A Warning Bell

Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the year 2007, for supporting the cause of the environment. His film “An Inconvenient Truth” has won an Academy award as well. I got to watch this movie a few months ago. This is a real eye-opener. If you get an opportunity to watch this, do not miss!

What is this ‘Inconvenient Truth’? It is something that most of us know, but not willing to acknowledge. Our tendency is to push the mess under the carpet, unseen until it gets so big, and can not be concealed anymore. Well, the unpleasant, inconvenient truth is that the global warming caused by human activity has harmed the earth’s environment in the last 4 decades, probably more than what had happened in the previous forty centuries. And worse, we are turning a blind eye to that even after knowing the consequences of global warming.

The harm done to the environment is nowhere more visible than in the melting ice sheets and the receding glaciers. Over the years, glaciers are receding, and ice sheets in the Arctic and the Antarctic are melting away. In the last 25 years almost 20-30% of the arctic ice sheet has melted. Between 1850 and 1980 the glaciers in Europe have lost about a third of their landmass. Parts of the Arctic Ocean and the Antarctic Ocean are actually warming up at a rate twice or thrice that of the other regions in the world. The ice cover in Greenland has about 10% of the world’s supply of fresh water, and if all that melts, the sea level will increase by about 20 feet. In The frozen continent of Antarctica has about 99% of the land covered in thick ice sheets. If this would melt, the sea level would increase by about 200 feet. Overall, the sea level has increased by about 6 inches in the 20th century. This may further increase by about a foot in the 21st century. Considering a large population of the mankind lives on or near the coastal regions, any impairment would be of great consequence.

Glaciers on all the 6 continents have been receding and melting away. The glaciers on the Kilimanjaro in equatorial Africa have receded to less than 60% of what was there in 1975. In Glacier National part in Montana, more than 40 of the 137 glaciers have disappeared in the 20th century. In Greenland, new islands are breaking away from the mainland due to melting ice. Several pacific and Indian ocean islanders are always living is fear of being overtaken by the sea.

I know many people who visited the town of Gangothri in Uttaranchal, expecting the headwaters of the river Ganga to be there and being surprised to find a free-flowing river instead. The headwaters are actually at Gomukh, several kilometers up the river at the terminus of the Gangothri glacier. The Gangothri glacier, source of river Ganga, is receding averaging to an alarming 83 feet every year. Gomukh is getting farther off from Gangothri every year, and it is 3 kilometers farther away from Gangothri than it was a century ago.

In general, the glaciers in the Himalayas are found to be drying up faster than those in the rest of the world. In case of Gangothri glacier, the rate of receding has been shown to be much higher in the last 3 decades. NASA pictures have shown that Gangothri glacier has receded about 850 meters in the last 25 years. If the same rate of depletion continues, it is feared that the glacier may totally disappear by the end of the 21st century.

If Gangothri glacier melts away, it will affect more than 1.5 billion people in India and Bangladesh directly. How does that affect others? The financial meltdown of 2008 has shown that in the current world economic scenario, no country is shielded from the events happening elsewhere. Billions of more people around the world will be affected by a slow catastrophic event of this nature. When the glaciers recede, the oceans will swell and cities and mangroves near the coast will face the threat of getting submerged.

So, should we care about climate change? Yes, we should! Every one of us can, and has to do something to slow the negative impact on the environment. In Kannada there is a saying “ಹನಿ ಹನಿಗೂಡಿದರೆ ಹಳ್ಳ” – “Water drops gather together to form a stream”. Even if individually small, collectively we can achieve large goals. Here are some things that we can do as individuals to reduce our impact on the environment.

Mother Earth has been so kind to us. Isn’t time for us to be kind to her?

-neelanjana

(Posting a modified version of an earlier post I made in 2008 – For the Blog Action Day -2009)

Seven Days In A Week

“There are seven days, there are seven days,

There are seven days in a week

Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday

Thursday Friday Saturday”

You might know this rhyme for a long time, but have you thought why there should be seven days in a week? Why not five? Why not ten?

Or for that matter why there should be a week after all?

