The Soul search & Stray dogs - Bytes from Bystander

Soul search and the stalemate:

The essence or spirit of life is deemed to be the soul. The soul enters a human body at the time of birth and leaves at the appointed time. Who decides the time and whether there exists a possibility of getting an extension are in the realm of faith and religion. What happens to the departed soul and how the sequence of rebirth is determined, if the soul has eternal existence?

If the never ending cycle of re-births is accepted for the departed souls, then this question on the increase of human population needs a convincing answer on the paradox, how an increase can occur when the same numbers of souls take re-births? Should this figure not be a constant? The birth to death ratio and birth of multiple offspring does not help in explaining the increase in human beings.

Suppose, there is a law of conservation of souls at work to manage this figure and for this law to operate successfully, the total number of souls had been distributed among all the forms of lives in the universe, to start with.  And by up gradation, the souls from lower forms of lives join the human population. For this theory to work, it has to be conceded that all forms of lives have souls.

Even if this is acceptable, the numbers don’t add up as the count of species runs in to millions and each one with a population of millions. Species becoming extinct, falling prey in the food chain and natural deaths amongst them liberates millions of souls. Do all these get upgraded to the next form of life? In answering one paradox another one has surfaced to confound the calculations.

One way to reduce the rush of souls at the gate of human factory would be to introduce a wait-listed system for the departed souls to allow only those souls which had inhabited species with five senses to get promoted. At this threshold the number of competing souls drastically reduces but still the growth figures for the human population remain unexplained. Another interesting point that comes up now is the possibility of re-births even in the lower orders of living things.

Conception of a human embryo is beset with complications and unimaginable hurdles - millions of sperms manage to fertilise a few eggs. In the subsequent stages, still birth and child mortality influence the growth of population. It is a wonder how an upgraded soul or a departed soul from a human being manages to find the right host, truly winning against astronomical odds!

How and when the soul does enter a human body? Probably, with the first breath the newborn takes after coming out of the womb. What sort of a record the soul brought to the child at the time of its birth? How the DNA is able reads the encrypted instructions and act accordingly? How then the soul leaves the human body, may be, with the last breath exhaled at the time of death? What the soul carries away with it as record of its existence that just got extinguished? The spirits or souls may not suffer from language barrier but do they suffer continental divide is a pertinent question. When a soul is on the verge of rebirth, how these issues are sorted out. Another point is when a child is about to be born dead, how the waiting soul knows about it. Is there a ‘soul.net’ connection to advise suitable action?

Question after question or in the best case scenario an answer throws up at least one supplementary question or confusions. Bystander lost his nerve to go farther in to the realms the dead and their souls.

 "Switch Bharat" :



The more he thought about the more he liked the idea. For an idea to succeed it must have measurable potential and deployable resources to convert an opportunity in to an enterprise. On this count, he felt his idea had a great appeal. He never thought a news item, casually read, will leave such a hallmark impression in his mind and slowly gelled in to this idea.

Taking stock of his preferences, he came to the conclusion of being neither an animal lover nor a hater but opting to keep a safe distance from being bitten by any pet or stray dogs or wild animals, including the snake varieties. In his boyhood he had chased some dogs and cats after ascertaining that they had no intention of coming anywhere near the biting distance. The lucky escapes could have been because of he and the chased ones were confused about their ‘pet’ or ‘stray’ status!

News papers publish statistics, metropolitan city wise, the number of 2 wheeler, 4 wheeler, trucks and buses that add to the traffic jams and commuter woes. Not to leave the animal lovers or haters feeling bad, they also come up with reasonable estimates on the number of pet animals and stray animals, including the bovine variety. He wondered whether, in the case of animals, this compilation was carried out during a population census and the numbers periodically revised based on either GDP, WPI/CPI or by any other method best known to certain people in the know!

 For the present, he was willing to take the published data as such, on pet animals and stray dogs living in each of the metropolitan city. He did not fail to notice a commonality– all metropolitan cities had more strays than pet animals!

Another published data on the crime graph Vs strength of law enforcing force, hit-and-run Vs coverage of CCTV surveillance made him to, literally sit up and take notice. Thus he found the genesis for his, yet to be proposed, brilliant idea. He liked to tie all the loose ends before discussing his idea even to himself loudly. He decided to take a walk in the streets as it allowed him a chance to observe and think at the same time to analyse the idea.

He came upon a crowd of people near a mangled 2 wheeler and the rider injured but not seriously sitting at a distance. A stray dog was looking forlornly at his bike splitting its guts on the road. The question ‘in a hit-and–run case, what business that dog had there?’ remaining unanswered, he returned home. He had already decided how to go about finding takers for his idea – mobile surveillance. Who else other than the stray dogs could be streetwise?

He took up the technical challenges that are likely to derail his project and listed them for finding workable solutions. He envisaged creating a “waGSapp” to automatically upload videos from all the wired stray dogs spontaneously giving out geographical coordinates of the area under surveillance along with the tag number of the information generator. Public and law enforcing agencies will get an alert over cell phone, regarding the incoming visuals and audio from respective service providers. The hi-tech industries will support the effort as part of Social Responsibility.

The Central government wishing to reap the immense potential of this surveillance tool might join hands with a dedicated spectrum allocation and sops for the industries to encourage their participation, under “switch Bharat” scheme. The beleaguered state governments suffering acute manpower shortage in the police forces see an golden chance to gain  immensely – stray dogs are aplenty, don’t ask for food and shelter, offer voluntary service, rain or shine they are on duty and do not claim allowances, medical and retirement benefits. Yet the state governments may demand devolution of funds from the central government as it has been given the status of a scheme!

Some brilliant ‘think tank’ can come up with a suggestion that States can seek Central funds under deemed loss of ‘revenue’ as stray dogs do not apply for any license. Sit-ins and walk-outs are staged when the fight for funds echoes in the Parliament. For having claimed credit in the first place, the media and print houses make hay (yelp) and come up with passionate editorials and panel discussions sounding like music on the ears of the subject being discussed – stray dogs!

Not to miss a platinum opportunity to protect and get these animals a decent standing in the society, the Blue Cross will come forward to spread the technology to every nook and corner of developing and economically weaker countries in the world with the support of UN, as an alternative policing method.

Bystander is ready to discuss the idea loudly to anyone willing to hear, now! He will let the TV channels and print houses to continue to claim credit as it will keep the public interest alive and bring the political parties in the race, to earn smooth electoral mileage.