As Fate would have it

There was this conference that I attended in Budapest. After all the long winded scientific sessions, the organizers decided to give us the much desired break; they organized a city tour to see all the major landmarks.

We were taken around the popular Baths, soaking in the salty waters of Budapestian Baths is supposed to be healing we were told. We were taken to the historical City Square, where the history of Hungary is depicted as moments frozen into statues: the coming of the fierce half- mongoloid Magyars who conquered the country and laid the foundations of civilization there. We were taken to a rare monumental fort, rare because each part of the fort had been built in a distinct architectural style, some parts Gothic, some parts Baroque, some parts Moorish….it was there that we met Mr Fate.

Mr Fate was a large granite statue, with a hood, cloak and sinister look, depicted as sitting on a huge block of stone. He had a Golden Pen in his right hand and The Big Book of Deeds in his left. We were told touching the pen would give one oodles of good luck, but touching the Book, god forbid would lead to a lot of bad luck.

This spiced up all our imagination; we thought Mr Fate would make a good subject for our group photo. All of us climbed onto Mr Fate, the superstitious of the lot all clinging to the Golden Pen and the indifferent among us just arranging ourselves wherever there was space. The photos were taken and the most superstitious among us, ‘touched and kissed’ the Golden Pen one last time and hopped off the statue, only to turn to look at me and say, “My God, Shalini, what have you done, look at you, sitting right on the bad Book…..god save you now!”

Only then I realized where I was seated…..on the left shoulder of Mr Fate, with my right hand carelessly dangling onto the Big Book of Deeds. I laughed and hopped out of my perch, but my companions would not let the matter rest, “Just be careful, will you….now that you have incurred Bad Luck” they chorused half jokingly and half fearfully.

I was determined not to let that daunt me….in this age of science and logic, the sentiment seemed quite silly. And so I put away the incident and went around the rest of Budapest, enjoying myself at the local fair, where Romanian girls sold exquisitely carved wooden curios and embroidered peasant tops. By the time I finished seeing the fair, I had actually forgotten the Fate incident.

The conference got over, we checked out of our hotel, boarded the bus to the airport, embarked the plane, changed flights at Frankfurt, watched an engrossing movie onflight, reached Mumbai, crossed over to the domestic terminal, boarded the flight to Chennai and finally landed in the long Immigration Queue. It took another hour for us to claim our baggage, and travel-weary I trudged to the Prepaid Taxi Counter with my luggage in tow. As I told the counter-walla my destination I pulled out my wallet from my back pocket…..only there was no wallet in my jeans.

I was taken aback, I fumbled some more….but no, there was no wallet there. I pulled out some money from another of my bags and with a worried wrinkle on my forehead, clambered on to the waiting taxi…..where did the wallet go? I had several thousands worth of Indian and foreign currency in it!

Once inside the taxi, I opened my entire luggage and searched for the wallet….no, it was not there! Obviously I had lost it, but where? I tried to recall all the places that I had been to in the last twenty four hours, and mentally tried to rewind every scene of my movement…trying to identify if the wallet had been with me at that moment or not.

I seemed to remember a sleepily eaten breakfast at Mumbai that morning, which meant I would have paid for it, out of the wallet of course…..so probably somewhere between Mumbai and Chennai I had lost the wallet, only then did the image of Mr Fate’s Big Book of Deeds suddenly flash into my mind! Was it true after all, the sentiment of the Bad Luck?

I could not decide…my mind seemed divided just then, one half was too busy worrying about the lost money, all the ways that I could have spent it usefully, all the things that I could have bought with it…and just feeling unhappy at having lost so much money….while the other half was analyzing the whole incident typical shrink-style: Mr Fate was only a statue. Good Luck and Bad Luck are mere beliefs. The Big Book of Deeds was not inherently evil; it was made of the same stone as the rest of the statue. Touching something cannot lead to something else that was not even remotely related to it…the cause and effect did not match at all. On a spiritual level, may be it was destined that the wallet be lost for some mystical reason….

Thus split in my thoughts I reached home. The therapist inside me decided the conflict was leading nowhere and asserted itself…. “No more pondering or worrying”, I told myself. Can’t let worry spoil my precious little brains! What’s the big deal, I lost some money, ok, let me face that and move ahead. It was after all only money, I could always make more to replace the lost notes. Thus self-therapized I went about my work as usual.

The nicest thing about Psychiatry is that we are so engrossed in solving much bigger and graver problems for others that personal problems just get automatically deleted in the process. Two days later, I had completely forgotten about the lost wallet and Mr Fate’s alleged conspiracy against me, when I received a call at work.

Absent mindedly I picked up the phone, some sweet-voiced girl from some Airlines was on the other line, asking my contact address. Some one wanting to fix an appointment I thought, preoccupied with the work at hand. She was saying, “We found your business card in a wallet….”

With the word wallet, my mind flew back to her in full attention, “Oh, yes, I’d lost a wallet, you found that?” I could not believe it.

“Yes, we found it on your flight seat….could you please make arrangements to collect it from me..” She proceeded to give me her contact details.

The next day, the wallet was back in my hands, complete with all the currency, credit cards, business cards and scratch pad notes that I had scribbled on….

My thoughts automatically went back to Budapest, Mr Fate and the book on his left hand….with the wallet safe in my hands, my mind was suddenly clear ….Bad luck? bah, all sentimental crap!

right switch wrong person

Right switch wrong person.