If you didn’t know, let’s do some time travel to see the origin of the seven day week.

As a second language learner of English, I remember being surprised at the fact that three of the days of the week (Sunday, Monday and Saturday) had the same meanings as their counterparts in Kannada, my mother tongue. This similarity was very conspicuous given the fact that the names of the months of traditional Indian calendar were very different from their western counterparts. As you might know, Indian names for the days of the week are based on the 7 visible planets (Traditionally, the Sun too was considered a planet) Later on, I came to know that even the names like Tuesday and Wednesday (which do not show a direct relation with Mars and Mercury, were indeed coming from old Germanic words which are either equivalent to the planets or another God or deity with very similar features.

If you look at world languages, there are two distinct ways of naming the days of the week. The first is calling the days of the week as the first day, second day, all the way up to seventh day. Some languages have a ‘Day of rest’ after the sixth day. This system is used in languages such as Hebrew and Mandarin.

In the other scheme, the names of the days are always named on the planets. I will elaborate on this scheme because this one is most likely the fore-runner to the other system.

This naming scheme seems to have originated in or near Babylon around 3000 years ago, and spread to around the world in historic times. The names were obviously based on the planet names, but why should Monday follow Sunday or Saturday follow Friday?

Years and Years of looking at the night sky had made the ancient civilizations proficient in everything seen in the night sky. They had figured out that it took about 365 days between the return of the seasons, and Sun complete a revolution in the sky against the background of the stars in the same time. They call this unit as the ‘year’.

They also knew that there were 12 full moons in one year. In other words, there were 24 waxing and waning cycles of the moon in one year. When they had to define a unit of time shorter than a day,  they choose to divide a day into 24 parts. This is the unit that has come to be known as an hour. This is why we have 24 hours in a day.

These people from ancient civilizations knew that there were exactly seven objects in the sky which moved with the stars being fixed in the background. Each one took a different amount of time to move in the background of stars. Moon took about 27.5 days to return to the same position among the stars. Mercury took about 90 days to return to the same spot among the stars. Venus took about 225 days. Sun took exactly 1 year. Mars took little more than 2 years. Jupiter took about 12 years and finally Saturn took about 30 years.

Now let us write this in a table, in the decreasing order of the revolving time of the planets around the sky in the background of stars, as observed from Earth :

Saturn	1	8	15	22	5	12	19
Jupiter	2	9	16	23	6	13	20
Mars	3	10	17	24	7	14	21
Sun	4	11	18	1	8	15	22
Venus	5	12	19	2	9	16	23
Mercury	6	13	20	3	10	17	24
Moon	7	14	21	4	11	18	1

Earlier, we saw that a day was comprised of 24 hours. Who ever came up with this naming, allocated each hour of the day to a celestial object in this order. Assume on day 1, the first hour (hour when the sun rises is given to Saturn, Then the following hour is given to Jupiter and the third hour to Mars and so on. When you finish 24 hours and go to the next day, you may notice that this hour will be associated with Sun. – and that is the first hour of the next day. Continuing this process repeatedly you will see that the first hours of each day are governed by these planets in the following order – Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn.

This method adopted by Babylonians went to the west through Greeks and Romans. This was also carried to the Far East, most likely through India. All the major Indian languages follow this naming. Japanese, Korean and Old Vietnamese follow this scheme for some of the days of the week and for the rest the days, there are substitutions such as fire –day, water-day etc. But in Japanese, the planets themselves are named on the five principles (fire, water etc) thus indicating the source of naming to be the same. For some reason, this naming is lost in China, which follows a first-day second-day kind of naming.

Many of the customs and rituals followed by ancient civilizations had real scientific principles behind them. I wish we take sometime in understanding the traditions of earlier generations, and take the best part for our future. We should not forget a giant Sequoia tree becomes great by a combination of its ancient roots, and the shoots and blossoms of today.

-neelanjana

ps: This was a speech I gave in my Toastmasters Club

Sa Ri Ga Ma Pa Da Ni

Doe (Do), a deer, a female deer
Ray (Re), a drop of golden Sun
Me (Me), a name I call myself
Far (Fa), a long long way to run !

