NATIONALITY

I was watching a very close cricket match between India and Bangladesh. Both sides had almost equal winning chances. When an Indian player hit a four or a six I had the wish to jump up and down like many young Indian fans in the ground. And when an Indian wicket fell I felt despondent and looked nervously towards the score sheet. Just the opposite happened among the rival fans. Bangladeshi supporters looked depressed when a four was scored by an Indian player and found their voices and legs to celebrate the fall of every Indian wicket. Eventually India won the match and I felt happy and went to sleep with a contented mind. Bangladeshi fans looked morose.

The point is I was feeling one with the Indian team. The team did not include a single Bengali player and I supported them wholeheartedly. I did not care about the difference in so many things between the players who were playing for India and myself. The Bangladesh team consisted solely of Bengali players. I am a Bengali and did not feel empathy towards all those Bengalis because they were of another nationality although in language and culture I was far closer to them. And even now I feel quite right about that. I am and will be a supporter of Indian team whenever it plays against Bangladesh or any other cricketing nation.

Only a thought sprung to my mind. What if I was born a hundred miles or less towards the east in Pabna or some other district of Bangladesh? The whole scenario would have been opposite. I would have been jumping up and down with every Bangladesh victory and dispirited at every loss. Most probably I would have been a Muslim by religion because although it is not a religion one gets by virtue of being born in a Muslim family (as in the case of a Hindu) I would have got indoctrinated into becoming a Muslim by the family in quite a young age. Not many Muslims are Muslims because they judge for themselves whether it is best or not but gets along with the family traditions. Very few change their religion in their adult life taking their own judgemental decision. Yet as a born Hindu I feel sometimes antagonistic towards or superior to Muslims or even Christian or Jews because accidentally I was born Hindu at Howrah district of West Bengal within India. Yes accident! I could be born in Bangladesh or in Philippines or in Zimbabwe or in some other planet. Everything would have been different then. I mean I did not choose to be born in India. The atoms of my body were born in imploding supernovae many thousands or millions light years away from earth. They floated for millions of years in cosmos and somehow coagulated in to my DNAs in my genes. And I was given birth eventually by my parents in Earth (instead of some other unknown planet). Had my parents were accidentally in Pakistan I would have, most probably, a different view towards Kashmir issue or many other issues for that matter. I would have been a staunch supporter of Pakistan team no matter whatever the difference between me and the players. I would have even cheered for a Hindu if he were in Pakistan team (like one leg spinner whose name I cannot remember now) and did well against India. Had I been born in some African nation I would have found most of them acceptable looking instead of ugly as I find them now.

Our nationalities are accidental. Yet we all feel terribly patriotic so much so that we can even kill or do worse to people of other nations without batting an eyelid if we feel they are antagonistic towards our nation (this statement is valid for all nationalities). If I am an American I will drop two atomic bombs in Japan and kill thousands of innocent children at one go. If I am German I will kill Slavs and Jews in gas chambers.  Not only nationality. Nationalities in many occasions are bound with religion. So if I am a Sunni I will not only kill Hindus and Christians but also Shias or Ahmadias. I will not consider that  I am actually accidentally born Sunni and not a Shia or a Hindu or an Ahmadia. But this is true for a Shia or a Hindu or an Ahmadia also. Hatred is intricately bound with nationality and organised religion.

Patriotism makes us so blind that we do most hateful things without any moral hiccups. We can kill other innocent people by committing suicide and making a bomb blast. We do not think our nationalities are totally accidental and my right may be wrong for the other.

A point to ponder upon.

