THE NAZI WHO SENT MAN TO MOON

Wernher Von Braun was born in born in Wirsitz,Germany (now in Poland) on 23 rd March ,1912.He had aristocratic ancestry from both his father and mother’s side.During his childhood his mother had given him a telescope and he developed passion for astronomy.The family moved to Berlin after world war 1 when wirsitz was transferred to Poland.He also learnt to play and cello and became an accomplished musician who could play Bach and Beethoven from memory. In fact during his early life he aimed at being a musician. Braun attended a school near weimar where he did not do very well in mathematics and physics.In 1928 his parents moved him to Hermann-Lietz-Internat on the East Frisian island of Spiekeroog. There he acquired a copy of Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (1929) (By Rocket into Interplanetary Space) (in German) by rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth. Space travel had always fascinated von Braun, and from then on he applied himself to physics and mathematics to pursue his interest in rocket engineering.

In 1930 he attended the Technical University of Berlin, where he joined the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (VfR, the "Spaceflight Society") and assisted Willy Ley in his liquid-fueled rocket motor tests in conjunction with Hermann Oberth. He also studied at ETH Zurich. Although he worked mainly on military rockets in his later years there, space travel remained his primary interest. The following episode from the early 1930s is telling in this respect. At this time von Braun attended a presentation given by Auguste Piccard. After the talk the young student approached the famous pioneer of high-altitude balloon flight, and stated to him: "You know, I plan on travelling to the Moon at some time."

Von Braun was working on his creative doctorate when Nazis came to power in Germany.He completed his doctorate  in physics from University of Berlin .Only part of his doctoral thesis because The full thesis contained many secrets of rocketry and was published only in 1960.Braun was influenced by the father of rocketry,the american Robert H Goddard. An artillary captain Domberger arranged for grants from ordnance department.

Civilian rocket tests were forbidden by the new Nazi regime. Only military development was allowed and to this end, a larger facility was erected at the village of Peenemunde in northern Germany on the Baltic Sea. Dornberger became the military commander at Peenemunde, with von Braun as technical director. In collaboration with the Luftwaffe, the Peenemünde group developed liquid-fuel rocket engines for aircraft and jet-assisted takeoffs. They also developed the long-range A-4 ballistic missile and the supersonic Wasserfall anti-aircraft missile.
In November 1937 (other sources: December 1, 1932), von Braun joined the National Socialist German Workers Party. An Office of Military Government, United States document dated April 23, 1947, states that von Braun joined the Waffen-SS (Schutzstaffel) horseback riding school in 1933, then the National Socialist Party on May 1, 1937, and became an officer in the Waffen-SS from May 1940 until the end of the war.
According to Von Braun’s own version he joined  Nazi party and SS under pressure because he had no other option and ordered by SS chief Heinrich Himmler to do so.His version was disputed by many others. There is a picture which shows Braun in uniform with Himmler.Many said he wore the uniform regularly although Braun claimed he wore it only once.He was thrice promoted by Himmler although he claimed the promotions were technical ones

VON BRAUN WITH HIMMLER

In 1943 Adolf Hitler became very enthusiastic about rocket weapon signed the order approving the production of the A-4 as a "vengeance weapon" and the group developed it to target London. Hitler was so enthusiastic that he personally made von Braun a professor shortly thereafter. In Germany at this time, this was an exceptional promotion for an engineer who was only 31 years old.

DIAGRAM OF V2 ROCKET

British and Soviets were aware of Hitler’s rocket programme and Braun and bombed Peenemunde heavily on 17 -18^th august, 1943.Although many people died Braun’s group and facilities remained largely intact.

SS General Hans Kammler who as an engineer had constructed several concentration camps including Auschwitz, had a reputation for brutality and had originated the idea of using concentration camp prisoners as slave laborers in the rocket program. Arthur Rudolph, chief engineer of the V-2 rocket factory at Peenemünde, endorsed this idea in April 1943 when a labor shortage developed. More people died building the V-2 rockets than were killed by it as a weapon. Von Braun admitted visiting the plant at Mittelwerk on many occasions, and called conditions at the plant "repulsive", but claimed never to have witnessed any deaths or beatings, although it had become clear to him by 1944 that deaths had occurred. He denied ever having visited the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp itself, where 20,000 died from illness, beatings, hangings and intolerable working conditions. A friend quotes von Braun speaking of a visit to Mittelwerk:

“It is hellish. My spontaneous reaction was to talk to one of the SS guards, only to be told with unmistakable harshness that I should mind my own business, or find myself in the same striped fatigues!... I realized that any attempt of reasoning on humane grounds would be utterly futile.”