I am sure most of you recognize this song from the classic movie – “The Sound of Music”. The song tells about the seven musical notes used in western classical music – do re mi fa so la ti do.  Here, in this gentle introduction to Indian classical music (ICM) I am going to tell you about another set of 7 notes, sa ri ga ma pa da ni –the very same notes as they are known in India.

Indian musical traditions date back to several thousands of years. Around the 13^th -14^th century AD, it started splitting into two streams. Both these systems are in vogue today. The basics of the two systems are the same, but there are differences in style and presentation. The system prevalent in most of the northern India is called by the name Hindustani, or uttarAdi (northern music). This had an influence from Persian music during middle ages. The music in the south retained more of original elements of Indian music, is called Karnataka or dakshinAdi sangeeta (literally, southern music).

I will compare and contrast Indian music classical with western classical music to make this an easy learning experience. Just keep in mind that whenever I refer to western music or Indian music, they refer to the classical variety.

Let me first tell about the similarity. Both western and Indian music are based on an octave with 7 notes and 12 semi-tonal intervals. A note is called svara in Indian music. The 7 notes are shadja, rishabha, gandhara, madhyama, panchama dhaivata and nishada. Don’t worry about the complicated sounding names – These are always represented by the solfa syllables -sa ri ga ma pa da ni while singing.

There are some key differences that can make Indian music almost alien sounding to an ear trained to listen to western classical music. The first difference is that the notes in Indian music are seldom played or rendered plain at their nominal position. The notes generally descend from a higher note or glide from a lower note or oscillate around the nominal value. This is called gamaka , and this technique of singing a note is employef commonly in Indian music.

The second difference is the floating key used in Indian music. The compositions in western music are set in and are always performed at a certain key. There is no such hard and fast rule in Indian music. A performer uses a pitch in which he or his instrument sound best. This is normally set by the sound of a drone, called the shruti. In a performance, all the singers and the instruments set their pitch to the shruti set by the main performer.

Coming to the next difference, harmonic elements are almost absent in Indian music, while western classical music has abundant harmony. In western classical, you will find combination of notes that sound nice when played together form chords. You may also find different instruments, or vocals singing a different note blending very harmoniously. On the other hand, Indian music most of the time does not use of playing or singing different notes at the same time. Indian music a melodic system, where compositions are set in different melodies, called raagas. The term rAga actually means color, and indeed is a true representative of Indian music. There are hundreds of raagas which have individuality by the notes they use, the sequence of notes, and also the gamaka or the variations on the notes in the raaga, and the mood they create.

Last, but not the least is the importance of improvisation. In a western music scenario, most of the pieces you would get to listen in a performance are pre-composed. The performers may also have the notation in front of them when they sing or play. On the other hand, in an Indian music concert, there is heavy emphasis on improvisation and elaboration. There are compositions, but the artist would augment it with his own imagination and explore the contours of the raaga he is performing.

There is a saying: “Shrutih mAtA, layah pitA” – Being in tune(key), and keeping a good rhythm are like parents to have good music. There is a well defined rhythmic system in Indian music. It can be as simple as keeping the rhythm by hand or use a plethora of rhythmic instruments.

To conclude here are the key take-away points. Indian musical system is based on the same 7 notes and 12 semitones as the western music. However, absence of harmony, increased use of melody, the glides on the musical notes and the emphasis on improvisation make it distinct.

-neelanjana

p.s: This is a speech I gave at my Toastmasters Club

A Walk in the Neighborhood

I am sure most of us would like to take a walk around our home on pleasant summer day like today. When you go out, you might see the neighborhood kids biking on the side walk. You might even see some neighbors walking their pets. You might stop to exchange a few pleasantries with people whom you know. You will see blooming flowers, in the bright summer air.

