A proof that the Hindus had the Binomial Theorem

The manuscript, “Asiatic Research or Transactions of The Society Instituted in Bengal for inquiring into the History and Antiquities, the Arts, Sciences and Literature of Asia – Volume II “, published in the year 1799, has a chapter, “ A Proof that the Hindus had the Binomial Theorem” ( page 487) by Mr Reuben Burrow.

An extract:

With respect to the Binomial Theorem, the application of it to fractional indices will perhaps remain for ever the exclusive property of Newton, but the following question and its solution evidently show that the Hindoos understood it in whole numbers to the full as well as Briggs, and much better than Pascal. Dr. Hutton, in a valuable edition of Sherwin’s tables, has lately done justice to Briggs; but Mr. Whitchell, who some years before pointed out Briggs as the undoubted inventor of the differential method, said he had found some indications of the Binomial Theorem in much older authors. The method however by which that great man investigated the powers independent of each other is exactly the same as that in the following translation from the Sanscrit.

" A Raja's palace had eight doors; now these doors may either be opened by one at a time, or by two at a time, or by three at a time, and so on through the whole, till at last all are opened together. It is required to tell the numbers of times that this can be done ?

" Set down the number of the doors, and proceed in order, gradually decreasing by one to unity, " and then in a contrary order, as follows :

8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

" Divide the first number eight by the unit beneath it, and the quotient eight shows the number of times that the doors can be opened by one at a time. Multiply this last eight by the next term seven, and divide the product by the two beneath it, and the result twenty-eight is the number of times that two different doors may be opened ; multiply the last found twenty-eight by the next figure six, and divide the product by the three beneath it, and the quotient fifty-six shows the number of times that three different doors may be opened. Again, this fifty-six multiplied by the next five, and divided by the four beneath it, is seventy, the number of times that four different doors may be opened. In the same manner fifty-six is the number of fives that can be opened : twenty-eight the number of times that six can be opened: eight the number of times that seven can be opened ; and lastly, one is the number of times the whole may be opened together; and the sum of all the different times is 255."

The demonstration is evident to mathematicians; for as the second term's coefficient in a general equation shows the sum of the roots, therefore, in the n power of 1+1 where every root is unity, the coefficient shows the different ones that can be taken in n things : also, because the third term's coefficient is the sum of the products of all the different twos of the roots, therefore when each root is unity the products of each two roots will be unity, and therefore the number of units, or the coefficient itself, shows the number of different twos that can be taken in n things. Again, because the fourth term is the sum of the products of the different threes that can be taken among the roots, therefore, when each root is unity, the product of each three will be unity, and therefore every unit in the fourth will show a product of three different roots, and consequently the coefficient itself shows all the different threes that can be taken in n things; and so for the rest.

Positive energy

“The positive energy of all my devotees saved my life” said godman Sri Ravishankar after the miraculous ‘incident’ in which a bullet missed him by a few minutes and a few kilometers.

Most charlatans and quacks resort to such terms as ‘energy’ and ‘ vibrations” to give their dubious teachings a scientific spin, but Sri Ravishankar is refreshingly different. He knows his thermodynamics. When he says ‘positive energy’, he knows what the term connotes.

Eric Schrödinger ( “What is life?) and later Eric Schneider ("Life as a manifestation of second law of thermodynamics") had postulated that the sole purpose of life was to disperse energy. Virtually all organisms, including human beings, are sunlight transmogrified waypoints in the flow of energy. They do so not by burning brightly and disappearing, like a fire torching a forest, but through stable metabolic cycles that store chemical energy and continually reduce the solar gradient. ( source).

Albert Einstein famously derived the equation that established the relationship between energy and mass. Applying the equation, Sri Ravishankar could easily calculate that the bullet weighing around 10grams, fired from a distance of 750 metres can be deflected by a few kilometres, by the collective energy exuded by millions of his sunlight-transmogrifying devotees.

What a man!

An open letter to my daughters

Dear Daughters,

I always thought that you Millenials (those born between 1982 and 2002), with your ubiquitous iPods and 24/7 e-mail access, were spoiled and pampered whiners whose self-esteem had been overstoked by anxiously over-involved parents like us and who were granted undeserved As from teachers. All this has made your generation profoundly narcissistic and made you unmanageable later in life. You’ve become over-confident, nay irrationally exuberant and are headed for a major crash. So I concluded.

Apparently, that’s not true. ( source)

Though your lack of humility is hard to digest, I understand that you are not necessarily maladapted. On the contrary with your inexhaustible well of positive self-regard, your refusal to have your horizons defined by the limitations of our era, you may end up being far more resilient than those of our generation.

Yes, we certainly knew how to shape you, didn’t we?

Everest, here I come.

Every now and then one gets to read about someone having climbed Mt Everest. As climbing the mountain, by itself, is no longer newsworthy, some other unique achievement needs to be tagged. This takes the form of “ first to climb from the Southern side”, "first Indian woman to climb Mt Everest”, “youngest Indian to climb Mt Everest”, “first from Tamilnadu to climb Mt Everest”, “ youngest woman from UP to climb Mt Everest”, “first to climb with a Supersuit on”, etc.

Without doubt, climbing the tallest peak in the world is a formidable task and a test of endurance. The achievement cannot be belittled. But, why the hell do these people do it? What are they trying to prove? What purpose does it serve? The novelty value is long gone and the story barely gets into the newspapers ( or even Reader's Digest). Is it to prove to oneself that he/she is capable of doing it? Why risk one's life to do it?

George Mallory is supposed to have replied “ Because it is there”, when asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest. If a thousand people after him give the same reply, it can get a bit tiring. ( As an aside, when a writer, I don’t remember who, was asked why he kept writing, he replied, “ because it isn’t there”.)

Soon, to paraphrase Yogi Berra, nobody will go to Mt Everest any more. It will be too crowded.


Update 29/06/10 : An article in The Telegraph explains the attraction of Mt Everest:

"Dr Tim Woodman, co-director of the Institute for Psychology of Elite Performance at Bangor University who has studied what motivates mountaineers, believes many climbers do it to fulfil a basic human need.

“A lot of people who climb mountains like Everest struggle to explain why they do it,” he says. “Mountaineers tend to be people who don’t feel in control of emotion in their everyday lives. Emotions are a basic human requirement, and mountaineering allows them to feel fear, a very strong emotion, and be responsible for controlling that emotion.”

This might explain why Everest still has such appeal. As the world’s highest mountain, it represents the ultimate challenge and battle against nature’s forces. "

Joined the twitteratti

I have been trying my hand at Twitter for the last few days and have found the experience fascinating.

If blogging is akin to an ODI game in cricket, and anything longer than a blog post comparable to Test cricket, Twitter is the T20 equivalent of writing. As in cricket, switching from one format to another requires a complete change of mindset. Not all can manage this transition well.

A blogger whose posts I used to like quite a bit, proved to be a crashing bore when he took to writing columns. He simply struggled to expand on his ideas and tended to ramble. When he became more ambitious and wrote a novel, I couldn’t get past the first few pages. He is now into Twitter too, but mercifully uses it only to provide links to his columns which I don’t read anyway. Clearly ODI is his forte and he should stick to it. Not for him the T20 game or Test cricket.

Even among famous authors, very few have excelled in both formats- the novel and the short story. I have found Somerset Maugham very good in both. P.G.Wodehouse was another. Arthur C Clarke, Roald Dahl, Ray Bradbury were brilliant with their short stories, but their longer ones or full-length novels failed to grip me.

