Ill-starred event

This blog post might give the impression of a déjà vu as I wrote on the subject before also.

Never did I realise that a lecture on Disaster Management can be so interesting and rewarding. When a friend of mine asked me to join him in the lecture at Academic Staff College, Gauhati University, which was to be delivered by an Assam Civil Service officer from NDMA Mrs Nandita Hazarika, willy-nilly I agreed to come as I was expecting a slide show of facts and statistics from a somnolent civil servant. But to my utter surprise , it turned out to be a lecture that enriched my perception
manifold about the subject. Besides the lecture was organised at the most opportune time as India’s biggest natural disaster has badly mangled our collective unconscious. The lecture was basically about how we can mitigate the impact of a disaster (both natural and man-made)with preparedness and planning . Here was an officer with considerable oomph and zeal who knows what job is cut out for her.

The lecture set my mind in motion as nature and environment are two important issues that occupy a sizable portion of my mindscape. I searched for the etymological root of the word ‘disaster’ and found that it is a word of Italian origin of 16th century. From Italian ‘disastro’-ill-starred event,from’dis’(expressing negation)+’astro’ meaning ‘star’(From Latin ‘astrum’.) ( Oxford Dictioary of English,Second Edition,Revised)

Being an ill-starred event, no nation can avoid natural disaster. But is there no element of human intervention in natural disaster?

To my mind all the natural disasters are nothing but an extension of age-old man versus nature conflict. Western literary productions have constructed a concept of nature which was subsequently put into practice in material culture. For instance the ideas of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke suggest that nature was valueless and should be treated as man’s private property. For them the ‘state of nature’ was a primitive one. Rousseau was an exception who believed that nature was ‘purest’.
During Industrial Revolution which was considered to be the beginning of ‘modernism’, Man’s relation with nature became more exploitative as progress and development came to be regarded as man’s control over nature and environment. With that man’s attempt to subjugate nature received momentum. It may be recalled that Francis Bacon who presided over the trials of witches used the same language( that he used in the trials) when it came to subjugating nature. ‘Hound her’, ‘bind her’…these were the exact words that he used with regard to nature. Since then man’s attempt to dominate nature with complete conquest has been continuing unabated.

But this is a litany as even school children are also being told that we are living in a world that is being lost to pollution, environmental degradation and so on and therefore Time magazine can start off an article stating ‘how everyone knows the planet is in bad shape’.( The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg).
There has hardly been any attempt –which is life-affirming-to effect a reconciliation between the human and non-human world. The relation has always been exploitative. As a result nature, at times ,hits back at us with all the fury .

All told, my first statement has to be qualified as Bhupen Hazarika long back showed us in his song as to what constitutes an ideal relation between man and nature or for that matter between human and non-human world in his song(which is purported to be sung by a farmer): O mur dhoritri aai /soronote diba thai(my translation)…( O’my mother earth I prostrate myself in thine feet….I am orphan…I plead, be my mother). All other nature songs (in Assamese) are nothing but a description of beautiful nature as the subject is enthralled and spell bound. Mark the lyrics of Bishnu Rabha’s( translations are mine) :’ bilote halise dhunia podume’ (lithe lotus move and bend gracefully in water)or Jyoti Prasad’s ‘Gose gose pati dile phulore xorai(all trees are in bloom) or Nirmolprabha Bordoloi’s:’phulore mela te pokhi e geet gai…( Birds sing in this flower fair). All these songs describe nature and says nothing about our relationship with her. Bhupen Hazarika’s aforementioned song has blazed the trail.

Let our relationship with nature be like what Bhupen Hazarika’s song outlines. This relationship is life-affirming and not exploitative.
Once we cultivate this relationship I am sure there will be no man-made disaster to deal with.

TWO CULTURES

Let me begin with a quote from C.P.Snows’ 1959 Rede Lectures: “I believe the intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups.”  The split envisaged here by Snow between Art (by Art I include Humanities and Literature and social sciences) and pure Science is still widening and this is primarily due to the elitist attitude being harboured by  both the groups that  help perpetuate the split. Snow recounts his personal experience when he says that in  many a learned gatherings of persons belonging to the discipline of  Art he poses the question as to how many of them can really explain the second law of thermodynamics. And all  of them remain invariably silent.  Snow , however,maintains that it is as good as asking an Art student about Shakespeare.

