March 15, 1999, Monday, sunny, with occasional thin clouds, 18-30C

 

[22:56 @ Rm.111, Kanha Jungle Lodge]

     Today, Faiyaz and Sucheta left the lodge at 08:00 to revisit those panchayat leaders who had come to our meetings, and returned at about 16:30.  Even at dinner time, he was still obviously perturbed about having let the villagers down.  To the panchayat leaders he would not lay blame on the forest department or on Gopal, because, he feels, he would then indeed be driving a wedge between the villagers and the government.  So he took whatever resentment upon himself.

     He told us that he committed Sucheta to noninterference before meeting the villagers, which should suit her fine, as the “monitor”.  Same for her role tomorrow in the media conference as far as I’m concerned, I mean, the noninterference part.  She did make one observation to Faiyaz.  “Your problem is that you are sandwiched between Pradeep and Anthony.”  Not completely true.  Faiyaz is very much his own man.  He just happens to hold similar views to mine, for which I am thankful.

     The power went on and off all day, so I wrote on and off for as long as the aging battery of my laptop computer would last.

     This evening, Pradeep came to our dining table (he usually sits with the tourists) to talk about what to do in the immediate future, meaning from now until the monsoon in July.  He showed me a draft of his letter to “Rajeesh Raj Gopal”, a very humble-toned letter saying essentially (not verbatim, since I did not copy it down), “Yes sir, we will scrap the conference, sir, and promise to be a good boy from now on, sir, so please forgive us, sir.  We will never do anything like this again, sir.”  It will be delivered to his highness Rajeesh Raj Gopal tomorrow morning at 10:30 by a very demur and respectful Sucheta.  Excuse me while I throw up.

      In our discussion I pressed Pradeep for a commitment to supply one solar cooker to each village in Kanha and Bandhavgarh that requests one.  Each one would cost about C$10-20 to make, using locally available material.  We would charge C$2 or so for each, as a gesture of seriousness from them.  Faiyaz is to be put in charge of this follow-through program with Anne as his volunteer.  If our 1999 program could have at least 50 villages (instead of Pradeep’s two) to adopt the solar oven to cook one meal a day over the sunny nine months of the year, I’d be happy.  Pradeep nodded a affirmation to our plan, the perfunctoriness of which made me doubt its sincerity and validity.       

     Tomorrow we (Faiyaz, Anne, Sucheta & I) will go to Mandla, then Jabalpur, leaving the lodge at 07:00.  Pradeep will leave the lodge at 08:00 back to Delhi.  “If I don’t see you in the morning, let me say good bye to you now.  See you in Delhi in two weeks,” he said.  With this and a handshake, he returned to his room, leaving us, especially Faiyaz, in a state of uncertain optimism, or optimistic uncertainty. 

     After the meeting, Faiyaz, Anne and I went for our stroll with the fireflies under the stars.  We filled Anne in.  “Well, a promise of something is better than a promise of nothing, even from Pradeep,” she said with a little shrug of resignation.  “I hope he doesn’t just forget about it the moment you leave.”

     “The only way he can forget about it would be to undo the neuronal subcircuit called ‘rural outreach program’ I’ve installed through his ears into his head less than an hour ago.  If he doesn’t follow through with it, it would be a conscious decision in spite of it,” I said.

     After a brief cricket-filled silence, Anne said, “Anthony, I know it’s your figure of speech, but do you believe literally that not only does neuronal circuitry store memories, but that a piece of memory is in fact a specific neuronal subcircuit, or conversely that a neuronal subcircuit is itself a piece of memory?”

     “Yes, I do,” I said.  “Right now, as we speak, your brain is forming a new neuronal subcircuit which is the new thought that a new thought is a new neuronal subcircuit.  Learning how to ride a bicycle or to swim or to ski is to build a bike-riding or swimming or skiing neuronal subcircuit.  Conversely, to forget a thought would mean the dismantling of the subcircuit.  To break an old habit, like quitting smoking, is the same.”

     “So, more generally speaking, you believe that consciousness is based on matter, and that without matter, there can be no consciousness?” asked Faiyaz.

     “Without matter, there could be no conscious that would allow the awareness of the physical world,” I answered. 

     “Sounds circular,” Anne observed.

     “Many things in the universe are circular.”

     “So, what is consciousness to you?”

     “Consciousness, to me, is the configuration of matter.”

     “So you believe that there is nothing after the death of the body?  In other words, you don’t believe that the soul exists?”

     “Not so.  I believe that the soul exists, but is not the same as consciousness.  The soul, whatever it is, depends on a conscious physical being to be aware of events and phenomena in the physical universe.  Further I believe that even consciousness is multileveled.”

     “How’s that?” pursued Anne.

     “Let’s use memory again as an illustration.  On the Subatomic level, which is the one beneath the Molecular level, memory is stored as an electrical and electronic configuration, such as that in the hard drive of a computer.  On the Molecular level, there are so called “memory molecules”, and of course genes, which are memory in coded form.  On the Cellular level, memory is the macro-changes within the neurons and the inter-relationships among the neurons. On the Metabion level, memory is the physical configuration of the neural circuitry. On the Tribal level, memory is mostly passed on by verbally transmitted stories and legends, including the humpback whale’s songs.  On the City level, it is mostly in hand-written or printed records.  On the National level, it is mostly in libraries and national archives.  On the planetary level, it is in the global media, library systems, the U.N. archive and the World Wide Web.  The term ‘extra-somatic memory ‘, referring to written records, computer files, etc., is already well known.”

     “Maybe we should have committed Pradeep to a City-level written contract, rather than your Tribal-leveled gentleman’s verbal agreement.  I don’t see Pradeep as a gentleman,” said Anne.

     “Maybe you’re right,” I concurred.