Review of Progress

 On  Wednesday , the 10th August 2011,I was again seating in front of Dr.Anil Agrawal,the surgeon who had operated upon me exactly seven months ago for removal of a cancerous growth in my esophagus. Ankit, my son -in-law was with me, as he always has been.Apparently, Dr. Agrawal was satisfied with the progress, since I was not losing any weight and was also not experiencing any pain or discomfort. As usual, he exhorted me to have a positive attitude and not think of the illness as such. I nodded and asked whether there was any way of disabling the programme that has caused the cells to so  misbehave as to cause this disease. He said  that that was in the hands of the Power above.Then he advised that I undergo some  blood tests and also get a chest X-ray done and report to him the findings at the next seating which could be as early as the  coming Wednesday.We thanked the surgeon and moved out of the room wondering whether anybody really knew enough about cancer.I was reminded of the Pulitzer Prize winning  author Dr.Mukherjee's book on cancer wherein he has called  this disease the emperor of maladies and revealed to the layman that there are a number of maladies covered by the generic name cancer but each of them is different.Some cancers, according to him, are on the verge of being deciphered as a lot of progress has been made in researching their causes and the course  they will take over a period of time; however, in the case of most others, we are not much ahead of what we knew about them in ancient Babylon when the disease was first noticed.Yes, the questions why the cells  begin  going berserk suddenly and why we can not re-programme them to become normal have not been answered satisfactorily till now.But the quest is on and millions of dollars are being spent on research projects to find an answer.But, does the causality principle really work? Should there always be a cause for a condition? People argue that God has not been caused by another cause.He is the first cause..But then God is not seen or is not perceived whereas, cancer is very real ,and causes immense pain and discomfort not only to the patient  but also to others who have some affinity with him.I sometime wonder what this world would be  if the mankind had not been having faith in the causality principle. (Yes it is faith only, for ,an action can have many effects or results, both immediate and long-term and nobody can predict all the consequences of an action.We still do not know all the consequences of the first major event of this Universe-the Big Bang ). Well, there would be no progress as we know of.There would be no cure for any of the ailments,there would be no airplanes, no electricity,perhaps no cities and even villages and not even the human race, for, even a caveman would know that if he threw a stone (cause) the animal or the bird would be killed (the effect) providing him with food,-- his and our basic need.Why only human beings,even animals have this innate sense of causality! How would they, otherwise, get their food?But I am waiting for the day when the principle of causality would stand debunked as generally false . Have not many things we had faith on  earlier, been debunked since then?What would life then be?