Thought of Food I. Seven Cereal Chikki

The drive from Bombay to Poona on NH4 is very good after they made it into a toll road --- especially in the months of June to October. The chief advantage of NH4 in my case is that you can drive through Lonavala and visit the Chikki and chocolate fudge shops. Being old timers, Lalitha and I stop for chocolate fudge and a home-made ice-cream cup at Cooper’s which is now three generations old. The Cooper face still proves to be sufficient recompense for the diversion. They still give you huge dollops of their fudges for tasting (always choose the walnut one), you try all of them and end up buying more than twice the amount you thought you would.

The chikkis of Lonavala are famous although one has to be a connoisseur to pick the good chikki shop. The more famous one has been started by Maganlals four generations ago. The chikkis are usually made from peanuts or ground nuts --- that’s the only chikki one should have --- but with the quick stock-market-type money that used to be available to everybody (except people like us, I guess) the chikkis are now made from all kinds of expensive nuts including almonds and pistas or cashewnuts. I cannot immediately pick up an equivalent food item in the western countries except perhaps nougats. The one nougat that immediately comes to my mind is the Hazel-nut torrone or nougats made with honey and Hazel nut (with almonds; see internet for the Torrone di Benevento) and bound by well-whipped white of egg and tons of expertise.

The first chikki Maganlal sold at the railway line at lonavala which was being laid sometime in middle of the nineteenth century. The important and older chikki shops remain close to the railway line in Lonavala even now. The chikkis are flatter versions of the well known ground-nut or peanut balls which are called kadalai urundai in Tamil, or gurdana in marathi condensed from gur and sheng dana to some. These ground-nut balls were made with molasses and are considered to be a very healthy and very affordable food having the essential amino acids (if one wants a technical reason). The flattened chikkis (evolved probably from some British whim or for convenience in packing large quantities in smaller volumes (for the same reason that the Japanese would later make cubic watermelons). A more exotic variety in western countries is the hazel-nut or almond torrone made with honey and white of an egg as binder.

What I will describe in this blog is a chikki made from simple varieties of cereals which have been around for thousands of years, and should be around for ever (despite this recipe, one could add). You may say that the motivation for this recipe came from wanting to sound like the Western seven grain bread since all good things Indian require to be derived from good things Western (just look at the TV channels and their attitudes to the very sensible utterances of the health minister Mr. Ramdoss).

The seven gain bread most times contains besides wheat, malted barley, toasted seeds, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, sesame seeds and poppy seeds. In this recipe for seven grain chikki I use ragi (African millet), jawas (flax seeds), jowar (millet), bajra (sorghum), rice (rice, fully organic from the Godavari), ragira (amaranth) and wheat (fully organic from Navdanya). The cereals are puffed on a thin kadai (picture 8). The kadai is first heated on a high flame for about a minute or two (depends on the kadai) and various grains added individually with continuous stirring until the popping sounds stop. This takes about a minute or two in most cases and depends on the cereal and the amount added. See pictures 1-7 for the kind of puffed cereals one may easily obtain without any special treatment. Not more than a table spoon at a time is recommended for the puffing step.. Flax seeds (picture 2) take the shortest time while jowar (picture 3) does not puff that well for the given patience levels. Wheat puffs mildly (picture 4; it is not like Kellog’s puffed wheat for example, but tastes much better) while it is tons of fun puffing rajgira (picture 1); bajra (picture 7) takes the longest while rice (picture 6) requires some soaking in water and some preplanning (not my forte).

The next step is to choose an appropriate amount of molasses (the darker organic variety is compulsory if you want the feel good factor) which you take in a thick kadai (picture 9). The amount of molasses taken in Fig 9 is sufficient if one takes one- to one-and-a-half table spoons each of the cereals). The molasses are heated with continuous stirring till caramelization (if that is the word) is initiated (Fig 10). A tea-spoon of water may be added for the inexperienced. Note that adding sugar or glucose is strictly taboo if you like the feel good factor unless your feel good factor is inclined towards what is seen in advertisements.

The molass is ready for use if it looks like Fig 10 as a rough guide; if you are doing it for the first time it is usually safer to wait just a little longer than when you think it is ready; alternatively you may ask your grandmother (especially if she is of the hep traditional type) who will tell you to see the way the syrup drips after it is taken out with a spoon--- the last drop must solidify on the spoon.

Once the molass is ready, the puffed cereals are poured in quickly stirred to a consistent paste and poured onto a oiled plate which is mildly pre-heated. It usually spreads slowly and uniformly with little coaxing by patting with the ladle. It is allowed to cool a bit and desired markings are made with a knife (picure 11). In this case, the molass was considered ready a bit too early. The pieces (chikkis) were taken out (with a broad flat knife) or rolled into balls (urundai) before fully solidifying (see Fig 12).

I used our dog (there was nobody else at that time) to test the tatse. So I gave him (Fig 13) different biscuits along with the chikkis. Like a proper thoroughbred fox terrier he saved the best (the chikkis) for the last. He seemed to eat them (Fig 14) with great relish.

I promised to keep the blog short at least once. Because of this I cannot go on any longer. I have, however, got to adhave a moral in the tale. My interest in this really stemmed from my search for finding a cheap substitute for oats for my breakfast, not only because it is expensive in this present stage of retirement but also because I refuse to believe that what had been reserved for horses should now be promoted as proper food for the upper strata. I may not believe in the famous definition in Samuel Johnson’s dictionary that oats is something that is eaten by people in Scotland and fit only for horses in England, simply because the retort of the Scots seemed to be prefect: “That’s why England has such fine horses and Scotland has such good men!”. But I certainly believe in the strength of the Maratha manus brought up on the traditional food of bajra, jowar, sprouted lentils. They are lean and str ong. It seems that after the rest of the Indian army have failed to make a break-through in their wars with Pakistan they usually call for the Maratha Light Infantry to bring things to a quick conclusion. The Marathi thugs or pindaris are also very strong ask any one who has been at the receiving end of a Shiv Sena slap would know.

Before I close this blog there are two common sense points I would like to make:-

The first of these is that the cereal grains are of different size and shapes so that the particles do not pack well in the jaggery or molass syrup. The chikkis could crumble easily if there is not optimum (conditions could be obtained from fluid dynamics of granular material if one wants for whatever reason) amount of stirring.

The second point is that cane-sugar molasses may not be as good for the health as sorghum molasses. The Americans knew about sorghum molasses from the early Africans who settled in their country and the Indians probably did use sorghum molasses until, say, the creative destruction (see my blog on Shiva’s Dance) of sugar-cane cultivation came in.

Obama! Obama! Obama Mama Mia!

There is a song from my high school days (late fifties) from the film Parvarish with Raj Kapoor and Mehmood and sung by Mohammed Rafi and Manna Dey. Freely translated, the song goes (mama being mother’s brother or any male guest) something like this:

“O mama! O mama! O mama-mama-mama!
Yahoo! Yahoo! Yahoo-yahoo-yahoo
The household is in a spin
Because of us and our din
Don’t get lost in the racket within.”

Now we yahoo for Obama’s win! As they say: Maan! He is Kewl! But what about the spin and the din and the racket within?

The Obamania confronting us every evening at prime time is becoming a little difficult to bear, what with the Saas-Bahu serial being withdrawn, and the ever-controversial Ganguly retiring from the cricket team.

It is good to see Bush off. What are we getting in turn? Does anybody know?

Obama has promised CHANGE. What CHANGE for what malaise?

