Which is real and unreal?

Bliss (2021)

Director: Mike Cahill

This is one of the movies that one will either love or hate; get it, or it just passes by! I thought it was good. It helps the rest of the population not be affected by the complexities of a confused mind. 

Quite often than that, to the lucky ones unaffected by the hardship of modern living, it is sometimes how certain decisions should be made. And we cannot understand why the mentally ill repeatedly make wrong life decisions. They plunge continually into states of helplessness and hopelessness. 

Greg (Owen Wilson) is a staff in a call centre-like office. Even though his superior keeps calling him to the office, Greg is immersed in his own pencil drawing of his dream holiday villa. We gather that he is divorced. Even though everybody else is huffing and puffing, busy answering calls, Greg is in bliss, adding details to his drawing. 

When Greg finally meets his boss, he is shocked to find out he has been fired. Greg shoves his boss aside, and in a freak accident, the boss hits his head and dies. That is, everything became a blur. Greg finds his life going into a tailspin. He is confused. He does not know what is real, what is drug-induced, and what is hallucination. Who is that mysterious lady who keeps appearing and disappearing with yet another concoction to try? Why is the Universe keeps changing? At one moment, they are homeless and hunted like dogs in one instance and, in another, feted as great scientists.

To the uninitiated, this whole exercise is too confusing. If we scrutinise keenly, this entire imbroglio of severe mental illness could be akin to one floating around in a dream. Just like we become the leading player in our dreams and tend to do invincible outlandish feats, the sufferer is convinced that he writes the script of his role. There are no rules there; no holds barred. The trouble is that the audience and co-players do not share the same script. Hence, the clash.

Mental illness causes distortions of the mind. And the modalities to treat the sickness also bring in the same distortion to the mind, sometimes worse, bringing in disastrous outcomes. Sometimes, it makes us wonder. Is the illness worse, or is the treatment worse?

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Be careful what you wish for!

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
Director: Jon Watts

I was under the impression that the Universe moves along and things happen along its path. Whether events occur by pre-determined means or just by chance, for example, by a mere flutter of the butterfly wings, is anybody's guess. Everything goes on with a pre-set sequence despite all the randomness and the chaotic soup it portrays. 

The question is whether everything is pre-determined or it can be changed willfully. If events were pre-determined, nothing we can do changes Nature's course. So why bother to pray and hope that God will change things. A minor change in the complex order would just cause everything to crumble like dominos. If something can be altered at will, then the next course of events should be intelligence, not prayers.

One is reminded of the battleship dilemma here. A sea battle needs battleships. Tomorrow, there will not be a battle if the Admiral does not send a battleship. So, the question of whether a sea battle will take place tomorrow cannot be fate. The grand finale results from multiple 'what-ifs' and 'choices' made along the way that culminated in the showdown. 

"Shit happens all the time; deal with it. It's not the shit we face that defines us; it's how we deal with it." said a wise person.

In this outing, Spiderman finds out that his secret identity is revealed. The public is furious with the damage he had caused during his crime-busting activities. Specifically, Spiderman @ Peter Parker and MJ are vilified by the Daily Bugle and J. Jonah Jameson. On top of all that, Parker, MJ and his friend, Ned, all fail to gain entrance to MIT. Hoping to change all these, Spiderman approaches the mystic, Dr Strange. Change did not happen but not without consequences. It opened the floodgates of many multiverses and villains of those multiple alternative universes. To confuse things further, Spidermen of those universes also got drawn in. The rest of the story is about maintaining order after curtailing all those villains and their nefarious ambitions.

The lesson learnt here is that nothing just happens out of the blues. They are the combined effects of actions and inactions. Like they say about the proof of the pudding is in the eating, the testimony of one's resolute is in how he deals with adversities.

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A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away...

Mandalorian (2019)
Miniseries (S1-S2)

A confession is in order here. When my classmates in 1977 were ranting on and on about a new movie in town, my curiosity was aroused. What was all the fuss about, I wondered. Every free moment, during school recess and between the change of subjects, all they could talk about was 'Star Wars'. Some were even holding fat paperbacks of 'Star Wars' related books as their badge of honour like their lives depended on them. All the hubbub piqued my interest; I decided to pick a ticket at the local cinema to see what the brouhaha was all about.

I was mesmerised by make-belief vast outer space, the space ships and the various alien forms that form the storyline. And I loved the stormtrooper costume but was baffled by their bumbling incompetence and terrible soldiering skills. Unfortunately, the plot was too complicated for me to comprehend—Alderaan, Death Star, Republic, Resistance, Ewok and such were too much for me.