Let me not mention names, but there was this middle-aged lady who came for consultation with complaints of vague aches and pains all over her body, poor sleep, bouts of irritation and sudden crying and very sad mood for weeks together. She had tried attending religious discourses, chanting prayers and meditating in the name of God….nothing helped.

Her complaints were all in favour of Depression and so she was given a robust dose of psychotherapy and a short prescription of antidepressant medication. Like most people she responded to that magic combination and within three weeks her depression was all but gone.

Her sleep had become normal, her appetite was good, her mood was cheerful and most important of all, she had no pains anywhere in the body. But she started talking about new complaints….she had realised that she was being forgetful, absent minded, very sensitive to criticism and having rage reactions at the slightest provocation….all these had been there for so many years, but now that she realised something as gruelling as a depression could be healed within few weeks, she also wanted to do away with these other troublesome symptoms.

It was then that she was asked about any past history of abuse - physical, emotional or sexual. The lady gave a blank look and stared straight into the eyes of the psychiatrist. Within a split second her eyes glistened and tears filled up, her first question was, “Why do you ask that?”

The answer was simple…childhood emotional abuse is extremely common, female sexual abuse is even more common. Some women who have had such experiences later on develop certain kind of psychological problems…that may lead to problems in paying attention to things around them, increased reactivity to even minor things and an unbalanced emotional state.

When she was informed of all these, the lady nodded subtly and whispered, “Yes, doctor. There was this man, he used to teach me tuition….he taught me very well. I liked him. But one day, he…he touched me in the wrong places. I was only eight at that time! I knew it was wrong….but I did not stop him…”

She closed her eyes and the tears dropped off her cheeks, “It was all my fault doctor, how could I let him do that!” She opened her eyes, looked up with trembling nostrils and asked, “You think I am a bad person doctor? I let this man do this to me…what kind of a weird child I must have been! To tell you the truth doctor, I think I might have even enjoyed that man’s caresses…which makes me all the more a bad child”

This story that this lady so hesitantly told is not so rare. Many adult women often have such secret histories of sexual abuse and the quirkiest part is most of these women blame themselves for their abuse.

The human body is designed to feel pleasure when certain parts are touched. Each of such touch sensitive-pleasure eliciting area is called a sensate focus. The human body has many hundreds of such sensate foci.

These sensate foci are like switches, when touched they automatically produce a rush electric sparks that travel all along the nerves and register in the brain as pleasure sensations. Just like anything of high temperature is recognised as hot and something of very low temperature is recognised as cold, so too the human brain recognises touch on the sensate foci as pleasure; pure and simple brain physics that!

It is only because the human body is designed on these pure and simple physical laws that the human beings derive great pleasure from the mere mechanical act of copulation…. no other animal on the face of the planet enjoys the copulatory act so much. Only the humans do and that is because the human body operates though such sensate foci.

But the problem with this Switch for Pleasure kind of body design is, these switches send sensations of pleasure, irrespective of when, where, by whom and how they are touched. The touch could be accidental, by a human, by an object, by an animal, with the consent of the body-owner or even without the consent of the body-owner…still all these touches can produce a sensation of pleasure.

For that matter the switch may belong to the body of a young child, but when touched it still produces pleasure sensations. That is why even infant boys take a great fancy to tweaking their penises….for young and innocent though these babies are, they had accidentally discovered a sensate focus, touching it caused pleasure sensations and so most little toddlers learn the knack of amusing themselves by fidgeting with their penises.

So too does a child abusee feel pleasure when an abuser touches the sensate foci of its body. Now the question is: is the abusee at fault because he/she felt some pleasure by the acts of the abuser?

Let’s look at it this way. Child A does not know that item Z can cause a sensation of feeling cold. But adult B offers the child this item Z. Because the child A trusted Adult B, the child touches item Z, only to discover that it causes cold sensations…now is this child guilty of some sin?

Definitely not. It is unfair to expect a child to identify Z as COLD. And it is preposterous that an all-knowing adult should deliberately give this cold shock to this innocent child…so too is child sexual abuse. The child is unaware of the pleasure inducing properties of some parts of its body. The child is blissfully ignorant about the switches and the sensations. But the adult does. The adult also knows it is improper to touch the child in the wrong places. But this adult, even after knowing what he/she is doing is wrong, operates the child’s switches…then who is at fault, the child or the adult?

Of course it is the adult who is at fault! That is why societies all over the world view child sexual abuse as the cheapest and most lurid of crimes. And responsible societies make sure that preventive measures are taken to route out the menace all together. No society at any time during the long course of human history has ever blamed an abused child of bad behaviour.

This being the case, it is quite inappropriate that many adult women with past history of child sexual abuse blame themselves for the event. They suffer from misdirected sense of shame and guilt and feel they are somehow flawed and dirty. This negative self-perception and low self esteem causes anger and irritation. Such off-putting emotions crowd their minds and they are unable focus fully on the present tense.

Sounds tough eh? But the good news is, knowledge frees the mind from its fetters. Typically when all these women suffering from child sexual abuse related emotional problems understand that they are definitely not at fault, that they were only the victims of the wrong person operating the right switches at the wrong age, they recover remarkably well.

As for example the above-mentioned client. A few sessions and all her negative emotions had vanished. She no longer felt low and inadequate. She learned to overcome her silly childhood fears and self-doubts. She realised that she was no longer a victim, she was actually a survivor. And as always, knowledge gave her power. The sense of being in power gave her the poise and equanimity to handle life in peace.

