Why are we scared of animals?

This rat snake scaled the neighbor’s wall and lay there long enough for me to do its photoshoot.

When I sent these photos to my contacts on Whatsapp, majority of them sent me gawking emojis in fear. So why do we fear snakes?

Animals attack other animals primarily for food, protecting their offspring, self protection and in rare cases rescuing a fellow animal from its attacker(s). Snakes do not prey on humans so they will never attack us unless for self protection and protecting their eggs. Snakes live in human settlements for two reasons – to prey on mice and for dark and cold areas inside and around our houses to lower their body heat and digest their food. We should be more wary of urban cats and dogs than snakes because they can chase and bite us. Wild cats like tigers and leopards prey on us but attack us only if they are able to drag our body away from the spot because the smell of fresh blood and meat attract other carnivores. Lions hunt as pride which is why they do not show this behavior.

But there is an oddity in us that is not in animals – fear. In nature there is no emotion called fear. Animals running away from their predators is not in fear as we commonly believe. They run to save themselves and their only purpose is reproduction. Nature imposes population control so to stay as dominant species animals need to reproduce as many as they can. We are the only beings on the planet that live in fear of its own kind. We have created the emotion of fear in animals by encroaching and destroying their habitat and hunting them for the purpose of hurting them. Cows graze on wetlands which are snake infested but snakes rarely bite them and move away from them. Snakes bite us in self protection because we tend to kill them at every possible opportunity. Snakes have poor eyesight so they rely on smell and instincts to determine what is prey and what is a threat. Similar is the case with urban street dogs. Through smell and instincts they understand the ones among us who are hurtful to animals.

I was afraid of snakes for a long time because I was taught to be scared of them. Many snakes simply crawl away or warn us in different ways when we get close to them. Some don’t but they stay far away from human areas. We get into conflict with animals when we think we are entitled to walk anywhere and do anything we want. The planet belongs to all living beings and are entitled to live out their lifetimes if they survive in nature.

Human fixation with building houses – an evolutionary perspective

I was travelling by train when I saw the chandelier like hanging nests of Baya Weavers for the first time & I was absolutely spellbound at their sight. It has taken me a few years to finally get their shots but it has been worth the wait. Ever wondered why building houses is so important for us? Why owning a house is an important parameter in marriage? Primates such as apes and gorillas build nests but are rudimentary when compared to the complexities involved in the nest building process of birds. Male Baya Weavers build partial nests before starting to woo females who in turn inspect the nests before agreeing to mate. Then the males go on to complete the building of the nests. One important aspect females apparently look for is the distance of the nest from the branch or the pole to which it is tied. More distance means the chicks are safer from predators like reptiles and can be protected better. So males that make better choices about where and how they build their nests and can make stronger nests wins over the females. Owning a house is an evolutionary trait which we believe will help us raise our children safely. Our evolution is mind boggling because we have inherited traits from so many different beings. We diverged from nature when we started cutting down trees and destroying nature to build our houses which requires ability and intelligence nature has never given and will never give to any living being because it is a simple self destruct button. This is where human creation theory truly trumps over human evolution theory.

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Sexual harassment thrives only on the fear and complacency of women

Bollywood actor Tanushree Dutta seems to have opened up a massive cupboard of skeletons of sexual harassment. So many women in the corporate world are taking to Twitter to narrate their tales of similar sordid experiences at the hands of men and vent their anger. The hashtag Metoo is trending like fire on Twitter. Though I am glad that this discussion is finally happening, sadly, women are opening up with their stories years after their ordeal. Why? Because they were forced to hush up for the sake of their careers and lives. Why again? They were more fearful of the backlash and repercussions from the society. They simply had nowhere to go so they had to gulp down the venom and stay quiet.

