Extinction, Human or Ecological..

Winding mountain roads are not mere serpentine ribbons of asphalt but an open vista, a new perspective of the surrounding panorama. Driving or trekking along these roads, suddenly a majestic view appears; unheralded, a snow clad mountain peak makes its appearance purveying ineffable joy. The sight of a peak, either shrouded in mist or illuminated by the sun’s golden rays, is certain to leave the viewer uplifted. The sheer scale of a mountain range is awe-inspiring, a reminder of nature’s grandeur and overwhelming power. With every step, the mountain grows larger, its details becoming more defined – the rugged cliffs, verdant slopes and patches of snow. Each mountain ridge tells a tale of time, etched by weather’s brushstrokes, a testament to resilience and magnificence. The chiarascuro of light and shade unveils a breathtaking spectacle, evoking reverence. It is not only natural beauty; in the mountains one finds solace, deep connect, and a profound appreciation of the cosmos with its harmony and impeccable orderliness. The liberation of spirit accompanied by unalloyed happiness enveloping our senses, is a dimension of bliss overarching truth. Wherever pure joy pervades, truth trails closely by. That is why the divine is called sat-chit-anand, translating to truth-consciousness-bliss.

Garibaldi Heights, Vancouver BC..

It is a profundity that is equally experienced in the predawn hours. There is a quiet hum of dawn, when the world is still asleep. The early riser becomes a privileged witness to the birth of a new day, observing the subtle transformation of shadows into light. In this me-time, the mind finds its sanctuary for uninterrupted strands of thoughts, to contemplate the day ahead in perfect serenity and quietude. As the rest of the world gradually stirs, the early bird carries the residue of morning serenity into the unfolding day. There is a sense of accomplishment in having stolen a march on time, an unspoken victory over the pressing demands of a bustling world.

Thamarassery gradient, en route to Wayanad in Kerala..

My occasional forays into hilly terrains and regular me-time during pre-dawn hours are presently holding up as oasis of calm and quiet sequeing uncomfortably into the scorching tropical heat and aridity of summer days, presently stretching its way into mind’s terrains to wither away blooms of optimism and positivity. Climatic patterns are in disarray, manifesting as disastrous cloudbursts, cyclonic turbulences and bouts of torrential rain and extremes of summer heat in various parts of Asia. A deep gloom envelopes the mental horizon which hitherto remained bathed in luminosity of hope for better tomorrows, a kind of inner turmoil resonating from environmental degradation and conflicts around various regions worldwide.

The dharmic way of life enjoins the preservation and conservation of Nature, as beautifully delineated in the Vedic prayer chanted upon one’s waking up at the dawn of a new day: Samudra-vasane Devi / Parvata-Stana-Mannddale / Vishnu-Patni Namasthubhyam / Paadha-Sparsham Kshamasvame. It approximately translates to, “Oh Devi (Mother Earth), donning the Ocean as your garment, and Mountains figuring as your bosom, / Oh consort of Vishnu, salutations to you; seeking absolution for the tread of my feet”. The shloka is a morning salutation to Mother Earth, revered here as goddess Lakshmi, consort of Vishnu, beseeching forgiveness for treading on the terrain construed as her body. Stated differently, humans are exhorted to seek pardon of mother Earth for the privilege of using, and in the process often abusing, her exteriority in pursuit of their daily sustenance. The prayer serves as a solemn reminder of the heightened sensitivity and care to be exercised in the conduct of our workaday lives. The values of environmental conservation, conscious and sustainable living are deeply embedded in metaphors highlighting a reverential attitude to planet Earth, spiritualized as Lakshmi.

Consciousness, according to Arthur Young, “sleeps in the minerals, awakens in plants, walks in animals and thinks in man”. Consciousness progresses through desire, manifestation and love. It hibernates in the minerals while informing across aeons, and awakens in the plant, with even more informing across larger timescales to gain dynamism in the fauna and gather critical mass to finally attain sapience in the human. Environmental, social and governance, known shortly as ESG, is a burgeoning force delving deep into spiritual values, with its overarching framework extending to the management of self, family, and society. Its essence expands to E-empowerment through a positive mindset, S-strong relationships, and G-governance rooted in disciplined practices imbued with spiritual values. The resultant positivity emanating from individuals, salubriously impact family dynamics and, much like a potent virus, possesses the capability to synergistically influence the broader ecosystem.

Various spiritual traditions seamlessly align with the redefined values of ESG. The Upanishadic Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, meaning ‘the world is one family’, underscores the promotion of a shared destiny akin to familial bonds. Thus ESG is a spiritual compass guiding us towards transformation. We must actively work to make it happen: as in the words of Peter Drucker, “The best way to predict the future is to create it”, or the audacious hope in Martin Luther King Jr’s words, “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree”. And it is not a mirage. As King articulates it again, ‘Hope is not an illusion…the world has thus far survived on seemingly outlandish hopes’. When the threads of material wealth and spiritual essence intertwine, the concept of abundance unfurls its sails, aided by the winds of cosmic generosity. The air we breathe, sunlight that bathes the earth, the rains and endless expanse of water, the vastness of space and twinkling stars have all been bestowed freely upon us. Nature, the ultimate philanthropist, teaches us that abundance is a birthright, not an earned privilege. Denoting the richness of the soul, abundance is a journey with a spiritual compass. As we tread the path illuminated by ancient wisdom and modern insights, we discover that true abundance is not merely material possessions but the boundless love, compassion and generosity we share with the world. As Wayne Dyer would have it, ‘Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into’.

“The existential dilemma is this: because we are free, we are also inherently responsible”. A bounden responsibility clearly pointing at the imperative to reduce emissions and concurrently eliminate the accumulated carbon in the biosphere: CCUS, which stands for Carbon Capture Utilization (or sometimes this is termed ‘usage’) and Storage. The idea is that, instead of storing carbon, it could be re-used in industrial processes by converting it into, for example, plastics, concrete or biofuel. CCUS refers to a suite of technologies that enable the mitigation of carbon emissions from large point sources such as power plants, refineries, transportation modes and other industrial facilities, or the removal of existing carbon from the atmosphere.

Environmental degradation is only a side effect of what Kim Stanley Robinson calls Götterdämmerung capitalism, the destructive and dehumanizing influence of modern capitalism, only slightly different from feudalism, with an owner class consistently enriching off the workers and the environment. The UN’s climate negotiations always make a strong distinction between developed and developing nations, with repeated injunctions on developed nations to do more to mitigate climate problems than developing nations. Now, as the situation continues to deteriorate, many of the stakeholders see themselves fighting a losing battle, confronted as they are with the apathy of some of the major economies disinclined to meet their emission targets. The sincere group is arguing that all the young people on Earth, along with generations of humans in the centuries to come, who could never speak for themselves, added up to something like a hugely deprived and vulnerable fledgling, appearing inexorably over the horizon of time. These new citizens were young and weak, in many cases utterly helpless. And yet they had rights too, under the Paris Agreement’s equity clauses to which every nation is a signatory. Arguably, they had rights equivalent to those of a developing nation. And without quick and massive efforts of developed and economically strong countries, the developing nations’ developmental, nay existential, challenges continued looming larger.

In a recent study, published in the Lancet, entitled global fertility rates in 204 countries and territories, 1950-2021, with forecasts to 2100, projected India’s total fertility rate (TFR) – the average birth-rate per woman – to drop to 1.29 by 2050. India’s TFR dropped substantially from 6.2 in 1950 to an estimated 1.9 in 2021, plummeting below the universally accepted replacement rate of 2.1. India’s case, however, is not an exception as the global fertility rate dropped from 4.5 in 1950 to 2.2 in 2021. Against the background of reducing population arising mainly from economic growth leading to more women entering workforce, the global drive towards sustainability initiatives to save the environment will matter little, at least to humans, if there are not enough numbers of them left as inhabitants in a few generations.

Dwindling fertility rate may gradually diminish ecological degradation contributing to natural reversal of climate change and rejuvenation of environment in a schema of lesser humans resulting in re-wilding of increasingly vacant spaces, leading to eventual environmental restoration. With global population expected to plateau and steadily plummet in the not so distant future, the emerging scenario is likely to be of fewer humans than before coexisting with more wildlife in what now appears to be a return from a time of illness.

The possibility of a flat world, sans barriers and borders, was, according to Harvard University’s political theorist Michael J Sandel, first identified by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the Communist Manifesto, published in 1848. The figurative shrinking and flattening of the world of today may be at variance with what was envisaged by Marx, but it is still part of the same historical trend highlighted in his writings on capitalism – the inexorable march of technology and capital to remove all barriers, boundaries, frictions, and restraints on global commerce. “Marx was one of the first to glimpse the possibility of the world as a global market, uncomplicated by national boundaries”, Sandel explained. “Marx was capitalism’s fiercest critic, and yet he stood in awe of its power to break down barriers and create a worldwide system of production and consumption. In the Communist Manifesto, he described capitalism as a force that would dissolve all feudal, national, and religious identities, giving rise to a universal civilization governed by market imperatives. Marx considered it inevitable that capitalism would have its way – inevitable and also desirable. Because once capitalism destroyed all national and religious allegiances, Marx thought, it would lay bare the stark struggle between capital and labour. Forced to compete in a global race to the bottom, the workers of the world would unite in a global revolution to end oppression. Deprived of consoling distractions such as patriotism and religion, they would see their exploitation clearly and rise up to end it.”

But where do work and workers stand in today’s world? AI is taking over most of routine and repetitive work, compelling larger numbers of workers into re-skilling, unlearning and relearning, a continual process that is uplifting the workforce to higher realms of specialisation and sophistication. The possibility of workers around the world as single class uniting around a commonality of demands is becoming more and more remote and destined to shrink into irrelevance. Assuming greater relevance are the three natural Laws of economics, as expounded by Adam Smith, together with state support by way of policy intervention and fiscal stimulus as posited by John Maynard Keynes; together, they appear to be more in sync with peoples’ progress and developmental aspirations: the law of self-interest – people working for their own good; law of competition – competition forcing consistently better products at lower prices; and law of supply and demand – production of adequate goods at lowest price to meet the demand in a market economy. In other words, rational self-interest in a free market economy appropriately regulated by the state leads to economic wellbeing more than a crop of autocrats at the helm, planning and controlling state’s resources, and deciding the course of citizens’ lives. Liberal market theories explain how to make economic growth faster, yet they do not explain how to make growth inclusive. The models assume that growth at macro level, like a rising tide, lifts all boats, and wealth will percolate down as it accumulates. Such trickling down of wealth, however, does not happen automatically. Achieving economic growth with social inclusion remains a challenge before governments everywhere. Capital formation is kosher only if it places humanity and concern for environment at its centre. Capitalism must be like a tree striking deep roots that enable resources to trickle down to the bottommost level with its fruits of prosperity concurrently spreading out as branches of sustainable development.

Human extinction denotes the hypothetical end of human species, due to population decline vide anthropogenic destruction or extraneous factors such as asteroid impact, massive volcanism, annihilation triggered by nuclear or biological warfare and advanced AI. More than extraneous factors, mankind’s rapaciousness is likely to hasten their end given the way the world is trending. Ecological extinction results from loss of biodiversity that gradually erodes environmental resilience over a period of time. Every specie holds significance as a predator, competitor, symbiont, mutualist, or prey contributing to a wider interactive process that sustains biodiversity in turn leading to ecological preservation.

All things point to the imperative of humankind finding its sustenance whilst simultaneously safeguarding ecological concerns, or else it is destined for early extinction. Over eight billion people segregated into two hundred odd countries and territories separated by military borders, continue to jostle for survival, ascendancy and control, keeping step, regrettably, with the choreography of paternalistic nationalism and religious radicalism. Vitiated by extreme religiosity and sectarianism, nationalism stands distorted, assuming monstrous proportions. A nation is, essentially, an artificial concept and nation building ought to be devoid of sectarianism and accommodative of diversity; it must not be a procrustean process of forcing identity into narrow, constraining walls of religion, race or creed.

Deep emotional and spiritual ties link people to geographies in which they live, duly forged by cultures they have developed and the relationships that further strengthen those ties. The naïve assumption that people can simply transcend their identities, which for better or worse have acquired a certain reality over time, and embrace a hazy and globalized humanism is, even though ideal, unrealistic. The only caveat is that the love of what one considers one’s own must not devolve into chauvinism or notions of superiority, or a xenophobic obsession with keeping one’s environment “clean of outside influences”.

