Hummingbird antiques

On the afternoon on 6 May 2010, as I enetered my office, looking over the North field through the window, I saw a hummingbird doing the U-shape dives characteristic of their display to woo a female of their species. It did it about half a dozen times. By then I had my camera out and started to take a video. Managed one ascent and one descent and the bird was gone. I continued the video panning the area for 15 seconds, and then every now and then looked outside the window hoping it will come back, but I did not notice it.

Only the first couple of seconds of the video contained the hummingbird. I give here two links. The first has first 4 seconds of the original video. At 25 frames per second. The second one is a slowed down version where I took the first 49 frames (=2 seconds) and inserted a delay of 0.2 seconds between successive frames to make the second movie. The stripping was done using:

mplayer -vo png hummingbird1.mpg

The recombining was done using:

convert *[0-4]?.png hummingbird2.mpg

I had expected the length to be 48*0.2+29*0.04=10.76 but the second one turns out to be almost 14. So someone is messing up somewhere. Anyway, remember that the actual duration for the second one is 2 seconds.

Its best to download the movies and watch them since over the internet the frames may not flow smoothly. In both, the hummingbird is seen on the right side, first going up and then coming down.

Hummingbird (original, truncated to 4 seconds) 0.5 MB

Hummingbird (with delay between frames - duration 2 seconds)2 MB

From the frequency of hummingbirds here I would have thought its Anna's, but consulting The Sibley Guide to Birds
and remembering how chracteristic U's were being described, could it be a Calliope's? Caltech's weekly data will not support that, nor will their typical habitat. Comments welcome.

BTW, Hummingbirds are amazing birds. They weigh only a few grams (below 5) and everyday eat in food (mostly fluids) several times their bodyweight and need to incessantly feed so as not to die of starvation. What they CAN do is slow down their metabolism (in torpor, a hibernation-like state) by amazingly reducing their heartrate to well below 100. The usual rate - during feeding - is around 1200. Some species are known to fly non-stop for over 500 miles.

Oh, and about the dives: research has shown that hummingbirds can reach 9G during the dives. Jet pilots would pass out at such accelerations. The birds can cover 400 times their bodylength in a second, twice bettering falcons and jets.

Morphogenetic fields, Memes, Lamarckian evolution etc.

Several years ago I had read an article on Morphogenetic fields, asking if it is fact, fiction (,fantasy) or fraud. According to the theory learning to ride a bike is easier for children these days because everyone who has learnt to ride one set up a field which everyone else has access to.

Lamarckian evolution has some traits of that but has a somewhat sounder footing.
See http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22061/ for an example. Conditions that someone grows in, their memory, can apparently be passed on. What that means though is that you have to actually see a few people learning to ride bikes to benefit from it.

Vaguely speaking, this is akin to memes, the mental counterparts of genes - ideas that can jump from one person to another. But in the case of memes, you latch on to an idea. It can be completely abstract. You make it yours and spread it.

Watched today a TED talk by V Ramachandran: Neurons that shaped civilization. Here he talks about mirror neurons which fire when you see some one do some action (remember yourself trying to stretch out to catch a ball when you want the fielder on the TV screen to catch it?). Apparently the firing of the neurons can allow you to learn some tasks (as well as experience feelings the other person may). So very likely it is these mirror neurons that help you learn riding a bike quicker than the first person to do so.

That, I feel, still does not explain phenomena like my dreaming that Nandu Narvekar, a Marathi detective, was eating a lot at a party and the food ended up in my stomach. I had an upset stomach the next day.

Terrorist attacks and leisure time

The very basis of human civilization was leisure ... spare time in which to indulge curiosity and experiment.
-Edmond Hamilton in "The Ephemerae" (1938)

The recent Mumbai attacks bring this back with full force in more than one way. If you look at the lower life forms, much of their time and energy is spent in surviving, not leaving them much time to experiment or to build higher structures. As Terry Pratchett said in "Equal Rites" (1987): Animals never spend time dividing experience into little bits and speculating about all the bits they've missed. The whole panoply of the universe has been neatly expressed to them as things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.

With us humans of course it is different. We farm, build walls, build hierarchical structures, and above all divide types of labors so that we can all get some time to try out different things, and generally relax. A clear move away from mere biological evolution.

