Miracle of Movement

As soon as we get out of bed in the morning, we stand we walk, we use the hands the wrist the fingers, elbows, knees the ankle, all of the joints. To move. The anatomy of the nervous system of the human body talks of the spinal cord supporting the main trunk line of the nervous system carrying the various electro-chemical impulses. The nervous system, interlink with the myriad muscles and the bones. The heart muscles controlled by the nerves and the heart in turn nourishes the nerves using blood. All interlinked all connected, the individual, the in-divisible, the human body. 


Socially too the movement in the voice box, tongue and the facial muscle convey images between any two human bodies and the perception of this image determines the action of those bodies. If the perception is that of a threat then the bodies look for security either by fleeing or fighting the action determined by what the human body has learnt effectively. If the perception is that of joy then there is laughter, dancing and the bodies in merriment. The walking body, running body, the dancing body, the acting body, the fighting body bodies in action one way or the other. Based on the perception that in turn depends on the movement of images from one body to the other. That in turn depends on what the bodies are doing at the moment the movement occurs. The bodies too indivisible part of this one giant movement.


Flight of a bird, galloping horse, cheetah's sprint, the turtle's relaxed pace, movements.  Sports men, the dancers and martial artists around the world are students-learning, looking and understanding movement. So are the poets. painters, thinkers-students of the movement of ideas, emotions, perceptions. Lovers, students of each other- caught in a passionate dance of emotions and of the body. Movements. 


We all see this movement some part of it, some claim that they see the whole of it, some don't and some don't know what to make out of it. 

Gratitude - Part 2

So we pick up the thread from where we left out. The stoic doctors. The operation theater- families confronting the fact of death. The hospital Sri Ramachandra Medical College and finding humanity.


Well speaking of which I do not know how to begin. I so very much want to make it clear through my writing. I see them all interlinked. I do not see the beginning or the ending. One begins and ends into another. For the general practice to make writing a sequential progression of cause and effect will only make the subject more obscure. The problem is to strike a chord with those who read this piece perhaps person has to live through it to understand, I do not know. That was just a guess. This brain I am not the expert to know the functioning of the brain or its anatomy. I can only live it.


April 23 morning. I was waiting for the procedure of AVR (Aortic Valve Replacement) on my father to get over and was waiting to meet the doctors. 


(For those curious about AVR here is a link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmnzhuYRjz8)


Sometime in the afternoon I get to meet one of the doctors in the team and inquired about how the operation went. The doctor was relaxed calm and he said "Not to worry he is fine all the vitals are normal now he has been transferred to the ICU". For me that was a relief. Another family just came up to meet the same doctor and I heard him say, with the same calm in his voice, this as I head back to my room- "Sister tell them that the patient is no more...". Something hit me the relief I felt was gone. Thats life and death.


The hospital here Sri Ramachandra Medical college is a big system constituted by different departments further constituted by individuals right from the lift man to the man on top. Every body is doing his assigned task day in and day out. The insurance, the pharmacy, the nurses stations in different wards, the case files changing hands, the doctors investigating, studying and administrating treatment, the various labs churning reports. To this system people with different backgrounds seek treatment of myriad ailments, afflictions, recuperation, rehabilitation, to give birth or to breath their last. Good news and the bad news at the same time. Your brain does not know what emotion to ride on. One may describe it as a confusion in which case you make choice to feel happy or sad, a conscious choice. Or you do not choose. This brain of humanity evolved over millions of years can be unfettered, set free, let go. Mind you read me carefully. I state again the "Brain" and not your "Consciousness" is freed. Your Consciousness is your memory, what you state as self is your memory. What you know. Your Consciousness put it in its proper place. Freeing of the brain, now what the heck does that mean? Hear the sounds that you never hear, see the things that you never see, feel that you never felt before, smell that you never smelt and taste that you never tasted before. The anxious or surrendered faces, the medical students anxious before the exams, wheel chairs and stretchers and the squeak in the wheels, the resigned patient who would go under the knife, the prayers to the divine, all that pushing and shoving in queues, the first smile of a new born, the heart beat of a premature born through the incubator, the people in the shadows- those peons or more aptly hygienists, errand boys, the nerves of the doctors and nurses in the Emergency, the bleeding heads, broken bones, the bloody entrails, the fast response of the medicos, the relief of the ambulance driver having reached the hospital. Hear them, see them, feel them use every sense of body to listen to them. Thats the sound of the humanity breathing. The brain does not judge anymore not caught in duality between good or bad, life and death, it does not see any contradiction anymore, truth is not judged, the brain lives it. 


