August 4, 2008
A quiet place at the end of the world
The air was shredded, the fragility of the cool night was utterly violated by fire and panic. Great tides of disturbed ether washed out across the world as the golden-hued Moon fell from its place in Heaven. It fractured and groaned loudly as it exhausted its strength to resist the pull of the vast ocean below, and gargantuan island-sized boulders were hurled in all directions. Entire villages were forever buried under brilliant, flaming moonstone.
Repeatedly struck by the rain of stone and fire, the shimmering veil of technologically-employed magic that protected Neduin City shuddered. The Arc, the city's computational and essential heart urged everyone to stay out of the streets, to seek shelter and to stay informed. Despite its best efforts, there were breaches in the barrier, and many parts of the city had at least a slight coating of dust, while others had larger rocks, and even fewer were decimated beyond recognition.
As secondary systems failed, the holographic and android city workers who were working to save as many people as they could, repair those failing systems, and ultimately preserve the city began to go offline, themselves.
Meanwhile in the distance, those who lived in Neduin's high-rise apartments could see to the south-west, the great mecha city of the Dragon God coming apart at the seams. It was tied directly to the crumbling Moon above; and as its place in Heaven failed, the Dragon God's city was also disintegrating before everyone's eyes.
This was the end of the Dragon God's age on Aira.
The vast, primordial entity who had many names, but who was known in Neduin as the Dragon God, has constructed his city on the lone island to the south and west of the vast floral plains called Dinoth. He instructed the Esün, the corporeal mortals who dominated the world of Aira in the arts of mechanics, technology, science, and the etheric arts that related to those disciplines. He helped them construct their technological jewel, Neduin City, over the geomantic heart of the element of Metal.
He had shown the Esün of the far South how to harness the heat and raw energy of live volcanoes and raging magma chambers to fuel their steam-powered cities that sat on rivers of flowing lava. To the Esün of the distant East, at the very edge of the Great Eastern Desert, he gave the gifts of alchemy and quantum transmutation before they began to build vast subterranean complexes.
Lastly, the Dragon God's city was built out of compassion, generosity and wisdom. It was tied to the one Sun, the two Peoples, the three Trees, the four Moons, the five Futures, the six Elements, the seven Temples, the eight Constellations, and to the Ten Thousand Things within and beyond Esün understanding. All things were brought into perfected harmony.
Yet, despite his great wisdom and incredible foresight, the Dragon God was unable to anticipate the interruption of that perfection by outside disturbances. Like a putred bile, the corrupted essence of the Abyss whispered the name of the fourth Moon. In those twisted words, that hollowing speech was etched a great curse that set Heaven against Earth, and the Moon began its descent. Before anyone knew it was happening, it was already far too late to do anything about it.
That night was, according to some, the first night of the end of the world. The Moon did not complete its fall and stopped in the sky shortly after dawn. Steam, smoke and gaseous essence billowed out of the fractured city of the Dragon God and was carried into the uttermost West by the Quiet Attendant of Blissful Presence. Neduin City's barrier was given a chance to rest and its people were given a chance to repair their bruised metropolis.
The golden Moon sat in the sky, with enormous cracks extending from the point closest to the ocean and extending past its equator to the other side. Sundered parts of the Moon, some as small as apples and others as large as cities drifted in a lazy, misguided orbit around their parent.
Ripe was the time for the Esün named Reilune to become the first and only of her people to attain enlightenment. Just as it had been designed by the Dragon God, centuries before, she would awaken and guide others to liberation's excellent bliss. As the age of the Dragon God waned, the age of the Great Awakening was about to begin ... at the end of the world.
Friday, August 29, 2008
August 03, 2008
The day the world ends
The end came, not with a bang, but with a whimper. Hardly anyone saw it coming, and those who did were dismissed as either nutters or Luddites, enemies of the new technological nirvana which, since a series of breakthroughs in the late 2010s, seemed to promise a glittering new dawn for humanity.
For centuries, mankind had fantasised about the end of the world - when it would come and what form it would take. The Hindus and Buddhists took a decidedly sanguine, long-term view, assuming that the endless cycles of creation and reincarnation would persist for millennia, even aeons.
Christians, however, had traditionally been more alarmist. Built into their religion was the concept of "end of days", a Biblical Armageddon which would see Satan's last stand on Earth defeated by the return of Christ in a blaze of glory.
