Thoughts And Trivia

Slogan written under India's Official Symbol of three Lions, is in Sanskrit Language:
"Tamso Maa Jyotirgamya". This is a prayer to God to "Take (guide) me from Darkness (ignorance)towards Light (enlightenment). But I find the reverse journey very exhilarating."

I go for a walk every morning to a botanical park by the sea-side. The pathway is shielded by dense trees. This seclusion gives a sense of being shielded from daily humdrum life. But, of course you are in the company of scores of familiar faces of regulars.
Recent floods in Mumbai, left the electrical cables damaged in the park. Now it has no lights in the evening. They still allow you to take walk up to 7:30 pm. By 6:45 pm its already dark.
I find walk in evening from 6:30 pm to 7:30 pm as almost a spiritual experience. There is only faint stray light. One walks aided by the habitual knowledge of the twists and turns of the pathway. The feeling of seclusion from everyday life is now total, since one can't even see the familiar faces of regulars. Dark shilhouette and faint patterns of lights on the ground create a heightened sense of surrealism.
One is all to oneself - in a totally unreal, weird, unfamiliar setting - this is the key to reach an uncommon mental state.(please see my post on gaining consciousness after being put under anesthesia)
One savours the present moment cocooned in the darkness. Its almost like meditating. Its now easier to defocus the past. What has happened in past is not by any hidden design. All that happens is just a random happening - to be accepted as such, not part of any trend or design. With these thoughts one gets magnanimous towards people around you - and not be anxious of what may happen in future. The more you are with such thoughts the more one clings to the present moment. Its a exhilarating spiral descent into self.
Its the journey back from garden through bright city-lights that is physically "Tamso Maa Jyotirgamya". But it is in the darkness of the park, that I am guided from ignorance to enlightenment. I wait until dark to get it!

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Volker committee report, instituted by UN has reported financial-scam of astronomical scale in UN sponsored Oil-For-Food program in Iraq. Is it not another example that our primordial-evolutionary ingrained programme makes human cheats, dishonest and hypocrites at heart.

So sad! This is nothing but snatching of food morsels from the hands of hungry Iraqis by a few influence wielders.
In general what are sure-shot ingredients which facilitate such large-scale corruption : -

• 1) When there is a large, artificial gap between the market-rate and the transaction-price. This gap is called "Rent" creation by Economist.


• 2) When such "Rents" are assigned, allocated or awarded in non-equitable, non-transparent and non-competitive manner, for reasons other than commercial.


• 3) When access to facts of such transaction is not made public for sake of commercial secrecy.


• 4) Even if 2) and 3) above are followed but when the group capable of such transactions is small and forms a cartel.

Why could such shenanigans escape the notice of press and public? What should be done?
Firstly UN should be reformed to conduct its business in competitive, transparent, equitable manner and in Public. It should also have an Ombudsman to look into such misdemeanors. There should also be external audit by independent experts.
Secondly, press and public has to be vigilant.
I also think UN should setup a mechanism to monitor large flows of moneys in the world economy and make these public. Drug trafficking, Terrorist funding, corruption and such scams would get detected. Violation of privacy of individuals and corporates is no arguments against it. After all commercial transactions are in public domain.

Business should be conducted like dogs do it - openly!

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Discovery Channel had made a DVD regarding the "Out Of Africa" theory of Human migration based on mitochondria Genes. What is new in this?

I have written earlier also on this theory of there being only one original Woman {Lucy) from which all of us are descendants, based on the Mitochondria. (By the way: I should make a subject wise archive on this blog, instead of monthwise. I would do it ASAP).
Still what was intriguing was how could large number of humans crossed the sea at various points. The fact is that at that time, there was a sever ice-age and as a result the sea level was about 160 Ft. lower than today. Therefore, what appear to be islands today, actually were connected through shelves of land(which are now submerged).
But still there was about 100 miles of sea from Malaysia to Australia. This the Humans did cross by reed boats. Why and how did they navigate is not clear.
All this is based on mitochondria evidence and real archeological evidence is still weak.

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Virus! Vi r u s(ick)! Bird-Flu pandemic scare scares us all. Sometime back it was SARS. I wonder what the viruses are upto?

Virus in dormant form are not living things but large protein molecules. Still the tendency to perpetuate their genes is much more virulent than in larger living things. The animal-human viruses like bird-flu, mad-cow disease and SARS create a pandemic. Even AIDS is rumoured to have passed on from monkeys to humans. I suspect a purely human (or purely animal) virus is not virulent since its not programmed genetically to totally wipe-out its parasite-host. In animal-human virus this restraint is not seen. Does my hunch make sense?
Virus spreads from one living parasite-host to another, but not from vegetable and fruit. Why are vegetable kingdom immune to cross vegetable-human virus? If we all revert to vegetarian diet and stop keeping pets except in Zoo, can we avoid at least animal-human viruses - that are a real danger?

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As mentioned in one of my earlier post, commonly held belief that if we don’t meddle with nature, Nature would ensure survival of human race – is not correct. Our universe is a violent and unstable place born in violent Big-Bang and brought up in equally violent events like supernova bursts etc. It’s not natural for life to develop and survive in such a universe.  Life is too fragile and too freak a phenomenon to be infinitely sustainable.
World economy is also a similarly unstable and ruthless phenomenon.

Our understanding of it is rather sketchy. What makes it tick and what makes it go into cycles of depression is hardly understood.  There are theories in this regard but none has predicted the next disaster – which is the real test for any theory to be true.
Globalisation of world economy (The flat world) is forcing the fault lines of world economy to realign, without our knowing it.  The changing political balance of power in post cold-war period is another unsettling force.
Earlier in segregated economies a meltdown in one country did not affect others.  Thus the world as a whole could climb back out of the abyss.
Globalisation and overheating of economy and fast pace of its growth in China etc. could lead to a world-wide economic meltdown. It will be difficult to climb out of such a global economic tsunami.
We should concentrate on understanding the forces shaping the global economy with as great urgency as possible.
What do you think? Please leave a comment.