Before getting into sexual harassment we need to understand what sex is. The answers are in the very foundations of our existence. We share many common traits with animals and one of them is procreation. Why do male species of animals exist? Essentially to reproduce. Their purpose is to pass on their sperms to the females. Male butterflies and males of some species of animals engage in a frantic race without even having food to deposit their sperms inside the ovaries of as many females as they could before they die. There are many more bizarre cases of reproduction process in nature. In many species including ours, males have evolved into taking care of their families. Human males have never been monogamous which is why society was created and marriage as a concept was enforced upon us. Marriage to me was actually a desperate measure to control the reproductive urge of men. When this was not enough, prostitution was created. This is why the Devdasi concept was introduced in ancient Indian society. Upper caste males were allowed to prey on girls and women from the lower castes and satisfy their sexual needs so that they would stay away from girls and women of their own castes. The term sex in itself exist only in our world and is not part of the animal world. Intercourse is just one aspect of the entire process of procreation among animals. But we have made it complex and convoluted. From discovering and understanding foreplay to creating contraceptives to writing an entire book on sex positions, we have actually wasted a humongous amount of our time and energy on something that was actually meant to be a clear and simple process.

Now where does sexual harassment come from? Males of all species in nature are supposed to woo females before mating with them. They engage in fierce battles to win over the right to mate with females. Male birds dance before the females, bring food, build nests and do an array of other things as part of the wooing process. This is why males of all animal species are beautiful and brightly colored. Only among us are women required to color themselves up and look good which for me is one more example to illustrate how male chauvinism dominates human society. What we call as flirting is actually the wooing process in nature. Thousands of years of societal rules have ensured that men don’t ask for sex the moment they like women. But there are men who do it nevertheless. One category consists of the ones with prominence in the society who misuse the value bestowed upon them by people and who knows how to use their influence to clamp down mouths and keep their dirty secrets in the dark. The other category consists of people from the lower strata of people without enough education and without proper nurturing who grew up seeing women getting treated with contempt and without value. The raging debate currently is about the first category. But there is only a thin line that separates the two categories. In both cases, men begin with flirting and move towards seeking sex. When both doesn’t work, men of first category resort to sexual harassment and men of second category indulge in rape. Why? The only difference is, men of the first category have too much at stake to lose if they resort to rape.

But why does all of this happen? Because women blame fellow women for their ordeals. Why? Because there is a huge gap in the mental makeup of women from older and current generations. Women from older generations used to suffer immensely and surrender to the whim and fancies of men to keep the relationships from breaking apart. But this goes a lot deeper. Men with power and influence in the past used to try and hook up with women they fancied. Some women in turn used men’s lust for sex to satisfy their own societal needs. This is very much in relevance and vogue even now. This is the origin for the need of complicity. This is why men expect all women to comply and give in to their needs which is why men often say when another man’s wife doesn’t have a problem doing something why are their wives complaining about it. So the burden of blame falls squarely on the shoulders of women who do not want to comply. This is why women cannot go to other women and open up about their ordeals because of the fear and apprehension that older generations could put the blame on them and use it as an opportunity to make them give up their careers for a domesticated life and their more naive friends and peers could possibly advise them to give into the wishes of men and keep quiet about it to save their careers.

Women of modern times have hardly reasons to complain though. Here is the amazing and heart wrenching saga of Nangeli (https://www.speakingtree.in/allslides/did-you-know-19th-centurys-breast-tax-in-kerala-is-the-darkest-spot-on-humanity-ever/401758). In the erstwhile Travancore kingdom in Kerala about 300 years back, women from the lower castes were forced to walk around without covering their breasts and had to pay taxes based on the size of their breasts. Nangeli chose to defy the demented rule and all the ensuing odds by covering her breasts. When authorities came to collect taxes, she chopped off her breasts, gave them as tax and bled to death. Her act of unimaginable courage was enough to stop this horrendous practice forever. When the entire society was complacent, all it took was one woman’s sacrifice to bring about the change.

Its a pity that educated women still fear backlashes from men and society, suffer the ignominy of sexual harassment and choose to speak about it much later. They need to look for inspiration from history, from the lives of heroic women like Nangeli who chose to not bow and lay down their self respect and integrity at the feet of men and societal diktats. Sexual harassment and sexual predation continues to exist because women in the past have shied away from opening up their torturous lives to the world. Speak up and force the society to change now. That is the only way to make the lives of the future generations of girls and women better and safer. Nangeli, Joan of Arc, Rani Laxmi bhai and countless more brave heart women must be looking down and smirking at the pathetic state women have put themselves in.

Menstruation – a derogatory body function or a divine creation?