VON BRAUN WITH SS COLLEAGUES IN 1941

Others claim von Braun engaged in brutal treatment or approved of it. Guy Morand, a French resistance fighter who was a prisoner in Dora, testified in 1995 that after an apparent sabotage attempt:
Without even listening to my explanations, [von Braun] ordered the Meister to have me given 25 strokes...Then, judging that the strokes weren't sufficiently hard, he ordered I be flogged more vigorously...von Braun made me translate that I deserved much more, that in fact I deserved to be hanged...I would say his cruelty, of which I was personally a victim, are, I would say, an eloquent testimony to his Nazi fanaticism.
Robert Cazabonne, another French prisoner, testified that von Braun stood by and watched as prisoners were hung by chains from hoists. Von Braun claimed he "never saw any kind of abuse or killing" and only "heard rumors...that some prisoners had been hanged in the underground galleries".
Von Braun was arrested by Gestapo because of his “defeatist” attitude on war on March 14 ,1944 but released soon because german leadership understood the importance of Braun working on rocketry.
On May 2, 1945 almost at the end of the war Braun,his brother and almosst the whole Peenemunde team surrendered to Americans in Bavarian Alps.
The americans were very much aware of the importance of the catch.He was detained and interrogated by americans thoroughly and detained him in germany for a short time. On June 20, 1945, the U.S. Secretary of State approved the transfer of von Braun and his specialists to America; however this was not announced to the public until October 1, 1945. Von Braun was among those scientists for whom the U.S. Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency created false employment histories and expunged Nazi Party memberships and regime affiliations from the public record. Once “bleached” of their Nazism, the US Government granted the scientists security clearance to work in the United States. "Paperclip," the project’s operational name, derived from the paperclips used to attach the scientists’ new political personæ to their “US Government Scientist” personnel files.
Braun  and his remaining Peenemunde staff  were transferred to their new home at Fort Bliss, Texas, a large Army installation just north of El PasoThere he remained largely as a “prisoner of peace” and unused although . While there, they trained military, industrial and university personnel in the intricacies of rockets and guided missiles. As part of the Hermes project they helped to refurbish, assemble and launch a number of V-2s that had been shipped from Germany to the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico
On March 1, 1947 Braun married his first cousin Maria in a trip back to Germany.
. In 1950, at the start of the Korean War von Braun and his team were transferred to Huntsville, Alabama his home for the next 20 years. Between 1950 and 1956, von Braun led the Army's rocket development team at Redstone Arsenal, resulting in the Redstone rocket, which was used for the first live nuclear ballistic missile tests conducted by the United States.
As director of the Development Operations Division of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA), von Braun, with his team, then developed the Jupiter-C, a modified Redstone rocket. The Jupiter-C successfully launched the West's first satellite, Explorer 1 on January 31, 1958. This event signaled the birth of America's space program.
Despite the work on the Redstone rocket, the twelve years from 1945 to 1957 were probably some of the most frustrating for von Braun and his colleagues. In the Soviet Union, Sergei Korolev and his team of scientists and engineers plowed ahead with several new rocket designs and the Sputnik program, while the American government was not very interested in von Braun's work or views and only embarked on a very modest rocket-building program. In the meantime, the press tended to dwell on von Braun's past as a member of the SS and the slave labor used to build his V-2 rockets.
To end his frustration Braun chose to go to public and popularize his vision of men landing on moon through articles,tv talks and journals. The May 14, 1950 headline of The Huntsville Times ("Dr. von Braun Says Rocket Flights Possible to Moon") might have marked the beginning of these efforts. These disclosures rode a moonflight publicity wave that was created by the two 1950 U.S. science fiction films, Destination Moon and Rocketship X-M. At this time von Braun also worked out preliminary concepts for a manned Mars mission that used the space station as a staging point
The U.S. Navy had been tasked with building a rocket to lift satellites into orbit, but the resulting Vanguard rocket launch system was unreliable. In 1957, with the launch of Sputnik 1, there was a growing belief within the United States that America lagged behind the Soviet Union in the emerging Space Race. American authorities then chose to utilize von Braun and his German team's experience with missiles to create an orbital launch vehicle, something von Braun had originally proposed in 1954 but had been denied.

WALT DISNEY & VON BRAUN IN 1954

NASA was established by law on July 29, 1958. One day later, the 50th Redstone rocket was successfully launched from Johnston Atoll in the south Pacific as part of Operation Hardtack I. Two years later, NASA opened the Marshall Space Flight Center at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, and the ABMA development team led by von Braun was transferred to NASA. In a face-to-face meeting with Herb York at the Pentagon, von Braun made it clear he would go to NASA only if development of the Saturn was allowed to continue.Presiding from July 1960 to February 1970, von Braun became the center's first Director.
The Marshall Center's first major program was the development of Saturn rockets to carry heavy payloads into and beyond Earth orbit. From this, the Apollo program for manned moon flights was developed. Wernher von Braun initially pushed for a flight engineering concept that called for an Earth orbit rendezvous technique (the approach he had argued for building his space station), but in 1962 he converted to the more risky lunar orbit rendezvous concept that was subsequently realized.During Apollo, he worked closely with former Peenemünde teammate, Kurt H. Debus, the first director of the Kennedy Space Center. His dream to help mankind set foot on the Moon became a reality on July 16, 1969 when a Marshall-developed Saturn V rocket launched the crew of Apollo 11 on its historic eight-day mission. Over the course of the program, Saturn V rockets enabled six teams of astronauts to reach the surface of the Moon.

WITH PRESIDENT JOHN KENNEDY

SATURN ROCKET

During the late 1960s, von Braun was instrumental in the development of the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville. The desk from which he guided America's entry in the Space Race remains on display there.
However, on March 1, 1970, von Braun and his family relocated to Washington, D.C., when he was assigned the post of NASA's Deputy Associate Administrator for Planning at NASA Headquarters. After a series of conflicts associated with the truncation of the Apollo program, and facing severe budget constraints, von Braun retired from NASA on May 26, 1972.

APOLLO 11 LAUNCH

BRAUN WITH COLLEAGUES FROM NASA AFTER APOLLO 11 SUCCESSFUL  MOON LANDING

MAN ON THE MOON

BRAUN IN HIS OFFICE AT NASA HEADQUARTERS, 1970

WIFE MARIA

In 1973 a routine health check revealed kidney cancer, which during the following years could not be controlled by surgery. Von Braun continued his work to the extent possible, which included accepting invitations to speak at colleges and universities as he was eager to cultivate interest in human spaceflight and rocketry, particularly with students and a new generation of engineers.
Von Braun helped establish and promote the National Space Institute, a precursor of the present-day National Space Society, in 1975, and became its first president and chairman. In 1976, he became scientific consultant to Lutz Kayser, the CEO of OTRAG, and a member of the Daimler-Benz board of directors. However, his deteriorating health forced him to retire from Fairchild on December 31, 1976. When the 1975 National Medal of Science was awarded to him in early 1977 he was hospitalized, and unable to attend the White House ceremony.

