Dear Readers,
Reading history is like falling in love or like experiencing this tender feeling so romanticised in literature and entertainment. You have your own set of questions, your own set of 'expected' answers, the set of real answers, the dilemmas, the insecurities, the uncertainties and the strong chances of you figuring it all wrong just when it seems to you that ah! Finally, I got it right!
I was going through the travel account of one Pietro Della Valle, an Italian traveler who was a globe-trotter in the sixteenth century ( yes, he managed to do that even then!). He had visited places like Constantinople, Aleppo, Hormuz, Baghdad, Goa, Calicut and other such exotic locations. As I lay enveloped in the love of History, a question struck my mind, the one which does so quite often. Were we better off in the past or is the present age our best living so far?
How charmingly delightful it would have been to explore such places in their pristine beauty and nature? Is it a greater sensuous pleasure to walk along the boulevard of sixteenth century Panjim after a luncheon with a Portuguese aristocrat than racing around in a luxury SUV in Vegas? These doubts are raised not against a solely Epicurean or aesthetic mind-frame but against a background of satiate living. Which way of living would bring us humans more satisfaction?...
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