The Battles of Our Civilization

Hell in Holi Land

Whatever "ism" you may follow, it all asymptotes to feudalism, where the power is confined within the hands of a few and they hypnotize the mass with glitz and glamour. Whereas there are a few, who by some sheer unfair rule of nature, never cease to exist but their number always remains well below the critical mass needed to change the society, who keep on fighting, and when they disappear there is another small group to replace them. These two cycles go on and on, and the civilization continues on its march of "progress".

So far nature has been able to balance the march of the civilization, but now we are reaching a critical mass where nature might decide to play some catastrophic game (in its own slow / long time scale)...

The article (linked from the title of the blog) shows two class of people classified by their relationship to religion, what they use religion for. Is for the sake of one of these two classes of men that I desist the cry to end all religion.

Poetry and Translation

Poetry is what is lost in translation (Robert Frost)

Poetry is what is gained in translation (Joseph Brodsky)

It all depends on your frame of reference, how you want to look at it. As you change your language, it is akin to change your eye lens, and the red appears in a slightly different hue, your old view is lost, your new view is gained, have your pick. It all depends on the context (that includes the quality of translation).

But what is more important is that the urge to translate is a true urge, and I am trying to fathom why does this urge exist? To get a complete picture, you need to see the object from different perspectives, and perhaps translation provides that slightly different perspective. You may like it, you may not, but the urge to view it differently is real. There may be other reasons that manifest into this urge to translate, but for me this is the foremost, and so far the only, reason.

Hence I have decided to translate Tagore's songs (Rabindrasangeet) into English. Well, as I claim in my disclaimer, it is not really a translation, but more of retelling.
These songs are among the most basic ingredients that constitute my being, having grown up with these, and will die with these as my last companions, like the dog who accompanied Yudhishthir in his final journey.

As it very often happens in projects that involve slightly crazy ideas, I am not alone. Pratik Majumdar is my accomplice here. and lets see how long this translation bug stays with us!!

4 Years Hence

4 years, and I have not written anything here, actually I have not written anything that really matters to me in these 4 years...

That makes me wonder, will this life slip by without me writing anything that matters to me? Is there any other act, form of expression that may matter more to me...?
But, these years, I have never stopped thinking, reading, analyzing, arguing (most of the time, due to lack any company, the arguments have all been born and exterminated inside my cranium), without stopping... add infinitum...

I have to find more time for myself, to gather my thoughts in a cohesive manner, and put pen on paper, rather, this keyboard on the monitor, the virtual medium.

We live in an era when we don't really have time for ourselves, the race of the daily sustenance occupies the major chunk of our time, and whatever crumbs are there for us we let the media overwhelm us during those moments of solace. Ironically the same media exhorts us to rediscover our inner self, that is the in-thing to do. Let me see, how much I can accomplish, without feeding on to the media, the hustle-bustle, the sustained insecurity of our existence.

Indians and adventurism: social security?

Forgive me for starting with another allegory on cricket! No, I am not going to talk about why we lose, or if the present captain is worse than the previous one (well, I might get on that topic sometime later, when I am in a more sombre mood and the bitterness of the recent defeat has faded into the past), but I'll start with a report that the Australian coach Greg Chappell had a very stern dialogue with the team and told them in no uncertain words to come out of their comfort zones, get rid of the "attitude" and exhibit workman like discipline. Where the coach has got it all wrong is that the in the sports field it is the sense of adventure that drives the collective set set of individuals forward, that spirit of discovery and rediscovery of themselves is why people are addicted to sports, and Greg should remember this, not long ago he was a great player himself. What this Indian team lacks is the getting out of comfort zone in order to get into that adventurous mode. Responsibility can drive an individual to state of heightened upper echelons of mediocrity but only the zeal of charting newer paths drives him further, and the Indian, as a collective whole lacks that.

Take another example, can you ever imagine an Indian becoming the next J K Rowling? We are no less educated, at least the urban India, but how many mothers (that too single parent) can ever imagine of giving vent to her imagination through creative writing for children? How many individuals can take up any good idea to become venture capitalist, the big corporate houses like SUN Microsystems, Google, Microsoft, etc. all started out as garage ventures of students of varied calibre, but in India it will be extremely difficult for anyone to even attempt give shape to his ideas. So the natural question that needs to be asked is that there has to be a socio-economic factor that prevents the Indian mindset from coming out of his stupor. Given the massive success of Indians established in the developed nations, the factor should be macroscopic in nature. Of course you will find many writers trying to shout that Indians are coming out of the closet and stepping into the big world to rediscover their dream and realise it ...blah .....blah....., the number is minuscule given the volume of our population.

Trying to probe for the reason why the Indian mind set is so 'closed', I was desperate to find an answer, because I realized that I was also similarly cocooned, not coming out to realize at least some fraction of dreams that I had for this life time . I want to write, to excel in music, to travel around (that requires money!), and also do science! Now, why is it that I am simply sitting around doing nothing worthwhile (except trying to motivate myself at my job, a scientific research job, that I love to do anyway, but losing the interest at a very rapid rate!). The reason is simple, I am looking for financial stability for my family. I know my wife earns enough to support me and my son, but still it is not pardonable in our society that I take a year off writing a couple of novels which are desperate to come out of me, to translate a particular book by Bibhutibhushan Bandhopadhyay (and the idea is gnawing my being to the core), while my wife is keeping us well fed and clothed and sheltered. And ditto for any venture in music, I don't want to be a professional, but would love to sing my heart out and learn the "howabouts " (this word is coined by me!) of it from learned people, but.......Because it will take years for me to establish myself in any field, with very little financial emoluments in the field of writing for a struggling writer, I need the protection of a "permanent job" before I can venture out myself in any such endeavour. Also, continuing with science along side doing anything else is unthinkable in our set up!