As we all know subconsciously, the world is too complex for any single world leader to run it wisely and independently. Decisions are made for world leaders by smaller and smaller groups which are more and more dependent on computer projections from necessarily incomplete/untested computer programs. Scholarship, in any case, is a hindrance in making quick decisions regarding corporate profits as all governments must now do in this age of globalization.

Considerable faith has been put on Obama’s ability to deliver because of his colour and not because of his spoken record. He is in danger of being regarded as a Methodist hymn-singing Uncle Tom; as well-behaved (WASP-ish) African-Americans, such as Colin Powell or Condolezza Rice has been.

Times may have changed since the time (1852) when Uncle Tom’s Cabin was written. The attitude of the colour-independent masters towards colour-independent salaried slaves in various ways from workshops to HR to IT to research may some times still be described as in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (chapter 19):
… I may steal all he has, and keep it, and give him only such and so much as suits my fancy. Whatever is too hard, too dirty, too disagreeable, for me, I may set Quashy to do it. Because I don’t like work, Quashy shall work. Because the sun burns me, Quashy stall stay in the sun. Quashy shall lie down in every puddle, that I may walk over dry shod …all the days of his mortal life, and have such chance of getting to heaven, at last, as I find convenient. This, I take to be what slavery is.

Independent of our colour and social status many of us have the plight of slaves (Quashy). When one is governing to consolidate monetary profits the justification of slavery is dressed in various languages of show business (Let’s Party!). The mission of Obama may just be the delivery of slaves of all colours. He may also as well say as St. Clare did in Uncle Tom’s Cabin:
… what can a man of honorable and humane feelings do, but shut his eyes all he can, and harden his heart? … … I can’t turn knight errant and undertake to redress every individual case I see.

How did Obama win? There could be two views.

The first is that the Republicans lost deliberately. In real terms the victory of Obama is more a reflection of the disenchantment with Bush than an approval of Obama’s persona.

It is difficult, however, to imagine that Bush’s Republican Party, with its army of advisers, could have willingly brought itself to such a sorry state, that a Democratic candidate could have won with so little record of public service. The Republican Party leaders backed out of the nomination race early. There was no visible support from their party to the non-Washington Candidates!

On the other hand, Bush could claim to have achieved most of his stated American objectives. He has consolidated hold on oil in Iraq; Iran is afraid to posture; he has subsumed India’s non-alignment; he has silenced the entire Arab world’s voice on Israel.

Giving the “devil his due” Bush and his cronies may even have engineered the financial crisis to mop up profits on the stock market, which has been allowed to be driven to crazy heights. Who cares about winning or losing an election when you can manage a 700 billion dollar bailout. They could have known (say, in 2006) that a financial crisis was looming. Just hindsight the way our Tatas, and Mallya and HCL were seduced into buying up big companies!

The second view point available on the net is that the Obama campaign was properly crafted using a methodology that evolved on the way to the 2004 election. At that time an Aziz Poonawalla started a blog called Deans Nation that developed for the first time a strong a network through the net (netroot) that got the net-savvy younger generation in support for Howard Dean. It made a strong impression and Dean was an early front runner with strong anti-Bush sentiments. Dean lost media support once he (loudly) sounded anti-establishment. But Dean had got the message.

Dean saw to it that he became part of the Democratic Party Establishment as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee when he used his netroot experience to raise funds from millions of small donors of different hues (the rainbow coalition). He developed a “50-state” strategy to introduce Democratic policies to voters in Republican states. His strategy to get Barrack Obama elected as a candidate for the Democratic party using the Internet surprised and ambushed Hillary and Bill Clinton’s advisers.

So who will be running the country? Obama? or Dean’s Internet? Howard Dean sounded ominously self-congratulatory on CNN after the election. Obama’s men have started taking the credit without mentioning Howard Dean.

Who really gets the credit for the happy Democratic tunes? Will it be Obama or Howard Dean?

It reminds me of that lovely song “Sam’s Song” sung (Italian) Dean Martin and (Afro-American) Sammy Davies Jr. (I never found out who Sammy Davis Sr was). The lyrics of that song can perhaps be (writing Obam instead of Sam)

Dean: Here’s a Happy tune they call it Dean’s song
Obama: I’m saying, Dean, this is Obam’s song
Dean: Obam, you’re just a ham:
Obama: But Dean, here’s the scam
The song is named after Obam
Dean: Obam who?
Obama: Obama Hussein
Dean: Oh
May I say with pride where I reside
They call it Dean’s song
Obama: And that’s quite a group you have going for you.
Dean: There’s no bigger choir that you could hire for singing Dean’s song.

The saving grace is that Obama is handsome (watchable) with a good voice (hearable) and Gandhi’s Mickey Mouse ears (see picture on top) --- he cannot be evil. He has a little bit of many nations and many religions.

Other than that there is little we know of Obama. As his wife, Michelle, says “It helps that he is cute”. Like Ronald Reagan?! Is he going to be just a coloured WASP finally?

It is what exists between the ears that will matter. Between Mickey Mouse and Gandhi, Obama will have a tough choice.

Obama has not spoken Kennedy-lines such as “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for the country” as yet. What will the inauguration-day-one-liner be? Out-of-Africa as all learned mono-theists believe about evolution?

The Bon of the Bongs, Part I: East or West, East is the Best (Sometimes)

If one asks - and one should not - for the origin of the people of India, many of our early scholars from the upper Aryan castes answer “It’s in the Rig Vedas”. It reminds me of an early college mate, Rajasekharan, from Loyola College in Madras, who put up his hand enthusiastically and irritatingly insistently for any question that was asked in his minor Science class for his major Economics course (those were the days). When asked for the answer he would always keep a serious face and say “Sir, it is in Einstein’s theory of Relativity”. He would not go beyond that. As the class howled in laughter, Rajasekharan would be asked to leave the class; which he did to join his other friends in the car park.

It now seems that the question: “Which was the pre-rig-veda civilization that gave the rig-vedas?” is not often asked leave alone being answered, at least in India. It is not the purpose of this blog to ask this question. Instead, as a Bengali or bong, I ask the question, as I must, “Where did the bongs come from?” Where indeed did the bon of the bongiyo bhasa and the bongo of the Jano Gano Mano come from? The answer that I get is a little surprising especially as far as the bon is concerned. It also helps resolve some identity crises.

There are two major contradictions that confront a young Bengali. I will take up others in other blogs. The first crisis is that he has to know whether he is a ghoti or a bangal; the second is whether he is kulin or not. I will address myself first to these two aspects, before I go to the bon of the bongs.

The ghotis (predominantly from West Bengal) and the bangals (predominantly from East Bengal or what is now Bangladesh) have distinctly different culture, traditions, cuisine (see blog on Jhol and Jhaal at http://www.kolkatamirror.com/ by Ms Sushmita Sadhu) and accent. Simply put, the ghotis like prawn, mustard, and Mohan Bagan club while the bangals like hilsa, tamarind (tetul, if you are good people a small tetul leaf can accommodate nine) and East Bengal club.

The ghoti Bengalis of the learned kind that I know quibble about trivia, giving rise to the irritating (for the ghotis) saying that three of them would form three communist parties. Indeed, it is possible that their unique style of reasoning could have led to the well-known (Bernard Shaw?) arguments on why ghoti is actually to be pronounced as fish (gh = f as in laugh; o = i as in women; ti = sh as in nation). I have no problem with that. Being a little garrulous could be a good way of burping or whatever after a good meal.

