Satrajittu's Story

A king named Satrajittu rules a kingdom neibhoring Krishna's kingdom. Satrajittu has Shamantaka Mani, a stone kind of thing, which produces 60kg (not sure of the number) of gold each day. This he obtains by praying to Indra (I guess). Anyway the news spreads and Krishna comes to know about this and now he wants to own the Mani. This Mani would make India an economic superpower if the religious find its whereabouts just like they found that Adam's bridge was indeed built by Rama. So Krishna politely asks Satrajittu saying that some how it would be of much benefit for the people if it was in his kingdom. Satrajittu refuses to give up the money and the issue is settled here.

Unfortunately for Krishna, Satrajittu plans to go hunting (who said ancients were nice to animals?). A lion sees the pendant around his neck, attacks and kills Satrajittu and takes off with the Mani. In an interesting turn of events, the lion becomes the victim; a bear attacks the lion, kills it and sets of with the Mani. The bear is no one else but Jambavant, a bear-like creature who fought alongside with Rama against Ravan. Jambavant has an interesting story. After the war with Ravan, Rama asks these stalwarts (Sugriv, Jambavant, Hanuman etc) what each wants. Jambavant asks for a fight with Rama. Rama says that he would reincarnate as Krishna and will fight him then. This is weird since Jambavant has to live for around one-million years(see the link) from Treta yug till end of Dwapara yug to fight Krishna, by the way it is the same Jambavant that appears in Ramayan, whom Krishna is supposed to fight. I hope scientists will soon find a way to increase life-span to millions of years. Thats right they should be studying Ramayan first!.

Back to the story: Now the word is out that Satrajittu is dead and people start to blame Krishna for the death saying that Krishna killed him for the Mani(How can people blame a god?). Now Krisha has to prove that he is innocent. So he sets out into the forest as a detective. He sees that a lion killed him and follows the lion's foot-prints and eventually finds that the lion itself is killed. He the traces the foot-prints of a bear to a cave. He walks into the cave and sees that the Mani is hanging over the cradle of Jambavant's daughter Jambavati. As Krishna tries to snatch the Mani, Jambavati cries, which alarms Jambavant and he jumps into the scenario and the much awaited fight begins. After fighting for a long time(I forgot the duration) they decide that its a stalemate(Interesting that one can withstand god!). Krishna then tells about his promise in Treta yug and Jabavant is happy that it is now fulfilled. Krishna then marries Jambavati. Now this is crazy since Jambavati is a bear.

One may wonder how god himself can be falsely blamed. There is an explanation. It so happens that on one Vinakaya Chaviti Krishna is milking a cow and sees the reflection of the moon in the milk. I guess you are familiar with the story about Parvati(one of Shiva's wives) cursing the moon for laughing at Vinayak. It looks like even god is not exempt from the "law of nature". If you are not familiar with the moon-story, read my blog on the story of creation of the moon. ISRO is indeed inefficient since one of the missions of Chandrayaan project (millions of dollars coming from tax payers' pockets) is to "Study the origin of the moon". Why do they want to study something that is already known?

There are some key events in the Mahabharat, the Ramayan and the origin of the moon that are related to this story. Now if one accepts that Mahabharat and Ramayan indeed happened, why does not one accept these line of events actually happened?

Many people may doubt the truth in the story. If you are one of those you are going to hell; shut up, believe and save your soul!.

Genome, You and The Planet

I have been frequently been under temporary euphoria. No, I am not under any drug influence. The feeling is caused simply by reading science sections of BBC, NYT and of course some journal articles. As Richard Dawkins quoted someone[1], reality is indeed queerer than we can suppose. For now let us deal with a special part of it that is relevant to our lives and save the quantum reality for later. I know it is a little early to celebrate but I can not stop appreciating the flow of articles that link Genome to disease, even if it is “bad news”. The sense of knowing is indeed a state of bliss irrespective of the implication of the knowledge obtained. Why am I so upbeat?

