Shunya's Notes

Cats and Humans - Domesticating Each Other

Like Lucy, the mother of man who came out of Africa, the mother(s) of all domestic cats might have been a resident of the middle east. Don't worry, this is not the start of Friday Cat Blogging - I refer to a paper to be published in the June 29 issue of Science  which traces the history of the domestication of the house cat. The research conducted on behalf of the National Cancer Institute's Laboratory of Genomic Diversity by Carlos Driscoll of Oxford University concludes among other things:

• Cat domestication probably began some 12,000 years ago and became complete around 8,000 years later.
• DNA analysis shows that house cats all over the world, from Shanghai to San Paolo, can trace their ancestry to five distinct wildcat lineages in the near east - around Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE. 
• Cats voluntarily adapted to humans and domesticated themselves upon finding safe living conditions around early agricultural settlements. Man probably played little or no role in the taming of the cat except to tolerate its presence around the home and the barn.
• Cats migrated with their human companions from their original habitat to different parts of the world.
• Although the cat earned its keep by killing rodents around the grain bins, the reason the cat became a beloved household animal (and even a divine deity, as in Egypt), probably had as much to do with its winning personality as its utility in the early agrarian society as a pest controller.

A Rare Wodehouse

In an otherwise unrelated article by Christopher Hitchens, the erstwhile brave contrarian and now a pathetic neocon prevaricator, I came across this statement:

George Galloway Is Gruesome, Not Gorgeous
By Christopher Hitchens

My old friend and frequent critic Geoffrey Wheatcroft once tried to define a moment of perfect contentment and came up with the idea of opening a vintage wine while settling down to read an undiscovered work by P.G. Wodehouse.   ...........

This brought back memories of an interesting, chance encounter aboard a London to Houston flight in the autumn of 1999 and the uncommon pleasure of reading P.G. Wodehouse. The gentleman sitting next to me on the plane was an older English man of great wit and charm. Very early in our conversation I found out that he was a member of the P.G. Wodehouse Society and was traveling to a Wodehouse conference in Houston.  Wodehouse in Houston! I am a huge Wodehouse fan, as are many among my friends and family. But I had not until then met a single Houstonian, including my book club friends, who had read him. My co-passenger, J.F, then revealed that apart from being a die-hard fan, he was also a researcher and publisher of rare and undiscovered writings of Wodehouse. Upon learning of my own devotion to the author, he presented me with a book by P.G. Wodehouse, "A Man of Means", published in 1991, of which I knew nothing. He had  discovered this little known work (first published in the Strand magazine in 1914) among Wodehouse's early manuscripts and obscure magazine publications. J.F. and his friends published the stories (with the original accompanying illustrations) in the form of a brand new book through his own publishing company, Porpoise Books in Maidenhead, England. I was suddenly the proud owner of an "undiscovered" work of Wodehouse! Upon reaching home, I proceeded to enjoy it with relish (without the accompanying vintage wine, recommended by Hitchens' friend). I own several books by Wodehouse published by larger, better known publishers like Penguin Books but this little book, (not Wodehouse's best), is a treasure among them because of the totally unexpected way in which I came to own it.

Reading Wodehouse is a bit like eating potato chips - you can't stop after just a few, highly addictive when you begin to enjoy the process and once you are finished, there is nothing substantive you can say about the experience except a sense of pure, silly satisfaction. Wodehouse was the unOrwell - able to transform the bleak and the solemn to jolly and cheerfully banal. Fans of Wodehouse will understand what I am talking about and those who haven't tried him, should find out. Although Jeeves and Bertie Wooster are the better known Wodehouse characters, to the uninitiated I recommend starting with the capers of Psmith ("The p is silent, as in phthisis, psychic and ptarmigan"), a lively and enterprising young man who always has a scheme (mostly for making money) and invariably fails, with hilariously disastrous results.

The main character Roland Bleke in A Man of Means, the "rare" Wodehouse I mention above, has the opposite fate - he does not want money but wealth pursues him relentlessly.  I think the author tried Bleke as a model for a long running theme, found him unsatisfactory, reversed the circumstances and struck gold with the perennially penniless Psmith.

