Travelogue - Friendship Peak

The following travelogue - focused on travellers instead of the journey - is inspired by Manu Joseph's miraculous description of his Chadar trek (https://bit.ly/2FhglO7). If you don't have the patience to read mine, do read his. It's the most unique form of travel writing out there.

The Woodbine in Manali looks too opulent a hotel to not have an elevator. The lobby is small but well-furnished. One corner has four sets of large couches arranged in the shape of a square, a thick red carpet covers slightly over half the floor area, and there are two wooden doors duly marked ‘He’ and ‘She’. No underpaid, untalented artists smearing the bathroom doors with moustaches that could be confused for lips and vice versa, leading to embarrassing situations. Just the letters displayed in bold – the way he likes it.

As he walks up the stairs to the first floor, where the four other trekkers from the group – all of them strangers to each other – are housed, he wonders why there isn’t an elevator. Maybe it has to do with the fact that a lot of the hotel’s clientele, just like himself, is part of the trekking community, and prefers taking stairs. Climbing up, he feels his muscles twitch, eager to conquer the 17,300 feet mountain that lies ahead of him. As he rings the doorbell of Room 102, a bald, stout man with an uncanny resemblance to Seinfeld’s George Costanza, answers. ‘Phew, I am not going to be the baldest person on this trek’, the words almost escape the confines of his oral cavity as he surveys George standing before him. He introduces himself to George as Fighter, explaining that he loved to fight his way through life. He doesn’t reveal that he was once known as Winner, a name he had liked far better.

 The snow-covered Friendship Peak in the distance

“So, where all have you trekked?”, Fighter asks George, a question that helps trekkers flex their muscles as much as break the ice. George, a government-employed scientist, proudly declares that he has under his belt several high-altitude jaunts, including the dreaded Chadar, a trek Fighter knows he would never dare attempt because of the cold. Fighter’s accomplishments are feebler, but he is fitter and at least a decade younger. ‘Enough time to outdo this guy’, Fighter thinks to himself, barely suppressing a soliloquy. Over tea, they discuss that the upcoming week-long trek to Friendship Peak is going to be the highest and the most difficult for both of them.

George tells Fighter that Room 201 has been reserved for a girl. “A girl? I thought this trek was a sausage fest”, says Fighter, already hoping that the girl is old and married, so that he can focus entirely on the trek. Human and natural beauty are almost mutually exclusive occurrences in the higher reaches of the Himalayas, but when they co-exist, it leads to confusion and chaos. Together they go through the list of trekkers, and settle on the only name which could remotely be a girl’s. Fighter calls her Hermaphrodite. George asks for the meaning and grins widely upon knowing – “I thought being gay was weird enough.” To make it easier to pronounce, they decide to call her Herma.

Just then, there is a knock on the door. George answers. A tall, fighting fit, dark-skinned man with salt pepper hair and beard, about 50 years of age, walks in. He looks capable of dating a hot young airhostess, but has a family with two kids. A man made for Everest, confined to Friendship Peak. A businessman from Mumbai, his trekking repertoire ranges from Kang Yatse II (6250 metres) to Mera Peak (6476 metres), and he once climbed Stok Kangri – India’s highest trekking summit – as an aside (“I was actually there to run the Khardung La Ultra Marathon”). Milind is a regular on India’s nascent ultra-marathon circuit, but his greatest achievement is that he has got there without resorting to a keto diet. George is about to share the Herma joke with Milind when Fighter stops him, fearing Milind might start running a Pinkathon in protest.

Obviously impressed with his feats, George asks Milind for the secret sauce. Milind reveals that the secret sauce is a group of four close friends and his love for running and the mountains. He emphasizes that long-distance running and high-altitude trekking are “personal endeavours” and not competitions, and casually follows it up with “Be it running or climbing, I always make sure I stand first among the four of us.”

Fighter calculates that he has a bit over two decades to match Milind’s feats, but it is probably not going to be enough. He has never run beyond a half-marathon, and lacks the expertise or the desire to climb so many difficult mountains. Winner would have got perturbed and started making plans, but Fighter, instead, suppresses the thought.

When Milind steps into the washroom, George confides in Fighter that he thinks Milind’s is a family business, not a self-made one, but avoids asking him this because he gets the impression that Milind understands only English. Fighter is a tad uncomfortable at this display of intimacy by a stranger, but secretly hopes that George is right about Milind’s business.

Milind gets a call from the group’s trek leader, who asks all of them to assemble in the lobby below. He tells him he needs time, and for some reason Fighter and George think they need time too, and wait till Milind’s ready. Finally, the three of them come face to face with Herma, a fifth trekker and the leader. George, giggling, whispers to Fighter that Herma’s looks don’t justify her name. But they can both see that all those years of climbing have made her old and weary, and heave a collective sigh of relief. The 40-year old trek leader’s teeth are soiled and the cheap red scarf around his neck makes him look like a Bhai fan. He stands leaning against a pillar and shoots off incoherent instructions about how to avoid AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness), especially on the summit day when the team would go from 13,000 feet to 17,300 feet in the space of less than 10 hours. “Since you’re all reasonably experienced, I don’t need to tell you the little details”, he says. Then, without warning, he pulls out huge white Scarpa boots, each weighing about 3kg, which would have to be worn to negotiate the thick snow on the summit day. Except Milind, who is carrying his own light-weight snow shoes, the rest are used to walking only in trekking shoes and unsure how they would walk in 3kg boots. “We will leave tomorrow morning at 9”, he says before walking off, leaving the round of introductions upon the trekkers themselves.

