Sourabh De's Blog

The designation of the date of 8th March is just a reminder on the calendar, for the obvious fact that there is NO day, that’s not a women’s day.

It’s always been like that until in the early 1900’s when a bunch of confident, fearless, creative and visionary women, from all walks of life, started coming together to build momentum.
United Nations chose this particular date as a pivot for all of us to always remember, what it means to be a woman and what the Womankind means to humanity.

The 3 colors that depict the International Women’s Day (IWD), say it all.
-Purple denoting Royalty, Dignity, and Justice
-Green meaning Hope
-White depicting Purity.

In about a century, that movement is coming a full circle with renewed and expanded focus on Women’s rights and Equal opportunities; through diversity and policy initiatives across social and business circles.
In the entire human history, this might be the perfect time where the Female species of the H. sapiens can seize the moment truly and surely.

Happy International Women’s Day to all!

In the book, Time travel, the main characters get up at 4am in the morning on this day to embark on an exciting journey to the Great Rann of Kutch!

This and much more in the most important book of the decade. Time Travel: To the Edge of History by Sourabh De
Pick it up, get on a journey of 3Mn years & review on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.in/Time-Travel-Edg...
Time Travel: To the Edge of History

As India proudly celebrates its 73rd Republic day (the day when the Constitution of India became effective); it also marks a day when a natural calamity struck the Kutch region and Bhuj city in the State of Gujarat, on this day 21 years back.
Commonly referred to as the Bhuj Earthquake, it devastated most of the city with huge casualties.
The city rose again like the 'Phoenix' and rebuilt itself.
Bhuj also had an earlier brush with turmoil when in 1971, it was attacked from air by Pakistan (Operation Chenghiz Khan), marking the beginning of the Indo-Pak war, both on the Eastern and Western fronts.
The city and its airbase bore the brunt on 3rd Dec 1971.
The war lasted just 13 days with the surrender of 93000 Pakistani soldiers, and the liberation and formation of a new nation Bangladesh.
This and much more in the most important book of the decade. Time Travel: To the Edge of History by Sourabh De
Pick it up, get on a journey of 3Mn years & review on Amazon.
https://amazon.in/.../ref=cm_sw_r_apa......…
#bookstagram #travel #HistoryAwaits #archeology #astronomy #holidaygifts #holidayreads

Yes. And that's the first day of year 2022.

They say, whatever habits we wake up to on the first day of a new year, stays with you for the rest of the year.

I didn't go to sleep till late in the night on 31st Dec 2021. So much to reminisce, so much to express. And as the final hours of the momentous year 2021 started to fold up, something I wrote almost 25 years ago, came rushing back.

‘The night crept on and the fire died down,
‘nother year closed in for the sleepy ‘ol town,
I kept on dreaming and you moved very far,
For I am the solitude and life you are..'

I intend to wake up late again on the 2nd Jan, just to balance the sin committed on the 1st day of the year.
Hoping that we all meet 2022, with a much better version of ourselves, and continue our journey towards happiness, contentment and excellence.

Why the Andaman and Nicobar Islands called so?
The Andaman Islands and its indigenous tribes (not the modern population of Bengalis, Tamils and others) have had a very long, unbroken history, almost 60,000 years.

The name itself is more recent, and is likely to have been derived from the Hindu Monkey God, Hanuman, one of the key characters from the epic, Ramayan. Ancient Malays from South East Asia, knew about Ramayan and Hanuman calling him, 'Handuman', who they believed, lived on these Islands. Hence the name, 'Andaman'.

But do you know where the name 'Nicobar' came from? That's more interesting...! The mighty Chola Kingdom of South India knew these islands with a specific name, which led to its modern name.
What was that? Please post your answers.

This and much more in the most important book of the decade. Time Travel: To the Edge of History by Sourabh De
Pick it up, get on a journey of 3Mn years & review on Amazon.
https://amazon.in/.../ref=cm_sw_r_apa......…
#bookstagram #travel #HistoryAwaits #archeology #astronomy #holidaygifts #holidayreads

Did you know that the only fossil in India, of a 'human' ancestor was found in Central India.
A small part of the skull, it is named the ‘Narmada Human’ and believed to be of our evolutionary cousin H. erectus, which roamed the Indian Subcontinent about 500,000 years ago.