At Landmark, the other day, I came across this book called Twitterature in which several classic stories have been retold in a series of Twitter-style messages ( about 20-30 of them per story). I believe that there’s also a book written solely in text-message format. Tailor-made for the limited-attention-span generation of today.

Vacuous and Verbose-18

In a statement , soon after the conviction of gunman Ajmal Amir Kasab and others, including Pakistan-based LeT masterminds Hafiz Saeed and Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, in the 26/11 case, Mr P.Chidambaram said:

“The verdict (against) was a clear message to Pakistan. “If they do (export terrorism) and we apprehend the terrorists, then we will bring them to justice.”

I would have slotted it at the top of the list of stupid statements of the year. Then I decided that this was more pathetic than stupid. The Home Minister is seriously under the delusion that terrorists who come here on suicide missions ( probability of death = >90%) would be deterred by the thought that they might get caught, tried, convicted and hanged to death ( assuming charitably that each step has a probability of 80%, the overall likelihood becomes 41%). And that people who send the terrorists across on suicide missions will also realize the folly of their ways and abort future missions.

But , as it is the stated policy of Plus Ultra to proffer solutions and to not merely criticize, let me make a suggestion that will guarantee success. Every terrorist who is caught should be subjected to regular, long sermons by the likes of P.Chidambaram, Abdul Kalam, etc. Now, if word gets around to other budding terrorists across the border that this is the terrible third-degree torture that awaits them if they are caught, it might make them give up their plans completely. (True, this might also induce them to put in extra effort not to get caught, but we’ll take that chance)

Woods number

That Tiger Woods had confessed to having 121 affairs is old hat. His wife, hereinafter referred to as Tigress Woods, had still let him off with a warning.

Recently, she seems to have learnt that Tiger Woods had not revealed details of his 122nd affair with their neighbour’s 22-year old daughter. This seems to have upset Tigress a good deal. (source).

At the time I am posting this, it is not clear what exactly has upset her. Is it the fact that Tiger had an affair with their neighbour’s 22-year old daughter? Or that he had had an affair with their neighbour’s 22-year old daughter? Or that he had had an affair with their neighbour’s 22-year old daughter?

What exactly are her objections is not material to this case. Or germane to the larger issue I am going to discuss. Suffice to note at this stage that the 122nd affair was the proverbial straw that broke the proverbial camel’s proverbial back.

For centuries, the male of the human species has been testing the marital waters, wondering what the threshold limit is when it comes to the number of extra-marital affairs one can get away with. Thanks to Tiger Woods, it is now known that the threshold is 121. Upto this magical number, the wife is tolerant ( “boys will be boys after all”). Beyond 121, she blows a fuse.

I propose that we refer to this number, henceforth, as the Woods number. It would be a fitting tribute to the man. Those of you who want to start a wiki entry on the subject may provide the definition that Woods number (121) is the number of affairs a man can safely have before his wife says ‘enough is enough’.

But wait. Just as Dunbar number ( 150 for human beings) can vary with species, can Woods number vary with race, religion and nationality? Is the number 121 valid only in the USA? What about India?

To establish the results following rigorous scientific methods, I invite male, married bloggers from India to participate in an experiment to determine the Woods number for this part of the world. Carefully document the affairs that you are having and allot serial numbers. When your wife files a petition for divorce, let me know the serial number of the affair that made that happen. I will add my own inputs and share the findings with the rest of you.

Vacuous and Verbose-17

"The Defence Minister Shri AK Antony has called upon the top brass of the Armed Forces to coordinate closely with various national cyber agencies and prepare crisis management action plan to counter cyber attacks and cyber terrorism….( source).

Referring to the use of large-scale energy resources in the Armed Forces, Shri Antony called upon the top brass to bring about strict energy conservation discipline. He also asked them to look for alternative sources of energy…

….he asked them to control the Revenue Expenditure in the Armed Forces by adopting various mechanisms such as increased use of technology, integration of the three Services, adopting joint training / procedures and uniform inventories. Shri Antony said there also exists considerable scope to improve the quality and efficacy of Defence Expenditure through increased Private Sector engagement, import substitution and indigenisation, improvement in procedures and practices and better project management within the parameters of the Government’s Policies."

I can imagine the scene. The Defence Minister making this long and completely vacuous speech, packed with motherhood statements,  and the ‘top brass of the Armed Forces” looking in his direction ( not the same as listening) with as much solemnity that they can pack into their facial expressions and nodding their heads in agreement, but praying that the damn ordeal would get over soon.

Heads of Army, Navy and Air Force are equipped to handle nuclear wars, infiltration, mutinies, terrorist attack, guerilla ambush, threat from inter-continental ballistic missiles and enemy aircraft carriers that have entered Indian waters, but I doubt if their training manuals provide them any tactics or weapons to counter such verbal volleys from Ministers. Just for their endurance of this torture, they deserve all the medals that they wear on their uniforms. I look at them with new admiration.

High-Fives and Ass-Pats.

A forthcoming paper by Michael Kraus and Dacher Keltner at UC-Berkeley investigates the correlation between "tactile communication" and success in the NBA. In essence, the paper demonstrates that "touchier" teams - and this includes everything from pats on the ass to high-fives - are also more likely to win. “Tactile communication, or physical touch, promotes cooperation between people, communicates distinct emotions, soothes in times of stress, and is used to make inferences of warmth and trust. Based on this conceptual analysis, we predicted that in group competition, physical touch would predict increases in both individual and group performance “say the authors ( via Frontal Cortex).

What I find incredible about this paper is that the researchers have sat through so many of the NBA games, observing if players are touching each other’s ass and if so, how many times, and concluding that the team that recorded the most number of ass-touching was more likely to win.

I wish I had read about this correlation, before IPL3 started. I would have spent my time more productively, keeping count of the tactile touches rather than the runs scored.

I could have used the sensitive information to make a killing off the bookies this season.

By the next season, I will come up with a counter that would record the number of ass-pats among the team members based on feedback from electronic sensors/transmitters secretly fitted on the backside of all players. As I mentioned in my previous post, this is an age of hi-tech data mining. Human observation alone will not do.

Numberology

The book “ Super Crunchers” by Ian Ayers explained how statistical evidence obtained through data mining is fast replacing human intuition in decision-making. “ Cutting-edge organizations are already crunching increasingly larger databases to find the unseen connections among seemingly unconnected things to predict human behavior with staggeringly accurate results. From Internet sites like Google and Amazon that use filters to keep track of your tastes and your purchasing history, to insurance companies and government agencies that every day make decisions affecting your life, the brave new world of the super crunchers is happening right now”.

Credit card companies use data mining extensively to send out the right mailer to the right group. If your spending pattern shows that you like Chinese food, they can send you a mailer when a new Chinese restaurant opens in the city. The connection will not even register in your mind, but you will be led subliminally to the ‘Wong Fu” or the “ Fong Chu” or whatever the new restaurant is called.

Now, the field of  data mining is getting far more advanced and nuanced. This article that I read (via) says that Visa Card can actually predict when someone is going in for a divorce. Other seemingly strange correlations have been unearthed from the data. Passengers who prefer aisle seats on planes spend more money on others than on themselves and so, I guess, will be the prime targets for ‘gift’ shop brochures.

