Book 15, 2023: Adventures of a Young Naturalist by David Attenborough

Book 15: Adventures of a Young Naturalist

Author: David Attenborough (UK) 🇬🇧

Genre: Non-fiction/Wildlife/Travel/Nature

Set in: England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Guyana 🇬🇾 Indonesia 🇮🇩 Paraguay 🇵🇾 Argentina 🇦🇷

Page 304:

The most brilliantly beautiful butterflies of the tropical rain forest do not fly in search of appropriately gorgeous blooms, but instead seek a meal from carrion or dung.

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Book 14, 2023: Lucknow 1857 by Rosie Llewellyn-Jones

Book 14: Lucknow 1857

Author: Rosie Llewellyn-Jones (UK) 🇬🇧

Genre: History/Conflict Studies

Set in: India 🇮🇳

Page 11

The last king, Wajid Ali Shah, had recruited a number of Africans for his Hubshiyan Risala or Black Cavalry unit, formed from men brought to India by Arab slave traders. He also had a number of female African soldiers as his bodyguard, who were probably part of the Gulabi (Rose) Pultan. African men guarded the royal treasury in Qaisarbagh, and African women not only guarded the royal zenana, but some were inside it too as wives of the king. 

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The Grand Predicament by Nic Askew

A fear of not belonging drives much of what we do and how we are.

Unknowingly it can define the experience of a life.

Most of us live with an underlying sense that we are not yet enough.

And assume that until we are we cannot truly belong.

We assume that we must become a better version of ourself.

But we’re never quite enough in this relentless pursuit of belonging.

We are lost to a never ending self improvement.

Might we have been looking out there when all along it had been within?

Might we already be the version we’d been seeking?

Beyond the endless game of fixing what is seemingly broken there exists a profound experience of knowing that there is no one to fix.

That we are enough as we are. And that we belong without condition.

Yet we cannot seek and hope to find this. As its nature is to find us. And to consume us with no doubt.

No one can teach us this. We cannot learn this.

In a moment of surrender. In a moment of not seeking, the experience can be re-known.

Nothing changes but everything is somehow different.

And then everything begins its transformation.

Liberation, peace and all that follows is the work of Inner View.

The little boy with green hair: Mixed Media on paper

My five-year-old son asked me to paint him with green hair.

Book 13, 2023: Aurangzeb - The Man and the Myth by Audrey Truschke

Book 13: Aurangzeb - The Man and the Myth

Author: Audrey Truschke (USA) 🇺🇸

Genre: History/South Asia

Set in: India 🇮🇳

Page 73: 

Aurangzeb's ascension initially changed little about the Hindu share in Mughal administration. Under Akbar, for example, Hindus constituted 22.5 per cent pf all Mughals nobles. That percentage hardly budged in either direction under Shah Jahan, and, in the twenty-one years of Aurangzeb's reign (1658-79), it stayed level at 21.6 per cent. But between 1679 and 1707 Aurangzeb increased Hindu participation at the elite levels of the Mughal state by nearly 50 per cent. Hindus rose to 31.6 per cent of the Mughal nobility. This dramatic rise featured a substantial influx of Marathas as a strategic aspect of expanding Mughal sovereignty across the Deccan.

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