Reinventing reincarnation

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Hinduism is the idea of reincarnation. In this age of corporate yoga and pharmaceutical Buddhism there's hardly a person who can't expound on how we're all stuck in samsara, the eternal wheel of reincarnation, our souls endlessly striving towards final liberation or moksha. But other than philosophical fancy or fodder for stoned wonderment, what does reincarnation actually entail?

I found my high school adviser's metaphor to be quite helpful. We are all familiar with the sight of bubbles rising out of a carbonated drink. If we abandon for a moment our knowledge of chemistry, then it would seem that air emerges out of nothing, forms bubbles, and rises to the surface, dissolving into the atmosphere. In the same way, our souls (atman) are small pieces of the stuff of eternity (Brahman), like bubbles are of air. Our little 'divine sparks' are stuck in this world, like the air in the drink, but we also inevitably rise towards liberation. The bubble itself is the shell we create to shield ourselves from the nasty world- our egos.

That's all good and fine, but what does it mean for a strict materialist who doesn't want to concede all this 'eternity' and 'soul' jazz? I look at it this way. There's no need to invoke higher powers when you put your life up against the 6 billion others that are being lived right now (to say nothing of non-humans): the idea of that much humanity is eternal enough. The concession that your life is made up of the same stuff as anyone else's is tantamount to the idea that you could be born in any other life. The self-aggrandizing ego convinces us that we are 'lucky' to lead good lives, but really we're just monkeys with an attitude just like everyone else. And what goes around comes around.

Perhaps not the most elegant theory, but it gets across the same point. As Red Green would say: I'm pulling for you, cause remember, we're all in this together.

Breeds of Camel: Kacchi

The Kacchi camel hails from the swampy borderlands of southern Gujarat, where the Rann of Kacch forms a near-impassible barrier between modern Pakistan and India. The only large animal able to navigate these treacherous, misty bogs is the Kacchi camel, whose moderate size and wide feet, as well as reputed intelligence, grant it the ability to pick its way around trouble spots. The Kacchi is used by the Indian Border Defence Force to patrol in this area, but the Kacchi's main use is milk production. The sparsity of vegetation in the Rann led to the evolution of a longer lactational period and higher milk yield-- up to 20 liters a day!

Dippin' a toe in the orient

The most numerous (and harmless) type of tourist is the westerner who, finding themselves with some weeks or months to spare before the start of the next term or the expiration of unemployment benefits, decides to head to India to experience something a little exotic. It's a good choice: travel costs are low, the colorful culture is famously alluring, and, most importantly, Indians only kind of look like terrorists.

These tourists usually come to India with pretty high expectations for Indian culture-- parades of elephants/camels/palanquins, orange-clad holy men, colorful gods, etc.-- but thankfully tend not to have strong preconceptions. So they quickly fasten on the obvious, like cows in the streets and constant noise from temples, and are content to just see the sights and feel the vibe. They make excellent travel partners because they will treat every detail you point out as if it is the greatest insight ever made.

Their only major faults stem from their necessary naivety towards Indian culture. On the one hand, they remain oblivious to many of the more interesting (or distressing) aspects of Indian culture, for the most part never moving beyond the facade of poverty, religion, and cacophony. More annoyingly, they can joke for hours about the apparent irrationality of India, at once telling it just like it is and at the same time betraying the fundamental cultural arrogance that afflicts us all.

Saddle of camel: North Arabian model

By about 1000 B.C.E. the camel caravan was a common sight throughout the deserts of southwest Asia, regularly ferrying passengers and goods through the oven at the world's crossroads. But saddle designs adequate for carrying loads couldn't support a rider at full tilt. Until camels could be ridden well enough to be used in battle, the caravans were at the mercy of brigands on horseback operating from isolated oases deep in the desert. Between bribes to pass safely and the cost of an armed escort, camel herders were unable to reap the full benefits of the lucrative trade they carried and remained socially unimportant.

