Oh, how I dreamt in school When heard speeches of Kalam..
Thought I really had wings..
Thought I’ll make us THE Superpower, Thought I’ll help make Development sustainable, Thought I’ll help people See through all the bullshit, Thought I’ll make Education accessible, Thought I’ll give everyone Every opportunity,
To make new discoveries, To make ideas come true, To venture the world, the universe, To find the purpose-the real one, To choose, To love, To dislike, To befriend, To never be left behind..
Today I see Vilest of the vile people Doing stupidest of the stupid things, And taking pride, smaller than nothing,
Now when someone plays that iPhone-made short film, With Kalam’s voice in the back And kids repeating after him, “I am born with wings”, I cringe and then I laugh.
Recently finished reading अधर्मयुद्ध (Adharma Yuddha-war of religious fanaticism) by Girish Kuber.
The first book by him that I read was ‘युद्ध जिवांचे’ (Yuddha Jivanche- bio-war, or ‘war of the living’, or ‘war of people’?) It talks about science and technology’s darker side that prevailed in the power-privileged countries like America, Germany, Japan, Russia, etc and how it created an endless network of exploitation that the third world can’t even notice or imagine. Everyone should read it, especially those in science, technology and pharmaceuticals.
Reading it in school is a bad decision for those who already have their own existentialism. Seriously. It makes one wonder, whether we, the Homo sapiens, actually deserve the title of the most evolved species on the planet. Makes one question how humans can be so sickeningly creative in violence, how the largest share of money from every country’s GDP, people’s hard-damn-earned money, ends up in various violence projects, may it be in the name of national security, or exerting dominance, or simply fear-mongering.. Do common citizens consent to all this? Do they even know what goes on in their name?
When we read these details as science enthusiasts, we are humbled by the immensity of responsibility that’s on our shoulders. More than that, we are disgusted by our ancestors in the field. Depressed, even. We start asking, do we really want to end up like this? Any sane being’s answer would be, no. It also initiates another line of thought-importance of humanities. We take great pride in counting every scientific achievement of our respective nations or individuals, a common sentiment everywhere in the world. But we don’t really care to know why the study of humanities is important. In all these years of human history full of violence, we are yet to learn our lesson and create a system to utilise the resources in trying to learn about the diversity in the world and how to deal with it sustainably.
Because the prime emotion behind every project mentioned in the book is hate and greed. Greed, or a general sense of superiority that makes one ignorant of others existence and gives them a ‘license’ to exploit them however they please. ‘Lisence’ with which they escaped any questions on the sweet coincidence of the sudden rise of the company manufacturing Tamiflu from total bankruptcy and the sudden emergence of swine flu all over the third world.
Or a general sense of hate, that helps them legitimise and defend their actions. Hitler’s gas chambers are the least of such horrors, purely motivated by hatred.
Whatever it is, it’s far away from where we all should’ve been. The current situation is worse, these tools have reached in the hands of terrorists even. But looking at the rising communalism and racism in politics (but hey it was always the same!), along with the peaked greed, it’s very hard to differentiate between the right and wrong. We live in a world where the terms ‘killing’, ‘murder’, ‘massacre’, have different meanings for different socioeconomic-political dynamics of the victims and the perpetrators. Which brings us to three of other books by Girish Kuber- एका तेलियाने, हा तेल नावाचा इतिहास आहे & अधर्मयुद्ध.
एका तेलियाने (Eka Teliyane) gives a brilliant historical account of how Ahmed Zaki Yamani almost dictated the oil strategy for international markets during the period of the 60′ to 80s. हा तेल नावाचा इतिहास आहे (Ha tel navacha itihas aahe-This is the history of oil), as the name suggests, it gives an insight into the history and politics of the journey of oil, from nothing to everything. These two books, along with the third (which is not based on oil, but on terrorism and opportunism that revolves around oil) अधर्मयुध्द, create a master package to understand what’s going on in the world and which all factors are responsible for it.
अधर्मयुध्द makes us furious at the west, mainly America and England. It explains how the greedy capitalists chose Islamist terrorism over Russian communism-a heavily messed up decision and how they kept making the same mistake of fueling and utilising terrorism to spite&fight Russia again and again, how insolently they overlooked the bigger horrors that were being set up parallelly, proving their complicity again and again. Now along with them, the whole world is paying for their mistakes, and the powerful, are still busy filling their own pockets.
