left. Years he was now determined to live happily. With Melanie.

Melanie Carmichael.

He realized there were butterflies in his stomach even as he thought of her name. Melanie was only two years younger than Ruth, but she might as well have been a teenager. She had such a wonderful spirit, that woman.

Jacob looked across the acres of his farm stretching in front of him, as the setting sun’s golden touch made the brown blades of grass glow.

He continued to sway in his rocking chair, on his porch. This moment was peaceful. It would have been magical with Melanie been by his side. He closed his eyes as he tried to remember the scent of her perfume. 

It always made him swoon.

He smiled as he realized there would be many evenings in the years to come, with him sitting on this very spot, with her hand in his.

He had met her only a few months ago. She was a retired teacher from the city, who had moved here to enjoy her golden years.

He had fallen in love with her almost immediately. He had been stunned at first, at the intensity of his feelings. Love was a thing he had forgotten, and had even buried the memory of ever having felt.

Maybe it was that sweeping flood of emotions so sweet that willed his decision. A decision he didn’t take lightly, but took nonetheless.

Ruth had to go.

He was aware of how severe and cruel it sounded. But he knew it was his only chance of happiness. Didn’t he deserve some happiness? After forty three years being bound in chains by that cruel woman who knew no love… didn’t he deserve something good?

He did. So he had decided to take it upon himself.

He didn’t know how though. It had taken him a few days to figure something out. Nathan’s wonderful computer machine. That monstrosity in the den which he had installed a year ago.

“Dad, you can look up anything in this, do you understand? Anything!”

Nathan had been almost excited like a kid again. A young boy who was sharing all the neat tricks of a beloved toy with a grown up. 

Dear Nathan. His sweet child.

How he had helped his old father, he would never know.

Jacob had ignored the machine for a few months. But after Melanie came into his life, and the decision had been made regarding Ruth, he finally started to learn the mechanisms of the thing.

He was astounded at all the things stuffed inside that little screen. Nathan had not been kidding. Ruth had been suspicious of his new found joy for it.

When was that woman ever not suspicious of any joy he found? He cursed what foolish moment in youth had convinced his heart that she was the one for him.

A life wasted. His... and now hers.

No. He reminded himself again. His life was still left. But she had to go.

On some level, he was sorry, but still Ruth had overstayed her welcome in his life by decades. It was time.

This is for love, he told himself. Not out of hate. But for love.

Besides, he sated his nagging conscience, it is not like Ruth is having the time of her life. That woman was miserable from the moment she woke up to the moment she slept, and she spent all her waking time making sure he would not sustain a smile as well.

Even if he did ask her for a divorce, she would make it the rest of her vindictive life’s work to destroy everything he had ever known, and would still remain a depressing old hag at the end of it all.

No way was he willing to take that road. This was the way. The way the machine had shown.

It was a few days into his tinkering with the thing that he chanced upon a strange place. A site, as Nathan called it. Jacob had until then mainly used the grey, beeping machine to search for things to read. But this place, this site, was different. There seemed to be a lot of people on it. Or a lot of names at least. Strange, sometimes funny and often perplexing names he found hard to even say out loud.

It still boggled his mind, that. How is it a place and how could people be on it? It wasn’t…. real. Not really. Was it?

In any case, this place called ‘3chan’ had a lot of intriguing ideas in it. And one of them just happened to deal with homemade poisons.

Jacob was shocked beyond belief to see that at first. He had almost unplugged the machine.

Surely this was illegal. Would the sheriff come calling? Would they know he had been to this weird little place? Sheriff Thomson knew him. Would he be appalled at what good old, mild mannered Jacob had been up to? The fear and paranoia had kept him awake one entire night.

The next day, he had a couple of drinks, and forced himself to revisit that place. He had to know what it was.

Despite what little credit or worth Ruth had given him for over four decades, Jacob believed inside that he was a smart man. And this was his chance to find out. This was his chance to prove to himself when it actually mattered that he was a capable man.

Ruth never ventured near the machine anyway. She found it godless. She had said so the day Nathan brought it home.

