Thread: The Principle Of Adaptation

An excellent piece of work I came across yesterday. I'm impressed by the authors arguments.

I'd like everybody on WAB to read the post and share their comments.

Its too long, but its worth it.

BhumiPavana was training his students to string their bows blindfolded while hanging upside down from a tree, when he felt a familiar presence and turned around. He saw nothing but a monkey's head staring at him from behind the leaves on a tree, and turned back towards the students. A few moments later, he had the same premonition and whirled around.
He saw his guru MargaDarshi standing a few feet away with a smile on his face. He had aged a lot since he saw him last, which was more than fifty years ago. He detected two things in his guru's eyes - that the rishi had developed profound wisdom over the years, and that he had a look of sadness and resignation.

"I did not expect to see you again." BhumiPavana walked forward, stopped and turned back. "That's enough for today -- take the rest of the day off," he said to his relieved students who ripped their blindfolds off and scampered down the vines to the ground. The tone in their guru's voice suggested that he was not to be disturbed for the rest of the day.

The two rishis walked towards BhumiPavana's hut, but did not go in. They sat down outside facing each other.


~*~
Sitting on the floor of the family room, she watched her younger brother trying to figure out a complex problem in algebra. Her father was trying to figure out how to install the wireless adapter he had bought for his laptop from Wal-Mart. Her mother had gone shopping with friends.

"Dad…" she started and hesitated.

"Yes…. Damn! Now Netscape does not even come up," exclaimed her distraught father.

"Dad," she started again. "I have something important to tell you."

"Yes. Go ahead, I'm listening."

"I'm seeing someone."

"Oh! You mean…"

"Yes, I mean I have been going out with someone. I am serious about him."


~*~
"Are you serious? You want to attack Srirangam right away? The horses are tired and the soldiers weary. Can't it wait till tomorrow morning?" the general exclaimed.

"I did not come all the way from Delhi to rest," Ulugh Khan growled. "There is a famous temple at Srirangam where the infidels worship. We are just one hour away from there. With the death of all these soldiers," he swept his hand at the bloody battlefield, "the temple is defenceless. We will go there tonight and slaughter everyone and destroy the kafir's idols and temple."

"The temple will not go anywhere by tomorrow morning, will it?"

"But the infidels may take away their idol and hide it. And when we go back north they will build another temple and consecrate the idol. That's what they did in Dibrupur, Naraingunj, Narsipattana and scores of other places that we went through on our journey here. I am not making the mistake of letting them slip away with their idol. They have special reverence towards it. They attach cultural, artistic and historic importance to it. It gives them mental strength. Smashing it does more damage to their psyche than anything else does. God willing, we will be successful in our mission."


~*~
"Were you successful in your venture?" BhumiPavana asked MargaDarshi. There was a pause before his guru replied, and BhumiPavana guessed the answer.

"Not entirely," said MargaDarshi with a sigh. "We have created the first version of the Vedas, but it is far from perfect. There are contradictions within that we have been unable to resolve. We need the next generation to continue the work."

"I see," said BhumiPavana. "And you have me in mind?"

"Yes, we think…"

"Who is this we?"


~*~
"What's his name? What does he do?" asked the father.

"Suhail," replied the daughter. "He just graduated and has a couple of job offers in the city."

"He is a …"

"…Muslim. Yes dad. Is that a problem for you? You brought us up with liberal values, remember?"

"Problem for me? Will I have to live with him? If anything, you have to think if this is a problem for you!"

"No dad. He is very liberal. He is not a fundamentalist."

"What makes you think so? What's a fundamentalist?"

"You know, terrorist, militant… that kinda thing. He has never spoken about his religion with me. We do fun stuff, ya know, hangin' out at bars, pubs, dance-floors. He is serious about his career."

"I sense trouble already. Firstly, contrary to what you think, fundamentalism is not limited to suicide bombers, but the large silent majority that does not try to stop them and quietly supports them. Secondly, the fact that he has not spoken to you about religion raises red flags all over."

"Dad! Stop being so judgmental! You have not even met him. Meet him, learn to like him, then you can learn to hate him."

Sensing that his daughter was shutting her mind in a rebellious mood, her father put the laptop aside knowing that this was going to be one long discussion.

