COVID-19 summary report (till now)

1. COVID-19 is the only disease in the world now. People suffering from existing life threatening diseases are being made to undergo COVID-19 tests before giving the treatment they have been getting till now.
2. No information about healthy people dying due to COVID-19 has been made available. People suffering from existing life threatening diseases are highly vulnerable to COVID-19. Yet their deaths due to existing diseases are being attributed to COVID-19 which is why high mortality is getting reported.
3. By invoking full lock down, our immune system has been officially declared as useless. We can no longer survive without vaccines and medicines.
4. The entire world’s population can be locked down and made to live on bare essentials for an extended period of time. Dictatorship is no longer the hegemony of Hitlers and Mussolinis.
5. Our total lack of discipline has got exposed because we need to self isolate when we are sick which we never do and governments have had to quarantine affected people to prevent community transmission of COVID-19.
6. All it takes is an app on our mobile phones for governments to start surveillance on it’s citizens and which people will happily install because of the fear created in the name of a virus.
7. Lock downs will continue in some parts all over the world till a vaccine is found for COVID-19. The vaccine will be introduced to the world with the offer that there will be no need for lock downs once everyone has been vaccinated. There is a windfall waiting to be made and it’s going to be the biggest scam in the history of mankind till now.

Animal migration is not just a journey in search of food

 

Every year at the fag end of the extended monsoon season, birds start migrating to the wetland areas in my hometown. They come from far and near and more species of birds have been coming with each passing year, especially after protection of migrating birds has been strictly imposed.

Why do birds migrate?

The common answer is for food. Seasonal changes in the areas they are endemic to forces them to leave their homes in search of food. This is true but not entirely. There are more troubling questions here. Why do they travel so far? But what is more incomprehensible is their mortality rates. As they cross oceans and continents, many die due to predators, diseases, injuries and many other reasons. Why travel so far which exposes them to higher mortality rates? Why no self preservation?

All the above questions have changed my understanding of animal migration in general. To understand the mortality rates during migration, we need to look what happens after migration. Migrating animals return to their home regions and what they do next is reproduce. Procreation is the reason why migration is so important. The weaker ones in the herds and flocks have to die. Some will die due to predation, some by diseases, some due to injuries and eventually the ones that return will be the strongest ones, physically and genetically. Migration is a natural population filter. The farther they travel the better the filter works. I came across a research on Arctic Terns flying all the way to Antarctica and back during their migrating season. The fascinating part was, they travel a longer distance during their onward journey but return by a faster route with less stopovers. Then it all became clear to me. The return journey is all about preserving themselves – feeding for enough fuel to burn to reach home so that the stored fat in the body is not depleted and reaching home quickly with less mortality to begin reproduction.

It’s the same with the now renowned yearly migration of Wildebeest across the Masai Mara plains and river, known as the Masai Mara migration. Of the 1 million odd that migrate, just 1-2% die. Even if consider the worst case scenario and take the total mortality rate to be 5%, that’s just 50,000 deaths.

So why such a population filter?

Because of Nature’s rule of Survival of the Fittest. Every living being within nature’s ecosystem is being continuously tested. Only the ones that survive predation, diseases, injuries and natural disasters need to survive. Nature retains only the best. From eating their own infants to starving them to death to pushing the chicks outside the nest so that only the ones that fly survive, nature’s filters are cruel but keeps it’s ecosystem free of genetic diseases. This is why there is only nurturing and no love in nature. This is one critical difference between us and them. We suffer from so many genetic diseases because of the complex emotions we have for our children.

But there is a filter inside our mother’s womb which gets activated as soon as we are conceived. A series of tests are run inside the womb to determine if the zygote can be harmful to the mother or to any zygotes conceived in future by the mother. This is critical since the umbilical cord connects to the blood stream of the mother through which DNA of the child is passed on to the mother which can cause health issues to the mother or to future children. This is why the first 3 months are critical for the mother as well as the baby, why the mother’s health weakens and why chances of abortion are highest in this time frame.

Nature seems to work in mysterious and incomprehensible ways but it appears so because of it’s order and discipline. Specific mating & migrating seasons are why we get to photograph them in different times in different colors, plumage and behavior. If animals were to photograph us based on mating and migrating seasons they would get thoroughly confused because we don’t have any of both. We can have children any time and we travel wherever we want when we feel like. There is no order and discipline in our lives. The fact that we do not adhere to most of nature’s laws is the reason why we are no longer part of nature’s ecosystem.

If love cannot exist without hate, it’s better to not love at all

 

A social media post about an Impala (deer) sacrificing it’s own life to save the lives of it’s fawns from a cheetah attack had gone viral some time back. The post had gone on to describe how the mother deer was looking at it’s fawns longingly and lovingly and was defiant at the same time as two cheetahs were attacking it simultaneously and that the photographer had become mentally disturbed after taking the award winning photograph. Though the post and it’s contents were debunked and rubbished by the photographer, the post had received millions of likes and shares by then.

Well, love does sell well, isn’t it?

