FEATURE
TENDULKAR'S LOVE & PASSION
Indian batting wizard, Sachin Tendulkar had made it clear, the other day, that he has ‘no immediate plans of quitting the game’ saying he was ‘enjoying the game even more now and still has the “desire and the passion” to play for India. Retirement is not in my thought yet, and as and when I decide I would let every body know, to call it a day’ he is reported to have stated interacting with the media, post India’s World Cup win.
“The passion for cricket has not died, the love of the game is very much alive and I have played for such a long time because of that, I don’t see any reason why that would change now. It is time to enjoy the game even more. I am looking forward to it and continue” he had added while indicating that he may not be part of the next world cup team.
In a cricket career spanning 21 years, Tendulkar has played 177 tests and 453 ODI, scoring a record 14692 in test, which is the highest for any cricketer as well as 1811 runs in ODIs.
India is slated to be an economic super power by 2020, at least that is the dream of APJ Abdul Kalaam, a former President of India, a Bharat Ratna awardee. As things stand today in 2011, it looks fairly clear that India will not become a super power by 2020, with malnutrition, hunger and poverty stalking the length and breadth of the country. But it certainly has the potential to become a super power in the coming years.
One of the component of being a super power is its intellectual capability and to make its mark internationally. There is no field where India has not excelled. And cricket is one of them. The world cup victory has proved the innate strength of the country in cricket. And the ongoing IPL has brought to the national and international limelight the abundant pool of talent available within the country. Thus, on innumerable occasions, it has been proved beyond any shadow of doubt that there is a whole fund of talents and abilities available to be drawn. But the mechanism meant to draw these talents for better utilization is either stymied by infrastructure infested with selfishness or shortsightedness or both.
In other words our talents are not exposed to the opportunities available in the system or plainly denied opportunities, so that only vested interest is allowed the role to play. This has greatly hurt the latent talent, which is lost in the wilderness like a flower, unseen by the world at large.
India is indeed a great country but greatly infested by very selfish people at all levels, where only those who are in the thick of happening want to continue to pop the milk of available avenues. A sad spectacle indeed.
Now look at our greatest batting icon, Sachin Tendulkar, who desires to be a Bharat Ratna, who has been playing for 21 long years in all forms of the game. Made big name and fame for himself, also made huge monetary fortune for himself. Reportedly ‘the richest cricketer’. But look at his recent statement, he does not want to give up his position. So when will those young talents available to IPL teams shall get the opportunity to play for India. He has reportedly stated “retirement has not crossed my mind”. But what about the lot of those young and promising players, why their waiting in the wings does not cross his mind and those of cricket administrators? Don’t you think, he needs to think, so too our cricket administrators?
While on the subject, just as Anil Kumble and Saurav Ganguli have left the arena, while still doing well, it is important that players like Rahul Dravid, V.V.S. Laxman, besides Tendulkar too should retire for the youngsters to bask in the sunshine. In the emerging India, shouldn’t all do well and prosper, not just some handful of influential people?!
J.Shriyan
SOCIAL WORK OR ANTI-SOCIAL WORK!?
One of the unfortunate development in India of recent times, is the fixation syndrome, most activists / NGOs suffer from. Their purpose is to fix people or organisations, rightly or wrongly. They are fairly active, using funds either their own to some extent or handouts received from friends and well wishers or state funding or even foreign funding. Those who are in the last two categories usually have a better infrastructure and sometime even provide for the life style of people at the helm. Here we are not talking about people who exist only to get funds from different sources, and there are many like them, but only those who are active-funded and non-funded.
These real activist NGOs do work fairly diligently. For some, it is a career, for some, it is a passion. Although the ones who have opted for social work as a career are better organised with their network and therefore manage better media exposure. But those passionate ones, funded or non-funded are far more committed and do make lot of difference at ground level to the society around them, but poorly networked and therefore cannot manage media exposure. Even media, whether print or electronic, does not recognise their activities, their contribution, or even their presence for whatever reasons. But unmindful of these aberrations they are busy with their activities.