He loved her so much. The way she used to smile at him when she was only a month old. The way she would cling to him whenever she saw him. Her first words... He wished nothing but the best for her. "And what happened? What have I done to deserve to see this day?" The distraught father thought as he saw his daughter wailing uncontrollably at the news from the battlefield that her husband had died at the hands of Ulugh's soldiers. How he wished his wife was alive to support them emotionally at this hour. She was lucky to not have seen this day.

"Ponne! Console yourself! You husband died in battle -- there is nothing more important than that for a Kshatriya."

The women from the neighborhood who had come to console them hushed him up. "What garbage are you talking? Even at a time like this can't you men think of anything other than your philosophical nonsense?"

"I have no life. I want to die and join him in Vaikuntha. Krishna! Take me," his daughter cried plaintively.

"Please don't say that. I have nobody else but you. Let's leave this place and you can start over." Many people were packing up their belongings and fleeing. Rumors were afloat that Ulugh would ransack Srirangam next. Muslims were known to slaughter all civilian men and old women, and rape the young women. They would take away children to be brought up as Muslims.

"I'm going. My time is up." MargaDarshi said. BhumiPavana was not surprised. The rishi was more than two and a half centuries old, and it was showing. Regardless of the intensity of tapasya and the powers gained hence, the aging of the body could not be controlled forever.

"I'll do my best," said BhumiPavana. "I want to know where you left off."
"And that's why I'm here," said MargaDarshi. "Before I go into the details of the Vedas, I want you to know the goal, the purpose of their creation."

BhumiPavana sat back.

"It is all about change," began MargaDarshi. "The world is changing slowly but constantly. Mankind and all its related activities like culture, language, modes of worship all have to keep up with the change. Those that fail to atrophy and perish."

"Adaptation…" said BhumiPavana.

"Exactly," said MargaDarshi. "It is all about adaptation. Every philosophical principle, every thought and every action of man has one and only purpose: Adaptation to the changing states. If you have breathed out, your lungs need oxygen, so you adapt by breathing in. You get hungry, and you adapt to the stimulus by eating. You are young and your hormones are hyperactive. You adapt to the situation."

"Marriage," said the father.

"What?" said the daughter.

"I said, marriage. Men and women take different steps to adapt, but marriage is by far the biggest step in adaptation."

"I don't get it," said the daughter.

Her brother exclaimed: "I got it!" apparently to the algebra problem and turned the page.

"Look at this," said the father pointing to the laptop. "I installed new software, and what did it do? It ruined many of my existing settings, and I cannot run some of my existing software that I used to be able to run for years. The manufacturer claimed that it was backward compatible with other applications, and I bought the marketing shpeil. You're frowning, so I'll come to the point. The question that I have is: Is Suhail plug-and-play as he claims, or does he want to plug and play?"

"Dad!"

"Don't roll your eyes. It is the most important question that you will ask yourself in life. If he is the former, then he is conducive to adaptation. If it is the latter, then he is not."

She suddenly stiffened. Something seemed to have clicked in her mind and she stopped crying abruptly. The neighboring women looked relieved, but the father knew from the familiar look on his daughter's face that she had made a decision and no force on earth could change her mind. He looked even more worried.

"Where is Ulugh Khan's army?" she asked quietly in a steely voice.

"About an hour's ride by horse. We do not have time to lose. We should head south or hide in the hills. They say it is better to hide than run because his soldiers will follow us south. We have a few hiding places that will fit all the women in Srirangam."

"What about the men? What about the temple and the murthi?"

"Pillai Lokacharya has decided that he will take the murthi to SatyaMangalam near Mysore. Wodeyar has a large army and Ulugh will not attack him. He is in the process of selecting a few men who will accompany him. However, there is apprehension that if Khan's army starts out soon, they will be caught before they can get out far enough from here. Let's pray to SriKrishna for a miracle."

"It's no miracle that some societies last long enough to become civilizations, yet others die out after a few centuries. The former has learnt to adapt itself to changing situations and the latter has not," continued MargaDarshi.

"I see," said BhumiPavana. "But seems to me that adaptation is an end state that can only be reached after a process. What is the process?"