Herma – an avid trekker and a yoga teacher – is unusually petite and demure for a sardarni, and laughs a little too hard when Milind passes a snide remark on George’s weight. No one, including George, thinks it’s too early for snide remarks; everyone’s in awe of Milind’s climbing roster, fitness and looks. The fifth trekker – a  Bong who hates fish – is wearing a t-shirt that screams “IIT Bombay” and points diligently to the caption while introducing himself. Fighter, an IIT-reject himself, is alarmed. He knows the adage ‘empty vessels…’ holds most true for those who have done only their master’s degree from the IITs. He considers them fake IITians. “Oh awesome, I always wanted to go there. What did you study?”, he asks, disguising his probe as admiration. “I studied....um, bioengineering”, comes the response. “I didn’t know IIT B offered a bachelor’s in bioengineering”, presses Fighter. “Well, it doesn’t. I did M.Sc. Bioengineering from there”, says the fake-degree Phenku before changing the topic, but the damage has been done. Phenku doesn’t wear a similar t-shirt for the course of the trek. Fighter’s bitterness over having failed to make it to the hallowed institution has claimed another victim. His mind briefly drifts to the day people stopped calling him Winner.

The trekkers differ in their views on how tough the Friendship Peak summit is going to be in the big boots, but are unanimous in their opinion that their leader is a Leader Only In Name – a LOIN, which turns out to be an apt gender-neutral euphemism for what they come to think of him later during the trek.

Over the next two days, the five trekkers negotiate a moderately difficult trek up to the base camp. Speed or stamina, Herma gives each man a run for his money and leaves behind Phenku and George, who are always at the end, by a long margin. Though shorn of snow itself, the base camp is cradled among towering snow peaks. The 6000m+ Deo Tibba and Indrasan tease from a distance, while their shorter cousins Friendship Peak and Hanuman Tibba look deceptively climbable. Pointing to his altimeter, George exclaims that the group has, for the first time on the trek, breached the 4000 metre above sea level mark. “No, you’re wrong”, intervenes Milind forcefully, pointing to his own altimeter, which shows a figure just shy of the 4k mark. Everyone agrees with him.

The trail

View from basecamp tents

Herma, being the only woman, is privileged to a single tent. Fighter, too, sneaks out a tent for himself making up smelly feet as an excuse. About a month back, while zeroing in on Friendship Peak as the choice of trek, he had realised that the name of the mountain might have subconsciously influenced his decision. He had been broken by years of loneliness and wanted some genuine company. But after the lure of being alone in a tent proves irresistible, he knows that the malaise had more to do with himself than with others.

The trail

On the evening the trekkers reach the base camp, they are led to a large snow patch nearby to get acquainted with the gigantic boots, crampons, ice axe and safety equipment including harness and rope. LOIN explains that the safety equipment is there “just in case…” The team learns the basics of ice-climbing and self-arrest using ice axes in case of a fall. Milind, wearing lighter boots and trained in ice-climbing, literally runs up the patch even as others struggle to put one step after another. The only one remotely close on his heels is Herma, seeing which George wonders whether it’s the opportunity of spending lone time with Milind that’s driving her. After barely 60 minutes of slipping and tumbling in the snow, LOIN declares that the team has had enough training to successfully make a nonstop 8-hour climb in much deeper snow on the summit day. Pleas for more training go unheeded.

The trekkers soaking up the sun on the morning before the rain hit

Back from the training, Fighter hurriedly ventures out looking for a spot to relieve himself before it gets dark. There are two kinds of people in the high mountains – those who choose the nature to answer its calls, and those who choose the cramped toilet tents. Fighter is clearly the former. He can only sleep with the knowledge that he washed, and not just wiped, which is the only option available in tents. For this, he puts up with carrying a big water bottle, soap, and walking far away to find a spot that’s previously unused and provides him the right balance and cover, which could take up to 15 minutes. Every time he finds such a spot, he credits himself for the discovery but wonders how he had missed it so far.

“Why do they need a tent for it?” – The Cow

That night, the trekkers are treated to a sumptuous dinner of matar paneer which ends with gulabjamun. For city folk on a difficult trek, the one thing that suffers an even greater shock than the muscles is the body clock. Dinner’s served by 7:30PM and, in the absence of internet and electricity, one usually retires to bed – sleeping bag in this case – by 9PM. The fatigue ensures that sleeplessness, despite the claustrophobia inside a tent, isn’t a problem.

  The training session with ice axe and the huge Scarpa boots

Tonight though, the team won’t be sleeping peacefully, for the summit climb is scheduled to begin at midnight. Peaks with heavy snow are best climbed in the dark because sunlight softens up the snow, which makes both ascent and descent far more time-consuming and treacherous. The threat of weather’s turning on a dime is also lowest during early morning hours.

Perhaps the heartbroken unfairly blame the wavering affections of their former lover as the epitome of fickleness. To get some solace, they need to witness the weather on high mountains. At the time the team went into the dining tent, the weather had been crisp and warm – perfect for the summit ascent. By the time they step out, the base camp is enveloped in a pall of menacing dark clouds, and rain’s pouring down. LOIN sounds the alarm, “Rain here means snow on the summit. We can’t ascend in fresh, soft snow. If this doesn’t clear up, we might have to postpone the ascent by another day”. Thankfully, the schedule has a built-in reserve day to deal with exactly such an eventuality. But that night, little did the team know that one reserve day won’t be enough.