Below the article, a commenter adds, “British airways are understanding consumer behaviour in a different light. Passengers now look to the airlines not simply as a mode of transport, but to catch on movies they've missed. That seriously resonated with me, am often guilty of that. With the average traveler facing a lack of time, behaviours shift with the passage of time and the way entertainment is presented will start to shift radically.”

Flights not as mode of transport, but as movie theatres! Where are we heading?

Is it all about computers/data/numbers/super-crunching? Is there no value to human intuition? A Little Birdy has commented on the article :

"After working for 10 years as a bartender and 20 years in the legal field, I can tell you that it's amazing the things that all people do and share no matter what their race, religion, gender or socio-economics. It's very easy to predict behavior. I used to be able to take one look at a couple who came in to the bar where I worked and tell if they were married, if so how long, if the were on their first date or if they were cheating lover and I could do it in about 60 seconds. We used to bet on how long it took for certain behaviors to occur.”

Thank you, Little Birdy. There’s hope for the human race.

Killer BMWs

“A speeding BMW driver ran over a 62-year-old morning walker near the Akshardham temple in East Delhi on Thursday morning”, reports the Times of India. The title of the story is " Speeding BMW kills elderly man".

As I wondered in a post earlier ( be warned that I have more than 650 posts up my belt and can link back to a post on any subject), why is BMW singled out for special attention? Was BMW responsible for the accident? Hell, there have been many accidents involving Mercedez Benz, Toyota Corolla, driven by rich kids, but these cases have not been referred to as the Toyota case or the Benz case.

An incident in Feb this year, in which a rich woman rammed her Honda CRV into a police jeep and killed two persons, has been reported by TOI thus:

A woman driving allegedly under the influence of alcohol rammed her car into a police jeep and a bike, leaving an assistant sub-inspector and the biker dead and four constables seriously injured early Saturday morning. A local court remanded Nooria Haveliwala (27), arrested for drunk driving, to police custody till February 5.

This is now being tagged by the media as the Mumbai drunken driving case, not as the Honda CRV case.

Curious.

Coward! Stop fighting elections, come fight us in the forests.

Calling the Maoists “cowards, Union home minister P. Chidambaram launched a direct attack on the ultra-left rebels and their front organisations during his first visit to their bastion at Lalgarh, in West Bengal’s West Midnapore district, on Sunday. “Why do they live in the forests? If they have courage, they should take part in democratic processes and face elections. Who is stopping them from winning elections?” ( source)

Of course, as Arundhati Roy would love to point out (and she has in a recent 32-page essay in Outlook, after spending some time in the forests, walking with the comrades), perspectives can vary. For the Maoists, living inside their forest may be a way of life. Why should they accept the Home Minister’s notion of courage – that of taking part in democratic processes and elections?

The Maoists can ask the question: “ Why is P.Chidambaram such a coward? Why can’t he step into the forests here, without his sten-gun toting Black-cats and settle things with a man-to-man fight?

In any case, why describe the Maoists as ‘cowards” of all things? You can call them anti-national, immoral, unlawful, unresponsive, unrepentant, etc but how can they fit the description of coward?

To quote Paul Krugman for the third time (earlier quoted here and here) from a column in which he was discussing President Bush's description of 9/11 as an act of cowardice.

“In truth, notions of "cowardice" and "bravery" are entirely irrelevant when we contemplate the horrors of terrorism. To call a terrorist “cowardly” is to substitute testosterone for morality. Somehow it isn’t enough to abhor an act of terrorism or even to promise to make the terrorist pay dearly. The rules demand that the terrorist be branded a sissy. This is not only a childish reflex, but one that weakens the moral force of the condemnation and thereby dishonors terrorism’s victims. After all, we don’t want brave people to slaughter innocent people any more than we want cowardly people to do so. Still, the public seems to demand that our presidents call terrorists cowards, and our presidents are too–well, cowardly–to deny them.”

Update 07/04/10: The post rather flippantly got into the semantics, but reading about the tragic event involving the killing of 74 CRPF men yesterday, made me reflect a bit.

“Bravery’ and ‘cowardice’ were traits that were part of a Code of Honour in the past. If one was labeled a coward, and therefore ‘unbrave’, that was the ultimate insult as per the Code of Honour. This code of honour was deeply implanted into the collective psyche and therefore was accepted unquestioningly. Whether it was the Samurai warriors fighting each other or the Kuruskshetra battle, the Code of Honour provided the coward-to-bravery scale to judge soldiers with. Even the thought that one was going to be described as ‘brave’ posthumously was enough motivation to take on the risk of dying .

Cut to today. How do you get people to sign up for the Army, when there is no Code of Honour that is held sacred by all? With money? No way. When you consider the high risk of being killed in the prime of one’s youth, soldiers get a pittance. And there are options of less-riskier and better-paying professions. So when you can’t lure them with money, you need to appeal to their sense of glory and fame- a modern day equivalent of the Code of Honour. And the glorification of military acts must be done relentlessly. Genuine acts of bravery do become part of legends and folklore. At the same time, a Commando-officer who meets his end at the Taj Hotel has to be called a ‘braveheart”, even if he did nothing spectacular in military terms. A Police officer who merely put on his bullet-proof vest and got shot after removing it must be spoken about in glowing terms. Vir Chakra and other awards will have to be bestowed too. The ‘brave’ image of the Army and the Police force must be kept alive.

To enhance the ‘brave’ shine of the Army, the ‘enemy’ must necessarily be branded a coward. The ‘terrorist’ who might have shown extraordinary daring to blow up a plane must be described as a pusillanimous poop. Maoists who carry out attacks with precision and with solid planning must be dismissed as cowards. This is the ‘done’ thing and the tradition must continue.

Off with the gown; hand me the Japee and the sorai

The no-nonsense Union Minister of Environment and Forest, Mr Jairam Ramesh, on Friday called the practice of wearing convocation gowns a “barbaric colonial relic” and removed his gown at one such event. (source)

“Why can we not have a convocation in a simple dress, instead of coming dressed up as medieval vicars and popes,” he asked, removing his gown worn over his trademark white kurta.

Two days after pocketing these swadeshi brownie points, Mr Jairam Ramesh went to the Guwahati Zoo to inaugurate the night safari. Here he was felicitated with a traditional Assamese Japee and Sorai, which the grinning MOEF donned on his head and clasped in his hands and sportingly posed for photographs.( source) 

If you will, for a moment, keep aside the swadeshi vs colonial angle , both the practices – that of wearing colourful, flowing convocation robes and the one of carrying the traditional Japee and Sorai can be viewed as meaningless and stupid. You can’t condemn one as barbaric and endorse the other as traditional.

That is because human beings have an innate need for rituals. Probably this shared belief in rituals improved the survival value of the race by providing a common purpose, even if the said purpose had no specific functionality.

Given this legacy, whether we are a tribal society in an island in the South Pacific or we are engaged in a Board Meeting in a Corporate office in London, we continue to observe rituals. Where religious rituals are absent, surrogate ones take their place. The Opening Ceremony at the Olympics serves absolutely no purpose, if you take a rational view; the organisers can start off straight with the events. But without the ritual and the pageantry of the Opening and Closing ceremonies, Brand Olympics will lose its shine and appeal. The changing-of-guards ceremony at Buckingham Palace or the daily show of saber-rattling at Wagah are other examples of ‘meaningless’ rituals calculated to capture people’s attention.

