I read a delightful book, “Clock Towers of India,” written by Dr. Yatindra Pal (YP) Singh. We share our Alma Mater – GB Pant University. I graduated in Mechanical Engineering and YP in Civil Engineering. Two years junior to me there, YP was studious, energetic and immaculate, unlike the playful, chaotic and scruffy me. YP won the Chancellor’s medal for his all-round excellence and later joined the Indian Railway Service of Engineers. So, when I read his book with some beautiful photographs, including the clock tower of our own university, a cascade of memories was activated.

It started with the rhyme, YP quoted in the book – Ghantaghar ki char ghadi, Charon mein zanzir padi – there are four clocks in the clock tower, all four are chained. It was the theme song of the freedom movement in North India, from where YP and I come. As most of the clock towers were constructed by the British or the local feudal lords supporting them, they became the butt of scorn. But after independence, the clock towers quickly turned into icons. We sang the Ghantaghar ki char ghadi… as our pathshala rhyme. Meerut, where I was born and schooled, had a majestic clock tower built by the prodigals of Hasan Mahmudi Kamboh, who captured the city of Meerut for Mahmud of Ghazni (971-1030). It was called Kamboh Gate, one of the nine gates of old Meerut. 

When I was admitted to Dev Nagari Inter College in 1965, I would walk under the tall three-laned structure. We could hear the clock tower’s bells in the night, when sleeping on the terrace, which was the norm during summer. Then the name Kamboh Gate was changed to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Dwar, celebrating the fact that the great hero had visited Meerut in 1930 and addressed the public from here. The doughty manager of Menka Cinema, with his soldier-style moustache, had fought for the Azad Hind Fauz, we were told. He would stand in the lobby of the cinema with a cane, and I would give him a passing glance of deep admiration, carrying my heavy school bag on my back like a mountaineer. 

My father worked in Meerut Municipality, a furlong away from Ghantaghar. Once my father said that there would be a procession from the Municipality passing through the Ghantaghar and we decided to watch the spectacle. Three of my younger siblings, two brothers and a sister, along with our grandmother, climbed to the first level where there was a big watch shop. We spent about an hour there, but no procession came. It was my first chance to look down from a height and I was indeed captivated watching the traffic below. Later, when I looked down from the Eiffel Tower in 1985 and 2014, the Sears Tower in 1999, St. Louis Arch in 2000, Jin Mao Tower in 2003, and Burj Khalifa in 2015, every time, the Ghantaghar came alive reminding me of the indomitable spirit of my grandmother. 

The clock tower at the north end of the Palace of Westminster in London, famous as the “Big Ben,” was completed in 1859. It is perhaps the biggest and the best clock tower in the world. Big Ben’s clock was the largest and the most accurate four-faced striking and chiming clock in the world. In 2016, I spent good time there, looking at the details of its marvellous structure. It is 40 feet, about 12 meters, on each side and 320 feet height, just short of 100 meters. Hearing the 15-ton bell struck by a 450 pounds (about 200 kg.) hammer was surreal! 

YP writes in his book that the British commissioned clock towers at many places in India to show their authority to the commoners and to keep the morale of their troops high. But while a clock tower signifies power, the clock signifies a structured lifestyle. YP purchased his first wristwatch in 1981, after getting a job. I was lucky to have it from my father in 1971, when he was sending me off to Pantnagar. My father died at the young age of 49 in 1979 and I did not wear a wristwatch since then. A few years back, my friend, Jitu Patel, who lives in Nairobi, gifted me a 10,000-dollar Rolex watch, as he was meeting me on my birthday. But I am yet to wear it. 

Nowadays, everyone lives with a mobile and the time is so obvious. But, instead of making people more productive and organized in their lives, this awareness has cultivated a new pattern of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OBC) of checking time every moment. People fix alarms for TV shows, schedule gossip sessions and create cognitive garbage by megabytes every day. They can idle for hours together doing nothing and yet keep their senses and mind busy. I must share here what Charles Darwin, who gave the Theory of Evolution, famously said, “A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.” 