On June 16, 1977, Wernher von Braun died of pancreatic cancer in Alexandria, Virginia, at the age of 65. He was buried at the Ivy Hill Cemetery in Alexandria, Virginia..

(This article is largely adapted from Wikipedia article On Von Braun)

My Wife and Sleepless in Seattle

Why am I writing this?

Who would read a review of a movie which has released 20 years back and although a few people still watch it in DVDs and internet people in general are not very much aware of it right now.

However people do things which sometimes defy reasons. Or there is a more ulterior subtle reason which even the person who is doing it cannot fathom.

Sleepless in Seattle was movie made in 1993 starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan and IMDb  rates it a bit above average (6..7). It is a story well told (writer Jeff Arch) and it revolves around the theme l “love”. Particularly love of a bereaved husband for his deceased wife. The light had gone out of his life until in a quirk of fate he meets a woman because his eight year old son answers a radio talk show. The love he once thought impossible again (as dearly he loved his wife) lights up his life once more.

After the movie ends you feel a quiet satisfaction.  The movie captures the intangible thing called “love” in a compelling way. Particularly the love which means care, companionship and the inner nearness. The love which a husband/wife feels for his wife/husband with whom he is in love. For which he/she can forgive thousand folly of the other one and can do almost anything for the other. He /she can bear physical distress, humiliation and sometime even die. It is not the wild kind of love which craves for wild physical intimacy but a gentle hug which embraces all life. Because with this particular kind of love the hinge pin of life is the other person. Whatever you do, your goals and striving for success is permanently locked with this person in life. The stars, the cosmos is meaningless without the other. In one of the most touching scenes the man tells his son with excruciating care and love how his (the son’s)mother could peel an apple at one go, which was one of the million other things he loved about his wife.

And here I got involved with the movie. It is an enjoyable movie and quite a hit (it was made with $21 million and grossed more than 10 times the money in box office). But it meant a lot more than any other good movie to me. Because it involves the central point why I continue to live.

Have you ever had this fear of losing something immensely valuable? I think almost everyone has. And although you have not lost it your mind is aggrieved because you think that one day you will lose it and feel that it is already lost. My wife is, many would say an ordinary woman whose face is perhaps beautiful, walks rather painfully slowly, does not have a figure worth any attention, but to me she is more valuable than my own life. Although she is very near me most of the time I feel like I have not got enough of her. I fear losing her and sometimes feel as if I have lost her. So many times I ponder what life would be without her. It will be like I will be blinded and maimed for the rest of my life or even worse.

We do not have much physical intimacy. I have forgotten when I last had sex with her (I am 55 now). And we have fights, sometimes stormy, about little things of life. We do finger point each for not doing this and that and she and I shout at each other at the top of our voice. Yet when I snuggle beside her and she tells me that she had seen an orange colored cat which even said “meow” when she approached him the world melts within me. The dog “Nyaota” comes up in the conversation. He looks imploringly for biscuits and when my wife gives a few to him he crawls up her sari with his two legs to say his love to her. He also makes a squeaky sound with his voice to show his joy when he encounters her. My wife tells all these to me and I feel that only things in universe that matters are the cat and Nyaota. I also tell her a few stories of my own, like the cat in the street that seemed worried and busy and careworn with life. She giggles at this and asks me to tell more.

My wife also is a poet. And I think she is a great poet. Although world may not know her name now we dream someday whole world would know it. When she writes something which she thinks good she come up and tells me “hey listen to what I have written”. I cannot always hear her immediately because I may be busy with some other things but I always feel those words crawled in the note book someday will make her and me proud.

When I think of myself I feel I am both a great and small person. I have cheated my wife whom I love so much a few times in net (physical want takes form you do not want it to) and not earn enough to support her. I got a good education and became a bachelor of engineer. But I became a failed engineer and spent most of 20 years of life in confusion. It is very recently I am doing what I really like to do but unfortunately that is not enough to earn me a livelihood . And my cheated wife trudges slowly her way to office which she hates just  to support us. Sometimes  I feel pathetic and once again go to job sites and seek for an immediate job and go back to office life. Yes, money. That will save everything. But I know that will stop me doing what I like most and kill me inwardly but let me have perhaps a decent life financially and my wife will not have to go to office. On the other hand I think of things I like to do and do easily. Like writing on everything that moves me emotionally. I feel someday someone will notice my obscure articles somewhere and give me money for these. Because these are works of love. And when I do things I like to do I feel great. I think my life is of worth something in this world because I have done something which came from deep within myself…they are original…completely mine.

Love is the most selling thing in the world. As I told you the movie was a hit and grossed ten times the amount it was made with, telling about love. As my wife calls to come to her chest sometimes when she feels lonely and I smother my face in her bosom I feel like it has value beyond money and is eternal. As I wish I could melt inside her chest that this love even can bring something we dearly need, namely money. I wrote this article about love because perhaps it will bring me little money someday.

The man in the movie lost his wife and found a new woman. I fear that. I do not want a new woman in life ever. I just want that my wife become healthy and happy and fit ,a successful person in life without ever having to do the things she does not like.

The new woman in my life would be She.

KASHMIR ISSUE

What is the solution of Kashmir issue? Two countries, India and Pakistan have fought for this beautiful piece of  land from their inception. More than six decades have passed, three wars have been fought between these countries but no solution is still in sight. The hatred and animosity it has generated is still a big threat to the world peace.