The next dry moment they witness comes exactly 60 hours later. The only thing more difficult than living in the mountains is living there while it rains. To those who choose the outside to answer nature’s call, a cold and wet butt is worse than a cold and dry one; and to those who choose the toilet tents, wet poop smells worse than dry poop. Moreover, the greatest charm of mountains – being out in the midst of nature – is lost, which is exactly what happens with the team as they spend most of the two days huddled inside the dining tent, making it to their soaked sleeping tents only after dark. The fact that everyone’s trying to postpone finishing their business doesn’t make for a pleasant-smelling dining tent.

To pass time, they turns to movies. George and LOIN are carrying some in their phones, but after LOIN refuses to share his, they’re reduced to seven, three of which belong to the Taken trilogy. The debate over which one to play first is settled as soon as Red Sparrow’s name pops up. “Man, I haven’t seen a woman in a week, and it has Jennifer Lawrence’s sex scenes”, says Phenku excitedly. It is at that moment the group embarrassingly realises they’re not all-male, even though Herma’s tried hard to keep it that way the past few days. They then sheepishly agree upon Argo. Over the next two days, the team would polish off seven movies on a 6-inch screen without external speakers, battling the noise made by raindrops falling on top of the dining tent. Given that Liam Neeson’s movies require the least hearing, they’re left disappointed when he stops after only three consecutive attempts at saving his family. At some point during the trilogy, Milind changes his wet clothes for dry ones. Fighter notices he doesn’t have abs, and wonders whether anyone without abs should be called Milind.

Every hour the team mates break their torpor by venturing outside, hoping that the weather has become better. Every hour their hopes are dashed. The mountaineering folklore is loaded with warnings about AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness), but it will remain incomplete until it adds Acute Rain Sickness (ARS) to its lexicon. The gloom and sloth induced by mountain rains has a knack of cracking open the toughest of trekkers. Hungry to touch the summit till the moment the rain hit, the team members are now down with homesickness to varying degrees. “B***d I really need to get back home to sort out my shit”, mutters Milind, and adds hurriedly, “all professional of course”, finally confirming that he does indeed speak Hindi. “I know what you mean”, concurs Herma, and deflects questions by Phenku on what’s troubling her. The marriages of both the married trekkers in the group seem to be on shaky ground. Is this their true motivation for spending so much time in the mountains?

The unmarried trekkers have their own problems. Phenku wonders whether the mini avalanche that rumbled down Hanuman Tibba is a result of a nuclear explosion afar. Unsure, he hopes that the explosion eliminates all the myriad non-trekking tourists of Manali so that he can make his home there. George takes time to fall asleep once inside the sleeping bag because he likes to contemplate how his life might have changed in the days he’s been cut off from civilization. Three nights of sleeping in a wet tent have made Fighter unsure about whether travel is a singularly rewarding activity. “If other gratifying pursuits of human life – romance, sex, food, audio-visual entertainment – can leave one confused and regretful, why not travel?”, he asks others, who want to agree but are unsure in the face of evidence to the contrary presented by IT professionals who gave up their low-paid sinecures to turn into only slightly higher-paid travel bloggers. He fiercely counters everyone, including Milind, who tries to pass off the 3-day ordeal as a “learning experience”.

The tourists that make Phenku wish for a nuclear explosion

The final river crossing with the rescuer holding the rope

After the rain eats up the reserve day and some more, the team decides to descend back to Manali. Their love for mountains, regret of not making the summit and slippery downward slopes are up against one thing – the promise of civilizational comfort. The zing in their steps shows that the latter far outweighs everything else. They face three river crossings of which the last, an especially raging and deep one, has to be negotiated using a rope. Back in The Woodbine, nothing except the room numbers allotted to them has changed. Almost disappointingly, there have been no nuke explosions and all the tourists are alive. Everyone’s jobs and family members are secure. Staying true to the name of the mountain they tried to climb, the trekkers make promises to see each other again, but they all know promises are meant to be broken. It would take a lot more than a week-long trip to the hills to change their lives.

An evolutionary perspective on the Chopra-Jonas marriage

This is a no-frills and more substantive version of an article by me that will appear in the media soon. It explains from the perspective of evolutionary psychology the societal disapproval of marriages between older women and younger men, the hook being the uproar over 36-year old Priyanka Chopra’s marriage to 25-year old Nick Jonas. I think this would be a good introduction to anyone curious about the extremely powerful field of evolutionary psychology. The underlined sentences will assist the TL;DR types.

#PriyankaChopra on Twitter is a good barometer of how a lot of people feel about a woman marrying a man 11 years younger to herself. Expectedly, liberal backlash has condemned and dismissed this as ‘patriarchy’ of the unwoke. No matter how well-intentioned, the problem with liberal backlash is that it assumes purely social roots to the institution of patriarchy. The liberals neglect, even hound, those who try to point out patriarchy’s obviously biological/evolutionary roots, which are well explained by evolutionary psychology. The implicit assumption, sadly, is that anyone attempting to do so is trying to justify patriarchy. In defence of the critics, they’re wary of the dubious pseudoscience that has been used in the past to shore up eugenics and male superiority, leading to untold horrors. However, given that we learn from our past, there is no reason to continue shutting down perfectly tenable scientific explanations. If anything, knowing the biological reasons behind patriarchy will allow us, as a society, to deal with it more effectively.