But she still had one hang up, “I do not want any other child to suffer like me! What do we do to the men who abuse little children doctor?”

Men who abuse little kids and what we should do to them…. that’s a whole new story altogether.

ever wondered why men achieve more?

Have you ever wondered why there are not as many women achievers as there are male achievers? In every field, art, science, literature, craft, religion, you name it and it is the men who out perform the women, why would that be?

If you say, that’s because women are more focussed on taking care of their family and children, then you are perfectly right. But above and beyond that there are other reasons why men outshine women, at least career wise. And it has to do with the difference in the way that men and women think.

A woman’s thinking is broad based. She interconnects things effortlessly and thinks with a wide focus. But the man’s thinking is typically deep. From all the random thoughts that run though his mind, the man chooses the one that intrigues him the most and goes on to keep thinking deeper and deeper about that subject. His thought has a narrow focus, but is highly penetrative.

Now why on earth would the man’s cognition be different from the woman’s? Ah! Yet again it is the big T factor, testosterone!

At conception all foetuses are built in the default Female Design. That is why even those kids genetically designated as Male (with the forty five X and the single Y chromosome) are also provided with nipples that they have no need for.

But this All Female model is changed at the sixth week of uterine life. By then, the genes in the single Y chromosome of the male start expressing themselves by synthesising the big T factor. Testosterone courses through out the foetal body, imprinting the Male upon the pre-existing Female, through a process called Masculanization. To put it simply, all men are but women plus the testosterone. All the differences that exist between the man and the woman happen only after this Masculanization.

This process of Masculanization makes changes all over the foetal body. The texture of the skin, the power of the immune system, the strength of the muscles, the length of the bones, the structure of the voice box, the number of red blood cells, the capacity of the lungs, the design of the reproductive apparatus, everything is altered...no system is spared. The entire body is rewired. But the most important rewiring happens in the Brain.

The Default Female design of the brain has a large language area, hand gesture area and emotional area among other things. But the male requires special areas for hunting fitness, that would include the abilities to track moving prey precisely, to judge the speed of movement, the distance between self and the prey and to time the release of the weapon for a sure fire hit. All these abilities are collectively called Visuo-spatial skills, because these part abilities are all about Hand, Eye and Movement Co-ordination.

The humans come from the ape stock of insect eating herbivores, but later had to evolve into meat eating omnivores to survive the harsh Great Ice ages. Their insect eating herbivore heritage provided the early humans a simple brain that was absolutely no good at hunting. The human genes later evolved the Hunter Brain, to ensure their survival.

But there was a snag in this Ape Herbivore to Human Omnivore Brain Conversion. The brain was only so much; its size could not be increased too much, for the human pelvis cannot widen that much without compromising its mobility. To keep the Head: Pelvis fit good enough for easy delivery of the babies, the genes had to make a compromise....to increase the brain size a bit, the pelvis size a bit and then to remove the less important functions from the Hunter Brain and replace the vacated areas with the new very-important-for-survival function: Visuo Spatial Co-ordination.

And so the men lost most of the language areas; hand gesture areas and emotion-recognition areas of their brain....they had no real use of these functions anyway. A good hunter has to remain silent. Can’t keep gesturing at chums...the prey would notice the movement and run away. And a man cannot afford to empathise with the ‘hey, please spare me man’ kind of look that the prey would give him....then he’d take pity on the prey, spare it for all its sad looks and return home empty handed. That would have been the end of the Human History.

Testosterone also engineered another major change in the Male Brain. It made the man perseverant. It made him focus deeper and deeper until he finally made his kill. But there was a snag in this too. What if the man tried all his best but was still bested by the prey, which dodged away at the last moment? Such a failure could potentially make him feel dejected, lose confidence and give up hunting for good. Now ‘Giving up after the futile chase’ would be extremely detrimental to human survival. It made genetic sense to keep the man motivated even if the chase turned futile...and so Testosterone altered the Reward Centre in the male brain. It made the man feel pleasure after every chase....even if it was futile.

Testosterone also had the additional effect of making the men aspire for dominance. For only the dominant male could get the attention of all the worthwhile females...and so whatever their activity, men liked to maximise their output and win the Brownie points for dominance rating.

All this Brain Masculanization made the men wonderful hunters. Hunting made the humans survive the vegetation-scarce Ice ages. But the Great Ice age ended some ten thousand years ago. With the ice receding away, the earth opened up with freshly evolved vegetation.

The women, who had been the food/herb gatherers from time immemorial, quickly discovered the high nutritive value of the new grainy plants. They learnt to plant these crops and reap good yields. They also learnt to tame the wild animals that hovered around the farm and breed them for personal use. The surplus yield they learnt to barter for goods that they needed but did not have. And all of a sudden civilization began.

With the women organising the societies into little kibbutzim, domesticating the animals, raising crops in the backyard and controlling their small time economy there was no need for the men to go hunting. And all these social changes happened so fast, that there was no time for the genes to redesign the brains again to suit the new living conditions. But the humans do not consider themselves intelligent for nothing.....their big brain learns to expend itself in useful ways whatever the circumstances.

There was no real hunting to do, yet the men set up virtual hunting games, set up some new targets as prey and closed in for the kill. Many occupations, sports, games, hobbies and past times that men have reflect this tendency. To this day, men call a sound business deal ‘a good kill’. That’s just how strong ancient instincts are.