We struggle to define words such as “nationalism” or “patriotism” in positive ways because they have always been somewhat vague and open to multiple interpretations. Some progressives who attempt to construct a non-chauvinistic notion of love for the homeland have attempted to counterpose patriotism, as a preferable attribute to nationalism, which is defined, somewhat arbitrarily, as undesirable. Others in contrarian and equally arbitrary disposition, equate patriotism as inchoate chauvinism, and “nationalism” as an enlightened creed of non-exclusive, geographically-based solidarity. It would, therefore, be opportune to consider matriotism, a new term having a tonal softness and an all-embracing, inclusive feel, advocating an emotive link with the feminist movement and ancient tradition of seeing the Earth as feminine. Myriad cultures, Greek, Indian, Chinese and Sumerian, characterized the Earth as a feminine entity, often personalized as a goddess. The matriotic view also alludes to the earth as “mother”, thus the homeland of the matriot is the matria, i.e. motherland, rather than the masculine patria, or fatherland. Matriotism is specifically, semantically and semiotically identified as the love of the motherland and, in casting it as such, carries a conscious appeal to a set of archetypal feminine values that support an agenda of compassion, empathy and solidarity. The archetypal mother figure, hallowed in various cultures as Dhaatri, Gaia, Ishtar, Brid, Frigga, and Madonna, symbolizes compassion, unremitting care and acceptance.

It is a call to reconceptualize the modern state, particularly the post-war welfare state, in a way that respects and accommodates people’s love of place and culture, which celebrates connection to historical communities without conceding anything to racism, exclusivism, chauvinism or narrow communalism and wanton exploitation of the environment. The matriotic approach is open to adopting new members for inclusion into the family. It is neither bloodline nor race that unites people but their status as milk-siblings, suckled by the same parent whether native or adoptive. There is, however, clearly an implicit responsibility here; matriots must embrace a common set of values that unite them in their diversity. It is not a community where siblings angrily vie with each other for parental attention but one in which solidarity is the first of the matriotic values whereby members are encouraged to remember their fundamental family ties. Matriotism, in short, is a love of place based on relationships.

This may seem to be myth-creation, yet it is necessary to steer societies towards edifying values aimed at preserving the (wo)man and the environment. Mythology and story-telling are ways to help us connect to deeper enduring truths of the ongoing human condition. It is a call for greater democracy, on a notion of rights which is as inseparable from responsibilities as the natural give-and-take of any relationship. It is, in short, an invitation to reconsider and reconceive society as a kind of ecosystem, a system of relationships in which all are valuable, all have a role to play, and all are needed.

Random Musings…

The search for the divine is a spiritual odyssey. The concept of divinity has been explored and debated for eons, with different cultures and religions offering their own interpretations. The most rational interpretation within the limits of human comprehension is the posit that everyone and everything is a manifestation of divine energy – part of a dynamic ecosystem comprising a huge multitude of constituents, a veritable inter-connected, inter-dependent web of life, both within and without  -, predicated on the precept of Tat tvam asi.

The divine is one’s own highest, most illumined, most perfect part. We all have two parts, one is higher, the other lower. Most of the time, we tend to stay in the lower plane. By becoming fully aware of our higher being, our lower part is totally transformed and unified with the highest, at which time we are none other than divinity itself. The summit of the spiritual journey is the attainment of one’s own highest, most developed, most perfect and illumined state. 

Selflessness and love are integral to the most illumined state, leading to compassion and enduring happiness. Names of divinities and layers of mythology surrounding them are only signposts whereas the values, such as love, beauty, compassion and happiness, are the vital core. And if a person has attained it, s/he is already up there. By being integrated in our awareness, all our thoughts are shut out as we have become an impenetrable citadel. Not that we are closed; we are still open; but just the very energy of awareness becomes our citadel whereby the thoughts that are afloat will bypass us, enabling our free movement – transiting unaffected even through the most abominable situations in the most loathsome places – to a truly enlightened state. To reach that harmonious state, the sagely advice is to maintain equanimity, avoid negativities, and live mindfully in the present.

In the workaday world, only quantifiable things hold value. This leaves ethics, justice, beauty, loyalty, commitment, love and discipline to an arcane realm of sentiment and abstraction. Does the certitude of scientific knowledge and its specialized fragmentation steal from us the faculty of critical thinking and holistic comprehension, making us social conformists, eager to subjugate ourselves to extant power structures? Perhaps we need to revise our notion of rationality and enlightenment in the first place, and seek movement, instead of acceptance of stasis. 

Life is about finding enough delights in short spans of happiness to extenuate the longer spells of sorrows, frustrations and disappointments, carving out positive swathes to contribute one’s mite to society in a generally unhappy environment where, as Henry Kissinger observed in a different context, there is no “absolute satisfaction but only balanced dissatisfaction”. One way to do this is by choosing our dharma, our passion or ikigai – it could be drawing, painting, photography, mountaineering, reading, writing, music or dance, or whatever lifts the spirit, and adhering to it. This is what Bulgarian essayist Maria Popova calls ‘Parallel Reality’. To find joy and hope for oneself and spark it in others is nothing less than a countercultural act of courage and resistance. It is a matter of discovering a parallel reality, where joy and hope are equally valid ways of being, writes Popova. To underscore her point, she then quotes artist Rene Magritte as saying, “I live in a very unpleasant world because of its routine ugliness. That’s why my painting is a battle or rather a counter-offensive”. The compulsion, therefore, to live a parallel reality, to have a meaningful life by seeking out the kindly light, rather than merging with the encircling gloom.

Schopenhauer’s credo, in this context, that suffering is rooted in the cycle of desire of wanting more, acquiring it and obtaining temporary relief, only to start wanting more all over again leading to a life of suffering and striving is coincidentally reminiscent of Buddhism. He termed it as the ‘will to live’. If the word ‘suffering’ appears to be hyper for the stated human condition, it may be toned down to a lack of peace of mind. The suggested solutions to get out of the vicious cycle are not limited to asceticism and compassion. Art is strongly advocated as a means of finding solace. And even in art forms, it is music that is deemed to be the best option, as music is said to be integrally linked to spirituality; it leads to the right setting for spirituality, in turn inspiring soulful music. A singer’s voice extending to three-and-a-half octaves invoking the divine in raga Abeer Todi, elevates the listener to a spiritual bliss in the same manner as a devotional song set in raga Mohanam or Anandabhairavi, or, even Sufi music and Gregorian chants.

When we think about music, we often focus on the soaring highs of treble or the thumping depths of bass. But there is a whole meadow for our ears to run about in the spectrum of midrange frequencies. These middle tones, or midrange, shape the overall sound, delivering a rich, emotive journey; it is the heart of most compositions, where one listens – and not just hears – vocals, strings and woodwinds. Eric Clapton’s low drone riding the guitar takes on a new shimmer. The sublime notes of Bismillah Khan’s Shehnai travel through a soaring air tunnel. The human voice finds its home in this range, making us connect with, dare we say, an Ella’s or Amy’s soul.

It is in the midrange that instruments find their sweet spots. The resonance of a tanpura, the warmth of an acoustic guitar and the harmonious heft of a saxophone are amplified by these frequencies, and listening to them is like biting into a musical piece. It goes into the artist’s emotions, even intentions. From the ringing riff of a Les Paul to the raw emotion in Billie Holiday’s voice, midrange gets intimate. So, my suggestion for the next time is to try listening to a favourite musical piece or artist, putting ears together for the enchanting midrange, and begin to see the sounds, as in the monsoon raindrops falling on the ground. 

“When the leaves hang trembling, the wind is passing through” said the poet. The magical sound of wind gusting through trees is pleasurable to the senses. Listening to susurration of leaves, watching the branches bend and sway, one experiences life far more subtle, far more generous and far more wondrous than in the humdrum of routine. The wind is, of course, invisible. Neither is it audible. But as soon as the trees catch the wind, we have the wind before our eyes and ears, in a sound describable as psithurism, aptly from the ancient Greek psithuros, or whispering. It is an audible hush, a joy of seeing trees come alive, swaying like apsara dancers, alive to the breezy music. This can be a son et lumière for the onlooker-onhearer, a show put up for his relaxation. What is mesmerising is the rise and fall of the sound, the hiss and shush of psithurism, seeking our quietness and audience, our seeing and being.

Coconut trees relishing their image on glassy waters of Vembanad Lake...

In a similar vein, a monsoon downpour is joyous chaos. Stealing the words of Emily Dickinson from a different context, the rains ‘tell all the truth” of Nature “but tell it slant”. Puddle-watching no longer has to be just a child’s delight. For a child-like adult, it is creation in action to be witnessed from a balcony or through a window. A monsoon downpour pierces the heart of scorching heat and does it with a visual splendour: the trees are turned into a brighter hue of green, buildings turn wet-darker by a few shades, making for a painting. The sky goes into concealment in the torrential rain; but upon subsequent brightening, it reveals itself like a mademoiselle washed herself clean. The sight of raindrops dancing on leaves and rooftops is deeply entrancing, as is the sound of rain pattering on different surfaces to create a symphony of its own, mixing the hard and the soft, the wet and the once-dry. The parched Earth greedily intakes the water, exuding petrichor, the fragrance of its wetness. Monsoon rains feed the lakes and rivers to sustain diverse life forms. In the profoundly poetic perspective of Henry David Thoreau, “A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. The fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overarching brows.”

Vembanad Lake , in a sombre mood..

kids revelling in monsoon rain

But what about the summer preceding the monsoon? If there is one good thing about the searing Indian summer, it must be the mangoes. Each variety has a distinctive character, flavour and signature. When a person sinks his teeth into, and push the palate back on one, it erupts as if it had just been created in all its glory inside the very mouth that is tasting it. 

Succulent mangoes in an orchard.

There can be no winner in a Totapuri-vs-Salem-vs-Sindhoori-vs-Mallika-vs-Banganapalli-vs-Malgova-vs-Alfonso-vs-Neelam-vs-Hemapasand-vs-Kosseri tussle. The names have become fibrous abstractions melting away, giving way to sweet notes, punctuated with shades that have the full-blown, dramatic overdrive charm of a pulp novel magically mixed with subtle, deft tones that lurk in the back like teenage sentiments. End of summer, though welcome, it also is, alas, the end of the affair with fruity Aam. Savouring the last mango of the season – its fragrance of memory mixed with dream, its velvety texture and the perfect tingle of sweetness and tanginess – is an experience that is as palate-worthy and disconcerting, akin to seeing off one’s beloved taking off on a journey. The Aam is off for now, but the names – Alfonso, Amrapali, Ataulfo, Badam, Chausa, Payri, Kesar, Dasheri -, the bright yellow colours and taste linger.

Life is a feast. The question is, are we the one feasting – feasting our eyes and mind upon it, being nourished without diminishing it – or, are we the one being feasted on – being eaten up and eaten away, or eating ourselves from within like hungry ghosts, as we crave more and more and consume more and more and yet have less and less? Do we, when faced with some refreshing view or fact or perspective, approach it with curiosity, hoping to learn, even if it means letting go of some things held to be sacrosanct, or do we reject it as a threat to the world view we have built up, the position we have claimed for ourselves, the cage we have so carefully constructed around us?

Walking On The Pacific…

Beautiful British Columbia is how the vehicle population captions it on their registration number plates. And it cannot be any truer. As Canada’s western most geographical area situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diversity featuring rugged landscapes, rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, forests, lakes, barren stretches and grassy plains. British Columbia, or BC in its abbreviation, borders Alberta to the east, the territories of Yukon and Northwest to the north and the US states of Washington, Idaho and Montana to the south with the Pacific Ocean and Alaska to the west. BC has Victoria as its capital and Vancouver, as its largest city at the confluence of the Fraser River and Georgia Strait. Scenic views, climatic clemency, and friendly people create a delightful blend of attributes that makes Vancouver known around the world as both a popular tourist attraction and one of the best, though expensive, places to live. The city recently figured as one of North America’s most promising economic and investment locations of the future in addition to its consistent rating as one of the world’s most sustainable and beautiful cities. Vancouver is the greenest city in Canada according to an independent ongoing urban ecological footprint study; it has a near future goal to become the world’s greenest city.

Port of Vancouver with its container / cruise ships terminals.

Taking off on a direct flight from Delhi, I was in Vancouver in the middle of June this year for an idyll lasting many weeks of sightseeing, rides aboard yacht and ro-ro vessels, spending enjoyable spells at the beaches and walking several evening hours around its spick and span environs inclusive of our salubrious place of stay at Burnaby Heights, soaked in atmospheric air punctuated by floral fragrances. What is so special about Vancouver? One thing that immediately strikes the visitor is its scenic beauty, wide open spaces, well maintained green parks, beaches and lakes. Surrounded by majestic mountains and sparkling waters, alongside glorious rain forests providing an incredible contrast to the modern skyscrapers adorning the city’s skyline. Just over the Lion’s Gate Bridge in Stanley Park is West Vancouver and Lighthouse Park. Here are some of the exquisite views in the tri-city area, with picturesque locations looking back at the city of Vancouver over the water, coastal islands, birds, boats and even whales.

On board Pacific Yacht.

Squamish Nation.

The city takes its name from the Englishman, Captain George Vancouver, who explored the inner harbour of Burrard Inlet in 1792 and gave various places British names. The family name “Vancouver” itself originates from the Dutch “van Coevorden”, denoting somebody from the city of Coevorden, Netherlands. The explorer’s ancestors came to England “from Coevorden”, which is the origin of the name that eventually became “Vancouver”.