Before embarking on the discussion, readers must keep in mind three things: one, natural selection – the evolutionary force that shapes human behaviour – cares about one and only one thing: transmission of genes down the generations, that is, having the maximum number of children for every couple;  two, in fulfilling its aim, natural selection drives individuals to behave in a manner which will help them find the best possible mate(s); three, natural selection doesn’t choose or design the environment we live in, it only responds to the given environment such that we’re driven to find the best mate(s).

A strong indicator of something having biological/evolutionary roots is its presence across cultures, geographies and ethnicities. Seen from that angle, in a large majority of marriages that happen globally, the man is older than the woman. For example, in US, a nation far more liberal than most others, men are older[i] in 64% marriages and women are older in just 23%, whereas they’re of a similar age in the remaining 13%. This trend holds for the still more liberal Scandinavia. It’s commonplace across the world for women to be attracted to older men, and for men to eye young women. It’s evident that the roots of this trend are embedded deep in human biology.

Given the first fact about natural selection mentioned above, it’s not difficult to see why cohabitation/marriage in the hunter-gatherer era happened between older men and younger women: because women’s reproductive shelf life is much shorter than men’s, the men preferred[ii] younger women as wives to allow birth of more children. Women, on the other hand, preferred[iii] older men because they remained fertile even at later ages and the time allowed them to rise in status and resources, and thus become better protectors-providers.

In those times, given that physical attractiveness and child-birthing capabilities were a woman’s greatest assets, a man’s marriage to an older woman was considered a waste of his genetic potential. For a woman, a younger husband usually meant a feeble protector-provider. Thus, older women and younger men mutually discounted each other as marriage prospects.

Though circumstances in the modern era might have changed drastically – women have far more to offer, marriage is hardly done only for procreation, the role of men as protectors-providers matters much less and can certainly be fulfilled by younger ones – human emotions, endowed to us by natural selection in the hunter-gatherer era, haven’t undergone nearly the same metamorphosis. Seen in this light, it’s not entirely surprising that the ‘animal spirits’ sometimes unleash themselves in ugly ways, which is what, in most cases, accounts for the behaviour of those expressing disapproval of Chopra-Jonas marriage.

Interestingly, the animal spirits can be unleashed even against younger female and much older male pairs, which is another evidence of its biological roots. One only need dig up the storm of tweets castigating Milind Soman for dating a woman nearly three decades younger, to be sure of this. The logic behind this outrage is exactly the same: a woman marrying a much older man, nearing the end of his reproductive life, is wasting her genetic potential. Though Soman was seen as the predator in this case, men usually take only half the blame for wasting the genetic potential of much younger women because these women – now often pejoratively called ‘trophy wives’ – have over the evolutionary past consented[iv] to such relationships, given the huge resources at the disposal of some much older men. In case of older female-younger male pairing, my guess is that usually the female is considered the predator while the male is let off as the gullible prey. I’ve tried to find an explanation for this in evolutionary psychology, but haven’t found anything concrete. Maybe it’s a straightforward case of men asserting their historically superior physical and political power over women, which would make for a classic case of social patriarchy. An expert would be able to reason out better, though.

It’s important to note that though natural selection dictates our behaviour, it works quietly without making humans conscious of itself. In other words, most of those who outrage against Chopra’s marriage to Jonas, or Soman’s to Ankita, don’t precisely know the reason for doing so, but act on an impulse. This explanation counters the notion of an all pervasive, carefully-knit and sustained social patriarchy, in favour of one that’s built into the environment in which these people find themselves. This environment is such that in order to succeed – that is, find the best mates – unconsciously practise patriarchy over egalitarianism. That’s not at all to say social patriarchy doesn’t exist. It does, and significantly so – the youth are deeply influenced by the actions of the elderly and the influential in their community. For example, taking selfies, an act unmatched in abhorrence by all the patriarchy that the world could muster, is a purely social phenomenon which implicitly teaches people that partaking in it enhances their chances of evolutionary success, and has hence spread like a virus.

On the other hand, what accounts for the behaviour of those who support Chopra-Jonas marriage? Are these superhumans who have overcome natural selection and magically developed altruistic qualities? The answer is an emphatic no. This happens simply because they have managed to build for themselves an environment in which natural selection promotes altruism and empathy as the emotions that help genes thrive. In other words, this environment – driven by an emphasis on increasing standards of living, which has brought about participation of women in the economy and countless other associated benefits – promotes altruistic and cooperative folk over the non-altruistic and vindictive ones. To succeed here, if you had to choose between emulating JRD Tata and Arun Gawli, I would strongly suggest the former. Indeed, altruistic emotions are more important to transmission of genes than aggressive ones, which is why the arc of human civilization bends towards peace and egalitarianism.

The far more interesting question is, how was this environment – one that encourages low birth rates, in clear contrast to the aims of natural selection – built? This is often the  great evolutionary mystery to those who are curious about evolutionary psychology, and a gloat to those who are dismissive of it. To the disappointment of the latter, there is an explanation available: natural selection, to drive us towards making babies, instilled us with the big O. It is in seeking this pleasure, and not babies themselves, that we end up making them. Using our highly advanced brains – also a gift of natural selection – we have found ways to enjoy the big O without worrying about the babies, thus outsmarting natural selection. Alas, being ‘evolved’ doesn’t come without its fair share of irony.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, those who find themselves in the clutches of patriarchy have not been able to create this noble environment. This is not to suggest giving a clean chit to those who troll Chopra and Jonas, because some people caught in this environment have still been able to deploy their mental faculties to select the right emotional response, going against the grain. In evolutionary psychology parlance, each individual follows what’s called ‘status hierarchy’, a natural order in which individuals unconsciously arrange themselves as per their capacity to attract the best mates. Of course, the hierarchy is not written in stone and keeps shifting, but to expect someone lower down to upend it is a bit much.