Evolution Is a Blind Watchmaker

For a long time, Biblical creationists have trotted out the empty analogy of the Blind Watchmaker to try to refute the theory that complex organisms evolved by natural selection—or at least persuade people that such a thing couldn't possibly be true. It's an argument based on fundamental misunderstanding of the theory as well as some glaring logical flaws, as demonstrated in this sweet video for children:

The Watchmaker

In rebuttal, Chuck Kopec has created his own video. Substituting the terms of the Creationists into the theory of natural selection and plugging these parameters into a very clever computer simulation, he demonstrates that, in fact, evolution is a blind watchmaker.

Evolution IS a Blind Watchmaker

On the same page you can read Kopec's short discussion about his simulation. Probably, it won't change any minds, since, as discussed elsewhere on these pages, people don't necessarily base their beliefs on evidence. But it made my evening!

The Basis of Belief

Do we arrive at our beliefs in a systematic manner or through an intuitive process ? Are we predisposed towards some beliefs while being skeptical about others ? Do life experiences play a strong role in what we believe ? Does scientific training enable us to develop a method for deciding what to believe ? Or is it that rationalists are born, not made ? Is there a commonly accepted set of methods for deciding the truth value of claims ?

A clutch of these questions occurred to me recently, when I got into an argument.

Percy Julian, Chemist Extraordinaire

The story I will tell you tonight is a story of wonder and amazement, almost a story of miracles. It is a story of laughter and tears. It is a story of human beings, therefore, a story of meanness, of stupidity, of kindness and nobility. —Percy Julian, 1899-1975

Percy Lavon Julian, born in Montgomery, Alabama in 1899, the grandson of slaves, was one of the most accomplished chemists of the 20th century. His work, especially in the field of steroid chemistry, positively affected countless millions of lives and did nothing less than to help change the world.

In the Jim Crow South, libraries were closed to blacks and public schooling ended with 8th grade; teacher’s colleges were available for aspirants to the 10th grade. This education was seen as adequate to produce laborers for the larger economy and teachers for the black community. Though Percy’s parents had but a basic education themselves, they scraped together their coins to build a home library for their six children, all of whom would grow up to earn post-graduate degrees. Percy went first when at sixteen years he gained admission to DePauw University, a small liberal arts college in Indiana, as a “sub-freshman” who had not completed high school. DePauw would be life-changing for Julian, as he recalled, “On my first day in College, I remember walking in and a white fellow stuck out his hand and said ‘How are you?–Welcome!’ I had never shaken hands with a white boy before and did not know whether I should or not.”

Percy Julian was not the only black student at Depauw, but he was surprised to find upon arrival that campus hostel facilities were closed to them. Alone in a strange town, it took young Percy a day and a half before he found a place that would serve him a meal. Eventually, he made a deal with a college fraternity for bed and board in exchange for his service as a waiter. He also took work digging ditches to help pay his tuition. Far behind his white classmates in education, Julian attended the local high school while pursuing his first two years of university studies. He did catch up with his peers and by the end of his fourth year, Percy Julian graduated Phi Beta Kappa and valedictorian: first in his class.

At commencement time, my great-grandmother bared her shoulders, and she showed me, for the first time, the deep scars that had remained from a beating she had received when, one day, during the waning days of the Civil War, she went through the Negro quarters and cried out, “Get yourselves ready, children. The Yankees are coming. The Lord has heard our prayers!” And then, proudly, she took my Phi Beta Kappa key in her hand and said, “This is worth all the scars.”

Julian’s dream was to get a PhD in chemistry, following the inspiration of St. Elmo Brady, the first African American to have accomplished the same a few years before. But Julian's professors dissuaded him; they would not recommend him for graduate programs; they showed him letters from top graduate schools expressing concern that he would over-qualify himself as a black man and be unable to find a job. So Julian took a teaching position at Fisk University, a historically black college in Tennessee. Though he was terribly unhappy, he made the best of his role, writing a completely new series of lectures for organic chemistry. When he showed these to William Blanchard, his mentor at DePauw, the professor was so impressed he finally advocated for him to win the Austin Fellowship in Chemistry at Harvard University.

