A Lesson Not Learnt (Review of George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' and '1984')

In human civilization's journey across time, some lessons are never learnt, it seems.

Here is my goodreads.com review of George Orwell's 'Animal Farm'.

In 'Animal Farm', George Orwell brilliantly presents a deep and detailed insight into the innocence, as well as the folly of the human civilization.

The theme of the book, various events, the way they turn out, and the outcome - all these have repeatedly occurred over and over again, in various lands, in different cultures, across different times in the past. Unfortunately, the very same manipulations, the same sequence of events, the same mistakes can still be seen in action all around us. The same story of societies aspiring for happiness, dignity and peace gradually turning into violent dictatorships gets repeated over and over. We never learn, do we?

In a sense, almost the entire planet is nothing but a collection of 'Animal Farms' of various sizes.

'Animal Farm' goodreads.com review

And below is the review of '1984'

Absolutely the most terrifying novel I have ever read.

Published in 1949, 1984 presents a bone-chilling account of a future world composed of despotic totalitarian dictatorships, full of extreme violence towards each other as well as towards their own subjects who dare to dream of freedom, individuality and a slightly positive world. 

When one deals with stories and movies about Ghosts and Ghouls and spirits and Poltergeists, one can take  solace in the fact that such things may not really exist. And even if they do, these entities are not necessarily always evil.

Unlike the ghosts and ghouls, one cannot even have the solace that 1984 is purely a work of fiction and that the circumstances mentioned in the novel do not actually exist. They do, and can be seen all around us, in various stages of 'development'. The characters in power in this novel are beyond evil, they are ruthless and carry out torture in an extremely 'inhuman', gruesome manner that only the species of humans is capable of.

Goodreads.com review of '1984'

A Journey Beyond Space and Time

 The idea of writing this book arose from my own search for such a book. A book that would explore the wonder of existence without inhibitions.  A book of science, which would explain scientific concepts and the current associated research in a simple language that a layman can understand. A book which would be a combination of the above two, which, however, is restrained and does not go crazy in speculations. A book that would take care to limit its opinions only to those phenomena that have substantial evidence. A book that is short and concise and not very lengthy.

The basic questions confronting humankind have remained more or less the same throughout ages. How big is the universe, and what is there beyond it? Who are we actually, why are we in existence at all, what is the purpose of our life, and what is the correct way to lead one’s life? Where do we go after we die, in case we do still exist in some form post-death? Do we have a spirit, what is consciousness? Is there a bigger reality beyond our known existence, and if so, what is the nature of such a reality? In this book, some of these questions are explored based on the available evidence around us....

(an excerpt from the preface of the book)

Coming soooon...on 28th August 2020.

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Available for purchase in Print and Kindle version, available in Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owner's Lending Library.

Yemenese Music : Virtual Browse Travel

Yemen is said to be facing one of the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, due to military violence, civil war, acute environmental crisis and the world's worst cholera epidemic.

Yet, is it still possible to find beauty and innocence in such a grim country?

Yemen was a land of beautiful music, and here, we will go through some of it, which also may have had influence in several other parts and cultures of the world. Indeed, the Raga Yaman of Indian classical music is said to have its influence from Yemen, though this cannot be verified easily now.
While I work on establishing the link, here is some music with a very good match with notes of Raga Bhairavi in the first part, and also other ragas and folk tunes of India in the later parts. (eg. one may find glimpses of the Bengali Bhatiyali at min. 25:00 or so...).

38:30 and onwards of above, the influence seems to spread via the Oud into certain Spanish styles, such as the Spanish-Arabic music of Al-Andalus.

And via Spain, the influence may have traveled to neighboring Portugal, and from there all the way to
Goa, parts of this song...
                                      

resemble traditional Scottish music!

while other parts, resemble traditional Goan-Konkani music...

The style of the Cymbals used in the above Ofra Haza song are very similar to the percussion of the Copper Thali used in the music of Uttarakhand Himalayas...

Here is a hebrew poem by the 17th century's Yemenite Rabbi Shalom Shabazi, which has later been put to music and was sung by the Yemenese origin Israeli singer - Ofra Haza, among others.