But, just for a moment, imagine that when you take your walk there is nothing around. The only thing you see is a dim light afar. You walk towards it; you do not meet anyone on the way. You have walked more than 4 miles, to your surprise you find a he toddler crawling slowly on the ground. Then you look around; The light you were following all this time is much more closer now, and you can see a couple standing below the light pole. Could they be his parents? Do you think if such a neighborhood be interesting? Do you find it creepy? Are you willing to take a bet that such a neighborhood does not exist?

Don’t take that bet! Because that is exactly like the interstellar neighborhood we live, or rather our Sun lives in. The Sun is an average star – meaning when compared with the bulk of stars in the Milky Way it is neither very big, nor too small. It is not one of the hottest stars and not one of the coolest. It is not a very old star nor is it very young.

The solar neighborhood is typical of what you would find on the periphery of the galaxy. The stars are packed very loosely. If you take s sphere of radius of about 20 light years around the Sun, there are only about 100 stars!

The scene I described before is a solar analogy. The slowly crawling toddler 4 miles away from your home is Proxima Centauri. in the constellation of Centaurus. This is the nearest star to the Sun at a distance of about 4.2 light years. This star is much cooler than the Sun and has a diameter 1/7th that of the Sun. Proxima Centauri is not even visible to the naked eye, with a brightness 100 times dimmer than the faintest stars that we can see with the naked eye.

This dwarf is orbiting a star pair, called Alpha Centauri. Many of the bright stars have proper names, otherwise they are referenced by the constellation they belong to, normally with a Greek prefix. Generally, the brightest star in a constellation is termed Alpha. Alpha Centauri is the brightest star in the constellation Centaurus.

Many stars that we see are in fact multi-star systems. The stars that constitute Alpha Centauri, generally termed Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B and these are analogous to the couple I mentioned before. These two stars are both very much like the Sun. When seen by the naked eye, Alpha Centauri looks like a single bright star, and it is the third or fourth brightest star as seen from the Earth. Because of it’s location in the celestial southern hemisphere, it is not visible from large parts of northern hemisphere. The pair forming Alpha Centauri is located about 4.4 light years away from the Sun.

Who comes next in the list of our neighbors? It is Barnard’s Star – another dim star about 6 light years away. This is at least 15 times dimmer than the dimmest star we can see with bare eyes. The Star is named after an astronomer who first identified this star. We all know that stars are fixed points in the sky. But the truth is that all stars, including our Sun, are moving. We can not notice the change in the positions of the stars because of the large distances involved. In case of Barnard’s Star, it has perceptible movement and within your life time you will be able to see the change in its position in the sky with respect to other stars. Because of this fact, it is also called the Running Star or the Flying star. In fact, it is moving so fast that in another 10000 years, it would be replacing Proxima/Alpha Centauri system as the closest neighbor of the Sun.

The next closest star Wolf 359 is rather an uninteresting dim star named after a scientist. After this, at 8.3 light years is Lanande 21185. This is dwarf star, and an interesting one. Scientists have evidence to believe this star has 2 planets comparable to the size of the Jupiter in our solar system.

Little further, at around 8.6 light years we find Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, and is about 30 times larger than the Sun. This brightness attracted all ancient civilizations. It is called vyAdha in Samskrita, Al Shira in Arabic and Tian Lang in Chinese. Ancient Egyptians found out that the annual flooding of the Nile occurred when this star appeared in the sky just before sunrise, and so it became quite an important star to them. Sirius is also a binary system, but in this case, one of the stars, Sirius A is a huge star, while B is a dwarf star.The star is part of Canis Major constellation and called Alpha Canis Majoris and in common usage, the star is called the Dog Star.

Let’s skip a few more naked eye-invisible stars and come to the next naked eye star. This is Epsilon Eridani located at about 10 light years. It is similar to the size in Sun, but only quarter as bright. What is special about this star? Well. It turns out that this star too has a planetary system, with at least two planets!

We went around our solar neighborhood. We found all kinds of stars, big and small. Bright and dim. We visualized how space is very sparsely populated. We also saw that planetary systems are not unique to our Sun. So could life be? That is a question only future can answer.

I enjoyed waking in this stellar neighborhood. And hope you did too!