When I was 10 years old, my parents started sending me out to do small bits of shopping. I used to stay at my ancestral home with my grandparents in those days and aunts and uncle with their families used to come for yearly visits during summer holidays. It was during one of these days that I was told to go and buy bathing soap. I went to the shop and as I was looking around, I saw a big white packet that looked like soap. I told the shopkeeper I want that soap. He gave me a smile and said, “that’s not soap” and gave me another soap. When I came home and told that the shopkeeper had refused to give me a bigger soap, they asked me what it looked like. When I told them, they all started laughing but I did not understand one bit. What I had asked for was a packet of ladies sanitary napkins. That was my first brush with women’s menstruation. I am a single child and I don’t know how my mom managed it but I never knew about it at home. I used to hear boys talk about it snidely in school but I was never a gossip seeker or a gossip monger, so I was not part of any groups and did not understand what they were talking about.

I slowly started realizing that something is going on with girls and women every month but I blissfully continued living in ignorance through my college days without knowing much about it. After I started working, a colleague who later became a good friend to me came to me one day and complained of stomach pain and pain in her knees and legs. I was trying to take her to the doctor when she said, “stupid, it’s the monthly thing”. I didn’t know what to do next so I took her home to my mom and told her to take care of her. I looked so dumb on myself that day and I decided I better understand what all of this is. I went up on Google and started reading. I was very good in biology in school but I did not have the heart to cut open bodies that’s why I decided not to study medicine. What I got to read about menstruation blew my mind away.

All beings in nature have the innate tendency to become a dominant species and procreation is one way of achieving this. Nature has provided them the necessary means and intelligence for procreation as well. All animals have mating periods and that is the only time they engage with their opposite sex. Human beings display very different and distinct behavior and attributes from all other animals in nature and the reasons have been explicitly mentioned in ancient texts.  In the Old Testament and other ancient texts, two phrases are of interest here. The Gods said, 1) Lets create them in our image 2) Let them rule over the land, the seas and the animals. This clearly indicates that we did not evolve from nature and we have been created to be the most dominant being on the planet. To fulfill this purpose, our procreation habits and organs have been created differently. Unlike in females of animals whose ovaries can store sperms of males for long time after mating, ovaries of human females do not have that capability. This requires that humans mate frequently and women are required to have frequent mating periods. This is why women have cycles of ovulation and menstruation every month.

The design of woman is a marvel in anatomical engineering. Ovulation and menstruation cycles, the design of the womb, the ability to carry a child for 9 months inside the body, the natural instincts that kicks in to protect and nurture the baby after it is born and most importantly, the hormonal changes associated with each aspect, nothing more complex than a woman exists on this planet. The body prepares to procreate after the egg is produced at the start of ovulation. If the fusion of egg with sperm does not happen during a certain period, the entire process of ovulation is reversed and everything that was created during ovulation is converted to waste which is pushed out of the body. To push the waste out, a liquid medium is required. This is why blood is used and we call this complex activity as menstruation.

Now we have all heard how menstruation has been used to deride women and has been used in derogatory ways to even ill treat women. The ideal time between two ovulation cycles is 28 days and that is the time it takes to complete one cycle of new moon or full moon. So a woman’s monthly cycles are linked to nature’s cycles. I have read that without the moon, there would be no tides on earth and without the moon’s influence, life would not have been possible on earth. If this is not enough to define how special a woman’s monthly cycles are, there’s more.

The cycle starts with ovulation, then egg is created, a certain time goes by when the egg is preserved, then menstruation starts and the body is cleansed of the effects of ovulation. Once menstruation stops, there is a period of inactivity for a few days before ovulation starts again. Compare this with the creation of the Universe as per ancient Indian texts. The Brahma day starts with the creation of the Universe and then the Universe is maintained and preserved for the entire Brahma day. At the end of the day, the Universe is destroyed. This is followed by the Brahma night when no activity happens. Then the next Brahma day starts and the cycle continues. The monthly cycles of woman are designed exactly like that of the Universe. The essence of Creation (Brahma), Preservation (Vishnu) and Destruction (Shiva); the Holy Trinity exists inside every woman. Doesn’t this make the woman’s creation divine? This is not the only instance where designs at the micro level have been found to mirror the designs at the macro level. Here are a few more examples (https://www.facebook.com/ScienceNaturePage/videos/993208110811447/). In certain tribes in Africa, during menstruation cycle, women are supposed to stop all their work, move away from their families and stay in huts kept a little distance away from the settlement so that they can take rest. This is not because women are treated with disrespect; rather they are treated as special because ancient cultures understood the importance and divinity of women and their monthly cycles.

