Climb every mountain....

It was time for her to gape, open mouthed.

"You climbed in a frock and chappals ? "

"No only that, your Aji climbed wearing a 6 yard sari and chappals, and both your uncles wore normal half pants and sandals. "      Me.

This was about Kalsubai, the highest peak of the Sahyadris in Maharashtra, and the fact that my parents, my brothers and I climbed this , about 55 years ago,  during our summer vacations.  My father was then posted at Ahmednagar, and we spent our vacations there, as we continued to attend school in Pune during the school year.  On a trip to Bhandardara , then an emerging  , little known tourist destination, with just a government Rest House, someone mentioned Kalsubai to our parents, and everyone decided to attempt  a climb.

A local from the village of Bari, at the base, accompanied us.  There was just a standard hand held bag carrying some water and something, which my mother carried.  We climbed, scampering across , as children are wont to do, occasionally slipping ,  supervised by our parents and the local guy, who kept up a constant informative chatter about the village the deity, the activities, and such, interspersed with commenting on how the kids were taking to the climb so well.

No photographs exist. So I have nothing to show how we had to hold on to some kind of chains fixed into the vertical rocks, somewhere near the top.  And so we did it, all 5,500 feet of it, reached the peak, rested , inadvertently learned a bit of history, geography,  sociology, and then descended.

There was an element of not knowing what came next in this trip.  Our only Net was the local guide, who gave real time advice.

Why do I write this ? 

Today,  a Google search on Kalsubai give 1,53,000 results in 32 seconds.  You can read about it all, without stepping out of your chair.

The mountain stands , as before, majestic in the monsoons. Possibly experiencing the change that advancing age brings....

The daughter recently went on a trek to the same place.  Very organized. With complete instructions, do and don'ts,  safety  warnings, suggestions about clothes, footwear, and respecting the sensibilities of villagers.  It was about setting out from an urban Mumbai, heading out into the plains by the railways, then being driven to the village, where locals organized yummy breakfasts.  The Kalsubai mountain itself, now had  signs here and there, a bunch of railings and ladders installed  for the benefit of the local climbers population, and the visiting trekkers.  Somewhere near the 3rd or 4th ladder, a chap had set up tea stall specailizing in Kanda Bhajjyas, freshly fried and served in leaves. He was even seen nimbly climbing  along with the trekkers, lugging a sack of onions.

The climbers, all outfitted in appropriate climbing shoes, capris, jeans and track pants, tees , and waist pouches.  I know someone who even carried a power bank. The trekkers almost all carried rucksacks, with plastic water bottles, some food, rain jackets, cameras, and every now and then , folks would whip out their phones and take pictures.  Sounds normal today, but would have sounded positively confusing to someone who had never used a landline black rotary phone then.   


So many wonderful photos, descriptions on blogs , and making friends.

And it too me back to what happened when , 58 years ago, we descended down, exhilarated, and returned to Bhandardara, and thence to Ahmednagar and back to Pune and school.

Being the one  with a literary bent amidst the family children , my parents encouraged my efforts , be they in the prose or verse form.  This hobby also developed due to having friends with similar interests.

There was a children's Marathi magazine , called " Garjana" published from Kolhapur then, and I wrote an article about this  "trek"  (it was then called a trip)  accompanied by a poem. They actually published this in their "Varsharambh" issue in April 1960.  In those days, any event , including floods, elections, prizes awarded o family friends, popular leaders coming to Pune etc would elicit a poem by me, and these were written in longhand, in a book, regardless of whether anyone wanted to read them or publish them.

I had lost track of these "manuscripts"  for decades , as I got busy with my own life and children and their hobbies and clicks and writings.

A few months after my father passed away, I spent some time organizing and clearing papers in their house, and came across a file,  where I found, carefully filed, copies of stuff that I wrote, copies of stuff of mine that someone published, and all kinds of letters written to me subsequent to some kind of state level scholastic achievement, all sitting quietly together, frayed edges, dulled inks, and all.

I remembered these, and  went through them again with my daughter, before she went on the trek.  Leading to the conversation mentioned at the beginning of this post.    

History repeats.   Another generation climbs Kalsubai.  Does excellent photography there.  Posts it on Facebook, where those who were on the trek with her "like" it and comment on it.

I decide to further utilise the capability for which my parents encouraged me so much.  I co-operate with the daughter on a blog solely dedicated to her various treks. She does the photos, and I do the short text accompanying each.