In a considerable majority of cultures, it’s highly likely that the right kind of nurture can provide the right environment, and thus bring out the right nature. It’s important to keep reminding ourselves of the struggles that some of the most liberal modern societies required before they reached where they are today. This, instead of blaming everything on the apparently incurable social patriarchy and denouncing completely those suffering from it, should be the emphasis of aspiring changemakers.

---

[i] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/whats-the-average-age-difference-in-a-couple/

[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_disparity_in_sexual_relationships#Male_preference_for_younger_females

[iii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_disparity_in_sexual_relationships#Female_preference_for_older_males

[iv] https://bit.ly/2OnUR32

Will Love, Marriage and Procreation Stand the Test of Time?

The seeds for this post were sown in my mind about two years back, during a phone call. My friend was aghast to know that I had never been in – or wanted to be in – love, and that I didn’t want to marry or to have kids. Given the present state of society, she expressed concern that I would come to regret my decision if I didn’t get married by early 30s, because by then the marriage market would be out of supply.

I was aware of this, of course, and tried convincing her that I really did want to live and die a childless bachelor. But more than that, I tried explaining to her my vision of the future, upon which my resolve is predicated. In this future, love would be a far weaker force than it is today; marriages – if they happen at all – would happen much later in life, expire after a predetermined period, and the marriage market would retain supply even for older individuals.

Not surprisingly, this was laughed off, and for good reason. Under the prevalent circumstances, falling in love, getting married (once) and procreating completes the holy trinity of human life. Nevertheless, I believe that the trinity, no matter how ubiquitous, will not stand the test of time. Advancing technology will either crumble or change the trinity’s form to the point of non-recognition.

To a certain extent, I have already been proven right. Women empowerment, birth control, abortion and online dating have significantly shaken the traditional roots of the trinity. However, three upcoming technologies – the result of unprecedented advances in healthcare and genetic research – are set to disrupt it beyond anyone's wildest imagination. These technologies are: increasing life span, creation of artificial sperm and egg, and ectogenesis (pregnancy outside female body).

Let’s start with increasing life span. When it comes to marriage, the tacit understanding behind the ‘right age’ is predicated upon the duration of female fertility and the fact that human life is finite. There would be no ‘happily’ in ‘happily ever after’, if there was actually an ever after. Well, the ever after is now around the corner. As per conservative estimates, life expectancy by 2100 AD will be a mindboggling 160+ years, coupled with much longer sexual shelf life for both genders. The number could be much, much higher if certain technologies come to fruition. In such a scenario, I am curious to see who would be confident enough to proclaim someone as the ‘love of their (entire) life’ and take the marital plunge by 30 – the cutoff age at which concern for the unmarried turns into derision – and stick to the same partner throughout. Can people imagine living with one person for 130+ years? Longer life expectancy coupled with longer sexual shelf life for both genders, will ensure that marriages happen late, are no longer a singular event, and become contractual and limited to a few decades. This would also mean that the marriage market is profuse with supply at much later ages in people’s lives.

The other two technologies – creation of artificial gametes and ectogenesis – are far more radical than increasing life expectancy. To understand their impact, one must go back to the evolutionary reasons behind love. It is well established that sexual attraction – nature’s tool to make us lose our minds so that we make babies – is the progenitor of love.  But, what happens when humans know that, by forsaking sexual reproduction, they have a chance to have made-to-order babies, whose physical and psychological traits can be determined as per their preferences?

Would people let go of an ideal offspring in favour of endlessly worrying, as they do now, about their partner’s receding hairline, breasts being too small or too large, anorexia or obesity, and countless other blemishes – all of which mar the quality of offspring? Moreover, sexually produced babies will continue to be at a far higher risk of genetic diseases than their soon-to-come asexual counterparts. In such a scenario, parents who choose to reproduce the old way would perhaps not be considered too different from the anti-vaxxers of today, thereby bringing immense social pressure, and perhaps regulation, to adapt. In time, asexual reproduction would deal a death blow to sexual attraction, and consequently to love itself.

One can argue that despite babies being made to order, men and women will continue to love and marry as long as women carry babies in their womb, and for the upbringing of the child. Here’s where the genius of ectogenesis steps in. Ectogenesis will enable childbirth entirely outside the female body, thereby putting an end to the idea of men and women being ‘fathers’ and ‘mothers’. Not to mention that all these technologies will eventually cost cheaper than to do stuff the original way.

The impact that this will have on human society as we know it, is impossible to gauge: the combination of several forces – asexual reproduction, women no longer hobbled by pregnancy, and their increasing economic ability to care for children alone – would mean the predominance of single parenthood and increasing asexuality among humans. Becoming a parent will simply mean sponsoring a made-to-order baby. The resulting children, knowing they were fed not by their mother’s umbilical cord but by a test tube, would hardly carry the level of attachment towards their sponsors that they do towards their parents. Shorn of the burden of childbirth, women will finally have a chance to compete with men on truly equal terms. On the other hand, men, unencumbered by their love for women and by their need for women to procreate, might try to ensure their control over resources while they still can. This would make people look back at the present gender war with fondness.