My dad has wondered for long if I am gay because I don’t look at women like other men do. I do not know what to feel for a woman just by looking at her. I think I have to be demented to get attracted to a woman just by looking at her. I need to know her as much as she knows me to develop any emotions for her. I told dad that when I see a random woman, 3 possibilities exist. 1) Most probably she hasn’t seen me 2) If she has seen me I don’t know what she is thinking about me and 3) Maybe she is at that time of the month when she doesn’t want to have guys anywhere around her. I shut down his “gay” thoughts forever with this. After knowing about a woman in such detail, it is impossible for me to treat women with anything less than respect. I do not know how many people out there would understand my perspectives, but I hope it will help in restoring the respect women deserve to get from the society someday.

Dissecting first impressions and their consequences

I ran into the article in the below link and looks like the objective of the author is to sabotage the adage “First impression is the best impression”.

https://www.strategy-business.com/article/Why-First-Impressions-Are-Often-Wrong

First impressions do not make any significant impact about any person or situation in my mind. Forming first impressions are fine as long as we are not going to have relationships of any significance with those people. If we are going to have even a conversation with someone once, it is better not to be judgmental about that person based on first impression and look forward to the conversation with an open mind.

What we need to understand is that we are all connected at the cosmic level. Doppelganger effect is not an accidental phenomenon. There should be a reason why 9 people in the world look similar to each other. Our human forms must be getting created from a finite number of templates. There isn’t anything to be surprised at this. Tigers all look the same, so do Zebras. What differentiate them are their stripes which are unique, just like our finger prints. So there are common and differentiating factors among all species in the Universe. I had read a long time back that when a man looks at a woman, he is not simply admiring her physical appearance. He is trying to figure out how fertile she is. When a woman looks at a man, she is trying to see if he has the characteristics to become a good companion. Both are results of nature at work. What the man does ensures that procreation happens and our species survives. What the woman does ensures that her children get the attention, protection and nurturing of their father. All of this happens in the first look itself but we are unaware of it because that’s how our body is designed to function.

We do not really need to strive to create first impressions about people we come across. We have those features designed within us already. Our hormones attract or repel hormones from other people which help to set the comfort levels we have with people we see. Our eyes are said to be the mirrors to our souls. What we think and feel will reflect in our eyes. This is why poker players train to have “poker eyes” so that their eyes do not reveal what their next move would be. Research studies indicate that we tend to look towards the left side when we are recounting straight from our memory and towards the right side when we are putting together a series of events and explaining a situation. This is used to identify if someone is lying and forging facts during interrogations. The firmness of the hand’s grip is an indicator of self-confidence and the confidence one has in the other person. Drooping shoulders, bent spine, fiddling fingers all are indicators of lack of confidence. How we judge people is also based on our own personality, upbringing, the environment we grew up, the type of people we normally associate ourselves with and societal influences such as skin color, race, caste, religion and so on. There are numerous parameters we use to analyze a person in a single look. But everything in this world is situational. Any or all of the indicators could also be false flags because that person is not able to be himself due to circumstances. This is why first impressions could be misleading.

I believe there is something more innate about us which is beyond our comprehension. For those who believe in rebirths and reincarnations (of which I am a firm believer), we also have the ability to know who are the right people and who are not either from our relationships or through our experiences of dealing with people in our past lives. What we are experiencing and feeling through our lifetimes are also data in the cosmos and this data should be existing somewhere from where we can reuse it. All of these could be contributing factors when we form those impressions about someone in milliseconds. This could be what we call as gut feeling or intuition. Love at first sight is one possibility. It could also be that our body is going into self-alert mode to ward off potential threats.  I read in an article that we usually bond with people whose genetic structure resembles more closely to ours. There is simply too much that we do not understand about our anatomy and body functions. Forming first impression is not a one dimensional activity. There are too many parameters involved to draw conclusions based on just the concept of physiognomy.