Have a look at it at Field Clicks.

I can never aspire to do what my folks did. Painstakingly cut and file away my literary outbursts at various ages and the documentation of my various activities that in inadvertently appeared here and there . And carefully maintain it through decades.

I must move with the times.  And learn to document it all on the blog the daughter maintains , for her treks.
.
.
.


In the meanwhile, the erstwhile 10 year old girl who climbed Kalsubai in a frock and chappals,  has been told by someone leaving for work, to expect an online merchant courier who will deliver a cell phone lockable  waterproof cover sometime today........

Misguided Mirrors ....

I have this huge amount of respect for whoever designed the human brain.

There is an entire set of people  trying to get computers to do what the brain does, and while I appreciate their hard work, conviction and single minded devotion,  I think at some point the brain simply wins hands down.

I mean  when was the last time a computer CPU exhibited neural plasticity ( say, one USB port , learning and chipping in on its own for another non functioning port) ?  And when was the last time,  the CPU, decided to ignore certain parts of itself, and simply shut down the sections of the computer controlled by those parts, because power was being compromised in some way within ? And when was the last time your engineer repaired the circuitry in real time with the computer actually on ?

So it was with much delight that I leaned about something called mirror neurons.


Whenever the brain is involved in an bodily activity, the neurons in that  part of the brain that is controlling that activity are said to "fire", and this is experimentally observable. 

Sometime in the 1990's some scientists in Italy did an experiment with monkeys.

They fed the monkeys (A)  some peanuts  and noticed a certain section of brain neurons firing.  They had a bunch of monkeys (B) observing these monkeys(A), and found that  some neurons in the monkeys (B) fired every time the monkeys(A) were given peanuts.  This was not a one off coincidence and several experiments were done that resulted in the postulation of "mirror neurons", or neurons that didn't participate directly in the action, but still got all excited about it on their own.

These are what you might call "learning" neurons.  Suppose someone pokes your thumb with a needle. You express hurt , and react , by trying to withdraw your hand, as decreed by your normal brain neurons. 

When I watch the process of poking, there are mirror neurons in my brain, that will react. Because they learn about the poke and its effects , and fire. These are not the neurons that listen to the brain say "Ouch, pull back that hand !".  But neurons that are capable of understanding that act and help us learn about it and the in process , empathize with the person being poked. .

In simple terms, when you say one learns by observing, one is talking about these mirror neurons. When you watch something happening to someone,  your own set of mirror neurons imagine the event and you react in empathy as if it happened to you.

Dr V. S Ramachandran, a neuroscientist at UC San Diego, and author of many books about the brain , says that mirror neurons   enable us to see someone else as an intentional being, with purpose and intention.  And so when some one's mirror neuron system is dysfunctional, we have a autism situation.

I have a question that has to do with what we observe, how much we observe, and is it possible that mirror neurons can be misled ?

Over the last half a century and more , visual mediums have proliferated in our lives. For some of us, television happened in our mid twenties, with color coming in even later. Today's generation, born in the nineties, are hounded , by visual data in the form of millions of television channels, video games, cell phone screens and so on.  Right from birth itself.  Small babies and kids react to Ipads.  And in television, there is  hardly any control on the content being shown, particularly in India.

Is it possible that mindless violence , immoral behaviour , and  unnatural acts and events, constantly badgering our mirror neurons, could have fatigued them?  To the extent that they blindly wrongly "empathize", and later no longer react to what their own brain , capable of reason, is actually telling them ?  To the extent that people mindlessly behave and act without regard to the consequences ?   

Is it possible that,  beyond a certain frequency of onslaught of visual graphics,  the mirror neurons , sort of start functioning "on automatic", bypassing the individual's capacity to  evaluate and reason before acting?

Watch something and emulate , regardless of final outcome, or harm to someone.  And our so many billion dollar entertainment industry obliges ...


Newspapers are full of stories where someone killed his father because he refused money for a new cell phone; someone slashed his wife' neck because she said she wanted a divorce;  someone else flung acid on a girl's face  because she spurned his offer of marriage; someone killed his mother because she wouldn't sign over some papers of ownership of something;  someone committed suicide by hanging because of less marks in board exams; and endless events of this type. So many of these events are India-centric.  In a country in a desperate hurry to catch up with the rest of the "developed" world,  it is possible, that important steps are skipped.  Blind aping of situations and events in films where humiliation of women is rampant, presumed superiority of men based on their mindless revengeful acts , are some of the results of this headlong rush into "Progress Alley" ..