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Isn't it a surprising thing, that Mr. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi for most of us) never received a Nobel Peace Prize.

The Maha(The great)-Atman(Soul) developed, preached and practiced non-violence as a potent weapon against the British Colonists.  And this non-violent struggle was mainly responsible for India winning the freedom (its a lie that it was granted to us). His philosophy influenced other freedom movement leaders like Nelson Mandela; African-American rights leaders etc.
In World's fight against Terrorism, Mahatma Gandhi's non-violence can be potent answers.   Those who use terrorism as a weapon could realise that much more can be gained for their causes through Mahatma's methods than by violence.
We should place him in the category of Mahatma Budha.  We should be utterly grateful that Mahatma Gandhi didn't leave us his dogma in form of a religion or a family clan - which he was in position to do so.  His followers would have converted his sound philosophy into an inane dogma and pushed it down the throat of others - in a non non-violent way.  That is what fanatical followers of religions do to the noble principles of their religions.
Then why didn't he receive Nobel Prize? It is learnt that he was nominated for the award in 1937,1938, 1939 1and 1948.  But some internal petty minded referees chose to stress on some of his eccentricities rather than to his greatness.
Nobel Prize is poorer for this faulty judgement.

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I cherish my invention as a kid, of a Telephone Exchange for kid’s thread and ice-cream cup toy telephones.   The invention is extremely simple.   I wonder why no other kid had invented it before (or after).  The high that this generated still provides me a sense of achievement.

I initially tried to find a solution to the problem that such thread and cup telephones can only function in straight line, but not across a bend. If there is any obstruction on the way which touches the thread, it did not function.
I made a large diaphragm of paper on a cardboard cut out.  This card-board diaphragm I fixed at the corner(Bend in passage) at 45⁰. Threads from two perpendicular directions were anchored to this diaphragm.  The threads could be kept taut without touching the bend.  Now you could talk from two perpendicular directions.
It was a simple step further to make a cube of card board (withot top and bottom panel). Diaphragms of paper were fixed on four cardboard cutout sides of this cube. Then these diaphragms were connected from inside of cube by taut threads to the diaphragm perpendicular to it on its right, which in turn was connected to the perpendicular one on it's right thus completing a circuit of all four diaphragms  For better results the opposite diaphragms were also connected by separate threads. This cube I fixed on the roof of the concourse in the house. Now threads from all directions could be connected to the four diaphragms of this cube.
This was the thread telephone exchange which allowed me to talk to any other threaded telephone.  The important point was that the other telephone could even be hidden behind a wall, but I could talk to it.  All my siblings played with it various spy games etc.
Great! and simple.   NO!!

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My recurrent theme (and a pet peeve) is that the intrinsic animal instincts of humans are in conflict with the mores of our society due to which the institution of marriage is crumbling.   A newspaper report says that in UK, more and more men and women are finding marriage to be incompatible with professional and personal time-demands. Is there no way out?
Can we refashion our mores of society (or the institution of marriage)to be more in tune with our basic animal instincts?

Some virus like programming in our minds makes humans(women not excepted)to be polygamous.   Its as if an alien being takes hold of our psyche.   Would you not expect that we should have been programmed to place our own survival as a top priority.   But no, its passing forward our genes to a mate perceived to have best genes (person with brawn rather than brains), that appears to be ingrained as top priority in our psyche - even at the cost of our own survival.   Unsinn (non-sense) ganz verruckt (total madness)- as the Germans would say.
On the other hand humans also want to optimise their chances of physical survival by selecting a mate with best ability to provide food (and monetary safety).   In stone age these two qualities coincided, because the best mating genes was also the mate with best ability to hunt food.   Not any longer in modern society, where brains (with a minimal brawn) dictate ability to provide food and monetary security - rather than brawn alone.   Thus humans want to mate with brawny candidates but want to marry the brainy ones.
This is what threatens the institution of marriage.
Single parents, Live-in relationships, procreation thru in-vitro child-birth, step-parent are all off-the-cuff reactions to this dilemma.
While the animal instincts would not go away, social-contract expectations from marriage would get refashioned.   We cannot predict the ultimate solution society would arrive at, by trial and errors.   But the fundamental approach could be that on one-hand women would get freedom to choose father (not necessarily their husbands) of their children.   On the other hand men would be freed from the life-time financial responsibilities towards their spouses and family.

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How and what our mind, recalls, is a great mystery. Sometimes we marvel at it, when it dredges out long forgotten things - in mint fresh condition. Other times, we rue its incapability to recall the name of a person, we seem to know quite well. How is it different from the way a Computer recalls data from its data-base.
In computer a data-base is organised in such a way that each piece of information and its closely related data (together called a record - the thing you see in a row of data in printed form)is stores in memory that is assigned an address number. Thus basically if you know the memory address of that data, it can be retrieved. But Data-Base software shield you from this memory address problem and allows you to recall whole record if you know even one piece of data in that record.
But human mind does not function this way. It has no user accessible memory location address. It fetches data if you know the contents of that data itself (then there is no need to retrieve it) or other pieces of data which your mind thinks were linked to that data at the time of storage. Thus at the time of storing, mind forms association of that data with other data. This association is the key to retrieval. Therefore for recalling a data mind requires triggering hints or a series of them
The number and complexity of such associations is peculiar to each human.
When younger, I had phenomenal memory for faces, although I never recalled the name.
Even if I saw a person once, 20 years later, I could recall the place where we had met and other persons associated with both of us. Also what had he said to me at that time!
I was also good at weird linking of obviously un-connected data.
At the same time I was very poor in medium term memory - where had I put my reading glasses yesterday?? My mind would give seemingly weird hints. "I had placed it at secure place, where nobody can accidently step on it". "When I was helping my wife in kitchen". "What about eating an orange?" I used to tear my hair deciphering these hints - I don't want to eat an orange, I want my reading glasses. Of course I was butt of various family jokes about this memory failure. Reading glasses were finally found in the Refrigerator Freezer!!!
Things have changed a lot during last 40 years. Pressures of job and wife have made me very good at medium term memory. A picture immediately flashes, where had I put my glasses. But I have also to a large extent lost that complex connectivity of data in brain. I neither remember the name nor the face of a person I had spent hours with only last year.
Mind is a pliable tool, the way you use it, it responds to the needs of your life.
As they say - Use It Or Loose It.
Take Care!!

