Ignorance is Bliss !!

Recently I had a post on "Naadi Astrology", in my Tamizh blog. On Adengappa's suggestion I shared my experience with my regular blog readers as well. This definitely has started a chain of events that I had no intent of starting.

I have given serious thought over the last three days, not to the "Naadi Astrology" but to the conflict between Western Scientific thought and its aversion to the paranormal versus the exotic relationship between the Occult and Eastern thought. Having read most of Joseph Campbell's works (thanks to my friend Erica for introducing me to his works) and been witness to some powerful scientific thinkers in south india who go about disproving the occult as fake (Most of you have seen a bearded scientist who goes from village to village in Tamil Nadu, to show that "sobbudu" viddhai (black magic) and the typical gimmics used by holy men to draw a fan base are pure fraud !!), I am trying to keep an open mind.

There is on the one hand a fascination for the dark arts in the western world simply because they cannot accurately explain these phenonmena. I am not talking about the fire walking and the materializing of holy ash from thin air. Anyone who has read the short story by Dom Moraes, where the sorceress pulls out a little statue from her hair and hands it as a gift from god to a little boy who is just mesmerized by the proceedings, and how the experience turns to one of utter disillusionment when he goes home and observes the scratched out "made in hong kong" at the bottom of the statue!, will see these things through. I am talking about more esoteric things, that are truly path breaking. Things that are hard to accept as possible, but can be proven to a certain extent even by the scientific western world.

Even more shocking is the attitudes of people who are raised in the East (especially in today's world) where simple faith in god can be considered unscientific and blind !! Faith in god and faith in science have always been at the crossroads, but not in the eyes of the general public. Both in the east and the west the Theologians and Scientists have been fighting a silent war. This is not new fact, but when someone writes a book like "Angels and Demons" he is able to sell a million copies!! This, not to mention the big debate on Darwins "Theory of evolution" clashing with the "Theory of intelligent Design" that has the United States and its people polarized.

My focus is not on the general populace, who usually make up their mind based on the coverage these issues get in popular media or from Dan Brown novels. My concern is the polarization among people who grew up with me in orthodox families, who were taught to have a healthy tolerance for the occult, but were also taught to have an equally healthy scepticism for the occult from their English medium education. As a scientist and researcher I look for data to conclusively prove cause and effect and design experiments to prove my hypothesis. This method may not be well suited for a lot of applications. I will elaborate !!

Galileo was on house arrest for suggesting heliocentricity few hundred years ago. The problem at that time was that only a handful of people could understand what they saw through the telescope. Einstein came up with a lot of theories a few decades ago but the experimental method did not have the level of sophistication required to prove or disprove his theories. Even today, they are sending out telescopes into outer space to understand the universe. I am not saying that the scientific method is flawed. I am merely suggesting that Horoscope reading or thumb print reading are not considered science by people who subsribe to western thought simply because the scientific method doesnt provide instant proof. What if there was an extensive database of fingerprints (maybe ask the Department of Homeland security ?) and we classified them into different types just like the Naadi Astrologers do, and we match the year of marriage of the people in the database to fingerprint type ! (just a suggestion). Or for that matter, do all single folk have something common in their fingerprints ? One cannot but wonder if the size of the database needs to be expanded to find the formula that may explain the "Unified Fingerprint theory" (hopefully I get to patent that one).

I can see potential upsides and downsides to the unified fingerprint theory. The Homeland security department or any other law enforcement agency would quickly correlate certain fingerprint features as common among terrorists and potentially all people with that fingerprint type would be arrested and sent to eastern europe for "you know what" !! Fingerprint alteration of course, silly !! Once you transplant some other dead social workers fingerprint on the dude, he will not be a threat anymore. That is the sceptic raising his head again...

No , seriously ...look at all the things that I can cite where we just ignore good stuff because we are taught to alienate eastern thought.

Lets take simple medicine..

a. south indian women used to liberally apply turmeric paste as part of their bathing regimen. Todays woman probably shuns this because it leaves them looking a bright yellow for a day or two. Pretty soon, turmeric usage was a "no no". Now foreign pharmaceutical labs are making millions by taking active ingredients in turmeric and incorporating it into your "fair and lovely" type creams. Same goes for the antiseptic nature of turmeric and neem oil.

b. ever get a loose stomach. my grandmother used to open my mouth wide, put a handfull of fenugreek seeds in my mouth, and make me gulp it down with buttermilk.. Voila, no more loose stomach. This combo could give your "Immodium" a run for its money. I always used to favor the tablet, and pay $4.99 for it instead of fixing the problem with free stuff at home.

c. Grannys used to give women who have just delivered kids a combination of betel leaves, saffron and some other common herbs. This helps them recover nicely. Read in national geographic magazine that this combination releases a local anesthetic of the "caine" family and helps heal internal wounds. My wife would rather have vicodeine than the betel leaf medicine..

My grandfather used to tell me that the Germans got a hold of 3000 year old palm leaves which had the Ayurveda and Max Muller was in charge of getting them out of India and translating them. He used to say : "what are you doing, you and your research ? it is just re - search.. all searching has already been done in the past !!". Dont know if this is true. It is my sincere hope that the unabridged version of Ayurveda wasnt used to graduate a whole bunch of Germans with their Ph.D's on antiseptics and stool softeners !

Keep an open mind folks. Ignorance is bliss, only as long as you dont know your ignorance. . .

One pissed off blogger !!

Blogger has been on and off today !!

I still cant see others blogs.. but I know Witchy Angel is reading my blog now.. other than that.. blank. Cant comment on my own blogs !!

will be back tomorrow..

hope this post goes through !!

1 Blogger 3 blogger 5 blogger 7?

First it was just me in a corner..

then I got to meet Narayanan sir and Ambi !!

