Enemy Inside

I do remember Christiane Amanpour once cutting short a religious lady, who was her guest - perhaps last year - for using the word ‘evil spirit’ in her talk. Seeing my brother on the top post of church’s ranking and not surprisingly, he is surrounded by others like him, who keep using evil’s spirit and devils work. I have heard them using these words for the things that ever made any sense to me. Therefore, I know exactly why she rubbished that religious lady for using the word, saying this is just ‘extreme’ way of putting it. And then there are people who never gets tired of teaching their young children to stay away from strangers as they might pose potential threat in this way or that way. Nothing unnerves me than this belief.

Last week, I watched a movie, ‘the devil inside’.  Perhaps they call it thriller or dark twist, I am quite not sure about its genre. They were talking about the people, who were possessed by devil. And at times some of them were possessed by multiple and very powerful devils. Some of them were in mental hospital and some were kept in the basement of a house, tied on their own bed. The was a story told by Rosie about her mother and she was trying to capture those things in her camera with her team. In the process she met two priest, who helped her in her quest to find some answers. The document type story telling was interesting but, by nature I don't like stories that ends on suspense, which do not offer me any clue for what they were trying to understand.

As if by coincidence, this week I read a news about a father, who had paid 10,000/- to kill her teenage daughter. Because, Chandra Raut Barai was not happy that her sixteen year old daughter Rubi had eloped with Arun Kumar Sah, a seventeen year old boy, who also happened to be their neighbor. They ran to New Delhi on March ‘13. They were brought back to village and then the girl was sent to stay in her aunt’s place in India, for some time and then again she was arranged to stay in one of her uncle’s house just couple of days before the plan that took place in may 21, 2013, where he sent contract killers to kill her. Her body was charred beyond recognition and it had taken the investigating police officers seven days, just to identify her body.

Her mistake, she had fallen in love and then eloped with a boy whose caste was different than her.

Tens of thousands of people get killed every year around the world for choosing a life partner of their choice. The reason is not just inter caste marriage;  sometimes, the other party coming from different religion, status or from the ‘enemy family’ of the same society.

I watch an Indian crime reality show, regularly. A well to do family in Punjab, Jalandhar was miffed by the murder of their servant and at the same time loss of huge cash and jewelries from safe too. When investigation ended, it shocked the parents of Sagun, in fact, it was her plan to kill, all her family members, parents and her younger brother through contract killers.

The reason, she had fallen in love with a man in her village, who was poorer than her and was from ‘lower caste’ than that of hers. Sagun’s* father threatened Charan Singh to stay away from her, and then forced him to leave the village too.  While Sagun’s parents were busy searching for a suitable man for her, she still could not shake her head from her first love. Despite Charan Singh being a married man now, they were still in constant touch.  

When Sagun’s mother Jaspreet* went to see her daughter in prison cell and wanted to know, "why she wanted them to kill ? How come that much hatred in your mind for us ?" Sagun however seem not feeling guilty not even feeling remorse she responded in reply that, “you never wanted me to be happy with my choice. When you say ‘good man’ that meant your prestige and your status in society came first, then my happiness, when it comes to my life. Where is my happiness in all that ? where is my right to choose a man for my life ?”

She sure ended up in jail but she seemed more sorry for the death of an innocent man, Gurvinder Singh, her family servant, than the plan failing to kill  her family members.

In another case, that also happened in India, Sakchhi* and Piyush* was both married now and were living in different village. Before marriage they were romantically involved and wanted to marry but they belonging to very conservative society Sakchi was married to a different man.

One day, the mother-in-law of Sakchhi was murdered and father-in-law was brutally attacked. Police officers were baffled, how come the couple did not hear the help cry from the old couple, when they were sleeping in the next room ?

During investigation, it come to know that Sakchhi’s mother-in-law had sniffed that she was having an affair with another man. The other man happened to be her old flame. She had made her feel that this relationship was ‘filthy’ and ‘sinful act’ and you must stop it immediately. 