But it should not be as simple as that. The point of interest is that East Bengalis (bangal) should be identified phonetically more with the Bengali name than the ghoti name is for west Bengalis. There must be a lesson in that.

The kulin/non-kulin division of Bengal into West/East Bengal is perhaps more serious. The kulin system is unique to Bengal. It is, to be safe, at least in my reading of it, part of the ethnic cleansing resorted to by Aryan invaders. A little condensed history (there is no exact history) is required and obtained from the net.

As far as Bengal is concerned, it has always been regarded as the last post for resistance against Vedic invaders. The early ‘Kol’ (root of the name Kolkata?) dark-hued people of Austrasian origin lived in water-logged areas and cultivated rice. They are different from Dravidians and are related to Kolerian tribes in Chattisgarh, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, and Jharkhand. They were replaced by or intermixed with Tibetan mongoloid people about two-three thousand years ago. Some sort of Buddhism flourished in this region for more than a thousand years resisting all Aryan or Vedic influences. A kind of Hinduism prevailed around 4th century AD.

Because of this lack of Aryan influence unlike the region westward, the region of present day Bengal did not have the rig-Vedic caste system, unlike the regions westward. Bengal became the final place for long drawn confrontation between Vedic Brahmanism and Buddhism. Nearly anarchaic conditions prevailed around 750-850 AD. The Buddhist controlled the south and south-eastern Bengal and the non-indigenous Aryan Guptas colonized north and West Bengal.

The lack of Brahmins was felt by the kings of that region on some pretext or other. Five Brahmins were imported from Kanauj (in UP) apparently at different times. The exact dates are uncertain. According to one source, five Brahmins (Moitro, Sanyal, Bagchi, Bhaduri and Lahiri) were imported by one Adisura (of uncertain origin) in 8th-9th century AD while the five Brahmins (Chatterji, Banerji, Mukherji, Ganguly and Ghosal; Bhattacharya is a title given to Pandit Brahmins) were imported by king Ballalsen in the middle of the 12th century.

If the above chronology is correct (there does not seem to be a consistent description or reliable chronology on the net), the Adisura Brahmins were imported during the reign of the Pala kings of Bengal. The Palas, being indigenous to the region, were benevolent rulers giving fresh lease of life to the Buddhist reign for nearly four centuries, renovating during this course important centres of learning such as Nalanda and creating new centres of learning such as those at Vikramasila. It was during this rule that Muslim contacts were made through the arrival of sea-faring Arab traders at the flourishing port of Chittagong. These Arab traders and the accompanying Sufis spread the first words of the newly emerging caste-less religion of Islam that struck a friendly chord with the local people.

The weak point of the Pala kings was that they became dependent on the powerful landed and official Brahminical influences that were carried over from the Gupta period without the intermediacy of other castes such as Kshatriyas and Vaisyas. The Brahmins also usurped traditionally kshatriya posts in the royal court and the army. When the non-Bengali Senas finally took over under Ballal Sen, it was considered to be a great triumph for the Aryan/Vedic rulers. The Senas behaved as invaders and would not follow the liberalism of the indigenous Palas. They oppressed the Buddhists and encouraged vedic Brahminism.

It was during this time that the Kanauj (kanya kubjya) Brahmins as well as other non-Brahmin imports were given the kulin name. For nearly seven hundred years, till the middle of the nineteenth century, the kulin populace had the sole and very profitable function of a stud or Shiva’s bull, marrying hundreds of girls and raising their progeny according to Manu Smruti and thereby increasing the arya vamsha.

It is of interest, as an aside, that there were rules about the way marriages could be made including one in which the persons being married should be the same number of generations down from the original members of the list. This led to the maintenance of extended family trees in kulin houses.

Ballal Sen, it is said, divided the Bengal region into four for establishing the Kulin system. Two of these were under the kanauj Brahmins. The region of East Bengal continued to be called as Vangal or Vanga. The population in the east especially was frustrated by the tyrannical rule of the foreign Sena invaders.

As they do so often in Bengal, mystic poets such as the Baul singers who have many songs in their memories but cannot read or write, express themselves in poetry with verses that resemble the Haiku poetry of Japan. There is no way you can appreciate the baul music, however, if you do not sing it, “… for thereby its movement and colour are lost and it becomes like a butterfly whose wings have been plucked.” (Tagore). I have written two such poems expressing frustration (see Islam in Bangladesh, by Razia Aktar Banu, p11) in forms that could resemble Haiku (5-7-5 syllables, each poem in one line)

My house is in town, No neighbour no rice in pot, I must serve always.
or
He who will be wise, Is foolish and must be thief, To be seen honest

The indigenous kulin-ised people could not go back to Buddhism. They accepted the Sufi preachings and converted to Islam voluntarily without the initial help of Muslim invaders. The baul Fakir singer would continue to sing of Radha and the Vaishnav singer sing in praise of Allah. It is said that because of their long Buddhist ancestry the muslim retained their shaved heads – nede muslims.

The West Bengalis on the other hand had the weight of the kulin system on them. The vedic Brahmins only begat them leaving their mothers to bring them up in what they deemed to be an upper strata but to which they did not really belong. There was no way that the ghotis could be called bangal.

This would explain the residual but persistent hostility between ghotis and bangals even today.

Of interest, as far as the new point of this blog is concerned, is a possible interpretation of the origin of the phonetic sound used for bongs. I have not read or heard this description elsewhere. So I suppose this interpretation is new. This interpretation comes from my readings of the pre-Buddhist Tibetan bön religion, which is now followed with renewed interest outside India.

The bön religion is still very much in practice in modern Tibet and among Tibetan exiles despite (http://china.notspecial.org/archives/2008/01/the_people_in_m.html ) Chinese restrictions. It is claimed to be the origional religion of the Tibetan people being founded by one Tonpa Shenrab 18,000 years ago, so it has been said.

Just like Gautam Buddha, Tonpa Shenrab also gave up his worldly life style at the age of 28 or something like that, sat under a tree, and achieved enlightenment or Buddha. It seems many other Buddhas followed with almost identical enlightenment history. There may have beeen a long line of Buddhas of which Gautam Buddha was the last; just like there is a long line of Vishnu-avatar of whom Kalki is the last (Buddha was the last but one?); just as Mohammed was the last of the prophets (Christ was the last but one).

The history of the Tibetan bö religion is very similar to that around Bengal. In the early days the bön religion was thought to be shamanistic and animistic. This feature is common to East India also. The point that I will try to make in this and following blogs is that the mongoloid people who were in Bengal two-three thousand years ago were the bönpo or the people who followed the bön religion.

There are many aspects of the bön religion that strikes a chord with the bangla idiom. The word bõn is pronounced as bun so that the phonetic connection with the bun of bangla should be immediately apparent. I suppose one would require more convincing. I will try and outline them in blogs that follow. For the present, two features are of interest.

One may take the viewpoint that the bön people (bõnpo?) took roots in bongo where they lived securely and spread in different directions. Later, their excursions to the west would have been curtailed by the Aryan and other settlers. Their excursions eastward, say, into present day Burma was safer. There would have been influences after Gautam Buddha from Nepal which would have mixed with the bön language. The word ‘bhikku’ for monk in the Pali language appears as ‘pongyi’ in Burmese which is closely related to the word ‘bonze’ a priest in the bön religion.