Sworn atheists in the DK and DMK parties in TN may frown upon religious rituals and label them barbaric, but they will not hesitate to garland a statue of their long-dead leader, forgetting the absurdity of venerating an inanimate block of granite chipped away to look like and symbolise a human being.

Those who get absorbed in the nitty-gritty of rituals and get lost in the symbolism would miss out the big picture and the larger social purpose. Equally, those who dismiss rituals as ‘barbaric’ or ‘medieval’ are only kidding themselves. They would be unconsciously observing several surrogate ones in other areas of their lives..

It is easy to ridicule the convocation ritual. But, without the attendant ritual and the induced air of solemnity, the aura will simply not be there and you will not find anyone attending. The graduates would rather take their degrees by mail.

If you object to the colonial hangover, replacing the robe with the “kurta’ won’t do. You must substitute it with an Indian equivalent that is ornate and resplendent in colours and hope that this will gradually become a tradition.

Update 26/04/10 : Santosh Desai, in a column in TOI today, expresses similar views.

Do you love dogs, children, cricket and travel?

I had an uncle who was a veterinary doctor. By all accounts, he was very good in his profession. As a child, I have tagged along with him a few times to his hospital and have seen him treat assorted animals with total commitment. But what I remember most about this veterinary uncle was that he hated animals. I have never seen him pat a dog caringly.

For years, I used to take my daughters to a pediatrician, who again was very professional and quite reliable. But he used to view children almost with disdain and would make no effort whatsoever to put them at ease. It could be concluded that he hated children.

These examples illustrate that being good at your job or in your profession does not mean that you should love what you are doing. Or love the object that your job is centred around or concerned with. I may be highly competent in my job as a power sector professional. I may even love my job, but I don’t need to love the boilers and turbines and the other objects that I need to deal in or the people that I need to deal with.

Prem Panicker, in a recent post, writes that he is repeatedly asked why he has given up writing on cricket and he cites ‘ennui’ as the reason. When the questioner protests and remarks that his is a job that others would kill for, he replies “You want to try doing it, day in and out, for a year, mate. Then let’s talk.’ Prem adds : “Doing this for a living’ is not all it is cracked out to be. How do you explain, for instance, the difference between kicking back and watching cricket as a fan and sitting in front of the TV or in the press box, laptop open, scrutinizing each moment minutely for technical points to make, for “turning points” to identify and use to season your report, for broader narratives to expound on? After a time, you see only the trees — the greater beauty of the forest is lost to you.

Prem links to an article by Tom Swick who expresses very similar sentiments about travel writing. “Travel writer” may be the one title everyone wants except the people who have it. The travel writer, when thought of at all, is regarded as a charmed figure, never stymied in front of a customs officer or a computer screen. The travel writer, when he reflects, sees himself as aimless, clueless but nevertheless underappreciated.” A travel writer is too busy picking up minute details for reporting later that he has no time or inclination to enjoy his travelling.

On a related note, Prem cites a mail from a friend, Siddharth Vaidyanathan of Cricinfo.

We all began as cricket fans before becoming professional cricket writers. Being in the profession, though, takes away a lot of the fizz….At some point, … you start watching the game through a different prism. It’s no more the innocent past-time that made you jump up and shriek or kick the floor in anger or sulk all day. It’s now the sport that you trying to be detached from (though you’re actually very close to the epicenter). It’s a sport you think you have figured out (though you actually have very little expertise on the subject matter).

Gradually you begin to view it as another job – I’ve actually felt really frustrated when a cricketer died on a Sunday, simply because it meant more work. Soon you ask yourself – just like Swick says of travel writers – what (the heck) am I doing here? And over time, you gradually forget why you got here in the first place.

That’s why, says Prem, he has given up writing about cricket. He loves the game too much.

Loving your solitary pet dog is fine. But, when you are a veterinary doctor who has to treat hundreds of diseased dogs day in and out, your perspective on dogs may undergo a change. Similarly, your children may be the apples of your eyes, but for a pediatrician, they are merely objects that need to be repaired and sent out of his garage. You can love’em or treat’em, but not both. You can be a cricket fan or a cricket writer, but it is difficult to be both.

' We are too self-absorbed"

"Why are Indians poor at team sports? Why don’t we win at hockey or football?"  The answer, according to Aakar Patel’s column in The Mint, is that “we cannot understand harmony. That’s why we are poor at things that require selfless interaction, like team sports. Indians do not have the instinct of acting in concert. We find it difficult to put the other person ahead of ourselves even if both might benefit. This lack of harmony isn’t limited to sports, it is inherent: We see it every day in our mindless traffic sports.”

We might win at cricket, but that’s hardly a team sport. A twenty over match is nothing but an aggregate of 240 one-ball encounters between batsman and bowler. So, someone like Sachin I-don’t play-for-records- I-play-for-my-country Tendulkar can be perfectly happy with his century, even if his team doesn’t win.

To perform harmoniously as a cohesive unit, different components of that unit must come to the self-realisation that they are in it together for a common purpose. In this case, the common objective is that the team must win. How does this sense of collaboration emerge in each of the components?

Nicholas Humphrey, on 'watching his baby son thrashing around in his crib, two arms flailing, hands grasping randomly, legs kicking the air, head and eyes turning this way and that, a smile followed by a grimace crossing his face', wrote a brilliant, meditative piece wondering when and how the different parts of the baby would perform together harmoniously as in an orchestra? 

Ask any orchestral player, and he’ll tell you: although it may perhaps look to an outsider as if the conductor is totally in charge, in reality he often has a quite minor – even a purely decorative – role. Sure, he can provide a common reference point to assist the players with the timing and punctuation of their playing. And he can certainly influence the overall style and interpretation of a work. But that is not what gets the players to belong together. What truly binds them into one organic unit and creates the flow between them is something much deeper and more magical: namely, the very act of making music; that they are together creating a single work of art.

Doesn’t this suggest a criterion for “belonging” that should be much more widely  applicable: that parts come to belong to a whole just in so far as they are participants in a common project?

Try the definition where you like: What makes the parts of an oak tree belong together – the branches, roots, leaves, acorns ? They share a common interest in the tree’s survival.What makes the parts of a complex machine like an aeroplane belong to the aeroplane – the wings, the jet engines, the radar? They participate in the common enterprise of flying. Then, here’s the question: What makes the parts of a person belong together – if and when they do? The clear answer has to be that the parts will and do belong together just in so far as they are involved in the common project of creating that person’s life.

  To go back to Aakar Patel’s column, teamwork cannot be brought about by a team leader or imposed from above. It can come only when there is self-realisation in every member that he/she is collaborating on a common project of winning a match. Perhaps, such a realization evades Indians. That’s why we may produce an occasional world champion in billiards, badminton or chess, all in individual capacities. But team events such as hockey and football leave us thrashing around, arms flailing, legs kicking randomly, head and eyes turning this way and that…………….

Aam Aadmi.

“For the aam aadmi, costs go up again” screams the headlines in Business Line.

Now, this term ‘aam aadmi’ is a cliché that is frequently used by the media and I have always wondered who they are referring to. Apparently, they have the Great Indian Middle Class in mind.

Do the newsreaders count themselves as part of the aam aadmi brigage? If so, why do they use it in a neutral, third-party sense? Am I an aam aadmi or not? Should I then write, “ us aam aadmi” instead of implying “they aam aadmi”. I find myself in such existentialist dilemma.

