INADEQUACY OF A YEAR

                                               

The 28^th of September alone every year  is famous for different national and internal events. We know that melody queen Lata Mangeshkar was born on this day. Shahid-e-Azam Bhagat Singh’s  birth day also falls on this date. Recently we have declared to observe it as the ‘Daughters Day’. Somebody was referring two more events related to this date.  Similarly there may be several more dates having over a dozen of important events associated with each date. Who will remember them and organize functions accordingly?  The question arises, are we making a fun of observing a date?  

There are 365 days in a year. Everybody has to observe birth and death days of himself’ his family members and relatives. Then add to them national and international days. In addition to that in Sanatan Dharma, almost every day of the week is associated with some deities or rituals. Additionally, if he has faith in astrology, which in general most of us have, he will have to trace the connotations of a day from these angles. If it is Bhadra, no auspicious work will be started. On a particular day, one should avoid journey southward. Similarly it applies to all directions. Thus, the total events of a year will rise to thousands, each date having the share of about a dozen or so.

Despite Valentine Day, Mothers Day’ Fathers Day so on and so forth, do we find that love, respect and compatiability in the family and society have increased? Say when the observance of these days was not in fashion, people lacked love and respect and were always fighting against each other? Delhi, which of late has started becoming highly festive on New Year Day, Valentine and Sisters Day, has also become notorious as the rape capital. Why this contradiction?

Some days back, I was reading a spiritual commentary in which the writer tried to explain that instead of adopting some good qualities in our day-to-day behaviour, we stage a ‘tamasha’ and be happy. We cannot adopt truthfulness and compassion of Gandhi and Buddha and  so we idolize them and put in the category of divinity to falsely convince ourselves that these qualities are not for human beings.  

JEALOUSY THY NAME IS HELL

                                  

Jealousy is a common trait of majority of mankind. What is it ? In the world, broadly speaking , there are two categories – one performs and the other decries.  When somebody is succeeding and the other, who lags behind, does not like the performer, he is the example of a jealous person.  Such persons either do not work or their effort lacks the dedication which takes one to the summit. Instead of honest attempts, they also take resort to shortcuts. Most of this lot does not accept the challenge of trying again and again and simply turn into a jealous class.

When there is a game or sport, say sprint, the hardest trying player wins gold. Somebody had said, ‘We do not get silver, instead we lose the gold’. The losing ones go back to their club and increase their efforts to come up on the top next time. On the other hand, many of them complain that the judge/umpire was biased, rules did not suit them, the climate was bad, the crowd was parochial, so no and so forth. Sometimes a few charges could be true but not all. Such decriers may be treated as jealous.

The best example of this scenario can be seen in history when the courtiers of a monarch were proverbially jealous of one another. The king kept the best brains in the court who could give the best suggestions for enhancing governance. One thing was very clear that they tried their best to block the entry of any new talent in the court and pulled the legs of the co-courtiers so that they could not succeed in going in the goodbook of the king. Particularly in the courts of the Mughal emperors, we hear and read the story of secret plots to defame the competitors and ensure their banishment from the court. Often the queens, harem ladies, eunuchs and other such personnel having access in the durbar were involved in such well planned conspiracies. One courtier was willing to be one-eyed if it turned the enemy blind.

Jealousy has triggered off wars in the history of mankind. If we do not wake up to restrain this self- destructive feeling, the devastating encounters will continue to torment mankind. So it requires to be curbed.

STAND UP AND SIT DOWN

                            

You may be knowing that the elephant is the strongest and  the horse is the animal with the best stamina. But both of them do not sit or lie down during day time. Can we affod to do so? If we try, we can definitely do that but at the cost of  bodily injuries. The above two animals are doing so because of their genes. The nature has endowed them with this quality. On the other hand, the man has activities involving both sitting and standing. However, when the balance between the two is disturbed, it brings in its wake pain, stiffness and several physical and mental ailments.  

Acharya Rajneesh once said that behind every physical labour, there is a defective notion that the individual thus would amass so much of wealth that not only himself but his children would also gracefully live without moving their hands and legs. So he struggles for years, earns sufficiently and then loves to be sedentary which begets multiple diseases, denying him the happiness from his hard earned money. Unfortunately heavy body and no work in our society, till recently, were treated as the traits of belonging to an opulent family. People around him appreciate his this extraneous show off.