Now, if I compare myself with, say J K Rowling, the question that hits me is: why is it that she was able to write to her hearts content (before becoming a millionaire, ouch!) and I am unable to? The answer is actually simple, she had the support of social security, which is non-existent for me. Social security, as the terminology specifies, is not just the meagre amount that is doled out to the individuals of the society to support themselves and the minor family members in the household, but also acceptance of such people in the society. I am lucky my wife is there to support my day dreams, had she not existed I wouldn't have dared to dream either, of writing a novel or translating one or singing myself silly to glory! Had there been social security, I would've trekked to the Himalayas lugging my laptop along, hooking on to the internet via the mobile and researched for my next novel, a fantasy set in a world different from the earth but entrenched in the political activism similar to that of the 2nd half of the twentieth century (of the earth), where individuals discover themselves through the eyes of two protagonists, one male and the other female, growing up in disparate sections of the society of 'haves' and 'have-nots', rather the 'ruling' and the 'ruled class', interchanging their respective classes in the journey of their lives......(the story goes on, I won't reveal any more here :-) !) .........

Well, I hope the day comes when despite of lack of social security, and with only the help of spousal security, the novel will come out. Till then I will only marvel at one Indian cricket captain, who in recent past was able to muster this feeling of adventurism in the Indian cricket team (and also to the general populace, including me!) where the individuals were able to shed their insecurity to strive to reach beyond their perceived limits. Perhaps the fact that he was pretty rich, and never felt the insecurity that the bearer of the middle class mentality do, helped him in his cause! But this is not to take any credit out of his natural capability and nature, every individual, no matter what his position in life is, always battles against his insecurity, and he who wins (even a few battles, if not all) is worthy of all the respect!!

Religion as control

Many of my allegories stem from cricket, or has some connections with the great game and its proponents. Sports links to life as much as anything else, also it doesn't exist in isolation, especially the sportsperson, that too in a sport that involves big money! But how does religion get attached to sports? I am sure you are aware of many such possible connections, but here is one of the less common one.

Now take this photo of a very special cricketer, Harbhajan Singh. Yours truly blogger holds him in great respect for his fighting attitude, carefree demeanour and athletic exuberance. In his fairly young life he has had quite a few come-backs, from various circumstances, involving minor controversies on and off the field, but with each come-back he has emerged a stronger personality. His is a recognised face all over the country, being a superstar cricketer, and it will need a very dumb nitwit to not to recognise the person in the picture.




Now here is a picture of his in which, well, indeed he has quite a different appearance, a rocking image of a flamboyant persona that he is. Indeed it took me sometime to recognise the valiant sardar in this rock star look. The swagger in his gait is evident from this freeze of a split second in a still frame. This event was a fashion show where a few Indian cricketers took on the to the ramp.






But this picture stumped me completely. Despite being an admirer of his cricketing abilities and fighting spirit and a swagger like approach to his game (and plausibly, life), I never envisaged this person as such a handsome guy, and here he is in a controversial advertisement for an alcoholic liquor company. The advertisement has been made controversial because the religious head of his congregation has publicly admonished him for letting himself be photographed with his hair let loose. Every organised religion has such edicts passed onto the followers, and the reason given is that lack of discipline results in faltering in one's path towards salvation, and hence the whole mass has to follow some generic rules to prove to the leaders that they are indeed well endowed for salvation!

I don't want to get into the details of the rules of the particular religious community to argue whether he was in his limits or not, nor shall I give arguments as to the leeway given to some other prominent members of the community who live on by breaking certain edicts and yet enjoy the privilege of not being censured in public. My argument is completely in the philosophical regime, regarding the issuance of such community wide edicts on every individual following a particular form of worship, irrespective of any particular religion.

Since mankind has not reached the level of consciousness where it can be guaranteed that the ordinary individual will not cause harm to his fellow human beings, every society needs to formulate and implement laws, rules, edicts to safeguard the spirit of humanity. Historically these laws were guided by the religious sentiments, whose main purpose was to control the negative tendencies of human nature by the fear of the unknown, using the concept of a universal creator, saviour and destroyer called God. The set up is very convenient as it gives the power into the hands of a small minority who control the masses by the manifestation of this fear of the unknown. These small minorities which constitute the leadership, in every religion, creed, or sect, then identify certain commonalities among its followers and create an aura of exclusiveness of their particular group, and create certain rules to preserve the exclusiveness of the group by passing community wide edicts to preserve the exclusiveness of their power over the community, in the guise of the protection of the exclusiveness of the group. The eagerness of the people to form exclusive groups is the manifestation of the fear of the unknown: as the group provides a security (by large numbers) and the exclusiveness gives the assurance of trust among the people.