So, clock towers definitely played their own important role in creating awareness about time and helping people live life in a structured and purposeful way. As YP pointed out in the book, most of the clock towers in India are now dysfunctional, their clocks obsolete and unrepairable, and buildings depleted and encroached upon. A nation that does not respect its heritage, is often deprived of any glory in the future. Time moves like an arrow. It never returns. You can use it to hit a target, or shoot it into the dark. Eternity is indifferent to what are you doing with your life, like an envelope carrying a letter, not concerned with its content. 

It is time to value your time on this planet and use it properly. No one has lived forever and you would not be an exception. As time passes by you, you will find your body losing its strength, your mind getting dull and your spirit losing its buoyancy and ardor. No regret, no remorse, and no lamentation would be of any help later. Be aware of time, for it is your time. Rather than minding the hours and minutes, be aware your breath and your heartbeats. The inner clock must not run itself out before the outer one.

Of all the content on TV in last few years, a series, “Mr. Robot” on Amazon Prime Video, fascinated me the most. There is a character, “White Rose,” who is the leader of the Dark Army, a Chinese hacker group. She is a transgender woman masquerading as the male Zhi Zhang, the Chinese Minister of State Security. In one scene, she is shown surrounded by hundreds of expansive clocks of all kinds – from antique to the most modern – in her house. She says, “I mind the top one percent of the top one percent by hacking their time.” 

Mind your thoughts and emotions, and see how they are hacking you. Stay grounded in your body, stay connected to your past, your roots and your heritage and utilise their wisdom for creating a better future for yourself and the coming generations to live in. Every life is just an extension of what existed earlier and a genetic chronicle. I thoroughly enjoyed reading YP’s book and would certainly recommend it to everyone.

A Kaleidoscope is a fascinating little toy. I immensely enjoyed it and even made one in my woodcraft class, guided by my teacher “Tyagi Sir” in Dev Nagari Intermediate College, Meerut, in 1967. We took three mirror strips, tied them together as a triangle, put some broken colored pieces of glass bangles and packed them into a tube together. I used a bamboo piece for the tube. 

Wonderful symmetrical patterns are formed due to repeated reflection, presenting an ever-changing view when the tube is tilted. I strongly recommend that every child, before finishing school, must make one kaleidoscope and examine (scope) the formation of (edios) of beautiful forms (kalos). It would be a great primer to the Maya that this world is for the eternal observer of the soul. 

I have come to believe that we are all human kaleidoscopes, a walking collection of memories, like shattered glass with bits of crazy color churning inside our minds. Mundane little events keep happening as we grow through life. We experience them first as curious children; then, as adolescents bubbling with hormonal surges; then, as energetic, hardworking adults; then, as mature, wise, grown-up people; and finally, as a reflective older lot, a group to which I now belong. In September 2007, I accompanied Dr APJ Abdul Kalam on his first foreign trip after he relinquished the Presidency. He did not go to the United States as President and this visit was indeed long due. 

The “Fifty Years in Space” international conference at the California Institute of Technology provided the best fit. Dr Kalam included me in his speech writing team that included a punch line, “Planet Earth has twin human needs. One is the protection of the earth environment for living and the other is energy independence. The Earth is experiencing both stratosphere cooling (due to the ozone hole) and troposphere warming (due to increased greenhouse gases) …”

My friend, James Lupino, who was born to his Italian immigrant parents and grew up to be a brilliant electrical engineer, flew in from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to meet Dr Kalam.  We had a chance meeting with a famous singer-song writer, William “Smokey” Robinson, in the lobby of Hotel Indigo where Dr Kalam was staying. Robinson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. We had a tête-à-tête with the “star.” Robinson was friendly and open and when I asked why he was called Smokey, he said, “As a child, I loved cowboy movies. My uncle not only used to take me to these movies, he also gave me a cowboy name – Smokey Joe. If people asked me what my name was, I didn’t tell them my name was William, I told them my name was Smokey Joe.” And then he laughed with a tinge of tears in his eyes.  

Once free from the official engagements of Dr Kalam, I had a good time with James who drove me through Los Angeles – the iconic Hollywood sign on Mount Lee, Beverly Hills, and the famous shopping street Rodeo Drive nearby. We passed by the stunning billion-dollar Getty Center perched high atop Brentwood Hills. We of course did not enter and see Vincent van Gogh’s “Irises,” Claude Monet’s “Stack of Wheat,” and “The Abduction of Europa” by Rembrandt, famously displayed there. 

