Evolution, they say, takes millions of years. We didn't get transformed from apes to homo sapiens in a couple of hundred.
But look what we homo sapiens have done in just that timespan. Changed our lifestyle so completely that the evolutionary mechanism has been left far, far behind.
Take the human reproductive system. It was designed for a species which lived a maximum of 30-40 years. Hence we were made biologically capable of reproducing around the age of 14 - giving enough time for the offspring to grow into an adult while the parent was still alive but in the last 50 years, the human lifespan has increased by leaps and bounds. The average Japanese can expect to live to be 85. The average Indian, about 61 years.
Since you and me belong to a class of Indians with better access to healthcare, sanitation and nutrition that would definitely be much higher. Closer to about 75, I should think.
And yet, our bodies are functioning according to the old requirements. Girls will start 'maturing' around the age of 11 (even earlier than previous generations - thanks to better diet and other environmental factors). And so will boys.
At an age where we are expected to bury our noses in books, hormones start raging in our systems and instead, we start mooning over each other. "Yeh padhne-likhne ki umar hai," say parents and frown upon any 'distractions' from studies. It's like - the tap has been turned on - but there is no outlet.
My point is, in the '15-17 years of study' format of life, reaching sexual maturity at age 12 makes no sense - from an evolutionary standpoint. The idea was to enable propogation of the human race, right? In the modern context it works in quite the opposite manner. Especially for women.
The human female is born with a limited no. of eggs and the quality of these eggs declines with age. Hence doctors advise, women should consider having a baby by the time she is 30 and definitely not wait beyond 35.
This, effectively gives a woman just 5-8 years to establish herself in a career. Given that you complete an MBA or similar post graduate degree by 23-24, you now have to swiftly get ahead in your job and find a mate and have a baby in the next decade.
If you challenge nature and postpone having a baby, you may find it difficult or impossible to do so. There are modern fertility and reproductive techniques - but they cost a good deal and offer no guarantees.
Meanwhile, men can become fathers at 40 or even 50 or even 60!
So, if evolution was an efficient mechanism, women should actually become fertile closer to 18 - and stay so till their early 40s. That would still give the child born a very good chance of growing into an adult under the care of living parents and give women a better shot a 'equality' in high pressure careers and modern life in general.
I mean, under-age marriages still occur because dakhiyanoosi thinking parents would rather have a girl who's crossed puberty safely chained to a husband. Instead of risking she completes her education and be exposed to temptations of the flesh outside. Crude but that's how a lot of people still think!
Whats the use of being a mom at 40 and having an average life expectancy of 61 and the best part u cant even live to see ur grand children or being partly or fully orphaned in a short span of time .I think it surely doesnt make sense.
God is perfect in His works. Infact in the older times people did comand a lifespan of 100-150. If one analyzes from the beginning, the capacity of the first man and women to reproduce and further create a generation of descendants who were on their way further to produce further descendants as a cycle .One could expect a women producing children between 14-60. The Bible(Genesis 17:17) says Abraham's wife Sarah went on to produce a baby at 90 and live for another 100 years. Its fine if God blesses u enought a live long age to look after your children and see your grandchildren. Probably at that time men would continue producing children till their wives maximum fertility span. Not to forget the ancient indians were good at it and the Arabs still continue the tradition hoping the govt will look after their children and their education.
Once life is too precious to miss the joys that God has in store for them. Biology doesn't seem to have evolved, and Men don't seem to have evolved either! So you have men who are otherwise career horses who insist that women be happy with another package, all the time claiming to be feminists themselves, because... well, they give equal value to men's work and women's work. (This possibly is a digression.. but oh well!)
The burden of responsibility, mostly due to social-engineering in terms of caregiving is still seen as women's prerogative. It's not a complex .. it's a lament! :) Then there would be issues of individuality, again a myth people have. Even grains of sand would have individuality if given names.
Bottomline: Like any other System, the one God created up there to manage the business of planet Earth and earthlings, just may need some re engineering...
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Feeling good?
For a Mumbai socialite, it scarcely got bigger and better than this, reported the Indian Express.
Prerna Goel, "porcelain perfect 33-year-old homemaker and mother-of-one" was selected by the ultra-luxurious Chanel to star in a television documentary on the fashion house.
"It’s quite a prestigious thing," said the Lagos-born, London-raised Goel, just back and jet-lagged from shooting in Paris for five days. The Chanel team was also in Mumbai for three days last month, shooting Goel as she went about her daily life—meditation, playing Mom, charities and of course, some evenings well spent at Mumbai’s top restaurant, Indigo.
"I was chosen for their accessories profile," says Goel, who owns over 35 bags (the lowest price for one is Rs 50,000), and numerous belts and shoes.
I don't grudge over anyone for their share of designer labels - wear 'em if it makes you feel good. But 35 Fendi bags? If I had several crores in my bank account - and 18 lakhs was mere spare change - I still wouldn't buy 35 of those obscenely priced thingies.
And the luxury retailers who think India is the 'next big thing' need to look beyond the small, extremely creamy layer of society for whom carrying the 'right' bag and wearing the 'right' shoe is a matter of do or die.
The rest of us have a life and an identity which is independent of the labels we may choose - or choose not to -display.