Let me retrace the history as briefly as I can. The two countries found freedom from British rule in 1947 but with a price. One country was divided into two on the basis of religion .The lands with Hindu majority went to India and with Muslim majority went to Pakistan. There was a problem with states which were ruled by “princes” subordinate to the British. They were allowed to join either of the two states they liked.

Maharaja Hari Singh, the ruler of the state Jammu and Kashmir could not decide which state he wanted to join until forces from Pakistan (who thought the state was morally their property as the state had a Muslim majority) attacked it and captured some part of it. At this point Hari Singh (who was a Hindu) joined India.

India sent armed forces and after some fighting between Indian and Pakistani forces it came to a standstill. There was a status quo at what is commonly known as “Line of Control(LOC)” From then onwards the two portions of  Jammu and Kashmir on two sides of LOC has been ruled by India and Pakistan both of whom think that the land is rightfully theirs. After much debate a resolution was passed in United Nations in 1948 to hold a plebiscite under international observation at a future point of time and both countries agreed to it.

But after a later confrontation between the two countries in 1971 known as Bangladesh war (which India won) an agreement (called Simla Agreement) was arrived at by both countries in which both decided to resolve their issues bilaterally. East Pakistan became a separate country known as Bangladesh.

Although no war has been fought between these two countries after that (except a scuffle in Kargil region), the tension never ceased in Kashmir region. Hostilities took new dimension in international terrorism.

Let us check the propriety of the claims of the two nations on Jammu and Kashmir. India is a country of diverse languages, cultures and food habits. The only common thing that is a unifying force in the country is common faith in Hinduism which is again a very loose and tolerant combination of different spiritual views. However India is by constitution is a secular country and gives equal importance to every religion. India has also a large population of Muslim community. So India can  say as a secular country Kashmir is rightfully theirs.Also Kashmir joined India according to the agreement then prevailing,and thereby a very legal "property" of India.

Pakistan on the other hand is by constitution  a Muslim country although there is also many diversities among different states. However Islam has a far stricter spiritual view and is not very tolerant to other faiths. But as Jammu and Kashmir has a Muslim majority they feel it is morally theirs. Their claim is reinforced with the basic fact that at least some of the Muslim population feel uncomfortable living in a country of very largely Hindu population with which they have a traditional animosity.

So what is the solution? I believe as with every nation only the people of Kashmir have the right to decide this. As originally suggested in United Nation resolution there should be a plebiscite as to what people Jammu and Kashmir wants.

But the plebiscite should have three options a) to join India, b) to join Pakistan and c) Kashmir becomes a sovereign country.

I think the third option is the best for everybody. Because in this case both Indian and Pakistani people will have equal opportunity to go to that place without fear. Kashmir needs business from both India and Pakistan to survive and flourish. It will also throw the doors of international tourism in Kashmir wide open. The Hindu minority there also will not feel aggrieved.

It will also help both Indian and Pakistan to reduce cost substantially for defense and internal security .This substantial amount can be much more fruitfully used to reduce the abject poverty in both the countries.

In a sovereign Kashmir both Hindus and Muslims can roam freely without any fear so nobody loses anything except a bit of ego. Indian and Pakistanis are culturally and otherwise very similar to each other and Kashmir can be a happy rendezvous for both.

However to implement this idea both countries will need an exceptional leader who does not care for his life. The emotions run very deep in both the countries. Many sons of both the countries have lost their lives to defend and conquer this piece of land. To both the countries they are martyrs. Many will see it as an ultimate betrayal to these martyrs to “sell” the right over the land.

However it seems the only sane and rational solution.

The only thing that nags my mind is, if it so happen that Kashmir becomes a free nation and hostilities end between India and Pakistan what will happen to the very unity of both the countries. Because both countries are most united in their animosity against each other. Without the common enemy the internal differences may come to the forefront and there will be chances of farther fragmentation of both the countries.However, on the flip side, with a major worry out of the way ,both can be rejuvenated with a new hope and lasting peace ,united with a more clear conscience and work together unitedly to be a joint major power in the coming world.

MY MOTHER AND I

My mother created me in her lust.

I have never become reconciled to the fact that my mother had lust, although she undoubtedly had as she was a human being. The only time I had a sneaking suspicion that she could have it when I heard her laugh and giggle with my maternal aunt about which I knew was an edition of Playboy magazine which my father brought home and I duly found out. I had no doubt that my father had lust because I frequently found pornographic books in hidden places which I had little difficulty in finding. But my mother seemed different. She always seemed the person who was rebuking about naughty thoughts and telling me subconsciously not to do “it”. I had enough confirmation of this one day when I was playing under a quilt with my little thing beside my sleeping mother when she suddenly got up and in a very stern voice told me not to do what I was doing.

She was a person who cared too much for me. And I hated this. She would not let me do any “ good” thing ( like going alone out of the house for some adventure in the afternoons when my mother took a nap). She was a “coward”. My father on the other hand was a brave man. He had crossed and came back swimming Hooghly River many times in his child hood at Srirampur. But he was a strict man, very cautious about money and my mother and he had frequent fights about how meager amount he let her spend. My mother also cried frequently and reminded my father umpteenth times that he did not “love” her. I believed her. Because my father was a very tactless man who told very rude things to people telling exactly what he thought. Also there was this “other woman” in his life who was very beautiful but vapid and empty whose family my father perhaps helped. But as days go by and I find so many similarities with my father in myself I doubt my mother’s words. Just like him I could not express my softer emotions in so many words and in gestures and when I think about those days I guess perhaps he was too shy to express his love.That my mother was a loving and soft woman I had no doubt. Particularly to me. As I got back from my school and sat to eat my meal she would make crow’s lump and crane’s lump (kager dola, boger dola in Bengali) with rice and daal and sabji and as I told her a completely fictitious story about how I caught a shoal fish in a drain in the monsoon floods she would just smile as if she believed all this and put those lumps in my unsuspecting mouth.