According to Wikipedia, “ for an Aam Aadmi, his set of aspirations include three essential things: Food, Clothing and Shelter”. Trust me, my set of Maslowian aspirations include these three essential things too. I can't live without them.

Be that as it may, when costs go up, they don’t go up selectively for the aam aadmi, as the Business Line headlines seem to convey. Costs go up for the rich person ( the gender-neutral, opposite of aam aadmi) too. Maybe, it hurts the aam aadmi more. Too bad for them, sorry us.

Update 02-04-10 : See this cartoon in The Hindu today

The Budget in brief

Covering  the Union Budget is such a ritualised process for newspapers. Year after year, the format followed is the same.

Publishing the photograph of the Finance Minister arriving in Parliament to make his Budget speech, brief-case in hand, is an important  Budget-day ritual. The cameras tend to focus more on the briefcase than on the FM. The next morning all papers have to compulsorily carry this photo.

As with many Indian Parliamentary traditions, this too was borrowed from the British, as is evident from this photo and description in “Iconic Photos”:

“The most important day in a chancellor’s calendar is of course the Budget Day, now set on a Wednesday in March. The night before, he would have a dinner with the monarch, who is the first person to be told on the new budget.

 The next morning, he makes the short journey from Number 11 to the Commons after showing the assembled crowd the battered budget box. The beginning of this somewhat silly photo-op tradition dates from 1869 when Chancellor George Ward Hunt opened the Budget box in the Commons only to find that he had left his speech at home.

Why can't our FM go ethnic and carry the Budget papers in a jute bag?

The secret to having happy employees....

"Fire the unhappy employees" . (via)

Vacuous and Verbose-16

“It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it” says Al Gore in this article in New York Times.

I am reminded of an incident cited by Albert Einstein in one of his speeches, soon after World War II.

I recently discussed with an intelligent and well-disposed man the threat of another war, which in my opinion would endanger the existence of mankind. Thereupon my visitor, very calmly and coolly, said to me: “Why are you so deeply opposed to the disappearance of the human race?

I  calmly and coolly, pose the same question to Al Gore: “Why are you so obsessed with the idea of protecting human civilization as we know it? And, why are you so deeply opposed to the disappearance of the human race? I suspect that you have a sinister, hidden agenda in keeping humankind the way we know it.

Close shave

All the TV channels today have been flashing the news that Mulayam Singh Yadav had a close shave today. It appears that a cyclist suddenly appeared on the runway just as his plane was landing at the Saifai aerodrome in Uttar Pradesh's Etawah district.

But hey, what about the poor cyclist? Didn’t he have a close shave too, poor chap? You may argue that he had no business to be there on the runway, but you won’t be right. According to what a police official told the reporter of Hindustan Times, said cyclist was someone who had been deputed to shoo away a blue-bull that had strayed close to the runway. So, the blue-bull had a close shave too, though the TV channels won’t report that.

IBN’s website gets the headlines almost  right ( “Close save for cyclist as Mulayam jet hits runway), but then goes on to report what a miraculous escape Mulayam had had.  

According to India Today’s site however, the cyclist was actually trying to intercept the plane as it was about to land and was even following the plane after it had landed. The only explanation for this behaviour, of course, is that the cyclist mistook the plane for the blue-bull and was faithfully obeying instructions that he should shoo it away.

Can we refer the matter to a third umpire ( say, someone from Gillette) to decide who among the three had the closest shave? Mulayam, the cyclist or the blue-bull?

Another Reservation Bill.

 Parliament should be a microcosm of society. The mix of elected representatives must be reflective of the regional, linguistic and religious demographics and – thanks to the Women’s Reservation Bill- even the gender demographics of the nation. I am all for this.

A demographic dimension that doesn’t seem to draw much attention, however, is the age profile. According to a report published in September 2009, 30.1% of India’s population is between 0-14 years of age. The median age is 25.1. So, it is fair to conclude that half the population is less than or equal to this median age. Whereas the average age of the members of the Lok Sabha is 53.2. (I couldn’t get the median age that would have avoided the distortion caused by outliers like Ahmed Hamdullah Sayeed who is only 26 or Ram Sundar Das who weighs in at 88.)

But the good news is that the women can make a difference. The average age of the women MPs is 47, while that of the male MPs is 55. As the % of women MPs goes up from 10% at present to 33%, the average age will come down.

To force the issue, how about a Bill that will mandate reservation of 33% of the seats for candidates below 35 years of age? A Venn diagram of a circle representing 33% of seats for women intersecting another circle of  candidates below 35 will ensure a good percentage of young women in Parliament. The TRP rating of the Lok Sabha TV channel will also go up.

"On the state of female society in India"

On the occasion of Women’s Day (ok, I am a day late), here is an extract from the chapter titled ‘the state of female society in India” in the book “Essays relative to the habits, character and moral improvement of the Hindoos” published in the year 1823. It discusses the practice, prevalent then,  of getting girls married at the age of six or seven.

The natives contemplate the birth of a daughter with far less satisfaction than the birth of a son, more care and attention being requisite to secure her early settlement in life, and more disgrace being attached to delay. Hence her parents are occupied with solicitude on this subject from the moment of her birth; and at the time when in civilized countries her education would commence, arrangements are in progress in India for her marriage. The young female is therefore not only deprived of every opportunity for mental cultivation, but is snatched at an early period from all the benefit of paternal instruction. Long before her intellectual faculties are matured, she is buried in domestic avocations, to the loss of all future hope of improvement. Subjected to no course of rigid discipline, and, except in the unimportant vagaries of childhood, to no parental direction, she is dismissed into life, and becomes mistress of her own actions with all those evil propensities in full vigour which inevitably entail misery; for though she continues at home for some time after her marriage, her parents have parted with the power, and perhaps with the wish, of correcting her follies. Thus she takes her station in life years before she is fitted for it, and is elevated to the state of a wife amidst the follies of infancy.

It is melancholy to reflect on the early extinction of happiness which this system occasions. In the life of a female, what season is more calculated for enjoyment than that which elapses between the period when her mind begins to expand, and that of her entering upon the severer duties of life? At this season every thing wears an aspect of gaiety and loveliness; the absence of care induces the highest cheerfulness, and gives free scope for the enjoyment of that unalloyed felicity, which comes but at one season of life. The pleasure which a married state affords from a conscientious performance of its duties, however serene in its nature, is still tempered with the burden of its cares. In India, this season of youthful enjoyment comes not for the female: scarcely has she time to look abroad, and inhale the sweetness of life, ere she is plunged into the rigid duties and severities connected with Indian wedlock. At the early age of six or seven, her happiness is often sacrificed at the shrine of family honour, while she herself is an unconscious spectator of the transaction.

Later, in the same chapter, the writer observes that this horrible practice had not existed in India in ancient times.

From the early records of Hindoost'han there is strong reason to conclude that in ancient times many of the odious peculiarities in the present system of educating and marrying females had no existence; that women, at least the daughters of kings and the wives of heroes, were taught to read; and that their own inclination, not that of their parents, influenced the selection of husbands. In the historical records of the Ramaywna, the Mtthabharwta, and the Pooranas, we meet with no heroine in the disgraceful situation of modern females. They are generally represented as deeply skilled in learning, often willing to display their attainments, and not averse to a combat of skin with the other sex. Nay, in many cases, they enjoin a literary victory over themselves, as  the only price at which the suitor can expect success.