Over the years, the sequels start manifesting, and the initial offering become Episode 4, and there were prequels. Some even write 'Jedi' as their religion in their airline disembarkation cards! There were cartoons, and there was Star Wars merchandise which actually earned more money for George Lucas.

Now another addition to the Star Wars family is Mandalorian. It is an exciting tale that centres around a warrior-race fighter bounty hunter assigned a child, actually a 50-year Yoda-like being, who looks like an infantile Yoda, to take to a place where his powers can be harnessed. Along the way, he has to perform specific tasks to know where to place the child. The Mandalorian seems to carry a lot of secrets and is secretive about everything, including his name. He only reveals his face and name towards the end of Season 2. 

I was trying to place this story in the timeline of Star Wars. After cracking my head, I thought it must have pre-dated all the episodes put together, that the child would grow up to be Yoda, the wise one. Wrong. In the last episode, Luke Skywalker shows up in the form of a digitally modified young Mark Hamill to receive Grogu, the baby's name to train him as a Jedi. What, Luke is already a Jedi? Luke training him? My bubble burst. A quick check online revealed the real story.

These events apparently took place after Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

0 BBY – Before the Battle of Yavin, first assault on the Death Star in 'A New Hope'.

The Mandalorian takes place in 9 ABY – nine years after 'A New Hope' and, interestingly, five years after the Emperor’s defeat in 'Return of the Jedi'. A breakdown of where The Mandalorian takes place in the Star Wars timeline. 

REF: https://draft.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/4325847849664620954/8391446437981195822#.

• Star Wars: The Phantom Menace – 32 BBY
• Star Wars: Attack of the Clones – 22 BBY
• The Clone Wars – 22 BBY-19 BBY
• Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith – 19 BBY
• Solo: A Star Wars Story – 13 BBY – 10 BBY
• Star Wars Rebels – 5 BBY – 1 BBY
• A New Hope – 0 BBY
• The Empire Strikes Back – 3 ABY
• Return of the Jedi – 4 ABY
• The Mandalorian – 9 ABY
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens – 34 ABY
• Star Wars: The Last Jedi – 34 ABY
• Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker – 35 ABY

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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See you at the end of the road!

Nomadland (2020)
Director, Screenplay, Co-producer: Chloè Zhao

Maybe we never forgot our roots. Even though we decided to become farmers, stay put in one place and hope to gain strength through numbers (i.e. living in communities), we simply could not shake off our desires to wander and be close to Nature. As cavemen and hunter-gatherers, we were doing the same thing. We were awed by the things around us. We wanted to experience them and to know all about the fantastic things that we saw and felt. Who built them? When were these made?  Like an excited child, we yearned for answers. And we are still doing them today. 

At one time, we were told it is what it is. Do not ask too many questions of which answers you will not understand. It is beyond your comprehension, they would say. Nah, read these scriptures; everything is there. With science, it appears that this mindset is changing. People started asking questions and more question. Apparently, there were more questions than answers the more people asked. Curiosity piqued. Obviously, the books did not have all the answer. It seems that people need to feel to experience. They needed to spread their wings. The desire to travel is rekindled.

Much like a physical journey, our life journey gives us pockets of experiences. Every visual gratification, every smell, every touch, every feeling is an experience of its own. In life, we would encounter many sweet-bitter events. All these pockets of experiences form a composite picture of what we can say 'our life'.

'Nomadland' can be viewed as a cerebral movie that tries to look at two things that seem essential to the American public - homelessness and the zest to find the meaning of life. In a way, this film combines both topics. 

Chloè Zhao

Many townships that had experienced boomtown for decades are now in real danger of being wiped off the USA map. The industries and factories which formed the rock bed of their existence have suddenly lost their competitiveness. Many of the work had been outsourced to third world countries. Town dwellers had to find employment elsewhere. One such town in this story is Empire in Nevada. Fern, the protagonist, is one of the last people to leave this town after its Gypsum plant shuts down, and her husband dies. She sells her belongings to invest in a van to travel, see the world, and seek employment. 

In the course of her journey, she meets many fellow travellers who consider themselves 'nomads', making trying to escape the restrictive lives that they were leading or to cut loose of the melancholy that suffocate them. 

Perhaps by being out in the open amongst the gargantuan structures and mighty forces of nature, all our troubles seem insignificant. To the vast expanse of the Universe, we, as individuals, are irrelevant in the greater scheme of things. We are nothing, so are what we perceive as our unsolvable miseries.

