Reflections

I am back from India after a holiday that seemed far too brief. I went back to Siliguri, now wracked by the Gorkhaland agitation. We had planned a short holiday in the hills but had to hastily cancel it as there was a bandh call, which in the event got cancelled. It is difficult to go for a holiday with the possibility of a Damocles sword hanging over you, no matter how beautiful the destination may be. Perhaps the agitators would do well to remember this. Once the golden goose is killed, there will be no more eggs, golden or otherwise. Calcutta where we spent a couple of days was as Calcutta always is : dusty and crowded. I visited the Mohun Bagan ground after a long time and met Subir and his friends, of which I will write at length later. I saw the lights of Park Street, looking pretty good this year; it appears that the Park Street is recovering somewhat from the raggedness that it had fallen into during the eighties and the nineties. The roads as usual were chockablock with the mo...

One of my posts (Mohun Bagan Vs East Bengal) has brought me in contact with a group of young alert and very tech savvy group of fans of Mohun Bagan who have banded themselves into a Yahoo group. One of the founders is Subir Mukherjee who commented on my post and invited me to join them. I did and am daily being entertained by their conversations. It seems to cover everything, from the best way to preserve records and digitize them to what they will be doing over the weekend (some of them will be partying I am glad to say.) There is now a lively conversation going on about the famous Pele match. This was in 1977 on the 24nd of September (I think). I had the privilege of watching the match as well. I remember that the Statesman had written during the build up to the match that it was ridiculous that Mohun Bagan should play them. Mohun Bagan had lost the Senior Division Football league title that year, losing 0-2 to East Bengal in the derby match. If I remember correctly, there was some...

I wake up nowadays to the sound of the koel’s call. It is untimely, at least that is what I would have thought in India where we associate the koel with the onset of Spring. It could , at least during my student days be heard even in central Calcutta by lanes. However I now remember that this call had welcomed me when I came to Malaysia one year ago. How time flies, it has already been a year since I came here and it is time to take stock. What are my impressions? The first thing that strikes you as you enter the country through the KLIA is the wonderful infrastructure that has been built up. The highways are better than anything I have seen in the West, and most of the other infrastructure is also impressive. It is now a semi developed country, far ahead of India or any other South Asian country. It was raining than too, just as it does every day now. And well it might as this is the rainy season: so the first lesson to be learnt here is that the seasons simply do not resemble anyth...

There are, I am told about half million Bangladeshi workers in Malaysia today. New entrants have been barred after the Global economic downturn began to bite. Still everywhere you go , in Malaysia, Bangladeshis are seen working: in supermarkets , in the construction industry, as janitors, household help and a hundred other professions that do not attract Malaysians. There are also a fairly large number of Nepali immigrants who work mainly in the private security services. I meet them mainly in the local Carrefour supermarket where I go for my weekly grocery shopping. There are boys from Comilla, Mymensingha, Jessore and every other part of Bangladesh. I like talking to them as we share a common language. I also like to know where they come from because the names evoke memories of my maternal grandparents and my mum’s stories of the lost East Bengal which was part of our country not so long ago. Last week I spent some time chatting with two of them at the local supermarket. They ...

I was watching a National Geographic programme on the Haj pilgrimage on TV yesterday. It was moving to see how a couple of million pilgrims from around 120 countries come together for a pilgrimage that has been happening for the past 1400 years. In fact the pilgrimage to Mecca had been going on for many years before Prophet Mohammad made it one of the cornerstones of Islam. Similar pilgrimages exist in all lands and in all religions. But there is no country that epitomizes pilgrimages as well as India. India is the land of pilgrimages. People have been going on pilgrimages to holy temples, rivers and mountains for well over 2500 years. There are pilgrimages all over the land. Some of them were arduous in the past, but now modern facilities, and roads have made them easy of access. One such must be the temple of Jagannath in Puri which has attracted pilgrims from all over the Indian Subcontinent for aeons. As recently as the nineteenth century, the pilgrimage to Puri from the heartla...

Bundelkhand is one of my favourite parts of India. It is unfortunately one of the most neglected parts of India as well and drought and a chronic hunger stalk the land. This does not detract from its beauty and the grandeur of a land that was once the home of the Chandela Kings who built the Khajuraho temples. It is also the home of several rivers that are in many ways unique. These include the Chambal River and the Ken both of which have carved some of the moist scenic gorges. The rivers are also the home of some of the largest populations of the Gharial, now decimated by a mysterious illness, probably related to pollution in the river. The story goes that the Moon god seduced a Brahmin girl when she had gone to the river to bathe. After the birth of her son, the young unmarried mother had to take refuge in the forests of Central India and this son, Chandravarman, grew up to found the Chandela dynasty. He started the building of temples in Khajuraho, successive rulers adding to the n...

