Reflections

Sujata Mukherjee is now a well known name in medical journalism in West Bengal. She writes regularly on health issues in the column APNAR ASUKH SARAN in the Ananda Bazar Patrika and has written in all major Kolkata newpapers and magazines on the treatment of disease and its prevention. Many are surprised to know that Dr Sujata is not a medical doctor. She has a PhD in Chemistry; however her knowledge of medical matters is so good that she enjoys high credibility among her readers and is also respected by the medical fraternity because of her knowledge. She has written 10 books, her last, POKETE CHIKITSA 1st part and POKETE CHIKITSA 2nd part named EBAR SUNDAR HABO was published in 2011 and 2012 and immediately climbed to the best seller charts. Sujata and I go back a long way. We have been friends since 1990, if I remember correctly, when she first came to the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the Medial College Hospitals where I then worked to write a story about it in BARTAMA...

The Twentieth Century will probably go down in history as the century of Wars. There were the two world wars, the wars of liberation in Africa and China, civil wars in Nigeria and Ethiopia, but one war that lives on in the memories of men, was one that ended in defeat for the forces of Good and emphatically led to the victory of the dark forces. I refer, of course, to the Spanish Civil war. Fought as sort of prelude to the Second World War, between 1935 and 1939, this war pitted the forces of General Franco who represented the worst face of Conservatism against the elected government of the Spanish Republic. Ranged for the Franco forces were, of course, the Catholic Church, Nazi Germany and the Italian Fascists while the British gave them tacit support. The Republicans however mobilised support from all over the world and many young men from all parts of Europe and the Americas made their cause their own. One of them was Ernest Hemingway, whose novels paint a vivid picture of the st...

Driving out from Sydney on a bright autumn morning, we were headed for the Jenolan caves. We, meaning, Aurelia, Sovan, Susmita and myself. The traffic was heavy as we left town, but soon, we were en route to the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, the mountains that played an important part in the colonial history of Australia and formed the first natural obstacle to the colonizers as they attempted to penetrate to the centre of the continent. From the picture perfect town of Cootomba, the road to the Jenolan Caves branch off the main highway. The road is totally deserted this morning; we do not encounter traffic from either side. 40 kilometers on, the road winds steeply down, 8 kilometers of really steep mountain roads which lead to the magical Jenolan caves. These caves were known to the local Aboriginal community for thousands of years. They treated these caves as a tribal totemic area and reportedly avoided them. However they had named them 'Binoomea' (Dark Places). The fir...