The beginnings of the modern city, which was originally named Gastown, grew around the site of a makeshift tavern on the western edges of Hastings Mill that was built on July 1, 1867, and owned by proprietor Captain John Deighton. His garrulous nature earned him the nickname Gassy Jack and the place logically became Gastown. Lively Gastown isknown for its whistling Steam Clock and mix of souvenir shops, indie art galleries and decor stores in Victorian buildings. A trendy food and drink scene includes chic cocktail lounges and restaurants serving everything from gourmet sandwiches to local seafood. The heritage value of its overall architecture saved Gastown from being overrun by redevelopers and commercial exploitation. The city was renamed “Vancouver” in 1886 and the Canadian Pacific transcontinental railway was extended to the city by 1887. The Port of Vancouver, a natural seaport on the Pacific Ocean, became a vital link in the trade between Asia-Pacific, East Asia, Europe and Eastern Canada.

Stanley Park is the city’s first, largest and most serene urban getaway, with its ever-blooming gardens, pristine coastal areas and roughly half a million cedar, fir and hemlock trees living up to its green-space reputation since the last century. The park offers a wide range of unforgettable experiences for all ages, including Canada’s largest aquarium.

In close proximity is the English Bay in the downtown area, also called First Beach, offering facilities for kayaking, scuba diving, beach mats, swimming rafts and beach volleyball. The Stanley Park Seawall, a sought after running and biking route, runs along the eastern side of the beach. An interesting structure at the English Bay is the Inukshuk, a striking rock monument that readily grabs one’s attention. Created by Alvin Kanak, it stands six metres tall and weighs approximately 31,500 kilograms. A plaque near the structure reads: “This ancient symbol of the Inuit culture is traditionally used as a landmark and navigational aid and also represents northern hospitality and friendship. Constructed of grey granite, this monument was commissioned by the Government of the Northwest Territories for its Pavilion at EXPO ’86 and later given to the city of Vancouver. The word “inukshuk” means “in the likeness of a human.” For generations, Inuit have been creating these impressive stone markers on the vast Arctic landscape. Inukshuks serve several functions, including guiding travellers, warning of danger, assisting hunters and marking places of reverence.

The beaches of Vancouver also bear tell-tale indication of its Spanish association, in its name Spanish Banks in commemoration of the 18th century meeting of the English, under George Vancouver, and the Spanish, under Galiano and Valdés. An entire stretch, located between Locarno Beach to the east and the grounds of the University of British Columbia to the west, forming a series of beaches carry the name Spanish Banks. These beaches are backed by grassy fields, which make them popular for walks, family gatherings, picnics, soccer and volleyball games. There is a neatly laid out bike path next to a walking path that runs parallel to the water. Spanish Banks is best known for its low tide flats. While swimming is possible at Spanish Bank East, skimboarding and kitesurfing are more popular activities at Spanish Bank West. We spent a balmy afternoon on the 25th June picnicking on the grassy stretches alongside Spanish Banks Beach. The park was yet not crowded. As the afternoon wore down, the crowd started building up and a group of families settled close to our tent. Soon they brought out a variety of drums, that looked like a percussion ensemble, and set it into a drum circle. A crowd gathered around the drum circle as they enthralled onlookers playing up a variety of rhythm patterns. Apparently the rhythm worked its way into the minds and bodies of the crowd. A girl promptly waltzes into the circle matching steps with the beat; as if on cue, other shaking hips and legs too join in to further enliven the scene. Encouraged by spectators, the performance continued but faded out from our view as we moved on with our agenda for rest of the evening.

Canada Place at night hours with its fabric shaped roof sails illuminated (as seen from Pacific Yacht).

Another iconic landmark is the Canada Place, a whitish building owned by the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, accommodating the Vancouver Convention Centre, the Pan Pacific Hotel, World Trade Centre, the Port Office together with the Cruise Ship Terminal, and the virtual flight ride called Fly Over Canada that affords the visitor a close-to-the-real experience of major attractions across Canada. Being the starting point for cruises to Alaska, the cruise terminal handles a heavy traffic of regularly scheduled pleasure-cruise vessels. It is also the world’s fourth largest cruise terminal. In keeping with its maritime character, the exterior of Canada Place is covered by fabric roofs resembling sails that are colorfully illuminated during night hours.

The highlight of our Canadian idyll was a three hour nocturnal sailing from the Bayshore Marina on board the Pacific Yacht on the 30^th June 2023. It was a real jamboree in the company of family and friends in a spirit of celebration aimed at cementing relationships and creating memories for a lifetime.

The ride on the Pacific Yacht neatly sequenced into a drive to the BC Ferries terminal on the 1^st July for on-boarding to ro-ro vessel Queen of Cowichan that took us on a two hour voyage to Vancouver Island. Located off the coast of southern BC, the Vancouver Island is surrounded by Pacific Ocean and separated from mainland BC by the Straits of Georgia, Johnstone and Queen Charlotte. Ferry and Air service connect it to Vancouver BC.

The Vancouver Island is renowned for its rugged coastline, giant trees, and abundant wildlife. The stunning natural environs and mild climate make for spectacular hiking, biking, camping and paddling activities. Quite simply, it is a nature and outdoor lover’s paradise sprawled across 460 kilometers to qualify as the largest island on the pacific coast of North America and one of the world’s largest islands. The area boasts of three national parks and over hundred provincial and regional parks, all well worth exploring. The island is home to Victoria, the capital of BC and a veritable recreation of cherished features of British urban life. Our resort destination here was Tigh-Na-Mara, located in picturesque Parksville. Nestled on the eastern shores of Vancouver Island, not too far from Nanaimo and Victoria, Parksville provides fascinating views of the Strait of Georgia and the surrounding mountain ranges and some of the Island’s best beaches stretching across several kilometers of shoreline affording ample space for all – from beachcombers and kite flyers to ornithologists, sandcastle enthusiasts and more.

As planet Earth’s deepest and largest of ocean basins covering approximately sixty-three million square miles and containing more than half of the Earth’s free water, the Pacific has always held a limitless appeal to my pantheistic sensibilities. I did not want to fritter away time plonking myself into the shallows and getting confined to a particular waterfront, keener as I was to explore as much of vast expanse of the Pacific spread out before me in the form of one of its straits.

Sunrise over Pacific waters (view from our resort cottage).
The watery expanse of late afternoon and all through the previous night hours started receding in the morning with the tide ebbing away, exposing several kilometers of seabed. The incredible rhythm of the ocean’s changing tides is so powerful that it can cause entire landforms to submerge and reemerge with each flow and ebb. I become witness to what appears as land for several morning hours being magically transformed into an expanse of neritic water by late afternoon. While witnessing the slow transformation, I promptly utilize the tidal window for exploring as much of the ocean floor as possible. Keeping an alert eye on the sheet of water that seemed to be hugging the far horizon, I keep walking at a slow pace, concurrently observing the seabed comprising varieties of sand, clay, silt and gravel.

Morning view of Beachfront at ebb tide.

Watching the sky at dawn is a sensory feast. Not only does it mark the night segueing into the day, but it also denotes the beginning of another pearl-string of moments into our lives. Dawn also has the moon, stars and other celestial objects gradually fading away or being subsumed by the emerging sun’s brilliance, serving the reminder that many things present at all times can be perceived only some of the time. Celestially, dawn is furling of the night and, at the same time, unfurling of the day. For a tellurian like me, a morning walk on the dampness of the seabed presented a similar spectacle, facilitated by sea waters ebbing away into the great distance, providing, in the process, a rare sanctuary where one could cozy up on solitude as a coveted luxury, lolling around in the open, liberated space in which to truly relish the pleasures of being alone, feeling the wet and muddy sand crunching gently under the bare feet, occasionally stamping on sharp edges of a shell or coral and retracting, and then wading through a soothing wave in the shallow patches, all alone in spirit, untethered from the quotidian world’s incessant demands and distractions, as if couched within the comforts and vastness of Nature’s womb. It offered a tranquil setting for introspection and self-discovery, shorn off the layers of social niceties one is constrained to practice in the living and working spaces of domestic and vocational lives. Time seemed to attain an elasticity, expanding and contracting at will; minutes stretched into hours as I relaxed, lending a listening ear to the water’s pampering burbles and spume. It was deeply experiential where, I, for one, felt like a child toddling on the ocean floor of a strait of the mighty Pacific, feeling his way amidst the corals, tiny crabs and other marine organisms.

My surreal state at this juncture is in a trice fazed by a feeling of apprehension: what if a giant wave suddenly starts advancing at a menacing pace? The ocean floor can be enticing with the waters beckoning from several miles afar; it can be beautiful beyond words and description; it can also be misleading and hazardous in case the tide unexpectedly turns back faster that I can head to the safety of the shores. It is just not my realm. The realization dawns that we are but visitors in a domain we are ill-suited to explore, but instinctively drawn to admire.

My spirit wants to linger; but physical limitations keep tugging me back. I head to the security of the shoreline, to spend the remainder of my resort time with family, new relatives and friends, and set myself up for the return voyage the next day on board ro-ro vessel Queen of Oak Bay to mainland Vancouver BC.

May Day, Distress or Rejoicing?

Nothing works without the worker. Without labour, nothing gets off the ground. Genius begins great works; labour alone finishes them. As yet another day Labour Day or May Day rolls by, there is no exultation anymore as the air is laden with angst for the future of the worker.

Labour is an active factor in manufacturing and services as it is the vital input that delivers productivity. Land and Capital are passive factors that cannot kick off production by themselves. Without the active ingredient of labour, the other two are rendered infructuous. Work is universal but is the worker indispensable to deliver it?

It is hundred years to the day when India’s first Labour Day was celebrated in Madras on 1st May 1923. It is also 133 years since the idea of a day dedicated to the working class took root in the closing years of the 19thC. Its origins can be traced to 1884, when the American Federation of Organised Trades and Labour Union’s call for an eight-hour workday led to a general strike. 

The unprecedented show of labour militancy, and the subsequent Haymarket Riot in Chicago on 4th May, 1886, led to the implementation of the eight-hour workday regulation in the US and, subsequently, in many countries. It marked the first victory in the long struggle for workers’ rights. This was followed in 1889 by a resolution of the Marxist International Socialist Congress demanding that the eight-hour workday be formalised in law and calling on nations to dedicate 1st May every year as Workers’ Day of International Unity and Solidarity.

With 1st May thus gaining synonymity with Labour Day or May Day, it would have appeared as an ominous portent to a prescient observer of the labour movement given the fact that May Day is also a widely recognised international distress call coined by Frederick Stanley Mockford in the early 20thC. The trade union movement everywhere flourished for long years going from strength to strength based on the collective bargaining power and indispensability of labour. It reflected in the improved conditions of the working class with regular work hours, assured rest periods and mostly decent wages. 

Good times are not forever. The heydays of the trade union movement are now fading out, not only in India but also worldwide. The clout of the unions, once formidable, has steadily waned since the 1990s and is now in shambles. It looks as if developments in all fields of life, rapid advances in technology, rise of the gig economy, decline in the share of manufacturing in GDP, and increasing privatisation of public sector enterprises have, individually and severally, lowered the scope for unionisation. The working class, to use cricketing terms, is on the back foot against the combined onslaught of lethal bouncers and vicious googlies, meted out by a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) environment that also compels entrepreneurs to avoid traditional and outdated approaches to day-to-day working and management. Business enterprises facing market headwinds are often constrained to downsize or even shut down resulting in manpower lay offs. Globally, the share of labour in total income generation is declining too. 

The net effect is rising inequalities. Martin Wolf depicts the picture in the US in his book ‘The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism’: “Over the period of 1993-2015, the cumulative real growth in incomes of the top 1% was 95%, compared with 14% for the remaining 99%”. And the US is not an outlier. The economic disparity is further widened by the fact that in most countries tax earnings from capital are at a lower rate relative to tax earnings from labour. Corporate tax in India has seen significant reductions whereby peak corporate tax rate is much lower than peak income tax rate.

Ergo, is it May Day in a distress sense for labour as a class, specially in India where workforce is mostly employed in the unorganised sector? Or is there a silver lining of possibility for governments to restore the balance between labour and capital? It must desirably start with taxes, by introducing more equitability whereby incomes are taxed at the same rate regardless of whether they are earned by the sweat of one’s brow, or from putting capital to work. All exemptions and concessions in tax assessments may also be done away with. Concurrently, there is a need to expand the social security network, be it unemployment insurance or old age pension, to cover all workers in the organised and unorganised sectors. Also, the investment limit on Public Provident Fund (PPF) may be increased substantially to enable those with the resources to save for contingencies and sunset years. Both governments and the private sector have an obligation to re-skill and up-skill workers rendered redundant or laid off and ensure their gainful redeployment. That said, it is also up to every employee to be continually on a learning and skilling curve, to seek out every opportunity for refinement and renewal, keenly mindful of the fact that obsolescence is as much a fact of life for humans as for computer systems. The future is unclear and uncertain; the present is resting on a foundation of short durability and solutions can no longer be reliably drawn based on templates of past experience.