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Maybe due to some psychological programming, we fail to notice the human side of authority figures like - Parents, Teachers, Police Officers and of course Bosses. As we plod towards our own grave, each new experience could help us understand, more and more the Human, that our Father was. And that would help us understand the Human inside us!
(Substitute "Parents" for "Father", if you like).
It is when, we have the first look at our first child, in the hospital crib, that we understand the basis of the love our Father had for us. That way we can better understand our own bonding with this bundle of our own flesh.
As we go through the growth of our children, we can understand why our Father was so restraining to our activities (Don't, Don't, Don't) - his fears of us getting hurt. We can let our children out a bit more, due to this understanding of fears of our father. We can say 'yes go ahead' and wince and pray to GOD for their protection.
(On the other hand, understanding children is much easier, since we have gone through the same set of fears and emotions when we were their age.)
As we and our spouse grow up over years of marriage, we can realise the feelings of our Father as a man. We can now understand, why he many times mistreated our mother - as we saw it. It can help us to be more forbearing about the 'all-to-human' frailties, of the human, that our spouse is - as she does for ours.
It is difficult to come to terms with the realisation that Father was as much a human of flesh and blood, as we ourselves - not a mere card-board cut-out figure.
He lead a human life of his own - which to him was the main drama-stage of life. As ours is to us and our children's is to them and our spouse's to her. All feel that the rest of the characters are there to play a role in our drama-stage - only a little better than the stage props.
We feel cheated, if we realise that, role players in our lives, on the sly, also have a drama-stage of their own - in which we are only a bit-role-player - no more. Why do they have to "two-time" us in my Drama-stage and work as Hero in another Drama Stage of their own -much like a Boss learning of moon-shining by a subordinate.
We are now able to withstand the fears that made father err. Yes, now we empathise with his rights and wrongs, so much, that we need to look into mirror to separate us from him - even then sometimes the resemblance is too close.

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At the end of 19th century, the growing number of horse drawn carriages in London, lead one mathematicians to calculate the horse shit that will be generated 100 years hence, if the horse drawn carriages kept on increasing at the same rate. He predicted that by the year 1992, London would be under 16 feet of horse dung.

These things should be taken with a pinch of salt - the forecast, I mean, not the horse shit. A change of technology to Internal Combustion Carriages (Automobiles) could not have been envisaged then.
I strongly suspect that the environmental prophets of doom are committing that same mistake. They are creating s similar picture of doom due to pollution by the cars.
In any case a single volcanic eruption or a Tsunami can cause much more environmental pollution than a decade of pollution by cars.
I am confident that humanity will be able to discover the next source of energy sooner than later - which would make internal combustion engines a museum piece.
In any case the recent spate of natural disasters has refuted our belief that nature, if left to it, is benign to Human civilization. Nothing of that sort. Nature could wipe out the Human civilization, as suddenly,as unpredictably, as quickly, as remorselessly as it had wiped the dinosaurs.
Step on the gas man, till you you have time!!!

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Information Technology has epochally transformed our Society. This tranformation is as seminal as the transformation of Society from Stone-age to Bronze-age. I am lucky to have been Witness to this transformation from the 2nd generation (discrete transistor circuits) Main Frames to present Web-enabled systems. I dirtied my hands with Machine Code, Assembly Level Language, FORTRAN, Cobol, RDBMS and now Web-enabled systems - paralleling India's journey from being 30 years behind to a front-line runner. What was it Like??

• 1969 - there were a handful of Main-Frames in India. A new one ICL-1909 came to IIT-Delhi. I learnt FORTRAN-IV and Programmed for my Graduation Project on "Simulation of Diesel Engines"


• Computers consisted of Large Cabinets with panels containing blinking lights and switches . These were housed in Large air-conditioned halls with cables running underneath false floor.


• Memory used be made-up of ferrite rings strung on cross wires - solid-state memory came in next generations. Being physical, these used be housed in huge cabinets. 12 KB memory was all that we had.


• Tape drives were huge things, about six-feet tall. I being only 5ft 3in tall, had to stand on tip-toes to load the tapes. Being sensitive about my height, I used to make sure there is no one around, before I did that. Vacuum columns kept the tension on tape constant.


• Line printer was huge and shaped like a Dodo-Bird. It made a racket while working and threw out printed paper like a demented demon.


• Fresh Input was thru Cards, but in IIT we used Paper Tapes. We were taught to read the hole patterns on the tape and the cards for corrections. Wrong portions of tapes were substituted with correct portions by manually splicing the tape. Tapes were punched on a teleprinter like machine.Later IIT acquired card reader and Card Punching machines. This looked like a major improvement


• We sincerely followed the steps of flowcharting, coding etc.


• Computers operated on 6 bit BCD Byte. Mostly computers had fixed word length of 8 bytes, but the computer , I worked on in Railway (IBM-1401) had variable length word, end being marked by a word-mark byte. Blocks of words were marked by Group-Mark byte.
  
• There were no Operating System or firm-ware in these computers. Only one Programme could work at a time. Multi-threading and Multi-tasking came in later generations of computers.

(To be editted)

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Many of us have or would face depressing and unnerving situations, which arrive like a bolt from blue, without rhyme or reason. Such events normally do not come alone, but may pile up, one upon another - raising a specter of a life full of holocaust. How can one maintain one's sanity in such situations?

