Book review - 'Caffeine' by Michael Pollan (audiobook)

 'Caffeine' by Michael Pollan (audiobook)

It's Pollan's name as author which initially drew me to this, the first audiobook I completed*, as I'm reading his rivetting 'Cooked' too.

In his own style, Pollan takes us through the history (and geography!) of caffeine.  One of the new things I learned is that centuries before tea (which also has caffeine, though less than in coffee), it's coffee which was the staple drink in Europe.  The ubiquitous coffee houses not only served the beverage but functioned as a place for intellectuals and scientists among others to get together and interact (Pollan contrasts those to the modern virtual version, the internet forums!), and reputedly the leader of the Paris Rebellion during French Revolution also frequented a coffee house and started the 'action' from one!

Apparently, coffee played a part not only in industry (coffee breaks, now a legally enforceable benefit in US, were meant to shore up the workers' energies against a midday sag), but also in wars - notably a Republican general during the American Civil War distributed quantities of coffee amongst his troops, which seems to have contributed not a little to their victory!

Pollan's narrative gains a rare kind of personal touch as he reveals towards the beginning that he abstained from his daily cuppa(s) while writing this book, as a way to understand the effects of abstention from what effectively keeps most Americans awake and toiling!

A thoroughly enjoyable listen.

(* Completed not in the perhaps more typical manner of a mobile device with headphone, but aloud on an Amazon Echo Dot using Audible membership.)

Work without hope...

Long back, while in college, I read this blurb at the beginning of a course reading 'Nectar In A Sieve', a novel by Kamala Markandeya on the travails of a farmer family in India:

'Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,

And hope without an object cannot live'

I was reminded of this while reading a passage in the 'Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda':

But isn't that the very thing that's a lifelong struggle for a householder, at least those driven by an overriding sense of duty and responsibility - the unrequited striving, in all arenas of life?  To keep doing one's duties without any (or commensurate) appreciation, not to talk of return, for big and small things?

Seems Karm Yog suggests a way to rise above the often resulting frustration, to wash away not only the physiological but also the Karmic consequences of the negative feelings generated: offer (उत्सर्ग) everything to God, the work as well as both good and bad 'returns', and live in this ephemeral world like a water lily...

{From 'Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda', Vol. I, Karma-Yoga}

Can plants talk

 https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210831-the-people-who-believe-plants-can-talk

Book review - 'Lone Fox Dancing'

'Lone Fox Dancing - My Autobiography'

Just finished reading the story of 'Ruksan' in his own words, and it's difficult to come out of the aura created by Bond through his magical pen.  Words at par with the gentle stories he weaves, so authentic that the reader just wants to believe that Bond actually lived each story!

From his early life to ripe old age, Bond has laid out his whole life, though he admits towards the end that for some personal anecdotes he has changed the names.  One thing that comes through is his deep love for his dear departed dad, whom he lost in his early teens, and the undertones of a strained equation with his mom, with whom he tries to make up on her deathbed.

And the other theme is his deep love for India.  He does hop over to England for a couple of years at the beginning of his writing career, also taking up odd jobs to support himself.  But he gets restless and comes back to India, to his beloved Doon, to the friends of his younger years and some new.  His early struggles as a writer vouch to his abiding love for the art of writing, and he keeps at it for well nigh four decades before starting to get a degree of recognition.  

It's amazing that Bond has continued to live in and around Mussoorie almost his whole life, that he continues to delight in and get inspiration from the trees, the birds, the wildlife of the hills, even as life around him has changed beyond recognition over the decades.  And he continues to live with and support his adopted family of a man of the hills, his early support, over three generations.

A rewarding story of gentle love and deeply humanist outlook.

Book review - 'The Order of Time' by Carlo Rovelli

Having earlier read 'Seven Brief Lessons on Physics' by eminent physicist Rovelli, I had high hopes from 'The Order of Time'.  Not only have those hopes been fulfilled, but Rovelli has gone much beyond.  This book would be favoured by readers who like to be challenged.

Rovelli starts with the seemingly innocuous fact that "time passes faster in the mountains than it does at sea level", something empirically proven but perhaps not known to the majority of common people.  He goes on to prove that this is true across the universe, well-proven a hundred years back by the curved space-time equations of Einstein (later revealed to be a gravitational field), who postulated that time slows down the closer one is to the source of greater gravity.

