On Winds

Winter has switched to spring quite abruptly this year. 

Within a span of a week cold foggy mornings gave way to bright sunshine all day prompting us to pack up our jackets and sweaters a month ahead of the Holi festival -  the traditional end-date for winter in this part of the country. There is however one lingering sign of winter that still remains - a cold, steady wind that blows before sunrise and after sunset.

Winds have a language of their own. They always remind me of a passage in Michael Ondaatje's classic, "The English Patient":

"There is a whirlwind in southern Morocco, the aajej, against which the fellahin defend themselves with knives. There is the africo, which at times has reached the city of Rome. The alm, a fall wind out of Yugoslavia. The arfi...which scorches with numerous tongues. These are permanent winds that live in the present tense.

There are other, less constant winds that change direction, that can knock down horse and rider and realign themselves anticlockwise. The bist roz leaps into Afghanistan for 170 days - burying villages. There is the hot, dry ghibili from Tunis, which rolls and rolls and produces a nervous condition. The haboob - a Sudan dust storm that dresses in bright yellow walls a thousand meters high and is followed by rain. The harmattan, which blows and eventually drowns itself into the Atlantic..."

One of the winds named here - the Ghibili - has been immortalised by the Japanese anime legend, Hayao Miyazaki, who has named his production house, The Studio Ghibili Collection, and churned out some of the most endearing animation movies we have seen. 

Recent research has also revealed that the great Amazon forests owe their nutrition to winds that emerge from the Sahara desert. Molecular level analysis combined with remote sensing technology tells us that an estimated 22,000 tons of phosphorus from Saharan dust is deposited on Amazon soils every year!  Even more astounding is the discovery that much of this phosphorus comes from one specific area in the Southern Sahara, the Bodélé Depression in Chad, an ancient lake bed where rock minerals composed of dead microorganisms are loaded with phosphorus!

Do the winds that blow through Delhi have their own names? Have they inspired any creative genius, or carried vital nutrition into distant ecosystems? We don't know yet.  Perhaps the answer, my friend, is blowing in the winds...the answer is blowing in the winds.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Nature (4 Jan., 2021) - Dust arriving in Amazon Basin over the past 7500 years came from different sources

* NASA Satellite reveals how much Saharan dust feeds Amazon's plants - https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-satellite-reveals-how-much-saharan-dust-feeds-amazon-s-plants

* The Studio Ghibili Collection - Hayao Miyazaki - https://ghiblicollection.com/

* Demons of the African Air - https://www.irishtimes.com/news/demons-of-the-african-air-1.90392

Hijabs in Udupi

 It is amazing how news of a certain type suddenly blows up.  

A couple of weeks ago, in a hot, humid coastal South Indian town called Udupi, schools finally reopened after the long Covid break. Most students and teachers seemed relieved to be back - except at Government Pre-University College, Kundapura. 

Out of over 590 students studying at this school, about six muslim girls out of 75 decided that they would not adhere to the normal school uniform, and instead wear the hijab. The school objected and stopped these students from entering its premises, and within a few days this became national and international news!

Suddenly everybody seemed to be hyperventilating about the constitutional rights of minorities, and alleged oppression by the Hindu Right. Prominent 'thought leaders' on the social media claimed that 'traditional dress', fundamental rights and cultural identifies were being trampled. 

I have had numerous muslim classmates in Hyderabad and Thiruvananthapuram, and I never saw them in school wearing hijabs. Coming to think of it, I was not even sure of the various grades of this outfit - the hijab, chador, niqab and burka -  until a few weeks ago. And now it turns out that the students who are insisting on wearing a hijab are actually wearing a much more conservative (and regressive) covering - the niqab.

Having travelled widely in that area since the 1980s I can vouch for the fact that the hijab was rarely seen in the southern states until very recently. The traditional dress worn by girls of all religions here has been the ones that are suitable for the local climate - long skirts/pavada and blouse, or light cotton sarees. 