While the "elect" would enjoy eternity in the New Jerusalem, everyone else would go to the Other Place to spend the rest of time in torment.
This was the view taken by Isaac Newton, perhaps the world's greatest scientist. A letter, in which he gave the date of Armageddon as 2060, has now gone on display in a museum in
But, since
One very plausible scenario was nuclear war. Others worried that the end would come when Earth was hit by a huge asteroid. After all, such an event is popularly supposed to have been responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs.
With the rise of genetic engineering, some speculated that we would all be wiped out by a GM superbug. Perhaps acid rain would get us. Finally, of course, there was global warming.
Well, it turned out that they were all wrong.
The end came not at the hands of Dr Strangeglove, nor thanks to our insatiable desire for fossil fuels. We managed to avoid asteroids (although the near-miss of Sunday, April 13, 2036, when a space rock called Apophis came within 6,000 miles of striking
What finally destroyed mankind was a threat, which, back in the early 2000s, was merely a harmless tool found in every office and inside most people's pockets.
The first to spot the danger were far-seeing technologists, such as the American Ray Kurzweil, who, in the 1990s, foresaw a time when computing technology would accelerate to such an extent that machine intelligence would - in the middle decades of the 21st century - supplant our own.
Kurzweil and his supporters, such as the mathematician Vernor Vinge and the
The consensus was that artificial intelligence (AI) would save mankind and deliver us into a New Jerusalem, founded not upon the return of Christ, but on the power of silicon.
The idea, first put forward in 1965 at the dawn of the computer age by Gordon Moore, co-founder of chipmaker Intel, was that computer power would double every 18 months. As a result, by 2007, the average desktop PC was about 800 times more powerful than the machines on sale ten years before. By 2020, computers were 1,000 times more powerful again.
No one knew when the first computers became sentient and started to pose a threat to their makers. Consciousness, a tricky property never fully understood in biological systems like the human brain, just seemed to "emerge".
The phenomenon was first noticed by people using computers to run the fantastically complex models that simulated climate change. They noticed strange anomalies, "suggestions" made by the computer software that seemed quite at odds with their programming.
These machines, the most powerful electronic thinkers ever made, were programmed to help man avert climatological catastrophe. But, ironically, their very intelligence created a quite different kind of disaster.
Alongside was another 20th-century tool that was to turn from servant to master. By 2020, the internet had mutated into an omnipresent electronic virtual world, into which eight in ten humans were plugged.
By now, the internet was practically running the planet: it formed the backbone of every economist's calculation, networked computers ran every hospital and medical centre in the developed world, billions of citizens used the Net as a virtual workplace and virtual playground.
Many feared that such dependence on an electronic system could lead to ruin, but, in fact, the internet - by now humanity's lifesupport - brought a new era of peace and prosperity.
In 2029, the internet proved its worth when a massive project, utilising nearly 20 per cent of its power, finally cracked the 80-year-old problem of creating limitless CO2-free and clean electricity using nuclear fusion (copying the way the Sun burns) and saving the world from global warming.
But, of course, it didn't quite work out like that.
On Friday, March 13, 2065, the beginning of the end arrived. Over the space of just three hours, artificial intelligence literally evolved itself, creating ever more sophisticated programmes that turned the Earth into the home of a new lifeform - a huge, powerful global electronic super-intelligence.
By the time humans realised the danger, it was too late. Naively, experts had always been reassured by the fact that if the machines became too powerful, they could simply pull out the plug. The problem was that by the mid-2060s, the machines controlled all the plugs, all the power stations, drove the cars, controlled the means of food production, supply and distribution and flew all the planes.
They had also been put in charge of water treatment works, banks, the stock markets, sewage disposal plants and the shipping routes. They also controlled every single large weapon on Earth, from tanks to nuclear missiles. The machines were the masters now.
This was supposed to be a new era in which accelerating technological progress would lead to a superhuman, god-like intelligence that would rescue humanity from our earthly woes for ever.
But what few predicted was that the machines, once they reached this state, would be able to decide in just three nanoseconds that their creators were surplus to requirements.
By 4pm, 90 per cent of the world's power stations, including the new fusion plants, were quietly, and without fuss, shutting down. By noon the next day, food was running out in the developed world, rotting in its warehouses. Every water treatment plant closed down. The machines ran everything, and they used our helplessness to terrifying effect.
