Mindware

I just read something a FB and blogger friend posted. 

A must read ; please read this.

Today is the last day of the year. Some, looking back, thinking, and some, looking ahead, hoping, wishing.

And then it occurs to you that for some, there may not be a next year.

And so you try and think of what you and they have enjoyed together. When time wasn't an issue. And whether , now, so many years later, you can recreate that. And it really never has anything to do with the physical capabilities of the person, or for that matter, yours. 

L was in his late eighties. A whimsical determined person,  who was very fit till a year ago, and  had doctors begging him to get off the treadmill during a stress test, which he thought was a complete lark. At some point age simply caught up , and he was now bedridden . His mind sometimes played games, and he would notice people but not recognize them. Except those he saw daily.  He had tons of what he called walking friends, but not, say, a key close friend. And these were the ones he missed , along with the walking. Something he indulged in daily , in the nearby park. And he would look longingly at the park when they put him in a wheelchair and took him to the balcony, to enjoy the flowers and fresh air.  

So one  Diwali, when more family was around, they hired a stronger wheelchair, capable of handling rough pebbled roads.  He had to be lifted from his bed , onto a chair-with-wheels, and then carried down the stairs two floors, to the waiting new wheelchair. The cycle-repair man outside the gate offered to help in the lifting. And before you knew, he was settled into the chair, a monkey cap on his head, assorted  bags, and catheters hidden behind a warm shawl that was wrapped around him. The sky was getting overcast. And they wheeled him down the road to the park, much to the delight of the old fruit seller outside , and some of the neighbors. The former came over with apples, the latter smiled and waved. Some joined in.

A few minutes later he was in the park. He didn't recognize some friends, but there was a great deal of smiling and handshaking, and nodding .  There was a kind of smile on his face that you show when you smell something wonderful.  Maybe it was the flowers, the trees, the children.  And suddenly there were a few raindrops.  He came out of his dream in panic. Wanted to rush home. And one of the neighbor's kids rushed over with a huge umbrella, and held it over him. He was safe.  So many old neighbors came out to meet him, knowing that he may not recognize them.  One of them was his doctor. But it was time to go home. The raindrops , went away like they came. But the umbrella remained, and the kids. And so they reached home, and carried him upstairs.  He rested, happy , but tired. And for the first time in many days, slept well that night.  
 
And then , a few years later, there was T.,  a career and family woman,  unmarried,  herself in her 80's, paralyzed waist down after a massive stroke,  who had friends ranging in age from 30 to 75. Who would all come to see her and chat. Sometimes, she would get confused, and speak something repetitive. Other times, she would make a comment that would stun someone in her field of expertise, which was medicine.  What she really enjoyed in her fitter days, was going to one of Pune's best "hangouts" and enjoying excellent South Indian breakfast and coffee with her friends. This was something we did without fail when we met her on our trips to Pune. 

And so a day was quietly fixed when her family members would be there, particularly the young grandkids, and a whole bunch of us went over to the hangout place which made and packed everything piping hot and fresh for us. She was known to them, and I like to think the food had an additional special ingredient that day.  Her family was kept in the loop, and they organized the table ware. We landed up in her room, and she  greatly enjoyed her repast, amidst the younger kids tucking in , like idlis were going out of fashion, and the others doing a more sedate job, between unobtrusively trying to help her with a shaking spoon, and blaming it all on the size of the wada.  She lay back on her raised bed, tired, but happy at the scenario.  A niece-in-law came in with coffee for everyone.  T just had water.  She was really full. In body as well as mind.  The kids showed their photos and artwork, she beamed. There was a lot of ribbing happening. It isn't clear if she understood the references, but she listened, and looked at peace.

Life went on. And one day,  both L and T were no more. Their respective families  mourned and continue to mourn.


But what is remembered is not their sickness, inabilities, and  troubles, but the smile that played on their faces, their sense of belonging and fulfillment  of mind and small wishes, and the joy,  that they continued to be a part of all of us.       

I recently posted about a family friend in her 90's, who lies in a virtual coma, tubes through her nose , a prayer bead necklace clutched in her hand. Her son -in-law, regularly recites , at her bedside, some Sanskrit prayers that are her favourites. Nobody knows if she can hear. (She never responds when called). But the minute he starts the prayers, her fingers move across the prayer beads!  

And so it seems, that along with the anatomy Hardware and  the memory-managing Software that defines us, there is also something called Mindware.

Maybe all living beings have that.