Near the event, things look to be grossly worse than they actually are. Stick to basics and facts of the events.

Don't:-

• concentrate on emotions, pain, suffering.


• spout philosophy.


• blame others or circumstances.


• try to find your own faults which lead to it.


• try to spy out the motives of your tormentors.


• try to figure out cause and effect chain leading to the event.


• think of revenge - this thought will pull you deeper into abyss. Forget and forgive is for saints - impractical. Just put away the person or event, for the time being.

Discard the baggage of your religion (Hinduism for me) relating to above mentioned aspects. Religion is meant to give you a guilt feeling.

Spell out (or better write down), your feelings, beliefs, opinions.

Be stubborn, do not be a party to any dis-assertiveness or disrespect to you. Standup for yourself.

Finally write down what you need or want at the present moment, to put the event behind you.

Then go ahead and have a quite inner dialogue or meditate or pray if you like.

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Religion has become a source of hatred all around the world. To stop this we have to understand why Godly Religion generates so much hate and passion.
As I said, strong identity with ones Religion and believing it to be the best and the "Other" religions to be Pagan, Dumb or worse, arises out of basic Human Psyche. Humans are born without an owners manual. The question that stares us in face is : "Who are we". To answer that people form identity groups. There is a matrix of overlapping groups to which one belongs. I am an Indian, A brown skinned male, Hindu, Son and sibling of a family group, husband and father of another family group, an Engineer, Alumni of IIT, A Railway Manager etc. etc. To heighten this sense of belonging I eulogise qualities of my groups and find faults with the "Other" groups.
That is why it pays me psychologically if I think that Hinduism is the best religion and think that other religions are not as good.
But if we understand the basis of this mind-set, it will be easy for me to think that other Religions are also great and Godly and righteousness isn't a prerogative of my religion alone. I can look at people of other religions and feel an empathy instead of a separation from them.
Can this be spread to reduce the present hatred all-around.
PS: Hi I am back after two months. Thanks for visiting this site.

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Is Low labour cost in countries like, India, an advantage or disadvantage?
What are the ill-effects of low labour cost regime, on various classes in society.
Minimum quantum of Food, clothes & roof over-head, required for survival for a human, is approximately, same in poor countries and in richer countries. (I am talking of humans, not of sub-human unfortunates, who have to survive by sleeping on footpaths). But prices for food, clothes and real-estate are much lower in poor countries. Therefore its possible for the bottom layer of society, to survive on low wages, in poor countries.
But the low cost of these survival-minimums, is itself a reflection of low wages, paid to producer of these - the mason, farmer and mill-worker etc. All this is a vicious chain of human oppression. Its a medieval and unequal social contract, between various sections of society - which democracy and market forces are expected to level-up. In final analysis, the low wages are determined by low social concern for human values, than by economics.
In India, due to the caste system in olden times, the lower strata of people did not have the social might, to ask for reasonable prices for their goods and services. Because of poor returns, these classes could not even gather the commercial might, to dictate price.
Human value index of Indian society, would improve, when a shoe shine boy will get equivalent of 1US$, at least, instead of 5 cents, for a shoe polish. Similarly, significant increases in prices of goods and service, from socially and politically weaker section, would be a sure sign of increase in Human Values in the Society. The price of individual human services, should become so high, that these should pinch the buyer. This would reduce demands for such services and thus provide an equilibrium at high-price level. People can shift to more productive professions. The over all cost of labour would go up in the society. The society, will then really become a Human Society. The mediaeval social contract would get replaced by its 21st century version.
Will this push up prices of Indian goods in international market - and have backlash on Indian Economy making higher wages unsustainable.
This is not true.
Lets look at similar chain of oppression, in International Trade between poor countries and Richer ones. There is also a similar mediaeval and unequal, political and economic contracts, between the poor and rich nations.
In next post, we will see that, the economic power and the rate of exchange of foreign currencies, is determined more by military might of nations than its economic performance.

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When we think of science, names of Einstein and Newton come to mind instantly, but not of James Clerk Maxwell. Beg your pardon! Who is this Maxwell, whose name is being taken in the same sentence, as Einstein and Newton? Blasphemy?
James Clerk Maxwell (1839-1879) changed the very perception of reality, by discovering the inter-relation of magnetism and electricity. He wrote equations to explain this inter-relation.
These equations also disclosed possibility of electromagnetic waves, which travel at the speed of light. These waves could not be described mechanically.
This was really a shift of gears in science, from mechanical concerns, to invisible reality behind the mechanical world.
It was a shift from Sherlock Holmes to Harry Potter.
It took 25 years, for Hertz to experimentally show existence of these waves. These waves are now warp and weft of the fabric of our civilization - TV, Telephones, Radio, Satellite Communication, RADAR etc. Visible light is also such waves, but occupy only a small portion of the spectrum of these waves.
More than making possible these discoveries, its the seminal leap in the concept of reality as a continuum of fields, that is his greatest contribution. All of Quantum Mechanics, Relativity and Particle Physics are founded on reality and Mathematics of this concept of continuum of fields.
James Clerk Maxwell is the real Prima Donna of modern Physics.

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Under scorching sun, canopy of trees, harsh light sieve,
Pattern like mesh of suffering and relief, in dusty cemetery weave.
Wandering rustle, of dead brittle leaves, puts silence to sleep,
Hundreds of solitudes, out shrieking thoughts sweep.

Hear the hypnotic tales, from graves dead men shout,
Passionate lives, lived or dreamt, calmly recount.
Whom they loved, and who deceived,
Magnanimities and cussedness, given and received.
Laughter and tears, grief and stifled cry,
Miles of tales, condensed in a sigh.

Over heart, hands crossed, solemnly lie in state,
No longer they fib, neither they hate.
Now that, spell is shattered, ennui sails,
Call it a day; lets not tarry, on dead men's tales.