In the afternoon she would take a nap. I would jump around and play  in the empty house when my mother would get very irritated and  would tell me sternly to sleep quietly beside her. I, after vehement protests had to comply with her because force would be applied on me. I would lie quietly beside my mother facing her as she snoozed and fantasize of scoring centuries in cricket test matches and goals against East Bengal club in soccer. 

From the beginning of my conscious life I had one aim and that was to make my “unhappy” mother happy and proud for me. She was a very soft woman, loved me dearly and cried so much because of her quarrels with my father because father did not give her enough money and rebuked her if he himself lost something or told her bluntly that her cooking was not good if there was a little more chili in the food than his liking. Once there was a big confrontation between them and mother seriously threatened to leave the house and went quite a few paces towards the exit door. I was a little child then and I panicked and  put my two little arms around her waist tightly so that she would not go. She cried and desisted from what she was about to do.

I was a little better than average student in school and my yearly report cards were a bit better than average. My parents looked up to me and hoped this “ bright” boy would do something good in his life. I did somewhat good in my school leaving exam and got a chance in a good engineering college which was not so easy those days. My mother was proud of me. Although engineering was not what I liked (it was physics I liked most)  I joined engineering college so that I could earn a lot and make my mother happy (although not getting a chance in the physics department of the two most coveted colleges in Calcutta compounded the decision making). I did not want to be a student of B.Sc  in an ordinary college but a wealthy engineer son of a proud and happy mother and give her as much money she liked. The inner unhappiness of studying and doing something I really did not like was the main cause of my downturn much later in my life.

I passed engineering with “flying” colors and got a job even before the result was announced and without even an interview. Although I left that job pretty soon I got a chance in a very renowned company within a few days and began to get a handsome salary. I would get back from office every day , very unhappy inside but waited for the salary day. When the day came I would give all the money to my mother. My dream of making my mother “happy” was coming true.Soon mother became worried about my future bride. Actually she was worried about my future wife when I was a school kid because in her opinion I “needed” a very smart woman to “take care” of me because I was so “careless” about worldly matters. After I worked in office for certain years and outwardly established myself in the world I gave the nod to my parents for my marriage. There was the usual advertisement in newspapers for brides (just like most Indians) and quite a lot of pretty and educated girls’ photos came in. I went to see a few of them and liked a girl who was not only beautiful but very vivacious.

From my mother I learned to keep lust and women apart. To me women looked so innocent and were so “clean” that they could not be capable of such “bad’ thing as lust. My mother seemed to dislike sex. Once, when I knew all about it, I asked my mother how babies were born just to check what answer she would give. My mother was irritated and said “god sends them”.

As I got older I began to learn from books women were not so “clean” as one would imagine. I was a very shy boy who never dared to approach a girl and had no sisters (even all my cousins were boys) and therefore had no firsthand experience of a woman of my compatible age. With marriage I experienced for the first time the female lust. In the eventful first night my wife expertly guided me to previously “unfamiliar territories”. Although this was very pleasurable marriage was not bliss to me as I had expected. This woman was so different from my mother. Not only she had lust but she liked and disliked things my mother did not. She laughed and cried at things which were different from what my mother laughed and cried for. I had expected her to like my soft mother and dislike my rude father whereas the opposite happened. My wife and father took instant liking for each other and my mother and wife had a lot of things to complain about each other. Soon it became a war between my mother and wife. I was confused about what to do, which side to take, and was mentally agonized. After the hard days of labor at office as I came back home I faced music from both sides equally angry with each other and finally towards me because they both thought that I had sympathy with the “other” side. That my wife was so different emotionally from my mother did not help matters at all. Because I was prepared to cope with another “mother” but not this “wild” woman.

After one year of co existing with my parents we moved to a separate dwelling partly due to the lack of space in our apartment at the advent of my elder brother’s family and partly and more importantly I wanted to keep my wife and mother apart. Although this brought slight relief my life became an unhappy existence. I missed my mother’s caring comfort and my wife was new and inexperienced in family matters like cooking and housekeeping. She was an educated woman, wrote great poems but would begin to cry if the maid did not appear in the morning. On top of that she had quite a temper. I thought my married life would be very unlike my parents because I would never deny money to my wife and never say rude words to her for bad cooking. Unfortunately she wanted more than this. She expected me to be more careful about my clothes, did not find it her duty to neating up things I messed up in my daily life like leaving dirty clothes in the toilet. She told me in so many words that my mother did not educate me to be a “proper’ man. I was terribly wounded for her disrespect for my mother and we had regular and some time stormy fights. Once in a moment of mad rage I gave her a blow in her face which caused her teeth to be reset.

But my wife loved me more than I knew. By this time I was becoming very tired of engineering chores daily and deeply craved for relief. I would come home with my brain totally tired with my office duties and yet I would begin to study higher mathematics because inwardly I had a fantastic hope of winning a Nobel Prize in physics to make my mother “happy”. The unhappy and tired brain along with a tumultuous marriage made my life miserable. The pent up unhappiness was killing me. Fortunately I slowly began to realize that my boisterous wife was a sweet child at her heart. She would try to hug me and forget all the bad things which happened a few moments before and laughed and kissed me like nothing has happened. We began to have sleepless nights telling each other our erstwhile life stories, our little things and nothings and made love wildly. By this time my wife had got a little job in a government office. I slowly found the confidence to confide to her my greatest guarded secret. I told her I wanted to leave job and liked to follow what I liked most, physics and astronomy. I wanted to know if there was life anywhere else other than earth. She told me I could do whatever I liked and she would stand rock solid with me. To this day she had done that.
Also my mother and wife began to become friends gradually. My mother gave my wife household tips and she was grateful to mother for that. Also they had the common concern for the same man, that is, I. They would share their experience about the same person they both loved and slowly they became friends. Also I began to find many things common among the two women which I had not foreseen before. They had the same feminine intelligence and stupidity I never suspected. They had the same concern that why I was not more careful. I began to become angry with my wife for the same reasons I sometimes wished to further flatten my flat nosed mother with a juicy blow. My loyalty began to shift gradually from my mother to my wife.