The emerging economic order, with its demise of trade unions, shrinking share of labour and fate of employment generation increasingly threatened by emerging machine super-intelligence, points to turbulences ahead. Violent conflicts between labour and capital reminiscent of the 1886 Hay-market Riot are not likely in the 21stC. But destructive skirmishes between workers and robots are not all that far-fetched. Hence the idea of a just society is something that cannot be forsaken. The onus is on governments and businesses to address society’s growing labour pains. The dedication, work ethic and contribution of labour ought to be recognised and valued as they are foundational to our everyday lives. May labour continue to enjoy safe and healthy working conditions, with added access to education and training to enhance skills and advance careers in an environment free from discrimination. May businesses facilitate workers’ participation in the decision-making processes by according them dignity and respect. May the clarion call of yesteryears not dirge into a doleful reminder for workers worldwide that they have everything to lose except their pains…!

Dunkelflaute…

The Germans have a word for the time of sundown when the wind is still: Dunkelflaute, or dark lull. The enemy of wind and solar power, it is the latest obstacle in Europe’s path as it tries to deal with a winter energy crisis. The “dark doldrums”, as the word is sometimes translated, are about to arrive in earnest.

In the renewable energy sector, a dunkelflaute, literally ‘dark doldrums’ or ‘dark wind lull’ is a period of time in which little or no energy can be generated with wind and solar power, because there is neither wind nor sunlight. In meteorology, this is known as anticyclonic gloom.

It looks as if the world is immersed in a state of dunkelflaute. 

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” opined philosopher George Santayana. Put differently, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. According to Santayana’s philosophy, history repeats. The thought that history repeats aspires to common sense and is hard to disagree with. In the history of the United States and Europe, wars have ended with confiscatory terms of government surrender inevitably breeding more wars. Revolutions, like those in France and Russia, that gave an individual absolute power—Napoleon and Stalin, respectively—inevitably ended up as brutal dictatorships of failed empires. Even individuals are subject to this advice. Couples who do not learn from their fights break up. People refusing to learn from their mistakes do not mature.

In the 21st century, specific events in Syria offer repeatedly proven lessons about civil wars, like the Vietnam war, that when great powers, goaded also by the arms lobby, intervene to fight proxy wars, conflict becomes protracted. Incidentally, when Abraham Lincoln governed during the American Civil War, he recognized that it was essential to keep out foreign powers like Britain and France.

In a contrarian manner, worldly events also highlight the fact that those who do learn from history as well as those who do not learn from it are equally doomed to repeat it. If it is really true that those who do learn from history are doomed to repeat it, then the saying does not seem to add to anything at all.

So is that the case?

After repeated 19th century wars between Germany and France, France still demanded that confiscatory terms of surrender be imposed on Germany after the 20th century’s First World War. Then the Second World War happened .

After failing to invest in education and infrastructure in Afghanistan since arming the Mujahedin against the invading Soviet Union in the 80’s, America neglected to make the same investments after later Middle Eastern military campaigns. Then rose The Taliban and Al Qaeda.

After Stalin’s brutal regime of secret police and leader worship, Cuban revolutionaries allowed their charismatic revolutionary leader to seize absolute power. A Castro still holds a seat of dictatorial power in Cuba.

It may be common sense that all of the good things and all of the bad things about people, and the way that we organize ourselves, are simply going to breed patterns as we continue to make history as a species. It may be that we are simply given to a certain irrationality which leads us down paths, some disastrous, again and again.

Santayana also said of human nature, “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” He famously disagreed with his contemporaries like William James. After leaving the United States, he became generally critical of American society, though such criticism was separate from his system of philosophy.

In a similar vein, humorist and writer Mark Twain quipped: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” History cannot literally repeat itself. What is past is past. However, the present can conditionally fall into the same rat hole and the current cast of idiocies can make the same mistakes. In other words, ryhming a well known verse, in a figurative sense. 

Is there an antidote to mankind’s urge for territorial expansionism? Every newly born infant can be considered a terranaut, automatically receiving such a commission as a birthright; accordingly, infantile exploits in earthly space, by way of exploring terrestrial space through conquering spatial mysteries of climbing stairs, running uphill, pedalling a tricycle et al, will rival those of astronauts in comparative complexity. What was earlier a marine organism or aquanaut, transforms into a terranaut, a lung-breathing land dweller. Perusing Bob Thurman’s translation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, one is struck by the term describing Tibetan spiritual explorers: the psychonauts. As opposed to astronauts who venture out of planet Earth to explore the physical universe to know what lies beyond, psychonauts were “inner world adventurers of the highest daring, who personally voyaged to the furthest frontiers of that universe which their society deemed vital to explore – the inner frontiers of consciousness itself, in all its transformations in life and beyond death”.

‘Psychonautics’, derived from Greek root words meaning ‘navigating the mind’, is a beautiful way to explain the need to understand the universe within as much or even more than the need we feel to explore and understand the world out there. And navigation requires guidance, compass, coordinates and a vehicle that will take one there. From aquanaut to terranaut, and therefrom to astronaut and psychonaut, humans are required to evolve to higher states of being instead of remaining limited to their ambience. 

Spiritual masters talk about the light within that enables our seeing the path clearly. When all external lights like those of the sun, moon and fire are extinguished, the internal light of the Atman, the light of the spirit, will burn bright “and by which we must live, work and walk to return to our eternal home”. It is echoed in the Sanskrit verse: “Asato ma sadgamaya; tamaso ma jyotir gamaya; mrityor ma amritam gamaya” – Through untruth lead me to the Truth; through darkness lead me into Light; through death lead me into the Deathless State. 

Death and the deathless state, these may sound oxymoronic but really, they are not. For although one is declared dead, the Atman, being immortal, lives on. 

In the beginning of this year, at the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual meeting at Davos in Switzerland, global leaders voiced concern on the turbulences across various nation states. Fragmentation of the world is causing harm to human race and, therefore, the Forum called for greater cooperation among nation states as problems faced by countries are often not being created within their national boundaries. 

The call at the WEF meeting to end fragmentation resonates with Tagore’s philosophy of internationalism, to arrest fragmentation of humanity into pieces of nation states, sited within geographical boundaries for the pursuit of nationalism, which implies militarily protected land borders, and is intrinsically violent. 

Tagore’s idea of internationalism is not about global governance, through dismantling of all nation states and mandating their surrender of national sovereignty to a global authority. Tagore’s internationalism centres around cooperation, understanding, mutual respect and pursuit of unity of mankind. Almost hundred years ago, he gave a lecture in Japan on the disastrous side of nationalism and posited the credo of internationalism that encompassed global interconnectedness in place of fragmentation, unity in place of isolation and xenophobia. In other words, nationalism without territorial bindings and suffused with universal humanism; nationalism expansively enriched by culture, consciousness and welfare of the other. 

Juxtapose these thoughts alongside the now one-year long Russia-Ukraine war that erupted on February 24, 2022, showcasing Russia’s domestic rot and EU’s geopolitical delusion. 

The world economy used to be a remarkably efficient network of ever-moving goods, services, technology and finance. Recent ruptures in that network revealed to governments how dependent they were on supply chains consisting of several hundred components, and financial service providers scattered over dozens of countries. India, which preened itself about being the world’s vaccine-maker, realised it in the midst of the pandemic. The authorities were shocked to be told by their pharmaceutical industry that it needed over 350 different bits and parts from 40 countries to roll out all the ‘Made in India’ jabs. 

Over the past few years, disruptions have become as increasingly frequent as to leave the network frayed and torn. The obvious disruptions are the virus, the war and Taiwan. The less obvious ones are Washington’s lack of enthusiasm for the multilateral trading system, the legitimacy deficit of the ruling elites of half of the developed world, and the rise of a rules-breaking China. Then there is technology, like green energy and digital currencies, that would have anyway happened in the normal course but, thrown into this mix, is proving more unsettling than expected. All these counter-currents feed on each other. The loss of working class support is impacting governments everywhere in the sense that they are unable to implement painful reforms needed to make economies more competitive. Instead, governments print money to maintain growth, until it begins to create asset bubbles, and, now, inflation. 

The real economic story of the years ahead will be about where the world’s corporations are investing and doing business with, and which new countries are being reflected in their balance sheets. 

East, west, or even the much hyped middle kingdom, none of these regions is able to ensure global equilibrium. The Russia-Ukraine war, through its images of blood and gore, offers the most striking evidence that the network of yore is woefully inadequate to deliver stability even in Europe. It woke up big business. And in turn it is a wake-up moment for countries of the global middle (whose population numbers stood at 4.4 billion in 2003, expected to balloon to over 5.25 billion by 2030) to make their pitch. 

Daily writing prompt

Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?

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Blue Vault And Grains Of Sand…

‘To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour.’ A Blakean adjuration to see the grand in the very small, by mulling over metaphysical concepts through observation of their gross pattern at a micro level, to envision the harmony and correspondence between the everyday things of Life and the ethereal essence of Being. The child-like delight of looking at simple things with true, unintentional ‘awareness’ enables our brilliant connection to the divine, what T S Eliot called ‘the Unattended moment’, when, entirely absorbed and without ‘thinking’, we become who we truly are. Every terrain is different; and so is every single grain of sand. No two grains of sand are alike and their movements are powered by unseen energies. Hidden from everyday perception, a magical world pulses within these grains. A speck’s-eye view would reveal that there are no small parts; only actors of nano dimensions contributing to the big picture.

Sand grains – microscopic view..

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry gave it another expression when he wrote, “The tree is more than first a seed, then a stem, then a living trunk, and then dead timber. The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky.” The beautifully bluish firmament; blue that is vast and infinite. Every thing immense, expansive and deep, expresses itself in blue. Not just the sky, the ocean is blue, every human is a blue pearl in the sense that he or she cannot be measured. Though one is in the body, no-body can measure one’s being. One’s being is not just blue, it is a radiant infinity that is deep and immense. Blue pearl is that which is shining, that which is infinite; yet, it seems to be finite. Planet earth has a cerulean tone that probably prompted Carl Sagan to define it as ‘a pale blue dot’ embellishment in the cosmic fabric. 

When we turn inwards, we know that all is one. We are like shells afloat, not in empty space, but in an ocean of life. The water in each shell is not separate from the waters of the ocean. One comes out of the shell, in deep meditation, to experience the essence of life out of the body, expanding everywhere in a me-here, me-there and me-in-everyone feeling. Designed as angels of energy in mortal coils, we are currents of life dazzling through a material bulb of flesh. Yet, through concentration on frailties and fragility of the body bulb, we have forgotten how to feel the immortal, indestructible properties of the eternal life energy within the mutable flesh. 

The Vedic ethos perceives all beings, animate and inanimate, as composed of the same five basic elements – the panch tatva of earth, water, fire, air and space. Harmony among these elements – within us and between us – is essential for our physical, social and environmental well-being, signifying the fundamental oneness of all. “Energy functioning in a pattern becomes matter. That is all life is… Matter and energy are interrelated.”– (Jiddu Krishnamurti).

What is life? Not clearly explainable and not possible to pinpoint when it had emerged from nature; life seems to have actuated itself as a highly developed structure that could not simply occur in the inanimate world. Between life and inanimate nature, however, is a yawning abyss, which research seeks in vain to bridge. The endeavour is on to close that abyss with theories, both scientific and metaphysical; yet the gulf remains. Archebiosis states the slow formation of organic life from inorganic matter, by inventing transitional and intermediate stages, assuming the existence of organisms lower than any known form, but which themselves were the result of even more primal attempts by nature to create life – attempts that no one would ever see, that were submicroscopic in size, and whose hypothesized formation presupposed a previous synthesis of protein.

Three physicists were recently awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize for their work in Quantum Entanglement. Their findings are reported to revolutionize the field of Quantum Computing.
Much prior to that, Niels Bohr, father and son duo of JJ and George Thomson won a Nobel prize in Quantum Physics for their discovery of subatomic structures, which implied that even an invisible electron exists both as a particle and a wave. Experiments demonstrate that at a gross level, all objects exist as particles, whereas at a subtle level, they exist as waves or energy.
Human beings too, at the visible level are constituted of body, mind and intellect, whereas in the transcendental state, at the threshold of enlightenment, we exist as an energy, when various chakras in our body are activated and it is one with the supreme Self or Universal Consciousness. Thus, at the subatomic level, there is a lot in common between Quantum of Things and understanding of supreme energy or universal consciousness.

Most of human actions are driven by rationale with an underlying purpose and personal utility. But an intuition, a discovery, new knowledge goes beyond the rational mind. Truth is beyond the rational mind. The rational mind is like a railroad track that is fixed in grooves. An aircraft has no tracks, it can fly anywhere. A balloon can float anywhere. If one is stuck only in rational acts, life becomes a burden. Purposeless and selfless action is freedom, it is like a dance. Reality transcends logic and the rational mind. Gaining access to creativity and the infinite requires transcending the rational mind.