Thanks to Girish Kuber, who narrates this like an everyday conversation in Marathi and makes the complex history and politics of the world easier to understand for everyone.
PS: The list is incomplete without his another Marathi book on Putin (पुतीन: महासत्तेच्या इतिहासाचे अस्वस्थ वर्तमान- Putin: The turbulent present of the history of the superpower), with an interesting subtitle, but I am yet to get my hands on it. Hope to get it soon..
When Shalini finally came to know that her daughter Leila is alive and safe, she shared her joy with her friend. Friend? Or co-worker? Is there a word such as ‘co-sufferer’? Because that’s what they all were. As close to ‘friends’ as they could be. This ‘friend’, on the day Shalini was going to meet Leila, said to Shalini, “Leila ko mere baare mein batana haan..! (Do tell Leila about me!)” with so much enthusiasm, as if she was going to get the Nobel prize. We never saw her again, we don’t know what her fate was, also because it’s a fictional character.
But the important thing was that she wanted to be remembered. She didn’t know Shalini, she hadn’t even seen Leila, but by considering the little time she might’ve spent with Shalini, she thought she could be remembered by them. As a friend, as a co-worker, as a ‘co-sufferer’, as enemy, or in whatever way they’d seem fit.
Don’t we all want to leave something behind? Depending on which point we are on the scale of privilege and merit, the genre of the legacy that we want to leave would differ. Some would try to buy a cottage for their children, some would spend their life to send signals to aliens. Quite a variety of aspirations, really! But the aspiration to leave a legacy is common. This aspiration gives one something to live for. It gives one a big list of unfulfilled demands for the lifetime. To some, it gives hope. For some, it sucks out their presence in the present. Those who don’t have it, berate those who do. Those who have it, pity those who don’t. Deep inside, everyone knows that it is always there, in some or the other form. It ends only when we actually start living in the present.
But that’s difficult, isn’t it? How easily we procastinate something as simple as a blood test, or disregard years of research done on environmental crisis or reject the concept of something so obvious as ‘end’. The very first reflex is ignorance, because we don’t like to accept vulnerability, because we don’t like to acknowledge limitations or weakness. Instead, we start mocking those who do. We patronize them, belittle them and hope that everyone just forgets them.
The aspiration to leave a legacy comes from the same place. I wonder what we actually achieve by doing that. One day, I am sure I’ll find the answer.
Till then, we sing, ‘Achcha chalte hain, Duaon mein yaad rakhna…!’ (Okay I am leaving for now, but remember me in your prayers)
Recently, I watched the newly released movie in theater-Jurassic Park: The fallen kingdom. Overall, it was a good movie, technically and otherwise. The usual plot of any Jurassic Park/world movie is almost the same, someone gets greedy and wants to use genetic technology and the dinosaurs for some purpose. For example, John Hammond wanted to create something very amazing with his money and influence so he built the theme park to astonish the world by having living dinosaurs in it, the next part has his son bringing out the T-rex for selling it to a park, the third part deals with adrenaline junkie kids to visit the island for adventure. Then there is ‘Jurassic world’ series, where the park is rebuilt and we see two parties- 1] park’s founding body who thinks that dinosaurs are just another toy to show in the amusement park & 2] The military who wants to create dinosaur species to hunt given target. In the end, everyone learns his lesson in the end in his own way.
The latest sequel talks about one more problem-the volcano on Isla Numblar getting more and more active, and having the potential to burn the island completely which would cause the elimination of all the dinosaur species from earth (once again). This starts a conflict, whether to let mother nature rule (let the dinosaurs die) or to meddle in her business (and save them by displacing them to a new island). Immediately there are two groups, those who want to save the dinosaurs and those who don’t want to take any additional actions. There is a third hidden group of the opportunists, who deceive the first group to track the dinosaurs on the island and capture them for experimentation and military purposes.