When I had enough confidence in my wife and my wife supported me to the hilt and the office became an unbearable hell I set a date in my diary for the “grand day”. The day I would resign from job. I had no clear idea what I would do next but in my confused mind I envisaged a grand career for my wife while I do something with physics.

After deliberating for almost a year finally the “grand day” came and I left my job after giving a very rude resignation letter saying that I hated civil engineering. With resigning came a release I never experienced before. It was like a ton of granite was lifted off my chest and I went into a state of feverish excitement. With that came a deep anxiety about how am I going to meet my expenses in future. The euphoria of release from a chain of slavery along with a very deep anxiety made me work and act in a feverish and frenzied manner and sometimes rather queerly. I went to all big newspaper for ads for job for my wife which looked rather like matrimonial ads. Also once I refused to talk with my relatives unless the servant boy was present in the conversation. My wife’s family and my family  decided to take me to the top psychiatrist in Calcutta at that time. Although I agreed to go to the psychiatrist because everybody wanted me to, I refused to take any drugs which the doctor prescribed because to my mind I was wholly sane.

Next thing I remember I was inside a mental home where all my co inhabitants were to some extent in a mentally demented state. My mother’s “bright boy” was in a mental sanatorium and all her hopes were crushed. I had quite a number of colorful friends there, one of whom thought he would never be able to get up from bed although he had no problems with his legs or anywhere else. Another would laugh and cry every other moment alternately for seemingly no reason. It was like a jail with all the doors closed, toilet doors without locks and we were allowed no contact with outside world except once in a week with our relatives. We were not allowed to watch television except once in a week for an hour to watch the serial Ramayana.

When the visitor’s day came I wept to my wife and mother to take me out of the jail house and give me freedom. They also wept and did not know what to say. The doctors would take me to a chamber and give me injections after which I would go unconscious. After the consciousness came back I would feel deep pain throughout my whole body and unable to move. A burly strong man would carry me above his shoulder to the upper story where I had my room. Later on I would know that I was subjected to electric shock therapy in these occasions and some of my memory was completely wiped out from my brain. The doctors would ask me whether I liked my job or not with a peculiar, narrow smile on their lips with injection in their hand and I would say “Yes, yes. I like my job immensely and I would like to go back to my office immediately”( I figured out that those were the only words that could release me from that jail). Soon afterwards I was released from the home diagnosing my problem as affective or bipolar disorder, the general meaning of which that the guy is either in a highly excited emotional state or in a depression.

Actually this sort of disease is somewhat hereditary and I had this streak from my father’s side (my paternal aunt was a mental patient and one uncle was also visited psychiatrist).The doctor advised me to not to tell anybody that I went to a psychiatrist which I ignored and told the rest of the world that I was slightly mad. Later on I found out that my little streak of insanity makes me create and do things which others would not dare to. It was at once a disadvantage and an advantage because somehow it brought out whatever was in my depths.

However mother was inconsolable. My father sent a letter to my previous office that I lost my head and let me join the work again. They kindly agreed and I joined my office again but sat silently during office hours reading translation of Tagore’s poems. After a few days I resigned again and after the third resignation my office did not take me back.

Time moved on. I had during my office days managed to gather substantial amount of money so I could buy an apartment for myself with a little help from my father in law. My wife was also earning a little money and my father had securities and fixed deposits in joint names which matured and became very handy at this time. I tried to start a business of making telescopes which brought me a good deal of financial loss because the telescopes were highly uncompetitive price wise although they were good and there are few people interested in India to dispense with a large sum of money for some exotic interest.

I, after some hibernation took jobs as civil engineer elsewhere, in fact in quite a few places with me resigning after short spells at these offices. However around the beginning of this millennium computer and internet entered in my life and gave a new impetus to it. I became interested in the logical and mathematical part of engineering and softwares and the complete disliking turned to a partial liking. Also internet gave a chance to flower socially ( I am a rather unsocial person who likes spend most of the time at home and visiting and chatting with others was foreign to me). However you could chat with people with varied personality and interest at the repose of your home through internet. Also internet brought “women” to my life. As I said earlier I was a very shy chap in real life but I found that I also could be liked and sometimes adored by women. And finally it brought me once again to confront female lust which “mother forbade”.

Although I was going down the drain financially at least my emotional and intellectual life was flowering. Once during these days I had the opportunity to visit Haridwar and Hrishikesh and it brought me some realizations which made a deep mark inside me. I had great sleeping problem (and still have to some extent) and I had to take plethora of drugs to just make myself sleep.  The visit to Hrishikesh and Haridwar somehow instilled in myself faith in God and released me from the deep anxiety which was the main enemy of sleep.

My father passed away in 2003 after the third heart attack. My mother was growing old. My mother’s complaints against my father vanished firstly because my father became a very mellowed and spiritual man in his later days and secondly my father left my mother enough money to live rest of life without worry. The thrift of my father for which my mother fought with him for such a long time resulted in a life for mother without financial worry after father’s death. She did not have to look forward to his “bright boy” for money, on the other hand my father’s left over money helped me for a long time.