And these instincts bred true in all ancient human activities. As the human populations spread, the women became more and more tied up with domestic chores. But the men were all free, with no hunting to do, now that there was ready-made meat available right at home. And so the men applied their highly evolved hunter brains to the peripheral activities like cattle rearing, soil tilling, bartering goods at trade points and defending the kibbutz from foreign invasion.

Their Every Chase is a Pleasure kind of deep-focussing brain design made the men make the most of every single job they picked up. The average women could be uniformly good in all her activities, she would sing ok, cook ok, sew ok, organise ok, raise crops ok, tend to cattle ok, run house ok and still be content with her performance.

But none of this would be ok for a man. His Point Focus, Deep Penetration, Chase is pleasure, Dominance seeking brain design makes him pick up just one line of thought, go on and on, on the same line, feel great rapture just with such thought chasing and then climb high on the dominance scale....

It is the woman who will be content with running a small time, subsistence farming kind of life style, the real Man would never be content with being small. Even if it is a simple thing like growing a cabbage, men like to make it bigger and bigger until their cabbage is the biggest in the whole world, what’s more the men would even organise a contest for Cabbage Growing and proclaim winners every year! That’s how powerful the man’s instinct for dominance is!

And so it was that the men, freed at last from the onerous job of hunting, filled their time and curious mind with picking up areas of interest and going deeper and deeper into it until they became the ultimate authority in that specialty. It is no surprise then that all the great philosophers, scientists, writers, orators, singers, poets, painters, doctors, politicians, actors, even chefs, tailors and jewellers throughout human history have all been men. Yet by large the average woman is a much better thinker, healer, leader, speaker, seamstress, actress, singer, composer, cook, and all else when compared to the average man. Despite her overall superior abilities the woman never reaches those dizzy heights of genius, because her interconnecting neurons think wide not deep. It takes a male brain to think deep. And typically such a deep thinking genius male would be a complete muddle in all other, even basic life skills. Anecdotes are plenty about such brilliant male geniuses who are absolutely clueless about other aspects of life.

It’s all thanks to the big T factor. It makes men think deep with such single-minded devotion that they reach great heights of achievement. All the achievements that the men made in every one of their chosen narrow fields eased the collective lives of the humans; every small step of each man became a giant leap for mankind.

And so it is that to live we need the women, but to live well, we need the men!

Why Worship Women?

The world history is literally strewn with evidence to prove that the early humans worshipped women. Archaeology has time and again excavated figurines of female goddesses. Literature has sung praises of the female deities. Anthropologists poking their scientific noses into the lives of primitive tribes have always reported deification of the female omnipotent. Evidences are thus aplenty, but the explanation remains elusive.

Why would humans worship women? Surely, the shy, coy, dumb and weak women were hardly worthy of respect, leave alone worship… or, so thought the great thinkers of circa 1700. It took another thee hundred years of cerebral effort to understand something that early humans had been doing for thousands of years.

Admittedly, understanding the early human mind can be a tough job. It would need one to travel back in time, shorn of all the conditioning of modern thinking and see the prehistoric world through the eyes of the humans while they were still in the making. Just for the fun of it, let’s all pretend to be prehistoric people.

To a prehistoric child, who would be the most important person in it life? Who else but its mother! The mother who laboured hard to bring it alive, who cuddled and cooed while feeding it, who showered it with unconditional love and unlimited care, who was always there – to understand, counsel, support and encourage; who nursed it through sickness and pain and nourished it through thick and thin; whose ‘disobey me and you’ll regret it later’ always turned out to be miraculously correct and whose blessings made even the most difficult tasks triflingly easy.

The one lady whose role nobody else could play any better… the nurturer, the caregiver, the Forever-there-for-me woman… truly in the eyes of the child, its mother is the best heroine ever. A heroine worthy of worship.

Perhaps this was the beginning of God Mother Worship - the child human’s atavistic tendency to look up to its mother. Even today, even in the most male chauvinistic societies of the world, it is the mother who is more adored, better taken care of in old age and least ill-treated by her offspring. Fathers always come second in the order of preference.

That would make a nice Explanation Number One for God Mother Worship, from the child’s point of view. Now let’s take another peek into the prehistoric world, this time into the psyche of the adolescent, for Explanation Number Two.

Life for the evolving human on the African savannah had been quite difficult. It was perpetual struggle between tender life and terrible death. Death was an every day reality - children died due to infection by the dozens. Mothers died in labour and its complications. Men died while hunting.

Thanks to this high death rate, humans remained an endangered species until some thirty thousand years ago. Their numbers were very few - a few thousand spread over several continents - quite the endangered species, don’t you think! For this handful lot to survive, they had to put in all their efforts to keep up a high birth rate to beat the mounting death rate.

Death taught them that life was precious – to the point of being sacred. Fertility thus became their most valued asset and birth was always a celebrated event. But birth had a very strange habit – it seemed to need a woman’s body to happen.

For the pre-literate man, this was the most perplexing riddle in all of nature. His seeds that fell on to earth yielded no children. His seeds that fell on other men also remained futile. But these same seeds when put into the woman grew into babies! This to him was truly magical!

Nature with all its ‘saving the best from the worst’ strategy kept all the woman’s reproductive organs deeply hidden inside her body. She had no outward clues about the inner workings of her secret parts. So well hidden were her precious cargo that, forget the preliterate man, even the so-called literate modern man could not understand the woman’s body until a few decades ago. They were absolutely clueless about the details of her baby-making abilities.

