Political leanings

Most of you who read this blog have seen my feeble attempt to understand my own political leanings here..

The recent Indian elections have created a confusion of sorts for my family and friends alike who ask me questions like "You are a social liberal in the United States and support the Democrats but you also support Narendra Modi who is pretty much the Ronald Reagan of India?" or "If you support Modi in India because of his economic policies, you have a blatant double standard for what you want in India vs. what you want in the US, no?" or worse "Hi, if you are all for securalism in the US, then why are you supporting BJP instead of Congress?"

Not being a politician, I do not have well rehearsed answers for these questions. Actually have to think deeply to find out answers to these questions and sometimes you might still end up wringing your hands!

The trick to answering some of these questions though is understanding that the words "liberal" and "secular" seem to be interpreted differently in India and the US. Most of the folks I interact with seem to have notions of these two words that fit a different context. 

Lets take the "secular" thing first as it is relatively easy. When I grew up in India, the "secular" word meant "a co-existing of all religious faiths" which meant a "freedom of the local darga to put loud speakers and blast out muslim prayers at 4AM and the ability of the local Maariamman temple to start with Maariamma engal maariammmmmaaa at 4:05 AM". Every so often the Velankanni chariot procession with a Mother Mary statue in it will add its loud speakers to it. When the cacophony is heard by your tired and groggy ear as "alllllah whooo ammmma!", your brain subconsciously lets you understand that they are all an equal nuisance and the best thing for you to do is to turn your head in the opposite direction of "Sathyavaanimuththu Nagar" , put a pillow over your head and try to sleep. 

India is a place where religion competes openly much harder than FB and Google fight for your eyeball time in the internet. Loud speakers, garish displays, festivals created by the local populace that are no where to be found in calendars of folks in other countries who practice the same religions, it is an endless barrage of "in your face religion". My understanding of Secular was that everyone could go visit whatever place of worship they wanted to go to and they had an equal right to assault the eardrums of everyone in a 5 km vicinity. They were also free to take over busy streets, cut holes in them and do "thee midhis" (fire walking) be it in the name of some Indian godess or some descendent or relative of the prophet Mohammad. I always used to wonder why the Christians in India didn't have a nice fire walking ceremony to add to the fun.

What was also odd was that the guys who do the loudspeakers are mostly cousins and some just converted to different religions. They would all show up at our house to collect money for the various festivals and my father, nice guy that he is, would kind of do a deferred payment by agreeing to let them use "electricity" from our house for their loud speakers. The irony of that is not lost on me. There are so many times I have wished to just go uproot that "illegal" umbilical cord that ran across the street from our electric box to those speakers. All said and done, everyone was different and yet everyone was the same. That kind of summed up "secular" for me.

The funny thing was that the two main political parties in Tamil Nadu were both Atheist and 90+ % of the folks doing the fire walking had a choice of voting for atheist vs. atheist. 

Later in life though, it hit me hard when the reservation system reared its ugly head and I actually understood the concept of a "vote bank" after living in Banaras for 4 years. Secular meant the extension of the British Raj by the Congress party by using the "divide and rule" policy. Prey on the differences, give special treatment to minority groups where you define minority in local geographic terms and capitalize this to get votes. 

In the US, my understanding of secular in my early immigrant years can be summed up in one sentence. "We are a Christian country, but we will let you go to a temple and pray the way you want as long as you understand that when we say ONE NATION UNDER GOD, we mean Jesus!" . Over the years, I have realized that given anything other than Christianity is a minority religion in the US, my understanding was more or less accurate. We were seen as a small bit of of spice to the melting pot that did not ruin the taste. The US is 79% Christian, 5% other religions, 16% non religious. Of the 16% non religious, 5% is "secular" or "unassociated". 

In the US, Secular means "I am neutral to religion" in a very different way. 

Now to understand the "Liberal" thingy. I am glad this was not on an exam paper for 10 marks, because I would have run out of paper or ink and not finished the exam in any alloted time. I was not sure exactly what my political leaning was in India. I never voted in an Indian election. In the south I did like the leader of one of the two Atheist parties because he had a way with words when it came to the Tamil language but did not like his party or its followers for their "hate crimes". The rest of my family loved the other parties leader as she acted as though their was a Hinduistic lean. Turned out they were both playing a similar game in different sectors. They have their own TV channels, airlines, newspapers, etc. FOX news executives can learn a thing or two from both these parties and we have a sum total of one guy who represents the  Jon Stewart and Colbert spectrum in Tamil Nadu.