The trouble is that we tend to take these things for granted and forget that it has been but a handful of centuries during which we have been trying to perfect this art. We are becoming civilized, but are far from being it. There are pockets of dissenters who would, without realizing that that is what it amounts to, pull us back towards barbarianism. We should of course resist that. What that means is that while this firefighting is done, we have to reduce our leisurely preoccupations, and give that time - call it an investment - to ensure that the structures we need in place are strong and secure and reliable. This includes a strong political will, an able law enforcement system, and, above all, law-abiding, non-stab-in-the-back'ing, non-shortsighted world citizens. In a welcome move many top business leaders in India have started saying that they need to take more interest in all the processes concerning the democracy.

If we value our time and wish our values to stay intact, we need to invest a fraction more of our time in examining and helping strengthen the basics.

Borg and Maharashtrians

The Borg: Strength is irrelevant. Resistance is futile. We wish to improve ourselves. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service ours.
-Michael Piller, "The Best of Both Worlds" Part I, episode of Star Trek: the
Next Generation (1990)

I have always been fascinated by the Borg. Though they are the enemies of starship, and of my heroes aboard the Earth spaceships, there is something about them that I find agreeable. It certainly isn't their ruthlessness. Very likely it is their will to assimilate knowledge in other species. And their mechanisms. The will to expand not just physically, but in those dimensions that
are not easily fathomable. The hive like structure was another fascinating aspect. We see it among bees and ants but not in what we term as higher beings. One possible reason is that as entities get more complex, passing on information back and forth, and sharing it with far strung quarters becomes time and
energy consuming. So distributedness is in fact a more sustainable model. (That is what makes a "controlling" God a difficult thing to digest - but that is for another day).

Back to the Borg. I find a curious thing happening in Maharashtra. People are turning away from assimilating other cultures, alien knowledge, alien influences in the name of retaining an authenticity of their own. At least the vocal ones are. They are forgetting that nothing can be authentic. Everything
is ephemeral and hence borrowed. You just have to dig deeper to realize that.

The backers of Marathi often forget that English rules mainly because it assimilated influences from other languages more easily (besides the fact that English speakers boldly went forth rather than drawing artificial boundaries around themselves). A language is only as flowery or terse as your understanding of it. To two lovers a wink on an eye means the universe. It doesn't even need words.

The starship crew generally defeated the Borg by springing a surprise. Something that the Borg did not expect. A uniqueness of humanity that the Borg had not assimilated from anywhere else. Maharashtrians need to do exactly that if they feel their culture is being threatened. Identify what is unique about Marathi or Maharashtrians. Not just items that others have under different names or variations, but truly unique.

On a related note, the civil system needs to be strengthened to see that justice is meted to everyone alike, that there is opportunity available for the fittest and the most industrious of people. Dissolve boundaries, make the world your own. To unite, does it have to be against something or someone?

Show of strength is futile. A show of will will go farther and be more effective.

on valuable contributions

Thou shalt leave valuable contributions for future generations.
- 5th commandment of the Ethical atheist fromhttp://www.ethicalatheist.com/docs/ten_commandments.html

I bumped in to this interesting website recently and the 5th commandment in particular caught my eye. What they mean is that your facts are based on facts discovered by others (just like a dwarf on a giant's shoulders sees more than the giant). You should make a note of those and leave a legacy behind so that generations that follow may be able to make use of them. That is all very well and very positive advice to provide and is indeed worth emulating.

However, the reason it caught my eye was the very quirky interpretation it launched somewhere deep within me that made me inwardly smile. Having seen so many claims from people at all levels about how all knowledge future and past is contained within religious sacred books (e.g. vedas, bible etc.) I was immediately convinced that what the author meant was that do not be oversmart and do all the work yourself, but leave some contributions for future generations. What point is there if you do all the fun stuff and leave the others to have no "aha" moments of their own?

All work and no play make Jack rather dull even if Jack be the master of all trades.

the truth

If you [are] a real seeker after truth, [you must,] at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things.
-Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650)

I recently met a few people who used to doubt the existence of God and then turned to Him. I have also met people who used to believe in God (or at least believe in the belief in God) and then started doubting it. It is often these issues around which debates on doubts revolve. Thankfully not many doubt the scientific methodology though they do doubt its being able to grasp all truths. Quoting Godel's logic to extend to non-formal systems, the reachability of truth is put beyond not just logic, but also thought.

