THE HAPPY HEART SYNDROME

That stress kills is now an accepted fact. The medical fraternity also identifies the Broken Heart Syndrome or ‘Takotsubo’, which is characterised by sudden temporary weakening of the heart that may lead to cardiac arrest. This is a relatively rare condition that is typically triggered by episodes of severe emotional distress like grief, anger or fear that may cause chest pain and breathlessness in patients, leading to heart attacks.

In classical stress literature, this is called ‘bad stress’ or distress that was thought to be dangerous and had to be avoided. In contrast, there was the good stress or eustress, which was not supposed to be harmful. But there are recent evidences pouring in that point out that even good stress may be dangerous.

Scientists from a Zurich Hospital University of Switzerland have carried out a systemic study to prove that even too much happiness may trigger something similar to a broken heart syndrome. They have named it the happy heart syndrome. Moral of the story — happiness or grief can be savoured only in moderation. The lesson to be learnt is balance. The age-old adage that excess of anything is bad is perhaps worth noticing seriously. In fact, the nature of stress is so intriguing that it is very difficult to understand.

It is a non-specific stimulus as well as a non-specific response. It is sometimes an intervening variable between a stimulus and response. Thus understanding how stress arises and how it harms may not be easy. However, one thing is certain, that it is impacting human life in a big way and is rightly characterised as the public enemy number one of the 21st century. While researching on stress for a PhD, this writer found that stress is not what happens to people, it is rather how they react to it that matters.

This reminds me of an old story. An elderly man diagnosed with coronary heart disease (CHD) was in the habit of buying lottery tickets. The family doctor monitoring his health had advised his sons to guard against any news that was either too disheartening or heartening. The sons would never let him check whether he had won the lottery or not and would always take the ticket and match it with the results.

As is usual, he was not winning. But there once came a ticket that gave him the prize of Rs 1 crore. The sons wondered how to break the news. The ticket was with the old man. They consulted the doctor who suggested that breaking the news suddenly may be dangerous, so he will do it in his own way.

On his regular visit he asked the old man what would he do if he got a prize of Rs 10 lakh. The old man had been buying lotteries for long. He told the doctor not to crack jokes with him, but the doctor persisted. The old man said he will give Rs 1 lakh to the doctor. The doctor, following the paradigm of successive approximation, asked what if it was Rs 20 lakh? The old man was now enjoying. He said he will give Rs 2 lakh to him. This went on till the doctor could finally take the amount to Rs 1 crore. The old man said he would give half the amount to the doctor. And it was the doctor’s turn to collapse of a heart attack. Watch out!

THE ABBEY OF BLISS IN INDIA

The Abbey of Bliss is the title of the first English publication of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s eternal literary work Anandamath, a novel set in 18th century Bengal famine during the British rule. It is about the Sanyasi rebellion by the monk brotherhood of a remote Bengal village and the source of the eternal song,Vande Matram, which was incorporated as the National Song after Independence.

What brings the novel and song to the mind may be a question that may crop up in the minds of the readers of this piece. But the recent incidents that took place on Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus and the sequence of events that followed necessitate the recapitulation. An insidious debate has started in the aftermath of the police action that took place on the campus after certain sections of the electronic media highlighted the high voltage seditious sloganeering in the university. Some students while observing the anniversary of hanging of Afzal Guru, the man charged with the heinous crime of attack on Parliament, were shown raising anti-India slogans and indulging in behaviour that no democracy could permit.

But the events that followed have been subject to so many twists and turns that the entire issue has been skirted. The issue is now the arrest of the students’ union president and whether his aggressive anti-Government, RSS and ABVP posture was seditious or not. Instead of a serious national debate on nationalism as a value, a political debate has started with battlelines clearly drawn. The arrest of the JNU students’ union president is an issue that has to be decided by the judiciary. His utterances against the Government may or may not be proved to be sedition and the argument that in a democracy citizens have a right to speak against the Government may have many takers. But what about sympathisers of Afzal Guru and the likes? What about the sloganeering that took place on the campus while organising the anniversary of his hanging? Talking against political parties cannot come under the charge of sedition, but what about talking against the country?

True the Constitution does not specifically mention sedition as a ground for restrictions on freedom of speech and expression, but sedition does embrace all those practices, whether by word, deed or writing which are calculated to disturb the tranquillity of the state and lead ignorant persons to subvert the Government. The intention or tendency is an issue that cannot be overlooked.

It is against this backdrop that the entire episode has to be viewed. But somehow the focus of the entire debate from universities of far away US to streets of London and serene campuses of Indian universities has shifted to a different issue. It is not about the right to expression. It is about the very definition of a citizen and his duty towards his country. There is a Section on fundamental duties in the Indian Constitution.

The issue is about the definition of a nation state. And of course it is about the values of a citizen. It is about Mother India. None can doubt that India is a nation that has its boundaries. Those claiming license in the name of freedom of expression must understand that the freedom is guaranteed only because of the country and its Constitution. The debate must focus on that.

O GOD, BLESS THE POOR

From the Bible to the Indian scriptures, in most religious books, the poor have been thought to be closer to God. Gandhiji referred to them asdaridranarayan, which means “God resides in poor”. According to St Mathews, “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.” But these notwithstanding, the fact is that poverty hurts. And it hurts more because it grows because of the few rich who are getting richer.

While the media at large keeps on singing paeans of globalisation, liberalisation and marketisation, the poor are not able to get what the champions of market economy had promised. Fudging reality by statistics is one thing but stark reality is an entirely different story. In fact a closer and deeper look at the effects of globalisation would point out that the benefits of this most trumpeted media expression has helped the rich become richer while impoverishing the poor.

Even as recession persists, depression persists and the hitherto fairly insulated economies also get entangled in the quagmire of recession, clamour for more reforms is getting louder. These are Budget times in India and the annual Budget is due tomorrow.

While it is the Government’s prerogative to decide the course that the Budget may lead to, the economists  inadvertently or inordinately  are leaving no stone unturned to make things easier for the rich, which usually make things difficult for the poor.

Sounds harsh, but facts do speak for themselves. A recent Oxfam study bares it all. The findings suggest that the wealth of the richest 62 people has risen by 44 per cent in the five years since 2010. That comes to an increase of more than half a trillion dollars. The interesting piece of statistics is that in 2010, it was 388 people whose wealth was equal to that of the poorest half of the world population. In 2011, the number became 177, in 2012 it was 159, in 2013 it became 92, then 80 in 2014, and 62 in 2015. A systemic change that cannot be ignored.

The other interesting findings are that since the turn of century, the poorest half of the world’s population has received just one per cent of the total increase in global wealth while half of the increase went to the top one per cent. Further, the average annual income of the poorest 10 per cent of people has risen by less than three dollars each year in almost two and a half decades.

As the gap between poor and rich widens year after year post globalisation, it is time to think about the real agenda of globalisation. The good reason of course was summum bonum or greater good to greater number, but it certainly was not the real reason.

If only one per cent people own wealth more than what 99 per cent own, something certainly is wrong with the scheme of things. Globalisation that started with much fanfare as glasnost and perestroika in the then USSR, saw the same USSR as its first causality. China has been second, though other emerging economies also fell prey to globalisation propaganda. Will it be India this time? Needs to be pondered over. The way our economy swings at global cues is not a happy augury and indicates a larger design. It is time God actually becomes the saviour of the poor as daridranarayan.