Is it possible that we have passed the zenith of the development of our cerebral cortex, and are now on the other side,  on a slow slide to an animal way of life ?   Have we abused our mirror neurons till they  have become mindlessly irreversibly  narcissistic?  Have we abused different ways of learning ?

As human beings who should be aware and respectful of the ways of Nature,  have we now become marauding types out to destroy anything and everything that spells "B-A-L-A-N-C-E" ?   Instead of being students and learning, the mirror neurons have now become masters.

And you see this abuse in Nature, as well as in the way our society is developing.

Even computers which mimic or at least are programmed ("trained")  to mimic what the brain does, are now used for fraudulent  dealings, defaming people, propagating harmful stuff, and cheating. 

Possibly , computers can be rectified, repaired and started afresh.

I wonder  if this can be done with the mirror neurons that have gone astray...
 

MRI Reloaded....

Almost seven years ago, I was asked to do an MRI of the shoulder and neck region.

Never mind what happened to my shoulder later, but the exercise resulted in a blog post  "MRI Rock", detailing my first fun experience  with the MRI procedure. The highlight of that entire procedure was the immense variety of noises that emanated around me as I lay, deadly still , in one of those  slide in-slide out , cylinder type things  , which presumably had magnets inside , trying to twist and turn and position themselves.

I was back for another MRI.  Thanks to a long standing strange complaint of severely  burning toes , which was killing my sleep.  I was curious to know this time , what had changed in the last 7 years. With me, as well as the MRI machine....

The target of the MRI, which was this time, the Lower back, or as they say, LS Spine.  (Just reminded me of a TV program from ages ago, where Archana Puransingh used to do a comedy program  and classify  people/places as HS(High Society/posh) and LS (Low Society/Unposh). I was ecstatic to know that my spine was LS....  But I digress.)

The whole idea of an MRI, is to position magnetic fields in clever ways so as to polarize the hydrogen atoms in your body region under survey, and then point radio waves at them, and catch the reflection of these waves on film, to give doctors an idea of the mess inside your bodies.

Like before , all metallic items were removed , and handed to a relative for safekeeping, and  a hospital gown took its place.

Like before , I lay down on one of those sliding planks. The only difference was that now they also moved vertically, so that I could climb on , in a sort of casual way , as opposed to , on a stool, that shook under the weight.

And like before, I was cold, the AC was killing me, and I was told not to move once the procedure began. And as before , I asked the technician for the emergency bell , which I must hold in my hand, in case anything became intolerable and needed me to move.

Some things have clearly changed.  The earlier MRI, had, in addition to a slide-in cylindrical section,  a kind of large diameter spherical section which felt like a planetarium when one slid in.   This machine was a cylindrical contraption, much narrower , and  possibly the effect of the current craze for size zero .  Fairly puzzling because  so many normal-size non-page 3 folks came  to get MRI's done .  The whole effect was like one was sleeping at stiff attention, and itching for someone to shout and say , "Vishram!".

And then there were the sounds.
 
Clearly, the hydrogen atoms inside me had mellowed down. The sort of music that was offered to get the magnetic fields working now was different.  

The main sound continuously playing in the background was some kind of sound of a dog barking rhythmically, somewhere far down the road, in a sort on non stop way. There were some very loud rhythmic  beat sounds, which I thought, would be better suited for some loud nightclub or discotheque, and I could imagine people desperately flinging themselves around in weird clothes trying to dance to that music. Wonder if any DJs have had MRI's done ?

All of a sudden,  it changed to a  lower pitch yet still very loud sound , a kind of thick buzzing. Then a kind of sound of a mixer running in your kitchen.  This was followed by what I call hammering house repair sounds.  The sort you hear when there is a building coming up next to your house. 

At some point, in a throwback to my past experience, the dreaded sounds of a drill digging up a concrete road made their debut.

The new sounds this time , were different. One was much like an electronic saw making precision cuts, loudly and clearly; not a terribly reassuring sound to hear when you are sleeping under a cylinder sliding in and out under someone else's control. 

The other new sound was what I call the horns.

I am not sure whether these "horn sounds"  kind of announced that a new area in the body was being looked at.  But they sounded exactly like the Mumbai suburban local train sounds, when the train stops at a red signal, and the driver tries to signal to whoever, that he needs a response, so the train can move. 