Mothballed secrets forgotten, why these tales told,
How could past mysteries resolve, my future foretold?
Since when bones creak, my breath labours,
Are my eyes shut, soul eternity harbours?
Hear more I won't, Can't I getup and bail,
Am I the Dead Man? Telling my own tale?

Oh! Listen! Don't you go, over the chest hands please fold,
Yours as well 're these tales, lie besides me as told.
Why and wherefore, humans behave, fret not one's head,
Nothing unknown, all revealed, in grave lies when one dead.

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My job has taken me to every part of India. I am fascinated by British cemeteries. The epitaphs on the graves,
are sometimes terse/ sometimes in verse,
but have solemnity/ and enough gravity,
I bow my head/ to the silent dead!

These show a pathetic side of the story. How many British mothers/wives lost their sons/husbands, in a land thousands of miles over oceans - in inhospitable weather, hated and unloved by locals - among whom they died. More white-men died due to disease - dysentery, cholera, malaria and heat-stroke than fighting. How many men wasted their lives away from families. In terms of human price paid, it was colossus. If employed in Industry - these very men would have given Britain well - earned honest wealth - much more than the illgotten wealth through plunder and undisguised Robbery of a defenceless people. And imagine the full life these men would have lived among their families.
My school was in an erstwhile castle (Ludlow Castle)of the British, in Delhi. It bore the brunt of attack from the natives, during the first independence war of 1857. My favourite perch, for eating my lunch, was a memorial over a solitary grave in our football field. Whenever they dug grounds in school for construction, human bones still turnedup in 1950s.
Oppressions is a double edged sword. It cuts both the oppressors and the oppressed. In terms of human lives the oppressors suffers as much as those they oppress. Britain's colonisation of India and other nations also was a similar story.
India was kept enslaved as a colony for over two hundred years - really a long time. From a Modern point of view, it appears uncivilised and downright barbaric, to treat another nation and its people like this. It was purely for commercial reasons - howsoever disguised, behind high-sounding cliches of whiteman's burden.
But if I keep aside my negative feelings, and look with compassion, at the British people who ruled in India. They unwittingly suffered a lot.
Who suffered more the oppressor, or the oppressed? Clearly the oppressed suffered much more. But Britishers didn't go Scot-free.
Do I fulfill a psychological need by wandering through these cemeteries? Is it a purging of congealed disgust against the British Rule - a sort of gotcha?

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So once again lets ask: "Who am I?"
Uptill now in earlier posts we have argued that:-

• We are here to contribute towards the exploration of Knowledge and of the Universe.
• Implanted in our brains, the Trojan viruses, of survival instinct and the passion for mating, facilitate continuity and refinement of genes for this task.
• Lets take the bricks-and-mortar world as the only reality.
• Lets explore the reality, with the approach of Riemann's Geometry, deciphering the world with each step physically taken by us - and not rely on any handed down world-view, as in the omniscient approach of Euclid's Geometry.

Lets not get ensnared, into our various religious hand-me-downs - soul, sin, morals. Our ancestors who wrote these, were even less sure of reality, than we are, since we do stand on the high ground of knowledge, gathered by these ancestors. They are more likely to have erred in their basic assumptions, on which most of their world-view is based. Strongest of citadels built over foundations of sand, will crash out one day or the other - sooner, than later.
Mahatma Gandhi, once, removed and retained the paper-clip from a verbose and pretentious letter, by a big-wig, and threw the letter, in the dust-bin. Mahatma explained with an impish smile that, he has retained whatever was of merit, in the letter. Our approach in assimilating hand-me-down world-view, should also be similar.
I would therefore, not go in search of anything more than, this bag of skin, containing arthritic bones called empirically "Girish Bhatnagar" - when I want to know "Who am I?". This is a wrong questions. Wisdom lies, not in giving intelligent answers, but in avoiding wrong questions!
In rejection of soul, morals and other religious commandments, I am not advocating negation of these virtues. Honesty and Morality are based on other tangible considerations, which I recommend, instead of merely religious grounds. I am not advocating desertion of religion either. That's an individual choice.

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A good engineer should be able to 'Saw with a file and File with a Saw'. But that would be really inefficient. For best results, use saw for sawing and file for filing.
As concluded earlier, the main reason 'What we are here for?' is to take human knowledge and exploration of our universe further.
But each one still contributes, in many other ways, even if not directly involved, in pushing forward frontiers of knowledge.
I still have to worry about my individual role in this human quest. Am I a 'file' trying to 'saw' a log of wood?
The best way is to discover it, over a period, in our life. Try doing variety of things and be alert to signals of enjoyment and pleasure, in doing certain things. Work, that gives us an emotional high, is 'Our Cosmic Work'. This is the work 'What I am individually here for?'. Basic survival (eating, money hoarding) or mating etc don't count - but wealth creation could.
We should discover 'Our Cosmic Work' and do it as much as possible - even if we have to do something else, simultaneously, to bring home the bacon. This Cosmic Work - may be more than one and may be different during various stages of life. So we have to be on constant alert, for increasing/decreasing trends of pleasure, while doing familiar or new work. A painter who no longer feels inspired, should go and search, for his new Cosmic Work.
What are you waiting for? Go and discover your Cosmic Work!
Next time we go back to 'Who am I?'.

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If posts are a ton of milk - exerpts from these, are like a few pounds of cheese, culled from that milk. These reflect the essence, of what I am submitting, for your consideration.

• A good engineer should be able to 'Saw with a file and File with a Saw'.


• Work, that gives me an emotional high, is 'My Cosmic Work'. This is the work 'What I am individually here for?'.


• We like an ant on a football don't know who we are, why we are there on this globe, and what is the globe made of, what are the processes acting on this globe.


• One oriental concept is that we all have a soul (Aatmaan). The soul is only a part of larger entity - the super-soul (Param-Aatmaan). God is nothing but this super-soul. All souls are linked to each other and form a whole. Budhism takes it further to propound that there is no division between our soul and the God's super-soul - its only one entitity. Eh! an internet of Souls.