Why has it suddenly become necessary for a small section of people to demand an exemption for long-standing rules? Was this a deliberate attempt to provoke a reaction? 

Amongst all the discussion and debates I have come across so far, this one from "India This Week" seemed closest to ground realities.  

Unlike the shrill debates you see on the TV channels, often dominated by extremists of all hues, this one offers the unique perspective of educated muslim women who have themselves been working for years to increase the literacy levels amongst the poorest sections of the society. 

It is a pity that sane voices like these are getting drowned out. 

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LINKS & REFERENCES

* Islamic Dress Post - https://vintageindianclothing.com/2015/04/20/the-islamic-dress-post/

* Muslim Style in South India - https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/2786886.pdf

* 900 Cannot Suffer Because of Six Students - https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/hijab-row-udupi-govt-school-students-urge-management-to-start-classes-as-exams-near-1912725-2022-02-14

* Indian Girls are Fighting to Wear Hijab in College - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-60079770

Boy Soldier

 

We ran for hours, deeper into the forest. The path had ended, but we kept running until the sky swallowed the sun and gave birth to the moon...

This must be one of the most harrowing real-life stories I have read so far.

It is about a twelve-year-old boy who loves reggae music, dancing, and hanging out with his friends. All of a sudden his world is turned up side down by an armed gang that attacks his village. The villagers scatter and run for their lives, leaving the boy gets separated from his family. While trying to escape a civil war, he ends up getting forced into becoming a combatant himself - part of a gang of teenage boys wielding machetes and AK-47s, marauding villages, killing innocent people as a form of revenge, or simply for fun - the oppressed becoming oppressors themselves.

I stood holding my gun and felt special because I was part of something that took me seriously and  I was not running from anyone, anymore...We were simply told to follow the path until we received instructions on what to do next. We walked for long hours and stopped only to eat sardines and corned beef with fari, sniff cocaine, brown-brown, and take some white pills...

A few years later, while this war of attrition is still dragging on, a UNICEF vehicles roll into their camp. The younger boys are taken away to a rehab centre where most of the children are just not able to adjust to a life without drugs and guns. Most of them revert back to fighting, but one, somehow escapes because of one dedicated, thoughtful nurse. This is is the story of that one boy - Ishmael.

"None of these things are your fault", she would always say sternly at the end of every conversation. Even though I had heard that phrase from every staff member - and frankly I had always hated it - I began that day to believe it...

Ishmael Beah's memoir, "A Long Way Gone", is centred around Siera Leone of the 1990s. A country with a population of just over 8 million, and an area that covers double the size of Kerala. Here the mistrust between various tribes and political factions boils over into a full blown civil war. 

Mourning the dead wasn't part of the business of killing and trying to stay alive...Little did I know that surviving the war that I was in, or any other kind of war, was not a matter of feeling trained or brave...

This is the story of just one among the 300,000 children across 20 countries who end up as soldiers on the frontlines of war. According to the UN, up to 40 percent of these are girls. Come to think of it,  perhaps it is a miracle that even a few of them manage to get back their childhoods, and return some semblance of a normal life.

This book is a small but vital window opening into a world we do not know much about. A place where brutality is on a loop, and where peace is an aberration, an abnormal state of affairs. 

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* UNICEF - Children recruited by armed forces or armed groups - https://www.unicef.org/protection/children-recruited-by-armed-forces

* Sierra Leone on the CIA World Factbook - https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/static/b0a107fb587d45dbfc17e74a6dd39c4f/SL-summary.pdf

* HRW - Child Soldiers -  https://www.hrw.org/topic/childrens-rights/child-soldiers

* UN -  https://www.un.org/youthenvoy/2015/02/4-10-child-soldiers-girls/

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Leone

A Mug That Cheers

 

"Do you see how the edges are curved? It fits out lips better..." - Ayse Birsel, TEDxCannes

One thing I discovered this winter is the joy of holding a beautiful, ceramic mug, and sipping a hot drink on a cold winter day. The drink could be anything hot - tea, coffee, rasam, or just plain warm water - what matters is the comfort of holding such a mug, cupped in your hand, while sitting at your table or just staring out of the balcony, and letting your thoughts wander as the world going by.

