A Tale of Two Cows
A Tale of Two Cows infographic by kylatomdesign.



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The Uttar Banga Anath Ashram ( North Bengal Orphanage)

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Uma Mallick looks like an ordinary Bengali Housewife. She wears a standard cotton sari, vermillion on her forehead and travels clinging to her husband’s motorcycle as he whizzes past in Siliguri’s notorious lanes. However she is anything but that. Uma is the founder and the livewire of the Uttar Banga Anath Ashram (North Bengal Orphanage). Lest that makes you conjure up an image of a gleaming building full of well dressed children being looked after by an army of attendants, let me disillusion you. Her orphanage looks after girl children (she only takes in girls), and they are housed in a tiny postage stamp sized piece of land that was donated to her by a kind soul. Or perhaps not so kind soul, because the land was already occupied by a group of Mastaans, ( local goons) who could only be induced to vacate by a long and desperate struggle, involving a hunger strike by the children, and the help of local well-wishers. The house is basically a brick structure covered by a tin roof. There ...
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Here I was, reading a chapter on “Oral & Parenteral Opioid Analgesics” while all of a sudden I visualized the beautiful poppy flower, its petals as soft as silk and as delicate as a baby’s cheek and my heart soared with the memory of banks and banks of poppies I had seen, all along the roadside in Central Europe, particularly when travelling from Prague to Budapest during our last summer holidays. As my thoughts wandered in between pearls of medical wisdom and poetic imagery, I thought of the various ways the innocent and seemingly harmless poppy had made ingress into medicine, drug abuse, wars, and literature and as a symbol of remembrance.  Opium use predates recorded history (3000 BC) and use of opioids for pain management has oscillated between indiscriminate use even a short century ago even among the elite  to the severe restrictions of today which has left many a patient suffering from severe pain, unrelieved. Morphine, the opiate obtained from the poppy plan...
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Shiv Kumar Batalvi shone like a meteor in the field of Punjabi poetry. Sadly, like a meteor, he faded away at the early age of 36. Born in undivided Punjab in 1936 (or 1937, as his matriculation certificate testifies) his family moved to the Indian Punjab during the Partition. His father was a minor revenue official and they settled in Batala (thus Batalvi) in the Gurdaspur district of Punjab, the heart of the Punjab as it were. He was a precocious poet, beginning to write songs and poems as an intermediate student. Unlucky in love (twice according to most accounts) he wrote some of his finest romantic poetry in memory of the two women he loved and lost. He was the youngest ever winner of the Sahitya Academy award for his verse play Loona. Shiv Kumar Batalvi  He used to delight in outrageous behavior, often speaking disparagingly about amateur poets who used to abound in literary meetings. Unfortunately he was also an alcoholic and despite his superb literary output, was...
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