We have a new fan in the living room and it has made me realise how inferior (though pleasingly colonial in appearance) the previous one was. This is silent and even at medium speed gives a nice gentle breeze across the largish living room. When in England I do miss fans, having grown up with them, and especially on summer nights. While our British visitors invariably find them uncomfortable, it’s neck and neck, and depending on heat tolerance, whether they find them less bearable than air conditioning.
I read a couple of interesting articles about Aurangzeb and his presentation in modern India and Pakistan that is making me rethink my comic book. It is about Aurangzeb’s encounter with Sarmad, and largely follows the liberal reading of the emperor in Pakistan, as a conservative who cut off the hope of a more liberal Islam that his brother Dara Shikoh offered. I am now thinking of adding a small bit that questions this. Dara Shikoh was not particularly competent after all, and Aurangzeb was not a rigid proto-Islamist but merely a harsh ruler and conqueror. The memoir of one of his Hindu midlevel commanders, a man named Bhimsen, seems particularly interesting, and I shall try to find and read it.
This is the article I read. I am not sure how widespread its conceit about a perception of Salman Taseer as a sort of latter day Dara Shikoh in Lahore actually was, as I was in London when the governor was assassinated, but I can imagine it being brought up in certain drawing rooms.