How to keep our Immunity caring about the System

(this article originally appeared on the blog 'Lord of the Flies')

Life is a perpetual struggle, as it should be, forcing thermodynamics to its limit. 

One way to put up the milestones might be your achievements. Or it might even be your failures. Or it might be all the things you let go. Or it might be all the people you have ever loved. Or it might be all those things that you lost. Or it might be all the fairies you have believed in. Or it might even be all the fairies you stopped believing in. Or it might be the behavioral walls you built around yourself, to protect, to become immune. 

We are all born with soft, delicate baby skin, but this world is not a place for that. Our skin hardens and obtains the right complexion and toughness that is required to survive in our environment. It is a natural process. We gather antibodies only after suffering from the disease and surviving. In most cases, isolation is not the solution because if it takes the form of a delayed onset, it harms more than it helps. 

Over time, you become immune to everything. You become immune to bullies at school. You become immune to your parents’ negligence. You become immune to the unavailability of your brother. You become immune to the rude remarks of your sister. You become immune to the selfishness of your friends. You become immune to getting bad grades. You become immune to the prejudices of your professors. You become immune to rebuke by your employer. You become immune to the plight of the beggar on the street. You become immune to the sensitivity of your companion. You become immune to the emotions of your friend. You become immune to the dejected faces of people whom you disappointed. You also become immune to chicken pox and influenza. 

Being so immune is good. No one can hurt you, because no one can reach you. And in the meantime you can coldly play your cards and climb the socioeconomic ladder. 

But as we build this strong fort around ourselves for our protection, it must not become a labyrinth for our souls where we get lost. Yet it often does. The fort becomes more real than its occupant. 

We start by building baby forts. But when we are babies they look really big. We learn to gulp down a few things by getting used to them, or by using some form of "rationality". The highest of all walls we built around our ego, because we know that it has to be protected at all costs, because we know that any harm to it will shatter our confidence to fight, to live and to love. We always protect it, no matter what. 

To counter the risk of another person shattering our confidence, we just HAVE to believe that the person is a fool, and we are sucking up to him/her for OUR benefit and nothing else. But how can you ever respect a person if you have to wear armor whenever you have to face him/her? 

In the desperate attempt to protect ourselves, we shut out the reality we do not want to believe. We refuse to accept our own vulnerability. That might make us feel brave and give us some degree of satisfaction. In fact, it might be a great strategy to buckle up and move on. But to what extent? You lose track... is this person really you, is this really what you wanted? 

People vilify things they once loved because it hurts them to believe otherwise. 

Those battles we had fought in our childhood, fading away like a dream now, look like mere skirmishes. It was easy to stay immune to the world outside your home then, because there was some "apparent" self-sufficiency because your family was taking care of all your needs. Now it’s like you all have been thrown into a pile of candies and you get how much you take. You have to fight and the ugly face of survival appears. This is reality. It can get ugly. 

All the morals, sensitive thinking, reflection -all that held meaning, is just plain lost because you can see that it is not only taking you anywhere but they were empty casks that held nothing at all, no "real" value, nothing to face the reality. They can shade you from the sun for some time, but when you realize that you have got nothing left in spite of being so true to yourself, you realize it was your mistake to believe that people get what they deserve. And seriously, is not that the most illogical thing? Of course, people get what they take - it is so plain and simple. 

It hurts to fight and play dirty games to get something you love, because that is not how you romanticize. You want your lover to stay with you and love you back; you don’t want to have to fight with others to keep him/her. And so it goes with any work that you love, because you think it is yours. That is why competition hurts. Because you have to ‘prove’ that you are good- all the time. And you have to fight, even with those people who do not even "love" that work but they just want to be there for the bucks. And then you realize they are not even wrong. That is how things are and that is how they will always be. 

When you were out of the system, you never cared about it, so you never criticized the system, because there was nothing wrong with it and it seemed good, it is just that YOU were not interested. But then you were forced to fight for your living. So you stepped in and you immediately started getting scathed. Although you played by the rules, you started seeing the imperfections and the loopholes and you started feeling disgusted and hating the system like never before. Maybe, you have to become mean. You do not mind acting mean but it is so much effort! But what if you really become mean? The fort you have built has become you then, and you have lost your identity. 

