1411.....or the era of the Cockroach?

1411- By now every one of us would be aware of this number; in case you didn't know, that is the exact number of tigers left in India. The 'Save our Tigers' initiative, launched by Aircel and NDTV, has roped in stars such as Suriya, MS Dhoni, Baichung Bhutia to campaign for saving the tigers, which is incidentally the national animal of India (I had almost forgotten till I was reminded of this fact by these ads). The audience is asked to spread awareness through e-mails, social websites, blogs (this post is not one such), word-of-mouth and anything else that comes to mind.
Now the question I would ask is - Why ?
Is it because:
1: The tiger is our national animal.
2: It is cruel to kill animals for human pleasure.
3: As a policy, no species on earth should ever get extinct.

Let us begin with Point 2:
There is already a whole lot of jazz around us on the issue of cruelty towards animals, it is in fact a worldwide phenomenon. We have the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) with two million supporters worldwide (Source: Wikipedia) or 3% of the world human population; and back home we have our very own Maneka Gandhi with her "People for Animals" and active involvement in various other animal rights related initiatives. I am assuming these organizations would certainly focus on 'Saving the tiger' as well along with various other animals, that may include mosquitoes, flies, and bees as well. So I really don't think we need more people to spread the awareness, we especially don't want Mr. Dhoni joining Maneka Gandhi's camp, lest it affects his Cricketing performance adversely!

Point 3 - This completely contradicts the basic theory of evolution by Charles Darwin.
Darwin says that the mechanism of evolution of life essentially follows 'natural selection' and 'survival of the fittest'. It just means that any living organism 'naturally' selects the most desirable traits required to adapt itself to its surroundings, and over a period of time the species that are the 'fittest' survive, whereas the others get extinct. Simple enough?
History has it that over 97% of species that ever lived are now extinct; and someone else says that 25% of all species known to mankind will become extinct in our lifetime. There have been a total of five "mass-extinction" periods in the history of the earth's existence, the most notable of them being the extinction of Dinosaurs, that paved the path for the arrival of mammals and birds into the world (For details please refer - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_extinction), and finally us Homo Sapiens. Had there been any resistance to the natural process of evolution, humans would not have been humans, we would have still remained apes. Or worse still, we would all have been single cellular amoebic organisms, or maybe even not that.

All I am trying to say is, this is exactly why one day even the tigers will get extinct; Rather, they need to get extinct, in order make way for something better, and fitter. Just like one day even the human race will become extinct and give way for a far superior species, right? Now this is what will be the "Sixth mass extinction" in the history of evolution. If this is how nature has intended life to be, then why tinker with it, right?

Finally, coming to Point No. 1 - Do we need to save the tiger just because it is our national animal? Now, how did the Tiger come to become our national animal in the first place? And why was the Tiger alone chosen as the national animal? Why not something else that had far lesser chances of becoming extinct within the era of the Homo Sapiens?
Just to give a different perspective - take the case of sport; Hockey was made our national sport at some point in history and it still remains so. But instead, it is cricket that the entire nation worships ah so religiously! This would perhaps be followed by Tennis, or F1 where India is nowhere in the world map; and yet Hockey is almost dying a natural death, just like the tigers of India.

So if the sole reason for 'Saving our tigers' is that it is our 'national animal', then it is surely not worth the efforts. I say - lets not bother about the Tiger being our national animal. Let us all just embrace Darwin's theory, let the tigers reach a natural extinction, and let us create a new national animal. Something that is found in abundance. How about the Cockroach? Or the housefly perhaps; some of the most ubiquitous creatures you would find around. I am sure these animals would not get extinct for generations to come. Some scientists say that even in the event of a nuclear holocaust or aliens capturing the earth, the one species among all living beings that will truly survive is the Cockroach. So let us all join hands and spread awareness through e-mails, blogs, social websites, word-of-mouth and anything else - to make the Cockroach our National Animal!

Books and Me...

