A friend of mine was once alone at home when an artery in his brain burst. He remembers being in excruciating pain for hours, and then suddenly he was walking along a tunnel in exquisite comfort. “It was like wading through velvet,” he told me. Soon, he saw a light at the end and while a part of him wanted to enter it, he was suddenly pulled back to consciousness and pain again. Years later, as he told me this, he remarked, “That was when I knew that I am here for a purpose.” 

Early this week, The Times of India ran an article which said that doctors at George Washington University had found that near-death experience was nothing but a spurt in electrical activity. They monitored the brains of seven terminally ill patients and found that in each case, while the brain gradually ceased functioning, towards the end, there was a flurry of action lasting from half a minute to three minutes. It was the last wheeze of the brain, so to say. They hypothesised that this tricked the brain into imagining things. The tunnel experience is not the only near-death incident. There’s also the Out of Body experience, where the almost-dead patient finds himself looking down at his sleeping form. Neuroscientist Dr VS Ramachandran, who has written bestsellers like Phantoms In The Brain, says this can easily be induced by stimulating parts of the brain with an electrode. 

The implications of all this is a little disturbing. At the core of all religions is two things—man’s desperate search for meaning to his existence and his fear of death. A near-death experience was solace at both levels: it was proof that there is a happy place waiting after death, and, because you didn’t die despite the experience, it meant that you returned to humanity for a reason. 

However, as science starts its baby steps towards studying the most complicated thing designed by nature, the human brain and consciousness, rational explanations are springing up for supernatural experiences. For my friend, it means that he is not there for a purpose at all. Indeed, after half a decade, he was diagnosed with a genetic disorder, which was why the brain aneurysm happened in the first place.  But it’s not just him. At some point, science will force even the staunchest believer to accept that humanity has no meaning given unto us from above. Whatever meaning is needed, we will have to forge it. And that might not be such a bad thing.

In a country where radio still has mass appeal, BBC World Service Trust has started social intervention through the airwaves. A programme called Reach and Response aims to promote knowledge and community advocacy among those most vulnerable to bonded labour. The project aims to reach 8 million people in Bihar and UP.

Sarah Palin has a new neighbour—an unwanted unofficial biographer. Joe McGinniss, who is working on a biography of Palin, had earlier written rather unflattering magazine articles on the Alaskan governor who was in the running for US vice-president. He found himself decidedly unwelcome when Todd, Sarah Palin’s husband, walked over to introduce himself and realised who the new neighbour was.

Palin posted on her Facebook page:  ‘…Wonder what kind of material he’ll gather while overlooking Piper’s [her youngest daughter] bedroom, my little garden, and the family’s swimming hole?...you know what they say about ‘fences make for good neighbors’? Well, we’ll get started on that tall fence tomorrow…’  True to promise, a 14-foot fence has come up between the two houses.

This football World Cup will see half-brothers, Jerome and Kevin-Prince Boateng, in action, but for different teams. Jerome, a defender, is a member of the German squad, and Kevin-Prince is a midfielder for Ghana.  They have a common father, Prince Boateng, but different mothers. Though both were born in Berlin, Kevin-Prince decided to opt for Ghana. “I’m proud to be an African,” he says, though it is believed he nurses a grudge for being dropped from Germany’s u-21 Euro Championship team. Both teams are in Group D and likely to face each other on 23 June. “I won’t root for either side. The better team should win,” says their father.

The road to hell is paved with non-intentions. When cartoonist Molly Norris from Seattle made a satirical poster declaring 20 May 2010 as the first annual ‘Everybody Draw Mohammed Day’ (EDMD), she did not anticipate the furore it would create. The now controversial cartoon began as a response to the online death threats received by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone for depicting Prophet Muhammad in their TV series, and Comedy Central’s subsequent decision to censor the offensive episode. What Norris did not expect was for the cartoon to be hijacked and made into a Facebook page, with up to 41,000 fans at its peak, or for the governments of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh to block Facebook pages associated with it. In India, too, access was restricted by Facebook on the request of Indian authorities. The internet angsting out seems set to last beyond the 20 May expiry date: an ‘Against Everybody Draw Mohammed Day’ page on Facebook is actively competing for fans, while the original EDMD page has disappeared, leaving secondary sites in its place. Meanwhile, citizen journalists blogging about EDMD are facing potential censure from Trojan horses. Religious battles appear to have infiltrated cyberspace, and how.

Last week, during a two-day lecture tour through the Maldives, Dr Zakir Naik, Mumbai-based Islamic scholar and self-professed expert of comparative religions, caused quite a stir. During a Q&A session after one of his speeches, 37-year-old Maldivian Mohamed Nazim reportedly took the mike, and, proclaiming himself an atheist, said he was “struggling to believe in religions”. According to reports in Haveeru, the country’s oldest daily, Nazim said, “I am still struggling to believe in religion... My parents taught me the religion of Islam. They are good practitioners, actually... I have read a translation of The Quran. Yet, I still do not believe in a religion.” The constitution of the Maldives, however, states that its citizens must be Muslim, and saying what he did, Nazim was assaulted by some members of the religiously fervent audience and eventually led off by policemen. Naik, on his part, said the non-believer had “deviated from Islam” because he’d been reading the “wrong books” and was “oversmart”. Nazim, though, appears to have been put through a quick study session of the right books because on 1 June, at a press meet, he repented and declared himself a Muslim.