Many men of Science believe that Art is a luxury and hardly contributes to human progress and development. 'Was this the face that launched a thousand ships....' is an articulation of aesthetic experience for the poet whereas for a man of science the 'truth' in fact is in the act of seeing. In other words the image getting captured and journeying through  Retina and finally the intrusion of brain and so on. 

But are Art and science  such watertight compartments?

I do not think so. And I am sure many of you will agree to my view.

There are many aspects of Art and Science that are shared and together further knowledge-both self-knowledge and public knowledge. Scientist writers like Fritjof Kapra, Paul Davis , Michio Kaku to name a few, have helped me straddle both the worlds. Kapra has shown us in his 'Tao of Physics' and for that matter Paul Davis in his 'God and the new physics' have clearly demonstrated how at one level particle physics and (Primarily eastern)mystical thoughts converge. In some ways Art and Science can be the two sides of the same coin. One illuminating self-knowledge and the other public knowledge. Both are inquiry into nature , the ways are different though. Art is also a discovery. An artist uses his own medium in his effort of discovery and is not aware beforehand about the nature of his discovery until the work is done. In that sense, it may be mentioned, Art is different from craft for craft knows the final shape beforehand. The medium of Science are more abstract-experiment and Mathematics. But the aim is to discover. Yet Science never knows where it is  heading for( On Science by B.K.Ridley). Both Science and Art are built on firm foundations. What was considered beautiful in past is still regarded so and inform creativity.

The  history of Art and Science are both fascinating. The growth and power of Science forced Art to focus more on subjective elements. However, both permeate each other in their growth and develpment. Hermatism of ancient Egypt helped Copernicus to conceive the idea of a helio-centric model of our solar system. We are aware how the hypothesis of hyperspace influenced Dali and Piccaso in their artistic creations (Hyperspace by Michio Kaku).

One fundamental difference between Art( Let me repeat by Art I mean Humanities and literature and Social Sciences also) and Science is that the problems in Science always converge whereas the problems in Art always diverge. All super specialists  will agree that Losartan Potassium is the most suitable drug for treating Diabetic Hypertension. On the other hand Social Scientists will debate how Diabetic Hypertension will impact social gerontology.

One thing is certain. It is foolish to view the world with the narrow view of Science. All great scientists in the world came out of the confines of their laboratories and let their world view permeate with humanistic philosophy. Einstein is  a case in point. His oft-quoted line 'Science without religion is lame,religion without Science is blind' is profoundly thought-provoking. 

So the elitist attitude harboured  by both the groups will be an impediment in the way of human progress. The need of the hour is to listen to and understand each other. That is ,I am sure going to bridge the gap between the 'Two Cultures'.

Christmas Musings

Today is 12th December, at 12 pm,12th minute and 12 seconds, the date and time will be 12//12/12/12/12/12
Maa Kasam! Sardaron ko kaun sambhalega...??

This is the message that I received on my mobile on 12th December from a fast friend of mine. And I am sure you too had received such text messages on the day.
The brouhaha surrounding the date and time as mentioned ranged across the world from Fiji to Hawaii. In Guwahati also people organised special feast to celebrate the date and time. Besides, many insisted their obstetric surgeons to perform Cesarean section in such a way that the baby is made to be born coinciding the momentous moments.

But a little reflection on the date stirs up our thoughts as to what significance the date(and time)encapsulates and also to the extent  of  casting serious doubt if at all the date has really taken place.

The celebration of this date and time means the triumph of a model which is Christian and European. The calculation of ab anno Domini is essentially christian. In early Middle Ages years were counted not from the birth of Christ ;but from the presumed creation of the world. In the seventeenth century  the protestant Issac de la Peyriere observed that the original sin involved only the descendants of Adam,not other races ,born far earlier. He was declared a heretic. China and India had flourishing civilization before the year 0. Thankfully Plato and Aristotle's births are recorded as 'before Christ'.

After the independence , the government of India constituted a commission under the scientist Meghnad Saha to examine various calendars that were in use among different communities ( Even today the Assamese have a different calendar) and the commission was dumbfounded by the bewildering number calendars that various communities in India were using(and perhaps are using at the moment). A friend from Manipur once told me that there the child's birthday is recorded from day of his or her rice ceremony. A different calendar again!

Now the most pertinent question. Was the day really 12th December?