The spirit of that age must have been much more liberal than that of modern times; since few writers who courted the attention of their fellow-countrymen, would have ventured on so bold a departure from popular practice. And though the heroines of the song were the daughters and relatives of rnonarchs, no one who estimates the power of influence which irresistibly draws the lower orders into a servile imitation of their superiors, will conclude that a knowledge of letters was then confined to palaces, or that a practice which received the praise of poets and the sanction of princes, was not in some degree of general application. A different spirit must have animated the ancestors of the Hindoos, to have produced such splendid results of the cultivation of female intellect as exist on record. The contempt with which they are at present treated, could scarcely have existed in an age which owed some of its literary splendour to their compositions. Nor can we suppose, that the female authors of that period were the only individuals of their sex to whom a knowledge of letters was communicated ; the beneficial result of granting them an education, must have contributed to render the practice more general.

India's national game

On the eve of the Hockey World Cup, a TOI columnist asks, “Can India give its national sport a new lease of life?”

As I wondered in an earlier post, how or when was hockey ‘appointed’ our national game? And who, for that matter, selected our national bird, national animal, national fruit, national flower, etc? Were elections held? Were committees formed for this purpose? What were the criteria?

(An aside: Responding to the argument that Hindi was our national language because it was spoken by the most number of people in the country, C.N. Annadurai is supposed to have said, “If numerical strength is the criterion, the rat and not the tiger should be our national animal”.)

The Hindu calls itself India’s national newspaper. It has a right to call itself a national newspaper (as opposed to a regional one), but the words “India’s national newspaper” seems to imply that it was chosen from among many newspapers and conferred the title.

Anyway, I hope that I’ll soon be reading in India’s national newspaper that our team playing India’s national game has excelled.

On success.

Tendulkar has broken yet another record….......yaaawn…… He became the only person in the history of mankind to score….zzzzzzzzzz.....

Isn’t the man just sickeningly, boringly, tiringly, monotonously successful?

500 runs in a Test innings, 500000 runs in international cricket, 5 million runs in first class cricket at the age of 50- nothing is beyond him. Tell me that he has just whacked a six off the last ball of the match while seated blind-folded and mouth-gagged on a wheel-chair with one arm in a cast and I will display no astonishment.

The sight of him pummeling the hapless bowlers reminds me of Rajnikanth taking on an army of 1500 thugs at the same time and whacking the hell out of them. Of course, he does it in the movies, while Sachin does it in real life, but the net effect on me is the same.

I get bored.

Gandhian economics

John Michael Greer of the “Archdruid report”, explains in this post how E.F.Schumacher, the maverick economist, drew some of his central ideas from a very different source: the largely neglected economic ideas of Gandhi.

A lot of Americans think of Mohandas K. Gandhi as a spiritual leader, which of course he was, and as a political figure, which of course he also was. It’s not as often remembered that he also spent quite a bit of time developing an economic theory appropriate to the challenges facing a newly independent India. His suggestion, to condense some very subtle thinking into too few words, was that a nation that had a vast labor force but very little money was wasting its time to invest that money in state-of-the-art industrial plants; instead, he suggested, the most effective approach was to equip that vast labor force with tools that would improve their productivity within the existing structures of resource supply, production and distribution. Instead of replacing India’s huge home-based spinning and weaving industries with factories, for example, and throwing millions of spinners and weavers out of work, he argued that the most effective use of India’s limited resources was to help those spinners and weavers upgrade their skills, spinning wheels, and looms, so they could produce more cloth at a lower price, continue to support themselves by their labor, and in the process make India self-sufficient in clothing production.

…Current economics dismisses Gandhi’s ideas on the grounds of their "inefficiency," but this has to be taken in context, "efficiency," in today’s economic jargon, means nothing more or less than efficiency in producing somebody a profit. As a way of keeping millions of people gainfully employed, stabilizing the economy of a desperately poor nation, and preventing its wealth from being siphoned overseas by predatory industrial nations, Gandhi’s proposal is arguably very efficient indeed – and this, in turn, was what brought it to the attention of E.F. Schumacher.

The flightless spinner

Prem Panicker describes the bowling effort of Harbhajan Singh against South Africa yesterday:

The wicket had bounce and sharp turn— the kind of conditions spinners revel in and batsmen, especially from teams like SA that are not known for their skill at playing the turning ball, dread.

As for Bajji, any time you find an off spinner bowling the bulk of his deliveries from around the wicket to right handed batsmen, you’ve got to figure something is way wrong. The likes of EAS Prasanna, newly picked as one of India’s two spin bowling coaches, will tell you that when there is turn to be had, the off spinner’s stock ball is the one just short of driving length outside off, turning in to hit the top of off. That line forces the batsman to play the turning, bouncing ball from beside it, without the protection of his body behind the bat; Bajji’s preference on the other hand seemed to be to bowl off, to off & middle and middle stump lines — just right for batsmen to get behind it, watch the turn and play it down and away through the “leg trap” for easy runs.

Douglas Adams had once described the flightless Kakapo parrot of New Zealand thus: “ Not only has the Kakapo forgotten how to fly, it has also forgotten that it has forgotten how to fly.” The net result, according to Adams, is that it frequently runs up a tree, tries to take off and falls flat on its face.

Harbhajan Singh reminds me of the Kakapo. Not only has he forgotten how to bowl, he frequently forgets that he has forgotten how to bowl. The result being that he goes around with a permanent scowl and every now and then throws up wild tantrums.

Meanwhile, the selectors have forgotten how to select spinners; worse they don’t seem to realise that they have forgotten how to select spinners…..

India's awesome show.

I have always felt that we shouldn’t be getting into events such as the Olympics or even the Asian Games and needlessly pitting ourselves against the Americans, Russians and the Chinese. Why compete with the global best and then come back without a single medal and add to our inferiority complex?

What we should be doing instead is to participate in events where competition is from the likes of Bangladesh, Maldives and Nepal and knock the pants out of them. Which is what we seem to have done this week at the South Asian Games in Dhaka and hit jackpot.

With 10 gold, 12 silver and eight bronze they won on the penultimate day of competition in the South Asian Games being held at Dhaka, India now have 129 medals (67 gold, 40 silver and 22 bronze) reports the Times of India. You name the event – boxing, shooting, swimming, karate, taekwondo, table tennis, archery- India wrested or, rather, breasted a medal. How often do you see news reports such as this? Way to go.

Another thing we must do is to introduce events that are more suited to our physique and temperament. The Olympic motto of “Citius, Altius, Fortius” was not evolved keeping Indians in mind, and we shouldn’t make asses of ourselves by attempting to jump longer or higher, run faster or dive deeper.

What we should lobby for is an event such as “kicking the groin” contest. If you have watched “Paul Merton in India” on Fox History channel (which I did yesterday), you would have seen the interview with Mr Nayak who holds the Guinness record for withstanding the most number of kicks (43) on his groin. Nayak is now training his son too  . Soon, I am sure he will be able to start his own academy and enroll a few hundred trainees. If this model can be replicated all over India, we’d have a basket size of a million people proficient in the sport of getting kicked on the groin. This would become a quintessentially Indian sport and we should be able to bag a few medals in various events, before the Chinese catch on and come up with their pirated version. “ The poor Indian may lack the resources to buy food grain, but he sure has good groin” would be the response of the awestruck rest-of-the-world.

Lady readers, kindly pardon the gender bias, as this sport will remain a male bastion, unless some disruptive technologies come into play in the future..