The Malaysian philharmonic Orchestra is housed at the Petronas Philharmonic hall at the Twin Towers of Kuala Lumpur. I visited it for the first time this week. It was a weekday concert, short, about an hour, and they played Terry Riley, an American modern composer. He has been heavily influenced by Indian classical traditions and this was evident in the composition. The MPO was accompanied by a large contingent from the Malaysian Youth Philharmonic Orchestra as well. I am really not very competent to comment on the quality of the music played. However, even to my inexperienced ears, the standard did not seem to be very high. However they played with competence and I enjoyed the evening, this was my first exposure to live Western music played by a full scale Orchestra. But as always in Malaysia, the infrastructure was superb. This hall sponsored by the inexhaustible oil revenues of Petronas, is built on a grand scale, the high ceiling, the backdrop and the seats were all, at least to m...

I was flying to Jakarta for the second time in less than a month. This time I was at a window seat and the sky was clear. Under such circumstances the flight can be really enjoyable as you can see the islands of the Indonesian archipelago floating, as it were, on a turquoise sea. There are over three thousand islands, I gather, that make up Indonesia, many of them stamp sized and often uninhabited. You can see several of them as you fly down to Java, one of the principal islands and the site of its capital Jakarta. The countryside (as seen from the air) around Jakarta is very familiar. There are cultivated fields, large waterbodies all very reminiscent of Bengal. Jakarta airport is like most South East Asian airports modern, efficient, but not so crowded. The visa on arrival process took all of three minutes and I was waved into Indonesia with a smile. The luggage took ages to arrive, and I always suffer from agonies of apprehension if my luggage is a little late to arrive, wondering ...

Why does one become a fan of a particular club and not another? When I was a kid, I was most influenced by my maternal uncles. My two youngest uncles, who influenced me the most were fanatical East Bengal supporters. It would have been natural for me to support that team. However I was ever since I can remember a Mohun Bagan fan. I first saw a Mohun Bagan team play in Krishnanagar where I had gone for our Easter holidays. It was a game of hockey, I do not remember who the opponents were, but I do remember that I saw Gurbux Singh play for the first time. He was then at her peak of his powers; he would captain India in the next Olympics. The first time I saw Mohun Bagan play football was in 1968. I was then all of ten years old and it was a tournament that the Amrita Bazar Patrika newspaper (now deceased) had organized as part of its centenary celebrations. Mohun Bagan played Mohammadean Sporting, a formidable power in those days and drew 2-2, a dark genius called Kannan saved the day fo...

I had blogged some time ago about the Uttar Banga Anath Ashram. The blog is here. http://akdcts.blogspot.com/2009/07/uttar-banga-anath-ashram-north-bengal.html Nipon had offered to construct a website for this sop that we could collect donations for the Ashram which lives from hand to mouth. I am glad to say that the blog and Nipon’s website has had a number of hits and we have several prospective donors who are eager to help.See it here: http://uttarbangaanathashram.org/ I am really happy that this could happen. All credit goes to Nipon who spared the time to set up the website. He is a medical student and as all past and present medical students know, time is something that is really difficult to find. However he is shrugging off all credit, though I know how important his role has been. I also talked to some people today and many are willing to help. It looks like there a a lot of people around with large hearts!

Singapore is widely regarded as one of the great cities of the world. This nation on an island is widely regarded as an example to underdeveloped nations. An island that has no natural resources (even water is imported from Malaysia) has, by the dint of hard work and an innovative approach to development become Asia’s second country that belongs firmly to the first world. This happened over a period of about twenty years when a city that was no different from Calcutta or Mumbai suddenly rocketed into a developed status, leaving their rivals far behind. It has become a magnet now for professionals from all over the world and is now one of the world’s biggest tourist attractions. Susmita and I visited Singapore in the third week of August. Changi airport is said to be the world’s best airport and that is what we found it to be. While KLIA seems to be jazzier and is probably bigger, what stood out in Changi was the efficiency. Everything worked perfectly. There was not a single hitch or...

When in India, I saw (via You Tube) Jean Renoir’s The River. Jean was the son of the famous Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir and wrote a marvelous memoir about his father. He was a well known film maker and though I do not agree with some overenthusiastic fans who feel he is one of the greatest ever, he did make some lovely films. His career started in the thirties of the last century when he directed several silent movies before he moved into the world of sound as many others did. He fled to the USA at the outbreak of the Second World War and the first movie that he made after the war was “The River” which he shot in and around Calcutta in the late forties. This movie is important for another reason. One of his assistant directors was a certain Satyajit Ray who was influenced by him to take up a career in cinema. Several others who became famous in their own right such as Bansi Chandragupta and Subrata Mitra also worked in this film. The movie is based on a novel by Rumer G...