I

Who is this ‘I’? Or a more pertinent question should be who is the owner of ‘I’? The very obvious answer to this question should be “I am the owner of I”. But let us examine it a bit more closely. Is the ‘I’ we think of is the controller of function of our kidney? Or liver, heart, blood flow in our arteries and veins? Well not the conscious I. We are not owner or controller of the I that controls every movement of our bodies. Now how much different is our mind from our liver? The mind is nothing but a function of our brain. And the brain is just another organ like kidbney but much more complex. This mind or brain is just some chemical reactions and electrical impulses of brain which we do not control. Therefore we are not owners of our conscious mind or the so called I also. Our minds which are nothing but series of thoughts are not controlled by our ‘I’. The source of thoughts is that I which controls our kidneys and livers and so on.  Who is that ‘guy’...the real ‘I’? Atheists would call it nature. Others would call it God; source of all ‘I’ s. And that I or the essence is everywhere. I mean are we not just bunches of atoms (or more fundamental particles if you like) examining other or the same atoms. Which or who is the Examiner within these atoms? And examining Whom?

Immortality

Einstein met Rabindranath in 1930 at Einstein's home near Berlin. Among other things they had a remarkable conversation about nature of Universe. To Einstein universe was objective..that is, it exists independent of whether I or you or anybody exists in it. This is simple to conceive. After all universe was there before my birth and will remain after my death. Tagore's view, on the other hand, was that universe is subjective, Let us think about Tagore's view. The universe I know or feel is only within my consciousness. Without my conscious experience of the universe there is no other universe. This universe exists only within my consciousness ( so does your's). So universe is subjective. It is there because of our conscious experience of it. There is no universe without our consciousness. So both Einstein and Tagore were correct, isn’t it? Now if we take a little help of simple algebra, like a=b, we must admit that objective universe= subjective universe. That is, outside=inside. Therefore everything is One. That is what Upanishads say. You are the universe and the One. Not your body,but the eternal consciousness that dwells inside you. That is unborn and deathless. Since everything is One, it is independent of time and space because time and space means separation. If there is only One there is no time and space in it. It is eternal and deathless, So the big 'I' inside you and I are one and this is unborn and immortal.

DO WOMEN WANT LESS SEX?

Women want less sex than men in general. It is self evident. There are enormously more incidents of males forcing women to sex than the other way round. Men watch porn almost twice as much than women. There are far more number of female prostitutes making money pandering to male desire than male prostitutes making livelihood by catering sex to women. There are always far more number of men in chat rooms (which is highly sexualised) than women. Most men have to “win” a woman in romance. Of course there are women who “win” their men, but generally they are for permanent relationships than for winning sexual favour. Of course there are reasons like men having more money, opportunity and domination etc for this. However it does not really explain the big difference.

I always was intrigued by this fact. Why would it be like this? In every other normal physical action men and women operate equally. One cannot say that women have less hunger for food than men. Normal physical activities like sleeping, eating, bowel movements, and emotions like anger etc are equal among both men and women. Also we see there is a great law governing this universe. That is to arrive at a stable condition all the forces must equate to zero. This is a law of mechanics but applicable to everything. We see that everything is divided into two and equally charged. Without the electrical charges being the same electricity cannot flow. All matter is composed of same number of oppositely charged fundamental particles (if it is not, it is not in stable condition). Human beings and in fact all living beings are just matters composed and organised in a certain way. So by nature the positive and negative should be same. And on top of that by nature both the male and female want perpetuate their genes. So both sexes equally want equally to procreate. Men and women equally want to be father and mother respectively. Sexual urge is an expression of wanting to be a father or mother. So why would women have less sexual urge than men?

The matter of fact is that equality between men and women are maintained in a complicated way. Nature has endowed men with more physical power but women have more physical beauty. Men have more mathematical intelligence but women have more “emotional” intelligence. So although women are weaker and shorter than men they maintain a superior sexual power (namely beauty) to balance out the inequality. Sexual equality is maintained in a very complex manner. Testosterone, the male hormone (which gives men the maleness) enhances sexual urge in human beings. It is also responsible for aggression and it starts to flow in men in great proportion when they reach puberty. Women also have testosterone in their body but the amount is much less than in men. The female sex hormone oestrogen is more geared to make the appearance of women and giving women the power to mothering and bearing a child. Oestrogen is present in males in far less quantity. So men have more urge for natural chemical reasons.