The other “evidence” could be a little more speculative and no such connection is made in the net. It came from my examination (http://www.zhangzhung.org/) of John Vincent Bellazza. In this site one sees a rock-carving of a kiang (a horse to Chinese and a Ghor-Khar of West India (half-ass half-horse) described by Blyth (“… I published the picture in a sports magazine because I got five pounds for them.”) in his correspondence with Darwin in 1885. Bellaza’s picture of the rock-carving of the kiang is given on the left of the figure on top. The straight tail is typical of the kiang or a wild ass. The pointed ears, the shape of the body and a straight tail is also typical of the Panchmura terracotta (figure on right) bankura horse. These clay figures played a ritualistic role being offered as tokens of devotion to Hindu gods as well as being places on tombs of Muslim saints in Bangladesh.

So now we should know why the East Bengalis were called Bangals.

It is quite simple! They just refused to be identified by any other name! The boundary-less (religion or caste) bön of Bongo has to be the bon (good) thing about them.

Shiva's Dance and the Stock Market: Creative Destruction

This article is being written in the evening of Friday 24 October when the Stock market – already at nearly 45% of what it as at its peak value 10 months ago shrank another 12% today to take the market back three years.

This wild fluctuation in productivity is the kind of fluctuations seen in some physical property at a phase transition.

I have written the blog just to acquaint myself with the phenomenon and ask some questions. As such the blog may be long even for my close and dear ones. I have therefore divided it into three parts so that one may pause in between. I think the subject is serious enough and I have not taken it frivolously.

Creative Destruction

So, is this the beginning of a change towards another model for economic growth? Is this a New Wave of economic thinking that engulfs and destroys the old. Is this the dance of Shiva symbolizing the dance of the force of creative destruction. Enshrouded in the flames of the Universe, Shiva dances the tandava creating the new destruction which resolves and maintains the new order. Shiva triumphantly raises his feet when stamping out the demon or dwarf symbolizing ignorance of the new construction. Shivas face shows no remorse or triumph. One can perhaps see in the face a firm sense of accomplishment showing that the deed that had to be done has been done.

There is a well discussed Schumpeterian model of Creative Destruction for economic growth in which an entrepreneur enters the market through a new innovation that is so radical that it destroys other entrepreneurs who, till that time, controlled and enjoyed an area of the market. There is a new spirit of creative activity to establish the new order that accompanies this transition to a new order after the Creative Destruction has taken place. This creative destruction generates the next sustained phase of economic growth measured, say, by the productivity or GDP.

The Shivas of the economic world being merely mortals now may not be able to dance the tandava with such finesse. The present destruction of the Stock markets may nevertheless have a purpose of destroying the old and creating the new. It implies that the Stock market, as we know it, may not be the same again; just as the memory cards of digital cameras may not be the same as the film rolls of the mechanical camera, or as e-mails are different from written letters, and green fields are different from genetically modified farms.

Now, as we ought to know, productivity has been a classical economic term to justify economic prosperity. Productivity or GDP is measured in terms of economic output per employed person. Among methods that increase GDP are to have capital accumulation through investments, increasing efficiency by removing obstacles to work, and wasting less materials and energy.

The Creative Destruction introduced by economically rich countries now is to outsource their work to China and India, thereby destroying jobs and skill at home. China excelled in organized and flawless mechanical production, while India contributed to the clerical work using the tradition that had sustained the British Empire. It increased the GDP of the outsourcing nation because of the reduced number of employed people and increased profits because of the reduction in Labour costs. It also divorced the requirements of the people with the centers of production. Thus In India, instead of indigenous traditional and tested foods, we have pesticide-laden broccoli, strawberries, pepperoni, and tomatoes that wont decay and wont taste. We now use western perfumes instead of fresh garden flowers. Our IT people work their best hours of their best years being instructed by external sources.

Growth based on Creative Destruction rejects most time the theory of equilibrium. Under equilibrium conditions growth could be continuous without any catastrophic changes accompanying the transitions. However, if the interval is short, there are some very heavy downsides also, as so vividly popularized in Tofler’s book “Future Shock” albeit in a different language and context. There is a shift in values of the whole society and the prevailing social order. There is no philosophy in democratic reasoning (tyranny of the masses) on why a social order should not shift or why there should not be a change in public social behaviour as long as there are justifiable pluralities including mass hysteria.
When there is Creative Destruction, it becomes increasingly difficult, both for the entrepreneur as well as the consumer, to adjust to the many new products that appear every year and keep track of the services required to maintain it. The very fact that we accept a new technological product so frequently (example, the various types of mobiles, with SMS, camera, email, Bluetooth, blackberry, GSP, that appears with increasing price and newer features regularly) means that we are showing a consumer boredom to be alerted only by the forceful jingle of the advertiser’s intrusions. The advance of modern technology has taken place without preparing our modern man for it.

Crash of Oct 08

The present position of the Stock Market (I am not an investor) may not have been designed or aimed at Creative Destruction. I get the suspicion that once we recover from the heap and dust of broken markets we may as well bring about a new order without the Stock market.

In this catastrophic and discontinuous scenario of change one requires only a consideration of basics or first-order parameters. This should be easy to obtain. What follows is what I have garnered from a brief perusal of the web. It should serve to understand the likely important points that led to the crisis. At worst it should serve to make the layman reader familiar with the jargon for future reference/study.

The main culprit in this crisis is the lowering of interest rates on well-recognized investments such as fixed deposits in Indian banks, or treasury bonds of America. The idea was that there is no point in keeping huge amounts of money as deadwood. They had to be lured out of the static mode and made more dynamic and peripatetic, garnering more profit for the banks though more attractive investments. This was achieved simply by reducing the interest rates on fixed deposits or static money (some attribute the move to Alan Greenspan).

In order to lure the investor into making risky investments they were fed with images of huge profits. One of these is the idea of subprime mortgages first introduced it seems by Gordon Brown as finance secretary in the Tony Blair government of UK. Subprime just means interest rates which are lower than the prime lending rates of banks. The prime lending rates are based on a serious assessment of the investment and the assets available to the borrower.

The “creative” part of the modern banking system was that subprime lending was given to those who could not have obtained loans otherwise. Incredible as it may seem now, there were “balloon mortgages” (pay only interest for the first years and then pay a huge sum), “liar loan” (you simply lie about your annual income), “adjustable rate mortgage loan” (where the amount lost due to a reduced initial interest is added to the principal and interest increased later), “ninja loan” (acronym from No Income No Job and no Asset). Once these safety barriers were broken there was immense competition between banks to lower standards and give loans decreasing at the same time the requirements for financial security.

Lewis Ranieri at Salomon Brothers now thought up the idea of buying the mortgages from banks and turning them into securities, and adding to it other securities backed by “assets” such as credit cards, and auto loans to make a bundle of securities which are then sold to investment banks. Bundles of such bundles are then sold to Wall Street Firms to create mortgage-backed securities. The mortgages of these securities from pooled mortgages and packaging them into securities which are then recombined to form a collateralized debt obligation may be considered to be an Innovation. It was not yet an act of Creative Destruction.

Such camouflaging under the name of securities led to investments of the order of more than ten trillion dollars. Appadiya!!! Added to this was the new source of money from the Indian and Chinese economies as well as other economies. There was unending money in the global pool which had to be soaked up. This was the effect of globalization of economies. Chickens were counted before they were hatched. The boom in the stock market was a direct consequence.

