Flesh eating crows and other songs

Posted on March 20, 2021March 20, 2021 by bach

Nope, this title is not clickbait. I indeed have this weird topic to cover, and you may find it intriguing as well, just like I did. This is mainly to do with Bollywood lyrics related to the title – the crows eating human flesh! Be aware that I am not trying to connect Bollywood to scavenging birds, but I would understand if you wish to refer to them as so.

Okay, let’s start. You would have heard this song titled “nadaan parinde ghar aaja” by A R Rehman, which composed for the movie – Rockstar. If you did, have you happen to focus on the lyric behind it? I did not try to understand until recently. In fact, I was fully concentrating on what this overrated Nepokid Ranbir was trying to bray on the screen.

If you notice, there is a line that reads:

Kaaga re kaaga re mori itni araj tose Chun chun khaaiyo maans. Arajiya re khaaiyo na tu naina more Khaaiyon na tu naina mohe Piya ke milan ki aas

I could not believe my ears when I heard this!. For those who do not read Hindi thoroughly, let me translate it for you. It appeals to stray crows asking them to go ahead and eat his flesh by picking as per preference. That, except not to feast on eyes, which apparently, are required for him to hold a union with his love interest. I am not kidding. This is true.

I had no clue why so much gore in these lyrics. To be absolutely sure about what I heard, I asked Alexa to play it a couple of times more. Amazon’s AI engine picked up my request and queued up a few more songs with the same lyrics on my radio. The next was Sonu Nigam and All Yagnik singing the same in more contemporary dialect Hindi.

कागा सब तन खाइयो चुन चुन खाइयो मांस

दो नैना मत खाइयो मोहे पिया मिला की आस

Then there was another by Kailash Kher, then one by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and I know this now by heart!

Initially, I was so confused about why all these good people singing the recycled verse, appealing to scavenging birds to eat all the flesh but eyes? Is this some kind of sacrificial ritual practiced by a tribe? Or does it have any historical significance?

After a bit of research, I found this blog post that tells me that it was originally written in Punjabi about a millennium ago. It was written by a Sufi mystic in Northwestern India, which is present-day Pakistan. He was Baba Sheikh Farid (1173-1266 ). You can read more details here.

This is what he wrote :

Kaaga karang Dhadoliya saglaa Khaaiyo Mass Aey Do Nainaan Mat Chhuchho pir dekhan ki aas

( O crow! come and peck all this flesh over this skeletal frame of mine, Leave these two eyes untouched for they are in wait of that Grand beloved of mine )

I am not gonna judge the baba or his followers on why this was made famous over centuries because I don’t know how love worked during then. May be birds involved, and maybe not. But our current generations of Bollywood should have known better. This is not the song for the present century, and we should stop using it.

Let me know your thoughts.

Women’s Day and Aigiri Nandini

Posted on March 13, 2021March 13, 2021 by bach

Happy Women’s Day, everyone!

I know I am delayed by a couple of days to publish this content. Sorry about that. But hey, why would you mind if I post it on a different day. The causes of women’s equality are open items even today as well, right? Additionally, I have little more than a few cliched social media status to share. It’s not a “forward as received” kind of content. 🙂

One. Can we agree on Women’s journey towards equality has been painstakingly slow? It is like watching paint dry. Agreed that we are currently living in a more gender-equal society than at any point in the recorded history of human civilization. However, it’s sad to see we have outsourced the progress of equality to the wrong set of torchbearers. We should’ve never trusted the Left to achieve anything good in this regard. In fact, off late, we’ve seen regression on what was accomplished over the last few decades.!

Let me give one example. Recently, there were some decisions taken by the elected government entities which can potentially kill women sports. I am not kidding. This is true. There is no point in guessing who lobbied it. Potentially, the women may not be able to even qualify to forget winning in their own “women’s sports”. If this momentum continues, this might impact the Olympics as well. Please read through Joe Biden’s First Day Began the End of Girls’ Sports

Second. There is a regression in the way storied are being narrated. The moment an imagined lie is introduced in the story, the credibility goes for a toss. I have written about it in one of my previous posts on a movie review – Gunjan Saxena. Here, a director built an entire movie around a woman officer’s plight in the armed forces, where 100% of the misogynistic treatments was pure work of fiction. The lady officer eventually took the legal route, but the damage was already done. Let’s achieve equality, but not at the cost of truth.

I will leave you with a video. Please consider it a greeting card for women’s day. Its a song called Aigiri Nandini written in Sanskrit by Adi Shankaracharya. If that information were accurate, in all its likelihood, this lyric is 1400 year old!!! The song is a set of praises to the Goddess, the mother of the Trinity of Gods – Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. She takes various forms to visit earth whenever there is the regression of collective values of earthlings. The song sings about this and the qualities attributed to her in a very clever use of language.

Evidently, the same song can be used to appreciate women in more of a philosophical sense. That is why its a great greeting card for women’s day.

Another thought. This song is probably the first rap song, with its full version, has more than 800 words, which are to be sung within a few mins.

Again. Happy Women’s Day, everyone!

The 5 AM Club & Alibaba – reviews

Posted on March 6, 2021March 6, 2021 by bach

This is a rapid review of a book named the 5 AM Club that I recently abandoned after tolerating for about three-fourths of its length. Now, I have no intention of finishing it.