But you should be more afraid of the fort than the reality around it. By building the fort you have made yourself even more vulnerable that something outside you can just get inside and change you! 

To prevent this, there should be something in your life that brings out your hidden softness. Some constant light that will always provide warmth and keep burning even in the coldest, windiest night. Something that will never let you forget who you are and why you are doing whatever you are doing, that will always show you the direction and whisper- keep going, I am here right next to you. Of course, its mere faith, faith in a person, faith in a process, faith in a deity, but faith is important. We must not become immune to this light. We must make ourselves vulnerable to it and let it tear us apart if it will. It is a gamble you cannot escape. 

There must be some way to find this light. Or is time the only answer? We should not mind as long as there is one. 

 

Opposites Attract!

(this article originally appeared on the blog 'Lord of the Flies')

 

Have you ever wondered why there are two genders: Male and Female? 

There could have been only one, and everyone could have just passed on their genes directly to the next generation; things would have been much simpler. Or there could have been three, with the same kind of forces playing between them in pairs, as in between male and female. Or there could have been four, or five, and so on. 

Yet there are only two sexes in all animals. Even plants. Even bacteria! Why did nature choose only two? What’s up with the number two? 

This question has baffled me for many years. And other than the existence of some mysterious symmetry I could never find any explanation for this. 

And so the question remained for many years, the continuum of confusion broken somewhere by a sudden insight into knowledge in the middle of some dream, which faded away in the morning and I collapsed back into confusion. I knew I had the answer, I just was not able to find it. 

Since this is a biological question, it is more likely to be answered by the theory of Evolution. All biological beings have evolved to the present state because the present state has offered them some advantage in terms of growth, survival and competition. But what is the advantage of having two genders? 

Could it be genetic mixing? Genetic mixing is very useful for evolution, since it creates new kinds of gene combinations that can be tested to perform under the changing conditions.  But genetic mixing could have happened even if there were three genders. That is true. However, if the process of reproduction would have required three people, the probability of three willing candidates coming together would have fallen rapidly, therefore reducing the growth rate. But what if the process required only two, but these pairs could be formed in three ways? That sounds pretty logical... 

The problem here is that reproduction is actually quite big a deal, it consists of so many complex processes like pass on the information, make the child and keep him somewhere safe while you do that, take care of the baby’s health and nourishment, help him/her to grow and learn, and many other cares. A single person can do all this, but then there would be no genetic mixing, in which case if this person does not have the faculty to, we could say, survive a storm, both the person and his baby would die. So what we need here is some sort of collaboration with another person who has that faculty to survive the storm. That person who can survive the storm would also be willing to collaborate with this person because he/she might have got some other quality like, say, survive the heat. By sharing their qualities, they can potentially create a baby that can survive both the storm as well as the heat. It is possible that the future would consist of only the storm, or only the heat, but since you do not know the future, you have to gamble. That is how mating arose. 

In that case there could be just one gender and people could mate with whomever they chose. However, if you have to gamble anyway, collaborating on just one issue is not a very good gamble. There got to be a handful of them, and since both of you are now investing in one project, the responsibility is fairly shared between the two of you. Sharing could have occurred by both of you taking turns to perform the same function, but it could also be that one person performs some of the function and the other does the others. The latter will increase the efficiency of the functions being performed because each of you will then acquire some degree of specialization in the functions you chose to perform, although it will make the gamble riskier. Millions of years ago, on the unstable, unpredictable Earth, the efficiency became the important factor since there were so many gambles anyway. 

In the course of time, this specialization increased to the extent of becoming encoded by the genes! All the complex physiological and psychological differences between male and female boils down to the asymmetric twenty-third pair of chromosome: the XX for female and XY for male. 

And thus arose the two genders. 

Polygamy or Polyandry could have probably arisen whenever one person of a particular gender could increase his/her efficiency multiple times and so could provide for multiple partners of the opposite gender. 