Suspect Logic

The Guardian's "comment is free" site had a post a few days ago by Moazzam Begg, a Briton of Pakistani descent, now famous for his detention for three years at Guantanamo Bay. Begg is the author of a book called Enemy Combatant, in which he details his experiences.

While his account of his experiences confirm what I have read elsewhere about the whole system of detention, interrogation and torture in the so-called war on terror, I have found the responses to Moazzam Begg's writing and public utterances to be quite striking. While there are many people who are sympathetic to him, there is also a strong current of animosity towards him. The UK Telegraph is one source of skepticism about Begg's claims of innocence. The commenters on his post at the Guardian's site, among others, point out the following: he was a member of a street gang called the Lynx in the mid 1990s; he was arrested for social benefits fraud in 1994; a search of his home revealed night vision goggles and flak jackets; he was associated with a fellow called Shahid Akram Butt who was convicted of benefits fraud in Britain and later of terrorism in Yemen; he was running an Islamist bookshop called Maktabah al Ansar which sold titles like The Virtues of Jihad; he had attended training camps in Afghanistan in the 1990s and provided financial support to jihadi fighters in Bosnia and Chechnya; he was present in Afghanistan in late 2001 just prior to his arrest in Pakistan; a copy of a money order bearing the name Moazzam Begg was found at an Al Qaeda training camp. Begg has not denied much of this, except to claim that the name match was a case of mistaken identity.

If you view this evidence from the point of view of law enforcement, there seems to be very good reason to be quite suspicious of Begg. The logical leap from being suspicious to saying that "The only way Begg should have left Gitmo is in a coffin ..", as a reviewer of his book did on Amazon.com, is deeply flawed, but is unfortunately made too easily by too many people. Mere suspicion is not cause for indefinite detention and even less so for torture and killing. By all means, haul suspects before a court of law and use the full force of the legal machinery to punish them if they are guilty. Even the most heinous serial killers are charged and given their day in court, but the Bush administration keeps arguing that the suspects at Guantanamo have to be treated differently. The most basic injustice inherent in Guantanamo is the attempt by the US government to bypass the legal system entirely.

As Begg has pointed out in interviews, the US government never charged him with anything, and released him finally in January 2005.

Five Chinese Classics

Have you read, or heard of, the great classical Chinese novels written between 14th and 18th centuries? Still part of folk culture, they're known to most Chinese. I learned of them and their contexts while reading The Search for Modern China by Jonathan Spence. Here are five of them:

Journey to the West: "China's most beloved novel of religious quest and picaresque adventure" ... published in the 1590s in the waning years of the Ming dynasty, when "essayists, philosophers, nature poets, landscape painters, religious theorists, historians, and medical scholars all produced a profusion of significant works, many of which are now regarded as classics of the civilization." The novel's hero, "a mischievous monkey with human traits ... accompanies the monk-hero on his action-filled travels to India in search of Buddhist scripture." * It's "a first-rate adventure story, a dispenser of spiritual insight, and an extended allegory in which ... pilgrims journeying toward India stands for the individual journeying toward enlightenment." Indeed there aren't many books in which "go west, young man" would be a call to go to India. :-)

Golden Lotus: Published anonymously in early 17th century, this is a "socially elaborate and sexually explicit tale, the central character (who draws his income both from commerce and his official connections) is analyzed through his relationships with his five consorts, each of whom speaks for a different facet of human nature." It can be read as "allegory, as a moral fable of the way greed and selfishness destroy those with the richest opportunities for happiness; yet it also has a deeply realistic side, and illuminates the tensions and cruelties within elite Chinese family life as few other works have ever done." *

Dream of the Red Chamber: "China's greatest novel," was written in late 18th century by Cao Xueqin, and in simple outline is a love story. It "presents a meticulous description of the Jias, a wealthy Chinese extended family who occupy a series of linked mansions in an unnamed big city" that bears resemblance to Nanjing and Peking ... "the 'dream' that is ascribed to the 'red chamber' constitutes an elaborate yet mysterious foretelling of the fates of the main female protagonists who are related or linked to the Jias in some way." * "The novel is remarkable not only in its huge cast of characters — over 400 in all, most of whom are female — and its psychological scope, but also in its precise and detailed observations of the life and social structures of 18th-century China."

