The lost symbol – Dan Brown

5 years ago on one of the Sundays I woke up at 6am to finish school assignment. While having tea I picked up a book I had just bought and started going through a few pages. Next I know it was 10pm on the same day and I had finished reading it… the book was ‘Da vinci Code’ and yes I did have quick lunch and no, I did not finish the assignment.

I started reading ‘the lost symbol’ on a weekday so it took me 3 days to finish it. The story is just awesome. But unlike Dan’s other books there is more mystery than history in this book. There are lot of references from Vedas, Upnishad, Bhagvat Gita to yoga and meditation which are part of Hindu philosophy.

I hope Dan writes a thriller based on Indian history someday.

Nice read!

Ghost in your genes...

We get our physical features from our parents. Similarly we acquire our behavior patterns from our parents. There was an interesting experiment that the scientists carried out.

There is a nurturing mother mouse say M1 who takes care of her children really well. There is another mother mouse, say M2, who is non-nurturing and neglects her children after the birth.

M1’s kids turn out to be quiet and well behaved and M2’s kids are nuisance, they bite people and scream and shout in the cage. Scientists placed M2’s newborns in M1’s cage and M1’s newborns in M2’s cage. Guess what? M2’s kids turned out to be quiet and well behaved and M1’s kids – nuisance!

That means all behavior patterns are not dependent on genes a lot relies on nurturing.

There is a small village in Sweden where people always faced famine (this was 100 years ago). Now their grandchildren are scared of even the word ‘famine’. (Though no one has faced famine in recent years) The fear of famine was passed on to the new generation through genes.

You can watch all this and more interesting stories in a documentary called ‘Ghost in your Genes’.

This documentary made me think what if like fear, even knowledge and information is passed through genes? A lot of times we feel ‘oh I have been to this place before’ – déjà vu – is it because some of our ancestors have experienced it in their lifetime? It would really have been great if the knowledge and information was passed on to the next generations through genes!

Nice documentary, you can find it on Google videos.

Race With Time

Time is loping rapidly. I have given up my attempts to make it take a breather. I am trying hard to match my speed with time.

Sometimes I take a quick break and watch time dashing by. Why doesn’t it go slow? How come it is never exhausted? Why doesn’t it just linger for a while? They say to make it big you need to be on your toes continuously. But if we don’t put our feet up how will we observe our contest with time.

I have stopped dreaming to win in my race with time. I start rushing from the time I wake up. I plan the ‘to do’ things for the day during my jog with milliseconds.

In this scuttle I just touch a few places and run and at places I lurk a bit while on run. As if the entire day’s scurry is not enough; my mind starts running at night. It visits different places and people while I am asleep. When my mind gets tired with body, my brain starts its gallop. Recently it wrote articles, poems and plan for the coming days while my body was somnolent.

Time keeps up with its flow but though not tired I stop at times; to absorb the ‘emotions’ related to the happenings during the day… and just to observe their presence in life…

Keys ...

When I go home I lock the door and fling the keys wherever.

When it is time to go out it takes me 5 minutes to get ready and 10 minutes to find the keys. In our frenzied and hectic lives, I think we do the same with our memories. We create different compartments in our mind and keep them filling unconsciously with various memories, experiences, events and feelings. We lock these compartments and let them corrode. In our mechanical and chaotic life it rarely happens that the memories are revived when we are relaxing. Just so that our life doesn’t become too impassive our mind, oblivious to us, hides the keys to all its compartments in distinct places. These keys take us instinctively to the past memories. You might have experienced this…

Gentle breeze comes from somewhere and leaves by opening one of the compartments of our mind. And then the mind takes off and circles around the similar kind of breeze experienced in the past.

Mind also conceals some keys in various odors. The scent of earth after the rain might take you to the woods of your hometown.
One key is buried in the sense of touch. Touch of the blanket made from my mother’s Saree still makes me feel her warmth.

Sometimes the keys are in different sounds. If we listen to even the sound of a swirling sea then the next moment we might find ourselves lying on the beaches or spinning in the waves of Konkan / Goa (might be Hawaii for you). At times you listen to a familiar song and immediately locate yourself dancing in a concert.


And at times the keys are masked in various names. If you read/ hear one of it then it instantly opens the locks and fetches the memories related to it – pleasant, ghastly, wounding, insulting, gracious…

One of the names may perhaps embrace the ‘master key’ and it stirs up all the memories.

And in the middle of all this suddenly we become conscious of the reality. We grab our running mind, gather the cluttered memories, lock them in the compartments and fling the keys!