This anatomical ignorance made them awe the woman’s seemingly supernatural powers of creativity; the Power that no man could ever have. This single most important distinction made men respect the powers of the female. Without her there could be no life. She was the life giver. She was holy. She was venerable. She had to be God.

The human mind was, at that time in evolution, quite simplistic. He had a childlike penchant to attribute humanlike tendencies to everything around him. A phenomenon that in today’s psychological parlance is called Animistic Thinking.

Early man applied this same animistic thinking to the world around him and decided all those things that were capable of giving birth must be female… the earth that gave birth to plants, the rivers that gave birth to fish, the stones that gave birth to fire… in his eyes all these inanimate things became female. By virtue of being female, they were held to be specially endowed with supernatural creative power.

And even the so-called simple minded early man knew: power must always be heeded to. Please it and life would become easy, but provoke it and life would become miserable. No one in their right senses would choose the road to misery - so the humans chose the road to ease.

From their long ape-ancestry, humans had followed a hierarchical societal structure. The strongest of them got to be the boss – the Alpha – and the dumbest of them was relegated to the bottom of the hierarchy – the Omega. The Alpha’s role was tough. It had to lead the troops, make sure they were all well fed and well behaved; it also had to settle in-group disputes and defend against outsiders’ attacks. For holding all these responsibilities, the Alpha got extra privileges, better food, better choice of sex partners and better life style. But its life was always at risk.

In contrast, the Omega was a non-entity. Its life depended on whether the Alpha liked it or not. For if Alpha did not favour Omega, then Omega could very easily be driven out by the rest of Alphadom. So Omegas always made it their business to behave in an Alpha-pleasing manner. How could an Omega please an Alpha in the ape society?

Well, there were some proven techniques to win the favour of the Alpha: by grooming it, by feeding it, by displaying loyalty, by lowering oneself to make Alpha seem larger, by going out of one’s way to make life more comfortable for Alpha… whatever the means, the goal was only this: to win the approval of the Alpha. Then life would become easy - one could quickly ascend the hierarchy, become a delta or a gamma and get closer to the all-powerful Alpha.

This Omega-pleasing-the-Alpha trait was so deeply ingrained in the ape-humans that they automatically fell into the same pattern in their new big-brained Alphadom.

But there was a difference… in their old world the Alpha was a single female. However in the new world, with their better intelligence, and freshly evolved ability to express ideas in the form of symbols, the early humans could over-generalise this abstraction and conceive a larger-than-life-aggregate-image of the Worshipful Female. They personified this Super Alpha Female and created a stone-hewn sacred idol. She of the idol became their Fertility God, Bringer of Luck, Bestower of All That is Good.

To this idol, they offered their traditional Omega-pleasing-Alpha rituals… by garlanding it, by placing their best food before it, by singing praises to it, by prostrating before it, by making pilgrimages to it, by putting themselves to distress to show their loyalty to it, by thanking it for good co-incidences and appeasing it for bad co-incidences. They did their best to be in the good books of the God Woman.

According to the Tholkappiam, in the pre-sangam era - that is, some two and a half thousand years back from now - right here in Tamil Nadu lived the people, who before any hunt worshiped a forest dwelling goddess called Kotravai. This Kotravai was an all powerful lady god, who rode an awesome lion, wielded mighty weapons and bestowed great strength and luck to her devotees. Some scholars are of the opinion that it is this Kotravai who later became idolised as Kali, Shakthi and Amman. Literature has proven that Kotravai predates all the other male and female gods that we now know of…. Siva, Vishnu, Brahma, Skanda... the entire pantheon post-dates Kotravai.

Not only the Tamils, all the ancient people had an equivalent of Kotravai to worship. The Sumatrans had Ishtar. The Egyptians had Isis. The Indo-Aryans had Genetrix.

And this God Woman, they believed, favoured their fervour with such high fertility that from an endangered species the humans soon became the endangering species. They outgrew all other animals at such a furious pace that soon resources became so scarce and they were reduced to fighting among themselves for those precious little resources. Land, food, water, women… yes, the women also became a resource to be fought over. And when fighting became the way of life, godliness took a sudden turn.

Gone were the days when humans were a precious few and fertility was a prized trait. With so many humans fighting with each other, bravery and warmanship became the new ideals worthy of worship. And since men were the ones involved in fighting the enemies and protecting their clan, Godliness was slowly shifted onto the men. Suddenly, within the last two thousand years male gods began cropping up. Muruga, Thor, Mars and all other male gods all over the world represent this sudden deification of the warrior man. All the major religions that flourished during this era - Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and Jainism purported the existence of The One and Only Male God.

Yet the Father God worship was only a newfangled thing that would not take a deep root in the human psyche…for the human mind had been so used to looking up to its God Mother for too long. They simply couldn’t let go of the all-empowering God Mother. And so we find the God Mother lingering on quietly but powerfully. She is still worshipped all over the world, in her ancient form and aspect, but as some male god’s consort or mother. Only, now she has earned new names. Some call her Amman, some call her Mary, some call her the Kabba (The Kabba Stone that the Moslems make a pilgrim to was originally a God Mother Idol, you’d be surprised to know).

The name, the lineage, the paradigm…all these might have changed. But like they say, ‘the more that the things change, the more they are the same’. And so do the humans continue to believe in God Mother Worship. Jai Matha Ki, you see!

The Beautiful Mind

October 10th is the World Mental Health Day. What better excuse can I have to vent my grouse against the media portrayal of the Mentally Ill?!

