Karma is chasing the blackbuck

Even during the demonetisation days, blackbucks were not getting as much attention as they are getting now, so I can’t let go of this rare opportunity to torture yet another wild beast with my keyboard.

For us in Gujarat, there is a great opportunity of watching blackbucks in the stunning background of Velvadar grasslands located barely 150 Km away from Ahmedabad.

Velavdar in the early morning is a fantastic vista with long grass wearing shiny beads of dew and dancing gracefully to the flute played by wind. It is a rare place where morning sun rises armed with Midas touch and transforms the entire landscape into a shimmering sheet of soft velvety gold. Just when you think that there is no room for improvement, God often decides to up the ante and make blackbucks appear on the scene.

A static herd of blackbucks is almost invisible in the landscape, but when they start running, your auditory cortex starts feeling as if a fast tempo Mozart composition is being played, forcing a group of ballerinas to unfreeze from a tableau and into a climax of a grand opera.

Blackbuck opera is one of the finest productions of nature, and we are so fortunate that it is regularly conducted on Velavadar grassland, often by our beloved stray dogs.

My social media interactions with some really kind ladies and gents have educated me that God created the universe by first proclaiming that “Let there be stray dogs”, hence these divine creatures have the first right to our cities, villages, jungles and even nature reserves. So, time and again stray dogs enter the park with a pious thought of honouring the blackbucks by adding them to their menu, even if Forest department tries to cause inconvenience to them. While mean and inconsiderate blackbucks try to escape from kind dogs desirous of disembowelling them and eating them alive, the Karma theoretician in me is forced to ponder over a deeper question.

Which bad Karma are chasing blackbucks that they are now getting chased by dogs and Bollywood stars? As we now know that all Indian concepts can be explained by stretching science and imagination is equal proportions, I think I have found the answer. Blackbucks suffer as they have sinned! Science has found strong evidence that their bad Karma are hidden inside their genes.

While normal males of most species, including humans have their sex chromosomes in XY format, blackbuck male carries them in XY1Y2 format. It is a genetic anomaly as sex chromosomes normally come in pairs, X from male and Y from female. Formats like XXY or XYY appear only when there is an error in formation of germ cells that are used for sexual reproduction. As these errors are not inherited in most cases, it is extremely rare to find animals like the blackbuck.

The fact that blackbucks have stabilised with XY1Y2 suggests that they have passed through a genetic bottleneck induced, most probably because of their breeding behaviour. Blackbuck males fight over females, and victorious male acquires right to breed with a large number of females. This leads to passing of dominant male’s genes to a large number of offsprings. As they compete with other males, there is further consolidation. This process accelerates improvement, but is also detrimental to diversity in population as one super-powerful male’s genes can rapidly spread across a large part of population.

So, at some point in evolutionary history of blackbucks, a dominant male with XY1Y2 chromosomes must have appeared. For an unknown reason, XY1Y2 provided some edge in intra-male wars, allowing it to overwhelm the population.

As descendants of a Genghis Khan-ish lineage founded on defeat and destruction of a large number of males, blackbucks of today could be facing Karmic justice now, with dogs and actors a mere carriers of the divine justice system!   

City-based science nomad who tries to find definitive answers
samir.shukla@icloud.com