Reflections

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...