The modern medical science says that the sedentary and cosy living invites several life-style diseases. What happens is that while working, our metabolism is activated. On the other hand while sitting or sleeping, body functions like respiration, blood circulation, digestion etc. become slow. If this situation is allowed to prevail for long, these bodyl mechanisms start gowing weak and ultimately malfunctioning. That is why, you might have seen high executives standing up from the chair and reading papers. They develop a healthy habit of avoiding lifts, if possible and attending calls on mobile in standing or moving position. The prolonged sitting, which was slowing the body functions, start getting reactivated. If one sits continuously for more than an hour, he should get up or move for at least a couple of minutes. People who exercise for an hour, are in a false world of satisfaction and keep on sitting or sleeping for the remaining hours of the day. They should also several times  reverse the order by standing up. Post- lunch stroll is a good habit.

   Similarly, due to professional compulsions or reasons otherwise, the people who stand longer, are suggested to sit down. In 1970s, when I was in Jamshedpur, I had seen workers of machine tools section, Tisco and assembly section of Telco doing their duty by and large in a standing position. I personally know that most of them had joint pains in feet and waist. There was hardly any even working arrangement to provide the break. I have read about a similar situation in Europe at the time when the first World War started in 1914. The workers in ordnance factories were ordered to multiply production of arms and ammunitions, of course on war footing. As a result, they kept on working in standing position for a much longer period beyond the stipulated duty hours. There the hospitals were full of patients suffering from body stiffness, joint pains, mental heaviness and several other ailments. The govt., under pressure had to provide stools, benches and such other things so that the workers could take brief rests and revive their energy.

The above brief account is there to emphasise that for men, there should be a balance between activity and rest. So if you are sedentary, stand up and if you are the standing lot, sit down. Follow this small tip and ‘khul kar jiyo’.

SAY NO TO STRESS

                                                  

Thinking  is a part of our mind. Thousands of thoughts come and go daily. It is a continuous process of a living mind. But when an individual is over obsessed with a particular thought, on mental level, he is virtually cut off from the world around and he is treated as a stressed man. He knows that by simply remaining shrouded in that particular idea will neither minimize nor remove the problem, but somehow he just cannot come out of that mental labyrinth.

In this connection, while reading a Hindi newspaper, I came across a very good analogy defining stress. I prefer to share with others who might have missed the daily. The teacher had to explain stress to his students. He held a glass of water in his hand. He held it for a minute and put it back. Nothing happened. Then he said that if he held the glass for an hour, he would have got stiffness and pain in his hands. He added, if he kept the glass in his hand for 24 hours, he might get pain, stiffness or even that part of the body could have got paralysed. Similarly, he advised, if a stressful situation overtakes you, drop it as quickly as you could. Nothing will happen. But if you allowed yourself to be haunted by that incident/thought indefinitely, you would start going closer to your end. You will have to convince yourself  that just continuously thinking about a problem brings no solution.

The Sanskrit word for stress is ‘chinta’. The word basically means thinking as well as over thinking on any situation. Our ancestors were aware of this silent but killing ailment. Therefore they said, “chinta chita samakhyata”, meaning that the stress ultimately takes one to crematorium. Though to start with it is just a thought, prolongation of which is sanguine. Every sane person has to remain ever alert against this sugar- coated poisonous pill.

NECTAR FROM GITA

                                                               

From my student days itself I have been reading this great inspiring book and every time I read it, the realization dawned that earlier I knew nothing. I agree, those days I recited its ‘shlokas’ just as a part of the daily religious chore.  In this context I read the most authentic Shankarbhashya and books by Gandhi, Vinoba, Tilak (only partly) and listened to scholarly discourses by several eminent persons including Swami Chinmayanand. The most recent link in the chain was the discourse by Smt. Jaya Rao, in the Kamani Auditorium, New Delhi. Without any attempt of devaluating the views of the above scholars, I admit that her simple style of interpreting the verses of the chapter XiV of the epic, almost overwhelmed me.   

According to her, the Bhagvad Gita helps achieve excellence in the world. It also takes us beyond, to the state of Enlightenment. It makes a thorough analysis of human being, identifies the areas of weakness and removes them.

Every human being is made of matter and spirit. Matter is of three distinct hues called gunas or qualities. They are sattva (purity), rajas (passion) and tamas (ignorance). The gunas determine the qualities of thoughts, emotions and actions in a person. Together they bind us to the world. Like the three primary colours red, yellow and blue that mix to create all colours, the combination of the gunas create the infinite variety of beings in the world.

Tamas is the state of inertia and indifference. In this state the best qualities get shrouded and our inherent talent is prevented from manifesting. Rajas is a state of stress and agitation brought about by greed , craving and lust. The incessant desire-driven activity and the resultant agitation of the mind result in mediocrity. Sattva is tranqullity of mind when one functions at one’s best. This is the state that all executives, , sportspersons and professionals in every field of activity strive for being in the ‘zone’, performing at peak levels. However, nobody knows how to achieve it. The Bhagwad Gita spells it out clearly and simply so that every one can operate out of one’s sattva while marginalizing and eventually eliminating the rajas and tamas within.

