The Weight of My Soul

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I picked up this crime thriller by Mark Billingham from the British Council Library the other day. For all my love for the literary "greats," I go to sleep every day with the exploits of gory, psychotic, Dexter-esque cops and killers.

In any case, something in this book I'm reading set me off on the usual tangent into myself. There's this gay pathologist with various piercings on his body who's the very-straight-and-almost-copy-book-macho cop protagonist's best friend. Over a post-mortem, he tells his friend the cop that an adult dead body weighs about 16-21 grams (3/4 ounce) less than the person did immediately before he or she died.

Or so a Dr. Duncan MacDougall of Haverhill, Massachusetts came to believe after conducting experiments on 4 tuberculosis patients, one terminal diabetes patient and one man who was dying of undiagnosed causes in 1906. The good doctor, a religious man, thought the lost weight, sudden and substantial and inexplicable, was that of the soul. This was confirmed when his experiments on dogs showed no weight loss when he killed them for the sake of science—only humans have souls, you see.

My research shows that Dr. MacDougall’s findings were published in American Medicine in April 1907 in a paper pompously entitled "The Soul: Hypothesis Concerning Soul Substance Together with Experimental Evidence of The Existence of Such Substance."

The pathologist in Mark Billingham’s book explained it as the release of the residual air from the lungs at the moment of death.

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Most religious philosophies juxtapose “body” against “soul.”

The body is material, the soul spiritual.
The body is effervescent, the soul eternal.
The body consumes and is therefore ultimately consumed; the soul is energy and therefore essential.
A body without a soul is dead; a shell to be discarded. A soul without a body is free, has gained nirvana, merged with the essence of the godhead—the param-atman—and has therefore reached its ultimate goal.

For religious philosophies, thus, the body burdens the soul while the soul “enlightens” the body.

One of the reasons I can’t subscribe to religions (and the eminent Dr. MacDougall) is my lack of faith in the absolute certainty of their beliefs.

If my body “contains” my soul within its limits (and therefore its limitations), does it not affect the “shape” and “scope” of my soul as long as it is within my body?
Does not the soul get imprinted with the experiences of the body?
Don’t the body’s properties affect the chemistry or the character of the soul?

I guess what I’m trying to get at here is that my soul must also show some scratches from the life that has been etched into my body. Otherwise, how is it my soul and not yours or a tree’s or an ant’s?

If my soul is essential energy, unaffected by the “cage” it must inhabit, how does it reap the benefits of the good my body does or get punished for the sins it commits?

If all souls are one and inseparable from each other, how is the body I inhabit today a result of my soul’s karma and a part of its purification process?

Does the body or the soul commit the acts that will be rewarded or punished?

If it is the soul that is responsible for my karma on earth, why is my body incarcerated, whipped, tortured, maimed and killed?

If it is the body, why an afterlife? Why heaven or hell?

The Cost of a Hurricane

I was in the Andaman Islands with my husband and children for the last 10 days or so. For us, traveling is more addiction and passion than a pastime and, as a family, we've been around 5 continents via plane, train, cruise ship, automobile and various other means of transport including cycle "vans," camels and elephants!

I'm beginning to digress even before I've begun. To get back to the point, I love the Andaman Islands and keep returning to them every couple of years. I have a visceral connection to the Bay of Bengal and these gentle, hilly, palm-tree laden, rich-green drops of land bobbing in the Bay's distinctive pista-coloured waters hold a special attraction for me. Every visit back confirms their beauty remains unsurpassed by anywhere else I've been.

The first time I went back to the Islands after the big South Asian tsunami happened on Boxing Day of 2004, I was solar-plexused by the scope of the destruction I saw all around me. Six years and three more visits later, I can still see many places where what was once land is now a permanent salt marsh.

This brings me to the cost of the damage that a hurricane causes on average.

A couple of years ago, Aila came and went while I was vacationing in Europe. I heard from family, of course, of the “never-before-this” force of the winds. I saw friends’ status updates on Facebook about the hundreds of trees that toppled, verandahs that crumbled and people who were felled by Aila. I read reports on the Internet about the swathe of destruction Aila wreaked on villages that happened to dwell on its way.

But I wasn’t there when it happened. Nothing happened to my home or people I knew. Therefore, despite the fact that I made all the right noises, Aila didn’t really impinge on me.

When we came back, we saw remnants of Aila’s demolition work in the left-over stumps and branches of so many trees that had, since my childhood, stood guard on the side of the roads we took. We donated old clothes for Aila victims and paid an extra sum on our club bills when asked. We heard from our maids about the flooding of their homes.

We heard; we sympathized; we murmured our understanding of their anguish. But we didn’t understand. We weren’t them or theirs and it hadn’t happened to us or ours.

Then, a couple of days ago, this gentleman who has a mission in The Netherlands and in Florida came to visit me. Of and on, over the last 15 years, I’ve been commissioned by him to write publicity material for his mission. This time, he brought pictures to show me. He had hundreds of photographs of the Sunderbans villages that had been mangled by Aila’s show of power.

