The Rebelle blog

I joined Instagram one fine day in June after deactivating all other social networking platforms. I used to be cynical about Instagram, labelling it as narcissistic people's socialising but after becoming yet another member, I realised there are two sides to everything. Instagram quickly became my favourite virtual hangout for looking at photographic skills of people from around the globe. There's so much quirkiness and lively spirit there. There are some crazy bibliophiles who update such beautifully composed images of their book reads and I am absolutely transfixed by their creative efforts and genius in doing so consistently. One thing that I have learned after being on Instagram is that it runs on dedication of its members. If people weren't so keen on uploading and updating their travel, food, book images, it wouldn't interest cynics like me to actually get up and check what all the hype is all about. I now understand what it is like breaking my own prejudice...

I recently reread Norman Lowe's phenomenal book on History titled, Mastering Modern World History, as part of my preparations for upcoming exams. The first time I had read it was as a general reader who wished to know the events and timeline of progression of nations post-war and about independent colonies of the British Raj. This time when I read it as a student interpreting and correlating world events that led to wars, formation of UN, the Cold war era and subsequent disintegration of Soviet Union, it brought a methodical analysis to history as we should see and study it in current context. After reading through school textbooks about the French and Russian Revolutions and their fight for securing and protecting the apex human values of liberty and equality, it became even more important to start reading about the history of humanity that also went through two very disturbing and violent world wars that destroyed nations and people. This book was last updated in 1997, henc...