Romance of the Three Kingdoms: Stories in this novel "existed as oral traditions before any written compilations," and are based on "events in the turbulent years near the end of the Han Dynasty, and the Three Kingdoms (220–280)." It's current form is attributed to Luo Guanzhong in late 14th century, and illustrates his gift for storytelling with a rich tapestry of personalities ... Characters take on "exaggerated and mythical characteristics, often becoming immortals or supernatural beings with magical powers." It reflects the Confucian values prominent at the time ... "loyalty to one's family, friends, and superiors [was] one of many measures to distinguish good and bad people."

Water Margin: Attributed to Shi Naian (same as Luo Guanzhong?), "the novel details the trials and tribulations of 108 outlaws during the mid Song Dynasty ... The group was active in the Huai River region and eventually surrendered to government troops in 1119."

Read more about these and other classical Chinese novels here and here.

* Most quotes for the first three titles above are from The Search for Modern China by Jonathan Spence. The rest are from Wikipedia.

Arundhati Roy on Her Money

From an interview in Tehelka, "the people's paper" of India (Nov '05):

Arundhati Roy: As for money, I have tried to take it lightly. Really, I have tried to give it away, but even that is a very difficult thing to do. Money is like nuclear waste. What you do with it, where you dump it, what problems it creates, what it changes, these are incredibly complicated things. And eventually, it can all blow up in your face. I’d have been happier with Less. Yeh Dil Maange Less. Less money, less fame, less pressure, more badmashi. I hate the f***ing responsibility that is sometimes forced on me. I spent my early years making decisions that would allow me to evade responsibility; and now…

Tehelka: You gave your Booker money to the NBA. Your Sydney prize money to aborigine groups. Another award money you gave to 50 organisations who are doing exemplary work ... You gave away your money ... Very few people do that ...

Arundhati Roy: Well, I haven’t given it all away. I still have more than I need. If I gave it all away I might turn into the kind of person that I really dread — ‘the one who has sacrificed everything’ and will no doubt, somewhere along the way, extract a dreadful price from everybody around them. I’ve learned that giving money away can help, but it can also be utterly destructive, however good your intentions may have been. It is impossible to always know what the right thing to do is. It can create conflict in strange and surprising places. I am not always comfortable with what I do with my money. I do everything. I give it away extravagantly. I blow it up, extravagantly. I have no fix on it — it comforts me, it bothers me, I’m constantly glad that I can afford to pay my bills. I’m paranoid about its incredible capacity for destruction. But the one thing I’m glad about is that it is not inherited. I think inherited money is a curse.

Giving money away is dangerous and complicated and in some ways against my political beliefs — I do not subscribe to the politics of good intentions — but what do I do? Sit on it and accumulate more? I’m uncomfortable with lots of things that I do, but can’t see a better way — I just muddle along. It’s a peculiar problem, this problem of excess, and it’s embarrassing to even talk about it in a land of so much pain and poverty. But there it is…

Youth

(A Poem by Czeslaw Milosz )

Your unhappy and silly youth.
Your arrival from the provinces to the city.
Misted-over windowpanes of streetcars,
Restless misery of the crowd.
Your dread when you entered a place too expensive.
But everything was too expensive. Too high.
Those people must have noticed your crude manners,
Your outmoded clothes, and your awkwardness.

There were none who would stand by you and say,

You are a handsome boy,
You are strong and healthy,
Your misfortunes are imaginary.

You would not have envied a tenor in an overcoat of camel hair
Had you guessed his fear and known how he would die.

She, the red-haired, because of whom you suffred tortures,
So beautiful she seemed to you, is a doll in fire,
You don't understand what she screams with her lips of a clown.