At a national level though, I have never liked any party be it the BJP or Congress. The congress was doing the divide and rule and their economic policies sucked. Sucked the money out of India to Swiss banks that is! The BJP was great for the local economy and Nationalistic pride makes nations improve their standing in the world (see China and how it is doing now!).  However witnessing the demolishon of mosques and watching hindus and muslims go on killing sprees, curfews and shoot at sight orders in Banaras left a bitter after taste for religious politics. It is also difficult to map what party in the US maps to what party in India!

If you had to compare Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians to the Congress, BJP and the new Aam Aadmi party it really gets to be difficult. Somehow folks expect this to be a 1:1 but it is not.  When it comes to economic policies, development policies, influence of religion on the party, govenment reach into policies, individual freedoms and government guarantees they are all over the place. 

Now for the Modi Reagan question. I am going to agree that being a minority in the US based on my religion and part of the majority in India for the same religion, there are some views that are shaped by this discrepancy. Why? While I am not the "in your face" religious type, I do like the freedom to practice what I want to, be it religion or spirituality. It is also the reason why I am probably turned off by the far right in the US while I am not alarmed by the BJP's vote base that is equally far right because they happen to be Hindu. Somehow the reasoning that India is more of a spiritual place seems to supresses that tingling spider sense. 

Supporting Obama because he will bring Healthcare to all and even out the increased divide between the folks who have access to lobbyists and folks who are being left behind while simultaneously supporting Modi who is bringing in Reagan era scalebacks of social subsidy programs does sound hypocratic. But my brain puts it in a differnt context. It is true that both countries have corrupt politicians who make themselves and the rich, richer while the poor get poorer. There are differnces though to concepts like a minimum wage that exists in US but is non existant in India. Social Welfare itself implies different things in the two countries! Infrastructure development does not have the same priority in the US and India. The needs and priorities in the two countries are very different. Yes, they both could use a multi party system and honest politicians and a populace that is not swayed by advertising and lies that makes them vote against their own interests. 

In a way, Modi is closer to Obama and not Reagan because he stands to do a lot better than his partymates, seems to have a character that seems to be outside of the 3*sigma window of the politicians in his party and seems to have an uncanny ability to rally the troops when push comes to shove. He also seems to be as determined to develop the infrastructure and open up trade in the same way Obama pushed the healthcare reform. He also seems to have a personal charm, integrity and conviction, not to mention those things that are common to soccer, tennis, table tennis and cricket. 

After all that rambling, the takeaway is this. The 1:1 mapping does not work between the parties or select leaders.

I am sure there will be a lot of you telling me in intricate detail where I am wrong and where I am right. Will also find out over the years myself on where my bets were right and wrong. It happened with Obama being toothless and playing victim, when it came to taking on certain fights and I am sure the same thing will happen to Modi if he plays pacifist between his far right base and his development agenda. As long as he doesn't start crying like John Boehner, think it will be okay!

Nelson, my man.. my mai'Man

Last week after what can only be described as a long and ardous work day, came home, made some tea, sat on the couch and logged into Facebook. 

The news feed had at least 25 references to Nelson Mandela passing away. If I were to plot a histogram of the number of letters on the post (including forwarded or attached links) it would look something like this..

Granted I rounded off the letters, but still this is a fairly accurate picture. Where was I? Yes, it appeared as though my main man Nelson had carpet bombed my Facebook feed through my friends.  The one long post was a cut paste job of how the US as a country was actually trying to keep Mandela in prison as long as they could, call the ANC a terrorist organization, supported the South African government in his initial capture, etc.  and pretty much stopped short of saying "if you are American, don't bother talking about Mandela". 

After digesting the news feed at the end of the long day and doing some Googling, Twittering, etc. I came to the following conclusions:

1. Nelson Mandela had definitely passed away, and given the outpouring, had already rested in peace. It was a sure thing for the man.

2. On that day people all over the world probably said "RIP Mandela" instead of the usual "Jai Ram Ji ki" , "Allah o' Akbar" or "Praise the Lord" .. Hell even the Namaste in the Yoga room was probably replaced by "RIP Mandela". 

3. There was a clear trend of certain articles related to Mandela, but the surprising ones were the US is no friend of Mandela variety which were getting more rounds than the "did you know his middle name was Troublemaker?" type articles.

Given all this Mandela, I asked the kids "Do you know why Nelson Mandela was?" and the little one, crackerjack (mundhiri kottai translated wrong) that she is, said and I quote verbatim:

Yes. I know! Mandela was a good guy who fought for the freedom of "Africans", then they put him in jail for a long time and when he finally came out he won and helped the Africans, but the guys he fought didn't like him and so they shot him"! 