The problem with having three genders in which any two can form pairs is that it cannot happen for reasons of complementarity. If you have to form a pair anyway, you will have to share the chores equally, in which case having a third gender is not at all required. And if the chores were shared equally between three, any two forming a couple could never be capable of providing complete care. In that case collaboration between three persons will be required, which is first of all, as I have said earlier, difficult to attain (the probability of compatible three meeting each other would be so low), and then also difficult to sustain given the number of opposing views that will increase the fighting! 

According to scientists, all of this can be represented in terms of energy costs, although research is still on. 

So two it is, till date. And they continue to fight the temptations that biology conferred upon them to keep their genes afloat. But with the Earth’s changing geography, and the changing society, and the millions of years our sun will continue to burn, who knows the future? 

 

Resurrecting Paradise

(this article originally appeared on the blog 'Lord of the Flies')

"Gar firdaus ae baruhe zamin ast, hamin astu hamin astu hamin ast... "

These famous Urdu words uttered by a Mughal Emperor (most probably Jehangir) aptly captured the beauty of Kashmir once upon a time. The translation would be: If there is paradise on Earth it is here, it is here, it is here. 

 

In this beautiful valley, amidst the splendor of snow-capped mountains, somewhere among the lush green fields the breezes still blow. The peaceful waters of the Jhelum river still scintillate rapturously under the benevolent sun, seeming to have lost all bloody memories of the past, ignorant of the sound of gunshots in the distance. The smiles of its people having faded away, the grandeurs of nature bestowed upon this war-torn land and the many beautiful gardens constructed here by mankind seem like a mockery of its fate- the fate of this ‘paradise’. 

Kashmir has recently been in the news once again for the wrong reasons: ceasefire violations by Pakistan. 

Sixty-six years have passed since the first conflict began, and Time has twisted together the myths and the facts so capriciously that it seems almost impossible to disentangle them today. 

Sixty-six years ago, the Indian subcontinent became independent from the British rule, and two nations were formed: India and Pakistan (later on, former East Pakistan separated from Pakistan as Bangladesh). And ever since then, India and Pakistan have been fighting over Kashmir. 

I am from India and, until now, I used to hate Pakistan for this. 

What I knew was that when the British were leaving India, some Muslims started demanding for a separate nation exclusively for Muslims, perhaps insecure of being dominated by an overwhelming Hindu majority, probably also fearing vengeance given that most Mughal rulers, with the exception of Akbar and a few others, were not particularly kind to the Hindus. What they could not see is that the two-hundred-year-old past was long forgotten ever since the Hindus and Muslims came together and embraced each other, united to fight against the oppressive British rule. Another reason was perhaps that India aspired to be a secular democratic, and ‘secularism’ was not something the orthodox Muslims were very fond of. Also, it would have been highly unlikely that the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, would let go such a great shot at power. 

It was a deadlock that was difficult to resolve, since all Hindus and some Muslims did not want this separation. But the British couldn’t leave India till a consensus was reached on this matter. They alternatively proposed that all the states having a Muslim majority be allowed to constitute Pakistan, and this became the demand of Jinnah and the Muslim League, as opposed to the Indian National Congress. When there arose talks about an interim government constituting both the parties, the Muslim League felt threatened and launched the 'Direct Action Day' in Calcutta, which turned into a campaign of violent aggression and worst kind of Massacre, killing around 5000 people. Muhammad Ali Jinnah said: 

Why do you expect me alone to sit with folded hands? I also am going to make trouble. 

The Indian leaders were desperate for Independence (probably also for power?), and everyone was tired of the 200-year long fighting. It was also heartbreaking in general to see the people who once fought together on the battlefield now kill each other. The only solution was: Pakistan. 

And so Pakistan was formed. East Pakistan and West Pakistan, on the two sides of India. Few years hence, East Pakistan would separate from Pakistan to form an Independent nation called Bangladesh, owing to differences arising from language, culture, ethnicity and many other factors. (India had helped Bangladesh in this war, which is infamous for the Pakistani war crimes that are often compared to those that happened during World War II, giving Pakistan another reason to hate India.) 