I was never a fan of Robin Sharma to start with. I disliked his most famous one, “The monk who sold his Ferrari”. For the same reason, I was skeptical about this one as well. I blame my purchase on some of my overenthusiastic friends for having recommended it to me. Definitely not for me.

Those who are planning to buy it, please be informed:

It’s written as fiction, a rather boring one. The author is a lousy fiction writer.
The fiction is a multilogue between a few people from various walks of life. What irritated me the most is that these people regularly and continuously spitting out motivational quotes as if it’s some sort of rap battle. I did not buy this book for infinite list quotes.
I yawned through a few chapters, then FOMO kicked in. Did the book cover the 5 AM topic? Is it yet to be discussed? or are they gonna discuss world affairs first? Now that I have suspended the book, this will remain a mystery to me.
A few like-minded people suggested that I should finish the book with few tricks. One advised that I skip a few specific chapters and jump into particular ones directly. Another told me that I should read only the italicized paragraphs and only visit the pages with images and their description. But I can’t do any of those through audible. 😦

The 5 AM Club: Own Your Morning, Elevate Your Life

I do not recommend it. Please take the good reviews on the internet with a pinch of salt. In my opinion, it’s a dull, badly fictionalized book. That’s it.

Another book I just finished is Alibaba – the house that Jack Ma built. It’s a biography. The book narrates chronicles and adventures on how he reached the place where he is. What makes it more interesting is that the book runs Jack’s rise to wealth in parallel with the evolution of Chinese free-market economics and regression in social communism. A good read. Go for it if this is the kind of book interests you.

One of the exciting wisdoms he provides is about the approach of catching a rabbit. Suppose, if there are nine rabbits on the ground, and you wish to capture one -Just focus on one. These rabbits obviously will run, skip, change course and even might hide in a hole. You should try things differently and change the strategy and tactic but never change the rabbit you earmarked. Good stuff. On a lighter note, I would never want to catch a rabbit. They belong in meadows and leave them there. Don’t bring rabies home.

The lobster debate, Social Hierarchy and Jordan B Peterson

Posted on February 28, 2021March 1, 2021 by bach

While reading the latest book I picked up, I came across this fascinating and fantastic trivia about lobsters’ behaviors. I assure you that you too will be surprised to learn about it. It is a very cool analogy and the correlation between the Human kingdom and Animal ones. This can be utilized to reason out a few characteristics such as male dominance, the effect of antidepressants and the social hierarchy, including even patriarchy. It goes like this:

Like any animal kingdom species, lobsters get into disputes and fights to register male dominance. As usual, the battle is to determine who is the best suitable mate to carry the gene forward. As decided by binary results, the lobster that won the brawl will flex and get bigger physically, advertising his victory. The looser will shrink physically.
Suppose you inject antidepressant, like serotonin, to the lost lobster. It stretches and gets bigger and ready to fight again. By the way, the same hormone work works on the human as well,
An interesting point to note is that these neurochemical behaviors exist in the animal kingdom for 2.5 million years. i.e., Even before trees became into existence.
A defeated human, such as with PTSD, will have the hippocampus shrink and the amygdala grow. A hippocampus can grow back with the help of anti-depressants. However, amygdala never grows back. Similarly, a defeated lobster will have its brain dissolved, and a new one grows back but not of the same one before.
Basically, the argument is that the animal kingdom, including humans, organizes itself in the inevitably aligned social hierarchy, which is evolutionary and driven by neurologist chemical reactions. Not due to a political system such as capitalism. In other words, the human hierarchical organization in the political system has the evolutionary design to blame, not the other way around.

Apparently, this conclusion is based on a study on lobster, collective behaviors, social hierarchy etc. And the books where I picked up is “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos ” by Jordan B. Peterson. I will not be able to validate the theory as I am not qualified enough to do this. But he is a well-published author, Professor, clinical psychologist and public intellectual. I am gonna have to go with him this time.

Most rules of these books are controversial now, often unnecessarily. Jordan and his book are receiving end of American university students’ anger and social figures leaning left. Most noise comes from those who have not read it, instead of having their knowledge based on 140 characters of Twitter. Understandably the book is not an easy read. The technical terms, psychological reasoning etc., make it a laborious read. Unless you made up your mind to complete it, it is not gonna finish itself.

I recommend this to you if you are still interested, take it as a fresh perspective on the latest sets of social debates.

Yuval Noah Harari – Trilogy

Posted on February 21, 2021March 1, 2021 by bach

Okay, it’s done. I’ve read all three books of Yuval Noah Harari, a self imposed challenge BTW I highly recommend that you read them, these books are gems of the books..

Unfortunately, my views and ratings seem to be in line with many critics on the Internet, have nothing more to add, it will be redundant. Also, I am quite late in the game, and hence mine is probably the millionth post on this topic.

Anyways, I have listed them in the order of my likings :

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Summary :

Highly recommended, you are missing out if you have not read them yet.
You do not need to be an avid reader to pick those yet has profound Thought-provoking concepts. If you want your kid or loved ones to pick up the reading habit, then these are the right ones.
Slightly leftist, but generally liberal.
Straightforward read, and definitely not not laborious reading such as works of Christopher Hitchens

If you want to turn a few pages before you decide to buy them, here you go :