Reflections

Should We Avoid Over Experienced Surgeons?

2012-01-27T17:18:00.000+08:00

An important article was published in the British Medical Journal on the 10th January. Authored by a group of French surgeons (the Cathay Group), this study examined the association between surgeons’ experience and their complication rates. In other words they wanted to gather some scientific evidence to prove or disprove the contention that the more experienced the surgeon, the less likely he is to have complications.It can be read here.
To do this, they used the specific instance of thyroid surgery. This form of surgery has not substantially changed for several decades and it is associated with specific complications which can be fairly easily defined. These are, of course, injury to the laryngeal nerve and damage to the parathyroid glands both of which are dreaded complications after thyroid surgery.
The study analysed 3574 thyroid operations done by 28 surgeons over a period of one year. They then used sophisticated statistical tools to examine the relation between the rate of complications and the experience of the surgeon. They tried to eliminate bias that might be caused because, for instance, experienced surgeons operation only on more complicated cases.
The results were not entirely unexpected. It has already been reported that major cardiac surgery done by surgeons more than 20 years in the profession have poorer results that those done by their younger colleagues. This was found to be true in the present study as well. 20 years or more of practice was fund to be associated with a significantly larger probability of complications. Thus the skill levels of surgeons seem to increase over the years, reach a plateau at the 10-20 year practice level and then decrease subsequently. The authors have opined that even very skilled surgeons need to mentally and technically renew themselves if they are to maintain performances over long periods.
This study reminds me of another article that I had read in the New Yorker late last year. Atul Gawande, the Indian born surgeon who has written many superb books chronicling his surgical experiences, was the author of this piece. Here he describes his experience of employing a coach to improve his skill levels as a surgeon. He rightly points out that if great tennis players need coaches to tell them where they are going wrong, there is no reason to believe that surgeons would not be benefited by having a coach who would observe them in action in the operating room and point out to them faults, which might be minor in themselves, but can make the difference between an uncomplicated surgery and a surgical disaster. Dr Gawande used one of his teachers to come in and examine his techniques and found that he had a lot to contribute to improving his skills. The article can be read here.
It seems sacrilegious to the surgical estab;lishment that we could have somebody looking over our shoulders as we operate who would then tell experienced surgeons what he did wrong, but there is no denying that the idea that needs dispassionate discussion and perhaps implementation. This could perhaps overcome the 20 year decline that the authors of the first study have demonstrated!

Mongpo, Delo and the Neora Valley Jungle Camp Part 2

2012-01-18T17:06:00.001+08:00

The road down to Lava was as pleasant as it always is. The forests are as dense as ever and the road deserted except for a few vehicles toiling up the hill to Kalimpong. These are among the best birding sites in the world and many rare birds have been spotted here. Serious birdwatchers can check this out.
About two km below Lava, an unmettaled track takes off into the forests. This road willl finally lead to several Rai villages but now we plan to stop at the 8 km level at the Neora Valley Jungle Camp. The camp is run by Help Tourism and has utilised local resources to build and run it. Several cottages made of local timber with all the modcons and huge glass windows that give breathtaking view of the mountains and a dining hall which has the same view all nestle along a hillside backing into the forest.

Trails go off in all directions, into the forests, down to the Rai village from where this Camp gains sustenance, and the road such as it is to the waterfall that lies below.
The cottage is a so called attic cottage: A huge bedroom, attached bathroom, a sitting room with glass windows from where we can catch the Kanchenjunga, now bathed in the afternoon sun. A ladder leads up to the attic where there is an low roofed bedroom with a mattress but again glass windows to give you a view of the mountains as you lie in bed. Just a few meters down from our cottage is the dining hall where we repair to restore the tissues as Bertie Wooster might have said.

The food is cooked in a wood fired adjacent kitchen, again by locals who are teh employees of this Camp. The food is amazing. Rice , two veg, dal and chicken disappear in minutes as we tuck in, our appetites heightened by the long drive and the crisp mountain air. Replete , we decide to go for a jungle walk. The hillside is now bathed with the afternoon sunshine and we are reluctant to walk too far Into the cold sunless forest. However we enter a trail that leads us deep into what looks like primeval jungle and soon we are out of sight of the road. Birds chirp and several fly past, we recognize some familiar friends,, but are frustratingly unable to, recognise the rest. Suddenly we are brought up short by a sinister rustling in the hill above our trail

. Some large creature is moving here, but what? Despite the fact that we can hear it clearly, we simply cannot penetrate the leafy coverings to be able to see it. Could it be a bear? We retreat; discretion proves to be the better part of valour.
The evening draws on, the Kanchenjunga becomes orange and then disappears. As the sky darkens the not so distant Sikkim Hillside comes alive with lights. The lights of the still under construction Pakyong Airport are seen, suspended on the dark hillside. It is cold. The winter temperatures regularly reach sub zero level. It is not that cold now, but still pretty chilly. Malaysia has made us too used to a tropical climate , so we move indoors.
There can be very little to compare with the pleasure of sitting in a warm room, over a cup of tea and pakoras and having a chat with friends. And this is exactly what we do. Mr Ghosh and Uttam who runs this camp sit with us filling us up with the stories of this camp. There have been many notable visitors, most recently Gautam Ghosh who stayed here for a month writing the script of his next movie. Mr Ghosh lives here while his family lives in Kalimpong because of his childrens’ education issues. We discuss recent political changes in the State and the state of the world in general. We agree many issues, I find.
Diner is scrumptious as well. We decide to stick to rotis, hot, with vegetables, dal and fish. A very welcome cup of soup precedes the meal. Back in our cottage we sit together discussing our day. Susmita and I are a little despondent as our daughter , Shreya will go back to the hostel soon; we had spent almost a month together after a long time.
We sleep like tops, the rezai keeps us as warm as toast. We wake before dawn and poke out head outside to see the first light on the Kanchenjunga. It is another beautiful day. The sky is crystal clear and the light changes the colours on the Kanchenjunga , the Sincholu and the other peaks that make up what we refer to as the Kanchenjunga range. The colours keep changing as the light increases and soon the first sunlight falls on the highest peaks. We have seen this on a daily basis in Pokhara, but the magic never fades.

There is a geyser, so hot water is available. We shower and head out for a walk, this time down the roadside. We avoid the village and stick to the forested hillside. An hour’s birdwatching later we return, ready for breakfast.
We plan to leave shortly after breakfast, so we say our good byes and Ramesh drives us down the road toward Dam Dim, We insist on a detour, we cannot possible go back with visiting our favourite Murti River. On the way back we stop at Bapida’s Restaurant opposite the Bus Stand at Malbazar for some of the best Chitol Mach I have ever had, it is a trifle pricey, but worth every penny.

Now back along familiar roads. But we will be back, next year and every year, the travel gods willing.

Mongpo, Delo and the Neora Valley Jungle Camp Part 1

2012-01-15T18:55:00.000+08:00

Raj had asked me during my last visit to go to the Neora Valley Jungle camp. Unfortunately there was no time then, but this time when I was I Siliguri, he again repeated his recommendation. While I had no real plans to go there, I agreed. One reason was, of course, that the weather had been marvelous during the past couple of days in Siliguri and the Kanchenjunga was visible clearly from our flat. This view, of course was just a sliver, and a pale imitation of the real thing that one can see from the hills.
We started at 7 AM on a clear day. The sky was blue, the air was crisp and the K was clear in the sky. Down the Sevoke Road we went in Ramesh’s Sumo into the Mahananda Forest. The Woods were lovely dark and deep as usual, but today we had another date, and so we sped on past the Mahananda Sanctuary past the Sevoke Bridge towards Kalimpong. We have been on this road countless times, but today we deviated from the main road to Sikkim to climb the 16 km to Mongpo. This was one spot in the hills that we had wanted to go so many times, but failed to go for some reason or other. As somebody superstitious would say, “The time had never been right for us”. Today the travel gods decided that we should see Mongpo.
Mongpo, of course is known to all Bengalis because of its association with Rabindranath. He stayed there as the guest of Dr M M Sen, who was the Director of the Cinchona Research Plantation whose headquarters and factory was in Mongpo. He made two visits on consecutive years 1928 1and 1939. He lived in a bungalow, picturesquely situated on the hillside overlooking the hills of Sikkim. His stay has been chronicled by Dr Sen’s wife Maitrayee Devi in her book “ Mongpo te Rabindranath”, later translated into English by the author as “Tagore By the Fireside.” (You can read a review here)

The bungalow has been converted into a memorial to the Poet and the Cinchona factory still exists, though now almost non functional. However, Nature has remained almost the same. Monpo is the home of the Orange. Orange orchards dot the hillsides, and driving up to the town one passes several orchards. Many have had their fruit plucked already, but many are still, well “orange “with fruit. We stop at one orchard and persuade the teenaged ? owner to give us some of the fruit. Needless to say, they are delicious.

There is a bust of the Poet in the garden and the house still has some of the furniture he had used. It is not difficult to imagine him sitting on the verandah or in the front garden, enjoying the sunshine as he wrote. The museum as it now is not well maintained. It has possibly suffered from the unrest in the hills. Now it has a new coat of paint, possibly hastily done before the Poet’s 150th anniversary, but it could be much better.

Next stop Kalimpong, or rather Delo. Delo is a garden laid out on the top of a hill with the most sublime view of the Kanchenjunga range. By now clouds had begun to cover the lower reaches of the mountains, but the peaks remained proudly aloft. There is a seedy looking Tourist Lodge here, but with sublime views, but as is usual with Indian and particularly West Bengal tourist spots, there is no toilet. Or rather there is one, but if you are brave enough to use it you are a better (or more desperate) man (or woman) than I am.

It was here that we had the most marvelous snack. We have had it earlier in Nepal, and my daughter is very familiar with it from her long Sikkim stint, but I was glad to renew my acquaintance with it after a long time. Made from Moog dal and the most delicious sauces phepla is out of the world, The lady who was selling it from a small shop near the entrance of the Delo gardens was worth a picture in her own right.

Now to the Neora Valley Jungle camp

The Scientist and the Surgeon

2012-01-12T13:58:00.000+08:00

There is a hoary old story about the surgeon and the scientist. The surgeon was jogging around a lake when he noticed a man drowning in the water. He dived in to save him and when he got him out he saw another man drowning. In he went again and as he came out he saw yet another man going under. At the same time he noticed a scientist standing on the bank of the lake deep in thought. “Why the hell don’t you do something instead of just standing there?” he shouted. “I am” answered the scientist. “I am trying to figure out who is throwing them into the water.”
This story has many important implications. While some may see it as a condemnation of the doer who just rushes in to solve the problem without addressing the root cause, the story is not as simple as that. While somebody figures out the root cause and presumably also a method of fixing the problem, trained individuals are still needed to save them while all this research in going on.

As a surgeon and also now hopefully a scientist of sorts, I fall between two stools. While I am stoutly in favour of doing the best in the light of available knowledge to save the patient or at least palliate him, I think it very necessary to try to obviate the problem in the first place. Presumably this will lead, in time to the shrinkage of the field of the surgeon. (or physician for that matter) Such examples are legion. During the course of my working life, I have seen surgery for peptic ulcer disappear from the surgeon’s operating list. When I started life a house surgeon, there used to be at least two V+ GJ ( Vagotomy and gastrojejunostomy) in the list every operating session. Then came various modifications, including the highly selective vagotomy which, it turned out only its inventor Johnston could do properly, and finally with the advent of Cimetidine, the operation disappeared. Some chemist had created a compound that the pharmacist had developed into lethal weapon against acidity and surgeons’ incomes as well.

So does that make a scientist more important than a surgeon? Ask the poor guy who is suffering from a painful limb ischemia. While scientists work out ingenious methods of restoring the vascular supply (and I am involved in some work that may provide an answer), the surgeon saves limbs as well as lives by doing something, however imperfect to relieve the poor sufferer. No surgeon since Alexis Carrell has ever won the Nobel Prize and if Michael De Bakey did not get one despite 8 nominations, I suspect no one ever will, but to legions of patients their contributions are significant, much more significant than that of the scientist who will benefit mankind someday, but only in the future, perhaps long after my troubles are at an end.
The advent of interdisciplinary work has now lessened these conflicts. The era when physicians disdained surgeons as barely educated barbarians who tried to get by force what the physicians got by stealth has gone. However in the public eye, the surgeon outscores the scientist by a mile. The reason is that he dives in while others fear to tread the dangerous waters of difficult disease. The future belongs to both these categories of persons.

J B S Haldane: On Being The Right Size

2012-01-11T11:10:00.000+08:00

Written in 1928 this essay illustrates what I had said about the famous biologist in my last post. A sharp brain, humour and style makes this essay a wonerful read even 80 odd years on.

The most obvious differences between different animals are differences of size, but for some reason the zoologists have paid singularly little attention to them. In a large textbook of zoology before me I find no indication that the eagle is larger than the sparrow, or the hippopotamus bigger than the hare, though some grudging admissions are made in the case of the mouse and the whale. But yet it is easy to show that a hare could not be as large as a hippopotamus, or a whale as small as a herring. For every type of animal there is a most convenient size, and a large change in size inevitably carries with it a change of form.

Let us take the most obvious of possible cases, and consider a giant man sixty feet high—about the height of Giant Pope and Giant Pagan in the illustrated Pilgrim’s Progress of my childhood. These monsters were not only ten times as high as Christian, but ten times as wide and ten times as thick, so that their total weight was a thousand times his, or about eighty to ninety tons. Unfortunately the cross sections of their bones were only a hundred times those of Christian, so that every square inch of giant bone had to support ten times the weight borne by a square inch of human bone. As the human thigh-bone breaks under about ten times the human weight, Pope and Pagan would have broken their thighs every time they took a step. This was doubtless why they were sitting down in the picture I remember. But it lessens one’s respect for Christian and Jack the Giant Killer.

To turn to zoology, suppose that a gazelle, a graceful little creature with long thin legs, is to become large, it will break its bones unless it does one of two things. It may make its legs short and thick, like the rhinoceros, so that every pound of weight has still about the same area of bone to support it. Or it can compress its body and stretch out its these two beasts because they happen to belong to the same order as the gazelle, and both are quite successful mechanically, being remarkably fast runners.

Gravity, a mere nuisance to Christian, was a terror to Pope, Pagan, and Despair. To the mouse and any smaller animal it presents practically no dangers. You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes. For the resistance presented to movement by the air is proportional to the surface of the moving object. Divide an animal’s length, breadth, and height each by ten; its weight is reduced to a thousandth, but its surface only to a hundredth. So the resistance to falling in the case of the small animal is relatively ten times greater than the driving force.

An insect, therefore, is not afraid of gravity; it can fall without danger, and can cling to the ceiling with remarkably little trouble. It can go in for elegant and fantastic forms of support like that of the daddy-longlegs. But there is a force which is as formidable to an insect as gravitation to a mammal. This is surface tension. A man coming out of a bath carries with him a film of water of about one-fiftieth of an inch in thickness. This weighs roughly a pound. A wet mouse has to carry about its own weight of water. A wet fly has to lift many times its own weight and, as everyone knows, a fly once wetted by water or any other liquid is in a very serious position indeed. An insect going for a drink is in as great danger as a man leaning out over a precipice in search of food. If it once falls into the grip of the surface tension of the water—that is to say, gets wet—it is likely to remain so until it drowns. A few insects, such as water-beetles, contrive to be unwettable; the majority keep well away from their drink by means of a long proboscis.

Of course tall land animals have other difficulties. They have to pump their blood to greater heights than a man, and, therefore, require a larger blood pressure and tougher blood-vessels. A great many men die from burst arteries, greater for an elephant or a giraffe. But animals of all kinds find difficulties in size for the following reason. A typical small animal, say a microscopic worm or rotifer, has a smooth skin through which all the oxygen it requires can soak in, a straight gut with sufficient surface to absorb its food, and a single kidney. Increase its dimensions tenfold in every direction, and its weight is increased a thousand times, so that if it is to use its muscles as efficiently as its miniature counterpart, it will need a thousand times as much food and oxygen per day and will excrete a thousand times as much of waste products.

Now if its shape is unaltered its surface will be increased only a hundredfold, and ten times as much oxygen must enter per minute through each square millimetre of skin, ten times as much food through each square millimetre of intestine. When a limit is reached to their absorptive powers their surface has to be increased by some special device. For example, a part of the skin may be drawn out into tufts to make gills or pushed in to make lungs, thus increasing the oxygen-absorbing surface in proportion to the animal’s bulk. A man, for example, has a hundred square yards of lung. Similarly, the gut, instead of being smooth and straight, becomes coiled and develops a velvety surface, and other organs increase in complication. The higher animals are not larger than the lower because they are more complicated. They are more complicated because they are larger. Just the same is true of plants. The simplest plants, such as the green algae growing in stagnant water or on the bark of trees, are mere round cells. The higher plants increase their surface by putting out leaves and roots. Comparative anatomy is largely the story of the struggle to increase surface in proportion to volume. Some of the methods of increasing the surface are useful up to a point, but not capable of a very wide adaptation. For example, while vertebrates carry the oxygen from the gills or lungs all over the body in the blood, insects take air directly to every part of their body by tiny blind tubes called tracheae which open to the surface at many different points. Now, although by their breathing movements they can renew the air in the outer part of the tracheal system, the oxygen has to penetrate the finer branches by means of diffusion. Gases can diffuse easily through very small distances, not many times larger than the average length traveled by a gas molecule between collisions with other molecules. But when such vast journeys—from the point of view of a molecule—as a quarter of an inch have to be made, the process becomes slow. So the portions of an insect’s body more than a quarter of an inch from the air would always be short of oxygen. In consequence hardly any insects are much more than half an inch thick. Land crabs are built on the same general plan as insects, but are much clumsier. Yet like ourselves they carry oxygen around in their blood, and are therefore able to grow far larger than any insects. If the insects had hit on a plan for driving air through their tissues instead of letting it soak in, they might well have become as large as lobsters, though other considerations would have prevented them from becoming as large as man.

Exactly the same difficulties attach to flying. It is an elementary principle of aeronautics that the minimum speed needed to keep an aeroplane of a given shape in the air varies as the square root of its length. If its linear dimensions are increased four times, it must fly twice as fast. Now the power needed for the minimum speed increases more rapidly than the weight of the machine. So the larger aeroplane, which weighs sixty-four times as much as the smaller, needs one hundred and twenty-eight times its horsepower to keep up. Applying the same principle to the birds, we find that the limit to their size is soon reached. An angel whose muscles developed no more power weight for weight than those of an eagle or a pigeon would require a breast projecting for about four feet to house the muscles engaged in working its wings, while to economize in weight, its legs would have to be reduced to mere stilts. Actually a large bird such as an eagle or kite does not keep in the air mainly by moving its wings. It is generally to be seen soaring, that is to say balanced on a rising column of air. And even soaring becomes more and more difficult with increasing size. Were this not the case eagles might be as large as tigers and as formidable to man as hostile aeroplanes.

But it is time that we pass to some of the advantages of size. One of the most obvious is that it enables one to keep warm. All warmblooded animals at rest lose the same amount of heat from a unit area of skin, for which purpose they need a food-supply proportional to their surface and not to their weight. Five thousand mice weigh as much as a man. Their combined surface and food or oxygen consumption are about seventeen times a man’s. In fact a mouse eats about one quarter its own weight of food every day, which is mainly used in keeping it warm. For the same reason small animals cannot live in cold countries. In the arctic regions there are no reptiles or amphibians, and no small mammals. The smallest mammal in Spitzbergen is the fox. The small birds fly away in winter, while the insects die, though their eggs can survive six months or more of frost. The most successful mammals are bears, seals, and walruses.

Similarly, the eye is a rather inefficient organ until it reaches a large size. The back of the human eye on which an image of the outside world is thrown, and which corresponds to the film of a camera, is composed of a mosaic of “rods and cones” whose diameter is little more than a length of an average light wave. Each eye has about a half a million, and for two objects to be distinguishable their images must fall on separate rods or cones. It is obvious that with fewer but larger rods and cones we should see less distinctly. If they were twice as broad two points would have to be twice as far apart before we could distinguish them at a given distance. But if their size were diminished and their number increased we should see no better. For it is impossible to form a definite image smaller than a wave-length of light. Hence a mouse’s eye is not a small-scale model of a human eye. Its rods and cones are not much smaller than ours, and therefore there are far fewer of them. A mouse could not distinguish one human face from another six feet away. In order that they should be of any use at all the eyes of small animals have to be much larger in proportion to their bodies than our own. Large animals on the other hand only require relatively small eyes, and those of the whale and elephant are little larger than our own. For rather more recondite reasons the same general principle holds true of the brain. If we compare the brain-weights of a set of very similar animals such as the cat, cheetah, leopard, and tiger, we find that as we quadruple the body-weight the brain-weight is only doubled. The larger animal with proportionately larger bones can economize on brain, eyes, and certain other organs.

Such are a very few of the considerations which show that for every type of animal there is an optimum size. Yet although Galileo demonstrated the contrary more than three hundred years ago, people still believe that if a flea were as large as a man it could jump a thousand feet into the air. As a matter of fact the height to which an animal can jump is more nearly independent of its size than proportional to it. A flea can jump about two feet, a man about five. To jump a given height, if we neglect the resistance of air, requires an expenditure of energy proportional to the jumper’s weight. But if the jumping muscles form a constant fraction of the animal’s body, the energy developed per ounce of muscle is independent of the size, provided it can be developed quickly enough in the small animal. As a matter of fact an insect’s muscles, although they can contract more quickly than our own, appear to be less efficient; as otherwise a flea or grasshopper could rise six feet into the air.

And just as there is a best size for every animal, so the same is true for every human institution. In the Greek type of democracy all the citizens could listen to a series of orators and vote directly on questions of legislation. Hence their philosophers held that a small city was the largest possible democratic state. The English invention of representative government made a democratic nation possible, and the possibility was first realized in the United States, and later elsewhere. With the development of broadcasting it has once more become possible for every citizen to listen to the political views of representative orators, and the future may perhaps see the return of the national state to the Greek form of democracy. Even the referendum has been made possible only by the institution of daily newspapers.

To the biologist the problem of socialism appears largely as a problem of size. The extreme socialists desire to run every nation as a single business concern. I do not suppose that Henry Ford would find much difficulty in running Andorra or Luxembourg on a socialistic basis. He has already more men on his pay-roll than their population. It is conceivable that a syndicate of Fords, if we could find them, would make Belgium Ltd or Denmark Inc. pay their way. But while nationalization of certain industries is an obvious possibility in the largest of states, I find it no easier to picture a completely socialized British Empire or United States than an elephant turning somersaults or a hippopotamus jumping a hedge.

J B S Haldane

2012-01-10T12:29:00.000+08:00

JBS Haldane with P C Mahalanobis.

J B S Jaldane was one of the foremost biologists of the last century. He has been lovingly described as one of the “great Rascals of science.” Born to the aristocracy of Scotland, he also belonged to the aristocracy of science (he was the son of John Scott Haldane, a Scottish physiologist who taught in Oxford) . From a very early age he developed an interest in Biology and bred guinea pigs to demonstrate the truths of Mendelian Genetics. The story goes that he “often served as an experimental subject himself when he helped his father. In one childhood episode, the elder Haldane made him recite a long Shakespearean speech in the depths of a mine shaft to demonstrate the effects of rising gases. When the gasping boy finally fell to the floor, he found he could breathe the air there, a lesson that served him well in the trenches of World War I. He was educated at Eton and Oxford, but volunteered to fight in the First World War. His experiences in the trenches shocked him because he discovered that “he liked killing “
Be that as it may, he returned to the groves of academe after the war, becoming a Fellow at New College, Oxford and subsequently to the Cambridge University where he taught at Trinity College. His principal contribution ot science was his development of the field of population genetics an honour which he shared with Fischer and Wright.
Indians have a special soft corner for this great biologist because he left the University College London to join the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta to set up the biometrics department. He was invited to do so by P C Mahalanobis. However there was a falling out between the two men later (Mahalanobis was notoriously difficult to work with) and he left to set up the Biometrics department in Bhuvaneshwar. One of his principal contributions during the last years of his life was the guidance he offered to young Indian Scientists to whom he inculcated mathematical methods. He also worked a major populariser of science delivering innumerable lectures to Universities and other bodies as well as over the AIR. He became an Indian citizen during his Indian sojourn and died of rectal cancer in 1964. He donated his body to the Kakinara Medical College for use in scientific research.
He was a lifelong socialist, then a communist and fought for Republican Spain, Indian Independence and the rights of oppressed people worldwide. He was also a prolific writer and predicted many developments in modern science including the advent of the test tube baby as well as modern wind powered power generation. .
Even when facing death from Cancer, he wrote a comic poem which is a classic. The initial lines go like this:
"Cancer’s a Funny Thing:
I wish I had the voice of Homer
To sing of rectal carcinoma,
This kills a lot more chaps, in fact,
Than were bumped off when Troy was sacked..."
I plan to reproduce an article written by JBS Haldane in the next post. . I found it profoundly interesting and I am sure you will too.

More on the Obedient Wives.

2012-01-06T12:01:00.001+08:00

This is just to update you on the Obedient Wives Club.
The club came out with a prospective best seller. Titled “Islamic Sex Fighting Against Jews To Return Islamic Sex To The World,”, and priced at RM 50 (approx Rs 800) this 115 page manual was designed to teach the Muslim woman to satisfy her husband so that he did not stray. Readers will remember that that one of the prime objectives of the club was to teach women to be “first class prostitutes”. The idea was that with such bounties at home, men would not frequent brothels or indulge in other adulterous relationships and this would be a huge blow for the happy family. Unfortunately, nobody I know has read a copy so that the distinctions between Jewish sex and the Islamic variety will remain hidden. The Club authorities have determined that only 10% of wives can satisfy their husbands and this book is an attempt to fill the 90% gap that remains.
The Malaysian authorities, spoilsports as they are, banned the book. A spokesman for the Malaysian Home Ministry said that the Islamic affairs department of the Government had recommended this ban on the grounds that it would confuse Malaysian Muslims about what constitutes acceptable religious teaching. If found with a copy of the book, the authorities could fine the culprit up to RM 5000 (approximately Rs 80,000) quite a huge sum! The field, however, is open I presume, for the publication to take place in some licentious Western country so that the Islamic Women of the world are not deprived of its precious advice. There is a London branch of the club, incidentally, or at least a meeting had been called on the 23rd November to start one. I am not sure that anybody attended.

There is a superb interview with the International Vice president of the Club here

.
Some of the questions and answers are
“So, how does a woman become a sex goddess?” I asked Dr Rohaya at the Perangsang Templer Golf Club in Rawang, where the obedient wives were preparing for their club’s launch on June 4.
“We will teach them techniques,” said Dr Rohaya without blushing.
Blushing, I asked, “What sex tips?”
“You ask him first what he likes, then you ask yourself what you like. You can’t have two heads in the house,” she said.” Wow!!
Spake another member:
What do you think of (Perkasa president Datuk) Ibrahim Ali’s statement that when a man has the need and his wife is cooking, she has to stop cooking?” I asked.
“I agree with him as God created Eve for the needs of a man,” ex¬¬plained Fauziah, who is a third wife and proud of it.
I will keep you posted on further developments. All those who want a copy of the manual can apply to the International headquarters of the club. And I don’t know where it is!!

North Korea as a Religious State.

2011-12-22T11:00:00.000+08:00

This post is by Gary Leupp. GARY LEUPP is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. This post originally was published in Counter Punch in the edition dated 14-16th October 2006. The death of Kim Jong Ill, the hereditary ruler of what is claimed to be a Communist State has made this article extremely relevant. I am grateful to Prof Leupp for permission to reproduce this piece in Reflections. The original article can be read here.

"Heaven and Earth Shake with Cheers for Kim Jong-il!"
North Korea as a Religious State
By Gary Leupp

All three countries labeled "the Axis of Evil" by President Bush in 2002 are presently religious states. Iran is of course a Shiite theocracy, while the government of formerly secularist Iraq—to the extent it has a government at all—is dominated by Shiite fundamentalists. North Korea has long practiced its state religion, Kim Il-songism.

According to North Korean scriptures, when the Great Leader Kim Il-song died in 1994, thousands of cranes descended from Heaven to fetch him, and his portrait appeared high in the firmament. Immediately villages and towns throughout the nation began to construct Towers of Eternal Life, the main one rising 93 meters over Kim’s mausoleum in Pyongyang. The Great Leader’s son, the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, took power, declining to assume the title of President.

The Constitution of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea restricts that title forever to the Great Leader, whom the Dear Leader has proclaimed, "will always be with us." The Dear Leader himself was born on Mt. Paektu, the highest mountain in Korea and Manchuria long revered by Koreans as sacred and the birthplace of their nation, in 1942. (Unbelievers say he was born in 1941 in Vyatskoye, in Siberia, in the Soviet Union.) His birth in a humble log cabin brought joy to the cosmos: a double rainbow appeared over the peak, a new star rose in the heavens, and a swallow descended to herald his birth. (Thus he is called, among other monikers, the Heaven-Descended General.)

When he was 32 years old, the Workers’ Party of Korea and the people of Korea unanimously elected him their leader. When he visited Panmunjom, a fog descended to protect him from South Korean snipers, but when he was out of danger, the mist dramatically listed and glorious sunlight shone all around him. . . You get the idea.

Now, how did it come about that a socialist republic established by a Marxist-Leninist party in 1948 came under the spell of this state religion and its peculiar mythology? Some might say that Marxism-Leninism is itself a religion, but they misapply the term. "Religion" proper doesn’t refer to just any ideology or thought system, but only to those that posit supernatural phenomena such as life after death, miracles and the existence of deities. Marxism as a variant of philosophical materialism explicitly rejects such phenomena. Some socialist societies have surely produced personality cults, distorted or fabricated histories, dogmatism and fanaticism. And of course when a leader dies, the party has said, "He will always be with us" in a metaphorical sense. The Soviets early on adopted the custom of embalming revolutionary leaders, and the Chinese, Vietnamese and Koreans have followed suite. But what we see in the DPRK is more than a personality cult. It seems to me more akin to the State Shinto imposed on the Korean peninsula by the Japanese imperialists after 1905.

State Shinto, itself developed after 1868 in specific emulation of European state churches, emphasized the divine origins of the Japanese emperors, descended in an unbroken family line from the establishment of the Empire by Jinmu, great-great-grandson of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu. State Shinto emphasized the kokutai or "national essence," the unbreakable unity of the Japanese islands (born from the bodies of the kami or gods), the Japanese people, their divine emperor, and all the kami with the Sun Goddess at their head. It was a vague concept that boiled down to obedience to state authority and to that solar disk national flag. (We find this sun worship meme in Kim Il-songism too. The DPRK Constitution states, "The great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung is the sun of the nation and the lodestar of the reunification of the fatherland." A monumental artwork called "the Figure of the Sun" erected to mark the 100-day memorial service for Kim in 1994, adorns a hill overlooking Pyongyang.)