Patience, originating from the Latin word for ‘suffer’, tend to suggest passivity. The prevalent work routine creates febrile atmosphere in which patient deliberation can be seen as weakness. Gandhi had said, ‘To lose patience is to lose the battle’. Patience is a great companion to contentment and achievement. Nature makes a promise but commitment and patience make it happen. Success is built with blocks of pure patience. The Gītā defines patience as control of mind, or self-control. Krishna advises, ‘Little by little, through patience and repeated effort, the mind is to be stilled in the self. The bee collects drops of honey patiently from each flower and stores it in the honeycomb. Patience is simple waiting. Sleep appears useless but it is essential. It is a state of silence in which music of life comes forth.

We have all these wisdom before us. Yet, contrarian disposition, rather than moral conviction, appears to be gaining ground and stoking conflict. What drives contrarians to go against the grain so resolutely? Some are skeptics scalded by conventional norms; others use defiance to capture attention, and many are looking to establish their own identities as distinct from a larger group. It is reported that European governments are asking their citizenry to brace for rolling blackouts and interruptions in supplies of gas used for heating homes. As if on cue, Germans are said to be stocking up on candles. A grim scenario in the offing, does it looks like? Not really; as it may well be pointing to the beginning of the end of Russia-Ukraine war. It is part of Russian lore that the invasions of Sweden (Battle of Grodno) in 1708, Napoleon in 1812 (The Patriotic War) and Hitler in 1941 (Operation Barbarossa) were foiled, in part, by the severity of Russia’s winter with the frost killing soldiers, disrupting supply lines and depleting morale much before the invader’s pyrrhic victory or final rout by Russian army. Russian gas still flows to Europe through multiple pipelines – the Yamal, reaching Germany through Belarus and Poland; the Brotherhood and Soyouz pipelines running through Ukraine and merging into a single line entering Slovakia, where it forks, one branch going to Germany via the Czech Republic and the other to Italy via Austria; and the TurkStream and the BlueStream, both underwater pipelines, through the Black Sea that deliver gas in Turkey. Only Nord Stream1 to Germany is presently out of commission. As winter intensifies further and energy privation and fiscal challenges heap misery across nation states, the pressure will hopefully mount to bring the war to an early end. So let there be glowing kindness to effect a thaw in this winter. And once that happens, we see and hear better. As Thorin in ‘The Hobbit’ utters in a vein seeking forgiveness, “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world”. Profound words conveying the very essence of spirituality. As the songs goes, “Where have all the flowers gone… Oh when will they ever learn?” painting a dismal scenario of flowers picked by young girls, who in turn are taken by husbands-in-uniform going to war only to be cruelly snuffed out of life and consigned to graveyards, and the still young girls eventually reverting to pick flowers to decorate their spouses’ graves.  

Is there anything like total or unlimited happiness? Everyone wants only happiness and no suffering. But happiness comes always punctuated by longer spells of suffering. Hence the art of happiness is also the art of suffering as well. There is no realm where there is only happiness and no suffering. Knowing how to suffer well helps realize true happiness as suffering can be transformed. The biblical narrative of ‘Let there be light’ may be imaginatively tweaked to depict Light as responding to the divine command, saying, ‘I have to wait for my twin brother, darkness, to be with me. I can’t be there without the darkness’. Upon being informed of pre-existing darkness, Light hastens to add, ‘In that case, I too will promptly follow’. It is very much similar to the mise-en-scene or the design and arrangement of actors in scenes for a theatre or film production. Like light illumining darkness, a disorderly state is a prerequisite for the various objects, props, actors and chiaroscuro of mise-en-scène to transform a stage or cinematic frame to set the mood and enliven the narrative.

A joyful heart is very close to the stars. The singing, dancing and celebrating are creating paradises with each song and dance. Heaven and hell are not outside, they are within as states of mind. It all depends on the choices one makes. Choose love, to be divine, festive, and more and more celebrant, to transform one’s being into a ground for flowers to blossom and fragrance to dwell. Time contracts and expands, in step with our emotional states. Henry Van Dyke spells it out with clarity: “Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.” True love transcends time, as an extraordinary feeling of affection without expecting anything in return. It is vital for the heart to be filled with affection, for then there is no destruction, no hate and ruthlessness, no violence and strife. Only happy humans, with happiness obviating the need to pray and seek the divine, for happiness is divinity itself.

Who And When..?

“If not us, who? And if not now, when?” is a spur to quick action in the now, without waiting for a prod, and is frequently used as clarion call to take up cudgels against social injustice. Dithering makes one, by implication, part of the problem. Although this rousing articulation or differing versions thereof have been made popular by several political figures, its origins lie in Hillel the Elder, a first-century BCE Jewish leader, who reportedly stated, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And being for my own self, what am I? And if not now, when?”, as more of a commentary on self-advocacy than social activism. Since Hillel’s utterance, variations of it have been used not just in politics, but in arts and literature as well.

The telling observation strikes us once again in the context of the passing of a titan like Mikhail Gorbachev who went about his task with an ‘íf not me, who and if not now, when’ zeal. When the world was still mired in insanity inherent in history’s reiteration of similar events irrationally aimed at expectations of different results, leadership set against societal currents and principles not standing firm like rocks, Gorby, as he was fondly called, stepped in with refreshingly powerful dynamics that promptly dismantled the monstrous edifices of yesteryears and restructured them with new-age constructs that reflected emerging aspirations of openness and freedom, an initiative famously encapsulated in perestroika and glasnost, two Russian words that since gained entry to the global political lexicon. Though in power for less than seven years, Gorbachev unleashed a breathtaking series of changes resulting in the collapse of the authoritarian Soviet state that was otherwise on the road to penury and implosion; further leading to the liberation of East European countries from Russian domination, also culminating in tearing down of the Berlin Wall, and the cessation of decades of East-West nuclear confrontation. A rare statesman who was driven by the belief that yesterdays’ problematic enormity only served to remind of today’s reformative inadequacy, he had the prescience to predict that a different future was possible and the courage to risk his entire career to achieve it. The result was a safer world and greater freedom for millions of people.

Raisa and Mikhail in their younger years...

During my student days, the erstwhile Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) held a great deal of fascination, projected as it was as a welfare state and a beacon of socialism. Sprawled over 22.4 mn sq kms, USSR, headed by the Russian republic, was a mammoth geographical entity eulogized by left liberals as a land of milk and honey. It spanned most of Eurasia, accounting for almost the size of entire North American continent. The romance of the flagship communist state that began in 1922 petered out by1991; by Boxing Day 1991, USSR had fully disintegrated, with its constituents becoming separate sovereign states.

Gorbachev envisaged an end to conflicts and the arms race, aiming for an open socialist society with ex-Soviet and Warsaw Pact countries free of Stalinism in its various formats. He was the kind of Soviet leader the world had never seen. He was young, relaxed. He tried utmost and his efforts were crowned by the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990; though determined to build better relations with the West and to reinvigorate the stagnant Soviet economy, he did not quite succeed in his endeavour. By the time he left office, the Soviet Union no longer existed. “What happened to the USSR was my drama,” he later narrated to a journalist, “And a drama for everyone who lived in the Soviet Union. A split in society and a struggle in a country like ours, overflowing with weapons, including nuclear ones, could have left so many people dead and caused such destruction. I could not let that happen just to cling on to power. Stepping down was my victory.”

Many Russians were critical of his governance and blamed him for the unintended collapse of the USSR, caused by events spiralling beyond his control. Recalling his early days in power, Gorby once recounted to an interviewer: “When I became General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, I travelled to towns and cities across the country to meet people. There was one thing everyone talked about. They said to me: ‘Mikhail Sergeyevich, whatever problems we have, whatever food shortages, don’t worry. We’ll have enough food. We’ll grow it. We’ll manage. Just make sure there’s no war’”.

It was a very different Gorbachev that the same interviewer encountered in 2019. There was a sadness in him not seen before. It was as if he sensed that his achievements were being rolled back; that Russia was re-embracing authoritarianism and East-West confrontation was returning. To the query at this juncture whether freedom was under threat in Russia, Gorbachev claimed that the process that was set in motion had not attained completion as yet, and that there were still some people for whom freedom was an annoyance as they did not feel good with it. When asked if he meant Vladimir Putin, Mikhail Gorbachev’s tacit response was to leave it to the questioner to guess the answer. It was customary for Gorbachev to end his interviews musically, with him moving over to his piano to play and croon some of his favourite songs in Russian. The lyrics of one of these songs are tinged with irony: “Between the past and the future is the blink of an eye, and that instant is what we call life.” The Soviet Union passed in the blink of an eye. What are 70 years as a timescale compared to the centuries of Roman and Ottoman empires?

On Gorbachev’s 90th birthday in March 2021, President Putin praised him as “one of the most outstanding statesmen of modern times who made a considerable impact on the history of our nation and the world”. On his passing, António Guterres, general secretary of the United Nations, said Gorbachev was a “one-of-a kind statesman who changed the course of history”.

At inflection points in history some leaders rise, others falter. Mikhail Gorbachev rose to make our world safer. He, too, was imperfect. But he had a vision for stability over chaos and ultimately freedom over repression.

In cinema there is no God, only Godard: Celebrated film-maker and the eternal god of cinema exited from the scene at his Lake Geneva home on 13th September 2022. “When you are still with dolly shots and close-ups, we are with the protesting workers and students”, raged Godard while urging the organizers to suspend Cannes Film Festival in 1968 as a mark of solidarity with the agitators. Not just political films but cinema itself needed to become politics, according to Godard. Holding a hand-held camera, he was in the midst of agitating students and workers in France. He believed that “Photography is truth, cinema is truth 24 frames per second”. Even at the age of ninety, he was active directing the 3-D film entitled ‘Image Book’. Indeed, his was a life that fathomed the artistic depths of cinema. There have been more radical filmmakers before, during and since Jean-Luc Godard made his great body of cinema. But no one has been arguably so revolutionary, in the sense of dramatically changing the language of celluloid art. A pivotal member of La Nouvelle Vague, or ‘New Wave’ cinema, which Francois Truffaut aptly described to be not a movement but ‘a quality’, Godard’s first feature film, the 1960 ‘A Bout de Souffle’ (Out of Breath) – better known in the anglophonic world as Breathless – was itself a manifesto of this ‘quality’, with its jump cuts, elliptical narratives and organic dissolves. In films like the 1963 Le Mépris  (Contempt), the 1965 Pierrot le Fou (Pierrot the Fool), the 1968 documentary-cum-feature 1+1, and the 1987 experimental King Lear, Godard, with his scorn for the ‘thick’ plot line, showed the true value of not just moving pictures but moving situations. 

Jean-Luc Godard..

In cinema, Godard depicted that an art form can be seen as an arch-rival to life, with controlled distillation of dialogues, meshing and unmeshing of characters, and a sensory collation-collision where beginning, middle and end need not follow the dogma of that order. As he had once said when responding to violence portrayed in his films, ‘It is not blood, it is red’, a nuance that eluded most viewers in his time, and would have certainly eluded even more people today. Along with many of the celluloid masters such as Akira Kurosawa, Satyajit Ray, David Lean, Alfred Hitchcock, Chaplin, Federico Fellini, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Ridley Scott, Andrei Tarkovsky, Richard Attenborough and Roman Polanski, Godard was the light of truth passing through films to project memorable works of cinematic art.  

The King leaves the Court, long live Federerism: A few countries may want to consider the recently concluded seventy years’ reign of a 96 year old as a measure of the end of an era. Not so the world of sport and its legions of admirers. For them the departure of tennis’ monarch from the far more crowded courts signals the glorious end of the Federerian Age. The numerous accolades and trophies may bear testimony to his many achievements. But they simply do not do justice to what the 41 year old Swiss has been capable of in a career spanning a near quarter century that came into the limelight when Roger Federer won his first Wimbledon Grand Slam at 21 years of age. The languid grace in his movements across the court, fluid serving and volleying, and his silky backhand together with a formidable forehand, perfectly balanced overhead shots, exquisite slice and drop shots will forever be etched in collective memory as feats of supernatural beauty. On the lawn, he was the grass whisperer, not using power or strength as much as deftness, a genius for the right touch of racquet to ball to achieve high precision placements in unexpected reaches of the court, leaving opponents stranded. Watching him play was akin to viewing a scintillatingly choreographed ballet on stage, all glide and flow, seamless, seemingly effortless movements culminating in tennis wins of spectacular artistry. Roger’s final hanging up of his racquet means heartbreak for the world of  tennis, of no longer being able to see one of the greatest athletes of the modern era ply his glorious art and precision trade. Game, set, match, tennis, Roger Federer…!

Roger and Mirka with their double twins..