Now I got to meet TJ, Jagan and Sathya, at you guessed it .. Blogger Bhavan in Sunnyvale.

I had a good time talking to these guys. Hope they did too..

(photo : TJ, Me, Jagan, Sathya, Narayanan Sir)

Your life story - From your thumb print ?

I had posted an article in my Tamizh blog. On Adengappa's suggestion, I am posting this on this blog as well..

SUN TV runs a seial called "Chidambara Ragasiyam" based on the "Naadi" astrology method. "Chidambara Ragasiyam" means "The secret from Chidambaram" and "Naadi" literally means "moment of time" !

Just to give you folks an idea of what this "Naadi" Astrology is all about, there are 3000 -5000 year old Palm leaves which have been preserved in a south Indian temple which have generic verses (poems) written in them. They describe in great detail events happening in time for people with various traits. Considering that the Tamizh calendar has 60 years which go on rotation and follow the lunar system, these could technically describe people every 60 years. One can go to these temples and wait in line (sometimes for days) to see if you can find your designated palm leaf !! You can go in person with your horoscope or with just your right thumb print !! They pick a catalog of leaves which pertain to a certain type of thumb print and then ask a few preliminary questions and once they find that the details match yours truly, they go on to read the leaves. There are some special people who are trained to read the leaf since it is written in ancient tamizh and there needs to be some translation to current Tamizh.

Flash back to 1996 : I am in the process of finishing up my studies. I call my parents in India with a calling card from my Lab. As usual (for those times) we started arguing over the phone ! My parents were insisting that I send them my thumb print. At that point in time, I had a healthy hatred for Astrology, Horoscope matching and Astrologers in general, not to mention the arranged marriage since the arranging process was totally stacked up against me (at least in my opinion). I felt at that point that the astrologers were totally incompetent nincompoops who were taking too long to find that girl who was destined for me !!

Just then my Professor walked into the lab. She must have heard me screaming. She is American but, knew a lot about India, Indian culture and Me ! and was(is) a very practical lady. She said, "If it is just a fingerprint, just send it. Why bother arguing with them?"

Which one do they want ? she asks. I am zapped. I am in a daze because I am embarrased about my phone fight going public. I said "I dont know". She says "Well I am glad you only have two thumbs.." She took the ink pad in my Lab, put my thumbprints on a piece of paper, made me write my address on the envelope.
"I will mail this on my way home, now go back to work!!" she said, and disappeared. An important lesson I learnt that day "Do not argue over silly things" and "Never fight with your parents in front of your boss"!!

I did not even bother to check if the fingerprints reached India or not. Almost ten months later I went to India. The trip was abnormally peaceful with no significant progress on the marriage front. When my trip was coming to a close and I was packing for my trip back to the US, I asked my parents "Did you ever get those fingerprints?" .My dad promptly went and got an audio cassette and said "Do you want to hear this?" It was something along the lines of Jack Nicholson saying "you want the truth.. you cant handle the truth!".

To this day, I have never forgotten those 25 minutes in that dark room with my parents, brother and sister where I was sitting speechless. Just that booming voice on the tape, telling me in such vivid detail, my life story, all from my thumb print!! The voice went on to read verse after verse and in translation gave my name, my parents name, number of siblings, number of maternal uncles, my parents occupation, my educational background (metallugy is not your run of the mill guessable degree, mind you. The old tamil word in the verse actually meant blacksmithy, but the translator used the term metallurgy!), my current lifes events, my ideas on marriage, etc., etc.. it was mind boggling! There was even a verse which recreated my entire horoscope with the exact position of the sun, moon and all the major planets at the precise time of my birth!!

The most amazing thing was the statement "Not everyone is blessed with getting to know their destiny! The leaf actually tells you when exactly you get to meet your leaf !! Although, you have found your sons leaf now, he will not realize the contents until he crosses his 25th birthday!" . I had turned 25 a few months before hearing the tape but my parents had heard it almost 7 months back.

Up untill today, nothing on the tape has turned out to be false. I could have said "everything has turned out to be true" but there are some things which are still open ended, so I choose my words carefully.

I do not think about this tape much unless there is some major event in my life or when I watch movies like "Men in Black" or "Matrix".

How is this possible ? Am I just going through the motions of a predetermined sequence of events? I have not been silly enough to try and disprove the tape either because the tape mostly says good things about me or the really bad stuff doesnt start to happen till I am forty!!

Scientifically, this just baffles me. Just truly amazing!! An Indian guy who was raised with a traditional bent of mind, having embrazed the western idealogy of science and scientific discovery, this truly puts things in the twilight zone for me...

Scary !! Premature maternal instincts

The jealousy was more target towards mommy than the baby.. With that information in hand (thanks to her daycare teacher who pointed out that the toddler picked up a baby doll first thing in the morning and would let go of it only when I showed up!), I got a real lifelike doll for her.

This doll is silicone (feels like skin when you touch it), has the body proportioned to a real baby, comes with its own milk bottle, diaper, dresses, cap, socks, bed, pillow etc..

As of yesterday we told the toddler that she is a "mommy". The baby has been named "Uma" and "Swathi"..

Right now, Uma Swathi is being fed when the baby is being fed, she is changed when the baby is changed.

On a side note, two funny things that happened.

First, when we were unpacking the baby doll, my wife walked into the room. My daughter says "mommy, dont come here. go take care of YOUR baby !! go away!!"

Next, she fed the baby, then claimed it was choking and burped the baby for a full 5 minutes !! We were impressed ..

But now Uma Swathi is a prime candidate to be picked up by social services as a neglected baby. The toddler is going to a birthday party and in her rush, she left the baby like this !


That is kids for you in a nutshell ...