Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Libra

Human Sexuality


(more of my photographs of bronzes of Tamil Nadu)


Among human beings, the most significant and consequential deviation from the evolutionary command encoded in our DNA is that it has moved away enormously from the purpose of sexual activity. Inventing and re-inventing sexuality, man has lost the fundamental reason for it: procreation, ensuring continuance of life, the survival of the species. Sex has become the ultimate in recreational activity. All other acitivities: sports, art, music, scholarship, competitiveness to excel in various fields, etc. etc., all derive from this shift of sexual organs to the brain, because man/woman believes that his/her achievement will make him/her attractive to the Other, and therefore will enable and also enhance sexual experience.

In the other living creatures that we know, plants and animals, which do not have the benefit of imagination, it is DNA which prompts their reproductive systems to activity; while, among human beings, sexuality has not only left the most complex mark, but is in a continuous process of enhancement and acceleration. Therefore, our human inventions of romance, yearning, voyeurism, variation of activity, variety of partners, scorching jealousy, and vendetta.

For a simple example, take the case of an amoeba: in the body of water, small, large, dirty or clean, in which it lives, that limbless, organless, brainless, life, the DNA in its single cell contains the message of survival. When the content of the water body is stable, the reproductive system is automatically stabilised. But if the water is drawn away, the automatic system of survival will go into action, and it will begin to divide and reproduce with acceleration.

Compare this to mankind: homo sapiens … I can go on and on, but would like someone who reads this and has an opinion, to engage me on the subject.

-------------------------
I had tweeted:
Human beings are the only creatures whose sexual desire, fulfillment, violence, reside in the brain and not in the sexual organs.

@DeirdreS wrote: that would surprise me very much. We're all mammals; if it's true for humans, it's true for others as well.

My answer:
All mammals are not the same. Only human beings are conscious of their existence and aware that they were born, that they are, and that they will die. No other living creature has this consciousness. They exist purely according to the commands of genetics.

@DeirdreS wrote: Recent research with primates, monkeys show they have a sense of what others are thinking/feeling, just like us.


My answer:
Empathy alone is not the same as self-awareness.  It is instinctive and born out of the most basic sense of survival. Among the living, both plant and animal, there are varied degrees of evolution. But the difference between man and others is unbridgeable.  On a scale, for instance, of 1 to 100, if man was at 100, the other forms of higher evolution would not exceed 8-10. Some animals, some insects, and what we would call the highest forms of mammals, just to take a small instance, can sense and learn more than some others.

B.F. Skinner, who developed "Skinner's box" or more elaborately, what is called in psychiatry "behaviorism", claimed that human beings could train less evolved creatures to perform new behaviors for food and survival. But that does not make them more evolved: they still are not conscious of their existence, that they were once born and that they will also die. They do not know their names, their identity. They cannot confer, create religion or concepts, form associations in protest against their greatest adversary, their worst annihilator.

The point is that we are the only creatures conscious of our being and therefore capable of premeditation and execution.
--------------------------

@looksurly wrote: Do we really know what goes on the brain of other creatures? E.g., whales http://fwd4.me/V7Y

my response: Only human beings are conscious of their existence and aware that they were born, that they are, and that they will die. No other living creature has this consciousness. They exist purely according to the commands of genetics. If you still doubt, I'm willing to provide explanations and evidence.

@looksurly wrote: What I doubt is that you (or anyone) can prove that another animal is not conscious. We barely understand this in humans.

my response: I respect your doubt; now, for me the question is: are you comfortable with your presumed  belief that in all creatures and, perhaps, even in matter, reside varying degrees of consciousness. If so, I would not want to argue and try to convert you to scientifically incontrovertible evidence that I am willing to provide to you, including designing and suggesting models of experimentation in laboratory to prove that among all living creatures, only humans are fully conscious.