 

Even after the partition was given a thumbs-up, terrible violence followed, leading to the worst kind of riots India has ever seen. Nobody seems to know the real reasons. It could have been the result of a cycle of rebuttals. Also, when it was agreed that states with a Muslim majority would go to Pakistan, some people in these Muslim-majority states took it upon them to ‘create’ this majority by destroying the minority as far as they could, because the majority-minority ratios were usually like 60-40. Since in those days there were no proper information channels, and radio was a luxury of the rich, there could be many rumors being propagated and people reacting to them with blind emotions. Amidst the confusion and lawlessness no one really knew for sure where Pakistan ended and India began. It took months to contain this violence, which killed millions of people. The horrors echo to this day. 

In such a way, British India was divided. However, there were some parts of India which were not exactly under the British: these were known as the ‘Princely States’, and they stayed mostly independent of the British rule in return for huge sums of money. These states were granted the freedom to choose whether to join India, or Pakistan, or stay independent. These Princely States included some Muslim-dominated states with a Hindu ruler, and some Hindu-dominated states with a Muslim ruler. Although they had been given a ‘choice’, it was not exactly their choice because there was a lot of pressure from the local people. In all cases, except Kashmir, the religious dominance, and sometimes even the location, determined the fate of the state. 

Kashmir, however, was different. Located on the India-Pakistan border, it was a Muslim-dominated state with a Hindu King, who chose to remain with India. This was not acceptable to Pakistan, and they have always wanted Kashmir ever since. They have also attacked and occupied a part of Kashmir. 

Pakistan looks at India as a Hindu country, while the truth is that India has more Muslims than the entire population of Pakistan! 

Today, the people of Kashmir, as citizens of India, participate in the general elections and state elections in considerable numbers. I take that as an expression of solidarity with India. The Ministry of Kashmir majorly comprises of Muslims, accurately representing their population, and they all see themselves as Indians. Lot of people from Kashmir are going to different parts of the country for higher education, or for jobs, or settling down in inter-religious/inter-caste marriages, it does not matter: the views of the educated generation resonates with the ideas of a ‘secular democracy’. That includes a lot of people I personally know. 

I have always condemned Pakistan for wanting something that does not belong to them, wanting to force themselves on people who do not want them. And it is not just Kashmir. India has suffered many 9/11’s in the hands of Pakistani terrorists, many bomb-blasts. I can understand if some people in a country turn out to be bad, what I cannot understand is how all the people in a country can harbor so much hatred for their neighbor. No, Pakistan does not feel sorry for the people they have killed in India. In fact, if they do, they get killed. Pakistani attacks are also threatening the Indian democracy in a way that ‘Islamophobia’ is increasing in the country, and our own Muslims are being segregated against, looked upon with suspicion. 

I have always hoped that one day I wake up to see that there is no Pakistan in the world map. 

Meeting Pakistani delegates in a school-fest did not help. Becoming a fan of Pakistani musicians who made it big in Bollywood did not help. Reading Khushwant Singh’s accounts of a high society, where the ultra-rich Indians and Pakistanis apparently had no differences, did not help. The marriage of the Indian tennis star Sania Mirza to the Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik did not help. 

It is like, "fine, they are also normal people, like us". But how can we proceed from here unless the major issue is resolved? A part of Kashmir still remains with Pakistan, and the people of Pakistan still believe that Kashmir is theirs. In fact, Kashmir used to be one of their election issues before they stopped having elections and sank into this cycle of alternating democracy and dictatorship. Kashmir, of course, remains their foremost issue. And in spite of what the whole world can see, how can they still believe that they have got a better economy than ours? Why do they mistake the soft corner Indian Muslims might understandably have for them as some sort of support? The strong Muslim cast of a recent Bollywood movie, D-Day, which deals with a wishful Indian operation in Pakistan in search of a most-wanted terrorist, sends out a message. And I guess Pakistan got it when they banned the movie in their country. 

Today, India and Pakistan are trying to be friends, without referring to the Kashmir issue. Now, how does one put all this unsettled business behind and set about to make friends? One of my friends has a Pakistani pen friend but I cannot understand that. If I did that, I would be faking, as I am sure many people are. 

Yet something unexpected made me look in the other direction. 

