Was watching a televised debate on the state of health system in Orissa. The channel had invited a senior doctor from the Health system and one activist purportedly working in the tribal pockets of Orissa. The channel had set up a classic pro and anti govt. type of debate and after a while one felt like one was watching a tennis match – considering the speed and agility with which the participants were merrily tossing the ball in to each others courts. The point of discussion was the lives lost every year to diarrhea outbreaks that occur every year without fail in the same pockets of Kalahandi, Rayagada, Gajapati and nearby districts. As if the participants were not confusing the issue enough, the anchors decided to throw in the 22 deaths in the State due to swine flu. This naturally turned the already murky discussion in to total chaos. The discussion, as generally happens on Indian TV, rapidly deteriorated in to a free for all. Whenever the anchor tried to put in a word, he was shouted down and was generally reduced to a helpless spectator like all of us. The activist vehemently opposed the govt. and its policies without coming out with a single concrete, doable proposal. He kept mouthing catch words like holistic approach, community empowerment and so on. The senior govt. doctor in the meantime decided to turn aggressive and defensive at the same time and as is the problem with us technical people, when at a loss, we tend to spout figures, numbers and statistics in our defence.
But what everyone forgets is the real issue at stake. Human lives. Imagine that same activitist’s or govt. doctor’s son passing away from diarrhea. Yeah… one can’t even begin to imagine that. Imagine the feelings that these villagers must be harboring at the onset of every monsoon. Whose turn will it be this time? They have no roads, no electricity, no connectivity to the nearest hospital. Even if they somehow manage to carry the moribund patient to the nearest hospital, there is no guarantee that there would be a doctor there.
Actually it doesn’t take much to treat diarrhea. You don’t even need any fancy antibiotics or injections. All that has to be ensured is that we pump in more fluids than is being discharged from the patient’s body till such time that the patient recovers sufficient strength to heal himself. That is all that needs to be done. Just some intravenous fluids. But time, as they say, is of essence in this treatment. You have to start pumping in fluids before it’s too late. Wait for the morning to carry the patient on his cot to the nearest hospital, 15 kms away, on foot, and it might be too late. So the poor villager has two very clear choices:
One – Watch his two year old kid (who is already malnourished) loose fluids the entire night and pray to the village deity that his kid survives the night so that he can be carried to the hospital at first light.
Two – attempt to carry the kid in his arms (if its someone older, then carry the patient cot and all) on a rainy monsoon night, from an area that does not have any form of communication, electricity or roads to the nearest hospital which may be 10-15 kms away in the middle of the night – on foot. Which option would you have chosen?
The surprising thing is that these outbreaks occur every year during the same three months of rains and in the same areas, and yet, we fail to do anything to prevent this from happening. Everyone rushes to bolt the stable doors after the horses have left the area – every year.
The Govt. representative on the news channel has been posted in Bhubaneswar since more than ten years. Ask him to visit any remote district to supervise preparedness and he will promptly quote health grounds for not traveling. All the planning and monitoring is done from his snug office in the Capital over telephone and reports received by emails. If a Medical Officer genuinely tries to report a case of diarrhea then that MO is the first one penalized (how could you let this happen in your area, what all precautions had you taken, and so on) till the poor chap decides that it is best not to report. The activist is no better.
Worst are the news channel guys. Just look at the hype over 22 swine flu deaths in our State over the last one year. Everyone and his uncle are out to procure masks and hand sanitizers. Medicine shops and all sorts of black marketers are making hay left right and centre and the sun continues to shine unabated. Nobody has bothered to inform the poor viewer that these masks are worse than useless. That the deaths due to swine flu are less than a fraction of deaths that occur in our State due to Malaria and TB everyday. Reported deaths due to Malaria are far more than due to swine flu. And here also we are talking of reported figures, which, in all probability, might be less than the tip of the iceberg of actual deaths due to malaria. Same can be said of TB, pneumonia, cancer, and a myriad other diseases. The largest cause of deaths in our country, by far, is road traffic accidents. But due you think media guys would stir up this frenzy over a truck accident. No way.