Controller of Brinjals

Why is the Govt hell-bent on introducing Bt Brinjal? Surely, this is not the most pressing need of the country?

As we know from the “Yes Minister’ episodes, there is more to Govt decisions than what meets the eye. More often than not, major decisions are taken based on completely mistaken premises.

In one of his articles, R.K.Narayan described a dream he had had. The Controller of Stores, a Dept of the Govt, places a large order for stationery. Unfortunately, when the letter-heads and envelopes arrive, the name of the department is found to be misspelled as “Controller of Stories”. Not wanting to admit the mistake or waste the stationery, the Govt goes ahead and creates a new department that would have the mandate of controlling or censoring stories.

A similar thing must have happened to Bt brinjal. When an application came in from a US company seeking permission to bring in GM technology, some bureaucrat must have cleared the file presuming that it was General Motors trying to introduce yet another new car into the Indian market. And, considering the weird names that they give to cars nowadays, he must have been convinced that the name of the new car model was Brinjal and that the pre-fix ‘bt’ was a stylized abbreviation of ‘battery’ or ‘butane’ or ‘’byte’ or whatever.

Once the mistake was noticed, there was no option but to put on a brave face and pass on the file to the MOEF.

That's how the poor, humble Jairam Ramesh is left holding the baby brinjal.

Vacuous and Verbose-15

A staff reporter of The Hindu has filed this story today:

The public consultation on commercialization of Bt brinjal here on Saturday witnessed uproar after a scientist of the Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, Bangalore said those who opposed the GM Technology were interested in mobile technology and other things.

Minister of State for Environment and Forests, Mr Jairam Ramesh intervened and said, “ I am sorry that a scientist spoke like this. I apologise to all of you. Scientists are too arrogant and they should speak with humility. Scientists should learn to be a little more humble.

Later, in the same meeting, the Minister lost his cool and asked a protestor who accused him of being an agent of a leading biotech firm to seek mental help. ( source)

"I am not a Monsanto agent", a livid Ramesh snapped at the agitator. "You need mental help. You need psychiatric treatment," he told the protestor with a warning, "if you interrupt, I am going to throw you out".

Thus spoke the humble, unarrogant, mentally-sound Jairam Ramesh.

Delusion

In his column in The Dawn (which was reproduced in the Times of India), Nadeem F Paracha writes:

The roots of the modern-day Hindu-Muslim antipathy lie not in the distant past, but a mere hundred and fifty years back in history, when the British began introducing a greater number of modern ideas and technology, some of which, like democracy, suddenly awakened the Muslims to a stark reality which they had simply not been aware of. The idea of majority rule suddenly made the Muslims realise that they were actually in a minority.

A number of Muslim scholars and reformers agreed that to supplement their community’s sudden minority status, the Muslims of the region should start identifying themselves as citizens of the worldwide Muslim ummah.

Soon, as India entered the 20th century, conservative Muslim scholars also started reshaping Muslim history of the region. To them Mughal kings in general, and Akbar in particular, became arch villains, mainly for their ‘liberal views’ and detachment from the Turkish caliphate, which, according to these scholars, led to the downfall of Islam in India.

The rewriting of the history of Muslim India by such scholars soon saw the Muslims of India talking more about ancient Muslim conquerors (mainly Arab), and gleefully celebrating plunderers like Mehmood Ghaznavi and Muhammad Ghori, all the while downplaying Muslim rulers who had made India their home and played a leading role in uniting the region as a distinct and diverse empire.

This distorted version of history and the denial continued long after Pakistan came into being and restored the ‘majority status’ for Muslims.

V.S.Naipaul who traveled extensively in the non-Arab Muslim countries, including Pakistan, wrote later:

I was traveling among people who had to make a double adjustment- an adjustment to the European empires of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and an earlier adjustment to the Arab faith. You might almost say that I was among people who had been doubly colonized, doubly removed from themselves.

Because I was soon to discover that no colonization had been so thorough as the colonization that had come with the Arab faith. It was an article of the Arab faith that everything before the faith was wrong, misguided, heretical; there was no room in the heart or mind of these believers for their pre-Mohammedan past.

In Pakistan were the ruins of the old cities of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa. Fabulous ruins, the discovery of which earlier this century had given a new idea of the history of the sub-continent. Not only pre-Islamic, but also possibly pre-Hindu….. With the growth of fundamentalism, there was a contrary current. This was expressed in a letter to a newspaper when I was there. The ruins of the cities, the writer said, should be hung with quotations from the Koran, saying that this was what befell unbelievers.

The faith abolished the past. And when the past was abolished like this, more than an idea of history suffered. Human behaviour ,and ideals of good behaviour, could suffer.

When I was in Pakistan, the newspapers were running articles to mark the anniversary of the Arab conquest of Sind, which at that time was a Hindu-Buddhist kingdom. This was the first part of the Indian sub-continent to be conquered by the Arabs. … It was a terrible event. The Arab army was allowed to plunder and kill for days.

This was the event that was being commemorated by articles in the newspapers in 1979. After 1200 years, the holy war is still being fought. The hero is the Arab invader, bringer of the faith. The rival whose defeat is to be applauded- and I was reading this in Sind-is the man of Sind.

To possess the faith was to possess the only truth; and possession of this truth set many things on its head. The time before the coming of the faith was to be adjudged in one way; what came after the faith in Sind was to be judged in another. The faith altered values, ideas of good behaviour, human judgements.

Another columnist, Ayaz Amir, writes thus in The News:

For 800 years -- from 1192 AD. when Muhammad Ghori defeated Prithviraj Chauhan in the second battle of Tarain (in present-day Haryana) to the establishment of British rule in Bengal in the 18th century -- every ruler of Hindustan of any note or merit was of Caucasian origin. In all this vast expanse of history, the lands which now constitute Pakistan could produce only one ruler of indigenous origin who could lay claim to any ability: Ranjit Singh, Maharajah of Punjab.

We, the inhabitants of Pakistan, may claim in moments of (misplaced) exaltation that we are descended from those early warriors. But this is a false claim. We are now more sub-continental than Central Asian. Just as empires and nations rise and fall, races too do not remain the same over time. The Mughals were a hardy people when they marched into India under Babar. After 200 years of unbroken rule their dynasty -- descended from the great Taimur -- had become degenerate and soft.

We may name our missiles Ghori and Abdali -- although Abdali is somewhat inappropriate, considering that Ahmed Shah Abdali in his repeated invasions brought much suffering to Punjab -- but this is a throwback to a past far removed from our present. Comfortable thought or not, Ranjit Singh's kingdom of Punjab is more relevant to our present-day conditions than those distant days of glory and conquest.

The challenge thus posed is a daunting one. For 800 years we have produced no ruler of native ability. But if Pakistan is to come into its own, if it is to throw off the mantle of failure of the past 60 years and forge a new future for itself, then its native sons and daughters have to create something new: capacity and ability where none have existed before -- except in the solitary example of the one-eyed king of Lahore, Maharajah Ranjit Singh.

So, the land what is now Pakistan has, in its history, produced only one ruler of note, but as that ruler happened to be a Hindu ( or Sikh, I am not sure), he cannot be held up as a role model, because the Arab article of faith prohibits it. The recourse then is to either produce something new and innovative, as Amir suggests above or to be deluded by  a distorted version of history.

iMagic

The Apple website describes its latest gadget iPad as “our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device”.