A highly popular version of the song which was an international hit:

Why leave out the Madonna version of Im Nin'Alu, here it is.

IM NIN'ALU - If they are locked,

DAL THAEY NA DI VIM - The doors of the generous ones. DAL THAEY MA ROM - The doors of the sky, LO NIN'ALU - won't be locked.EL HI MA RE MAM AL KARUVIM - God is alive and sublime to the angels,KULAM BA RUHO YA'ALU - In his spirit they'll rise above.EL HI - god is alive...

The point of all this is that there are points where music from distinct places of the world finds common ground. Indeed, there are common points where all people of the world find common ground. The more we try to explore these common areas, the better it would be for all of us. Hopefully, the music inside of us will thus live on...

Relativity and Reality: A journey? in space? and time?

Relativity and Reality

Relativity like features from unlikely sources

(This was a project for a Stanford University course on Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity by Prof. Lagerstrom)

Introduction:

Now that we know that the concepts we were so far living with and considering absolute and thus equal for all – time, distance / length, simultaneity – are not actually so, the next question is what then is real and absolute?

Are our lives just a projection of something, so that each of us becomes entitled to our own frame of reference?

Here, an attempt is made to explore and discuss on this based on special relativity formulae and a couple of other unlikely sources.

Relativity and the NDE:

With the advancement in medical technology, there have been an increasing number of cases of near death experiences due to resuscitation of physically dead people – people whose heart and brain had stopped functioning for a few minutes. There is a fair amount of serious scientific research going on, on this phenomenon, for example, Sam Parnia MD’s “AWARE” study project, etc. Websites like http://www.iands.org and http://www.near-death.com and many others are full of thousands of accounts where resuscitated people recount their experiences of the period while they were physically dead. What is interesting is that almost all of these thousands of experiences are similar with respect to certain observations:

1. There is a very bright light, which is identified with God.

2. Many have come back saying that the concept of time is not what we think it is, it is not linear. They have said that the past, present and future all exist at the same “time”. Most have recounted travel back in time, and have even come back with intuitions about the future.

3. Space and distance are not a constraint, and people were accurately able to recount details of events and different places while they were not alive.

All this makes us wonder – does our consciousness, which may exist independent of our body – have some properties similar to light?

Indeed, from Einstein's formulae of time dilation and length contraction, we know that:

(delta t)moving = (1 / Y) (delta t) rest

(l)moving = (1 / Y) (l)rest, where Y is Gamma = 1 / (sqrt (1 - (v*v) / (c*c))).

At speeds of light, Y becomes infinity, thus rendering (delta t)moving and (l)moving as zero, while (delta t) rest and (l)rest become infinity – thus lending what can be called as omnipotence and omnipresence to the moving frame.

Thus, it can be said that time stops and the distance becomes zero for one frame while it is related to infinite time and infinite distance in the other frame, which is the universe familiar to us (when alive). The frame in which time and distance is zero has properties generally attributed to God and similar to ones observed by the people just described, where, without moving in distance and time they still are able to relate to all places and times.

Thoughts from a different place and time

Mandukya Upanishad is an ancient set of verses written in the Sanskrit language, and it indirectly explores some of the thoughts presented above. It speaks of an entity with four states, and the central idea of this text is that time and space, which seem absolutely real in the normal state become fuzzy when we dream and the dream world then seems real. There is also another dreamless state in which both above states do not exist. This state exists, but cannot be experienced in the usual conscious manner. The text goes on to say that all states are supported by

the fourth state which is beyond everything and yet contains and supports all that there is.

If we represent this state in terms of time by a single entity, then the following verse becomes interesting: “Bhutam bhavat bhavishya iti sarvam”, that is: “past, present, future – everything is this entity only”. Another verse tries to explore the features of this state: adrashtam (unseen), avyavahaaryam (not related to anything), agraahyam (incomprehensible), alakshanam (uninferable), achintyam (unthinkable), ekaatm pratyaya saaram (knowledge which can be felt deep inside (but cannot be understood or explained)), avyapdesham (undescribable), prapanchopashmam (negation of all phenomenon), shaantam (peaceful), etc.