Next, Rovelli demolishes the idea that time is unidirectional, establishing that it's increasing entropy and a phenomenon called 'blurring' which gives the impression of time progressing, and that heat exchange is the only event which is unidirectional and thus giving rise to 'thermal time'.   On the way, Rovelli puts paid to the concept of cause and effect, and even to past and future. (Did Einstein really write that "the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion"? Rovelli provides the context for that famous saying in chapter 7).

Coming to the 'present', Rovelli next establishes that "the present of the universe does not exist", using the example of interstellar travel.  What effect this has on genealogies is an interesting aside.

Ultimately, Rovelli says, 'The world is made of events, not things'. And as Aristotle said: 'Time is nothing other than the measurement of change' in those things.  Along the way, Rovelli also refers to the concept of 'loop quantum gravity' which is one of the approaches in quantum theory on which he works.

And all this is explained by about the middle of the book.  The rest of the chapters touch upon more complex, seemingly esoteric, concepts like 'indexicality'.

The range of sources across centuries accessed by Rovelli for this tome on time (though a slim volume at less than 200 pages) is mind-boggling, from Mahabharat to Ecclesiaste to the Greek philosopher Anaximander (the title of the book is from one of his writings) to the the Persian poet Shirazi to Aristotle to Newton and much beyond upto 20th century - reminds one of Carl Sagan's legendary 'Cosmos' which also had similar breadth of references.

This is not a book for casual reading.  I usually read parts of 4-6 books on a typical day, but for this book I had to ensure complete peace and focus, else one may tend to lose the train of thoughts.  But once the reader is able to focus, a rich harvest is assured.

Book review - 'The Hidden Life of Trees'

 #trees #woodwideweb

'The Hidden Life of Trees' by Peter Wohlleben

That trees in a forest communicate with and nurture each other through a vast underground 'mycelial' network of 'mycorrhizal' fungi, sometimes spanning hundreds of miles, is only one of the more astounding facts we learn from this treasure trove of a book on something so close to us and yet so far in understanding. 

Contrary to the impression given out by the subtitle 'What they feel, How they communicate', this book is not only about these things, but also about other facets of the lives of trees - how they talk (using scents and sounds), how they walk (across generations of course, but over vast distances of thousands of miles over ice age progressions), how they fight back attackers (by synthesising specialty chemicals and by attracting other predators), how they nurture their 'young' (the 'old' being upto a thousand years of age or even more!), and the like.

The format of the book is also quite inviting, with short chapters dealing with different aspects of trees' lives.

It can be guaranteed that anyone reading this book seriously will not only get invaluable knowledge and insight into our closest neighbours everywhere, but would also gain a large measure of empathy for the oldest living inhabitants of this earth.

A biased question on the Chinese...

 The late Sardar Khushwant Singh, who passed only a year short of a century thanks to his robust lifestyle and his daily dose of the tipple, was well known as a formidable and outspoken character, full of wit.  Indian of my generation would probably remember that in the last couple of decades of his life, having given up editorship of venerable newspapers and magazines and mostly focusing on writing his later books, he still used to pen a regular column in newspapers such as the Hindustan Times.  In the moniker for that column, his image was shown sitting inside a light bulb, almost as if inviting brickbats to be thrown at him, and fittingly the title of the column was 'With malice towards one and all'.  So Singh was very upfront about his views and hardly gave two hoots that people would accuse him of writing maliciously.

In the same vein, let's get this out of the way first thing: This post is written with a pronounced bias as regards the Chinese character, and yes, it has a lot of generalizations.  So those looking for some politically correct and totally balanced narrative, kindly look elsewhere.  The titular question I'm asking today is: When was the last time you met/read about/heard about a generous Chinese?  A down to earth Chinese, yes.  A gritty Chinese, yes.  An aggressive Chinese, by all means!  A crafty Chinese, of course!  But a generous Chinese?  In real life?  In anecdotes?  In literature? Ummm.... well...  Is that a contradiction in terms?  An oxymoron, perchance?  