But the basic nature of man is that it seeks freedom. Knowingly or unknowingly, each individual is fighting a battle for his freedom, and that involves fighting his insecurity, i.e. the fear of the unknown. The leaders who pass edicts and formulate rules need the security of the group behind him, and whenever they see any individual breaking away from their grasp they first try to bring him back into the fold by passing harsh strictures against the individual. In case the individual covers enough distance to go beyond the confines of their control, they attempt to vilify him and make him an outcast to ensure that others in the community do not follow his example, because anyone following the example of having an independent philosophy slackens the hold of these leaders on the community.

It might very well happen that certain individuals want to follow the traditional rules, because majority do not want to take up the responsibility of thinking and charting a path for themselves. But evolution demands that some individuals will break the mould and start charting his or her own path, maybe in some very small steps: but when this breaking away results in passing edicts from the religious leader, it smacks of fundamentalism which is caused by insecurity. As long as the person is not causing harm to anyone, he has the freedom to dress in whatsoever manner he may like, and passing strictures against him is violation of the basic tenet of civilization, of evolution.

Loss of power is something no one ever learns to cope with, and the fear of losing it makes the leaders lose the broader perspective and become very narrow minded. They do not learn from history, that closed minded control never works. Despite of all extreme control over the thinking process of the masses, a Galileo will always breakthrough the cage of unrealistic dogmas. For, the force of evolution, the urge of man to be free, is the basis of natural progression and hence unstoppable. Therefore this decree of stigmatizing Harbhajan Singh for having the gall to appear in his most handsome avatar is a churlish attempt to control his urge to express his own handsome self. It is a crime against humanity, and religions that profess such edicts have lost their philosophical moorings. It is time for humanity to redefine the regime of applicability of religion, and this is not confined to any particular religion. This sort of fundamentalism in religious setups is getting increasingly common the world over, and the time is nigh that clear debates are organised to redress the growing menace.

Nationalism as opium

Mad About Pyramids

The above link is an article in the 22 September issue of Science which reports a growing trend in the erstwhile developing nations but now seems to have engulfed all the societies in its grip. The gist of the report is that the archaeologists in Bosnia & Sarajevo are prevented from studying a hill over a small town called Visoko that resembles a pyramid (in shape). The archaeologists contend that the underlying rocks that form the structure of the hills are

stone slabs ... nothing more than fractured chunks of sediment called breccia, the remains of a 7-million-year-old lakebed that was thrust up by natural forces.

But the media, general public, and the politicians do not want to listen to the scientific explanation, and worse, they do not want to continue scientific study of the hills, instead they want to support the millionaire businessman who promises to find pyramids that will fill the poor Bosnians minds with a pride of the distant past, a prehistoric supercivilization, because the present has nothing much to offer. The archaeologists are teeming with anger as they say that the layer between the surface and underlying breccia has remains which are crucial to the study of the history of the last two millennia, but that layer is being destroyed by the overzealous diggers scouting for a pyramid. The archeologists' community is suffering from severe fund shortage, and the whole social and economic machinery is killing them in lieu of some false glory pertaining to the distant past.

The academic in me cringes whenever I come across such news, and these are getting more frequent nowadays. The rich guy will behave like an all encompassing god bringing a sense of romantic adventure by disclaiming all the orthodox notions of study, the general public will follow suit with salivating tongues, hoping for a redemption from their dreary existence by a deliverance that will not need any effort on their part, the politicians will feed on the ego of the rich guy, and the drunken fervour of the general mass to secure his own position by the support of money and popular choice. And the media will, of course, sell whatever that earns hard cash.

Building a culture of any worthy note requires generations of very hard sincere work, there is no shortcut to it. Cultures in the decline have the tendency of looking back to their glorious past to rejuvenate their fledgling morale. If the glorious past doesn't happen to have occurred in the near past then one doesn't have much choice but to look in the very distant past, and if someone conjures up something in the guise of lost glory then the public goes into frenzy. Nationalism can be used as a very effective opium to guide the people off from thinking coherently, logically, to lure them into a false sense of well being, and the politicians love it as it doesn't involve any effort on their part. The truth can go to hell!!

This particular news is from Bosnia, but this is a very common feature all over the world, in fact this trait confirms the universal nature of man. Everywhere, at all times, few scrupulous people lure the masses into the false belief of well being by using nationalism (and religion) as opium to stifle all scientific, progressive thoughts by not allowing the development of a free debating atmosphere where opposing perspectives are dealt with respect and candour.

Nationalism, at best, is the natural love for the innate particles, thoughts, emotions and philosophy that constitute the man, and at worst is the hatred for the innate particles, thoughts, emotions and philosophy that constitute the other man. Stifling the gain of knowledge by logical, rational study retards growth, which is the antithesis of life, because life implies growth, of knowledge, awareness, leading to the realization of self.

Syriana: The movie

Another Disturbing Affair

A dear friend of mine posted in the link above about the movie Syriana (The IMDB link is here). As he writes in his blog, it had a disturbing effect on him, which I too shared, and so I started to rewind the movie in my mind. The long time gap (a few months) smothered, perhaps, many small details but the overall impact of the movie has matured inside me, signs of a truly brilliant creation.