Chloè Zhao has the enviable reputation of being the first woman of colour and the second woman to win the coveted 'Best Director' award at the Oscars. But, unfortunately, her native country, China, had censored all of her, the 2021 Oscar, as well as her acceptance. This is in response to her caustic remark about China in a 2013 interview. She had described China as a 'place where there are lies everywhere'.

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We matter, we like to think!

We brag, exert our authority, struggle for the course we think is right, and our ego. We fight for our rights and continue to do so. Sometimes we cling on to our convictions till breath leaves us. We do it because we think it is the right thing to do. It is our dharma to act so, and failing to impart our life lessons is sacrilegious. The law of Nature must be upheld at all account, and it is our God-given duty to do so. 

In that process, we break many hearts, we shed many a tear, invoke misery in others. We, however, feel no remorse because we know we did the right thing. Sometimes it kind to be unkind. Being the elder one with greater power acceded by hierarchy means leading others is a given thing. Pandering to the need of the majority and garnering popular votes are just not acceptable. There is a divine decree to uphold, or is there?

Now that twilight has passed, and Sun had set you, all is left are memories of you - anger, dislikes, idiosyncrasies and memory of strict stares. In a way, we miss you as we reminisce the good times and the not so pleasant instances you spent with us in the last few years. Oh, how those twilight years took away your hawkish eyesight, your robust physique, your hearty health, your confidence and your independence. 

That is the story of mankind, is it not? We appear wet, helpless, vulnerable, dependant and garner attention. Our cry creates joy to the ones around us. Then we manifest our reason for being, live in the harvest of our investment, clamour in that joy and follow the path of decline. We end up in a state of bliss to the pains of existence. This time the others are crying. They wail, we are in a state of joy, we like to think.

That it is. Our presence is marked with a single lighting of ‘vilakku’ to honour our death anniversary, to celebrate our footprint in the history of time. We like to think that our existence mattered. In grander schemes of things in the gargantuan Universe, we perceive our presence and our action or inaction do make a difference.

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Peel open the eye of ignorance

Doctor Strange (2016)

They say Dr Strange dabbles with magic in his crusade to fight the destructive forces that attack Earth. An intelligent but arrogant neurosurgeon in the real world, he is floored by a nasty accident that damaged his hands so severely that all the modern medicine could offer could not put his hands in working order again. No amount of aggressive physiotherapy or experimental avant-garde modality of treatment could resurrect his limp hands. They continued tremoring like leaves.

At this juncture, he heard of a patient with a transacted spinal cord who attained 100% recovery with alternative therapy when modern science failed him. Dr Steven Strange's subsequent journey for a cure led him to Kathmandu to things beyond his imagination. He got sucked into a world of 'magic', harvesting inner energies, dark forces and alternate dimensions. Things became so complicated that he found himself defending the Universe's right side against the Dark Forces.

I could not help but saw parallelism in how the story went to what is perceived in Vedantic teachings. Similarly, the mathematician Ramanujam saw his formulas spilt out of his mind as he sat and gazed at his devata, Namagiri. Hindus believe that the various Gods and Goddesses are a personification of conduits in pursuit of specific vibrations. Tune in a particular wavelength and see a sea of knowledge deep and too immense for the human mind. Seek Saraswati for an educational path, Durga for athletic endeavours, Lakshmi for a road of prosperity, Ganesha to remove obstacles, etcetera. 

Another exciting part of the story is the concept of time in a loop form. Unlike modern man's idea of time being linear, the Vedic teachings suggest that it could be cyclical. What takes place now had probably happened many times before and bound to happen again and again.

Among the many that get thrown in along the movie's course, one philosophical question is whether it is alright to be dishonest to win over your opponent? Is it acceptable for a leader to do the very thing that the rest of the subjugated are forbidden from? When life is simple, the rules of life must be followed to the tilt. As life becomes complex, rules are not so straightforward and can be bend.

We can draw our conclusions from the events in Ramayana and Mahabharata. Ramayana, depicting simpler times, portrayed Rama's life decision that was cut and dry. Do this and that. Simple. During Mahabharata, things become complicated. "They are your relatives, but you Arjuna still have to defeat them in battle. That is your dharma, the correct thing to do." In another scenario, it is perfectly expectable for Yudishtra to 'lie' that Drona's son Aswatthama 'died' when in fact, Yudishtra meant Astwatthama the elephant died. It was justified as Drona was almost undefeatable in war with his unfair usage of the celestial weapon. Drona's subsequent slaying was excused. These days we call these half-truths white lies.