Death, as is well known, is inevitable. People will die. And people will have to die of something. I mean you don’t expect a perfectly healthy guy to kick his bucket just because he has turned hundred and he feels it is his moral duty to give way for the next generation. So people will continue to die and die of something. No point losing sleep over that. Countries which have controlled infectious diseases are facing an epidemic of life style diseases (diabetes, heart disease and so on). As mentioned earlier, road traffic accidents continue to be the biggest killer. Wars, terrorism, muggings gone wrong, everything contributes. And as if that is not enough, nature too lends her hand once in a while to keep the populace under control. The problem is deaths which could have been prevented easily. Deaths of 2 year old kids. Deaths during child birth. Deaths due to malaria, TB and so on. That, is what gets one’s goat.
Why cant the govt. ask officials from the department of Health, Roads, Electricity and other allied departments (including those responsible for ensuring potable water in every village) to ensure that the roads are motorable, there is electricity, the tube wells are functioning, the wells disinfected, villagers sensitized on what to do with the first outbreak of diarrhea and so on – before the onset of monsoons. Why blame the Health department only? Actually why blame anyone. Has any action been taken on anyone for these deaths - ever?
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
The Dilemma of eating meat:
I am an avid fan of non vegetarian cuisine. Always have been and, unless something dramatic happens – always will be. But the moral issues to be considered by a non vegetarian are tremendous.
If you take a moment and think of the steps that have gone into preparing your favorite tandoori chicken or biryani, they are, in chronological order - killing a innocent lamb or a chick by slitting open or twisting its neck, ripping out its skin, tearing it limb from limb, boiling it in hot water, adding spices to it to make it palatable and then actually eating it – it makes one kind of blanch in disgust – doesn’t it? Am I really such a cruel person? Imagine a species superior to humans with a penchant for the human flesh. Imagine this ghastly species cultivating us in cages, giving us sustenance and then carefully selecting the most suitable ones among us and subjecting us to the same treatment. Imagine this species especially favoring tender human babies for their extra tasty flesh. Revolting? But then isn’t that exactly what we do?
Coming back to my original question - am I a cruel person. I had though not. I do not step on even an ant knowingly. When I remove cobwebs, I routinely avoid killing the spiders, although I know that these persistent buggers would go ahead and simply spin another web. I have always loved all varieties of animals – I have had pets ranging from puppies, kittens, white mice, frogs, ladybugs and what not. Heck, I even have my favorite lizard under my table that enjoys watching me work on my laptop and nods his head knowledgably when I issue rhetorical statements. Then what possesses me when I sit down to eat? Why do I turn in to a demon? Being a Hindu, I am forbidden against partaking any kind of non vegetarian fare on any day. Period. Naturally I manage, rather conveniently, not to ruminate too much on that while nibbling on a fish finger.
But then what exactly is vegetarian food? Is killing a plant for food better than killing an animal? Do plants feel any less pain when their leaves are ripped off their branches for food? Is depriving a calf of milk, so that I can drink it instead, fair? Imagine that same obnoxious species mentioned above having a proclivity for human milk. Unimaginable again – isn’t it? Is any food purely vegetarian? Does the avowed vegetarian Gujarati who so casually sprinkles the humble table salt on his dhoklas, theplas and khakras realize where this salt originates form?
As the Lawrence Sanders character Archibald McNally said famously: plussed I am non
If you take a moment and think of the steps that have gone into preparing your favorite tandoori chicken or biryani, they are, in chronological order - killing a innocent lamb or a chick by slitting open or twisting its neck, ripping out its skin, tearing it limb from limb, boiling it in hot water, adding spices to it to make it palatable and then actually eating it – it makes one kind of blanch in disgust – doesn’t it? Am I really such a cruel person? Imagine a species superior to humans with a penchant for the human flesh. Imagine this ghastly species cultivating us in cages, giving us sustenance and then carefully selecting the most suitable ones among us and subjecting us to the same treatment. Imagine this species especially favoring tender human babies for their extra tasty flesh. Revolting? But then isn’t that exactly what we do?
Coming back to my original question - am I a cruel person. I had though not. I do not step on even an ant knowingly. When I remove cobwebs, I routinely avoid killing the spiders, although I know that these persistent buggers would go ahead and simply spin another web. I have always loved all varieties of animals – I have had pets ranging from puppies, kittens, white mice, frogs, ladybugs and what not. Heck, I even have my favorite lizard under my table that enjoys watching me work on my laptop and nods his head knowledgably when I issue rhetorical statements. Then what possesses me when I sit down to eat? Why do I turn in to a demon? Being a Hindu, I am forbidden against partaking any kind of non vegetarian fare on any day. Period. Naturally I manage, rather conveniently, not to ruminate too much on that while nibbling on a fish finger.