As we know that 23rd April in 1564 is not the same as 23rd April 2012. By the mid sixteenth century, the Julian calendar had fallen ten days behind the solar year and so in 1582 Pope Gregory xiii introduced the Gregorian calendar that we follow today. Many European countries immediately made the changes. Accordingly Thursday 4 October 1582 was followed by Friday 15th October.The anti-papal England rejected the idea and did not catch up till 1752,when 2 September was immediately followed by 14 September. In other words in 1564 in England, the date referred to then as 23 April corresponds to what we would today call 3 May.
This observation ,without doubt. complicates the whole issue of 12/12/12/12/12/12.

Nevertheless a very happy Christmas to you all!


Reference:

On Anniversary by David Crystal( A lecture delivered on the occasion of 425th Anniversary of Cambridge University Press in 2009)
Five Moral Pieces by Umberto Eco(Vintage,2002)
Argumentative Indians by Amartya Sen( Penguin Books)

Conversation with Umberto Eco



Umberto Eco appeared before me like a vision of God. Lately he has cottoned on to the fact that our state has developed a lot in the health sector and therefore he flew from Bologna to Guwahati for a consultation with a doctor from Gauhati Medical College. But as the luck would have it , there broke out a clash between the medical representatives and the doctors and as a result the OPD  was cancelled. He had nowhere to go so he came to my apartment. He was in a flowery shirt that went well with his personality and the brown corduroy that hides his well-formed legs lent  an extra dimension to his sartorial casualness. He was wearing a pair of  sports shoes.

He seated himself in the computer chair  in my small and cozy bed room that I sometimes use for reading my my electricity and medical bills.
In no time we launched ourselves into a desultory and freewheeling conversation. I hope it is conversation and not merely interrogation.  Following is an excerpt:

NJK: Ever since I read your 'The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana' , I have become enamored of you and should you  had been a girl or a lady-as you know I have special fascination for elegant elderly lady- I would have told 'I love you' and would have sung' drink to me only with thine eyes and I shall....

UC:  Ha ha....(he laughed loudly and his chubby cheeks were sunk into tiny hollows).It is indeed a pleasure to have  a fan like you who is  half-sane and half-insane...

NJK: Can there be an absolutely sane person or mind?

UC: You are right. There can be no absolutely normal mind. The dividing line between normal and abnormal mind is very thin.

NJK: ...but where is mind?

UC: My mind is elsewhere.

NJK: Where?

UC: In the play I enjoyed last night. Bhul Nubujiba Bhupenda(Do not misunderstand Bhupenda). Oh! Just mind-blowing! The auditorium, you call it pandal right?, was crammed with spectators. Electrifying! I have come to know that the playwright has written more than thirty plays in a single year which is a remarkable feat and a record of a sort. Even Shakespeare could not write as many plays during his life time. How many did he(Shakespeare) write?

NJK: I do not know.

UC: But you told you studied literature in the university?

NJK: Yes. But that was the question which was never asked in my exams.

UC: OK. I see...

NJK:  That is a good lead-in...

UC: Which one?

NJK: Bhul Nubujiba Bhupenda...

UC:  Which way?

NJK: Bhupen Hazarika , of course...

UC: He is a great singer and composer. Bhupen Hazarika dead is more powerful than Bhupen Hazarika alive.

NJK: Very well said. Explain please...

UC: See the amount of soundbites and the reams of  paper that have been wasted on controversies surrounding him.

NJK: And the latest one...

UC:  Well Nayan, I must tell you that culture is a filtering process. What is relevant to our culture remains and irrelevants just sink into oblivion. Just see, Calpurnia was relevant as long as Ceaser was alive. After his death she became culturally(or historically) irrelevant. Have you ever inquired about Shakespeare's sons? Or about the family of Indira Gandhi's husband? They are just culturally irrelevant.  So it boils down to the fact that a singer or a writer should be judged only on the basis of his or her work.

NJK:..so it is not necessary to know how many plays Shakeapeare wrote to appreciate him?

UC: Ha...(No this time he did n't laugh loudly. He became grave instead.)

NJK: What else did you like about our city?

UC: The big garbage can without lid installed by the city's civic authority.

NJK:  A  filth phile...ha ha...

UC: No.It stirs your thought. It reminds me of your great writer Raja Rao who said that there can be no India without( I was told that there is no crow in a place called Barpeta in Assam. Is any Barpetia reading this? Can you please verify?) crow. These crows feed on those garbage. Besides this provokes us into thinking if mankind as technological beings and mankind as civilized  social beings are going hand -in -hand.