Watch out for its sequel in 2022.

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Intelligent Designer or Pure Chance?

They are both from the rodent family but people's perception of both these furry animals are worlds apart. One receives awe of cuteness when seen roaming around the garden whilst the other received shrieks of panic.

One has a fluffy springy tail whilst the other has a slim tapering tail. Both had their bodies evolve over generations to suit the environment they live and their need to survive. The squirrel's furry tail may aid in the balance as it jumps from branch to branch. The tapered rat tail helps escape through tight fissures.


The bushy tail of the squirrel has its own added coincidental benefits. Being around flowering plants, the hairs on the tail aid in pollination.

Certain internal traits could have evolved over time as and when the environment demanded. Other incidental features, like the fuzzy tail, performs accidental purpose to the survival of other species. Who decides on this? Is there a higher power who plays the role of an intelligent designer who, for the kick of it, in a single brush decide to paint creations as He likes?

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Awful waste of space?

Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (Documentary; 1980)
Creator, Presenter: Carl Sagan


It all probably started over 13 billion years ago. A mammoth explosion which sent energy expanding across the universe gave light and mass. This expansion of space after the blast, by all accounts, is likely to be still ongoing as seen by the Doppler effect visible in the telescopic visualisation of distant stars. In cosmic terms, time probably started at that juncture. Then there was nothing for a very long time. Slowly with the cooling of the system, galaxies and stars came around. The earlier stars had short shelf lives. Their burning out of hydrogen fuels gave rise to other heavier atoms and supernovas that became the seed of our existence.

With carbon and oxygen came the blueprint of existence, water. By trial, chance and selection, the seed of life began. Slowly unicellular, then multicellular and complex creatures formed. DNA was found by Nature for continuity of life. With time a primitive reptilian brain evolved. As reptilian started becoming land creatures, some species developed more complex brain and a conscience.

These species of creatures turned out to be the most successful of nature's creations. They started exploring beyond their backyards. Some, however, refuse to use their new found neo-frontal cortex for the betterment of all of the universal's accidents but instead feel contented to let their actions be dictated by the primitive reptilian brain.

Carl Sagan

They refuse to see their short-sighted view of instant short-term gratification. They fail to look at the fate that may befall them when deadly nuclear arsenals are hurled at each other. The uninhabitable nature of our neighbouring planets in the solar system should forewarn our leaders of the future that awaits us.

For times immemorial, people have shunned from knowledge, critical thinking and use of science to learn about ourselves. Again and again, the wealth of knowledge and scientific discoveries have been destroyed in the name of nonsensical belief and in the haste of wanting to enrich themselves and usurping power. Events in Alexandria and Nalanda are the testimony of these atrocities.

We, as human beings, do not indeed have the higher intelligence to live together in harmony with possible other life forms in the Universe. Talking about the possibility of finding another lifeform in the Cosmos, it appears like a Herculean task. We are however making strides towards this end. Multiple probes and spacecraft are apparently showing positive signs, according to scientists. We are working towards 'contact', not now, but perhaps for generations to come. The Universe is, after all, hell of a big space. 

https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

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Of concordance and schisms

Aryabhata (476-550 CE)

Mathematician/Astronomer.

The first person to say that Earth 

is spherical and revolves around 

the sun. The first to suggest that 

any number divided by 0 

gives infinity ∞. (pinterest)

Continuing in the quest to make sense of things around me, I stumbled into something quite thought-provoking. It has something to do with our idea of separating knowledge into the sciences and the arts.

It is interesting to note that the Ionians, of the Eastern part of the Greek civilisation, and the Hindu culture started learning things about the world we live in entirely independent of each other. It is incredible how quite similar their discoveries were, at least in the initial stages.

The pre-Socratic thinkers thought that there was a connection between the Universe and the world immediately around us. Thales tried to say that water is the essence of our existence. Democritus put forward the theory of Void and eternal, indivisible atoms that made up our physical world. Pythagoras and his cult members attempted very hard to a mathematical formula for everything in the Cosmos, including music. His equations, he later realised, could be irrational at times. A case in point is the irrationality of √2. The hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle with dimensions of 1 X 1 cannot be calculated probably made him abandon his idea. From that time onward, another branch of knowledge is said to have developed - natural philosophy. Later philosophers quit looking at the stars for the answers but instead started gazing inwardly. They abandoned the physical sciences to rhetorics. Their idea of problem-solving was people watching. This type of wisdom continued all through Plato and subsequent sages. As we know Plato's teachings metamorphosed into Neoplatonic ideas which greatly influenced the Abrahamic religions.

