Forebodings and Hope

Hi!

These are difficult times.

A pandemic caused by a virus, which is highly contagious and occasionally fatal, rages in our world. The biggest economies, the technical giants and the wizards in the world of medical sciences have been brought down on their knees. Virus seems to know what it wants from our bodies but our body’s protection gear hasn’t yet learnt to deal with this new invader. Neither does our supremely wonderful mind know the ways of this tiny mischievous blob of genetic material, which has played truant by abandoning its legitimate home in search for a new abode.  It is this fear of unknown, the ominous uncertainty just around the corner, which has turned our lives topsy-turvy. For a period, virus thrives in our bodies, does not produce any outwardly signs of its occupancy, yet remains capable of invading more innocent bodies to continue its relentless goal of reproducing its sparse genetic material. This is the most potent recipe to leave behind maximum copies of your genes, the beguilingly simple yet unimaginably potent law that governs life on our planet. Fight between invading genes of a germ and the host genes, is as old as origin of species. Organic life on earth probably originated first in the form of an RNA virus, billions of years back. SARS Corona-II, responsible for the present pandemic, is an RNA virus. Human beings arrived on earth only about two hundred thousand years back. To refer a much-quoted analogy: if earth originated twenty-four hours ago, we have been around for mere three seconds, while viruses have been here for more than twenty hours. RNA virus is the most primitive form of life forms while the Homo Sapiens represents the finest example of a complex life. Yet the primitive life seems to be triumphing against the might of the finest species that has ever roamed Earth. The older inhabitant of earth, in its billions of years of occupation, seems to have learnt a lesson or two in survival, that have evaded our species till now.

With social-distancing the only means at our disposal to ward-off this danger, all of us will find ample amount of the resource that remained elusive in our lives, i.e., leisure. While mobile phones and TV with illimitable resources at their command will occupy most of it, I bring to your notice a couple of books which may provide not a dreary diversion to a stray person. I can never have enough time to read all the books I want to read. Nevertheless, in last few days, I have discovered some fiction authors to my delight, like Howard Jacobson and Lawrence Osborne, and some fine books on finance and economics. But today I talk about books I read in a remoter past.

In inclement times our innate tendency to believe in an impending calamity rises to fore. Cassandras thrive and air thickens with a gloom of thick pessimism. A dose of well-reasoned optimism is the need of the hour. Matt Ridley’s Rational Optimist- How Prosperity Evolves is one such well-written book. Ridley convincingly shows how our lives are consistently moving towards betterment. There is no reason for pessimism.

All of us have crannies in our mind that are clogged with things that we want to do, tasks that are highly accessible, yet we keep postponing these inexplicably, denying ourselves a few moments of joy.  I had wanted to read Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat for long. It was only a few months back I finally got down to it. It is incontrovertibly one of the funniest books I have read. Most readers would have devoured it long-long back. I implore those who haven’t, to profit from my foolishness.

Origin of life on earth is baffling. Certain parameters in our physical world, like mass of elementary particles, their charge, the ratio between basic forces of nature like gravity and electromagnetic force, seem so accurately fine tuned that even a millionth change in their value would make life impossible. Such facts delude us in believing that the whole purpose of this inconceivably huge universe was to lead to Human evolution. Paul Davies, in his incredibly well-written book, Goldilocks Enigma-Why is the Universe Just Right forLife, explains this illusion and the concepts inherent in it splendidly. It is difficult not to fall in love with Davies’ elegant prose style.

I’m sure all readers have a list of books they consider paragon of a particular genre. For me, John le Carre’s Spy Who Came in from Cold is such a book in the Espionage category. I read the book in a trance. I read it again after many years to confirm if it really possessed the charm, I had found in it on my first reading. As I read my notes again now, I am a little ashamed of the profuse praise I showered on it. And regret my snobbish flare too with remarks like, ‘a thinking-man’s espionage story’. Nevertheless, I still stick to my opinion that it is a great espionage story. Le Carre published a novel few year back in which the story picks up where The Spy Who Came in from Cold ends. More on it later.

Discovery of the structure of DNA is clearly one of the tallest scientific achievements of modern science. It explained a mammoth quantity of facts in biology. It spawned the growth of many new streams of studies in Biology. This knowledge is now such a ubiquitous fact in biology that it is impossible to conceive of the world when humans did not have this knowhow. It is quite simply THE molecule of life. James Watson’s Double Helix-A Personal Account of the Discovery of DNA, is the story of the discovery of DNA, straight from the horse’s mouth. And a luscious, enchanting tale it is.

Many-many years back I was in Afghanistan for a little more than a year, as a team member of the medical-help group sent by GOI. We were stationed in the holy city of Mazar-E-Sharif, in northern region of country, bordering Uzbekistan. Fabled Oxus river, the Amu Dariya, flowed a little distance from the city. Country had suffered one of the most severe wars in its strife-riddled history of centuries. Devastation loomed large everywhere I visited; the villages, the provinces and the cities. But there was a passive optimism in almost every citizen. I became aware of it increasingly as I befriended many local people. It was a way of life with most and was reflected in their vigorous involvement with the immediate task at hand, the immense joy they derived from small leisure activities and the unperturbed acceptance of fate. A graffiti scrawled in Pesian, on the bedraggled wall of a road-side bistro captured this attitude quite aptly.

می گذرد

(Migorazad)

It will Pass