But then what exactly is vegetarian food? Is killing a plant for food better than killing an animal? Do plants feel any less pain when their leaves are ripped off their branches for food? Is depriving a calf of milk, so that I can drink it instead, fair? Imagine that same obnoxious species mentioned above having a proclivity for human milk. Unimaginable again – isn’t it? Is any food purely vegetarian? Does the avowed vegetarian Gujarati who so casually sprinkles the humble table salt on his dhoklas, theplas and khakras realize where this salt originates form?
As the Lawrence Sanders character Archibald McNally said famously: plussed I am non
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Bizarre Thought (2):
Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics. ~ Fletcher Knebel
More than 40% of the Indian population is infected with the Tuberculosis bacteria. However only about 10% of them are likely to breakdown and develop full blown TB disease in their lifetimes! What this means is that although many of us harbor the dreaded TB bacteria in side their bodies, a minority of us is likely to suffer from TB (more than 90% of those who have the actual bacteria in their bodies will not suffer from the disease). How is it so? The answer lies in the amazing human immune mechanism. The human immunity is so effective that it prevents the bacteria from replicating actively and thus preventing the disease. However when this remarkable immunity breaks down (due to a variety of causes, HIV being one of the most important), the human body develops the disease even though it may not be in direct contact with an active case of TB. So is TB a contagious disease? Is the TB bacterium the real cause of TB?
Smoking causes lung cancer. This has been drilled in to our skulls time and again. However all of us have come across cases where guys who down ten packs a day live up to eighty and ninety years where as non smokers develop bronchogenic carcinoma. So is smoking the cause of cancer? I can go on and quote hundreds of similar scenarios but then I presume you must have got my drift by now.
What then is the real cause of disease? Picture this: Two of us are lost in a dense forest with only a scimitar each to help us cut through the foliage and reach safety and thus survive. One has been given a state of art Swiss made knife and another possesses one of inferior quality. Who is more likely to make it through the forest and survive? Obviously a no brainer. The one with the better knife lives. Then who or what is responsible for the death of the second man? Is it the forest or is it the knife?
Before lack of sleep and too much beer makes me blabber let me get to the point which I am trying to make. The epidemiology of all disease depends on three variables. Host, Agent and the Environment. What we can control to some extent are the environment and the agents of disease. However what we have absolutely no control over and which is the most important factor of the above triad is the host. We are all born with a certain genetic make up. This is what determines everything about us. This is the inbuilt map that determines how tall we grow, how strong we become, how intelligent we are and so on. This also determines our resistance to various diseases. Hence there are persons who are inherently prone to get lung cancer and they will suffer from the disease irrespective of whether they smoke or not. Smoking, maybe, acts like a catalyst and hastens the inevitable. But smoking is not the primary cause of the disease. Not by far. Same goes for all diseases. Even psychiatric illnesses may have a genetic genesis. Some guys are simply more prone to depression and other mental illnesses. A stressful environment acts as a catalyst but is not the cause of the resulting madness.
I suspect that one day science will prove beyond reasonable doubt that all maladies are genetic in nature. Treatment, which is currently directed at external factors like killing germs and errantly multiplying cells, will in future, be aimed at modifying the basic gene structure of humans that will make them inherently resilient to disease. Does this make any sense or am I at my incoherent, rambling and long winded worst?
More than 40% of the Indian population is infected with the Tuberculosis bacteria. However only about 10% of them are likely to breakdown and develop full blown TB disease in their lifetimes! What this means is that although many of us harbor the dreaded TB bacteria in side their bodies, a minority of us is likely to suffer from TB (more than 90% of those who have the actual bacteria in their bodies will not suffer from the disease). How is it so? The answer lies in the amazing human immune mechanism. The human immunity is so effective that it prevents the bacteria from replicating actively and thus preventing the disease. However when this remarkable immunity breaks down (due to a variety of causes, HIV being one of the most important), the human body develops the disease even though it may not be in direct contact with an active case of TB. So is TB a contagious disease? Is the TB bacterium the real cause of TB?
Smoking causes lung cancer. This has been drilled in to our skulls time and again. However all of us have come across cases where guys who down ten packs a day live up to eighty and ninety years where as non smokers develop bronchogenic carcinoma. So is smoking the cause of cancer? I can go on and quote hundreds of similar scenarios but then I presume you must have got my drift by now.
