Gender bender in a Unisex World

The other day I read that in some cold and organized part of the first world, a group of over funded, under worked engineers had managed to put a female mind into a male body. No, It wasn't Hollywood production. They apparently inserted a chip which was programmed to be a female mind into a hapless male and checked if he stopped watching the sports channel or playing pocket billiards. (Not really, I just made that bit up).

Actually, it was a much duller research project to see whether the technology of gene transfer could be extended into the area of brain. Functions concerning perception. At least that is what I understood, but then I can't add fractions so don't count on me. Now if you have no time for unscientific drivel, go away. But if you have an unfettered imagination, and a propensity to worry about none is sues read on.

Imagine the implications of putting a female mind into male body. If you survive the shock of finding yourself wearing unflattering colors, you may collapse once you've calculated the financial implications of hair removal. The only thing likely to because you joy is the presence of slimmer things narrower hips and hopefully, no stretch marks.

Let's see the impact this would have on society. What would you do if a man walked into the room and, in 10 minutes, no t gets petty bout a new ear that somebody else had bought? Worse still, he won't be smiling foolishly at young women and ignoring the older women. Instead, he would be finding out where you bought that sari, and what the best place to look for throw cushions was.

One could go on making lists of things that a Man with a Woman in his Head (very different from a Man with Woman on his Mind) would be doing but hang on. There are many subjects that have become unisex now. You wouldn't know if it's the chip speaking or whether the original brain has re-asserted itself if he starts talking about cricket, wine or Shashi Tharoor : You will be foxed if he knows the calorific value of cup of sprouts and the long term benefits of Tai Chi.

The truth is that the unisex mind is already among us. We have nurtured it because life now demands that you don the male and female that. If you have reached the age of 50 and believe that the gender of our brains is the gender of our body, then please check out the BBC website. There is a quiz that allows you to find out the gender of your brain. I won't tell you my results but I can tell you that one of my men friends was a borderline male.

It's all very well for men to talk about nurturing their female side, and for women ot believe that they are "man enough". But what if you would happen if men didn't know that when they are being sensitive, it's their female side at work and women didn't know that they were being man enough when they switch off in the middle of a conversation? Losing your gender can be as scary as your hard disk crashing without having saved your files. All the women will break into a cold sweat at the thought of losing their capacity to color coordinate or detect a lie. And you men out there, would you survive if you couldn't compartmentalize your lives and continue to believe that you are emotionally stable? So hang onto your gender because you may be already gender because you may be already on you way to losing it.

Glory of the Lady-of-the-house

Meaning: According to the line of Rigved 10/85/46 — O daughter-in-law! Lead you, life in such a way that your mother-in-law all respect and honor you.

Message: After the marriage, the wife leaves behind everything in her father's home and comes to her husband's home. Everything is left behind including her mother, father, brothers, sisters, family home- everything. She leaves behind the entire milieu of love where she was born, spent her childhood, studies and entered her youth and after becoming related to an unknown stranger, goes to his home. Is she at a loss by this renunciation of her previous family? No. In return for her renunciation, her total surrender to her husband's family, she becomes a very important member of her new family. Now that family becomes her own family, where she gets the status of the lady-of-the-house. She becomes the owner of the family and the entire responsibility of the family comes on her head.

In this new family she becomes the Empress over her mother-inn-law, father-in-law, and sister-in-law. Just as an Emperor looking after the happiness, comfort, and maintaining cordial relations among all pays attention to the progress of the kings and their populace under his ruler ship, similarly by becoming the chief member of the family, the new bride has to carry a very big burden of properly organizing the comforts, meals and the family paraphernalia for all the members of the family. It becomes her duty to think of the interests of all the family members, big or small. Because of maintaining all these duties, she is aptly called the owner or the Empress of the family.

The meaning of becoming th4e Empress or owner of the family does not imply that she establish her supremacy over the others. The implied meaning of the above title is that she should fulfill her important responsibilities, deal courteously with all and administer the house with the guidance of the elders by benefiting from their experience. By coming to the new milieu, she should not consider herself as a servant and feel inferior in any way that is why she has been given the glorious status of an Empress. All the members of the family should conduct themselves with love and warmth towards her by giving her proper respect.