The evolution of a man-woman relationship

Relationships are one of the most intriguing and endearing enigmas in the cosmos. I am absolutely certain all of us have found the best people in our lives among the most unlikely of people in the most unlikely of places from the most unlikely of situations. That is how it has been for me, every time. Our eyes have always popped out at the sight of a gorgeous woman in the arms of a guy whose looks can be defined in just one word: disaster. Same is the case with seeing an irrepressible hunk together with a disaster of a woman. We wonder in amazement, how did this s**t happen?

Well, we see and experience this with our eyes, which is just one of our 5 senses. True relationships are about experiencing each other with all our 5 senses. Our natural inclination is to look for someone who can bring balance into our lives and personality. A gorgeous woman has no need for more beauty in her relationship with a man (unless it is casual). Her needs might be for intelligence or money or both or something else. This is how she will choose her man and that guy might look an absolute disaster but they must be complementing each other perfectly. This is what brings in the balance in the relationship. I see every person’s life as a circle. When two people come together, these circles intersect depending on their needs, interests and a host of other factors. Maintaining this intersection is the secret to keeping the relationship alive and going. In the highly affluent and elite circle, men seeking pleasure with women outside marriage is a commonly accepted norm primarily because they are good husbands, great fathers to their kids and they make sure their families get the best lives and comforts. Their wives reconcile to this life because all their needs are getting fulfilled and they have nothing to complain about.

Everything in the cosmos has indicators associated with it. Fever is the indicator that a foreign substance has entered our body and our immunity system is working to protect us. Similarly, relationships also have indicators connected with them, sex being the best of the lot. Sex needs to be perceived and understood through its components: foreplay and intercourse. A species becomes dominant through successful procreation so intercourse becomes dominant when procreation is the objective. Foreplay came into the picture when procreation was no longer a requirement for us. Our needs changed from procreation to pleasure with time. This is how we discovered sex. But pleasure required that both partners enjoy the act equally. This is how foreplay was born. Foreplay requires that the partners are connected with each other, both mentally and physically and this in turn requires that the partners engage with each other in their daily lives, primarily through conversations. Being able to express each others feelings and needs extends to being able to express our sexual needs and desires as well. Ultimately, healthy sexual life is a key component of a great relationship and foreplay essays the most critical role in the picture.

Even more remarkable are the intricacies of our body.  Our body is the most advanced creation of anatomical engineering. None of the relationship making process would have been possible without our hormones playing their part so precisely. In fact, our hormones create the initial connections with people by connecting with their hormones. Looks closely and we can see that this is all about energy interactions. We attract and repel people based on how our energies interact and hormones make this possible. The next step is to use our emotions and experiences to analyze and build the relationship. In the relationship between a man and a woman, the role of the body is a true wonder. How the woman’s monthly cycle sets her up for procreation and how a woman’s health can be determined by simply looking at her cycle is just sheer genius. Even more stunning is the use of blood to create a male erection and making a woman’s vagina ready for intercourse. Unfortunately, we have chosen to depict all of this with vulgarity rather than observe with wonder and admiration.  I believe we should redesign our system of worship and start worshiping whoever it is that designed and created our body to these improbable levels of perfection.

With procreation no longer a requirement, marriage and monogamy have also lost its relevance. Society is trying hard to hold onto its rules but it is no longer tenable to live life according to the wishes of society and people around us. Women no longer have any sort of dependency on men. Its high time man and woman rediscovered each other and figured out how to fit into each others lives. This may be our next stage of evolution. Open communication, spending time together, respecting each other, expressing emotions and insecurities openly all help to create an environment where two people can truly experience each other. This planet and our species desperately need more kids born out of such relationships to improve and take forward our lineage.

Single and ready to mingle – again

Marriage was a fantasy that was sold to me when I was too young to understand it’s gravity. I was forbidden to enter the kitchen or do any household chores by my granny who used to keep saying she will find a woman for me who will take care of my house and my needs. I used to see my granny and my mother toiling in the house every day and to be honest, I never gave much thought to it, but I thought that was the way it was. What enticed me towards marriage was the occasion itself, people coming together and having fun, women covered in ornaments, sumptuous food and most importantly, being at the centre of attraction. My understanding of a companion changed when I started living with friends and later alone, but a full comprehension of marriage took some time.