Coming to the fixation syndrome of these activists, NGOs, their efforts are mostly directed towards finding the wrong doer rather tha finding what is wrong. Principle of social correction demands that the system should find out what is wrong, rather than to be obsessed with who is wrong. ‘What is wrong’ approach normally leads to healthier debate and then probably moves towards how this wrong can be rectified or corrected, without any rabble rousing and without any rancour among the social divisions, if any. Whereas ‘who is wrong’ approach leads to all kinds of avoidable acrimony, that would, more often than not, lead to ‘stand offs’ or make solutions difficult to come-by. The question that must be there before everybody who has a stake in the society, should be, ‘how to bring about social evolution for a better and harmonious existence?’
If it is so, then ‘who is wrong’ approach is patently incorrect and contribute a blatant disservice to society.
Sometime in late Jan. 2011, a pan-Indian NGO organised a meet outside D.C. office in Mangalore, ostensibly to protest the conviction of Dr Binayak Sen, by a court in Chhattisgarh. But as the meeting progressed, it turned out that there was less of talk on Dr Sen, but more on Ayodhya Temple/Masjid judgement, which was already four months old. Speaker after Speaker, started with a former lady minister in Karnataka government, riled the judgement and called it almost a joke, based on superstition etc, to the applause of unfortunately a partisan audience. It was not an issue current in the media or the public space, at that point in time, but the objective appeared clearly to keep the gash in the national psyche open and in ferment. Surely such partisan rhetorics would only serve the divide to continue and probably increase rather than to bridge the divide. And come to think of it, speakers included sadly a retired Karnataka High Court judge!
The objective of every social enterprise or activity should be to promote bridging the social divide rather than create and sustain walls of disharmony. If the objective of such meetings, is to serve the social cause of promoting harmony, this particular meeting had completely failed. It was sad to see that there were people connected with the judiciary, a senior retired justice, lawyers, may be even teachers and ladies associated with the order of a faith. They all appeared happy to target another side of the divide. Of course there were lots of police posse around with protective helmets, shields and batons. On the face of it, it appeared a move by the administration, being over cautious.
India is a pluralistic society with a past which is uniquely its own, There is no country like India in the whole world. From Kanya Kumari to Kashmir, from Kutch to Kolkatta, this country of 1200 million people with incredible diversity present a picture of harmony unseen or unheard any where in the world. Of course there are pockets of restlessness, they can be eminently contained and managed, if administration is properly co-ordinated and coherent without any deviation due to politics or influence peddling, and treat all issues of public disorder as problems of law and order, period.
Here the civil society has the responsibility of helping the administration in the better management of problems recurring from time to time, rather than contribute to increased unease around. Yes we all need to ponder over our role in the meaningful discharge of our duties towards co-operative co-existance rather than mouth inanities of Divide-and-Rule politics.
J.Shriyan
Viva citas
(Dance with your germs)
“Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher.”
William Wordsworth.
Who, in fact, is man? Latest study from the prestigious National Institute of Health in America has confirmed that only about 10% of the human body consists of human cells of which there are around 1014 in all. The rest of 90% belong to millions of germs who have become very close friends of man over the millions of years that man existed on earth. While many of the germs have got incorporated into our cell cytoplasm (the soft ware of every cell in any organ) millions of them reside permanently inside our gut (mouth to the anus), respiratory tract, skin, and vagina/penis. The present estimate, which, of course, is statistical, gives a figure of the magnitude of ten times more germs inside the human body compared to the total number of human cells.
Our ambitious genome project and the associated stem cell research have all gone awry with this new scientific knowledge. While human genome has around twenty to twenty-five thousand genes in all, our friends, the germs, have contributed millions of their genes to us. They are a combination of microbiomes, virinomes, and also the genes related to their metabolism, called metabolomes. Together, they form the Meta-genome of man which needs to be studied from now on. The NIH project in the last one decade has been able to study about 1087 of those metagenomes of which there are millions more to be explored. At the present rate of research it might take decades more to unravel the mystery at a phenomenal cost.
How did our present science miss this vital knowledge? Some of our venerated leaders were responsible for this tardiness. The leader of the group was Robert Koch with his Koch’s postulates. Many of the disease causing germs could not be identified using these archaic postulates. They were all classed as idiopathic diseases. While there were occasional successes en route like the time Helicobacter Pylori was detected in the gut and L-forms were discovered in London, we have made very little headway elsewhere. It is possible that some of our present day killer diseases like heart attacks, brain attacks, cancer, autoimmune syndromes and even some psychological illnesses might have their origin in some germs as the triggering factors. The whole sea of hidden knowledge is there for bright future researchers to explore.