In the evening, we leisurely walked in Hollywood Boulevard, where more than 2600 five-pointed stars on the walkway celebrate famous stars. I had my first Corona beer in a Spanish restaurant there with a lemon slice stuck in the opening, giving the beer its wonderful taste. I don’t know if the Corona beer would still retain its immense popularity after the coronavirus pandemic. 

From LA, we flew to Minneapolis, transiting at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, Arizona. Situated in the vast Sonoran Desert that wraps around the northern end of the Gulf of California, Phoenix receives the most sunshine of any major city on Earth. I was fascinated to see the air traffic control tower, made of war-time underground fuel storage tanks welded together. You need audacity of imagination and engineering competence to accomplish such feats. In contrast, I found that in India, we are scared of going out of the box and even while innovating, the mind is gripped with fear. There are so many naysayers everywhere, waiting to see you fail. 

James lives in Minneapolis. He has been working with US Electronics there. I spent a few days in this beautiful city, spread on both banks of the Mississippi River. Minneapolis is home to five Fortune 500 companies, and together with the neighboring St Paul City, they make up the fifth-largest hub of major corporate headquarters in the US. We visited the United Health Group – a healthcare company with a revenue of more than $200 billion. I learned there that improved health outcomes can be achieved in spite of 40% lower treatment costs. I don’t see anyone even minding these matters in India. If you fall sick, it is your problem, and you are at the mercy of the healthcare business about what they do to you and how much you are asked to pay. 

Instead of bothering about your plans, your wishes, goals and ambitions, holding a telescope always, as if looking into future and writing the script for tomorrow, why not examine the kaleidoscope of your memories instead and you will find all that you need to know to become your best. You will feel a spring of energy inside, bathing you with enthusiasm. Dr Kalam, the NASA lecture, Smokey Robinson, the Mississippi River… are all unconnected and different, like broken glass pieces in a kaleidoscope. But they become one in my mind and I am able to communicate to you the beautiful picture they make together.

While writing a comment on my blog, “Hot Fudge, here comes the Judge,” 77-year-old veteran attorney, Bart Fisher, connected to his childhood in St. Louis and his passion for Baseball. My erstwhile colleague at Care Foundation, Arun Arramraj, recounted the American values as he had observed them during his study there in what could be the best description I had ever read. Dr Ramaiah, my student at Hyderabad University, now a professor at the University of Hail in Saudi Arabia, recollected that I had narrated the fudge story to his class in 2008. It is amazing to see how things get connected, creating positive energy! 

Habits of getting into arguments, always complaining, focusing on inadequacies, and lamenting about a half-empty glass are not only bad, but they are also dangerous. They keep you forever trapped in your miseries. So, in the New Year, learn to spend some quiet time with yourself, tilt the kaleidoscope of your memories and watch the beautiful patterns it makes with the strange combinations. You will find your signs, your cues, suggestions, guidance, help, whatever you are looking for, coming out from your inner being.

Here is the truth that I learnt a little late in my life. Not only is each one of us a speck of consciousness, but the whole universe is also consciousness itself. When you start feeling your consciousness, you will also start sensing the consciousness in your surroundings, in the form of vibes and subtle happenstances. You will indeed taste the bliss that God had embedded while creating life!

Cricket is a passion for Indians. I grew up listening to cricket commentary on the radio. During test matches, life would come to a lower gear as people unabashedly listened to commentary at work and students carried pocket transistor radios in their school bags. Shopkeepers put up display boards outside their shops writing with chalk the latest score. I had a friend called Pramod Dixit who would take tea, water and lunch as and when the players in test matches did. My father never went to a playground himself but would want to know the score whenever India was playing cricket with whichever country.

Earlier, the Indian team winning a test match used to be a rare event and even individual performances were celebrated. When young Nawab Pataudi scored a double century against England in Delhi in 1964, people in my neighborhood in Meerut distributed sweets. India had its first test victory overseas only in Dunedin, New Zealand, in February 1968. On August 24, 1971, when India had won cricket’s final frontier — beating England in England — I had just joined Engineering at GB Pant University, and that night in the hostel was like a carnival. 