It is very difficult to know what the original composers of the verses may have actually meant, but over a period of time a rich set of interpretations and analogies have developed. For example, avyavahaaram (not related to anything) is on many occasions explained with an analogy to space – space does not have any shape itself and is not related to anything, yet no relation between two things can exist except in space).

The stress on incomprehensibility of certain things is interesting, as with relativity, we are increasingly observing other phenomenon like quantum entanglement and other quantum mechanics results which seem quite counter-intuitive and incomprehensible and seem to have no relationship with our usual observations and physical laws. But these to do seem to exist as per specific experimental observations and mathematical proofs.

Before we end the discussion on this text which had bravely set out in search of the basic knowledge of all things thousands of years ago, it would be worthwhile to quickly see the first verse which is a humble prayer of surrender to the forces of nature and the related Gods. To quote a small portion: “swasti naa poosan” (please provide your blessings to us O Sun (or the one who lights up and nourishes (the whole world))).

Pl. note that the above is only a partial interpretation of the text, which goes on to explore the relationship between ourselves and the fourth state and suggests meditation as the key to better experience and understand things.

The greatness of Einstein

Since the dawn of civilization, mankind has been in a constant endeavor to find answers to certain questions – who are we, where do we come from and go to, the nature of things around us, how was the universe created and what does it all mean, etc.

Einstein’s contribution was in providing a giant leap to mankind’s understanding of the nature and properties of the universe, thus providing a different level and means of understanding to thousands of years of thinking effort.

However, for me, the greatest quality of Einstein was the simplicity in thought and the humbleness in nature that he retained throughout his life, in spite of all the achievements.

“What I see in nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility” – Einstein.

The Rhythm of Life

Abstract:

Man is as much a product of music and rhythm as he is of nature.

Industrialization has robbed us of this music, leaving mankind a frustrated lot.

This article is a prayer that in the journey of life, may this music never leave us - and symbolically explores this idea via trains.

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What is it that differentiates a human from the rest of the species? All species have emotions, care for each other, search for food & shelter, reproduce. One thing which sets us apart is the ability to appreciate rhythm, dance, and enjoy music.

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Why we like music - A Scientific Experiment

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A team of scientists from University of Texas set about scanning the brains of volunteer Tango dancers in the CT-PET machine hile they were listening to music and performing simple steps of a dance (see photo). This enabled them to track the blood flow in different areas of the brain under different conditions.

Jumping directly to the conclusion, their research tells us that:

- Areas in brain like ‘Anterior Vermis’ and ‘Medial Geniculate Nucleus’ act like a Metronome, helping synchronize our movements to a guiding rhythm. Also, these areas bypass some of

the processing that takes place during normal listening (eg. via auditory cortex). That is why several times we find ourselves sub-consciously tapping our fingers/feet to music without initially realizing it.

- Precuneus contains a sensory-based map of one’s own body, helps to plot a dancer’s path from a body-centered, or egocentric, perspective.The great thing is that it seems that the primary purpose of these areas is to enable appreciation and execution of music and dance. For regular activities like walking/exercising, listening to someone, there are other areas of the brain which enable and regulate these activities.

- Brocas Area of the brain is activated both when we dance as well as when we communicate eg. speak. Both activities may be related, eg. we are hardly able to talk without hands moving and without facial expressions, even though there may not be a need to do so.

The research paper then goes into beautiful speculation into why all this may have occurred. Imagine a time long ago when humans were just starting to differentiate from apes. They could make fire and would sit around in a group each evening collectively cooking their food. This would spontaneously lead to dancing around the fire with the accompaniment of a rhythm via a simple drum or sticks. Rhythm involves some amount of mathematics to keep time, dance involves expression of feelings - and the process of doing these activities may in fact have been responsible for the development of the brain in its unique human form – combining the elements of expression/communication, spontaneous subconscious familiarity with rhythm, music and dance.

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Music and the steam loco

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Many of us are instinctively fascinated by a running steam loco.