For the mentally ill have suddenly become the oft-portrayed characters on both the small as well as the big screen. Almost all the television soaps sport a character who is mentally ill. Many films have explored the life of the insane. While one is happy that the media is giving so much attention to mental health, the actual presentation of mental illnesses in the media is downright nonsensical and leaves much room for improvement.

To this day, mental hospital scenes are depicted as places of chaos, where the green clad patients leap around like monkeys, indulge in all kinds of buffoonery, talk like grown up babies and behave like utter idiots. In real life though there is no mental hospital today where patients behave in any way similar to what is shown in the television or the movies. Insane though they are, the patients still are and behave like humans….not at all like the half-cracked up caricatures that are depicted by the entertainment industry.

Films and teleserials also depict the mentally ill as dangerous people. Most films tell tales of the Mentally ill hero going around killing every Tom, Dick and Harry at the drop of a hat. In reality though, most murders are committed by only the so-called sane people; the insane never indulge in such planned violence.

Another major rubbish that is presented in the movies is the abject bleakness of the life of the mentally ill person. According to the Tamil films a mentally ill person will either kill others or kill oneself or do both. There is no other productive activity in his/her life. From Alavandaan to Anniyan, all films make the same mistake of showing the mentally ill person as being permanently malicious. This is completely untrue. In reality most mentally ill persons are absolutely harmless. Many are married, gainfully employed and lead such near-perfect lives that no one apart from their closest family members can make out that they are psychologically ill.

And the worst rubbish shown in such movies is the alleged incurability of mental illnesses. Admittedly certain long-term, genetically deep-seated mental illnesses are difficult to cure, but the vast majority of mental illnesses are all quite easy to conquer. The kind of sophisticated medications that we fortunately have today have made mental illnesses quite treatable. Depression, Mania, Anxiety, repeated bad thoughts, sleeplessness, impotence, fears, panic, chronic aches and pains, bad marriage, child rearing difficulties….you name it and it is all curable. Yet the media goes on with the once-mentally-ill-always-mentally-ill kind of myth.

But that is the not the worst! There is yet another gibberish in Indian movies…..the mentally ill hero of the movies always falls in love with his psychiatrist. If the psychiatrist is an old man, then the daughter of the psychiatrist. No daughter, then at least the niece of the psychiatrist! Romantic as these love-pairings may be to the audience, such cinematised doctor-patient dalliances are down right idiotic. No doctor in his/her right senses would encourage such non-professional liaisons, for to the true doctor the patients are like one’s own children and any erotic involvement with one’s patients is considered incestuous and unethical. And kudos to the mentally ill persons….even in the heights of insanity, they know that the doctor is sacrosanct.

But films are only made for entertainment, we don’t have to take it so seriously, a media enthusiast may well argue….but you know what, research as consistently shown that watching something be it on film, or real can change the human mind. Because the human mind is designed on a see it-do it-learn it model, it learns things even from a medium that is supposed to be offer only entertainment. More violence is reported in children who watch televised violence scenes than those who watch Mickey Mouse.

The unknown artist who made his burnt-clay dolls in the long buried city of Mohenjadaro or Harappa would only have considered his doll-making as an expression of his creativity. But today, we rate that culture’s merit based on his doll-making! Likewise the movie-maker of today may make his movie only to express his creativity, or just to make some money…..but in the course of history, this culture will also be rated based on what he has created. And it is only a civilised culture that avoids hurting the sensibilities of its citizens.

Nearly thirty to forty percent of the general population has some psychological illness or the other. With proper treatment, they would all become better. But even if the treatment is offered free, many people hesitate to consult a psychiatrist, because they fear such consultation will confirm that they are one of those ‘dangerous, permanently damaged buffoons’, shown on TV or the movie. That is how much bad media representation can hurt the sensibilities of the people.

Also consider the effect that such media representation would have on a person who is now on treatment for his/her mental ailment…. let me give you an example.

Name Undisclosed is a young college student who had battled with a schizophrenic illness but became better with medications. He happened to watch a very popular Tamil film and the very next day he reported with complaints of sleeplessness and fear of becoming ‘mad’ again. When enquired he revealed that the movie he had seen the previous day had scared him with its contents. In the movie, the hero loses his control along with his sanity and goes around killing people, yelling in high decibels and generally behaving in a very undignified manner. “Will I also become like that doctor? Will this illness make me lose my dignity?” He asked so pathetically. He was reassured that “the makers of such insensible movies were all Class One Dumb Idiots who do not know the A B C D of mental illnesses. They have finished all their stories about the Extraordinary feats of the Normal Tamil Man. But the problem with being normal is Normal is so boring after a time. And so the moviemakers are all out to create their own genre of the Abnormal Man. Most moviemakers have no knowledge first hand of mental illnesses. They build their grandiose stories based on hearsay, hero-hoisting and imagination, with a profound absence of realism, naturally their depictions would be awful and flawful”…. thus reassured the young man was prescribed a dose of the Beautiful Mind.

Now The Beautiful Mind is also a movie. It is also about a man, John Nash, afflicted with a mental illness…. schizophrenia to be precise. But the movie is all about the hero overcoming the illness and winning against all odds, no less than the Noble Prize.

Name Undisclosed called up the next day, so full of his joy and hope…he was filled with optimism on seeing the movie that he wanted to share his pleasant thoughts with his doctor. That is what a good movie will do …it makes people hope, trust and grow….I wish I could name one Tamil movie that would have the same effect on the mentally ill person!

