MAN PROPOSES NATURE DISPOSES

Nature is all powerful. Man wishes to tame her but fails repeatedly. We cannot imagine how much power Mother Nature has over our lives. A wise leader respects nature and plans his military advances accordingly. The most glaring example of such a leader was Field Marshal S.H.F.J. Manekshaw.

On March 25, 1971, when political events in East Pakistan had taken a turn for the worse, the Pakistan army cracked down on Bengali intellectuals and leaders, killing over 50,000 of them. Millions of refugees began fleeing into India to escape from this organized genocide. The exodus of refugees placed an unbearable financial burden on India and strained the fabric of social structure and political stability in eastern India.

Field Marshal S.H.F.J. Manekshaw

Then Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi toured the border and on her return from Calcutta, she drove straight to South Block and walked into the operations room of army headquarters. She turned to Manekshaw and bluntly asked, 'what can the Indian Army could do in this situation?’ Manekshaw in his inimitable cryptic style, replied, 'Nothing.' The army chief went on to explain it took time to launch military operations and the army was not ready. The PM said, 'I want the army to launch an offensive into East Pakistan as early as possible. You should be prepared to attend a Cabinet meeting in two days' time and outline your plans.'

Later, Manekshaw attended a Cabinet meeting where the PM repeated she wanted the armed forces to invade East Pakistan as quickly as possible. Manekshaw was unmoved, 'even when my troops are in position in June, I do not recommend we launch any operations for two reasons. Firstly, the monsoon would be raging at the time. Secondly, the Himalayan mountain passes would be open and I will not be able to withdraw troops from the northern borders for operations against East Pakistan. Moreover, India must guard against the prospect of fighting a war on two fronts. That would present me with problems far more complex than what had been the bane of the German general staff for more than 50 years across two world wars. It would be unwise to rely on diplomatic assurances that the Chinese would not react in support of Pakistan. We must wait for the snow to block the northern passes.'

Pakistani General Niazi signing the instrument of surrender

Manekshaw told the Cabinet the monsoon in that region was very severe. He quietly explained how the whole area of Bengal, East Pakistan and northeast India becomes a virtual lake. All road transport would cease. If India launched operations in June, the results would be disastrous. He would rather resign than act against his professional judgment. The military assault was launched on December 3, 1971, and the Indian Army was able to end the campaign in a fortnight and capture over 90,000 prisoners of war. Genl. Manekshaw did not succumb to the political pressure but respected the power of nature!

However history tells us that all leaders were not as wise as Field Marshal Manekshaw. They thought they had it all figured out, but as the following facts of history prove, the weather can intervene even the most thought out plans, for better or for worse. These are 6 instances where natural conditions have altered the course of important events and eventually also changed the course of history.

1. The bombing of Nagasaki

The tragic fate of the city of Nagasaki could have been avoided had it not been for a few clouds. When American bomber Bockscar took off from Tinian island on August 9, 1945, its target was not Nagasaki at all. The notorious atomic bomb was originally intended for the Japanese city of Kokura, which was home to one of the largest arsenals in Japan.

However, when the bomber approached the city, its target was obscured by dense clouds. Pilot Charles W. Sweeney circled the area a few times, before deciding to move on the mission’s secondary target Nagasaki. And so the clouds that spared one city doomed the other. At 10:58 a.m. local time, Bockscar dropped its nuclear bomb, killing an estimated 35,000 and obliterating 44% of the city.

2. Napoleon's invasion of Russia

Napoleon

Russians owe a lot to the extremely harsh winters in their country. With the exceptions of the Mongols at the beginning of the 13th century, no force was able to conquer Russia thanks to these harsh weather conditions. Of course, this fact did not deter Napoleon Bonaparte, who was known to be a bit cocky, nor did his fellow officers who advised against it. 

In 1812, 600,000 men and about 200,000 horses invaded Russia. Only about 100,000 soldiers returned to France. Many horses died of the cold and without them, the army was unable to transport weapons and supplies. Starvation and disease soon set in, and when Napoleon realized defeat was inevitable, he abandoned the army and returned home on a sleigh to prevent a coup. 

3. The Dust Bowl

While the rest of the country struggled with the Great Depression that hit in 1929, the farmers of the Southern Plains of the United States continued to grow crops and bring in money. Their luck ran out in 1931. As a result of a severe drought that hit the region in 1930, crops began to fail and left the farmland bare. Eroding soil led to massive dust storms and economic devastation that lasted a decade. The once prosperous farmers became the nation’s most imperiled.

