Check-point

Hunder- near the confluence of Shyok and Nubra

Hunder is one of the prettiest places I have been to.  Having travelled for hours on some of the harshest roads in the country, dodging and overtaking, countless other tourist vehicles and trucks hired by the army to supply oil further north, one finds oneself in an extremely wide and reassuringly green (especially after the rocky twists and icy turns of Khardung La) valley. Hunder is where Nubra, flowing south-southeastwards from Siachen, meets Shyok which flows towards the north-west into Gilgit-Baltistan.  The valley is so wide that I could not tell exactly where the confluence lay, when we visited the place in July 2012. The sand-dunes, the giant Buddha statue and just the surrounding mountains are a photography enthusiast’s (note that I am not using the word ‘photographer’) paradise.

Having  invested a significant portion of our memory storage devices in Hunder, the next day, we left for Turtuk, a hundred miles down the river (Shyok), quite close to the LOC. The drive along the river is fun. The road is excellent and the traffic sparse. We stopped only to let the occasional army truck pass and  to store the magnificence on display in our memory cards, lest our memory failed us a few years down the line. The journey would have been etched on my brain as the loveliest of my life had it not been for that incident.

We were nearly half-way through, having just crossed THOISE, a military airstrip, when we were stopped at a check-point manned by an Indian Army soldier. As our vehicle came to a halt, the soldier carefully looked at all of us and asked our driver (who hailed from Choglamasar near Leh), “Andar koi J&K se to nahin hai na?” (“Is there anybody inside from J&K?”) Apparently, citizens of Jammu and Kashmir (an integral part of the Republic of India!) were not allowed any further, in their own state! (Imagine a BSF jawan at the Wagah Border, telling tourists that only non-Punjabi Indians were allowed to go right up to the border. It would be preposterous.) Our driver dutifully replied in the negative and we were let through.  Quite clearly, the word “J&K” was not used by the soldier to refer to the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Our driver, himself a citizen of Jammu and Kashmir was let through without any trouble.  It left no doubt in my mind that the “J&K wallahs” wanted by the soldier were people from the Kashmir valley.     

I do not know if it is the government’s official policy not to let Kahmiris visit Turtuk or it was a single person taking matters into his own hands, but the incident certainly doesn’t bode well for India’s claim that Kashmir is an integral part of India.        

Urdu versus Urdu and Hindi versus Hindi

All over the world, I believe, people make use of the name of some language alien to them in order to convey their displeasure when someone they are talking to doesn’t pay attention to or misinterprets what they say. Consider the following example.

Person X: I think I have a fever.

Person Y: Do you know there is a new restaurant just around the corner. Do you want to try it?

Person X: Was I speaking in German? I am not feeling well!

The language mentioned in this manner, is always a language that none of those involved in the conversation can understand.

One notable exception to this rule is India, where many people use the name “Urdu” to mean a language that is completely foreign to them.  “Was I speaking in Urdu yesterday?”, a schoolteacher might scold his class for having forgotten yesterday’s lesson. Ironically though, which language would many such conversations be taking place in? The answer is Urdu! Just think how ridiculous the last line of the conversation mentioned above would sound, if the word “German” was substituted with “English”.

Imagine a bunch of friends discussing Bollywood movies.

Person A: तुम ने सरफ़रोश देखी है?

Person B: नाहीं, मुझे आमिर खान अच्छा नहीं लागता.

Person C: ओये, सुनो. कल PK देखने चलें?

Person B: मैं ने क्या उर्दू मे कहा था? मुझे आमिर खान पसंद नाहीं.    

‘B’ assumes that Urdu is a language that none of her friends understand, without realising that the language she has just used to convey her message is nothing but Urdu. Of course, if you pointed this out to ‘B’, she would probably swear that she was speaking in Hindi. Failure to recognise that spoken Hindi and spoken Urdu are the same language masquerading as two different languages is a common mistake in India and probably more common among people whose native language is not ‘Hindi’, myself included.