Anyone who has been carefully screening the science sections frequently notices that there is a deluge of articles linking genes to disease. There are tens of diseases already linked (causation) to or correlated with presence or lack of a particular gene sequence. Now, this may scare the weak-hearted away from knowing his/her own genetic make-up, but in the current age, any one scared to face the truth is not a good survival machine as we have been digging out tons of it recently and in future we will only accelerate, assuming we survive what Carl Sagan calls “technological adolescence” [2] and the present self-destructive political order of the world.

So what if we know our Genome? What are the consequences? The consequences are enormous and in some rare occasions, catastrophic. How would you like it to know that you are 100 time more prone to cancer than an average person. However, there are “positive” sides to this knowledge as well. There are many diseases, for which and individual’s genetic predisposition can be ascertained well in advance so that the individual can take necessary precautions, mainly involving diet and exercise.

How does one decode his/her Genome? “23andMe” (More at [3, 4]) is one company among others that provide these services. You just need to provide the company with your saliva sample and the Genome is ready (There are other details about Genome one may be influenced by, which are more complicated and are not dealt here). It costs about $1000 now, which will become cheaper in near future. Now once you have your Genome, which by the way is a sequence of letters consisting A(Adenine), T(Thymine), G(Guanine) and C(Cytosine). The order of these nucleotides (letters) determines your predisposition to disease and probably determines, to some extent your behavior (Who said free-will exists in absolute sense?). Some recent research suggests that not only the sequence of the code but the location of the sequence in the Genome also determines some aspects, which means that to have a full picture we need to wait for a few more years. Now this code on a digital storage device may take up to 3GB and can be compressed to 0.75GB. Once you have the code you can just open the code with the software provided to see which diseases you are prone to (in probability terms).

This opens up the age-old debate of Nature vs Nurture (interestingly the supernatural died out in the debate). While there are some diseases about which we can do nothing yet as far as nurture is concerned, there are others such as heart-attack which can be kept in check under prescribed diet, exercise.

The title also contains “The Planet”, so where does that fit into the current discussion. Craig Venter is a geneticist; well he can also be labeled a heretic. He ("his" then company, Celera Genomics) competed with the government sponsored HGP (Human Genome Project) and came up with techniques for reading genome much faster than HGP could. While HGP team took more than decade to finish, he took less than half of that, but he started much later and finished along with HGP team. When Human Genome was unveiled in 2000 it was "called a tie".

Craig Venter(started Synthetic Genomics) has plans of producing semi-artificial to artificial life forms whose capabilities range from cleaning up environment to spitting out oil. He is currently figuring out a way to take the DNA of a particular organism and plug it into DNA-stripped cell of some other organism, so that the host will develop into the organism to whom the DNA belong to. Now he is trying to cut the DNA to level at which the organism can actually boot(similar to computer), in other word trying to figure out the shortest functional DNA. He says that they are months away from making this possible. There are others working to create life out of nothing but material, building from scratch (so much for the soul), which could take up to a decade. Imagine the consequences of producing life from scratch. But the religious will hardly cede the point as, for centuries, their sincerity has been questionable.

There are other people also working on the same problem so I don't want to project an impression that this is the lone person working on this problem, however he is a pioneer in this field.

It was observed by the US army earlier in 1940s that some bacteria evolved the ability to decompose TNT (Tri Nitro Toluene, an explosive; think about why this is an explosive, those from AP, India, this is 12^th class organic chemistry). This happened where the containers of TNT were leaking and the bacteria around duly developed a mechanism to break down the bonds and use the energy. This also happened with another synthetic product Nylon (NYLON -> NY-LON -> New York - London). There are bacteria that evolved the ability to decompose Nylon. Such is the power of evolution, you give a source of organic energy and they will figure out a way to exploit that energy (see extremophiles for more astounding creatures).

What implications do these have? A bacteria that decomposes (some types of) waste can solve at least some of the environmental problems that humanity is plagued by. There are some interesting species of bacteria thriving in ocean bottom using hydrothermal energy. The idea is to develop bacteria that will mimic the photosynthetic process but will generate more useful product, oil or hydrocarbons. The subject will revolutionize this generation more than what computers did to the previous. Hopefully it will find a final solution to the dearth of energy which has triggered many wars over the last century and has caused untold suffering. There are solutions to many problems but the main question remains: will we implement them?