The ancient Indian cosmology, as opposed to most other western religious cosmologies (for instance the ones that claim that the universe, or the earth is 6000 years old) was aware of the vastness of space and time and had become aware that to understand the hierarchy is a rather daunting task. They decided that until telescopes are invented we better turn to nuclear physics. As a result, they turned their attention inward and discovered the vastness inside. It should be possible to gaze at the truth by getting closer to zero than to infinity, they concluded.

The Greek philosophers (and then western in general) shot down the sometimes imaginative but often more holistic stuff of older philosophies replacing it with hard logic that is slow in moving outward (as also inward). But, combined with other branches of the sometimes stuttering, sometimes rocked by fraud, science, it does make definite progress throwing out everything that is not really needed. Scientists are often like horses tied to a cart, with their eyes seeing only what is in front of them. But if there are enough of them, one ends up covering all directions.

Descartes belonged to the rationalist school (in fact he was one of the founders) as against the empiricist school that included philosophers like Hobbes whose thoughts, to an extent, paralleled Indian philosophy. It is Descartes' Cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am) that tells us if we do really exist (or rather how do we know we do exist).

The confusion often is about the purpose of life. Why do we exist? Or even, why do we need to exist? THAT is what sends people scampering off in search for truth, or Truth, or even truths. This generally gets entangled with Right and Wrong (ethics, morality and all that) too. Along that path people doubt many things, including the reality of it all. Descartes would have been partially proud. Unfortunately, they do not heed him to the T. They forget that they should also doubt that there has to be a, some, definite truth. May be there isn't any.


If you are a real seeker, you must, at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, that a specific truth or purposefulness can be ascribed to the universe. The creativity that will then flow will really be your own.

hellish perspectives

Hell is full of musical amateurs
-George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

The Nobel winner Shaw was a critic and dramatist (not necessarily in that order) among other things. He was not a musician of note, but he did criticize, or favour, certain musicians in his column. His view of hell would be a good indication of what he treated as good music.

Yesterday I watched an episode of the original star trek where Kirk and co. go to a planet which is like paradise except that the humanoids are under complete control of a machine living peacefully. Spock even remarks how serene their lives are without the human envy, anger etc. But when threatened, they end up destroying the machine and causing the humanoids to start living like humans. Back on the ship, Spock semi-accuses the captain of giving them the knowledge of the apple and thus destroying Eden. The captain is quick to remark that before calling him Satan Spock should take a look at himself.

People do create hell and heaven in their image of bad and good. That is part of the drive of seeing things in black and white. Once you label things, life becomes easier to cope with. Squash complex dimensions by making projections on to familiar ones and keep treading there. Life is simpler and stays in a rut. Helps make one a kupmanduk.

On the other hand, if you attach new connotations to the old, you can get to higher dimensions. See the world in a whole new light, different part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Get a wing, so to speak.


Rather than defining hell and heaven, how about converting the Earth in to the best it can be?

Involved writing?

Recognize the fly, even love it if you want, but don't marry it.
-Natalie Goldberg, in Writing down the Bones

Natalie is describing how a writer, in a restaurant scene, can mention a fly, even the particular sandwich it walks over, name its species, but if she digresses too much in discussing the patterns of its wings and a mathematical discussion of its trajectory and such details unconnected to the scene where the reader is expecting the waiter to arrive or something else related to happen, how it can be a put-off.

While I believe that digressing is a fine art that is not very well explored yet - at least to my knowledge - let us leave it to another time.

The reason I thought of bringing in the fly in the ointment is its inappropriateness elsewhere. It is analogous to the mindless use of analogies. Suppose a great unnamed spiritual leader - or one treated as such - is describing the theory of unity of souls and how there is one big soul and all our souls merge with it once we die (or may be are one even when we are alive). A typical example he would take (I am giving up my political correctness by not saying she here. Howmuchever I would like to see the equality of sexes in the arena of priesthood, the males have unabashedly taken control over it, and the women should really do something abut it. But they should replace some rather than add to them) is to say that JUST LIKE sugar dissolves in to water and becomes invisible, unidentifiable, so also our soul becomes one with the ultimate one. This is an analogy. The sugar and water are tangible substances and have nothing whatsoever to do with the souls. Their physical properties in this case are based on the intermolecular spaces as well as the structure, composition of the molecules. But in one stroke that is equated with the soul which can otherwise not be decomposed in to any structure. When others seem to believe it, the guru starts believing it himself (in case he did not earlier), and all this has a very positive effect and it becomes a fact (just like ganesh idols drinking milk is a fact). Oh, the power of analogy. Poor Einstein, he once said: Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler. If only he could use analogies, everything would so much simpler.

