The year that was 2009...
Friday, September 4, 2009 at 11:56PM The title of this post was wishful thinking.
Sometimes I just wish, that we are already into 2010!
The last eight months, has not been easy. First it was my dad's heart problem. Next it was my flying visit to India, where I got my foot contused, and had to go through different treatments including acupuncture, followed by some really hectic and crazy schedules at home and the last one month of pain because of the broken arm.
Two days before I fell down, I had a phone conversation with my brother. The end of the phone conversation was about how Saturn (Sani), was in a bad position in the horoscope for almost every member in the extended family. But my brother ended that conversation on a positive note. He told me that out of all the people in the house, I had the most favorable Sani because of my Guru Dasa. For those of you who are not familiar with Hindu astrology, that would be the good effect of having Jupiter shining his grace down on you.
Apparently in the giant struggle between Jupiter and Saturn, trying to bestow their grace or calamity on me, Saturn won!I wonder if Jupiter did a hard fight and maybe that's the reason I'm still alive, because if goodness is what I'm going through right now, I fear to think of what badness might mean!
But then again, the last year has been bad for almost everybody across the globe compared to the previous years!
Everybody I know, who still has a job is working harder than ever.
It is hell for everyone who has lost their jobs.
Then there was the swine flu, or should I say "there is the swine flu"
We don't even want to go into the percentage negativity in the daily news, be it economic, social, you name it.
I do not know how to read a horoscope. I do not want to live my life by what people tell me about my horoscope, but at the same time, I have a very healthy respect for people who are able to tell me things by looking at my horoscope and are right, time and time again. Astrology, maybe more art than science, and I find it pretty amusing when people mock astrology.
In today's world, you could go pick eighth-grader's from India or United States or any other Western country and ask them a few questions about how a tiny seed can grow into a big tree, or how would a tiny sperm and egg have enough information to grow into a full-fledged human being, and they would probably give you answers that would be along the lines of genetics 101.
Thanks to Western science and its widespread propaganda machinery, with good help from what is considered Western scientific thought, the general message out there is that it is okay to believe:
1. Sperm's and eggs contain DNA
2. The DNA is very complicated and different pieces of DNA have different information encoded in them, which contradict the specific traits and attributes of the organism the sperm and egg are going to create.
3. Out of the millions or billions of pieces of information contained in the DNA, select parts can be identified as contributing to specific features by scientific experimentation.
4. It is possible using complex experimentation that a cause and effect can be established for particular parts of the DNA causing particular diseases or haircolor, or height or girth, etc.
If a similar method is adopted to explain certain events in a person's life correlating to certain planetary positions at the time of conception of the same organism, it'll be ridiculed as arcane, esoteric or downright absurd!!!
There are a lot of things that are beyond the comprehension of the average human mind. If a sequence of proteins that is considered to be the basic building block, for the human organism determines the height of a person, or the diseases that this person has (or is predisposed to get), maybe the cosmic rays that deflect from various planets at the time of conception irradiate the sperm or the egg in a way that alters the protein for all we know!
I was thinking about all of this,because I had plenty of time to think about all of this over the last month, lying in bed and staring at the ceiling fan.
A few years ago, I had posted about Nadi astrology, which accurately tells the past, but left the future a little bit sketchy, and for good reason. At that point, I had compared the ability of reducing a person's life history from a thumbprint to particle physics in the context of sample size. Maybe our ancestors had small sample sizes, where correlation was easy and obvious.
Think about the following two experiments...
1. The scientist studies a family of Italians. The entire family has been marrying within Italians for generations. The scientist studies three generations of the family, and finds out that there is one person who has married an Irishman and that family has Irish Italian kids. The scientist proceeds to study the genetic makeup of entire family and tries to see how the genetic code in the kids compared to the genetic code of the family and the contribution from the Irishman to the gene pool.
Eventually, the scientist claims that they have isolated the Irish part of the gene contribution. An ethnic stereotype, may not be the best example. But you could switch it to an entire family of obese people and a single skinny person, or an entire family of short people and a single tall person, etc.
2. A different type of scientist, studies thumbprints of everyone in the same families and cross correlates select features on the thumbprints and finds the one pattern on the print that differentiates the contribution from the odd man out!
The entire irony is in the fact that the thumbprint itself may also be genetically transmitted information, which is a visual representation of the persons genetic code. After all, there are millions of ridges and troughs and loops in every thumbprint!
This post started off somewhere and is ending somewhere else...
In the last month of pondering and soul-searching, with and without the aid of narcotic painkillers, I have come back to the same conclusion, yet again!
It is always good to have a healthy respect for things that are beyond our comprehension. It is also good to keep an open mind when it comes to scientific experimentation or scientific curiosity, and removing a bias that complicated experiments with billions of dollars and millions of samples, along with computerized correlations are in some way superior to similar correlations established by astrologers going back a few millennia!
It is a crying shame, that Hindu astrology or thumbprint reading gets compared to fake things like rope walking or levitation, which are tricks and can be proved to be nothing but tricks.
Where is your Saturn?
ps. my apologies for the multiple posting of the same post. For some reason, the voice recognition software decides to hit the publish post button every now and then.
It is possibly mistaking some of my words as commands instead of text!
I still find it incredibly amazing. I may be typing faster than you can read this, thanks to the software.
I will be back to blogging regularly...
2009, all part of life, astrology, east and west, genetics, horoscope, naadi, science
Reader Comments (7)
I think Saturn itself has had a bad time this past year, what with GM selling it to Penske!
Hi Sundar...
Hopped over from Boo's 'Hall of Fame' post of fracture-ees! So sorry to hear about your hand. I broke a leg and I can't decide which is better or easier on a person!
This sani aspect came up from my MIL too and when she heard abt my injury she headed to the temple for the usual. I've had an eventful year too, which all seems to tie in to the Sani effect..In January...I realise that my passport has expired 5 min before I am due to travel to India for a wedding. Of course Jupiter wins again, when I travel the very next day with an emergency extension.
A week later, I lose all myw wedding jewels (probably every single one that my Dad collected and had made over a period of his 15 years of teaching career in a careless oversight by somebody. Never go tthat back, so Guru didn't come thru there.
And now this. :D
So yes, I have a healthy respect for the stars and planets and how they want to push and pull and toss over my life. But my healthiest respect is for the Guy above and beyond all this...and to Him, I bow deep and low, as much as my one good leg will allow me and say...Bring it on! :)
Stay comfortable and make the most of this time of recuperation!
The broken arm is well on its way to recovery i guess !
Naadi Joshiyam does not 'predict' the past. It tells the past. Minor correction. But you know...i major in these minor stuff !!
Indeed unfortunate that these are compared to rope tricks !
But then there is nothing compared to the Missed Call Trick that i blogged about...!
Vijay, awesome comment
Tharini, guess it would have been easier relatively, if I had broken my left hand.
thanks for the wishes.
Kavi, you should change your blos title to
punch-a-kavi-yam!
:)
i am a molecular biologist and i too have a healthy respect for ppl who are genuine experts in astrology and the field itself. makes one think of Rita(the Cosmic Order)
Enjoyed this post Sundar. Hope you are recovering well.
What you say is so true- there is so much we know nothing about. That doesn't give us license to deride it. Remembering the way I fell, I'm lucky to have escaped without a serious head injury. And yes, fracturing the left arm is comparatively easier than the other options, although I am waiting for the time when I can wash both my hands!