This book about the curious lives of human cadavers is definitely a fast read. Mary Roach is a hilarious writer. She is not the medical types, but a writer for salon types. I had simply not thought about so many things about dead bodies until I read this book. I was surprised to find out what people and the medical community did with cadavers.

It starts of with the medical colleges using heads (fresh, not the embalmed) of the dead bodies to practice cosmetic surgery. Getting people to donate bodies to science is still a challenge today, even though it is common. In the olden days, it was quite complicated to get bodies for dissection and body snatching from the grave used to be a routine event. Dissecting a body leaves no place for a soul to come back was one of the thoughts. And dissecting was used as a threat in a different country. When someone commits a crime, he may be hanged. When someone commits a crime that is so harsh, he will be hanged and then dissected. It was used as a scare tactic.

My favorite chapter was using cadavers to figure out how an airplane accident happened, especially the ones that happen over the sea. There is no black box and the specialists study the damage done to the bodies to figure out if it was a bomb blast, a failure in the part of the aircraft and so on. The bodies can tell a lot even after they are dead. They are also studied to track car accidents, by safety departments and insurance companies for seat belts and the impacts. The cadavers are also used as dummies for car crash tests.

The life cycle of the dead is interesting as well. The anatomy labs are given the first choice for donated bodies and then the others get to choose. It finally ends up at the Body Farm, a criminal forensics campus at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. The cadavers are allowed to decompose naturally for various studies. The crime investigators and the dogs are trained here to smell the bodies.

My other favorite aspect of the book is figuring out what to do with the remains of the body. To bury, cremate, turn it into compost, reduce it to liquids and flush it down the drain or embalm. So many choices. I was quite surprised to find that Mary Roach did not to go Varanasi. But I also found it refreshing, so many books or at least chapters have been beaten to death just about a westerner witnessing the burning of the bodies. I get bored of reading such accounts. Same same, nothing different.

The Promessa method is the freeze drying method to end up as compost. Susanne Wiigh-Mäsaks from Sweden has patented this method, where the body is frozen first and then uses ultrasound to break the body into tiny pieces, then freeze dried and ends up as compost. This is billed as a green alternative to go. There is a lot of resistance from the people who run the crematoriums and who make the caskets. I was quite impressed by descriptions of Sweden. The Swedes are a practical people who appreciate simplicity abhor frou-frou. After reading this, I want to visit Sweden.

The other method is the Tissue digestion. Where an alkaline is used to reduce the body to liquids and release it in the drain. Plastination is yet another method to be around as eternal as you possibly can and it costs  $50,000. Organ harvest or organ recovery (PC or more businesslike) is used by transplant professionals to remove the important organs to be used by patients waiting for these surgeries.

I was quite impressed with the choices one can make. Although all methods are not available in all the countries. I am not very sure how I want to go. I do think donating organs or to be used by the medical community is a good choice for me. Mary Roach says that the survivors also need to be consulted and given a choice instead of the dead dictating the terms even after they have gone.

Death is a topic in all the religions, although everyday lives don’t deal with that. I read this somewhere while I was in India last year. Possibly in Tiruvannamalai, where Sri Ramana Maharshi is buried. Even though cremation is the usual custom of the Hindus, it is often prohibited in the case of a Yogi who is believed to have made the highest attainment. It is believed that the vital breath or unseen life-current remains in his body for thousands of years and renders the flesh exempt from corruption. In such a case, the Yogi’s body is bathed and anointed and then placed in a tomb in a sitting posture with crossed legs, as though he were still plunged in meditation. The entrance to the tomb is sealed with a heavy stone and then cemented over. Such a mausoleum becomes a place of pilgrimage. There exists still another reason why great Yogis are buried and not cremated, and that is because of the belief that their bodies do not need to be purified by fire since they were purified during their lifetimes.

One of the interesting points is that either weak quads lead to poor knees or that the poor knees lead to weak quads. The author says, no matter what is causing the other one to perform badly, the solution is simple. Start strengthening the quads which eventually improves the knees. Most of the time, an injury or an issue with the knee starts to waste or weaken the quads.

The author says there are four key things that a good knee must have- strength, flexibility, proprioception and endurance. He suggests simple and effective exercises for each one of them. My favorite one is proprioception, by which you should be able to feel the muscles by closing your eyes. Close the eyes and balance on just one leg. I enjoy this exercise a lot.