• My religion (Hinduism) says that all this world is an illusion. But if I bang my head on the illusive wall I get severe non-illusive pain in my illusive head. No! Even if it might be a world of illusion - that illusion is for Gods. For us humans this world is a brick and mortar world.


• More than passing down of genes, its this passing down and further accumulation of knowledge - generation after generation - that is the essence of "What are we here for?".


• We are just envelops of the message of genes - where the envelop itself is the message.


• All literature and Arts arise from the quest of humans to understand just two questions, in the absence of an operation manual from GOD:


• Who am I?


• Why am I here?


• Exceptional creativity arises at the boudries between normalcy and insanity.


• Having too much money/ Power /beauty could be a fatal disease.


• There has been too much back and forth mating between the Peoples that Race and Ethnicity has no Biological basis.


• Differences between the Races are much less than variations within the Race.


• I had dived 80 fathoms below conscious and touched the real tenant of my body. He is real sport and much more child-like and happy, than I am.


• But the urge to mate and procreate is so altruistic that I suspect that this is a Trojan virus that has hijacked our psyche by some aliens.... And how ludicrous, funny and laughable this rub-and-tinkle thing is mating. It looks fishy. I feel we have been enslaved by some Virus into this anti-selfish urge.


• Even if I don't realise, all my emotional reactions are based on a world-view acquired mostly as a child.... it is very manipulative of us....Most of our grief as adults arises from this world-view.

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We like an ant on a football don't know who we are, why we are there on this globe, and what is the globe made of, what are the processes acting on this globe.

Millions of generations of accumulated wisdom of ants may develop a world view of the football:
-that its made of leather pieces sewn together
-has an internal bladder the penile spout which is tied up with string-its overinflated with air
-its prone to sudden kicks; flights in air and sudden landing and bouncing on ground
-some GOD like beings get pleasure in kicking it or making it fly.
The new generation may dispute this World-view and say that the world has changed.-It no longer is made of leather but of synthetic material.
-It no longer has internal bladder because the penile spout is no longer there instead a neat little hole is there
-they may even blame the disappearance on the polluting practices of certain ants-rest of ancient world
-view still holds.
Einstein was also faced with something similar when he propounded the Theory of General Relativity where the space-time continuum develops a curvature in the presence of heavy material objects. To describe these curvatures he used Riemann's Geometry.
Riemann Geometry was quite old and quaint not much known or of not much use till then. Unlike Euclidean Geometry it dealt with finding the geometry of a surface by taking small steps over a the surface. Say an ant walking over the surface of the football taking measurements after each step. With Riemann Geometry the ant can develop an equation describing the spherical ball with its seams and patches. The ant need not start a-priory with any world view of the football.With Riemann Geometry the ant need not take as gospel truth the unverified world-view handed down by its parents and society. It develops the world-view as it goes along step by step based on what it actually sees with its own eyes.
So we should discard the world-view handed down to us. Go along developing your own world-view from what your eyes see.
Euclidean geometry is from the perspective of all-seeing God above us. Riemann Geometry is for us Humans with limited perceptions.

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One oriental concept is that we all have a soul (Aatmaan). The soul is only a part of larger entity - the super-soul (Param-Aatmaan). God is nothing but this super-soul. All souls are linked to each other and form a whole. Budhism takes it further to propound that there is no division between our soul and the God's super-soul - its only one entitity. Eh! an internet of Souls.
How similar to my concept of sub-space entities. Soul is akin to a sub-space particle. All sub-space particles are in touch with each other in a time-less distance-less continuuam. All these sub-space particles form a whole space. All space only a singularity in time-space continuum.
Visit My Other Blog.

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Does nothing really matters in life. My religion (Hinduism) says that all this world is an illusion. But if I bang my head on the illusive wall I get severe non-illusive pain in my illusive head. No! Even if it might be a world of illusion - that illusion is for Gods. For us humans this world is a brick and mortar world.
In real-life I would believe only what I see - no far-fetched concepts for me. Real-life is WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get).
So would I in science!

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Even to persons averse to rituals, like me, the scene of the evening worship at the city of Haridwar (= The gateway to God) on the Ganges, is a poignant moment. It sends a gooseflesh shiver down my spine.
Every evening, the goddess of Ganges is worshiped, at the banks of this river in Haridwar . During the worship, thousands of floating lamps in leaf boats are launched into the night, on the Ganges. Your heart starts thumping with excitement, to the rising crescendo of chants and cacophonic sounds of gongs. Thousands of floating, flickering lights hold you hypnotised. The mixture of serenity and heightened emotional tension leaves you shivering.
Click to see the Site
I would avoid, going out on a limb. I would not explain, why I think that main reason of "What are we here for?" is as follows:-
Imagine the knowledge accumulated by Human race over past 3000 years. The knowledge is so vast and diverse - that no human generation could have gathered it in its lifetime.

More than passing down of genes, its this passing down and further accumulation of knowledge - generation after generation - that is the essence of "What are we here for?".

We are like the thousands of floating lamps launched on the Ganges, to explore that vast river. We are part of that millenniums long project, to gather knowledge and understand the universe.
The urges to survive and mate, merely, are a mechanism of ensuring continuity of this knowledge gathering, accumulation and passing down. Selection of best genes to pass on, is meant to refine, the knowledge gathering capabilities of future generations. It would make Humans morons and humourless, if this mission was known to them, ab-initio, through an operations manual for Humans.
It is not that the lives of those, who do not help to take further, the sum total of universal knowledge, are of no avail. Like in a corporate mission, all persons in different roles in the organisation are equally important - as much as direct production or the marketing people.
Who created this grandiose scheme of Human continuity to understand an infinite world? Who seeded our brains with the Trojan viruses of survival and gene-passing? I would not like to go into that mine-field!
But I am ready to do an iteration. Having failed in understanding "Who Am I?", we turned to "What are we here for?" and succeeded. Lets go back to "Who am I?", with this knowledge. Can we now tackle it successfully?