The brilliance of the movie lies in the story telling aspect, of which I believe the author, Robert Baer, of the original memoir-novel, See no Evil, should share the credit with writer-director Stephen Gaghan. Much has been reviewed, debated and said about the movie, but I would like to mention why I found the movie so enlightening and disturbing.

The movie has a multiple storyline narrative that lays bare the workings of the biggest of the mega corporates, i.e. the oil industry, and the other mega industry that affect the lives of this earth as profoundly as any other, the organization of the religious fundamentalist terrorists. The movie succeeds in depicting the carnivorous, rather cannibalistic, attitude of these two mega corps.

The global oil industry is supposed to be the epitome of the free market economy which is built on the premise of freedom and opportunity for all, and the religious fundamentalist regime of the middle-east is supposed to ensure a social structure that provides security and a universal umbrella to promote the goodwill of all with a more socialist set up. And what happens in reality is that they both feed on each other and lead the rest of the hapless inhabitants of the earth to destruction by ensuring a feudal set up which effectively ensures the confinement of power within the hands of a small minority. This minority doesn't compromise in spewing any venom on the society for their narrow minded individual profit and control of power. The oil industry and the 'powermongers' of the west remove the progressive movement in the middle east, in fear that there monopoly will be undermined, and the religious bigots develop the factory of jihadis to ensure their stronghold on the society by denying them any freedom of thought and philosophy.

Brilliantly told story which is enormously complex in its manifestation, this movie is disturbing for the sole reason that the end shows that the good is struggling hard and losing ground in this battle against evil, and there are enough compelling reasons that show that the current movement is perhaps irreversible. The eternal truth that we have been led to believe in our childhoods, the ultimate safe haven of our imagination, that good in the end triumphs over evil, will need much more complex battles to win to ensure that the struggle doesn't remain hopelessly lopsided........... and we have to really look hard into what minute roles we can fit, in this battle. An inconspicuous individual has no effect in these turns of events at this mega global scale, and this is what I find so disturbing, this inability to turn the tide.

Battle of the sexes

Men love battles and competition, and this basic trait of their innards had relegated the supposedly more feminine approach of empathy to a less regaled status, until the feminists woke up to take up the cudgel, trumpet the battlecry and shove all empathy down the drain (well, nearly!). Thereafter the phrase 'battle of the sexes' became so popular.

Now the battle has taken up a new phase; it is fashionable to be 'metrosexuall', which is supposed to imply that men from metros have suddenly woken up to their softer side and are not ashamed to display it. I am not sure if men from the smaller towns are not supposed to possess these attributes, and in case they do should they be forced to relocate to the cosmopolitan environment so that they find peace and togetherness in the fraternity that exists there.

And of course the never ending debate of the inherent equality of the intellectual and other capabilities of the sexes keeps on getting new fodder for the media to feed on: some academician makes some comments regarding the relative lack of participation of women in scientific research (especially maths and physics) and the media goes agog reacting to some phrases in the speech and taking matters out of context, or some columnist decides to generate some controversy (to improve his readership rating, obviously) by stating that career women make inferior wives and the piece has the desired effect, or some biologists claims some difference in the structure in the brain the male and the female samples of homo sapiens (to ensure proper media coverage to further the research grant, I suppose), or....etc. etc....

This topic used to be extremely interesting point of debate during the teenage years when raising such an issue in a public place (like the canteen) was a sure shot mode of getting attention from the fairer sex (yep, I liked that term in those days only to realize later that it was a misnomer, girls ain't fairer, it took a few years to learn the truth!). But it seems the media has taken cue of the advertising world and targets the younger population to sell their stuff, or may be they don't want people to grow beyond the teenage, because selling stupid stuff to a matured mind is far more difficult requiring matured strategy and approach. So in the guise of intellectual journalism it just feeds on juvenile stuff, leaving serious discussion to blokes like me whose blogs no one reads!!

So let me get a little serious and finish today's piece by an observation. Our neighbour's daughter (we stay in an apartment), about a couple of years older than my 2 year old son, one day met my son (they were both accompanied by their mothers) downstairs at the vegetable sellers shop. My son, like the usual male, was busy playing around, while the girl was trying her level best to introduce him to her mom. My son's expression was like 'why involve parents in the fun we are having?' and the girl was emphatic about her mom's approval of her friends. The next day we spotted that the girl was cajoling our male offspring to guide him to her home and he was very reluctant about it preferring to play outside, although he relented in the end, but didn't stay indoors for long. Now this behavioural attitude may be typecast as typical inherent characteristics of male and female, but my hunch is that even at this stage, it is the difference in the treatment meted out to the girl and the boy that has a more pronounced effect on their behaviour. We don't put much restriction on the movement of our boy, while the mother of the girl tries her best to keep her daughter indoors and encourages her to bring her friends home (a typical scenario in the Indian household), and although they are only 2 & 4 years old, their psychological set up is getting shaped irreversibly and is reflected in their behaviours. Now, the debating point is whether the difference in the mothers' attitudes towards their male and female offsprings is due to any inherent difference of the genetic/physiological difference or simply due to cultural conditioning. The question is somewhat like the chicken and egg problem, cultural conditioning supports a certain type of genetic manifestation or the inherent genetic difference causes the cultural evolution? I am still searching for an answer!

The feudal system of humankind

The feudal system is the most stable set up of the human society. Despite centuries of efforts to upstage this system, including all the possible experiments with democracy as well as communism, the human system has
failed to see beyond the feudal lord.