Love the analogies, even marry them, so long as you know how to evaporate the water and reclaim the sugar.

PS: budding authors may find some good pointers in Natalie Goldberg's book.
Her website is: http://www.nataliegoldberg.com

on racial pride

He was a proud man, with that peculiar pride, not of achievement, not the pride of the well-born or of the rich, but the pride of an ancient race, of the representative of an ancient tradition and system of thought and morality which, actually, had nothing whatever to do with what he really was.
-J Krishnamurti, in The only revolution

Jiddu Krishnamurti was brought up as a prophet but he gave up the position thus created for him and became a freelance philosopher and a very good one. Much of his teachings are agreeable almost to their last part where he, magically, and unfortunately like most other spiritual leaders, connects it all to something supernatural making a mess of it.

He was very perceptive and understood the human condition and predicament very well. In his book The Only Revolution he takes up case studies of his visitors, their thoughts, intentions and questions. It is about one such person that the quote above appears. One can immediately envisage such a person. Though this happened in India, there are many civilizations around the globe which harbor such people. India is likely to have the most because our tradition IS ancient, and because we love harping on it, often at the expense of the current and future and irrespective of our worth in the scheme of things, exactly as stated here.

Rather than being content on what our ancestors did under the prevalent models and conditions, we need to reexamine all traditions and values and keep only those which are still relevant. Then we can afford to be proud of those. It will be even better if we add to the past developments. Many of us are already doing that. In the least we should recognize their contribution in helping make India modern - not necessarily in the sense of making it Western which many seem to loathe, but just making it so that the latest technology can be used by all and the minimum needs for most can be satisfied in a straightforward manner. A healthy skepticism combined with a faith in the bold ways of the current generation will go a long way in doing that.


Rather than just being proud of whence we came, we should try to make our ancestors proud of being our ancestors. That is unlikely to be achieved by blindly trying to imitate them.

on minding your openness

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
-Terry Pratchett

Discworld fame Terry Pratchett is one of my favorite authors. Not all his books are equally funny, but some are amazing with insights and humour thoroughly mixed to great effect. "Truth" is by far one of the best I like.

This tongue in cheek remark of his is much more subtle, and very true. It is not an argument against having an open mind but just showing the pitfalls. Nature gives us our genes, but it is nurture (i.e. people around us feeding our open or in-the-process-of-forming minds with their biases and prejudices and likings and theories and what not) that determines our nature. This includes your parents, siblings, teachers, friends, politicians, spiritual gurus, cartoon heroes, sports idols, filmstars and filmstaresses and who ever you care to listen to. That is the reason people who listen more than they speak end up learning more (junk) [people who lurk on sites like maayboli without ever writing, please take note]. That does not of course mean that it is better to be a chatterbox [people insisting on making their opinion on everything known, please take note]. No, definitely not. The middle ground of digesting the sermons is better. One should create a set of filters (a very personal one by selectively choosing only those biases which make personal sense). One should then verify all incoming garbage with existing checks and measures and only separate the useful stuff thereof. If everyone did that, many strifes about such subjects as religions, historical figures etc. will not arise and people will be free to stay in the present and do what is best for themselves as well as for those around them.

One simply cannot help being biased due to the essentially selective "nurturing" one gets, but one should try to ensure that one's biases are very unique.

On patriotism and tyranny

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny; flattery to treachery; standing armies to arbitrary government; and the glory of God to the temporal interest of the clergy.
-David Hume (1711-1776)

David Hume was a Scottish philosopher with naturalist and skeptical overtones. His famous works include: A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740), the Enquiries concerning Human Understanding (1748) and concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), as well as the posthumously published Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779).

His sentence quoted above is a precise summary of rise and fall of empires over eons, right from the time since humans continued the animal instinct of staking territorial claims, but with external weapons (and followers to boot).