Because the ignorant borrowers didn’t read the hidden impact of interest rate of clauses in their agreements the mortgage soon became unaffordable to the borrower. There came foreclosure. Banks were aware of this possibility. The strategy was that they would buy up the house from the defaulter at a rate lower than the prevailing market rate and this would lead to more profit.

Wall Street firms noticed they did not get enough profits, retail and investment banks suffered. When banks restructure loans without going to the original bond holder, then it is assumed that the bank owns the control of the loans along with the built-in liabilities. Because of the huge scale of the loans and the liabilities the banks had no idea about how to restructure the loans. Computer models from prime lending days (pre 2003 some say) were not prepared to address the complex financial landscape because of the fast supply of money. There were a whole range of ill-defined issues (1099, FAS 140) that prevented prompt pre-emptive action rapidly.

The crisis in the business financing or credit industry emerged. Trickle of expected modeled-in foreclosures soon developed into an avalanche. The effect was global.

Credit was stopped. Deleveraging was initiated to reduce companies’ debts by selling investments to pay back loans or to get liquidity in cash flow. Usually high-yielding assets are sold; prices of these assets then lowered forcing other investors in these assets to sell at still lower prices.

Japanese Yen and American dollars are perfect currencies to fund leveraged carry trades because of the very large banks in Japan and US and their very low interest rates, which, strangely, started the whole crisis. There was a huge global requirement for dollar and yen. American dollars can be printed without any guarantee of payment of the printed value. Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Paulson print money and supply them at an incredible pace. The dollar and yen became strengthened because of this demand.

The fundamentals do not support a strong dollar. The printing of money should cause inflation since money supply is increasing.

Then came the seven hundred billion dollar (~3500 dollar per individual over-18 American) “bailout” program about which there are very sketchy details. It was supposed to prevent banks from collapsing because of lack of cash infusion by buying up bad debts, extending bank deposit insurance and expired tax breaks mainly to get Republican (some of whom had withheld support earlier) support . The amount was based on the finances require to shore up the lower value of a security because of the sub-prime mess to its intrinsic value. The Treasury buys up a certain amount of quality (with adequate credit ratings of borrowers, delinquency status) from institutions offering lowest prices nin a “reverse auction” procedure in exchange for treasury bonds.

The politicians talked about the American taxpayer. Taxpayers would face deeper economic troubles if financial markets remain clogged. This bailout was supposed to protect lost jobs, higher unemployment, more foreclosures and a contraction of the overall economy. The bailout was also intended to protect against the loss of taxes should the financial institute collapse and drive the country faster into recession. Naturally, the bailout was to be such that the executives of banks were given adequate compensation. After five years if the institutions do not pay back, the profits would remain privatized, and the losses, as usual, would be communitized among the tax payers How comfortable!

Lessons we may learn.

Is the collapse of the stock market due to a collapse of the modern way of thinking? Is it an example of Creative Self-Destruction? Or is just a just outcome of excessive greed?

In the left of figure at the top of this page, I have shown the changes in the Dow Jones index over the last twenty years or so. Between 1988 and ~1994 there were no discontinuities in the prices and shows linear increase in the index. After 1994 the Dow Jones prices increase at a faster rate to fall again around 2002-3 and 2008 as shown by the dips in the stock prices at those years. The lowest point in these dips fall on the dotted line extended from the prices between 1988 and 1994. If these dips are taken as corrections, the crash of Oct 2008 would only be that required of a correction which was long overdue. The Down Jones prices have increased nearly four times this last twenty years or so implying a compound interest rate of 8%. This is the normal rate for a fixed deposit in a standard bank such as the Reserve Bank of India. There has been no loss. Only some excess greed of some investors has been exploited and used to mop up some ill-protected funds.

If this is the case it would only show that the money has been all along in safe hands. It reminds me of an incident from my school days. I once borrowed the equivalent of three quarters of a rupee from my classmate in school who shared my bench. It was a princely sum at that time. I could not pay it back in the time I said I would. I would try to make it up by sharing some of my lunch box with him several times. He happily did it and I thought it was sufficient recompense. The boy did not ask for the money. Two years later when we were to leave school, and we were taking leave from each other on the last-but- one day in school, this boy, Vishnu, asked me for his money back (twelve annas of those days). “I come from a Marwaadi family” he said. “We worship money and it is our duty to protect it. I have to protect my god. Please return the money tomorrow. I am not asking you for any interest.” I did that. I learnt that the Marwaadi money lender is as important to the environment as any other since they don’t encourage frivolous use of money unless they get to eventually own it and protect it.

So where did all that money above the dotted line in the figure on the left go? Will it go to those institutions which gave it more protection? Will it be through the bail-out plan, for example? Probably.

Maybe the Stocks and Share Markets just mopped up the unprotected and fundamentally weak (mainly paper money, in any case) and protected it.

Will it recur in the future? Will the mopping-up game start again? Or will a new game start. Will it be a new dance of Shiva? Will there be a new wave of Creative Destruction? Will the Stock markets never recover again and be driven to obsolescence? Will there be a new division of citizenship with a class of affluent people benefiting from centralized services according to the dictates of a centralized Entertainment and Beauty industry and another class of people who provide these services? Will we finally become like the Eloi and the Morlocks of H. G. Wells’ “Time Machine?”

Will I pass away before that happens?

A second more intriguing thought is the possibility that the stock-market crash is simply a new form of Destruction. Is it similar in some way to that of the 9/11 destruction of the Twin Towers of New York? What are the similarities>
· The securities required in the subprime market were unusually lax just as the securities were at the airports at the time of the 9/11 disaster.
· It took the market regulators by surprise just as 9/11 took the air control operators by surprise. It seems that it took an unusually short time of four or five quarters between 2005 and 2006 for the mortgage crisis to actually blow up and be detected. After this, the markets were left standing helplessly waiting to fall just as the twin towers stood after the impact.
· There is an eerie similarity to the rush to war in Iraq in seven days and the passing of the 700 billion bailout bill by American law makers in seven days. “Just because God made the world in seven days does not mean we have to pass this bill in seven days (Rep. Joe Barton). Is it because they wanted to hush-hush other insights into the crash? Is it reflected in sustained increase in stock prices in Arab world despite severe decrease in Oil prices?
· The figure on the right at the top of this page shows the way the stock prices (S&P 500) changed en route to Oct 24. The take-off point was around the middle of September. Another 9/11?

If this is the case we can be sure that the crash of Oct 08 will mark a defining moment of change for the stock market as we know it. Will it for the good or the bad?

Shiva only knows!

Sachin dev Ganguly

In the present world of cricket in India, the sun rises in the east with Sourav Ganguly and sets in the west with Sachin Tendulkar. If the twain should meet in Sachin dev Ganguly will there always be a sun? or will they annihilate each other in a cacophony of dark comparisons?

It sometimes amazes me to see the amount of energy we have spent and will spend trying to stay awake watching some cricket match or other, contributing only to the growth of Pepsi and Coca Cola companies.

As one knows a cricket test becomes interesting only when the result is approached at the end of five days. In the meanwhile one is supposed to appreciate and comment (nowadays there are professional commentators commenting ad nausea) on the cricketing genius on display with the technical terms such as bowling a maiden over, or late cuts (so late as to be posthumous as the Maharaja of Vijainagaram would say), or the Indian word, doosra (made famous by a Ceylonese). In the process sporadic comments on cricket turned into a running commentary.