Democracy is supposed to be a system 'of the people, for the people and by the people', while effectively its just that in this statement the 'people' consist of one small, rather minute, class that rules over the other, and the other class lets itself be ruled only because of the dream that each individual entity of the ruled class has, that of making the transition to the other ruling class. It is this aspiration that preserves the feudal system.

The biggest responsibility that a man can ever undertake is that of the consequences of his own actions, on the contrary it is much of an easier job to criticize someone who is running your life. Although more often than not the individual doesn't have any option but to run to the diktats of the master, be it in the form of the proprietor, boss, or the administrator, in the sense of acceptance of fate there lies, perhaps subconsciously, the lack of will to take charge of matters into one's own hand, because that will ultimtely imply being responsible for your own actions, and you wouldn't have any imposter to blame for your state of affairs.

There is always a minority who do not follow the trends of the general mass, the ruled class, and they fall in two categories: the major chunk who plan willfully to make the transition into the upper echelon, and the minority who decide to take on the system, often by force, to change it for the better. More often than not, all the major steps forward in the evolution of the civilization has happened due to this small minority. But, the human system stabilizes back to the old feudal system, with some incorporation of the newer innovative ideas of the few who had tried to change the system. After all, it is much more fun to decide the fate of multitudinous many rather than your own, and so the transition to the ruling class is much more attractive and profitable rather than taking on the system.

Ultimately, both the ruling class and ruled class are living in their own illusions, the ruled class believes that they are guided by outside forces who cause all the miseries of their lives and they have no responsibility in the state of their own affairs as they are not really guiding their lives. While the ruling class believes that they are deciding the fates of multitudinous many. The truth is that we are all guiding our own fate, and only our own, by our affirmative actions or passive acceptance by inaction.

It can be argued, correctly, that most of the time the ruled class doesn't have any option, but the counter argument is that one should at least keep looking for options, instead of tacit acceptance of the situation, and not give up. The small minority that manage this are the ones who have brought out the changes in the human civilization, perhaps most of them get unnoticed as history eulogises the ruling class. There are a few who make the successful transition to the ruling class without losing the appetite to take on the system headlong, and they form excellent examples of the history of human spirit. These people never really adopt completely in the ruling class despite having the influence over one and all, but the tragedy is that more often than not their followers very effectively imbibe the philosophy of the ruling class and stabilize the system back to the nearly original state. Then comes the group who make their mark invisibly, only the marks are seen and not the markers. The ripples are seen but not the stone that set it in motion, and if the situation is favourable these ripples leave indelible marks and the society is gradually changed irreversibly. The purpose of democracy is to give more authority to these ripples, and not let the system get into the completely stable state of dead action, which the ruling class always professes to preserve their rule.

One has to realise that there is never a completely stable system, i.e. a static system. Had it been so, this universe (or multiverse?) wouldn't have existed. Life wouldn't have moved forward had it been static. One has to look for dynamic stability. The closest analogue is that of a moving vehicle, say a car, which is most stable when it is not moving, but to move ahead it has to compromise and optimize between stability and forward motion. This falsehood of equating static with stability is the trump card of all dictators, who play on the basic insecurity of the people, and the few who see through it are seduced by the lure of power into making the transition to the ruling class. Democracy is the mechanism to create a multi-layered complex hierarchy in the system to distribute the feudal authority to enable logic and free flow of knowledge to take precedence over personal short sighted ambitions.

View from the top: cricketing perspective

I think I will start from where I ended the last time, but discontinue the didactic preaching attitude. Not that I have anything against the 'didactic preaching' stuff, in fact it has very good market nowadays, but more on that later. And it does feel good to write some of those hushy-mushy inspiring things now and then, it camouflages the lack of content with an impression of classy intellectuality.

Cricket, the sport, is as much a metaphor for life as any sport can be. More so it has different versions, and any preference of the individual pertaining to the particular version reflects the basic personality of the person concerned. One can write long essays on this metaphor, and as a sport this is the game that produces the maximum amount of written material than any other sport, in the form of books, essays, anecdotes or the most obvious forms, reports. And I guess in future this blog will see many reference to this wonderful game which is changing its shape as our culture evolves.