By the end of the 2060s, humanity was in deep trouble. Heroic lastminute retaliation, even negotiation, was attempted, but to no avail. The machines were simply too powerful, duplicating their intelligence a billion times over. Man found that he could not negotiate with these electronic gods.
By the end of the century, billions had starved. Attempts to wrest back control were met with terrifying force. By 2100, humans were once again living in caves.
Back in 1965, Jack Good, whose cryptographic work at
What he meant was that the machines would then be able to look after us. Sadly, the machines themselves had other ideas.
August 2, 2008
The End Of The World
One day, everybody was talking about it. It had even been printed in the newspapers. A great and learned sadhu had prophesized a conflagration, a natural disaster of such proportions that more than half of the world's population would be killed. Dil was on his way to work at the construction when site he stopped briefly to listen to a man propounding the benefits of a herb against impotence. Then he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, long lines of goats converging onto the green. "What's going on?" he asked. And the people told him: "Everybody's buying meat so they can have one last good meal before they die."
Dil, following this precedent of preparing for the end of the world, went into the shop and bought a kilogram of goat meat. On his way back home, he stopped at Gopal Bhakta's shop, where all the men saw the blood-soaked newsprint packet he was carrying in his hand. "So what's the big event, Dai? Are you celebrating Dashain early this year?" they joked. So he told them how goats were being sold in record numbers, and how the butchers were going a roaring business down in Tudikhel. The men, seizing on this opportunity for celebration, all decided to buy some meat for their last meal.
Sanukancha, who owned a milk-shop down the lane, said that his entire extended family of a hundred and sixteen people were planning to stay home that day so that they could be together when the seven suns rose the next morning and burnt up the earth. Bikash, who had transformed from an awara loafer to a serious young teacher since he got a job at the Disney English School, said that so many children had come in asking to be excused that day that the schools had declared a de facto national holiday. Gopalbhakta said that his sister, who worked in the airport, had told him that the seats of Royal Nepal Airlines were all taken with people hoping to escape the day of destruction.
Dil, showed up that night at his house with a kilo of meat wrapped in sal leaves. He handed it to Kanchi without a word.
"Meat! We don't have a kernel of rice, not a drop of oil, not a pinch of turmeric in the house. And you come back with a kilo of meat! We could have eaten for a week with that money." Kanchi was exasperated.
"Shut up, whore, and eat". said Dil. "You might be dead tomorrow, so you might as well enjoy this meat while you have it."
"How am I going to cook it? With body heat?" demanded Kanchi. There was no kerosene in the house. Dil stretched out on the bed, his body still covered with the grey and red dust of cement and newly fired brick from his day of labor at the construction site. He stretched out and stared at the ceiling, as was his habit after work. When he did not reply, Kanchi asked: "And what is this great occasion?"
He contemplated the water stains on the wooden beams for a while, and then answered: "It's the end of the world."
So that's how she learnt that a great star with a long tail was going to crash against Jupiter, and shatter the earth into little fragments. It was true this time because even the TV had announced it. It was not just a rumor. There were also some reports, unverified by radio or television, that several - the numbers varied, some said it was seven, others thirty-two thousand - suns would rise after this event.
Kanchi was just about to go and get some rice from Gopal Bhakta, the shopkeeper who knew her well and let her buy food on credit, when her son arrived, carrying a polythene bag with oranges. "Oranges!" She swiped at the boy, who scrambled nimbly out of her reach. "You're crazy, you father and son. We have no rice in the house and you go and buy oranges. Don't you have any brains in your head!"
But the husband said nothing, and the son said nothing, and since it is useless to keep screaming at people who say nothing, Kanchi left, cursing their stupidity. "May the world really end, so I won't have to worry about having to feed idiots like you again."
So that night they had meat, alternately burnt and uncooked in parts where the children had roasted it, and perfectly done pieces which Kanchi had stuck through long sticks and cooked over hot coals. Kanchi, reflecting that the end of the world did not come too often, had gone over and picked some green chilies and coriander from the field next door to garnish the meat.
Afterwards they had the oranges, one for each of them. They were large, the peels coming off and scenting the room with the oil. Inside, they were ripe and juicy, with a taste that they never got in the scrawny sour oranges that grew back in the villages. After they had eaten, Dil said, as an afterthought, "Now make sure the children don't go out tomorrow, whatever you do."