Attempts to revive sciences through the works of Kepler, Copernicus and Newton met a lot of resistance from the society so ingrained in a kind of a dogmatic belief. Some of the branches of the Abrahamism realised their loss of grip on the flock and decided to move with the times while some found content in spewing their 6th-century or maybe 12th-century slightly improved ideologies.

On the other side of the world, in the Indus Valley, things progressed slightly differently. Their perspective of life on Earth seems to one that was devoid of the outside realm but of one that incorporated all the celestial bodies in the Universe. Till today, they appreciate significant events of the heavens like the birth of the new moon, the glory of the full moon and specific planetary positioning. Modern science is slowly agreeing to many of their old age believed traditions about the Cosmos and its cyclical manner of doing things. People of the Indian sub-continent continue showing their appreciations to things which are taken for granted in life. A simple example is the festival of Thai Ponggal or Makara Sankranthi which is celebrated during the Indic solstice as the sun enters the 10th house of the Indian zodiac Makara or Capricorn.
As more and more new things are discovered, one cannot fathom but only stand in awe trying to come in terms with how these ancient civilisations, with their rudimentary tools, were able to find things that were literally out of this world.

Kepler-186f is an exoplanet about 550 light-years from the Earth. It is the first planet with a radius similar to Earth's to be discovered in the habitable zone of another star. (Wiki) 

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Coincidence or what?

Get a copy of the book 'Real Lessons in Reel Life' here...Your entry into the elusive world of Maya, the stage set by Man to learn from to live on the stage set by Nature.  https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson

Asoka Chakra, quintessentially Odiyan

For 17 years, I have been receiving referrals from the world over. On the morning before my long procrastinated maiden trip to India, to Bhuvanesvar specifically, where did I receive a referral from? Well, what do you know? It is from Bhuvanesvar! If you do not call it coincidence, what else? Or is it that I am specifically on the lookout for these quirky incidences. Perhaps if I were to look at other tiny unimportant data, I would surely see a pattern and claim synchronicity! [Referral]

Am I so important to the Universe that it decides to indulge in some kind of divine game? A mystical prank. That would be putting own self as a point of reference as if Nature gives a damn to the single individual.

In fact, complex mathematical formulas had been employed to calculate the possibilities of these seeming coincidences that defy logical explanations. The odds of experiencing these type of similar events are actually, not as low as we think it is. It is just that we fail to see other happenings that occur at similar frequency without we batting an eyelid to see them whiz us by.

Sorry to burst the bubble but there may not be a governing body in the Department of Synchronicity up there who is responsible for ensuring that events periodically happen at a pattern to show us who is The Boss! It is just an order in the chaos that we selectively choose to see.

Synchronicity (German: Synchronizität) is a concept, first introduced by analytical psychologist Carl Jung, which holds that events are "meaningful coincidences" if they occur with no causal relationship yet seem to be meaningfully related. ... Jung used the concept in arguing for the existence of the paranormal. [Ref:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_synchronicity05.htm]

(Listen to segment 19:00 through to 27:30)

Get a copy of the book 'Real Lessons in Reel Life' here...
Your entry into the elusive world of Maya, the stage set by Man to learn from to live on the stage set by Nature.  https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson

Talking to ghost?

Source Code (2011)
Director: Duncan Jones

When you switch off a filament lamp, the light just does not go off just like that. There is a temporary time before the brightness disappears. Even life is that. If somehow we can get into the dimension when two people die, one life can mathematically be calculated to get the others and can be made to turn the tide of events. This bizarre time travel where scientists can communicate through a digital interphase to save the world is the theme of this movie.

Capt Colter Steven finds himself trapped in the body of a school teacher and on a train where a time bomb is about to be detonated. Through repeatedly moving to and fro between his old self and new, and communication through his computer, the Afghan-missioned army helicopter pilot is actually dead but is sent on a secret mission to find the culprit behind a train attack so as to avert other future attacks.

His mission was just to locate the information about the perpetrators and pass it to the people in the real world. What he was actually doing is that he is going to an alternate universe to retrieve useful information. What he actually does in this universe, he is told, would not have effects in the real world. If he communicated with his father, his father would not know in real life. If he managed to avert the train blast in the other world, it would still happen! At least that is what he are made to realise...