The book Time Travel: To the Edge of History, tells how that is related to our mythologies and heartwarming stories that have been handed over for thousands of years.

As per our current understanding of history, here's a chronology of Veds. Let's not call them Vedas. They are Veds.

By 1500 BC (3500 years ago) the Sanskrit speaking, Horse mounted Pastoralists (also called the Yamnaya) from Central Asia started coming in and encountered the much more advanced and urban Harappans of the Indus valley, who spoke a proto-Dravidian language.

The earliest Ved, was the 'Rigved' written by these Pastoralists and contains evidence of influence from the Harappans. By around 900 BC, all 4 Veds and many other Vedic literature had been documented.
By 500 BC (2500 years ago), the great epics Ramayan and Mahabharat were also composed.
However, it doesn’t mean that the events described in the epics were from that period only. The stories and the legendary characters were perhaps a mix of the present and also from many centuries and millennia from the past.
The epics are exactly, where historicity, mythology and faith come together and coexist happily.

This and much more in the most important book of the decade. Time Travel: To the Edge of History by Sourabh
Pick it up, get on a journey of 3Mn years & review on Amazon.

https://amazon.in/.../ref=cm_sw_r_apa......…

#bookstagram #travel #HistoryAwaits #archeology #astronomy #holidaygifts #holidayreads See lessTime Travel: To the Edge of History

Did you know about the 'Battle of Aberdeen'?
Many consider it to be one of the earliest attempts towards India’s independence from the British.
The battle was waged between the ‘Great Andamanese’ tribesmen, who valiantly fought the against the British occupation of the Islands, on the fateful day 14th May 1859.
Once the largest tribe on the islands, that day, much of their population was massacred by the modern British fighting machine.
Today sadly, only 50 odd members of this indigenous human tribe survive on the islands.

This and much more in the most important book of the decade. Time Travel: To the Edge of History by Sourabh
Pick it up, get on a journey of 3 Million years & review on Amazon.
https://amazon.in/.../ref=cm_sw_r_apa......…
#bookstagram #travel #HistoryAwaits #archeology #astronomy #holidaygifts #holidayreads
Time Travel: To the Edge of History

Not many have the fortune or the guts to spend a night alone, inside the Great Pyramid of Pharaoh Khufu (The largest of the 3 pyramids in Egypt).
Yet one celebrated conqueror tried that around year 1798.
He spent a night inside the King’s chamber, deep inside the humongous pyramidal structure. This smart and adventurous emperor must’ve wanted to prove a point and dispel myths.
Instead, the next morning, he was taken out of the pyramid, all pale and shaken.
One can only guess what on Earth or (Heaven) he must’ve experienced during the night, that he couldn’t reveal even on his deathbed…!!
This and much more in the book, Time Travel: To the Edge of History.
Time Travel: To the Edge of History

Who hasn’t heard of Machu Picchu!
One of the most visited and enigmatic sites from the Inca civilization. In the 16th century, it survived the Spanish invasion due to being covered in thick vegetation, deep in the Andean mountains of Peru.
Around 1911, Prof. Hiram Bingham, of Yale University, rediscovered this gem of a historical site, shrouded in mystery.
This is how our forests and jungles hide in their guts such marvelous and mysterious creations.
Many people still believe that Machu Picchu in fact sounds like 'Matsya Puchha', the tail of a fish, in Sanskrit. Could it be possible?

...This and much more in the book, 'Time Travel: To the Edge of History'

Time Travel: To the Edge of History

Preface from my book 'Time Travel: To the Edge of History' explains the compelling reasons of why this book was written. A book which many have termed as the most important book of the decade.
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Preface:

What interests me the most is knowledge, knowing things unknown, connecting information and the huge satisfaction I get when data from two different walks of life come from a common past, and establish a correlation.
Interestingly, the internet can give us all the answers, but the best questions can only come from one thing – curiosity!!!

The more you know, the more curious you become, as it keeps feeding on itself. My drive to write this book was to cultivate and satisfy the sense of curiosity amongst my fellow beings and especially our next generation.

The branch of curiosity which I have discussed in this book is Human History and how it has evolved in many years.