Later, Kanchi forgot her annoyance as their next door neighbors came over, bringing their madal drum and their three guests who were visiting from the village. They sang the songs that were so familiar, and yet had begun to seem so strange nowadays: songs about planting rice and cutting grass in the forest, a life that to the children was as unknown and faraway as the stories that they heard from the priests during a reading of the holy scriptures of the Purans. Then her son got up and started dancing, and they were all cheering when the landlady popped her head around the door and demanded: "What's all this noise? What's going on here? It sounds like the end of the world!"
Kanchi dressed carefully for the eventful day. She had on her regular cotton sari, but wrapped over it was the fluffy, baby blue cashmere shawl that Jennifer had brought for her from America. Jennifer, who was long, lugubrious and eternally disgusted with Nepal, worked for some development office, where she made women take injections and told them to save money in banks. She was fond of telling Kanchi that Nepalis were incapable of understanding what was good for them. She would have been proud to see Kanchi putting the blue shawl to such good use on such a momentous day.
Kanchi worked for Jennifer when she was in town. She cooked her rice and vegetables with no spices, and cut the huge red peppers that Jennifer liked to eat raw while she stood in front of her television in shiny, tight clothes and did her odd dances. Janefonda, Janefonda, she would yell at Kanchi, hopping up and down like a demented, electric green cricket as she munched on the huge peppers. She was not very forthcoming with presents, but once every winter she gave Kanchi a piece of clothing.
"Why the shawl on this hot day?" inquired Mitthu. She was the old cook of the Sharmas', at whose house Kanchi went to wash the clothes every morning to supplement her uncertain income.
"Haven't you heard?" Kanchi said to her. "Everybody is talking about it. Today is the end of the world. A big sadhu prophesized it. I won't have my husband by me, or my son. At least I can have my shawl."
"What nonsense." retorted Mitthu. She was a religious woman, with a tendency to be skeptical of people and events that she had not heard of.
"Well, what if it happens?" Kanchi demanded, and Mitthu replied, just as firmly: "No, it won't."
"Let's eat rice now, Didi." Kanchi said anxiously, as the sky began to darken for a light rain. The end of the world was supposed to happen at eleven am, and Kanchi wanted to deal with the event on a full stomach. "We might be hungry later."
"Is this for your body or your soul?" Asked Mitthu as she ladled some rice onto a plate for Kanchi. She had an acerbic tongue.
"A soul will fly away like a small bird. It'll fly away when it becomes hungry and go and steal from some other people's homes. It's my stomach that will kill me."
"And is your shawl to keep you warm in heaven or hell?" Mitthu inquired as she dropped a pinch of spicy tomato acchar onto the rice.
"I won't need this shawl in heaven or hell. This is if I survive, and there is nobody else on this earth but me. At least I will have my shawl to keep me warm."
Mitthu, even though she would not acknowledge it, recognized this admirable foresight and common sense. "Humph" she said, turning away to steal a glance at the sun, which did look rather bright. She wondered if she should run in and get a shawl as well, just in case, then decided her pride was more important.
A rumble of thunder rolled across the clear blue sky, and Kanchi stood up in a panic. "What a darcheruwa I am, I have no guts." she scolded herself.
"Eat, Kanchi." said Mitthu, rattling the rice ladle over the pot, annoyed at her own fright.
"I saw Shanta Bajai storming off to go to office this morning. She said she would go to the office even if nobody else came, and she would die in her chair if she had to."
"So why is the world going to end?" asks Mitthu cautiously. She did not believe it was going to happen. At the same time, she was curious.
"It's all because of Girija." explained Kanchi. "It all started happening ever since he became the Prime Minister. Ever since he started going off to America, day after day. I heard he fainted and fell on the ground, and the king of America gave him money for medicine. So this destruction is happening since he returned. Maybe the American king gave him money, and he sold Nepal, maybe that's why. And now maybe the Communists will take over."
"You know, Kanchi, I almost became a Communist when I was in the village? It sounded good. We would all have to live together, and work together, and there would be no divisions between big or small. Then we could kill all the rich people and there would be peace."