However, Sakchhi was not feeling guilty of her relationship with her ex-boyfriend, who had killed her mother-in-law. She admitted in front of police that she was not ahamed of her relationship with her old flame, love of her live. She was not ready to stop seeing him instead she wanted to marry him and then spend rest of her life now more than ever. She was sick of pretending to be good wife and mother to her two children aged six and three, with a dead soul inside her.

If children get marry they get killed by their own parent, if children don't get a chance to marry, then they do not hesitate to kill their own parents and siblings. And if they are forced to marry with others, the first love never seem to die, it just need a chance to take a flame and then again it has power to burn everything around their life, like the Sakchhi and Piyush did to her in laws.

Why a person cannot choose a life partner of his or her choice, when they are the one who has to spend life together ? Here in my side of continent, marriage is regarded as a family affair, and the truth is, it is; in every part of the world.  But, then, why they can't choose a partner on their own to start a family of their own ? How big prestige or status pressure should be, in an individual choice ? Does those pressure fit in constitutional right of a person to have a right to think and choose a life partner ?

I have always been a hard core believer of love marriage, as against arranged and my head always bow down to those, who went for love marriage to start a new family, with or without the permission of their loved ones. But, at the same time, love marriage has also created some enemies in our society. Surprisingly, this creates enemies inside the home first, then, it becomes burning issue in society; as people gets divided into two groups depending upon their own belief. What is important to understand here is, its not love marriage, but forcing new generation to choose life partner against their wish have invited crimes in society. Its more like, who can win the argument, even if, at the cost of taking or losing life of close family members.

So, when they say love for family, what do they mean ? Is this really the case of status, prestige, caste or religion only or there is more that lies in the depth of its belly ? Is this the personal happiness that has to surrender under family status ? When they say happiness of family, does this mean, that the new generation has to surrender their happiness to the older generation ? Really ? In all the above cases, it was the older generations, who opposed the new generation’s wish to choose life partner. Not surprisingly, the unthinkable followed once they felt, its do or die situation.

In the movie, ‘the devil inside’, no one knows who and what caused all the trouble to the people they were studying. At the end, all of the involved people became the victim of that unknown power. Perhaps, some of the things remains unexplained for centuries and may be this one is one of them. However, in  above cases; people involved may be refusing to take a good look into what exactly is the problem, that made their life miserable. Its not the love marriage that is root of all problems, in fact; its our society which is bit slow in accepting a person’s right to chose a life partner, which ultimately invites all the horrible incidents in our society that ails our nation too.

At this point, I remember the African proverb that says, when there is no enemy within the enemies outside cant not hurt you.

 * In the Indian crime cases all names are changed  to  protect privacy.

Why Science & Math Mystifies Me ?

Science has always been one of my weakest subject, when I was in school and to top it all, it was math which made me even more weaker. I somehow could manage to get the pass marks to make it in science, but, math just got angry with me. Have you read my earlier blog post ? its my math and science teacher who was not happy with me, and this may be the major reason; why I am so very poor in these two subjects. But, this post is not about my math and science teacher so, I won't cover that part here.

Science just eluded me when I tried to understand it. Why it was so hard like Mandarin [Chinese language] to understand. I could read the lines but could not figure out what those lines were telling. My comprehension in science just comes to nil. I can't get it even if I try hard to get it. But I think it's not the science that I don't get it, it seems its the scientist opinions, that I failed to get.

Here are just some of the examples why I failed to get when it comes to science.  One February 15, 2013 a space rock, which the Russian Academy of Science estimated,  weighted about 10 tonnes hit the earth. The rock fell on earth at the speed of 54,000 km/h. I get this much, besides it did not hit my home so its still ok if I fail to get the power and speed of its. But as I read further down the article, was that a meteoroid ? on The Guardian by Stuart Clark that had reappeared on the Himalayan Times on  February 17, 2013.

