' 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…?

The dilute remedy

Among alternative therapies, homeopathy seems to enjoy higher credibility, as it is cloaked in scientific vocabulary. Its German origin adds to is acceptability and enhances the perception that scientific reasoning and methods would have been rigorously applied.

I know of a couple (let’s call them Mr Homeopati and Mrs Homeopatni) who clung to this therapy for several years, till an incident required one of them to be rushed into the Emergency ward in one of the allopathic institutions that they had sworn they wouldn’t be seen dead in .

Via Coyote Blog I came across an article on Timesonline written by Matt Parker of the School of Mathematical Sciences, London in which he explains what it means to achieve the ‘dilution’ levels required by homeopathy:

I have just purchased a packet of Boots-brand 84 arnica homeopathic 30C Pills for £5.09, which Boots proudly claim is only 6.1p per pill. Their in-store advice tells me that arnica is good for treating “bruising and injuries”, which gives the impression that this is a very cost-effective health-care option.

Unlike most medication, it didn’t list the actual dose of the active ingredient that each pill contains, so I checked the British Homeopathic Association website. On their website it nonchalantly states that to make a homeopathic remedy, they start with the active ingredient and then proceed to dilute it to 1 per cent concentration. Then they dilute that new solution again, so there is now only 0.01 per cent of the original ingredients. For my 30C pills this diluting is repeated thirty times, which means that the arnica is one part in a million billion billion billion billion billion billion.

The arnica is diluted so much that there is only one molecule of it per 7 million billion billion billion billion pills.

It’s hard to comprehend numbers that large. If you were to buy that many pills from Boots, it would cost more than the gross domestic product of the UK. It’s more than the gross domestic product of the entire world. Since the dawn of civilisation. If every human being since the beginning of time had saved every last penny, denarius and sea-shell, we would still have not saved-up enough to purchase a single arnica molecule from Boots.

But, if you are an ardent believer in homeopathy, don’t let science come in the way. Go right ahead and pop some of those 30C or 200C pills. If not the formulation, the placebo effect can cure your illness. If it doesn't, there's always the ICU in an allopathic hospital as a last resort.

Update 02/02/10: " Massive homeopathic overdose leaves hundreds of scientists 0.00000000000000000000000001% dead".