What then is the real cause of disease? Picture this: Two of us are lost in a dense forest with only a scimitar each to help us cut through the foliage and reach safety and thus survive. One has been given a state of art Swiss made knife and another possesses one of inferior quality. Who is more likely to make it through the forest and survive? Obviously a no brainer. The one with the better knife lives. Then who or what is responsible for the death of the second man? Is it the forest or is it the knife?
Before lack of sleep and too much beer makes me blabber let me get to the point which I am trying to make. The epidemiology of all disease depends on three variables. Host, Agent and the Environment. What we can control to some extent are the environment and the agents of disease. However what we have absolutely no control over and which is the most important factor of the above triad is the host. We are all born with a certain genetic make up. This is what determines everything about us. This is the inbuilt map that determines how tall we grow, how strong we become, how intelligent we are and so on. This also determines our resistance to various diseases. Hence there are persons who are inherently prone to get lung cancer and they will suffer from the disease irrespective of whether they smoke or not. Smoking, maybe, acts like a catalyst and hastens the inevitable. But smoking is not the primary cause of the disease. Not by far. Same goes for all diseases. Even psychiatric illnesses may have a genetic genesis. Some guys are simply more prone to depression and other mental illnesses. A stressful environment acts as a catalyst but is not the cause of the resulting madness.
I suspect that one day science will prove beyond reasonable doubt that all maladies are genetic in nature. Treatment, which is currently directed at external factors like killing germs and errantly multiplying cells, will in future, be aimed at modifying the basic gene structure of humans that will make them inherently resilient to disease. Does this make any sense or am I at my incoherent, rambling and long winded worst?
Friday, June 25, 2010
Bizarre Thought (1):
Recently a bizarre thought occurred to me. Have you noticed how people who crave a particular thing are usually restricted by circumstances to give up that very thing? For e.g. a person who loves sweets and has relished them his entire life becomes a diabetic and is warned off sweets by the doctor. All of us have come across similar examples. This set me thinking as to whether all of us are born with a fixed quota of things that we may partake in this life? What if our bodies have been pre programmed in such a way that we can have a prefixed amount of sweets, just so much carbs, exactly so much breaths and a fixed number of heart beats before it finally stops? Scary thought that. By that logic if one takes less carbs and lipids one may take them for a longer period. Isn’t this belief also held up by science? The basic aim of yoga is to regulate once breathing. Great yogis have perfected the art of breathing less (one breath per hour or so). And they are famed to live up to a hundred and more years easily. Even athletes and those who undertake regular aerobic exercises, slow down their heartbeats to up to 40 beats per minute and regular exercisers are known to live longer. It has long been documented that organisms that live longer than humans (the tortoise for e.g.) have slower heart rates than humans. Is that why the Budhha and most religions advocated the middle path – the path of restraint? Is that why most religions have warned off people from indulging too much in those nefarious activities that raise ones heart rates (and I am not talking about jogging here)? Do we have a fixed quota of work and of leisure, of happiness and sorrow, of laughter and of tears? Munch on that…….
Monday, March 29, 2010
The Hindu Philosophy
Let me at the very outset make it clear that I do not know much of the subject that I am going to broach today (not that I knew much on my earlier subjects… but what the hell… it is my blog after all). From my meager readings on the Hindu Philosophy (as distinct from Hindu religion) I would like to discuss some of my inferences.
The entire philosophy, it seems, boils down to a simple law of nature – one has to face the consequences of one’s actions. Good actions have good consequences, bad actions have bad outcomes, and no action has no consequences. This is obviously understating at its worst. But I feel that is what it is – essentially.
The reader can quote myriad examples of people carrying out noble activities yet spending their entire lives in abject misery and on the other hand crooked people of all shades thriving. However the catch in the philosophy is that time is not limited to one lifetime. Nature tries its best to create a zero balance in a single life time, however, many a times one life time is not enough to balance the book of life. To go through the consequences of one’s activities, one may have to take rebirth. If you do good you may have to come back to enjoy the fruits of the good deed and like wise to face the consequences of the bad deeds. As long as you keep taking new births and live through entire lifetimes you keep on carrying out actions and hence the cycle goes on. How does one then achieve freedom from this vicious cycle of rebirths?