The devil’s toys she stayed away from, being the good Christian woman she liked to call herself. Jacob had realized years ago that her faith was just another thing for her to hate and judge others by. This time, sanctioned by the Lord.

Her distrust of the machine though worked in his favor. He got more time alone with it.

Slowly, bit by bit, he unraveled the mysteries of the ‘internet’. And one very confident day, when Ruth had gone out to the market mumbling and cursing him for being a waste of space, he searched for that familiar, scary room in this immense labyrinth of information again.

Homemade poisons. He found it.

And there in that cozy and naughty little room on the deep, dark internet, hidden away from Ruth and the Sheriff and his kids, he found what he had hoped to find.

Near undetectable poisons.

Something that could kill a person and leave no trace if they did an autopsy. Or so the ‘3chan’ said.

It wouldn’t lie to him, would it? What reason could it have anyway? There was no money to be made off of him. That’s how you see if anyone is out to make a sucker out of you, his daddy used to tell him. Is there any money they can make off of you?

If the answer is no, then you can trust them. Jacob trusted the ‘3chan’.

It was then a matter of covering his tracks and patiently acquiring the ingredients necessary. That took some time, but Jacob bought it bit by bit from the market, so no one would be the wiser. A couple of times he had to order some things from the city, and that meant records of orders placed in the market logs. But he was as careful as any man in his shoes should have been. He hid the particular thing he needed by also ordering a bundle of other things with it. No one could see through this, he was confident after a while.

It took him another few weeks to prepare the mixture, which was mainly herbs, properly.

This was because Ruth liked to keep tabs on where he was and what he was up to at all times. It was tricky doing all of this without her getting the wind of it.

The sheer terror of Ruth actually knowing… that was enough motivation for Jacob to take all the precautions.

And finally, the day – no – the night had arrived. And here he was swaying calmly on his chair, looking at a magnificent sunset.

Why was he so calm, he wondered. Last night had been one of cold sweats and nervous excitement. He had almost chickened out of the whole thing.

But the thought that this was the last day he would have to spend with Ruth. That Melanie was waiting for him to hold her hand and beckon her into his life, that changed his mind.

And the plan was back on. Just like that.

Now the final day of misery was drawing to an end, and Ruth was unaware of it. For some reason, this made him feel powerful. It was the first time he had felt that. Power over someone’s life and destiny. An odd but enticing sensation. He paused to think if this is how Ruth had felt every day they had been together, knowing how tied up and helpless she had him.

“I’ve set the plates. If you’re going to have supper, come have it.”

Jacob broke out of his reverie to hear Ruth utter that worn out, familiar invitation.

But today, Jacob was heading to the supper a content man. A gleeful child inside, though no one could see it.

He had… implemented the solution to his problems earlier in the evening.

Ruth liked to have a couple of glasses of wine before her supper. She was very protective of this habit of hers, for no apparent reason. He had never stopped or even questioned her on it, but still she liked to point out that wine was okay. The good Lord didn’t mind her having a couple of glasses of wine to soothe her weary old soul after a hard day. Why, wine was practically a church approved drink, if there ever was one.

On top of this, she still liked to give him a whole lot of grief over the few drinks of whiskey he had every week. A worthless drunk, she sometimes called him, when he knew that he was far from that.

But then again, it was no surprise to him. Ruth was near allergic to anything that made him happy. So over the years, he had learned to turn a deaf ear to her words on this matter.

There was, after all, a limit to how much a man could give up in life. His drinks were his last defense against insanity. Or it was… until Melanie. Now she was his reason for everything. From waking up every day in this hell hole of a marriage to what he was about to do, or rather had done already – she was his one shining reason and goal.

Jacob looked at Ruth, as they sat down to eat their food.

Had she had her wine already? He would have liked to see her drink it. Just to be sure.

But he dare not bring it up, on account of raising her suspicion.

He had carefully mixed the full dose of the potent mixture into the last bottle she had opened. It was supposed to be tasteless and odorless. He hoped to hell it was.

Jacob’s own sense of smell and taste had waned in the years before, but Ruth’s was still as sharp as ever. Would she smell something fishy? Or poisonous?

He closed his eyes for a brief moment and reined in his nerves. Stay calm, old boy.