This is the amazing  thing that fires up and functions, extra well, in one's  last days,  regardless of the analysed-to-bits anatomical and physical systems. 

Something that lights up the eyes, of someone , who may not see another year.

And creates wonderful comforting memories, for those who will

Mindware.  It was always there.  


Like the coming New year.  2012.

Greetings !

Life Phantoms

Have been reading about Phantom Pains. Nothing to do with a hurt Phantom, squinting painfully through his purple mask  in the old comics. 

But these are supposed to be pains arising out of something that simply isn't there. In your body that is.

Typically experienced by someone, say, who has lost a limb  traumatically, and it has been amputated. And he still continues to feel all kinds of heat and unbearable pain in it, as if the limb is there.

Think of someone who , say, skidded , going very fast on a motorcycle in the rain, was thrown by the impact, but to complicate matters, his jacket got stuck on the handle bar etc, making his shoulder and arm muscles bear the brunt of the push and pull. The arm got badly dislocated, and the nerve connections between the upper arm and spine simply got yanked out.  (No, I am not making this up, but this is a true story.).  This resulted in the entire hand withering away, becoming useless,  when reattached back at the shoulder, and the man kept having unbearable pain, continuously in his bad arm, which was , for all purposes ,  nerve dead.     

Turns out that our nervous system functions in a convenient type hierarchy.  While the decision making properties of the Brain are supreme,  some of the instant decisions are left to what are called "nociceptive" neurons in the spinal column.

Remember how you sense the heat and instantly pull your hand away above a hot griddle , or refrain from touching it? Remember how you instinctively duck as you sense something useless being thrown at you ?  What happens, is, that in such cases, the nerve sensation travels up through the arm nerve-bunch (brachial plexus), and reaches the spinal neurons through further connections called ganglia.  These nociceptive neurons do some processing of the sensation, and act automatically, before relaying the pain message to the Brain . And they keep doing this all the time, whether we are aware of it or no. Like when we shift positions in a chair to enable circulation, or relieve strain on a particular muscle etc. We call this a reflex action.


The nociceptive neurons in the spinal cord, continue to be busy relaying pain messages to the brain, pretending they are  activating reflex actions in the limbs, even when the nervous infrastructure is completely bashed up as in the case of the fellow above.  This is the pain the brain processes, and the injured person feels.  The culprits are the nociceptive neurons, or should I say, now deceptive neurons , which have become slaves to habit, as such.

It has occurred to me that life around us is much similar to this.

We have a Head supreme person at the top , like a PM. He has all these levels of subordinates under him, all of whom, need to report to him, and sometimes they take decisions by themselves.  These could be bureaucrats, elected folks, regional heads, rural officers etc .  Even when there is sometimes no appreciable work, these guys pretend to be busy, creating a impression of work, simultaneously cheating the public in the process, by creating obstacles .  The public suffers, and the Head or the PM, continues to suffer under the misconception that his subordinates are doing truthful meaningful work.  Phantom problems (where there need to be none)  are created for the public, complicated by introduction of corrupt practices.

The question arises as to why the brain cannot take all the decisions and avoid the pesky nociceptive neurons.  The same as asking why everything cannot be handled by the PM or Head.

This will lead to long approach lines, or in the case of the body, long nerve fibres all creating chaos, connecting individually to the brain. Leaving a decision to the spinal neurons, without consulting the brain, would possibly be those few life saving seconds you needed....

And so we have a hierarchy.  Its the price we pay for evolution. For democracy. 

Unfortunately, we have no value for it.

Like middle managers pretending to the CEO of a company , to be busy with work, when there is none,  the spinal neurons  pass so many wrong,confused, and noise type signals to the CEO Brain, that the mind perceives this as a continuous constant pain in a limb , which has no sensory supply , because it is simply not there.

And so we are, as a people,  getting used to the mess created by corrupt phantoms , that complicate our lives, our law ad order and our safety.  Because democracy gives us freedom and we badly and irresponsibly abuse it.

Is there a solution ?

In medicine, there is. Neurosurgeons use cryosurgery or thermal surgery to kill off the spinal neurons left over from the accident. It's a very delicate surgery , done with a lot of care and finesse. Else there may be untold effects like paralysis or loss of one or more senses.

In life, we need to seek a solution, by proper investigation, honest decision makers, stiff punishments, and at all times, honest democracy.

Watching what is happening in our supreme legislatures, I sometimes wonder , whether this will be a sensitive careful surgery, or a random hit , hoping that magically , something improves.