More than anything else the running commentary has contributed to the popularity of cricket. It is an essential ingredient of today’s cricket. Any local cricket tournament in any village of India would be worthy of its salt only when there is a pandal with extremely loud speakers out of which will blare out a loud commentary of the proceedings on the ground including loud exhortions to the umpire to declare a boundary or to give some body out. Records of all kinds are necessarily mentioned during the commentary alive including anecdotes and events that add mirch and masala to the game sometimes necessarily so because of advertisement revenues that keep a game, or at least players of the game, alive and prosperous.

Sachin Tendulkar’s record must be given its due importance as an important milestone. When Sachin began his career as a lad of fifteen/sixteen facing up to the powerful Pakistan bowlers in the indo-pak grudge series, most of us had our hearts in our mouth watching the young angelic looking lad facing upto the hostile pace of Imran Khan at his best while the rest of the older India collapsed around him. The body language of this young David facing upto the Goliaths charmed everybody. There was no fault in his game or his looks for that matter. His feat with the bat continuously beat all expectations. Advertisers loved him. He claimed easily the spot at the top.

We wonder how much more he would have earned if his voice did not have that decidedly unappealing pitch. His charm has faded a bit as he grows older and he has now a thick-set look of a much-repaired professional fighter.

When Sachin Tendulkar “broke” Brian Lara’s record recently the television channels picked out all kinds of trivia from his life and prepared themselves to be the first to broadcast it so as to increase TRP ratings of the channel. Unfortunately, Sachin took much more time (75 runs from three innings) than that expected from his life-time average of nearly 54 per innings. Much of the trivia and expert comments eventually came out from the well-prepared media before Sachin could actually achieve his mark. The fizz of the eventual celebrations became reduced, thankfully.

Sachin himself got a great line across – “turning stones to milestones”. It may have been a well-prepared and rehearsed statement especially if one considers Sachin’s records to carry as much import as Neil Armstrog’s landing on the moon – one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind, remember?

The record itself is the highest number of runs scored in tests. If you look at it coldly and ask what the record was all about, the conversation could go like this:

Q. What is this record all about?
A. Tendliyaaaaa scored 12,000 runs in test cricket. More than anybody else in the world!
Q. What is a run?
A. Aaare! You don’t know? You make a run if you run between one wicket to another.
Q. How long is that?
A. 22 yards, one tenth of a furlong, one-eightieth of a mile.
Q. Come again?
A. 20 metres!
Q. You mean he ran 240 kms?
A. Double that! Because he has to run also when his partner runs, no?.
Q. He must be some athlete! How much time did he take to complete this 500 kms.
A. Nineteen Years.
Q. What?!! Nineteen years?!! For 500 kms? That would mean nearly 25 kms per year or 70 metres per day? Isn’t that too slow?
A. Maybe slow and steady wins the race. But you must understand one thing. He scored these runs in 300 innings so that he would have actually run one kilometer per innings. That is a lot you know. Even if you count the boundaries (because they do not involve running) it will still be half a kilometer per innings! If I run like that for my bus every day my pants will fall down.
Q. Why would your pants fall down?
A. My stomach will become thin, no?. It is very comfortable to have a big stomach to rest on when you have a clerical job, especially when listening to commentary.

Cricket like golf is the perfect game for English gentlemen of yore, controlling and benefiting from the plunder of the vast British Empire (my computer just told me to correct the small e to capital E in Empire). In between the arrival of ships these gentlemen had to while away their time. A five-day time-pass (between week ends with the family) test cricket was a natural process.

The gentleman spectator of a cricket match is supposed to admire the cricket landscape during the five days, partaking of the various old-word victuals and beverages during these days, preferably seated comfortably in an easy chair in the members’ stand and attended upon by bearers with the hot cuppa tea, served in proper tea kettles in their tea-cozies and the accompanying silverware. One could afford long sentences those days.

Most of these gentlemen watched cricket and a few played. Those who played preferred to bat. The stronger lads (blacksmiths, gardeners and so on) bowled to them for which they were paid. These professionals of those days were the players as distinguished from the gentlemen who made very fair rules for themselves. Cricket became associated with gentlemen. While fielding, the gentlemen preferred to stand in the slip cordon where they could observed and comment without doing much else.

This class distinction was naturally very suited to be carried over to India. The game of cricket is very much biased toward the upper classes, which usually translates into an upper caste, usually Brahmins. This class of predominantly babus or clerks was close to the ruling English community correcting their grammar and fudging their accounts. They had probably better access to the cricket know-how. They could excel in the game simply because nobody else knew anything about it or was even interested in a silly time-pass thing. This is how it became a gentleman’s game.

It is important to remember that a Sachin Tendulkar came to fame with his 600+ partnership with Vinod Kambli. Kambli, not a Brahmin, started his test career well. He had averages in the 100s. He became absorbed listening to music with earphones, forgetting to be civil (not servile enough) to cricketing greats. He was properly admonished and dropped for rude behavior. He could have regained his place but he tripped and hurt his leg before his last-chance match.

Was it because Kambli was not a Brahmin? We don’t know. It could well have been the Ekalavya syndrome so familiar to the average Indian. The low-caste Ekalavya acquired excellent skill in archery by practicing in front of an image of Drona the teacher of Arjuna, the best archer of that time and Drona’s favorite student. Arjuna feared Ekalavya’s skills. Drona appeases Arjuna’s fears by demanding Ekalavya’s thumb as a Gurudakshina. Ekalavya makes the supreme sacrifice, cuts his thumb and gives it to Drona. That was not cricketing at any level, but very acceptable as long as one knows who has to win.

The Ekalavya syndrome is easy to see in India. Was Vinod Kambli the Ekalavya to Tendulkar’s Arjuna? Is caste the only bias factor?

Sometimes too much class may not be good. In some ways, Sourav Ganguly’s fate is a measure of this class bias. His family is supposed to be one of the richest Bengali families in Calcutta (one has to exclude the Marwadi community certainly). By all accounts he was a complete sportsman in his younger days winning trophies in athletics, excelling in football, and then taking up cricket for career reasons. He disadvantaged as well as positioned himself by choosing to be a left hand batsman. He may have distanced himself from some team-mates by being rich-like in his behaviour. He did not walk into the Indian test cricket team like Tendulkar did. He got his place only because of an injury to one player and because of a fit of temper in another (Navjot Siddhu who is said to have killed a man with his bat because of a road-rage incident).

Ganguly grabbed the opportunity stylishly. Like Kambli, he scored two successive centuries on his debut. Unlike Kambli he survived for some time. Too long perhaps. Or maybe Ganguly’s aristocracy became an arrogant one. Greg Chappell, insisted perhaps that Ganguly run and practice as much as the other members of the team. When Rajdeep Sardesai asked Ganguly in 2006 after he was dropped from the team even after scoring a hundred in his last test “But would you have liked some of them (team members) to stand up for you, or … come to you …as a player and told you the reason why you have been dropped? Sourav Ganguly’s reply was “I haven’t asked anybody to be honest.”

The travails of Ganguly is worthy of the man as a fighter and his skills with his body and mind. He has surfaced from deep waters to regain his place in the sun. They say you drown after the third time you surface in water. It seems that this will be made true in the case of Ganguly.

Was Ganguly also the Ekalavya to Tendulkar’s Arjuna?

Times have changed and will continue to change. Test matches will die out. One-day matches would also be replaced by 20-20, Test matches and test records would be lost as well as the gentle leisure class.

Will Sachin dev Ganguly then shine brightly?

Milk sans Human Kindness; or why is the Iyer yogurt so gooey?