As I said earlier, on a scale of 1 to 100, human beings being at 100, the other consciousnesses would not exceed 8-10, and that is not sufficient to transpose and juxtapose our own feelings of pleasure, grief or whatever onto them, as not only are they oblivious of those feelings, but function almost entirely out of genetics. 

So, either I leave you to your belief or proceed to prove my point. I may mention, in passing here, that I did set up an experiment at Rochester Psychiatric Institute sometime in the 1970s, when, at an open house, as a chief speaker, I was asked this very question, apart from several others, and I succeeded in making my point, because the opposite could not be proved by the scientists who had taken me on.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Knowing

I had much rather left the rainbow alone; but wanting to understand it demanded that I unbend it, hold it in my hands - and it quickly lost its magic. Living with fiercely energetic intensity, I got burnt too soon by the dazzling discovery of the nature of things, as well as the inescapable knowledge that it is in the nature of things, inevitably, to be what they are, and nothing else.



Monday, June 28, 2010

Poise

Adhe jaage adhe soye
bikre hue sapnon me khoye


Half-awake, half-asleep
lost in scattered dreams

1964

Tribute to Harivansh Rai Bachchan's Madhushala

Baadal se aansu
Aansu se baarish
Baarish ki nadiya
Nadiya se dariya
Dariya se saagar
Saagar se bharkar hai jaam

Hai
Jaam men kitni doob gayi
Mere jivan ki har shaam

Friday, June 25, 2010

Time

THE MOMENT I TRIED TO GRAB IT
THE PRESENT BECAME PAST
THE FUTURE WAS CONTINGENT
AND THE PAST WAS IRRETRIEVABLE

MY PLEAS TO TIME
TO PAUSE, REST A WHILE
TAKE IN THE SCENERY
UNDERSTAND AND EXPLAIN ITSELF
WERE IN VAIN
TRYING TO STOP TIME
I SAT DOWN
GREW OLD AND DIED
TIME DID NOT ATTEND MY FUNERAL

UNSTOPPABLE, IT SURGED ON
ILLUMINING EONS, LEAVING BEHIND DARKNESS


Grapes After Wrath




Thursday, June 24, 2010

Thus Spake Zarathustra

At a party several women, many of them Parsis, decided to ask me about God, and not succeeding in unsettling me, decided to declare that, "Okay. God or not, we can prove to you that spirits and ghosts exist." I merely smiled, indicating, "Don't even begin to try to prove it." They conferred among themselves, and decided to persist. They gathered six empty glasses of wine, kept them inverted on a table, and began some mumbo-jumbo ritual to summon the "spirit of the glass." It exasperated them that I was paying no attention, and finally they were unbearably frustrated that no spirit turned up, even after they found out, by conferring in a separate room secretly, that none of them was menstruating (which would have kept the spirit away – don’t ask me why). So, in affectionate rage, they cursed me that "the Satan in me should burn in the fires of hell," among a number of other curses. I responded by writing the following, and sending it to all of them:

IGNORANT CHILD, KNOWEST NOT THOU BETTER
THAN TO INVOKE ME IN VAIN
WITHIN AN EMPTIED INVERTED GLASS

HOW DOST THOU PRESUME
THAT MY SPIRIT WOULD TRAVEL
FROM THE STOPPERED BOTTLE WHERE IT DWELLETH
TO AN EMPTY GLASS HELD BY FINGERS
WHOSE OWNERS HAVE FIRST EMPTIED THEIR WISDOM
AND VERILY THEN DIVORCED ALL COMMON SENSE

I ORDAIN THEE TO FIRST UNCORK THE BOTTLE
AND FILL THE GLASS TO THE BRIM
AND HARK MY VOICE WHICH SPEAKETH CHEERILY
THROUGH THE BREATH OF THOSE WHO FIRST FILL THEMSELVES
WITH THE ELIXIR

AND IF THOU CRAVETH AUDIENCE WITH ME
LOOK INTO THE EFFULGENCE OF THEIR EYES
AND IF THOU STILL CANST NOT BEHOLD ME
IMBIBE THEE MORE OF THE SPIRITUOUS DISTILLATE AND
WITNESS MY PRESENCE IN ALL THY LIMBS

-- THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
TO THE SORCERESS

(Note: Thus Spake Zarathustra, and Man and Superman, were magnum opus of the then widely-popular German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, who, like many other thinkers, became insane in his later years, and is now almost forgotten, as much as also is his contribution to the field of philosophy. Hitler was credited with being profoundly influenced by Nietzsche, which is a historical error: Hitler was not educated, let alone capable of curiosity or ability to analyse thought and intellect. Similarly, Hitler was also credited with having been influenced by Wilhelm Richard Wagner, while in fact, what happened was that Hitler wanted to be identified with art and music of some form, and he made Wagner very popular, and therefore currently almost banned in Israel. Richard Strauss, a great composer of the time, came actually under the influence of Nietzsche's work, and named his most-remembered music Thus Spake Zarathustra, which gained its ultimate fame when Stanley Kubrick decided to use it very extensively in what will remain an all-time epic in cinema, 2001: A Space Odyssey.)

------------------
Anonymous wrote:
"This is a delightful masterpiece of wit wisdom and wickedness."

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Smile

Woven



Grotesque, with apology

Gateway to ...

Through the window, darkly

Theorems in Geometry






Waiting: will it work when it is required, when fire engulfs us?


All my life, I have been Waiting: waiting to grow up, waiting to grasp the universe, waiting for my life to end, finding it irrelevant and worthless in the universal scheme of things; in better moments, waiting for rain, fog, the sound of treading on dewdrops; railway trains, huffing and puffing, stopping and running, criss-crossing tracks, the changing geography of landscapes and scenery; waiting, waiting for order in chaos, waiting for people and events which occur only without any regard to punctuality or expectancy; waiting, waiting, always waiting.

Waiting, even for your reaction. And yours. And yours.

On a different note, please go to my wife's poem, Waiting.

-------------------------
'Austere' sent me the following link in response to this post:

http://manaskriti.com/kaavyaalaya/lo_din_bitaa.stm

Please do try, and if you have difficulty with the Hindi language, please write to me and I will send you a translation of the very good poem by Harbans Rai Bachchan

Devdas Syndrome (my contribution to the world psychiatric encyclopedia)

Kaun kambakht jeeta hai saans lene ke liye?
Main to jeeta hun taake pi sakun

(What fool lives in order to breathe?
I live so that I can drink)

The above lines have been quoted, misquoted, distorted by many before; my version above, I want to believe, is the most original deviation from the real original.

Courtesy, and with apologies to:

Sarat Babu


Bimal Roy



Dilip Kumar







-------------
@randomsubu tweeted on 22 June:
Jeene ke liye chahiye ek cheez; kissi ke paas shabab hai, hamare paas sharab hai. 

I replied:

Arre kamaal likha aapne
is par ho jaaye jaam saath mein
shabab to jaata hai jald jahaanam mein
chalo ham doobe jaaye sharaab mein
------------
Anonymous wrote:


wah ustad wah

aap dubo jaam mein
basanti naachey kaanch pey.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Ishq

Ishq par zor hai; Ghalib, kamzor; ishq, kambakht.

Ishq ek aandhi hai
jo samandar ke garbh me rahti hai

A WASTED TORNADO

(Click to enlarge)




MY EVERY SIGH IS A TORNADO:
BUT IT IS SHAMELESSLY BENEVOLENT,
DOES NOT EVEN STIR A LEAF,
LET ALONE SHAKE OR STORM
ANYTHING IN THE WORLD
TO LEAVE BEHIND ITS IMPRINT

IT DOESN'T CHANGE, DOESN'T HURT,
DOESN'T IMPROVE ANYTHING
BUT UNFAILINGLY,
SWEEPS ME OFF MY FEET,
FELLS ME AND LEAVES ON ME
INCURABLE MARKS OF
HURT, INJURIES AND BEWILDERMENT.