"There are five stages to this process: Intolerance, tolerance, acceptance, participation and adaptation. All living beings in nature will have to possess one of these traits to react to external stimuli. It is the last one that keeps them living and growing, the fourth that keeps them happy, the third that keeps them content, the second barely comfortable and the first brings conflict. No matter what situation you take, one of these five options will have to be chosen."

"Take the example of Halloween" the father continued. "You see people who hate the fact that children ring the doorbell. They have signs on their property warning the children to stay away. This is perfectly legal, but intolerant. Then you have some other people who do want to buy candy and they do not like answering the doorbell while they are watching TV. So they sit inside the house, and even if kids ring the doorbell for candy, they do not answer it. This is tolerance. Then you have people who want the kids to have candy but do not want to be bothered. They want the kids to be happy, but are content in leaving the candy outside the front door so that the kids can take whatever they want. This stage is one of acceptance. Then you have people who actually answer the doorbell, exclaim "Wow! I like your Spiderman costume!" and give out candy. This makes the kids even happier because not only do they get candy, but also their costumes are appreciated. This is the participation stage. Once they reach this stage, then they are able to adapt to the event as times change. Today it is tradition to give out candy, but in a few years it may be something else. Since they have participated all along, they will adapt to new ways that Halloween is celebrated."

"There will be no more celebration in my beloved daughter's life," the distraught father thought. "How will she live? What will she do?"

"Appa," his daughter started, "I want you to accompany Pillaiyar to Mysore. Please see to it that the murthi of SriKrishna comes to no harm. I will not be in hiding. I have something to do." She turned towards a servant and said, "Get a horse ready for me."

"What? Why? You must hide immediately. Especially a young woman like you…" he saw the expression in his daughter's eyes and fell silent. For a brief moment they reminded him of his long gone wife, the same steely look that came when she had made up her mind.

"Appa. Somehow Ulugh's army has to be delayed by a few hours. The army is gone. People are fleeing because we all know what happens to civilians when the Muslim kings are victorious. They are not like Hindu kings who respect the people of the defeated kingdom. They're animals. Even the fleeing old people will not be spared. Someone has to step up a plate and hold the army back. Someone has to adapt to the situation."

"But how will you do that?"

"Leave that to me. My life is over. As a childless Kshatriya widow, it is my duty to fight the enemy and I will do whatever it takes. Rest assured, you will have enough time to make the getaway. Leave now and I'll handle the rest."

"Let's see how you want this situation to be handled by Suhail," the father continued. "You love the opera, don't you?"

"Like, totally," the daughter replied.

"Let's just say for argument's sake that he has never been to an opera, but vaguely knows what it's about. After marriage, one of the following may happen. First, he could forbid you from going to the opera anymore because it is rooted in Catholic religiosity."

"Dad! That's intolerance -- he is not like that."

"Well, not right now, and I'll come back to that later. Second option, he will give you permission to see the opera, but will not like it. He will not like it when you take your children to the opera. That's tolerance. Third option, he will drive you to the opera, buy tickets for you and the children, but will not come in. He will ask you later if it was good, whether you enjoyed it. That's acceptance. Fourth option is when he accompanies you, sits through the thing with a bored expression, dozes off in the middle. That's partial participation. Fifth is when he accompanies you, sits through the thing with interest, points out the good and bad parts, laughs and talks about it. He wants to see more operas with you. He likes some. He hates others. That's complete participation. Which option do you want?"

"Fifth, of course dad. I'm not a chimp!"

"But of course, you're my daughter! Fifth. In all aspects of life, you want the fifth option, and you want to give him the fifth option when it comes to his interests. I know you don't care too much about baseball, but if he likes baseball, you must give him complete participation. It goes both ways."

"Yes…" she said thoughtfully.

"And if he likes to celebrate Muslim festivals, go to the mosque for events where women are also invited, you should go with him. And pray in mosques if necessary."

"Of course I will dad. That's how you brought us up."

"And if there are events in temples for Hindu religious festivals, then he should participate as well. If you want to celebrate your son's graduation with a havan, he should perform the havan with you. Participation is critical."

She was silent.

"A penny for your thoughts…"

"Dad…"

"Why is your voice so dry? Here, have some water…"

"Dad. Their religious traditions are such that they cannot participate in other's religious places and events. They cannot belong to more than one religion."

"That's utter nonsense. The President of India, Abdul Kalam, participates quite openly."