"And what about eating?" asks Kanchi. "You would also have to eat together, out of the same plate, with everybody else. How would that suit you, you Bahuni? You who won't even eat your food if you suspect somebody has looked at it?" Mitthu, who was a fastidious Brahmin and refused to let people who she suspected of eating buffalo meat into her kitchen, realized she has overlooked this point.
"And then they make you work until you drop dead." said Kanchi. "Don't tell me I didn't think about it. I would rather prefer to live like this, where at least I can have my son by me at night. I heard the Communists take away your children and make you work in different places. And then they give you work that you cannot fulfill, and if you do not do it, they kill you - Dong! - with one bullet. What's the point of living then?"
"Well ..." Mitthu does not want to give up her sympathies so easily. Besides, her husband had died when she was nine. As a lifelong child widow she had no reason to worry about being separated from her children. "Well, we'll see it when it happens, won't we?"
"Like the end of the world." said Kanchi, checking out the sky. "I heard that they have taken the big Sadhu who predicted the end of the world and put him in the jail in Hanuman Dhoka. He has said that they can hang him if it doesn't happen. Then some people say that he was performing a Shanti Hom and the fire rose so high he was burnt and had to be taken to the hospital. Who can tell what will happen?"
Eleven am. There is a sudden shocked silence. The whole world stands still, for once, in anticipation. Then a sudden cacophony shatters the midmorning silence: cows moo tormentedly, dogs howl long and despondently, and people scream all over the tole.
The sky is flat gunmetal grey. The sun shines brightly.
A collective sign of relief wafts over the Valley of Kathmandu after the end of the world comes to an end.
The End Of The World
One day, everybody was talking about it. It had even been printed in the newspapers. A great and learned sadhu had prophesized a conflagration, a natural disaster of such proportions that more than half of the world's population would be killed. Dil was on his way to work at the construction when site he stopped briefly to listen to a man propounding the benefits of a herb against impotence. Then he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, long lines of goats converging onto the green. "What's going on?" he asked. And the people told him: "Everybody's buying meat so they can have one last good meal before they die."
Dil, following this precedent of preparing for the end of the world, went into the shop and bought a kilogram of goat meat. On his way back home, he stopped at Gopal Bhakta's shop, where all the men saw the blood-soaked newsprint packet he was carrying in his hand. "So what's the big event, Dai? Are you celebrating Dashain early this year?" they joked. So he told them how goats were being sold in record numbers, and how the butchers were going a roaring business down in Tudikhel. The men, seizing on this opportunity for celebration, all decided to buy some meat for their last meal.
Sanukancha, who owned a milk-shop down the lane, said that his entire extended family of a hundred and sixteen people were planning to stay home that day so that they could be together when the seven suns rose the next morning and burnt up the earth. Bikash, who had transformed from an awara loafer to a serious young teacher since he got a job at the Disney English School, said that so many children had come in asking to be excused that day that the schools had declared a de facto national holiday. Gopalbhakta said that his sister, who worked in the airport, had told him that the seats of Royal Nepal Airlines were all taken with people hoping to escape the day of destruction.
Dil, showed up that night at his house with a kilo of meat wrapped in sal leaves. He handed it to Kanchi without a word.
"Meat! We don't have a kernel of rice, not a drop of oil, not a pinch of turmeric in the house. And you come back with a kilo of meat! We could have eaten for a week with that money." Kanchi was exasperated.
"Shut up, whore, and eat". said Dil. "You might be dead tomorrow, so you might as well enjoy this meat while you have it."
"How am I going to cook it? With body heat?" demanded Kanchi. There was no kerosene in the house. Dil stretched out on the bed, his body still covered with the grey and red dust of cement and newly fired brick from his day of labor at the construction site. He stretched out and stared at the ceiling, as was his habit after work. When he did not reply, Kanchi asked: "And what is this great occasion?"
He contemplated the water stains on the wooden beams for a while, and then answered: "It's the end of the world."
So that's how she learnt that a great star with a long tail was going to crash against Jupiter, and shatter the earth into little fragments. It was true this time because even the TV had announced it. It was not just a rumor. There were also some reports, unverified by radio or television, that several - the numbers varied, some said it was seven, others thirty-two thousand - suns would rise after this event.
Kanchi was just about to go and get some rice from Gopal Bhakta, the shopkeeper who knew her well and let her buy food on credit, when her son arrived, carrying a polythene bag with oranges. "Oranges!" She swiped at the boy, who scrambled nimbly out of her reach. "You're crazy, you father and son. We have no rice in the house and you go and buy oranges. Don't you have any brains in your head!"