Lack of flexibility in the hips and knee make one walk slower. I found this an interesting fact. Flexibility of the knee can be tremendously improved by stretches. Hamstring stretches and quad stretches. A lot of yoga asanas can help in this. Strangely, the author does not mention yoga here. Instead, he uses “body-mind technique”.

This is my grouse with the author. He also recommends “relaxation response” which is nothing but Pranayama and meditation. He refrains from using these words. He says a technique of repeating a word or short phrase like “One” or “Our Father who art in heaven” is known to help solve the knee injury. There is also a section which says knee issues can be caused by psychological variables. Depression and anxiety are known to aggravate knee issue. May be these variables are the blocks in the mind which the yoga teacher used.

My own self analysis of my injury after reading the book is that there may be a tear in the ligament. This is a serious problem which might need surgery in bad cases. I am not sure how effective the medical insurance plan is in Canada. Pretty sure, it is better than the US if I believe Roger Moore’s Sicko. I plan to check out my knee thoroughly next time I go to India.

This book is simple, humble and quite chatty. You get to know Gandhi at such a personal level. This book was first released in 1925, it does not cover all of Gandhi’s life. It stops when his life has become completely public, so the actual nonviolent fight for freedom is not covered. This book covers his childhood, education in England, his life in South Africa and a few years after he returned to India. I am impressed with the little details he mentions that goes all the way back while he was in his teens or a kid. The book was written when he was serving a prison sentence.

Ahimsa as Gandhi explains is the same as the yogic definition. It means non-hurting, non-violence in thoughts, action and speech. Interestingly, he does not mention the word ahimsa when he explains his dietetic experiments not to eat anything related to animals. Every time, he mentions ahimsa, it is always in the context of hurting or torturing someone’s feelings by one’s behavior.

As a child, he experiments with smoking. He and his friends need money to buy fresh cigarettes as they get tired of smoking the left overs from where they can find. Gandhi decides to steal a copper (coin, I guess) from someone who works at his house. This probably was the only wrong that he ever did. It chews him out. He decides to confess it to his father by writing a letter and asking for forgiveness. This is a touching chapter and Gandhi understands that he has caused a lot grief and this he considers himsa.

Gandhi got married at the age of 13. His wife Kasturbai was also of the same age. He was a typical Indian husband of those times, always controlling each and every move of his wife. He says that he was a devoted and a jealous husband. He caused a lot of grief to his wife. It was only later on in life, after having understood the true meaning of ahimsa in all its bearings, that he has regrets for his behavior towards his wife. He says that only a Hindu wife could have tolerated those hardships. For a Hindu wife has really nowhere to go even when a husband treats her badly. She is described in a few places that she did not agree with him in a few things and would end up crying, red eyed, pearls dropping. For she had no choice but to accept what Gandhi told her to do. Gandhi was no easy man to live with, what with constant new diet ideas and other experiments. This is why he considers woman as an incarnation of tolerance.

It is interesting to note that Gandhi did not have a role model. His father was not well educated and he did not look up to anyone for inspiration or guidance. His obsession with truth was inspired by the Indian story of Satya Harishchandra. He felt everyone ought to be able to live like that. Although he picked up a lot of habits by reading books, most of the truths that are in the spiritual texts were figured out on his own. Time and time again, the need for ahimsa and truth were being felt by him. Brahmacarya is something he has struggled a lot with. He felt it over time, that if he did not follow brahmacarya, he will not be able to serve the humanity. Again, curbing the senses was something he felt from within. I am so impressed that he felt the need for satya, ahimsa, brahmacarya, aparigraha and detachment on his own, that these were the ideals that defined his life. He was one of the best yogis known to mankind.

He did pick up his fondness for walking and his dietetic quack experiments from some books he read while in London. I was quite amused by his dietary trials. He did give up on milk initially to follow brahmacarya. Then he comes to know about the atrocities done to the animals in Calcutta and that supports his decision not to drink milk. He mentions that it is important to take vows, for without them it is easy to lose the focus. I quite see meaning in this statement. This is the only vow that he breaks and drinks goat milk to maintain his health.

I felt he was so simple and impressionable. He reads the book Unto This Last, by Ruskin. He is so impressed with this book, he decides to live the rest of his life according to the book as soon as he has finished reading the book. For the longest time he did not think that the British imperial rule was bad at all. He even volunteered to help with the war that the British had to fight. It is only after he moves to India, it slowly dawns on him that India should be a free country.

He was a shy kid and a teenager. He would not even speak to anyone when he went to London as a teenager. Later on, he got better. He does mention that his shyness actually worked well.