The Meiji-era reformers who created Japan’s state religion were well-educated men who probably didn’t believe the mythology literally, but thought it would allow for the effective control of the indoctrinated masses. It did in fact work fairly well, up until Japan’s crushing defeat in 1945. The U.S. Occupation then abolished it (leaving "folk Shinto" as opposed to State Shinto alone), and forced Emperor Hirohito to publicly renounce any claim to divinity. He could have been tried for war crimes; the Allies could have ended the myth-shrouded monarchy right then. But the U.S. Occupation authorities found the residual aura of sanctity surrounding the office useful. Hirohito was, to Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the "queen bee" whose cooperation would ensure mass compliance with Occupation objectives. The emperor remains a sacerdotal figure, the High Priest of the Shinto faith, enthroned in a religious ceremony, offering prayers on behalf of the nation to the gods.

Growing up under Japanese occupation, Kim Il-song could have observed the usages of a state religion in the service of a hereditary monarchy linked to Heaven. Maybe these observations subconsciously affected the evolution of his thinking. Once in power in North Korea, from 1945, he increasingly built a personality cult, initially modeled after Stalin’s but by the 1970s plainly monarchical in nature. It integrated Confucian values of filial piety and obedience, and glorified the entire family of the Great Leader, including especially the crown prince Jong-il.

Tens of thousands of "research rooms" have been constructed throughout the country, which persons are required to visit at regular intervals, bowing to the portraits of the two Kims the way that all Japanese (and colonized Koreans and Taiwanese) used to have to bow to the Japanese emperor’s portrait.

As Hwang Jang Yop, once International Secretary of the Korean Workers’ Party, has written, "Kim Jong Il went to great lengths to create the Kim Il Sung personality cult, and Kim Il Sung led the efforts to turn Kim Jong Il into a god." (It is perhaps not surprising that the Great Leader warmly welcomed the Rev. Billy Graham to Pyongyang in 1992 and 1994, where he preached his brand of Christianity in Protestant and Catholic churches and at Kim Il-song University. Kim was no doubt appreciative of the power of religion, having created his own.)

The Chinese communists (when they were communists) referred poetically to "heaven," as in the 1970s expression "There is great disorder under heaven, the situation is excellent." Chinese Confucianism and Daoism both allude to Heaven (Tian) in the sense of a moral cosmic order that confers its mandate on successive dynasties of Chinese rulers. The word occurs in Chinese literature in so many contexts that it’s natural for Chinese Marxists to use it metaphorically. But Kim Il-song chose "believing in the people as in heaven" as his motto, implying perhaps that one should believe in both; and wrote a poem on the occasion of his beloved son’s 50th birthday: "Heaven and earth shake with the resounding cheers of all the people united in praising him." He really seems to have wanted the people to believe in a celestial realm conferring its mandate on his dynasty.

In a Tungusic myth, the ancient Korean nation of Choson was founded by the son of a bear who had been transformed into a woman by Hwanung, ruler of a divine city on Mt. Paektu, and a tiger. I’ve read that this myth has been reworked to suggest to North Korean school children that the Kims came down from heaven to the top of the sacred mountain, where they were transformed into human beings. (There may be some shared memes with Shinto here. In the Japanese myth, the grandson of the Sun Goddess descends to earth, to a mountain peak in Kyushu, marries the daughter of an earthly deity, loses his immortality, and begets two sons one of whom sires the first emperor, Jinmu, by a sea princess who turns out to be a dragon. The Japanese imperial family also came down from heaven, and became human.) Heaven clearly plays a role in Kim Il-songism as it did in State Shinto.

Where does Marxism-Leninism fit in here? According to one report, while there are portraits of the Great and Dear Leaders all over Pyongyang, "there are only two public pictures in Pyongyang of people who do not belong to the Kim family–in the main square are two smallish images, one of Marx and one of Lenin."
That suggests at least some small formal deference to the communist pioneers. But the Dear Leader stated in a major speech in 1990:

"We could not literally accept the Marxist theory which had been advanced on the premises of the socio-historic conditions of the developed European capitalist countries, or the Leninist theory presented in the situation of Russia where capitalism was developed to the second grade. We had had to find a solution to every problem arising in the revolution from the standpoint of Juche."
This is the supposedly brilliant idea of "self-reliance" or as the Great Leader put it, the principle that "man is the master of everything and decides everything." (The "standpoint" of course sounds rather trite and vague at worst, while not overtly religious. But born out of Kim’s brain supposedly when he was only 18 years old, it is the faith of the masses and the ideological basis for the state—rather like kokutai in prewar and wartime Japan.) The DPRK’s new (1998) Constitution omits any reference to Marxism-Leninism whatsoever. Rather the document "embodies Comrade Kim Il-song’s Juche state construction ideology."

Still, those portraits of Marx and Lenin are there in Pyongyang. DPRK propaganda continues to describe the late Kim as "a thoroughgoing Marxist-Leninist." Juche is described as a "creative application of Marxism-Leninism." The Korean Workers’ Party continues to cultivate ties with more traditional, perhaps more "legitimate," Marxist-Leninist parties including the (Maoist) Communist Party of the Philippines.

Some material by Marx, Engels and Lenin circulates in North Korea, and the Marxist dictum, "Religion is the opium of the masses" is universally known. But according to a Russian study in 1995, "the works by Marx, Engels, and Lenin are not only excluded from the standard [school] curriculum, but are generally forbidden for lay readers. Almost all the classical works of Marxism-Leninism, as well as foreign works on the Marxist (that is, other than [Juche]) philosophy are kept in special depositories, along with other kinds of subversive literature. Such works are accessible only to specialists with special permits." (One thinks of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages restricting Bible reading to the trusted clergy, and discouraging it among the masses.)

I imagine some with those special permits are able to read Marx’s famous 1844 essay in which the "opium of the masses" phrase occurs:

"Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions."
Maybe the rare North Korean student of Marxism, acquiring some real understanding of the Marxist view of religion, can see all around him or her conditions which require mass illusions and delusions in order to continue. There are some signs of resistance here and there to the Kim cult, which would seem to be a good thing.

Having said that (and always trying to think dialectically), I don’t believe that life in the DPRK is quite the hell—another religious concept—that the mainstream media would have us believe it is. One should try to look at things in perspective. We hear much of the terrible famine that lasted from about 1995 to 2001, killing hundreds of thousands if not millions. But North Korea was not always a disaster. As of 1980, infant mortality in the north was lower than in the south, life expectancy was higher, and per capita energy usage was actually double that in the south (Boston Globe, Dec. 31, 2003). Even after the famine and accompanying problems, a visitor to Pyongyang in 2002 declared:

"Housing in Pyongyang is of surprising quality. In the past 30 years–and mostly in the past 20–hundreds of huge apartment houses have been built. Pyongyang is a city of high-rises, with probably the highest average building height of any city in the world. Although the quality is below that of the West, it is far above that found in the former Soviet Union. Buildings are finished and painted and there is at least a pretense of maintenance; even older buildings do not look neglected. Nothing looks as though it is on the verge of falling down. . .
"Although a bit dreary, the shops in Pyongyang are far from empty. Each apartment building has some sort of shop on the main floor, and food shops can usually be found within one or two buildings from any given home. Apart from these basic, Soviet-style shops, there are a few department stores carrying a wide range of goods. . . "While not snappy dressers, North Koreans are certainly clean and tidy, and exceptionally well dressed. . . There is no shortage of clothing, and clothing stores and fabric shops are open daily."
There’s apparently one hotel disco and some karaoke bars in Pyongyang. No doubt Kim Il-songism can provide some with the "illusory happiness" about which Marx wrote, and it is possible that genuine popular feelings as well as feelings orchestrated from above have contributed to the production of the North Korean faith. The DPRK might not be all distress and oppression. But neither is it a socialist society in any sense Marx or Lenin would have recognized, to say nothing of a classless, communist society. It is among other things a religious society in a world where nations led by religious nuts are facing off, some seemingly hell-bent on producing a prophesized apocalypse. I find no cause for either comfort or particular alarm in the Dear Leader’s October 9 nuclear blast; if it deters a U.S. attack it’s achieved its purpose, and however bizarre Jong-il may be he’s probably not crazy enough to provoke his nation’s destruction by an attack on the U.S. or Japan. I’m more concerned that Bush will do something stupid in response to the test.

In any case, the confrontation here isn’t between "freedom" and "one of the world’s last communist regimes," nor even between fundamentalist Christian Bush and Kim Il-songist Kim Jong-il. It’s between a weird hermetic regime under threat and determined to survive in its small space, using a cult to control its people, and a weird much more dangerous regime under the delusion that God wants it to smite His enemies and to control the whole world. Both are in the business of peddling "illusions of happiness." Neither is much concerned about the "real happiness" of people. Both ought to be changed—by those they oppress, demanding an end to conditions requiring illusions.

AWW SHIT!

2011-12-21T09:43:00.004+08:00

This is another post by Debashish Ray. As my readers are aware, he has been with the Indian Railways for a long time and this post muses on something that we all know about but prefer not to discuss!However do we really know? Find out!!

Aww Shit
By Debashish Ray
My Grandmother had just passed away at Jabalpur. I was a trainee then and had managed to get to Allahabad, to try for a berth for the onward journey. All to no avail - the train to Jabalpur was heavily overbooked and there was no place. So I opted for the unreserved third class coach, which was already so packed that it was difficult to even get in. I managed to squeeze in but could only find place for one foot as there wasn’t space for the second! The train moved on with me alternating on my feet. After a couple of hours I could take it no more and even riding on the buffer seemed preferable. So off I went at the next halt to stand on the buffer housing. The other buffer was already occupied, by one of those kids who live by their wits in all big stations. He appeared quite unperturbed, probably inured to this form of travel. Drawing confidence from his nonchalance I sat down on the casing with my feet on the edge of the buffer flange. And so we moved along without a word exchanged for the next two hours.

The sleepers flashing beneath, monotonous in their regularity, were like so many Sheep. Worse, the metronomic clickety-clack of the joints made me drowsy. Rather than risk a fall, I studied the information on the end of the following coach. That didn’t provide much reading, so my attention settled on the spots of mud which seemed to have been spattered on the end of the coach. They were mud thrown up during run, I reasoned. It took me some time to realize that the ‘mud’ was really dried feces from the lavatory of the leading coach, - the one on whose rear buffer I happened to be sitting. I thanked my stars that I had chosen a trailing buffer to sit on. I would not be spattered with fresh turds. Some kilometres later I recalled that coaches were never reversed, only the rake was pulled from the other end. So my coach should have been the trailing coach on its last journey in the opposite direction. I looked round horrified to see that I had been resting my back on end wall of dry feces! So I got off at the next stop and went back to alternating on my feet like an elephant. That was near forty years ago. You, dear Reader, may well shake your head in amused disbelief, but how many of you know that lavatory effluents are still sprayed and spattered on to the ends of our coaches? Just look at the pictures below.

It was the same for the bogie headstock; it was always the outer side that needed corrosion repairs. Compare the picture of the bogie above with the next picture of the same bogie taken from the inner side of the coach below. The story is the same for the inner headstock, diagonals, outer headstock and fall plate. Their replacement and repair are all accelerated by the frequent spattering with feces and water. Add to this urine rich in chlorides, and you have a recipe for accelerated corrosion. The Automatic Controlled Discharge system used on LHB coaches has not helped much. The outside face of the bogies is still heavily caked with discharge and mud. These will retain moisture allowing the corrosion reaction to continue on the metal surface. Compare the ends of some LHB bogies during POH at Lilluah Shops. Note the heavy caking on the lavatory side and the absence of this layer on the bogie not facing a CDT, in the next two pictures.

Even more telling was the Dy. CME AK Gupta’s comment that the Generator Cars showed little corrosion damage. This LHB coach has only one toilet used by a few attendant staff; little water and effluents means small corrosion problems. What happens when the double-decker coaches, now being built, discharge double the matter onto the bogies? Sometime back Mr. Dhasarathy (then Member Mechanical, Railway Board) in a personal communication said, that he’d once inspected forty year old EMU coaches and they showed less corrosion than the main line passenger coaches. Essentially it’s the discharge from the toilet that has to be tackled on priority. Tackling anything else, will not give comparable benefit. The root cause is periodic wetting of under frame and bogie by effluents from the lavatory chute. We need to take up any method of controlling this issue for our own good. All those years that I was in railway service, the stress of the Department was on making the lavatory floor as water tight as possible. I do not recall even one official mention of the corrosion damage caused by the effluent discharge under the coach. For that matter trough floor corrosion from flooding the coach insides during cleaning at coach maintenance depots, also received scant mention. The discharge chute received attention only when the Engineers claimed that toilet discharge was corroding rails. What about the damage and delay to our own coaches? Perhaps the Department has been looking without seeing. But there is also an attitudinal problem. We have never given importance to finding alternative toilet design. Trials have been wishy-washy to say the least. No control and no sense of urgency. It is the Department which will stand to benefit from a non discharge toilet system. We should be doing this for our own benefit, not because the Engineers are complaining about track corrosion. If the Mechanical Department of the railways is to get out of the ‘deep shit’ that it is in, then we need to modernize the toilet disposal fast. But first we need to upgrade our attitude. A thousand years ago King Canute said “Time and tide waits for no man.” Neither does it wait for a Department. (All photographs by the author) <

Cherating Beach

2011-12-15T15:06:00.003+08:00

Driving in Malaysia is a pleasure. The highways are the best in the world and driving at 100 kmph is a breeze with wide three lane highways penetrating all over the country. Thus driving the 300 odd kilometers to Cherating took just over three and a half hours even after long halts for breakfast and coffee and once to refuel. The road travels over the Pahang hills that separate the capital from the eastern coasts. The road is spectacular, climbing high through dense forests as the exits to Bukit Tingii and Genting highlands beckon.

Cherating, well known for its magnificent beaches is in the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia. Close to Kuantan, the capital of the Pahang state, it is at the border of the Sate of Terengganu, and is part of the idyllic, typically Malay part of the country, laid back, charming and with a sense of never ending beaches, fishing villages, forests and hills. Devoutly Muslim, the people of the East Coast have for centuries traded with China, Java and the Borneo islands and fished the turbulent sea south of the Chinese mainland.

We had booked into the Suriya Cherating resort, located on the beach. When we reached there, it was too early to check in, so that we strolled over to the beach to stare at the rolling waves. The Malacca Straits barely produce any waves, but the South China Sea can be dangerous, the waves breaking harshly on the golden sands. The sky was clouded over, after all this is the monsoon season, but it did not rain. The Coffee Shop overlooked the ocean, which compensated somewhat for the less than brilliant fare.
After checking in, we booked ourselves into the Cherating River cruise and were soon picked up by Pak Su who welcomed us with grave courtesy and drove us to the Cherating River in his SUV. Here he handed us over to Hanif who was to take us for the cruise proper.

The Cherating River, now muddy following the rains, courses down from the highlands to the ocean, piercing the rain forest. Near the sea, it has a primal mangrove forest which is the home to a variety of wildlife. As we sailed up the river and then up one of its small tributaries, the teeming fecundity of the mangrove forest was always in evidence. We are familiar with Mangroves, after all we do come from the region that has the largest mangrove forests in the world, but even so, and there is a romance in floating lazily past a mangrove grove, even the leaves of which are home to bats and insects of all types.
The trees were alive with snakes. We spotted several Mangrove snakes, brilliantly coloured in black and yellow stripes. These are a diversion, because these stripes advertise the snakes’ threat, while they are really not poisonous at all. There was a python lying coiled in one branch of another mangrove while water monitors of various shapes and sizes sunned themselves at every possible perch. Crabs scuttled around the holes in the mudbanks, now exposed by the falling tide.

Later in the evening we went over to Terengganu state to find a well known eating hub at Kemantan where we had some of the best food we have had in many a day. It was difficult at first to make ourselves understood because here English is not spoken too much, but fortunately one young lady speaking impeccable helped us out.

The next morning we walked on the beach, Susmita and me, leaving footprints in the pristine sand. The beaches are deserted at this time of the year, other than a small crowd near our hotel; we met nobody as we walked for miles along the sand. The sunrise disappointed, as clouds played spoilsport, but bathing in the sea was great fun, the waves forcing us back to the beach whenever we ventured out even a little. These waters can be dangerous, I had been told earlier, but we made sure that we stayed close to the shore to avoid any accidents.
During the drive back, we took the old highway. This road, while not so wide and as well maintained as the tolled road, is more interesting as it takes you through villages and forests and fields and water bodies. We drove about a 100 kilometers along this road before we entered the soulless highway which however brought us back to KL in record time. The traffic in KL was fairly heavy and a huge jam faced us just near home as there was a carnival on at the Bukit Jalil Stadium, but we managed to get back just before really heavy rains struck. Driving in this sort of rain would have difficult.
This time around we missed the snorkeling and the turtle nesting, but we will be back, sometime soon.

Two Vignettes

2011-12-14T15:30:00.005+08:00

Both these heartwarming writeups have been penned by Mr Swapan Sen. I would like to thank him for another contribution to Reflections.

The Nursing Mother
Cats and dogs are not known to be friends. Cats walk away if dogs are around and dogs growl at cats if they come close. Well, there are exceptions. In my house, a female street dog had once taken shelter. We used to feed her regularly and soon she became very attached to all members of our family. A year after, she gave birth to eight lovely puppies. With the passage of time most of her puppies died of disease or were run over by cars when they tried to cross the streets. One was taken away by a dog-lover and the remaining one, as it grew a little, ran away in search of food leaving the mother alone. The mother was obviously lonely, sad and used to mourn the loss of her children, lying down quietly most of the time. It was around then a kitten came from a nearby house and after moving around the lonely mother, found her quite harmless. Soon a strange relationship developed between the two. The kitten became much attached to the mother and the mother too, starting nursing the kitten with her milk. I could manage to capture the nursing mother and her child in my digital. That was several years ago and neither of them are alive now. When I look at their old pictures, I feel a pang of sadness in my heart and wish they were still alive. There are many great wonders in this world but the relationship between the mother-dog and the kitten, she nursed, is a little wonder that will remain alive in my memory for ever.

The Strange Story Of The Nursing Tree
The relationship between the nursing mother and child belonging to different living species is certainly a little wonder of the world. But the relationship between two objects, one being an inanimate one, is nearly unbelievable. In a scrap-depot of South Eastern Railway I visited for inspection, I found such a relationship. All kinds of scraps, carriage and wagon bodies, steel frames, posts and wooden items, -to name a few-, are sent here for storage and disposal. One such item was a lot of scrap steel wheel-sets, a few spiked and the others, the normal disc type. No-one knows or remembers when they were actually brought and stacked there. It must have been many years ago. As time passed, a tree grew from a plant lying in between the wheel sets. Its trunk went around the axles of the wheel-sets and these are now lying embedded in the motherly care of the tree. People, who have seen this, feel that this is a little wonder of the world. To me, the wheel sets embedded in the tree looked like children in the loving care of their mother.

The Fire at AMRI

2011-12-13T09:29:00.002+08:00

( Photo Courtesy: Zee News)

I was returning to KL from Penang. The flight was a trifle late and I was settling down in the cab listening idly to the news in Bahasa Malaysia when I heard the name of Kolkata and then hospital and finally bomba (fire). While I am not too good in Bahasa Malaysia, I realised that there had been some fire in a hospital In Calcutta.
As I reached home, my wife told me that there had been a massive fire in AMRI and the internet told us the rest. The Malaysian news channels showed us gory images as did the BBC and many others. It appears unbelievable. 91 dead; mostly patients. The sorry fact that our public buildings and disaster management services have no modern equipment or protocols was again exposed to the public eye. It is only one of a long litany of such fires: Stephen Court and the Nandaram Building are still green in our memory.
Perhaps even more nauseating than the disaster is the media circus that has immediately ensued. The Media as usual have it all down pat. The staff of the hospital, (by which they mean mainly the Doctors and nurses) did not do anything to help the patients. They seem to be unhappy that only a few hospital staff perished in the fire, they would be happier, it appears if dozens of doctors and nurses had died.
The Telegraph , which I read regularly in the internet edition, has gone to town, telling us heartrending stories of people who died. The stores are horrific and make us hang our heads down in shame. The guilt has been fixed by the media. The directors of the hospital are at fault. Lawyers, who, one would think would be conversant with the principle that everyone is entitled to a fair trial, have refused to allow anybody to represent the accused. How this is possible in a civilized society is beyond imagination. The idiot fringe of the political firmament has also gone into action. The PPP model is at fault. The PPP model must be scrapped. All the hospitals must be dragged down to the level of the Begundanga primary health centre; only then will true socialism be achieved.
We are all aware that this indignation, the anger and angst will all die down very soon. If Anna’s antics become more compelling, it will die down in a few days time, if not in a few weeks. Then it will be business as usual. I have worked in many hospitals in Calcutta and elsewhere over the past twenty five years. Other than the two Manipal group hospitals that I worked in, I never was part of any fire or disaster drill. I am sure that no such plan exists for Medical College or NRS or for that matter for the Anandaloke Hospital in Siliguri where I spent my last few clinical years. In fact I was just imagining what would happen if there was a fire in the basement of the Anandaloke Hospital. I cannot imagine anybody getting out of the the hospital alive.
The fault is in the Administration. Everybody is fully aware that the rules are flouted at every single opportunity and at every level. The private sector does it, so do the Government institutions. Does the venerable Writers’ Buildings have a fire management plan? I am sure it does not, and if it does, it is just a paper exercise and no one will be able to put it in place if there really is a disaster. This is typical of what I have now come to regard as the Third World mentality. The so called Chalta hai attitude or, if you like “we are like that only.” Nobody really believes that anything will happen, that public areas will become safer. We will live dangerously as we have always done, making brief and ridiculous spectacles of righteous indignation on occasion.
Another feature of the ongoing media circus intrigues me. There seems to be a unanimous condemnation of the hospital staff for not being heroes, not dying in the attempt to save patients. I can understand relatives of those who have died feeling this way, but at the risk of being politically extremely incorrect, I must mention that I am quite sure that if I was caught up in a raging inferno, I would most likely have concentrated on saving myself first. It is possible that I may have shown up to be a hero, plunging into the flames again and again to save somebody, but I doubt it. However I would also refuse to be blamed for this. The job of saving people is that of the disaster management people, they are trained in this or should be and have the necessary equipment. Did they function as they should have? I am quite sure that they did not, If they did, why was it that the local people had to break in when the Jadavpur Police Station is a few metres away and the fire services also close by? It is no surprise that the emergency numbers did not work. They never do. Everybody knows thus, it is scarcely a closely guarded secret. But why did they not? Will they work in future?
What is now needed is a task force of just 2-3 people who will be tasked to check every single public building in town. All; of them must confirm to laws or close down, no matter how many livelihood’s are affected and how many poor families are “forced to starve” . (I can just see the TV channels going berserk if a major hospital is forced to close.) Just as they would have done if the AMRI itself was forced to close the day before the fire took place for violation fire safety norms. If we want to develop, we have to confirm to First world norms no matter how painful or expensive it is.
The alternative is to have utterly disgraceful incidents again and again, to shout and yell for some time and then fall asleep until the next disgraceful event occurs.

How Doctors Die

2011-12-07T09:15:00.005+08:00

Zócalo Public Square,(http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/)is a site that i often visit for some stimulating reading and it always provides some food for thought. They descrribe themselves int heir website as "a project of the Center for Social Cohesion, is a living magazine, an innovative blend of on-the-ground events and on-line journalism, that connects people to ideas and to each other in an open, accessible, non-partisan and broad-minded spirit. Through our web publication, lectures, panels, screenings, and conferences, Zócalo explores ideas that enhance our understanding of citizenship and community—the forces that strengthen or undermine human connectedness and social cohesion."This post is sourced fron their wesite. Written By Ken Murray,who is Clinical Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at USC, this post raises important questions about the sort of medicine that we practice. I am grateful to Zocalo Public Square for allowing me to post this on my blog.
The original post appeaered here .

How Doctors Die:
It’s Not Like the Rest of Us, But It Should Be.
By Ken Murray

Years ago, Charlie, a highly respected orthopedist and a mentor of mine, found a lump in his stomach. He had a surgeon explore the area, and the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer. This surgeon was one of the best in the country. He had even invented a new procedure for this exact cancer that could triple a patient’s five-year-survival odds—from 5 percent to 15 percent—albeit with a poor quality of life. Charlie was uninterested. He went home the next day, closed his practice, and never set foot in a hospital again. He focused on spending time with family and feeling as good as possible. Several months later, he died at home. He got no chemotherapy, radiation, or surgical treatment. Medicare didn’t spend much on him.

It’s not a frequent topic of discussion, but doctors die, too. And they don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care they could want. But they go gently.

Of course, doctors don’t want to die; they want to live. But they know enough about modern medicine to know its limits. And they know enough about death to know what all people fear most: dying in pain, and dying alone. They’ve talked about this with their families. They want to be sure, when the time comes, that no heroic measures will happen—that they will never experience, during their last moments on earth, someone breaking their ribs in an attempt to resuscitate them with CPR (that’s what happens if CPR is done right).

Almost all medical professionals have seen what we call “futile care” being performed on people. That’s when doctors bring the cutting edge of technology to bear on a grievously ill person near the end of life. The patient will get cut open, perforated with tubes, hooked up to machines, and assaulted with drugs. All of this occurs in the Intensive Care Unit at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars a day. What it buys is misery we would not inflict on a terrorist. I cannot count the number of times fellow physicians have told me, in words that vary only slightly, “Promise me if you find me like this that you’ll kill me.” They mean it. Some medical personnel wear medallions stamped “NO CODE” to tell physicians not to perform CPR on them. I have even seen it as a tattoo.

To administer medical care that makes people suffer is anguishing. Physicians are trained to gather information without revealing any of their own feelings, but in private, among fellow doctors, they’ll vent. “How can anyone do that to their family members?” they’ll ask. I suspect it’s one reason physicians have higher rates of alcohol abuse and depression than professionals in most other fields. I know it’s one reason I stopped participating in hospital care for the last 10 years of my practice.

How has it come to this—that doctors administer so much care that they wouldn’t want for themselves? The simple, or not-so-simple, answer is this: patients, doctors, and the system.

To see how patients play a role, imagine a scenario in which someone has lost consciousness and been admitted to an emergency room. As is so often the case, no one has made a plan for this situation, and shocked and scared family members find themselves caught up in a maze of choices. They’re overwhelmed. When doctors ask if they want “everything” done, they answer yes. Then the nightmare begins. Sometimes, a family really means “do everything,” but often they just mean “do everything that’s reasonable.” The problem is that they may not know what’s reasonable, nor, in their confusion and sorrow, will they ask about it or hear what a physician may be telling them. For their part, doctors told to do “everything” will do it, whether it is reasonable or not.

The above scenario is a common one. Feeding into the problem are unrealistic expectations of what doctors can accomplish. Many people think of CPR as a reliable lifesaver when, in fact, the results are usually poor. I’ve had hundreds of people brought to me in the emergency room after getting CPR. Exactly one, a healthy man who’d had no heart troubles (for those who want specifics, he had a “tension pneumothorax”), walked out of the hospital. If a patient suffers from severe illness, old age, or a terminal disease, the odds of a good outcome from CPR are infinitesimal, while the odds of suffering are overwhelming. Poor knowledge and misguided expectations lead to a lot of bad decisions.

But of course it’s not just patients making these things happen. Doctors play an enabling role, too. The trouble is that even doctors who hate to administer futile care must find a way to address the wishes of patients and families. Imagine, once again, the emergency room with those grieving, possibly hysterical, family members. They do not know the doctor. Establishing trust and confidence under such circumstances is a very delicate thing. People are prepared to think the doctor is acting out of base motives, trying to save time, or money, or effort, especially if the doctor is advising against further treatment.

Some doctors are stronger communicators than others, and some doctors are more adamant, but the pressures they all face are similar. When I faced circumstances involving end-of-life choices, I adopted the approach of laying out only the options that I thought were reasonable (as I would in any situation) as early in the process as possible. When patients or families brought up unreasonable choices, I would discuss the issue in layman’s terms that portrayed the downsides clearly. If patients or families still insisted on treatments I considered pointless or harmful, I would offer to transfer their care to another doctor or hospital.

Should I have been more forceful at times? I know that some of those transfers still haunt me. One of the patients of whom I was most fond was an attorney from a famous political family. She had severe diabetes and terrible circulation, and, at one point, she developed a painful sore on her foot. Knowing the hazards of hospitals, I did everything I could to keep her from resorting to surgery. Still, she sought out outside experts with whom I had no relationship. Not knowing as much about her as I did, they decided to perform bypass surgery on her chronically clogged blood vessels in both legs. This didn’t restore her circulation, and the surgical wounds wouldn’t heal. Her feet became gangrenous, and she endured bilateral leg amputations. Two weeks later, in the famous medical center in which all this had occurred, she died.

It’s easy to find fault with both doctors and patients in such stories, but in many ways all the parties are simply victims of a larger system that encourages excessive treatment. In some unfortunate cases, doctors use the fee-for-service model to do everything they can, no matter how pointless, to make money. More commonly, though, doctors are fearful of litigation and do whatever they’re asked, with little feedback, to avoid getting in trouble.

Even when the right preparations have been made, the system can still swallow people up. One of my patients was a man named Jack, a 78-year-old who had been ill for years and undergone about 15 major surgical procedures. He explained to me that he never, under any circumstances, wanted to be placed on life support machines again. One Saturday, however, Jack suffered a massive stroke and got admitted to the emergency room unconscious, without his wife. Doctors did everything possible to resuscitate him and put him on life support in the ICU. This was Jack’s worst nightmare. When I arrived at the hospital and took over Jack’s care, I spoke to his wife and to hospital staff, bringing in my office notes with his care preferences. Then I turned off the life support machines and sat with him. He died two hours later.

Even with all his wishes documented, Jack hadn’t died as he’d hoped. The system had intervened. One of the nurses, I later found out, even reported my unplugging of Jack to the authorities as a possible homicide. Nothing came of it, of course; Jack’s wishes had been spelled out explicitly, and he’d left the paperwork to prove it. But the prospect of a police investigation is terrifying for any physician. I could far more easily have left Jack on life support against his stated wishes, prolonging his life, and his suffering, a few more weeks. I would even have made a little more money, and Medicare would have ended up with an additional $500,000 bill. It’s no wonder many doctors err on the side of overtreatment.

But doctors still don’t over-treat themselves. They see the consequences of this constantly. Almost anyone can find a way to die in peace at home, and pain can be managed better than ever. Hospice care, which focuses on providing terminally ill patients with comfort and dignity rather than on futile cures, provides most people with much better final days. Amazingly, studies have found that people placed in hospice care often live longer than people with the same disease who are seeking active cures. I was struck to hear on the radio recently that the famous reporter Tom Wicker had “died peacefully at home, surrounded by his family.” Such stories are, thankfully, increasingly common.