I was like "Wow".. Someone just rewrote history and mixed up MLK with Mandela. I know there are parallels with respect to fighting for black people.. but seriously! So, I broke the news to her that Mandela did die "peacefully" in his bed at the ripe age of 95. San may have had a hand in this history lesson is my guess.. 

Now where were we again? Ah, yes! Mandela had passed away. We went to Jr's winter concert band performance at her school and guess what ? The conductor is dedicating "Mozart's last requim" to Mandela as a fitting tribute. Irrespective of how he was remembered while alive, Mandela had definitely touched anyone and everyone for 24-48 hours at least, in an all pervasive way by dying.

My initial rant at seeing all the forwards was "Why are people melting icebergs by forwarding things in the name of showing some respect to a dead world leader?" Ok, I know there are folks going "what? Melting icebergs?". Let me explain.

In my day job, I make a memory. All of you use memory all the time without realizing it. When you do that harmeless "R.I.P. Mandela" post on FB and send it to all your friends, it gets written in a lot of places on a lot of memory chips, disks, solid state drives etc. Now it takes energy, a very small miniscule amout to write and read this data. However, this adds up. Just do the math. A few picoJoules of energy multiplied a few Qunitillion times is already in Mega Joules.. again crude math but you get the picture!

Was just thinking aloud "what is the piont in making a better memory and giving it to people if they don't use it wisely.. the more memory you give, the more RIP posts are going to go around. More folks will instagram their dinner. . still more icebergs will melt etc. etc." Did I say it was a long day?  Did come around eventually to accepting that irrespective of what I thought, today the world is more connected than ever and it is okay for everyone to connect in whatever way they want. Trying to regulate how someone uses something like memory was a stupid thought in the first place. Probably ranks on snobbery! So I stand corrected. 

That said, my kids did ask me what I thought of Mandela or what I knew of him as though I was supposed to know him very personally. So here is what I remember of Mandela ..

It was the late eighties. Prannoy Roy had a wonderful program that aired late night on Doordarshan (only Indian channel at the time) called "The world this week". In that we would get glimpses of world events. We got to see video clippings of Mandela and Apartheid. It was like watching the caste system on steroids running out of control and one man who was the voice of reason. I didn't give him even 50/50 odds at the time of repealing Apartheid. 

Early nineties. I come to the USA as a student to Philadelphia. Back folks don't have the same status as white folks when it come to financial equality but it was heartening to see the US as a true melting pot of races. In a way it was great that my entry to the US was in Phili that gave me this rosy view of the US. If I had gone to some place in the mid-west, my outlook on the country would have been very different. Mandela becomes president, Apartheid is no more and we are now discussing real important issues in the grad student lounge on what this means to Cricket, Allan Donald, Alan Lamb, Gary Kirsten.. etc.   Most of you won't understand, but some of you will! This meant the Indian team would be one more down in the world rankings after yet another country, "South Africa" now kicks its butt in Cricket. It was too much to bear.  On the bright side, there was one blackish looking dude in the South African squad. It was kind of like a precursor to watching Obama become president.

Mid nineties. Remember having a conversation about Mandela with another student at RPI. "why would she divorce him after going through all that?". It was a conversation on divorcing at 70+. At the end of the conversation it was clear that I did not understand Mandela, Winnie, people in general or the concept of divorce.

Then things changed in my life. Mandela was mostly forgotten as was cricket. There was the occasional news that he was sick, dying or both and a potential backlash if he died. Never got that. Given that it has been almost 20 years since Apartheid was lifted and things have improved slightly, why would South Africans suddenly erupt in violence if a good man died at a ripe age after accomplishing something so phenomenal. Unify two races after hundreds of years of animosity and oppression? 

The answer came to me in a flash! Why did people in Tamil Nadu go vandalize shops and disturb law and order when MGR (an actor turned politician) died ? He was no Mandela, but the crowd went into a frenzy. So maybe the press was right in their thought process? 

Well, the good news is that the man and the country whose people he unified, are both resting in peace almost a week after he passed away. 

If anything, that is the true legacy of my main man Nelson! 

All quiet on the western front

My sister visited us over the long weekend. It has been four long years since we met face to face. Phone conversations and video chats go only so far to bridge the gap!

It was great to see the four kids play together and see them ask questions like "why can't they stay longer?" , "when can we go visit them?" , "Can they move to California?" etc. etc.

We toured a few local sites (all day trips) and before you realized it, they were off to their routine.

We were glad they came last week instead of this week, what with the heat being downright unbearable here this week. Two weeks ago we had the heater on because the temperature was 46 F in night. Last night the cooler was on and the house temperature read 89 F!