With some friends in the film industry, we reviewed all the mental-illness-based Tamil films so far made. Of the hundreds of movies thus reviewed, only a paltry two films passed the test. One was Ethir Neechal by veteran director K. Balachander in which despite her brief stint in a mental hospital, the heroine is depicted as shining right through life. The other was Pathinaaru Vayathinile, by ace director Bharathiraja, in which the mentally retarded Chappani overcomes the oddities in his life with determination.

Only two movies! In such a big film industry that makes so many mental-illness-based movies per year….you wonder? Ah, that’s the whole point!

Mental illnesses are depicted very unfavourably in the movies. But with the audience becoming more discerning, let’s hope the moviemakers learn their lesson and grow up to make some civilised movies, at least on the mentally ill.

The Malaysian Man

Malaysia is a beautiful country. One could write pages and pages about its various places of interest but then, all this can be read up from any encyclopaedia or downloaded from the net. What I’d really like to focus upon, is this man that I met in Kuala Lumpur.

I did not notice him at first. I was busy ogling the street scenes that swept past the bus window and exchanging remarks with my friend. As the bus consumed the miles, I tried to strike up a conversation with my Malay neighbour, “Can you please tell us when we reach Masjid India?” The pretty lady shook her head and said apologetically, “No English, Bahasa only”. Just when I was turning away with disappointment, I caught the eyes of this said man. He was watching us with a smile. Just the looks of him and I knew he was a Tamil. The chocolate complexion, the ‘I-know-your-lingo’ looks, the friendly countenance…Ah! To meet your own kind, especially in a foreign land! Our team of peregrinators gave him a unanimous delighted smile. Luckily for us, he was getting down at Masjid India too. At his signal we merrily hopped out of the bus and followed him like the dutiful mice scampering after the Piper.

He led us deftly through the confusing trail, pointed out at the Parliament, the Indian market, the stadium, etc., stopping only to click snaps at vantage points. He gave us quick descriptions about the various landmarks, shared with us the must-know for tourists, garnished with the right dose of humour and biographical details. Soon we reached Jalan Masjid India. He guided us to the ultimate shopper’s paradise: Hanifa stores. Eager to commence shopping, we turned to thank him for his kindness. We assumed that he would part and proceed with whatever work he had for the day. But he seemed to be in no hurry, “Finish your shopping, I’ll wait”. We were taken aback; God knows how much time we’d take to shop!

We tried to explain and politely persuaded him to get on his way, but he stayed put. Anyway we were too eager to shop and could not spare time to think any further. As we jostled up and down the jam-packed aisles, our T-shirt clad Santa Claus kept sensing our needs and guided us to the right spots. In a way, we were grateful to have this grown up Boy Scout around. He was our Malay spokesperson, our security guard, the authority on what to buy and how much to pay, our carrier of heavy bags….he was so helpful!

But then- didn’t he have other things to do? How could he just let total strangers like us, swallow up his time and energy? Every one of us will surely be courteous and helpful to hapless tourists, but wasn’t this a bit too hyper helpful? We were in a foreign land and trust was a costly commodity that had to be judiciously spent. There were women in our team, we had money on us and expensive items had been purchased. Although we did not voice it, we all kept exchanging paranoid looks. We started looking for signs of deceit. We could not find any, he looked like a perfect gentleman, his demeanour was entirely dignified and his only gratification seemed to be our common language. He was too good to be true.

When hunger won over our acquisitiveness, the feverish shopping spree came to an end and we chemotaxied towards an Indian restaurant. A pseudo-friendly Sardar offered us greasy chappathis and unappetizingly priced sabjis. We sat down to have our Thanks Giving Meal with our friendly neighbourhood Malay man.

Towards the end of the meal, we exchanged addresses with our Mr. KL, hinting subtly at the end of our time together. But the hint went wide off its mark. Sans any postprandial lethargy, he zestfully marched us to yet another shopping complex. This time the shopping was not frantic but the need to get away from this overzealous Good Samaritan was. Sight seeing and shopping were relegated to the end of our list, all we could think of was rest and some limb-stretch. We pleaded tiredness, heaviness of the purchases and even bankruptcy. But our honorary guide would not hear of it. He wheedled us to one spot after the other, “You must see the Chinese area la. The nightlife there is beautiful. In the evenings, the streets are lit up……..”

“Please, we’ll see all that some other time, we’re too tired now. Let’s call it a day”, the least tolerant among us asserted and before he could reply, hurriedly hailed a cab. We hastily piled into the Toyota and turned to thank our Man Friday for his time and help. But much to our chagrin, he also climbed into the cab, “ I’ll get down on the way.”

He did not, he accompanied us all the way back to the hotel, helped us carry our huge cases into our room and enquired about our plans for the next day. We were alarmed. His helpfulness was all fine, but why would someone go out of his way to help a bunch of strangers, what was the motive? While we bartered looks pregnant with sinister meanings, the alpha male of our team, quietly led the man out, ostensibly for a drink. With the subject of our predicate safely out of earshot, we verbalised our doubts freely.

“He does not look like a bad sort, perhaps he is just lonely.”
“Lonely for women’s company?”
“Aw! Come on- he is as cordial to the ladies as he is to the men.”
“May be it is our Tamil.”
“He said he’s travelled all over the world, may be that’s why he understands our plight”
“It must have been his day out and he just joined our fun for the heck of it.”
“May be we remind him of his children.”