The whole ordeal of… well, everything… is almost over.

The ‘3chan’ said the mixture would take 3-4 hours to work and when it did, it would be sudden and almost instantaneous. That meant, Ruth would probably pass away in her sleep.

No, she definitely would die tonight. She had to, and he wanted her to. Why sugar coat it now, he thought. He had done it, and now he just had to hope for the best. This would either be the most miraculous night of his life, or the most heart breaking.

His thoughts again wandered into the ‘what if’ lane. What if the whole thing had been a scam? A cruel joke made up by one of the faceless names on the internet?

He couldn’t bring himself to finish that thought. He needed this to happen, and for the first time in years, and for the strangest of reasons in the end, he found himself praying for his miracle.

Oh God, please show some mercy, call this vile woman to you, he begged within. Let her be in heaven. He didn’t care. He wanted to make his heaven here. Ruth could have paradise.

He was caught up in this inner dialogue, and paid no attention to the things Ruth was muttering to him. Hateful things about every person she had encountered that particular day. How they were all sinners.

Jacob was lost in his odd prayer. And so their possible last supper ever finished without either of them really acknowledging the other’s presence.

They went to bed the same way, and soon Jacob was lying there in the darkness, listening to her snore.

How much longer now? How much longer did he have to wait till it was over? Till he could breathe again?

His stomach was now in knots. He was sweating profusely.

If Jacob had listened to Ruth that night, or any other night, maybe, just maybe Ruth would have talked more, and not just mutter complaints. She might have been more forthcoming about various things too.

Maybe she would have told him many years earlier, instead of keeping it her annoying little secret, that on the days she was particularly worn out she hated hearing him mumble things to her. Bland, plain, pointless things about something or the other that initially forced her to plug her ears with cotton wads. He never noticed though and at some point, it began to irritate her that he didn’t notice the lengths she was going to, in order to not listen to him yap on.

Maybe if he had paid attention to her then, or had bothered to check with her, she would have included him in the new system she had developed wherein she mixed in some of her wine when cooking his food to improve the taste for his dull tongue, and also so he would go to sleep early and not bother her.

Maybe she would have shared all of that with him.

Maybe.

Life is full of a lot of maybes in the end, it seems.

The following is a Facebook post that began making the rounds on the internet a couple of months later.

YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE THIS LOVE STORY THAT WILL TUG AT YOUR HEART STRINGS!

A  couple from rural Oklahoma, Jacob and Ruth Whitfield, who met when they were just teenagers, got married for love and raised a family together. After 43 years of a happy marriage, they both passed away as an old couple, on the same night, in the same bed, due to natural causes. Imagine the odds. Some matches are truly made in heaven!

SHARE AND LIKE IF YOU BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF TRUE LOVE!

When Patriotic Pride Meets Troubling Delusions

We can be proud of many things as a nation. We have achieved much as a civilization through the ages, and since we became a unified nation officially on that fateful day in 1947. I am proud to belong to this country. I would not choose to have been born anywhere else, or at any other time. 

Even more emphatically, I would not choose another family. I am lucky in many ways. But this is not about that.

Recently, I have started noticing in me a subtle delusion. I am sure there are many others, given the extremely flawed and immature human being that I am, but I want to focus on this particular one.

It is about the pride that stems from achievements that I have no direct or indirect claims to. Yes, we as human beings have a sense of community and belonging, and therefore are capable of drawing happiness from the success of any individual from our social groups or nations.

As an Indian though, here I am talking about that characteristic Indian pride for great things that have some connection to India.

When an Indian scientist makes an important discovery, for example, there is ample reason for us patriotic citizens to rejoice in that fact. But when a scientist of Indian ‘origins’, who has chosen another nation as his own, by birth or otherwise, achieves something remarkable – why do we get to claim pride in that?

Does it not seem desperate?

I feel it is. And it bothers me.

It is like the struggling person in life with low self-worth who likes to feel good by reminding people of the fact that a distant relative of theirs, who they have never actually met, became famous. As if that somehow means they have done so themselves and deserve respect for it.

We hail from a great civilization. We have enough and more in us, to make ours a grand nation too. And slowly but steadily, we are getting there.