It seems if one can manage to carry out actions without attachment then one does not accrue any karmic baggage. By that logic if one manages to carry out the noblest of deeds or even the vilest of crimes totally dispassionately without any attachments thereof one does not accrue any karma. Hence the stress on focusing on the activity rather than the fruits of action. Nature is bound by its own law to reward / punish all actions. And if one doesn’t exult in good times and mope around in bad, Nature simply doesn’t know what to do. On the practical level too one can use this law to one’s advantage. One way is to not to take credit. Do your best and make a sincere effort to let someone else take the credit. One other way could be to do a good deed without any expectations of rewards whatsoever – in fact refusing any compensation outright. For the more worldly, an easier method would be to do more than what one is compensated for. Nature, bound by her laws, obviously can’t let that happen. She will keep trying to find out ways to reward you.
That is one reason why magic stones and chants will never work. They are against the grain of the Hindu philosophy. Bad times and misery are inevitable and they are good because they are Nature’s way of reducing your negative karmic debt. No amount of rings on your fingers or taveezs around your neck will help. At best they can maybe postpone the inevitable. But isn’t it better to get it done with and out of the way? Pundits point out that these rings and other assorted religious jewelry help in reducing the intensity of the misery. Doesn’t gel. If you slapped someone unfairly then Nature will find a way to slap you back and cause you the exact same amount of misery that you had inflicted. Wearing a sacred ring in the hope of getting a lesser intensity slap won’t work as that goes against the philosophy expounded above. The fruits of your deeds are always in proportion to the actual deeds themselves.
Actually praying to God too won’t work on the same grounds. Nature (or God if you will) too it seems doesn’t have the power to break its own laws. What works however is that it gives the praying person a (?false) sense of security (surely God will look into the matter and help me out …just this one last time !!!). It is this sense of security that enables a praying person to actually ride out a crisis better. Same goes for pujas, rituals, offering coconuts (isn’t it unfair that mankind has progressed to pizzas and what not but has still kept the Gods on coconuts) to the deities and so on. Think about these from a rational angle and one tends to be amused but they have their uses.
And the interesting thing about Hindu philosophy is the way our ancestors have gone about merging it with religion and rituals to implement it. Take for example the practice of forsaking the pleasures of the flesh (the eating variety and not what you might be imagining). Devout Hindus will not touch meat (actually all non vegetarian food) on so called sacred days like Mondays, Thursdays and so on. However if you look at the fine print, Hindus are actually strictly prohibited from eating flesh ever (for various reasons – some upheld by the science of today and some not). However our ancients must have fast realized that this was never going to happen. Then someone must have got the brainwave of dedicating particular days to Gods and presto!! Shiva devotees will not touch flesh on a Monday for the fear of pissing off Lord Shiva (although they would happily gorge on all shades living organisms on the remaining days without sparing a thought to the feelings of the Almighty). It is the same principal at work when pictures of various Gods and Goddesses are plastered on the places where people spit their beloved Paan juice or urinate freely. But what it usually results in is that although the Gods are left pretty much alone they are as often as not surrounded by an uncanny halo of red spittle.
Hindus have historically found out all kinds of ways to circumvent the dictates of conscience mostly using religion as an excuse. Let me quote some examples from a treatise no less than the Mahabharat:
Maharaj Shantanu had a son Gangeya (later famously known as Bhisma due to the intense vow that he made) but there is no clear mention of who the mother of the child was (lots of speculation there though Рsome so risqu̩ as to make even the Kamasutra feel like a nursery rhymes book!!).
Shantanu later married Satyavati (for which his son had to take a vow that no man should ever have to – but more of that later)
Satyavati had an earlier child (out of wedlock) by the famous Saint (sic!) Parashar Muni, a son named Dwaipayan (meaning conceived on an island – that is where our revered Muni had taken the young Satyavati to satisfy his unholy desires). This son was later popularly known as Ved Vyas.
Shanatnu and Satyavati had two sons Chitrangada and Vichitravirya. Chitrangada mercifully passed away at an early age. However no such luck with Vichitravirya. Bhisma kidnapped three lovely princesses (quaintly named Amba, Ambika and Ambalika) for Vichitravirya. Lots of chaos ensued and Vicitravirya finally managed to marry Ambika and Ambalika. However the pleasures of bigamy was too much for Vichitravirya to handle and he too kicked his bucket (in the middle of the act actually).