Am I claiming that Hindi and Urdu are the same language at all levels of comparison? Certainly not! Take Qaumi Tarana (Pakistan’s national anthem) for example. The language doesn’t sound even vaguely familiar. Compare it with Bachchan’s Madhushala and it would be preposterous to say that the two works are in the same language. This distinction is perhaps clearest in the ‘standardised’ forms, most commonly found in government documents. Documents in Hindi excessively borrow Sanskrit-based words while shamelessly ignoring equivalent and perhaps more common words of Persian origin (“वर्ष” in place of “साल”, “प्रारंभ” in place of “शुरुआत”, “निर्णय” in place of “फैसला”,
“प्रश्न” in place of “सवाल”). In Urdu the situation is exactly reversed. Contrary to popular belief, however, the underlying grammar in both these standardised forms is nearly identical, based on Khari Boli, the vernacular of Delhi (which for all practical purposes is the lingua franca of most urban areas in the Indo-Gangetic planes and many in the Peninsula as well), with the only differences being the presence or absence of Sanskrit-based suffixes and Arabic plurals. The major difference between the two forms is not the grammar, but the vocabulary, with one relying heavily on Sanskrit and the other on Persian and Arabic. The other notable difference is the scripts used to write the two forms. However, including scripts in a discussion about languages would be incorrect, as the way languages are written and the way they are structured are two independent things. Theoretically it is possible, within certain limits, to write any language in the script of your choice.

So when and how did the Hindi-Urdu debate begin? Christopher King, in a very interesting article, points to the North-western Provinces and Oudh (present-day Uttar Pradesh). Before the British assumed power, the language of the court in the Kingdom of Oudh was Persian. In the 1830s, the East India Company replaced Persian with English and Urdu (written in the Nastaliq script). Little or no formal written Hindi existed before then in the Khari Boli dialect (ignoring, of course, the literary traditions in Braj Bhasha and Awadhi, whose grammar differs from that of Khari Boli). In the second half of the 19^th century, the advent of competitive examinations (for entry into the public services) stimulated large-scale production of text-books on various subjects. This prompted many in the eastern region of the province which had a rich Sanskrit-learning tradition (around Varanasi) to publish text-books in a highly Sanskritised version of Urdu written in Deonagari script, in addition to textbooks produced in Urdu. These two versions, one highly Sanskritised and written in Deonagari, while the other borrowing a large fraction of its vocabulary from Persian and Arabic and written in Nastaliq, became communal symbols associated with Hindu and Muslim identities respectively. Today, Urdu is the official language of Pakistan (alongside English), while Hindi is the official language of India’s Central Government, although Urdu does enjoy official status in some states. 

But is that all? Don’t languages exist outside courts, textbooks, poetry, formal government announcements and speeches made by Sadhus and Maulawis? Shouldn’t day-to-day conversations, actual words spoken by people be given more importance while comparing languages? It can be argued that literary texts and formal education influence the way people speak. It is certainly possible. But, literacy rates in the Indian Subcontinent have always been low, casting doubts on the extent to which texts could influence spoken language.  Also native speakers pick up their language before being formally schooled, while non-native speakers are influenced to a much greater extent by verbally interacting with other speakers than any amount of formal schooling in that language. Just consider improvement in the Hindi-speaking proficiency of non-native Hindi speakers at IISER Mohali. The fact that a few years in the company of native Hindi speakers can outweigh years and years of formal training in Hindi (12 years in the case of many students from Kerala) in terms of its contribution to a person’s Hindi-speaking skills demonstrates the independence of the spoken word from the written word. Therefore spoken Hindi and spoken Urdu should be examined without referring to either the scripts or the literature or even news-broadcasts.     

Once you take this approach, all differences between Hindi and Urdu appear to melt away leading one to conclude that formal Hindi and formal Urdu are merely two standardised forms of the same vernacular, Hindustani or Khari Boli.  Would an Urdu speaking person say “मेरी उम्र साठ साल है” any differently? I doubt it.

Does that mean there is no variation at all? Not at all.  Vernaculars which are recognized as Hindi today vary greatly, in terms of their accents, in terms of certain usages unique to them. All these variants are intertwined closely with variants of what is known as Urdu. An interesting exercise would be to record several day-to-day “Urdu” conversations in Pakistan and similar “Hindi” conversations in India and ask people to classify them as either “Hindi” or “Urdu”. I would be surprised if such a classification turns out to be a straightforward task, if at all possible.

An article I read a long time ago (the name of whose author I cannot recall) sums up the debate succinctly by pointing out that while Indians and Pakistanis have trouble understanding each other’s government broadcasts, they are thoroughly comfortable with each other’s movies.  