The lone diplodocus on Isla Numblar
There is one incident in the movie where, from the island, military men rescue as many dinosaur species as possible and take them on their military ship. The time is critical and the volcano is on the peak of destruction. Everyone reaches on board and suddenly they all hear an excruciating sound, the sad cries of a giant Diplodocus (sort of), who was left behind, standing alone on the deck. As if she was calling them to come back for her, or saying her goodbyes, no one would know. No one could do anything. They didn’t return for her, maybe because she was just a harmless herbivore, who took too much space, and couldn’t be a killer. In seconds the lava erupted and poor dinosaur, who was once the crown jewel of the park and the epic magnanimous creature of the planet, was embraced by the flames. This triggers something in the viewers, that they can describe with no locution.
The senate witnesses a debate between first two groups-whether or not to save isla numblar’s dinosaurs from volcanic eruption? Tough question, because it starts its own list of questions-Who has more right to live than others? Who is the better one? Who has the right to decide that someone is better than others? Who gets the authority to decide everyone’s net worth? Is there any measure, any unit to describe that? How many units is good and how many is bad? What is good and what is bad?
This reminded me of another movie, ‘The Oxford Murders’. In that, the protagonist-Martin, a university student, unravels the mystery of his landlady’s murder, while being fooled by his idol-Arthur Seldom-who is actually, trying to cover the murderer because of some guilt from past. Seldom makes Martin believe that a serial killer is challenging them by giving them a mathematical problem. But his puzzles are used as a cover by a desperate father of a seven year old girl in need of a lung transplant and he murders next few (who are already on the verge of dying). He plans to blow up the school-bus of neurodivergent kids and use one of their lungs for his daughter’s transplant. He dies in the ordeal, but the curious thing is, why did he think it’s appropriate to take lives of those kids? Because their consciousness was developed in a different way from that of ours? Does it make them insignificant? The French graphic novel Le Transperceneige (on which the movie Snowpiercer is based) shows the struggle-to live on the same footage, in the ice age caused by a failed global warming experiment, done by humans of course-between the high and low classes of humans-not caring about the whereabouts of other elements of the planet’s biological sector. It, therefore, indirectly shows the narcissistic human nature-how little we care about others, may they be other humans or creatures.
There are many movies and fiction shows that show similar line of existential crisis. It’s funny how the production houses for such movies (which are mostly Hollywood, Marvel or Warner Bros, etc.) keep their own countries at the center of the decision making body in the movie and still make money on an international level. Even in kid’s cartoon, Doraemon shows Japanese earth’s representative in outer space, the Potterverse mentions the magical population from only Europe. This is of course obvious, everyone favors their own troupe. We naturally feel safe in a familiar environment with people we know. This natural instinct-a characteristic feature representing our animalistic lineage-is interpreted by human population as a license to berate the unfamiliar.
In his book Sapiens-A brief history of mankind, Yuval Noah Harari has given account of the socio-psycho-biological evolution of mankind. There were more than six species under the category of ‘Humans’ (under the genus Homo) one of which are us, Homo sapiens. In his attempt to ‘answer what made the others decline making us the only human species’, he describes the evolution of cognitive function of Homo sapiens – which is nothing but an extremely ableist narrative that gives a free pass to all the above cases of “selectivism”.
We are supposed to be cooperating with everyone of us, every single element in the world is important and deserves basic dignity, and therefore, the right to consent. We are no one to make decisions for others. If everyone understands this, it’d be easier for us to decide what to do with the dinosaurs in Isla Numblar.
This reminded me of another movie, ‘The Oxford Murders’. In that, the protagonist-Martin, a university student, unravels the mystery of his landlady’s murder, while being fooled by his idol-Arthur Seldom-who is actually, trying to cover the murderer because of some guilt from past. Seldom makes Martin believe that a serial killer is challenging them by giving them a mathematical problem. But his puzzles are used as a cover by a desperate father of a seven year old girl in need of a lung transplant and he murders next few (who are already on the verge of dying). He plans to blow up the school-bus of neurodivergent kids and use one of their lungs for his daughter’s transplant. He dies in the ordeal, but the curious thing is, why did he think it’s appropriate to take lives of those kids? Because their consciousness was developed in a different way from that of ours? Does it make them insignificant? 
The French graphic novel Le Transperceneige (on which the movie Snowpiercer is based) shows the struggle-to live on the same footage, in the ice age caused by a failed global warming experiment, done by humans of course-between the high and low classes of humans-not caring about the whereabouts of other elements of the planet’s biological sector. It, therefore, indirectly shows the narcissistic human nature-how little we care about others, may they be other humans or creatures.
Wander with Mudita 