The biggest point is the sperm count in men gets back to sufficient level within 24 hours to make reproduction possible another time. So a normal fit man is capable of producing babies every day. Women however produce a single egg in almost a month. So they can be mother only once in a month and once they get pregnant there are no more eggs in her body for almost a year. So her want and need is naturally curbed. So this is a clear reason for her to want less sex than men.

However nature does not like inequality. It seems that when women are fertile and want to be mothers (that is during the ovulation), their sexual urge increases and intensifies to match that of men. And it seems it gets even stronger than men during peak time. They feel the hunger so much that many women fantasize of sex forced upon them and having multiple male partners at once. They are also physically endowed to have multiple male partners. The word “gangbang” particularly suggests a single female with multiple males. The opposite of this is not commonly heard of. The reason is a single female has enough physical desire to meet desires of multiple males. This in a way reduces the paucity of available women with sexual desire and creates equilibrium between sexes. Also a man having sex with one partner cannot perform a second time for a while. Whereas a female is capable of having sex continually so that she is able to mate with multiple male within a very short period of time.

So to summarize although female have less sexual appetite more of the time, at her peak can have more desire than men to balance everything.

The Easiest Way to God

God is infinite and there are infinite ways of getting Him, but perhaps the easiest way is to surrender oneself completely to Him and then do whatever comes to mind without thinking of past or future knowing that whatever happened in past was His making and He will take care of whatever happens in future.
All that have happened in past has made one come to the point of surrender and once surrendered God takes away all the burden from him and life becomes very light.

TIME TRAVEL AND “IT”

In a recent experiment Australian scientists made time travel possible. They sent a “photon” back to past. This experiment is very recent and created much curiosity throughout the world as it was published in world’s premier scientific journal; Nature.

The experiment is compatible to Einstein’s concept of a wormhole. According to Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity space and time are interconnected and can be called a space-time curve. A skew in this curvature can cause a hole through which one can go back to the past .And General Theory of Relativity has been proved beyond doubt.

But here comes the very pragmatic and simple argument called grandfather question against the notion of possibility of going back to the past. The argument says if it is possible for you to go in to the past you will be able to stop your grandparents to meet (like killing your grandfather!), thereby stopping your birth itself. So logically it is impossible to go in to the past.

Then how do we come to terms with these two conflicting scenarios which are both true!

Let me tell you that a photon although is a particle is actually the smallest “packet of energy”. As everyone knows mass and energy are interchangeable and from the famous equation of special theory of relativity of Einstein, E= mc,² where E stands for energy and m stands for mass and c stands for the speed of light (which is a constant). The mass of a photon is equal to zero at rest is actually also a wave.

Photons and also other extremely small particles are dealt in quantum mechanics where things act in a very queer fashion, to say the least. The shape, size and momentum etc. are not very determinable as we are used to in daily life. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle says that we cannot measure the position and momentum of a quantum particle simultaneously with precision. In the very complex and strange world of quantum mechanics whatever knowledge we gain from daily life of physical world begins to falter.

In almost similar fashion Einstein’s theory of relativity makes us lose our usual way in the macro world of gigantic dimensions like the intergalactic space, mammoth black holes and speeds nearing that of light. With greater speed time becomes slower than when at usual speed we encounter. Black holes are enigmatic objects which do not emit light yet are at core of the galaxies creating sources of vast energies.

Also problematically Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity and quantum mechanics do not go well with each other fundamentally. Only very recently scientists have been able to come to a little bit of rapprochement between the two but not at all totally. Sending photons to “past” through worm holes is one such effort towards the rapprochement.

So it is possible to go back to the past yet it is impossible!

Where does this leave us then? The conclusion is that, the more we delve deeper and deeper in to something and know more we begin to know that we know nothing. There is something unknowable which will elude our grasp however we or the scientists may try now or in any time in future. New questions and new mysteries will always engulf us (like the case of dark matter and dark energy that scientists are grappling to solve these days).

There is something in Upanishads which says Brahman is not describable.

“IT” is the only knowledge yet ever unknown.