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Having failed to answer the question - Who Am I? Can I answer What Am I here for?
The genes I carry are a net result of a sequence thousands of passionate matings - since the mitochondrial eve - Lucy ate the apple. These matings were a result of a deep seated insane command in human brain, to shuffle one's own genes with best possible genes accessible.
How many matings. It is estimated that there were 6,000 to 10,000 generations between us and the "Mother of all Mothers" - Lucy of Africa.
And if my genes are analysed - besides the Caucasian genes of North Indians, there may be traces from South Indian - Dravids, Locals Aborignals, African people, Middle-eastern people, Huns/Mangols. One wonders at the veritable melting pot of genetic material. More than the genes, I carry the same insane command to pass on these genes - shuffled with best possible genes.
To pass on genes - one has to survive. Therefore urge for self-preservation should be more basic. But given the two urges - many time urge to survive is risked - a woman's pregnancy threatens her survival.
We are just envelops of the message of genes - where the envelop itself is the message.
Is this robotic command the main thing we are here for?
I Hope not!
I think Not!
Is there some other job that is more important and more basic to 'Why we are here for'? Till Next Post!

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Even moderately complex equipments come with an operation manual, warranty card and maintenance support centers. But we Humans come to the world without an official operations manual, nor any warranty and nor any maintenance support. Oh! Dear GOD why did you play this trick on us?
All literature and Arts arise from the quest of humans to understand just two questions, in the absence of an operation manual from GOD:

• Who am I?
• Why am I here?

We try to the answer the fist question by pigeon-holing ourselves. We attach ourselves to various groups to define - who we are? I am a male; Indian; a non-functional Hindu; a branch in a family genealogy; member of a caste/tribe/race; alumnus of a college; employee of an organization; and so on...? To forge and sustain these identities we extol the virtues of me-groups and denigrate the not-me groups. We see not-me groups as evil and foul - and me-groups as pious and virtuous. This is the main reason for so much hatred in the world.
But by this hiding behind group identities, we mask and fudge the question - who am I? The question still remains unanswered? My groups do not define me - I must find the answer elsewhere.
Or perhaps accept that the question may not have an answer.
Lets smile and appreciate the not-me groups - they are just as lost and orphaned as me!!
Can I console myself, that I can at least answer the second question - Why am I here? See you Next Time!

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Exceptional creativity arises at the boudries between normalcy and insanity. The German King Ludwig II, who was declared insane by his relatives, created one of the most beautiful Castle - which I had dreamt of visiting since I was 7 year old boy. <
When I was 7 year old, my father put up on my bedroom wall, a framed photo of a castle taken from the Calendar of Lufthansa Airways. Perhaps he wanted to pass on to his favourite child, the childlike thrill he got from the picture. The castle feavered my imagination and made me dream of the place. It was like a Fairy Tale.
My dream was fulfilled in 1988 (I was 38 yrs old), when I went for a year, to live in West Germany. I had faint memories of this childhood dream. With great difficulty, I could get a person, who could tell me the name of the castle, from my scanty description of a childhood photo.
I went round the castle in a trance. It was really like playing a part in a dream Fairy Tale. I count that visit as one of the high points of my life. The story of castle added to the mystique.
This is the castle (schloß) Neuschwanstein near Munich. Ludwig II called it the "Castle of Holy Grail".
But like all Fairy Stories, the Castle brought only curses to Ludwig. Only after six months, of moving into the castle, his uncle usurped the Reigns, after declaring Ludwig as insane. He was imprisoned in-house and was found drowned, under mysterious circumstances, in lake Starnberg, early in the morning of 12th June 1886.
But what a striking similarity this story has to another dream monument "The Taj Mahal". The Emperor Shahjahan who created Taj, was imprisoned, by his own son, who snatched power from him. Shahjahan went insane in his last days and spent all the time, watching Taj from his Prison cell in Red Castle, which overlooked Taj.
Having too much money/ Power /beauty could be a fatal disease.
Please see the official site of Neuschwanstein.

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I recently read a thought provoking book - which shook some of my views on the subject of Peoples, Race and Ethnicity. The book is: -
Mapping Human History
Discovering The Past Through Our Genes
By Steve Olson (2002)
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Let me give you a synopsis.
The book traces the differences and similarities between Peoples of various Races and Ethnicity using:

• Frequencies of Genetic Mutations in mitochondria and Y-Chromosome
• Languages
• Physical and Facial Features
• Archeology

Its Findings are:-

• There has been too much back and forth mating between the Peoples that Race and Ethnicity has no Biological basis.
• Differences between the Races are much less than variations within the Race.
• Human migrations from Africa to Middle-East -> to Asia-> to America and Europe has not been smooth and one way. There has been movement back and forth also within the overall direction mentioned above.
• European People developed faster than Peoples in other continents, due to local geographical and environmental conditions - not due to any genetic difference

I learnt that the passed down theory of Aryan coming to India and replacing the less developed locals - is a conjecture to support preconceived ideas. Available facts do not support this theory.
Click to see Maps and Data on Homo Sapien Migrations