Germs are a part of human body; as such, they control our every move. Even to lift a little finger one needs to get permission from a small germ. This is a very good lesson in philosophy and mundane experiences of daily living. Pride, the greatest enemy of man, has no scientific locus standii in view of the awareness of the human meta-genome. Even the greatest of men have to be subservient to microscopically small germs. Humility, therefore, becomes the order of the day. Humility, according to Indian wisdom, is a sign of highest education in man. This is a good scientific lesson to all those that are arrogant to think that they can run this world with their money, muscle or brain power.
Advances in physics have added new knowledge in this area too. Now Hans Peter Duerr, the Emeritus President of the Max Planck Institute in Munich, has shown that energy and matter are but the two faces of the same coin-“matter is not made out of matter.” This will bring human mind as the same as human body, again reminding us that the Indian sages were right when they wrote that mind is but man himself-manaevam manushyaanaam. This brings us to the crux of the problem in the medical world, the ghost of adverse drug reactions that kill maximum number of people that seek medical help. An elegant study coming from Oxford, Cambridge, Hamburg and Munich universities, led by Professor Bingel at Oxford, showed that the Placebo effect or the Expectation Effect, which depends on the patient’s faith in the doctor, is much more powerful than all the drugs available.
If the human mind is tranquil, human body rarely suffers from any physical illnesses. The same applies to psychiatric illnesses. The old idea that mental illnesses have chemical background has been challenged scientifically. The latter could be managed by the placebo effect in the same way as bodily diseases. All most all psychiatric drugs have come under fire with this new wisdom. If we could dance with our germ friends inside us and keep our mind tranquil, we could one day win our war against illnesses. “Organ based diseases” have lost their sheen with the new knowledge in physics that body cells love one another irrespective of the organs in which they live. It is only when that synchronicity is lost that we fall ill. Fritz-Albert Popp’s bio-photon emission could tell us if our cells are in synch with one another or not. Body cells could also be made to dance (vibrate) together with proper mental balance.
Dance with the germs to live life fully-Vivacitas!
Indian batting wizard, Sachin Tendulkar had made it clear, the other day, that he has ‘no immediate plans of quitting the game’ saying he was ‘enjoying the game even more now and still has the “desire and the passion” to play for India. Retirement is not in my thought yet, and as and when I decide I would let every body know, to call it a day’ he is reported to have stated interacting with the media, post India’s World Cup win.
“The passion for cricket has not died, the love of the game is very much alive and I have played for such a long time because of that, I don’t see any reason why that would change now. It is time to enjoy the game even more. I am looking forward to it and continue” he had added while indicating that he may not be part of the next world cup team.
In a cricket career spanning 21 years, Tendulkar has played 177 tests and 453 ODI, scoring a record 14692 in test, which is the highest for any cricketer as well as 1811 runs in ODIs.
India is slated to be an economic super power by 2020, at least that is the dream of APJ Abdul Kalaam, a former President of India, a Bharat Ratna awardee. As things stand today in 2011, it looks fairly clear that India will not become a super power by 2020, with malnutrition, hunger and poverty stalking the length and breadth of the country. But it certainly has the potential to become a super power in the coming years.
One of the component of being a super power is its intellectual capability and to make its mark internationally. There is no field where India has not excelled. And cricket is one of them. The world cup victory has proved the innate strength of the country in cricket. And the ongoing IPL has brought to the national and international limelight the abundant pool of talent available within the country. Thus, on innumerable occasions, it has been proved beyond any shadow of doubt that there is a whole fund of talents and abilities available to be drawn. But the mechanism meant to draw these talents for better utilization is either stymied by infrastructure infested with selfishness or shortsightedness or both.
In other words our talents are not exposed to the opportunities available in the system or plainly denied opportunities, so that only vested interest is allowed the role to play. This has greatly hurt the latent talent, which is lost in the wilderness like a flower, unseen by the world at large.
India is indeed a great country but greatly infested by very selfish people at all levels, where only those who are in the thick of happening want to continue to pop the milk of available avenues. A sad spectacle indeed.