And that leads me to the second part of this thing that is bugging me.

The pride in the feats and achievements of ancient India.

I feel that when we go for the easy pride in the vague notions and ‘facts’ of ancient Indian greatness, we blind ourselves to the present day problems that we need to face to a certain degree.

I have seen and at times even been complicit in vehement arguments about something ancient India did or is said to have done. Yes, there is a fierce patriotic element in that but I sense now an overwhelming delusional part in it too.

So here are some things many modern Indians are proud of, but with a twist. Let us look at them in context for once, shall we?

We invented the modern number system, and zero.

Can you name five great mathematicians in India today? What have been some recent modern contributions from our nation to the field of mathematics? Are we at the forefront of this area of study? How do we get there?

We had a very advanced system of medicine in ancient India.

What are the current health and medical statistics in India that we need to improve? Where do we rank in the global scale of things as far as our medical institutions go? How much of the population has access to good medical services?

We have a great history of the arts and literature. Mahabharata is still the longest epic ever written.

This is true. But can you name the most critically acclaimed writers of at least two languages in India right now? How many great schools of the arts do we have? How many traditional art forms are fading away in to obscurity? What do we need to do to revive our native arts?

Do you see where I am going with this?

At what point does pride become something that lures us into complacency, and not something positive that is born from the reality we live in?

I say again – I am proud to be an Indian. But I also feel that I would rather be an informed and aware citizen who beams with a little less pride, than a proud and boastful moron, who lives in a manufactured nation of abstract notions and ancient wonders.

What's Your Story?

I like telling stories. No. I love telling stories. It’s so much a part of me that I honestly don’t know who I am without it. I guess, deep down, without these narratives to occupy my world, I feel somewhat hollow.

Any bit of information or news I hear, my mind automatically collects enough bits and pieces to frame a story with it. Inevitably though, I feel the need to communicate these tales to others. It has, however, been brought to my attention that this habit of mine is a bit tedious to handle for those around me.

People don’t always want to hear stories all the time. And I suppose I cannot blame them for this. People like to deal in information. The bare essentials. This I have to say I cannot comprehend fully. I guess I am still that petulant child demanding Grandma to tell me one more story if she needed me to finish eating my meal.

Those are my first memories of it, by the way. Listening to my grandmother tell me tales from the ancient epics as I listened attentively, wide eyed and slack jawed in amazement at the colourful characters and grand adventures full of gods and demons and war.

Did that early childhood mould this trait in me? I cannot be sure of that. Maybe I would always have been this way. I am a bit peculiar, after all.

In the early school days, I remember being in the spotlight, telling stories to audiences small and large. Something I assume, from the number of prizes I gathered in that area, I was quite good at.

I have to say, I don’t think I would be able to do that now. But there is a certain courage that one experiences only by virtue of the naivety of childhood. From the lack of knowing of what the world is, comes a fearlessness to do things before it. To be a performer of a hundred bold voices and a thousand exquisite emotions.

Could I have been a storyteller back then, if I knew what I know now? Could I have stood before an audience and passionately told those fantastic tales, if I knew they were not paying attention maybe? That they were also quite possibly people who dealt in information? The bare essentials of life, their only concern?

Is that what growing up means, I wonder. The process of becoming a person who doesn’t much care for stories any more. At least not all the time…

I guess I will never know for sure. I am what I am. Maybe I can keep my tendencies from weighing heavily on the people in my life, but that would be the extent of it.

I cannot change what I became, or how I want to live. I will always want that next story – petulantly and childishly.

Stories all around me just make living easier, I suppose.

Two Free Apps for Better Android Web Browsing!

Though I still prefer my trusty old laptop for my net browsing, it is very true that most people now have to access the internet on the go. Busy lives require innovations and now most websites are even designed primarily with the smartphone size and format in mind.

Still, most android users, for example, still stick to their stock browser and standard options. While the more proficient users opt for the free or paid custom apps available to get things done smoother and faster.

I am here to give you guys, two apps you really need if you’re working with a medium – low speed internet connection and a moderately powerful android device. Trust me, these two apps might just make your lives a bit easier.