The course of the Southern Plains was altered forever. Many families packed up and moved west. Regular rainfall returned to the area in 1939 bringing the dust bowl years to an end, but population decline in the worst-hit counties continued well into the 1950s.

4. Hitler's invasion of Russia

Hitler

Another leader who did not take the Russian winters seriously enough and refused to learn the lesson from Napoleon’s failure was Adolf Hitler. On June 22, 1941, he led his troops there. He was confident the campaign, dubbed Operation Barbarossa, would be swift and the whole conquering business would be done by October. In fact, Hitler and his army were so presumptuous they left their winter gear at home.

As many of you may know, the German army was all but wiped out by the bitter cold and constant attacks of the Soviets. “The ghastly cold of that winter had the strangest consequences. Thousands and thousands of soldiers had lost their limbs; thousands and thousands had their ears, their noses, their fingers…” wrote the Italian journalist Curzio Malaparte. Operation Barbarossa was the beginning of the end for the Third Reich. 

5. The Battle of Long Island

Although the Battle of Long Island was a British victory in the Revolutionary War, it could have been much more disastrous had Mother Nature not been on the side of commander-in-chief George Washington and his men. After a week of fighting, the British forces in Long Island decided it was time to cross the East River from Brooklyn to Manhattan and withdraw.

George Washington

The troops began the ferrying process at night, but by morning a big part of the Continental Army was still on the wrong side of the river. Had the British seen them they would have been captured or killed. However, it was a very foggy morning. The fog was so thick it concealed the ferrying troops, and by the time it was lifted the whole army had reached safety. Washington himself was one of the last to retreat. If it wasn’t for that mist, General Washington could have been captured, and the war could have taken a very different turn. 

6. The Divine Kamikaze Winds

During the 13th century, Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan, took the throne of the Mongol Empire, defeated southern China, and united the country under the newly formed Yuan Dynasty. He then set his sights on the islands of Japan.

After a few failed attempts to persuade the Japanese Emperor to surrender, the Mongol Army decided to attack. The Japanese style of combat was utterly unsuited for the massive Mongol army and its 900 ships. Luckily for the Samurai who were meant to fight, a powerful typhoon struck the coast and destroyed the attackers’ fleet and most of the army. Kublai Khan did not give up. Seven years later, he brought together an even larger force to take the islands once and for all. Mother Nature intervened again, wrecking all but a few hundred ships in a furious storm. As the story goes, the emperor ‘summoned’ the kamikaze - or divine - winds to save Japan.

Today, the need to respect nature and all that constitutes it has become far more important. Increasing human population interacts with local and global environments to deplete biodiversity and resources humans depend on, thus challenging societal values centered on growth and relying on technology to mitigate environmental stress. Although the need to address the environmental crisis, central to conservation science, generated greener versions of the growth paradigm, we need fundamental shifts in values that ensure transition from a growth-centered society to one acknowledging biophysical limits and centered on human well-being and biodiversity conservation. The COVID-19 pandemic is a rude shock which nature has given us and it has rocked both our lives and our livelihoods. This is nature’s way of reminding us to respect her all the time.

IS OILY AND SHINY SKIN BOTHERING YOU?

Oily skin and large pores are often embarrassment as it makes the skin shine excessively and I have seen people trying nose pore strips, facial scrubs, and are generally over-washing their face, all of which are only bound to exacerbate the problem. What makes matters even worse is that oily skin is often treated as a problem only teenagers have, and so many people in their 30s and onwards who have oily skin are often completely clueless about the things they can do to reduce excess shine. 

What is Oily Skin? 

Skin types are predetermined by our genetics. In most cases, oily skin is completely normal and men are more likely to have it than women, and with age skin becoming less oily. People with oily skin have more and larger sebaceous glands than other skin types, and so these glands produce a bit more natural skin oils called sebum, which appear as a shiny layer on the skin. Throughout the day or night, these oils further build upon the skin, and so the face becomes even shinier in the afternoon or when one wakes up. Sebaceous glands aren’t distributed evenly throughout the skin. These are more around the nose, on the forehead, and on the chin - an area also known as the T zone - which commonly becomes oily quicker. In most cases, having a little shine by the afternoon is completely normal; in fact, it means that the sebum is creating a healthy skin barrier that in turn is protecting the skin from pollution and germs. However too much oiliness and shine means that something else is causing your skin to be oilier than it should be. 

What causes excessive shiny skin? 