I saw the birth of one-day cricket. It was a 60-overs’ game initially. Television had arrived, and we could see the matches live. In the first World Cup played in 1975, India lost its first match with a huge margin of 202 runs to England. When India was chasing 336, Sunil Gavaskar had crawled to 36 not out, out of 174 balls as if he was playing a 5-day test match. It was generously declared as lack of experience. 

The turning point came when nine years later, the Kapil Dev-led Indian team lifted the World Cup by beating the mighty West Indies at Lord’s Cricket Ground. I had come to Hyderabad by that time to work at DRDL. I remember clearly that on June 25, 1983, it was five minutes to midnight in India, when Mohinder Amarnath got Michael Holding out in the 52nd over and India won by 43 runs with 8 overs to spare.

In the 1987 World Cup, the overs were reduced from 60 to 50 and the matches were called One Day International (ODI) since then. On July 13, 2002, India successfully chased down 326 against England with two wickets and three balls to spare in one of its greatest ODI wins. When Sourav Ganguly took off his India jersey and waved it to the crowd from the balcony of Lord’s in celebration, he indeed declared the rise of New India – confident, capable and above all, courageous.
A further short format of 20 overs with a more athletic and explosive form of cricket came in 2005. It was called Twenty20, or T20. The Indian cricket team played its first T20 match under the captaincy of Virender Sehwag against South Africa at Johannesburg on December 1, 2006. India defeated the hosts by six wickets. India also won the first T20 World Cup in 2007 defeating Pakistan by 5 runs bowling them out with three balls to spare. India once again won the ODI World Cup against Sri Lanka in 2011 with Mahendra Singh Dhoni hitting the iconic six for the title chasing 275, the highest winning target in a World Cup final.

The color of the cricket ball was changed from the traditionally red to white, for better visibility, when one-day matches began to be played at night under floodlights. White balls have been found to behave differently in swing. They also deteriorate more quickly. As a balancing measure, the color was changed to pink as a satisfactory compromise on this issue.

Fast bowlers throw the ball at 160 km/h and skillfully make it deviate from a straight course. This is called a ‘swing’ when done in the air and ‘seam’ when off the ground. Spin bowlers impart lateral revolutions on the ball at the point of delivery, so that when it bounces from the ground it takes a different course. The color and the damage that the ball must endure make things unpredictable and the game, interesting. The pink ball is pushed to make day-night test matches work.

The first pink-ball test was played in November 2015 in Adelaide between Australia and New Zealand. It turned out to be a low-scoring thriller. Australia defeated New Zealand on Day 3 by three wickets. Since then, there have been ten more pink-ball tests. Adelaide now exclusively hosts day-night Tests, with the only exception being the 2018 match against India. The Indian team had declined to play with the pink ball due to being unfamiliar with it. 

India played its first pink-ball, day-night Test match against Bangladesh at Eden Gardens in November 2019. It won by an innings and 46 runs riding on the century of captain Virat Kohli and excellent fast bowling by Ishant Sharma and Umesh Yadav. And finally, India played from December 17 to 21, 2020 at Adelaide, its first pink-ball test against Australia only to score their lowest score in history. On the third day of the match, Indian batsmen suffered annihilation. Every player was edging the pink ball and almost all of it went into the hands of the fielders as catches. Australian bowlers — Cummins and Hazlewood — were over the Indians like a rash.

What does this story tell us? In June 2003, Kabir Edmund Helminski came to meet President APJ Abdul Kalam. I was there with Dr Kalam so he involved me in the meeting. Mr. Helminski presented to Dr Kalam his book on the thirteenth century Sufi poet, Jelaluddin Rumi, containing the English translation of Rumi’s Persian poems. Later, Dr Kalam gave me the book marking a few poems. One of those read: “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” 

The need to change was conspicuous when our cricketers played cricket with the pink ball. The new world needs new skills. Let us not die a death by our old habits. Let us change the ways of working, reset our aims, recalibrate our goals, and stop doing what is bound to fail and start something small, that is safe, certain and that keeps the kitchen going. The biggest falsity in the world today is the impression that newer and bigger means better – whether it is cars, houses, brands, etc. Don’t fall for this mirage. Small has always been beautiful and will remain beautiful. Learn to appreciate small pleasures and conveniences and relish simple tastes. 