Buggering Khushwant

Few Indian writers can match the irreverence, acerbic wit, and bawdy humor of Khushwant Singh. Here is his latest piece at 92. He is not well-known outside India but there is much more to the man than this light-hearted piece conveys. He has secured his place as a major Indian novelist, journalist, and historian of the Sikh experience. Read this article, for instance, to see another side of him. A compelling, if less upbeat, viewpoint on his legacy has been put forward by Amardeep Singh.

I crave the forgiveness of my readers for writing on a subject which is taboo in genteel circles. I also apologise in advance for using words which some people may find distasteful. I wouldn't be doing so if the end of my tale of woe was not so comic.

It all started during my recent summer vacation in Kasauli. I woke up one night with a queasy feeling in my stomach. Half asleep, I tottered to the loo to rid myself of my sleep-breaker. When I got up from the lavatory seat to flush out the contents, I was shocked to see I had passed a lot of blood with my stool. "Shit!" I said to myself, suddenly wide awake. The rest of the night was wasted in contemplation of the end. I had had a reasonable innings, close to scoring a century, so no regrets on that score. Was I creating a self-image of heroism in the face of death? That vanished on the following day as more blood flowed out of my belly.

I asked my friend Dr Santosh Kutty of the Central Research Institute (CRI) to drop in for a drink in the evening. Over a glass of Scotch, he heard me out. When I finished, he asked me: "Have you been eating chukandar?" I admitted I'd had beetroot salad the day before.

"It could be that," he suggested. "It is the same colour as human blood. Or it could be nature's way of reducing high blood pressure--bleeding through the nose or arse. Or it could be a polyp, or piles, or...." He did not use the word but I understood he meant cancer. "Let me examine your rectum."

"You'll do no such thing," I rasped. "I'd rather die than show my rectum to anyone." He paused and continued, "It would be wise to have an endoscopy. It will clear all doubts. We don't have the facility in Kasauli. You can have it done at PGI in Chandigarh or in Delhi. The sooner the better."

Eggs, Sperms, Bones and Brains

Here are links to some not so "Just So Stories" about animals - dead and alive.

A Supersized Chicken: [link] The original Nature article requires subscription for full access.

One of the world's top fossil hunters has unveiled a previously unknown gigantic, chicken-like dinosaur that may change evolutionary theory on prehistoric animals.

The remains of the animal, thought to have weighed 1400 kilograms, was discovered by Professor Xing Xu, from Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mongolia's Erlian basin, an area rich with fossils. The new species, named Gigantoraptor erlianensis, is the biggest bird-like dinosaur ever found and at a height of 5 metres is about the size of the famous Tyrannosaurus rex, Xing says.

The 85 million-year-old creature was 35 times heavier than other known similar species, and is thought to have had a beak and sporadic patches of feathers, according to a paper in today's issue of the journal Nature. Through analysing its skeleton, the researchers believe the Gigantoraptor shared the same ancestor and belonged to the same family as the Oviraptor.

With a beak and feathers, the Oviraptor is also bird-like and flightless, but weighed a mere 1-2 kilograms.
The largest known feathered animal before the Chinese discovery was the half-tonne Stirton's Thunder Bird, which lived in Australia more than 6 million years ago.

"If you saw a mouse as big as a pig you would be very surprised; it is the same when we found the Gigantoraptor," Xing says.

DNA Restores The Cuckold's Nest: [link] Okay, we have known this for ever - men's anxiety over fatherhood. DNA testing for paternity has put many a man's mind to rest. But paternity tests are beyond the financial reach of the majority of men in the world. So, absent any concrete proof, men will go on wondering about the biological origin of their offspring. What came as a bit of a surprise to me in the linked article, is that this innate suspicion is reflected even in men's considerations for adoption - they tend to gravitate towards children who bear some resemblance to themselves. Women on the other hand, simply look for healthy babies.

High-profile paternity suits point to a trendy obsession for the ultimate proof of biological fatherhood. But to evolutionary psychologists, they're just a recent and hi-tech twist on age-old anxieties.

Since hunter-gatherer times, men have relied not on DNA swabs but on a little-understood calculus of physical resemblance to decide whether to invest in little Emma or Ethan. In the infant's upper face and eyes, the skeptical pater familias looks for clues.