"Well. That's an exception. Normal Muslims cannot do that."

"Why not?"

"Well, it's not really necessary…" she started. "I can go to the temple alone when I feel like."

"So you don't really care for the fifth option. You are willing to give it up for him."

"Well... I won't be giving it up."

"Oh yes, you are. After marriage you can continue doing things alone only for a while. Eventually you will give up. And your children will never become anything close to a Hindu. They will be Muslim, out and out."

"There's nothing wrong with it."

"Isn't there? Is it natural? Have you seen people born out of inter-racial marriages? They have physical characteristics of both the races equally. Nature does not do injustice. She balances all aspects. Do you think it is conducive to nature if your children do not pray in temples but pray in mosques?"

"Well, they don't have to do either."

"Like nature producing Oriental children out of a White father and a Black mother? That's fabulous! They don't have to pray anywhere. They don't have to watch baseball or go to the opera. They don't have to eat beef or pork. That's very good. Reduce the options for your children even before they are born."

"Sorry. I did not mean it that way. You are right; they have to do both. And he has to participate in everything and so should I."

"Well, that's all right. You are still young and as a woman you can only think short term when it comes to mental issues."

"Dad. That's preposterous!"

"And men can think only short-term when it comes to physical issues."

Her mind went back to almost a year ago, at her friend's graduation party. She was talking to a group of friends when Suhail came into the group and congratulated her friend. He did not look at her and walked away to another group. She had found herself going into that group on some pretext. He was speaking to some other people. He did not look at her. Since there were no other women in the group, she threw her hair back and tucked it behind her ears one by one. He still did not look at her. She grabbed her hair and tied it into a tuft and jutted her chest out just a little bit. He still did not look at her. She opened her tuft and waved her hair and ran her finger through them. He walked away to the buffet table to get some food without looking at her. After a few moments, she found herself near the buffet table, after checking her face in the mirror, a shiny plate and a bald man's head. They both met at the alu-mattar pan, and paused.

"You go ahead," he said looking at her eyes for the first time.

"Thanks. The food is good, isn't it?"

"Yummy," he said. They both walked over and stood to a side eating.

"Suhail," he said extending his hand. "I work at an investment bank".

She introduced herself. "So how do you know these people?"

He started explaining. While he spoke, she slowly took her hand up to one shoulder and played with her bra-strap, and brought her hand down casually brushing her breast.

'This one is putting me through a test at the very first meeting,' Suhail thought. His eyes did not leave hers.

He continued to talk. After some time, she put her plate down and took one hand back up and absentmindedly put it on the top of the other breast.

'Either this one has the hots for me or she's in heat,' Suhail thought. He continued talking, his eyes locked to hers. "Your best option is to take the analytical courses in the last semester."

"But isn't it better to get them over with early on?" she asked while thinking, 'This one is good. He did not even glance at my chest.' He moved sideways just a little bit and her eyes fell down and glanced at the point where his legs met. She looked back up abruptly.

"But analytical courses are such that they are best taken during winter when the weather is gloomy outside and you are forced indoors into sitting down in one place," he continued.

"That's a good point. It's definitely better to take conceptual courses in summer when you can read outside in a park or something. I never thought of that." Her eyes darted quickly down again to the same spot on his body. 'What's wrong with me? Why am I doing this?' she thought.

'She did it again,' Suhail thought.

'He wins. I lose,' she thought.

"I win. You lose," he said loudly.

"What?" she asked startled.

"I made you change your mind, didn't I?" he asked.

"Ohhh!" she said relieved. "Thanks for the advice." And she walked away without looking back.

And their meetings had become more frequent over the months.

"I'll take the least frequent route to Ulugh Khan's camp," she told herself as she rode out of the deserted town. It was a dangerous route over a ravine, and only expert horsemen could survive the ride. And she did not care too much for her life anymore.

She reached the camp in a couple of hours. The soldiers were getting ready to mount their horses. The attack was imminent. She rode straight towards them.

"Take me to your leader," she said authoritatively.

Unused to taking orders from a woman, the soldiers growled. A couple of them forced her down the horse and grabbed her bottom.

"I belong to your leader," she said calmly.

The two soldiers abruptly let go of her, and hurried to inform their leader. They came out in a few moments and waved her in.