Quite interestingly, she also explained Gita’s four castes (Chaturvarnyan maya sristan gunkarmvibhagshah) in the light of three gunas. One who is satisfied in his intellectual pursuit and distributing that is a Brahmin. The person who is in greed and arrogance, indulges in actions and is defined as a Kshatriya/Vaishya. On the other hand one who does not know what he is doing and roams in his state of ignorance is a shudra. She lamented that this quality based social division deteriorated later into determination of caste by birth.

Every being has three gunas. You come up with peak performance when sattva predominates. When rajas prevails greed, disquiet and hankering weigh you down. And when tamas reigns supreme, you are overcome with delusion, heedlessness and inertia. One step ahead, the relative strengths of the gunas also determine the environment one goes to after death. A sattvika  person progresses, the rajsik one moves within a narrow band while a tamasika person goes downhill.

( What I feel, this magnum opus of Vyas, if exposed to the public at large in such a persuasive and easily comprehensible manner, the message will easily reach the entire globe).   

MOBILE'S DANGEROUS PROFILE

                                                

A couple of years back, when I was at my native village in Bihar, I was surprised to know from my co-villagers that of late the region had been losing some birds like crows, sparrows and ‘neelkanth’.  When I enquired about the likely reason, they emphatically mentioned that the syndrome was caused after the mobile towers were installed. Subsequently I learnt from other sources that the people living close to such towers were getting exposed to carcinogenic complications. As a history student, I cannot boast of the  knowledge of the involved  biological technicalities. However, the issue kept on haunting me since then till I attended a talk by an internationally acclaimed expert on the topic.

Under the auspices of the Synergy Environics Ltd, New Delhi, this talk was organized in the local India International Centre auditorium on Sept.15, 2014 evening with its Managing Director, Shri Ajay Poddar in the  chair. The speaker was Dr. Dariusz Leszczynski, an expert on biological/health effects of mobile phone radiation and one of the experts of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) involved in classification of cell phone radiation carcinogenicity. He is also an Adjunct Prof. Of University of Helsinki, Finland. The topic of his speech was “Cell Tower and Moble Radiations – Perceptions, Threats and Solutions”. At the outset Shri Poddar introduced the speaker to the august gathering consisting of knowledgeable persons of the discipline as well as several executives of mobile operating agencies.

 In his scholarly talk, Dr. Dariusz said that every week, there are media reports in India on the issue of Electromagnetic Radiations from mobile Transmission Towers and Mobile Phones being harmful to human health and constant exposure to them causing Cancer etc. We also come across articles presenting a completely different side of the story, which say that there is no conclusive evidence on any harm to health from these radiations. This creates a lot of confusion in the minds of people as they don’t know what to believe. So much more clarity is required on this front, he added.

He further mentioned that due to the mounting concern about the possibility of adverse health effects resulting from exposure the wireless communication devices like cell phones and towers in the world, a Working group of 31 scientists and experts from 14 countries was formed in 2011 and they met in France to assess the potential health hazards due to such radiations. In May 2011, based on the data and studies presented by them , the IARC, a part of the World Health Organisation (WHO} classified radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans, based on increased risk of glioma, a malignant type of brain cancer, associated with wireless phone use.

The speaker, who has been working in this field since 1996 revealed that there have been two more such authentic researches which concluded that the information collected were not conclusive. However, there are several indications to ascertain risk factors. He said that health meant both physical and mental wellness and the heat from such communication radiation was generating risk factors. Sh. Arvind Sawant, MP/RS/Shivsena who came to release a sticker to be pasted on mobiles like the warning on cigarette packets, informed that he knew a family of three sisters in Maharashtra, who caught cancer after they allowed a relay tower to be installed on their house.

Based on the above slightly jargonic account, I am quoting some dos and donts for the common users so that they can observe  necessary precaution. As the speaker himself said that our society has gone too far with the moble and so any return is unimaginable. So precautions are the best option. According to him, for some money, we should not permit towers to be built on our buildings. Vicinity  to them has added dangers. In Europe, such towers are permitted in areas beyond human habitation. We were surprised to know that mobile’s radiation is more harming than the cell towers due to distance. Therefore, we should, as far as possible keep the instrument away from the body. At no cost school children be permitted to carry the mobile in their pockets as their physique being comparatively more tender, they are prone to be the worse victim. He also advised that besides the name being laptop, the user should observe restraint and keep it on a table avoiding more body touches. He gave a clarion call to the society to be careful with their mobiles.