Climate, skincare products, diet, medications, and health conditions can all make our skin oilier. High humidity and hot summer weather makes us sweat more, which can make the skin appear oilier. Certain hormones like Testosterone cause excessive sebum production and that is why males and teenagers are more likely to have oily skin. Food items like refined sugar, processed foods, milk, and chocolate increase sebum production or make it thicker, which could cause more clogged pores and acne. Skincare routines may be to blame for excess oiliness. Washing face more than twice a day, using facial scrubs, toners than contain alcohol, and washing face with ordinary soap or an overly drying facial cleanser can in fact force the skin produce more oil. Our skin tries to compensate for all the drying agents we use on our skin and protect it from damage caused by scrubs. Thus, by scrubbing our face clean, we may be actually training your skin to produce more oil. 

How to reduce skin shine? 

1. Avoid excessive face washing and scrubbibg, alcohol-based toners, and nose strips, as these will only irritate the skin, make pores look larger, and urge the skin to produce even more sebum. 

2. Wash face twice a day and after exercises with a neutral cleanser formulated for the face to prevent clogging of pores. Special face wash that contains ingredients like salicylic acid or glycolic acid help regulate sebum production. 

3. Use skin moisturizers. This may sound strange but moisturizing skin may actually help it to produce less sebum. By using a moisturizer after cleansing, we can ‘trick’ the skin into believing it has the right amount of oil so it does not overproduce! We can also opt for a gel moisturizer that will hydrate the skin without creating an occlusive layer over it’. Oily-skin-friendly ingredients to look out for in a moisturizer are hyaluronic acid, retinol, niacinamide, and glycerin. 

4. One can use a mask to reduce the shininess; wash-off clay masks are generally effective at blotting the oils from the skin and can be safely used 1-2 times a week. 

5. To manage the excess shine during the day, blotting papers are the most effective, but a paper tissue will do the trick just as well. 

6. Choose skin care products that are labeled “oil free” and “noncomedogenic.”This means that products that have these labels — including cleansers, moisturizers and makeup — won’t clog your pores or cause acne. 

7. Use sunscreen outdoors. Sunscreen helps prevent sun damage that could lead to wrinkles, age spots and even skin cancer. To prevent acne breakouts, look for sunscreens that contain zinc oxide and titanium dioxide, and do not use sunscreens that contain fragrance or oils. 

8. Don’t sleep in your makeup. Always remove all makeup before going to sleep. 

9. Don’t touch your face at all times. Doing so can spread dirt, oil and bacteria from your hands to your face. Only touch your face when you’re cleansing, moisturizing or applying sunscreen or makeup, and make sure your hands are clean and washed. 

 Every person’s skin is different, and there is no "one size fits all" approach to skin care. If you are concerned about the amount of oil your skin is producing or if you’re struggling with blackheads or acne, make an appointment with a Plastic Surgeon or a Dermatologist.

CREATING MASTERPIECE DURING QUARANTINE

How you spend your free time depends upon who you are. Creative people often choose solitude to be at their creative best and come out with masterpieces that they would have never been able to create in the hustle bustle of a market place. Combining isolation with inactivity is a recipe of depression but utilizing solitude to meditate and connect with your inner being invariably brings out the best in you and history is filled with examples where even forced solitude has been utilized to perfection.

One thing the Covid-19 pandemic and quarantines have brought is free time, and many people around the globe suddenly found themselves with more free time than ever before and limited ways to use it. Of course, a global pandemic is a time to prioritize your mental health and physical well-being above anything else, so I am at no point asking you to stress yourself. But for some people, being engaged in a project and keeping their mind busy can prove very helpful in hard times. If you read those lines and think ‘that’s me!’ then you have a few historical role models.

1. William Shakespeare

 ‘Shakespeare wrote King Lear in quarantine’ is probably something you have heard at least once since March 2020. Well, it isn’t an exaggeration. Shakespeare, who has become the face of pandemic productivity, was an actor and shareholder at The King’s Men theater troupe when the bubonic plague forced London theaters to close in the early 17th century. Public playhouses were shut down and the theater industry was paralyzed for most of 1606, but that doesn’t mean Shakespeare was idle. In fact, as he found himself without a steady job and lots of free time, the playwright composed 'King Lear', 'Macbeth', and 'Antony and Cleopatra' before the year was over.

2. Isaac Newton

Just a few decades after isolated Shakespeare penned some of his most famous plays in history, another outbreak of the bubonic plague hit England, and forced Cambridge University student, Isaac Newton, into isolation. Newton was 20 years old in 1665 and seeing that all classes were canceled, he returned to his family estate in Lincolnshire. Young Newton didn’t have any zoom classes to attend or emails to answer, and despite (or maybe because of?) this complete lack of structure, he excelled. 