The Indian Media is on a high note these days, and recently NDTV succeeded in inviting Pakistani professors to a Panel debating the Kashmir issue. And the professors were quite cool, I really liked them! In the course of the discussions I came to know the root of the conflict, which was much more subtle than I used to think. During the partition, the ruler of Kashmir actually wanted independence, probably due to greed for power. This was not acceptable to anyone and it was decided that a poll would be conducted in order to decide whether Kashmir goes to India or Pakistan. But that poll never happened. Pakistan attacked Kashmir before that, in an attempt to overthrow the King, and this propelled the King to react by pledging allegiance to India. Immediately, Indian troops were sent to defend Kashmir. The Indian troops had managed to secure about two-thirds of Kashmir when the United Nations ordered a cease-fire. Since then, one-third of Kashmir remains with Pakistan, and the dispute continues. (China has also got a chunk of Kashmir, but that is another story.) 

Pakistan realizes that it was a great strategic mistake to attack Kashmir. Some Pakistanis even deny that the invasion happened with the knowledge and support of the State. Some Pakistanis also argues that the King of Kashmir had sought India’s help during the attack but that did not mean he wanted to join India. 

Along with this, Pakistan highlights the atrocities committed by Hindus on Muslims in Kashmir during the riots while India highlights the reverse. The scenes of trains full of slaughtered people arriving at the stations, in both the countries, have not been forgotten. Under such circumstances, it is natural for people on both sides to hate each other, especially so when they are introduced to the partial knowledge at a young age. 

Could a reality check at a younger age help? Two years ago, three young Pakistanis set out on a mission to create a History textbook that presented the History taught in Indian schools and those taught in Pakistani schools side-by-side. The two Histories are apparently quite different. I am quite jealous that this awesome idea should come from Pakistan. Although still waiting for widespread acceptance, and probably some more painstaking research, with this venture they not only created history but also won my heart. 

And so did this photograph: 

 

 A Kashmiri farmer crosses a barbed wire fence to check his crop on a foggy 

morning on the outskirts of Srinagar, India (AP Photo/Dar Yasin) 

Here is a common farmer from Kashmir, who is living his routine life, earning his daily bread, oblivious and indifferent to the big deal people are making about his land. In the fight between two nations we have perhaps forgotten the people of Kashmir. What do they want? Will it be fair to conduct a poll now given that a lot of Kashmiris are still in refugee camps in the adjacent states, too afraid to return? Or should we just forget the past and accept the Line-of-Control as the National Border? Does Pakistan want to keep the dispute alive as an election issue? There is no consensus. It could be an issue that is being strategically kept alive so that it could be used to advantage at an opportune time, by China or the United States. 

Many people think that the first step towards resolving the Kashmir issue is friendship. Friendship on a personal level could produce something fruitful after a few generations, but at the moment that kind of thing is more tangential to the current problem. As education in Pakistan is improving, a lot of people are coming out of the cocoon, becoming more aware and doing good work, and also extending a friendly hand towards India, so there is some hope. Friendship on a National level though is very tricky, given that Pakistan has breached treaties it signed with India in the past. The political climate in Pakistan remains unstable, cross-border terrorism continues, and until this stops I don’t think we can proceed towards peaceful negotiations. 

Omar Abdullah, the Chief Minister of Kashmir recently said: 

"Thinking that the relations will get normalized in such a situation, that is impossible. We will surely talk, but the results that we want out of that dialogue, we cannot achieve those till such things (infiltration and ceasefire violations) are not stopped. "

And I agree with him. 

 

Singularities

 (this article originally appeared on the blog 'Lord of the Flies')

Black holes are not known for equilibrium. Or white holes. But the universe loves equilibrium and will not quit till it is achieved. The entropy will keep increasing till it cannot any longer. No matter how much we would love to disagree, we humans, with our various Gods, are not above this. Yes, we can keep ice frozen in a refrigerator when the sun is burning outside, but for how long? We will soon run out of fuel. We don’t have the power to defy the universe. 

It is true that living beings appear to go against the laws of the universe through the very act of propagation but it is more than made up for by the fact that they use up a huge amount of fuel during their lifetime and render it useless for any other utilisation.  Hence, the net entropy or disorder in the universe continues to increase. But this is a purely scientific concept and on its own, a very difficult topic to consider while worrying about humanities. At best, it only encourages us to use less petrol and try switching on to alternative forms of energy. Is that all there is to it? 