Several years ago, my older cousin Torch (born at home by the light of a flashlight—or torch) had a seizure that turned out to be the result of lung cancer that had gone to his brain. I arranged for him to see various specialists, and we learned that with aggressive treatment of his condition, including three to five hospital visits a week for chemotherapy, he would live perhaps four months. Ultimately, Torch decided against any treatment and simply took pills for brain swelling. He moved in with me.

We spent the next eight months doing a bunch of things that he enjoyed, having fun together like we hadn’t had in decades. We went to Disneyland, his first time. We’d hang out at home. Torch was a sports nut, and he was very happy to watch sports and eat my cooking. He even gained a bit of weight, eating his favorite foods rather than hospital foods. He had no serious pain, and he remained high-spirited. One day, he didn’t wake up. He spent the next three days in a coma-like sleep and then died. The cost of his medical care for those eight months, for the one drug he was taking, was about $20.

Torch was no doctor, but he knew he wanted a life of quality, not just quantity. Don’t most of us? If there is a state of the art of end-of-life care, it is this: death with dignity. As for me, my physician has my choices. They were easy to make, as they are for most physicians. There will be no heroics, and I will go gentle into that good night. Like my mentor Charlie. Like my cousin Torch. Like my fellow doctors.

An Apology

2011-12-05T11:17:00.001+08:00

I have an unfortunate habit of uploading photographs in my blog without acknowledging the source. Frankly, in my early days of blogging, I was not even properly aware that this is unethical and in some cases illegal. However I have tried to mend my ways and these days I try to acknowledge nmy sources, whenever I reproduce an article or photograph.
Unfortunately in my post The Harrier and the Moorhens I neglected to mention the sources of the photographs. This was not really intentional. I uploaded the photographs but I did not notice that the photo credits had not been uploaded.
Anyway Mr Debashis Ray, who had authored this post was annoyed and rightly so.
I reproduce what he had to say :
Read the post on the blogspot together with the introduction by my friend. Thank you for posting the article to a larger audience. There is however one peeve. I am not sure whether Swapan Sen or you deleted the photo credits from below the photographs. These photographs were not my own but that of GM Garg (in real life a railway Stores officer) and Lip Kee (Dr LK Yap a gynecologist) selected from the Wiki media Commons/Flickr collection. Their permission said that I should give them credit by mentioning their names and not use the photos in a commercial publication. They will certainly feel let down if they see their photographs used without any indication of who took them. Bird photography is a difficult, expensive and time consuming hobby. Apart from skill with a camera and the special attachments, it requires hides and hours of patient waiting for the correct moment to click. Even then my reading in my young days showed that only about one in thirty shots came out good enough to display. So to get these shots Garg and Yap probably spent more time than I spent birdwatching. Even if they had not requested it, it would be unfair to print their photographs without mentioning them by name. And it may mislead some of your readers to think that I am a skilled photographer! I would request you to include photo credits in future post, wherever the photographer has been specifically mentioned.I have added the credits in the post concerned and I apologise to all my readers for this error.

Prambanan: Central Java

2011-12-01T13:22:00.006+08:00

The last time that we had planned the trip, Mount Merapi took a hand. It spewed out lava , initially slowly, then with increasing intensity. However we still planned to go ahead with our trip, we thought we would see both a manmade wonder and a natural wonder at the same time. But no such luck, on the morning of our trip, we found, after reaching the airport an an unearthly early hour, that all flights were cancelled.

This time however the day dawned bright and cheerful, here in KL at least. In Yogyakarta it was another story. When the Air Asia flight landed in Yogyakarta, the sky was cloudy, as well it might be, the rainy season had started. But fortunately the rain held off and we lined up to get our visa on arrival. It is easy to book a car at the airport terminal itself. It is severely functional, is the terminal, but we could change our money and hire a vehicle to take us to see Prambanan and then transport us to Borobodur in the afternoon.
Changing money in Indonesia is good fun. You become an instant millionaire as you change money at the rate of about 2800 Rupiah to the Ringgit. It is difficult however to keep track. It is lucky that most people at least in Central Java are fundamentally honest and in general tell you if you are giving a 100,000 Rupiah note instead of 10,000.

If we travel back in time to the middle of the first millennium, Java was even then a fairly well populated island, though much more thickly forested than it is today. Central Java in particular was ruled over by several dynasties, alternating their religious allegiance between the Hindu and Buddhist faiths. While Western writers lay much emphasis on the differing religious affiliations of the rulers, and marvel how competing faiths built such large monuments at about the same time only 60 kilometers apart; to us who do not belong to the Semetic religions, know that it is quite possible for someone to belong to both the faiths and to be just as equally aligned to both of them. Anyway, the rulers who built these particular temples we were to visit first were those of the Hindu Sanjaya dynasty.
A legend is associated with these temples, that of the Javanese princess Loro Jonggrang whose father was defeated in battle by Prince Bandung. When he proposed marriage, she reluctantly agreed to marry him, but set an impossible condition. He was to complete building a temple with 1000 statues before sunrise. Nothing daunted, the Prince called up the help of spirits who helped him build 999 well within the allotted time. Seeing her ruse failing, the Princess lit a huge fire in the eastern side of the building site. A cock crowed mistaking this for the sunrise and all the spirits melted away as well, leaving the task unfinished. Prince Bandung was furious when he discovered her trick and turned into a stone statue which still adorns the temple.
More mundanely these temples were built around 850 AD by the King Maha Shambhu of the Sanjaya dynasty, though there are some arguments on this. Surprisingly these magnificent temples were active for only about 200 years, after which they were basically abandoned when the political centre of gravity moved to East java. The repeated eruptions of the volcanoes in the area also perhaps had something to do with this. The temples were ruined in a major earthquake in the 1600s and lay scattered as huge abandoned site until they were restored in the last century. Even then there were many setbacks, most recently a couple of years ago when another earthquake broke one of the spires of a temple. This fragment still lies on the ground, awaiting another restoration attempt.
The drive to Prambanan from the airport takes about 40 minutes and soon we could see these magnificent structures surrounded by a huge park, now called Candi Loro Jonggrang. The way to the park was through green fields, water bodies and small houses, very reminiscent of home. Here are not the sterile antiseptic highways of Malaysia and Singapore, good to convey you from Point A to point B, but with nothing of interest in between. Throughout this route, there is life, movement and colour, it could be a scene from my native Bengal.

The temples are in two principal groups. One ring of temples which are in a bad state of repair, but are now slowly being reconstructed one by one, is the outer group. Here there were originally 224 temples. These are the Candi Perwara and they are grouped in 4 circles. In the inner square are the principal temples consisting of 8 temples, three large ones dedicated to Shiva, Brahma and Vishnu. We could not enter the Shiva temple as it was undergoing repairs after the latest volcanic eruption and the 2008 earthquake which had cause some damage. There are in addition 3 temples dedicated to the vahans of these respective deities.
We entered via a reception centre that caters to overseas visitors. It is cozy place where you can have a cup of coffee gratis and drink ice cold water, an essential in this weather. There is a film about the temple playing on a TV screen and you can hire a guide here. That is exactly what we did and he took us around the complex, explaining much of what I have related above. The temples’ facades have been carved with illustrations from the Ramayana. It is probable that these carvings which are so reminiscent of many such temples in India was supervised by master craftsmen who came from the Eastern Indian coast to these faraway lands and trained the local workforce. All this 1200 years ago, fully 5000 km away from the Indian heartland. It does invoke a feeling of pride to think that even then, India influenced so many people so far away.

The temples are majestic and awe-inspiring. One wonders how many such temples fell prey to the iconoclastic zeal of later conquerors. Just as In India, the Indonesian islands also bear witness to many Buddhist and Hindu temples now taken over by jungles or simply left to ruin and their bricks carted away to make individual houses. But no one can deny that the influences that spread from the Indian Subcontinent were instrumental in the making of societies as far apart as the Vietnamese, Cambodians, Japanese and Indonesians. And this too, only by the force of ideas, with no element of force.

Outside this temple complex is a large park, full of shady trees and containing restaurants, gift shops and a museum. We visited the museum which is the repository of many images that have been retrieved from the ruins but have not been used for reconstruction yet. The park too is shady with many large trees many of which were flowering, the blooms carpeting the pathways. The mango trees were full of fruit as were many others The warmth however slowly became oppressive as the clouds cleared and the sun came out. We were glad to come out of the sun and resume our journey to Borobodur.

The Harrier and the Moorhens

2011-11-30T11:47:00.001+08:00

Debashsis Ray is another friend introduced to me by Mr Swapan Sen ( see the posts here, here and here.I have not yet met him, but I plan to repair this omission the next time I am in Calcutta. He will also contribute to this blog and I am very glad to welcome him and I hope that we will have a long association.Mr Sen has written a short introduction about Mr Ray which speaks volumes about the sort of person he is, my sort of person, I would say!Here it is:One of my friends, a retired Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Railways, Mr. Debashis Ray, also sends various write-ups based on his own experience to his close friends. For quite some time I have been wondering if I may introduce him to you. He is an interesting character and a good writer of real life stories. He has a touch of subtle humor in his stories and the technical articles that he writes and sends to his friends. I met Debashis in 1969 when, as a Railway probationary officer, I went to stay at Jamalpur Gymkhana, - which was the hostel of Special Class Railway Apprentices (SCRAs) inducted to the Railway Service through the UPSC examination. The SCRAs were required to complete a 4 year study-cum-training course at Jamalpur and during their stay at Gymkhana, quickly learnt all kinds of pranks for applying on visitors like me. The boys were notorious for their ragging and were a dreaded lot to their juniors as also senior officers, who used to stay at Jamalpur. Fortunately for me, I escaped from their clutches for two reasons. I quickly accepted the most notorious of the boys as my friends, started playing various games with them, both indoor and outdoor. Then, my friendship with Debashis saved me from being harassed by the others. Debashis was different from the lot at Gymkhana and though of average build, he was regarded with awe and respect because of his prowess in martial arts. He was then in his pre-final year class of the Indian Railway Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineers (IRIMEE) at Jamalpur. For several years Debashis was associated with Eastern and South Eastern Railway and in course of my working with him, I too learnt a lot from him. He is a specialist in corrosion problems and I was introduced to this subject by him. I found him to be a wonderful person, -a great orator, a specialist on birds and reptiles and animal behavior, and a true nature-lover. His short stories on human behavior are also great. Equally wonderful are his technical write-up, which he presents in his inimitable fashion of storey-telling that can be understood by all. He now runs a home for Spastic children.I am posting a superb short write up about a one of his experiences with nature. "It was a cold and windy day. The wind was riffling the water of the small pond near my home in Andal, each gust sending waves across the water in successive dark bands. It had pushed the floating water hyacinth piling to the opposite bank. Only the lily pads and the thicket of ipomeas on the far side remained firmly rooted.Most of the birds who normally came to this marshy pool had sought shelter. But not all; near the lily pads swimming like ducks, were a pair of dark birds, the size of half-grown chickens. They had red yellow beaks and some light spots on their flanks-Indian Moorhens. They were not alone. Swimming on the water between the adults were two little black balls-chicks in down.

The chicks were the size and color of squash balls, hardly able to keep up with their solicitous parents protecting and guiding their every move. The chicks probably were only one or two days old. The little family was swimming between the lilies and hyacinths, when one adult bird skittered over the water and dived, only to emerge a few metres ahead. The second adult gave a sharp ‘Keank!’ call and frantically tried to chivvy the chicks towards the hyacinths.

A large kite like bird had just sailed over the little pond. Sitting with my back propped against a gnarled old tamarind tree next to the pond I had not seen its approach.This predator was brown all over like a pariah kite, but with a long rounded tail. It had a pale yellow cap and light colored patches on the leading edge of the wings. The legs were thin and long. It was a female Marsh Harrier seeking prey.The harrier hovered five metres above the chicks, as the mother (?) bobbing her head tried to drive the chicks to safety of the water hyacinths. Out of fear or because they were naïve the chicks swam, but towards the lily pads. The harrier dropped a metre still hovering, its long legs dangling. The hen dived again but came up immediately renewing her effort to protect her chicks. All the while the other adult kept swimming agitatedly but keeping his (?) distance.

The harrier flapping in the wind slowed and dropped another metre. The hen squawked in fright, dived and came up the next moment, a metre from her chicks. Now the harrier came down then rose, and one foot clutching a downy black ball, banked and sailed away with the wind." The photo credits for the pictures are as follows: GM Garg, Wikimedia Commons ( moorhen) Lip Kee, Flickr ( for the flying Harrier) Mohanram Kemparaju, Wikimedia Commons ( for the third picture ) For the life of me I could not put them alongside the pictures!

A Long History of Dissent

2011-11-27T06:58:00.004+08:00

Lessons of a long History of Dissent: Early Twentieth Century to Occupy Wall Street
by Fred Magdoff

Fred Magdoff is professor emeritus of plant and soil science at the University of Vermont and adjunct professor of crop and soil science at Cornell University. He writes frequently on political economy. His most recent books are The Great Financial Crisis (written with John Bellamy Foster, Monthly Review Press, 2009) and Agriculture and Food in Crisis (edited with Brian Tokar, Monthly Review Press, 2010) and What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism: A Citizen's Guide to Capitalism and the Environment (with John Bellamy Foster, Monthly Review Press, 2011).
We are at what social theorists call a "historic moment," in which real change suddenly seems possible. It is therefore all the more important to learn from past struggles. One of the first lessens of a long history of dissent from the early twentieth century to the current Occupy Wall Street movement is that relatively small numbers -- that is, significantly less than a majority -- of people can cause big changes through either armed revolutions or non-violent actions. Support by large sectors of society can be gained along the way. Examples include Russia, China, Cuba, the union/left movement and reforms during the Great Depression, anti-colonial liberation movements, the U.S. civil rights struggles, etc.

A second lesson is that most changes -- both large and small -- did not happen by "normal" electoral processes. They were a result of either revolutions or agitation and direct action that forced legislators' hands. When changes did happen through "representative" governments, it was because of the pressure exerted by activists. Capital was willing to accept some limited reforms -- for example voting rights for African-Americans -- and was willing to live with them. Sometimes such limited reforms accorded with the interests of the system. Civil rights reforms were essential if the U.S. state wanted to continue to exert its imperial power through proclaiming itself the home of freedom and democracy. However, when reforms or programs directly threatened profits the capitalist class took a long-run view to turning back the reforms. Thus, the social programs of the New Deal and "Great Society" -- Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, welfare, food assistance, etc., as well as the power of unions -- "needed" to be undermined, downsized, or privatized (brought within the market logic of the system) in various ways in order to maximize capital's flexibility and profits.

Changing the economic system by means of electoral democracy is not only challenging, but -- given ruling-class power and imperialism -- may not even be possible.

As Samir Amin has written:
I think that the reason for the failure of electoral democracy to produce real change is not hard to find: all hitherto existing societies have been based on a dual system of exploitation of labor (in various forms) and of concentration of the state's powers on behalf of the ruling class. This fundamental reality results in a relative "depoliticization/disacculturation" of very large segments of society. And this result, broadly designed and implemented to fulfill the systemic function expected of it, is simultaneously the condition for reproduction of the system without changes other than those it can control and absorb -- the condition of its stability.

A third lesson that I take from the history of 20th century dissent comes out of the problems that arose following the disintegration of the broader left in the United States. This was the result of a combination of factors, including: the onslaught of the McCarthy period; the increasing income during the rapid growth period; the end of the Vietnam War; the gains made in the civil rights struggle; and the suppression tactics used by the government. This disintegration of the broad movement, particularly the weakening of labor, led liberal/left activists to seek change through groups that focused on a single issue -- feminism, gay/lesbian rights, civil/human rights, the environment, workers' rights, sustainable/organic agriculture, hunger, etc. The resulting fragmentation -- with individual organizations isolating one struggle from another -- has been the roadblock to forming a strong, unified left (whether in opposition to capitalism or not). Nevertheless, many of these groups have helped to make really existing capitalism more livable for many people.

A fourth lessen is that under appropriate conditions a highly organized "vanguard" group can be effective in the armed struggle and in helping to mobilize the majority around a revolutionary project. However, this structure later creates major problems. In essence, the class struggle continues following even a successful overthrow of the old system. As Mao put it:

Marxism-Leninism and the practice of the Soviet Union, China and other socialist countries all teach us that socialist society covers a very, very long historical stage. Throughout this stage, the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat goes on and the question of "who will win" between the roads of capitalism and socialism remains, as does the danger of restoration of capitalism.

It is clear that it is very difficult to get this "vanguard" under control of the people. It rapidly begins to have its own interests -- whether desiring a return to capitalism or not -- that are different from those of the mass of workers. Marx discussed the issue of "the educator [who] must himself be educated." There were many attempts to put a check on the Communist cadres during the struggles in China from even before the revolutionaries took Beijing (for example, see William Hinton's Fanshen) through the Cultural Revolution (for example, see Han Dongping's The Unknown Cultural Revolution) where the final battle to gain the people's control over the Communist Party was lost.

If the "vanguard" (or bureaucracy or leadership) can't be brought under the control of the people, a truly democratic society -- essential to the success of a complete economic/social transformation -- is not possible.

So both the vanguard-revolutionary and electoral roads have proven to have huge problems in bringing about a new socio-economic-political system. And, of course, this is certainly true about the "identity" politics and "act local" tendencies.

Some Thoughts on Implications for 21st Century Dissent
In light of the failure of electoral politics to produce systemic changes in the 20th century -- with some the gains made by the people actually reversed -- what can we make of the changes in such countries as Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia? Will they be successful in finally transforming their countries from capitalism to a different socio-economic system while participating in a democratic electoral system? The process is partially pushed along by activists operating with and without government support. But (and this is a really big but) building a completely different social system within the interstices of a pre-existing capitalist system, with much of the old bureaucracy in place, results in many contradictions and local power blocs that will try put brakes on the changes. And, of course, imperialism and the reactionary internal forces will do their best to stop the process -- using any means possible to foment discontent or confusion. Although there are many positive aspects of these struggles -- such as feeding large numbers of poor people, providing housing and health care, the formation of literally tens of thousands of community councils in Venezuela to plan for their individual community's needs. With all the good things that are happening, it is still not at all clear -- given the economic (and political) power that remains in the hands of backers of the old order and the subversion of U.S. imperialism that is already being felt -- that these efforts can ultimately succeed in systemic transformation of their societies.

The Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street Movement

It is truly inspiring to see the mass demonstrations coming in the Arab world, inspired by a wish for a different life (and also by high costs of food and large numbers of unemployed). But while such demonstrations brought down two regimes, they left (especially in Egypt) the power structure intact. The focus in Egypt was understandably on the tyrant (and best friend of the United States) Hosni Mubarak. But, for a true transformation to occur, power must be transferred from both the army and local and international capital to the people. The mass demonstrations in Europe, especially Greece and Spain, have not yet resulted in any material changes.

We are no less inspired today by the way that this new movement has crossed the Atlantic from the Arab world and Europe, leading to Occupy Wall Street, which immediately set off a global protest now present in more than a thousand cities worldwide, representing every continent (almost literally so since pictures from Occupy Antarctica circulated the globe). The Occupy movement is a development of the highest importance for the left. The right slogan (we are the 99 %) -- at the right time has captured the imagination and the frustration of many people in the United States and abroad. Along with the actions already taken, this indicates a growing realization that it is the system itself that needs changing.

Whether or not they came on the slogan separately, the Joseph Stiglitz article in Vanity Fair (May 2011) "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%" provided mainstream backing to the concept that a plutocracy rules the United States with little meaningful democracy. The initial call to take and hold public spaces was made by Adbusters (adbusters.org). And it was here that the connection between the critique of the 1% and social revolution was most powerfully made, inspiring many.

Although the Occupy struggle has been criticized by the media, as well as some on the left, as having no demands, one of the main button slogans at Occupy Boston reads: "What do we want? Well for starters . . . TAX THE RICH, STOP THE WARS, MEDICARE AND JOBS FOR ALL." Not bad for starters, is it? The Occupy Wall Street activists have gained support from unions and in turn are assisting union struggles. Unions, in turn are seeing that they need more confrontational direct action.

Many are talking of "capitalism" and the need to transform the system -- lots of signs have the word "capitalism" in their slogans. Many people see the connections between the imperial wars, the gross inequality in the U.S., the lack of meaningful democracy, and the disastrous economy. The destruction of the environment, although not receiving the same attention initially as the economic/political issues (although there were some environmentally oriented signs, such as one reading "infinite growth is not possible on a finite planet"), is gaining attention from the movement. And some environmental groups are seeing that they need to join forces and struggle together with the Occupy movement. Occupy the Planet and Occupy Climate Change have become slogans, and reflect the efforts of environmental activists, who are increasingly joining with this new movement.

Based on lessens from the 20th century, it appears certain that if the ultimate goal of a movement is not to displace the power of capital with, literally, the power of the people, then reform projects and gains will be limited and potentially reversible. Encouragement can be taken by the many within the Occupy movement, as amorphous as it might be, who seem to understand that the various political/economic/social/environmental problems we face are related to the rule of capital, and that the ultimate goal must be to displace its economic and political power and to create a new society. There has never been a better time for this than now.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This article is reproduced with permission from Fred Magdoff. I am grateful to MRZine for permission to carry this article.

Three Tales of Adventure

2011-11-24T15:04:00.001+08:00

When I was a schoolboy, I, like all schoolboys dreamt of adventure. During the sixties when we were in primary school, the world did look very adventurous indeed. The space race was on, and while we did not understand the political nuances very well, the space walks, the first circumnavigation of the moon and finally the moonwalk ( of Armstrong and Aldrin, not Michel Jackson) left us with a state of wonder and a feeling that everything was possible. Three books stand out in my memory that embodied for me, the true spirit of adventure and I could and to some extent still feel a cold feeling crawling up my spine as I shared the adventures of the heroes of these books. One of them was a real person, and I refer to Jim Corbett and his “ Maneaters of Kumaon”. I was presented one copy on my birthday by one of my friends and the thrill of the forests had me in its thrall in an instant and I am glad to report, it has never left me since. The other two were fictional. One was Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and the other the Bengali classic by Bibhutibhushan Bandopahyaya, Chander Pahar.

The world of Stevenson’s coastal Inn and ships were not really very foreign to us. My dad was a Master mariner, so that we were familiar with ships and had sailed, at least on the Hooghly River many times. But the sailing ships that filled the pages of Treasure Island, the chilling villainy of Long John Silver and the recurring cry of “pieces of eight” thrilled us just as much as it must have generations of schoolchildren in England and now wherever one understood the English language. I seem to remember lying back on summer afternoons dreaming of sailing to a secret Island and then becoming rich beyond the dreams of avarice by finding a buried treasure. The imagination of children is really unbounded. They can clothe even the most mundane situations with romance and I used to imagine sailing the high seas with the wind on my face even as I lay in the sweltering heat of a Calcutta summer afternoon.

The third book that I still reread at least once a year was Bibhutibhushan’s classic tale of adventure in Africa. Bibhutibhusan taught geography and was well read on the features of the African continent, its peoples and animals. He used this knowledge to create one of the best yarns of adventure that has thrilled generations of Bengali youth. Nobody who reads the book would ever dream that the author had never left the shores of his homeland; the descriptions are so vivid that we travelled the plains of East Africa to the mountains of the moon to look for diamonds with Alvarez as a companion. The book ended with the faint hint of a sequel which however was never written, but his book remains an all time favourite for the past 80 years. Jim Corbett’s stories were of our own Indian forests. It was easier to recreate in our imagination, or perhaps our imaginations were constricted because we knew many of the settings of his stories. However his meticulous recreation of the physical environment, the descriptions of wildlife and the sheer human warmth of his recounting made his book a worthy companion to the other two books. One could imagine him walking with a couple of stolen eggs in his hands, coming practically face to face with a man eater and then with cool controlled unhurried movements, swing his rifle around until he could take the fatal shot. Superb!!I was reminded of all this by an article in the Times Literary Supplement (TLS) where John Sutherland who is planning yet another edition of Treasure Island has discussed the possibility that Stevenson may have at least partially plagiarized the story of this book from a serial Billy Bo’swain written by one Charles E Pearce . There are disconcerting similarities between the plots of the two books, and it is suspicious that while Stevenson did admit that he borrowed from an entire host of authors, he never mentioned this author, when there is record that he had been sent the serial by the editor of the magazine where it was published. Whatever the truth may be, the fact remains that Stevenson’s story was a rollicking tale and children and adults have been fascinated by it ever since its first publication in the early 1880s. If perchance you have not read any of these books please do so, Chander Pahar is now available in an English translation. I do not know whether you will feel the thrill that I felt as a young boy, but I can guarantee a wonderful read.

The Chilapata Jungle Camp Revisited: Shibjee

2011-11-21T11:40:00.007+08:00

Raj Basu ( read his interview here) had written a wonderful obituary cum tribute to Shibjee who was the founder of the Chilapata Jungle camp. I had a link to this article from my own post on Chilapata. I was recently informed by a reader that this link doesn't work anymore. The original post has probably been deleted. Consequently I have obtained Raj's permission to reproduce the article here in Reflections. I personally think it is one of the best tributes to a grassroots worker that I have ever read. This valuable article also gives an overview of the Chilapta Sanctuary and the development of the Chilapata Jungle Camp.

Shibjee, the end of an era at ChilapataChilapata Sanctuary, 08th April 2010: Last night when Buada rang me up from Chilapata sometimes past 10 at night, I had just returned from the Northeast Council Tourism Meet at Gangtok where one of the major points of discussion was ‘how can tourism stop climate change’. This was the second discussion this week, as on Sunday at a meeting of the Environment and Forest Ministers of the two nations, Bangladesh & India, I was asked to speak on ‘Sunderbans, tourism and climate change’.Buada told me that his father Shibjee had passed away. I rushed to Chilapata today morning and found several people from different communities (Oraon, Munda, Kora, Karjee, Rabha, Mech, Bihari, Nepali, Bengali and Rajbongshi) were present at the funeral. An old man was sitting in front of Buada’s house and was continuously crying and saying: “Shibjee first came to our house more than 50 years back and my father looked after both of us as brothers.”
In a small village near Samastipur in Bihar, Shibjee was born. His father passed away in his young age, and his uncles claimed his mother of having mental problems and chased her away with her two sons, the other elder to Shibjee. The uncles took away the land and the mother with two sons took shelter at a Brahmin’s house at Samastipur. The elder brother went as a child labour to Samastipur Jute Mill and the mother with the younger son worked for the Brahmin at his house.Not long when Shibjee went to work at Ranchi, from where he managed to go to Calcutta. A long part of his life as he told his son Bua (Ganesh Sah) that he served a doctor at his house in Chittagong. In the year 1949 and the early 1950s, East Bengal was undergoing the process of becoming East Pakistan, and the Pakistan constitution was being formed on the basis of Islam. This created riots in East Bengal, West Bengal, Assam, Bihar and several parts of the subcontinent.This made Shibjee flee Chittagong in 1954 and come and take shelter in Mathura Tea Estate, one of the first established tea estates of Dooars. The rise of the industrial revolution in United Kingdom in the 18th & 19th centuries, that was the time when the English sailed continents in search of new grounds for entrepreneurship, and started to create tea estates in India, mainly East. As a result, large forested landscapes had to be alternated with tea plantations. This is when they needed labours. The Barraiks were instrumental in bringing thousands of labourers from their state of Bihar and adjoining areas, who were made to work hard in these plantations at the present area Mathura next to Chilapata Sanctuary. In the process, the Barraiks became Rajas or Landlords of the area and owned large land areas, elephants, arms and people.
Chilapata had seen kings in the past and the fort ruins next to Bania River remain silent witness to the glorious past. As per historians, the ruins belong to the Gupta age and are often referred to the mythology of Nal Raja of Nal-Damiyanti. Several others believe that this fort belonged to Naranarayan, the King of Coochbehar and some argue that the area belonged to his General Chilla Rai, who was a great warrior and administrator. Today, the ruins are almost hidden in the forests of Chilapata Sanctuary, where the fort is inhabited by our wilder part of the ecology which includes everything from elephants to pythons, both very commonly sighted.
Shibjee started his livelihood by selling chana masala in and around Mathura. He gradually started venturing in the forests carrying snack food to be sold to the mahalders and their party, who were engaged in timber extraction. This was a continuation of the imperialistic British policy of earning revenue from their empire areas rich in natural resources. Timber and Tea industries were then at its best in the Bengal Dooars areas and brought generous returns for hardworking Shibjee. The turning point came in when he and his Nepali friend were trampled by a wild elephant in the forest. His Nepali friend died, but he survived with severe injuries. The timber merchants and their people rushed him to the Alipurdual hospital and after weeks of struggle he survived. He was no more capable of walking around to sell his snacks. The Timber Merchants then built him a small shed at present Chilapata More, where his son Bua (Ganesh Sah) still lives with his family, from where Shibjee sold food and sweets often patronized by Timber Merchants and Forest officials coming for short stay at the Chilapata Forest Bungalow.

The Chilapata Forest Bungalow, which was a major transit Bungalow for government officers in the past, a must stopover from Coochbehar through the Dooars in those good old days when the unbroken forests along the Bhutan foothills were abundant with wildlife. The old log book describes the presence of Tigers, Panthers and several other celebrity wildlife which were easily sighted. The other day Chilapata Jungle Camp had some guests, one of the elderly ladies was the wife of a retired Conservator Forests, who had stayed here more than thirty years back. She described that the bungalow was surrounded by forests and had a water body in front, which attracted wild animals throughout the day. Several retired and present forest officials called Buada on his mobile and conveyed their message on the demise of his father Shibjee.Ganesh Sah, Buada as he is popularly called in the area was brought up in the forest among the timber extraction business. His skills, intelligence and upbringing soon made him a Man Friday to the illegal timber trade lobby. He gradually became a threat to the local Forest Department. In the mid and late 1990s, a community based tourism movement was started by Help Tourism with the West Bengal Forest Department in North Bengal, both Hills & Dooars, a process to achieve protection of forest resources through tourism. The then Minister for Forests, Mr.Jogesh Burman himself, a strong believer of this movement aggressively used the tool for the forest fringe villagers. Buada, became a part of this movement with enthusiasm from the Minister and DFO.He took a loan from the local bank and started with a tourism infrastructure in the fringe of the forests, behind the Chilapata Forest Bungalow in the name of Shibjee Green India Tourist Cottage. This became a project in isolation and there was hardly any market linkage. Buada was disturbed with the increasing bank interest and approached the Minister again, who suggested him to contact Help Tourism. In the meanwhile Help Tourism was already supporting a wildlife researcher, Subhodeep from Alipurduar on forgs & toads. He along with guidance and support of Zoological Survey of India scientist, Kaushik Deuti encountered upon a new species of frog at Chilapata.Hence, Help Tourism took up the responsibility to be involved with Chilapata Sanctuary, the green corridor between Jaldapara Wildlife Sanctuary and Buxa Tiger Reserve. With the help of Wildlife III of West Bengal Forest Department, 29 local youths from different communities were trained as ‘ecoguides’. A yearly ecotourism festival was started with fixed date celebration from 15th to 17th September. Buada was given the support to complete the infrastructure, local people were trained to provide services and bank debts were cleared through a partnership, keeping the ownership of Buada intact. Branding of the infrastructure was brought intune as ‘Chilapata Jungle Camp’. Conservation networking with adjoining Bhutan and Manas Biosphere Reserve has been started.The Chilapata Initiative is being taken forward to be the core between Assam-Bengal and Bhutan-Bengal Conservation Tourism relations. The rewind of the imperialistic deeds are not possible, but to bring back community ownership and responsibility for their natural resources is of course the goal, which in turn will help to slow the ‘Climate Change phenomenon’.- Raj Basu, Help Tourism

The Match of the Century: Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer.