Dandelions

Pollinating, unaware of climate change, ecological imbalances and infinite number of manmade disasters taking them together with creatures large and small, to perdition.








Tanvi, a great talent in singing, versatility and distinction

My message to Tanvi Shah, sent in February 2010, on her extraordinary distinction for an Indian, to share with A.R. Rahman and Gulzar Sahib the Grammy Award for the best motion picture song "Jai ho":

Shabaash Tanvi. Jai ho jai ho
Mata Pita Pitamaha Bhrata
Sarvake garv bane raho
Jai ho jai ho



Sunday, June 20, 2010

Bleeding Heart


Recognising it [the heart]
Is very simple:
[the simplest thing in the world]
What does not hurt
[anything which does not hurt, bleed]
is not heart.

-- Javed Akhtar







Glass, Half-Empty or Half-Full; Humans Half-Fool or Full-Fool

At a party several women, many of them Parsis, decided to ask me about God, and not succeeding in unsettling me, decided to declare that, "Okay. God or not, we can prove to you that spirits and ghosts exist." I merely smiled, indicating, "Don't even begin to try to prove it." They conferred among themselves, and decided to persist. They gathered six empty glasses of wine, kept them inverted on a table, and began some mumbo-jumbo ritual to summon the "spirit of the glass." It exasperated them that I was paying no attention, and finally they were unbearably frustrated that no spirit turned up, even after they found out, by conferring in a separate room secretly, that none of them was menstruating (which would have kept the spirit away – don’t ask me why). So, in affectionate rage, they cursed me that "the Satan in me should burn in the fires of hell," among a number of other curses. I responded by writing the following, and sending it to all of them:

IGNORANT CHILD, KNOWEST NOT THOU BETTER
THAN TO INVOKE ME IN VAIN
WITHIN AN EMPTIED INVERTED GLASS

HOW DOST THOU PRESUME
THAT MY SPIRIT WOULD TRAVEL
FROM THE STOPPERED BOTTLE WHERE IT DWELLETH
TO AN EMPTY GLASS HELD BY FINGERS
WHOSE OWNERS HAVE FIRST EMPTIED THEIR WISDOM
AND VERILY THEN DIVORCED ALL COMMON SENSE

I ORDAIN THEE TO FIRST UNCORK THE BOTTLE
AND FILL THE GLASS TO THE BRIM
AND HARK MY VOICE WHICH SPEAKETH CHEERILY
THROUGH THE BREATH OF THOSE WHO FIRST FILL THEMSELVES
WITH THE ELIXIR

AND IF THOU CRAVETH AUDIENCE WITH ME
LOOK INTO THE EFFULGENCE OF THEIR EYES
AND IF THOU STILL CANST NOT BEHOLD ME
IMBIBE THEE MORE OF THE SPIRITUOUS DISTILLATE AND
WITNESS MY PRESENCE IN ALL THY LIMBS

-- THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
TO THE SORCERESS

(Note: Thus Spake Zarathustra, and Man and Superman, were magnum opus of the then widely-popular German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, who, like many other thinkers, became insane in his later years, and is now almost forgotten, as much as also is his contribution to the field of philosophy. Hitler was credited with being profoundly influenced by Nietzsche, which is a historical error: Hitler was not educated, let alone capable of curiosity or ability to analyse thought and intellect. Similarly, Hitler was also credited with having been influenced by Wilhelm Richard Wagner, while in fact, what happened was that Hitler wanted to be identified with art and music of some form, and he made Wagner very popular, and therefore currently almost banned in Israel. Richard Strauss, a great composer of the time, came actually under the influence of Nietzsche's work, and named his most-remembered music Thus Spake Zarathustra, which gained its ultimate fame when Stanley Kubrick decided to use it very extensively in what will remain an all-time epic in cinema, 2001: A Space Odyssey.)