Ling Poojan

"Ling Poojan" or Phallus worship has been an accepted norm in the Indian society for time immemorial. The Ling is considered as a symbol of Lord Shiva, one of the three main Gods in the Indian Mythology. There has been various arguments to justify such kind of act, ranging from social arguments, religious, psychological to some pseudo scientific arguments that have come forward these days.
Let us have a look into some of the pseudo scientific arguments that are being put forward from various quarters to justify such illogical customs.
Let us for once keep the matter of faith and the psychological advantages of faith aside and look into the act itself from a scientific viewpoint.
The whole idea of worshipping a body part as a god is hilarious to say the least. If we can worship a penis or a vagina, why not worship a liver or a kidney or an intestine for that matter?
Next comes the question of justifications for the "Ling Poojan".
First of all the comparison of the snakes on the Linga with the DNA double helix. We are so naively assuming that whatever the modern technology, through years of painstaking hard work, has unveiled now, was known to forest dwelling half educated or illiterate unsocial bums long long ago, who did not have any idea of even our body parts. These so called ascetics did not even know what is an intestine or how does a kidney function, and now they are supposed to know a DNA, and actually fashion a worship idol based on its complex structure.
There has been examples of Nuclear Reactors and Galaxies to explain the shape of the Linga and the surrounding Yoni . This custom of worshipping the Linga started quite some time back in the history at which point of time neither was there any nuclear reactor, nor was their any telescope to understand the shape of galaxies. So, these justifications are not only a vain and oft-repeated attempt at explaining illogical and uninformed customs, but also criminal conspiracies at misleading gullible people. It has become a fashion these days to try to explain every superstition by using scientific terms and bending the science.
Whoever has explained the Shivalinga as a nuclear reactor seems to have very sketchy knowledge about a reactor's function, most probably gathered from the internet and is clearly under the impression that similar shapes mean similar things.
A similar attempt has been made at explaining the Shivalinga by comparing it to a gland at the base of our brain, the pineal gland. So, now the linga has become a gland.
Comparing by shape and then declaring it to be the same .... if this is not blind superstition, I do not know what is.
Quite similar to some people who declare that the Betel leaf is very good for human heart just because it is heart shaped (the commercial shape of heart as advertised by various media, not the real shape of heart, which of course is unknown to such people).

Incredible India - 1

Here's a picture I took in one of the narrow bylanes in Delhi. I could not resist taking a picture of this when I saw it and to me the whole setup kind of appeared to be ironic (note the LIC ad vertisement in the background).
I would like to learn about your reaction to this picture.

How to Spot a Geologist

One of my Friends has forwarded me this material by email. This is extracted from this link:
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Geologist
Found it kind of Hilarious ...

To spot a geologist in the wild, look for:

• Someone who has the longest occupational description on Uncyclopedia (and has looked at all the other occupations to confirm while consuming large quantities of alchohol).
• Hand-lens, compass, pen-knife, handcuffs etc. tied round neck with string.
• Someone awkward and unsure around people who don't know the difference between a rock and a mineral
• Someone with a beard and Sandals... Jesus was a Geologist (actually, carpenters back then were also stonemasons, so there is some truth to that statement)
• Someone who owns a pet rock and is not eight (in the case of paleontologists, this will be their closest friend), with said 'pet' often found hanging from keys.
• Someone with over enthusiasm on the subject of dinosaurs and who cringes when a dinosaur is called a reptile.
• Someone who outgrew geology, started a brewery, and is now in politics.
• Someone explaining to airport security that a sidewall core covered in gunpowder residue isn't really a weapon.
• Someone who only includes people in photos for scale, and has more pictures of his/her rock hammer and lens caps than of family and friends. Especially *Someone who uses their new baby for scale (Oh God..the horror!)
• Someone who, if they could travel to Jupiter's moon, IO, would think the coolest part about it was the volcanoes and not the space travel.
• Someone with a collection of beer cans/bottles that rivals the size of his rock collection.
• Someone lighting a cigarette with a handlens focussing the sunlight, or a coat hanger stretched between the battery terminals of a University van.
• Someone who brings beer instead of water when hiking.
• Someone whose lunch consists of rocks, instead of ordinary bread. Shale lightly sprinkled in Halite mostly.
• Someone who consumes tonsil-killing chili for dinner every night of the week, and warms it up in a can on the drill rig engine block.
• Someone whose child is trained to know the geologic timescale before being able to walk.
• Someone explaining to airport security that just because his/her safety boots are covered in high-explosive (usually ANFEX) residue, it doesn't mean he/she is a terrorist
• Someone with hair in a pony-tail (this applies to male or female geologists).
• Someone who considers a "recent event" to be anything that has happened in the last hundred million years.
• Someone who licks and/or scratches & sniffs rocks or in case of china clay will eat it to prove it's perfectly safe.
• Someone who eats dirt and claims to be "getting an estimate of grain size"
• Someone who will willingly cross an eight-lane interstate on foot to determine if the outcrops are the same on both sides.
• Someone who considers causing a four-lane pile-up on the highway by examining outcrops while driving, as acceptable behaviour.
• Someone who can pronounce the word molybdenite correctly on the first try.
• Someone who has hiked 6 miles to look at a broken fence that was "offset by a recent earthquake".
• Someone who says "this will make a nice Christmas gift" while out rock collecting.
• Someone who thinks a "sexual exploit" is lying naked on an outcrop so the satellite will photograph them on the next pass.
• Someone who hires student assistants with an eye to whether they can run slower so the bears get them first.
• Someone who can jump start a campfire in wet weather with the judicious application of a beer fart.
• Someone who from personal experience knows the difference between Arctic grade and summer grade diesel fuel.
• Someone who even on an average day in the field can make Indiana Jones look like a bit of a klutzy wuss
• Someone who looks at scenery and tells you how it formed.
• Someone whose pockets tend to be filled with bits of rock.
• Someone whose rockery moved into their spare room and had replaced the goldfish.
• Someone who has more pairs of hiking boots than shoes.
• Someone who knows that Lagerstätten isn't beer, but wishes it was.
• Someone who wears hiking boots constantly, even for formal functions, and occasionally sandals with (obligatory) socks
• Someone who thinks of woodlice as trilobites but would tell anyone off who said so.
• Someone who, when on a beach, will collect shells and try to explain their muscle scars to you.
• Someone who prefers to explain the sequence of events shown in a cliff face to sunbathing.
• Someone whose collection of petrified wood samples is stacked like cord wood.
• Someone who plans extra time on trips to investigate road cuts along the way.
• Someone who almost crashes his/her car looking at road cuts while driving.
• Someone who often explains how their boozy coffee with whipped cream resembles a layered igneous complex.
• Someone who knows the phylum, kingdom, and genus of every ancient creature lodged in stone, some of which look nothing like an animal, but can't remember his/her mother's, or spouse's, birthday.
• Someone who uses a geologic hammer to halve a boiled egg, open a coconut, open a melon, crack nuts, or generally open any tough to get at food.
• Someone who modifies his/her pace to one meter in order to simplify pace-and-compass mapping.
• Someone whose radioactive ore specimen collection glows in the dark. It is so bright you can:
  • use it to read by.
  • illuminate your front yard.
  • use it as a landing beacon.
  • see it from Mars.
• Someone who can identify the chemical formula for Cummingtonite...and chuckles like a junior-high kid every time.
• Someone stuck on the side of the road without a spare tire because it was removed to make more room for samples or alcohol (or the spare is already being used on the other side of the van).
• Someone who, when asked what this rock is says, "Leverite, so leave her right there."
• Someone who compulsively peels pack moss and topsoil in the woods, just in case there are rocks underneath.
• Someone unwilling to improve their personal situation, resigned to the fact that the sun will explode in 5 billion years anyways.
• Someone who walks out of a bathroom and asks if you noticed the fossils in the stall dividers.
• Someone prone to Linnean mnemonic devices such as Keep Privates Clean Or Forget Getting Screwed.
• Someone who can only relate to one "Rock Band" (besides BIF): Are We Not Men, We Are Devonian!
• Someone who enjoys their topography: Subduction leads to orogeny, and orogeny leads to relief.
• Someone who walks into an art museum and looks at the floors and columns commenting on the stylolites and fossils, rather than looking at the paintings.
• Someone whose shorts expose way more leg than you ever wanted to see.
• Someone who rocks the party and is the schist everywhere they go.
• Someone whose sentences begin with the phrase, "Let me tell you what happened here."
• Someone who can say, "Gneiss Cleavage" or talks about slaty cleavage and means it in a non-derogatory sense.
• Someone who has to point out that your kitchen worktop is NOT made of granite and after a seemingly non-sensical crash course in petrology (involving many 'diagrams' and supposed 'writing') will even produce their trusty hand-lens to show you.
• Someone who gets really upset when the countertop, which is obviously mafic/aphanitic/metamorphic, is called granite and takes 20 minutes to tell you why you're wrong.
• Someone who has an odd obsession with Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Star Trek etc...and often dresses the part!
• Someone who can’t use a street map because it doesn’t have contour lines.
• When helping someone move and you ask "is this box full of rocks?" They answer "yes, be careful."
• Someone who always carries a small squeezy bottle of vinegar in their pocket
• Someone unsympathetic at the prospect of extinction for the long-haired woolly-horn red-butt moose, replying "Glaciers woulda killed him off in 10,000 years anyways."
• Someone who when colouring, stays between the lines. Always.
• Someone who scoffs when they see your compass doesn't have a clinometer as standard.
• Someone who will drink whiskey from funnels at parties in place of lager.
• Someone who selfdescribes his character as: "I'm gneiss, but don't take it for granite!"
• Someone who insists on wearing shorts and flip-flops in the dead of winter "so their toes can breathe". Only in really cold weather will they wear hiking boots with their shorts.
• Someone throws huge pieces of pumice at strangers to determine if they are acceptable to befriend.
• Someone who has a moustache or excessive facial hair.
• Someone who takes baths in crude oil.
• Someone who has a holster for their rock hammer.