2011-11-18T16:38:00.003+08:00

Chess was much more popular in our schooldays that it is now. At that time it was common to have chessboards at home and impromptu chess tournaments in the para between the local chess “masters” were extremely common. We were all familiar with the notations used for chess and the Sunday newspapers used to invariably carry a column on chess. The better chess players were admired as the brainy types and it was a a sport approved of by the elders who frowned on many games as a waste of time. Today, despite the fact that we have a homegrown world champion and many very competent grandmasters, the sport appears to have declined in popularity. This, despite the ease with which aspiring chess champions can access libraries of chess games and the availability of professional guidance. Or perhaps it is still popular; I simply am cut off from the milieu that plays chess.
Anyway, during the middle of the year 1972, the game reached the peak of its popularity. This was of course, because of the famous match of the century between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer. This match, which was billed by the media as a sort of West vs the Soviet Union battle caused a sort of interest that few sporting contests can match. It seems unbelievable now, but as I recall it, it was created much more of a buzz that even the Football World Cup does nowadays. We were then in Class 10. We were all pro Soviet Union. After all it was just one year after the infamous American tilt towards Pakistan, which we overcame with the help of the Soviet Union leading to the birth of Bangladesh and a bloody nose to the “imperialists”.
And then came the World Championship match. Played over three months from July to September 1972, the match almost never happened. This was because of Fischer’s antics. He wanted more money; he wanted to play without spectators. He wanted this, he wanted that. All this deflected the attention from the chess itself and was probably a ploy to distract Spassky. Mind games, Mark 1 as it were. However after all the problems were solved, the match finally started on 11th July.
Spassky was the poster boy for the Soviets. A very typical establishment man, he had come up via the Soviet chess machine and was its favourite son. He came across to all of us as as a decent person and as far as I remember most of us were solidly backing him.Fischer was a typical American. Brash, talkative, arrogant and boastful, he typified all the features that made Americans hated all over the globe then, even by those who lived largely on their largesse. He turned up late for the match, and made many impossible demands, all of which Spassky accommodated very politely.
And Spassky won the first match. Fischer made an elementary mistake and before he knew it he was one game down. He forfeited the next match because he refused to start on time. We were ecstatic as Spassky went 2-0 up. But it was from the third game that one realized that Fischer was truly the greatest player the world had ever known, at least till that time. He won seven of the next 19 games, dethroning the Soviet champion and the title left the Soviet Union for the first time in more than a quarter century. Fischer became an instant celebrity in the USA. He had a ticker tape parade in New York and accolades were showered upon him. He was singlehandedly responsible for the huge chess boom that took place in the US and all over the world at that time.
Unfortunately Fischer refused to defend his title the next cycle of the World Championships in 1975, again for extraneous reasons and lost his title to Karpov. He subsequently basically retired from the competitive chess world, began to abuse the Americans and the Jews, and moved from East Europe to the Philippines where he allegedly fathered a daughter with a very young woman and then moved to Japan and finally to Iceland and he died in Reykjavík, the city where he had his greatest triumph. He was probably mad by then. The drama did not end there. His estate was fought over, after his death in 1998, by several parties, including the daughter he had allegedly fathered in the Philippines, his nephews and a wife he had “probably” married in Japan. His body was exhumed to provide a DNA sample which proved that his Philippine daughter was not, after all, his daughter and his Japanese wife got all the spoils. Fischer in Iceland during the last phase of his life.
Be that as it may, Fischer was definitely one of the most colorful characters who have ever played chess and was instrumental in causing a huge spike in its popularity. I remember that during the match, we used to religiously follow the moves when they were published in the newspapers and even tiffin times were spent playing chess, something that was unique in our school where usually the lunch hour was the time we spent in letting off steam as boisterously as we could. Not a very savoury person, was Bobby Fischer, but definitely somebody difficult to forget.

Inspector Singh and his murder investigations

2011-11-15T12:07:00.004+08:00

Author Shamini Flint

We are familiar with the fictional detectives of the West. Sherlock Holmes remains the all time favourite, followed closely by Agatha Christie’s finicky Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. There are several others. For some reason, women writers in the UK seem to have particular affinity towards detective fiction; the names of Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and P D James come readily to mind.
Bengalis also have their own homegrown pantheon of detectives, chief among whom are, of course, Byomkesh Bakshi and the beloved Feluda. However among Asian writers writing in English, there appeared to be a singular dearth of fictional detectives, at least I cannot recall anyone offhand. This appears to have been remedied now by the advent of Inspector Singh.
This typical, yet atypical, sardar does not live in his native Punjab, or even in Delhi. He lives in Singapore where he is not the favourite of his senior officers, However they are forced to put up with him and his idiosyncrasies because he is good at his job: that is to hunt down murderers of every hew.
Inspector Singh is fat, he puffs and pants and he is very fond of greasy Indian food, lives in loveless marriage with a virago of a wife, is over fond of a quick beer and wears white sneakers to work. He is turbaned, though he sometimes does wonder why he bothers, especially when the heat gets to him.
He is however also a keen student of human nature, and can quickly get to the bottom of a witnesses story and dissect out the truth, He is dogged, never giving up, even when he seems to be at a dead end. He does not much care about the niceties of the law, believing that murder victims need to be revenged and he does not care too much how he gets to the murderer.
All in all I find him to be a very likeable, believable character.
This character was created by Shamini Flint. Flint has worked a lawyer all over the SE Asian countries, and is well travelled. She used to, and still does, write stories for children. She published her first Inspector Singh book in 2009, when he travelled to Kuala Lumpur to solve “ A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder.”
This was an excellent book. She brought out the rivalry that exists between Singapore and Kuala
Lumpur and the racial and other tensions that exist beneath the surface in Malaysia very well.It is obvious that she is a keen observer and has a very detailed knowledge of the people of South East Asia. Subsequently the Inspector went to Bali where he was mixed up in the Bali bomb blasts. He has no experience whatsoever in counter terrorism, but it appears that one of the supposed victims of the blast was killed by a bullet through his head before the blast. This investigation leads to the unmasking a a terrorist gang who were planning another horrific blast and Inspector Singh gets his man gain.
The third book is based in Singapore where He investigates the murder of a partner of a law firm who has recently remarried a young woman leaving his wife of many years. He is killed in his office, a high security area, where access is only available to his colleagues. This book is also intricately plotted and Inspector Singh again finds his man, though the book is fairly gory with several deaths. This book is the best of the three I have read, a delightful cameo of the Inspector’s wife, who is trying to arrange a marriage, being one of my favourite parts.
The fourth book is now out. Based in Cambodia this book is named: A Deadly Cambodian Crime Spree. I have not yet read this book. She plans to complete the series with a last book to be published next year. This is to be based in India.
Shamini is a good writer. Her plots are excellent, her characters well fleshed out and she never fails to surprise at the end. I think she should not stop at 5 but continue to develop this wonderful fictional detective who has the potential to be one of the big ones in crime fiction.

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, i.e the more things change, the more they remain the same

2011-11-09T17:37:00.003+08:00

( picture from http://sauvik.wordpress.com/2010/07/23/train-spotting-with-mamata-banerjee/)
The new dispensation in Bengal is panning out exactly how I had expected it to. But even I could not imagine that the Chief Minister herself (she is also the Home Minister) would rush to the local thana to force the hapless policemen to free some hooligans that they had detained. According to the newspapers, one of Madam’s brother’s cronies was celebrating Jagadhatri Puja and the best part of all pujos in Bengal is the bhasan, when all organizers can get drunk and create as much nuisance as possible on the streets with little possibility of retribution. And that was exactly what they were doing, bursting crackers outside hospitals and holding up the traffic with their dancing and revelry. The poor policemen of the Bhowanipore Thana who had probably taken Madam’s words to work without fear or favour too literally put a couple of them behind bars which was probably where they belonged. However, when the news reached her, she rushed to the police station and forced them to release the culprits and the revelry recommenced. One day later higher ups at Lalbazar, who are evidently more intelligent than the cops on the ground discovered, that the policemen were at fault after all. The poor dears of the Trinamool Congress who burnt several vehicles and trashed the area were merely expressing their democratic rights. You can read about it here and here.
Mamata Bannerjee’s gamelan seems simple and it is uncannily similar to what the Left Front had done in 1977. “Blame the Centre” always works very well in Bengal. It has a long history harking back to the early years of the last century. This is not to deny that we were sometimes right, but it is difficult to find fault with Pranab Mukherjee or Manmohan Singh if they refuse to take somebody who routinely asks for 100,000 crores and so on while refusing to cut down on expenses on a bloated bureaucracy or even allow train fares ( now unchanged for 8 years) or electricity rates to rise even as the concerned departments collapse. The logic of promising everybody free lunches and then screaming blue murder when asked to pay for it was technique perfected by our commie pals and now Mamata promises to outdo them in this just as she outdid them in competitive populism.
I was recently in India and I asked around informally about what people thought of their new government. The consensus of this entirely unscientific opinion poll was that “she seems to mean well, but, er, nothing much has happened yet.” Now the question is beginning to come to everybody’s minds: will anything happen at all? Or will it be 30 more years of the same thing?
Let us take the question of Health administration. In her early days Madam kept gate crashing into hospitals and ordering officials to admit somebody or give somebody else some treatment or other. In the process one poor guy in BIN lost his job. Now fortunately she has stopped this nautanki at least. However there has been no activity that suggests that there is any attempt to rectify the mistakes that the previous government had made. Every day I read that there will be a new advanced tertiary care unit opened in a remote district. No one speaks of who is to man it, how that manpower is to be trained and how long it will take. In the Ministry of Health website there is a Plan of Action 2011-2015. In the vision statement the first part is “affordable, accessible, sustainable, high quality essential health care for all in 5 years.”There are 10 focus areas, gathered together by some lazy bureaucrat from the documents that are generated by WHO and the Indian Health Ministry. It could also been copied from a textbook for all I know. There is no mention about how these goals will be accomplished, except for platitudes. Some examples:
“ Establish the neonatal care units in secondary/primary care institutions: Purulia
model
• Strengthen the adolescent care services specially ( sic) for girls
• Scale up ‘Save the Girl‐child’ campaign to improve the sex ratio
• Establish additional sub‐centres based on 2011 census
• Implement cashless delivery and free transport at all hospitals
• Establish one functional Basic Emergency Obstetric Care Centre within 6 km radius
and one functional Comprehensive Emergency Obstetric Care centre within 25 km
radius”. No mention of any plans to implement these grandiose plans.
I have not closely examined the other areas, I am sure there are some half-baked projections which have no chance of being implemented anytime in the next 5 decades.
However some rays of light still exist. I am told that the present dispensation is still listening to people other than their own. Perhaps they will hammer some sense into them.
I am pessimistic by nature when I think of West Bengal. I have a sinking feeling that it is business as usual and we have shot ourselves in the foot again.
God bless West Bengal or Paschim Bangla.

Henry Goodeve of Calcutta and his Cooke's Folly

2011-11-02T16:07:00.006+08:00

Henry Ives Hurry Goodeve was one of the doyens of the early years of the Calcutta Medical College. His work in educating Indian doctors in the early phase of the Medical College and his efforts to take a group of them to London for higher studies are fairly well known and documented. What is not so well known is his romantic nature and how, on his return to England he sought out and bought a residence that he had first eyed many years ago as an impecunious young man.
Near Bristol, on the Durdham Downs is an old structure named Cooke’s Folly. This house was built in 1672 By John Cooke, who was the Civic Chamberlain of Bristol as well as the Master of the Merchant Venturers in 1691/2. This body, which still exists, was set up in 1467 and received a Royal charter in 1552 by Edward VI and this was subsequently confirmed by all succeeding monarchs including the present Elizabeth II. The society controlled the Bristol harbor in the 17th till the 19th centuries and as Bristol was a centre where the slave trade originated, it made all the merchants rich beyond measure.

Be that as it may, this Cooke built a house here and one of his descendents, Sir Maurice Cooke, had a son Walter. A gypsy foretold that Walter would die at twenty years of age. To prevent this from happening Sir Maurice had him locked in a tower in the folly and had his supplies sent up to him by a basket drawn up by ropes (the influence of a fairy tale is evident in the story) . However the inevitable happened and when Walter asked for a wood fire on his twenty first birthday, a viper that had hidden itself in the woodpile that was sent to him, bit him and he died, fulfilling the prophesy.
Where does our Goodeve come into this?
It is said that Henry Goodeve came upon this Folly when he was visiting Bristol as a young man on his honeymoon in the early 1830s. He liked it so much that he promised to buy it for himself when he had made his fortune. And this is exactly what he did when he came back from India following his successful stint in Calcutta.
Goodeve was the eldest son of a Hampshire brewer and he qualified in Medicine from the Edinburgh University in 1828. He then trained in London and became one of the leading obstetricians of his day. One story that I had never heard before was that he was disfigured by a shot in the jaw following shooting accident when trying to shoot a tiger in the forests of Chota Nagpur.
I am passing over his Indian sojourn, but he returned to England din 1840/1, with his wife Isabella and they adopted her nephew as they themselves had no children. He returned to Calcutta the next year, but finally returned in 1845 with the Indian students of whom I have written previously. He retired from the Indian Medical Service in 1853 and came to Bristol where he bought Cooke’s Folly thus fulfilling a dream of his.
He participated in the Crimean war where he was one of the senior Physicians of a 1000 bed Civil Hospital in Turkey, but he finally retired in 1856 after the war was over. He lived peacefully at the Cooke’s Folly until he died in 1884. His wife had predeceased him in 1870. He is buried in the St Mary’s churchyard in Stoke Bishop.
The BMJ in an obituary published on the 21st June 1884 said: “HENRY IVES HURRY GOODEVE, formerly Professor of Anatomy in the University of Calcutta, died on Tuesday, at his residence, Cook's Folly, -Stoke Bishop, near Bristol. The deceased was the eldest son of the late Mr. John Goodeve, banker, of Bury Hall, Hants, by his marriage with Elizabeth, daughter of Mr. William Hurry, of Great Norfolk, and Yarmouth, was born in 1807. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he graduated M.D. in 1828. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (London) in 1860, and was also a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, and a retired surgeon of the Bengal Establishment. Dr. Goodeve, who was a magistrate and deputy- lieutenant for Gloucestershire, married, in 1828, Isabella, daughter of a Mr. J. Barlow. He was left a widower in 1870.”

The Unsung Heroes of the Indian Railways

2011-11-01T14:19:00.000+08:00

Travelling by train, especially between major cities, has become little passe for us middle class in today's era of cheap flights. However the Indian Railways still carries 17 million passengers every day, more than the population on an average sized country. The people who keep the wheels running are not acknowledged, and often ignored by the passengers who benefit from their work. Swapan Sen writes about the unsung heroes of the Indian Railways.

I met Nageshwar Rao at a railway level crossing in Araku valley, where my car was held up as a passenger train was passing by. Nageshwar was the gatekeeper at that crossing and was busy showing his green flag to the driver of the train. A cheerful man in his early thirties, Nageshwar had been doing this day-in day-out for the last five years. He had made his little cabin his home with the loving care of a house-owner, converting the little space in-front into a picturesque little garden. A flowering Bougainvillea creeper, Marigolds blooming on little plants and wild flowers from the surrounding hills, gave his little home the ambiance of a blissful heaven. He was away from his family for quite some time and could visit his home once in a year, that too only when a relief is available. Nearby, there was no hospital, no school for children, and no shopping centre. The local village weekly-market was all that was accessible to him for buying his day-to-day needs. Yet, he did not regret doing his job as the gatekeeper of the level crossing. On the other hand, he appeared to be rather proud of his work. His pastime was nurturing his little garden and talking to all those, who stopped at the crossing. A set of red and green flags, a couple of red banners, which is put across the railway track to stop trains in emergencies, a few hand-signal lamps, a can of detonators and a hand-operated magneto-telephone were all that he had to ensure safety of all when the trains passed.

In case you wonder, - what special duty the gatekeeper at a railway level crossing performs, - you have to know that a majority of the railway accidents takes place all over the world at level crossings, despite improvements in safety standards. Trucks and cars are always in a hurry to cross the railway track even when a train is seen to be approaching the crossing. The young heroes of to-day are also at times encouraged by stunts in movies. “The Fast and the Furious” shows Vin Diesel and Paul Walker engaged in a cliffhanger of a drag race that culminates into both the cars flying through a railway crossing narrowly missing being hit by a speeding train. In Bollywood’s Mausam, Shahid Kapoor is shown speeding with his friends in an automobile at an unmanned railway crossing to avoid a speeding train. As a matter of fact, accidents are galore in real-life even at manned railway crossings. As recently as in September, 2011, a driver in Buenos Aires miraculously survived after driving across a railway track - and being hit by an oncoming train. Video footage from the front of the train shows the car driving onto the tracks, despite the level crossing gates being down. The accident comes less than a week after another smash in Buenos Aires involving a city bus and two passenger trains that killed 11 and injured around 200. In that accident, the bus driver also went around the gates at a different level crossing on the same line. On July 19, 2011 at Kirknewton, Scotland, a train almost hit a car, which drove across the level crossing just before 11am. Two ten-year-old boys were spotted racing across the tracks as the barriers came down. Therefore, on a busy road crossing the railway track, the gate man has to remain extremely alert and make sure that the level crossing barriers are pulled down and locked as soon as he receives the message that a train is approaching the crossing.
Well, there are many Nageshwar Raos all over the Indian Railways manning the level crossings on the busy roads, locking and unlocking level crossing barriers, signaling the approaching trains with their flags, yet leading a lonely life away from their families. If a truck gets stuck on the railway track, they swing into action according to the prescribed drill -- placing red banners across the track at predetermined locations, fixing detonators on the rails, the first one at a point 600 meters and the next one at 1200 meters before the level crossing. In the event the train still approaches an obstructed level crossing, he has to sprint towards the train too, waving his red flag during the day or the signal lamp at night, to alert the driver of the train. Not an enviable work, -- with all our love for the nature, neither you nor I would like to remain away from the relative safety and comfort of urban life for such a job.

Nageshwar Raos are not the only ones, who sacrifice a good part of their lives to make the vast Indian Railways run their trains across the country, carrying goods and passengers. You could not have failed to notice the orange-shirted, khaki-clad men carrying rakes, shovels, pick-axes, hammers and the track-gauge measuring bar, raking the ballasts in between the sleepers, hammering the spring clips or inserts into the bearing plates or nudging the rails to make sure that the distance between the faces of the rail-tables is maintained. They too spend most of their lives in places, where basic amenities are practically unavailable. Come rain or storm, they go on their beat to check the track and maintain it according to the prescribed standards so that you and I can travel safely on trains. For most of such gang men at work, there is no senior supervisor accompanying them to continuously monitor that they do their job well. They don't really need one, as they never rest till they complete their job in the allotted section. I have seen such gang men at work in remote hilly tracks in Lumding-Badarpur section of the Northeast Frontier Railway without a supervisor. They left the track as my train approached them and again set down to work as the train passed by.
The Indian Railways do have excellent managers down the line. But the trains could not have run on its 64,000 km network without the sacrifice and hard work of its unsung heroes, the Nageshwar Raos.

The End of Malaria?

2011-10-20T09:42:00.002+08:00

As long ago as 1955, Russell published a book: Man’s Mastery of Malaria reflecting the widespread belief at that time that malaria was on its last legs and mankind would soon be rid of this deadly scourge. Unfortunately, the reports of its demise were hugely exaggerated and over the next few decades, malaria re emerged as a global epidemic and 55 years later, it still kills about 2.7 million people every year.
The parasite that causes malaria was discovered in 1880 and Ronald Ross discovered the lifecycle of the parasite working in small laboratory in the present SSKM hospital in Calcutta, and got the first Nobel Prize associated with work done in Calcutta in 1902. However the battle to tame this disease has been fought with varying success over the next century.
In the initial phase, the advent of powerful insecticides like DDT eradicated the mosquito from several of its haunts reducing the level of disease considerably. Those were the heady days of the Malaria Eradication Programme when it was thought that it would go the way of smallpox. I remember that the malaria programme staff would come at regular intervals to my grandfather’s house in a Nadia village and spray the house and sign on the walls as a token of their attendance. Whenever I visited the house, I would always check the signatures and note that they came faithfully every month.
But with the advent of resistance to DDT, the scenario changed and malaria made a comeback. When we were medical students, it was on its way back, when we became residents, it was triumphantly resurgent.
It is now obvious that the way to control this disease is via the vaccine route. This route is difficult. The principal idea of a successful vaccine is that it should teach the body to recognize the proteins in the parasite and use the immune system against it. Unfortunately the Plasmodium is one cunning animal. It varies the proteins on its surface so that developing a suitable immune response is hugely difficult.
Another difficulty is the lack of money. Malaria is a disease of the poor and deprived. There is no money to be made in developing a vaccine against it and thus the large pharmaceutical firms which drive much of the new drug development these days are singularly uninterested in it. However the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), a NGO in association with Glaxo Smtih Kline have developed a vaccine that appears to be successful in initial clinical trials. The initiative was funded generously by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The present vaccine is a hybrid one, fusing the hepatitis B surface antigen with a recombinant protein obtained from the sporozoite.
A Phase 3 trial has just (today) been reported in the New England Journal of Medicine which reports a cautious success in testing its efficacy. The trial which was multicentre and enrolled 15460 patients has raised hopes that a commercially available vaccine may be in the market by 2014/15.
There are some problems however. The treated group showed a small increase in the number of children suffering from meningitis. This could simply be statistical quirk as it probably is, but it strikes a note of caution. Also, there were more high fevers in patients who had the vaccine. This is explainable and expected because of the immunogenicity of the vaccine.
While this vaccine may be the turning point in the fight against malaria, it is necessary to remember that there are simple and proven methods which have already decreased the mortality and morbidity from malaria. These include the use of insecticide impregnated mosquito nets and chemoprophylaxis.
Hopefully a combination of all these methods will see the end for malaria, more than half a century after we had hoped, but as the saying goes, it’s better late than never.

Foreign Doctors Operating in India

2011-10-18T09:26:00.009+08:00

It has become quite common nowadays to have foreign surgeons operating on India patients during the course of a short visit or when they come to attend workshops. There are many horror stories about the results of such surgeries, when the surgeon has left and complications take place. It is unfortunate that some hospitals use the reputations of the foreign surgeons to entice patients into being operated, carefully shielding them from knowledge of the possible consequences.This issue has been discussed by one of the experts on the legal aspects of these surgeries and I think it is useful to read what he has to say about it. I am copying this form a Yahoo group communication sent to me, as I feel this is of general interest and needs to be better known.

What are the legal aspects of a foreign surgeon coming to India and perform surgery during camps and conferences?
QUESTION--What is the legal status of Foreign surgeon who come for camps and conferences and do surgery here? What will be their responsibility regarding complications/ misconduct? Should they take prior permission from MCI or local authority?

ANSWER—

1—Nobody can treat a patient in India unless he is registered with the medical council here. The foreign surgeons need to take a special short time / temporary registration with the MCI. Operating without such permission would be illegal.

2—Foreigners should not venture illegally in their own interest. If they operate and a police complaint / FIR is registered against them for criminal negligence, they may have problem leaving the country and may even be arrested.

3—Hospitals sponsoring such surgery will be fully liable in law for compensation and also for criminal negligence for allowing an unlicenced person to operate and causing harm.

4—It is also possible, depending upon legal provisions, that a complaint alleging negligence may be made or referred to the foreign medical council where the surgeon is registered and the council may decide upon the complaint and take action against him.

5—If a hospital thinks that getting a patient operated by the foreign surgeon but not showing his name as the person conducting the surgery in the medical records will save the hospital or the surgeon from the requirements or consequences mentioned above, this is a fallacy. It would be deemed as fraudulent on the part of the hospital..

QUESTION--What are the legal aspects of a robotic surgery done upon a patient in India by a foreign surgeon sitting abroad in his chamber?

ANSWER—

1—Since the patient is admitted in India in a hospital under the care of a surgeon who is present in the operation theatre to carry out: pre-operative management; intraoperative management including necessary surgery and coordination and assistance in collaboration with the foreign expert; and, post-operative management, the patient will be entitled to sue the hospital and the surgeon in India for compensation etc.

2—The consent should be obtained after giving necessary information to the patient about the name of the foreign surgeon and the nature of the surgery.

3—Necessary permission from the MCI should be taken because this would involve surgery in India by a doctor not registered with the MCI.

4—The hospital and the surgeon should be adequately covered by professional indemnity insurance.

17 October 2011

This was the opinion of Prof (Dr) M C Gupta, who is a Physician with a law degree and practices as a legal consultant

Perhaps organisers of workshops and patients who rush in at the sound of phoren should read this very carefully and ponder the consequences.

The Maharaja who was a Doctor: the Thakor of Gondal.

2011-10-17T16:01:00.006+08:00

HH Maharaja Shri Sir BHAGWATSINHJI SAGRAMSINHJI Sahib

Gondal today is a municipal town in the district of Rajkot in the Indian State of Gujarat. Today it is a relatively small dusty town on the banks of the Godali River, but it was once the capital of the princely state of Gondal. In the mosaic of semi independent states that made up the Kathiawar peninsula, Gondal was one of the first class states. This meant that the ruler was entitled to a 11 gun salute and in those feudal, status conscious times, this meant that the ruler of this state was curt above the rest, though not, of course, of the exalted heights that many others like Hyderabad, or Gwalior could boast.
This state was founded by the Jadeja Rajputs in 1634 by Thakore Shri Kambhoji, who probably came to this region from the Sind province. Subsequently several rulers came to the throne some of whom added to the state’s area by conquest and other means. In 1947, the state consisted of about 175 villages and the Thakor was now called the Maharaja, thanks to an elevation in the state’s status in 1926.
The first class status came courtesy the 11th Thakore, Bhagwatsinghji, who was a remarkable man. Born in 1865, he came to the throne at the tender age of 4. During his minority, the state was administered by the Kathiawar Agency and then a joint administration was set up which carried out the administration until the Thakore took over permanently.

The Thakore was educated as usual in the Rajkumar College; set up to train the scions of landowning families in the English public school style. It was here that he showed himself to be a cut above the common run of chiefs whose interests were limited to say the least. He was the Head of the school and carried of several prizes in English and other subjects. After his school education he visited the European continent as well as England and Scotland and on his return wrote about his experiences in an unprecedented book “ Journal of a Visit to England 1983” This book was published in Bombay and printed at the education Society’s Press in Byculla in 1886. This was probably the first ever book written by a prince whose usual activities during their European visits were altogether of a different kind.
He was much taken up by Scotland and had already decided that he would return there. This he did in 1886 when he sailed for Europe again and this time he enrolled at the Edinburgh University in the medical faculty and duly qualified as a medical graduate, the first and only princeling to do so. He was subsequently awarded an FRCP in 1895.
It was his medical grounding that probably made him set up a modern hospital in the city of Gondal in 1884. In addition he was responsible for many other improvements including the setting up of a railway industry in this town. He is by a wide margin the best ruler ever to have reigned in Gondal.
The reason why I find him interesting is that he is the only doctor ever among the thousands of maharajas, nawabs, thakors and sundry other rulers of the princely states of India. It appears amazing to me that a Ruler of State, who was, in those feudal days looked upon akin to a god, voluntarily subjected himself to one of the most difficult courses of study and qualified for Edinburgh, one of the leading medical centres of the day. He was active in his profession as well as we find from a reference in the New York Times on September 2, 1897. At a meeting of the British Medical Association held in Montreal in Canada, Sir William Osler the most famous American physician of his day and Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins, speaking on the development of modern medicine on India quoted from his paper “History of Aryan Medical Science” .I was unable to trace the actual paper, but it was obviously well known enough to have attracted the attention of even American physicians. Incidentally Douglas Argyl Robertson ( he of the AR pupil fame) was a close friend of his and Argyl Robertson died in Gondal in 1909 when on a visit to his state.
The Maharaja as he was now named after 1926, died on the 10 March 1944. Some of his palaces, now used as heritage tourism sites remain. Gondal itself is now a backwater, its glory days died with the Maharaja .

The Tourism Gandhi: Raj Basu

2011-10-14T18:07:00.000+08:00

I am proud to call Raj Basu a friend. There are several people in Siliguri who are remarkable, both in their outlook as well as in the sort of work that they have done. Raj is one of them. He is one of the founders of Help Tourism, a Siliguri creation that has now spread wings and was the driving force behind the creation of village tourism and home stay tourism in India. He has been the architect of several innovative tourism products like the Mango festival. He is well known in tourism circles but in my opinion, he should be much better known still. I have written earlier about one of his creations. It is the turn now to tell you about Raj Basu himself.
To do so, I have used an interview format, again for the first time in Reflections. Raj talks about himself, his work and his plans for the future. I only hope that he will be able to complete the revolution that he has started in the tourism scene in North Bengal and NE India.