Its 6:00 PM in the evening and visiting hours to the ICU begins.My mother anxious but strong would be the only person to visit him for they allow only one person. 


I visit my father 6:00 PM on the 24th and the site of the ICU of all Cardio-Thoracic cases, a huge spotlessly clean and a sterile room, seeing my father gasping for air and all the monitors and lights bleeping away with lines and tubes running from arms, legs, chest. He loves to talk, speaking is his profession and passion no wonder his 30+ years in teaching in various capacities at IIT Madras. He was waiting the whole day for 6:00 PM to strike and to meet me and to talk. All the machinery and lines and his human body was more akin to an abomination, grissly experiment gone wrong. The Darth Vader breathing that ominous breath ...sshhhhshshshhshs... He was frail. The pain killers kept him going. I spoke little tried hard to keep it short, he spoke till he easily ran out of breath. This is surgical technology mastered by human intellect through ages and still refined and my father went through it. Life finds a way always.


Then there are other stories that I had only a glimpse. The nearest bed from my father's had this very little baby with gauzes and bandages, life support, sleeping. That little life is going through the juggernaut of medication and pain. I wonder how the face could be so serene? As I learnt later from my father, the child would only wail out late at night and not stop till dawn. There were many others going through the seemingly gut churning obstacle course in this game of life and death.


 All this only humbles. We will never fathom it completely in our understanding and any idea of that nature is only infantile. But we live with this miracle of our body or our organs and their organisation that we choose to name as the individual. Its quite funny, if you go into the etymology of individual


 from in- "not" + dividuus "divisible," from dividere "divide."


individual - the single, not divided.


Not divided into various organs, not divided into the mind and the body, not divided into the conscious, subconscious or the unconscious, not divided into any dualities- good or bad, me and you, your religion my religion, your loss my gain, communists capitallists, hindus moslems. We choose a word that denotes us but does not represent us. 


An Individual is the whole humanity if he is not divided both from the inside and the outside. The totality. You save one life you save the entire humanity. You free one individual you free the entire humanity. So are we really an individual?


I thank Dr Richard Saldanha and his team, the A7 ward staff and the entire staff of the Sri Ramachandra Medical college to have helped us through this medical miracle.

Gratitude - Part 1

The days leading up to the my father's surgery had been quite an experience.  My father's reconciliation with the modern medicine as he goes under the knife. Perfect strangers and friends who are seldom in touch coming forward to help in my hour of need. The stoic doctors. The operation theater- families confronting the fact of death. The hospital Sri Ramachandra Medical College. In all this as all ways finding what being human means.

The procedure to be performed was Aortic-Valve-Replacement. Thats the prognosis. The diagnosis is stenosis due to calcification of the Aorta that led to his high blood pressure for over a decade. For my father's generation going to a hospital is in itself a dread and a surgery is quite beyond all comprehension. To top that the active lifestyle that he led with daily walks adds on the idea that one is impervious to any affliction. But as with any beliefs this to was on tenuous grounds and it did not hold. He had to face his fears- depending on someone else. When the going is good we keep to ourselves and do things on our own terms and not be bothered about someone else, self reliance is what we say. Self. The "image" about ourselves, how much water does it hold? We may never know, not until the image is shattered and then we do what we dread in my father's case depending on someone else, not being self reliant, we face the fears. But then life is funny you yield and every thing takes care of itself or rather, not risking getting misinterpreted or representing any belief, we come to terms with what FACT is and with the truth, studied, life seems to find a way.