It took a lot of reading of Bill Aitken's works and a sudden intuition to realize that the ancient dance performed around fire was not much different than the experience in the cab of a WP, or any steam loco. The aim is to develop a constant rhythm of the cylinders while performing nothing short of a group dance by the firemen, feeding to the fire its food.

(Another dance going on is the movement of the driving rods of the loco).

All music and dance is guided by a central idea, sometimes by a conductor representing this idea – and the time-table, route aspects, signaling and Sr. LP play this role in the WP.

To put forth another idea (by the great traveller Bill Aitken), mankind has always revered water (rivers are worshipped) and ice (snow peaks represent deities in the Himalayas). Water, Ice and Steam are different forms of the same element, and hence the natural reverence for steam locos too.

By comparison, modern electrics are fast, efficient, powerful, silent and hardly evoke the kind of wonder that comes via a steam loco.

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A small game with rhythm during travel

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There's something for the passengers too. Much of the music during rail-travel has been lost with the electrics and newer technology enabled welding of tracks, but one can still play a little game with rhythm while traveling in trains.

Counting the number of ‘clicks’ as the wheels pass over each joint of the track for 45 seconds will very very accurately give the current speed of the train (calculation is based on each track length being of 13 m length, it is practical to count for 9 seconds and multiply by 5). Experienced people can do this just feeling the movement of the train, even while lying down in the upper berth of an AC sleeper with their eyes closed.

True, one can now accurately get the speed using the GPS, but it is hardly as much fun.

You do not tap your fingers and synchronize with the rhythm of the journey, and do not exercise your basic instincts via ‘Anterior Vermis’ and ‘Medial Geniculate Nucleus’ and ‘Precuneus’

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The rhythm of life

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As we are growing technologically advanced, there is a danger of slowly losing the aspect of music from our lives. We are already out of rhythm with nature and are comfortable with 'quickly' destroying the last bit of forests, glaciers and pure air – and have hardly gained anything meaningful in return. Its only a matter of time before we also go the same way as the nature.

We may have come a long way since the days of dancing around fire in the middle of forests.

But let us not lose the aspect of music in our further journey of life.

The Blue Umbrella

Ruskin Bond, in his story ‘The Blue Umbrella’ describes Binya, a young Garhwali girl who successfully fights back against the thief who stole her umbrella, but quickly forgives him and hands him back the umbrella as she is deeply disturbed after the thief is made an outcast by the community. Perhaps this story is representative of the community living in those parts of the Himalayas, who are toughened by a very difficult life, but living in close proximity with nature also makes them very sensitive and spiritual.

I had a live encounter with Binya around 10 years back, when I was still unaware of the above story until it got made into a feature film some time back. On the way for a trek to a place in the interiors of Garhwal, and on the first evening had stopped to spend the night at a small town. Having nothing else to do, I found myself visiting a small village temple in the evening, crowded by local people. Alone, and slightly uncomfortable at an outside having intruded into something personal to the village folks, I tried to partially hide in a corner and watch the proceedings. Suddenly, I found something drop into my hands, it was a large yellow flower. In a flash, the little girl who handed the same moved away and disappeared among the crowd, leaving one flabbergasted and wondering at the possibilities of this encounter. Did she notice the discomfort of an outsider and wanted to console him and welcome him in? One will never know.

I was reminded with shivers of a story, by Maupassant I believe, in which a man is traveling through dense endless forests in a train. In the dead of the night, he sees a fire lit in a clearing and a lone man with a long beard sitting in front of it. In a flash, the scene has passed, but the mystery as to what the lone man was doing in the middle of the forest in the middle of the night remains with the author forever. Coming back to the above trip, later on, the trip ‘was’ successful and I was able to successfully reach the point I had planned to go to. However, it is now diluted in memory, but the impact of the above incident is such that it is still as fresh in memory as if it had occurred yesterday.

