One of my earliest favorite books was ‘Unexplained Mysteries of the World’. This was a Readers Digest special edition book, sold while they were still foolish trying to sell ‘1000 bucks plus’ books in 3 EMI’s through VPP. And 1000 bucks for a book 20 years back was unheard of.
My salary at that time was very much lesser, but love of books weren’t though. Always took the predictable route. Ordered the book, paid the first EMI, collected the book and ignored the repeated warnings for balance payments. I don’t know who was a jerk, me for not paying the rest of the money or them, who were pricing the books so high. Afterall citizens need to buy books and read! I don’t know whether it is one of the fundamental rights in our constitution, but I assumed it as one.
Anyway this is not about the meanness of either of us, but about this particular book. This chronicled all kind of unexplained events in the Universe like Ghosts, Bermuda Triangle and folks losing mobile signal when you call your team about achieving sales targets. Ignoring my last diatribe on my fellow salesman ( I also lose signals most times when my boss calls ), this had several comparisons from our own Puranas and Epics. About how the after-effects of a nuclear war has been exactly captured as an outcome of the 18-day Kurushektra war. And how in Ramayana, the take-off of the Pushpaka Vimana is so vividly explained like a modern day take-off. Then I used to be proud about these facts or atleast the fertile imagination of our ancestors ( the writing ones particularly ) and also it served a nice talking point in a drunken stupor of extravagance.
But I myself on later days have wondered about the Dasavatharam or the 10 incarnations of Mahavishnu. Maybe I read it somewhere or Vishnu Himself planted it in my head! The entire sequence of the Dasavatharam is a plausible explanation of the evolutionary development of living things.
The first one is Fish form, which we all know was the first bigger multi celled organism. The second one is the Turtle ( or the amphibian variety ) that is a natural progression from water to land. The third one is the Wild Boar, which is a complete land animal. And then the fourth was the Half Animal – Half Human form and the fifth was Human form, albeit a very short one ( maybe the early pygmies ). Then came the full human form, but an angry one at that, almost like carrying the remnants of the animal behavior. And then came the perfect Human with all the desirable qualities. And the Eighth avatar was the same Human with qualities so degraded like the modern man with full of lies and deceit. The last two always have been debatable, with people counting Buddha as one and Kalki, yet to happen one. But Buddha can be once again called as a development per se, which is nothing but rediscovering the better qualities.
While the charm of comparing this to the evolution still holds me in awe, the story behind the progress is not lost though. If thousands and thousands of years before somehow, someone could write this, we should have been something really.
I don’t know how to figure out where we have failed to record this intelligence in the current evolutionary process of ourselves. We had been rocking Man…
My salary at that time was very much lesser, but love of books weren’t though. Always took the predictable route. Ordered the book, paid the first EMI, collected the book and ignored the repeated warnings for balance payments. I don’t know who was a jerk, me for not paying the rest of the money or them, who were pricing the books so high. Afterall citizens need to buy books and read! I don’t know whether it is one of the fundamental rights in our constitution, but I assumed it as one.
Anyway this is not about the meanness of either of us, but about this particular book. This chronicled all kind of unexplained events in the Universe like Ghosts, Bermuda Triangle and folks losing mobile signal when you call your team about achieving sales targets. Ignoring my last diatribe on my fellow salesman ( I also lose signals most times when my boss calls ), this had several comparisons from our own Puranas and Epics. About how the after-effects of a nuclear war has been exactly captured as an outcome of the 18-day Kurushektra war. And how in Ramayana, the take-off of the Pushpaka Vimana is so vividly explained like a modern day take-off. Then I used to be proud about these facts or atleast the fertile imagination of our ancestors ( the writing ones particularly ) and also it served a nice talking point in a drunken stupor of extravagance.
But I myself on later days have wondered about the Dasavatharam or the 10 incarnations of Mahavishnu. Maybe I read it somewhere or Vishnu Himself planted it in my head! The entire sequence of the Dasavatharam is a plausible explanation of the evolutionary development of living things.
The first one is Fish form, which we all know was the first bigger multi celled organism. The second one is the Turtle ( or the amphibian variety ) that is a natural progression from water to land. The third one is the Wild Boar, which is a complete land animal. And then the fourth was the Half Animal – Half Human form and the fifth was Human form, albeit a very short one ( maybe the early pygmies ). Then came the full human form, but an angry one at that, almost like carrying the remnants of the animal behavior. And then came the perfect Human with all the desirable qualities. And the Eighth avatar was the same Human with qualities so degraded like the modern man with full of lies and deceit. The last two always have been debatable, with people counting Buddha as one and Kalki, yet to happen one. But Buddha can be once again called as a development per se, which is nothing but rediscovering the better qualities.
While the charm of comparing this to the evolution still holds me in awe, the story behind the progress is not lost though. If thousands and thousands of years before somehow, someone could write this, we should have been something really.
I don’t know how to figure out where we have failed to record this intelligence in the current evolutionary process of ourselves. We had been rocking Man…
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