India must learn to live with an unfriendly China, free its supply chains and produce all its needs, medicines especially, indigenously. Work-from-home will continue. Corporations have tasted the savings of closing their expansive offices and cutting down on travel expenses has become mandatory to maintain bottom lines. Digital payments, online sales and home delivery will flourish and people will mind their health better as availing medical facilities in hospitals has emerged not only risky for infections but also increasingly exploitative.

Year 2020 has left behind a mountain of debt. Governments, companies, businesses and families are all under massive amounts of debt. No one really knows who will be paying. The days of things like Minimum Support Price (MSP) for crops, permanent jobs, life-time pensions, and electoral freebies are indeed over. But hope is adamant. The gaiety of fantasy is die-hard. We can’t blame the ball. What if it has become pink? The game must go on.

Certain memories, not captured in photographs, not laced with emotions, were buried in the subconscious but they had never vanished. At the most unexpected moment, and at the subtlest cue, they sprung up in full liveliness as if they had occurred the last evening. 

I have been going to the United States since 1999 and have been to different places in connection with some or the other work. One such trip took me toSt. Louis with young Hamish Sahni, now Chairman, Klenzaids Contamination Controls Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai. They have been setting up the Integrated Biologicals Formulations Facility for Bharat Biotech, Hyderabad for which we met. 

The field of how to handle biological contamination was entering into India and Klenzaids was the leading company in India making HEPA (high-efficiency particulate arrestance) filters. So, I landed up in St. Louis for a technical conference I was attending with Hamish, without any idea about the place. The Internet had not yet come to our phones and one couldn’t Google to know whatever crossed one’s mind.

I was amazed to see the iconic Gateway Arch monument that symbolizes the city. It was a very tall arch that could be seen from everywhere. After completing our work, we visited the arch site, went up the 630 ft. (192 meter) arch in a cable car and watched a film in the underground theater about the importance of the monument. Constructed on the Western bank of the Mississippi River, the monument, which forms the state line between Illinois and Missouri, commemorates the westward expansion of the United States. 

Christopher Columbus started his sail from Spain to India for a share in the seemingly limitless riches of the “Golden Bird” and stumbled into Puerto Rico calling it the West Indies (India in the West). The saddest part of the story is that Columbus tried three more times—in 1493, 1498 and 1502—but could reach only up to Panama on his last trip and never put his foot on the North American continent. He returned to Spain disgraced and died in 1506. 

English exploration began almost a century later. They arrived in Virginia in 1585 and called it “The New World.” The first British settlers in the New World stayed close to the Atlantic, their lifeline to supplies needed from England and established their colonies going northward up to Canada. By the 1760s, the thirteen British colonies contained 2.5 million people along the Atlantic Coast east of the Appalachian Mountains. The Colonies defeated the British and established the United States of America on July 4, 1776. The war however continued till 1783. 

During the 1830s and ’40s, the flood of pioneers poured unceasingly westward which required the crossing of the mighty Mississippi River. The French were ruling this territory. In 1803, they sold it to the U.S. for fifteen million dollars, or approximately eighteen dollars per square mile. The United States nominally acquired more than 2 million square kilometers. The biggest joke is that the French were mere squatters there. The original inhabitants, called natives, had no role in this deal. Gateway Arch monument celebrates that crossing of the Mississippi River, as I learnt while watching the film. 

Another memory ofSt. Louis is the relaxed Sunday forenoon I spent at the Grand Hall Market. It was an old railway station converted into a marketplace. The trains now pass through the underground station. There I came across a fudge-maker’s shop. A huge African-American man was singing loudly in his baritone voice and making some sweet dish. I stood there as if hypnotized. I observed that the man was making a sugar candy by mixing sugar, butter and milk, boiling it to the soft-ball stage and then beating the mixture while it cooled so that it would acquire a smooth, creamy consistency. The aroma, his singing and beating sounds were creating the magic. 