Male heir was a necessity those days but these were not forthcoming without a husband. Hence religious sanction was given to Ved Vyas to assist the process. He not only managed to help out Ambika and Ambalika but also managed to impregnate a maidservant in the child bearing process (mistakenly it seems!!).
Ambika, Ambalika and the maid servant (with the saintly Ved Vyas’s help) gave birth to Dhritarasthra, Pandu and Vidura respectively. Dhritarasthra married the princess Gandhari and managed to beget a 100 children (how?? – a triplet a year for 33 years??).
Pandu didn’t learn from the mistake of his late dad Vichitravirya and married Kunti and Madri. Kunti, true to tradition had an earlier child (out of wedlock again), whom she had conveniently managed to lose before marriage to Pandu. Pandu too had cardiac problems during the act (what else did you expect?) and was warned off from fornicating by the family physician. After that both his wives managed to produce five children between them. How again one might ask?
The interesting thing in the above examples is that religion was invoked to give moral sanction to all these acts. My objective here is not to be blasphemous towards Hinduism alone but to be equally profane and irreverent towards all religions. I could quote hundreds of similar examples from almost all of Hindu mythology (and I suspect from all books in all religions). But again the issue to be remembered here is that all ages have had different social customs and taboos. And this age of ours is no exception. But religion invariably has been used (and misused) in all ages to suit the needs of mankind. Would it be too much off the mark to say that it was not God who created Man but it was Man who has created God for his own narrow ends?
The entire philosophy, it seems, boils down to a simple law of nature – one has to face the consequences of one’s actions. Good actions have good consequences, bad actions have bad outcomes, and no action has no consequences. This is obviously understating at its worst. But I feel that is what it is – essentially.
The reader can quote myriad examples of people carrying out noble activities yet spending their entire lives in abject misery and on the other hand crooked people of all shades thriving. However the catch in the philosophy is that time is not limited to one lifetime. Nature tries its best to create a zero balance in a single life time, however, many a times one life time is not enough to balance the book of life. To go through the consequences of one’s activities, one may have to take rebirth. If you do good you may have to come back to enjoy the fruits of the good deed and like wise to face the consequences of the bad deeds. As long as you keep taking new births and live through entire lifetimes you keep on carrying out actions and hence the cycle goes on. How does one then achieve freedom from this vicious cycle of rebirths?
It seems if one can manage to carry out actions without attachment then one does not accrue any karmic baggage. By that logic if one manages to carry out the noblest of deeds or even the vilest of crimes totally dispassionately without any attachments thereof one does not accrue any karma. Hence the stress on focusing on the activity rather than the fruits of action. Nature is bound by its own law to reward / punish all actions. And if one doesn’t exult in good times and mope around in bad, Nature simply doesn’t know what to do. On the practical level too one can use this law to one’s advantage. One way is to not to take credit. Do your best and make a sincere effort to let someone else take the credit. One other way could be to do a good deed without any expectations of rewards whatsoever – in fact refusing any compensation outright. For the more worldly, an easier method would be to do more than what one is compensated for. Nature, bound by her laws, obviously can’t let that happen. She will keep trying to find out ways to reward you.
That is one reason why magic stones and chants will never work. They are against the grain of the Hindu philosophy. Bad times and misery are inevitable and they are good because they are Nature’s way of reducing your negative karmic debt. No amount of rings on your fingers or taveezs around your neck will help. At best they can maybe postpone the inevitable. But isn’t it better to get it done with and out of the way? Pundits point out that these rings and other assorted religious jewelry help in reducing the intensity of the misery. Doesn’t gel. If you slapped someone unfairly then Nature will find a way to slap you back and cause you the exact same amount of misery that you had inflicted. Wearing a sacred ring in the hope of getting a lesser intensity slap won’t work as that goes against the philosophy expounded above. The fruits of your deeds are always in proportion to the actual deeds themselves.
Actually praying to God too won’t work on the same grounds. Nature (or God if you will) too it seems doesn’t have the power to break its own laws. What works however is that it gives the praying person a (?false) sense of security (surely God will look into the matter and help me out …just this one last time !!!). It is this sense of security that enables a praying person to actually ride out a crisis better. Same goes for pujas, rituals, offering coconuts (isn’t it unfair that mankind has progressed to pizzas and what not but has still kept the Gods on coconuts) to the deities and so on. Think about these from a rational angle and one tends to be amused but they have their uses.