On Telling Stories

We often ask what it is that makes us human, and much has been written about the unique (or not) gifts of humankind: our fully opposable thumbs, in-line toes, upright stance, tool use, large brains, reason, language, self-awareness. But if I had to choose a single defining feature of the human animal, I’d have to say it’s our penchant and need for story-telling: human beings are the story-telling species; in fact, we’re story junkies.

From stories around the campfire to wandering minstrels, movies, television, gossip, books, speeches, performances: we listen to stories; we tell stories. All the time. Everywhere. I’m doing it right now. We have no other way of being in the world; our apprehended reality is a network of stories, part fictional, part factual. We listen to news and other “true” stories to get information about our world, but what function does pure fiction fulfill? Why do we love a good yarn?

While facts provide us with hard and specific information, fiction helps us understand the relationships between those facts. Through stories we expand upon our empirical knowledge to grasp those aspects of experience which are factually empty.

Mythological stories serve this purpose within the purview of religion. As larger-than-life narratives, explaining or describing the human relationship to the cosmos, they become the bread crumb trails of culture that guide members of a community through a chaotic universe. But the power of stories on the human mind is not only a matter of rarefied existential wonder; they also aid our understandings of matters more mundane by serving as the training ground for emotional and intellectual exploration, taking us to places in our minds without cost or danger to our lives or livelihoods.

Stories allow us to explore alternate lives and ways of thinking and being in the world, and they do it by engaging us fully along the breadth of our deepest emotional, moral, and rational capacities as human beings. Stories bring us ideas in a way that can both appeal to and bypass our reason, while sustaining the uncertainties, complexities, and deep mysteries of life. They allow us to explore through virtual experience notions that don't easily or entirely lend themselves to factual or purely logical analyses. When we’re involved in a character’s life, we learn something without even realizing we did.

Stories also appeal to us at different levels. The most popular do so because they let us experience deep passions, emotional roller-coasters, or the epiphanies of heroism, which we may otherwise feel our ordinary lives are lacking. Tawdry stories appeal to us because they allow us safely to transgress morally or sexually in ways we never would dare to in real life. Other popular stories give us hope, idealized role models, or a sense of validation in our own lives. Perhaps the stories with the widest appeal are those that pander or speak more to our desires and fears, our unfulfilled emotional capacities or drives. But this is what we are, and even these stories, operating on these simple levels, feed us.

But stories certainly can be larger than this, too, and the most powerful and important fiction is that which engages the whole being and transports both the mind and soul. It grabs us by the bones, jogs our complacency, and takes us to new realizations. Such stories present us the opportunity to wander through our own complex natures as individuals and human beings, helping us to chart our inner landscapes and move towards greater self-knowledge.

The same stories clearly don't have the same power or meaning for every individual—or even at different points in the same lifetime. But this is a strength of fiction: we each carry ourselves into it to have our unique experiences within; when we emerge, we each bring back unique gifts from it, which may at times take the form of an averse reaction. But even in finding a work of fiction "untrue" or out of resonance with ourselves, we are enriched for having made the journey.

Anthropomorphism and Empathy

Better steer clear of her, you left-wing ideologues and right-wing religious types!

Taking into account the fact that Namit has introduced me as a Dragon Lady to be feared, I will inaugurate my blogging efforts at Shunya's Notes with a kinder gentler post.

As I say on my page, I am an ardent animal lover. No, not one of the kooky, irrational types who would let children starve while they pamper their pets - are there really many people like that?  ( But I must admit that when I watch epic war movies or westerns, the twinge of sadness I feel seeing a horse die on the battle field, is a bit more acute than the one I feel for its slain human rider.) I also believe that wanton cruelty towards animals should be punishable by serious jail time and fines. That said, I do not write about animals very often. Some time ago, when the memory of having lost a greatly loved pet was still fresh in my mind, I came across an extraordinarily moving essay in Newsweek by a man who had to put his beloved Doberman to sleep because it had become a threat to the safety of his family. The following thoughts had crossed my mind at that time.