"Hello…" the father said waving his hand. "Are you with me?"

"Oh... yes, dad," she said, coming back to reality from her first meeting with Suhail.

"As I was saying, in the art of courtship, women administer short-term mental tests on men, and men administer short term physical appraisals of women. Neither thinks long term, and hence the divorce rate among love-marriages is highest in all societies. But that is a discussion for another time. What I wanted to ask you is: Do you think you will lose out on your and your progeny's capability to adapt if you marry him? Is he adaptation-ready?"

"Dad. Why are you so hung up on this adaptation business? Why is it so important?"

"Adaptation is life," her father replied. "Adaptation helps you work with others who are not like you and think differently from you. Nature has set many examples all around us to teach us this lesson. One reason why women live longer than men is because their bodies learn to adapt to change during puberty and the monthly cycles, as well as during pregnancy and child birth, whereas men's bodies are almost the same throughout their life. Where you see adaptation, you will see continuity and longevity. I call this the Kishore-Balu phenomenon."

"Kishore what?"

"There were many great singers in Hindi cinema: Mukesh, Rafi, Hemant Kumar, Manna Dey etc. But none of them came close to Kishore Kumar when it came to the number of songs sung, number of awards, fan-base or number of years in the industry. You know why? Because he adapted his voice to the heroes of the time. He changed his voice to adapt to the careless drawl of Dev Anand, then to the romantic moods of Rajesh Khanna, the quiet tone of Sanjeev Kumar, to the westernized tone of Dharmendra and to the angry, brooding, deep voice of Amitabh Bachchan. None of the other singers in the industry, females included, could manage this feat. As for SP Balasubramaniam, he went one step further. Not only did he adapt his voice to changing heroes; he adapted it across languages. Whether it was the mockingly smooth voice of Kamal Hassan and the sultry voice of Rajinikanth in Tamil, or the brash voice of Chiranjeevi and Nagarjuna in Telugu, or the staccato voice of AnantNag and the carefree voice of Vishnuvardhan in Kannada, he managed to switch his voice with ease. He even switched his voice to suit that of Salman Khan in some Hindi movies. None of the other great singers of the south, be it PB Srinivas, Jayachandran, Yesudas etc., ever managed this feat."

"They adapted, and ruled," he continued, "and that is true of all human endeavors. Businesses that adapt to the changing markets last for generations. Societies that have learnt to adapt become civilizations. Societies that do not adapt are forever at conflict with all the others. In modern times, the test of adaptation is how conducive the country in question is to democracy. Countries that have taken to democracy, however flawed, are adaptation friendly. The others are filled with people who resist change and are adaptation averse. The conflict that you see today between the mid-east and the rest of the world is because Muslims have been so straightjacketed by Islam that they cannot adapt to changing realities. Christianity and Judaism learnt it the hard way through Renaissance and the Holocaust, but Islam is yet to learn it. Like everything, all learning begins at home. And the ultimate test of adaptation in a person's life is…"

"Marriage" said MargaDarshi. BhumiPavana leaned back. "Marriage forces a person to adapt to a person of the opposite sex who may have a completely different outlook on life. It forces the couple to adapt to each other and work around issues. The degree of marital conflict and break-ups is a good benchmark to gauge the degree of adaptation in any society. When couples have children, it forces them to adapt even more to the changing mores of the younger generation. This adaptation brings continuity, so when they see their grandchildren behaving completely differently from how they behaved when they were young, it teaches them how to deal with eternal change, and they live longer than those who do not have children and/or grandchildren. It is not a coincidence that people who are known to live the longest are also those who have great great grandchildren. Adaptation and longevity go together."