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Number counting system is so basic to civilization, that we tend to not realize that, this was the first major step, learnt by Homo-sapiens towards civilization.
There are still some tribes, in South America - whose counting vocabulary is limited to 1; 2 and Many!
Its clear that initially humans stumbled from 1; to 20, without forming any number system - since each of these numbers have unique name uptill twenty. 'Eleven' for 11; not 'ten-one'. (Exception is Sanskrit which starts calling 11; as 'one and Ten' -"Eka-Dash").
Even now in remote villages, illiterate persons do all their counting with numbers till twenty. 136 is '16 and 6-twenties'. Evidently it gets difficult after 420;.
Beyond twenty we start using the positional number system (developed much later) based on Units, Tens, hundreds etc. So 21; is Twenty-One. 121; is One-Hundred and Twenty-one. The digits are read out from left to right for hundreds, tens and units.
With the invention of positional number system, counting could go beyond 20; upto 100 and even beyond.
German and Sanskrit are however stuck with an intermediate system (which is a precursor of positional numbering system) for counting between 21; to 99;.
Both in German and Sanskrit, digits are read from right to left - and not left to right - i.e. units (right digit)first and then Tens (digit on the left)- in numbers from 21; upto 99; . This system was good enough, till the positional numbering system invented Hundreds and beyond - by reading out digits from left to right for Hundreds, Tens and Units in sequence.
However being too long an established a system, both these languages retained their right to left reading of digits upto 99; but superposed it on left to right reading of digits for hundreds and above.
In both these languages, reading out digits is weird - Hundreds digit from left, then unit digit from extreme right and then the middle Tens' Digit.
122; is read as "ein-hundert; zwei und zwansig" or as translated; "one hundred, two and twenty" instead of straight-forward and logical "one hundred twenty-two". In Sanskrit"Aik Shambhar Dwai-DwaDash".
This weird system of counting, from 21; to 99;, is such a squashed fly - that this proves that both languages must be copies of same proto-Indo-Germanic language.
I suspect that German is the older sister - since it retains the older "and" between units and Tens - while Sanskrit. which came later, does away with 'and' (like other later languages). So 22 is 'zwei und zwansig' in German; but 'Dwai-Dwadash" in Sanskrit.
This conforms to the accepted history that Aryans came to India from north.
Both cultures have other similarities - like use of "swastika" symbol - though there are minor differences, in the symbol, in Sanskrit and German cultures. In India swastika is written, with its arms vertical/horizontal and in anti-clockwise fashion. In Germany it was written with arms at 45 deg and in clockwise fashion.

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When you photocopy a version (having a fly squashed on it), of a many-versioned document, the copies can be traced back to that particular version. Some thing similar has happened with languages during the migration of human races across the continents - and we can trace the origin of various languages - the proto-language. Human race is said to have evolved from one single woman called "Eva" - based on evidence from mutations of mitochondria genes. We can trace the great human migration from Africa to various continents in three ways:
1) Mutations of Mitochondria Genes or Y-chromosome genes
2) Archeology
3) Comparative study of languages
Let me share my own discoveries on such photocopies of squashed flies between "Sanskrit" and "German" languages - that I learnt during my one-year stay in Germany during 1987-88. No wonder that these two languages are said to have come from same proto-indo-germanisch language.
Firstly the roots of words:
i) 'Sammeln' in Deutsch (German) = To collect or gather; 'Sammelan' in Sanskrit = Gathering of people.
ii)'Bahn' as in AutoBahn in Deutsch = A mode (of travel); 'Vahan' in Sanskrit= A mode of travel.
There are many others like that. In fact while learning Deutsch there, I felt a sense of Dè-jâ vu - whenever I encountered a new word. Many times I was able to guess its meaning.
But what is the real squashed fly is the exact copy of a totally weird counting systems in the two languages - about which I will post next. Please Wait for the next post.

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I underwent a minor operation, under general anesthesia, on a hand injury. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of coming out of unconsciousness after the operation - so let me share it with you.
My first recollection after the operation was of a video-game like bizarre scene in my mind. The figures were hazy and with very low resolution - madeup of large square pixels. As time went by the picture dithered like a ".GIF" file downloading - and became more refined. But for quite sometime it was not a clear picture.
I had a feeling of zipping at high speed on a motorway with scenery rushing past me - wind on face. It was exhilarating.
I was amidst unknown landmarks in an unfamiliar City.
A small voice in my head told me " Ah! Good. Enjoy the moment don't rushout to consciousness. Don't succumb to frantic efforts of others to take you away from this - too soon. Enjoy while this lasts."
I was feeling like a naughty child in presence of doting parents.
I opened eyes, but my pupils were uncontrolled - they were vibrating left and right. I saw multiple, collage of overlapped blocks of hazy images of my wife.
I told my Wife: " I am enjoying it, don't disturb".
The videogame played on in the mind. I enjoyed it very much.
The thrilling and exhilarating feeling was with me for days to come. I used to consciously go back to that feeling, by closing eyes.
I had dived 80 fathoms below conscious and touched the real tenant of my body. He is real sport and much more child-like and happy, than I am.
P.S. Or was it drug-induced hallucination?

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The very fundamental urge for all living beings is to ensure and compete for survival. All survival ultimately is exclusive access to sources of energy - in modern terms - access to Money. So we have a natural tendency to earn and stockpile Money.This urge to survive - like all selfish things - is quite natural and understandable.
But the urge to mate and procreate is so altruistic that I suspect that this is a Trojan virus that has hijacked our psyche by some aliens. This urge to create as many copies as possible of our genes and mate with those who appear to have best chances of survival - overrides the instinct for survival. We forego our own sources of energy and share it with mates and offspring. We also run after and compete for mates. And how ludicrous, funny and laughable this rub-and-tinkle thing is mating.
If this urge was not there animals would eat and play all their life. No Helen of Troy, No Sparta and No Trojan Horses. It looks fishy. I feel we have been enslaved by some Virus into this anti-selfish urge.

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Even if I don't realise, all my emotional reactions are based on a world-view acquired mostly as a child.
By world view, I mean, a conceptual model of human universe. What are the components of this universe and what are their inter-relations? What are the fundamental rules and principles which govern the processes of this universe? What action would attract which retribution or reward?
Its part morals, part religion, part spiritual, part psychology but mostly unadulterated non-sense.
This model is necessary to save the society from inbuilt animal genetic programming in our brains. Therefore it is very manipulative of us.Our religion, family and society inculcate this model of human universe in us. Parenting involves passing on these mental chains to our children.
Most of our grief as adults arises from this world-view.

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