During his time in quarantine, the young mathematician produced what would be some of his most famous works. He developed his theories on optics while experimenting with a prism in his bedroom, laid the ground for an early form of calculus, and even his theory of gravity started to bud during this time. While the apple falling on his head is probably a myth, Newton did have an apple tree outside his bedroom window, which he likely looked at every day during his quarantine. 

3. Edvard Munch

The Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, whose most famous work is 'The Scream', didn’t just go into quarantine to avoid the Spanish Flu, he actually contracted the disease in 1919. Interestingly, there haven’t been many depictions of the Spanish flu pandemic in art, probably due to the fact that there was a world war raging at the time which consumed the attention of artists and thinkers. So Munch’s documentation of his quarantine is actually one of the few artworks that recorded the existence of this deadly disease.

As soon as he felt physically capable, the artist gathered his painting supplies and captured his physical state. The result is 'Self-Portrait with the Spanish Flu', a painting which shows him with thinning hair and a forlorn facial expression sitting in front of his sickbed.

4. Giovanni Boccaccio

The bubonic plague wreaked havoc all over Europe in the Middle ages. When it hit

Florence in 1384, writer Giovanni Boccaccio lost both his parents to the disease. He himself survived the outbreak thanks to his decision to flee the city and go into isolation in Tuscan countryside. 

During his time there he wrote 'The Decameron', a collection of short stories framed as entertaining stories a group of friends tell each other while quarantined inside a villa, hiding from the Black Death. This quarantine project came to be considered Boccaccio’s masterpiece, and its influence on Renaissance literature in Europe was enormous. 'The Decameron' is also an important historical record for us today, of the physical, psychological, and social effects of the aggressive spread of the previously unknown disease.

5. Mary Shelley

In 1885, a massive volcanic eruption at Mount Tambora in Indonesia killed nearly 100,000 people and choked the sky with ash and dust. But the overall toll turned out to be much higher. The following summer, instead of sunshine, Europe was covered in fog and even frost. This crisis, which had a dire effect on crops around the world, unleashed famine and a global cholera pandemic. 

When Mary Shelley arrived at Lake Geneva for a vacation in 1816 the weather was so ghastly after the eruption, she was trapped inside for nearly the entire time. It was during this time that Shelley crafted her story of Frankenstein, after listening to the long dark debates of her fellow vacationers on the topic whether human corpses could be galvanized, or re-animated, after death. She didn’t know it at the time but Shelley’s Frankenstein would go on to revolutionize literature and popular culture.

So friends, how have you used this COVID-19 induced quarantine? Did you learn a new skill or sharpened an old one? Did you invent challenges for yourself to stave off the boredom while contributing to your growth? Did you start a new project to keep yourself engaged or finish off long pending ones? Did you find reasons to be enthusiastic about the future despite the present gloom? Isolation and being stuck in a crowd are two extreme social settings. If you find yourself deprived of a social circle, don’t just endure but expand. Both the isolation and the free time can be the two God given gifts to you to express yourself to the fullest. It is time to create your own masterpiece.

DISTANCE EDUCATION – THE WAY FORWARD

The pandemic has thrown a new challenge to our educational system and right across the spectrum from primary school level to the professional colleges and universities, all countries are trying their hand in distant learning techniques. Education is a continuous process and it cannot afford long interruptions at any level. That is the reason why innovative distant teaching techniques are being evolved using internet, Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality. 

The choice of the online teaching platform has to be a wise one. The site of your online teaching needs to be:

• Accessible: it’s easy for students and parents to use at home.
• Equitable: it has printable activities for students without reliable internet or device access.
• Communicative: so that students can talk directly to teachers as well as their peers. This might be via a live chat or a discussion board.
• Monitorable: so that teachers can stay informed of student activity and progress. Automated reporting is ideal.
• Sustainable: the online teaching platform needs to be a realistic long-term solution that doesn’t cause teacher or student burn out with undue amounts of time and effort.

What does it involve?

Distant learning is a form of education in which the main elements include physical separation of teachers and students during instruction and the use of various technologies to facilitate student-teacher and student-student communication. It adopts a web platform as technological tool to deliver the courses and the contents from the teachers to the students. Thus distant education involves:

• creation of a virtual classroom in which all course materials, including registration of the various sessions, useful for future reference and for administrative findings will be available
• the lesson the teacher appearing by video on the monitor of the students and presents them on line (in real time) the course of the educational content (files, videos, photos, exercises, questionnaires, etc.).
• the teacher sees the students present at the lecture, who in turn can interact in real time to seek clarification
• the teacher can enable students to work on the ‘whiteboard’ Course
• there is absolute geographical neutrality and both students and teachers can be from anywhere in the world.
• during or at the end of the lesson, the teacher can assign students to specific operations to be performed (filling in questionnaires, specific tasks, in-depth materials, etc.)
• at the end of the lesson, the teacher stays connected with students through the chat to discuss the details of the course; you can share new files and comments, review records and notes

