Abro

  Newton gave us gravity and a lifetime of numericals. What our Matric books never told us is that he also spent some thirty years chasing the sang-e-paras. Chai ka cup uthaiye, yeh kahani mazedaar hai. “ Uske haath mein to mitti bhi sona ban jaati hai .” We say this about people with a golden touch, na ? Well, today I want to introduce you to a man who took that muhaavra quite literally. Everyone of us who has sat a Matric physics paper knows Isaac Newton. An apple falls on his head, and gravity is discovered; and the night before the board exam we do ratta of his three laws from some key book. Basss… that is our whole relationship with the poor man. But what if I told you that the same Newton, the hero of reason our Master sahibs practically worshipped, wrote or copied out roughly a million words on alchemy? 1 Yes, much of it was copied from other alchemists’ books, but still, janaab , that is a mountain of ink. For about three decades he kept a furnace going in hi...

  I want to start today with a building.   Not a famous building. You won’t find it in architecture books or tourist guides. In fact, for most of the twentieth century, the people who built it did everything in their power to make sure you’d never hear about it at all.   This building was located on a flat plain near the city of Harbin in what is now northeastern China. It was the size of a small town. It had laboratories, dormitories, an airfield, and a prison block. It employed at its peak up to five thousand people — many of them some of the finest-trained medical scientists in Japan . So what was this place?   Officially, it was called the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army. Sounds almost noble, doesn’t it? Preventing epidemics. Purifying water. But it was a lie. A deliberate, bureaucratic lie. Because what happened inside that compound between 1936 and 1945 was not the prevention of disease. It was the...