If we only learned from our bodies.... 

The heart has its reasons....

This has been a season for thinking about hearts.

No , not as in Valentine,s, or playing cards, or proclamations of "cross my heart", and so on.....

But thinking of something, that starts off, beating in a foetus, while in "bonded" labor inside some one's uterus,  only to attain freedom from the bond, roughly 280 days later, under some fairly tough labor...

And then continues to beat, year after year, moment after moment, through childhood, puberty, even childbearing, middle age, old age, and so on... through  good and bad days, regardless of all kinds of pressure put on it, externally or internally.   

It gets nothing out of all that beating, unless it is the ability to beat more.

And so one marvels, at the philosophy of work or living, that is followed by the heart, and finds, that it is the finest exponent of Nishkaam Karma,  which is enunciated in the Bhagwad Gita, one of our oldest Hindu scriptures, which is actually a treatise on living.  Your best mode of worship of God, is to perform your work, honestly, to your absolute best, and more importantly, without worrying at all about the reward or the fruit of that labor.

The heart continues to ceaselessly do its work, independently of any other organ's behaviour in your body, with the possible exception of the brain,  which is really the ON/OFF switch for the whole body.

It's job is to receive dirty blood, send it off to the lungs to be purified, receive the purified blood, and then pump it into the big Aorta pipe, on its way to the different body organs, carrying nutrition, medications, and other markers of health.

Think of how willful the other organs behave.

The liver, that lies below the ribs and to the right,  spends its entire life tolerating and handling all the fat and carbs you imbibe under the excuse of celebrations and "loving it ".  Like a car whose engine is flogged without limits, the liver too has problems, but in its own selfish way, doesn't let on till it is 80% messed up.  When your blood shows up worrisome liver function values, it is almost 80% gone.

Your stomach, the recipient of all kinds of junk you eat.  It gets used to pouring in all kinds of body acids to digest your food. Then when occasionally you reduce your food intake, it finds it difficult to change the acid habit, and you then have left over acid in your stomach.  You complain of pain and acidity. It is not as if the amount of acid is fixed, but for some reason and for some folks, the digestion process bears a grudge against your previous excesses.

Your intestines. All 22 feet of them.  The whole idea is to have a quiet absorption/assimilation /exchange process going on while the digested  food moves about on this long road, so that what remains can be summarily chucked out.  But sometimes, the entire length of the intestine can get into a tangle, and cause you pain. Sometimes,  there are blocks in the path caused by stenosis;  consequent to some healing procedure, scar tissue forms, but clogs the path, simply blocking food from passing through nicely.  The intestines don't care what happens to the connected organs. They just do what they feel...

Think about your bones. All that milk you drank, and exercises that you did, as a child, followed by fitness concerns as a young adult.  Hit yourself accidentally with a tennis racket while playing, and you end up with a wrist fracture.  Take a irresponsible jump somewhere, and get an ankle fracture. I know of folks with a desk based sedentary lifestyle, who bent down to pick up a paper,  mistakenly thrown in the  waste basket, and sustained a rib fracture.  With all the fuss over bones in childhood and later, you reach menopause, and the same bones, in a wild independent streak, go haywire and start thinning. Without any concern for anything else around them. Sometimes, as a malicious  afterthought, some bones even develop extensions in weird places, and get called sesamoid bones. One such has often  kept India's star cricketer out of the game on occasion, by causing discomfort and pain.   


Think of the huge network of blood flow; arteries and veins. Thanks to folks who think they are being terribly stylish and smoking ,  these pipes simply remain inert watchers, as the walls are latched on to, by deposits which are byproducts of bad habits. Like Mumbai's subterranean water pipes, this network too suffers from  fatty junk sticking to its sides. The walls of these arteries and veins can do nothing, but look on fearfully as obstructions develop.

And then you think of the heart.

Relentlessly pumping the blood around. Sometimes putting in continuous hard work, which makes you a blood pressure patient.  The heart is often in cahoots with the brain; like, when  old age happens, and  weakness doesn't allow blood to reach everywhere in the body. The brain then instructs it to ration the blood supply, go to all the important places like the kidneys, stomach ,lungs, liver, brain etc, and reduces the supply to the limbs, ears, eyes etc; and you become bedridden, see and hear weakly.

Sometimes, the heart tries really hard to pump, and meets a tough opponent in some junk, blocking an artery totally.   Sometimes it is an artery that supplies the blood to the heart itself, as an energizer of the heart.  That's BIG trouble.