The story did fool me when I saw it but then I saw through the loopholes in the narrative soon enough. Females of any animal species are assertive from the time they are born. In mammals, they consume more of their mother’s milk and in other animals they eat more of the food their parents bring. This is because they are preparing themselves to procreate and need to be healthy to have healthy offspring. In the picture the mother Impala seems to be standing without trying to escape at all. Animals protect their offspring by goading the attackers away from them. This would also give them to chance to save themselves and females would try to save themselves as much as they can so that they can have more offspring. Most probably this was a male Impala from the way it was refusing to back down. So the photograph and the story in the post are as different as chalk and cheese.

But there’s more. Animals mate, have offspring, raise them, protect them and teach them survival skills but never love them. Nature’s rule mandates that no unhealthy and injured offspring of any living being is able to survive. Animals have the ability to understand which of their offspring are healthy and which are not. The unhealthy ones should die which is why there are no genetic diseases in nature. Animals are known to abandon, starve to death and even eat such offspring in their infancy. They simply nurture their offspring without any emotions. The offspring have to or are forced to leave their parents once the nurturing period is over.

To put it simply, there is nothing called love in nature.

So where does it come from? Apparently Lucifer was demonized and banished from the House of Gods for disobeying them and giving intelligence and imparting knowledge to us. Could be true or a fantasy story but if it ever happened, it wouldn’t be because Lucifer made us wiser. Must be because we were taught to love. A right eye has a left eye, a right hand has a left hand, a day has a night and love has hate. Can’t say if we learnt to love or hate first. What we have managed to do is to reduce all our higher intelligence and knowledge into hatred for our own kind. More than every other reason, hatred must be reason why the Gods unleashed the cataclysmic floods to destroy us (story of Noah’s Ark) and didn’t want any humans to survive.

Because there is no love in nature there is no hatred as well. Animals develop survival strategies through constant evolution because of nature’s predator-prey relationship to keep the population of all animals under control. Animals fight over territory domination, mating rights, protecting their offspring, etc but there is no hatred involved. Animals teach their offspring to survive in nature and not to hate a fellow or another being. Even when a male lion kills the cubs of a pride after taking control from another male lion it is only for mating rights which also helps to keep control over lion’s population.

In a movie, the male protagonist who is a police officer investigating a series of murders says there is nothing more extraordinary than a human being killing a fellow human being. This is true because only we can kill a fellow human in the rage of love or hate. When a spurned lover throws acid on the face of the woman he claims to love, does he have love or hate for her? The journey from love->obsession->hatred happens unknowingly. While he will continue living in the thought that he did it out of love, he may never realize that rejection had flipped his love to hate.

It’s a miracle that we have survived for thousands of years in spite of living with so much hate. From hatred within families to hatred for people from different geographies to the Church’s hatred for free thinking women during the Dark Ages to antisemitism to the current Islamophobia, humanity has been immersed in hate for a very long time.

So where’s the love?

Gobbled up by ‘I, me, myself’. Animals think in the same manner but only for their survival so that they can procreate and maintain their dominance in nature. Our population has grown so enormous, there is no need to worry about survival anymore. Love is all for myself now. When some among us spreads hatred, the majority of us sits quietly thinking “I am not doing anything so let me mind my own business”. When hatred comes knocking on our doors some day it will be too late to escape from being drowned by it.

While we lose sleep over a virus, the hatred that we have created has become a black hole that is consuming us. Not a pandemic, not a natural disaster and not a mass extinction event is required to wipe us out. Hatred is enough. While we are all told to love and not to hate, love and hate are two sides of the same coin. If love cannot exist without hate, we will have to relinquish love to get rid of hate. And no, there is no shame in being like animals.

How patriarchy has played a far greater role than Islamophobia in the rise of Hindu nationalism

The rise of Hindu nationalism, better known as Hindutva in India is no accident. Though resentment towards Muslims is being perceived as the fundamental reason for it’s current status, patriarchy has played the underlying role with far greater significance.

Indian society’s evolution after it’s independence from British rule can be traced mostly through the evolution of it’s film industry, mainly Bollywood. Through the 1940’s and 50’s, a virtuous male and female protagonist was always the flavour of the movies which would be complemented by the songs and their lyrics. Of course there would be other characters who would either be virtuous or villainous and the distinction would be very clear from the beginning of the movies. Into the 60’s and experiments with male protagonists having grey shades began. Enter the 70’s and film makers started portraying both male and female protagonists with grey shades. It was the time of hip hop and gypsy culture and both reflected on the stories of the movies. But the virtuous female continued to exist, the most enduring one being the roles essayed by the actress Vidya Sinha. Then through the 80’s and 90’s we see women protagonists becoming more assertive in their personality and character which then started reflecting on their appearance and attire. Now we see bold women protagonists openly expressing their sexuality and even murdering their husbands for his millions.

My dad was raised up in Kolkata where grandpa worked for about 40 years. He used to have the projector and screen to show movies and he used to get movies on reels for rent. I was born in the 70’s and grew up listening to grandma talking incessantly about the movies from the 50’s and 60’s especially when songs from those movies used to appear on TV. Now I realize that the movies she talked about the most were from the 50’s and early 60’s and her interest in movies had started decreasing from the later half of the 60’s. She had hardly watched movies from the 70’s and used to selectively watch Hindi movies on TV. What is eye opening is that this coincides with the waning of virtuosity in the male and female protagonists. She used to openly display her dislike for characters with negative shades in every movie she used to watch.