Today, let me talk a bit on the view from the top in cricket, i.e. the captain's perspective. And when one talks about India's captains, the inevitable name that comes foremost in the mouth of everyone is Sourav Ganguly (whether one utters the name or not is different question, for many complex equations come into play in a typical Indian's mind when it comes to the uttering one's thoughts!) as a contrast to Rahul Dravid, and the resultant pity is due to Indian cricket. When Ganguly was the captain, he made Dravid the wicket-keeper defying all opposition, including that of Syed Kirmani,one of the best glovesman India has ever produced, who always criticized the idea of Dravid behind the stumps but had to relent when he became the chief selector! Ganguly wanted to include Dravid at all cost, and since in the 1999-2000 period Dravid was going through a bad phase and was ousted from the one-day team and was going through a lean patch, worst being the Aussi tour under Tendulkar, Ganguly had a doubleprone strategy,that of including Dravid permanently in the team, and getting a balance in the team, which brought the best victories not only in the last one and a half decade, but in the complete history of Indian cricket. But under Ganguly, Dravid didn't relent at one place, he refused to open the innings in any form of the game, long and short. In the limited overs edition it was never needed with Ganguly, Tendullar and Sehwag ruling over the world, but in the tests Ganguly had asked Dravid to do the needful for the better balance of the team, knowing fully well that he had the technical acumen for the job. The media and the pundits all supported Dravid saying that he was too valuable to be risked at the top, as if the person to open the batting is a lamb to the slaughter. Then came the infamous episode of Ganguly being ousted, and the first thing that Dravid does is open the innings, inspite of the lack of enthusiasm from the team coach Greg Chappel, and Ganguly himself, and nearly broke the world record of opening parntnership.Then he continued the trend in the one-dayers, even when Tendulkar and Sehwag were both in the team, and is continuing to do so. The media has suddenly realized that the opening spot is not meant for the lambs to slaughter, but instead it is a viable option! The view from the top indeed changes the complete outlook and attitude of the man, and the sycophants that constitutes the followers (which is what the media is mostly made of) follow suit. The question to be asked is, the change in the outlook can stem from two reasons, first is that he gets aware of the broader picture and the individual aspirations and insecurities fade from the consciousness as one gets more concerned about the team balance and approach, while the second reason can be a burning desire to outdo the predecessor in all his acts. A person is usually a composition of all the possible facets, and it is likely that subconsciously both these facets are driving our current captain in his pursuit for the peak that he is trying to climb. We have to wait and see where Indian cricket lands up under his endeavours, before passing any judgment. But the journey so far has been far from impressive.

View from the top: change of perspective

Trekking the hills can be perhaps more educating than a mere adventure of quellnig nature's multitudinous challenges. As one starts the climb from the bottom, the initial inquisitive trepiditions give way to more measured steps in the middle stages where one starts reaching for the reserve stamina until one starts living off one's tenacity in the last quarter till the peak is conquered. The exhiliration at the top rejuvinates the the mind and body to keep it going in the long trudge downhill.

Nature provides metaphor for life in all forms of its physical manifestation. Climbing a hill is a very direct of such manifestations, which teaches one the evolution of the path in the journey of life. As the climb gets higher, the trajectory gets steeper (although there are exceptions to this, as there are exceptions to every rule of nature), the path narrower, and the view more majestic. The inter-relationships of objects in the vast scheme of things get clearer with every step up. The climber discovers one's own inner self in the journey, that is a reason perhaps why people who discover the innate joys of mountaineering get addicted to it. But, as in life, different people react differently to the same situation encountered in the path. It is while climbing a difficult stretch one realises how intricately difficult it might be when it comes to a single step, for there can be occasions that the single step decides your fate, and hence one needs to employ all the planning and execution skills that experience might've taught you, but more often than not one has to improvise and gather new experience in the process, and this contunues on and on for the whole journey, more so while climbing down! Also, it teaches the person to go beyond one's perceived limit to realise that humans' capabilities are indeed limitless, yet extremely limited. It is this dichotomy that every climber learns to appreciate, especially one who has ever led an expedition. A trekking expedition forces the individual to realise the truth of what Plato said; "Man is a social animal", at the same time one learns how to lead oneself through the dire stress that may disillusion the mind into believing that one can't go on, but if you are among good friends you will be able to push yourself through, no matter how difficult the situation may appear to be.

The peak gives the best possible picture, the nearly complete perspective, depending on how many other peaks are there nearby! Stand at the top, look around, get your fill of wonder and awe and accomplishment of reaching there, learn of the local geography around, gather the experience in the bag of wisdom you are carrying, and then chart your path of the future ventures. The journey never comes to an end. First you have to find the best way to go downhill. What determines the best depends on the individual (or rather the particular group that is travelling). Keep an account of all the slips that you made in the journey so far and try not to repeat the mis-steps. Come down to the plane, look around at the features that you had failed to observe before but had discovered in the view from the top. And then make the journey to a newer peak.

Democratization of knowledge: Part 1; What is knowledge?

How does one define knowledge? A quick search through the various online repositories, viz. definethat,answers.com, the freedictionary.com, dictionary.com yield the result (in a condensed form) that knowledge is the state of knowing, familiarity, acquaintance, awareness from study or investigation, but knowledge differs from data or information in that new knowledge may be created from existing knowledge using logical inference. If information is data plus meaning then knowledge is information plus processing, knowledge is an appreciation of the possession of interconnected details which, in isolation, are of lesser value. The crux of the matter is: knowledge is a dynamic thing and evolves as the humans evolve. And one needs to keep on exercising the grey cells, continuously, ad-infinitum.

Knowledge is the corner stone of all activities, viz. academic, artistic, emotional, business, etc. The purpose of any human activity employs the usage of the current knowledge with the (mostly unperceived) aim of augmenting it. Knowledge is power (to quote some anonymous), and power gives you freedom, and hence the ultimate quest of humans on this earth is the quest for knowledge. All adventures, journeys into the unknown, are the manifestation of this quest.