The first app you definitely need to install is,

OPERA MAX

This is NOT a browser from Opera. No, it is a VPN and data saving app. It is free to download and works with very little power consumption on your phone. It basically saves you a lot of data while browsing, and you even have the option of deciding which apps of yours can access the net and which apps need to be streamlined when it comes to net usage. It automatically creates a VPN for you to do all of this.

I have been using this for some time now, and I can genuinely see a change for the better in my android net surfing.

Download Opera Max

After you install this, you need to take care of your browser situation. The stock browser your android gives you is good, but it is just that – good. There are plenty of better alternatives available online for free.

While you will find a lot of browsers which advertise themselves as and sometimes are lighter and faster for surfing, it can be a bit confusing to choose one and not doubt your choice.

Fear no more, for I bring you a little known but better option.

Firstly, you need to install the Google Chrome Beta as your browser, BUT this is not the one you will be surfing the net with.

No, for that you will be using an app called,

CHROMER

Chromer is a privately developed app that basically gives you the option to use just tabs to browse the net.

Confused? Simply put, it draws the features from the installed Chrome browser on your phone, but without opening up the whole browser, it provides you with a light, less data and power consuming interface to browse pages. IF you need the full browser features to interact with the page you have chosen, then it also gives you the option of opening the page in the fully fledged Chrome Browser.

Again, this is an app I have been using for some time and it makes the whole process of surfing a lot faster and it consumes less battery. And that is the main advantage here. It increases your device’s battery life.

 Download Chromer

So there you go. Two small apps that will make your net experience a whole lot easier, as promised.

Don’t wait guys. Try them out now!

Columbus Did Not Discover America And Neither Did The Other Guy!

I thought this was interesting enough to require a post of its own. I was initially going to group it under the misconceptions post, but then came to the conclusion that this one required a bit more of an explanation.

Any way, the question is this, girls and boys - who discovered America?

Now, the somewhat older and now tremendously out of fashion answer is that it was Christopher Columbus. Incidentally, it is just as well because it happens to be wrong too. He did not land in mainland North America, for one, and more importantly he wasn't the first person from Europe to get to those parts. The Vikings from the Scandinavian regions are believed to have made the journey across the Atlantic to North America many times before Columbus.

Paintings of Christopher Columbus and his ship

Now, it is not like Columbus did nothing. Certainly he did. He landed in the island of Bahamas first, then went on to visit Cuba, Dominican Republic and Haiti etc, before also landing in South America (Venezuela to be exact). In each of these cases he claimed the land for the monarchs of Spain. See now, this is because though Columbus was of Italian origin, being a Genoan citizen, his expeditions were funded by the monarchy of Spain.

In any case, he thus opened up the route for the European colonization of the Americas.

But he did make a small mistake. When he landed in the islands of the Caribbean, he thought he had actually found the eastern islands of Asia.

Columbus made his journey or the rather the first expedition in 1492. He was celebrated as the man who discovered the Americas or the New World as it was called then. But as centuries passed, new information came to light. And a new name popped up in the popular understanding of this historical time.

Amerigo Vespucci.

Amerigo Vespucci was another Italian explorer who made journeys to the New World almost immediately after Columbus. Vespucci's travels to the New World were in 1499 - 1502.

Amerigo Vespucci

It was kind of decided in the nineteenth and twentieth century by the historical experts that it was in fact Vespucci who discovered the mainland of the Americas and also proved that they were NOT the eastern out skirts of Asia, as Columbus had claimed to the colonial powers in Europe.

The name America, it is believed now, comes from the name Amerigo, which was Vespucci's first name.

And so till date, most of us kind of accept this as true and have not questioned this knowledge much further than that.

I am here to tell you  a THIRD name is also in the mix here.


Richard Ameryk, Richard Amerike or Richard ap Meryk.

He was a rich merchant and explorer from Britain, specifically the Bristol area. There was a proposed theory that the name America comes from his name, not Vespucci's. Here are some reasons why this is actually a reasonable claim.


