The Hindu Business Line : `I am a positive person'

OF LATE, Sachin has been disappointing his fans with his out-of-form performance. Perhaps, this is when you should be browsing Peter Murray's Memorable, a photo album of Tendulkar's greatest moments — some good and some bad, from India Book Distributors ibd@vsnl.com.

To call him an icon is easily an understatement in cricket-crazed India, states the blurb. Because "his popularity and adulation outdoes the combined acclaim of all the film stars, politicians and holy men", writes Murray.

"In 13 years, Tendulkar has demolished more records and bowlers and won more hearts of cricket fans around the world than any other cricketer in history."

The book traces his childhood, "as the third child of a middle class playwright father and an insurance agent mother", in an ambience that gave him inner calm and stoic nature; and his exploding on to the scene in Mumbai with an unbeaten 664-run partnership with friend Vinod Kambli. Sachin's remark at the end of World Cup 2003 shows how he valued teamwork: "I don't play as an individual. We all play as India, I'm part of that team."

Sachin should never have been given the responsibility of captain, writes Murray. When, at last, he vowed never to lead India again and the captaincy went to Sourav Ganguly, it was "a case of a captain lost but a batsman gained."

The shattering match-fixing controversy was seen as destroying the game, but Sachin said cricket was too great a game to be permanently affected by these scandals. "It has given so much joy to people all over the world. This is just a passing phase. I am a positive person. I can only look at the positive side."

One hopes even his successive ducks are too simply a passing phase.

Silence has its lessons

HE WROTE The Power of Now, but now his Stillness Speaks. Eckhart Tolle needs no introduction if you have been a seeker of spiritual needs. His message is simple: Connect to your own stillness.

The book, from Yogi Impressions www.yogiimpressions.com can help if you find your mind "running to nowhere on treadmills". What is stillness? The first chapter answers this question. "The inner space or awareness, your essential nature." Why is it so important? Because "true intelligence operates silently. Stillness is where creativity and solutions to problems are found." If you are already lost in thought, with all that noise within about this stillness subject, well, that is `human condition'.

"Most people spend their entire life imprisoned within the confines of their own thoughts," says Tolle. "The human mind, in its desire to know, understand, and control, mistakes its opinions and viewpoints for the truth." That might make auditors give second thoughts to their opinions on truth and fairness. But remember, that thinking "fragments reality", and "dogmas are collective conceptual prisons" where people feel `secure'.

What is boredom? It means "the mind is hungry for more stimulus, more food for thought, and its hunger is not being satisfied." That is a refreshing thought.

Let us now attack prejudice, one of the most ubiquitous things around. When you are prejudiced towards somebody, "you don't see the other human being anymore, but only your own concept of that human being. To reduce the aliveness of another human being to a concept is already a form of violence."

Ah, I never knew that, you might say. It is not bad not to know, comforts the author. Take it easy because "the mind is always trying to conclude and interpret. It is afraid of not knowing. So, when you can be at ease with not knowing, you have already gone beyond the mind."

How to be effective, is another frequent question. Solution lies in giving full attention to this moment because that is when "an intelligence far greater than the `egoic' mind enters your life." For, when you let ego lead you, "you always reduce the present moment to a means to an end."

There is something nastier that the ego does: it complains. "What a miserable day. He didn't have the decency to return my call. She let me down." When you paint something or someone `wrong', it puts oneself in the right zone giving `a position of imagined superiority'. And ego needs enemies to define its boundary, cautions the book. "And even the weather can serve that function."

A good book to start the New Year with.

Emergency kit

PERVEZ`` survives assassination attempts, mad cow disease is hitting the headlines once again, and SARS is not dead. Everybody is afraid of terrorists.

"The word terrorism is derived from the Latin word for fear," writes Angelo Acquista in The Survival Guide, from Random House (www.atrandom.com). The book is about `what to do in a biological, chemical or nuclear emergency'.

Combatting terrorism involves removing fear, says the author. "Terrorists wish most to make us afraid; we can empower ourselves with knowledge." A few nuggets:

In the minds of many experts, anthrax represents the single greatest biological warfare threat. The reasons for this are: It can easily be concealed; it is very deadly; it is accessible; it can be stored for decades and is not destroyed by disinfectants or extreme temperatures; and it could be delivered to large populations and cause mass casualties.

Living anthrax bacteria can only survive for around 24 hours outside of an animal or person's body. However, when deprived of nutrients the bacterium goes into a resting phase. Called a spore in this phase, it can last for centuries.

Phosgene oxime (military code name CX) is a chemical weapon is commonly grouped under blister agents. It inhibits vital DNA function and kills off the most rapidly dividing cells first (skin cells and the lining of the stomach).

It causes corrosion of the skin and mucous membranes. While a comforting thought is that it has never been used in warfare, what could cause concern is that it can be easily manufactured.

Nerve agents are man-made, deadly poisons, and they are usually colourless, odourless and tasteless. They disrupt the process of nerves communicating with other nerves or involuntary muscles.

Even one or two breaths from a very concentrated vapour exposure could produce loss of consciousness within seconds, followed by respiratory arrest, seizures, paralysis, and death within minutes.

For instance, Sarin is 26 times more deadly than cyanide gas. And soman is deadlier. Among nerve agents, the deadliest is VX which is 50 times more toxic than cyanide gas.

Cruise ships are perfect breeding ground for contagious diseases. Isolating large groups of people and putting them together in the closed environment of a ship at sea greatly increases the chances for person-to-person spread of diseases, especially certain respiratory and gastrointestinal illnesses.

It is for these reasons that it is not all that uncommon for natural outbreaks of diseases to occur on these vessels.

A book to add to your emergency planning preparedness kit.

Books courtesy: Fountainhead, Chennai. E-mail: fhbooks@satyam.net.in

Tailpiece

"I think I have a problem. Whenever somebody says bullish, I hear foolish."

"If you were really bullish, it would happen the other way about."

ReadingRoom@TheHindu.co.in

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`I am a positive person'