Sure enough, even with these technologies in place, millennia of evolutionary and social training won’t disappear overnight. The present humans, and possibly even some future ones, might balk at the idea of relinquishing the cherished motherhood and at the thought of their children not being truly ‘theirs’. Love and contemporary methods of marriage and procreation will put up stiff resistance before they are choked to death by the descendants of the very humans who have sung countless paeans to them. After all, what is human desire in the face of convenience, favourable economics, pressure to conform, and the lure of a fair-skinned, blue-eyed child?

Why do I, someone who won’t even have children that will be affected by the future, take so much interest in it? Part of the enthusiasm stems from the possibility of my vision coming true. The rest stems from the desire to pose a counter to everyone – from parents to friends and countless sundries – who question, pillory, pity and dismiss my life choices. Blissfully ignorant of the lurking future, they relentlessly lecture me on how ‘natural’ and blissful marriage, love and procreation are, the right age to take each of these steps, and the minimum number of children to bear.

It’s not that I don’t see reason for their angst. As things stand today, I am a regret of evolution, for I have resisted its most fundamental impulses, love and procreation. But my point is, these impulses are hardly as fundamental as they’re thought to be.

Like all else, love, marriage and procreation are nothing but stepping stones to a rapidly evolving future. There is but one truly fundamental human impulse – the desire to stand vindicated for one’s choices. To, at the end, be able to look one’s detractors in the eye and say, “I was right”. I don’t want to say these words literally. I only hope to stand vindicated by the choices made by my detractors’ kids and grandkids, to watch quietly as they horrifyingly witness their progeny make the very same choices that someone – who they thought was a fool to miss out on the joys of life –  made several decades ago.

Review of Kiran Nagarkar's novel, Cuckold

At the risk of jumping to conclusions – this being my first Nagarkar novel – I will say that the author is already one of my favourites alongside Manu Joseph, on whose recommendation I read him. Can’t say I’ve been disappointed at all. Let me also confess that I was biased towards this book even before reading it because it deals with the story of my ancestors, who have traditionally been neglected by the genre of historical fiction. One of the reasons I picked up this book – other than its catchy title – was to learn more about the Rajput kings of Rajasthan. This book isn’t classic historical fiction, since the language is contemporary and the author doesn’t necessarily strive for pinpoint accuracy in depicting social customs of the 16th century, in which era the book is set. Having said that, it is loaded with invaluable information about the statesmanship and philosophy of Rajput kings, methods of warfare, internal and external power struggles of Mewar and surrounding kingdoms, and Babur’s conquest of India. I disagree with those who think this book is primarily a love story, or that its central theme is the protagonist’s failed attempts to win over his wife, Meerabai (not once referred to by this name in the book). Agreed, this is indeed a leitmotif of the book, and has a profound impact on her husband, Maharaj Kumar, but this isn’t what the book is about. The quote below should put an end to this debate: "My wife, Kausalya, Leelawati, my friends matter to me, but the meaning of my life doesn’t revolve around them." Which brings us to what this book is actually about – a deep dive into the meaning of Maharaj Kumar’s life. I have hardly read something that explores a character’s heart, mind and soul in such excruciating detail. Often through deeply revealing mental dialogue, Cuckold unveils the different roles he plays in life – that of a husband to two different women, a lover to several others, a son to a father who suspects his son will unseat him someday, a brother to those who incessantly plot to have him killed, a visionary warrior who considers peace and commerce to be more important, and an ambitious statesman. In the end, the book reveals an endearing man who’s tough on the outside but deeply conflicted inside, constantly questioning his actions and decisions. I suspect, though, that this is a book written by a man, based on a man, and for men. Depiction of female characters solely from a male perspective, physical and sexual violence, and excessive details of battle strategies (which I thoroughly enjoyed, including the bit about jihad’s importance to war) give me the impression that it would put off most female readers, but then I could be wrong. And oh, keep a dictionary handy while reading Cuckold. Hardly have I come across a book which had so many unheard of words.

Answering the question - What will my legacy be?

A few days back I was out till late night with a bunch of friends, looking for chicken roll for two of them. We finally located a roadside eatery where they began to chomp. The eatery had three child labourers, none over 14 years old, doing most of the cooking and serving. I wasn’t eating, so got busy mollycoddling a stray. He was cute and won’t stop leaping on to me and soiling my t-shirt with his paws.

I moved away a tad bit to keep the t-shirt clean and got busy chatting with friends. He hung back. In about another minute or two, I heard loud wailings. I turned to see that his left hind leg was curled up off the ground and he was limping away to the other side of the road as fast as a three-legged creature could. Why? Because one of the child cooks had hit him with a steel rod that was probably kept there just for that purpose.

I was morally outraged. Why hit an innocent creature who wasn’t even being intrusive? I ran towards the dog and saw that, despite the brutal intent of the assault, he’d escaped serious injuries and would soon be able to walk again. I turned back and unleashed my moral outrage against the child attacker - “Tumhe koi maarega faltu mein to kaisa lagega?”, and variants of it.

The guy was unfazed. Completely. In previous similar experiences, I had seen the guilty at least murmur justifications. This kid didn’t even bother with that, just kept looking down at the plate he was garnishing. I got my friends to pay up quickly and soon left the place in disgust, reacting typically like a morally outraged person would.

After physically abandoning the crime scene, the next step for a morally outraged person is to abandon it mentally, too.  I was in the process of blocking out horrific memories of the wailing dog and the stoic child, when I was reminded of something the inimitable Manu Joseph said – “If you’re morally outraged by something, get closer to it.”

Given that going back to the child and digging calmly into his reasons behind committing the act would most likely have proved futile, I chose the next best option - trying to figure out why a human being, a child no less, would do such an inexcusable thing.