Now, you may have read or seen many other bodies of work which have covered this in detail, however, most of them were either too scholastic or childlike. I wanted to bring forward knowledge which acts as the catalyst for a lifelong habit of learning, as well as satisfy many people like me who love to learn something new, in every chapter and every paragraph.

Since the time I have been writing this book, I have been on a journey, not just to new destinations, but also in time, exploring many unknown stories as well as trivia. Knowing more about where we came from and what triggered the world we are in today.
At times, I have travelled to the future as well, thinking where we will go, based on where we came from.
Sourabh De
If I were to dedicate this book to something inanimate and abstract, it would be ‘curiosity.’ It drove me to the path of exploring and understanding the past, present and future of human beings as a race. We as a race.

The rigmarole of corporate life and the process of seeing a young teenage daughter grow, convinced me that curiosity about human evolution, archeology, travel, and history are key aspects if we want to know ourselves better. Perhaps, it was time to drive a hard stake to bring everything together. Our generation, and the one following, needs to connect the dots more than ever.

Thus, I began a yearlong process of researching and revising my old travel notes and books, comics, atlas, and scholarly articles. I wanted to put down everything I grew up knowing from friends, mentors, dreams, and my travels.

Early on in the process, I realized that if we want to better understand the human species (or ‘specie’, singular form, used interchangeably in the book), we need to know more about this 4.8 billion years old big, wet stone sphere called earth, and its several timelines and phenomenon, which are essential for a better grasp on the topic of evolution, astronomy, archeology, and human genetics.

Classical knowledge gathered over 30 years and new research had to be crunched in one book. It would be a way to share the stories of human evolution, triumph, tribulations, customs, vanities, ghosts, conspiracies, and foods with everyone who cares about us as a species.

A year and a half later, what came out from this labor of love, set in the backdrop of the emergent Covid-19 pandemic, were 11 chapters, with 2 main characters embarking on an epic, once in a lifetime fictional journey across 20 cities, halfway through the world, covering 3 million years of human history in 30 action packed days.

On every page, hundreds of intertwined thought-provoking realizations, anecdotes, facts, aha moments and conversations from ground zero.
• The surreal feeling that the modern human beings (Homo sapiens) have been the only human species on earth since the last 10,000 years. What made us the supreme creature?
• Stories about dog and Lucy, the chimpanzee. How are we and cult of Beatles connected with Lucy?
• Was it fire, wheel, or printing press that turned us into an invincible machine?
• How did it feel to roast meat around a million-year-old community hearth, make a bed and drive a wheeled wagon, sew your own clothes for the first time?
• While Egyptians considered the human brain a useless organ, Harappans were rearing chicken as food for the first time.
• What do the great civilizations teach us to do and not do? Would we ever find Alexander’s tomb?

As the stories and anecdotes unfolded, there were more tantalizing facts coming out. Facts that could change our understanding of human evolution. But for that, we need to ask the right questions, dig up the past, look up at the Milky way and look inside for answers.

By the 11th Chapter, we start connecting the dots and pose the next questions. Those should fire the imagination in the parents, young professionals, and middle-aged corporate guys about history and world knowledge.
The readers of this book should act as evangelists to spread the message ahead. This book could be our sharpest weapon and the biggest reason to pack our bags and embark on a similar journey of our own.

My aspiration is that it becomes ‘The ONE History, Travel, Global knowledge book,’ that one ever needs to have, along with the great work by the likes of David Reich, Graham Hancock, Neil Shubin, HG Wells, Discovery of India, Satyajit Ray, Yuval Noah Harari.

The book also aims to bring in a few quiet changes and awareness towards history and the environment around us. In some ways, it should generate enough interest to impact policy decisions towards a much-needed emphasis on further supporting ‘Archeology’ as a discipline. The ideal outcome should be increased focus on excavating and researching more of the sites and getting closer to our past.

History should be a part of our general day to day conversations and not limited to academic circles only. We should have many more UNESCO heritage sites all over the world, and each one of us should know about them and how humans relate to them.

The day I received a response from the office of Prof. Yuval Noah Harari, permitting me to use his name as a fictional character in the book, I was convinced that the story I am putting up, indeed needs to be told.

Hope we read this book together, travel, look our ancestors in the eyes, share a meal and slice of their life, meet fellow Homo sapiens, and come home with a renewed sense of pride and warmth for the race we are and the place we are in.