Reflections

The Anatomy Museum at Medical College Calcutta Rabindranath Tagore had a tutor, Aghorenath Chattopadhyaya, who used to teach him English and several other subjects at home. This young man was a student of Medical College. Unfortunately he was apparently not a great teacher, and unlike many such teachers, was conscious of his failings. He used to desperately try to ingratiate himself to his students (who also included one of Tagore’s nephews and a brother). On one occasion he brought a dissected larynx from the Medical College in order to kindle their interest in lessons. As a treat, he also took them to the Anatomy Dissection Hall at the Medical College to see the rows of bodies lying there for dissection. Tagore, it is recorded, was not impressed. He looked upon the body of an old woman with equanimity, but the sight of a cut leg lying on the floor made him queasy. I do not know when the present Dissection Hall at the Calcutta Medical College was built, perhaps it did not e...

Classical education usually excluded the knowledge of such mundane matters like numerical literacy. While the knowledge of sacred and classical texts were considered to be the epitome of knowledge, the knowledge of arithmetic was not part of the education of the upper classes, not in the early modern period in Europe, nor in India. I was reading a very interesting article about this the other day and it struck me that while the traders and businessmen obviously had to have a clear knowledge of counting and calculating, the upper classes considered this knowledge below their dignity and refrained from learning these profane arts. In fact the knowledge of arithmetic was somewhat looked down upon even in Shakespearian times and as Iago says scornfully in Othello: “great arithmetician”. Spoken about Cassio it is a term of denigration. In early modern Britain the problem was compounded by the fact that Roman numerals were just being replaced by Arabic ones and this confused people no end....

One of the best evaluations of Jyoti Basu that i read over the past few days was this one. Please read it. http://greatbong.net/2010/01/18/not-the-end-of-an-era/#more-5924 Also you might read the evaluation by Sunanda Dutta Roy in The Telegraph. Both have really hit the spot. http://www.telegraphindia.com/archives/archive.html May we never see his like again!!

There was in interesting report in the Telegraph the other day. ( http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100109/jsp/frontpage/story_11962936.jsp) It repays reading. It mentions that George Fernandes (George the socialist turned Hindu fundamentalist) who is today gaga, is now being hounded by his wife ( with whom he has had no relations for three decades) and his mistress for those past three decades Jaiya Jaitely ( she of the Tehelka bribery fame) for his property. For a longtime socialist like George what could this property be? Perhaps a few hundred bucks in the bank one would think. It turns out that our man George owns property in his native Hubli that is worth Rs 7 crores and in addition there is the flat in Hauz Khas in Delhi which is probably worth as much. This is the man who preached socialism to us all through the sixties and seventies. As the Union Minister for Industry, he drove IBM and Coke out of India to prove his socialist credentials. He achieved fame of another sort when...

It is winter now in India and this is turning out to be cold one. The temperatures in Calcutta have reached unprecedentedly low levels and Siliguri is freezing, at levels that have not been seen for 5 years apparently. My wife tells me that the picnics parties are out in force in the Dooars and the forests are as pretty as ever. This is something that I miss a lot in Malaysia. There is no winter!! In the heights of the Cameroon Mountains and Genting Highlands you do get a coolness that is soothing but it is not the same as winter in the plains. The advent of winter is something that I always used to look forward to in India. It was the time when you could go for long walks in the Dooars area, in the forest trails, the birds and the trees a marvellous backdrop to a satisfyingly tiring exercise. One of my favourite walks was the one from near the Khunia More Forest office near the Jaldhaka river on the Chalsa road and through the forests of the Chapramari division up to Murti. The walk ...