A middle-aged lady, with pink skin and blue eyes, arrived. She was carrying two bags, which she kept on the ground and started clapping, singing and even gracefully dancing with the singing fudge-maker, making a perfect chorus. Many others also joined the singing. This went on for some fifteen minutes and concluded with the fudge ready. A few people bought little pieces but most of them were there to enjoy the making and singing. The lady standing by my side did not buy anything; she just lifted her bags and walked away as if nothing had happened. I learnt at that moment that this is the spirit of America. The lady was living in the present moment. There was no status consciousness. Neither was there any indulgence on the part of the fudge-maker – please buy… at least taste a bit…. 

So, what triggered this memory after 20 years? I think it was a juxtaposition of many things. The background was the recent visit of the Prime Minister to the coronavirus vaccine development facilities. Those images brought out the Klenzaids, who made such facilities. The shining steel interiors of vaccine-making plants brought out the memory of the shining Arch. But the singing fudge sprung up when I was microwave-warming the Mysore Pak before taking a bite. I think I overheated it, releasing the aroma of burnt sugar, and then started singing to hide my embarrassment…  

Queen Bitch, eat the rich 
I’m on the second course today. 
I’m not the first and I won’t be the worst 
She’s done most of LA.

We have to live little moments as they come before us. That is what that middle-aged lady demonstrated before me that day. It was a Sunday; her grown-up children must be sleeping at home and instead of breaking her head with them, she came out to this vintage shopping area and sang cheerfully like a little girl, fully immersed in the present moment. And once the moment passed, she detached herself and moved on.

Life is indeed beautiful if you have time to observe its beauty. There are so many little pleasures hidden behind the shouting TV and the clutter of social media. We may have come from a great civilization, but we are miles behind in civility and treating other people with loving kind respect. Advancing materially – becoming rich, buying toys, luxuries and conveniences – has never made any one happy, so why would you be an exception? Everyone needs fudge, it is how God helps us cope. Don’t judge everything and keep pronouncing verdicts. Cheer up!

I am blessed with the friendship of Dr Mpoki Ulisubisya. He came to India in 2005, as part of the follow-up of President Kalam’s visit to Tanzania in 2004. An Anesthesiologist, Dr Mpoki brought with him a team of doctors, nurses and paramedics. They spent two years in India learning further in their respective fields. They left behind very warm memories and a great impression. A decade later, I met Dr Mpoki and his colleagues in Dar es Salaam at the Jakaya Kikwete Cardiac Institute, a modern well-equipped hospital in Tanzania built by China and run by India-trained personnel. 

Dr Mpoki drove me to Bagamoyo, a trading port for ivory and the slave trade, with traders coming from the African interiors, from places as far as Zambia, Congo, Lake Tanganyika and Mount Usambara on their way to Zanzibar. Later, Dr Mpoki took over as the High Commissioner of Tanzania in Canada and moved to Ottawa. He posts his comments regularly in this blog and helps raise the narrative to a higher level with his soulful insights. Commenting upon my article about fame the last month, Dr Mpoki mentioned about Dr Edson Chikumba who spent his life impacting the lives of many people around him. 

When Dr. Chikumba left for his heavenly abode, Dr Mpoki said, “Dr Chikumba’s ancestral roots in the Kingdom of Monomotapa (modern day Zimbabwe), and the mourning transcended the political jurisdictions of the Republic.” The mention of the Kingdom of Monomotapa caused a hair-raising experience. It triggered my memory of meeting Padre Filipe Couto, Catholic priest and Former Chancellor of Universidade Eduardo Mondlane (UED) in Maputo, Mozambique. One evening, on June 13, 2016, I sat with him in a roadside café and listened from him the story of the people of Monomotapa. 

Born in January 1939, Padre Filipe Couto completed two PhDs, in Sociology and Anthropology. He told me that the Monomotapa empire covered vast territories of what are now modern-day Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique and South Africa. In fact, Monomotapa was a Portuguese transliteration of the African royal title “Mwenemutapa” derived from a combination of two words – “Mwene” meaning King or Lord, and “Mutapa” meaning land. The empire had a well-organized religion revolving around ritual consultation of spirits and royal ancestors and had a powerful priesthood. There were vast gold mines there, but they were not exploited, and people lived in harmony by doing agriculture and animal husbandry and flourished in their paradise. 