The current non-issue of singing (or not) of Vande Mataram is an excellent example. A song which originated when almost no one alive today was born, suddenly becomes a deciding factor as to weather you love your country or not. People from all walks of life are debating both sides (which in itself is a sign of a healthy democracy). What is interesting is that both sides have people who can not recite the song.

As usual, all kinds of extraneous claims are brought in. Somewhere, someone said to the Indian Americans commenting on the issue: "will you dare to not sing the American anthem in the US"? A fact that not many may know is that in the US burning the US flag as part of a political protest is not a crime. Democracy here, at least so far as such basic issues are concerned, is still alive and doing well. The rhetoric in India, on the other hand, has increased manifold.

What could the causes be? The unsustained growth in public media resulting in unethical oneupmanship, the extreme competitiveness due to increasing population, the plethora of political parties ready to take advantage of this, and the religious underpinnings of a typical persons life concoct a deadly cocktail that sometimes explodes and sometimes gets puked on to everyone around.

If only people understood the following three principles:
(1) one's love for one's nation can simply not be decided by what (s)he says or does not say (or whether (s)he accepts or not what the majority does) [freedom of expression],
(2) the love for humanity should be at least as strong as the love for one's nation (and its people) [freedom of thought allowing one to not do something if it hurts humanity even if it is good for the country], and
(3) in the eyes of the one God all religions ought to be the same and so one can practise any religion [religious freedom].

Democracy will be dead when one has to give up any of the above three. The trouble of course is that everyone wants everyone else to start practicing this first and hence they themselves do not. Be it the temporal interest of the clergy or territorial interest of the standing army, it sows seeds of hatred in the mind of commoners, dividing them unnecessarily. What Blaise Pascal said is a perfect statement to summarize the situation.


Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarreled with him? (Quoted by Tolstoy in Bethink Yourselves)

we are the world, we are ...

... tat tvam asi (तत्वमसि ) ...
-Chandogya upanishad, VI.VIII ...

Chandogya Upanishad is also one of the oldest ones and perhaps the best known. It belongs to Saamveda, the veda with metre. It has many very interesting passages in which we learn
- of the knowledge that Kshatriyas had but Brahmins did not,
- of Satyakama's story about how its not your birth that decides if you are a Brahmin,
- of Aruni's statement about the origin of the universe from sat which in the same breath challenges another theory of origin,
- of the extremely ascetic teaching exactly opposite that of the much later Bhagwad-Gita about duty (but the same as what Buddha said just before the rise of Bhagwad-Gita). It is stated that to obtain Moksha one has to give up ordinary life and stay in the forest,
- as to why dead bodies are burnt (rather than, say, buried),
- what and why are the five libations (Agnihotra), etc.

But certainly the most famous part is where uddaalaka aaruNI teaches his son Shvetaketu how he - Shvetaketu - and Brahman are identical. This is where dvaita (a common aspect of most religions) becomes advaita.

VI.VIII: The source of food is water, of water the fire, of fire it is sat (सत or Being or Brahman). That which is the subtle essence, that is True, that is the Self. That art thou (tat tvam asi), Shvetaketu.

VI.IX: Just like bees mix nectar of different flowers and then all the nectar is one, so also all beings are one with the Being. tat tvam asi.

VI.X: Just like rivers become one with the ocean and lose identity, not knowing "I am this river", "I am that river" etc., so also beings can't tell themselves from Being. tat tvam asi.

...

This is Vedic monism at its peak. No external gods needed, not even the One, because you are it. Quiet a few analogies have been used, but so be it.

Just like we are one with the Brahman, we are also one with the problems that surround us. We are also the solutions. Not just charity, but everything begins with ourselves.

on realizing nonduality

... neti, neti ...
-Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, IV.V.15

Just as Yadnyawalkya is ready to renounce his home, one of his wives, Maitreyi asks him about the means of attaining immortality. Yadnyawalkya explains that anything we do, we do it indirectly for the Self. All the scriptures (vedas, itihasa, purana, vidya, upanishad, slokas, sutras, anuvyakhyanas, vyakhyanas) also spring forth from the Self. It is this Self that is indestructible. He goes on to describe the non-duality (अद्वैत ) and that it is that which one should strive for. Losing ones consciousness in it is what immortality is.

Maitreyi is still bewildered, so Yadnyawalkya further explains it thus: if there is duality then one sees another, smells another and so on. But when the duality is gone, what can one see (outside the Self) and with what? What can one smell, and with what? Through what can one know that due to which all is known? It is not this, not this (that) (neti, neti). Realizing such a Self is the only way to immortality.