My brain got zapped at the point when the writer tried to give us the answer;  as I did not see anything wrong in the question, here is the question and answer that goes like this:

What do we do if we spot something big heading for earth ?

A recently formed working group of United Nations committee on the peaceful uses of outer space would be called into session. Known as the space mission planning advisory group, it is composed of scientist from Nasa, the European space agency and the world other space agencies. the groups would immediately meet to advise on who has the expertise to build the different parts of the necessary space craft and who should pay for it. then it would pass the decision to the hands of politicians.

As you see, there is nothing wrong in this question. But its the answer that made my brain go in deep thought.

Does this group of scientist are telling me to escape an accident that normally kills and damage a lot less people and properties than tsunami or other natural calamities and even other accidents which falls mostly on unpopulated areas. Although, about 40,000 space rock falls on earth every year but the major one that hit earth was on 1908, when an asteroid exploded in Tunguska region of Siberia. It had flattened forest over an area of hundred of square miles. Its size was estimated 50 meter across.

Do you remember how helpless Japanese scientist were, when the 2011 Tsunami affected their nuclear centres ? The whole world could not do anything, but just wait and watch for almost a month when the threat of exploding it loomed large. Then how come this scientists can prepare themselves from the speed that is almost four times the speed of a boeing plane ? Those who say scientist are crazy bunch of people, they must be right, at least that    solution they came up do suggest they are.

Then, there is one more scientific findings based on the research that appeared in American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology. Its about the sperm counting. In general this finding has nothing wrong except; I wonder how could they count sperms that has approximately 70 million sperm per milliliter the men produced during winter season ? The researchers found that men with normal sperm production has the healthiest sperm in the winter. For example healthy men produce 70 million sperm per milliliter of semen during the winter compared to summer. Do you know only about 5% have the motility or swimming speed which improves the couples chance to conceive babies. At the same time I am really curious how many milliliter sperm men produce at a time ?

Just tell me how could they count it so fast, when it takes every nation to keep track of population in every ten years ? which is combined years of  more than 20 - 30 years to count only about 7 billion population in the world. It took researchers from Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva about three years during 2006 - 2009 to do this research. There were more than 6,000 men on this research to take part in the lead researchers fertility clinic.

Then there are some scientists who estimated that the current age of sun is about a billion years and its total age is about 5 billion. They predict that, in due course of time it will lose its heating power gradually. This prediction really got my all common sense.  Archaeological findings have revealed  time and again 100 of millions of years existence of life on earth. But, every civilization has ended earlier than 10,000 years, as much as our history supports it. None of the civilization has been successful to date back more than 10,000 years of history to prove their civilization story.

My other logic is when we do not have a history of more than 10,000 years of any civilisation, then how come a scientist can say that the sun has the age of only 5 billion years. Who will be there to keep the track of this prediction, when this civilization will one day end and then another will start ? Therefore, I think that the scientist must have bad dream before predicting age of sun.

But maybe its more than logic. His lack of knowledge that got clashed with my own knowledge. In the book by Dr. Swami prapannacharya what is in the Ved ? [p.11]  the age of universe is 15,55,21,97,29,49,982 years old. He had said the source of this fact is Ved, as the name of his book suggest. If we believe this fact, then just imagine the life of sun as guessed by western scientists, which is just 5 billion; has completed long time back and may be we have been living in dark by this time, based on that hypothetical prediction.

If you guess I have slightest idea how big the age of universe is, then you must be completely.  Told you math and science is my weakest subjects. But, one thing I am dead sure, that number is a lot bigger than the number 5 billion, the predicted age of sun by the western scientist. So big that I don't have to worry about living in dark, but will I or you or any of your ancestor will have to see or face that dark age which is going to happen 5 billion years later. So, in this matter does this even effect that I don't understand the science or the math in this case ?

But please keep in mind even if you reply my questions, remember my science and math is so poor, you might guess I might understand the answer.