One important reason for the rise of Hindu nationalism is for the restoration of this patriarchy on Hindu society. After the liberalization of Indian economy in 1991, the country has literally been invaded by western culture and lifestyle. I had never heard about Valentine’s day throughout my academic years from school to college but it has become like a festival in India now. Girls and women openly expressing their love and sexuality in a society where the virtuous female protagonist from the movies of the 50’s and 60’s committing suicide after being raped by the villain was considered appropriate to redeem herself was always bound to ignite patriarchal angst. When the liberal part of Indian society cry hoarse every year on Valentine’s day when young dating couples are caught and chased away by Hindu nationalists, they do not see how deep rooted patriarchy is in Indian society. Many of them might even be adoring male protagonists in movies bashing up and butchering villains who dared to violate the modesty of the female protagonists. This is reflected on how people literally worship the actors who play the virtuous heroes and have even built temples with their idols. Patriarchal mindset has what made Hindutva leaders denounce western attire for women and make horrific comments like women who expose their skin in public deserves to get raped.

These are the reasons why Hindu nationalists are using the premise of Ram to assert their dominance. The king from the epic Ramayan whom Hindus worship as God is considered as the epitome of virtuosity. The ever obedient son who abdicated the throne and accepted to live in the forest for 14 years to fulfill the wish of his step mother, the hero who crossed the ocean to kill a demonic king and rescue his wife from his clutches and the husband who demanded that his wife walk through fire to prove her “purity” for him. Ramayan was written and rewritten time and again to maintain the stranglehold of patriarchy on Hindu society. If hatred for Muslims was the primary or sole reason, Krishna was a better candidate than Ram because based on the sheer number of demons Krishna had apparently slayed, demonizing Islam and invoking Krishna would have had been their go-to strategy. But according to the four ages or Yugas Hindus follow, Krishna lived in a time that was far less virtuous than Ram so obviously patriarchal rules weren’t so stringent during Krishna’s time.

Contrast this with the story of Iliad in Greek culture. A similar story line as that of Ramayan but with telltale differences. The female protagonist chooses to leave an abusive husband and king and go with the prince from another kingdom whom she falls in love with. The king uses his wife’s infidelity as the excuse to wage war with that kingdom and destroy it. All characters in the story have virtuosity but also have shades from grey to dark. Iliad was written and fits perfectly with the contemporary times but an openly abusive male protagonist and an overly assertive female protagonist are like the Antichrist in the world patriarchy.

Simply put, Indian society is in the throes of the conflict between the ideologies of Ramayan and Iliad now. Though the world is seeing the venom of Islamophobia being spread across India, the hatred for Muslims is being used to create the illusion of a common enemy to unite all Hindus under one umbrella so that archaic patriarchal rules can be reinforced on Hindu society. It is not without reason that Ramayan was adapted as a television series back in the 90’s and the government has started rerunning the series recently on TV. Add to this, a prominent cabinet minister took a picture of him watching Ramayan at home and advertised it on social media with the caption “I am watching Ramayan. Are you?” The message is clearly for the older generations of Hindus to admonish the younger generation for their wayward western lifestyle and bring them on the track of patriarchy.

Where it gets dicey is in how patriarchy is being sold to the Hindu community. With patriarchy Islamophobia is attached along with the aura of leadership and invincibility created around Modi, the PM and leader of the Hindu nationalist party the BJP. There are also some of the upper caste communities trying to restore their hegemony on Hindu society and to achieve this objective everyone at the helm of organizations that propagate Hindutva ideology are upper caste Hindus. Patriarchy and upper caste hegemony are two sides of the same coin. This is a complete package deal. The ones who choose Modi have to accept patriarchy and endorse Islamophobia. Many Hindus might be supporting Hindutva for one aspect but they are left with no choice but support everything else. On the flip side, a Hindu who does not support patriarchy or Islamophobia or both gets flagged as a Modi hater irrespective of any or no political affiliations.

In this situation it is quite easy to win elections because narratives can be created on one or multiple aspects at a time that can also be interconnected. The animosity with Pakistan was well exploited to create Islamophobia during the 2019 general elections and they easily pocketed the votes of Hindus who support India’s stand against Pakistan politically and militarily and the votes of Hindus who hate Muslims in general. In the recent Delhi assembly elections, the AAP party had successfully negated the BJP’s attempt to invoke the name of Ram to get votes by countering with their own call to Hanuman, the monkey king and Ram’s sidekick in the Ramayan but BJP still managed to garner votes and win 8 seats by unleashing Islamophobia. There are no fences and fence sitters in Indian general elections now. The choice is between being a Modi supporter or a Modi hater.

How India exits the COVID-19 induced lock down is on focus now but looks like the lock down imposed by the patriarchal Hindutva juggernaut will maintain it’s stranglehold for some more time. It remains to be seen how these short term and long term lock downs are going to shape Indian society and her future.