NJK: Can you crisscross the city without ever finding such a garbage can?

UC: Nayan, you have never been original. This is from Gerges Perec.

NJK: You have n't read Piere Manard?

UC: Ha ha....

NJK: no, I am serious. Can there be an Einstein  without Newton? The very concept of originality is flawed  Is Shakespeare original?

UC:    NJK ,you so-called educated people are very intelligent or rather cunning. you can rationilse . And you always rationalise to your favour.

With due apology to Umberto Eco.

For the full text of the conversation, please log onto the website: www.njkmadtalk.com

On walking and Bed


However hackneyed it might be, I must tell that walking is a good exercise. When I say walking, I mean brisk walking that works up a sweat ,helps burn extra calorie and leaves a general well-being for all of us. Health benefits that brisk walking offers to diabetics and to people with hypertension are immense. Doctors and health care professionals all across the world prescribe walking, at least for  five days in a week for all to maintain a healthy life.

On the whole walking is a part of a regimen for good health.

However, at the same time walking is a part of intellectual life also. Rousseau who wrote 'The Social Contract' also wrote ' Reveries of a solitary walker'. It follows that Rousseau conceived many of his ideas while going for a walk.So is the case with Nietzsche.Coleridge's post-dinner walk for 16 miles just to post a letter is well known. Dequincey calculated that by middle age Wordsworth walked 180,000 miles . The poet who wrote:
                              'One impulse from a vernal wood
                               may teach you more of man,
                              Of moral evil and of good,
                              Than all the sages can.'
Our existence is nothing but a succession of moments perceived through senses. I am sure Wordsworth perceived his moments through his extra-sensitive senses  while on walking tours. And subsequently he transformed them into a kind of spiritualized  emotion.

With explosion in automobile industry, peoples' mobility has largely become mechanized. However, because of the health benefits , people still walk( with a mobile in ears).

The end of walking may lead us to end of ideas also.
                                             
                                                              xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

'We spend more than a third of our lives in a bed. The bed is one of the rare places where we adopt roughly speaking a horizontal posture. The others are much more specialized : operating table,bench in a sauna,chaise-loungue,beach,psychoanalyst's couch.....' Wrote Georges Perec in Species of spaces and other pieces.
What do you keep with you when you are on bed? I keep my mobile phone. I like to sms and talk to my dear and near ones from my bed. And yes I sleep better on my own bed than some one else's. I am sure it happens with you too. Proust wrote the first sentence in his great novel'A la recherche du temps':" For a long time I went bed early'. But I cannot go to my bed early(Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy wealthy and wise). The temptation is always there though. And for how many people  a bed is made for? Perec writes  beautifully:' The bed is an instrument conceived for the nocturnal repose of one or two persons,but no more'. Thus he precludes a diurnal nap and a family of three or four may not like his idea. For me a bed is for one person-be it nocturnal or diurnal repose.
Bed is also a place where we dream most. Is day dreaming equally possible on bed?
 I can remember my nights of bed-wetting when I was a child and all the trouble my granny took next morning for washing the bed linens. At times I crave for a sort of oedipal nostalgia as I cannot remember when I slept with my mother last.
Like walking, I am sure, bed can also be a generator many outstanding intellectual ideas. This can be subject of good research.

What do you think...eh?

                                            Islam and civilization

What constitutes Islam? The question assumes extraordinary significance in view of the daily news stories with war, insurgency,human misery and violence around the world with active involvement of Islamic groups or countries. It is not surprising that many of us believe that the cultures of Islamic countries are backward and Islam as  the last revealed religion in the world is conservative and often as violent and extremist.
Against this background, it has never been more timely to explore the extent to which western cultural and scientific thought is indebted to the the works of Arab and Islamic thinkers a thousand years ago.
Maybe, it is one of the drawbacks of Euro-centric education system in which the contributions of non-European and particularly Arab and Islamic world are systematically pushed to the margin or totally obliterated.

 By the way the Indian contribution to science is Zero( Pun intended).

We all are familiar with Aristotle and his contributions in various branches of human knowledge. But how many of us  know about Avicena? I am sure very few. In fact I came across this name in a historical fiction by Ken Follet(The Pillars Of The Earth). Since than I have dug as much information as possible about this polymath. Avicena was born in 980 AD and is famous as the greatest physician of the middle ages.His canon of medicine remained as standard medical text across Europe till 17th Century. But his fame does not end there. He is one of the greatest Islamic philosophers and his treaties on philosophy still stands as a pinnacle of medieval philosophy.

Another Islamic Polymath was Abu Rayhan al-Biruni. He was a philosopher,mathematician and astronomer and is considered as the father of Geology and Anthropology. Yet he is hardly known here.
The word Algebra is also Islamic in origin. However, I fail to recall the name of the mathematician and his book after which the name came into being.

We all remember Copernicus for his helio- centric model of our solar system. But it was Ibn al-Shatir( Ibn Qurra) who conceived the idea  of a helio-centric model about three centuries before Copernicus. But tragically no science textbook or book on the history of science has  ever mentioned him.

We are reliably informed that Newton is the father of Optics. But in fact Newton has always mounted the Giant who lived 700 hundred years before him. He is the Iraqi Ibn al-Haytham and is famous for his treaties on the refraction and composition of light and they are considered as seminal on the subject.

Another Iraqi Al-Jahith developed rudimentary theory of natural selection much before Darwin. That was in 9th century. His book entitled 'Book Of Animals 'speculates on how environmental factors can affect the characteristics of species forcing them for adaptation and thereby passing on those traits to future generations.

Bagdad was a seat of learning of Islamic world. It has no parallel. The city was created by the Caliph Ma'mun who was known for his unquenchable thirst for knowledge. But we can roll out the names harem-keeping Caliphs whose indulgence in carnal pleasure became synonymous with the whole Islamic culture.

Many argue that novel as a narrative form began in the Arab world. To my mind Shahrzad is the greatest story teller( Arabian Nights). Her character is shrouded with the elements of fiction though. Recently when I finished reading 'Akhenaten' by the Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz, I kept marveling at the art of his story telling. The novel reinforces the idea of Einstein that when there are many observers,there is bound to be many observations. Elite academics talk about Delilo's book 'The White Noise'. They will do well to read 'Akhenaten' which is much more postmodern than 'The White Noise'.

The list will go on.

When I see bearded men with piercing eyes wearing shorter-than-normal pajama and longer-than-normal kurta(never happen to be the articles of faith), happy with abandon in issuing fatwas, I pity them.

With equal passion I laugh at them who, wearing the dress in vogue,  decry Islam as the most backward of all religions.

I wish they both had revisited the glorious age of Islamic culture and civilization.

I hope my wish is being fulfilled.

Spectacle and Media saturation




There has been a growing realization within me that to be human is to live amid images where medium is the message. There has been a general proclivity for presenting everything as a spectacle.
Well! your guess is right. I am about to write about the molestation issue involving a young drunken girl -the incident that has been giving many of us a voyeuristic pleasure.

But let me address this issue of 'spectacle' on a positive note.

When the well known Italian writer Italo Calvino remarked that Galileo is the greatest writer in Italian literature, it raised many an eyebrow. It is basically because Calvino rated Galileo over Dante and we are always under the impression that Galileo was a scientist. Even Leopardi( another great Italian writer), according to Calvino owes much to Galileo. But why Galileo? According to Calvino while describing the moon Galileo did not use language as a 'neutral utensil'. He used the language 'with a continuous commitment that is expressive,imaginative,and even lyrical'. Calvino further writes:'It is first time that the moon becomes a real object for mankind'(The Literature Machine by Italo Calvino).
In other words the moon became a real spectacle for us and both weak and strong anthropic principle
played with it. 


The issue of the molestation of a young and inebriated girl now has become a real spectacle for us. For this, of course, we have no Galileo to thank. Thanks be to the our (Visual)medias for making the whole issue a real spectacle. We are arguing till the cows are coming home as to whether it was really incumbent upon the medias to dish it out for public consumption in such graphic details. whereas the real culprit is still at large( somebody has told me that he played the role of a police inspector in a TV serial).
The issue at hand , I think, cannot be looked at in an isolated manner. It is inextricably bound up with the culture of media saturation wherein a  subject( often manufactured),right from sperm donor to a raped girl,must be ever-present to quench the thirst of voyeuristic audience.


Now you must be wondering what Galileo or Calvino  does have to do with this?


 What is the relation between the monkey, who with its prehensile tail ,before thousands of years jumped from one tree to another and the Cambridge scientist Hawking who proclaims that the moment we know why we are here, we will know the mind of God.

My dear friends the relation is those 'thousand of years'.