If you remain unsure, ask the subject to draw an annotated diagram of a trilobite. A true geologist will immediately reach for their waterproof notebook - this is your opportunity for escape.

Elephanta Caves

I had been to see Elephanta caves in December 2009 with my Family. The Elephanta Caves are located on Elephanta Island, or Gharapuri (literally "the city of caves") in Mumbai Harbour, 10 kilometres to the east of the city of Mumbai (Bombay), in Maharashtra, India. The island, located on an arm of the Arabian Sea, consists of two groups of caves—the first is a large group of five Hindu caves, the second, a smaller group of two Buddhist caves. The Hindu caves contain rock cut stone sculptures, representing the Shaiva Hindu sect, dedicated to the god Shiva. The rock cut architecture of the caves has been dated to between the 5th and 8th centuries, although the identity of the original builders is still a subject of debate. The caves are hewn from solid basalt rock. The caves were originally painted in the past, but now only traces remain. The main cave (Cave 1, or the Great Cave) was a Hindu place of worship until Portuguese rule began in 1534, during which time the caves suffered severe damage. This cave was renovated in the 1970s after years of neglect, and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987 to preserve the artwork. It is currently maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). It is in fact a quite easy and pleasant journey to this island. The nearest important railhead is Chatrapati Shivajee Terminus (CST). After reaching CST you can take a taxi to Gateway of India. It is not very far away and will hardly cost you Rs. 25.00 by Taxi. Once you reach the Gateway of India, you can spend some time there and have a look at the Taj Intercontinental Hotel just infront of the gate. Several boats ferry passengers from this point to the Elephanta island. You can take one of these passenger boats or book a separate one if you have the funds and inclination to do so. It takes about 40 min to reach the island. You can take your own food with you or eat in one the several restaurants available on the island. If you have taken your own food, eat it at a corner shade near the caves. You will see that there are many people who are sitting under the shade and eating. Try not to eat in some separate places under any tree. There are many monkeys on the island, and though they generally do not attack people, they may not be able to control their urge to share your food and may attack you if you resist.

Kanheri Caves

It has been a long time since I last posted in this blog. Partly due to lack of time and also due to the fact that I had not really known what to post. Today I shall post something about Kanheri caves where I had been in January 2009. Kanheri is located in the island of Salsette and 6 miles from Thana. These caves date from 1st century BCE to 9th century CE. The earliest are 109 tiny rock-cut cells, carved into the side of a hill. Kanheri is credited with the largest number of cave excavations in a single hill. Unlike the elegant splendor of Elephanta Caves nearby, these are spartan and unadorned. Each cave has a stone plinth for a bed. A congregation hall with huge stone pillars contains the stupa, a Buddhist shrine. Farther up the hill are the remains of an ancient water system, canals and cisterns that collected and channeled the rainwater into huge tanks. The caves are excavated in volcanic breccia, the hills rising at places to 1550’ above mean sea level. Majority of the caves are monasteries, intended for living, study and meditation. The unique figure of Avalokiteshwara captures the attention of everyone. No less than a hundred inscriptions have been found here, in Brahmi, Devanagari and Pallavi scripts. One Chaitya cave has some defaced woodwork on its roof. To the west is the Borivili railway station and across the creek is the Arabian Sea. You can go there by taking a bus from Thane (a station on the Mumbai-Howrah line). Take a bus to Borivli...the bus goes past the gateway to Sanjay Gandhi National park. You can get down right in front of the gate. you can also take your own vehicle right upto the caves if you live nearby . If you do not have your own vehicle, wait for the park’s vehicle, which will take you to the caves. I am posting herewith some snaps I had taken there. You get a beautiful view of the hills and forest of Sanjay Gandhi National Park from here.