For animal lovers, the joy of living with a companion animal is tempered by the knowledge that our pets most likely will die before us. We also know when we bring animals into our lives that some day we ourselves may be the instrument of their death - when disease, old age or some other consideration will compel us to euthanize them. Knowing this does not make the decision of putting a pet to sleep any easier ... ever.

While most pets are euthanized because of disease or debilitation, dogs sometimes are put to sleep because they become a danger to us even when they are young and healthy. Dogs of aggressive breeds like Doberman, Rottweiler and less often German Shepherds, sometimes imperceptively cross the line between frisky, exuberant and playful .... to dangerous. The pet owner is often slow to recognize the transformation because the dog can remain docile and obedient to one human in the household whom it regards as the alpha animal. Jonathan Cooperman's dog was one such tragic case.  Jack, whom Cooperman called "My Boy" had to be euthanized at the age of four, in the prime of his healthy life when it became clear that he had become a potential threat to his human companions.

"Sometimes there are no words--just a look. Upon my command, my Doberman, Jack, sat obediently in the vet's examining room. Four years old and in his prime, with 115 pounds of strapping muscle, he was at once impressive and intimidating. He sat between the vet and me, wagging his tail.

When I gave him the instruction "paw," he offered that big foot to the vet, who placed a tourniquet on his leg. The medicine was drawn into the syringe and pushed into Jack's vein. Two seconds elapsed, and it was during this extraordinarily brief space of time that Jack gave me that look, one I'd never seen before. I couldn't turn away. Then all that bulk went lifeless, and he was gone.

There were no words. There was no quote that I could take home and put in a diary. There was just that look.

Earlier that morning, Jack had jumped onto the bed (something he was not allowed to do) and attacked my wife, Tracy. He'd given no warning. Even as an experienced Doberman owner, I was amazed by his lightning speed as he bit Tracy three times. I rushed her, shaken and bloody, to the hospital, and it was later that day that Jack and I ended up at the vet's office.

.....We forge special bonds with our pets, and my relationship with Jack was no exception. I called him "my boy," having raised him since he was a pup. When I first got Jack, I owned a sports car, and his idea of going for a ride was jumping into the trunk, then crawling Army style half-way through the dropped-down back seat, so that his hindquarters remained in the trunk as we drove around town. My decision to buy a Jeep as my next vehicle was pretty much influenced by imagining Jack as a passenger. He deserved to be transported in style.

Just before Jack and I went to the vet's, I took him for a long walk and one of our car rides. We played Frisbee and I let him chase squirrels in the park. I wanted his last moments to be normal--and fun. Two hours later he was gone.

So what was Jack trying to convey with that unforgettable look he gave me in the last seconds of his life? Hard to say. Like most pets, he had an assortment of expressions and sounds that spoke loud and clear to me: a quick bark meant he had to go out; pushing his bowl across the floor meant "feed me"; wide paws and a low stance meant "play with me," and my favorite--jumping six feet in the air while banging all four paws against the sliding glass door--meant "I want to come in."

But that last look was something altogether different, and like most people who have been left with a hole in their lives, I find myself filling in the words that were never said. I'd like to believe Jack was saying, "It's OK. I had a good time."

All of us who have gone through the heart wrenching experience of putting a beloved animal to sleep, have wished that we could have fathomed what went through the mind of our pet at the moment before the lethal injection was administered - to know whether they understood.  I know that this will be dismissed by many as unnecessary sentimentality of projecting "human" feelings on to animals. But the very essence of our empathy is to be able to humanize an event and a relationship. How else do we bond with our animals?

Shunya's Notes is Evolving!

As they say, all good things mutate in the middle.* It gives me great pleasure to announce that after being a solo blog for almost eight months and 72 posts, Shunya's Notes is mutating into a group blog. Please join me in welcoming four new bloggers to Shunya's Notes. For more about them, click on their names or contributor links on the left.

• VP joins us from Neutral Observer. With Attitude aplenty, this ex-physicist has a penchant for prose brimming with empirical gravity. We'll be watching vee-pee!

• Usha Alexander was a bass guitarist in a garage band until she met me. She still persists with her interest in anthropology, science, and literature, while singing soprano in a world music choir.