My mother was also growing very old. In 2005 she had a silent stroke (which was not detected at that time) after which her health deteriorated quite dramatically. By this time the other woman, that is, my wife took over my life completely and I began to dream of making my wife “happy” instead of my mother.

In 2006 my mother had another stroke and she was hospitalized. After a few days she had to be put in ventilator for survival. My elder brother told me that it was useless because each day in ventilator was consuming a lot of money without any reasonable chance of my mother’s coming back to normalcy and life. Finally I agreed to get her out of ventilator. In the nursing home I was with my mother and all the other visiting relatives were gone. Nurse came and told the doctor that the patient was coughing. Doctor along with me went to my mother and tried suction to clear her throat. After a slight hiccup my mother’s body became still and the doctor nodded to me. My mother was gone.

The person for whom I dedicated most of life went away from earth. And I forgot her. My life was taking a new shape. I have begun to explore the cosmos with my newly bought telescope. Also I found that I could write a little.  I now began to give voice to whatever realization I had in the course of my life in my writings. Also I began to do some creative work in video editing.The person who mattered most now was my wife. She had completely replaced my mother in my life as the only person I cared for. I began to search a way to make my life financially worthwhile and help my wife who was earning the livelihood for us. I began to make engineering spreadsheets which is beginning to slowly earn some money for me. Although my financial woes are far from over I have got a direction in life at last and slowly making my way up.

The other day I was pondering over my life in the morning and suddenly my forgotten mother came back to me vividly. I was tired of my worries and woes and wanted to get back to my soft mother’s fold. As I remembered my childhood days and the softness and care of my mother my eyes became slightly wet. How worried she was even if I was a little uncomfortable about anything.  As I trudge my life’s path wearily alone I craved for my mother’s soft bosom. Then I realized my mother is always with me, in every cell of my body, experiencing every moment of grief and joy with me.

But the battle is not over. As I work and produce a little something everyday my hopes ignite again.

Perhaps someday, when death engulfs me I will be at ease with myself and say that “Yes, I made my mother happy.”My mother had conceived me in intense pleasure. When I return to her I hope my cosmic mother will come to me with same intense joy and tell me “You have made me proud, my bright boy.”

ANXIETY

What really is anxiety?

Anxiety is actually an expression of fear in our mind. In the volatile mind everything swim and swirl up. And something, little or big, begins to bother us. We feel a bit of silent panic inside us. There is doubt whether we can overpower the problem. The mind in its weak moment says the problem will overpower us.

Like everything else, anxiety comes from our inner resources , the inner power. Sometimes some people call it God.

Anxiety to some level is very much needed to live. It makes us work. It makes us do things when mind and body begins to become lethargic for a more than required period of time.

Anxiety can be little or big. The more and deep the rooted the fear is the greater is anxiety. Although a little level of anxiety is good and makes us work ,greater amount of anxiety can cause mental and physical damage and even death. It is a prime cause for depression.

What is treatment for anxiety?

Well the best treatment is to act immediately.

First of all we need to diagnose the problem well which is causing us anxiety. In a confused state of mind it is not sometimes easy. Mind is full of little things and changing. Lots of thing clamor together to get attention inside the mind. But if something is causing anxiety and worrying you, you must give prior attention to it because anxiety is the foremost killer of happiness.

So the first thing is to steady the mind ,make it still like a quiet pond and keep it away for sometime from unwanted disturbances.

One can make one’s mind serene in different techniques. But the best technique perhaps is meditation.

Sit at some quiet place with your backbone fully erect and steady and try to think of any single object for a little period of time. It is a difficult task. The mind always prances around from this thing to that. So to make it still is like making a dog’s tail straight. But you can hold your mind steady if you give a little effort. Many things will come to the fore but slowly the mind gets calmer and you can fell quietness coming inside your mind . After sometime as the mind becomes serene little noises which we do not hear normally in our business becomes audible. And the silence and quietness begins to make mind steady.

After meditating a little you should ponder what is making you bother really. There are many branches and twiglets  of an anxiety. But in an uncluttered quiet mind the root cause will become clear and make you decide which problem to attack first. When you start to attack a problem with pro-activeness slowly the problem begins to melt and ultimately disappear.

The second thing necessary is enough of physical exercise each day. Sufficient physical exercise makes both your body and mind strong and gives you the resources to settle a problem. Any exercise is good but two of the best are yoga and pranayama which are correlated. These two are great for body and great help for a troubled mind.
After the exercise a brisk walk in the open for sometime is doubly effective.

Another thing which is really very important is enough of sleep and enough of good food.

Now anxiety is a great sleep destroyer. But if the body and mind is tired enough with healthy physical and mental work it is bound to become tired and sleep comes naturally. If you attack the problem which is worrying you it will give you mental relief and sleep will come.

But some anxieties are so deep rooted that our normal resources fail to cope with it. So medicine helps There  are many anxiolytics or anti anxiety drugs .One of the main is Benzodiazepines. Among Benzodiazepines are drugs like Alprazolam,,Clonazepam,Diazepam,Etizolam,Lorazepam and Oxazepam.One should consult a doctor ,particularly a psychiatrist before using these drugs. But alprazolam is perhaps commonest.As these drugs give temporary relief from anxiety and perhaps bring much wanted sleep we must take opportunity of that little respite to get to the bottom of things which is causing us anxiety.

 So to be precise we have to face our problem with a positive attitude and exercise , meditation, food and sometimes medicine helps us to get us into the right positive attitude.

But there is another greater help.As someone said no lock is made without a key. So every problem has a solution somewhere. The power that gave us the worry in the first place has also provided us with its way to be eradicated.