The initial admission procedures went well-admission on 19th March, angio-gram on the 21st, and the operation on the 22nd. Then the problem- the hospital blood bank was out of A1+ve, this was because of a case of liver transplant that consumed 30 units of the Blood Banks' supply. Another problem- I was told about this on the 21st afternoon. One more Problem- my O+ve won't do. The Blood Bank had no A1+ve stock to trade with my O+ve. The first thing when a person is confronting a really serious problem and if the person is really serious, is that the brain becomes incredibly focussed. It actually stops thinking and ACTs. I and Rini get to act calling to Simu, my Tai Chi Administrator, Suresh an old friend, Shashi Kumar a BTech student from IIT Madras who moderates blood donation activities in the campus, Kanchan ex-cleegue of Rini, Helen current colleague of Rini, http://www.friendstosupport.org/index.aspx providing a comprehensive donors list, and my very good friend Desingh. My and my wife's phone was busy and phone call after phone call from the seeming impossibility of arranging blood, given the summer and the exams of students all over, in short notice slowly but surely kind gentlemen extend their hand to help. With the operation time slot postponed to the second slot (11 AM, first slot at 7AM) we found the 5 volunteers who would make it on 22nd early morning to donate A1+ve blood.

Myself and Rini, we thank Simu (Mrs Viji Thomas), Suresh, Senthil, Shashi Kumar and Kamal (2nd year, ECE, Anna University), Nasser, Kanchan, Helen to have helped us through the crisis.

Above all we thank the donors Mr Sravan Kumar (BTech, Mechanical 3rd Year, IIT Madras), Sreenidhi (MS, Electrical Engg, IIT Madras), Mr. Mahendran, Mr. Raghavendra (L&T Infotech), and Arun (2nd Year, ECE, Anna University).

We missed the deadline and the operation got postponed for the day but it was a relief that we had the requisite units of blood for the procedure to move ahead. I don't have the words to express the gratefulness I feel inside for these fine and exemplary ladies and gentleman. All I would say THANK YOU. I could now be relaxed to down the food through my alimentary.

Who is a friend and who is a stranger? The experience makes me question. The following gentlemen I have never met before are they stranger to me now? I guess not.

Senthil
























Raghavendra

Sravan Kumar
























Sreenidhi

Mahendran

Kamal and Arun

Images

For last few days a lot may have happened around us among which the most popular ones –Tiger Wood’s return to the Masters, the IPL controversy, Earthquake in China, the failure of the GSLV launch and the IPL matches. Others would add some more or less to this list which is understandable. The events of our daily lives make us form opinions and actions and all this collective opinion and action is the dynamics of our lives. There is research into the tweeter phenomenon- celebrity gossips, what is the dynamics of that? A bunch of friends meet and a lot get discussed about the latest happenings a lot in our heads is a result of how we come across them, through interaction, communication. Between long distance friends there used to be letters exchanged that would take weeks to find the reader apparently if the imagination can be stretched as Aparna Sen would have us believe in the Japanese Wife, a very intimate relationship could be shared through mere exchange of words. Well I wouldn’t say it as a stretch because you see words do provoke a reaction within us. The IPL concocto-versy for instance, people are curious, that is a reaction. We react to words. What is with Shashi Tharoor? What is with Lalit Modi? Questions- reaction that drives us to find more words and more questions.