My hesitancy in speech, which was once an annoyance, is now a pleasure. Its greatest benefit has been that it has taught me the economy of words. I have naturally formed the habit of restraining my thoughts. And I can now give myself the certificate that a thoughtless word hardly ever escapes my tongue or pen. Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. Proneness to exaggerate, to suppress or modify the truth, wittingly or unwittingly, is a natural weakness of man and silence is necessary in order to surmount it.

No wonder his letter writing skills have been amazing, for he thinks quite a bit before he puts it on paper. It is a treat to read some of the letters to the British government, saying why there will be a protest. It is written well and so dignified. He would never take any of his insults lightly. Every time he was denied his right in South Africa, he would write a letter to  the people responsible explaining why things need to be changed. You must be the change you want to see in the world. He says he had to pocket a few insults a few times for greater good.

The idea of fasting as penance must be Gandhi’s original idea. After he found success with this method to sort out very complex issues, he used this quite often ruining his health in the process. I can only imagine how difficult this must have been for him, but he says he was always guided by a higher purpose. Apart from fasting, his dietary experiments did make his life miserable. He suffered from pleurisy and once he was very close to death. He was in agony, doing nothing, watching the body slowly wearing away. He says he never liked living for the sake of living.

Gandhi wrote this book while serving a prison sentence.  I would have liked to read more about how exactly he came to dress in such a simple way. I can’t wait to see the film Gandhi again and read his other books like Satyagraha in South Africa.

This is Nandan Nilekani’s first book. But, it is brilliant for someone who is not a writer and is a business entrepreneur. He says if he had not met Narayan Murthy, he would have been a techie (boring!) living in New Jersey suburbs (boring boring!), taking the train to Manhattan. Am I glad he met Narayan Murthy and that he wrote this book.

NN has so much to say and I think he wanted to say much more. The book is quite huge with eighteen chapters covering most things India. Population, English language, education, democracy, pre independence India, India since then and move from socialist to capitalist India, his ideas about how India should move forward and the differences in the way China and India operates.

On to the book.

People eating, people washing, people sleeping…people visiting, arguing and screaming…people clinging to buses…people, people, people.

This is how India is described in some books. The idea that this population bomb has been a burden is not so true anymore. In fact, it is an asset that is driving India today.  India is currently benefiting the demographic dividend which most of the Industrialized nations have gone through. Economic growth normally coincides when there is a large number of working young people and fewer dependents. India has one of the youngest populations in the world, with a median age of twenty-three, at a time when the rest of the world is going grey.

The role of English language is significant, the chapter called ‘The phoenix tongue’ is interesting as it traces the fall and the rise of English, how it got finally accepted as an official language. When the British’s East India Company was bankrupt, they decided to replace British workers with cheaper Indian graduates. So, Outsourcing jobs is really not a brand new idea. If the costs are low, then that is the way companies operate. At the time of Independence, it was decided to let go of English and use Hindi. This caused such an uproar in the south especially in Tamil Nadu. With Kannada and Tamil languages having such rich history, people did not agree to using Hindi. So, it was decided English would be used for just another 15 years until every one agrees and has learnt Hindi. Again, the debate was on and finally it was decided to add English as an official language.

NN says that this worked out in India’s favor. He says that Singapore had chosen English as the language of the government over so many other languages. But, Sri Lanka did the opposite. Replacing English with Sinhalese, was a move that triggered the sectarian war and we all know how it turned out.

Of course, the civil war in Sri Lanka has affected India quite a bit as LTTE assassinated former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. He gets very high marks in NN’s book. Rajiv Gandhi was one of the first people in the government that was pro-technology using telecom and computers. Sadly, it was halted for sometime. Until then computers were known as man eaters and there was so much resistance to use technology. NN talks about the difficulties of convincing people in the government and the policies which were making things difficult for his software company and others. He goes on to say how Infosys has had such an impact on entrepreneurs. Until their time in 80s, the Indian industry was monopolized by the prominent business families. It is commonly said that everything from love to war is a matter of timing, and for India, IT was at the right place at the right time.

He talks about other technological achievements like electronic voting, railways reservation system, Stock exchange and the IT kiosks in the rural areas. The farmers can get to know the price for the crops and the weather conditions. Until this, the farmers were always behind with weather and crop patterns and were losing so much of their revenue.

The tipping point that truly transformed IT attitudes was the rise of the telecom sector. India is set to soon become the second largest telecom network. This is amazing progress when just a few years back, getting a land line was extremely difficult and only a small percentage of Indians were connected. The rural Indians have embraced technology and think of it as a passport to opportunities.