"Marriage is where Muslims tend to give the short end of the stick to non-Muslims throughout the world," the father continued. "Islam specifically forbids its women to marry non-Muslims, unless they convert to Islam first. It does not impose the same restriction on men, because it considers women to be useful only for breeding. If you notice, in almost all countries you will see its Muslim male population marrying the local womenfolk, but their women folk are restricted in their freedom so they are not allowed or available to marry the local men. You can see that in this country, Britain, Netherlands, Australia and of course, in India. Throughout the six hundred year Muslim rule of India, I have not seen a single Muslim ruler giving his daughter or sister in marriage to a Hindu prince. Those days, it was tradition among warring kings to marry into each other's families to avoid war and the hardships that war brings. So they would marry each other's children or sister or brother, thus ensuring that familial stakes would reduce conflict. This was true not just among Hindus, but also Greeks, Huns and other invaders who came to India. Greek princesses married Hindu princes and vice versa. However, this changed after the Muslims came. When a Hindu Raja would go with a mutual marriage proposal to a Muslim king, the Muslim would agree to marry the Raja's daughter or sister as a sign of friendship, but refuse to give away his daughter or sister in marriage in return. While it was the mistake of the Hindu Raja to sign a one-way contract that is a separate topic into which I do not want to go now. Since the Muslims do not give and take in a marriage, they never really adapted to India. Just as they do not adapt to the host countries even today. Hence you see conflict in Philippines, Thailand, Europe and any other place where they have lived for generations."

"But why do you assume Suhail is like that? We have to go by individuals."

"Agreed 100%. However, Suhail may not be like that now, but as age progresses, he may change. You see many instances in this country, Britain, Netherlands, Australia where Muslim men are married to white women and have daughters. After a few years when the daughters attain puberty, suddenly they take them and disappear into Saudi or Libya or Indonesia or Pakistan so that their daughters are not taught the free mores of life from their mothers. These men were liberal when they were young, but in their middle age they turn fundamentalist. Their wives are shocked and deeply hurt by their sudden transformation. You know why that happens? It is due to what is called in the west as mid-life crisis. During this time, men tend to become what they were deep down all along but could not come out due to circumstances. Some men drive themselves into becoming workaholics, throwing money at their family when they ask for attention and support. Some men start chasing younger women. Others delve into religion. These are all instances of men whose culture is least attuned to adaptation. In civilizations where adaptation is the norm, there is no such thing as a mid-life crisis, since men continue to do whatever it was they were doing all along. They change their norms according to the circumstances. If they have a family, they devote themselves even more to the family. If they need to work for their family's sake, they work harder. If the family needs more religion, they become more religious. If the milk needs boiling, they boil the milk. If the garbage needs to be taken out, they take out the garbage. Which reminds me…" saying so the father started to get up.

"Dad! Can it wait? We're talking about something a little more important than the garbage."

"Fair enough. As I was saying, look for adaptation when you are looking for a spouse. Everything else will come automatically."

"But Suhail could be that way! Why are you assuming the worst?"

"Yes of course! He could be. But I just want you to be reasonably sure. As I was saying earlier, women administer short-term mental tests to their prospective men, but fail to administer long term tests."

"This is the ultimate test for me," the widow thought as she entered Ulugh Khan's tent. She had chosen her dress carefully. It was provocative enough to be titillating to men, but not so much as to raise eyebrows. The right parts were revealed to just the right proportions.

"Woman, what do you want?" Ulugh said through an interpreter, his eyes undressing her.

"I have been widowed by your conquest of this kingdom," she started. Ulugh's guards went on alert, their hands stealthily going to their weapons to thwart any assassination attempt. "My norms dictate that if I am not taken by my husband's conqueror by the stroke of midnight, I will have to leave all worldly things behind and retire to a forest." She gave a pause. "I don't want to do that. I want to live my life in full glory. I deserve that." She stopped.

Ulugh ran his hands through his beard. "I'll never understand this complex country," he thought to himself. "Just go forty miles in any direction and I have to deal with an entirely different set of rules. Somewhere women jump into their husband's pyre. Yet others come on to the battlefield and fight with their dead husbands' weapons. Yet others consume poison. Others run and hide. And this one is asking me to take her right now." He just did not get it. How he longed for what he had heard about the uniformity from Persia all the way to Algeria, where people worshipped the same way, ate the same food, spoke the same language, thought the same way, behaved the same way.

"I have a battle tonight. You will have to wait." His eyes glazed over her navel.

"He's biting," she thought to herself. She knew that look very well.

"After tonight, you will have to take me only by force. But if you postpone your battle by a few hours, I will be yours forever with my free will. Make your choice now."

"This is the most important choice you will ever make," the father continued. "You have to ultimately do what's best for you. I can only guide you -- the decision is yours. As a product of a culture that has adapted itself over the millennia as times changed, you have to decide whether you want to marry a person who is a product of a culture that has failed to adapt."