And the interesting thing about Hindu philosophy is the way our ancestors have gone about merging it with religion and rituals to implement it. Take for example the practice of forsaking the pleasures of the flesh (the eating variety and not what you might be imagining). Devout Hindus will not touch meat (actually all non vegetarian food) on so called sacred days like Mondays, Thursdays and so on. However if you look at the fine print, Hindus are actually strictly prohibited from eating flesh ever (for various reasons – some upheld by the science of today and some not). However our ancients must have fast realized that this was never going to happen. Then someone must have got the brainwave of dedicating particular days to Gods and presto!! Shiva devotees will not touch flesh on a Monday for the fear of pissing off Lord Shiva (although they would happily gorge on all shades living organisms on the remaining days without sparing a thought to the feelings of the Almighty). It is the same principal at work when pictures of various Gods and Goddesses are plastered on the places where people spit their beloved Paan juice or urinate freely. But what it usually results in is that although the Gods are left pretty much alone they are as often as not surrounded by an uncanny halo of red spittle.
Hindus have historically found out all kinds of ways to circumvent the dictates of conscience mostly using religion as an excuse. Let me quote some examples from a treatise no less than the Mahabharat:
Maharaj Shantanu had a son Gangeya (later famously known as Bhisma due to the intense vow that he made) but there is no clear mention of who the mother of the child was (lots of speculation there though Рsome so risqu̩ as to make even the Kamasutra feel like a nursery rhymes book!!).
Shantanu later married Satyavati (for which his son had to take a vow that no man should ever have to – but more of that later)
Satyavati had an earlier child (out of wedlock) by the famous Saint (sic!) Parashar Muni, a son named Dwaipayan (meaning conceived on an island – that is where our revered Muni had taken the young Satyavati to satisfy his unholy desires). This son was later popularly known as Ved Vyas.
Shanatnu and Satyavati had two sons Chitrangada and Vichitravirya. Chitrangada mercifully passed away at an early age. However no such luck with Vichitravirya. Bhisma kidnapped three lovely princesses (quaintly named Amba, Ambika and Ambalika) for Vichitravirya. Lots of chaos ensued and Vicitravirya finally managed to marry Ambika and Ambalika. However the pleasures of bigamy was too much for Vichitravirya to handle and he too kicked his bucket (in the middle of the act actually).
Male heir was a necessity those days but these were not forthcoming without a husband. Hence religious sanction was given to Ved Vyas to assist the process. He not only managed to help out Ambika and Ambalika but also managed to impregnate a maidservant in the child bearing process (mistakenly it seems!!).
Ambika, Ambalika and the maid servant (with the saintly Ved Vyas’s help) gave birth to Dhritarasthra, Pandu and Vidura respectively. Dhritarasthra married the princess Gandhari and managed to beget a 100 children (how?? – a triplet a year for 33 years??).
Pandu didn’t learn from the mistake of his late dad Vichitravirya and married Kunti and Madri. Kunti, true to tradition had an earlier child (out of wedlock again), whom she had conveniently managed to lose before marriage to Pandu. Pandu too had cardiac problems during the act (what else did you expect?) and was warned off from fornicating by the family physician. After that both his wives managed to produce five children between them. How again one might ask?
The interesting thing in the above examples is that religion was invoked to give moral sanction to all these acts. My objective here is not to be blasphemous towards Hinduism alone but to be equally profane and irreverent towards all religions. I could quote hundreds of similar examples from almost all of Hindu mythology (and I suspect from all books in all religions). But again the issue to be remembered here is that all ages have had different social customs and taboos. And this age of ours is no exception. But religion invariably has been used (and misused) in all ages to suit the needs of mankind. Would it be too much off the mark to say that it was not God who created Man but it was Man who has created God for his own narrow ends?
Monday, January 18, 2010
TRUTH
Today let us try and analyse one of the core human values on which modern (and ancient) society has depended upon to maintain some semblance of order - TRUTH
Always speak the Truth has what has been hammered in to our skulls from the time we were able to comprehend the meaning of the word. But first things first. What is truth? Truth can be loosely defined as ‘Conformity to fact or actuality’. That means describing things as they really are. Is it really possible to do that? My truth may be different from your truth. It is so much colored by our upbringing, our prejudices that what I state as truth may not be what you perceive as the truth. Truth is bound by the limitations of time, place and person. Truth can, in most instances, never be absolute. Does God exist? Is Democracy the best available option of governance? Which newspaper depicts current events most accurately? Are Armani suits the best? Is Shahrukh Khan better than Amitabh Bacchhan or Aamir Khan? Does your mom cook the best alu bhindi in the world? Does life exist elsewhere in this universe? Is this the only universe or are there infinite more such universes? For most such and similar questions asked, one will receive a vigorous, spirited and definitive answer. Try and prove the answerer other wise and all hell is likely to be let loose. For the simple reason that my truth will differ from your truth and neither would actually be wrong.