Raj, please tell me something about your background. Were you born and brought up and have your education in Siliguri itself?
My mother’s father, Santosh Paul was a quite well known personality from Jalpaiguri and was part of the Indian Independence movement. My father’s father, Souresh Chandra Bose was a planter and the tea estate was in the foothills of Bhutan Himalaya.
Born in Siliguri and initially studied in St.Josephs Siliguri and had to shift to Don Bosco as this became a girls school after Don Bosco was started.
Nursery to Class 6 in Siliguri, continuing Class 6 in Oak Grove School Mussoorie as the sessions are different, upto class 10.
11 and 12 at Bongaigaon in Assam and finally graduation with Zoology Honours from Siliguri College.
This was followed by a one year certificate course on wildlife in Kolkata.
Were you interested in ecology and travel from your schooldays and college days or is it a more recent interest? How did it develop?
Yes, childhood days in the forests and hills of North Bengal, Sikkim and Bhutan with my Mother side family, later as scouts in Mussoorie and then finally being educated in the field.
Can you tell me something about Help tourism and its origins?
I was then in the late 80s helping Sikkim with Tourism development, as you must be knowing that Sikkim started seeing tourism from 1985 onwards. In 1990, I realized that Sikkim cannot be developed in isolation in tourism and hence the field should include Darjeeling Hills and Dooars too. Three of us college classmates got together to form Help Tourism in 1991, 15th August. Everyone then laughed at us as they thought promoting tourism beyond Darjeeling-Kalimpong-Gangtok-Jaldapara was ridiculous. The International Youth Travel Confideration in later 1991 at Delhi was a eye opener and added to confidence that nature and adventure can be beyond clubs and used for creating livelihoods through tourism.
How did you come out with the concept of village tourism? As I know it, your team was the first to come out with this concept in North East India, and perhaps one of the first in India as well. Are you happy with how it has worked out?
Yes, we were the first to start with the village tourism movement in India. Firstly, we organized Nature Study and adventure camps in remote areas and then in 1993 September, we started with Pelling in West Sikkim as the first Help Tourism Destination, 1996 Gorumara and Lava and then on to 30 destinations today with more than 2500 stakeholders, growing in multiples based on the model and hence to include all ACT (Association for Conservation & Tourism), a non-profit NGO was created.
We are happy with the empowerment of local people and helping to bring them to a reasonable economical standard, where they have a better living.
We are worried that inspite of our repeated requests to the Central Government and state Governments for a rural tourism or ecotourism policy is being given a deaf ear. We have seen that pristine rural destinations that we have helped to create fall prey to conventional tourism hands and thereby may lose sustainability.
Siliguri and the Dooars are to some extent left behind when there is a flood of tourists to the Hills. Do you agree? If so, what do you feel needs to be done to improve the visibility of this area for domestic tourists and worldwide?
No, the Dooars have not been left out. It is only the way we have shown the trend. Most of the tourists (75% domestic from Kolkata and adjoining areas) look forward to the cold weather in the hills. The views of the snow-capped Khangchendzonga range is a major attraction. Dooars, though we have wonderful forests and several game animals, but we create least opportunity to see them or think for innovative programs beyond the accommodation, food and restricted entries. We need to nurture and create products to be made into easy packages combining with hills. We have seen the Nepal model, Kathmandu, Pokhra and Chitwan.
All that we need a careful thinking and sincerity by the Governments.
Do you think that mass tourism is a correct approach for fragile natural areas like the Dooars or other parts of North east India? Do you believe as some do that high value low volume tourism is the key? Mass Tourism cannot be the right approach as we already know that there is no sustainability and it exploits the local resources.
Even the Bhutan model for ‘High Value, low volume’ cannot be the model, as most of the time the high value product is only controlled by people who can invest highly in tourism and the rural stakeholders, ‘sometimes people below poverty line’ are not owners into the system.
Hence, a strong policy with proper carrying capacity analysis for every destination and a good monitoring system has to be in place. Rest all visitors with whatever economical capacity should be welcome, specially in India where traditions calls for ‘Guests as Gods’.
Tea tourism has a lot of potential, but somehow it has not really taken off. What do you think are the reasons?Again here it is the policy, the bureaucracy in land conversion for tourism from tea has been put in red tape. The present Government has however agreed to let the use of existing bungalows for the purpose of tourism.
Tea Tourism, like any other plantation tourism in the world is bound to be popular.
What are your prescriptions for the development of Siliguri as a tourism destination?
Siliguri is already the tourist transit hub for Northeast India, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh, only that we do not recognize the same.
Actions to attract the 08 Northeastern States and the 03 countries to have liaison offices here is a must to issue visas, permits and information.
Create an Inter- state and inter- country road transport network.
Complete Bagdogra Airport as a fully functional 24 hours civil airport.
Open Nathula immediately for tourism between Tibet (China) and India.
Multiple entry and exit to India to and from the 03 neighbouring countries.
Single SAARC visa and currency (Indian currency is already allowed in Nepal and Bhutan).
Can you tell me something about the festivals that you have organized recently, such as the mango festival, orange festival etc. Have they had the impact you had envisaged?
Yes, all the festivals that we have organized are people’s festival. This is mainly to introduce new tourism products, compliment the existing resources of the area, motivate local people to be tourism entrepreneurs and help awareness about the natural and cultural heritage which needs to be conserved.
The Dooars Frog and Toad Ecofest, Samsing-Jaldhaka Orange Festival, Gitanjali Mango Festival are some of the festivals of North Bengal which we help in organizing.
Several Northeast Festivals like the Namdapha Ecofest, Pangsau Pass Winter Festival, Rey Festival in Arunachal Pradesh are supported by Help Tourism.
Similarly several local festivals in Northeast India, time to time are supported by us to make them part of the tourism activity of the region.
Yes, I think by supporting these festivals and drawing global attention has given pride to the local people and realization of the rich local natural and cultural heritage they possess.
I know that you have a closely knit team at Help Tourism. Can you introduce some of them to us?
We have recently changed the partnership organization to Help Tourism Pvt.Ltd with Asit Biswas and Sanjib Saha as the founder Directors. Asit is a first class first Masters in Journalism and Sanjib a state level sportsman.
The coordinating offices at the distance of about 500 kms each, Kolkata, Siliguri, Guwahati and Dibrugarh is a line that controls tourism experiences both to the North and South from this line and often connects several neighbouring countries as a part of Cross-Border tourism circuits. As th Directors are field workers, these offices too are actively run by a strong team of 17 field workers like Animesh, Shishir, Taposhi, Dipankar, Snehashish, Paras, Sumitra and several members of the Help Tourism family.
Every village site has a coordinationg or community leader who can bring a positive change in the local society and also create good experiences for the visitors.
What are your dreams for Help Tourism in particular and tourism in North East India in general?
This part of the Indian subcontinent was once the richest economically, culturally and naturally. The political division has isolated India’s Northeast, finished the region economically, inspite of being the richest naturally and culturally in the whole of the country. 98% of its border is still shared internationally and only 02% with the country.
We need to open all land borders for tourism and make this a tourism entry to the country India (most of which is more of a water-locked peninsula) from the rest of Asia.
Make Northeast India through Myanmar the meeting ground for tourism with the Malayan Peninsula.
Can we end on a personal note? Tell me something about your family? Do you feel that your hectic travelling schedule causes difficulties in your family Life? How do you cope?
My mother has been my guiding force into being a part of nature, people and cultures. Most of my friends say that tourism is my first wife and you can well understand the problem you may have in the family in regard to giving time and attention. My wife Abhaya, a principal of one of the oldest schools of Siliguri with about 1000 students has however taken the responsibility of the family, which has given me the opportunity to dedicate myself for this work. All friends and relatives have been extremely cooperative in establishing the tourism movement in the East and Northeast India, which is often referred to by the local people as ‘Help Tourism movement’.
I often feel proud when several senior people in Northeast India call me the ‘tourism Gandhi’, I really feel that I have been able to make tourism a people’s movement.
I do not cope, it is like flowing water, I just put myself as it flows.

What A Horrible City ( and I am not talking about Calcutta)

2011-10-13T10:28:00.004+08:00

Bangalore garbage : picture borrowed from the Hindu website

Calcutta is known worldwide as a terrible place. The infrastructure is crumbling, there are no proper roads, and the transport system is in a mess and so on. And how has this impression been carried all over the country and the world? Mainly by the efforts of the Calcutta newspapers, media and the self disparaging denizens of Bengal.
I was recently in Bangalore for a short one day visit. I flew in on a Sunday and out at midnight on Monday. I now often have to visit the city mainly for business purposes. I have always been of the opinion that this most favoured of Indian cities (in the media) is actually one of India’s worst. And this visit firmly confirmed these impressions.
It was raining heavily as we disembarked at the airport, admittedly a nice place, though not really nice enough to be voted the best in Asia or something as was heavily reported in the newspapers recently. The rain poured down as my car took me towards the city and the nightmares began. The roads: even Patna would be ashamed of such roads, potholed, lacking proper lighting, all the markings faded and because of the monsoons, small flood s everywhere. The driving is atrocious, all the cars horns blaring trying to literally push everybody else out of the way and totally oblivious to the plight of the pedestrians.
Near the Manipal hospital where our Bangalore office is, is one of Bangalore’s biggest refuse dumps. There are many close competitors, but I think this one is if not the biggest, definitely the smelliest of them all. A couple of buffalos grazed, having a light supper on the rubbish and the high tech city was shown to be actually an overgrown village.
The current went off twice at night , and the hotel generator came to life, the nise penetrating deeply even into the hermetically sealed room in which I was staying, I wondered what the denizens of neighboring flats thought of it.
I wonder why then, does Calcutta get such a bad press. When we first had load shedding in the seventies, the press from all of India went to town over it. There were special articles in newspapers and magazines, our probashi friends used to condescendingly smile at our plight. Now it turns out that, as usual, we were only doing yesterday what the whole of India is doing today. Delhi’s power hassles are legend; Mumbai starves the entire countryside and even then is unable to provide power to itself and Bangalore, Ha!
I think that the Telegraph in particular owes an apology to all of us. It led us to believe that we inhabit the boondocks of India while everybody forges ahead. That Calcutta is a better place to live in if you do not feel that Malls are the measure of Human evolution., we always knew, but even infrastructure wise, I think it is time that somebody assured us, that the so called bright lights of Bangalore are not so bright after all.
It is time that the capital of the Old Empire strikes back! My vote for Calcutta!

Teesta Floods 1968 (Part 2) By Mr Swapan Sen

2011-10-07T09:07:00.004+08:00

The second and concluding part of Mr Swapan Sen's account of the Teesta floods of 1968.

It was at about 2 AM that we realized that the gauge-stick was no longer visible. The top of the stick had apparently disappeared below the river-water and this meant that the river was flowing over the top of the embankment. The gauge-readers were nowhere in sight. I was worried that the camp of the gauge-readers would be washed away as soon as the embankment was breached. The men in the camp needed to be saved. Mr. Adhikary, got down from the Jeep and went in search of the gauge-readers. The tall figure vanished from the path of the Jeep-headlights as the brave man walked away towards the camp along the embankment. Minutes went by seeming like hours, but he did not come back. At last when I had given up hopes of seeing him alive again, a staggering figure emerged from the darkness. It was Mr. Adhikary. He came up to me, uttered, “I am sorry, Sir, I could not reach the camp. I fell into the river”, and then dropped on the ground apparently losing his senses. My driver, Kanu Mali and I jumped down from the Jeep and hoisted the heavy man on to the back sear of the Jeep. I told Kanu to turn the Jeep in the direction of the gauge-reader’s camp and flash its headlights. After several minutes, that seemed like ages, two figures appeared before the headlights of the Jeep - the gauge-readers. As I asked for the Gauge-register, they said they had not brought the record-book. Mr. Adhikari had, in the meantime regained his senses, and shouted at the gauge-readers urging them to go back and fetch the Register from their camp. The gauge-readers were obviously afraid of losing their lives, as the river-water was flowing over the embankment, but ultimately went back to their camp and fetched the Gauge-register. As they arrived with the Register, Mr. Adhikary snatched it away from them, embraced it as if this was his life, and kept on hysterically crying out, “Now everyone will believe us. This will prove that the Teesta has gone over the top of the embankment”.
I told Kanu to take me to Jalpaiguri, so that I could be with Kamakshyada and other colleagues. I asked the gauge-readers to board the Jeep and together we started for Jalpaiguri, across the road bridge on the other side of the river. As we entered the town of Jalpaiguri, we found that the streets were all water-logged, - possibly inundated by the waters of the overflowing rivulet Karala , which meanders through the town and meets the Teesta finally. Further inside the town, the water-level went on steadily increasing. As we reached the Police Station at the center of the town, Kanu, our driver, declared that the car-engine would stall if we proceeded further towards the Executive Engineer’s Bungalow. I told him to drop me at the Police Station so that they could, if possible, go back home at Moinaguri. They left assuring me that they would not take any undue risk to reach their homes. I found a policeman talking over a phone. I snatched the receiver from him after disclosing my identity and managed to connect Kamakshyada. He asked me to come to his place immediately. I was in no shape to make the half a mile journey to his residence alone. I was then running a high temperature and told him I could not come to his place. He told me to stick to the Police Station, where he would send some men to fetch me. I found an empty table, climbed up and lay down on the table. A few minutes later, the lights of the township went out. I was not also able to use the telephone thereafter as apparently, all the telephone lines too, went dead.
I had lost all sense of time lying on the table, when someone shook me up awake and urged me to come down. I found it was two of our office-clerks, who had been sent down to fetch me from the Police Station. We waded through the waist- deep rapids then flowing through the town and after about 20 minutes reached Kamakshyada’s house. I was terribly excited and told him what I had been through and that the Teesta waters had overtopped the Domohani embankments. He said the Jalpaiguri embankments had also been likewise overtopped and told me to take rest and not to think about what has happened. I lay down on a bed and woke up in the morning only to hear someone weeping. It was Kamakshyada. He was looking out of the windows of his first floor and was watching helplessly carcasses of animals, trees and debris floating by. By then fifty five people from the Colony of the Irrigation Department’s Division Office had taken shelter in the first floor of Kamakshyada’s house, the ground floor having already gone under water. The water available in the overhead tanks of the house was insufficient for the people who had taken shelter. This was therefore required to be saved for drinking purposes only. The water level outside kept on rising till about 11 AM and at 4PM, this receded only by a couple of inches. It was evident we were all going to face serious crisis if the water level did not recede faster.

It was 6th of October, 1968, 3 PM, when help arrived. Mr, Kutty, the Executive Engineer from Siliguri Division, arrived with his men, water, rice and other essentials wading through near waist-deep water and sludge. To us he seemed like God. He assured that all help will be available from his men and we were not to worry any more.

Yes, we got a fresh lease of life but the townsfolk had by then suffered irreparable and inconsolable loss. Their sufferings would continue for many more months and for some, for many more years. After a few days I was able to reach my residential quarters, pack up a few things and leave for Kolkata, where my parents were anxiously waiting for me to come back home.

Epilogue:

The Domohani Gauge-register, that was saved, was unfortunately not available after the flood. My colleague Dipankar Chakraborty, who retired as the Chief Engineer of the Irrigation Department of the West Bengal Government, tells me he did not see this after he was called back from leave and took over charge of the Moinaguri Sub-division again. He says all documents in his office were destroyed by the flood water.

Kamakshyada, my Executive Engineer, is no more. What he told me from his experience that the Teesta embankment would be breached only if the river water flowed over the top, proved to be true.

I do not know if Mr. Adhikary, the braveheart, is still alive. The official records of the river-water levels at the Domohani gauge station will not be available any more to prove him right.

(Acknowledgements:
Dipankar Chakraborty, Chief Engineer (Retired), Irrigation Department of the West Bengal Government
*Flash floods in India- Pritam Singh, A. S. Ramanathan and V. G. Ghanekar)

The Teesta Floods of 1968

2011-10-03T09:21:00.011+08:00

The Teesta Barrage

Yesterday was the 43rd anniversary of the Teesta flood of 1968 which caused untold devastation and changed the landscape of North Bengal to some extent.
In one of my earlier posts ,I had carried a scholarly contribution By Mr Swapan Sen, who was the Assistant Engineer of the Irrigation and Waterways Directorate of the West Bengal Government and was posted in the area at that fateful time.
In today's post he recounts the horrors of that day and recreates the memories of many brave men(including, I must add, himself) who fought against the elements, albeit unsuccessfully to save the people of North Bengal from the calamity. Without their efforts, the death toll and the scale of devastation would probably have been much greater than it actually was.While the Teesta is in the news nowadays for political reasons, nobody really remembers those terrible days. This is an important memoir of the floods of 1968. .

The Teesta Flood 1968- a real life story ( Part 1) By Mr Swapan Sen

It was 2nd of October, 1968. This being Gandhiji’s birthday was a holiday for all but not for me. My colleague Dipankar Chakraborty, who was the Assistant Engineer of the Moinaguri Subdivision of the Irrigation & Waterways Directorate’s Jalpaiguri Division, had gone on leave and I was to look after his work in addition to my own at Jalpaiguri. Rain was pouring down incessantly from the previous evening and at about 8 AM that day, I received a telephone call from our Executive Engineer, Kamakshya Prasad Chowdhury (Kamakshyada to all his junior colleagues) asking me to go to Moinaguri and take a look at the Domohani embankment. So I was on my way to Moinaguri in my Jeep not knowing what to expect.

Reaching our office at Moinaguri, I called for Sri Monoranjan Adhikary, the senior-most and the most experienced Sub-Assistant Engineer of the Sub-division. Together we set out for an inspection of the Domohani embankment which was crossing the Railway Bridge on the Teesta. I had little experience with the behavior of the mighty Teesta. So at the Domohani gauge-site, the spectacle seemed quite frightening. The river water was nearly touching the danger-mark and the river seemed to be endless between the two embankments of Jalpaiguri and Moinaguri. The country-side slope of the Domohani embankment, protecting Moinaguri, had slipped away at places. But these slippages were visibly old. Mr. Adhikary and I called up local men for covering the countryside slopes with gunny bags filled with earth with the hope that this would slow down the seepage of river-water through the embankment soil and prevent further slippage.

The water level of the river kept on rising and towards the evening it went beyond the danger-mark. As dusk set in, it became practically impossible to do any fruitful work amidst incessant rains and darkness. I decided to stay on at Moinaguri and went back to the office. I rang up Kamakshyada and narrated what I had seen at the embankment-site and the fact that it was impossible to work with a handful of local labour during the night and continuing heavy rains. Sensing fear in my voice, he told me not to panic, as the embankments, as experienced by him, are never breached by mere seepage unless the river-water itself flows over the top of the embankment.

I spent a very restless night in Dipankar’s living quarters. In the morning, I set out again with Mr. Adhikary, for the embankment. As I reached the embankment, what I saw was simply appalling. The river water had crossed the extreme danger level and there appeared to be, as we had been taught at our Engineering College, “sand-boiling” along the toe-line of the embankment on the country-side. Seeping across the embankment, the river-water was coming out with sand taken from the embankment along the toe-line through numerous holes. The sand coming out appeared to boil in the river water at the exits. It looked as if there were numerous pipes in the embankment through which the river-water was finding way to the other side. Evidently, if allowed to continue, this would eventually cause sinking of the crest of the embankment. We gathered the village people available nearby and sought for their help in covering the embankment toe with gunny bags filled with earth taken from wherever this was available. Soon other problems surfaced. There were large-scale slippages on the country-side slope of the embankment and the top of the embankment, as apprehended, started sinking at places. As our brave men kept on collecting and depositing earth in their bid to repair the damages, I went down to the village and managed to phone Kamakshyada from the phone of a log-yard owner. He told me, he would try to come to the site but the condition of the protection embankment on the Jalpaiguri-side too was no better and he and other colleagues of mine were busy in protecting that embankment. He also told me to keep in touch with Utpal Bhadra, the Assistant engineer at the Head Office, who had been deputed by him especially to monitor the situation, maintain liaison with the District Administration and the Army for help.
It was clearly a losing battle we were fighting. We neither had the man-power, nor enough useable earth or sand nearby to cover the leaking toes and depressions of the crest of the embankment, that had started appearing in the upstream reaches of the embankment. The top of the embankment had also narrowed down in places due to slippages and it was hardly possible to access the upper reaches of the embankment in our Jeep any more. The rains were not also showing any signs of letting up. I conveyed to Utpal from the log-yard owner’s phone that we had to somehow save the people as a breach in the embankment seemed imminent. He said the Army has been asked to help and I should remain at the site till they arrive.

At about 12 Noon, Government Officials, including the Sub-divisional Officer, Jalpaiguri, arrived on the spot to ascertain the situation. Asked what I thought about the condition of the embankment, I told them that the prognosis was bad as the water was still rising and the embankment could give way; the people in nearby villages should therefore, be alerted and evacuated. I made the same request to a local political leader, Mr. Chikur Chanda, who had also arrived at the spot around the same time. I told him the village folks were not ready to leave their homes in the incessant rain and that they were to be convinced.

At about 3PM, the rise in the water-level seemed to slow down and the water-level, apparently reached a peak. This brought some solace to our anxious minds but little did we know what was lying in wait. With the dusk setting in, we had to return to our office. I was in rain-soaked clothes throughout the day and needed a change of clothes. I slipped into my nightdress, which was the only dry apparel then available with me. Mr. Adhikari too, went home for a change of clothes but came back to the office in an hour’s time. Just then, a radiogram message arrived from Teesta Bazaar and we learnt that the level of water at the Teesta Bazaar (Anderson Bridge) gauge site was rising rapidly, more than 6 inches in 30 minutes. The status reported was that of about 6 PM. We consulted our gauge-records and previous history of time taken by the river-water to reach Domohani from the Teesta Bazar. What we found, took our breath away. The water level at Teesta Bazaar had reached an all-time unbelievably high peak (20.4 m above the extreme danger level*). The time the river water takes to reach Domohani from the Teesta Bazaar gauge site, we found, was 6 to 8 hours. This meant the water level at the Domohani gauge site would reach its peak between 12-00 hours that night and 2 AM, the next morning.

We set out again for the embankment. As we reached the gauge-site of the embankment at about 12-00 hours, we found that the water level was just about a foot below the top of the embankment. It was dangerous to proceed further upstream along the embankment in our Jeep. To reach the log-yard owner’s place we had to pass below a Banyan tree, which had, by that time, started leaning on the embankment partially blocking our path. We managed to reach the log-yard in the village along the side-road leading off from the embankment. I could call up Utpal over the log-yard phone and he told me to stick to the site as the Army was to arrive to take charge of the embankment. Before I left, I told the owner of the Log-Yard to call up his neighbors and move to safe zones as quickly as possible. Apparently he was unwilling to leave his home and said he had no place to go amidst such incessant rain.

I had no alternative but to go back to the gauge-site and wait for the Army to arrive. This was a relatively safer zone as the gauge-site was close to the crossing of the Railway embankment and our protection embankment and this crossing was at a level several feet higher than the top of the embankment. On the way to this crossing I summoned my gauge-readers from their camp, rigged-up on a wooden-platform, by flashing the headlights of my Jeep and told them to be alert and stick close to the water-gauge and the Railway line. We turned our Jeep focusing the headlights on the water-gauge, very little of which was sticking out above the river water by then. We kept on waiting in our Jeep and trying to read the water-gauge with the Jeep’s headlight from time to time. (to be continued)

Leonhard Euler and the seven bridges of Konigsberg.

2011-09-30T10:09:00.005+08:00

Kalingrad Today

The Russian city of Kalingrad is a seaport and lies in a Russian enclave bordering Poland and Lithuania. In the eighteenth century this city was in the Prussian empire and known as Konigsberg. This city was founded in 1254 by a group of Teutonic knights under the order of King Ottoker II. After the Second World War, it came under Soviet rule and was renamed after Michael Kalinin one of the heroes of the Russian Revolution.
Konigsberg had a special geographic peculiarity. It lay on 4 separate landmasses, two of which were islands and the other two the banks of the River Pregel. One of the islands, Kniephof lay at the junction of Pregel and the Pregolya river.

During the heyday of the Prussian empire, the four landmasses were connected by 7 bridges. These bridges were named the Blacksmith’s bridge, Connecting Bridge, Green Bridge, Merchant’s Bridge, Wooden Bridge and High Bridge. The outer landmasses were connected by 3 bridges each, while the central landmass was connected by no fewer than 5 bridges, A very popular pastime of the residents of the city was to device a method by which one could start one afternoon from a single point, and cross all the bridges only once and return to the starting point. This proved to be astonishingly difficult, so that the puzzle was modified to allow return to any point, but to cross all the bridges once only. This too was found to be difficult. Popular legend goes that several people claimed to have performed this feat over drinks of an evening, but failed to demonstrate it during the daytime when challenged.

Leonhard Euler was a Swiss born in Basel in 1707. He was trained for the Church by his clergyman father, but quickly moved to his favorite mathematics. Known as the greatest mathematician of the eighteenth century he was one of the most prolific scientists ever and has over 500 publications.
Euler, then working in the Academy at St Petersberg, came to view this problem as a distraction, a minor puzzle which was entertaining, but hardly the stuff of real mathematics. However he postulated the problem in such a way that he laid the foundation of the science of graph theory and his proof was one of the first contributions to topology.

Euler postulated the problem in a unique way. He drew a figure where he used points to denote the landmasses and lines to denote the bridges. He reasoned that anyone standing on one of the land masses would have to have a way of getting on and then off. Thus if he was to enter the mass and leave it by a different route, there must be an even number of bridges leading to the land area.

However as the figure shows, the four segments of Konigsberg have an odd number of bridges, three of them have three and one has five. Thus, he showed, it was impossible to cross the bridges without a second crossing of at least one of the bridges.

This simple and elegant proof became, as I have said, the foundation of topology which has many important applications today. From the construction of the London underground map, which with 4 levels and 270 stations could have been indecipherable, but thanks to Euler’s mathematics is easy to understand, to the intricacies of the internet, connecting one computer to another all depend on the mathematics created by Euler. A true example of a pure mathematician solving specific practical problems, and in the process, discovering an entire new branch of mathematics!
(Incidentally, only three bridges have survived to this day. Two were replaced by a modern highway and two more were bombed by the British during the Second World War.)

A picture of one of the surviving bridges.

The May revolution and Mamata's report card.

2011-09-22T13:23:00.004+08:00

( An old picture of Writers' Buildings.)

Now that the Madam (of Bengal) has completed about 4 and a half months on the job, it is possible and fair to evaluate her doings and prepare a tentative report card. While it is manifestly unfair that we compare her work for such a short time with the activities of our commie friends over three and a half decades, it is not more that she had let us to expect when she promised to change the face of West Bengal in days.

What has she accomplished?

The first thing that she has accomplished is, that by simply sitting in the CM’s chair she has showed those of us (including, I am not ashamed to admit, myself) who had thought that the CPM could never be shifted from Writers’ Buildings that we were wrong. With implacable courage, unshakeable determination and an iron will, she showed us, and I quote “Impossible is nothing”. And how! If the verdict was less than the total rout that we witnessed in the May revolution, I am sure that the Opposition would be up to all sorts of tricks, including disruption of normal life and unnecessary strikes and protests over trivial matters to make life hell for the administration as well as for everybody in Bengal. As it happens they are still lying low, all their dadas are still wondering what hit them and creating chaos is not exactly in ether minds as they can expect a zero response from the public if they try anything.

A second thing that she has done is that she has, if not solved, at least contained the Gorkhaland agitation. The previous dispensation appeared to be content to let things slide, perhaps hoping for a Bengali backlash which might fetch electoral dividends. This evil policy had been successful in the past, when Ghising’s agitation led to a campaign to “save Bengal from a second partition” and then as soon as the elections were won, Ghising became the favoured friend of the CPM until the poor man was unseated unceremoniously a couple of years ago. And who know that a singing contest would lead to such momentous consequences. Certainly not Subhas Ghising!

A third thing that she has done is that she has , at least until now, controlled her tongue and not spoken in haste to repent at leisure, which was an enduring feature of their political style earlier. Most of her pronouncements have been surprisingly sensible and she has reined in some of the less cerebral members of her flock.

One thing that she has not been able to do is to bring back the rule of law. Even at the height of Left Rule there was no law in West Bengal. There was an order of sorts imposed by the mandarins of Alimuddin Street, but law was conspicuous by its absence. Unfortunately this continues to be the case. The shenanigans in Haldia have been outrageous, and some reports that I have received from North Bengal also point to a situation where we have exchanged old goons for new. Since she obviously does not gain financially from these scams as her predecessors did, I think it is possible for her and imperative for the health of her administration that she puts an end to them immediately.

Another thing that she should curb immediately is her habit of making promises. She has promised tertiary care facilities in all district hospitals. In a situation where even secondary care is difficult to maintain even in major districts, such a promise is meaningless. Her blithe scattering of 500 crore, 200 crore promises also fill me with a vague foreboding. Everybody, including herself knows that she can never pay for all this. So are we in for another round of “ The Centre is depriving us” fun and games? Will Bengalis fall for this as second time? Blaming everybody but themselves for their troubles? I doubt that the younger generation at least will fall for this sort of twaddle, even if it does contain a grain of truth. It is more likely that there will more disruptive agitations which will lead to nothing.

I wonder why our leaders do not realize that what we need the most is a return to simple lawful ways. If we simply implemented all the laws that we have, instead of making new rules and promises every day, there will be a huge difference in the polity and then private investments will do most of the rest. If we cannot repair roads, cannot ensure that doctors attend to their duties, clerks demand bribes for simple day to day transactions, what is the use of ministers and the Didimoni rushing from place to place, promising the stars and the moon? All we want is a piece of earth.

I hope that Mamata will realize that she needs is to bring normal, non partisan, honest governance back to Bengal. If she can deliver on this, the people of Bengal will forever be in her debt.

Saving Natural Resources: Sasi in Indonesia.

2011-09-19T12:04:00.003+08:00

Marking the sasi area

Leave the pinang alone!
Leave the coconuts alone!
Leave the bananas alone!
Leave the trochus there!
From the mountains to the coast,
Leave it all alone!

Ritual chant, Saparua island, East Indonesia.

Most societies which are dependent on the bounty of nature for their survival have community based systems which preserve these natural resources. The Eastern islands of Indonesia, particularly the Makalu group of islands (1029 in number) have such a community management system for natural resources. This is the practice of sasi, a traditional system that has protected the fish, coconuts and other natural sources from times immemorial.

Sasi can be loosely described as a prohibition on the harvesting of certain natural resources in an effort to protect the quality and population of such resources whether it is plant or animal. It is also an effort to maintain the social structure of the society by equally distributing among all local inhabitants the benefits from the surrounding natural resources.
In this system, the tribal elders regulate the use of natural resources. The rules of sasi are decided at a meeting of the village council. Members of the clan who will enforce the sasi are chosen , they are the kewang who are empowered to implement the sasi rules. The kewang are also responsible for punishing or disciplining citizens violating these rules.
This practice consists of a set of ritual prohibitions to harvest resources doing the period of sasi. This prohibition, interestingly, is placed not only on the shared resources of the community, but could also be placed on the person’s personal property. Thus, if sasi is in place, one cannot even pluck the coconuts from one’s own plantation.

As one account has it “ During the imposition of sasi, the rightful landlord is permitted to enter his own garden in order to clean up the grounds and to gather the already fallen coconuts. He must take them to the village marketplace where they are branded and stamped with the sign of his clan group and stockpiled”.

A similar prohibition was placed, on occasion, on the sea and its resources. During the sasi period the clan members were prohibited from fishing in certain areas for some periods of the year. This was particularly used during the periods when tuna and lomba fish (a type of sardine) yearly returned to the mouths of rivers in April and May every year. A branch is placed on the reef that the fish frequent to signal the prohibition. When the fish have all swum into the reefs, the sasi is lifted and communal fishing parties now can partake of the bounty of the seas. In recent years, sasi has also prohibited the use of fine nets to protect hatchlings. The ritual chant was used to signal the start of the sasi period and the ending was often indicated by the beating of drums.

This system was rigorously, and one might say pretty ruthlessly, implemented. If the owner violated sasi on his own land, he was fined, but if someone had the temerity to steal from a neighbor’s land during this time, he was stripped and made to walk all over the village, accompanied by drummers and a gaggle of children and had to keep calling out “ Don’t steal like me” while he walked. It is little wonder that sasi was seldom defied.

