Cool and Lame - Ice Bucket Challenge

What will bathing, well not bathing, just dumping a bucket of water, which has some ice in it, achieve? Oh wait, you also put the act up online for tens to millions to view, depending on people you could pitch it to. Well important thing, the bathing, given the public display, is with clothes on. Ice bucket challenge for ALS has become viral over the past few weeks and each day more and more videos for the same are posted online.

For the starters it is Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosis. ALS. It is also called as Lou Gehrig disease named after an American baseball player. Stephen Hawking, the famous scientist was diagnosed with it and the recent. ALS is a neurodegenerative disease, which begins with weakness in legs, spreads with muscles not working, which affects speaking, swallowing and could affect breathing. Yes, a difficult disease.

And how frequently does it occur? 1 or 2 in 1,00,000. That is rare. And what is the treatment? Practically very limited, with one drug known to improve survival and others to manage the host of associated conditions.

Ok we were at the Ice Bucket Challenge remember? It is to raise awareness, raise money for research for ALS, which is all good and warranted. But what is not warranted is the mindless oh-am-so-cool, oh-am-so-concerned, oh-am-so-updated horde of joining the challenge and nominating others thereby triggering the chain.

The criticism are plenty. Beginning from wasting water which is of great value to a host of people to no link between donating money and taking a bath. What it could do is make a few people google what ALS is, which in itself is good that it added to their GK.

To put things in perspective, about 6,27,000 people dies of malaria in 2012. Yes the what-you-think not-so-serious malaria. Donation for that could help millions. This is certainly not to discredit the requirement of awareness and funding for ALS research and patient-support. It has been a sad fact, but an economically and socially prudent one perhaps that disease affecting the larger number of people receives more attention.

But the Ice Bucket challenge is nothing to do with the above serious issues of healthcare policies and flux of research. It is more about a rat race in a dignified manner. It is to look cool since Lady Gaga, Satya Nadella, Justin Beiber have taken it. It is to identify with the global awareness drive and show to your friends over facebook and twitter how charity is a concern for you (which as well could genuinely be). It gives you a sense of satisfaction of having done something, and there is nothing wrong with that. It is just the lame act.

A word of caution: take care not to catch a cold.

Shikhandi - Book Review

 

Dr Devdutt Pattanaik has talked about mythology in a manner that has both drawn more people to read and at the same time provided interpretations that has been thought provoking. In his book ‘Shikhandi – and other tales they don’t tell you’ he dwells upon a contentious issue present widely in mythology, that of queerness. Such topics of sexuality needs to be viewed with ‘cultural filters’ to understand, which the author has provided in his interpretations at the end of each story.

Dr Pattanaik begins with describing an important fact of how ideas and interpretations of Indian mythology changed after monastic orders of Buddhism and Jainism established in 500 BC. Monasticism is a religious way in which one renounces worldly pursuits to achieve god. And such an order pleasure was frowned upon; the Hindu matha traditions favored yoga (restraint) over bhoga (indulgence). Thus queerness which is replete in mythology began being portrayed as abnormal.

The book begins with instances of queerness not just in Hindu mythology but in Persian, Chinese, Egyptian, Viking and other mythologies. In part II, which is the body of the book the author tells the stories of Shikhandi, Mahadev, Vishnu, Mandhata, Skanda and 30 such found in Indian mythology. A byline for all the titles has been provided like ‘who became a man to satisfy her wife’ for Shikhandi, which drives home the underlying idea of the story.

The story of Shikhandi, by virtue of it being part of Mahabharat is well known. How Bhishma was pinned to the ground by Shikhandi, a girl born to Drupada but trained as a son, on 10^th day of the battle was a landmark moment. There are plenty of references to Krishna and Shiva, who have cross dressed, turned into women, turned other men into women on curse or request. Krishna perhaps in turning into Mohini to marry Aravan (Tamil folklore), in dressing as a female for the Gopis or with Arjuna or in dancing with Gopeshwara (Shiva himself), exhibit widest range of queer behavior. The idea perhaps as the author suggests is to portray that ‘purna-purusha’ has various other facets as well.

The diversity of the book is good with stories from Tamil Ramayana, folklores of Bengal, and various other areas of the country present. Oral traditions of hijras, Puranas, Valmiki Ramayana, Bengali Rampachali, Bhagavata Purana, Skanda Purana Tamil Purananuru are few of the sources of the stories. It serves to drive home the point that examples of queerness and not-so-watertight gender classifications are found in all mythologies. Even though the bulleted point pattern of description might make reading easier or difficult for some, the book finds great relevance in modern times where queerness is looked down upon and is uncomfortable to be discussed about.