"Do you think that I will have to give up my Hindu culture if I marry him?"

"There is no such thing as Hindu culture, Muslim culture, American culture, Indian culture and other such stuff. There are only two types of culture: The right culture and the wrong culture. The former is adaptation friendly and the latter is not. It is wrong culture to desert your folks when they get old -- but there is nothing American about it. There are many Indians nowadays who do that and there are many Americans who take care of their aged parents. It is right culture to consider man and wife as equals with the same rights. Many Hindus have forgotten their roots and do entirely the opposite and many Americans do the right thing even though it goes against the Bible. It is right culture to be pluralist. It just so happens that Hindu culture is such, and non-Hindu cultures are not. It is wrong culture to blow up innocent civilians for a religious cause. It is wrong culture to consider women from other religions as fair game and at the same time forcibly restrict your women from marrying outside. Just because mostly Muslims do it does not make it Muslim culture. All you should be asking is: Is Suhail having the right culture or not?"

"I gotta go dad. I think I heard enough. I'm glad I had this talk."

"Are you going to…"

"Yes. I am meeting him in an hour."

"Su," the father said.

"What?"

"In Sanskrit, all good words start with the syllable Su. Suprabhath means Good Morning. Subhash means good words. Sulekha means good writing. I just hope that Suhail is not an exception. I hope you were right about him and all my suspicions were wrong. He does not have to be perfect. He does not even have to be 100% adaptation friendly, none of us are. He just has to have the broad outlook. I hope he will, but just in case…" The father opened the drawer and gave it to her.

"Dad! I won't be needing this," she exclaimed. "Just take it," her father said quietly.

She undressed quietly and provocatively. "Keep the foreplay as long as possible," she told herself. "That will give Pillaiyar more time to get as far away from SriRangam as possible. Ulugh's army will never be able to get its hands on the murthi. SriKrishna will be safe ultimately."

"The ultimate effect of mental adaptation is," Margadarshi continued, "physical adaptation. Of course, that needs a lot more ability than a common person can ever possess, but this ability does not come until you are 100% adaptation friendly mentally."

"Physical adaptation?" BhumiPavana queried. "You mean, like the ability to withstand the vagaries of nature?"

"Partially, yes. Those who have passed a degree of mental adaptation will find that they can take Nature's physical fluctuations much more easily, sometimes to the point of not even noticing it. They will not feel hot even on extremely hot days, when everyone is scurrying for shade. They will not feel cold even on freezing nights, when everyone else is bundled up in layers. They will no more be picky on whether the right amount of salt, spices or sugar is present in their food. They will not even notice what food they eat or what beverages they drink. They will be impervious to insect bites, dust, grime or filth. Disease will not strike them, since they will be immune to all types of viruses and bacteria. Their wounds will heal easily; their bones will not become brittle with age. They will look half their age, since their bodies would have adapted to time as well. In the next stages of physical adaptation, they will be able to control their breath and urges like hunger, thirst, bowel movement, fatigue for long periods so as to adapt to different conditions. They will even learn to control their involuntary physical activity like heartbeat, lung activity etc., just the way some amphibian turtles do. "

"But those are just the first two stages of physical adaptation. Allow me to go into the next stage," continued MargaDarshi.

"When will we go into the next stage?" Suhail asked her mockingly. They had just finished kissing in the car for ten minutes. She straightened herself in the back seat and looked around gingerly to make sure nobody had noticed them in the far end of the parking lot. She did not reply right away. After a while, she said: "I hope, soon."

They started driving. The traffic was bad.

"Must be an accident ahead. I hope we make it to the party on time," Suhail said.

"Uh uh," she said. "So who will be there?"

"The usual gang. Karim, Aziz, Samad. Some of our friends, Sheela, Monica, Richa, Bhavani…."

"Sorry for not checking, but I actually invited a couple of my cousins as well… Subodh and Pranay. Is that all right?"

"Sure," he said after a pause. "I'm sure they are cool."

"Why don't you invite your cousin Shameem as well? She's a nice girl. And Pranay really likes her, and I suspect she likes him as well. You should have seen the way they looked at each other at the other get-together a few weeks ago."

He did not reply, but hit the steering wheel hard and said, "Damn this traffic."
They said nothing for a few minutes.