More seriously, does it have something to do with the ethos of 20th and 21st century Chinese people?  In the early part of this century, when I traveled to China a few times on work, I was intrigued with certain expressions used by English-speaking Chinese.  To be fair, they stated that the English terms they spoke were only close approximations of certain Chinese language terms, and not really equivalent.  Even so, one particular expression that I remember is: "clever".  So where in the normal course of conversation someone in another part of the world may use a term like 'intelligent' or 'wise', my Chinese interlocutors invariably used the term "clever".  I was fairly new to the country and its people at that time, so didn't consider it polite to either point out the dissonance or ask their reasons too clearly.  But the few times I referred to it, they just couldn't make out any difference between 'clever', as they used it, and intelligent or wise, one who could have a thinking mind yet not use it for personal advantage, for instance.

Much later, it struck me that the Chinese considered cleverness as the singular facet of intelligence.  For certain Chinese, not to generalize, it's the cleverness, or perhaps the ability to use intelligence for personal gain, which is the foremost.  And perhaps they just cannot fathom why someone who has the brains would forego personal gain and use it to benefit someone else, which is the hallmark of generosity.

And this is not to trivialize how the Chinese thinking may've evolved to such ethos.  They've doubtless passed through many travails since the ancient times that Chinese civilization was one of only four, along with India, Mesopotamia and Egypt, progressing westwards.  After their empires petered out into weak monarchies, like many others before and around them, they were dominated by a series of forces.  Even as late as 19th and early 20th century, they were pushed around by such powers as the British, with the Opium Wars imposed on them and turning a few generation of Chinese into addicts, and the Japanese during the second World War with a series of untold horrors including Nanking.

So have such travails inculcated in the Chinese a core ethos of cleverness, a conviction that the world will take them for a ride unless they deal 'cleverly' with all?  Is that the reason that the Chinese are so dichotomous, spouting homilies for peace and a just order with a straight face and then turning around and heaping exactly the opposite on their supposed opponents?  Is that why they've been at loggerheads increasingly with everyone, starting with Mao who was an expert in pitting Chinese against Chinese to foster an internecine war in the interests of a communist 'Cultural Revolution', another complete contradiction in terms as there was nothing cultural about it but only a revolution by the seemingly uncultured with a thin veneer of intelligentsia?  And it's not only in the geopolitical arena that the Chinese have acted 'cleverly', but also in the commercial arena, lulling the then world economic powers by providing a 'factory to the world' and later trying to dominate the very economic machine of the world by leveraging its demography.

Know thy enemy, the 'clever' advised, perhaps including that mythical Chinese general Sun Tzu.  So any effort at first understanding deeply the psyche and ethos of the Chinese, before engaging with them in any arena, seems the most 'clever' strategy to adopt for anyone...

With Malice towards... (with due apologies to Khushwant).

Coincidences...

It sometimes happens with probably all of us that we're thinking of something and then, either instantly or after a short time, we see some manifestation of our internal thoughts in the material realm i.e. the very thing happens or is seen by us.  (And I'm not talking about supposedly random marketing links appearing on our Facebook page or stream right after we've viewed, and not even clicked, a certain product on Amazon! 😁 That's the art and science of AI-driven user manipulation as so tellingly expounded by industry insiders in the recent Netflix documentary 'Social Dilemma'.)

There are various spiritual explanations for this phenomenon.  Some hold that all of us are just flowing in a collective stream of consciousness, and so seemingly random thoughts are not really random but are plucked out of that same stream.  And so, since the collective consciousness, for want of a better word, is aware of such plucking, we're then presented with the next logical evolution of that thought in the material world, either as a thing discovered or a happening.  This is perhaps why it's said that 'Watch your thoughts, they become... your destiny'.  This view also holds that all inventions are actually discoveries, of things or properties of nature lying dormant, sometimes in plain sight, till someone seemingly stumbles upon them in a flash of inspiration, even though after a lot of research and efforts.

Lately, I've been ruminating on a few minor... ummm... injustices life seems to have handed me.  Typical thoughts in a mid-life crisis (on the lines of 'I've done so much for others, what have I got in return' yada yada yada), which have the potential to turn any once energetic young person into a bitter old man, snapping at those around him to take out the frustration seemingly for minor slights or irritants, mostly unjustified considering life's bounties and good fortune.  To avoid continuing down the usual path of self-pity and then anger, I started to train my mind on Bhagavad Gita's core philosophy of 'Karmanyevadhikarastay ma faleshu kadachana...' i.e. you only have a right to the action, not to the fruits thereof.  it's good to remember that this, probably the most well known verse of the Gita, also extolls the virtues of ceaseless action (after all, we all have to 'pay our dues' to this earth) by ending with 'Ma tay sangoastvakarmani' i.e. don't let yourself fall prey to inaction.