This is not something I had given much thought to earlier - after all, a mug is a mug is a mug, and it is different from a cup! We have always had on kitchen racks an assortment of mugs - the small ones for chai or coffee, the slightly larger, bright red ones that we got for free with branded coffee powder, the monogramed ones we got from various places, and a few larger more stylish singles - the last survivors from the lovely sets we had got as thoughtful gifts from friends. 

Our specifications got a little more stringent this winter. The standard flat-bottom mug just would not do! - it had to have a rounded bottom that could be cupped comfortably in both hands; it had to hold more than 350ml; it had to be stable, and not topple over easily when perched on a tray in transit; the mug had to be balanced - not too heavy, or too light,  and of course, it had to look good and feel good in your hands;  something you would feel like picking up - just for the joy of it.

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Focus

 This is an interesting talk - Focus: the Hidden Driver of Excellence | Daniel Goleman.

Speaking to an audience at a Google office, the Prof. Goleman is essentially about our need to get more control over our own ability to focus out attention.

While much has been said academics and practitioners alike about the importance of Emotional Intelligence, and about the role of specific parts of the human brain - especially the Amygdala - that are hard-wired to cut out the clutter and focus on factors that are important for our survival, he makes one interesting point: It is possible train ourselves to ramp up cognitive control. 

Ideally, this training should start at an early age.  Goleman illustrates this point by describing the famous "marshmallow experiment" at Stanford on four-year-olds, and the research on how a school in a hardscrabble neighbourhood, transformed the outlook of children by helping them practice deep breathing through innovative games.

A video well worth an hour of your time. 

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Book - Focus: the Hidden Driver of Excellence | Daniel Goleman - https://www.amazon.in/Focus-Hidden-Excellence-Daniel-Goleman/dp/0062114964

* Floor Effect - https://www.statology.org/floor-effect/

* Daniel Goleman - https://www.danielgoleman.info/

The Economist and its Spin-Doctors

The latest economist (15 Jan., 2022) makes makes a claim that seems absurd at many levels - "In an index of societal discrimination against minorities compiled by Bar Ilam University in Israel, India scores worse than Saudi Arabia, and no better than Iran".

Saudi Arabia and Iran are both self-proclaimed theocratic states with a population of 35 million and 84 million respectively, where religious minorities do no have the right to practice their religion openly; where proselytising by non-muslims is punishable by death...and these are the countries is being weighed against India!

This bit is part of a carefully crafted editorial note titled, "India - Stop Inciting Murder", which, in line with the Economist's long tradition of taking a condescending view of everything outside the Anglo-Saxon horizon, picks four recent instances of extremism displayed by one of the many lunatic fringes in India. This list includes news about the Hindu right-wing utterances and actions against muslims - the "religious parliament" of sadhus at Haridwar; "Sulli Deals" auction site 'selling' muslim women, and namaz in public areas of Gurgaon. Each of these incidents has attracted condemnation and discussion on the media.

A closer look also reveals that this is a carefully chosen list of one-sided reports from the English language media. There is, of course, no mention in the report of the legal action and arrests that have taken place in each of these instances. Perhaps presenting a balanced view would blunt the edge of their wordplay that seeks to paint the whole government as being inimical to 200 million muslim citizens of India.

It is true that the top leadership of NDA has been tardy in responding to reports of discrimination against minorities, especially Muslims. It is also true that there is a whole ecosystem of Modi-baiters, especially in the English language media that swings into coordinated action to blame the government for everything wrong under the sun. They only end up discrediting themselves.

What is interesting in this case is the attempt to build a case against India using a study conducted by an Israeli University. Even a cursory look at the actual study would show you that the "Index of societal discrimination" is itself based on a mathematical model that stands on shaky data. The study covered 771 minorities from 183 countries, and uses secondary and tertiary sources - government reports, academic articles, news reports, and reports from NGOs. The only mention of Saudi Arabia and Iran in this report is in a table tucked away in the annex. 