Thus we see how the scriptures shifted from hero worship to polytheism to monotheism and there are already strains of monism with hints that gaining immortality means becoming one with this self.


Precursors of the current Hinduism have always been in flux, ever changing like a flowing river, trying to grasp at the meaning and purpose of life. To "what is Hinduism" too we can easily reply "neti, neti". May be that also holds for many current questions like "what is the solution to the crisis the politicians - that we ourselves elect - land us in" or "what is the solution to the perceived and real religious strifes going on all over the world". May be we need to take a deep breath, look inside ourselves and try to draw an all-encompassing picture like Yadnyawalkya had in mind, rather than quick short-sighted solutions.

on multitheism

Sakalya: Yadnyawalkya, how many gods are there?
Yadnyawalkya: According to the "Hymn of all the gods" there are 3306.
S: Yes, but how many gods are there?
Y: 33.
S: Yes, but how many gods are there?
Y: 6.
S: Yes, but how many gods are there?
Y: 3.
S: Yes, but how many gods are there?
Y: 2.
S: Yes, but how many gods are there?
Y: One and a half.
S: Yes, but how many gods are there?
Y: One.
(S: Which are those 3306 gods?)
-Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, III.IX.1

In the dialogue after this Yadnyawalkya explains that there are only 33 gods and the rest are their manifestations. He goes on to say what the 33 gods are:
8 vasus viz. elements in which the universe is placed (वसावः ),
11 rudras viz. 10 human organs and the mind, the loss of which leads the relatives to weep (रुद ),
12 adityas i.e. the 12 months that carry the whole universe (especially the sun) with them (आदादनाः ),
Indra, and Prajapati (the lord of created beings).

Then he explains that the 6 gods are fire, earth, air, sky, sun, heaven which encompass all the above gods and so on. Later in III.IX.9 he states that there is One god, Brahman.

The vedas started with natural forces as their objects of reverence. At some point gods proliferated. But these were still "natural" gods having to do with elements of nature or our own body (later many of these were personified). The conversation above shows the inclination towards monotheism starting from an internal hierarchy. Of course, once an idea is born, it never completely dies. Polytheism too continued in some form with some subsets and underwent further mutations with time.

Deep questions

Gargi: Yadnyawalkya, since all this world is woven on water, please tell me on what is the world of water woven.
Yadnyawalkya: On the world of wind.
G: And on what is the world of wind woven?
Y: On the world of atmosphere.
G: And on what is the world of atmosphere woven?
Y: On the world of sun.
G: And on what is the world of sun woven?
Y: On the world of moon.
G: And on what is the world of moon woven?
Y: On the world of stars.
G: And on what is the world of stars woven?
Y: On the world of gods.
G: And on what is the world of gods woven?
Y: On the world of Indra.
G: And on what is the world of Indra woven?
Y: On the world of Prajapati.
G: And on what is the world of Prajapati woven?
Y: On the world of Brahman.
G: And on what is the world of Brahman woven?
Y: Gargi, do not question too much about the divinity or else your head will fall off.

-Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, III.VI.1

Brihadaranyaka is one of the oldest Upanishads and certainly the most famous as well as the longest. It features various dialogues with the great philosopher Yadnyawalkya. Most of the women who find representation in the Vedic literature are represented in this Upanishad.

Brahman refers to the absolute (some translations use Hiranyagarbha i.e. the primordial material in place of Brahman and Virij in place of Prajapati in this dialogue). Clearly, questioning is allowed, even encouraged to an extent, but certain questions were taboo.

The Aryanakas and Upanishads tried to do away with the rituals and sacrifices stated in the vedic hymns (and often amplified by the Brahmanas). As a result Aryanakas and Upanishads tend to philosophize more, trying to get behind the reasons of whatever is talked about and done.

I find interesting similarities of this world-upon-world picture with Plato's association of the five Platonic solids with fire/earth/water/air/heaven (Timaeus ca. 350 BC). Incidentally the neolithic people of Scotland developed the five solids a thousand years before Plato (but I do not know of any associations they may have made).

The Hymn of Creation

None knoweth whence creation has arisen;
And whether he has or has not produced it:
He who surveys it in the highest heaven,
He only knows, or haply he may not know.