Now look at our greatest batting icon, Sachin Tendulkar, who desires to be a Bharat Ratna, who has been playing for 21 long years in all forms of the game. Made big name and fame for himself, also made huge monetary fortune for himself. Reportedly ‘the richest cricketer’. But look at his recent statement, he does not want to give up his position. So when will those young talents available to IPL teams shall get the opportunity to play for India. He has reportedly stated “retirement has not crossed my mind”. But what about the lot of those young and promising players, why their waiting in the wings does not cross his mind and those of cricket administrators? Don’t you think, he needs to think, so too our cricket administrators?
While on the subject, just as Anil Kumble and Saurav Ganguli have left the arena, while still doing well, it is important that players like Rahul Dravid, V.V.S. Laxman, besides Tendulkar too should retire for the youngsters to bask in the sunshine. In the emerging India, shouldn’t all do well and prosper, not just some handful of influential people?!
J.Shriyan
SOCIAL WORK OR ANTI-SOCIAL WORK!?
One of the unfortunate development in India of recent times, is the fixation syndrome, most activists / NGOs suffer from. Their purpose is to fix people or organisations, rightly or wrongly. They are fairly active, using funds either their own to some extent or handouts received from friends and well wishers or state funding or even foreign funding. Those who are in the last two categories usually have a better infrastructure and sometime even provide for the life style of people at the helm. Here we are not talking about people who exist only to get funds from different sources, and there are many like them, but only those who are active-funded and non-funded.
These real activist NGOs do work fairly diligently. For some, it is a career, for some, it is a passion. Although the ones who have opted for social work as a career are better organised with their network and therefore manage better media exposure. But those passionate ones, funded or non-funded are far more committed and do make lot of difference at ground level to the society around them, but poorly networked and therefore cannot manage media exposure. Even media, whether print or electronic, does not recognise their activities, their contribution, or even their presence for whatever reasons. But unmindful of these aberrations they are busy with their activities.
Coming to the fixation syndrome of these activists, NGOs, their efforts are mostly directed towards finding the wrong doer rather tha finding what is wrong. Principle of social correction demands that the system should find out what is wrong, rather than to be obsessed with who is wrong. ‘What is wrong’ approach normally leads to healthier debate and then probably moves towards how this wrong can be rectified or corrected, without any rabble rousing and without any rancour among the social divisions, if any. Whereas ‘who is wrong’ approach leads to all kinds of avoidable acrimony, that would, more often than not, lead to ‘stand offs’ or make solutions difficult to come-by. The question that must be there before everybody who has a stake in the society, should be, ‘how to bring about social evolution for a better and harmonious existence?’
If it is so, then ‘who is wrong’ approach is patently incorrect and contribute a blatant disservice to society.
Sometime in late Jan. 2011, a pan-Indian NGO organised a meet outside D.C. office in Mangalore, ostensibly to protest the conviction of Dr Binayak Sen, by a court in Chhattisgarh. But as the meeting progressed, it turned out that there was less of talk on Dr Sen, but more on Ayodhya Temple/Masjid judgement, which was already four months old. Speaker after Speaker, started with a former lady minister in Karnataka government, riled the judgement and called it almost a joke, based on superstition etc, to the applause of unfortunately a partisan audience. It was not an issue current in the media or the public space, at that point in time, but the objective appeared clearly to keep the gash in the national psyche open and in ferment. Surely such partisan rhetorics would only serve the divide to continue and probably increase rather than to bridge the divide. And come to think of it, speakers included sadly a retired Karnataka High Court judge!
The objective of every social enterprise or activity should be to promote bridging the social divide rather than create and sustain walls of disharmony. If the objective of such meetings, is to serve the social cause of promoting harmony, this particular meeting had completely failed. It was sad to see that there were people connected with the judiciary, a senior retired justice, lawyers, may be even teachers and ladies associated with the order of a faith. They all appeared happy to target another side of the divide. Of course there were lots of police posse around with protective helmets, shields and batons. On the face of it, it appeared a move by the administration, being over cautious.
India is a pluralistic society with a past which is uniquely its own, There is no country like India in the whole world. From Kanya Kumari to Kashmir, from Kutch to Kolkatta, this country of 1200 million people with incredible diversity present a picture of harmony unseen or unheard any where in the world. Of course there are pockets of restlessness, they can be eminently contained and managed, if administration is properly co-ordinated and coherent without any deviation due to politics or influence peddling, and treat all issues of public disorder as problems of law and order, period.