These sounds happened in different pitches, but what made me really amused was a sound like the very old style air horn (balloon type) which you still hear on BEST buses in Mumbai, when the driver is fed up of unmoving traffic and wants to push.

 It occurred to me that  these were typical sounds one would hear in a place like Mumbai, where new construction was rampant, there were no restrictions and rules on noise, and you would be cursed with cement drilling, concrete mixing, glass cutting, chain saw noises , interspersed with local trains honking for a signal in the distance. Even the barking dogs sound.

Science and Anatomy reflecting the society around us.


It isn't easy remaining still and unmoving inside the cylindrical MRI contraption. And they would constantly have these little back and forth shifts of the plank. You would think everything was done, and they would slide you in again, possibly to take another tantalizing view of your scintillating back.

This MRI procedure  was more claustrophobic than before.

 Seven years ago, I had kept my  cool and wits about me, by thinking of various songs that one could sing to the beat of these sounds, as the magnets did their stuff.  Occasionally , I would then remember some childhood prayers we recited when we were afraid . And recite them to the beat of the magnets.

Seven years on, it was not the same.

There was a bit of loss of bravado.  Almost similar music, and some similar sounds, with some innovative ones added in,  but all that I could recite to that beat, were prayers where one took God's name. Seven years down the line, I had moved on, and popular songs simply did not come to mind.  Possibly it was age,  or even inattention to what was being constantly played on loudspeakers all time . I would often realize that I was holding my breath, and then try and release it slowly so as to not unknowingly  make any movement in the area under investigation,  by exhaling hugely.

I am not an overly religious person, and not someone who can rattle off chapters and verses of holy books.  Shri Ram, Ganpati, and Shri Krishna are the Gods that always come to my mind.  Seven years ago, I could recite the Maha Mrutyunjay Mantra in my mind, in perfect tune to the MRI sounds, and even counted the iterations.

Now I tried to recite names in my mind, quietly, as the rattling, and booming and digging noises continued.   Somehow, the prayers to Ganpati , Krishna, and the Maha Mrutyunjaya Mantra,  did not fit into the rhythm of the MRI sounds.

But  Shri Rama did.  And so the hydrogen atoms  in this earthly body, straightened out to the tune of Shri Ram, Jai Ram,  Jai Jai Ram,  and sent their pictures back to the computer/photofilm etc , for what sounded like a musical thirty minutes, interspersed with local train horns, introducing each piece of music.

I know I always say our bodies reflect what is happening in society and vice-versa.

But no  this has nothing to do with the political party in power in my  state.   It has nothing to do with secular or communal.  

A different MRI beat could have fitted in with invocations to Ganpati and/or Krishna as well. Seven years ago, the MRI beats fitted perfectly to A R Rehman's Jai Ho!

What was important here was to figure out the handling of the burning issue of the day.

My toes.

 






  

Autobiography of an unknown pothole....

I am trying to find out my purpose in life.

Circumstances of my birth are never happy events that I remember.  I mean, I have never hankered to see the real world. 

I have been happy, cocooned in maternal concrete , cementing my ties with those around, just ordinary middle class entities in a subterranean world. Wires and cables, meandering around, minding their own business, and well meaning telephone cables carrying on their preassigned work. It does get crowded at times with the big ones that sit deeper and direct water and other unmentionables around, but then that's life.   But we folks, try and keep away from these folks who are important.

It has become difficult in a place like Mumbai, to remain subterranean. I mean think of the huge heavy loaded fourwheelers at signal junctions, pressing down on us till the get the green sign.  Big buses, trucks, and so many cars trying to be big. It becomes intolerable, and someone like me has to finally emerge into the fresh air.

That's when all the trouble begins. I cannot tell you how much it hurts to have  radial tyres  run roughshod over you.  Just when you think it is over, there appears out of the blue (it is now visible to me , you know) , a huge long transporter thing, with sixteen wheels bearing down on me. Sometimes it is a red bus, with its weight increased several times over thanks to people hanging all over it, through doors.

Of course, my injuries run deeper in the course of time, fractures, festering hurts and cracks, and occasionally someone will organize a pothole doctor to come and check me out.

Thanks to all the lax controls in our country over medicines ,  someone gets down to examining and operating on me, and fills  me up.  The world knows about it via the various red ribbons, banged up cylindrical containers and sticks organized around the operation area, and the pervading smell of tar. Most of the time, someone crushes gravel and stone and tries to fix my injuries.