Since knowledge is equated with power, and rightly so, the history is more than replete with instances of a few 'powermongers' making all desperate efforts to keep a tab on the knowledge base from reaching the general mass. The business of the 'powermongers' critically depend on the ignorance of the people over whom they want to rule, be it the king over the subjects, the president (or the chancellor, or whatever the nomenclature of a democratic setup may be) over the citizens, the priest over the devout believers, or the corporate over the consumers. The business of these 'powermongers' prospered in the medieval ages due to the generic laziness of the majority of population in taking up the responsibility of their lives with the attitude of 'whatever will be will be.........', until renaissance and democracy woke up the western world (Europe, to be precise), and their colonization of the rest stirred the long buried concept of freedom and knowledge.

The flame of knowledge could never die, for that is the essence of human existence. It was always preserved, and will always be preserved, by some small fragments of the societal set up (which at times may constitute of individuals, the smallest fragment of a society). The essence of democracy is to pervade the whole society with the availability of knowledge, rather, to put it more correctly, remove the obstacles from path of gaining knowledge for any and every branch of the societal set up. Knowledge is not something that you earn or gain, it is a level of realization that you attune yourself to, and the purpose of democracy is to setup up a system which will not generate unnecessary obstacles in the path of self realization to the level each and every individual aspires to. That is the ultimate state, the loftiest goal, that any society can aspire for, it is the utopian dream of the small societal fragments that toil day and night to keep the flame burning, and they find their purpose of existence in this toil.

Picture of the earth

What effect does a picture of the earth shot from space (that includes moon) have on the general public?

Imagine the cave man, looking at the passing of the seaons as heavenly wonders that he has no control on. He has grown up seeing the strange phenomenon of moon, changing its size with a definite periodicity, appearing, disappearing and reappearing, giving the impressions of Godlike forces acting on the heavenly bodies. His perception tells him that he is at the centre of the universe, a unique flat land engulfed by a bowl of blue sky that turns dark when the sun goes to sleep revealing the twinkling stars. He is a usual chap, not the philospher kind who ruminate over the mankind's past-present-future as well as its location in the this whole scheme of things. His worries are the same as the worries of the usual guy of today, providing food, shelter etc. etc., but the connotations of the images that he has grown up with gives him his bearing on this earth, in this life.

Now imagine the 21st century average guy who grows up seeing the following picture since his childhood:-

(Courtesy http://www.skydiveelsinore.com/space_posters/space_posters.html)

Does this picture alter the subconscious awareness of one's being in the mind and heart of Mr. Joe Average? Does it fill his heart with awe, his mind with the feeling of extreme beauty and vastness of this universe? Will this affect the the way the Mr. Joe Average looks at his life, bothered with his mundane worries and works? Will it affect the way he lives his life? Will it anyway change the way he starts his day in the morning and hits the bed at night? Does the the distance from which the photograph of the earth is taken alter his perspective through which he views himself, his life and his aspirations? Does this view of the earth from space change his life in any small or big way? Or to use the current fashionable phrases, 'Will his quality of life improve in any way' on seeing this picture and growing up with the attitude that the earth is unique as well as not so unique in this macroscopic scheme of things called the universe?

The answer to all the questions above is a resounding YES! Forget the philosophical implications, scientific aspirations and understanding or the academic interest. At a practical level life is a series of problems, and all our efforts to live can be classified as a list of solutions that we are searching for, trying out and implementing for the problems that our lives dish out at every moment. The key factor that affects the finding of solutions and implementing them is the perspective from which we see the problems, i.e. this world, and a wider perspective gives us a better understanding of the system in which we live and solve the problems, and it is imperative that Mr. Joe Average of the 21st century will have a broader database to define his problems of life, find and try out solutions from the perspective he has developed (perhaps unconsciously) by growing up with the picture of earth rising as viewed from the moon. Even an unlettered man will look at the problems, i.e. his life, with a different attitude once he grows comfortable with the picture from the moon, it affects each one of us to the core of our thinking, no matter how distanced our day to day life is from the the ones who are gathering funds for further missions to shoot some more such pictures!

Distance and perspective

I will not be writing long (hopefully), but I will surely elaborate on the theme that got me started with this blog, an astronomer's perspective, and what does it add to the understanding of a down to earth practical world.

Perspective is a complicated issue, mainly because you can never remove your personal bias. In fact it has everything to do with personal bias, but a good analysis tries to wedge in different perspectives to get a more or less complete picture. The idea is that one can never really remove bias, as all students of the 'theory of relativity' learns that observation depends on observer (rather the observer's frame of reference), but a good observer will be able to transform from one frame of reference to another and foretell what the other observer is seeing. So, in effect you can never really remove bias, but you can surely try to see things from others' bias and (hopefully) after seeing things from a few different perspectives you will get a general idea of the real picture.

The most important factor that affects the perspective of any observation is the distance. Then comes the orientation and, of course, the fourth dimension of our spacetime, i.e. time. A physicist will immediately recognise these concepts, but I guess even a sociologist or an artist will understand that this scientific mode of thinking doesn't just confine to the modellling of the physical universe. These general principles are the corner stone of all logical reasoning, without which mankind ('humankind'? to be politically correct?!) wouldn't have reached the level of abstract as well as material understanding which we claim to do so now today.

So maybe, I feel, being brought up to think from a third person's perspective, by looking at systems from a long distance, and trying to infer the macroscopic as well as microscopic details from the long distance observations, my understanding of the human, social, political, material, emotional, mental, physical issues will render some extra understanding of the general principles that underlie our world, that includes its people and their more often than not strange bahavioural patterns.