But today most men ignore this loving, healthy viewpoint and do not accord the proper status to the new bride. By considering her as a servant, mother-in-law, sister-in-law and others keep on ordering her every moment. They find fault in her proper work. She is ignored,, neglected, beaten and sometimes even killed. Why does this come to pass? It is a matter of great sorrow, grief and worry. There is smoothness in dealings when the parents-in-law consider the daughter-in-law as their own daughter and she also considers them as much more than father and mother. The question is, 'who should make a beginning" Parents-in-law or the daughter-in-law? Being the elders, the parents-in-law should give her the love and warmth which they would accord to their own daughter, so that the void she feels in her heart because of separation from her own parents, is filled up. After that her enthusiasm for looking after the needs and comforts of her empire will automatically double up.

In this only lies the glory of the Lay of the house.

God has Handed Wife for me.

Meaning: According to the line of Athervaved 14/1/52 —, O wife! God has handed you over to me. The responsibility of maintaining you lies with me. Let us both have children and live up to hundred years.

Message: The responsibility of a happy home-life lies with both husband and wife, although of course, the responsibility of the husband is more because the wife leaves her family to join the husband's family. God the Supreme Father has created the opportunity for the union of two souls and the conduct of both must be excellent. By doing this, happiness in family and good luck are achieved. Good luck of married life does not lie merely in getting married, but there should be loving adjustment between the husband and wife and only by that type of behavior, permanent happiness is achieved. Good luck remains stable where there is mutual sharing of love and happiness or sorrow between the two. To maintain this happiness of married life, it is necessary to maintain this tradition and to have healthy children. In this way both remain happy and achieve longevity with good luck.

For a happy future of the bride-to-be, it becomes necessary to evaluate the qualities of the husband-to-be. A worthy, learned and addiction-free man can carry the burden of a successful and happy family. He should not only be highly knowledgeable and with good qualities, but simultaneously physically strong and free from bad tendencies, bas activities and addictions. Addictions are like poison in a family. A man trapped in liquor, gambling, etc destroys the family's happiness and peace, and gets insults and bad name, and along with him his wife also undergoes mental pain.

From a practical view-point, the wife's area of work is within the home and the husband's area of work is outside the home. His responsibility is to look after the family with a proper display of his worthiness, learning etc. The woman's work area lies in properly organizing the home. It is the woman's duty to make proper use of money earned honestly by the husband to maintain house, cleanliness etc and to feed the family. Both must make proper adjustments in their above duties and make arrangements to run the family satisfactorily within limited means. It is the wife's duty to maintain a cheerful atmosphere within the family even by bearing hardships. A man is not as skilful as a woman in organizing the home. A heavenly atmosphere prevails in a neat home

A man must be prosperous as far as food-grains and other means of comfort are concerned. He should be bright and cheerful. Only such husband can fully satisfy his wife and keep her cheerful.

Good Health Comes First

The recently concluded FIFA World Cup football in South Africa caused worldwide excitement. Indians were over taken by the passion of the game even though India was not participating in the event.

It is easy to get infected with the spirit of the game in a globalize world with its vast media networks that enable people to watch the game even at odd hours. Often such infectious spirit drives us to indulge ourselves on the material plane and remain immersed in superficial aspects of life. Drinking beer and watching football in Germany might have temporarily taken its people away from the humdrum business of life and made them feel elated for some time. But every sphere of life, including the sphere of sports and games, must explore the infinite dimensions which impact human existence and about which we are not adequately aware.

When Swami Vivekananda returned to India in 1897 after his historic trip to America where he addressed the Parliament of the world's Religions in Chicago in 1893, he delivered a series of lectures. In one of them he linked the attainment of spirituality to football. He said to the youth: "You will be nearer to Heaven through football than through the study of the Bhagavad Gita." Good health is the first step to strive for perfection. It involves overcoming weakness and acquiring confidence and spiritual dignity. It means cultivating self esteem.