1. He was also part of, or at least funded and financed expeditions to the New World during the same time period.

2. Ameryk was his LAST NAME, while it was Vespucci's first name (Amerigo or Americus). This is a very important clue. You see, the theory that it was Vespucci who was the namesake of the Americas came about mostly because of the early maps which were then found of the routes across the Atlantic and bits of the New World. Historians had assumed the newly discovered land was named America in the maps to honour Vespucci, the explorer. This sounds okay at first, until you hear the other argument. It was not acceptable then to name things after somebody's FIRST NAME. Had the land in the explorers' maps been named so for Vespucci - it should have been named VESPUCCIA. Richard Ameryk, on the other hand, financed some such expeditions. So when they landed or if they landed anywhere new, it would make sense that they would name the land (in the maps) as "Ameryk's land" or, you guessed it -  America.


So folks, while we all like to think we know to some extent this piece of historical fact, the truth is that in the end it's all just theorizing. I wonder, how different would our history be if these legends had been afforded the technology and opportunity to blog.

Hmm.. let us not make the same mistake. Signing off now. I will keep up this good fight for generations to come.

Ten False Facts You Might Have Thought True

How many of these things do you  already know? Please comment and share!

1. The Ouija Board is a trademarked product of the American toy company Hasbro Inc. Though the word 'Ouija' is now used to refer to any board that is used to "talk to the spirits", it is actually a legally protected and owned product released as a 'game' by this company. Oh, by the way, they also own G.I. Joe, Monopoly, Transformers, Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit and My Little Pony among other things. So, the next time you feel like contacting the dead and demonic entities of the netherworld, maybe you could use the Scrabble Board instead. You know... better spelling and more points?

2. Frankenstein is NOT the name of the monster created by Mary Shelley. It's the name of the doctor who makes the monster. Victor Frankenstein. The name of the monster is Adam. So this Halloween, dress proudly as the horrifying legend... Adam. Ignore the mockery, and focus on the fact that you're right and they are wrong.

3. People outside India should know this for future reference. There is NO language called 'Indian'. India has dozens of languages. And when I say dozens of languages, I am not talking about subtle variations of one language. Nope. I am talking about languages so different that if you speak just the one language, you wouldn't be able to comprehend someone from even the states near you. Oh, and the world and Indians should know that a similar concept applies to China. There is no language called Chinese. The main two languages are Mandarin and Cantonese. Then there are many smaller ones and subdivisions of these two main ones.

4. No apple fell on the head of Isaac Newton prompting the epiphany of gravity in him. That's just a story that became popular later on.

5. People in the middle ages did NOT believe the earth was flat. Columbus apparently thought it was pear shaped. Seriously, even ancient Greeks knew the earth was round. Not just that, evidence actually suggests that many ancient cultures - including Greek and Indian - may have calculated the actual dimensions of the earth itself.

6. Darth Vader does NOT say "Luke, I'm your father." I'm not kidding. Look it up.

7. You CANNOT see the Great Wall of China from the moon. You can barely make out countries, let alone the wall. No matter how 'great' it is, it's still too far away.

8. Human beings did NOT evolve from 'apes'. Great Apes are the species of primates like Gorilla, Chimpanzee and Orangutan. Technically, we are also a great ape. But we did not COME FROM apes. The apes of today and us, the human beings, come from a common ancestor who we don't know much about.

9. Jesus Christ was NOT born in a manger surrounded by barn animals. Blew your mind? What... you don't believe me? The Bible, the oldest versions of it, never mention a manger or a stable or anything like that. There was a word that could have been interpreted as 'manger' during the early translations but that is it. The story we have now with the animals and the nativity play scene - all that started hundreds of years after Christianity was formed.

10. And while we are at it, you should also know that they (or we) pretty much made up the 'Three Wise Men' bit. I mean, there are the Magi who come to see the baby Jesus in the Bible. But Magi stood for, or meant, the Zoroastrian priests. Nowhere does it say in the Bible - the early, original versions - that there were three of them, or that they were wise OR that they were men. Three gifts are given on that occasion, and maybe that caused the confusion which made people think there were three of the Magi.


So yeah. That's the ten popular misconceptions for right now. Stay tuned for more posts, and stay open minded, folks. The truth is out there.