THE DRESS CODE

As I was watching a BBC program I came across a piece of news that American school girls were unhappy with their dress code. They have started a movement through social media like twitter to wear dress in school as they wanted to. In US school uniforms are not in vogue but girls are prohibited to wear skirts too short or backless or cleavage showing dresses. They are punished if the dress code is breached, like they are sent back to their homes or wear a long shirt on top of their dress in the school. These girls are objecting saying what they wear is their matter. They are objecting to the proposition that what they wear may “disturb” some boys. They are saying that boys have the responsibility to have control over their emotions and instincts. Some girls showed themselves in the TV show wearing shorts and cleavage revealing clothes and said that these are not allowed in the school and if they wear it they will be punished. More so if the girl is amply endowed in chest and hip.

In 1930s when England’s first women’s cricket team visited Australia the regulation dress was a skirt which had to be not more than four inches from the heel. These days some women play tennis wearing skirts which are “babies of skirts” as my wife described them. And nobody seems to bother.

So what should be the dress code or should there be a dress code at all. The question is serious as it is a fundamental question which even ignites wars in places like Afghanistan and other Muslim dominated countries. There the proper dress code does not even allow women to reveal their faces. Many women are unhappy that this should be such and the social unrest among women and who support them have caused wars between more liberal and conservative sections of people. But the problem among women of Afghanistan and US school girls is not of fundamental difference but of degree. The main problem is whether women should wear whatever they like regardless of what men or even other women think that these may cause problem and help to kindle uncontrollable passions among men. The argument for the women is that it is not there matter that men are troubled by such and who misbehave in response to any kind of dress is their problem. In Islamic states the burden of societal responsibility in these matters are put squarely on the shoulders of women so much so that women are called evil. In other societies the response varies in degrees. In India (my city Kolkata) 20 years back heads would have turned if a woman wore tight jeans. Even now it is considered obscene (even by women) in most parts of India if a woman wears mini skirt in a city street. I think women are to a great degree justified in the argument of their right to choose whatever dress they want but is there a limit to it? Suppose some women come out in streets wearing nothing at all or wearing bikinis? Where should we stand then? Not every male or female are same and their degree of excitement and their control on that excitement is not same. Even within a single person degree of excitement changes at different times. I have found out that in some days when I am too busy with my occupations and problems that even an attractive naked woman would not have my attention whereas at other times a hint of cleavage would spur animal instincts in my mind. Not everyone is Sri Ramakrishna who could control his instincts to the degree such that even when an amply endowed young woman sat on his lap stark naked his mind did not budge from God! And the question does not encompass women only. I, in a moment of madness, posted a picture of mine eating my lunch with my upper half of the body without any clothing in Orkut profile and a woman told me that it was horrible because it showed my thick chest hair. She also said there is a place for everything. If I wore this dress in a beach nobody would have objected to but in a public place it was objectionable. I also read a report that in middle east people found it objectionable that south Indian men wore lungis in such a way that it was folded up to their knees. They found it obscene and some laws were created to ban it.

So clearly not every dress is acceptable everywhere. But what is the boundary line and who would set it? As I have said earlier it varies to extreme degrees between cultures and places and time. I would imagine the amazement and pique of a person from Europe from middle ages if he happens to see dresses worn by modern day men and women even in Asia.

I do not think whatever I wish I dress argument is justified. Apart from personal security the opinion of others matter when it is in public and when others are involved. You simply cannot ignore the emotions and opinion of others if you are to mix with them publicly, in any matter whatsoever.

So the right balance has to come out in context of a particular place, time and culture. You can go nude in some of the beaches but you have to be covered up to head if you are in Afghanistan or in Europe in times of inquisition. Also if I go out in a dhoti or with a pajama punjabi in streets of Los Angeles or Zurich there will be a few eyebrows raised.

So coming to the point I started with what should be the solution for the American school girls. To my mind the best solution is a school uniform although that might not be to the taste of a quite a lot of Americans. A school uniform with taking opinion of all concerned will stop punishments and grievances. It should be democratic for all concerned like the country itself.