While we were still debating, our alpha male returned, without our Malay Man. Before we could ask, he pronounced his verdict, “Seems to be a genuinely nice guy. He was only trying to help us. But he had me worried- I mean how can anybody be so good?!.”

On hearing that, I de javu’ised what my paediatrician friend Preetha had once told me, “It is easy to understand why a person is bad – the reasons are obvious. But it is very difficult to understand why a person is good. There seems to be no reason at all for being good. Good simply is.”

I had not quite understood what she had said then. But now, I think I do.

The BIG and the small

Scene One: The Park Avenue in midtown Manhattan supposedly the most prestigious of addresses. We were staying in one of the glitzy five star hotels right on the Park Avenue…. you know one of those grand de la grand hotels that have gold tinted mirrors in the elevators and gold polished faucets in the bathroom.

We were attending a medical conference in this hyper opulent hotel. And we were told this particular hotel was specifically chosen because it was in the middle of everything that was worth seeing in New York. The Empire State Building was a few blocks this way, the Central Park was a few yards that way, the Rockefeller Building was just a few metres away and the Grand Central Station was a few feet the other way.

But we had so little time to spend sight seeing. The conference was so jam packed with so many sessions that the only time we had to ourselves was after 5.30 pm. But the Empire State Building would be closed for visitors after that…. and we were all so keen on seeing this Wonder of the World.

And so it was decided that we’d spend our lunch break wisely…as soon as the meeting broke for lunch we’d all rush to the Empire State Building, quickly look over the wonder and rush back in time for lunch and the afternoon sessions. Likewise immediately after we dispersed for lunch, we ran across the fifth avenue all eager to behold the big building. Once we entered the Wonder Building, we ogled around and walked over to the ticket counter. There a wise guy in our team had a brilliant idea. He said “For seventeen dollars we get to take a virtual plane ride through the city of New York and also see this Building. Only ten minutes…let’s all do the virtual city tour too!”

He wheedled, coerced and peddled the idea so vehemently that we all agreed to join the show…it turned out to be some dumb video show fit to amuse kids below six years or less. And we had wasted some precious ten minutes. Yet politely as would befit psychiatrists we withheld out collective irritation at the wise man that gave this stupid idea and walked over to the elevator to go to the top of the Wonder Building. From the top we could see the green patch of the Central Park, the Blue silhouette of the Statue of Liberty and the many skyscrapers of Manhattan.

We swarmed back into the elevator, went down and out of the building and walked back to the hotel. Being the faster walker of the lot, I outpaced my gang and went into the hotel, all hungry and thirsty. I walked into the banquet hall where our lunch was to be served…and to my big surprise, all the tables were cleared and there was no food on the buffet. There was a lone steward tending to the empty tables, I walked up to him, showed him my identity badge, introduced myself and explained that a bunch of us were yet to have our lunch. We were all the delegates attending the meeting and this lunch had been specifically arranged for us…. naturally we expected our share of the lunch to be saved up…we were just on time for lunch anyway.

But the steward gave me a superciliary look, pointed at his watch and said “Lunch time is just over”. Superciliary look my foot, I stared back at him and said very clearly, “But we are hungry. Let us have our lunch.” He went back him and brought a senior steward, now this guy looked up and down at me and finally said, “All the food is over.”

I was taken aback, “I am sure you arranged food for all of us. But most of us have not eaten. Surely there must be something remaining”

Senior steward looked at me, I looked back at him very determinedly. Finally he said in chaste Americanese, “Well, there is some soup left”

“Fine, let us have that”

By then the rest of my team had arrived, but all that we were given to eat was some soup and left over bread. This, in the finest of five star hotels in the heart of the wealthiest city.

Scene two: Another five star hotel in Kuala Lumpur. This hotel offered us bed and breakfast deals only and so we had to find our own means of food for lunch and dinner. Luckily right opposite the hotel was a street corner food shop run by some immigrant Tamils. All the days that we stayed in KL we had sumptuous parotas and cold Milos under the awnings of this street side restaurant, enjoying our lingua madarasi conversations with the restaurant personnel. The restaurant owner gave us many useful tips on The Best Place to Shop, The Must See Places and The Must Do Things in KL, etc.

On the last day of our stay in KL we had our Last Lunch at this restaurant. But one of our team members had been so bitten by the shopping bug that he had spent too much time at the malls and missed the lunch. He arrived two hours after our regular lunchtime laden with shopping bags but complaining of “Semma Pasi”.

We took him to our street corner restaurant. The owner looked up and asked, “So late? But we’re closed. Not had food yet?”

“No, lost track of time shopping. Anything to eat?”

“Sure”. He pulled up chairs for everyone. Brought some chappathi and sambar for the late eater and mugs of Cold Milo for the rest.

“What combination is this? Chappathi and sambar?” The late eater made a face as he munched the food.

Without much ado the restaurant man said, “I am sorry…it is not restaurant food. This is my lunch…”

We looked up at the man in surprise, “Your lunch…but what will you eat? You should have told us!! We would have gone elsewhere”

“No big deal. Please go on and eat. I’ll manage”

And so we resumed our regular chatter. When the meal was over we got up, said ‘thanks’ and paid up the bill. But on seeing the bill we noticed that the chappathi and sambar had not been charged. We promptly brought that to the notice of the hotelier.
“I know.” He said nonchalantly. “It is not hotel food….that’s why I didn’t charge it”

This, in a street corner eatery in some obscure developing nation.

The smallness of the big and the bigness of the small…. it never ceases to amaze me!