Now, one aspect of Karm Yog, epitomised by the above action, is the rising of the Karta inside us.  Action often fuels the feeling of 'I have done this' in our ego, much against the admonition in the above verse of not taking credit for our actions.  In this, what may perhaps come to our rescue is the other side of the coin, Bhakti Yog, which advises us to dedicate all our actions, and the results of such actions, to the almighty.  (There's a beautiful song by Ramprasad, the 18th century devotee of goddess Kali: 'Shokoli tomari ichchha... Aami jontro tumi jontri...' i.e. I'm only an instrument in your hands.). Once we deduce that, one, nothing is actually done by us but we only pluck the actions out of collective consciousness as an instrument, and two, that as a corollary we don't have a right to the fruits of such actions, then the rising ego should be well controlled.  So the right way seens to be to dedicate all our actions, and the fruits of such actions, to the almighty, while continuing to act out our part in this worldly drama.  (And just a drama it is, as the Maya philosophy tells us.)

Now, while I'm in the process of thinking all this through, what should I come across but the very thought in writing which aligns with the same throught process!  Having 'coincidentally' risen a bit early and thus having a few minutes extra in hand before my morning walk, I decide to read an extra page of my daily Gita read. (I tend to 'ration' meaningful readings, so as not to cram my mind but be able to understand a bit as I go along.). The last verse on the last page I read today (of 'Yatharth Gita', an interpretation by Swami Adgadananda) is verse 29 of chapter 13, which goes like this:

Voila - what a coincidence! Once we understand that it's nature which performs all actions, and that we're actually non-doer or non-agent, that opens up a whole new way of looking at and dealing with the world.  Now to actually put this in action (pun intended) is the challenge... Didn't someone say that life is a lifelong self-improvement project? (Well, that someone's wife also said that a husband is a lifelong improvement project for a wife, but let's not go there at the moment...😁)

Now, that I was inspired to put pen to paper (or, more aptly, keyboard to screen) to put down these thoughts, is that also a mere coincidence or...

Book review - 'Gene Machine' by Venki Ramakrishnan

We keep learning regularly of how new frontiers of science have been reached, and of the recognition awarded to this or that scientist, or groups of scientists.  And we keep wondering, what are such people made of, at what level of intelligence do they dwell, are they something above us mere mortals.  (And this seems a feeling shared by Venki's wife Vera, who he says remarked after learning of his Nobel: "I thought you had to be really smart to win one of those!")  Here, then, is a first person account by a Nobel laureate who has dedicated his life to researching into the ribosome, the 'Gene Machine' of the title which helps construct our body and mind by helping synthesize the various proteins which make it up.

The book reads like a thriller!  On how different groups of scientists across continents were striving to be the first to crack specific aspects of the workings of the ribosome (and, left unsaid, to have a fighting chance for the Chemistry Nobel, which Venki shared with two others in 2009).  And the story unfolds as that of an underdog 'coming from behind' to breast the tape since, for a large part of his scientific career, Venki senses that he's somewhat of an outsider among the cozy group of scientists working on different facets of ribosome research.  In fact, this seems to have influenced his worldview of the whole system of awards and rewards including the Nobel, as he writes at some length in the chapter aptly titled 'The Politics of Recognition'.

What strikes the reader quite early is the humility with which Venki writes about his life's passion.  Almost the first 40% of the book is focused on how other stalwart scientists, who worked in the domain since decades, helped bring the field of ribosome research into a certain state of maturity, even before Venki's life work begins.  And not only in ribosome research itself, there were so many who helped perfect the equipments and sensors which would later help scientists and researchers make sense of the minute articles they were looking at, articles within cells which couldn't even be sensed, much less seen, with any kind of X-ray (till electron microscopes made it a bit easier).

All through the book, Venki's passion for the domain itself comes through shining, bereft of any attempt at self-aggrandizement.  He's very conscious of the stellar work his 'competitors' were doing in the 'race' to crack the secrets of the ribosome, a race which seems still on, though perhaps now shifted to a better track and with better equipment, as Venki writes in the Epilogue.  And he's effusive in his praise for the junior scientists who chose to be associated with his labs over the years, describing their personalities (and eccentricities!) in some detail, besides of course the aspects of their work which helped along the main effort.  Throughout, he refers to "our" work, rather than 'my'.  It's touching to see the picture of Venki celebrating in Stockholm, while there to accept the Nobel, with almost all the associates who had worked with him at different stages of his career spanning across four decades.