They say marriages are made in heaven, but on earth, we are as different as chalk and cheese and I am not able to figure out the contradiction. We are brought up in different environments, we grow up in very different circumstances and consequently we develop very unique characters and personalities. When two such individuals become friends, it is normal, but when they get married, it is special. Why? I will go into that in a bit. People say marriage takes plenty of sacrifices and adjustments. Why is this to be spoken about specifically when we have been doing it for our friends for a long time? Or is it because we understand our friends? So why is it that we are more inclined to adjust with rather than understand this one person? What amazes me is how the rate of separation is surpassing the rate of union in the present times. When the love bug strikes, the two individuals are completely focused on those aspects in each other that they are interested in. Mannerisms are at their best, words are chosen with care and attire is at it’s pleasing best. But in a while, the factors that got the two people interested in each other becomes taken for granted and the attention turns to aspects that never matched between the two people, quickly diluting the bonds holding them together. All this is fine when it happens before marriage, but it beats my understanding when people go through all this after marriage. Then what makes people feel assured about marriage in the first place? Why become certain and uncertain about one person and one relationship with the passage of time? Why take all the trouble of getting married and showing pompously to the world that this is my companion sent from heaven? Question is, why marriage at all?

There was a time when we had to procreate to build our population and beat out competition from the rest of the animals in the ecosystem. On the way, we learned about having families with single partners from other animals. That turned into lineage, royal blood, dynasties and what not. Marriages became alliances to bring families together, either to end feuds or to unite against common enemies. All of this has been going on for ages and suddenly, all of these reasons vanished. Our population is exploding, there is no royal blood to protect and carry over and there is no more need to form alliances through marriages. The core foundations of marriage has been shaken and uprooted. This is why marriage has turned from the institution of procreation to the institution of confusion. The need for procreation is what made marriage special, but it is no longer the case. Now, people marry because society says they are old enough to get married. This is what happens when some part of us stays rooted in the past and the rest moves on with time. Our society and what it stands for starts decaying and losing value.

I do not know how this utterly ridiculous concept got created that when differences prop up between two people after marriage, a child or children can help sort things out. Any relationship is an investment of time, effort and emotions and marriage requires greater and consistent investment of these three factors over a period of time to burn the differences and build bridges between the two people. A child, which is no longer the product of the need of procreation, has to be the product of equal investments of the three factors from both people. But when these people are focused on each other’s differences, how can a child ever make people change their attitude and perceptions? It may become dormant for a while, but the fire remains in the underbelly and will come out with greater intensity down the road. Only outcome out of this is the troublesome childhood these children get and creation of confused and mostly wrong perceptions about relationships in their hapless minds. People seem relieved once they are separated from their partners and are divorced. Does the status of single and ready to mingle help us unload the baggage of our past experience or will that baggage weigh on our minds as we move on into a new relationship? So what happened to all the investment of time, effort and emotions? When children are born amidst differences, it means people have invested these three factors atleast for some time. So why can’t people work on this and make it span greater in their lives? When one person in a marriage cheats on the other with another person, it means only one thing. If someone cannot find contentment with one person, then it will never be truly found with any number of people. When one marriage goes sour, can it be fixed with another marriage? I honestly do not know, but I do know that I will neither have the state of mind or the stuff in my belly to take my chances again. Call me old school, I won’t mind.

I happened to see a movie in which the protagonist, a well educated guy is trying to become an entrepreneur and set up his own factory in a place where trade unions hold sway. This guy, with no job in hand at the moment, goes to see a girl for an arranged marriage. He tells her boldly that he means to leave his mark in this world in his own way, so if she chooses to marry him, she can either die as a millionaire’s wife if he succeeds in his plans or die as the wife of a madman if he fails. It is a risk she had the choice to take or reject which she finally takes on. Whenever a conversation of marriage comes up, people start talking about jobs, bank balances, family heritage and a 100 other things, none of which are perpetual or hold any value down the road. When the women of today claim that they are too busy in their careers to start families, they do not realize that their jobs are potential time bombs which can go off any time and make them unemployed any day. If marriage is perceived as a risk, then everything in life comes with risk. Taking it on and mitigating the risks together builds lasting relationships. My mantra for marriage is to never invest trust in it, invest faith and keep hoping that things would become better eventually, so in case it doesn’t happen, only my faith will be dented and not my trust in people.