References:

1.        Christopher King, The Hindi-Urdu Controversy of North-western Provinces and Oudh and communal consciousness,  Journal of South Asian Literature, Vol. 13, No. 1/4, MISCELLANY (FALL-WINTER-SPRING-SUMMER 1977-1978), pp. 111-120Published  (http://www.jstor.org/stable/40873494?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)

2.       http://www.dawn.com/news/1156166

3.       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl4xppek2gY

Physics, Muscles and Unbreakable Sticks

   High-school physics tells us that when an object is displaced through ds (an infinitesimal displacement) under the influence of a force F , the infinitesimal work done in the process is given by the “dot product” of the force with the infinitesimal displacement. This statement can be summarized by the well-known relation dW = F.ds   (where vectors are written in bold). The problems that one has to solve as a high-school student usually involve pumps supplying water to a tall building or a lift at a construction site carrying cement to the top floor. All that the students have to do is to multiply the gravitational force of the earth with the height of the building to calculate the work done. I have done this so many times that “W = mgh ” has now become permanently imprinted on my brain. These textbooks rarely talk about problems such as the work done by a human being (or, for that matter by any animal) while lifting objects

   Consider the case when a person holds a heavy dumb-bell stationary in front of his or her face. To keep the dumb-bell stationary, the person, using his or her muscles, has to apply an upward force to counter the downward pull of gravity.  Since the dumb-bell is stationary, or in other words ds = 0 , the work done by the person should be zero. And since no work is done by the person, his or her energy expenditure should be zero; and hence, he or she should not tire at all. This, clearly, is a contradiction!  All human beings (including Arnold Schwarzenegger), while lifting heavy weights, will sooner or later, tire. So where is the catch? 

   If one thinks for a while it is not hard to realise that the answer to this problem must lie in the mechanism with which muscles function. Even though no apparent macroscopic work is being performed, at the microscopic level, the fibres that constitute the muscles must undergo rapid movements for which work in the  sense dW = F.ds is required. Therefore, even when the weight that the person is holding is not displaced, microscopic displacements of the muscle-fibres would require work, consume energy and hence, the person would tire.

   It turns out that the Sliding Filament Model, modern molecular biologists’ explanation to muscle contraction, uses this very idea at its core. Muscles are made up of strands of fibres which are wrapped around each other. The functional unit of a muscle fibre, called a “Sarcomere”, is composed of two characteristically different protein-filaments: the “thin” filaments made up of a protein called Actin and the “thick” filaments made up of another protein called Myosin. Actin molecules have specific regions on them which have a very strong affinity to certain domains on Myosin molecules. Ordinarily, these binding sites on Actin molecules are ‘hidden’ or not accessible. But a signal from a motor-neuron, causes changes in the structure of Actin molecules, ‘unmasking’ those binding sites, to which Myosin molecules can now bind. Such interactions between Actin and Myosin are called “cross-bridges”. 

   Sarcomeres are observed to contract when the muscle which they are a part of contracts. But does that imply that the protein-fibres (Actin and Myosin filaments) which are building blocks of the Sarcomere also contract? Scientists were able to show that contraction of the Sarcomere is caused not by the contraction of its constituent filaments but by increasing the overlap of the thick and thin filaments. In the relaxed state, the two kinds of filaments overlap over a certain region. When the muscle contracts, the thick (Myosin) and thin (Actin) filaments slide against each other in opposite directions, increasing their overlap and as a consequence (see figure 1), decreasing the length of the Sarcomere. This sliding movement is achieved by bringing about a change in the structure Myosin, which causes the Actin filament to be tugged towards the centre of the Sarcomere. This is the step where work in the  sense dW = F.ds is performed and the energy required to change molecular conformations is supplied by ATP molecules- the universal “energy-currency” of life. Therefore, a person holding heavy weights tires as his/her ATP molecules get depleted.

   It is quite remarkable that with the help of molecules such as Actin and Myosin, a trained weightlifter can lift weights in the excess of 200 kg (approximately 10 to the power 25  times heavier than molecules like myosin) above their head. In each thick filament, every second, around 350 of its myosin heads form five cross-bridges. The number of thick and thin filaments in a muscle fibre and the number of muscle fibres in a muscle are so large that, molecules which are insignificant on their own, when acting together, can produce enormous forces.

   Perhaps, a thousand years down the line, children’s story-books will not have stories of sticks that cannot be broken when bunched together, but will talk about how tiny molecules, acting in tandem, can bring about events of simply astronomical relative magnitudes.

United we stand!

References:

11.      Life the Science of Biology (8^th Edition), Sadava, Heller, Orians, Purves, Hillis,

22.    www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/the-sliding-filament-theory-of-muscle-contraction-14567666