In fact most reviews of the product used the word ‘magical’.

Why magical?

One explanation is that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, as Arthur C Clarke put it.

A more detailed explanation can be found in Umberto Eco’s article, “Science, Technology and Magic” in his book, “Turning back the clock”.

First Umberto Eco makes the distinction between science and technology. Technology gives you everything instantly. Science proceeds slowly.

“Today we are accustomed to travel from Europe to New York in three and a half hours aboard a Concorde, and jet lag and the use of melatonin are a consequence of our high-speed life. We are so accustomed to speed that we get angry if we can’t open our e-mail immediately or if our plane is delayed.

This addiction to technology has nothing to do with the practice of science,. It has to do, instead, with the eternal resort to magic.

What has magic been over the centuries, and what is it still today, albeit in disguise? The assumption that it is possible to go from cause to effect without taking any intermediate steps. I stick a pin in an effigy of the enemy and he dies. I utter a formula and transform iron into gold.

Magic is indifferent to the long chain of causes and effects and above all it does not trouble itself to establish by constant experiment that there is a replicable relation between a cause and its effect. Hence its appeal from primitive cultures to he Renaissance to the myriad occult sects to be found all over the Internet.

Faith and hope in magic did not by any means fade away with the advent of experimental science. The desire for simultaneity between cause and effect was transferred to technology, which looks like the natural daughter of science. It might seem strange that the magic mentality should persist in our day, but if we look around, it is triumphant and everywhere.

So, when Steve Jobs or whoever it was who made the product presentation repeatedly use the word “magical”, he was appealing to the ‘magic’ mentality that is still alive in each one of us. We desire simultaneity between cause and effect.

On the agriculture of Hindostan

The Journal of Agriculture published in 1838 carried a lengthy article ( page 29 to 63) on the “ Agriculture of Hindostan”. In its opening paras, it tried to disabuse the Englishmen of the notion that all of India held fabulous treasures:

NOTHING can be conceived more erroneous than the ideas generally entertained, regarding the aspect, physically considered, of' the great Indian possessions, which have been acquired by Great Britain. Some have formed their pictures from the romantic legends and stories peculiar to the East, where rivers are made to roll over golden sands, where flowers are breathing perennial fragrance, and where palace, mosque, and minaret are the habitations of princes and of priests. Others, from a course of somewhat more authentic historical reading, have formed for themselves greatly exaggerated notions of the wealth, pomp, and splendour of the Rajahs ; while not a few, whose maxim on most things is, that " seeing is believing," have convinced themselves of the grandeur of Hindostan, not by legend or by written report, but from a knowledge of the unequivocal circumstance of so many of our countrymen having left the North, poor, and returned from the East, rich.

But when we turn from the coast towns of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, and passing the suburban village quietly progress into the vast territory which has been subjugated, as it were, by one spell, only to be kept in subjection by another, we find ample reasons for lowering the tone of our speculations. Instead of the pomp and parade, distinguishing the chief seats of the British Government, the eye will rest only on the depraved, the dependent, and miserable natives of the Deccan, and on dwellings almost too paltry for the habitation of human beings; in short, little elevated above those of the Esquimaux or Laplander.

It then goes on to describe in detail the methods of cultivation, the various crops, how Britain could harness the potential of India and, in passing, warns that it would be dangerous to try out European innovations in a country with such established beliefs and customs.

The communities of Hindostan are held together by a peculiar system, which, although considerably behind those of Europe in moral refinement, is yet a curious admixture of law, custom, and religious ceremony. The great mass of the natives are cultivators of the soil, which they hold by tenure of an annual rent, generally a sixteenth of the whole produce, payable to their immediate superiors, by whom, again, a tax is paid to Government. The country is divided into districts; these districts subdivided into villages. Each village forms an independent association of agriculturists, with its own establishment of officers, who, for certain duties to be performed, have a tithe of the produce, or a portion of land. These offices are generally hereditary. The cultivator's interest in the soil is hereditary also.

The officers of the village are the Potail, or head man, who is the organ of communication with Government, the collector of the public dues, and sometimes lessee of the village,— the Bullaye, a sort of constable, who, from lns acquaintance with local rights and boundaries, gives evidence about disputed land-marks, —and the Putwarry, or register, who keeps accounts of all village matters. As with ourselves, the priest, the watchman, the carpenter, the blacksmith and the barber, may also be considered as public characters.

These village communities are connected by various links with the general officers of the district, and thence with the Zemindary, who is usually a great functionary of Government, and by whom, under the Mogul dynasty, the land-tax was finally paid into the royal treasury. A general system of magistracy and police is thus formed, which is consecrated by immemorial usage in the minds of the population ; and which, although sometimes perverted to improper ends, has been found far from ineffectual in maintaining the tranquility of the country. Knowing, therefore, as we do, that among no people on the face of the globe does such bigotry to established customs so inveterately prevail, it would be well for the British Government to pause before attempting European innovations, which, however consonant to our own ideas, may be at wide variance with the religious prejudices, and the associations, the feelings, and habits, consecrated by the working of a series of ages. It were certainly by far our best policy in the mean time to act cautiously ; to gradually improve the defects of the native institutions, and to uphold what is praiseworthy among them ; to repair what has moldered into decay ; and rather to re-construct than to destroy. The influence of example will act much more beneficially than law or edict. We perfectly agree -with the following opinions of an eloquent writer in the Edinburgh Review (July 1824) : —

" As conquerors," it is there said, "we have to dread the explosion of fresh conspiracies against our newly acquired territory; and when we consider that there is not, in any part of India, above one European to fifty thousand natives, and that in many parts the proportion is much smaller, this disparity presents, it must be confessed, strong temptations to rebel; and it is only by the greatest moderation and justice that we can avoid this danger. In the capacity of legislators, the greatest danger arises from our ignorance and inexperience in the local usages of the country ; in consequence of which, with the best intentions, we may commit the greatest errors, aud agitate the country with the dread of perilous innovations on manners and customs interwoven with the very frame of Indian society."

The Ultimate Beauty

In the movie, “The Animal”, Marvin the cop meets with a near-fatal accident, but is miraculously saved by a ‘mad surgeon” who transplants different animal parts on to his body and, for good measure, also weaves in some amount of animal DNA. Marvin acquires all the individual strengths of the different animals and mobilizes them appropriately in various situations. But, in due course, the animal parts assert themselves and he starts displaying certain non-human traits…….

I don’t know why I remembered the movie after reading this article in Times of India, which provides valuable tips on beauty enhancement and in meeting aspirations such as “ If you want Kareena Kapoor’s jawline”, “ If you want Deepika Padukone’s arms”, “ If you want Priyanka Chopra’s legs”, “ If you want Shilpa Shetty’s waist”, etc. The writer provides two types of solutions, one cosmetic, the other non-cosmetic. Cosmetic methods involving liposuction, Botax treatment, hyalunoric acid injections, body contouring, sculpting, etc are recommended as the fastest way to achieve results.

If a woman (use of this gender may be rather presumptuous of me. Why can’t a man aspire to have Kareena’s jawline or Shilpa’s waist line?) wants to be an amalgam of all the desirable features, she can have her body chiseled and sculpted to accommodate Kareena’s jawline, Deepika’s arms, Priyanka’s legs and Shilpa’s waist. Her beauty would then be more than the sum total of that of all the parts.

Unlike the case of Marvin the cop, I really don’t see a flip side here. Or is there…?