Sapiens - one last time

With almost the last couple of chapters left, I can safely say that, whatever it has to impress, Sapiens has already done its due. As much I gush about it and talk my head off like a salesman trying to meet his target of selling that book to anyone who may care to listen, I do have couple of peeves about it though. May be it is the over expectation of everything being in one place and covered in one book. May be with those missing bits, it would’ve been the perfect dish that no one could eat beyond one mouthful as it would be too filling to consume even that. May be it is drishti parigaram. May be it was willingly let out or may be they were unwillingly missed. But Women as they are hardly find any mention in an otherwise a masterpiece of a book, tracing humans from evolution till date. Other than India hardly finding a mention for right reason or not, the contribution of women in the book was something that was a surprising miss. Never in our history books or in biology as well, evolutions have always depicted the males!! There is only thinking man and never a thinking woman, brow beaten and hunched up with the pain of the world on her shoulders. I always wondered how the early humans treated their women. Where there inequality in pay during agricultural revolution as well? Where they treated as shabbily or more during the industrial revolution? Didn’t they had any scientific invention or discovery to their credit other an odd Marie curie? Was it because science was taboo and no one was allowed to learn even across “civilized” European societies? Did the women folk enjoy the looted riches and weren’t they equally culpable during the times of imperialism? Were they always holier than anything and everything with their subjugation rescuing them from the tarnish involved with men folks and their horrible actions during slave trades and all those wars about it?

I really hope someone, sometime, write at least a novel, albeit fictional representation of what the world would’ve been had the roles been reversed. And a really decent and honest representation of India and especially the influence of Chola’s. If tamil is an international language of esteem, spoken across several countries, major credit goes to them for establishing/pillaging/winning over existing kingdoms of SE asia and far. Quite confident no Indian author would ever do justice to them for the simple reason that they are from the wrong side of the Indian map. Hopefully some vellakkaaran should take up the task and eventually the world would hear the might of the great cholas.

Gils verdict – Sapiens should be made school syllabus in CBSE, throwing away the existing history books after ensuring Indian history is still tracked as a separate subject, which anyway will change every 5 years along with the government. This is an amazing book to read and I’ve grown so much in fond of it that couldn’t quite wait for the “Deus”.