J.Krishnamurty would say that all we know about the world are only images in the memory. All the conditioning, habits, fears, pleasure we acquire in memory determines our personality. How we perceive about things. In this dynamic world we acquire opinions faster than ever before thanks to the words and images that fly very fast through all the optical fibers criss-crossing the high seas and all the innovators and entrepreneurs who evangelized Web and their application the Phenom- Social Networking. The blog I am writing to is a result of that and you reading it. What does a person go through with all this image building exercise? Swami Nithyanand had quite a successful following. I was surprised some very talented and educated people were following him. Until Swami Nithyanand “seemed” to do something “un-Swami” like. Quite a few went bonkers taking to the streets. Arrest warrants issued and now there are court cases for Nithyanand to fight. So in addition to “Image building” there is also destruction of images leading to anger, rage, depression, increased heart rate, man vs man. Well apparently images are not permanent there are the Bull and Bear runs spoiling the party and that’s what a person seems to go through.

Everything is a function of the prevailing images; sentiments that take the stock market to rallies and crashes. Take the case of the conflict between the government and the Maoists- images hating images. Religions around the world would want us to BELIEVE. What Images? Notions? Biases? Bigotry? Image of what is righteous, virtuous? And when those are contradicted by others we blow each other up? Images. It is like the fiendish character in Batman Series- the Two Face, images- of pleasure or fear. Well with all this I better handle this image thingy with care, be careful with them, they seem to come in different sizes and shapes and these days in Bytes- K, M and G Bytes. They are thieves out to get to your peace of mind. Watch out even from the Morpheus who would give you the Red or Blue Pill.

Bhajji on Bliss

It was a particularly annoying evening with water shortage, power shortage, shortage of relaxation after a day's work of an ordinary Software engineer, however, there was no shortage of the rain when the heavens opened and quenched thirsting Bangalore with a collateral of course- Uprooted Trees, speaking of God's weird ways. Anyhoo, it does not call for a particularly navigable traffic with a Moong Dal to buy. My previous 2 attempts of buying Moong Dal to satisfy my particularly discerning Wife was a failure and I had to, had to get lucky third time around, it was time to act Amigos, get married and you would understand and make me your hero.
  
However all this I didn't know, I didn't know it was to rain, I didn't know that there will be power cum water shortage. I leave office a little late than usual with a dread- my wife would be hungry and hungry Wives are dangerous. It almost sounded like hungry wolves are dangerous isn't it?. I forgot to pack any food from the "The Bay Foodcourt" I had already started. As a discerning General of Corps Husbandry managing my front I had to gather intelligence. I call trying to be calm and composed and ascertain the topology of the husband-wife dynamics at the moment. The dispatch from the war zone read "No Water Stop Wife Cooking Bhaji Stop No Power Stop" the odds read 2 to 1 for TROUBLE. Thats not a bad odd considering I have dealt with far sinister ones and my wife is not going to be hungry...pooh pooh...I am a seasoned veteran.

With a successful raid for Moong Dal I march for home turf. I call up the security about the water problem.

"No Water Before 8 read 9 pm"

At home I actually find my wife,  Rini, not marshaling a regiment but actually scampering like a naughty kid with excitement and I melt General of Corps Husbandry is "AT EASE". After the precious husband and wife talk of day's events, gossips, love, Bangalore bitching and love, I start chewing on the Haldirams. Its raining and its dark with Rini blissfully frying away, the Chilly and Corn Bhaiji. For the first time in many months Bangalore is actually cool with a cool spray in your face standing on the balcony, rain, and Rini cooking away "Oh!! When will she be done and I start eating!!??!!!"

Sure I annoy her wits end bit Rini is very caring with the first batch of Chilly Bhajji and Maggi Hot & Sweet Tomato Chilly Sauce-Its Different. What did I do to deserve this but hey you don't mess with questions when the going is GOOD, you blend with the flow. Sure I have been hard on Rini plenty of times with her worldly likes and dislikes, wants and aspirations and me so philosophical, critical, and skeptical, and tad too patient. She a Ball of Energy and myself a more laid back leisurely. The proverbial Yin-Yang and myself and Rini in a Cosmic Dance creating the world we share together every second of everyday.