My newest resolution is to develop the habit of reading. Regular reading that is. 6 books a year, one in two months - quite a reasonable target to begin with, I think. Especially, given that I took one FULL year- last year, to finish a single book that went by the name - "When Genius Failed". Of course, it was more like a textbook on exotic derivative products and stuff, rather than a readable story; so not entirely my fault for being so slow. This made me ponder over how my reading habits have gone through a sea-change over the years.

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The first time I would have started reading something other than my school textbooks would have been at the age of 6-7. Tinkle, Amar Chitra Katha, Champak etc were some of my favorite reads back then. I still remember how used to eagerly wait for my subscriber's copy of Tinkle every two weeks, go straight on to the Puzzles page, solve them and send them across to the magazine's office. But all I ever got in return for my 'correct entries' were some 'Coupons', which if I collect in certain numbers would entitle me to a 'bigger gift'! Which I never ultimately claimed anyway.

Over a period of time, I started cultivating the habit of reading novels. This was when i was in standard 7th or 8th, those were the days of Enid Blyton, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys; of course Tinkle never did lose its charm even then! Ah! The Teenage years - A time when a lot of my friends used to go absolutely ga ga over the 'romantic' Mills & Boons books. Somehow I never really had the courage to pick up one of those books and peruse the contents. The sheer number of those books lying around in my neighborhood library and the ridiculously mushy content thoroughly repelled me. Anyway, romantic novels never really were my cup of tea. Thrillers, Action, Murder Mysteries were more of my type. Surprisingly, my choice is the exact opposite when it comes to movies. While I quite enjoy watching romantic movies with the occasional mush, I do not really fancy action movies.
After some years, the Nancy Drews and Hardy Boys were replaced by the likes of Agatha Christie, Erle Stanley Gardner, James Hadlee Chase. Tinkle was almost out and in came Archie Comics. Those were the days when I used to easily finish off one novel a day.

I used to particularly love the Hercule Poirot mysteries of Agatha Christie. Poirot was absolutely unique in the way he solves crimes, purely by talking his way through the various characters, playing with their psychologies and getting them to reveal more information than they desired to.

In a complete contrast to Poirot was Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason whose first step after a crime has taken place invariable is to collect 'physical' evidence - fingerprints, footprints, cigarette butts, ash trays, anything and everything that one can lay hands upon at the crime site. Of course, the character Perry Mason was a lawyer by profession, rather than a detective, as was the author himself, and therefore more than 50% of his novels involve courtroom dramas. I simply loved those courtroom dramas of Perry Mason, and the way he defends his client in a seemingly impossible case.

I have come across very few people who have read a James Hadley Chase, and rarely anyone who actually liked his books! What I really enjoyed about his books was that they are always full of action, extremely fast paced, and would always keep one guessing what's going to happen next. Although crime is always central to his novels, they are not exactly murder mysteries; each novel will have a unique adventure to tell.

Coming away from thrillers and murder mysteries, an author who remains my all-time favorite is PG Wodehouse - a legend in his own right. The classic Jeeves - ah! Who wouldn't have heard of him? The quintessential butler, who always has an answer to every conceivable problem in the life of his employer Bertie Wooster, who has a knack for landing up in all kinds of awkward social situations.

Well, that was almost the end of my reading habits, as I entered college. I may have perhaps read 8-10 books in all four years of my engineering,which was when I got introduced to Sidney Sheldon for the first time. "Tell me your dreams" of his is one of my favorites. I must make a mention here that I have somehow not read a John Grisham or a Jeffrey Archer till date, which I presume is a must read for any avid reader. Nor have I read any 'Classic' novel. After college, I've read books intermittently, of various genres, with no specific preferences. "The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Night Time", "The picture of Dorian Gray", "Freakonomics", "Fooled by Randomness", "The Monk who sold his Ferrari" - are some of the ones I liked.

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So coming back to the present - So far my count for 2010 is three - 'The Interpretation of Murder', 'Superfreakonomics' and '2 States'. More on the individuals in another blogpost.