When no one is watching, they certify me fine.  (I wonder from where they learn to do that).

Once again, but this time with scar tissue, I occupy my place in the scheme of things.

The trouble starts when it rains.  In my earlier original subterranean life, my environment would suddenly cool down underground, and I would hear gushing flowing noises of the storm water drains. Today, I am  permanently sick and handicapped . Sick, because, water runs across all the scar tissue, dissolving things, and creating holes again. Some of it even sits for days, and I have to bear radial tyres thumping through the holes, bikers speeding through it , and when all is quiet (which it never is in Mumbai)  there are these mosquitoes, who come for a diesel laced nightcap and have a buzzing time.

The same doctors, the same obsolete banned medication, and the same traffic running unconcerned over me, even before I have healed. The scar tissue gets worse and worse, lumpy adhesions are formed , infections set in, and I think back to the old days, when  the road was somewhere else, the traffic was lesser and more orderly, there were often trees by the side , and my problems were treated in a simple yet better manner.

Today treating me has become a business.  The doctors even declare me as fit when I am not. Someone even tried to put my photo on Facebook, but I ended up getting spam from some doctors who had something against me.  I am even considered glamorous. Someone even made some plastic fake pothole prints , and spread the sheet  over some perfectly good roads  to teach the vehicle owners a lesson in driving carefully.

I have now become older and philosophical.  I know my health is going to get worse and worse. The impending monsoon does not inspire any sense of security.   This city keeps on adding thousands of vehicles every day, without checking if folks like me are healthy enough . Parts of me are atrophying.  Sometimes I meet other atrophying potholes, and they have the same story to tell.  Sometimes I almost die.

Sometimes I feel, we potholes are female.  So much physical abuse, so much of pointing fingers,  so much unconcern for our health, and simply no action on fake stuff used to treat us, unlike expensive stuff used for a slight scratch of the face of an expensive road.  It is not simply by chance that we affected potholes gravitate towards each other, sharing the water and the stories . Once every year proclamations are made about how someone is going to be taking care of us, and addressing our woes before the rains. Just like they are in the habit of proclaiming so many new National Days these days.  

But No.  

 Which brings me to reincarnation. I never used to believe in it.

 I had heard about the life system of dying and constantly being reborn as something else, and getting stuck in the cycle of life and death. And luck was with those who got a release from this life-death-reincarnate cycle , and  obtained freedom for the Soul .  Moksh. 

I keep getting sick, dying, and then I keep getting reincarnated as another pothole.  Perhaps the place changes. But I never reincarnate as something else.

Please.  I don't ask to be reincarnated as a powerful leader, or a lion or tiger, or even a popular actor or actress. I don't want to be reincarnated even as a mango tree in summer, or as saffron in Kashmir. Or as a beautiful rose bush in the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi.

All I ask is an escape from being reincarnated again and again as a pothole , a deliverance from the devil contractors and hand-in-glove municipal types.

Reincarnate me as a bird, that flies high on the skywalk at the junction, and watches the erstwhile pothole from there.

I will have then attained my Moksh.........     



  
   

An Approximate Life

Be approximately right rather than exactly wrong.

John W Tukey, a chemist, turned topologist turned statistician, absolutely hit the nail on the head when he said that. Which is kind of funny , because he was exactly right.

We, of the world's approximately oldest civilization, initiators of the exact concept of zero,  and  some time learners of a context sensitive ancient Panini Sanskrit Grammar so perfectly algebraic  for relating to computer programming structures, have unknowingly accepted approximations as a huge part of our lives.

Go on  road trip anywhere, and stop to ask directions. Many times, road signs are a one time effort performed by fatigued municipal office, and updating is ignored.   Regardless of the actual distance, with a fine disregard for the metric system  which actually took over in 1957, someone will always say ,"Oh, just 5 furlongs further down ."  After 5 furlongs, when nothing appears, and you check with someone , you get a similar answer, possibly qualified by sighting things like schools, cisterns and taking a left or right .

You get a notification from the income tax authorities mentioning your latest return, and it mentions an approximate general reason(s) you should see them immediately. There is nothing exactly mentioned regarding specifically you.  You take leave from work, and travel 40 kilometres to their office, out of respect for national laws which are exact. On reaching there, you move through a maze of folks who point you somewhere else approximately. The final person tells you , your return is fine, and the letters were sent to approximately 1 lakh  people including you, who fell into some category, as an exercise in random checking.