With Gorbachev, Godard and Federer becoming part of a glowing historical narrative, the vacant space in the domains of politics, cinema and sports is awaiting greater statesmanship, creative flair and dynamism, driven by the missionary spirit, in the manner of the late Russian leader, and beauty, inherent in a game of tennis as played by Federer and Dostoevsky’s illumining ‘beauty’ that ‘will save the world’.

Katrathu Kai Mann Alavu…

“Katrathu Kai Mann Alavu, Kallathathu Ulagalavu” goes the lyric of an old song in Tamil, inspired by a poem written by Avvaiyar, a poetess of the Tamil Sangam (assemblies of scholars and poets dating back to over 2000 BCE). Translated, it means “What is learnt amounts to a mere fistful of sand, and what is yet to be learnt is the size of the world”. Put differently, known is a drop, unknown is an ocean.

Philosophically, we have transitioned through several stages of thought, each defined in terms of “ages” as in ancient era, medieval era, age of renaissance, the reformation, age of reason or enlightenment during the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe, age of revolution, and the age of scientific discovery that runs often parallel with other eras. According to theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, scientific advancement is “enabled by discoveries in three fundamental areas: the DNA theory of life, the atomic theory of matter, and computer technology, which demonstrates that the working of the mind are based on logic and electrical circuits”. The next era in the scientific domain, he says, is mastering these three.

But there is much more to life and living than scientific theories, logic and electrical circuits, regardless of their inevitability in the new age of discovery. Dividing lines are now fluid, and if this is the case in the physical sciences, so it is in the domain of metaphysics. No philosophy is watertight; belief, faith and hope coexist with cynicism, non-belief and atavism. The same individual becomes believer, devotee and skeptic almost concurrently. It is all part of human evolution and evolvement, when learning and unlearning happen simultaneously, unveiling new vistas of understanding. What matters is that human intellect is whirring and churning, figuring out ways to navigate the universe and our consciousness. For a fulfilling and happy life, the four wheels of our personality – physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual –  are required to be well balanced and aligned. In fact, like the two rear wheels of a tractor – the size of the intellectual and spiritual wheels should be much larger, as they constitute invisible, critical factors that drive our destiny.

“Know in thyself and All one self-same soul; banish the dream that sunders part from whole”. That consciousness which was behind the youth we once were, may also be behind the mind of every animal and person existing in space and time. Will kind people be rewarded for their good deeds? Will the wicked be punished? Yes, according to a new interpretation of recent experiments; there is a direct and proportional price to pay for any act of cruelty or injustice.
Science suggests that there are consequences to our actions that transcend our ordinary, classical way of thinking. Emerson, it turns out, was right: “Every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and certainty.”
 

Experiments from 1997 to 2007 have shown that this is indeed the case. It seems bizarre that a frog in the rain forest or a dolphin in the ocean should be directly connected to us. But the double-slit experiment (in modern physics, the double-slit experiment is a demonstration that light and matter can display characteristics of both classically defined waves and particles) and other studies have repeatedly shown that a single particle can be in more than one place at the same time. See the loon in the pond or the dandelion in the field. How deceptive is the space that separates them and makes them appear to be isolated. They are the subjects of the same reality that interested physicist John Stewart Bell, who proposed the experiment that answered the question of whether what happens locally is affected by nonlocal events.  

In a further progression, physicist Nicolas Gisin sent entangled particles zooming along optical fibers until they were seven miles apart and, yet, the communication between them happened instantaneously. Today no one doubts the connectedness between bits of light or matter, or even entire clusters of atoms. They are intimately linked in a manner suggesting there is no space between them, and no time influencing their behavior. Everything that is experienced is a whirl of information occurring in one’s head; according to Biocentrism, space and time are simply the mind’s tools for putting it all together. However solid and real the walls of space and time have come to look, there is a part of us that is no more human than it is animal. As parts of such a whole there is perfect justice. The bird and the prey are one. “Non-separability,” said French physicist Bernard d’ Espagnat, “is now one of the most certain general concepts in physics.”

Biocentrism states that there is no independent external universe outside of biological existence. Part of what it sees as evidence of this is that there are over a couple of hundred physical parameters within the universe so exact that it is seen as more probable that they are that way in order to allow for existence of life and consciousness, rather than occurring at random. Biocentrism claims that allowing the observer into the equation opens new approaches to understanding cognition. Through this, biocentrism purports to offer a way to unify the laws of the universe. This is in tune with most ancient wisdom traditions of the world which says that consciousness conceives, governs, and becomes a physical world. It is the ground of our Being in which both subjective and objective reality come into existence.

Big Blackfoot River, Montana…

Our individual separateness is an illusion as scientifically inferred and philosophically posited. Imagination is reality itself in another world. We bring it down to this world the way we bring down fruits from a tree. To use the words of Norman Maclean’s autobiographical novella (themed on the unity between humans and the environment), “……Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.” The import is that first, as the twilight deepens, everything in the canyon disappears into the gloom (“all existence fades”) until the only things that the fisherman can sense are himself and the river (which he can hear). Eventually, “all things merge into one” (that is, into darkness), and a river runs through the darkness. Second, the fisherman becomes so deeply absorbed in his activity that he loses all awareness of anything other than himself and the river, and by the phrase “all things merge into one” indicating that in his mind, there is no distinction between himself and the canyon and the activity of fishing. Hence when “the river runs through it”, it runs (metaphorically) though the fisherman as well as (literally) through the canyon. On one level, a river represents the natural world. On another level, the arc of a river flowing through the rocks and canyons of Montana symbolizes the arc of a human life.

Fly fishing at the River. Fisherman casting his line on a summer day.

If sensation is raw stimulus, perception is refined sensation, conception is orderly perception, science is systematized knowledge, wisdom is highly organised life: each is a greater degree of order, and sequence, and unity; such orderliness does not arise from the things themselves; for they are known by us only by sensations that come through a thousand channels at once in disorderly multitude; “Perceptions without conceptions”, says Kant, “are blind”. If perceptions wove themselves automatically into ordered thought, if mind were not an active effort hammering out order from chaos, how could the same experience leave one man mediocre, and in a more active and tireless soul be raised to the light of wisdom and the beautiful logic of truth?

There is nothing like inherent order in the external world. The thought that knows the world is itself an ordering, the first stage in classification of experience which finally turns out as science and philosophy. All science, even the most rigorous mathematics, is relative in its truth. The external world is known to us only as sensation; and the mind is a positive agent, selecting and reconstructing experience as it arrives. Modern physics has come to the same conclusion on the relativity theory, that absolute space and absolute time have no existence, but time and space exist only as far as things or events fill them; that is, they are forms of perceptions. It is the same with social mores and morals. These too are not absolute and, as haphazard constructs for group survival, are subject to change, varying with the nature and circumstances of societies. Will Durant sums it up well when he says, “The function of the mind, and the task of philosophy, is to discover the unity that lies potential in diversity; the task of ethics is to unify character and conduct; and the task of politics is to unify individuals into a state. The task of religion is to reach and feel that Absolute in which all opposites are resolved into unity, that great sum of being in which matter and mind, subject and object, good and evil, are one.”

Looking at the compass, ship and lighthouse as metaphors relevant to the figurative true north, which is one’s inner sense, or calling, of what is sought to be accomplished in life, it is a combination of values, beliefs, and purpose. North represents a moment of serious contemplation where the lessons we have learned truly integrate. We become shining lights, beaming with spirituality and well-being. As the orienting point derived from one’s most deeply held beliefs, values and principles, true north is the internal compass enabling discovery of who we are at the core. Shaped by experiences, we are influenced by life’s pain points such as personal illness, death of a loved one, or discrimination. By reflecting deeply on these events, we can understand ourselves and the values we hold most dear, and if these lead us on to stepping outside of ourselves to put our shoulders to the wheel of societal progress, we may be on the most fulfilling path to true north.

The business of life is the most important task on which we should all focus as life was given to us with a supreme purpose. We were given a capital investment of time in a human body so that we could make use of it to first recognize our true essence and to then return to our Source.
“Let knowledge grow from more to more, / But more of reverence in us dwell; / That mind and soul, according well, / May make one music as before, / But vaster.” – Tennyson (In Memoriam). The poet expresses the hope that knowledge will grow from more to more, but this should also be accompanied by a reverence for that which we cannot know. “And when we look at what is taking place in the world we begin to understand”, as profoundly stated by Jiddu Krishnamurti, “that there is no outer and inner process; there is only one unitary process, it is a whole, total movement, the inner movement expressing itself as the outer and the outer reacting again on the inner”, to make the whole clearer.

Let me here digress to a pertinent story: during the course of a management seminar, a former bureaucratic top brass shared an experience he had while travelling with his wife through a north Indian village. While en route, they saw a large mango plantation filled with sparrow / weaver bird nests. Attracted, the wife expressed her desire to carry home two of those nests. The accompanying security escort called a young boy who was grazing cows nearby and asked him to bring down two nests, offering to pay him for the service. When the boy refused, the bureaucrat raised the monetary reward to a tempting level. The boy politely declined the offer and said, “sahib, I will not do it for whatever you will give. Inside these nests are baby sparrows. If I give those nests to you, in the evening, when the mother sparrow returns with food for the babies and does not find them there, she will cry. I do not have the heart to see that.” The dignitary and his wife were taken aback and felt dwarfed, later recounting that his high office melted away in front of that little boy, feeling as small as a mustard seed. Upon returning home, the incident continued to haunt them with guilt for several days.

Weaver bird at its nest..

Education, position or social status is never a yardstick for the measure of humanity. May it not be forgotten that knowledge is to know and understand the beauty of nature. Nothing is achieved by gathering a lot of information as long as it does not get transformed into wisdom. And wisdom is useless if it is not applied in daily life.

Flight to beyond…!

There is more to life than dreamed of in our science and philosophy, literature and arts, all limited by the reach of human faculties and sense perceptions. John Haldane, British-born geneticist and evolutionary biologist, once said “The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.” Biocentrism suggests space and time are not the only tools that can be used to construct reality. Although our destiny is to live and die in the everyday world of up and down, these algorithms could be changed so that instead of time being linear, it becomes three-dimensional-like space, enabling a walk through time in the same manner of a perambulation through space, releasing life from its corporeal cage. Indeed, human destiny probably lies in realities existing outside of known universe; affording new wings, perhaps, to transcend mortality towards an ineffable flight through space-time, and beyond.

The Dogs Of War…

“Cry ‘Havoc’, and let slip the dogs of war; / That this foul deed shall smell above the earth / With carrion men, groaning for burial”, are the words of Mark Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. The word ‘havoc’ was a military command to soldiery during medieval times to break into violent action, plunder and pillage the enemy positions. Dogs, trained for warfare, were a significant part of the battles of yore. The ‘dogs of war’ as a figurative expression refers to the wild pack of soldiers ‘let slip’ by wartime breakdown of civilized conduct under the commander’s orders to wreak havoc. Drawing on the same expression here is to dwell on plight of animals in war torn countries.

As I write this, the Russia-Ukraine War is continuing into its 57^th day without respite. India was initially trapped, with thousands of its medical students helplessly stuck in Ukraine. As the country was suddenly seized of their predicament and need for prompt evacuation, two students refusing to move away from war zone without their pet dogs attracted a lot of attention of animal lovers. Arya Aldrin and Rishab Kaushik, both, refused to abandon their pets and they were, amidst furore raised by animal rights activists in India, eventually facilitated to carry these creatures with them. This is commendable, and one hopes the canines have longer and happier lives in India than they might have had in a devastated Ukraine.

Arya Aldrin with her Zaira, Siberian husky from Ukraine

Rishab Kaushik with his Maliboo, from Ukraine

Wooden house in Kieve forest, Ukraine

Sofiyivska Square in Kieve, Ukraine

The story sharpens the focus on risk exposure of non-human animals in conflict locations, like the controversial airlift from Afghanistan of dogs from a shelter run by Pen Farthing, an ex-British Royal Marines commando, or any number of stories of service dogs from Iraq being taken home by their handlers. People often ask why animals should be prioritized when so many humans are in greater desperation. While some of these instances can be questioned, like Farthing’s alleged use of political connections to evacuate his animals while humans were left behind, the idea of always putting humans first is debatable. 

Suffering has no boundaries, and animals never choose to be in such situations. Andrew Tyler, director of Animal Aid, points out that animals are victims of war in many different ways. Some are collateral damage, like camels and horses abandoned in the first Gulf War, to die of hunger and thirst. Some are deliberate targets, like the zoo inmates in the former Yugoslavia who became targets for bored soldiers in the wars that followed the state’s collapse. There are deserted animals, a category likely to be high in Ukraine with its farms full of livestock. 

There are animals in the frontline, ranging from cavalry horses and bomb-detection dogs, to truly horrific stories, like the ‘tank-dogs’ trained by the soviets in WW II. As described by Dr John Sorenson, “dogs were first trained to seek and expect to receive food underneath military vehicles. Then they were deliberately starved and, loaded with explosives, let loose during combat. Seeking food, the dogs ran towards German tanks ..” This was not just callous, but also pointless, since German snipers quickly learned to target any dog. 