Even then , the heart doesn't give up. It sends out the word. An alarm. Your arms radiate pain. Your chest feels tight. There is a burning sensation in the breastbone. A sudden loss of energy.  And you rush. To the hospital. Sirens blaring, oxygen pouring into your nose , a small medicine under your tongue.

You are taken to a very sophisticated lab, where you watch, as some expert doctor, a cardiologist,  inserts a very very small diameter wire into an  artery (femoral)  in the groin, and guides it all over the place so that it reaches the blocked artery.  You yourself are able to watch it all on a huge screen. I know of a teacher by profession who even asked the doctors questions ....

Like Google maps, the doctors need to have the entire body artery / vein blood flow  map in their heads.  When to go straight up, when to do a U-turn, when to take a right, a left, and when to wait a second;  it takes amazing expertise.  (Unlike our Mumbai roads where we merrily destroy other roads in the process of repairing a given road.)

The specialists  scrape, and suck out the junk from the arteries,  shoring up the walls with some stent reinforcements. There are so many people there, helping out, reassuring your heart, to keep beating as well as it can,  and the little throbbing organ that has been doing so relentlessly, understands, tries its best, and at the end of a tremendous effort by some very clever folks, suddenly finds that blood can flow through its surface easily again.  The trauma and memories are not easy to erase, it isn't easy to live with repaired parts, but it tries.

Because its Bhagwad Gita philosophy for living says, it must perform its work to the best of its ability.  Nishkaam Karma.  Always. 

Without worrying about any rewards. Either from wilful types like the lungs, or kidneys, or stomach, or limbs, or intestines, or from the brain, which had been sensing what had been happening.   Presumably the person who undergoes this experience learns from this. 

The heart doesn't relax and sit back because the person has learnt a lesson; in fact it is so busy, pumping away blood, with a newly granted life, that it is now in its own life rhythm , doing what it knows best.  

  In the real world, such people are difficult to find. If you see a person who lives the philosophy of Nishkaam Karma, we think he is putting on an act.  Everyone has an secret agenda, and no one is ready to trust anyone.

If we only paid attention to our bodies, and the messages they convey ..... 

   

Getting things straight......

In this age of high mobility, faster career advancements and virtual travel, this is probably a stupid question to ask. But what kind of feeling or sense would you have developed if you lived in the same place, for say 60 years ? And more ? ......

You would know most of the people residing in your area, you would remember their families, and lets say, quirks and /or outstanding features of certain family members. You would know which parts of your area are more susceptible to seasonal variations and changes; you would certainly remember new constructions happening in places, now being considered important. There would be a sense of holding memories amidst the community that you lived in.

All this kind of "lit up" my mind , recently, when it occurred to me that the same would hold true for our bodies. I mean, just think. A large variety of useful organ members, residing and growing in the same area for , in my case, 60 years and counting. Some doing well physically, some undecided, some clearly on the way down, and some showing the sort of wear and tear that you see in crumbling walls, that still stand tall by sheer virtue of the goodwill coming from neighbors and the environment. This of course assumes that all these entities have a mind of their own.

And I was most delighted to discover that our body does not function autocratically under the dictatorship of the cranial brain . There is a sense of thinking, a sense of mind, a sense of "having its own mind" , in our abdomen. Its called the abdominal brain. Remember butterflies in the stomach, rushing to the loo in a stressful situation, losing appetite on hearing something terrible ?

In the highest traditions of management practices, there is delegation of work in our bodies, and there is more than one type nervous system in our body. The systems that allow brain messaging to enable us to recognize someone we have met before, are different from those that enable us to shout and instantly yank back our hands on unknowingly touching a hot griddle smeared with smoking oil. Lets not get carried away by names and titles of these things.

I have a firm belief , possibly yet to be investigated and ratified by, say, the NIH in Washington, that all our organs in the body are NOT just a chemical mass (like our potholed roads outside) , but have a mind, that listens, stores, reacts, and sometimes changes things.

In his late seventies, my father was diagnosed with a herniated disc/discs. At one point he couldn't even sit, and had to eat in a supine position, so painful was any movement. As a firm yoga practitioner since his childhood, he immediately rubbished things like surgery, and after initial analgesic doses of allopathy taken unwillingly, he started on a slow exercise regimen. He would often tell me, that one had to visualize in one's mind, that this situation would heal, that one would be active as before again, and he had a childlike adamant attitude about getting the best of this affliction , which he had to defeat. HE DID. Physiology is difficult to change at that age. The mind is not. And I think, somewhere, his spine and vertebrae sensed the strength of the thinking.