So the greatest help is to submit to that eternal power completely and let yourself remind that eternal and supreme power dwells inside you and it will do the right thing for you. It will make you act in the best and right way. As the great Hindu ascetic Shri Ramakrishna once said “ Dependence on God is like reclining in a bed and smoking tobacco after  a tiring day’s work”( That is, whatever necessary will be done by Him, there is no cause for tension and worry).

Without any anxiety there is no work done in any necessary period of time. So it is a great driving force.

So like everything else it is a necessary part of life and like everything else should not be unbalanced and disproportionate.

As Lord Buddha said too much of anything is poison.

Rape in India.A mathematical angle.

In the recent past there has been focus on rape in India due to a gory and heinous rape committed against a young woman in Delhi by a few men. There has been general uproar that the rape rate is going up and strict laws and quick implementation of such laws is of paramount importance. There have been suggestions from committees what steps to be taken to bring about necessary changes.                                                                                   

                                                                                   

All this is good and necessary. There should be very strict laws against rape and such laws have to be implemented quickly and efficiently and all the necessary measures that have to be taken should be taken at the earliest.                                                                                 

However I would like to point out a few things which may throw a new light on this subject.                                                                               

I was thinking about the increased number of rape in India (it has doubled within a decade or so).However what we have to consider that population of India has grown also by a substantial number during that period. Also there is the fact that the life expectancy of India has grown by almost 9 (or slightly higher) years from 1990 to 2010-11.                                                                              

Therefore the percentage of adult population (above 18) who are more prone to this crime has increased.                                                                         

Let us take this factor one by one.                                                                             

The population in India was 1241491960 (on July 2011 as per World Bank data.)                         

No of rape cases reported in 2011 in India=  23582  (Data supplied by Indian home ministry).                

There are always large no of unreported cases of rape due to various reasons. The experts differ in their opinion about how much is the percentage of unreported cases. But we may take any arbitrary value and I have chosen to be quite liberal about it and taken this as 15 times the reported cases.

                                                                       

Then the percentage of rape as a percentage of total population comes to= (15×23582) ÷ (1241491960×100) =0.028

This is an arbitrary number and varies according to how many times the unreported against the reported cases you have assumed.                                                                                                                                    

We must remember that most of the rape cases are committed by the adult population, that is people aged above 18.                                                                                                                                               

The percentage of people above 18 is about   60% in 2011.                                                                                                                          

So if we take account of the this factor then the percentage of rape cases in ratio of adult population in India in 2011 is = (15×23582)/ (0.6×1241491960×100) = 0.047        %

This is also an arbitrary number because I have taken an arbitrary value of unreported cases to be 15 times the reported cases.                                                                                                                                   

Now let us have a look at the figure of year 1990.                                                                                                                                        

(All data are supplied by the same sources)                                                                                                                                       

The population in India in 1990 =873785400                                                                                                           

No of rape cases reported in 1990 in India=  9200                                                                                       

We can very safely and legitimately assume that the unreported cases were far higher 20 years back because of different sociological issues like the stigma attached to the rape and lack of media coverage.                                                                                                                                            

If we  assume the arbitrary number of times of unreported cases against reported cases to be 1.6 times than 20 year later which seems very sensible, then the percentage of rape as a percentage of total population is = (1.6×15×9200)/( 873785400×100) = 0.025                                                                                         

We see an increase in ratio of percentage of rape cases against of total population =0.028/0.025 =1.13 times, that is a 13 percent increase

                                   

However the as the life expectancy was lower in 1990 compared to 2011 the percentage of adult population was also considerably lower.                                                                                                                                                                

As I said the life expectancy has increased by almost 9 years or more during this period we may assume that the adult population of age above is was around 53.5% of total population.                 

Therefore the percentage of rape cases as against the adult population in 1990= (1.6×15×9200)/ (0.535×873785400×100) = 0.047%                                                   

Although this is also an arbitrary number but it is a significant one.                                                                                                                                                             

Because the ratio of rape cases as percentage of adult population in 2011 and 1990 is = 0.047/0.047 = 1 that is same and a constant number.                                                         

Therefore rape cases have not increased perhaps not at all if we look at proper perspective.                                                             

You can juggle around with the times of unreported cases to the reported cases any way you like. But if you accept the fact that unreported cases  were 60%  higher 20 years back then there is no change in percentage of rape as regards to the adult population of India which is the most significant number.

You go on interpolating these data as long as you can but this constant number will not change significantly with change of time.                                                                                                                                                                      

So the basic nature of man kind perhaps does not change whatever laws and regulations and mechanisms are there.                                                                                                                                                             

There is also another interesting comparison to make.                                                           

The population of United States 2011 was 304094000 (Supplied by US CENSUS BUREAU)

No of rape cases in United States in that year 90000.

We must take account that in US rape cases are far more reported including minor offences.                                                        

Also the efficiency of law making, implementation of laws and finding out crimes are far more accurate in US than in India.                                                          

So if we take the unreported cases in US 3 times less than India the percentage of rape cases as against total population of that country becomes=(15/3)× 90000/(304094000×100) = 0.148                                                      

Then the rate of rape compared to India is 0.148/0.028 = 5.28 times.

The adult population of US higher than India due to higher life expectancy in that country .So the percentage of rape in comparison to the adult population will be higher.                            

One can take different data at different years and make that comparison between India and US, but my hunch is that these factors will not change significantly.                                                  

The data and factors for European countries vary slightly from US but do not change significantly.

                                   

This leads us to another conclusion that whatever laws you make and irrespective of efficiency of law making and implementing those does not affect that much upon the rapes committed.

There must be many reasons and external and internal factors why percentage of rape is higher in western countries than in India, since I do not believe the innate nature of the people vary from country to country.

However it may be concluded that the basic nature of man does not change regardless of laws and implementations.