Scripture reading is not sufficient if we re driven by frailties and temptations. Exercise is the key to achieve higher and finer objectives. Vivekananda was giving precedence to the individual's right to quality health which can provide access to many other wonderful realms. He said that Indians remained lazy because they were deprived of strength and energy. He explained our inability to work in terms of our physical weakness. He even painfully noted that the root cause of selfishness and disunity among Indian was our weakness manifested in fragile body and spirit. He earnestly pleaded for measures to strengthen our physical and mental health.

A scholar saint of worldwide fame, he advocated that health considerations must precede the quest for religion. "Our young men must be strong, religion will come afterwards. You will understand the Upanishads better and the glory of the Atman when your body stands firm upon your feet, and you feel yourselves as men," he said.

Passion for football must promote good health and purity of mind. The pursuit of sports and games will truly help us realize the essence of life which often gets overwhelmed by existential compulsions and loses its meaning and significance. Utkalmni Gopabandhu Das, a close associate of MK Gandhi, had said that mere excellence in the field of football and cricket will not make a nation. He meant that nation building involves building of character and cultivation of values. When Swami Vivekananda linked spirituality with football he was stressing as much on the ability to play that game as the capacity to realize divinity, a far more exalted goal than that of mere nation building. What is required is the balanced blending of physical and spiritual dimensions. It is indeed a coincidence that on the sesquicentennial years of swami Vivekananda's birth the world cup was held in South Africa.

Heavenly Atmosphere from the Family

Meaning: According the line of Athervaved 7/36/1 — let us husband and wife, look at each other with the gaze of love, always speak sweet words and reside in each other's heart. Let us be two bodies but with one mind only.

Message: What is the aim and ideal of marriage? Right from the beginning of civilization, why is this institution of marriage still continuing? If satisfying only the sexual desire is the reason for marriage, then this deal is very costly and troublesome. In this deal both sides seem to be heavy losers. Like the oil-miller's bullock tied to the grinder's beam and moving round and round throughout 8 to 10 hours, man also is crushed under the drudgery of earning for the family and the woman ruins not only her health and personality but also her life in the vicious circle of producing children. The aim of marriage is never like this. If that was the aim, the organization of the human society would have been completely destroyed and had been at a level lower than that of animals.

Marriage is a spiritual endeavor. This is a union of love which is nourished on the high ideals of self-denial and generosity. This is for men of goodwill and men who are brave. For a happy home-life, the life of the would-be groom and the bride-to-be should be of a high level, and both should be persons with quality and virtue. The groom should know the Vedas, properly educated, cultured and tolerant. The bride-to-be should be pure and impressive. With internal cleanliness of the body, the mind and intellect become pure. If the mind is clean, then the intellect and the mental tendencies too would be pure. With the body's inner and outer cleanliness comes the purity of conduct, good qualities develop and the light of knowledge and determination spreads around. The test of man's life is based on knowledge and character. Bright men and learned women, proven true on the above test, can achieve spiritual progress by joining in marriage and by living a 'yagyiya-life'. If the bond of marriage is making on the basis of capacity, learning and worthiness, then the life of husband and wife becomes happy.

The situation in the present times is indeed very strange. Maximum importance is given to pomp and wealth, but inner beauty (i.e. virtues) and personality in the form of qualities are ignored. As a result generally dissatisfaction and distrust are seen. In the absence of real sympathy, warmth and unity, despite living together, they live like lifeless strangers. They remain deprived of the inner joy and enthusiasm of the happiness, naturalness and tolerance of married life. A woman attuned to modality turns the peace of home into restlessness.

Husband and wife are complementary to each other. The objective of a successful family-life will be achieved if both consider each other venerable and work diligently for the success of marriage with mutual faithfulness, closeness, service, honor, cooperation, goodwill and generosity. For this holy objective, the husband and wife must be completely loyal to each other, and not think of any other woman or man.

By doing this, a heavenly atmosphere will be created in the family.