Animals are also used in weapons research, which is often held, as with medical vivisection, as justified by larger ends. But this again ignores how cruelly pointless such research can be, like an American experiment in the 1990s when, as journalist and peace activist Colman McCarthy writes, “some 700 cats were locked in vises and shot in the head”. The reason for the USD 2 Mn funded project was to find information to treat brain injuries, but as McCarthy notes “the main finding for the army was that when shot in the head cats feel pain”(!!!).  Additionally, wars expose the faults in our wider relationship with animals. Stories of devotion, like these dogs brought back from conflict, can be contrasted with the British Pet Massacre in 1939, as the nation prepared for war. A committee created to co-ordinate responses to air raids suggested sending pets to the countryside but “if you cannot place them in the care of neighbours, it really is kindest to have them destroyed”. Panicking pet owners thronged and, in barely a week,750,000 pets were killed. 

Remembering how animals suffer in war does not have to diminish the human cost. It simply amplifies the horror of what is happening in Ukraine, to be reminded how, for every dog brought to safety, many more animals are tragically left in the lurch as conflict continues unabated. It underlines the criminal callousness of perpetrators involved in the deadly power game. Animal suffering must be added to devastation suffered by humans. Ironically, Ukraine also provides an indirect example of one real way in which animals can benefit from human failings. The area around the collapsed nuclear reactor in Chernobyl, which was at the centre of hostilities early in the conflict, has been abandoned due to high levels of radioactivity. It has since rewilded, becoming a sanctuary to flora and fauna. This has been observed in other places where, more directly due to war, land has been abandoned by humans. In the demilitarized zones between north and South Korea, the two parts of Cyprus, and the Golan Heights, which are contested by Israel and Syria, nature has reclaimed what humans cannot. Perhaps the truth that animal lovers struggle to accept is that ultimate hope for animals lies in humans being eliminated from their lives, even if it has to come through horrors of war. 

The clouds of war emanating from the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and consequent trends portend a dark future for global security. The war is feeding a global conflict between Russia and the west, but with a potential to engulf others. Along with Belarus, Russia, with an annual defence budget of about usd 80 Bn, is pitted against the US, NATO, EU and the US allies in Asia – Japan, South Korea, Australia, with a combined military budget of well over a trillion dollars. While Russia is fighting with dated military weapons, headed by a spirited President and a largely pliant population, Ukraine is fighting back with weapons that are pouring in from the NATO states. The stage has been set for a major escalation. Western sanctions have been immediate, comprehensive, and pulverizing, with more in reserve, in particular in the energy sector. These are non-military weapons of the 21st C, of disruptive potential, perhaps more lethal than traditional weapons of war. 

A continued military stalemate in Ukraine will bog down Russia, the US and NATO in Central Europe, also opening a black hole of power and influence over the Eurasian continent. The last time such a power vacuum existed – in the 13th C – it was filled by galloping hordes of Genghis Khan, sweeping across the steppes of Central Asia up to the gates of Vienna. What a tragedy it would then be if, in their headlong and escalating confrontation over Ukraine, the US through its misplaced geopolitical priorities and Russia, through its missteps of aggression, hand over to China the keys to the vast Eurasian continent…!

The baneful impact stretches from geopolitical to economical. It is almost a truism that every dominant fiat currency will rise, and then sink into oblivion. For thousands of years, powerful and prosperous nations have used their finances recklessly, to wage ruinous wars and fund profligate public projects. In each era – ancient Egypt, classical Greece, imperial Rome and Britain – economic prosperity was first weakened by currency debasement, and then drowned in a rising tide of inflation. Will the dollar’s destiny be any different? 

Rome’s problem lay in trying to manage an increasingly unruly empire through the force of its legions. As the empire grew, so did its reliance on mercenaries, who needed to be paid in full and promptly at that. Even during Pax Romana of 27 AD – 180 AD, when war booty and tribute were plentiful, the amount of silver in the denarius was slowly reduced – from 4.5 grams to less than 3 grams – to meet the needs of sundry public works and other extravagance. 

A little over a century later, Roman coins were silver-plated at best, allowing for the production of sufficient currency to pay soldiers’ salaries and bonuses, so that they could afford the inflated prices of food, most notably wheat, whose price had increased three hundred fold in a century, an untenable situation that continued till 400 AD, when Rome failed to pay their Visigoth mercenaries, resulting in the sack of Rome and its eventual downfall. 

The British empire’s economy depended on managing a massive trading monopoly, supplied by goods sourced cheaply in its colonies. As Britain grew more prosperous, the pound, pegged to the gold standard, became the world’s undisputed reserve currency. But to protect its trading privileges, Britain was willing to wage expensive wars in any part of the globe. WW I proved to be its undoing, with its debt rising from 30% of GDP in 1914 to over 650 % of GDP in 1919. War financing and inflationary pressures severely weakened the pound vis-a-vis other currencies, depreciating @ of about 3% every year, further exacerbated by the Great Depression. Finally, after WW II, the pound officially surrendered its primacy to the dollar. 

But by 1971, the dollar had reached a similar pass. A mere 27 years after the introduction and proliferation of the Bretton Woods system – by which the US enjoyed the privileged position of issuing dollars as a reserve currency to other nations in lieu of their gold, pegged at USD 35 per ounce – mounting public debt and the almost entirely credit-sponsored war in Vietnam sounded the death knell for this last vestige of the gold standard. The downside of the system was that gold and dollars were interchangeable. Finding that the US had only USD 11 Bn in gold to back nearly USD 24 Bn in debt, Richard Nixon officially declared in August 1971 that the US would no longer redeem gold for dollars. The matter may well have ended there. The dollar was devalued by more than 10%, OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) raised the price of petroleum four times in 1973 alone, and embargoed the US in response to their backing of Israel in the Yom Kippur War. The dollar’s supremacy was seriously in doubt, and a multipolar world was suddenly a distinct possibility. 

Instead, in a master stroke, the US signed a pact with Saudi Arabia in 1974 that guaranteed the latter continuous purchase of oil along with military support and protection, in exchange for the Saudis mandating the dollar as the official tender for petroleum purchase. These dollars would naturally be ploughed back into US treasuries, thereby financing US debt. The rest of OPEC followed suit a year later and the US dollar became the almighty petrodollar. Consequently, the US, over the last five decades, has been able to wage war at will, fund public spending, fuel consumption and enable gigantic individual fortunes on cheap credit. Unlike the nations of yesteryear, whose debts were severely constrained by the gold or silver they were able to access, the US simply printed dollars to buy oil or pay back debt, thereby exacting a seigniorage on its creditors with a licence not seen even in medieval Europe.

But the catch appears to be just around the corner. Most nations stockpile dollar reserves for energy security. If energy purchases are also permitted substantially in another currency or commodity, the pressure to maintain petrodollar reserves will diminish. As demand for dollar shrinks, America’s debt-fuelled holiday will be severely constrained by devaluation and inflation. 

As in 1974, the world today is at a tipping point. The war in Ukraine, triggering sanctions of crippling intensity, is forcing a defiant Russia to hard sell oil and gas outside the petrodollar system. If it takes off and gains critical mass with other non-OPEC energy rich countries joining the bandwagon, the pressure will be on OPEC to relax insistence on the greenback. The currency’s hegemony may well begin to set despite US efforts to resist with might and main, which may not be all that bad because independence from the petrodollar will drive more political and economic equality in countries wallowing in dollar-denominated debt, help to unseat dollar-sponsored tyrants, deter the US from waging war directly or by proxy, and ensure that a basket of currencies, or some equivalent, regulates credit access and debt obligations. Posterity may well be grateful if the final outcome is a more harmonious and salutary world order. 

War and violence are external manifestations of the violence within human minds. It is part of the human mind just as peace and happiness are also part of it. All wars are nothing but the mind’s craving to express its inner violence. The mind has a primitive, undeveloped or under-evolved aspect. Seeking right way to outgrow this aspect of the mind may be the ideal approach to tackle conflicts and escalations thereof. 

Pertinent here is the observation of Yuri Gagarin, the first human in outer space, a Russian born and brought up in erstwhile Soviet Union, who, with his family and his entire village had suffered the Nazi invasion. He had this to say when he looked at planet earth from his Vostok-1 capsule in 1961: “Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it”. He was barely twenty seven years old when he made the comment. His eyes not only saw what was before him, but also experienced the expansiveness of being human. 

Although Gagarin’s remark came from a pioneering experience as the first entity to step outside the planet and take a cosmic view, many cosmonauts after him have had the same feeling, of the need to see the bigger picture, where geographical boundaries and other barriers melt away to reveal a composite whole. Naval aviator and NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell theorized that there is a spectrum of consciousness available to human beings. At one end is material consciousness and at the other end is what we call ‘field’ consciousness, where a person is at one with the universe, perceiving immensity of it all. Just by looking at our planet on the way back, Mitchell said that he saw or felt a field consciousness state. Political heavyweights in global leadership positions busy heaping violence with neo-colonial aggression and imperialistic designs on countries must be made to experience the state of field consciousness. 

Learning lessons from history and the current situation ought to steer all countries towards peace and equity. The path to growth and prosperity is through greater enterprise and innovation, industry and interconnectedness of people and nation states because no populace can have everything within their resources or their country borders. Life in its totality is precious, all of plant, animal and human. Let the part not be sundered from the whole. The words of Fyodor Dostoevsky ring in prophetically, “Mankind in its entirety has always yearned to arrange things so that they must be universal. There have been many great nations with great histories, but the higher these nations stood, the unhappier they were, for they were more strongly aware than others of the need for a universal union of mankind. Great conquerors, Tamerlanes and Genghis Khans, swept over the earth like a whirlwind, yearning to conquer the cosmos, but they, too, expressed, albeit unconsciously, the same great need of mankind for universal and general union.”

Diary Of A Pilgrimage…

Rooted in Latin peregrines, meaning ‘one from abroad’ or ‘one who has come from afar’, the pilgrim describes a journeyer to a holy place. The concept of pilgrim and pilgrimage may refer to the experience of worldly life or to the inner path of the spiritual aspirant from wretchedness to a state of beatitude. Yet, all pilgrimages need not be belief-driven; it can be actuated by challenges and rewards, fun and inspiration, delving within and cerebrating for new insights. The Sanskrit word for ‘pilgrimage centre’ is tirtha, literally a river ford or crossing place; ford is associated with pilgrimage sites not simply because many are on riverbanks but because they are metaphorically places for transition, either to the other side of particular worldly troubles or beyond the endless cycle of birth and death.

Pilgrimage destinations in India may be holy cities (Varanasi, Badrinath, Kedarnath); rivers (the Ganges, the Yamuna, the Mandakini); mountains (several Himalayan peaks are sacred to both Hindus and Buddhists); caves (such as the Batu Caves near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia); temples; festivals, such as the peripatetic Kumbh Mela, celebrated at intervals of twelve years, which witnesses the world’s largest public gathering; or the tombs and dwelling places of saints (Kalady, Alandi, Shirdi,). A modern phenomenon is the cultural pilgrimage which is a journey having both personal and secular dimensions. Destinations attracting such pilgrims include historic sites of national or cultural importance: an artist’s home, the location of a pivotal event or an iconic destination.An example might be a soccer enthusiast visiting the Pele Museum at Santos, Brazil. Cultural pilgrims gather to locales such as Auschwitz concentration camp, Jallianwala Bagh, Gettysburg Battlefield, Stratford-upon-Avon and the Lake District in UK, or the Ernest Hemingway House in Florida; they may also travel on religious pilgrimage routes, such as Lumbini in Nepal, the Way of St James in Spain, with the perspective of making it a historic or architectural tour rather than – or as well as – a religious experience. Secular pilgrims of left liberal orientation may be attracted to sites in Moscow and Beijing featuring the Mausoleums of Lenin and Mao Zedong, and the Karl Marx House at Trier. The lines separating religious, cultural or political pilgrimage and tourism are mostly blurred, not necessarily always clear or rigid. Journeys, largely on foot, to places where one hopes to find spiritual and / or personal salvation also fall under the definition of pilgrimage. In the words of adventurer-author Jon Krakuer in his book Into the Wild, Christopher Mcandless was ‘a pilgrim perhaps’ to Alaska in search of spiritual bliss.

My long cherished desire it was to undertake a personal journey to the Himalayas to behold the Mt Kailas and soak in the divinity surrounding the abode of Shiva and Parvati, and the magical aura of Manasarover, a fresh water lake nestling at an altitude of over fifteen thousand feet. Such aspirations, regrettably, had to be moderated given my not so robust health and fitness which precluded journeys that involved long trekking and climbing, with exposure to high altitudes and inclement weather. Choosing to confine mostly to the plains, I opted to explore, during mid 2019, the architectural marvel of a few of the towering temples in Tamil Nadu, neighbouring my home state of Kerala.