A new saddle design completely changed the course of Middle Eastern history. The North Arabian saddle, invented around 300-500 C.E., straddled the hump with a sturdy frame. Cargo could be loaded on and behind the hump and a rider could perch before it, his stability assured and within easy reach of the reins. Furthermore, seated atop the two-meter high withers of the camel, a rider could effectively wield a lance.

Camel herders quickly seized control of the caravan trade from the bandits and city merchants, and soon desert kingdoms emerged across much of Arabia. The most important of these was Mecca, which before 500 C.E. was little more than an oasis. Growing rich off the incense trade, by the time of Mohammed's birth in 570 C.E. it was a regional capital. With economic, military, and religious power in their hands, the camel herders of the Hedjaz were clearly in the ascendant.

Happy New Year

So I've been a little truant with updating. My parents came to visit for the holidays so I've had my hands full with playing tour guide. But now I'm settling in for a few more weeks of work at the NRCC.

I've also had the wind taken out of my sails in terms of academic pontifications-- it seems like everything I want to write about has been covered in greater depth and with much more fluency in Edward Luce's excellent In Spite of the Gods: The Rise of Modern India, which I've just finished reading on a freezing overnight train journey. I can't recommend this book enough for someone who wants to see beyond the spiritual and digital extremes that Western accounts of India so often adopt.

Desert wording

I have had a long standing debate with a considerably more erudite friend over the origins of the term desert. He argues from his extensive knowledge of linguistics and Latin that the term is derived from the verb to desert, which is predictably descended from the term de-serere, to unjoin. This is, of course, a logical and most likely correct explanation.

I, however, tenaciously hold onto an interesting anecdote related during a 9AM Egyptian Archaeology course. In ancient Egyptian (which, like its modern day cousins Hebrew and Arabic, and descendant Coptic, uses combinations of consonants to express core ideas), the term d-s-r-t described the uninhabitable 'red land' that stood in contrast to the k-m-t 'black land' of the Nile Valley.

I can find no credible explanation of how the Egyptian may have made its way into English, but it is a fun coincidence.

The Fierce Urgency of Now

My friends and family got to enjoy an exciting October full of electioneering and all sorts of good old American fun. I missed out, catching only snippets of Palin sound bytes through an intermittent YouTube. But nature ensured that I was not to miss out entirely on the sense of destiny everyone seemed to hum about in the first weeks after the election. After two months of playing the local water probability game, I finally and definitively came down with a nasty gastrointestinal something.

I have been no stranger to the stranger afflictions of the digestive system, but the past month has been a veritable Gotterdammerung. I simply refuse to give in to a recalcitrant duodenum, and so I have come to understand Obama's call to duty far better than I had ever hoped. For, squatting over a whole in the floor of an overcrowded train or hanging off the side of a Goan fishing boat or holding a pucker as I near the end of a 90 minute airport security line, there really is no better expression than the Fierce Urgency of NOW.

Saddle of camel: on hump designs

Riding was never a priority for the first camel owners. When necessary, people and belongings were haphazardly and inefficiently perched around the animal's swaying hump. But early saddling techniques prevented the camel from competing as beast of burden. Besides, there was no need for it in littoral camel-herding communities.

But money makes the world go round, and the high profits to be had from trade with the emerging civilizations of the Mediterranean drove the development of a new saddle. The prevailing winds of the Red Sea make northward journeys inefficient (even the Pharoahs tried to get around this problem), and most pack animals can't handle the distances and temperatures of the Arabian desert.

By arranging blankets and ropes around the hump of the camel, it was possible to stabilize the load enough for profitable quantities of goods to be carried the 2000 miles from Aden to the Levant. It is in just these caravans that camels first appeared in Western literature, with the arrival of the Queen of Sheba bearing gifts for Solomon (I Kings 10:2) and as Rebekah's mount (Genesis 24:61). Soon, camel caravans had taken over trade routes throughout southwest Asia, ferrying goods from the Gulf, Turkey, Persia, and beyond.

