A Curious Case of Give and Take

Water Water everywhere is a fair and exact statement. However inside us the color of that water is red. This red is brilliant and attractive and has been historically conferred many meanings. Blood as it is called, is mostly water though its components are Plasma which is yellow, Red Blood Cells (RBC) and White Blood Cells (WBC). Blood takes its brilliant colour from a substance called hemoglobin. Blood runs through our body via blood vessels and is propelled by the pumping action of our heart. 

Blood is neither just water that some people are thirsty of nor it is just a liquid that is biologically relevant. This is the blood of Jesus Christ that was collected and stored in a cup called Chalice, at the Crucifixion by his disciples. It is also the same blood that prompted King Ashoka to renounce violence and embrace Buddhism.

Any use of the word blood is fraught with multiple meanings. Whenever blood is shed, either taken or given, it means there has been fighting and people have been either injured or have died. When blood is willingly shed or consciously demanded, it means something extraordinary and sublime. It means individuals have felt that there is something more valuable than their blood and their life and therefore it can be sacrificed at the altar of that feeling or thought. 

"Give me blood and I will give you freedom” is a famous exhortation of Subhas Chandra Bose popularly known as Netaji. His blood boiled at the sight of India being a captive state of England. He was impatient of the non-violent methods of Gandhiji and therefore charted his own path. Interestingly to him is attributed the saying "If people slap you once, slap them twice". 

Indian National Congress and its leaders worked from within so as to work towards freeing India from the clutches of British. Netaji worked from outside. He rallied the support of important nations of the world that were against England to help him in fighting against the British. He met and discussed India’s freedom and its path to freedom with most significant politicians and thinkers across the world. Some of them were Clement Attlee, Harold Laski, Sir Stafford Cripps, J B S Haldane, G D H Cole etc. He was profoundly influenced by the methods of Kemal Ataturk or Turkey and statesmanship of Italian statesmen Gieuseppe Garibaldi and Giuseppe Mazzini. He also sought support from Hitler to fight for Indian independence and established an Indian Legion that had this famous oath "I swear by God this holy oath that I will obey the leader of the German race and state, Adolf Hitler, as the commander of the German armed forces in the fight for India, whose leader is Subhash Chandra Bose"

Subhas Bose was born in 23^rd January 1897 in Cuttack Orissa. He completed his schooling in Cuttack and then joined the famous Presidency College of Calcutta. He was expelled from Presidency College as he assaulted one of his professors Prof. Oaten for making anti-India comments. He then joined Scottish Church College, University of Calcutta and completed his Bachelors in Philosophy in 1918. Incidentally Swami Vivekananda also studied from the same college. 

Though historically it is said that he died in a plane crash on 18^th August 1945, it is believed that he survived the crash and lived as a mysterious monk with the name of “Gumnami baba” in Faizabad Uttar Pradesh and died only on 16^th September 1985. An inquiry commission was set up by Govt of India under the leadership of Justice Mukherjee to investigate the identity of Gumnami Baba. Though in its report the committee said that there is no clinching evidence establishing his identity as Subhas Chandra Bose, Justice Mukherjee did state later on in a documentary shoot that he was indeed the great man.

A Memory Extraordinaire

Examination days are tough when studies follow us everywhere and all the time. What increases the challenge is that we don’t have to just study but also have to remember what we have studied and the more we study the more material we have to remember. Our capacity to remember things is loosely called memory. There are always people whom we know who have better memory than we have. However what do we mean by someone having a good memory is not very clear. It probably means he or she gets the highest marks in the class.  It is also said that the elephants have good memory.

By good memory we mean a person is able to recall what he has read or experienced in detail and in letter and spirit, when needed. If we were to look at memory closely, we shall see that it has three stages. When we read or experience something new we first assign a simple and short code to it so that it may be stored easily. The code that we assign relates to our existing knowledge so that it is familiar and probably interesting. This code is called a mnemonic. The next step is to recollect the stored information or experience when required. So memory is actually a long process comprising encoding, storing and recalling.

The time that we take to go through these three stages determine whether we have a quick memory and the variety of things that we can encode, store and recall determines the vastness of our memory and when combine them, it is called extraordinary memory. If there were one example of a person with extraordinary memory, it is Narendranath Dutt later known as Swami Vivekananda.

Narendranath was an extraordinary student with phenomenal memory. After a discussion with Narendranath, Dr. Mahendralal Sarkar reportedly said, "I could never have thought that such a young boy had read so much”. He had a wide range of interests that comprised subjects like philosophy, religion, history, social sciences, arts, and literature. He evinced interest in scriptural texts like Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, Ramayana, Mahabharata and Puranas. He also studied western logic, western philosophy and history of European nations and is said to have studied the writings of David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Baruch Spinoza, George W F Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, August Comte, Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, Charles Darwin. He became fascinated with the evolutionism of Herbert Spencer. He was regarded as a srutidhara—a man with prodigious memory. His favourite books were Bhagvad Gita and The Imitation of Christ.

It is said that he would read a book so rapidly that to an onlooker it would seem like he was simply turning pages, and yet he could accurately tell what was contained in which page. He probably read 2-3 lines or a full page with one stroke of the eye. It was possible only through deep concentration. The three stages of memory in his case were assimilated and compressed into a continuous stream of consciousness aided by his sharp intellect and wide readings.