In recent times, however, the practice has lost ground. As population increases and pressures on the land and sea increase, the elders are forced to open sasi more and more often, thus the main purpose of sasi which was to allow the natural world time to recover from the depredation of man, is lost. In fact in recent times, the practice is in danger of being completely abandoned. The results are likely to be devastating for nature and will probably result in the end of a way of life that has endured for centuries .

I am indebted for some of the information here to Charles Zerner’s chapter in Nature and Orient, (OUP, Delhi, 1998)

The " Other " 9/11

2011-09-12T11:02:00.003+08:00

( This picture of Salvador Allende has been borrowed from Flickr)
There has been an outpouring of sentiment, and rightly so, for the victims of the 9/11 tragedy in New York on the occasion of its tenth anniversary. Islamic militants, sitting in caves and safe sanctuaries in Afghanistan and Pakistan, planned and executed a dreadful plan which led to the death of thousands and has set off some intended and some unintended consequences that have consumed many more thousands of lives and look set to consume many more before the fires are doused.
However of those of us with less longer and less Americoentric memories, 9/11 was the anniversary of one more tragedy, again planned with chilling callousness and for gain in distant offices and executed by local mercenaries. That tragedy, for various reasons, did not achieve iconic status (American lives being much more precious than others), but it still stands as one of the biggest criminal acts ever committed for ideological reasons.
I refer of course to the coup in Chile against the Salvador Allende government. This terrorist act was planned in the air conditioned offices of the CIA, okayed by the then denizen of the White House, Richard Nixon, another crook and well known to us in India because of his infamous attempt to save his clients in Pakistan from the results of their folly in 1971. The coup that they planned and financed killed thousands of innocent Chileans and unleashed a brutal dictatorship that made a mockery of the then ongong cold war against the undemocratic Communist regimes.
Salvado Allende was elected to the Presidency on the 4th September 1970 as part of the Popular Unity coalition of socialist groups. They set in motion policies that were seen as threat to the entrenched economic interests of the elite backed by the beacon of democratic values, the US of A. Initially, constitutional means were used to topple this inconvenient government, but when these failed, and only fuelled more support for Allende, the CIA got into action, masterminding the coup that led to the first 9/11.
Allende died bravely defending his position, and in a few days, Pablo Neruda died. There is much reason to believe that he was killed by the US backed Army forces. The US and its free press tomtommed the victory of Freedom and Chile descended into a hell from which it only emerged after decades.
I sometimes wonder whether the sanctimonious columnists who we have seen in full cry in the past few days really feel that only American or West European lives are important, or have they really forgotten history. Leave them aside, what about our communists? They hold demonstrations and write fiery articles at the drop of a hat. Why did they not even write a letter to any of the Indian newspapers, reminding us of this terrible day?
9/11 has terrible connotations, but they do not all relate to 2001. We should also remember the other 9/11 and pay homage to the victims of American terrorism.

Tales of exile and the partition of Bengal.

2011-09-02T10:21:00.006+08:00

This picture of the Paddy fields of Bengal is borrowed from Wikepedia.

Nessun maggior dolore,
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Ne la miseria.

There is no greater sorrow
than to recall our times of joy
In wretchedness

In one of his collection of essays, “The Imam and the Indian,” Amitav Ghosh has quoted Dante from his Divine Comedy as the title of a moving essay on the pain of exile. Not the sort of exile that we face here in Malaysia, , brought on by ourselves, in the lure of a better life or some better working conditions, but of those men and women who have to leave their land and their memories behind as they are forced out of land which they considered their own. The plight of many Palestinians, and nearer home, the Kashmiri Pandits are apt reminders of this terrible fate that can fall on men and communities.
As the Partition generation dies out in West Bengal and wherever the East Bengali diaspora dispersed, the memories of East Bengal slowly fade from our collective memories. Today it is Bangladesh, to our eyes, a land of turmoil and the source of a never ending mass of refugees who flee what was till the other day, at least in the collective imaginations of those who had to leave it, a land of milk and honey.
To those of our generation, born safely in West Bengal, but possessing relatives who had to leave the eastern part of Bengal during partition and afterward, these lines strike a chord. All my maternal relatives were from the East and had to leave their native soil. Some managed to sell their lands and got out before things became really bad. Others were forced out later fleeing with little but the clothes on their backs. It is politically incorrect nowadays to remember those days, and to tell the truth about the torture inflicted on innocents. However, I do not remember any bitterness in the recollections of my grandparents and others as they talked of what they had left behind. They however mourned the green fields, the rivers and the Chandi Mandaps of their native villages; not for one day, or one month or one year, but as a constant refrain throughout the rest of their lives.
The story of their suffering has been recorded in literature and some marvelous films, but the silent pining for the scenes of their childhood, adolescence and youth has, to my mind never really been recorded; and now, perhaps never will.
Perhaps that is all for the best, there is no use recalling past glories unless you are willing to do something to revive them. We Bengalis have been justly blamed for a nostalgia for the past that far exceeds our desire to do something in the present. However reading of the pain of exile of other peoples reminded me that in our lifetime, our people suffered a pain that was terrible and unexpected. Till the mid sixties, many lived in the hope that it was somehow reversible, but after the 1965 war, the hope died. When Bangladesh became independent not long afterward, and this again evoked the memories of a common language and common heritage, the bond was gone forever, I do not think anybody was too keen on reviving past associations, except as citizens of India.
One of the best evocations of that longing that prevailed in the fifties and early sixties was, of course, Annada Shankar Roy’s famous poem, “Teler Sishi Bhanglo Bole” later sung by Bani Ghoshal to Salil Chowdhury’s music. You can hear it here and perhaps shed a tear for the Bengal our fathers lost.

Bridge on the Untamed Teesta

2011-08-29T09:22:00.011+08:00

This is the first guest post I am carrying in my blog. I am grateful to Mr Swapan Sen for contributing this valuable article to Reflections. I only hope that it will be only the first of many more to come.

The fateful night
On the fourth of October, 1968, at about 2-30 A.M., a lone Fire Brigade bell desperately tried to wake up the sleeping town of Jalpaiguri, located on the bank of the river Teesta in North Bengal, India. It had been raining incessantly for the last 72 hours and the rivulet Karala, which meanders across the town to meet the Teesta, had inundated most of the low-lying areas of the town, unable to discharge itself into the already overflowing Teesta. For two days and nights, the townsfolk had toiled hard hanging on to their houses, hoisting their belongings to the safety of the wooden ceilings, sleeping on makeshift beds arranged on table-tops and collecting and saving water and food. Now they were dog-tired and lost in blissful sleep. The warning toll of the Fire Brigade bell therefore, went unheeded and tragedy struck the town.

The Teesta, by then, had breached the flood protection-embankment of the town, 4 km upstream at a point, where it met the broad-gauge Railway approach-embankment of the railway-bridge No. 40 on the Teesta. It found a new course through the township destroying and carrying away anything that came in its way. By 2-25 A.M., its raging waters entered the lone powerhouse of the town cutting off the electricity and in another 10 minutes all the telephone lines too, went dead. By 5 A.M., the entire town was under 8 to 17 feet of water and about 1000 of its inhabitants were either dead or missing. Across the Teesta, on the other bank as well, the disaster was equally devastating at the hamlets, Moinaguri and Domohani. The river had breached the flood-protection embankment along the other bank too at about the same time, 700 ft upstream from the point where the railway embankment had met the flood protection-embankment.

An act of God yet an avoidable disaster
As the flood waters receded, a one-man inquiry-commission, held, apart from identifying failures in disaster management, unprecedented rainfall in the Himalayan catchments of the Teesta primarily responsible for the floods and the deluge. Technical experts of the Irrigation and Waterways Directorate of the West Bengal Government, however, arrived at somewhat different conclusions about the contributory causes of the disaster. The protection embankments of the Directorate had been breached by the river water flowing over their crests on either side immediately upstream of the railway bridge. They felt that the rise in the water level beyond the tops of embankments was due to the unusual afflux of the river water caused by restriction of the waterway at the bridge and incorrect design of the guide-bunds for the railway-bridge

The bridge site

The broad gauge railway bridge across the Teesta, in 1968, had 13 spans, with clear waterway of 150 feet between the piers. Thus the waterway provided for the bridge was about 1950 feet only. The railway line was made to reach the bridge-abutments, separated by the guide-bunds deep inside the river waterway, across the Irrigation & Waterways Directorates’ protection embankments. At the bridge-site, the protection-embankments were separated by a waterway nearly 12000 feet wide, before the bridge was constructed in early sixties. About 1100 ft downstream of the Railway-bridge, was the PWD road-bridge spanning across the same guide-bunds common for both the railway and the road bridge. The river discharge was guided through the narrow waterway between these guide bunds, constructed usually by the Railways as per the age-old design of Mr. Bell. The sketch given below approximately illustrates the site conditions of the bridges.

The restricted waterway
During the rainy seasons, whenever there was heavy rainfall in the hilly catchments, the Teesta used to flow above the danger mark for the protection- embankments, upstream of the railway-bridge after its construction. This was because of the afflux of the river water caused by restriction of the waterway to about a fifth of its original width between the protection embankments.

The Bell-bunds

The combination of the short Bell-bunds (guide bunds), the bridge approaches and irrigation department’s protection-embankments used to produce still water pockets upstream of the railway-bridge and accentuate the afflux further close to the points, where the railway-bridge approaches crossed the protection embankments.

The design of the Bell-bunds was not obviously adequate to streamline the entire discharge of the river, when it was in spate, into the narrow waterway of the road and the railway bridges between the bunds, without causing abnormal afflux upstream.
The railway-approach embankment was protected with a set of spurs on either side of the bridge. These spurs, were hardly helpful to contain the afflux and only used to generate still water pockets, during the monsoons. The sketch appearing above shows the effect the combination of embankments and protection structures used.

Assuming irrotational flow, an approximate flow-net showing the streamlines and equi-potential lines at the bridge-site are shown in the following sketch.
The total head of water at points "X” near the crossing of the railway and the protection embank-ments and at ‘Y’, just upstream of the Bell-bunds, used to be the same, the points “X” and “Y” being located on the same equi-potential line (shown in red). At the point “Y”, the velocity of the river water used to be quite high (near maximum) and that at points X, where there were still water-pockets , the level of water would be much higher than that at “Y”, due to conversion of the velocity head into static head.

Upstream, the unrestricted velocity of the river discharge near the point ‘Z’, when the river was in spate in October 1968, was estimated to be about five to six feet per second. With the bridge waterway restricted to about a fifth of the full course-width of the river between embankments, the maximum velocity of the discharge between the guide-bunds of the bridge, assuming uniform depth of the river water between the embankments, could go up five times, that is, to about 25 feet per second.

At ‘Y’, the velocity "V" could have been close to this. The equivalent static head "H", of this velocity, given by VxV/2g, even after application of energy flux correction factors, could still be close to about 9 feet. Thus the points "X” and "Y" being on the same equi-potential line, the water level at "X" would have been higher than that of "Y" by this head "H". An approximate plot of the gradient of the river water between "X" and "Y" is shown above. As a matter of fact, it is at these locations, marked by "X", the river water had spilled over the crests of the protection embankments due to the abnormal head-up of the water causing the eventual breaches.
Incidentally, the HFL, as last officially recorded, was 288.5 ft but actually this was much higher as the river water had, in fact, flowed over the crests of the protection embankments. The crest level of the embankment itself was 290.00 feet (above MSL) at the water-gauge site of the Moinaguri-Domohani protection embankment.

Need for river training at the bridge sites
The devastating flood of 1968 came up with a few lessons for the engineers to learn:

• Restriction of waterway for bridges should be done with extreme caution specially for rivers in hilly catchments where there are chances of flash-floods due to extremely heavy rainfall and blockage of waterway due to landslides. A few additional spans may cost more, yet this may be beneficial in the long run.

• There is an absolute need to control the afflux which may be caused by restriction on the waterway and avoid formation of still water pockets as had happened in the case of the Teesta bridge.

A viable solution

Provision of extended guide-embankments, as shown alongside, to streamline the flow of the river, instead of the traditional Bell bunds, could be a viable solution, especially where the natural waterway has to be restricted under compulsion.
Alternatively, where protection embankments exist along the banks of the river, river training spurs may be provided to cause “Siltation” in between the spurs and guide the flow into the waterway of the bridges. Laboratory-study of the river hydraulics and it's possible behavior when the bridge is constructed, may help immensely to finalize the designs of the major bridges.

Epilogue
After the 1968-flood, 7 additional spans were added to the Teesta bridges and the waterway now is about 3000 ft. One of its guide bunds has been relocated but their shape, however, has remained unaltered.

About the author
The author graduated in Civil Engineering from Bengal Engineering College, Shibpore, in 1966. Before joining the Indian Railways Stores Service, he had a two-year stint as an Assistant Engineer in the Irrigation & Waterway's Directorate, Govt. of West Bengal, India. He was posted at Jalpaiguri and is one of the few living eyewitnesses, who was present at the bridge-site in October, 1968, till the mighty Teesta spilled over the protection-embankments and breached them right before his eyes.

Eyewitness to the Teesta Floods , 1968.

2011-08-28T10:42:00.005+08:00

The pictures are of Mr Sen, the first one taken last year and the other in 1969, just one year after the floods.

Whatever else my blog may or may not have done, it has brought me in contact with several men and women whom I would never have met, or been in touch otherwise. Among others, it brought me in close touch with Nipon ( of Niponwave and Bong Buzz), Pranab ( Of Septicemia) , and many others .
My latest friend (if I may be so bold as to call him that) Is Swapan Sen. Mr Sen was brought up in North Bengal, passing his Higher Secondary Exams from Jenkins School In Cooch Behar. Founded in 1861, this school recently completed 150 years and is still one of the better schools in the region.. In 1961, Mr Sen went to study Civil Engineering in the Bengal Engineering College in Shibpur, today a Deemed University. After passing out, he worked for a couple of years as Assistant Engineer of the Irrigation and Waterways Directorate of the West Bengal Government and was posted in Jalpaiguri. He was transferred to Calcutta in 1969, but soon left to join the Indian Railways Stores Service where he worked until retiring in December 2005. He now stays in Dum Dum Park.
He commented on an old blog post Damming the Teesta and that is how we got in touch. He now can afford to concentrate fulltime on his passion for wildlife, the mountains and nature, which fits in neatly with my interests as well, so I am sure this is just the beginning of a fabulous friendship.
He was one of the eyewitnesses and perhaps the only living one now, of the havoc caused by the Teesta on the 2nd October 1968. Seeing the Karala River today, barely flowing through Jalpaiguri town;, it appears to be more of a drain than anything else; it is difficult to even visualize its destructive avatar that year. The Karala drains into the Teesta and with the Teesta in high spate; it flooded Jalpaiguri with disastrous effects. The hospital was one of its victims and the present hospital was built away from the Karala to prevent a recurrence.
1968 remains in the collective memory of many of us, just as 1988 does, because it was one of the years of massive flooding in West Bengal. The 1968 flood occurred mainly in North Bengal. I remember it vividly as one of my uncles was posted as a police officer in Cooch Behar at that time, if I remember correctly. I was pretty young, but I clearly recall the tension that gripped our family as there was no news from him for almost a week and horror stories began to appear in newspapers. Communications were primitive in those days and all telecommunications had been disrupted by the fury of the floods. The death toll was horrendous. As Mr Sen recalls, about 2000 people lost their lives in that fateful morning.
Mr Sen was one of the brave men who tried their best to stop the river from breaching its embankments at Domohani ( Moinaguri) , but had to flee for his life when the water started flowing over the crest of the embankment, and starting a wave of destruction that became a legend, its horrors being recounted again and again by those who lived through its devastation.
I have invited Mr Sen to share his experiences and his take on how such tragedies could be prevented and he has sent me a wonderful write up which I plan to upload very soon. He brings his experience and expertise to analyse what happened and whether it could be prevented. I hope to have it online by tomorrow. For the nonce, thank you Mr Swapan Sen!!

Of Anna Hazare and Sundry Other Gandhians

2011-08-18T15:29:00.003+08:00

Gandhians leave me cold. One possible reason for this is the essential hypocrisy that masks their actions. Gandhi himself was a dictator and singularly intolerant of differing views. He knew best and woe betide Bhagat Singh, Rajguru or Subhas Bose if they refused to fall in line. Nothing that unusual about this, most leaders tend to think they know best and sometimes they do! However what I object to is Gandhi’s sanctimonious behavior in letting loose his minions to undercut and destroy his opponents while he himself pretended to be above all this political machinations stuff.
Subsequent Gandhians have had all his failings without any of his redeeming features. Take Morarji Desai for instance. This gentleman, despite glaring proof that his prohibition policy was a complete failure in the erstwhile Bombay State persisted in it giving rise to a culture of law disobedience that had disastrous results. And even so, would he admit being in the wrong? God forbid, a Gandhian could never be wrong!! His subsequent shenanigans as the Prime Minister are still green in the memories of those of our generation. Suffice it to say, that his principal contribution to the polity was to promote the use of urine drinking as a panacea to all ills.
Jayprakash Narayan was another one. In some ways, his endeavours were a lot like Anna Hazare’s After the Opposition lost the elections in 1972, he came forth to challenge the elected governments and started a culture of mindless street protest that has been the bane of the Hindi heartland ever since. He spawned Laloo Yadav and I think that says it all. His principal achievement was to show us the hypocrisy of the Gandhian fighters against Indira Gandhi’s emergency for what they were: power hungry men of straw.
Vinoba Bhave, on the other hand, was the Sarkari Gandhian. He could be relied upon to support the emergency, and all other misdeeds of the ruling Congress party. His semantic contortions in support of Mrs Gandhi during the emergency can still bring a smile to even hardened skeptics like me.
And now we have Anna Hazare. Known for running a semi fascist feudalism in his home Taluka, where he has people disagreeing with his prohibition and other policies beaten up while maintaining a beatific and distant smile on his face, ( in this he is a true Gandhian, a real chip off the Mahatma block), he has now appointed himself as the guardian of public morals in India. Not to say that something was not needed. But as I said, I am skeptical of Gandhian activities by nature. And true to form, I got a mail from an acquaintance of mine, belonging to the trading community, who is organizing a morcha in his favour in Siliguri. This gentleman is well known for his corrupt business practices and has skirted the law on many occasions with the help of his political connections, is today decrying corruption. Some of my doctor friends who think nothing of accepting bribes from pharma companies to prescribe drugs are in the same boat. They are going to fight corruption with Anna Hazare!
The problem, of course, is with the government. As I had said in an earlier post, Manmohan Singh needs to retire. If the crown prince is not yet ready to take over, maybe he can give Pranab Mukherjee a chance. He deserves it fully poor fellow. As it is he does most of the work that the Prime Minister should be doing. His latest tough man act in arresting Hazare and then pitifully negotiating terms with him has made him, justifiably, a laughing stock. What prevents him from taking some action on the issue of corruption? If it is Sonia Gandhi’s political compulsions that are staying his hand, he should have the guts to come out and say so. If that is the case and he is silent, he is as corrupt as anybody else.
The problem of corruption is a huge issue. However the middle class in their fit of morality has not thought it proper to assess their contribution to this. If they are willing to take bribes (and every middle class person barring only a miniscule few is willing to do so if they have the chance), on what grace do they accuse the political class? It is time, I think, to remove the mote from one’s own eye. Stop bribing, stop taking bribes, including dowries, one of the worst form of bribes possible. Then come out in the streets to oppose corruption. Until then Just shut up and that is what they are going to do anyway if the government really gets tough by using tear gas and an occasional firing as it would have done long ago if the protesters belonged to the underclass.
And the final word is to the Good Doctor, Manmohanji, let’s go home. It has been a good innings. We are grateful for many things, but you have now long overstayed your welcome.

Independence Day

2011-08-15T13:16:00.004+08:00

It is fashionable for the media in India to put on long faces and bemoan the difficulties that the country may be going through especially during the run up to Independence Day and Republic Day. As my readers may have noticed I am an incorrigible optimist and I feel that over the past 40 odd years that I have been following political events, I have never failed to read a host of articles that prophesied doom for India during this time. Unfortunately for the Doom sayers and fortunately for all the rest of us, India is alive and doing reasonably well, thank you very much.
When I first started reading newspapers in the sixties, they were saying that we would starve to death in a few years time. Far from it, we became self sufficient in food and it became possible for us to waste foodgrains by keeping it rotting in inadequate storage areas. Then in the seventies, corruption was going to make us collapse and we were lost as a democracy, Unfortunately (for them) we overcame all that and since ’77 we became an even more vibrant democracy with a veritable explosion in both English language and vernacular media outlets. In the eighties we were going to break up into tiny little bits, but OMG, we did nothing of the sort. In the nineties, the economy was doomed and religious wars would be the death of us. On the contrary, the nineties and the first decade of this century became India’s growth decades which changed the face of India. Now, we are again faced with the specter of corruption which, they say, will finish us as a stable entity. I confidently predict that we will do nothing of the sort and will muddle through as usual.
There are problems galore, there always were. But I think that by now, 64 years after Independence, the media would realize that none of these problems are going to bring us to our knees. We will shout, yell, lose some opportunities, and grasp some others, win the World Cup and promptly, lose our No 1 ranking in Tests, but we will go on until we reach the top position in the world. This is our destiny and we will reach there. I may not be around to see it, but my daughter and all my students definitely will.
So this 15th August, just ignore all the Cassandras, and celebrate the Sara Jahan Se Accha, Yeh Hinduatan Hamara!

Cardiac Surgeons and Their Feuds: DeBakey and Cooley

2011-07-26T17:22:00.004+08:00

The second half of the twentieth century was the heyday of cardiac surgery. Inspired by many pioneers working mainly in Europe and North America, new techniques of surgery and even more importantly, new techniques of bypassing the circulation of the heart and lungs, led to a flowering of cardiac surgery which is one of the most important triumphs of medicine.

Cardiac surgeons are famously said to be extremely egoistic. I had a teacher who insisted that they had every right to be so, as they were the only humans who could stop and restart the human heart at will. The only other entity who had this ability, he said, was God. Two such egoistic surgeons who were legends in their lifetime and will remain so for centuries to come were Dr Michael De Bakey and Dr Denton Cooley.

Dr DeBakey was a decade senior to Dr Cooley. He graduated from Medical School in 1932 and spent time in the Army during the Second World War rising to the post of Colonel. He developed many techniques and was the first to do several operations which are now standard in cardiac and vascular surgery. He operated until he was well into the nineties and died just short of his 100th Birthday.

Denton Cooley is fortunately still with us. He too has many firsts to his credit and is known for his legendary skills as well as his boundless ambition and this perhaps led to one of the most famous feuds in medical history that lasted for half a century. Their relationship started in 1951 when Cooley began to work in the Baylor College of Medicine where Debakey was the Professor of Surgery. They together developed instruments and techniques of aortic surgery which became standard and in fact saved De Bakey’s life when he needed urgent aortic surgery about 5 years before he eventually passed away. Their relationship had cooled by the 1960s when Dr Cooley moved to the adjacent St Luke’s Hospital where he set up the famous Texas Heart Centre. Dr Cooley was not really a very modest person. It is said that once a lawyer had asked Dr. Cooley, during a trial, if he considered himself the best heart surgeon in the world. “Yes,” he replied. The lawyer then asked “Don’t you think that’s being rather immodest?” Dr. Cooley responded. “Perhaps, but remember I’m under oath.” Dr DeBakey was perhaps the greater surgeon, but there was really little to choose between the two. In the fraternity of cardiac surgeons, though, Dr De Bakey is a much more prominent figure.

Be that as it may, the 1960s was when cardiac transplants came to the fore. Dr Debakey had obtained a US federal grant in 1965 to develop an artificial heart. He implanted a partial artificial heart in 1966 in a patient. However while his laboratory had developed a prototype heart, DeBakey was reluctant to implant it in humans until it was fully tested in an animal model. This artificial heart which was developed in Dr. DeBakey’s lab at Baylor, with funds from the National Heart Institute was a half-pound device of plastic and Dacron, linked by plastic tubes to a bedside control console.

This was the time when new “firsts” were being reported on a weekly basis and Cooley was not interested in waiting for the niceties to be observed if it meant losing the first place. In an infamous incident, he lured away Dr Domingo Liotta, a artificial heart technician in the Baylor lab, who also wanted to be a first and he either brought with him, or quickly fashioned an artificial heart which was identical to that being developed in Baylor and Cooley implanted it to much acclaim on April 4 1969.

The patient was a Mr Haskell Karp who was kept alive for about 72 hours with this device and then implanted a donor heart which kept him alive for another 36 hours. This was the time when proper anti rejection drugs had not been developed and most heart transplants ended in deaths within days if not hours. It is a shameful period in cardiac surgery when the egos of surgeons took control of their common sense.
Anyway, Debakey was understandably outraged at this and he filed a complaint, though he later refused to testify against Cooley in the investigation that followed. Cooley was forced to resign from Baylor and it was obvious to all that he had allowed his ambition to get the better of his common sense.

It was since then that these two great surgeons refused to acknowledge each other’s presence. Despite the fact that they operated practically across the road, they had no communication until the famous day in 2007 when a 87 year old Cooley invited DeBakey to a meeting of the Denton Cooley Cardiovascular Research Society on October 27 to present him with a lifetime award and the two old men kissed and made up (No, they did not actually kiss). However even at the height of the feud they maintained a healthy respect for each other’s abilities and when asked by a journalist whether he would allow Dr DeBakey to operate on his heart, Cooley replied ‘Yes, if he didn’t know it was me”.

Thus ended the most famous medical feud of the twentieth century, which had gained so much notoriety that it made it to the cover of the Life magazine. Debakey died two years later, leaving behind a glorious legacy that cardiac surgeons will remember with gratitude.

Pablo Neruda, Poet and Man

2011-07-22T11:22:00.004+08:00

On July 12, one hundred and seven years ago, a boy was born in the small Chilean town of Parral some 350 km south of the capital, Santiago. His father was a small time railway employee and his mother, who was a teacher who died very soon after his birth. This boy, Ricardo Eliezer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto, was to become one of the twentieth century’s most famous and well loved poets, Pablo Neruda.

Neruda was lifelong communist. He became one during his stint in Spain during the Civil War and clung to his ideology despite the infamous revelations of later years. This led to many estrangements, most famously from his longtime friend, Octavio Paz, another legendary poet, who could not stomach his admiration for Stalin. While today it is easily possible to see Stalin for the monster he undoubtedly was, it was not so plain to people in the days of the Second World War when Stalin and communist Russia stood basically alone against the all conquering Germans. The British had drawn back to their island and drawn up the drawbridges and the Americans were still debating what to do until Pearl Harbor made up their minds for them.

Neruda, during his long life always spoke out against oppression and for the common man. This led to his first exile when he had to flee from his native Chile over the mountains to Argentina in a journey fraught with risk. He has described it marvelously in his Nobel Lecture, which he ended with hope “ I come from a dark region, from a land separated from all others by the steep contours of its geography. I was the most forlorn of poets and my poetry was provincial, oppressed and rainy. But always I had put my trust in man. I never lost hope. It is perhaps because of this that I have reached as far as I now have with my poetry and also with my banner.” He then quoted Rimbaud to say “In the dawn, armed with a burning patience, we shall enter the splendid Cities."

There is one marvelous story about him that I remember reading in an essay written on him by Sashi Tharoor. Once, in the sixties, he was addressing an audience in South America when he was asked to recite one of his most famous poems. Neruda started, but he faltered as he did not remember the entire poem. Suddenly one person rose up in the audience to recite the next line, and he was followed by another who recited the next, and soon the entire audience stood reciting the poem from memory, as the poet himself stood mum.

Neruda died 12 days after the coup that toppled his friend, Salvador Allende’s government. As all of our generation remembers well, it was a CIA inspired coup that “saved” Chile by crushing democracy with the full knowledge and assistance of the leaders of Freedom Inc in Washington DC. It was one of the biggest crimes that the governing class of the USA has committed; it will rank not much below their dropping of nuclear weapons in Japan. There is every reason to believe that the government of Pinochet had a hand in his death. It was rumoured that he had been poisoned, though understandably in those times, this was never proven. Pinochet, I am glad to say, had to spend much of his dotage under house arrest He unfortunately escaped the hanging which was his due.

There are many poems of his that come to mind. I will quote one poem, which brings out why so many of his generation were attracted to Communism.

“You have given me brotherhood towards the man I do not know
You have given me the added strength of all those living”
“You showed me how one person’s pain could die in victory for all
You have made me indestructible, for I no longer end in myself. “

I wonder if the idiots who call themselves communist in West Bengal have ever read these lines?

But when we talk about Neruda’s poetry, what lingers most is his love poetry, he has written some of the most sublime romantic poetry ever written.
I leave you with his incomparable Sonnet No XVIII

"I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.”

Happy Birthday, Neruda!!