Dozens of dead cattle, half submerged in mud; shocked, vacant faces of those who had lost their already meager all; a beautiful water-body where there obviously should have been land; a house that had been washed away several hundred meters until it hit a bank still standing intact but at an awkward angle—the people inside the house were found drowned when the house was discovered several days later.

Looking at those pictures, the cost of the damage that a natural disaster like the south asian tsunami or a hurricane causes on average finally came home to me.

Aila came and went in a few hours. The full extent of her devastation has become visible only now. It will be years before those who’ve lost land, homes and livestock can be rehabilitated.

Those of us in the city who have short memories and shorter tempers rant and rave about a fresh onslaught of refugees from villages and the impossible pressure they have put on the already overburdened infrastructure of our city.

We talk about the government machinery and its vote-bank politics that lets hawkers take over every inch of free space in the city.

We talk about the growing number bodies sleeping on the foot-paths and wrinkle our noses as we walk faster past a new shanty town and complain about the exponential rate at which the poor propagate.

Aila has all but faded from our memories. She will, however, impact all of us for a long, long time. The South Asian tsunami and its effects are no longer daily conversation for the literati. The scars it left are still visible to those who want to see.

THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND DOGS

For some reason, I’ve been ruminating the truth about cats and dogs today.

Perhaps my canine thoughts owe their origin to Asterix (my Jack Russel Terrier, son of my heart if not my womb) who is, I know for sure, pining at home in our absence as my husband and I spend two weeks in the Andaman islands.

Maybe our frequent conversations about Asterix and his antics (we're missing him too!) make my thoughts stray to the feline because his primary day-job seems to be to keep our existence totally free of the neighbourhood cats and crows.

He takes his job very seriously and at various times of the day, he can be seen tearing from one verandah to another, growling and barking and lunging and generally posturing to be scarier than his 7kg body could possibly be—all because some intrepid cat or crow has dared to breach the invisible boundary into what he has designated to be his territory.

My feline thoughts could also be because of our recent visit to Istanbul—a city that seems to belong more to cats than to humans. Whatever the reason, I’m reminded today of a ginger, tiger-striped little cat who was waiting outside my apartment door one night many years ago.

It was late in the evening in Athens, Georgia, where I lived and taught at the time as I worked on my PhD as a Graduate Student. I lived in this off-campus housing estate comprised mostly of students and other poor folk of the community who couldn’t afford real houses.

So this mini tiger-cat was waiting outside my door when I came in. It was late fall and the last yellow leaves were on the ground already, waiting for my weekend tryst with the broom and trash-can. Although it was my 4th oncoming winter in the US, I still wasn’t used to the dreary, drizzly, gray and depressing months of the winter. I shivered as I stuck my key into the door, but before I could get in, this cat walked in as if it owned the apartment.

He walked around the entire flat (not that it was more than handkerchief size anyway) as if he had all the time to take stock. He surveyed my bathroom, my kitchen, my bedroom and looked gravely at himself in the full length mirror of the walk-in closet as I hung my coat. Apparently, my sense of hygiene, neatness, interior decoration, culinary taste and general lifestyle satisfied him.
He stayed.

I like to think that I let him stay, but that’s not really the way it was.

Through those winter months, he chose when to grace my lap with his presence; when to allow me to pick him up; when to purr at me and lick my hands with his rough tongue; when to curl up next to my body under the comforter.

But I, being human, thought he was mine. I bought him a litter-box and tins of cat food and told my friends at O’Malley’s on Friday nights that I had to go home because “my cat’s waiting for me.” And for that entire winter, he was.

Then one spring evening, I came home and as I let myself in, he let himself out. I never saw him again.

And now there’s Asterix, so undeniably, so completely, so totally mine. His entire existence revolves around me. His entire being trembles with excitement when I come home. His entire universe is suspended when I leave in the morning. If I didn’t say another kind word to him for the rest of my life, for the rest of his life he would still adore me.

I love Asterix.
I still think of the tiger-cat with awe.

You’re now thinking about the point of this post. I don’t know if there truly is a point, or if there is any 'truth' to the truth about cats and dogs, but I've heard many humans in my life classify themselves as cat-people or dog-people.

I'd like to ask those humans--what makes you a cat person or a dog person? Can you really know if you’re a cat or a dog? Are you really a dog who would like to be thought of as a cat? Or are you a cat brainwashed to think you should be a dog?

Whatever you are, you have to first recognize yourself.
Then you have to admit to yourself that you are meant to be what you are.
Then you have to allow yourself to be what you are.
Then you have to forgive yourself for being what you are.
Then you have to like what you are.
Then you have to be proud of what you are.

Then, and only then, can you fulfill your potential truth--cat or dog or both.

And talking about Asterix, watch this space for a video of him as a puppy killing his first ball!

Sunderbans: The Bengal Tiger Habitat

The Calcutta Wetland Bheris

One crisp winter morning, we decide to visit the Royal Bengal Tiger in its own habitat. The wetlands that are home to the most number of bengal tigers are not too far away from us. Although the prospects of seeing a tiger in the wild are not too bright in winter, we can't resist the temptation. A foggy dawn is just breaking when we load up our old Qualis and drive east into the sunrise.