HINDI DAY

                                                

Sept. 14, is every year celebrated as the Hindi Day in India and its offices elsewhere. The celebration starts a week earlier which concludes on the 14^th day of the month. Seminars, lectures, debates etc are organized to popularize the language and impress upon the people to take pride in talking in their national language. On this great occasion, let us take a bird’s eyeview of the progress made in this regard over the years.

On the international plane, depending on the number of speakers, Hindi stands on the fourth position. The  Chinese Mandarin with 955 million people, accounting for over 14% of the world population is on the top as per a survey of 2010. It is followed by the Spanish with 405 million speakers, grabbing the second position. You will be surprised to know that the worldwide known English, being spoken by 360 m. people (5.4% of the world population) occupies the third position. Since several regional dialects were recently given language status, the number of Hindi speakers dwindled.  The above language census accords fourth position to Hindi with 310 m. speakers (4.7%). Thus every time a regional dialect is recognized as a language, Hindi loses the number of its speakers. Unfortunately, under- vote bank politics, on election eves, some dialect is included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution, though it may not qualify the parameters set for transforming a dialect into language status.

  The official annual functions are completed just as a formality. So it could not carve any nitche till ten years ago. However, some other reasons have sent Hindi sky rocketing. The first place in this regard goes to Bollywood. Due to highly entertaining and sensuous Hindi films, the language started becoming globally popular. Already popular in West Asia, Hindi is grabbing space in farflung USA, UK, Russia and South East Asian countries. The second reason is India having emerged as a huge market. Corporates over the world are encouraging their executives to learn Hindi. Thirdly, Indian garments, food and other aspects of culture are being imbibed even in developed countries. Our competitive education system is also attracting students from developing countries as it is costly in the West. Due to high costing medical facilities in Europe and America, patients from Afro-Asian countries are flocking to Indian hospitals. These new trends are not only generating added forex from these tourists but also giving them opportunities to pick up working knowledge of Hindi.

Our present PM, having spoken in Hindi in some foreign countries, has popularized Hindi beyond the precincts of India. We hope, he will do so even in course of his upcoming US visit. The sumtotal of all these developments is bound to procure the desired official status to Hindi in the UNO.  

NON-ALIGNMENT AND INDIA

                                         

Non-alignment has remained an integral part of our foreign policy. Despite  changes in governments, it was not allowed to be eroded. When India became free in 1947, the world politics was bipolar with the erstwhile USSR and the USA at opposite ends. By mid-fifties, the accumulating tensions between both the nuclear superpowers became known as cold war. Both the groups, either by persuasion or force tried to bring maximum number of countries in their camps. Even our next door neighbor, Pakistan joined the military groups known as NATO and SEATO, led by the USA. Despite acute political pressures from both the rival camps, India preferred to maintain equi-distance, christened as non-alignment.

However, in the wake of the aggressive border skirmishes with China in 1962, it became clear that non-alignment also somehow meant a state of friendlessness. Since then, this type of foreign policy has been getting vetted from different angles. It has been realized that even without joining any camp, we can have friendship and bilateral affinity with different countries. Our old friendship with the then USSR was fostered with this end in view. It is this remarkable change in attitude that of late we adopted a proactive policy of befriending US and sidelinig their close friend Pakistan.

In this backdrop, fresh power games have started to carve out new power centres. Today four major countries are in the race, namely USA, Russia, China and India. Some other second line stakeholders are Japan, Brazil and South Africa. China has been known for its aggressive foreign policy. Even today it has border disputes with neighbours like India, Japan and Vietnam. With its huge military might, china wants to emerge as the leader of Asia with an important role in the international politics. As a result, its neighbouring countries are feeling disturbed. As a matter of fact, at present China is being seen with suspicion about its bullying tactics. Russia, USA and India are not its friends. She wants to befriend the USA to remain unchallenged in the region. She sees india as a competitor in matters of population, polity, military, economic progress so on and so forth. So through violations of the international borders, she wants to demoralize india.

In this background, India wants the support of at least Japan and Vietnam so that it can capably take on China. In his just completed Japanese state visit, Narendra Modi lamented that even in 21^st century, when development was the need of the hour, there are some countries resorting to the expansionism of the 18^th century. His pointed efforts to impress the Japanese rulers and ensure their support are bound to leave a clear message for China. Thus, it appears quite pragmatic to follow non-alignment only to the extent that India, in the hours of need, was not left friendless.