-Last part of naasadiiya sukta (Hymn of Creation) from Rigved's X.129
Translation quoted from Macdonnell's Vedic Mythology, 1897, as given in "A source book of Indian Philosophy"
Eds. Radhakrishnan and Moore. Full hymn with its translation can be found here

Rigved is arguably the world's oldest compilation of wisdom. Quoted above is the last part of the naasadiiya sukta from it. This is the best theory of Cosmology of any ancient civilisation that I have come across. It has many correct conceptions not unlike the current theories of simultaneous creation of space and time, the indifferentiability of truth and untruth (under certain conditions) etc. But what is more important is that it asks the right questions too. Gods themselves came after the creation. How could they then know about it? Rather than hastily attributing the origin to some super being, it has the right amount of doubt that perhaps even that high being may not know how the universe came into existence.

Such wonderful pieces are really a tribute to our ancestors catching their love for knowledge and learning. The Vedas and especially the Upanishads are full of such gems exhibiting the wonderful grasp of philosophy they had even then (and reflecting on the social circumstances as well).

on being a bomb

Never use one Hydrogen bomb when two are sufficient.
-Alister McLean in a novel

This is a fascinating statement that got tucked away in my mind as I was reading the book (I forget which). It is almost impossible to know what one could mean by such a thing unless you happen to be in a McLean novel where he could unfold the plot beautifully. I have not read any of his novels for several years now, but at one point I used to love them for essentially these kind of gems.

The sentence is a typical ploy Narad would have been proud of. Consider an entangled bundle of thread. If you ask one person to get it straightened out, that person eventually will. So will another person on her own. But ask them to do that together, and you have managed to keep the entanglement alive for life. So, to do proper damage TWO Hydrogen bombs are sufficient. Why use one?

Many of the problems we see around are quiet similar. Politicians can make use of various organizations as well as common people like they were H-bombs often pitting them against each other. People often do not realize that as some small immediate benefit is seen. In the long run all it does is keeping the entanglement alive.

That unfortunately applies to most situations since most issues are far from black and white and it is easy to get supporters for either side of an argument to keep it happy. One way to avoid it is to get to the base of the situation and try to evaluate it from grass roots - without any preconceived notions about society, culture etc., especially about traditions. Ask what it means to yourself, your family, city, country, planet and so on today, and one year, ten years, 1000 years from today. If only every person will think for herself, the planet will take care of itself.


Before taking sides on a topic that has a wide impact, make sure you are not being used as a weapon and get to the roots.

on harmonising extremes

Whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite is also true
-Joan Robinson (1903 - 1983)

An attractive statement, just because it is so bizarre. But this teacher of Manmohan Singh from Cambridge [1] had got it right in more than one ways. She spent three years in pre-Independence India with her husband, Austin, also an economist. She admired the Chinese leftist policies a lot and that clearly reflected in her teaching. Since reasoning is something all can do, and Manmohan Singh certainly did, that helped him get a nice balance between capitalistic and communist ideologies.

Nirad Chaudhuri wrote once that in India even exceptions run into millions. Thus what is true for the majority, for the exceptions the opposite is likely to be true. Also, in India, if you are one in a million, there are a thousand like you. Clearly it is important to respect the concerns and basic rights of
others, even if they are a minority.

Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru had said in his "Discovery of India":
There is a tendency on the parts of Indian writers, to which I have also partly succumbed, to give selected extracts and quotations from the writings of European scholars in praise of old Indian literature and philosophy. It would be easy, indeed much easier, to give other extracts giving an exactly opposite viewpoint.

Amartya Sen [2] likens James Mill's depiction of India (compiled without visiting India) as a grotesquely primitive culture, and that of Hindu nationalists' depiction as a dazzlingly glorious culture. Both tend to magnify differences and thus tend to separate our humane commonalities from the rest of the world.

The unfortunate part in all this is that there are many worthwhile achievements which get ignored because they do not fit the pattern that is being magnified. India's richness, nay, uniqueness, is essentially due to its occupying the entire spectrum of diversity in all walks of life. We need to not just preserve it, but encourage it. Only then can we evolve to a better state. Else we are likely to live the life of a kupamanduk sampling life in our narrow way.


While embracing Yin, be sure to embrace Yang too.