An interesting watch in the line of Groundhog Day.

Humbled by a pig!

“It is 5.23 am,” I told myself as I glanced at my watch. “I guess I got up early. Anyway, SK should be here right about now, right on the dot at 5.30am, as he has always been. Today is not going to be any different.”

I plugged on my earphones to hear the continuation of a podcast that I listened to all through the previous week. It was a day before the full moon, but the cloudy skies and the lack of street lights made the street look pretty dark. I sat on the raised stone fence as the auto-gate slowly closed from inside.

Far behind a parked car, I could see a moving shadow. It looked like the silhouette of two stocky legs pacing haphazardly as if they were swaying. At once, I thought that it must be the neighbour’s son who must be struggling back to his home after a long Saturday night out with the guys.

“Wow!” I was thinking as I symbolically pat myself on the back for keeping up with the routine all these years despite the raging inner demons and concerned naysayers who keep advising me to slow down on account of being a half-centurion! “Only madmen would be running on a Sunday morning when the sane recovers from a stuporous night-out!” they say.

Just as I was drowning in the nectar of my self-praise, I realised that the shadow cast under the car was not that of a man. The contour of two legs soon became four, and a greyish horrendously ugly looking face with a tinge of what appeared like thick whiskers soon manifested. I was 10 feet away, looking eye to eye at Vishnu’s third avatar, Varaha, a wild boar!

Here I was, I thought, at the comfort of city living, enjoying the fruit of my lifelong struggle to benefit from the support of privacy and security of the gated community, I felt I had had it all. Within the luxury of economic independence and intellectual reasoning, the brutal combat of our ancient ancestors and the street smartness of the lesser beings have taken a back seat. Even in my wildest dream, I never envisaged a moment I had to face off a wild beast!

It was the stare between two worlds; one of the modern domesticated kind who had fight-or-flight response limited to his autonomic nervous system versus one who had to fight to stay alive and keep his place in the hierarchy of the pecking order of the jungle.

Hey, they knew even then that the Earth
 was spherical, even before Galleili!

The stare looked like it lasted for eternity. The boar, of course, hungry and desperate for food, did not want a competitor. As if he knew that I was not interested in his food, thank you very much. Negotiation naturally was out the question, so did all civil niceties. 

I turned around to ring the bell to my house as I did not have the gate key. The sudden movement must have startled the beast. It gave a low-pitched snorting grunt as if it was showing its displeasure. Interesting, it was my neighbourhood, and the visitor or rather an intruder, was displeased! Well, that is the law of the jungle. Might is right, and there is no place for logic. This is the ‘id’ that Freud is trying to tell that is put under check by societal pressure and would manifest in a mob situation or when enforcement crumbles.

Just when I thought that nay was near, of me being gored by a wild beast, a beacon of hope came in the form of a beam of light from an SUV. My ride arrived right on the dot just in time to turn the table on the aggressor. Awed by, all it knows could be a more giant animal and a louder roar, its fight mode downgraded to flight as it turned its back to return to where it came from. It retreated.

As we drove along, we saw a humbled pig strutting its behind with its tail between its legs heading towards the secondary jungle. Probably my friend must have been reminded of the carefree days of his childhood when sauteed and spiced wild boar meat with toddy was a delicacy among friends.

That is why we are repeatedly advised by wise men to get back to Nature. Nature gives a purpose to our existence. Its massive structures like the trees, the mountains and elements of Nature awe us to the ground. It impresses upon us our deficiencies and our feebleness. It drills unto us that we are nothing, just a passerby who makes a cursory presence while Mother Nature and the Universe goes on and on without a gap. We are not even a single fragment of a tiny dot in the Milky Way, what more in the ever-expanding dimensions of the Universe.

Lord Vishnu’s bodyguards were cursed to be demons by 4 Brahmans for refusing their entry. These guards (demons) terrorised Earth and submerged it into the ocean. Through Lord Brahma’s breath came a boar. With Vishnu’s powers, it became Varaha Avatar. It valiantly fought the demons and scooped Earth out with its horns. The wild boar, being the third in Vishnu’s 9 Avatars, after fish (water creature) and the tortoise (both land and water creature), is said to be the most primitive of the firmly footed land animal. Long before the Darwinian theory of Evolution, the Avatars actually describe the slow transformation of mankind, from a water creature slowly evolving to gain wisdom and finally achieving priestly states.