From Cosmos to 207 Aster, Rakesh Fantasy Garden, my favorite sauce and my favorite Bhajis and the rain outside and its all dark, awesome. Every bite melts in you mouth and the sauce and the hot chilly touch your tongue and the fireworks of flavor work your palate and nostrils and the dark misty rain outside and the cool chill soothing your very bones with more Bhajis to come. AH, This is Nirvana!!!!

My palate is all fired and the water is not enough to quench but still I devour and devour still more. Rini comes looks at me is all smiles. For a consummate cook all they want are happy faces with their food or pieces of Gastronomic Art in the patron's mouth. She had one or two intermittently and her mind was only on the rest- Corn Bhajjis. What Rini missed today in her attire is a artist's berret. What is a berret you ask? Its a kind of hat that looks like this

The moment, the experience would forever remain and possibly saved for posterity in this blog as for me I feel grateful for the moment I and Rini shared with the Bhajis. In this dynamics of the husband and wife this I would say is a song. I bless her all the more and I am grateful.

Guess your way out of uncertainity

No matter what religious scripture one reads after a while the entire subject gets more obscure than when one had started. The mind becomes more unsure of itself and the floodgates of question comes pouring over. The first 30 years of once life is I think is a breeze some really "gifted" individuals would denote it with much smaller number. Everything is so set and definite. You start your kindergarten, score good grades, move up the 12 standards of schooling to attain your right for a college education. Another 3-4 years of being called a bachelor, and more 2 years and call yourself a Master and another 5-10 years to call yourself a Philosopher. Or you hate being a Master/Philosopher get into the thick of action jump in into your careers. Get Married. All right. Easy Peazy Lemon Sqeezy. Everything is so hunky dory and then like Neo in Matrix you wake up. 


You touch upon on myriad Spiritualists, Philosophers, Thinkers, Rock Stars, God Men, Politicians, Communists, Capitalists, Socialists, Hollywood Movies, Bollywood Movies, 9-11 Bombings, War against Terror etcetera etcetera etcetera. Each time you touch and if you had been sensitive you are affected, extent would depend upon one's predisposition.If you are touched then you say something is wrong. Then you run behind the elusive, what is true? If your run had been rather a 100m sprint then you may be brandishing your AK-47, dropping bombs and killing babies or if your run had been a marathon one, you might be protesting on the streets, writing columns, blogs, tweeting, ..., to summarize you will be, not only you we all will be, voicing our inner self when our search for an answer stops. You stop when you think you know the answer and act. 


So from one well seemingly well defined system we realize "truth" and break away to something else. A different "System". A system nonetheless. Until one meets the next Contradiction and Mr.Transformation would seek our appointment again. According to the Advaita "Change is the Only Constant". I smell another system. 


This reminds me of a scene from Fiddler On the Roof

Avram: (gestures at Perchik and Mordcha) He's right, and he's right? They can't both be right.

Tevye: You know... you are also right.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXIdamBEUJE

So why am I ranting today morning, the reason is the following link.


http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627550.200-enter-the-matrix-the-deep-law-that-shapes-our-reality.html


The science has created this marvelous system to explain nature. We have gone from Classical Theory, to Quantum Theory Standard Model, and now new theories to explain the unexplainable such as the string theory and the perennial search for the Unified Theory. In this search we hit contradictions along the way and the new scientist blog by the gentleman named Mark Buchanan describes a spooky way of guessing your way out a.k.a Random Matrix Theory. 


One particular pair of sentence struck me


" It means that while a large amount of information makes it easy to study everything, it also makes it easy to find meaningless patterns. That's where the random-matrix approach comes in, to separate what is meaningful from what is nonsense."


Geez, Does this mean that Lab Mouse that we are can get out of any contradiction/conjecture/problem by mere guessing?


Kaustav: Sense and non-sense are separated by a GUESS?
Tevye   :  You are right.