Ironically, we haven’t been able to see through a pattern so well repeated in History. Empires rose. And then fell. Why didn’t they keep growing forever? How long can greatness last? And why is the fall inevitable? 

More than seven thousand years ago, from blood, sweat and dust rose the magnificent pyramids of Egypt, boldly proclaiming to the world the possession of enormous power. But they treated their slaves badly and what befell them? Wouldn’t the story have been different had the development in technology gone hand in hand with some development in humanism? 

To the east beyond Mesopotamia was the Indus Valley Civilisation. Amazing urban planning complete with water supply and drainage system that parallel those of today. Also, one shouldn’t forget the auditoriums and the grain storage system. Sadly, all’s left in ruins and we haven’t even deciphered the script yet. They were amazing artists, craftsmen, traders and farmers. Guess what they forgot? The army! Too bad the rest of the world didn’t share their philosophy. 

The ruthless Indian Emperor Ashoka who after building his huge empire was all of a sudden struck with the realisation of the amount of cruelty he must have unleashed, gave up arms and meat and turned to Buddhism. He made his people Buddhist and also took efforts to spread Buddhism far and wide. His religious message remains but not in his own kingdom. Did he ACTUALLY think that such a huge Buddhist empire, with its goal being only peace, would just sustain itself when kings of other lands were looking to expand their territories and the barbaric tribes were having the time of their lives? 

Fast forward. The capitalists actually thought they would grow forever. People actually thought slaves would be forever. 

Hitler believed that he could conquer the whole world and persecute all Jews. Israelis might believe Palestinians don’t need to exist but they do and the conflict continues. America used to believe that it can continue growing with its capitalistic policies and continue to fight wars away from home, while still remaining invincible; but 9/11 shattered that image. Today America doesn’t even want to participate in cutting down greenhouse gas emissions but guess who is closer to the North Pole? 

Far away in a remote African village they don’t have the concept of money (from hearsay). They have developed their trust, honesty and understanding skills to such advanced levels that they don’t really need money. What a wonderful system! What’s your best guess till they die out? 

I am not trying to be pessimistic here; I’m just trying to look practically at the fact that most ‘victories’ have been failures in the long run. All these stories may seem very different from one another but there is a single vein that runs through all of them, they all have certainly made the same common mistake: they were not inclusive. The Egyptians were not inclusive of the happiness of their slaves. The Indus Valley people just shut themselves inside closed doors and tried to create luxury for themselves forgetting about practical necessity. While Ashoka basked in the glory of a great philosophy that was nevertheless quite useless during his times, not inclusive of the conditions elsewhere in the world. Obviously terrorists will have an eye on America if they perceive its growth unfair. No power can grow infinitely at the cost of others; the Universe has time and again taught us this. Developed countries should sincerely help the developing and the underdeveloped countries, and the developing countries should give their hand of support to the underdeveloped ones. As about the African village, if something no matter how good it is stands out as an oddity, it most definitely is an oddity or singularity, and being so renders it very unstable. That’s the reason growth and development must be inclusive, we must always try to take everybody along with us as we march forward (not that everyone should become the exact same but no one should have more advantages or disadvantages). If we leave anybody out they are always going to harm us, even if unintentionally. And no, you can’t make them extinct- it never happens. 

We live in this world with millions of other people and share the resources of our planet. We should think how we can mutually benefit each other instead of thinking how much profit we can make from the other person, or thinking about improving our own selves all the time without bothering about the people around. The Indus Valley people can make the excuse that they did not ‘know’ that the world around them was way behind, but we can’t. We most certainly know that not everybody in the world is in a position to appreciate our kind-hearted philosophy and we must not pretend so until we have brought everyone up to the same level. If we repeat the same mistakes it will only be our foolishness. 

Of course we don’t know about aliens that might be lurking elsewhere in the Universe and we most definitely can’t include them in our "growth". But we need to group together to create a benevolent planet for ourselves that is so much united (probably plants and animals too, along with humans) that we are prepared to face any kind of situation that may arise. What dangers the aliens might possess for us we are yet to see. And we probably will, unless we stupidly commit suicide before that.