Random Thoughts - Pattabhi Sitaraman

A well reputed wrestler, who had won many fights across the nation, was challenging the people in a small town to fight him and win a huge prize.  Seeing his muscular body and his prowess in wrestling no one dared to challenge him.  But the townspeople found it below their dignity to allow the fighter go unchallenged. Finally they settled on a young man who was practicing in the local gym for taking up wrestling.  The young man asked the reputed wrestler fifteen days' time to wrestle him in a title fight.  The wrestler agreed. The young man grouped his friends and told them to visit the wrestler every day in the morning and evening. Each day a friend visited the wrestler and was inquiring with him why the wrestler was looking tired and asked whether the climate in the town or the food did not suit him or what.  This continued till the day for the wrestling.  On the day of the prized fight with the young man, the wrestler was looking totally drawn, emaciat...

Adolf Hitler was in the army during the first world war.  He was frustrated by the German defeat in the war, the treaty of Versailles and the reparations that Germany had to pay.  He joined a small political outfit called German Workers Party in the same year it was founded in 1919.  The party and its founders felt that the treaty at Versailles was unduly unjust to Germany and the party was founded on the principles of German Nationalism and anti Semitism.  Hitler soon became a charismatic public speaker who could attract many German youth to the party.  He used to espouse the Aryan supremacy and German nationalism in his speeches and blaming the Jews and Marxists for the all the ills of Germany.   Though in 1923 he was arrested and imprisoned for a five year term, he came out of prison in a year and started rebuilding the party he joined which he renamed as German Socialist Workers Party or Nazi party.  After his release from prison he went a...