The Statesman Building Revisiting Calcutta is like meeting an old girlfriend with whom you have kept up an indifferent friendship. If you suddenly run into her somewhere you feel relieved that you got your self out of the relationship in time when you notice the circles around her eyes and the ill cut clothes. As I landed in Dum Dum, the shabbiness of the International Arrival terminal was in stark contrast to Singapore where I transited. The Immigration was comparatively fast this time, unexpectedly so, because I know that even when I used to regularly fly in from Nepal, the officers used to scrutinize my passport and spend an interminable amount of time to key in my details (one finger) onto the computers. But the welcome ended there. The luggage took ages coming. I was beginning to wonder whether my modest suitcase had been carried on to Dhaka or something when it finally appeared. But the best was the prepaid Taxi station where they would not book me in as there were no taxis!!! Af...

Musical Bandbox used to be our window to Western Popular music in the Calcutta of the sixties and seventies. At one o clock every Sunday thousands of youngsters used to tune in to this “request” session where we were introduced to many of the then hit songs of Britain and the United States, albeit perhaps six months after the songs were first released in the West. Three times a week we used to get Lunch Time Variety which was also western music usually crafted around a theme by the presenter. But this was possible only in the school holidays because at other times we were safely ensconced in our classrooms on these days. One song that was all the rage in the late sixties was the “The Ladies of Calcutta”. It suddenly turned up in You Tube the other day when I was browsing the net and for a few minutes I was young again, thirteen years old and madly in love with at least three girls at the same time. The song was apparently sung by Bill Forbes also known as Kal Khan. He was born in Colom...

There is often a hue and cry in the newspapers regarding the standards of the private medical colleges that are springing up like mushrooms after a monsoon rainfall in India , Nepal and Bangladesh. Some of the concern is no doubt justified, but to my knowledge the ones that really lack standards never have problems getting recognition from the Medical Councils. But that is by the by. However such concerns are not really new. As long as a 100 years ago, on the 30th of June 1908, the Calcutta “Statesman” carried a report about a “Dome “ named Poltu no less, who walked about the shops on Bowbazar Steet carrying a human arm and a skull, soliciting arms. Several shopkeepers quickly obliged him out of superstitious wonder, but he was soon picked up by the Police and jailed. It was suspected that he had obtained these specimens from the Anatomy Dissection Hall of the Calcutta Medical College, but this was proved false by the Senior Demonstrator of Anatomy who showed that the parts were so in...

The Pujas are just a few weeks away. The Bengali month of Bhadra is drawing to a close and Aswin will start next week, formally inaugurating the autumn season. When we lived in Calcutta the Bengali seasons went by almost unnoticed, but in Siliguri it is still possible to discern the procession of the seasons. I am now far away from Bengal, but I can imagine the hot sun and sharp showers that must be plaguing those working out of doors. The forests of North Bengal, are, I am sure , green with new growth and the undergrowth has grown, concealing the forest floor. The Teesta will be flowing at its highest and the paddy fields are green, the breeze causing waves to flow over them. The Jute crop is being harvested and the fibre is being separated in all the ponds of Bengal. The Saluk flowers are just showing themselves, the white flowers raising their heads from the waterbodies where they have lain dormant or the past eight months. The pink ones are particularly common near the Teesta and w...

Chicken Halim The holy month of Ramadan is here. For the first time I am living in a Muslim majority society seeing the fast from close quarters. Malaysia is not like the Middle East where I am told all restaurants close down and it is difficult to get food during the day. Here the restaurants and canteens are open, though doing substantially less business as the majority of their customers do not eat during the day. The papers are full of advertisements for” buka pausa” buffets. Today I noticed an advertisement for a 170 dish spread in some hotel! However I remember that our Muslim friends in Medical College, Calcutta who used to fast at least occasionally, never used to gorge for their Ifthaar meal, as it could lead to nausea. Here the population is very conscientious about fasting. In India, at least in our circles, our friends were notoriously lax. Only the possibility of a visit from an elderly relative could make XX ( one of my classmates, I won’t mention his name) fast. His c...

I just finished reading a biography of Kingsley Amis, the English writer, principally known as a novelist but also an anthologist, minor poet and prolific reviewer and writer in newspapers and magazines. It was published in 2006 from London and is written by Zachary Leader, who is Professor of English in Roehampton University. He was a friend of Kingsley’s son, Martin, also a novelist and has earlier edited Kingsley’s letters as well. I picked up the book at the local Carrefour Supermarket where they were selling large quantities of books at throwaway prices. This 1000 page tome cost me RM 5 (Approx Rs 65). I don’t really know why I picked it up; I have never read any of his books. I once made a brave attempt to read Lucky Jim, after having borrowed it from the British Council Library in Calcutta, but never got past the first few chapters. I don’t know why, but modern British novelists leave me cold. The only novelists writing in English I like seem to be non British, at least by birth...