"So, you want to make that call?" she asked him.

"What? Call who?"

"Shameem! Did you even listen to me?"

"Oh that. That's never going to work."

"Why not?"

"It just won't. Besides, we have a big crowd already, and the apartment is quite small."

"I see," she said, stiffening. "Can we make a detour, I need to go someplace else before the party."

"Sure!" he said. "Where to."

"Let's go to the temple," she said.

"Sure, I'll take you there."

"No, I don't want you to take me there. I want us to go there."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I would like you to accompany me all the way, if you want me to go all the way in your life."

"But I can't!"

"Why not?"

"Why are you behaving like this?"

"Stop the car," she said. They pulled into the parking lot of the strip mall.

"Why aren't you coming inside? You go to the mosque, don't you?"

"Yes. But why do I need to come to the temple? You are free to do what you want."

"Suhail," she said getting out of the car, "I don't think I want to see you any more."

"What? Why?"

"I just don't," she said in the same tone he had used earlier.

"You don't want to take me again?" the widow asked Ulugh Khan. He was dressing up. "Is that all a stallion like you can do?"

"I have to go now. You stay here and I will come back tomorrow and bring you a lot of jewelry. The idol in the temple town has two beautiful rubies for eyes. Apparently they are priceless. Once the idol is smashed, those rubies will make good earrings for you."

She smiled broadly. It was a grin of victory.

"It's too late. They would have moved the idol by now. They needed a couple of hours, and I made sure they got a couple of hours."

Ulugh's face contorted into angry helplessness. "You *****! You tricked me!"

"Oh, the women of SriRangam would pay money to see your face right now," she said, laughing loudly.
"You rat! You will suffer a fate so bad…"

"My beloved husband is no more. I don't think you can mete out any punishment that excels that."

He motioned to his guards. Eight of them entered. "She is yours. Take her in whatever manner you deem fit. I am heading to SriRangam. Get a small group with the fastest horses."

The eight of them converged on her like a pack of wolves.

"Krishna," she thought. "Will you protect me the way you protected Draupadi's honor?" She looked down at her hands. The diamond on her ring! She bit it off and swallowed it. Before the first of the eight penetrated her, she was dead. Now nothing could stop her from joining her husband.

"Stop!" Suhail commanded.

"Ooo... Authority!" she retorted, and started walking away from him.

"You cannot do this!"

"Just watch me"

He threw words at her. "Secular! South Asian!"

"Kiss my ass," she said.

"Stop," he said grabbing her and twisting her arm.

She yanked her arm back and ran. Someone in the parking lot started making a call on the cell phone.

"You *****! I'll…"

She whirled around, the Taser in her hand. He stopped. "You wouldn't," he said.

She fired. Fifty thousand volts of electricity went through him and he collapsed, immobilized for fifteen minutes. His brain was severed from the rest of his body and he would have no recollection of how he got to the hospital. The cops came in three minutes.

She used someone's cell phone to call her father to have him pick her up. The small crowd that had gathered in the parking lot gasped in horror at her story.

BhumiPavana shrank back in horror, and then composed himself quickly. MargaDarshi's face started changing, slowly turning into a Neanderthal humanoid, deteriorating further and finally becoming like a monkey.

The monkey smiled. "This is the final stage of adaptation, where you can change your physical appearance to be whatever you want it to be." His face changed into that of a beautiful woman, and then restored back into the original rishi. MargaDarshi collapsed into a heap, sweating profusely.

BhumiPavana rushed to revive him, but he was stopped by the rishi's wave of hand.

"Every time I do this, it drains me completely. That goes to show I have not got it right. My time is up. I am passing all that I have learnt on to you. I hope you surpass me in everything I did." Saying so, MargaDarshi started whispering into BhumiPavana's ears for a long time. At the end of it, his face relaxed into a smile. BhumiPavana's eyes had a radiance never seen before. He looked down at his guru, who was smiling, but not breathing anymore. He was now just a collection of chemicals that had to be reduced to ashes.

He summoned a few of his students to gather the firewood. There was more to be done, more to be discovered. Human life was so complex, and Nature had so much in store for Man.

He only hoped he would be as successful as his guru had hoped he would be.

Again, its pretty long...but quite worth it my friends.

Moor Nams Blog