Padre Filipe Couto told me that the problems started in 1561, when a Portuguese Jesuit missionary managed to make his way into the Mwenemutapa’s court and converted him to Christianity. This did not go well with the Muslim merchants in the capital, and they persuaded the king to kill the Jesuit only a few days after the former’s baptism. This was all the excuse the Portuguese needed to penetrate the interior and take control of the gold mines and ivory routes. The Portuguese started giving guns to the different factions, which brought the downfall of the Mutapan state. Not stopping at the plunder, the Portuguese forced their way of life on the African people. They called the Africans uncivilized and self-assumed a “right” to rule over them. Following this template, other Europeans also rushed in and scrambled the continent. 

The same story was rolled out in India by the British. Spices were the primary way of preserving meat in Europe in those times. The British landed on the Indian subcontinent at the port of Surat in 1608 for trade. They quickly spread along the coastlines and reached the East coast, first in the Coromandel, the southeastern coast region of the Indian subcontinent, and later up to Bengal. 

The British constructed the St George Fort in Madras in 1639 and Fort William in Calcutta in 1699. They got involved in factional conflicts, wars of succession, and rivalries among the regional Indian powers and recruited a large number of mercenaries and gave them guns. Over the years, prosperous India was not only plundered by the British but they turned it into an economic wasteland to benefit their local industry and global trade.

Sitting that evening with Padre Filipe Couto, I realized the universality of brute power destroying peaceful and prosperous cultures and traditions. American anthropologist, Jared Mason Diamond (b. 1937) in 1997 published, “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies” in 1997. He boldly declared, based on sound research, that European civilizations were not created out of superior intelligence, but out of a combination of guns, germs, and steel that enabled their imperialism. As much as 95 per cent of the people in the Americas died by smallpox and measles brought by the Europeans to their land. In Australia and South Africa, the aboriginals were decimated by smallpox, measles, influenza and other infectious diseases.

The recent outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic disaster that it has already brought must not be seen as a one-off event. Three trends are being repeated here – (1) China has reached a critical mass of prosperity where it must now become an empire (2) The Chinese have already established their presence in the African continent through infrastructure projects and (3) China has taken control of international organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). It is not COVID-19, it is the guns, germs, and steel that have all been rolled into one and mounted in the template of imperialism.

Let us hear what three great people of the modern times had said. Abraham Lincoln used to quote an anonymous poet who called Truth, the “daughter of Time.” Galileo Galilei said, “All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.” Albert Einstein declared, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” The only thing left of any worth in the world is humanness. If that is lost, everything will be lost. 

अयं निजः परो वेति गणना लघु चेतसाम् | 

उदारचरितानां तु वसुधैव कुटुम्बकम् |

The great vision of “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” of ancient Indians does not match with The Ming dynasty model of Xi Jinping, the Chinese President for life, demanding that other nations become tribute states, kowtowing to Beijing. The world may not be paradise anymore, but humanity cannot be forsaken. India can’t allow the Chinese to once again turn it into an economic wasteland to benefit their local industry. Humanity is indeed facing an existential threat of dystopia by a predatory superpower on the prowl.

This blog coincides with Diwali, the Indian festival of lights. Diwali symbolizes the spiritual victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance. It is celebrated on the “darkest night” that ends the lunar month of Ashwin and starts the month of Kartik, coinciding with the second half of October or early November in the modern calendar. The festivities begin two days before, on Dhanteras, and extend two days after, concluding with Bhai Dooj.

Motivations for celebration vary. People of North India celebrate Diwali to mark the return of Lord Rama to Ayodhya after his fourteen-year exile. People in the South celebrate it as the victory of Lord Krishna over the demon, Narakasura. In Western India, Diwali is celebrated as the rescue of Goddess Lakshmi from the prison of King Bali by Lord Vishnu in his Vamana incarnation. Jains celebrate Diwali as it was on this day that Lord Mahavira attained Nirvana. Sikhs celebrate Diwali to commemorate the laying of the foundation stone for the Golden Temple in 1577. 