One more problem with the conventional definition of truth is that it is limited by current knowledge. As of now it is believed that Sir Hillary was the first guy to step on the summit of Everest. However there is a staunch group that thinks that British mountaineer George Leigh Mallory achieved this feat in 1924, when Hillary was a five year old kid (Hillary eventually conquered the Everest in 1954). However who is to say that someone did not climb Mt Everest much before 1924? Everest has been around since hundreds of centuries and mankind too has been in place since thousands of years. It has been proved that it is possible to the scale the peak without the aid of artificial oxygen. Just because a fact has not been recorded doesn’t mean that it has never occurred – does it? I can go ahead and cite hundreds of such examples but I believe you get the general drift. As Einstein put it – ‘Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods’.
Now coming to the moral aspect of Truth. Is always speaking the truth a good thing? This again is akin to stirring a hornet’s nest. Can anyone place his / her hand on the heart and say that s/he has never uttered a lie (and I am not talking about two year olds here :))? If a truth is likely to cause immense heartache to the listener without any immediate or long term benefit what so ever, then is uttering that truth a wise thing? Whitehead remarked – ‘There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil’. Can any one relay events exactly as they happened? Isn’t exaggerating or underplaying akin to falsehood? A machine (like a video camera) can to some extent record and relay events with the least of prejudice. But a thinking, rational human being can never do so. His rendition is likely to be colored by his belief system however microscopic. And we should not forget that the machine is always operated by a thinking human.
Always speak the Truth has what has been hammered in to our skulls from the time we were able to comprehend the meaning of the word. But first things first. What is truth? Truth can be loosely defined as ‘Conformity to fact or actuality’. That means describing things as they really are. Is it really possible to do that? My truth may be different from your truth. It is so much colored by our upbringing, our prejudices that what I state as truth may not be what you perceive as the truth. Truth is bound by the limitations of time, place and person. Truth can, in most instances, never be absolute. Does God exist? Is Democracy the best available option of governance? Which newspaper depicts current events most accurately? Are Armani suits the best? Is Shahrukh Khan better than Amitabh Bacchhan or Aamir Khan? Does your mom cook the best alu bhindi in the world? Does life exist elsewhere in this universe? Is this the only universe or are there infinite more such universes? For most such and similar questions asked, one will receive a vigorous, spirited and definitive answer. Try and prove the answerer other wise and all hell is likely to be let loose. For the simple reason that my truth will differ from your truth and neither would actually be wrong.
One more problem with the conventional definition of truth is that it is limited by current knowledge. As of now it is believed that Sir Hillary was the first guy to step on the summit of Everest. However there is a staunch group that thinks that British mountaineer George Leigh Mallory achieved this feat in 1924, when Hillary was a five year old kid (Hillary eventually conquered the Everest in 1954). However who is to say that someone did not climb Mt Everest much before 1924? Everest has been around since hundreds of centuries and mankind too has been in place since thousands of years. It has been proved that it is possible to the scale the peak without the aid of artificial oxygen. Just because a fact has not been recorded doesn’t mean that it has never occurred – does it? I can go ahead and cite hundreds of such examples but I believe you get the general drift. As Einstein put it – ‘Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods’.
Now coming to the moral aspect of Truth. Is always speaking the truth a good thing? This again is akin to stirring a hornet’s nest. Can anyone place his / her hand on the heart and say that s/he has never uttered a lie (and I am not talking about two year olds here :))? If a truth is likely to cause immense heartache to the listener without any immediate or long term benefit what so ever, then is uttering that truth a wise thing? Whitehead remarked – ‘There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil’. Can any one relay events exactly as they happened? Isn’t exaggerating or underplaying akin to falsehood? A machine (like a video camera) can to some extent record and relay events with the least of prejudice. But a thinking, rational human being can never do so. His rendition is likely to be colored by his belief system however microscopic. And we should not forget that the machine is always operated by a thinking human.
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