My children are very much into reading maps and atlas now a days. They come up with all sort of questions like
- Why do we need boundary and mainly who decides it.
- Why cannot we have a polygon shaped countries - easier to maintain
- Why some countries do not have access to sea/ocean. they miss out the fun, similarly for snow.
- Why the old kings were always fighting
In fact they have their own map of world, where they try to divide the land/ocean mass equally for all countries.
Though I try my best to answer their questions, most of the things that I do not even know. unlike science queries, these things does not fetch satisfactory answers when we start googling. One such expedition fetch me a book written by Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers. I find this book to be special for the reasons that, it touches the topic the children are discussing and the very casual tone of the writing. It gives the feeling of someone sitting with you and explaining about it. More of Bill Brysonesque .
"History repeats itself" - this is what I got after reading this, though never mentioned anywhere in that. Events and people mentality goes in a cyclical way throug h out our history. In fact some dates and symbols are also that way. Why August 15 was chosen for our Independence and why certain symbols keeps appearing.
Some of the interesting reads were,
- How they try to figure Tsangpo river from Tibet flows to India as Brahmaputra
- Role of Tanjore temple in cartography
- How the border was marked during partition
- Portugal influence
I think our text books should have been more like this, rather than the usual "Kings planted trees . blah blah battle happened duh duh year "
Reason I am reviewing is NOT due to the content of the book. But this will be the last physical book I would have read. YES YES..I am moving to kindle. I will miss their texture and smell. Bye Bye...