Globalization and the opening up of the economy to integrate with the world markets has not been easy. It has paid off very well. Our current prime minister Manmohan Singh gets very high marks for this. NN says that India was a very open economy until the late eighteenth century. India and China accounted for 40 percent of the global market. Colonialism sapped India’s strength and the country since independence had been looking inwards, like a frog in the well. We have the opportunity now to return to our roots and become a fearless, outward looking country of the past. This is full of challenges, no doubt and they are all within the country. India can either benefit from the current opportunity if we make use of it or just lose it for good.

Urbanization is a recent phenomenon as India was considered to be in her villages. Now, people are moving away from the caste based villages to the cities in search of jobs. Finally, the urbanization schemes are getting more funding from the government. The highways and the infrastructure only recently became a concern for middle class, entrepreneurs and the farmers. The election promises used to be roti, kapda, makan (food, clothes, shelter) and now it has become sadak, bijli, pani (roads, electricity, water). NN says a million rupees spent on roads, lifts an estimated 123 people out of poverty. A million rupees spent on roads can reduce poverty seven times more effectively than the same spent on anti-poverty programmes.

At the time of independence, India’s leaders were well educated and were clearly ahead of the people. Now, the roles have changed. The people have gained confidence, the politicians are tactical but not visionary. NN does address the caste system and how voting does tend to go along those lines. But, he says Indians are finally becoming more than that is defined by caste and religion. I guess the current elections would support NN’s thoughts. He has also mentioned that the polyester pants helped solve the caste problems a bit. Until this affordable material was available, people would dress up according to their castes. Now, one cannot really tell the difference that easily. Long live technology.

In the last section of the book, he proposes many ideas that the government should implement to make use of the golden opportunity at hand. As a late bloomer, India can see the mistakes of the developed countries and learn from them. He talks about eGovernance, health care, tele-medicine and remote diagnostics, pensions, citizen id, subsidies tied with citizen id and the renewable energy sector.

The concern for environmentalism comes at a cost for the economic growth. And, India is facing a new challenge that the developed world never did- of driving the growth around an entirely new energy model.  He concludes his book with the renewable energy sector, which he thinks will play a powerful role in providing solutions. This is one of the quotes by Rajiv Gandhi -

Development which destroys the environment eventually destroys development itself.

Good advice for everyone. If Nandan Nilekani ever decides to run for the elections, he gets my vote. Although, he says he is unelectable, which I doubt.

Enjoy this speech given by NN at the Columbia University.

The year is 1931, pre independence India. PB being a journalist makes for a wonderful travel writer. The search is on for a few good men. It is definitely not easy as he keeps coming across well intentioned fools, scriptural slaves, jugglers with a few tricks and outright frauds. He travels across many parts of India, talking to so many people. Of course, he needs interpreters as he is an English man. He makes friends with people who help him out most of the time.

Here is an excerpt from the book that sets the tone of the book.

That the west has little to learn from present-day India, I shall not trouble to deny, but that we have much to learn from Indian sages of the past and from the few who live to-day, I unhesitatingly assert. Grant that India has nodded and snored for centuries; grant that even to-day there exist millions of peasants who suffer the illiteracy and share the outlook blended of puerile superstition and kindergarten religion. Yet there still remains a small but priceless residue of culture classified under the generic term Yoga, which proffers benefits to mankind as valuable in their own way as any proferred by the Western sciences.

I should remind the reader that the term Yoga in the book is not used as in hatha yoga, meaning a trikonasana or a hanumanasana. Most of the Yogis in the book are described being in a trance when the author gets to know of them. When PB eventually gets to talk to a few, it is usually about getting to know the inner self.

One of my favorite parts of the book is the chapter talking about a yogi from Adyar, Madras. This yogi does not talk to anyone. But the author follows him relentlessly and eventually the yogi talks to him. The yogi’s name is really long and PB shortens his name to Brama. Brama is the only yogi in the book that talks about a system of body control, which I think is hatha yoga. He says that the body and breath must be fought as though they were obstinate mules, and they must be conquered. He narrates to the author how he finds his teacher, which is very interesting. He says that without a master, the books are mere pieces of paper. The word guru means, One who dispels darkness.

PB meets a lot of charlatans, fakes throughout India and eventually finds a teacher that he connects with. It is Sri Ramana Maharishi that makes a deep impact. He explains the silent teaching of Maharishi, which is fascinating. PB stays at the ashram and wins his battle of spiritual certitude.