The plan is to powder some amoxicilin and put it in a pepper grinder. We can then put amox powder into our chai, sambar, etc. etc. Just went through a prescription for 1000 mg twice a day for 10 days. That is 20 grams of the stuff in 10 days to cure a sinus infection.

With the weather and pollen levels here, it is just a question of time before going for the next round. Unlike India where you can get this stuff from your nearest pharmacy, here in the US, you need a doctor appointment (co-pay=20$), then wait in the hospital with other germ spreading folks, be seen to confirm the sinus infection (that part always cracks me up when the doctor pronounces "your sinus is infected" and I respond with "I know"), then wait for 30 minutes for the prescription to go to nearest pharmacy, go wait in that line for 30 minutes to get the thing (you pay 10$, you save 76$ because you have insurance!!! yippeee!! Now that part is irritating) and finally after half a day is wasted you are on your way to a temporary recovery.

A tablet that is generic that costs 4$ and is Over the counter costs 20$ + 10$ to the patient and costs the system 160$ (that is original doctor's bill to insurance company) and 86$ for the tablets (of which we pay 10 and insurance pays 76).

If Pseudafed and Amoxicilin were made OTC in the US, that alone would significantly reduce healthcare costs. Maybe they can come up with a little <5$ test kit for checking if a sinus is infected? Stick a swab into your nose and put it in a liquid CSI style and go "yep. Infected!" and you take that to your pharmacist and he can give you the tablets.

Again we dream. Today we saw the pollution as we drove to the airport to pick up FIL and it was something. My FIL keeps asking me "why cannot this country have a decent public transportation system?" and I go "then America will become a very poor country and the roads wont be this nice"..

He asked me to explain and the rest of the ride back from the airport was a long monologue on the American economy being powered by Automobiles that run on gas...

You will get a transcript of the monologue soon... when I get some type time.

Maybe it is time to start a movement of sorts at a grassroots level. Start a bus service that covers the bay area and at least have Desi's and Chinese folks who are used to better public transportation try it out?

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Thanga Bhaspam, Velli Bhaspam, Legiyams - The irony

Recently, some of my friends were discussing the role of Gold/Silver and their impact on the environment and what was considered safe levels in our systems.

When I mentioned that as a little kid have taken a few grams of gold and silver powder as part of medicines over a period of years to cure a weird infection, no one in the audience believed me and they actually thought my "credibility" was taking a hit with a statement like that.

That is really sad because I am reasonably sure (and my parents have confirmed) that it was Gold containing powder (Thanga Bhaspam) which was always mixed with Honey and given to me and Silver containing powder (VeLLi Bhaspam) which was given always by mixing in Ghee (clarified butter). Why different media were used to dissolve the powders, we do not know. In addition to that was given a Legiyam (or viscous solution) that would clean out my bowels in record time and literally purged me.

Distinctly remember the old Siddhar( telling me that my blood was impure and he was purifying my blood (Raththa Suddhi was the word he used.. ie. blood purification) using the combination.

When mentioning this to Allopathic doctors (at least the western medicine doctors were referred to in our family as Allopathic doctors), they would comment on how these treatments were known in the western world but were avoided because of the "poisonous" nature of the cures and they used heavy metals like Arsenic, Bismuth, etc. to get to the digestive tract and attack the system using a "mild poisoning" method.

The way the body tries to fight mild poisoning, it kills the real poison also and that helps recover the system. It is not totally true that western medicine ignores these elements now.

You can see Bismuth in pepto bismol like stomach restoring systems. Chemotherapy uses heavy elements, kind of like the "raththa suddhi" used by Sidhhars.

The thing that would always beat me was the labels on these medicines from the sidhdha vaidhya saalai which would say "Used in curing the following with other medicine combinations... and Putru Noi or Cancer would be in the list"

Being in 7th grade and having limited exposure to Cancer as a "cureless disease" in those days, would ask my parents if this whole thing was bogus and can be believed. They recommended that since there were not many other alternatives, might as well go with the flow and believe! Their point was "Siddha medicine has been around for centuries. People won't go back to a doctor if they don't cure a high percentage of patients".

Now some dude in China actually goes and proves using western science that old eastern medicines have a reasoning behind them.

My personal take on how this type of thing evolves over time (again, note my very over simplified explanation) is..