Venki touches extensively on the issue of collaboration, in science as in other domains.  Of how collaboration "works best when people know each other well and like working together, or when they bring complementary expertise to bear on a problem that no one group can tackle alone".  And while being aware of the fierce competition in the field, he also admits that "even when scientists are competing, they are actually using one another's advances to make progress and are thus collaborating, albeit involuntarily".  In fact, he seems to treat due acknowledgement of such contributions by others as professional courtesy, bristling at one point when referring to an incident when another scientist used his work but didn't acknowledge that during a lecture.

One may wonder at the felicity with which an accomplished scientist like Venki writes in plain language (mostly!) the story of his trials and tribulations, to make eminent sense to the lay reader.  But then hints of that are strewn across the book, as Venki (and his team) had to write about their scientific discoveries not only for scientific publications like 'Science' or 'Nature', but also to make presentations to college students and even general public while on 'The Ribosome Road Show'.

This, though, is no hagiography.  Venki doesn't flinch from describing his own foibles, mostly in the scientific arena.  His missteps, his misjudgments (both of people and scientific approaches), and his frequent irritability.  He also describes briefly the uproar that resulted from his almost dismissing any connection with his birth country India, after being awarded the Nobel, especially with his "accident of birth" comment.  He gives his reasons, but his expression of surprise (not pleasant surprise!) both at getting messages from Indian President and Prime Minister, besides US Prez and UK PM, and also at being awarded one of India's highest honors, are bound to leave a sour taste for Indian readers.  Though this gels overall with his views, expressed earlier in the book, on other honors based on the Nobel award, he seemingly did try to make amends of some sort by accepting fellowship from Baroda university in India where he studied in the early part of his life till nineteen, along with Cambridge and Utah institutions where he worked, while rejecting all others.

The beauty of this book is that, even shorn of the scientific content (and there is quite a lot of arcane stuff there, naturally), it provides fascinating insights into the world of science and scientists, from the horse's mouth so to say.  And if one is a wee bit interested in the scientific aspects, the book has sufficient material for the reader to make sense of any discussion on ribosome and, with some effort, even to talk intelligently on the rudiments of ribosome, including a bit about the functions of large and small subunits, RNA, DNA and proteins.

Brazenness across decades....

I was watching an episode of the Netflix series 'Tokyo Trial', on the trial of Japanese military and civilian officials accused of war crimes, by a tribunal appointed mainly by the US General MacArthur, with judges from different countries from US, Europe, Asia all the way upto Australia and New Zealand. (The role of an Indian judge Pal, portrayed rather well by the recently deceased talented Indian actor Irrfan Khan, has interesting nuances.)

There's a scene (perhaps in Episode 3), after the Australian President of the Tribunal is effectively 'deposed' by the machinations of the British and a couple of other judges (who are worried that the 'too democratic' President is compromising on the ratio of Nuremberg trial of the Nazis), where the Netherlands judge, a 'protagonist' in the series, as it's produced jointly by Japanese and Dutch producers (having been 'turned' by Pal, pointing to still existing imperialist regimes, to a view that international jurisprudence hadn't yet progressed to a degree to consider a war, or an Act of Aggression by a country against another, as a crime in itself), recently 'advised' by his country's government to 'fall in line' with the majority view, goes up to a group of dining judges, which includes the US Judge Advocate General (recently appointed Tribunal President) and the British judge, and point blank asks the British judge whether he had anything to do with pressure being brought upon him.

The expression on the face of the British judge is worth noting: it's a mixture of haughty denial tinged with embarrassment at being accused so and also a bit of guilt (perhaps realising that the British government may have caused such pressure tactics).

Got me thinking: if this same scene was being enacted in 2020 instead of 1945, the expression on the face of the British judge would probably be a mixture of defiance, smugness and 'so what', half-trying to take credit for the influence-mongering even if not precipitated by him (as opposed to, in 1945, trying not to have anything to do with the same even if directly instigated!).

How far the world has come esp. in terms of humility and a sense of justice...