The celebration of light is indeed universal. People in different parts of the world celebrate their own festivals of light. The Chinese celebrate it on the fifteenth day of their new lunar year, which falls anywhere between late February and March. From August 2 to August 7 each year, in the Aomori city of Japan, people float gigantic boats with lights. Jews all over the world celebrate it as Hanukkah, for a period of eight nights and days anywhere between the end of November and December. 

In the Netherlands, it is St. Martin’s Day on November 11 each year. In France, it takes place on December 8 every year, to express gratitude toward Mary, the mother of Jesus. In Lewes, England, people have bonfires on November 4/5.  On the 12th day of the Thai Lunar calendar, usually in November, the Thai people float beautifully decorated baskets with lamps in water bodies. In the Keene Pumpkin Festival in New Hampshire, USA, people light jack-o’-lanterns each year before Halloween. 

Light is one of the most universal and fundamental symbols of the spiritual and the divine – तमसो मा ज्योतिर्गमय – Lead me from darkness to light – mentioned in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (1.3.28).  The appearance of God is linked to brightness, and light is seen as the source of goodness and the ultimate reality. In Paradiso, Italian for Paradise, poet Dante Alighieri ascends to a region beyond physical existence, which is the abode of God, and becomes enveloped in light. In the Bible, when the Lord created, He began with “Let there be light.”

When Prophet Moses went up to Mount Sinai, he got to see “a light much greater in brightness than the sun.” When he came down with the two tablets engraved with the ten commandments in his hand, the brightness of God’s appearance was reflected in Moses himself. Christ is called, “the radiance of the glory of God” (Hebrews 1). In the Sufi tradition, the soul illuminates the mind-space as kashf, the personal experience and direct vision of God. Any worship starts with the lighting of a lamp.

This Diwali has assumed more significance as the world is living under the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic and the economic hardships that it brought along. In the course of just few months, the virus spread out from Wuhan in China to across the whole world. Frightened with uncertainty, governments declared “lockdowns,” which had pervasive impacts on economic activity across the globe and millions of people lost their livelihoods.

But the “lockdown” also brought back clear skies over traffic-choked cities, improvements in local water quality, people working from home, and reductions in noise and air pollution. Glimpses of a transformed society with integrated families, reduced pollution and lowered environmental impacts were visible. 

However, the early signs of improvements in environmental quality have already succumbed to the rush to achieve the lost economic growth levels. Cities like New Delhi are once again choked with smog. Migrants are back in city slums more quickly than they had left, without any change in their living and working conditions. But thinking that the pandemic was a bad dream that is done and over with would be like brushing the real problems under the carpet. Unless the lessons are learnt, nature is not going to spare us. There is no promotion to the next class here without passing the exam. 

What are the three exams that we must take to advance into a higher level of  living? 

(1) The rebirth of medium and small-scale industries to feed local consumption, and a firm “no” to cheap imports from China and other countries; (2) No going back on new laws, making agriculture a profitable enterprise for the farmers, and investment in silos and supply chains to mitigate any distress sale and spoilage of agro produce; and (3) An Internet-driven education system ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education, and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all by bringing every single family online and giving them free connectivity. Adoption of technology to prevent the misuse of bandwidth is also important. 

As goes the famous line of American poet, Robert Frost – Two roads diverged in a wood – mankind is standing on an evolutionary crossroad in 2020. Rising to the occasion with grit and determination will usher in a new era of sustained living and social harmony; succumbing to fear and insecurity would throw us back into the past of conflict and chaos.  

If only we could learn that very little is needed to live, as we have lived through the lockdown, and that the rest is indulgence and wastage! Quality of work is more important than keeping busy. Spurious travel is best avoided and no more business trips for fun in disguise! The incessant availability of food, electricity, water, law and order, communication, medicines, television and the internet even during lockdown proved that we are not only a robust, but also a resilient social system, better than many Western countries, including the hyped United States. 

Darkness has no real existence; it is merely the absence of light, but shadow and light are forever coupled and they fall on the same landscape. In a year from now, COVID-19 would be fully understood.  It is the learning or ignoring the lessons of the pandemic that would decide whether Diwali 2021 would be brighter and I have no doubt that it definitely will be if shadows are handled well by leading lives differently.