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind. All these evils are a direct consequence of population explosion. We’re breeding like maggots and there are not enough carcasses to feed on. Why is unprovoked physical violence an abhorrence for you and I, but not for a teenager who’s had no education and probably sleeps on a half-empty stomach every night? Well, for one, you and I need to realise that what we think of as innate is often a byproduct of the environment one grows up in. A child who grows up watching his alcoholic father grab his sister’s ass and beat up his mom without reason, is often thrashed by his employer, must steal food and learn to land blows to survive on a daily basis, can hardly be expected to empathise with an animal. Physical violence, for this child, is either a way to vent his bitterness or a survival mechanism.

All those mob lynching incidents that we hear of these days? Sure, to an extent the spurt could be explained by the present circumstances, but never underestimate the fury of a group of people who’re underfed and underpaid. For them, it doesn’t take much of a leap to go from cobbling street dogs to lynching humans, especially if they’re paid for it.

That largely explains the depravity of the deprived. So, if the poor clamped down on producing more like them, surely the world would be a better place?

Hardly.

As white-collar crimes by Ivy League graduates, sexual exploitation by the powerful, female foeticide and infanticide by educated and urban Indians, and money laundering by chartered accountants suggest, physical violence is perhaps the least destructive form of depravity that has come to characterize human beings. The educated avoid physical violence simply because they don’t need it for survival and they have too much to lose by engaging in wanton violence. They channel their depravity into ugliness that’s more rewarding and easier to hide. The wealthy and the uneducated, however, don’t have similar inhibitions about it. Salman Khan and the Gujjar community are living examples.

In short, it’s pretty clear that making the poor educated and/or rich, or reducing their numbers, isn’t going to change anything, except probably making things worse.

To get rid of the problem permanently, I propose a radical solution – VHEMT. Started in 1991 by American environmental activist Les Knight, VHEMT stands for Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.  As its motto - “May we live long and die out” – suggests, VHEMT calls for all humans to stop having kids, so that the human race is wiped out for good within a generation. There’s no violence, no suicide involved. We just have to stop making more of us.

Many would argue that adherents to VHEMT are a bunch of misanthropes. Except for a few like me, that’s not really true. Most of these guys can be perfectly described by Lord Byron’s “I love not Man the less, but Nature more”. VHEMT guys believe, and rightly so, that a planet sans humans would mean its biosphere can revive and restore to its former glory again.

This makes perfect sense for the climate change radicals as well as for the hedonists who don’t care about the environment. For the former, not producing another resource-sucking creature would mean they’re doing their utmost to save the planet. For the latter, there’s a more subtle reason to adhere to VHEMT. If the entire human race decided to eschew kids, it would give us a guilt-free passport to the planet’s loot and plunder for as long as we live - not more than 125 years. So we could fire up all those coal plants again, shelve the boring EVs once and for all, and extract oil without worrying about ‘peak oil’. Once we’re gone, the planet will heal itself in due course. There are other less obvious benefits of VHEMT. College admissions would become easier. There’ll be more food for humans and stray dogs. No longer would women drop behind in the workplace due to pregnancy-induced leaves. Divorce settlements would be much less messy. The pro-choice vs. pro-life debate would end instantly. Above all, the most vexing question invented by humankind – what will my legacy be? – would become redundant.

If we can’t go as far as VHEMT, let’s begin by celebrating those who’ve already embraced this movement. For every Father’s Day, let’s have a Not-a-Father’s Day. For every Mother’s Day, let’s have a Not-a-Mother’s Day. For every Children’s Day, let’s have a Children-Never-Born’s Day. In place of the bygone “Hum Do Hamare Do”, let’s make a brand new start with the ambitious “Hum Do Hamare No”.

Review - Manu Joseph's latest book 'Miss Laila, Armed and Dangerous'

There are two Manu Josephs. One, Manu the author. Two, Manu the journalist. The first is an inspiration while the second is a warning. In his previous two books, Manu the journalist took a backseat and Manu the author – capable of staining the blank page with timeless wisdoms - shone through. In this book, however, exactly the opposite has happened.

First and foremost, this book should be deprived of its “fiction” tag. The only fictional element here is the lame stage names given to really well known, real-life public figures. This book is essentially an extended, heavily biased, opinion piece laying out the author’s thoughts on a particular case that rocked India over a decade back, and continues to emit aftershocks. Although I will avoid spoilers, anyone with a fair command on current affairs will be able to guess the real-life equivalents of the book’s characters and its plot, just a few pages into it.

The book’s best part – the author’s quintessential, though grossly generalizing, barbs against human rights activists – also turns out to be its most ironic. In presenting a completely one-sided view of important real-life events and the people involved in it, while ignoring all evidence to the contrary, Manu exposes himself as an activist, and perhaps a cowardly one at that, for his activism hides in the garb of fiction. I should mention here that asking tough questions is the job of a journalist, but asking them in a way so as to turn public opinion favourable to one’s own is not only irresponsible, but also dangerous. But then, as I said, Manu the journalist is a warning.

Of course, not everything about the book is bad. Like his previous works, this book has Manu’s signatures – underdog male characters, strong female characters, and of course, timeless wisdoms. Although the beginning seems jagged due to one too many interjections by the author’s voice, it soon picks up pace and reads like a thriller. It’s a given that the enjoyment readers gets out of this book will be directly proportional to their ignorance about the goings-on of the world. The plot twist towards the end is admirable, too.