In the good old days(thousand or two thousand years ago) there was a huge gap in the knowledge base of the people. There were many smart people who probably weren't famous or well documented but left their mark by passing on their knowledge in spite of not having media. Today we have a population of 6.9B instead of an estimated 170M in 0BC (a forty fold increase) and Information technology has come a long way from stone tablets to bluetooth. We only question the information from the past and want validation with current methods of understanding.. But as a % of people with higher knowledge levels have we come far?

Is information really leading to improved knowledge? What use is all the information if you do not act on it? Can knowledge be useful if it did not have a Ph.D behind it?

Does everything from the olden days have to be proved and understood in a doctoral thesis to be accepted? By who? why?

Should we confer Ph.D's to all our grandma's who tell you that using turmeric powder when boiling vegetables or adding turmeric to food that comes from the ground is safer or applying turmeric on baby girls is good for their hormone cycles? Or should we have research papers like:

Choi, Hyunsung; et al. (July 2006). "Curcumin Inhibits Hypoxia-Inducible Factor-1 by Degrading Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor Nuclear Translocator: A Mechanism of Tumor Growth Inhibition". Molecular Pharmacology (American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics) 70: 1664–71.

Aggarwal, BB.; Shishodia S. (May 2006). "Molecular targets of dietary agents for prevention and therapy of cancer". Biochemical Pharmacology (Elsevier) 71 (10): 1397–421.

Hatcher H, Planalp R, Cho J, Torti FM, Torti SV (June 2008). "Curcumin: from ancient medicine to current clinical trials". Cell. Mol. Life Sci. 65 (11): 1631–52

etc. etc.

Maybe if there was a Journal of Grandma Society and it had papers published every month and we could have references like

"Effect of kasthuri manjal podi on long term hair growth" , R. Saraswathi, K. Vijaythaammal, et. al. J. Gram. Soc., Vol 23, 2010, pp1023-1025

would more people be inclined to take it seriously?

Will the use of heavy metals to target poisons be taken more seriously now that we have this news?

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Knowledge is power ?

Has been a busy week, with more work, a conference in San Francisco and the usual happenings at home. I have been attending this conference almost every year for the last 13 years! This conference is usually a week long event. I get to attend it for two or three days every year. Ever since I started working, even those two days are marred by frequent phone calls and beeps on my pager. In spite of the interruptions, I feel so alive at this conference. I get to listen to the latest and greatest breakthroughs in my field of research, meet people who have similar interests, and get to overload my brain with all the information.

The hour long drive to and from San Francisco also helps clear my head and give me time to process the information. Yesterday I met an old friend and the conversation steered towards education. On the way back from the conference, my thought process was wandering around

education
why I did not become a professor
India
Brahmins
Importance to Knowledge
Aaavani Avittam
BHU
Mandal commission
reservations
affirmative action
research
white LED's
Nakamura
% success in Research projects
funding
policy
role of policy in education

and after going through a full circle I just realized I was just tired and the little hamster insdie my head needed some sleep!

But a couple of thoughts were stuck there for some time.

What Aavani Avittam ceremony is supposed to do for me and fails, this conference does! All Brahmin boys, renew their commitment to the learning process once every year at this ceremony. I do that ceremony mechanically because I am not well versed in Sanskrit or study Vedas and Upanishads for a living. I do love learning though! This week has been an extended Aavani Avittam for me! I get to meet the high priests of materials engineering, chat and debate with fellow researchers and realize the value of what I do for a living!

A second train of thought was that somehow in the back of my mind, I do always feel that the caste systems successful survival and stubborness to be eradicated in India has to do with how it makes people believe that they are special. More specifically Brahmins are proud of their commitment to learning or their belief of "knowledge is power". I am not discriminatory by nature and I am definitely not elitist or snobish because I am a brahmin. However, I have made statements in the past of how proud I am to believe that "knowledge is power" and that is somehow a very Brahmin thing to believe! I also realized that every caste tries to one up the others by making their speciality a secret. If brahmins believed that Knowledge is power, the right thing to do would have been to spread knowledge and empower everyone. Yet we know only a handful of people like Sankara, Ramanuja went along those lines. The vast majority decided to keep education to themselves and their clan and made the rest of the population dependent on them to even read and write! I could say similar things about all other castes except the poorest and lowest castes who by default got the shaft from everyone else.

I also keep thinking about how researchers are confronting politicians in faith vs science debates today, similar to the power struggle dynamics between Brahmins and the Kshatriyas.

It would have been great if everyone knew how to read and write, everyone was well versed in martial arts or had self defense skills, everyone knew how to trade and do business and of course everyone knew how to wash their own clothes, clean their own toilets or cut their own hair!! or at the least have a mutual respect for every other profession and professional!!

The hamster is on overdrive and needs to rest! Enough rambling....

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