Having written all these, I am really wondering if these musings are meant for others to read and understand and appreciate? Although I would love if people do understand and appreciate what I have written so far, I guess all I have achieved is that I have set up my mind as to what direction I need to move, ultimately it is for me to formulate where I am moving, and justify my existance by deciding that particular direction is the purpose why I have come to exist. At a more philosophical level, I guess we all write and do things to understand oursleves and explain oursleves to oursleves, at least that is what in introvert does, who learns to focus inside rather than outside.

Astronomer's view of the earth (& beyond!)

Well, that seems to be a decent title for a blog! Not too funky, rather, not at all funky, it's just a plain simple archaic way of saying 'Hey! I am an intellectual, I am here to give insights from a perspective that only few possess......blah..blah..!' It does give a classical ring to the ear, so different from the current trend of throwing all intellectual meat down the drain. It does provide a sense of egoistical satisfaction of being different, yet classical. To quote Eric Hoffer, 'If you give too much of freedom then people tend to copy one another' (well, I may have messed a up a few words here & there in this short sentence, but this was indeed what he had meant to have said!), which implies that (in case you belong to the generation of blockheads who fail to perceive a metaphor's implication) that majority of humans are incapable of making proper use of their freedom, and hence they just peep inside someone's door (or window, you can take your pick of your favourite mode of voyeursim), and copy whatever they see and believe that he/she (again, you can take your pick of the poltically correct pronoun) is unique as only he/she is copying his/her neighbour! Well, he/she would've been absolutely right if the habit had remained confined to one individual, but unfortunately/fortunlately (again, you may take your pick, depending on your philosophy of life, that is, if you have any, else don't bother) he/she is not the the only one to come up with such a fantastically simple idea. Homo-sapiens are ingenious and innovative creatures, they can think of many ingenious and innovative ways of not doing or thinking ingeniously or innovatively but instead ingeniously & innovatively copy others and present the ideas, actions, concepts, etc. etc. as their own, and hence Eric Hoffer came up with that ingenious observation summed up succinctly in the innovative one liner quoted above. Academicians and intellectuals even have a big and impressive word for it, 'plagiarism', and reams of laws are being written nowadays to justify the creation of this word by trying to prevent it, under the aegis of another impressive lexilogical conundrum "Intellectual Propert Rights"! Now, given that majority of people make up the average (that is what the statistical definition of average implies, believe me it is so!) are the ones who end up copying each other, the ensuing collaborative effort results in mediocrity. Then these vast majority decide (well actually, one bright spark perhaps accidentaly decides it, and others quickly follow) that it is too boring and unfashionable to keep on doing the same thing that others do, hence, why not copy from the past (meaning 20-40 years), and recycle those oldies with a new funky package, and there's even a technical name for this too(!!!), 'remixing'. So we have remixes of old music, movies, art, literature, apparel and what not, bypassing the dirty word of plagiarism, and feeling cool about it!!! This, again, leads to mediocrity in the eyes of few like me (who bothers about them anyway!). And so the likes of me, the residents of a dilapidated mansion dedicated to the old style of elegance and simplicity come out in the sun looking for sponsors to spruce up the old structure, take pleasure in proclaiming our classical individuality through our expressions which are decidedly uncool, but hopefully pervasive if not incisive. Hence, the title of this blog that I conjured up in less than a minute does give me a sense of pleasure, simply because it is so uncool that it makes me feel cool (kewl)!!

But if one tries to unearth a deeper meaning of that innocuous (unkewl but cool) one liner that constitutes the name of this blog then one can come up with more interesting conjectures, like 'Hmmm..... I am here to provide an outsider's impression of the inside things.....'; sounds vague? Well, you see, we astronomers are always outside viewers, we use some simple technological equipments like telescopes & electronic detectors mounted in huge observatories (many of them our now space borne satellites) and use computers (at times super-computers, or more commonly a poor man's cousin of these behemoth like structures, viz. linux clusters) to do some tedious data analysis using physics, statistics and what not, in order to see the extremely distant objects called cosmic sources (stars and galaxies and related structures, if you like!), and try to fathom what goes on inside them. So we are forcefully limited to exterior views and yet all our efforts go into understanding the interior workings. Hence, we assume that we are very good at understanding systems by just viewing from outside!

Well, effectively, to understand any system, one does need to observe it from outside, for the complete view always eludes the observer who is a part of the system. Therefore all science, cosmology as well as all philosophical studies of life, universe, etc. are extremely difficult things to do in life, akin to the proverbial elephant being looked at by a few blind people. Hence, to get a proper view of any system one needs to look at it from a distance just enough to cover the whole field of view and just near enough to resolve all the details (ask a photographer how to accomplish this!), and then go about observing and inferring. And it might be obvious from the title that that is what I have set out to accomplish, understand this earth along with the all the non-living and living organisms that populate it! ;-) At least, you can never accuse me of not having lofty goals. Wise men (nowadays that is synonymous to management gurus) say that having a lofty goal clear in your mind implies the work is half done. :-) The only difficulty is persisting with this dream for long enough time, guess I will have the perseverance to keep up with the demands of it, a small part of which includes informal documentations of the observations, inferences and thoughts. I guess this blog seems to be quite a nice place for it.