I’ll leave you with some gems that only Manu is capable of writing:

“Hope is a premonition of defeat”

“There is no evidence of Damodarbhai’s guilt except one. Hindus adore him and they can’t explain why.”

“Damodarbhai is not right, Damodarbhai is not wrong. He is a secret thought that people have already thought.”

“You can defame love by calling it madness, which only confirms its existence.”

One of the character’s response when his daughter asks him why he doesn’t leave India when he dislikes it so much - “India is a wound. But it is not a wound like a whiplash. It is a wound, like a spouse.”

“Sweetheart, I’ll always be yours because no one else might want me or I might be too frightened to stray, for that is what faithful men are, unwanted or cowards.”

Wait, I forgot to ask the most important question. Considering the entire book is based on true events, what if that man turns out real, too? If he does, I will go back the very day and change this review, as well as my thoughts on Manu the journalist.

Satire - Marital rape from a Bharatiya POV

All this silly outrage over the government trying to preserve the right to marital rape. Don’t all these feminist libtards get it? By defending marital rape, the government isn’t just protecting the “institution of marriage”, it is protecting something much bigger – the very future of this country. Let me explain how.

Bharat is a nation of sanskari men, where a majority of men observe strict celibacy before marriage. They don’t succumb to the Western sins of attempting to woo girls to date. The only exception is a minority who sometimes force their hands into the tee shirt of an unsuspecting girl who agrees to venture into a desolate park with them. She makes some noises but usually not those that indicate trouble. If she does no one really cares, including the top-button-loose khaki-clad protectors of the people. Because everyone supports the men, they must be right. If you think they’re not, remember what our dear Netaji said, “boys commit mistakes, will you hang them?”

Given his preoccupation with being sanskari, Bhartiya nar leaves the job of finding a girl for him to his parents, before he dies of sexual frustration. Have you seen the “V” sign proudly brandished by a Bhartiya nar’s friends at his wedding? That’s they celebrating his overdue loss of virginity. V= Victory = Virginity (lost). Once the marriage is done, he loses little time in claiming this much deserved victory. After all, if the girl in the park didn’t complain, why should the wife? Obviously, once she’s sitting all decked up in the bed, she is craving relief from the 50kg lehenga that’s about to bury her in the ground. That, combined with the glass of milk (or perhaps Red Bull these days, given India’s embrace of modernity) - can you really blame it on the men? Silly Ajay Devgun, backed out despite Aishwarya’s kinky pallu-ripping invitation in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam.

Sometimes we hear an incident or two of wives complaining that their husbands raped them. Those insolent ones get thrashed even by their parents. If the girls’ parents support the husbands, they ought to be right. If you’re in doubt, remember what Netaji said.

At the heart of marital rape lies another underappreciated reason – Indian men’s love for their wives. Denial of sex is a ground for divorce. Some Indian men love their wives far too much to divorce them, so they don’t let them deny sex. In any case, only 10-20% of the wives get raped. That’s just a few crores. Big deal.

So, do you now understand why marital rape – a perfectly justified activity as explained above – is also essential to the future of this country? It’s the kids, stupid! For a lot of sanskari Indian men who assiduously shield themselves from the Western notions of romance and consent, the right to rape make love to their wives is essential to the continuation of progeny, and thus to sustain the fast-dwindling population of India.

However, our sanskari government didn’t stop at this. It presented still more arguments to convince people of the necessity of marital rape. One of those is that, “This country has its own unique problems due to various factors like literacy, lack of financial empowerment of the majority of females… and these should be considered carefully before criminalising marital rape”. Now, the government understands these aren’t “problems” at all, but crucial to the continuation of the institution of marriage – after all, Westernization of women through education and empowerment makes their rape by sanskari husbands unlikely. Criminalizing marital rape would be a big step towards empowering women, hence it must be avoided.

Another brilliant argument is, “What may appear to be marital rape to an individual wife, it may not appear so to others.” Assuming the government isn’t talking about eyesight, it’s right in saying that women who get raped by their husbands are too dumb to figure it out for themselves. Estrogen, you see. Here they are on common ground with another women’s rights champion, All India Muslim Personal Board (AIMPLB). While defending triple talaq, AIMPLB said that it should be preserved because men have greater decision-making power than women. Such nouveau wisdom!

Lastly, the government rightly touches upon the misuse of Sec 498A to punish innocent husbands for domestic violence they didn’t commit, fearing that a law against marital rape will be similarly misused. This argument is based on careful analysis of data from countries – US, UK, Nepal, Bhutan etc. – where laws against marital rape have forced all husbands to flee to India, where men are still allowed to be men. Added to this is the government’s concern over how to prove marital rape. It’s saddening that this concern hasn’t been extended to non-marital relationships, where proving marital rape can be equally hard. This presents us with a golden chance to revoke anti-rape laws for boyfriends too. After all, why ruin a brewing marriage? And boyfriends never rape anyway, their girlfriends just invite it, so there’s little use of keeping a redundant law.

While we’re on the subject of revoking laws, let’s also revoke Sec 498A, the biggest threat to the institution of marriage. India has deftly avoided making a law to protect male victims of domestic violence, and now needs to correct its folly of trying to protect women. If women can undergo rape, what’s the harm in taking a few beatings at the hands of pati parmeshwar? And all those reports of burnings for not paying dowry are #FakeNews about kitchen accidents by presstitutes.

Let’s all be thankful to our sanskari government and Bhartiya nar for fighting tooth and nail to shield our great nation from existential Western attacks. Together, they shall defend our superior civilizational ethos and keep evil notions of romance and consent at bay.