Finally, my euphoria is not because there appears to be a solution to these problems. It is because nature has some tricks up its sleeve only for us to discover, it is the extent of discovery and curiosity that probably sets humans apart from other animals and without these, life as lived by millions is just pedestrian and routine.

Reference:

[1]. Dawkins, Richard., The God Delusion, Houghton Mifflin, September 2006.

[2]. Sagan, Carl., Contact, Pocket, July 1, 1997.

[3]. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/17/us/17dna.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=2&adxnnlx=1195312297-brHaW41/mWfo0XIZ8OiJ7w

[4]. http://www.wired.com/medtech/genetics/magazine/15-12/ff_genomics?currentPage=all

Marriage Proposal

I have been seeing a girl and we were at a point in our relationship where someone had to bring up the issue - marriage, as no one is getting any younger. We decided to talk before deciding either way. We headed into a garden which was ideal place for the discussion.

The girl(G), by the way is well qualified and well paid.

Here is how our conversation went

G: So, if we get married how you want it to work?

Me: Yeah, regarding that I have to confess to you some of my ideas about how our marriage is going to work. I donot plan to work full-time after we get married, instead I will be a house husband, taking care of the house-hold issues like cooking, laundry etc. I may continue working partime, working on and off.

So I guess, since you already have a high paying job, you can continue with your job and we will have enough money to get this going.


G: Really? I am shocked! (after pausing for a while) how about your own expenses, if you are going to have any?.


Me: Apart from the family I need little money for myself, incase if I need I will do some part time job for that.


G: Are your sure this will work out?


Me: Yeah, if not, I can find work, its not going to be a big deal.


G: Ok, then this changes many things that we need to discuss, we need to talk about dowry.


Me: Well, I am not a big fan of this concept. Even if I were, this is hitting below the belt, you know I can't really demand,
... ask dowry.


G: Well, you misunderstood me, I am asking how much dowry are you going to bring into our family?.

(This time, I am shocked)

Me: You must be kidding!

G: No, I am serious. Look, family is like a business, each member must carry the burden equally to reap benefits equally.
Now, obviously you can't provide a continuous source of income, now in that case you have to bring in enough capital so the
burden is equally shared.

(While I am aghast listening to this, she continues)

G: Since you work at home, we can probably compensate for that and agree on a number. There is a reason why the partice of
dowry is still on, people have done it out of some reason, you see?


Me: (Still recovering from the shock) ya, but I always thought marriage was something in which materialistic inputs donot
have much effect. Its about having some one to spend your life with, to share your emotions. Your spouse is someone you share
the special bond, which is beyond words. Marriage is supposed to be a joyous union of two people who commit to each other for
life, is pain and in gain.


G: Please donot get me wrong, but you see that I can have all these with a man who earns to support the family? There has to
be a reason to pick someone in favor of other. You probably are deluded, we live in real world, not in some imaginary ideal
world.


Me: Love is supposed to be selfless..., it is supposed to be blind to material assets and it certainly is not about choice or
picking.


G: I think the situation is getting tense, why dont we talk about something other than dowry.


Me: I feel same, lets talk about something else.


G: I know that you are a vegetarian, but I am not.


Me: As I clarified before, I donot believe in killing innocent animals capable of suffering pain, for food, while we have
healthy alternatives. But, ofcourse I dont have any problem with you being a non-vegetarian.


G: (nonchalantly) Thats all ok, but how about you cooking non-veg for me. Is that something you can do?


Me: No, I cant cook non-veg, while I dont have any problem if you eat it, but we can see how it goes.


G: Also, looking at the situation, its does not llok like its necessary to tell you but I will anyway. I am an occasional
smoker and I guess it should be ok. Also, I drink occasionally.


Me: While, those are not good for health, we can work on those aspects.

After this conversation we both decided to give it some time and thought and agreed to put off the decision making.