The first place on my itinerary was Srirangam (meaning the island of Ranga or Lord Vishnu). .“A grove where bees hum”, sang the Alvars (Tamil poet-saints who were devotees of Vishnu); an island encircled by the rivers, Kavery and its distributary Kollidam, is the sacred spot where Lord Ranganatha is reclining atop the coiled bed of Adi-Sesha, the primordial serpent (serpents represent fertility or a creative life force; as snakes shed their skin through sloughing, they are symbols of rebirth, transformation, immortality, and healing; the ouroboros symbolize eternity and continual renewal of life).

Constructed in Dravidian architectural style, the Ranganatha Temple in Srirangam, Tiruchirappalli is the world’s largest functioning temple consisting of 81 shrines, 21 towers and 39 pavillions sprawled over 155 acres – the Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia is the world’s largest religious architecture but it is not operational as a place of worship and exists only as a relic of history luring tourists from around the world.

Ranganatha temple towers

Ranganatha temple inner view..

According to legend surrounding Srirangam, Rama performed aradhana (puja) on Vishnu’s idol. As a reward, he gave the idol to his ally VIbishana (brother of Ravana in the epic Ramayana) to take back with him to Lanka subject to not allowing the idol to be placed on any spot en route as it possessed the proclivity to entrench itself permanently even if temporarily kept anywhere. Vibishana took this idol and while travelling towards Lanka, came upon the banks of the river Kaveri. As an utsava was in progress and wanting to take a dip in the Kaveri, he had no option but to seek someone’s assistance to temporarily hold the idol. When the festivity got over and he was finished with his ablutions, the idol could not be taken as the person with whom it was entrusted had placed the idol at the river bank. After several failed attempts to remove it from the spot, it was deemed as the Lord’s wish to remain in the same place (Srirangam). Upon Vibishana’s persistent prayer, Vishnu in the manifestation of Ranganatha extended his grace to Vibishana by always facing South (the direction of Lanka, home to Vibishana). And that is how the deity remained configured, in a reclining posture facing South. Over time, the area around the idol of Ranganatha turned into a dense forest due to lack of habitation. The idol was serendipitously discovered by a Chola king while chasing a parrot. He went on to build a grand temple at the site and named it the Ranganganatha Temple in Srirangam.  

Moving on to the next site, a steep climb of steps cut into a hill took me to Ucchi Pillayar Temple dedicated to lord Ganesha, on top of Rockfort. The temple stands 83 metres tall perched on the hill. The smooth rock was first cut by the Pallavas and the entire structure was subsequently completed by the Nayaks under the Vijayanagar Empire. The temple has a mystical aura with its awe-inspiring rock architecture. Although it is much smaller as compared to Ranganatha temple, the elevated site provides a stunning view of the city of Tiruchirapalli, the island of Srirangam, and the rivers Kaveri and Kollidam.

“Rockfort Temple in Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, South India.”

The ancient lore pertaining to Rock Fort temple is interestingly linked with Ranganatha Temple.  Vibishana, though he supported Rama, was basically an Asura, hence the Devas (who were arch rivals of Asuras as per Hindu mythology) wanted to stop an Asura from taking Lord’s supreme form to his Kingdom. They enlist the help of the ‘remover of obstacles’ and God of learning, Lord Ganesha. Vibishana, while returning back to his Kingdom, passes by Kaveri river, and wanted to take his bath in the river and do his daily rituals. However, he is in a dilemma as the deity, once kept on the ground, can never be removed. Vibishana tries to find someone to temporarily hold the deity. Ganesha, disguised as a cowherd, volunteers to hold the idol on the pretext of assisting Vibishina. As soon as Vibishana is fully immersed in water, Ganesha places the idol firmly on the Kaveri river bank. On seeing this, an enraged Vibishana chases the cowherd who scoots away and climbs over the nearby hill. Vibishana finally gets hold of the cowherd and smacks him on the forehead whereupon Ganesha reveals his true identity. Vibishana promptly seeks forgiveness and the Lord’s blessing; extending benediction, Ganesha asserts that the idol is destined to remain in Srirangam and waves Vibishana off to Lanka. 

From Tiruchirapalli, my itinerary took me to the Nataraja Temple at Chidambaram. Dedicated to Nataraja, meaning ‘king of dance’ or the cosmic dancer’, one of the forms of lord Shiva, the temple has ancient roots tracing it to the period when the present city of Chidambaram was a town known as Thillai. Chidambaram, as the city and temple are named now, literally means “atmosphere of wisdom” or “clothed in thought”; the temple architecture symbolizes the connection between arts and spirituality, creative activity and the divine. The temple wall carvings display all the 108 karanas (karanas is a Sanskrit word meaning ‘doings’ or ‘transitions’ or brief ‘movement phrases’ synchronizing specific leg, hip, body, and arm movements accompanied by hasta mudras or hand signs in Bharatanatyam as described in Natya Sastra) from the Natya Sastra by Bharata Muni, and these postures are foundational to Bharatanatyam, a classical Indian dance.

View of Chidambaram Temple..

Carvings and sculptures adorning Chidambaram temple walls…

Nataraja, the Dancing Shiva.. (brass sculpture displayed in my home).

Built in the 10th century when Chidambaram was the capital of the Chola dynasty, and spread over an area of forty acres, it is one of the oldest surviving and active temple complexes in South India. After its tenth century consecration by Cholas who considered Nataraja as their family deity, the temple has been serially damaged by colonial marauders and Semitic philistines, and restored through the second millennium. Most of the temple’s surviving plan, architecture and structure are from the late 12th and early 13th centuries, with later additions in similar style. Shiva  is presented as the Nataraja, performing the Ananda Tandava (“Dance of Delight”) in the Pon Ambalam or ‘golden hall’ of the shrine.

The sanctum of the temple set inside the innermost prakara (courtyard) is unusual as it does not have a Shivalinga, rather it has the Chit Sabha (consciousness gathering, also called chit ambalam or space of consciousness) with a silver sculpture of Nataraja, the temple’s principal icon. This introspective empty space is curtained off, defined in temple texts as the rahasya (secret). It consists of two layers, one red, the other black. George Michell, an architectural historian specializing in South Asian structures, cites it as a Hindu symbolism of “enlightenment inside, illusion outside”. The Chidambaram Rahasya is the “formless” representation of Shiva as the metaphysical Brahman in Vedas, sometimes explained as akasha linga, same as the omnipresent Self (Atman). The silver sculpture of Nataraja in ananda thandava (dance of bliss) aspect brings home a world of meanings:

• The demon under Nataraja’s feet signifies the trampling of ignorance.
• The fire in His hand (power of destruction) means He is the destroyer of evil.
• The raised hand (Abhaya or Pataka mudra) signifies that He is the savior of all life forms.
• The arc of fire called Thiruvashi or Prabhavati signifies the cosmos and the perpetual motion of the earth.
• The drum in His hand signifies the origin of life forms.
• The lotus pedestal signifies Aum, the sound of the universe.
• His right eye, left eye and third eye signify the sun, moon and fire/knowledge, respectively.
• His right earring (makara kundalam) and left earring (sthri kundalam) signify the union of man and woman (man on the right, and woman on the left).
• The crescent moon in His hair signifies benevolence and beauty.
• The flowing of river Ganges through His matted hair signifies eternity of life.
• The dreading of His locks and drape signify the momentum of His dance.

The symbolism of Nataraja is the oneness of religion, art and science. In the Divine’s endless dance of creation, preservation, destruction and paired graces is hidden a deep understanding of our universe filled with the resonance of Aum Namah Sivaya. Nataraja has four arms. The upper right hand holds the drum from which creation springs forth.  The lower right hand is raised in blessing, betokening preservation.  The upper left hand holds a flame, which is destruction, the dissolution of form.  The right leg, representing obscuring grace, stands upon Apasmarapurusha, a soul temporarily earth-bound by its own sloth, confusion and forgetfulness.  The uplifted left leg is revealing grace, which releases the mature soul from bondage.  The lower left hand gestures toward that holy foot in assurance that Shiva’s grace is the refuge for everyone, the way to liberation.  The circle of fire represents the cosmos and especially consciousness.  The all-devouring form looming above is Mahakala, “Great Time.”  The cobra around his waist is kundalini shakti, the soul-impelling cosmic power resident within all. Nataraja’s dance is not just a symbol but the reality within every being, at the atomic level, this very moment.  The Agamas (tradition, received or ritual knowledge considered to have been revealed by a personal divinity) proclaim, “The birth of the world, its maintenance, its destruction, the soul’s obscuration and liberation are the five acts of His dance,” denoted by the five syllabic chant Na/ mah/ Si/ va/ ya. As Heinrich Zimmer puts it, “His gestures wild and full of grace, precipitate the cosmic illusion; his flying arms and legs and the swaying of his torso produce – indeed, they are – the continuous creation-destruction of the universe, death exactly balancing birth, annihilation the end of every coming-forth”. The dance of Shiva is the dancing universe; the ceaseless flow of energy going through an infinite variety of patterns that melt into one another. Every particle from its sub-atomic level not only performs an energy dance, but also is an energy dance; a pulsating process of creation and destruction.

Dance and performance arts are not unique to Shiva in Hindu texts. Other deities too, including Vishnu, Durga (including Lakshmi and Saraswathi), Krishna, Ganesha, Kartikeya, are envisioned as practitioners and purveyors of knowledge and all art forms, amongst other things. However, with Shiva the idea is most evolved. Among Tamil Nadu’s innumerable temples,  Chidambaram occupies a unique place as the home of Nataraja, the dancer form of Shiva. This is now one of the most celebrated images of any Hindu deity, renowned throughout India and around the world. The prominence of dance as a motif at Chidambaram underscores the iconography of Nataraja and the architectural configuration of the temple itself. It is the interrelationship of legend, history, art, and architecture at Chidambaram that interestingly engages the keen visitor.

The Vedas are dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. Its time scales are in sync with modern scientific cosmology, with its cycles running from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long. There is the deep and appealing notion that the universe is but the dream of the god who, after a Brahma years, dissolves himself into a dreamless sleep. The universe dissolves with him – until, after another Brahma century, he stirs, recomposes himself and begins again to dream the great cosmic dream. Carl Sagan says: “The most elegant and sublime of these is a representation of the creation of the universe at the beginning of each cosmic cycle, a motif known as the cosmic dance of Lord Shiva. The god in this manifestation is Nataraja, the Dance King. In his upper right hand is a drum whose sound is the sound of creation. In the upper left hand is a tongue of flame, a reminder that the universe, now newly created, with billions of years from now will be utterly destroyed. These profound and lovely images are, I like to imagine, a kind of premonition of modern astronomical ideas.”

From Chidambaram, my journey stretched onwards to Thanjavur to behold another marvel, a monarch’s devotional fervour and orison captured in granite. Upon approaching Thanjavur, my gaze is irresistibly drawn to a colossal, elegantly ornamented temple tower presiding over the city’s skyline and soaring upwards. Built by Rajaraja I in 1010 CE, the Brihadisvara temple, as it is known, is a masterpiece of Chola architecture, an icon of its art, history and culture, and prominently listed among UNESCO’s world heritage sites. The fascinating structure is a palimpsest of the multicultural histories of more than a thousand years of worship and artistic endeavour, conveyed to the visitor across time through inscriptions, ritual traditions, sacred hymns and stories, and processions of images of gods and saints, as well as through painting, sculpture, poetry, music, dance and drama. A monument of superlatives in every respect combining grandeur of size and scale, mathematical and geometric precision, and innovative symmetries of proportion that draw on and transcend the prescriptions of Shaiva Agama texts provide the temple its distinctive ambience. In referring to the presiding deity as ‘Brihadisvara’, or the ‘great lord’, it is clear that Rajraja, an ardent devotee of Shiva, aspired to the grandest visualization of the infinite within human finitude.

Brihadeeswara Temple Tower..

Another view of Brihadeesvara Temple..

The abiding impression at the end of such tours is that Hindu temples are symmetry-driven structures, with many variations, on a square grid of padas (Block-like projections at intervals along the gala recess — ‘gala’ in Vastu shastra, the ancient manual on architecture, means ‘a wide recess’ — depicting perfect geometric shapes such as circles and squares, designed around the belief that all things are one, everything is connected. A temple “replicates again and again the Hindu belief of the parts mirroring, and at the same time being, the universal whole” like an “organism of repeating cells”. The pilgrim is welcomed through mathematically structured spaces, a network of art, pillars with carvings and statues that display and celebrate the four important and necessary precepts of human life — the pursuit of artha (prosperity, wealth), the pursuit of kama (desire), the pursuit of dharma (virtues, ethical life) and the pursuit of moksha (liberation, self-realisation). Though there are millions of deities, the focus is on the Supreme Principle, the sacred Universal, one without form, which is present everywhere, connecting and being the essence of all things. These sacred spaces are designed to purify minds, prompt reflection and accelerate inner realization.