I see Afghanistan and Bangladesh are competing in the 'Backwards Third-World Dump'

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Originally Posted by Burney

There's no such thing as a holy river, gg. Only backwards, third-world savages believe in that sort of thing. We gave up on all that when we around the same time as we stopped painting ourselves blue.

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Oh, you mean when the Wops came over and taught us how to read and write centuries after the Indians had been putting up pillars guaranteeing human and animal rights in 3 different scripts? And then when they taught us to count with Roman Numerals and no concept of zero? Verily, we are so much more civilised than the Vedics.

Ash is right - as bringers of life, all rivers are holy. It's just some are holier than others and Bangla has the confluence of two of the top three.

You should go and smoke a chillum on the banks of the Parvati or bathe in the Holy Ganga. Even you would find your soul touched. They have a ghat in Benares just for the cows. Called Gai Ghat, obv., given gai means cow. They just stand there all day, looking holy and going moo.

But it was nice of the 'Ghanis to let Dr Brydon in 1842 survive so he could tell the tale.

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Originally Posted by Burney

As I recall, much of the Wandle where I grew up is underground. It didn't seem to possess much in the way of divinity.

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All of the underground rivers in London are associated with a divinity, in the Ben Aaronovitch novels.

Also:

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea."

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Originally Posted by Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult

Oh, you mean when the Wops came over and taught us how to read and write centuries after the Indians had been putting up pillars guaranteeing human and animal rights in 3 different scripts? And then when they taught us to count with Roman Numerals and no concept of zero? Verily, we are so much more civilised than the Vedics.

Ash is right - as bringers of life, all rivers are holy. It's just some are holier than others and Bangla has the confluence of two of the top three.

You should go and smoke a chillum on the banks of the Parvati or bathe in the Holy Ganga. Even you would find your soul touched. They have a ghat in Benares just for the cows. Called Gai Ghat, obv., given gai means cow. They just stand there all day, looking holy and going moo.

But it was nice of the 'Ghanis to let Dr Brydon in 1842 survive so he could tell the tale.

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Who's 'us'? No Romans in Ireland, pal.

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Originally Posted by Burney

Who's 'us'? No Romans in Ireland, pal.

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:nod: They weren't fúcking stupid, were they?

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Originally Posted by Sir C

Disclaimer: that was 10 years ago. It might be like Manhattan now.

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Wouldn't surprise me. When I first went to Delhi, CP was so run down. The neo-classical pillars that would have looked sublime when they were built were just so tatty. Nehru had introduced subsidised rents for chunks of it, so you had people with little typewriters in their office paying a pittance for what is now some of the world's prime real estate.

Now it's full of western brands. Gutting.

Though one time, about a decade back, they'd changed one of the outer circle corner blocks to look a bit like our Parliament. So there, the mock-Georgian had become mock-mock-Gothic.

I was in a taxi, a bit fragged on K, and it was lit up by lasers and looked quite beautiful. It actually made me quite proud to be British - that they'd made this corner look like Parliament as if to say CP {or Rajiv Chowk as they call the metro station now} links the world's largest democracy with the Mother of Parliaments.

The best of both worlds. I guess you know enough about me to know why this would moisten the eye a little.

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Originally Posted by Burney

Who's 'us'? No Romans in Ireland, pal.

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Except the Romanised 'Patricius', of course. Not that he had much influence. :hehe:

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Originally Posted by Sir C

:nod: They weren't fúcking stupid, were they?

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There is a theory, of course, that between the Fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Charlemagne, Ireland was about the only remaining European repository of what we would have called Western knowledge. That without the Irish we'd have lost the lot.

This is balls, of course (ignoring as it does the influence of the Eastern Roman Empire apart from anything else), but still.

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Originally Posted by Ash

Except the Romanised 'Patricius', of course. Not that he had much influence. :hehe:

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He was Welsh. :-(

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Originally Posted by Burney

He was Welsh. :-(

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Irish people love it when you point out he was English anyway

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Originally Posted by Luis Anaconda

Irish people love it when you point out he was English anyway

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Couldn't have been English, surely. They hadn't been invented yet.