You go to your bank, to wire some money abroad as registration fee for a conference.  You would think the rules exist in black and white. But no.  I mean the rules exist, you specify the extra charges should be recovered from your normal savings account,  but the understanding is approximate, and so every head office en route on the wire gets its pound of flesh before the fee reaches the destination ,  reduced in value . You protest,  someone checks and apologizes, and something is returned to you.  This from a major bank that should know its procedures eyes closed. But there is a comfort level in being approximate, and a bit of a nose-turn-up in being called a service organization.      

The agency that really excels at approximation is the Weather Bureau or Meteorological Office as we call it.   The first approximation is about when the Monsoon will hit Kerala. Sometimes it does not keep appointments, and various reasons are given about winds, and depressions and so on. Which develop over a period of observable time, and nothing is instantly changing. Indications exist,  but we we are still approximate.  The 26th July cloudburst over Mumbai was never predicted. Rain clouds in mid February , are unusual, do not appear in an instant, movements can be followed, but someone thinks the clouds may approximately move on, and hey, who wants to make a wrong prediction ? (For that matter, a right prediction ? :-)  )

Law and Order issues being approximate is puzzling.  The approximation being done is by the authorities.  You get pulled up because you followed the traffic flow and turned left, when the signal was red.  You get pulled up when you obstinately wait for a signal to change color, and block all kinds of errant honking traffic behind you. The cop is approximately trying to figure out  what he should charge you under, as hundreds of bikers without helmets zip through disobeying an exact rule. You ask him about this, and he approximately deems you dangerous and lets you go.

Medicine is an exact science.  However , our Food and Drug authorities allow medicines , like Nimesulide , which are banned in other countries.  I mean, either something is beneficial to the body,  or it is harmful.  Dosages are specified . But we are beset with an approximate attitude.   We seem to follow a "maybe" system . Lead in Maggie noodles (where these noodles are not a life requirement, per se) is avidly investigated, retests ordered, but millions of fly-by-night ayurevdic manufacturers ignore proper procedures of preparing medications as specified, and market medications with unchecked harmful levels of lead.   The "Maybe" is intricately linked with a mindset that says, science may be exact, so what; but we deal in things approximately.

So many things that work like clockwork in other countries simply become "approximate" in India .  Cell phone service providers who must follow stringent service-to-consumers rules elsewhere , simply go approximately haywire in India. Like Vodafone.  ( I have personal experience).  Airlines which must provide certain facilities (else face penalties/actions) in other countries, quietly ignore things in India, and point to local airlines when you question them about things like wheelchairs. (Again I have personal  experience). Even food. They try and approximately do what they are supposed to , and it doesn't matter if  the consumer suffers.

Sometimes I think our flora today also live approximate lives, not knowing what the soils contain, thanks to indiscriminate landfills , putrefying stuff and increase in methane concentrations, and lack of water. Global warming is a nice approximate reason to publicize.

Many years ago, Germans were famous for perfection.  They still may be.  I haven't been there since 1991 when I lived there , with the kids , for a year.  There used to be  Herr Schmidt in our apartment  complex, who  always did the garden up keep, and became great friends with my daughter , who  then  5, liked to tag along with him, clearing weeds, raking soil, and watering , once the winter cold season got over. I would chat with him whenever I went to pick up my daughter, or thought she was being more of a nuisance than a help, and he once mentioned, that spring officially began on April 1, and so now was the time in late March, to do all this work in the garden.

My approximation laden mind was in a shocked tizzy over his statement about Spring beginning on April 1.  I mean, there were things you could be exact about, and there were things beyond your control.  Spring was not an aunt who called and said she was arriving by a certain train , and so on. 

You will not believe this, but right on the dot on April 1, I noticed buds  on the plants, some blooming, some just born,  on the garden border.  After a severe snowy winter , you could not miss this event when it happened.

Sometimes, I guess nature too learns  , where it must be exact , and where it cannot  be approximate....        

     

Brilliant coding .... and it is not about IT..

One exists the way one does,  because one's parents donated 23 chromosomes each , making one the proud holder of 46 chromosomes in the nucleus of every cell in one's body.