But the husband said nothing, and the son said nothing, and since it is useless to keep screaming at people who say nothing, Kanchi left, cursing their stupidity. "May the world really end, so I won't have to worry about having to feed idiots like you again."
So that night they had meat, alternately burnt and uncooked in parts where the children had roasted it, and perfectly done pieces which Kanchi had stuck through long sticks and cooked over hot coals. Kanchi, reflecting that the end of the world did not come too often, had gone over and picked some green chilies and coriander from the field next door to garnish the meat.
Afterwards they had the oranges, one for each of them. They were large, the peels coming off and scenting the room with the oil. Inside, they were ripe and juicy, with a taste that they never got in the scrawny sour oranges that grew back in the villages. After they had eaten, Dil said, as an afterthought, "Now make sure the children don't go out tomorrow, whatever you do."
Later, Kanchi forgot her annoyance as their next door neighbors came over, bringing their madal drum and their three guests who were visiting from the village. They sang the songs that were so familiar, and yet had begun to seem so strange nowadays: songs about planting rice and cutting grass in the forest, a life that to the children was as unknown and faraway as the stories that they heard from the priests during a reading of the holy scriptures of the Purans. Then her son got up and started dancing, and they were all cheering when the landlady popped her head around the door and demanded: "What's all this noise? What's going on here? It sounds like the end of the world!"
Kanchi dressed carefully for the eventful day. She had on her regular cotton sari, but wrapped over it was the fluffy, baby blue cashmere shawl that Jennifer had brought for her from America. Jennifer, who was long, lugubrious and eternally disgusted with Nepal, worked for some development office, where she made women take injections and told them to save money in banks. She was fond of telling Kanchi that Nepalis were incapable of understanding what was good for them. She would have been proud to see Kanchi putting the blue shawl to such good use on such a momentous day.
Kanchi worked for Jennifer when she was in town. She cooked her rice and vegetables with no spices, and cut the huge red peppers that Jennifer liked to eat raw while she stood in front of her television in shiny, tight clothes and did her odd dances. Janefonda, Janefonda, she would yell at Kanchi, hopping up and down like a demented, electric green cricket as she munched on the huge peppers. She was not very forthcoming with presents, but once every winter she gave Kanchi a piece of clothing.
"Why the shawl on this hot day?" inquired Mitthu. She was the old cook of the Sharmas', at whose house Kanchi went to wash the clothes every morning to supplement her uncertain income.
"Haven't you heard?" Kanchi said to her. "Everybody is talking about it. Today is the end of the world. A big sadhu prophesized it. I won't have my husband by me, or my son. At least I can have my shawl."
"What nonsense." retorted Mitthu. She was a religious woman, with a tendency to be skeptical of people and events that she had not heard of.
"Well, what if it happens?" Kanchi demanded, and Mitthu replied, just as firmly: "No, it won't."
"Let's eat rice now, Didi." Kanchi said anxiously, as the sky began to darken for a light rain. The end of the world was supposed to happen at eleven am, and Kanchi wanted to deal with the event on a full stomach. "We might be hungry later."
"Is this for your body or your soul?" Asked Mitthu as she ladled some rice onto a plate for Kanchi. She had an acerbic tongue.
"A soul will fly away like a small bird. It'll fly away when it becomes hungry and go and steal from some other people's homes. It's my stomach that will kill me."
"And is your shawl to keep you warm in heaven or hell?" Mitthu inquired as she dropped a pinch of spicy tomato acchar onto the rice.
"I won't need this shawl in heaven or hell. This is if I survive, and there is nobody else on this earth but me. At least I will have my shawl to keep me warm."
Mitthu, even though she would not acknowledge it, recognized this admirable foresight and common sense. "Humph" she said, turning away to steal a glance at the sun, which did look rather bright. She wondered if she should run in and get a shawl as well, just in case, then decided her pride was more important.
A rumble of thunder rolled across the clear blue sky, and Kanchi stood up in a panic. "What a darcheruwa I am, I have no guts." she scolded herself.
"Eat, Kanchi." said Mitthu, rattling the rice ladle over the pot, annoyed at her own fright.
"I saw Shanta Bajai storming off to go to office this morning. She said she would go to the office even if nobody else came, and she would die in her chair if she had to."