This blog is to lament the passing away of wholesome cow’s milk due to the kind-less-ness of the human kind. Why milk? Why not something else? We choose milk first mainly because milk is our birthright and in many Indian houses an important part of our death-rites as well. We intuitively depend on milk as the perfect good food especially for those of us at the toothless stages of our lives.

As every one knows, man is the only animal to deprive others of their rights even (or perhaps especially) when his basic comforts are satisfied. This is also true for the calf and its right to its mother’s milk. We are inured of such sympathetic thoughts towards the calf now. There is this mental, physical, and philosophical degradation of the way we look at milk especially when we make profits from them and place it under severe environmental stress.

Now, no matter how matter-of-fact and practical we are there is no gain-saying that we are attached to milk from our breast-feeding days. Also, no matter how liberated a woman can want to be in a unisex sense, I have this suspicion that all women would love to experience for herself the true meaning of the phrase “milk of human kindness” applied to her child. At the same time some ladies, like Lady Macbeth, may fear some one to be too full o’the milk of human kindness to take up evil spirits and do harm to somebody else in order to advance in life. Such fears are prevalent mainly in upper echelons of corporate houses and other ruling classes, especially when the business is to milk profits.

Incredible as it may seem, the degradation of cow’s milk on its way to the human imbiber may have started with Louis Pasteur himself since pasteurization destroys natural enzymes that help in digestion and alters proteins. I am not one prone to endorse scientific statements testifying to industrial practices - good or mal. I point out some nevertheless. For example, cats drinking pasteurized milk have been reported to have low sperm count and deliver still born babies by the third generation. Can we now guess why there are difficulties in having children among upper class educated families in India brought up on pasteurized milk?

Milking profits from milk itself is an industrial exercise which is perhaps certain to be kind-less. It can be done more tenderly perhaps. As children, we noted how our mother preferred milk men who brought a calf along to initiate the milking process. The calves were removed once the milk of kindness flowed easily, and the cows were milked manually. The calf would almost always get back the nearly empty udder. This was perhaps the closest one could get to a kindly profit in milking.

As the population of people who could afford to buy milk increased, the calves were done away with (literally) and the stuffed remains were carried by the milkman who showed it to the mother cow for the lactation to start. We hated to see this as children. The cow began to be milked more and more away from our sight until we saw it as pasteurized milk in cold plastic bags instead of fresh milk in hot cylindrical metal containers.

There could be major environmental impact when using plastic bags or bottles. As Mrs Robinson could assert in the summer of 42, plastics have been dangerous in several ways, especially when they are used as substitutes for natural things. Good-looking plastics such as the transparent polycarbonates leach out BPA (Bisphenol-A) dangerously when boiled or washed with some detergents. BPA influences development of brain, reproductive system and could be linked to harmful effects on sperm counts, or early puberty. “What parent or teacher” one has asked “has not noticed that girls are maturing far earlier than they used to?” These symptoms are surprisingly similar to a late twentieth century biotechnical invention which could be the primary focus of this blog. It could also be the cause for the potential death of healthy Indian yogurt.

One of the pleasures of fresh cow’s milk is the yogurt or curd that one obtains from it and the smell of hot milk and the taste of the sediment at the bottom of the pot in which the milk is boiled. Setting yogurt, churning the cream out to make butter, having buttermilk with curry leaves in hot afternoons, making paneer and good rasagollas were things done normally at home. We could identify with and mimic events mentioned in ancient stories of Krishna and his makhan chori, for instance.

In the days of a monetarily poor but culturally rich and happy family of India of my youth (50s), we were constantly reminded by several “learned” government and other agencies of our large cattle population and the way they competed for human food of the “hungry” millions. It seemed quite logical – especially for us “convent”-educated, Christian-ized children – that we kill the cattle for food and improve the yield of milk from the surviving cows. Jersey cows and their yields was what we admired and introduced into our dairy system or whatever there existed of it. Look at the Jersey cows!

Our first negative impact of modern dairy practices came when we went to Europe as a family the first time in the early 80s. Jersey cows were abundant there and we looked forward to their milk and other dairy products. We noticed straightaway that we just could not set curds and make rosogollas the way they could be made at home with the local milk. The curd would turn to be a little gooey and the rosogollas, while being easier to make at first, would easily disintegrate on keeping. We would often wonder why the yogurt would turn out that way in Europe and not in ours. “They must be adding something” in their food is what we normally say.

It takes some time for us Indians to realize that the relationship between man and modern dairy cattle is not the same as that in countries we would like to emulate. It is all mechanized now in western countries, including the cows being kept in narrow confinements so that they cannot move when the milking machine is attached to their udders.

In what follow technical terms will be used because it could help if it is included in the common vocabulary sooner than later especially if we are not to be forgiven for our trespasses.

One of the more heartless modern procedures is the use of growth hormone (GH) injections to increase milk production by 15 per cent or more. The GH milk is a major contribution from an emerging biotechnology industry. It is often labeled as “rBGH” (rBGH = recombinant bovine growth hormone manufactured by Monsanto Company) and is a genetically engineered “copy” (we don’t really know what a “copy” means or does in bio-systems) of a naturally occurring hormone produced by cows. The name of the label itself is, for present purposes, more important than its meaning.

The rBGH additive is legally allowed in USA but not in most other developed countries. The environmentally damaging aspect is that this technology is easily adaptable. In India we see even the roadside milkman injecting cattle to get more milk, more so in the festive or wedding seasons when milk products are in high demand. This is of course of immense concern to the ordinary Indian like me; and not only because it is spoiling my yogurt.

There are concerns in USA regarding health hazards due to consumption of milk or flesh (about 40% of the beef used to make hamburgers come from "old" dairy cows) derived from rBGH-treated cows. Because of this concern, milk which is labeled “rBGH-free” has shown a growth of over 500 % in the last few years. Starbucks of USA, among others have decided to reduce (now at nearly 70%) the use of rBGH-treated milk for their coffees. There are even reports that Monsanto is planning to sell off this part of its business. Such cncerns are of little help in the Indian context.

A more serious concern in “scientific” studies is the increased levels of another growth hormone called insulin-like-growth-factor-1 (IGF1) in milk. According to a European Union study, IGF-1 of treated milk is thought to be localized at the udder (mastitis, with symptoms similar to inflammatory breast cancer) causes infection at injection sites and increases (by 55%) the risk of lameness. Excess levels of IGF-1 in the milk are associated with breast, colon and pr ostate cancer.
The extent of increase in IGF-1 was reported to be as high as 3.5 or more even in the earliest reports. Among other links are those to a higher risk of diabetes, a shorter lifespan and an increase in the number of twins born to humans. All the above information has been gleaned from the internet and could have been available to a concerned reader.

As we should know empirically if not intuitively (being milk drinkers) yogurt is made by first boiling the milk (which is always mandatory in most traditional Indian homes even if milk is pasteurized and has simply to be drunk) and by adding the required bacteria (usually just adding a spoonful of an earlier batch of yogurt). The bacteria metabolizes the lactose slowly and leading to a slow release of lactic acid forming a gel that gives solid-like consistency to the yogurt. Its ability to retain all the water present in the milk is the result of a peculiar microstructure of the protein network. It consists of short branched chains of casein micelles and resembles a sponge with very small pores. The solid like structure is obtained when the water is retained in these pores. Inability to do so would result in a more watery or gooey structure.