[1] Manmohan Singh
[2] Chapter 7 of "Argumentative Indian"

on living morals

'Thou shalt not' might reach the head, but it takes 'Once upon a time' to reach the heart.
-Philip Pullman, author of 'His Dark Materials'

The statement above is quoted in an excellent New Yorker article[1] on Philip Pullman, winner of various awards for his "His Dark Materials" trilogy. The statement appears in a slightly different form in the talk he gave while receiving the Carnegie medal[2]: Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.

Philip is a great patron of morals, but he believes not in preaching them, but observing them, soaking them in and practicing them. Hence he believes that you can make rules and make children (or even adults) learn them, but if you tell those through a story, they are better understood. Mind you, he is not talking about stories that come with some moral as a tail-piece. Those are the worst kind (J H Frere illustrates this wonderfully in his poem "A Fable"[3]) - the morals have to implicitly come through examples/stories seen/heard.

Indian literature is full of fables where often a stereotype is pushed down the ears and eyes of all children and it is expected that they lead their lives like that. Experimentation and breaking of norms is not encouraged. Duty and obedience are the keywords. Children are brought up on Aesop's fables and panchatantra and kauche ghar sheNaache. No latitude in learning is taught.

In Pullman's trilogy the church and Christianity are described as a powerful and convincing mistake. In an interview Pullman said: "every single religion that has a monotheistic god ends up by persecuting other people and killing them because they don't accept him." He likens monotheistic religions to power seeking groups like the secret police. I like the Hindu philosophy better than most world religions. But I am afraid for the world when in the name of religion even these polytheists start acting like every other religion and calling everyone else communists.

At a recent talk Stephen Hawking asked a question in serious earnestness. Brilliant as he is, I do not like to go to his talks as due to his disability, he can not cover much. Due to the same disability he can not hit back when he is not understood properly. Due to their preconceived notions, much of the Christians in the audience took his question as a joke and laughed. He has been working on the origin of the universe and that of space-time. For convenience, he labeled as God whatever could have existed before the existence of time and asked what was God doing before he created space and time? Creating Hell for people who ask such questions? Indeed, to many the question itself is blasphemous and has to be discouraged. Why? That is another question to be discouraged. And so on.

One way to break out of this is to tell stories, image scenarios, and not attach morals to them. Imagine and let imagine.

Do not let others define your morals for you. Look around and you will be able to define them for yourself.

[1] Far from Narnia
[2] Carnegie medal acceptance speech
[3] A Fable

BTW, movies are being made on all three of his books in the trilogy: The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. I look forward to them. Until then, do read the books. They are wonderful.

on the necessity of voicing oneself

Silence is a powerful enemy of social justice
-Amartya Sen, in Essay 2 (Inequality, Instability and Voice) of "The Argumentative Indian", Penguin, 2005

In this book Amartya Sen deals with the great tradition of argumentation in India which flourished most during the reigns of Ashoka and Akbar due to the royal patronage it got. The argumentative heritage is an important asset, but its effectiveness depends on making proper use of it, and allowing its proper use. He rightly claims that acceptance of equality in our culture leans more towards acceptance (स्विकृती ) rather than recognition (मान्यता ). Acceptance implies that it can change from situation to situation and person to person. Even that has been waning of late.

Just like bad politicians are elected by good citizens who do not vote, many social evils are perpetuated by the silence of those whose voice can affect matters. It is seen at all levels, starting from small NGOs to the national level where well-trained pilots fall pray to tightlippedness. My own experience with small social organizations has reinforced my belief in the necessity of being vocal. Often because not enough of the other like-minded people are equally vocal, I do not succeed in my plans. But that is something one should be prepared for, and still continue being vocal. Be as logical as possible, try to take in as many circumstances and possibilities as possible, but always give your opinion on things that matter to you.

Hitguj is an interesting mixed example. Thanks to the mods and admin, it provides a platform for argumentation. Many users do not care about various matters so long as they can while away their time. Many others make use of the argumentative tradition to its full, if not beyond. While the good part is that the tradition is alive here, we do see that many prefer to stay tight lipped rather than argue. That is exactly what tilts the balance towards those who are more vocal. It is important to keep on saying what you feel is important no matter how futile it may seem in the face of opposite numbers. Their numbers are made because of those of us who do not stand up to be counted.


Silence may be golden, but argumentativeness rules.