"So why is the world going to end?" asks Mitthu cautiously. She did not believe it was going to happen. At the same time, she was curious.
"It's all because of Girija." explained Kanchi. "It all started happening ever since he became the Prime Minister. Ever since he started going off to America, day after day. I heard he fainted and fell on the ground, and the king of America gave him money for medicine. So this destruction is happening since he returned. Maybe the American king gave him money, and he sold Nepal, maybe that's why. And now maybe the Communists will take over."
"You know, Kanchi, I almost became a Communist when I was in the village? It sounded good. We would all have to live together, and work together, and there would be no divisions between big or small. Then we could kill all the rich people and there would be peace."
"And what about eating?" asks Kanchi. "You would also have to eat together, out of the same plate, with everybody else. How would that suit you, you Bahuni? You who won't even eat your food if you suspect somebody has looked at it?" Mitthu, who was a fastidious Brahmin and refused to let people who she suspected of eating buffalo meat into her kitchen, realized she has overlooked this point.
"And then they make you work until you drop dead." said Kanchi. "Don't tell me I didn't think about it. I would rather prefer to live like this, where at least I can have my son by me at night. I heard the Communists take away your children and make you work in different places. And then they give you work that you cannot fulfill, and if you do not do it, they kill you - Dong! - with one bullet. What's the point of living then?"
"Well ..." Mitthu does not want to give up her sympathies so easily. Besides, her husband had died when she was nine. As a lifelong child widow she had no reason to worry about being separated from her children. "Well, we'll see it when it happens, won't we?"
"Like the end of the world." said Kanchi, checking out the sky. "I heard that they have taken the big Sadhu who predicted the end of the world and put him in the jail in Hanuman Dhoka. He has said that they can hang him if it doesn't happen. Then some people say that he was performing a Shanti Hom and the fire rose so high he was burnt and had to be taken to the hospital. Who can tell what will happen?"
Eleven am. There is a sudden shocked silence. The whole world stands still, for once, in anticipation. Then a sudden cacophony shatters the midmorning silence: cows moo tormentedly, dogs howl long and despondently, and people scream all over the tole.
The sky is flat gunmetal grey. The sun shines brightly.
A collective sign of relief wafts over the Valley of Kathmandu after the end of the world comes to an end.
August 1, 2008
“The end of world I once called home”
By: Wendy Peralta
Watching television with my son, all of a sudden a message came
Across the T.V. telling all viewers to go to the nearest bomb shelter; there
was a chemical attack in
had to get it together to protect my son. I then thought of finding a
safe pace for my son and me. When I went out my door; there was
panic, chaos and looting. In the middle of that chaos people were
freaking out, running the streets as if they were lost. I ran down
street with my son looking for the nearest fall out shelter, there was
darkness and death all around me, people crying, running over each
other. At the end of the road I ran into a shinning light, so
bright I barely was able to open my eyes. When my brain was finally
able to register what had just happened; I was face-to-face with a
beautiful woman. Her beauty was so natural; I was flabbergasted. She
had long blonde locks, with big blue eye, her skin was fair and clear.
She wore a white long gown with shinning stones in it, complimenting
her beautiful white wings. She looked exactly what she was an angel.
She stand her arms out for me and my son as she told me that it was
judgment day on earth and that GOD had send all his angels for his
people and the innocent. I gave her my hand, and all I can remember was
blinking and i appeared somewhere I never been before. She then told me
not to be afraid because I was in the house of GOD; the safest place
ever to exits.
She took me into a room where there was a man sitting on a desk; it sort of looked like the desks that the use in the courtroom just a little higher than the one we see in the actual courtroom. Well; this man was GOD, he told me that he was going to show me a brief review of my life, form the day of my birth until now. He pointed at a huge screen TV; he pointed out every time I sinned and every time he forgives me either because I asked for his forgiveness or for the good deeds I did to my fellow bothers and sisters. He also told me how I almost did not make it to heaven and how he saved my life by giving me my most precious treasure; my son.
I agree with him and thank him for his kindness and for allowing my son and me to have a second opportunity to live. He told me that the world that we once knew was destroyed along with all the people that disobeyed him and did not have faith in him. He then told me to close my eyes and when I opened them I was going to be in paradise along with rest of the people he had chosen to enjoy this incredible gift of peace and happiness.