A chromosome consists of hundreds and thousands of genes, and , many personal traits  are determined  by sets of these genes.   The entire structure, and functioning of your body and possibly your mind is decided by the types and amounts of proteins your body synthesizes, and  genes are the managers  of the lives-and-times  of these proteins,  which actually contain coded instructions on how you will develop throughout your life.

You may have traits you inherit.  I  mean you may look like a spitting image of your father, but inherit the disposition of your mother.  You may even be predisposed towards a medical career, despite neither of your parents being so, simply due to a dominant gene from your grandmother, skipping a generation, and flowering within you. All those traits that have assorted aunts and folks say things like "You speak just like your Mom" or " This love for elocution is a gift of your Dad" are supposed to have come from dominant genes. Every time  someone shakes their head at your marks in Maths  and goes tsk tsk about how good your Dad was in maths, they are talking about your recessive gene.

The aforementioned coded instructions as protein strings in your genes,  are actually a kind of time table of your life.  How you will develop at what age, when will your height shoot up noticeably,  when will you start getting periods,  when will your musical abilities come to the fore, would you have a literary bent of mind , when will that develop, will you be one of those folks with a raging temper, and so on  . So many things. So many amino acid protein chains, folding and unfolding, so many enzymes and hormones quietly streaming around getting things done.

I have always wondered how time was coded into these instructions .

I mean, we humans live by the circadian time,  we have glands like pineal glands, little bitty smart things in our brains that sense that part of the 24 hours we are in, and trigger things like sleep,  idling down of various body systems, resting parts of the brain, waking up, feeling hungry etc etc .

Do these protein strings of the genes in our 46 chromosomes, sense time the same way we do at the macro level?  Clearly,  deep within our body, and in the cells, time would be sensed by a trigger of some enzyme or similar thing.  And the question can be asked, whether the well being of the body at that point, sickness/weakness etc, has any effect on the sensing of time by the cells at the micro level .

When we say that  some folks carry a certain cancer gene  what causes it to bide its "time" , before expressing itself in its gory glory ?  Does the environment around the cells, and general physiological condition of the body,  contract or dilate the time as far as the cell clock goes ?

But the real wonder is how these coded instructions influence thinking.

In my more than half a century of leading a fairly ordinary life, there have been several occasions when someone has remarked how I resemble my mother,  in the way I  express myself, and think.  So many people saying "you are your mother's daughter";  and post-some crisis situation, someone coming and saying, "Hmm. Independence... Shades of your mother .."   .  My father loved to write, and he ensured all those protein strings were there in his  23 chromosomes that he gifted me. Right from childhood , my parents encouraged this writing, which sometimes included poems.  All this right brain activity tangling every now and then with the algebraic unknowns of the left brain activity which was compulsory at times.

There was a huge gap in life,  like 30 years when this right brain activity took a back seat. Then all of a sudden , sometime in 2006 ,  I was inspired to write , both prose and poetry. 

While I agree with a lot of people's observations about me resembling my mother , it has become apparent to me , as I proceed well ahead on the wrong side of 60,  that I now tend to become a bit more like my father was in his old age.  In certain types of thinking, literary pursuits (which had remained hitherto dormant since the age of 25),  social interactions, a tendency to look inwards, and sometimes,  unexplained impulsive altruistic tendencies.  The basic maternal mould remains, but with these little  eruptions caused by certain hitherto dormant protein strings suddenly doing their stuff.

And I wonder , how thinking processes, and changes therein, can be coded into a protein string in your genes at birth , and how a tired  writing/poetry  gene,  one fine day ,  suddenly remembers how it expressed itself half a century ago, and is now all agitated to express itself once again.

I wonder how the cell senses what time of life it is . And what resources the body has at this point, struck as it is by shades of a metabolic syndrome. Surely, the quality of enzymes and hormones that tell the "cell-time"  have altered noticeably over the years, and the environment in the body is far from exemplary.

And  I often wonder about the Designer of this set up, who installs in us , all these coded strings at birth, that work with so much precision, co-operation with the vagaries caused by environmental effects on our bodies,  and manages to even have something to do with how we think at various points in our life.

No advertisements, no Apps, no festival deals, no false promises, no tom-tom-ing of foolishly named OS's  , no built in obsolescence.

Just some quiet updates, without announcements 

And you have ,  a quiet, robustly built, self correcting , real time  system of dedicated protein strings, remembering where they came from, and where they need to go, and when .....

The Designer Maker,  who some don't believe in, but continue to follow nevertheless ,  must be quietly smiling to himself.