The Naked Age

It's quite a remarkable fact that out of around one hundred million (100,000,000) unique species inhabiting Planet Earth today, human beings are the only one to wear clothes. I think the main reason why our ancestors took up clothing is to protect themselves from the weather, and not due to shame or modesty as proposed by various sources and institutions. We and our surroundings presumably would have been quite different if we, like all our co-inhabitants, wouldn't have worn clothes. It doesn't always imply that technologically advanced species would wear clothes. Steven Spielberg's ET, though capable of displaying extraordinary powers, was naked. Think of how much money one spends in his/her whole lifetime on clothes, not only in buying them for him/herself, but almost an equal amount as presents for friends and families. Being naked, we could have spent this money on various other things. Textile industry wouldn't have been present had we been naked. There wouldn't have risen a need for laundries and tailors. Had we been naked, we could have had options to explore other fields as well, which could not develop considerably due to the presence of clothes. Primarily, being naked would have required ourselves to protect the skin against cold, heat and rain. Given the technologically advanced species we are, it's quite amusing to think of infrastructural differences - more underground subways than roads on the surface. The surface being preserved for residential, industrial and agricultural purposes. In technologically and economically developed countries, air would be maintained at a controlled temperature. Economically it would have been difficult to maintain a controlled environment for the entire land surface of the planet. Hence, tropical regions would have been more densely populated, the density gradually getting sparse towards the poles. To keep ourselves accustomed to the weather, and be spread across the planet at the same time, we would have been much more prone to migration. Mobility would have been a cause for the survival of humanity. There would have been fewer subdivisions among regions, meaning fewer number of nations, who would have been more cooperative and tolerant towards each other. Maps would have been considerably different. During November-January and May-July, when the sun is over the tropics, people would have tended to move more towards the equator where the temperature is moderate. And towards the tropics during February-April and August-October. Due to this need for movement, traveling would have been more a commonplace thing and hence, less regulations on immigration issues. Possibly, by default, every human being would have been considered to be a citizen of not any specific country or region, but of this planet as a whole! Also, there would have risen a need to manage land and property by a centralized body, rather than being owned by specific individuals. Fashion designing would presumably have been present on a large scale. Human beings would have beautified themselves using body art, tattoos, jewelery, body-piercing, different body-hair styles. Salons would have also offered exotic styles of arms, legs, chest and pubic hair. 'How we look' would have meant different. We would have been more conscious of our bodily looks, and maintained proper diet and exercise to stay in shape. In fact, the absence of elastics and tight fitting clothes would have made human physique structurally a bit different from what we are today. We wouldn't have been the same psychologically. Inhibitions would have been considerably less or totally absent. Nudity, being non-secretive, wouldn't have been something to fantasize about. Maybe there would have been more depth and truth in a fantasy. We would rather think about the voice of the other person, about his/her personality, various positions to have sex with him/her, about his/her facial expressions and movements when he/she reaches orgasm. Would there have been less love? I don't think so. Aborigines love too, don't they? Probably they love more than we do. Sex would have been more prevalent and accepted. Forced sex would have been non-existent or extremely rare. Evolution and Being complement each other. Since humans have not chosen the path towards nudity, and have evolved since ages with clothes, it's very difficult to predict how things would have been without them on. Possibly, we and our lives would have taken an entirely new direction than my thoughts above.

Edge of Chaos

Last evening Darmint Cafe celebrated her first birthday. Instead of balloons and colored papers, Darmint was decorated with white plasters, bandage, saline and blood vessels. As my friends from the cafe explained, this symbolized a wounded society. A country, whose government is not being proficient enough to support against poverty, regular natural disasters, plane crashes (two in a month this time!), to name a few. And yesterday's celebration was a sign of protest against the powers that be. Most of the music that they played were in Bahasa Indonesia, but some Bob Marley numbers which were chipped in between hinted the pulse and flavor of this celebration. Among the peace loving people of Indonesia too, I noticed the threshold being crossed. Human beings, essentially, like to stay and be happy in their own small world. They are not much bothered until a limit is reached, which essentially happens due to the initiative of a small group of power-loving people. What pisses me off is the lack of efficient organizing capability among leaders, not necessarily of countries, but even of private sectors or students unions for that matter. Till the time this mismanagement remains within limits, everything apparently stays in order. Chaos takes over once that threshold is crossed. The same thing happened at Nandigram, a small village in West Bengal, India, where villagers were shot down by policemen and party cadres according to instructions from the state government. The villagers obstructed against setting up a special economic zone at the place where their cultivable lands lay. This industrialization, if properly planned and organized, would have possibly changed the economy of West Bengal (and Calcutta for that matter) to a large extent. But what happened is that at a crucial junction the order broke up and chaos took over. Lately, it seems, the tolerant mass of the United States have started to organize demonstrations against Mr. Bush and his government. After four fucking years of the war! Possibly this was expedited after the Democrats took over the Congress this year. There too, the edge of chaos has been reached. Chaos Theory is all about crossing this threshold, thereby upsetting normalcy. It happens everywhere, nature being the best example. The Butterfly Effect (a primary proposition of the Chaos Theory) says the fluttering of a butterfly's wings in Taipei can result in a tornado in New Mexico. [Wiki: Small variations of the initial condition of a nonlinear dynamical system may produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system... Had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the trajectory of the system might have been vastly different.] Even families are not devoid of this theory. Global warming! Lately some words are being spoken, but who knows. In 'Jurassic Park' (the book, not the movie), Michael Crichton wonderfully demonstrates the inconceivable repercussions that may take place once the edge of chaos is crossed.

Good Bye Lenin!

This movie revolves around the happenings in a small East-German family during the unification of the two Germanies. Alex, possibly in his twenties, lives with his mother and sister in a place surrounded by communist ideals during the pre-union era. His mother is a staunch socialist and is separated from her husband, who lives in West Germany. After a sudden incident, she suffers a heart attack and goes into coma. She remains in this state for eight months, in which their country undergoes a vast transformation: the wall is demolished, the two Germanies are united and capitalism takes its toll in East Germany. She 'wakes up' from her sleep in a changed world. Alex, the son, afraid that his mother might suffer another attack, keeps this reality a secret, and does whatever he can to make her believe that nothing has changed and it's still the old East Germany she knew eight months back. It's reality, still with a flavor of fiction, but not too much to spoil the essence of facts. Perfect art. What a movie!