Vaccination And Its Opponents

2011-07-19T09:51:00.003+08:00

Caption:
"My little Boy, Sir, died when he was only Two Months old, just after he had been Vaccinated." "How very sad! Had he been Baptised?" "Yes, Sir; but it was the Vaccination as carried him off, Sir!"
From Punch, September 19, 1891

For some reason, vaccination has always been the target of the ire of rabble rousers. This was true in the 19th century when smallpox vaccination was targeted by many ill informed activists and is true today when a band of people with motives which are not really obscure anymore try to perpetuate fears regarding vaccination and in the process subject children and their families to unnecessary risks with often fatal outcomes.
Edward Jenner introduced cowpox vaccination a safe alternative to the then prevalent smallpox vaccination in the last decades of the eightieth century. Its benefits were quickly recognized and this resulted in the Compulsory Vaccination Act in 1853 in the UK. This legislation required parents to vaccinate their children by the age of 3 months, with the provision of fining the parents if they did not do so. This measure was thought necessary because previous attempts, in the 1840s to start a voluntary vaccination movement failed because of the widespread antipathy to vaccination.
There were cogent reasons for this antipathy however. The vaccine that was available was of poor quality. The serum that acted as its vehicle was of animal origin and sometimes collected in less than the most hygienic ways. Vaccination often resulted in two weeks of morbidity which was difficult for the poor to accept as they could not work during this period.
The methods used by anti vaccination activists were the familiar tools used even today. Anecdotal cases of complications were held up as proof positive of the danger of vaccination while conveniently forgetting the alternative, which were the small pox epidemics of 1857-59, 1863-65 and 1870-72. There were activists who even did not disdain from claiming that doctors were spreading the disease by vaccination in order to make money. A similar approach is seen even today.
However by the close of the 19th century these fears were largely addressed, but even so the legendary Sir William Osler had to publicly challenge the anti vaccination brigade to send 10 vaccinated and 10 non vaccinated people with him to the next smallpox epidemic location. He also offered to pay for the funerals of those who would die in the epidemic as he confidently expected those not vaccinated to do. There were, needless to say, no takers. Just like our politicians who want everybody to be educated in their mother tongues except their own children, the anti vaccinators were too wary of taking up the challenge when their own safety was at stake.
The early part of the second half of the twentieth century was the heyday of vaccines. The development of vaccines for many diseases which were sure killers, like polio, tetanus, and many others led to the development of universal vaccination programmes which eliminated many diseases from societies which implemented them. The greatest triumph of vaccination was of course the elimination of smallpox which was one of the greatest medical achievements of the twentieth century.
But of late there has been a vigorous campaign to discredit several vaccination programmes. Based on anecdotes, strong campaigns have been launched, particularly against the MMR vaccine and several others causing a drop in vaccination rates as parents, now not exposed to the horrors of the disease are taken in and stop vaccinating their children, allowing diseases which had been eliminated in several countries to make a comeback. The first such campaign took place in 1982 when a television programme led to a debate on the usefulness of DPT vaccine and led to many countries dropping the vaccination. The comeback was not long in coming. The rates of pertussis ( whooping cough) rose up to a 100 times that of the rates in other countries and the vaccine was again back in favour as parents watched their children coughing out their lives for the lack of vaccination.
But the latest scare was generated by the now celebrated article in 1998 in the Lancet by Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues. (This article has since been retracted.) The paper used dubious science to claim that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR) caused autism in some recipients. The science on which it was based was shoddy and the data fudged, but the damage was done. There was a widespread reaction against this vaccine and there was marked fall in the use of this vaccine in many developed countries, leading to measles outbreaks, like the one in Ireland which caused over 200 unnecessary cases and three deaths. This pattern was followed in several countries where the scare had led to a reduction in vaccination.
Later investigations were even more horrifying. It transpired that Wakefield was employed (at a healthy 150 GBP per hour) by a solicitor Richard Barr to support a speculative attack on vaccine manufacturers. This contract was kept a secret while Wakefield pretended that all he had in mind was the welfare of the patients. It was also not disclosed that just days after the press conference that heralded his now infamous article in the Lancet, Wakefield got together with some business partners and the authorities of the Royal Free Hospital where he was then employed, in order to develop products based on his (fraudulent) claims, including a replacement for the widely used MMR vaccines.
The Royal Free Hospital however insisted that his pilot study be proved in a large scale clinical trial. Andrew Wakefield was found to be strangely reluctant to conduct any such trial. He preferred to highlight anecdotes rather than run a large scale epidemiological trial which would settle the issue once and for all. By now the scales were falling from the eyes of even those in the medical academia who had believed his claims, and he was kicked out of the Royal Free in 2001. In March 2004, 10 of the 13 co authors of the 1998 pare retracted their claims. The courts also rejected such claims and the hope of making money from the suffering of parents of autistic children evaporated. Wakefield lost his medical registration in 2010 and the Lancet retracted the paper thus ending the entire sordid episode.
The damage that this episode has done is considerable. The parents of autistic children have been convinced that their children were affected by vaccination and this has led any of them to fight futile court battles at vast expense. One can understand the motivations of the parents of such unfortunate children, and one can sympathise with their plight. But the campaigners who, often as a profession, led these campaigns should be exposed as the charlatans that they are and brought to book. Andrew Wakefield may have got his just deserts, but what about the others who in the pages of the social media particularly try to still perpetuate such myths. It would be laughable, if the results of such activities did not threaten to derail public health programmes in many countries, particularly poor ones which can ill afford these disruptions.

Birds in My Garden

2011-07-13T10:08:00.003+08:00

The Brahminy kite is a fairly common raptor in India as well as in South East Asia. In fact the island of Langkawi, one of the favourite destinations for holiday makers in Malaysia is named after this bird which is also claimed to be the original for the Garuda, the mythical bird which is the state emblem for Indonesia. A coastal bird, its range extends from the Indian subcontinent up to New South Wales in Australia. However it is mainly in Coastal Southern India, Sri Lanka and South East Asia that it really has its home.
The reason why I brought this up is because there is a pair of these kites roosting in a tree just below the verandah of my flat in Bukit Jalil. Just across the wall is one of the greens of the Bukit Jalil Golf Course and this hole is ringed by some really majestic trees. We had noticed a pair of kites coming to this area occasionally, but it was late last year that we really noticed that they were roosting in a tree about 150 yards away from my verandah. Now, over the past few months they have shifted base to another tree closer to my verandah, so close that if I Jumped , I would be able to land on top of that tree ( though with disastrous consequences both for me and the tree).
What I was amazed to notice is that the pair of birds enter the tree and leave it at practically the same time very day. I look upon it a show as good as anything that the KL Bird Park can put up as I stand on my verandah in the morning and the evening. At 7 AM give or take 2 minutes, the first of the pair leaves its roost and flies across to the opposite side of the green and sits atop another tree for a few minutes, before flying off into the distance. Just 3 2 minutes later, the second bird now emerges, and this one takes off immediately to the West towards a clump of trees that I can see in the distance until I lose sight of it.
In the evening the show starts at about 7.25 Pm come rain or shine. Initially one of the birds comes to rest in the tree on the opposite side of the green and is sometimes, though not always accompanied by its mate. At exactly 7.32 PM, give or take a maximum of 1 minute, first one and then the next flies across the course to the tree in which it will roost. The evening timing is so exact that I sometimes find it difficult to believe that body clocks can be so accurate.
The maximum variation that I have seen in their movements isi in the mornings, when on one occasion the second bird did not leave its resting place till 7.09 AM, but in most cases, they have left their roost by 7.05 AM. In the evenings, sometimes they make a few circles of the golf course before they zero in on their favourite tree, but in the mornings they waste little time in setting off, it is difficult to avoid thinking that they are going off to work and have no time to waste!.
There are a host of other birds , sunbirds which occasionally visit my verandah, several species of Mynah, swifts, pigeons and sparrows to name a few. The black headed oriole also makes an appearance occasionally, its yellow flashing about the trees like a jet of colour. Someday, I have promised myself I will seriously try to catalogue these birds. In the meanwhile I just enjoy the show!
( The two pictures were taken my daughter when she was here, one is the two Brahminy kites I refer to, the other is of a sunbird ( I cannot say which exact species) which comes to my verandah of an occasional morning.)

The First Artificial Organ Transplant

2011-07-08T11:57:00.005+08:00

The pictures are of an embryonic stem cell, Claudia Castillino and Professor Macciarini

There is a report this morning of the first artificial organ transfer in humans. Prof Macciarini who was earlier with the Hospital Clinic at Barcelona but now works in the Karolinska Institute in Sweden did this pioneering surgery. The world is familiar with what he had done earlier for Claudia Castillo. Claudia was a Columbian immigrant to Spain who developed a tracheal stricture following a tubercular infection. She was breathless and was unable to work and look after her children. Dr Macciarini used a donor cadaver trachea and denatured it of its proteins and then used stem cells to grow the tissue back on the graft. This made it compatible with the patient and he then operated on Claudia replacing the diseased trachea and giving her a new life. This was in 2008 and it created a sensation when this report was published in the Lancet that year.
The good professor has continued his work to a logical conclusion. The need for a cadaveric donor was a severe constraint in making this sort of surgery available to all comers. So in a logical advance, he has now transplanted a graft made of artificial material, impregnated with tissue derived from stem cells. The patient, a 36 year old African Ph D student Andemariam Beyene who now works in Ireland, was suffering from a golf ball sized tracheal tumor which threatened to suffocate him. Dr Macciarini was assisted by the University College, London where careful scans of the trachea enabled engineers to craft an exact replica of the trachea made out of glass, and this was then impregnated with stem cells obtained from the bone marrow of the patient to produce a trachea which was them implanted.
The achievement is mindboggling to say the least. Not only has the first artificial organ been produced, the successful transplantation has also put to rest any concerns about its compatibility to the human tissue. It now only remains to check on its durability, that is how long it will last and whether there will be any complications.
It is safe to say that this will rank as one of the important achievements of this century in the field of organ transplant. It is also a huge boost to the stem cell industry as it proves that stem cells can be used to replace many tissues of the human body and successfully re create an organ. This was shown earlier in a cadaveric transplant, but the fact that his can be done also in an artificial construct will give a new dimension to the work going on in this area.
It is too early to say, but his may be the breakthrough that will spawn many other organs Imagine a scaffold in which you transplant renal cells to create an artificial kidney. No rejection, no need for expensive anti rejection drugs and no fear of infection. Imagine the ultimate Holy Grail, a heart that beats, all put together with some plastic and the magic of stem cells.
The twentieth century may be the century when the science fiction of a bionic man is turned to a reality.
Hats off to all involved in this project!

Growing up in Trengganu

2011-06-29T16:11:00.003+08:00

This book has been written by a veteran Malaysian journalist Wam Hulaimi who initially wrote it as a blog under the name Awang Goneng. I had seen a review of this book in one of the newsletters here, but it was only when I got my hands to the book that I realized what a gem it is.
The blog is here: http://kecek-kecek.blogspot.com/

The writer was born and brought up in Terengganu, a state in the eastern Coast of Malaysia. Even today it is known for its laid back atmosphere, the lovely beaches and the Islamic fervor of the population. Incidentally their football term recently won the Federal Cup just across the road from where I live at the Bukit Jalil stadium. I have visited Kuala Terengganu, the capital sometime back. I wrote about it as well, you can check it out here.
http://akdcts.blogspot.com/2010/02/kuala-terengannu.html

This book is something else. Written as series of small essays, it covers all aspects of the Terengganu of the author’s childhood, reminding us of the people, the food, the language and the culture, all of which are (were?) unique and it s evocative of a way of life that has probably passed away, never to return.
The author is a foodie. His loving descriptions of the food that he enjoyed during his Terengganu days will evoke the taste buds of every reader and for a Bengali the descriptions of the fish and their myriad preparations are a particular delight. The book starts with a description of his Mother’s lempok, a cake made from durian. I must admit that I am not enamoured of the durian, it reminds me of our ripe jackfruit, something that I can leave severely alone, though I do know many who would kill to get it. Durian enjoys a similar status here in Malaysia where it has been crowned the King of fruits. Anyway, the lempok, “made from fresh durians thrown in a thick mass in a Terengganu brass pot and stirred and stirred with bonding and sweetening ingredients- and coconut milk perhaps-to a beautiful crust”. This lempok was hung from the rafters of the house and there it stayed, waiting perhaps for a suitable occasion for celebration. I remember vessels, (haris we used to call them in Bengali) wedged among the rafters in my grandparents’ home. They usually used to contain grains and vegetables kept there for future use.
There were Bais in Terengganu, the local lingo for “Bhais”, from UP, no less. This particular man was the man who sold breads and rotis to the families in Terengganu. His name was Abdul Kadir, “He had a thick moustache that wagged even as he spoke. His rotund body he squeezed through the frame of our front gate as he bent his knees slightly to avoid toppling his head basket at the overhanging bar.” The description is so perfect that I can clearly see him, a man perhaps originally from the Agra region, now exiled to Terengganu where he had found a better life.
I loved the name given to express trains in Terengganu; they called it, in Malay, “the proud train” the reason being that it would not stop at every station to collect the waiting passengers. A more apt description would be hard to find.
There are marvelous descriptions of the Id festival, the high point of the life of the people of Terengganu. One description of how is father used to buy severely practical new clothes for him during Id reminded me how we used to get new shoes for the Pujas, just as the Bata advertisement said, but they used to be the Naughty Boy shoes that we wore to school every morning. Life was the same everywhere.
In one particularly lovely essay, he points out that the essence of Malay life was the kampong, the village, which contained their memories, their culture, their way of life and their songs and prayers. When oil money came to Terengganu, the kampongs in Kuala Terengganu were swept away to create the shop lots that are today’s new town, and with it was lost the way of life that made Terengganu special. A nostalgia for that never never land is present throughout his writing and it leaves a bittersweet taste of longing that pervades this book.
I recommend it wholeheartedly, please read it.

The Death of Cleopatra

2011-06-17T15:32:00.003+08:00

I always enjoy reading articles in the medical journals that deal with medical mysteries. The mainstream journals do not usually publish them thought eh venerable BMJ is one exception. Some of the speculations can be very thought provoking and some positively outlandish. Sometime ago I came across one such interesting article published in Toxicology, a Web Med Central journal.
The author, from the New York University, has speculated on the death of the famous Egyptian queen Cleopatra. Our image of Cleopatra is based on the film portrayal By Elizabeth Taylor when she was famously rolled out of a carpet onto to bemused presence of Julius Caesar. Allegedly he fell in love with her at first sight and the rest is history. However history apparently did not happen quite like that, this incident which was the talking point of the film, apparently never happened. But the facts are reasonably certain, that she was the queen of Egypt and she had an affair with the leader of one of the superpowers of the world in those days ( Julius Caesar) and had a child by him. Later she also enjoyed the favours of Mark Anthony who died by his own hand because he thought she had betrayed him. It is said that she subsequently committed suicide by embracing the bite of an asp which was smuggled to her in the mausoleum where she was imprisoned, in a basket of figs. This is a romantic story, but the author has tried to investigate whether it is true.
The story goes that after the bite, Cleopatra maintained her famed looks and it was not apparent to Octavius’s baffled soldiers how she died as the bite mark was not visible. This has led to endless speculation that she may have been bitten in the mouth and everybody must have seen pictures of Cleopatra kissing a snake which transfers the poison to her so that she dies a pleasant death.
The truth, however, is that it cannot have happened this way. The Asp probably refers to the Egyptian adder (Cerastes vipera). This snake would not cause a quick death and would leave considerable swelling of the body. By most accounts this did not happen. This we are left looking for a snake that would kill almost instantaneously and leave very little by the way of bite marks and leave the body relatively unscathed. The only snake in the area that meets these exacting criteria is the Egyptian cobra ( Naja haje) . This snake was part of the mythology connected with Egyptian royalty and found a place in the front of the headdress of the King. It also represented the goddess Wadjet who was the mythical mother and midwife of the king’s family. Thus it is well within the bounds of possibility that Cleopatra would use this snake for her final exit.
The cobra could be the culprit, but here another problem arises. It is a large snake and it is difficult to imagine it being smuggled in a basket of figs, unless, of course the guards were of the type that we see in the Asterix comics. And where did it go, asks the author, when the guards did rush in after the event? It was too large to have disappeared unseen, according to him. This point however is moot because snakes can and do conceal themselves very cleverly in very small patches of cover and it is quite within the bounds of possibility that the snake was hiding under some cranny unseen by its pursuers.
The authors have suggested that Octavius himself had her removed by having poison given to her and put about these stories. Very probable, but how terribly prosaic.
Whatever the truth, the original story is romantic and if we have to substitute a cobra for an asp, then so be it!
Check out the article at http://www.webmedcentral.com/wmcpdf/Article_WMC00502.pdf

The Annapurna Circuit and Related Matters.

2011-06-16T14:52:00.004+08:00

In the Puja holidays of 1999, I together with my inseparable comrades during my mountain trekking expeditions, Swapan Chakrabarty, Subrata Chowdhury , the late Asit Bose and three others completed the Annapurna Circuit. It was one of the finest walks that I have ever undertaken and I have walked many trails in my time. The walk started in Besisahar, a few kilometers short of Pokhara on the main highway to Pokhara from Narayanghat or from Kathmandu and then it took 14 days to complete the circuit, the high point of which was the crossing of the Thorang La ( 5416 meters) to descend to Muktinath and then to Jomsom along the gorge of the Kali Gandaki.
The walk was strenuous, but not unduly so, the stages were manageable as we slowly vended our way up some of the finest mountain scenery in the world. It is possible to see the entire Annapurna range, as well as the Dhaulagiri, and the Macchapuchare. This was when I was still working at the NRS Medical College , but this journey was to change my life.
In Jomsom, I realized that since the walk had taken a couple of days more than I had previously anticipated, it would be necessary for me to take a plane to Pokhara if I was to get back in time for my joining date. It was difficult to get a ticket, the planes there are always packed, but fortunately (for me) the wife of the local representative of the Royal Nepal Airlines fell ill and I saw her and prescribed some medicine which I could dispense form our stock. The grateful official provided me with a ticket in the next day’s flight. In the airport I met Dr Amitabha Basu, Pathologist, at present working in the West Indies.
Amitabha was then working in the MCOMS Pokhara and he took me to see the college as well as the Principal Dr Nagra. I fell in love with it at first sight and next year my wife Susmita and I joined there to spend what have been the happiest years of our lives. I am a trifle boring while raving on the topic of Pokhara, so I will not say anything further, but I still thank the god in whom I don’t believe for making Amitabha and me cross paths. It has changed my life forever. I still have nightmares when I wake up imagining I am still in the West Bengal Medical Education service, surrounded by the dirtiest wards in existence, the surliest and most incompetent nurses and the ubiquitous minions of the Coordination Committee of West Bengal State employees. Thank you so much Amitabha.
Be that as it may all this was triggered off by a news I read recently that a motorable road is now being built to Manang , thereby reducing the need to walk by more than a week. It will now be possible to reach the Thorang La in two days walk. The BBC article where I read this bemoaned this development. It has been claimed that it will put so many people dependent on the tourist traffic out of business and how it will spoil the pristine area that we used to trek thorough in the past.
I cannot deny that I too felt a pang of dismay at the thought of jeeps roaring past those beautiful hamlets where we spent so many nights, gazing up at the brightest stars on earth. But I do not subscribe to the Western notion that the Nepalese hill people will have to subsist on a very seasonal traffic which might be cut off at the whiff of any disturbance at the other end of Nepal. I see no reason why the denizens of these mountain hamlets should not aspire to send their children to schools in the Valleys below, or reach there faster for medical treatment. However roads often mean the destruction of the environment in a large scale. This must be guarded against, but to stop the development process is like trying to ask the tide to return.
However I am glad that I did the Annapurna Circuit when I did, maybe if any of you have plans; rush before it is too late. For those who could never have walked for 250 km in that terrain, wait a while, you will be able to make it with much less effort very soon!

Obedient Wives In Malaysia

2011-06-13T09:48:00.003+08:00

When I was in India I noticed some Indian papers reporting the setting up of an “ Obedient Wife’s Club” in Malaysia. Set up by a fringe Islamic group Global Ikhwan, (which had the previous distinction of setting up a Polygamy club as well), this club with a membership of 800 was set up amongst fanfare and a guest list of 1000.
When I got back last week, I found out some more about this group and it was quite entertaining to hear what they had to say. One of the leaders of this group who is allegedly a doctor, Rohaya Mohammad, gave several tips to women to ensure happy and satisfactory married lives. These women were special too, more than 30% of them were in polygamous marriages which is , while not prevelant, is not really uncommon in Malaysia as in many Islamic countries. However, Non Muslims would also be welcome to join this unique club ,we were assured.
: A good wife is perceived to be prim and proper – you just take care of the children – but not much is emphasised on fulfilling sexual needs of the husband. If he needs sex, obey him,” she exhorted her membership. In fact she further explained and I quote ““You must satisfy your husband. A good wife should be a whore in bed.” Later, responding to the barrage of criticism that rained on her, she explained that she did not mean that women should turn into street corner tarts, but “high class prostitutes” How they would attain these arts was something that mercifully she did not explain. I had a vision of good Malaysian girls preparing for marriage by delving deeply into copies of the Kama Sutra!
Fortunately the response of the civil society in Malaysia has been to dismiss her as somebody beneath contempt. There has been criticism, mostly from Malaysian Women’ organisations which have suggested that she is dragging women back to some medieval concept of a good wife which can have no relevance today, and in fact is deeply insulting to Malaysian womanhood.

Tagore was the greatest literary figure of all time

2011-05-18T10:45:00.004+08:00

We Bengalis are sometimes accused of being inordinately proud of our cultural accomplishments and in particular, of raising Rabindranath Tagore to the level of an unchallengeable icon. I was fortunately in Calcutta and Siliguri during the run up to the 150th birth anniversary of the Poet and managed to catch many of the programmes on TV and elsewhere organized as a part of these celebrations.
Reflecting on Tagore, I realize that he was exceptional. I am fortunate that I can read English and am reasonably familiar with English literature. I do read Spanish literature in translation and have a nodding acquaintance with most major literary figures. It was Tagore’s misfortune (and our enormous good fortune) that he wrote in Bengali. This made him inaccessible to most of the European audience which moulded opinion and he was not translated as well as he should have. For this, he himself has to shoulder some of the blame as his own translations left something to be desired. However in recent times with better translations, his work is available to more audiences in the English language.
But coming back to the point I was making, I have read many poets and most of the great ones. Tagore is a far greater poet than any of them. Yeats is claimed to be the greatest English language poet of the twentieth century. In my book, he bears no comparison to Tagore’s myriad minded genius. There is no emotion that Tagore has left untouched and there is no part of life that he has not enriched with some of the most marvelous poetry ever written. He has told tales, he has composed prayers, he has written some of the most sublime poetry of love and separation. In addition he has written a body of essays which even today read as fresh as if they were written yesterday. His writings on village development and nationalism anticipated many issues that are even today being hotly debated. Unlike the anti Western rants in the economic thinking of the Mahatma, Tagore’s ideas are rational and modern, well suited even to the problems of the twenty-first century. It will richly repay anybody who thinks about these things to read his writings on these subjects.
And on top of that, he was India’s first modern painter. It has become increasingly clear as time passes that his paintings are a body of work that are very important in the context of the development of modern Indian art. Even Amrita Sher Gill has acknowledged her indebtedness to his paintings and today he occupies one of the most important positions in modern Indian Art.
It is difficult to imagine that anybody could excel in so many fields. Nobody that I know of came even close to emulating his feats in so many different endeavors. It is a pity that India has become so increasingly parochial that he is now increasingly seen as a Bengali poet rather than an Indian one. But if nothing else the celebrations for his 150th birth anniversary proved that that his reputation is alive and well. He was recalled in places as far apart as Kula Lumpur to Kenya. He may have fallen from the peak of his popularity when he was, as Amitav Ghosh pointed out, the first international literary superstar, but he has now regained much of the ground that he had lost. I am sure that in time to come, he will be acknowledged as by far the greatest figure in arts and letters the world has ever produced.
If we Bengalis or Indians are too proud of him, we have every reason to be so!

Calcutta Medical College in 1844

2011-04-27T15:55:00.006+08:00

DR Goodeve.

Dr Madhusudhan Gupta

I recently came across a copy of the Annual Report of the Medical College for the year 1844-45, that is 160 years ago. It was an interesting read and there is much that strikes a chord even today. The report was authored by Dr Mouat who was the Secretary of the college as well as the Professor of Materia Medica and Medical Jurisprudence. The term Materia Medica has now completely been replaced by Pharmacology, but even in our student days there were some senior teachers who still used to use the terminology. At that time there were 9 teachers in the main Instructive section as it was then called. They were Dr Wallich, Dr Jackson, Dr Pearson, Dr O’ Saughnessy ( in whose name the Chemistry medal was still being awarded in our student days), Dr Mouat, Dr Webb , Dr Robertson and of course Madhusudhan Gupta, the first Hindu to dissect human bodies and who is immortalized in a plaque in the Anatomy Lecture Theatre to this day. There were two other Indians in the staff. One was Dr Prasanna Kumar Mitra who was the resident surgeon of the Lying In Hospital ( the forerunner of the Eden Hospital) and incidentally was the favourite student of David Hare and who attended to him during his fatal illness in 1842 ( Hare died of Cholera). Mitra was the father of the famous disciple of Ramakrishna who was known as Yogin Ma ( Yogindra Mohini Mitra). The other was Babu Doyal Chand Basak who has been listed as pupil in the lying in hospital. This meant that he was the Midwifery Scholarship Holder, the forerunner of the present Goodeve Scholar. ( It is amusing to remember that in our year, Dr Subhankar Chowdhury , now Calcutta’s leading endocrinologist was the Goodeve scholar and spent a couple of weeks in the room allotted to him on the first floor, near the operating rooms as one of the conditions of the prize. A less probable gynaecologist I have never seen!)
That year there were 91 students in the Primary class, of whom 57 were Hindus , including 19 Brahmins. Muslims were only 3, the rest being made up of Christians and Ceylonese , presumably they were Buddhists. The Military class however had a large number of Muslims (75) of whom all but 14 were from the North West Frontier Provinces. The rest of the students (15) were Hindus making up a total complement of 90 students.
The report lamented the death of Mr Griffith who died the previous year. He was the Professor of Botany and who, in addition to his teaching duties was preparing a Manual of Botany which would now , the report lamented, remain incomplete. This was also the year that Dr Goodeve (of the Goodeve scholarship mentioned earlier) left the college. Henry Goodeve had been associated with the College since its inception. He was a well known physician who had written and published widely and it was during this return to England that he took with him the famous four: Bholanath Bose from Barrackpore who was considered to be the most promising pupil of the college, Gopal Chandra Seal, Dwarkanath Bose and Surjya Chakrabarti from Comilla. If I am not mistaken, this last named later converted to Christianity during his stay in England and took the Christian name of Goodeve in tribute to his teacher. The stay of these students was sponsored by Dwarkanath Tagore, the grandfather of the poet who paid Rs 7000 for each student, a truly magnificent sum in those days.
There are some other interesting nuggets of information. At that time there were two hospitals attached to the college. One was the General Hospital with 112 beds and there was another Female Hospital with lying in beds ( i.e. Obstetric) with 60 beds. The Anatomy and Pathological Museum at that time had 875 specimens and the library was in the proud possession of 3612 volumes. There was mention of the latest up to date cabinets being imported from Europe to house these volumes in style. The anatomy dissection hall was very active indeed. Registers were available from 1837 and during this time, 2316 bodies had been dissected. The maximum number was in 1843 with 544 bodies. 100 years later, the anatomy dissections halls were again full, this time with the unclaimed bodies of the Bengal famine of 1943.
There were a lot of suggestions to the Government to modernize the teaching staff and to stop the practice of one professor heading several departments. The rationalization of the teaching staff was also suggested as well as abolition of unnecessary posts such as that of the Lecturer in Minor Surgery. The college calendar was also reformed and from this time onwards, the session was to start on June 15th and teaching would continue up to March 15 and after one month given over to examinations, the session would end on April the 15th. There were some sample question papers as well and I would like to end by quoting some of the questions that were asked in the final exams of that year.
1 Detail the Symptoms of a strangulated Inguinal hernia- the methods you would employ for its reduction, and if they were unsuccessful, at what period and under what circumstances would you proceed to the operation. Describe the mode of operating and give the subsequent management of the patient, according to the various conditions of the contents of the hernia sac.
2 Enumerate the symptoms and postmortem appearances generally found in acute dysentery. Mention the different modes of treatment adopted in the different stages of the disease- the cases in which mercurial preparations are contraindicated-when and under what circumstances would you employ general blood letting and you reasons for preferring one system of treatment to another.

Malaysian Television:Its Yesterday Once More

2011-04-20T17:38:00.006+08:00

I am of that vintage that I can remember times when we had no TV and finally one channel in the idiot box. This was our good old Doordarshan, now totally neglected, except when they forcefully grab the rights for sports events held in India. There were some good programmes, some extremely boring and the highlight of the programming was the news. I would be guilty of injustice if I failed to mention some serials that they produced which have set benchmarks that today’s saas bahu serials never come close to matching, but, the news was the highlight of the Doordarshan day. Everybody watched Doordarshan news those days. You had no alternative, there was no other channel. The newscasters became famous and I am told that they used to receive love letters and fan mail aplenty. The news however was another thing.
Doordarshan was called, in those days, not without reason, IndiraDarshan. The reason was of course the single minded devotion to the then Prime Minister and her doings. Not that things changed much when she was thrown out in 1977 as then you got saturation coverage of the gerontology that ruled us; and their shenanigans, while more entertaining, were certainly a lot less telegenic than the doings of Mrs Gandhi. Life changed forever in 1991 when CNN first made inroads into India and then there was an explosion of channels, some 500 odd at last count. It amazes me that West Bengal, with no economic development for the past 30 odd years can support more than two dozen Bengali channels, but I suppose somebody must have done their economic sums.
Watching TV in Malaysia is like going back to those days. The channel that I watch most frequently is the NTV7 . It has so many resemblances with the Doordarshan of yore that I sometimes rub my eyes in disbelief. There are serials which nobody except the producers watches. I defy anybody to watch some of these serials, so execrable is the acting and so hackneyed the story line. There are some racy serials from the USA, all two to three seasons late, which are put on and off the air with no advance notice of their advent or departure. There are repeats of programmes that I have watched at least twice before; those who have been in Malaysia longer have probably watched them even more often.
And the news particularly is so reminiscent of the IndiraDarshan days that I crool with delight. Just as in those days the news started with Indira, went on to Sanjay and with a tiny mention of some other bigwigs of the Congress, criticized the doings of the opposition, so does the NTV 7 news start with Mr Najib, the Prime minister, continue with Mr Muhiyuddin , his Deputy and then mention some minor ministers before telling us about the latest scandals regarding he opposition leaders.
This is one thing that distinguishes NTV 7 from our good old DD. In India we are extremely prudish about the private lives of politicians, though we are avid for information about the doings of the Bollywood stars in and outside the marital bed. Here there is no Bollywood, which is perhaps why every week there appears to be a new video clip or collections of pictures of opposition leaders doing unspeakable things in their bedrooms and elsewhere. It is amazing that a society which prides itself in its conservative rectitude finds so much interest in the private sexual matters of their leaders.
One good thing about this sort of programming is that I get much more time to read and write, without the distractions of the idiot box. Whenever I am in India, I am always seduced by the racy news channels and their never-ending debates on earthshaking issues that are forgotten the following week. That is when I start missing the 7th edition, as the English News programme in NTV 7 is called. Say what you will, Doordarshan had its good points!!