Here the civil society has the responsibility of helping the administration in the better management of problems recurring from time to time, rather than contribute to increased unease around. Yes we all need to ponder over our role in the meaningful discharge of our duties towards co-operative co-existance rather than mouth inanities of Divide-and-Rule politics.
J.Shriyan
Viva citas
(Dance with your germs)
“Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher.”
William Wordsworth.
Who, in fact, is man? Latest study from the prestigious National Institute of Health in America has confirmed that only about 10% of the human body consists of human cells of which there are around 1014 in all. The rest of 90% belong to millions of germs who have become very close friends of man over the millions of years that man existed on earth. While many of the germs have got incorporated into our cell cytoplasm (the soft ware of every cell in any organ) millions of them reside permanently inside our gut (mouth to the anus), respiratory tract, skin, and vagina/penis. The present estimate, which, of course, is statistical, gives a figure of the magnitude of ten times more germs inside the human body compared to the total number of human cells.
Our ambitious genome project and the associated stem cell research have all gone awry with this new scientific knowledge. While human genome has around twenty to twenty-five thousand genes in all, our friends, the germs, have contributed millions of their genes to us. They are a combination of microbiomes, virinomes, and also the genes related to their metabolism, called metabolomes. Together, they form the Meta-genome of man which needs to be studied from now on. The NIH project in the last one decade has been able to study about 1087 of those metagenomes of which there are millions more to be explored. At the present rate of research it might take decades more to unravel the mystery at a phenomenal cost.
How did our present science miss this vital knowledge? Some of our venerated leaders were responsible for this tardiness. The leader of the group was Robert Koch with his Koch’s postulates. Many of the disease causing germs could not be identified using these archaic postulates. They were all classed as idiopathic diseases. While there were occasional successes en route like the time Helicobacter Pylori was detected in the gut and L-forms were discovered in London, we have made very little headway elsewhere. It is possible that some of our present day killer diseases like heart attacks, brain attacks, cancer, autoimmune syndromes and even some psychological illnesses might have their origin in some germs as the triggering factors. The whole sea of hidden knowledge is there for bright future researchers to explore.
Germs are a part of human body; as such, they control our every move. Even to lift a little finger one needs to get permission from a small germ. This is a very good lesson in philosophy and mundane experiences of daily living. Pride, the greatest enemy of man, has no scientific locus standii in view of the awareness of the human meta-genome. Even the greatest of men have to be subservient to microscopically small germs. Humility, therefore, becomes the order of the day. Humility, according to Indian wisdom, is a sign of highest education in man. This is a good scientific lesson to all those that are arrogant to think that they can run this world with their money, muscle or brain power.
Advances in physics have added new knowledge in this area too. Now Hans Peter Duerr, the Emeritus President of the Max Planck Institute in Munich, has shown that energy and matter are but the two faces of the same coin-“matter is not made out of matter.” This will bring human mind as the same as human body, again reminding us that the Indian sages were right when they wrote that mind is but man himself-manaevam manushyaanaam. This brings us to the crux of the problem in the medical world, the ghost of adverse drug reactions that kill maximum number of people that seek medical help. An elegant study coming from Oxford, Cambridge, Hamburg and Munich universities, led by Professor Bingel at Oxford, showed that the Placebo effect or the Expectation Effect, which depends on the patient’s faith in the doctor, is much more powerful than all the drugs available.
If the human mind is tranquil, human body rarely suffers from any physical illnesses. The same applies to psychiatric illnesses. The old idea that mental illnesses have chemical background has been challenged scientifically. The latter could be managed by the placebo effect in the same way as bodily diseases. All most all psychiatric drugs have come under fire with this new wisdom. If we could dance with our germ friends inside us and keep our mind tranquil, we could one day win our war against illnesses. “Organ based diseases” have lost their sheen with the new knowledge in physics that body cells love one another irrespective of the organs in which they live. It is only when that synchronicity is lost that we fall ill. Fritz-Albert Popp’s bio-photon emission could tell us if our cells are in synch with one another or not. Body cells could also be made to dance (vibrate) together with proper mental balance.
Dance with the germs to live life fully-Vivacitas!
Prof B.M. Hegde
Comments