There are quite a few people around who have lived their lives focusing on this journey aspect, not caring or having a specific goal. Ruskin Bond may be one, who could have returned to England after the partition and become materially rich and successful, but chose to remain in Mussourie in a modest house, content with the mountain life and simple village folk. Bill Aitken is a strange case, having completed his education in Scotland, and migrating to India he chose to lead the life of a simple villager, working as a gardener, tilling fields, collecting firewood, tending buffaloes in the Kumaun Himalayas and traveling the length and breadth of the country exclusively in second class on metre gauge branch lines when he did leave the mountains. To quote him from his book ‘Branch Line to Eternity’ “Main line traffickings were forgettable, but to enter a branch line carriage was to arouse a sense of adventure and open a door to the unknown”. At another place, he writes, “The biggest problem of all is to convince polite society that what they consider real life is actually only the poorer half of it.” How true.

There are two types of journeys in life, one which have a goal, and others which do not. While having a aim, ambition and goal is considered good, such goals belong to the realm of humans and are created and executed by us, and can also shield us from the infinite possibilities around. For journeys which do not have a goal or a purpose, everything around is an adventure, a discovery. One may not reach anywhere or accumulate much, but that may be a small price to pay for where one is and what one possesses all the time.

Often, we live in our small little houses, but forget to look up at the blue umbrella that houses everyone of us.

A Timeless Journey

Minutes, hours, even days, timetables, all these have no meaning when one travels by a train across the northern parts of India.
Notes from a journey from Kanpur to Pune.

1) Reached Kanpur station early in the morning to catch the weekly Lucknow-Pune superfast on Sunday.
The day started with a darshan of the Gomti Express coming from Delhi, going towards Lucknow at 6:30 am. Now, what was a fully sitting train doing traveling overnight, and that too on a Sunday on which it is not supposed to run? Well, it was just 9 hours late (in a 7 hour journey), that too on a double electrified section. Well, this was just the starting of a lot of exiting observations to come, which unfortunately did not seem so exciting when it came to my own train.

2) 7:50 am came and went but there was no sign of my right-time running train on platform 2.
The reason were the other 3 trains all ready to race each other out towards Jhansi (someone in this group was desirous of a railway F1 version, I had heard). These were:
2.1) Barauni-Gwalior, late by 23 hours. The only consolation to the doomed passengers would have been the shining bright WDM3D 11130 being wasted on the train, had there been any passengers remaining by this time. This was waiting for the Gorakhpur-Bangalore to move, which had already been given the starter signal.
2.2) Gorakhpur-Bangalore, late by 19 hours. When this superfast did actually finally move, after a few centimeters, someone probably with a good sense of humour promptly pulled the chain and brought it to a halt once again.
2.3) Gorakhpur-LTT, late by only around 6 hours.
Of course, all these old and esteemed trains had to be given priority over our young maiden which had just originated from Lucknow an hour back.

3) 2104 LJN-PUNE ‘superfast’ finally arrived 1.5 hours late and then spent another 1.5 hours at the platform waiting for the Jhansi-Lucknow passenger to arrive at Kanpur station from the opposite direction. 2104 was led by a magestic green PUNE WDM2 which was to have taken the train all the way till Pune.

4) On the way to Jhansi, we crossed a Bangalore-Gorakhpur rake. I presume it must have been that of the 0502 Holiday Special, running around 30 hours late (since the other SBC-GKP train on this route, the regular 2592 running late by 96 hours seemed a bit too much). Not very surprising, considering that they had decided to provide a single WDM2a the honours to lead the 23 coach train!

5) The mind spinning with all the strange encounters, and the 40 deg. Celcius winds in the SL class, and the fact that I had not slept the last 4 nights ensured that I became a dead-body in my side-upper berth for the next 18 hours flat. When I woke up near Manmad and peeped out, our train was led by an orange engine, it seemed. Closer observation revealed a bright orange Bhagat-ki-koti WDM3a, with a dead green Pune WDM2 quietly trailing it! The Pune loco was dumped during the reversal at Daund. The train was 5 hours late now. I went and checked out the BGKT WDM3a prior to its departure at Daund. Inside the loco cab, sitting on the assistant’s seat was a young girl, around 13 years of age, wearing a black frock on a dark body, having two cute ponytails. The starter turned amber, the loco gave a loud horn and the train started moving, I went back to my seat, regretting the decision taken in younger days of not becoming a loco pilot in favour of other opportunities elsewhere….