Back on the streets

After five weeks away, I'm back in Bikaner. I'll do my best to fill in the past days, but the gist is that, thanks to the Mumbai terrorism, I was 'stuck' in Goa for an extra week. And then how could I say no to a Delhi weekend?

The world's first camelid cDNA library

When some scholar desperate for a PhD topic turns his gaze to the history of research on camels, October 25, 2008 will undoubtedly mark a new chapter in his exceedingly tedious and irrelevant dissertation. After a year of research, the Camel Health Unit successfully synthesized the first camel-related cDNA.

DNA, being the stuff of heredity, is safely ensconced inside the cell nucleus. While this isolation ensures its integrity, it also makes DNA kind of useless. In order to get something done, the cell must transcribe instructions (genes) from DNA into RNA, which then passes out of the nucleus to be translated into proteins. These proteins are what actually do things in the cell. So if you want to study how genes get expressed rather than just how they get passed on, RNA is of far more interest, because it reflects exactly which instructions are being carried out when. But DNA is easier to study, so we collect the active RNA, copy it back into DNA, and call it cDNA.

Once you have cDNA, you can do all sorts of cool and godlike things. We're looking at the parasite Haemonchus contortus, a worm living in the camel digestive tract that feeds by digesting hemoglobin. We isolated the H. contortus RNA that codes for the protein responsible for digestion and copied it back into cDNA. Next, we'll insert that cDNA gene into the genome of a small bacteria (called a vector) and see if the genetically modified bacteria can digest hemoglobin. We'll then use that bacteria to design a simple diagnostic that would detect the presence of the hemoglobin-digesting protein in camel blood.

An interesting sidenote: even this advanced work has at its root the same large-level changes I've seen throughout Rajasthan. Desertification and overpopulation have led to a reduction in the quality topfeed (trees, tall shrubs) that camels prefer, forcing them to compete with sheep, goats, and cows for low-level grazing. This means that H. contortus, usually only found in sheep here, has moved to camels as the animals are exposed to feces-covered groundfeed.

Reasons to shave, vol. III

There's a lot of pot in India, and a lot of tourists who make its consumption a priority. It's an odd situation, for while some groups (like wandering sadhus and some farmers) are allowed to freely light up a chillum, marijuana use is otherwise very strictly proscribed, both highly illegal and socially discouraged. So an awkward balance is struck, with the freely growing weed and rich tourists on one side and a strict penal code and unsympathetic embassies on the other.

Pushkar is a holy city for Hindus, but it's also a major stop on the hippy circuit. Banana-nutella pancakes, Enfields, and homespun are as common as Siva lingams and sannyasins. And there isn't a tourist restaurant in town (most of which sport a 'No Indians Allowed' sign in Hindi-- a nice contrast to the radical egalitarianism of the idealists sipping chai inside) that doesn't offer 'special' cookies or lassis.

I've never been one to condemn having a good time, but I'm happy to avoid this side of tourism in India. This country's class-based and image-obsessed culture is extremely sensitive to details of behavior, hygiene, and dress that the 'smile and a handshake' West prefers to write off to individuality. By keeping my hair short, my face clean, my pants pressed, and my shirt collared, I can make a real difference in the way I am perceived and treated. In a place like Pushkar, where the locals are all too used to the interests (and weaknesses) of westerners, that goes a long way towards an enjoyable and hassle-free visit that includes genuine interactions with Indians.

Whistlin down the road

This evening I depart for Delhi for a flight to Kerala, where my Sanskrit teacher Jayanth is getting married. I studied with J for nine weeks in the summer of 2006, and he's stepping outside of his very conservative Brahmin caste to marry a secretary from the school where we met who has subsequently begun working as a lawyer for the High Court of Kerala. I can't pass up this opportunity, but I'm also using the trip as a chance to drop in on friends working in Madurai (Tamil Nadu) and Bangalore (Karnataka). Then a few short days on the beach. It's funny- since I'm already in India, my per diem on this trip will actually be lower than my current living expenses, despite how big a deal it would be if I were planning such an adventure from home.