Basanti - Sonakhali Jetty

Basanti-Sonakhali is 2 hours picturesque driving from Calcutta. All around us the waters of the wetlands glisten, rippling gently in the breeze. Migratory birds look like white lotus flowers growing in the bheris of the wetlands off the eastern bypass of Calcutta.Ten minutes from the bypass, the city gives way to thatched huts with gourds growing on creepers climbing their roofs. Cycle vans laden with produce ferry their ware to the weekly village markets.

Sunderbans waters

We leave the car here at the local police station in Basanti and board the waiting launch on a sputtering 3-hour boat-ride to Sajnekhali on an extremely wide expanse of water.

Tourist boats in the Sunderbans

For the next 2 days, we inhabit a chimerical landscape that is the bengal tiger habitat. The Tiger God Dakhsin Rai reigns here with Bon Bibi, the Queen of the Sundarbans forests There is an ever-changing infiniteness about the waters as they make and re-make the giant Ganga-Brahmaputra delta, the largest delta on Earth.

A serene chimera: the Sunderbans landscape

Islands emerge and submerge in wide water-webs. Where there is land today, there will be a water channel tomorrow. Where there is water, there may be a treacherous silt island being formed even as we float along. The banks of the placid looking channels of water are continuously eroding; the water eats up land-pockets and creates curved marshes, swamps, tunnels and rounded bends.

Trees like the Sundari, the Goran and the Dhundul live and breathe half-submerged among reeds and water-ferns; the viviparous vegetation gives the area a hallucinatory atmosphere.

The Sundarbans are the beautiful forests; they are the forests of the Sundari trees. They create a surreal archipelago; a mystic, mysterious green-blue world that is both water and land.Royal Bengal tigers roam freely in this landscape, swimming the channels and often straying into human habitation.

The Estuarine Crocodile: sighted in Sajnekhali

We see lots of birds—kingfishers, parrots, herons, cormorants, sea gulls as well as egrets, cranes and storks. We spot several deer and wild boar, crocodiles, Olive Ridley turtles and monitor lizards. We do not see other residents like the gangetic dolphin or the fishing cat. Several boat-rides and tower-watches at Sajnekhali and Sudhanyakhali notwithstanding, the Royal Bengal Tiger also eludes us.

Watch-tower in Sajnekhali

But the rhesus macaque is everywhere! Our everyday monkey thrives on the human contact and food-donations of 40-50 thousand tourists per year!

The Rhesus Macaque in Sajnekhali

The Sunderbans Royal Bengal Tiger Project area of 2585 square kilometers has 3 divisions—the sanctuary area that tourists are restricted to; a 1255 square km buffer zone and 1330 square kms of “core area.” In 1984 the core area was given National Park status and it has also been made a World Heritage Site since 1989. Narrow riverine channels that disappear and appear with the tides are often the only access to the core area.

Room at the WBTDC Tourist Lodge

At Sajnekhali, where the sanctuary begins, the WBTDC tourist lodge is a dark green, all-wood rectangular structure on stilts. Stairs lead to a long, thin corridor that leads to small, square rooms that are clean and functional with paper-thin ply partitions and attached baths.

I find a huge, hairy spider on the wall of the bathroom. I keep a wary eye on it as I finish my business in record time and get out. The shower can wait until I get back home!

The monkeys of Sajnekhali have learned human skills like begging, snatching and thieving. Despite the grill on the windows, we return from a little expedition to a room ransacked by the monkeys. Our stuff was all over the room. There were monkey paw marks on the pristine white bed-sheets. Fruits had been half-eaten and danced on and as they went back out of the window, our cousins left us the gift of the stinkiest monkey-poo you can imagine! Even a thorough washing of the room with buckets of phenoil couldn’t get rid of the stench!

A small museum at Sajnekhali educates us about the amphibian tiger population here and the consequences of the intersection of tiger and human habitats. Fishermen and honey-gatherers wear masks at the back of their heads to fool the tiger who, the myth goes, attacks only from the back!

Bon Bibi & Dakshin Rai
Photo credit: sulekha.travel.com

The villagers call the Royal Bengal tiger Dakshin Rai(Lord of the South) who owns all the wealth of the Sunderbans along with his partner, Bonbibi(Forest Lady). Both Hindus and Muslims in the Sunderbans worship the duo’s idols at common shrines and offer homage to them before they set out to plunder the Lord’s wealth in order to earn their daily bread.

Suitably gorged by Dakshin Rai’s riches, we overdose on the sunset!

The sun lowers to the horizon, dips into the water and dissolves in seconds, leaking its oranges and reds all around us. On our way back to Sonakhali, we are a pensive group. I am feeling awed, humbled and somewhat chastened, as if I have touched an immensely precious object I shouldn’t have—and left a smudge on it.

Photo Credits (Except Dakshin Rai & Bon Bibi): Arjan Banerjee