Gulma: a Hidden Paradise

2011-04-17T18:32:00.005+08:00

One of the reasons that make Siliguri is one of my favourite places is the quick proximity to rivers, jungles and wildlife. It must be the only city in India which is just 10 kilometres away from a wildlife sanctuary. And one that houses big cats as well as elephants. One of my favourite excursions from Siliguri is to Gumla. If you turn off from Champasari on the Highway to Sevoke Bridge, and proceed towards the north, the hills come to meet you. Soon the houses become fewer and very quickly you can see tea gardens in the distance and the forests of the Mahananda sanctuary seem very close indeed. Today, my daughter practices her driving skills.
Past the Milon Crossing, there is practically no more traffic, and you dive past a tiny forest village and there the road ends, at the Gulma Station. There is another better known near namesake, Gumla in Jharkhand, another tribal paradise, now infested with Naxalites, but this Gulma is on the Siliguri Alipurduar line, recently converted to broad guage from narrow guage, with disastrous results for the wildlife in these forests. This line takes you through some of India’s best forests and always in sight of the foothills of the Darjeeling, Slkkim and the Bhutan mountains. It deserves much better recognition than it has from the tourism industry.
You have to walk across the track, and often there is a train standing there, immobile and the only way to get past is to duck under it and pray that the train does not begin to move right when you are crawling past. The station itself is small and I do not really think that there is any commercial justification for its existence. There is a ticket counter, but nobody ever buys tickets here, or at least, I have never seen anybody doing so. And once you cross the tracks, you are in the Mahananda Sanctuary.
There is a grassy area first, in the monsoons it is more of a water body and a favourite hunting ground for the open billed stork. But in winter, it is barren and about a hundred yards on, the forest starts. The forest is the typical terai forest, a mixture of many types of trees, though Sal predominates. But this forest is alive with birds. We have on occasion spotted the Great Hornbill, several species of woodpeckers and many other commoner forest species. An hour spent here with a pair of binoculars is richly rewarding.
If you walk along the tracks a little ahead, the Mahanadi River bed comes into view. In the monsoons there is a wide river flowing fast between the banks, and bringing with it driftwood, rocks and gravel, but in this Spring morning the bed is totally dry . Often we have found a small stream rippling past, but today it is bone dry. The river, when it flows, joins the Mahananda further down .
Across the Mahanadi river is the forest proper. There is something forbidding about the aspect. The trees are close together and the sounds of the forests are very audible even in broad daylight. The Gulma area is a favourite haunt for elephants and it has often happened that the trains are held up by elephants as they cross the bridge over the river to enter the other side.
But today there is no such danger. The river being dry, is unlikely to attract the elephants and we can safely cross the river bed to the other side and enjoy the wildflowers which are blooming aplenty. There are many varieties of moths and butterflies as well, not to speak of colourful insects which, unfortunately we cannot identify. There is a track leading into the forest alongside the rail track, very inviting, but as we do not have permission to enter the forest we do not force our luck too much, but return, this time climbing onto a wooden footbridge that runs alongside the rail bridge.
This bridge is a beauty. There are a couple of places to sit here. Rough benches, where you can sit and gaze upon the mountains and the forest. We have seen many birds from here; once, memorably, a great hornbill which flew from one bank to the other. Today as we sit, a group from the forest village emerges, having collected some firewood. It is a picturesque sight, but sometimes it makes one uneasy to see the amount of collection from these not inexhaustible forests.
The bridge is blocked today by a locked gate. This is new; we do not remember seeing it before. However the gate is easily circumvented and we can return to the car parked near the station and return in less than 15 minutes to our home in the heart of Siliguri.

Tribute to a Forgotten Pioneer.

2011-04-06T12:04:00.003+08:00

The first use of the term essential hypertension used to describe hypertension without any definite cause is usually attributed to the French physician Huchard, Viennese von Basch or to Englishman Albutt. However it is little known that this condition as well as its natural history was described much earlier by a physician of mixed Indian and Irish origin, Frederick Akbar Mohamad. Son of a man who ran a fencing and boxing academy near Brighton, he was the grandson of the famous Dean Mahomet. Dean (probably a corruption of Deen) was born a a couple of years after Plassey in Patna in a minor nobleman’s family. He became a part of the East India Company army and attached himself to Godfrey Evan Baker who later brought him to England. Dean eloped with an Irish lady Jane Daly and became famous for setting up a shampooing establishment in Brighton . Shampooing in those days meant a sort of spa treatment including massages and diet regulations. He became quite famous in this and later was credited with having started the first ever curry takeaway in Britain, the fore runner, if you like of the chicken tikka revolution in the UK. He also wrote the first ever book written in English by an Indian. Perhaps I might write in a later post about the granddad, but today I intend to concentrate on the exploits of the grandson.
Akbar was as a child, excitable, passionate and fond of mechanical toys. He joined the Sussex County Hospital to learn medicine and was later transferred from there to Guy’s Hospital in London in 1989 when he was twenty years of age. He was a brilliant student and won all manner of prizes including the Pupil’s Physical Society prize for his work on improving the sphygmogram. He later was appointed to the London Fever Hospital where he became the student of the famous William Broadbent who was in addition to being the Physican to Queen Victoria, one of the foremost teachers of his day. He was elected to the MRCP in 1874 and received a University of Brussels MD in the same year. He later worked for a second MD from Cambridge, commuting from London in order to continue study while keeping up his post in London. He was also elected FRCP in 1880. In 1881, he joined his alma mater as an Assistant Physician. He was a keen researcher and published his first paper as a student. Subsequently he wrote at least 11 major papers in which he clearly described the natural history of essential hypertension and also very clearly identified the pathological features of kidney disease with hypertension and its manifestations. He was also instrumental is showing that not all hypertension was due to kidney disease but there was a subsection that had no definite cause. It is unfortunate that he did not get proper recognition for his undoubtedly pioneering work.
As one writer has put it: “He described the constitutional predisposition to essential hypertension and its tendency to run in families. At a time when tuberculosis was considered to have a constitutional predisposition, he used multiple photographic portraits to present a contrary opinion. He made a major contribution to the surgical management of appendicitis and was one of the first to use direct blood transfusions in humans. He described a syphilitic causation of thoracic aortic aneurysms. His last contribution was the precursor of modern cooperative clinical trials. He successfully proposed development of a Collective Investigation Record by the British Medical Association to prepare information on morbidity and mortality of diseases seen by physicians practicing outside hospitals.” His description of the pulse and its changes during the aging process was surprisingly modern.

Akbar Mohamad died in 1884 at the young age of 35 of Typhoid fever. He contracted this fever at the Fever Hospital to which he was still attached as a consultant and was looked after during his fatal illness by his old teacher Broadbent. His death prevented him from reaching to even greater heights. He was buried at the Highgate cemetery in London.

Understanding the Indian Muslim

2011-04-01T11:20:00.002+08:00

One of the enduring tragedies of India is the lack of understanding of the different cultures and religions that make up its mosaic. There is an unfortunate lack of knowledge about the cultures of different states, of different linguistic groups and most of all of differing religious groups. One of the most mysterious and unknown groups for the Hindu community among the different religious groups are the Muslims. Despite the fact that they make up about 20 % of India’s population and about 30% in West Bengal, the knowledge of their customs, thinking and fears are often totally a totally unknown quality to many Hindus. This is a tragicomic situation, unfortunately more tragic than comic.
Even for the well meaning and secular person, the other community is a blank and one really does not know what strikes a chord, and what does not, whether at all the community is as monolithic as it seems. One important means of bridging these divides has to be literature and the arts. Speaking for myself, one movie and one novel brought me an understanding of the Indian Muslim community that many rational discussions would never have. This is not to say that I understand, or even sympathise always with the ideas of the Indian Muslim people, but at least I think I can understand what makes them feel that way.
As I was saying one movie and one novel was what opened my eyes to a world that was to some extent unknown to me. The first was a movie made in 1973, when I was still in school. Directed by M S Sathyu, who was, with Shyam Benegal, the first movers in the New Wave of Hindi films, this movie was based loosely on an unpublished short story written by Ismat Chughtai. A Muslim Family from Agra, who were in the shoe making business, were now facing the gravest crisis of their lives. Would they move to Pakistan, their promised homeland, or would they stick to this land, now a “foreign” land where they were born and had grown up and which had been their homeland for who knew how many generations? The movie, for the first time, to my knowledge, brought an ordinary Muslim family to the screen. Without the exaggerated secularism of commercial Hindi movies, Sathyu showed what life was like for them, what their concerns were and their fears and desires in a way that moved one to tears. There was a scene where the family is forced to move from their old haveli to a new accommodation and at the last moment, the grandmother cannot be found. She is later found, hiding in the chicken coop if I remember right, refusing to leave the house of her forefathers. How then, the unspoken question was, could they move to a new country? There was another memorable scene where a former Muslim Leaguer, who was very active in the Pakistan movement, suddenly shows up in a Gandhi cap, having effortlessly switched his allegiance to the Congress party rather that face the displacement that he made necessary for so many millions. In the end, the family, defeated in their struggle for survival decides to move to Pakistan, but on the way the patriarch of the family, played superbly by Balraj Sahani, decides to stay and fight for his rights instead. This is without doubt one of the best Hindi movies ever made.
Another creation, this time a novel, had the same effect. I read it more recently when secularism had become a dirty word and Modi is the hero of the majority of India’s youth (or so it would seem to read the cyberwaves). This novel was written by Nazrul Islam, not the rebel poet, but an IPS officer. I am proud to say that he hails from the same district that I come from, not that I have ever lived there ever! The novel does not reach very high literary standards, but it is heart wrenching and inspiring story of a Muslim Bengali boy, bought up in a cultivator’s family who fights against the odds to reach his goals. It is obviously a thinly disguised autobiography. The author has shown how it feels to be a Muslim in a world of majority Hindus, he has also clearly demonstrated how educated Muslim youth do not hesitate to ask questions of their religion and shattered many other myths that are current. This book, Bhumiputra (Son of the Soil) has been translated into (atrocious) English and is now accessible to Indians who do not understand Bengali. However, as I said, the book is important, not for its literary merit, but for its dissection of the Indian Muslim mind. I must say that it was a great eye opener.
I would recommend these two pieces of Art to all who would like to understand the Indian Muslim. It would be difficult for anybody to remain a bigot after reading this book or watching the movie. Perhaps they should be made compulsory reading and watching for senior school and University students. At least it would rid us of the US and Them attitude that still unfortunately vitiates public life, 60+ years after independence.

Scientists and Scientific Research

2011-03-23T11:10:00.002+08:00

Now that I work fulltime in research I am beginning to have a clear idea of how the research establishment works and what it actually does. Research is today a holy cow. All emerging economies are told that the reason why the US and other major economies outpace us is their lead in innovative research. And this is undoubtedly true. Most of the world’s new discoveries which later become blockbuster commercial products are born in the US or in Japan. I cannot think of any Indian or even Chinese discovery in the last 50 which became a product in wide use. Thus, the mantra goes, you must spend money on research , particularly on the cutting edges of new scientific discoveries or risk being left more and more behind.
India is slated to spend 2% of its GDP on research by 2012. This means a mindboggling sum of money and the Department of Biotehchnology, Department of Science and Technology and various others are flush with funds and grants are being written and sanctioned like there was no tomorrow. However, my experience, short as it has been has raised several questions on this issue.
One conclusion that I have drawn is as follows
Most of the research done is of no consequence. Take stem cell research which is my field. There are large, hugely funded laboratories in major medical institutions which do research, the chief purpose of which appears to be to be able to publish papers. This is a laudable objective, but scarcely the reason why the money is being spent. Most of the research goes nowhere; being untranslatable to clinical practice and indeed most of the research never intended to move from the laboratory to the clinics anyway.
Those of my vintage will remember how we used to read in the news papers, with monotonous regularity, stories of miracle cures of Diabetes, hypertension and other chronic diseases from a University in the southern end of Calcutta. The news was always a seven day wonder and having got the researcher some publicity, a free trip to an international conference and perhaps a few publications, the hype died away only to be replaced some months later with another one. Some may remember the brouhaha a few years ago about arsenic in the water supply of southern Bengal. There were apocalyptic stories, scenarios were painted of a large percentage of the population of South Bengal being afflicted with malignancies , and the numbers of people afflicted increased from an initial few thousands, to a few millions, and then to hundreds of millions until I lost count. Many a research fortune was made in this phase. Conferences were held ( I was a participant in one such conference myself), papers were read, vast amounts of money was poured into technologies to ameliorate this issue. And suddenly, as fast as it had come up, the issue disappeared from our ken. Has arsenic disappeared from the groundwater of Bengal? I presume not. Has arsenic became non poisonous? Not so. But what has happened is that research funds have dried up and well it might seeing that the research that was done offered no solutions to the problem and that the problem was vastly exaggerated in the first place.
Just look at some of the prominent medical journals. All the research published there nowadays appear to be related to the use of some new device (paper sponsored by the company which made it) or a new drug (same applies). The device is designed to reduce the incidence of a complication which occurs at a frequency of never to once a year and the drug is treating conditions which have fifteen excellent alternatives already. No surgical journal will accept or publish any research on the easiest way of sterilizing equipment without using expensive chemicals, nor would it find any space for a paper that suggests that a particular surgical procedure is unnecessary.
On rereading the above, I realize that I am guilty of hyperbole,, but I think that there is more than a grain of truth in what I have written. The research establishment needs a complete overhaul and more meaningful and focused research is needed. Alternatively we will find at the end of the day that we have spent millions of crores on a chimera and the only beneficiaries are some so called scientists who will be left laughing all the way to the bank.

Gopal Bhattcaharya: Pioneering Entomologist

2011-03-14T11:39:00.002+08:00

A letter to the editor published in the Bengali Desh magazine drew attention to one of the forgotten pioneers of study of natural history in this country. Gopal Chandra Bhattacharyya was born in the Faridpur District of erstwhile East Bengal (now Bangladesh) in 1885. He came from a modest background; his father eked a living as a village priest in their native village of Lonsing. He studied until the matriculation and passed it in the first division. However by this time he had lost his father and family circumstances made it impossible for him to study further and he became a schoolteacher in order to provide support to his family. He later began to work at a mercantile firm as a telephone operator and it was at this time that he published his first article on bio-luminescence in the then popular Bengali periodical Prabasi. This attracted the attention of none other than Dr Jagadish Chandra Bose who, realizing his potential, organized a position for him at the Basu Vigyan Mandir ( now christened the Bose Institute) where he was employed basically as a technical assistant . He used to repair instruments and keep them in good order, and do drawings for the scientists but his innate research capabilities soon came to the fore and he began to work on his own research projects.
Though his initial interest was in subjects like bio-luminescence and hybridization of fruits and plants, Dr Bose soon directed his interest to entomology and he soon became a leading expert in this field. He published widely, in journals as diverse as the Scientific Monthly and Natural History magazine in the United States and Science and Culture from Calcutta. Backed up with some superb photography (he was an accomplished photographer), these papers were unfortunately mostly published in lesser known journals and failed to attract the attention of the scientific establishment of the day. His photographs of spiders, bats and other small creatures were unique in his day and his painstaking observation of tool making in wasps in now acknowledged to be a pioneering feat.
After Dr JC Bose passed away, he was encouraged by the then director of Bose Institute, Dr D M Bose, who incidentally was a physicist, to work on the effects of antibiotics on ants and tadpoles. He showed that the administration of penicillin leads to an arrest in the metamorphosis of tadpoles to frogs. This, he showed was because penicillin kills certain bacteria present in the tadpoles which are essential for a smooth metamorphosis. He thus was one of the first to show the presence of salogenic, ie health giving, bacteria.
One of his major discoveries which he published in the transactions of the Bose Institute as early as 1940 concerned his observations of ants which he ingeniously induced to nest in cellophane paper so that he could observe them. He showed that the diet of the larvae had an important effect on the future development of ants and controlled their development into Queens or workers. This too was not recognized at that time, but his pioneering observation is now acknowledged.

In 1948 he entered another phase of his life when he teamed up with Dr Satyen Bose (of Bose Einstein Fame) to set up the Bangiya Bigyan Parishad. Dr Satyen Bose had a lifelong interest in writing science in Bengali and this organization was set up to further this effort. Its main purpose was to promote the diffusion of science and scientific knowledge using the local language and quickly became the vehicle for his ( Bhattachharya’s) remarkable talents. He now directed his energies to science popularization and as editor of the magazine Gyan o Bigyan , he was instrumental in popularizing the writing of scientific literature in Bengali. He worked as editor from 1950 to the 1970s. One of his monumental works was the book “ Banglar kit o patanga” ( The insects of Bengal ) to date sadly untranslated, which fetched for him the Rabindra Purashkar in 1975. He had already been awarded the Ananda Purashkar in 1968.

However all this counted for nothing among some of his scientific peers. Gopal did not have formal education beyond school and this was the cause of much humiliation for him when well established scientists refused to acknowledge his work and in one shameful incident, Dr J N Mukherjee, who was then a well known scientist, refused to be interviewed by the All India Radio in a feature that they were producing on the senior scientists of Bengal when he came to know that Gopal Bhattacharya was also to be interviewed. He proclaimed that Bhattacharya may be a science populariser, but was certainly no scientist as he had no academic degrees after his name. The University of Calcutta did confer on him an Honorary D Sc on January 21, 1981, less than three months before his death.

The Government of West Bengal has instituted an award in his name for science popularization the Gopal Chandra Bhattacharya Smriti Purashkar, which has been awarded to many individuals working in this field. This is certainly an appropriate honour, but one should not forget his pioneering research in entomology in which he was the first in his field in India.

The River Saraswati and the Aryan Debate

2011-03-07T09:02:00.001+08:00

Michel Danino who is by birth a Frenchman, but has lived in India for more than 25 years has written a marvelous book on the River Saraswati. This river was mentioned in the Rig Veda as the most important of rivers, a mighty river with grassy banks on whose shore the Vedic Rishis wrote the hymns that are universally accepted to be some of the most sublime philosophy ever written.
The geography of the region that they lived in was well described. The Nadistuti Sukta, a hymn in praise of rivers enumerates 19 rivers which were of importance in the Vedic world. From east to west they were enumerated as the Ganges, Yamuna, Saraswati, Shatudru (Sutlej), Parushni ( Ravi) Asikni ( Chenab) Vitasta ( Jhelum) and so on. All the other rivers have been identified, but the Saraswati remained an enigma.
However as Danino shows in his marvelous book published last year by Penguin India, the Saraswati had been identified with the Ghaggar system long ago, when the first British administrators came to this area in the early 19th century. They recognized that a large river, whose bed was easily visualized, flowed through what is now desert. The river bed was so wide that it could accommodate “fifty camels walking side by side” as one of them put it. Later research , including satellite mapping showed that there were channels which connected The Sutlej and Yamuna with this river system and that that a cataclysmic event shifted the Yamuna to the East to join the Ganga and the Sutlej to the Beas, thereby causing the Ghaggar system to lose most of its waters and finally to dry up.
Danino has showed the evidence which appears to me to be quite plain. There is much evidence from the satellite pictures, geology, from archeology, folk memories and so on to show that there was indeed a mighty river that nourished a civilization on its banks from about 8-000 BC to around 3000BC. This civilization was the Indus Valley civilization which went through several phases, finally ending somewhere around 1500BC. The evidence shows that while in the early phase ( when the river was full ) there were large numbers of cities on its banks, they became less and less in the later phases as the river dried up.
The conventional wisdom is that this was followed by the Aryan invasion which was the Vedic Civilization, mainly rural in character and very different from the mainly urban, well developed and peaceful civilization of the Harappans. The Vedic people, as evidenced from the hymns were illiterate, warlike, and mainly pastoral in character. Unfortunately there is a problem here. The Rig Veda describes the Saraswati as a mighty river and many of its hymns suggest that it flowed from the Himalayas to the sea during the Vedic age. As late as the Mahabharata episode, the Saraswati is described as a living river on the banks of which Duryodhona and Bhim fought their last grim battle. The only way that this can be reconciled with the archeological and other evidence is to push the Vedic age to 3000 BC which conflicts with the Aryan invasion theory. However as Danino shows, the evidence is compelling to show that the urban civilization and the Vedic civilization were not, as thought earlier, the products of two separate peoples, but a part of the continuum of Indian History and civilization.
This is not to deny that there is much to be said for the theory that Saraswati was not necessarily this river (the Ghaggar ) ; there is some pretty good evidence on the opposite side as well and this has led to an unfinished debate on the origins of the Aryans and the true connection between the Vedic and Harappan civilizations.
The unfortunate fact is that this debate has now been hijacked by the proponents and opponents of the Hindutva movement. Many historians have allowed their ideology to affect their judgment and this leaves ordinary readers like me in a dilemma. What is one to think if someone like Romila Thapar actively debunks the theory that the Ghaggar system was indeed the Saraswati? And for that matter the venerable Irfan Habib who has written a well argued diatribe against this theory. One is always wary of the Hindutva gang, but to a layperson (a dispassionate member of the jury if you like), the evidence does seem compelling. That the Saraswati River, or at least a major river did flow in this region is now more or less settled. The implications for the Aryan invasion debate have yet to be decided.
I would recommend this book to anybody who has an interest in the history of India. Well written and compellingly argued, I must say that I find his viewpoint pretty acceptable. And with recent genetic evidence suggesting that rather than Aryans entering this country, Central Asia was peopled from South Asia, this debate seems to be poised for a definitive conclusion. Great reading!

Help Tourism and the Chilapata Jungle Camp

2011-02-18T15:13:00.005+08:00

Help Tourism is an award winning tourism agency headquartered in Siliguri. It was founded in 1991 by a group of young men who had a vision of eco tourism which was rooted in the local ecology and wanted to involve the local stakeholders in the process of development. One of the founders of this unique movement was Raj Basu who I am proud to call my friend. Raj has been instrumental in guiding this group to the success story that they are today. They have received many accolades, awards from many influential tourist groups and have had the honour of being one of groups included by the National Geographic as the best adventure tourism groups in the world. They have put North Eastern India in the map of adventure tourism and they have made it possible for many well known scientists and birders to work in this area. If you look up any report of a bird watching expedition in this region, you are very likely to find that it was organised by Help Tourism.
The most important part of their work has not been to showcase the riches of North Eastern India to the world. Though this work is important, they have been even more successful in enabling local people to take charge of the tourism projects and to benefit from it. Not only have they made it possible for tourists from around the world to enjoy the region, they have worked at ground level to train local people, help them to organize themselves and to enthuse them with the possibilities that exist in tourism sector to make their livelihood. As an inevitable corollary, they have thus been involved in mobilizing the locals to save their environment, their trees and animals and their way of life. It is heartwarming to see them in action and they are one of the most useful and important NGOs working in North Eastern India today.
One of the byproducts of their work has been the development of many destinations in the lease known forests of the region where it is possible to enjoy the sadly less known forests of North Bengal and to enjoy the local hospitality and have a wonderful holiday. One such spot is the Chilapata Forest where they have partnered with Bua or Ganesh Chandra Sah, to give him his full moniker, to develop the Chilapata Jungle Camp. We spent all too brief a period in this camp a couple of weeks ago and can testify to the success of the approach that Help Tourism has pioneered.
Bua’s father used to run what was a dhaba in this place. It was then called Shibji ka Dhaba, and was a popular drinking hole for people from Cooch Behar. But with the help of Help Tourism, His son Bua has managed to set up an eco friendly tourist destination which is about a hundred yards from the Chilapata forest. The camp has two types of accommodation, some cottages built on stilts and two typically Bengali huts which, however boast of all the basic amenities that are needed. If you are looking for luxurious accommodation with a swimming pool and three restaurants you will have to go elsewhere, but if you are the type who likes to eat local grown produce, sample the fish from the nearby Torsa river or the pond that Bua maintains in the premises itself and like to wake up to birdsong and the sight of entrails of fog slowly moving away to expose the forest, this is where you need to come.
The camp, as I said, in just a stone’s throw away from the forest proper; and when paddy ripens in the adjacent fields, elephants are their constant companions. At this time of the year the ever present signs of their presence notwithstanding, most of the elephants confine themselves to the forest. The jungle can be visited using jeeps which are accompanied by local guides. Our guide, a local lad called Jayanta Talukdar, was knowledgeable and seemed to have a feel for the denizens of the forests where he had grown up. He was able to predict the movements of a rhino we had spotted in the grasslands of the Torsa and positioned us perfectly so that we could see it cross the road just in front of us. We were lucky in that we were able to spot gaur, elephants as well as the rhino. In these forests one is normally not as lucky because the animals are shy and the forests are often impenetrable.
The best part of the Chilapata forest is the watch tower that overlooks the Torsa River. The Jaldapara Sanctuary can be seen just across the broad river bed and the grasslands are the home of the rhino. Several species of birds were present, though one would have expected more migratory species. Perhaps we were too late to catch them.
The best part of the Jungle camp, ok, one of the best parts is the food. Served on brass utensils the way we used to eat in village homes generations ago, the food is tasty and fresh. The vegetables are grown in their own gardens and the fish is procured for m the Torsa, and one morning we also ate fish that had been caught moments ago from the Camp’s own pond. This was how the people of Bengal lived in those days before life became so complicated!!
The only problem is of course the roads. They are execrable, though, like the curate’s egg, ok in parts. The total lack of any attention to the well being of the people of North Bengal on the part of the State Government becomes clear when we travel these roads; in many places there are no roads, just a collection of potholes. Why this should be so, year after year after year is something for the local administration to answer. They are deafeningly quiet.
The local hospitality is also very touching. All the workers have been recruited locally and trained with the help of Raj Basu’s team. This has resulted in good service, comparable to those obtained in more sophisticated places with the local touch that makes staying here comparable to visiting your village home that never was!
In subsequent visits I plan to see more of the places Raj has helped to set up. Until then, I can easily award 10/10 to the Chilapata Jungle camp.
There is superb article by Raj Basu of Help tourism on the founder of this property here.

Two Idiots of Indian Football

2011-01-26T14:34:00.002+08:00

If you have the press on your side, you can do anything in India. And there are some personalities who are experts in manipulating the press as well as the online media. One such person is Baichung Bhutia and not too far behind is his mentor Bob Houghton.
India was the worst team in the Asia Cup. Ok, it was a feat to have got there, but they qualified three years ago. Subsequent to this, the coach threw tantrums, made racial comments at referees, criticized the Federation, got an increase in salary which was totally uncalled for, and managed to spend most of the time abroad with his team or without.
Baichung Bhutia was injured most of this time. When his club (then Mohun Bagan) began to ask why he could not play football while fully able to execute intricate dance maneuvers for a TV show, he managed to project it as a “poor player being targeted by heartless clubs”, broke his contract and landed with East Bengal, for whom he has not played a match for quite some time now. Just in case they kick him out, he has started making noises about how he would like to retire from this club. This will probably enthuse the club to carry him at a high salary for the next 2-3 years until he decides that even Calcutta clubs’ gullibility can no longer be exploited and decide to retire, or perhaps play a few more years for the United Sikkim club that he is setting up.
I pity the officials of the Calcutta clubs, both of Mohun Bagan and East Bengal. The same players who made their name playing for these clubs , nowadays make their fame by criticizing the practices of these clubs: they are out of date, do not have gyms, their management is behind the times etc etc etc. The cry is out: Calcutta football is in decline, the future is in Goa and Mumbai.
If we look at cold statistics, there is something in this claim, the Indian Football League has not come to Calcutta for quite a few years. However if we look at the other Blue Ribands of Indian Football, we find that Calcutta clubs have won the Federation cup continuously for the past 6 years, and the Super Cup thrice in the same period. Thus the rumors of their demise are perhaps a trifle exaggerated. On the contrary, Mahindra United, died last year, and whenever one person at the helm loses interest, one or all the Goan clubs may meet the same fate.
Coming back to the Indian team. The players told us that we have the best coach the world has ever seen, much better than the Naeemuddins and Sukhwinder Singhs that we had to tolerate earlier. The coach told us that he had a well knit team that would do wonders. Unfortunately all we did was to concede 13 goals in three matches and score three, two of these from penalties. Now we are sold the story that they fought like tigers, not like the Habibs and the Kishanu Deys of yore who went down like lambs. This ignores the tennis like scores that all teams, without fail, notched up against us over the past few months.
I think it is high time that these two idiots, Baichung and Houghton were shown the door. They can be asked to earn their living instead of living on a sinecure. Baichung can perhaps fool his native Sikkimese for some more time, but will find it difficult to earn the sort of bucks he has become used to. As for the last of the buccaneers of the East India Company, Houghton , he should retire to his native Hampshire, or Lancashire or whatever shire he comes from and live happily ever after in the same way that his forbears did in the 18th and 19th centuries with their spoils from India.
As for us benighted football fans, we keep hoping for the best. Perhaps the age group teams, coached by Indians will do the trick, perhaps the clubs will reform themselves and perhaps the professional league will become truly professional. Perhaps India will play in the world cup in our lifetime. If not, the Mohun Bagan East Bengal clash looms, lets cheer for our teams and celebrate (or mourn) the result! That is all we were fated to do.

The Protestant Cemetery, Penang.

2011-01-26T09:16:00.010+08:00

I was in Penang for a business meeting last week relating to a study we are doing there in collaboration with one of the hospitals. Meetings over, I had some time to spare, which I decided to spend in taking a walk around the area where my hotel was. The biggest problem in Malaysia is the humidity which makes walking a bit of a tedious activity, but today there was a balmy breeze from the Malacca Straits which made life a lot more enjoyable.
As I strolled down Northam Road, now named Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah (re namers also exist in Malaysia, though not so virulent in their work as in Calcutta), I suddenly came across the Protestant Cemetery. It is a leafy walled enclosure full of tombs of Britishers, some Chinese, and Armenians who ended their life on this island. The first burial took place in 1789 just three years after the settlement was founded by Sir Francis Light in 1786.
Francis Light was an interesting person. Probably the illegitimate son of a minor nobleman, Francis found himself in Madras ( now Chennai) where he was the skipper of a ship, Speedwell. He traded between India, Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula and soon established contacts with the rulers of Kedah who offered Penang to the British in 1771, hoping to find protection against the imperial designs of Siam which was expanding south wards. This offer was not immediately taken up and Francis set up base in Phuket, then called Junk Ceylon but maintained his connections with the Sultan of Kedah and finally prevailed on the then Governor General of India at Calcutta to accept the Sultan’s offer and took control of Penang in August 1786. Incidentally his son, William founded the Australian city of Adelaide, almost exactly 50 years later. It is another matter that the British did nothing to prevent Kedah from being taken over by Siam later.
Francis Light is buried here as are many other luminaries of that time. These include several Governors of Penang as well as the founder of the Penang Free School , Reverend Hutchings,. Penang Free School was the first English school in Malaysia and is the alma mater of many famous Malaysians and Singaporeans. When I visited the cemetery there were some bouquets offered by students of the school on his tomb. I later discovered that it is a tradition for the senior class of the school to come and pay homage to him every year on the anniversary of the founding of the school.
Another interesting tomb is that of a very young ( 31) officer Thomas Leonowens. He died in 1839, leaving behind a young widow and her son. This widow was Anna who was employed by the King Of Siam as a teacher and she left behind a volume of memoirs entitled “The English Governess at the Siamese Court”which was the basis for the famous 1956 musical “The king and I” starring Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner. Recent research has shown that she had exaggerated her influence in the court and made up much of the material that so captivated her 19th century audience. However it remains a good read.
There are other tombs which include some of Chinese Christians who had fled the mainland during the Taiping rebellion and sought shelter in Pulau Penang. They are some 60 such graves which have Chinese inscriptions and tell the story of these unfortunates who died far from their homeland.
A small door in the inner wall leads to the Roman Catholic cemetery which is not very well maintained. The grounds are extremely overgrown and most of the graves are overrun with creepers and other vegetation.
One of the marble plaques that I saw was imported from Calcutta . It was sent by a Brown and Company , and followed by the words SCTS,I was unable to understand what this meant and my cursory search in the internet also failed to throw up any clues, except that this company had provided plaques to many cemeteries all over India in the 19th century and these words recurred in all their work.
The graveyard is shady, though the trees had mostly lost their leaves giving them a somber look that fitted in well with the place. I saw a newly married couple who had come here in their wedding finery to have a photoshoot here. I was wondering if it was an appropriate place, but they seemed to have no problems, the lady spreading her long trail to ensure a striking picture as she cuddled up to her husband.
This cemetery closed down in 1892, when it was probably house full here, and the dead had to find another place for their rest.
There has been some restoration here and there are signposts and board describing the place. It is an instructive place to spend an hour before reentering the bustle of Penang.