The IGF-1 in treated and untreated milk has different lengths of chains of amino acids wich accounts for altered interactions with immune system. It is known for fatty acids and lipids that shorter hydrocarbon chains dcrease the rigidity of the fatty acid or lipid layers. The question now is whether the shorter chains of amino acids could influence the nature of the protein network of curds in hormone-treated milk. This will tell me why the curd from modern dairies do not set well.

American companies such as Tilamook, Cascade Fresh, Stonyfield and so on, who are proud of their yogurt emphasize the fact that they do not use rBGH in their milk. Danone’s or Yoplait’s credentials in this aspect are not very clean at least till a while back.

Wonder what our own Amul has to say.

Human IGF-1 and bovine IGF-1 are said to be identical except that in humans IGF-1 are bound to protein and are less biologically active than the unbound IGF-1 in rBGH milk. Is there a lesson to be learnt for Indians?

One could forgive and forget all this simply as figments of a “scientific” imagination. But what about the gooey curd (as we call yogurt) I get now? That is reality! The curd set by my wife, the best curd-setter in the Iyer world (is there any other curd world?) is becoming gooey! Is it finally the rBGH-treated cow’s revenge? Holy cow!!!

Holy cow???

In the seven churches of San Stefano in Bologna, Italy, there is a section containing a wooden panel covered with paintings of exotic animal shapes. Next to that is an ancient wooden figure, about five feet tall and carved from a single block of wood. The wooden figure is that of San Bovo, who was born around 940 to a noble feudal family and died on the 22nd may of 986 AD, in Voghera, Pavia. This is a date still celebrated by animal lovers, at least in Voghera. It turns out that San Bovo was a renowned warrior fighting against Saracenese invaders. After his successful exit from the wars San Bovo became an ascetic and took up a life of penance. He became a cult figure for those interested in domestic animals. The wooden figure in San Stefano, Bologna, carries a flag (standard) with the image of a cow (?) and with the inscription “sopra alla bovine” which I translate as “Above all is the cow”.

The cow is truly a Annapurna as long as we leave some of its holy grails associated with it strictly alone and not milk excessive profits from her.

“Once upon a time, milk was teeming with life forces. Today, supermarket milk is a brew of hormones, chemicals, DDT, fungicides, defoliants and radioactive fallout, produced by artificially inseminated creatures forced to stand around in muddy feed lots all day”. (shirley’s-wellness-cafe.com/bgh.htm)

Where are the green fields that we used to roam (Beatles).

Riding a cusp

The name of my blog “capararius aquacorn” is based on a split-and-join of Capricorn and Aquarius. I deem myself to be born on the cusp of these two constellations. As a result I don’t have a star I can definitely identify with as so many others (97%?) with well assigned stars seem to do.

Does one cusp like feature induce/influence another cusp?

I now imagine that I find many cusp-like situations when I look at events that have shaped my life.

In physics, a cusp (lamda point, actually) in some physical property happens at a phase transition that is not catastrophic. One cascades in avalanches to states on either side of the cusp by a slight perturbation. Sitting on a cus-just as riding a wave for a surfer-is therefore interesting or potentially so; unless you are very decided on things so as to be predictable. There is this danger of being predictable at my age (born in 1942) since one has slid a long way.

It helps being alive to encounter more and more cusp-my children would say too many cusps spoil the blog. As sand falling on a sand-pile you shape events by sliding down a self-organized critical state generating avalanches to do so. Being on the cusp could be important because one is in a critical state which makes one aware of the coherence of long-range or distant effects that helps put events in perspective in a causal sense.

I have chosen the name of my blog, “capararius aquacorn”, because it could have several light-hearted (hilarious, corny) connotations even if there could be a temptation to associate the name with capricious intentions, which I certainly do not have. At present I think the world as a whole is faced with a leadership and activity that generates cusps with progressively deteriorating (it would seem) consequences in this currently very complex¾technical, spiritual, ethical¾age (kaliyug?) of the world.

I have felt the cusp in several ways - like being born in pre-independence India and then being faced with the notion of independence as a very noble one without really having realized the need for it. I will deal with other cusp effects later. The purpose of my blog would therefore to put forth these perspectives, not for the sake of change or betterment of the world but more to simply find one’s place in it - with goodwill towards all and with malice towards none.

In this first page, I will introduce myself a little bit simply because I think I am typical of the cusp-people of the Indian independence movement. For the purpose of this introduction, some cusp situations from my childhood will be recalled here not because it is typical of me but could be typical of those times. For instance, my father, Aboni Kumar Ganguly, preferred to be part of a larger India and shifted out of Bengal in 1948. He was a pure, learned Bengali who also recited longest English poems in the purest Bengali accent and thereby failed to impress those with other accents, including every regional Cambridge or British accents. The cultural status of an Indian in its higher strata is usually judged by the way he speaks a foreign language. Even his religion is many a time based on what he is not. He - it is always masculine nowadays ever since women’s lib desired and successfully made, unfortunately, a female into a male - is not a muslim, Christian, jew and so he is a Hindu.

My first name-”Christian” name as they would emphasize in convents or “good” name as we would have it here in India - itself serves as another example. For the sake of national integration, an idea which was very strong in a nascent India, my name was changed from Krishna Kant Ganguly to Parthasarathy Ganguly. This is what my parents told me. Actually it may have been done to remove a tarnish. Krishna Kant is a name that is almost always changed to Keshto, especially when the person with the name is dark hued, which is my hue. Many dark-hued people are economically backward, and work as domestic helps (normally referred to as servants), more often than the guinnea” (mistress) of the house. Now, our famous Bengali poet, Rabindranath Tagore, wrote a poem to honour keshto, and put in a line which translates to “whenever anything is lost guinnea says keshto baetai (keshto the rascal) chor (thief)”. Whenever I was introduced to anybody since my childhood I would get this reference “keshto baetai chor”. I would laugh along with them, as expected; my mother would get hurt. My name had to be changed. This opportunity came perhaps when I had to be register as my official name in the school.

The way I obtained the initial to my surname, Ganguly, is another cusp-like situation arising due to a a transition from a Bengali environment to a tamil one. My name in the register at the time of my admission to a catholic convent (whatever that means) school in Madras was entered as P. Ganguly. Vaishnavite Iyengars would write it that way in the Madras state of that time, since Parthasarathy (or Partha’s charioteer, Krishna, when Parthasarathy is used as a single word) is an avatar of Vishnu. I later learnt that Bengalis usually would have written the name as P. S. Ganguly or as Partha Sarathy Ganguly. The name is split into two. The reason for this difference beween Iyengars and Bengalis is not clear to me, as yet. It could have come from the association of Bengalis with Partha a name for Arjuna. Partha or Arjuna is a very popular mythological character in the eastern parts of India. P. S. Ganguly would have meant Arjuna (the) Charioteer Ganguly, who would not at all be an avatar of Vishnu. The cusp situation in my name-deciding who I am when called by my name-was that a short form Partha would mean Arjuna and not Krishna or Keshto, the name by which I was addressed by those close to me.

These brief cusp-comments have served, I hope, to alert the reader of my blog that I could have cusp-like view points that are likely to be unusual for those of whom a cusp in the behavior is not expected. I hope to comment on current events that will be derived from my experiences with a cusp-sensitivity. I am technically a scientist, even if formally retired (if one can be a retired scientist), having worked in various areas and in various (prestigious, one may say) laboratories in India and Europe. I hope to write my blogs as a diversion from my “science”. I am, frankly, a little tired of being refereed and seek a freedom of expression. Paarkalaam. Let us see.