Delving into mankind’s procreation

We have been reproducing our own kind for ages, but have we ever stopped to think if we are doing it the right way? I believe we have been doing it the wrong way for so long, we don’t even know if there is a right way. People think good nurturing is what makes the next generation better but I believe this goes way deeper than that. Some talk about cloning, but cloning only recreates an individual and not the same character and personality.

To dwell further on this, I will cite the example of Abhimanyu, probably the most popular character of Mahabharata, Hinduism’s magnum opus mythological war saga. The story goes that his father, Arjun, the greatest warrior of his times was narrating to his wife, Subhadra about the most complex battle formation and how to destroy it and Abhimanyu, in Subhadra’s womb, was listening intently. Sounds like a figment of imagination? I do not believe so. Life is nothing more than energy and even if I do not have any proof, I believe fusion of sperm and egg is a fusion reaction and energy is created which encapsulates and nourishes the embryo. The factors that affect life during it’s creation goes a long way in deciding the character and personality of the offspring. I believe positive influencers amplify and negative influencers diminish life. There are four common ways how procreation happens.

1. Man and woman in love (married or otherwise), don’t think about kids and it just happens. I am an example of this.
2. Man and woman in love (married or otherwise), plans a kid, works on it, talks a lot about it and it finally happens.
3. Man and woman are united in an alliance brokered by families. Next expectation from society is to have a kid, so no talking, no planning, they just go through the motions and it happens.
4. A child born out of a traumatic situation, such as prostitution or rape.

It is easier to explain through negative reasons, so I will start from points 3 and 4. Point 3, where the man and woman are either not sure if they even want to have a child at that time or one or both are secretly desisting the forced procreation completely. These negativities are passed on to the life of the offspring. Point 4, where life is created under the influence of man’s rage and lust and woman’s agony and helplessness. Such offsprings are never going to have a normal state of mind and a normal life. Points 1 and 2, where the love between the couple is the most important factor of procreation enhances the life force of the offspring.

So can a child in it’s mother’s womb listen to and comprehend the outside world? I believe it can, especially if it has been created from points 1 and 2. The story goes on to say that Abhimanyu was listening intently to Arjun and it had just reached the point where Arjun had explained how to breach the battle formation when Subhadra fell asleep. He could remember what he had heard after he was born. I can illustrate with a personal example though it may not completely fit the picture. My grandpa was a self centered moron as per my dad and his siblings. The day I was born, I was in the hospital simply wailing for no apparent reason when grandpa came to see me. My dad used to smoke then, so grandpa came up to me and asked, do you want to smoke like your dad? I stopped crying and gave him a full open mouthed smile. It changed his life forever. No one in dad’s family has ever figured out how my grandpa could flip so much. He was a father who didn’t even pick his son (my dad) from the floor when he was an infant because he didn’t want to mess with his suit. And the same man wasn’t ready to put me anywhere away from his hands. I didn’t plan any of this and it might have been just destiny or I may have figured out from my mom’s womb that this man had to be tamed.

I believe too much of positive or negative effect can reduce the span of life. When the epic battle of Mahabharata was raging, Abhimanyu’s uncles came up against the same battle formation he had heard about and his father, who was the only one with the knowledge of how to enter it, destroy and come out unscathed was stuck in another battle. Abhimanyu knew only to enter the formation, but in all his zeal, he blasted his way in and unable to force his way out, he lost his life. Jesus knew his fate if Romans got to him and he could have easily escaped, but he chose to relinquish his life. May be the positive energy was too much for their bodies to hold on to. Similarly, truly hardened criminals live without the fear of death. Their life force diminishes with every crime they commit, first killing their character and personality and then their physical being. The lists of good people and the bad ones who died early are huge.

We have to stop believing in and convincing ourselves that simply providing good education and fulfilling our children’s needs are going to make them model citizens of the country. Providing good environment for nurturing at home and school is mandatory, but it just doesn’t stop there. I believe it depends mostly on the point of origin, how it was when the child was conceived. Medical science will have a huge role to play here. Like all other optimum measurements of body functions, medical science has to decipher the optimum energy an embryo needs along with the optimum environment for it’s creation. We do not need to clone a Brad Pitt or a George Clooney, it is enough to have their wax copies at Madame Tussads. What the world needs is a Jesus Christ and a Gautam Buddha, not in resemblance, but in character.