• Ruchira Paul, a talented painter and the founder of Accidental Blogger, has established a high bar for political, social, and literary commentary. Better steer clear of her, you left-wing ideologues and right-wing religious types!

• Dukhiram looks far less dukhi than one might imagine. When not entertaining, educating, and exhorting (as is his custom), he devises better ways of searching for needles in a haystack.

In the spirit of this mutation, I will no longer be using Shunya as my nom de plume on this blog. Happy blogging, new contributors! 

* (Ok, I don't know anyone who says that but it's true; else we wouldn't be here.)

A Portrait of Kerala

Kerala is known for its long tradition of religious amity, high literacy rate, high social status of women (due in part to its former matrilineal system), and a relatively decent public health service. In 1957, it democratically elected the first communist government in the world. Owing to its high population density, long exposure to foreigners, and a mercantile spirit, lots of Keralites travel abroad for work, most to the Middle East.

Hindus, with their diverse sects and practices, form the majority. Christians, over a third of the population, belong to the Orthodox Syrian, Roman Catholic, and Protestant churches. While Muslims reside throughout the state, the Mappilas of the Malabar Coast constitute Kerala's largest Islamic community (the earliest known Indian Muslim community, having existed since the 8th cent. CE). Jains live mainly in the far north. The Jewish community remains a small, exclusive sect, centered around an ancient synagogue at Cochin.

First mentioned as Keralaputra in a 3rd-century-BCE rock inscription of Ashoka, the region was famous among the Greeks and Romans for its spices (esp. pepper). During the first five centuries CE, it was a part of Tamilakam, and so partially controlled by the eastern Pandyas, Cholas, and Cheras. In the 1st century CE, Jews arrived and St. Thomas the Apostle visited (or so the Syrian Orthodox Christians believe). Arab traders introduced Islam in the 8th century. Under the Kulaśekharas (c. 800–1102), Malayalam emerged as a distinct language and Hinduism became prominent. The Cholas often controlled Kerala in the 11-12th centuries. Ravi Varma Kulaśekhara of Venad briefly ruled southern India in early 14th century. After his death, Kerala became a conglomeration of warring chieftaincies, among whom the most important were Calicut in the north and Venad in the south.

The era of European intervention began in 1498, when Vasco da Gama landed near Calicut. The Portuguese superseded the Arabs to dominate the commerce of Malabar. Their attempt to establish sovereignty was thwarted by the zamorin (hereditary ruler) of Calicut. The Dutch ousted the Portuguese in the 17th century. Martanda Varma ascended the Venad throne in 1729 and crushed Dutch expansionist designs at the Battle of Kolachel. He adopted a European mode of martial discipline, expanded the new southern state of Travancore, and allied with the central state of Cochin (against the zamorin). By 1806, however, Cochin and Travancore, as well as Malabar in the north, had become subject states under the British Madras Presidency. In 1949, Cochin and Travancore were united as Travancore-Cochin state. Today's Kerala was constituted on a linguistic basis in 1956.

Tamil and Sanskrit literature flourished from the 2nd cent. CE. Malayalam, an offshoot of Tamil, absorbed a good deal of Sanskrit and has a prolific literature. Notable Malayali poets include T Eluttaccan and K Nampiyar (classical), and K Asan and Vallathol (modern). In 1889 Chandu Menon wrote Indulekha, the first major novel in Malayalam. Traditional dances in Kerala honor Hindu deities or depict scenes from the great Indian epics. In kathakali, the classical martial dance form of Kerala, males portray both male and female characters. Kerala even has a martial art form, Kalaripayattu, still practiced today. Kerala's writers and artists include TS Pillai, MT Vasudevan Nair, OV Vijayan, Kamala Das, Shashi Tharoor, Arundhati Roy, P Zacharia, and Raja Ravi Varma. Famous entertainers and sportspeople include Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Yesudas, John Abraham, M. Night Shyamalan, the Sarabhais, PT Usha, Shankar (the cartoonist), and Jimmy George. ♣

(Click below for pictures of Kochi / Cochin, The Backwaters, Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary, Kovalam, and Thiruvananthapuram / Trivandrum)

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