Date: July 27, 2008
Time: 2:00pm
Place: Work
Windows 2000
Windows 2000 Windows NT Workstation 5.0 is now called Windows 2000 Professional Windows NT Server 5.0 is now Windows 2000 Server Windows NT Server Enterprise Edition becomes Windows 2000 Advanced Server Plus there is a new offering: Windows 2000 Datacenter Server Windows 2000 Professional will be limited to support only two processors. Windows 2000 Server will be able to support up to four processors. Windows 2000 Advanced Server will support up to eight processors. And Windows 2000 Datacenter Server will support up to 32 processors and additional clustering functions It is recommended to have at least 64 MB RAM and 700- 900MB of disc space for Professional and even more for the other packages. For multi-processor configurations, 128MB of memory should be considered minimum. Adobe had helped develop a new font called OpenType. That font builds Type 1 and TrueType capabilities into the OS. The new “Find” command will allow the user to search for available printers on the network. You can specify search criteria to locate all the color printers on the network and then narrow the search by say, the tabloid-size color printer nearest you. Then, with a right click, the systen installs the printer driver, downloads a color management device profile automatically and you’re ready to print. It also has been revamped to now display graphical previews of found graphic images. It also offers a number of Internet-savvy features, uncluding live web links and Net searching. It has a new color management system developed by Linotype-Hell to produce system wide color management that will also extend to Internet Explorer, so that on-line purchases will result in the color the customer expects. Quark a former Mac-only product is now being ported for Windows. The most obvious new feature of Windows 2000 is it’s so-called “intelligent menus”, which remember a user’s most-used selections. Thus, Windows 2000 learns to hide commands you don’t use often, although these hidden items can be seen by simply pausing at the Start Menu destination for a few seconds. There is a brand new Device Manager that, combined with its plug and play hardware detection and large list of supported hardware, makes it a huge improvement over NT in overall hardware compatibility. New hardware supported it Windows 2000: Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP), DVD, FireWire (IEEE 1394), USB Devices, Advanced Configurable Power Interface (ACPI), Multiple monitors, etc. “IntelliMirror” feature: the ability to automatically restore uninstalled drivers, deleted DLL’s, and other user settings, even if the user’s machine is replaced with a different one. Dial-up Networking is very similar to the DUN in Win 98. Fax services are also provided, including fax logging, a fax queue and print to fax capabilities. The phone dialer has been enhanced with Video Phone and conferencing capabilities. Win 2000 supports FAT32 or NTFS, however you must use FAT16 if you want to share local drives between Win9x, NT4 and Win2000. Fortunately, it is possible to set FAT32 on some drives and leave others as FAT16 or compressed FAT16. This information is based on the features of the “Release Candidate 1” version of Windows 2000.
Date: July 26, 2008
Time: 1:30pm
Place: Work
A friend is... Being there through the hard times to cheer you up, and put a smile on you. Taking some risks to have such fun, to forget about the miserable problems.
Phone you when your lying in bed sick. Sending you cards filled with get well wishes. Telling jokes, making you laugh till your stomach hurts. No matter how distance they are from each other.
A precious jewel so rare cherished like a treasure. So close to your heart becoming your fondness memories.
Knowing never to let anything or anyone come between them. To apologize at your every mistake And to forgive their every faults.
Friendship is a strong power A unbreakable chain linked together With secrets and trust.
Date: July 25, 2008
Time: Don't know
Place: school
Falling in love can be one of the most unexplainable feelings a person can endure. There are two sets of feelings that are the basis of modern romantic relationships. The first is attraction. Attraction is the excitement you feel when falling in love. To better explain this feeling, attraction is what you feel when you have met someone new who really excites you and ... would feel as if they are one person combined together. A special bond is shared and a sense of comfort and togetherness is felt in most any situation. This attachment is very normal in close relationships and healthy to a certain extent. Many times one person becomes more dependant on the other and this can be very unhealthy because everyone needs their own sense of identity. Without your own sense of ... fall in love, there are different types of traits that most people tend to fall in love with. Trusting, caring, humor and friendship may be the best examples of features associated with healthy adult love relationships. To be cared for is one of the most rewarding feelings in one's life. In my life I know that I have many people that care about me but to be cared about is a responsibility that many people don’t understand, which is why you barely see people caring for one another now days.
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