-neelanjana

**********

(p.s: This was a speech I gave in one of the meeting of our Toastmasters Club)

An Inconvenient Truth

Last year, Al Gore was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for the year 2007 was announced, for supporting the cause of the environment.   His film “An inconvenient Truth” has won an Academy award as well. Although I haven’t seen that film, I really appreciate Al Gore for the concern he is showing on the Earth’s environment.

What is this ‘Inconvenient Truth’? It is something that most of us know, but not willing to acknowledge. Our tendency is to push the mess under the carpet, unseen until it gets so big, and can not be concealed anymore. Well, the unpleasant, inconvenient truth is that the global warming caused by human activity has harmed the earth’s environment in the last 4 decades, probably more than what had happened in the previous forty centuries. And worse, we are turning a blind eye to that even after knowing the consequences of global warming.

The harm done to the environment is nowhere more visible than in the melting ice sheets and the receding glaciers. Over the years, glaciers are receding, and ice sheets in the Arctic and the Antarctic are melting away. In the last 25 years almost 20-30% of the arctic ice sheet has melted. Between 1850 and 1980 the glaciers in Europe have lost about a third of their landmass. Parts of the Arctic Ocean and the Antarctic Ocean are actually warming up at a rate twice or thrice that of the other regions in the world. The ice cover in Greenland has about 10% of the world’s supply of fresh water, and if all that melts, the sea level will increase by about 20 feet. In The frozen continent of Antarctica has about 99% of the land covered in thick ice sheets. If this would melt, the sea level would increase by about 200 feet. Overall, the sea level has increased by about 6 inches in the 20th century. This may further increase by about a foot in the 21st century. Considering a large population of the mankind lives on or near the coastal regions, any impairment would be of great consequence.

Glaciers on all the 6 continents have been receding and melting away. The glaciers on the Kilimanjaro in equatorial Africa have receded to less than 60% of what was there in 1975. In Glacier National part in Montana, more than 40 of the 137 glaciers have disappeared in the 20th century. In Greenland, new islands are breaking away from the mainland due to melting ice. Several pacific and Indian ocean islanders are always living is fear of being overtaken by the sea.

Glaciers in the Himalayas are drying up faster than those in the rest of the world. The Gangothri glacier, source of river Ganga, is receding so fast that it has lost about 3 kilometers in the last century. This comes to an alarming 83 feet every year. In case of Gangothri glacier, the rate of receding has been shown to be much higher in the last 3 decades. NASA pictures have shown that Gangothri glacier has receded about 850 meters in the last 25 years. If the same rate of depletion continues, it is feared that the glacier may totally disappear by the end of the 21stcentury.

If Gangothri glacier melts away, it will affect more than 1.5 billion people in India and Bangladesh directly. In the current world economic scenario, no country is shielded from the events happening elsewhere. Billions of more people around the world will be affected by a slow catastrophic event of this nature. When the glaciers recede, the oceans will swell and cities and mangroves near the coast will face the threat of getting submerged. Just remember what happened to New Orleans when hurricane Katrina hit. The fate could befall to any coastal, low lying city when the ocean level rises.

So, should we care about climate change? Yes, we should! Every one of us can, and has to do something to slow the negative impact on the environment. But how do we do that?

We can do several small things for the betterment of our environment. Every bit counts. Save energy wherever you can. When possible, take public transport, or walk, or bike instead of driving. When we drive, we can combine and reduce the number of trips. We could use renewable energy resources such as solar and wind power. We can also reduce garbage**, recycle, and compost  bio-degradable trash.

We can also plant more trees. More trees planted means more carbon dioxide taken out from the atmosphere, and less trapping of heat in the atmosphere. What is stopping us from doing these good things?

Let’s get rid of the resigning mentality that the actions one person change the earth. True, one person can not change the world. But it takes lots of drops to form an ocean. We are all but drops. But if there are no drops, where would be the ocean?

Mother Earth has been so kind to us. Isn’t time for us to be kind to her?