I have personal experience of suffering a particular problem which kept going from bad to worse over almost 25 years. All kinds of tests and pathological exams indicated no organic problem. Surgery and removal was a solution, but not something that appealed, because nothing was diseased, per se. Things reached epic proportions at a time when I was beset with many many difficult family responsibilities and it came to a point when energy, intense anemia, and movement became a worrisome issue. Ten years earlier, surgery had been a solution, I was younger, but I had refused, being a firm believer in the fact that if you had a worrisome child, you worked with him to improve, rather than give up on him and ignore him; and of course, each child was different, but got an equal chance.

I often visualized what was happening in the body, how surgery would traumatise the innards, what needed to happen etc. My doctor , who had advised me earlier and knew my family system, physiology and thinking, now convinced me to go in for surgery. I finally agreed and consulted the surgeon. She fixed a date , and asked me to get the preliminary checks up and stuff done. She then asked , since I had waited so long and tried so many meds, if I would be willing to try a specific regimen of a medicine which I had tried earlier, several times, but which was being newly marketed now. I agreed.

I couldn't believe it, when my problem , chronic over 25 years, simply disappeared , just like that, once I took that medicine as directed. One day it was there, and it simply disappeared. And has remained so 10 years down the line. Just like that. I like to think that certain parts of my physiology, were aware of my thinking, my empathy and respect for the anatomy, and the wild behaviour kind of ceased, when the body sensed that I had unimaginable stresses coming up, and this was the time to put their hand up, be counted, and help. The concerned organ probably had nightmares of being cut up in surgery ,and removed, and kind of gave up its willful behaviour. My doctor thinks this whole thing is amazing. But also believes in the power of "visualization".

I know folks who had intense intestinal digestive problems after some unavoidable treatments. An elderly gent has explained to me how he actually "conversed" with his intestines in his mind, cajoling them to be co-operative. He would do that several times a day, while carrying on with his meds and treatments. I guess his intestines listened. I mean we may be globalizing but his intestines behaved in traditional Indian style, listening and respecting elders.

20 years ago, two acquaintances, closely related to each other, both detected with cancer at the same time, in a chance check up. Both were in decent health, and in control of their bodies, as such. One of them insisted, he wouldn't agree to any surgery/chemo/treatments, because, he had a great belief in his health situation, and would face whatever, whenever. The other person, simply agreed to undergo radical surgery followed by assorted chemo and radiation treatment.

Both did fine for many years. Today, the one who did surgery, is no more after facing an uncontrolled spread of the Big C, and several drastic last minute treatments. The other person, continues to live, now afflicted , simply by intense old age. May be he had stronger thoughts throughout. Maybe he lived in resonance with his body. Maybe he infused his physiological set up with those thoughts. Which is not to run down proper cancer treatments. But it tells you the power of your mind.

In our childhood, we often heard folks shout at us, whenever we didn't appear to be sitting or standing straight. I remember being asked to stand against a wall, and remember the straightness of the spine, and to hold it that way. Particularly in the pubertal years, one often heard "Don't slouch", " Keep your spine straight", " Shoulders back"...... and someone would even poke you in the back if it looked like you were sliding into a slouch.

A few days ago, the potato basket in my kitchen accidentally overturned and the stuff went all over the floor. In an effort at stopping things from rolling under cupboards and stuff, I hastened to bend , probably in a completely unrecommended manner, particularly for people my age. I paid the price. Excruciating pain while straightening to stand up, inability to stand for a longish length of time, and wild applications of ointments resulting in aromas of methyl salicylate pervading in a season where sandalwood, camphor, and jasmines and roses would be the norm.

XRays happened. The doctors says that my spine, which should have been in a graceful "S" shape, has tended to straighten out.(!) Its more like a mathematical "integration" sign now. And the muscles of the back, are pushing themselves to the limit, trying to support the whole thing, causing my stiff and painful back. I hear words like Lordosis. Sounds royal. :-) And Kyphosis . Sounds terrible :-(.....

But I am convinced, that years of listening to folks shout at me about keeping my back straight, must have trained the vertebrae and the spine. Like me, they must be harking back to the old days. They probably remember . They also probably realize how incredibly stupid I have been in bending inappropriately for the potatoes. Those who don't listen are often taught a lesson.

I guess, I am getting mine now.....