Minding your business
But would you mind if the media also took a quick peek at your husband's income tax returns? Just to confirm, you know, that the money spent is tax paid. And save you the trouble poor Ramdeo Agarwal is now going through. After coughing up Rs 3 crores as ransom money -which was recovered when his son's kidnappers were nabbed - the high profile stockbroker had generously offered that the I-T dept keep Rs 84 lakhs of it. It was, he admitted, black money - when asked to explain the 'source of income'.
Should we stand up and applaud this honesty? Or wonder how many more such crores are stashed away??
Under the Income Tax Act, all payments and withdrawals above Rs 20,000 have to be made by cheque. Interestingly, the officers in Mumbai have been told the currency notes meant for the abductors were accompanied by bank slips and were in Rs 1,000 denomination.
Was Mr P Chidambaram (the then finance minister) at all concerned how easily and legitimately black money was circulating in the system???
Evidently not
Which is why the name "Thanks" for the new luxury designer store in Mumbai's Worli area was so very apt. Thanks, Mr Chidambaram, for having taxed cash withdrawals of Rs 10,000 but not digging into the Cartier skeletons in our closets.
The new 10,000 square feet store houses top brands like Dolce & Gabbana, Valentino RED, Stella McCartney, Juicy Couture, Chloe, Paper Denim, etc. Prices? From Rs 4,000 for a 'regular' Juicy tee to lakhs of rupees for Fendi and D&G accessories.
Says the Sunday Mid-day," The attempt here, is to really save you a trip abroad for shopping..." And, I might add, the ignominy of being caught evading customs duty on several lakhs worth of luxury goods. Like two loaded and well known gentlemen.
It used to be known as 'smuggling', you know, at one time... But let me not spoil the 'feel good' factor.
This calls for some genuine tax reforms. In india it is sad to see that even the head honchos tend to pile up black money and finally land up into money laundering.
Vir Sanghvi once mentioned in his article that many of the Mumbai's or might as well say India's top businessmen siphone funds from their holding Companies and stash them away in swiss bank accounts and live in the bombay high society circles with the remmittances from the swiss bank a/c s leaving their Companies in shambles, Indian investors in such cases are left having no choice.
Prerna Goel, "porcelain perfect 33-year-old homemaker and mother-of-one" was selected by the ultra-luxurious Chanel to star in a television documentary on the fashion house.
"It’s quite a prestigious thing," said the Lagos-born, London-raised Goel, just back and jet-lagged from shooting in Paris for five days. The Chanel team was also in Mumbai for three days last month, shooting Goel as she went about her daily life—meditation, playing Mom, charities and of course, some evenings well spent at Mumbai’s top restaurant, Indigo.
"I was chosen for their accessories profile," says Goel, who owns over 35 bags (the lowest price for one is Rs 50,000), and numerous belts and shoes.
I don't grudge over anyone for their share of designer labels - wear 'em if it makes you feel good. But 35 Fendi bags? If I had several crores in my bank account - and 18 lakhs was mere spare change - I still wouldn't buy 35 of those obscenely priced thingies.
And the luxury retailers who think India is the 'next big thing' need to look beyond the small, extremely creamy layer of society for whom carrying the 'right' bag and wearing the 'right' shoe is a matter of do or die.
The rest of us have a life and an identity which is independent of the labels we may choose - or choose not to -display.
Minding your business
But would you mind if the media also took a quick peek at your husband's income tax returns? Just to confirm, you know, that the money spent is tax paid. And save you the trouble poor Ramdeo Agarwal is now going through. After coughing up Rs 3 crores as ransom money -which was recovered when his son's kidnappers were nabbed - the high profile stockbroker had generously offered that the I-T dept keep Rs 84 lakhs of it. It was, he admitted, black money - when asked to explain the 'source of income'.
Should we stand up and applaud this honesty? Or wonder how many more such crores are stashed away??
Under the Income Tax Act, all payments and withdrawals above Rs 20,000 have to be made by cheque. Interestingly, the officers in Mumbai have been told the currency notes meant for the abductors were accompanied by bank slips and were in Rs 1,000 denomination.
Was Mr P Chidambaram (the then finance minister) at all concerned how easily and legitimately black money was circulating in the system???
Evidently not
Which is why the name "Thanks" for the new luxury designer store in Mumbai's Worli area was so very apt. Thanks, Mr Chidambaram, for having taxed cash withdrawals of Rs 10,000 but not digging into the Cartier skeletons in our closets.
The new 10,000 square feet store houses top brands like Dolce & Gabbana, Valentino RED, Stella McCartney, Juicy Couture, Chloe, Paper Denim, etc. Prices? From Rs 4,000 for a 'regular' Juicy tee to lakhs of rupees for Fendi and D&G accessories.
Says the Sunday Mid-day," The attempt here, is to really save you a trip abroad for shopping..." And, I might add, the ignominy of being caught evading customs duty on several lakhs worth of luxury goods. Like two loaded and well known gentlemen.
It used to be known as 'smuggling', you know, at one time... But let me not spoil the 'feel good' factor.
This calls for some genuine tax reforms. In india it is sad to see that even the head honchos tend to pile up black money and finally land up into money laundering.
Vir Sanghvi once mentioned in his article that many of the Mumbai's or might as well say India's top businessmen siphone funds from their holding Companies and stash them away in swiss bank accounts and live in the bombay high society circles with the remmittances from the swiss bank a/c s leaving their Companies in shambles, Indian investors in such cases are left having no choice.
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