-neelanjana

**p.s : As per today’s news KLIV, the city of San Jose is proposing a ban on plastic bags. Way to go!

A Bowl Full of Oil

Today is the next day after New Year Day. When I was young, the day after Yugadi, the Indian new year day was celebrated as “Varsha Todaku” – Difficult to translate – but something like :Hurdle day for the new year  :-) If you did anything good on this day, it is believed that you would do that through the whole year. No doubt that I was expected to do things that were considered good by my parents.    Extending that principle, today is the “varsha toDaku” day for the Gregorian calendar , and I want to do something good. Such as telling a nice old story.  

India has been the home to one of the ancient civilizations of the world. Some of the thinkers from the early period, four thousand years ago, seem to have had thoughts very advanced for their times.  The Rig Veda says: “The truth is one – the wise call it by many names“. Another Samskrita couplet  says : “Just like the water from the rains ultimately reaches the ocean – your prayers will reach the almighty, whatever you call him.”Starting with these roots, India supported everything from Atheism to Monotheism to a multitude of Gods and Goddesses.

 

Ancient Indians saw Gods and Goddesses in all forms of nature. The Sun, the Moon, planets, the air, rivers, the ocean, and even animals were seen as personification of the almighty.   With so many gods, can mythological stories fall behind? This story is from Indian mythology, but could be true irrespective of where we come from!

Vishnu, also known by names such as Hari, and Narayana, and thousand other names, is the God responsible for  maintaining the universe. Narada,  the celebrated celestial singer, is a great devotee of Vishnu and chants Vishnu’s names all the time.

One day Narada came to Vaikuntha, the heavenly abode of Vishnu, located in the ocean of milk, and asked what he always wanted to ask – “Oh Hari, pray tell me who your greatest devotee is.” Narada was indeed expecting his lord Vishnu to pat his back and tell  that it was indeed Narada, who was the greatest of them all. But to Narada’s utter surprise, Vishnu uttered an unfamiliar name. Narada, shocked and furious, asked who this person was. Vishnu, almost in a Google Earth way, zoomed on  a farm down below on the earth and showed him a farmer working there.

Narada felt  his stomach burning with jealousy. He wanted to check how could this farmer be better devotee than himself? Narada, with his special powers, flew down to earth, followed the farmer unseen like a shadow for 7 days and seven nights and returned back to Vaikuntha.

When he returned, he was really mad at his Lord Hari. He told Vishnu “ Oh Hari, do you think I am a fool to believe that this farmer is your greatest devotee? I followed him like a shadow for a week. In total, he chanted your name seven times! And, you call him your greatest devotee?  

Vishnu said – Let me give you an important assignement. After you finish that, lets discuss about him. Vishnu, then he took a golden  bowl, and filled it with oil. and told Narada. – “Oh my child, now I will place this bowl filled with oil on your head. Go around my palace 7 times, but make sure not a drop spills.” As Narada was about to leave, Vishnu added “ And, by the way,  please do not touch the bowl, please”

It was indeed a difficult task. Narada somehow managed to tiptoe around the palce 7 times and returned and told Vishnu. “Oh, Hari! See this. I have come back without spilling a drop of oil, and without touching the bowl even once”. Vishnu said – “Wonderful, Narada. I was confident you would do this task amazingly. Pray tell me how many times did you think of me when you went around my palace”? Narada says – “Oh Narayana, do not be silly and try to make fun of me! It was such a balancing act, I did not think of anything else apart from the bowl filled with oil”

Vishnu said – “Narada, now think of that poor farmer. His wife is ill, and he has young kids to take care of. His parents are old. As the village chielf,  he has to help other farmers in the village matters. Life is a tight rope walk to him; Everything he does, he does with devotion. He is a devoted father, a devoted husband, a devoted farmer, a devoted son. He takes my name once before going to sleep, and only asks for strength to carry on with his duties. Now tell me – Who is better? You or He?”

Having understood what the Lord of three worlds had in mind, Narada could only remain silent.

I think our lives are no different than Narada’s with a bowl filled with oil on top of the head – always trying to balance the load of responsibilities on our head!

 

If only we carry out all our responsibilites with true devotion, do we ever need to pray to any God?

 

-neelanjana