Of all the temples and mosques, rites and rituals the Indian Subcontinent has thrown at me, none has enthralled and enticed me as much as 'The Shrine of Red Royal Eagle'. On a conical mound, in the Sindh, lies the historic town of Sehwan Sharif, one of the oldest continuously occupied settlements in all of India and Pakistan. On its northern outskirts are the ruins of a huge fort used by Alexander the Great as he passed through this way. The fort was occupied by a succession of dynasties up to the 16th century. Arab chroniclers mention of its refurbishment in the 11th century and recent French archaeology uncovered work by the Hindu King Brahma as well as the Buddhist Gandharan Empire. But the town owes its greatest importance to the Mausoleum of Sheikh Osman of Marwand, known to his followers as Lal Shah Baz Qalander (Red Royal Eagle) who died in 1274. He arrived here from Marwand near Tabriz in Iran in 1260 and within a decade had ten's of thousand Muslim and Hindu followers. He b ...

When I was younger, a death grip was something only Mr Miyagi, erstwhile trainer of “Daniel son” in the Karate Kid movies, could do. In my mind it involved fingers and necks and instant comas. But this week has seen a redefinition of the move and one that I’m far from happy about. The new post-modern “death grip” refers to the way some people hold their iPhones. Apparently the device, if held in a particular way loses all signal – something which Apple have blamed on the Vulcan-like grip of the owners rather than their own software. As appleinsider.com recently reported it, “Apple's chief executive Steve Jobs stoked a whiplash of blogger frenzy when he reportedly responded that users "were holding it the wrong way," blocking the signal with their hands.”This most recent incident really confirms that Apple has made the transformation from business to religion. How else could the suggestion that people are holding a device incorrectly prompt a “whiplash of blo ...

A heroin dependency makes it difficult for forty-six-year-old John Bailey to keep a job, pay rent, or maintain stable relationships. Consequently, Bailey, who also suffers from arthritis, diabetes and seizures, has spent several years living on the streets. During these years, he would sleep under park benches, covering himself with discarded newspapers to stay warm and hidden. On colder nights he might venture into a shelter, which offered heat, but which also required him to engage in the ‘one-eyed sleep’, a state of semi-alertness prompted by the fear of having one’s possessions stolen. Bailey has also been severely beaten both in the shelters and in the city parks. Presently, a rehabilitation program has helped Bailey to remain drug free for several months and he has a job of sorts. But he is wary of taking his current life for granted. ‘This is not my first time rising,’ he admits, recalling past bouts of being sober and housed. 'Raw existence can be only a few slips awa ...

It needed to be written. A predictable wistful-turn-of-the-decade-piece hailing the end of the Noughties and the inevitable onset of the Tens (not quite as catchy. Tennies? Sounds a bit like over-the-counter diarrhoea medication. Give me time on this one) and a bit of token drivelling about the internet now being a vital yet terrible extension of our personalities and the carbon footprint that is ominously stamped all over our middle class fun... Well I refuse to give in. I like the 21st century and all of the soullessness it delivers. I like the convenience of expressing the very depth of my soul through one sentence in a neat little box beneath my Facebook profile picture. Now finally the emotionally awkward have a chance to communicate love/sadness/confusion through handy specific combinations of punctuation, :-) indeed. I enjoy the enigmatic nature of “Maybe Attending” events, shamelessly Wiki-ing my way through higher education, and being able to Google all those annoying th ...

“It’s something like the priesthood now,” my then tutor said a while ago, adjusting her cassock. She had heard rumours that I wanted to become an academic, and consequently wanted to enact a chat, and, I assume, a sanity check. For myself, I’ve always heard rumours that I wanted to become an academic, and rarely paid them overmuch attention. “I mean,” she continued, “do you know what you want to do, what it is? It requires a sort of cold, full-on dedication now, of course. The gentleman-scholar doesn’t exist anymore.” The chick had, naturally, got to the node of the matter. I’m aware that the gentleman-scholar doesn’t exist, that we’ve gone from Sliggers (see prior article) to sloggers, but I am young and foolish and, in my moments of reconciling myself to the Worship of Athena, I do like to think I could help to reverse that process. In this article I will try and articulate how, by musing on what the academy was, what it is, and what it might become, in two ...

There’s an old hymn I remember singing in primary school: “He’s got the whole world in His hands”. While questions may have arisen as I have grown up regarding the nature or existence of this "Him", recent events have served to remind me that the writer of the song was on to something when he spoke of the “whole world”. A volcano with an unpronounceable name is currently causing unspeakable havoc across Europe: a volcano on a glacier in Iceland. Arbitrary national divides which keep British laws in and French beef out mean nothing to an explosive mountain that has bubbled since before nations existed. The ash, though it has placed a shadow over the plans of thousands of travellers, has illuminated a fact that we often overlook: that we really are just one world, and what happens in one part of it will have an effect on the rest. And, immensely exasperating and distressing though it is, the "travel chaos" has led to a pragmatic pattern of everyone in eve ...

In the current political malaise, the story about how the public hate their politicians is as tired as the rhetoric being used to fight the election. Sanctimonious commentators, journalists and public figures are all out to wring as many column inches as possible out of our sorry and sopping political class. “They are all crooks,” we hear. “They’ve misspent all our taxes and I’m disinclined to give them any more,” they holler. MPs are woefully out of touch and out only for themselves it seems. The duck house has become the new ivory tower. The attraction of such arguments is that they are easy. In a sense they absolve all of us from bothering to look at the thorny issues that face a Britain on the slide. Like toddlers who take refuge under the table in a storm, we can duck the complicated jargon of the deficit by suggesting that most of the people in the know are probably lying anyway. Such arguments are the electorate’s blankey – a reassuring friend in the unknown and ...

12.30pm, March 7th 2010 Between Godstow and North Oxford “Feel free to listen to your music if you want.” “It’s OK.” “No, really, mate, I don’t mind.” “It’s fine; I was just going through a wall back there, that’s all.” I glared at the back of my training partner’s running vest. Anything rather than concentrate on the feeling in the backs of my thighs. You patronising Irish bastard, I thought, do you really think you’re in control here? We pounded on in silence through a gloriously sunny morning, oblivious to the light on the canal, to the couples on their Sunday strolls, and above all to the fun runners we occasionally passed. Then, grinning with my teeth gritted together, I quickened my pace and passed him. Two miles to go - what have you got for me? Past the bridge to St Edward’s School, I was leading by three or four yards. Beyond another bridge, a bridge that didn’t even have a name or a purpose except to mark out the distance between ...

On his first trip to Africa, Pope Benedict XVI was asked a question about the Catholic Church’s position on the way to fight AIDS. This is how he answered: Delivered to a continent where 22 million people live with HIV, and which accounted for 75% of all AIDS deaths in 2007, his words provoked strong reactions. Journalists, politicians and AIDS activists from around the world lined up to criticise the Pope’s views: “The Pope deserves no credence” said the New York Times in an editorial; “Impeach the Pope” urged a guest writer in the Washington Post . The British medical journal the Lancet accused him of having “publicly distorted scientific evidence to promote Catholic doctrine”, Former French Prime Minister Alain Juppe suggested that he was “living in a situation of total autism”, while Rebecca Hodes of the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa described his remarks as “alienating”, “ignorant” and “pernicious”.The row goes beyond previous ...