There are 6 Types of Distance Education

• Distance Education via Video Conferencing. Distance education institutions often employ video conferencing for educating the students. For this motive, video conferencing software with high quality like ezTalks Cloud Meeting are being used, and this ensures your with flawless communication and enhances the experience of both students and the faculty.
• Synchronous and Asynchronous Distance Education. This means learning at the same time the teacher is teaching or learning at student’s convenient time. Synchronous distance education is usually less flexible and unsettles student's life to a larger extent. It also facilitates larger sum of interaction between professors and students. Asynchronous distance education provides students with the freedom to work as per your own will. Students can have more interaction with other students.
• Open Schedule Online Courses. Students are given with internet based textbooks, email and bulletin boards to finish their course work. Initially, the students are provided with a set of deadlines to complete their work and then permitted to work in their own pace.
• Hybrid Distance Education. Hybrid distance education is actually the combination of asynchronous and synchronous learning in which the students are subjected to follow the specific deadline to complete their work. Students are permitted to complete assignments on their own time and submit those assignments via online forum.
• Computer Based Distance Education. Students are required to meet in classroom or computer lab at a specified time every week.
• Fixed Time Online Course. The students need to log-in to their learning site at a designated time. The format of this course remains synchronous because it requires mandatory live chats in some cases.

Distant teaching

There are 3 parts of distant teaching - Content creation, Connecting with students and Conducting classes. 

Content creation
Teachers are converting their class lectures into ppt presentations and videos. The online class then becomes an interactive session in which after the video or ppt presentation the students question the teachers about their doubts and thus clear their concepts. The schools and university departments are then storing these educational contents in their website or in YouTube so that the students can revise at their leisure. 

Connect with students
This in India is still challenging despite the penetration of mobile phones in every corner of our country and the economical rates of broadband services. Our internet speed is much slower than what is available in the developed world, but then again we pay much less. In parts of our country like Kashmir 4G services remain suspended and every service provider is not rendering services everywhere with equal efficiency. But despite all these difficulties online classes have become a norm. Enthusiastic students and dedicated teachers have agreed to go online in the evenings after office hours when internet speed is higher. Even tuition teachers and primary schools are going online with creative contents to impart education. There is however a discrepancy in the receiving end as poor students may not have the same access to these contents and classes as their richer counterparts. 

Conducting classes
Both the teachers and the students need to be complimented for making this happen. The teachers have gone beyond the call of their duty to create innovative teaching modules and students have patiently accepted the initial glitches and birth pangs of this newer model of education and now are getting friendly with it. Every realtime classroom has rogue elements and so it is not unexpected to have their online counterparts but teachers are gradually learning to deal with them. Once the pandemic blows away I am expecting this trend of online education to continue. The classes will become hybrid with students both in real classrooms and online locations. This will give much needed geographical neutrality to education and one will not have to spend a fortune studying in Oxford or Cambridge but be their online student at a fraction of the price. 

Advantages and disadvantages

There are many advantages of distant learning – it cuts cost, more experts on the topic can be involved, bureaucratic and logistical practices (visas time, travel, etc) can be bypassed and long distance travel can be avoided. However there are disadvantages too. Creating individual touch points between the teacher and the taught is vital for personality development. The campuses of elite Universities and Ivy League colleges have a personality of their own and their atmosphere, their environment and their people have been known to build leadership skills and personalities, something distant learning will perhaps not impart.

What the students will miss the most is the human connection that is cultivated in their classroom. The little interactions teachers have with them in the hallways, before and after class or during breaks in lessons, are irreplaceable. While it can be tempting to focus on content in distance learning assignments and instructional videos, what matters more is creating structures for personalized touch-points with students. Teachers thus have added responsibility to create these touch-points through any medium you like: emails, video messages, phone calls, messages through the learning management system, comments on shared documents, etc. Such interactive alliances will have to be created with students and they in turn will see their teacher’s investment of time, energy and effort and know that they care about them.

Several online educators like Baiju, Vedantu and Unacademy are already targeting this vibrant market. Our educational institutions need to collaborate with them for technology upgradation so that the best quality education can percolate down to the remotest students. Skilling too has to be incorporated in these teaching modules so that our education system starts producing employable youth. This will be our best Teacher's Day tribute to Prof. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan.