Hindu view of man-woman relationship

The default option for a Hindu man is to love all women as his blood relations, i. e., mother, sister or daughter. Only in the case of a wife, for purposes of property & income (when they didn't have those rights) they are given some rights for the sake of progeny. Even the change of gotra during marriage is a (biologically) meaningless formality.

This is aptly recognised in the Hindu Succession Act also, as the wife's relatives  do not have any claim. The so-called "inlaws" are practically "outlaws"to as far as the law is concerned.

Even in the western milieu, right from Sophocles' "Antigone", who rated a brother's love higher than a husband's or even children's, to Eliot's Tom & Maggie, who were not separated even in death, in "The Mill on the Floss", sibling love is celebrated. Even in later times, the Lamb siblings, Charles & Mary lived a full literary life together. In "Anne of Green Gables", Matthew & Marilla spent their whole life contentedly, with the irrepressible Anne for company. Even Harry Potter, despite extreme closeness to Hermione, was unable to think of her as anything other than a beloved sister.

Of course, India is the only country, where "Rakshabandhan", celebrating sibling love, is a national festival. Even Draupadi, in spite of having five valorous husbands, had to depend on her brother Krishna, to save her honour. The spiritual leader Sri Ramakrishna, in his "Gospel" repeatedly exhorts his devotee couples to live as siblings after having a child or two.

To end on a personal note, this writer's father, the eldest son, & an ideal brother was the heir to a prime property in Bangalore. He gave priority to the claims of DNA, rather than marriage, & gave up the whole property to his sister cheerfully, whose descendants are enjoying it happily now!

Reading for Pleasure: An Acquired Taste

As Mark Twain said "The man who doesn't read has no advantage over one who can't."

When Winston Churchill was a lieutenant in the Colonial Army, he stayed in Bangalore, & wrote to his mother to send books of Socrates, Plato, Gibbon, Malthus, Darwin & others. He would read for 4-5 hours daily. He writes in his autobiography that "life would have been intolerable but for the consolation of literature."

More recently, another Army man, Capt. Gopinath, writes in his autobiography that when he was in the army, he read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Sholokhov, Maupassant, Camus, Maugham & others.

Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys, in his visionary book "Imagining India", has a bibliography, running into 16 pages, containing references from Dickens' "Sketches by Boz" to T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land."

N. R. Narayana Murthy, another co-founder of Infosys, has reputedly more than 20,000 volumes in his personal library.

All these extremely busy people made time for reading is a measure of the love of knowledge & the pleasure in reading they had. But as the noted Kannada writer D. V. Gundappa wrote "Even if they have time, even literate people would rather do anything else than read."

In this matter, the achievement of J. K. Rowling in weaning children away from their TV screens to queue up before bookshops at midnight to grab & devour the latest copy of Harry Potter is indeed mind boggling.

Divine Interventions to the Devout

In the famous "Tari Ghat Station Story" from  Page 256, Life of Swami Vivekananda, a rich merchant was taunting Swamiji about his starving condition while he himself was eating sumptuous food. After a while, a sweet meat seller came running to the Swamiji, bearing a basket of food & water. He said he had a dream, where God told him to feed a starving sadhu in the railway station, whom God described. The man identified Swamiji & offered him the food. The Swamiji, surprised, thanked him & accepted it.

In the film "Song of Bernadette" based on a true story, right after the first vision of St.Bernadette of the Lady at the Grotto, a family whom Bernadette's mother had helped in the past, caming running with  food for the starving Soubirous family & even offered a job to the father to enable him to earn money.

On the night of the Muslim Saint Rabia's birth there was no lamp, oil or swaddling clothes for the new born baby. The Prophet, appeared in a dream to the father of Rabia, telling him to write to the Amir of Basra, reminding him of his obligation to help the poor. After the receipt of this letter, the Amir himself came running with the necessary funds.

Science, Faith & Miracles

Dr. Alexis Carrel, a French surgeon pioneered vascular surgery especially triangulation.

In 1902, a physician friend of his, invited him to take care of patients being transported to Lourdes. Dr. Carrel was an agnostic.

On the train, he encountered Marie Bailly who was suffering from acute tubercular peritonitis & abdominal distension with large hard masses. Dr. Carrel believed she would pass away quickly.

Marie was taken to the Grotto where water was poured on her abdomen. She felt a searing pain. After the second pour it was lessened. After the third pour, she had a pleasant sensation & her stomach began to flatten. Dr.Carrel noted that after 30 minutes, the distension had completely disappeared with no discharge from the body.

Marie then sat up, had dinner & got out of bed, dressed & boarded the train next day. Arriving at Lyons, she was monitored by a psychiatrist & a physician for 4 months. After her healing, she joined the Sisters of Charity & worked strenuously for the sick & poor & died in 1937, aged 58.

Dr Carrel felt that if his presence at Lourdes became public, it would ruin his medical career at Lyons. But the news leaked out & he had to leave France (the medical fraternity at that time were ferociously anti-clerical) for the University of Chicago & then to the Rockefeller University. For his work there on vascular anastomosis, he received the Nobel Prize in 1912. When he died in 1944, he was a believer in God.

He wrote a book about his experiences at Lourdes "The Voyage to Lourdes". It was published, for obvious reasons, four years after his death.

Fast forward to the twentieth century. Dr. Samuel Sandweiss, an American Psychiatrist, visited India & Sri Satya Sai Baba. He was overwhelmed & on his return to USA, related his experiences to his brother doctors, who did not believe him. He asked them "If these things happened before your eyes, what would you do?" They unanimously replied "We won't believe our eyes!". But the point is that the whole of science, including medicine, is based on our sensory (specially visual) perception. If we  don't want to believe our eyes, what is left of Science? Is this the much vaunted "Scientific Temper"?