The Maghen David Synagogue The Ezra Hospital was tucked away along the Colootola road adjacent to the Calcutta University complex. It was of little concern to us as students, as it housed the ENT Department and the Chest Department which consumed very little of our time during those days. However it housed the Students’ Ward as well and here students used to repair occasionally to while away their blues after a rotten examination or a dead love affair. No consultant ever ever dreamt of coming to see you and only the nurses used to check your temperature twice a day. There was ample time for smoking and adda and when you had tired of the pleasures of a sort of solitude, you requested the House Physician to discharge you so that you could go back to the hostel. When we became Interns and House Surgeons, the Ezra Block was known for its quietness and lack of the usual hustle and bustle that was the usual scene in all other wards of the Medical College. , The patients either had had a mast...

I have been to Sandakphu many many times. The last time was when my daughter and I went there during Christmas in 2007. Several times since between I have walked that familiar trail, once with my inseparable Himalayan comrades Swapanda and Subratada, once with a group of children from one of the mountaineering clubs of Calcutta. The first time was however in 1982. We had just passed the MBBS exams and had started our internship at the Calcutta Medical College. Six of us decided to trek to Sandakphu. It was not a very common route then, it had just been popularized as a trek route and the Youth Hostels association of Darjeeling used to rent out rucksacks and sleeping bags to those who ventured there. There was a very active warden of the Hostel, whose name unfortunately completely escapes me now, who was a very encouraging figure and must have been instrumental in sending many young men and women to their first adventure. The idea was Aruni’s. Aruni Sen was a livewire who was always d...

Today’s generation has never even seen records. I know that my daughter will probably wonder what these black discs are if she saw one. However we were bought up in the time when records gave way to cassette players and then we saw the advent of CDs as well. However I believe that connoisseurs of music still swear by the discs of yore. During my childhood, the record player was quite a luxury, at least in the circles that we lived. There were just a few families which possessed one of these and we all used to go to their houses to listen. I remember that one of our neighbours, the Roys, had a magnificent instrument. It was not just a player, but a record changer. It was a fine piece of engineering which could play several records one after the other. Rather than listening to the music I used to watch I n fascination as the stylus raised itself after one record stopped playing and it moved out of the way while the next record fell into place from the stack which we had piled up earlier...

I lived in Pokhara for three and a half years in the beginning of the millennium. I came in the middle of 2000 to work at the Manipal college of Medical Sciences and left on the last day of 2003 to come to Sikkim. Pokhara lies beside the Phewa Tal, the city rising from the banks of the lake to the Kaundanda where the Manipal Hospital lies, at Phulbari, rising above a hill at the bottom of which the Seti River thunders down the valley. The Phewa Tal and its environs is the home of the Tourism industry. Choc abloc with hotels of all varieties and a vast selection of restaurants, it is a paradise for tourists who flock there from all over the world and well they might; to my mind, it is the most beautiful valley in the world. We lived at Phulbari at the bottom of the Kaundada in apartments provided to us by the Medical College. We overlooked the Seti gorge and whenever we lifted out eyes we could receive the benediction of the Machapuchare which overlooks the Pokhara Valley like a benign...

Last week I got a mail from June Christie. She said that she worked for the BBC and had read my blog entry on the Moon Landings in 1969 and would like to interview me for the Outlook Programme of the BBC. I was taken aback. I know that some of my friends and students do read my blog, (they sometimes email me about it) but the BBC? Somebody had to be pulling my leg. I was wondering whether it was Rakesh or maybe Yachna ? However I did reply and yes, after a couple of mails going to and fro I realized it was indeed the BBC , really ,and I was interviewed by Matthew Bannister who asked the questions over the phone from London while my responses were recorded by their Kuala Lumpur correspondent. I can only tell you that I felt very very important. So if you people out there tune in to the outlook on the BBC world service radio on the 20th (I think,) you will be able to hear me!!! Unless of course somebody edits me out!!!!

I was in Dhaka last week. It was a business trip, but it was an occasion to renew some friendships and to also renew acquaintance with the second great city of Bengal, now unfortunately in two parts, thanks to our own stupidity. The Partition of Bengal was a traversty of history, but the conditions were such that there was an inevitability about it in 1947. I don’t hold with those who happily blame the politicians, the Britishers and everybody else for the division of Bengal, but the people of Bengal must take the final blame. If they had not turned into animals, the partition could have been averted. But the mistrust that ordinary people of each religion bore to each other overcame 1000 years of cooperation and in the event the Partition was inevitable. However, that it need not be permanent has been proved by the events in Germany. I firmly believe that in the next 15-20 years the partition will be reversed, not perhaps in the sense of a political reunion of the two Bengals, but in ...