Strangely, even the data presented in the annex contradicts the claim being made by the Economist: 

According to this 'research', there has no record of "Targeting Minorities" in Iran and Saudi Arabia during the study period (24 years!). How on earth did the Economist editor deduce from these scores that "India scores worse than Saudi Arabia, and no better than Iran" ? 

I have always been a fan of the Economist, and will continue to be one. No other international magazine presents a world-view that you would find in its pages. Yet it is good to be reminded that the magazine's world-view is flawed, and that it often loses its own self-proclaimed goal - "...to participate in the severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress".

This just goes to prove that the Economist is as fallible as the leftist next door, with opinions coloured by preconceived notions, biases, lazy analysis, and plain stupidity.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

Article - https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/01/15/hindu-bigots-are-openly-urging-indians-to-murder-muslims

The Economist (15 Jan., 2022) - https://www.economist.com/weeklyedition/2022-01-15

Nutmeg & Mace

 

On the banks of Manimala river in Tiruvalla, Kerala, there is a place called Thottabhagom. Perhaps the area gets it name (~ 'garden areas') from its exceptionally fertile soil, enriched by the occasional flooding of the river. 

One of the common trees on these fertile river banks is the Jathi-ka Maram, better known as the Nutmeg tree (Myristica fragrans), the source of two important spices - Mace, and, of course, Nutmeg. During the summer months, hundreds of fruits can be found strewn under the tree, often hidden under tufts of grass and dried leaves. The ones that are found get carefully laid out on straw mats, its fleshy portions are cut away revealing a seed that looks like a piece of art, with its deep red pericarp delicately covering a large oval seed like a lace glove. 

As children we did not think much of this tree because there were others that offered instant gratification - mangos, guavas,  rose-apples, tamarind and mangosteens. It is only much later that we learnt just how much these spice seeds meant to people in far away places, of how thousands had been killed, and sold into slavery so that a few europeans could enjoy trade monopolies, and enrich their own cities.

The greed for nutmeg and mace brought the Dutch to the Banda Islands south the Malaccas in the 14th century. Here they first tried to get exclusive deals from the local traders, and when that failed, they decided to solve the problem with their won version of the "final solution" - by exterminating the entire population of these two islands. Then for about a century they ensured that all the nutmeg trees were uprooted and destroyed on the nearby islands. This ensured that they could enjoy profits of over 400 percent of the investments for each voyage.

This story, and its wider ecological and economic impact has been brought out in the latest book written by Amitav Ghosh - "The Nutmeg's Curse - Parables for a Planet in Crisis". As with Ghosh's earlier books this too weaves a narrative based on extensive research of the origins of global trade in these spices, the depredations of the colonial period, of how it shaped capitalism as we know it today which sees the earth as a resource to be exploited at will.

The fruit itself becomes a metaphor for the larger picture - 

...Taking the nutmeg out of its fruit is like unearthing a tiny planet...Like  a planet, the nutmeg is encased within a series of expanding spheres. There is, first of all, the fruit's matt-brown skin, a kind of exosphere. Then there is the pale, perfumed flesh, growing denser towards the core, like a planet's outer atmosphere. And when all the flesh is stripped away, you have in your hand a ball wrapped in what could be a stratosphere of fiery, crimson clouds..."

One question that this books leaves unanswered is on the Dutch monopoly. For a tree that grew widely in South India, with records in the Sanskrit texts going back at least to the 6th century, how could the Dutch establish a monopoly in the first place?  

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* https://penguin.co.in/book/the-nutmegs-curse/

* https://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/food/the-wonders-of-nutmeg-fruit/article19369859.ece

* WebMD - https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-788/nutmeg-and-mace

Covid-19: Winds of Change

 How things change in one year!

At the beginning of 2021 everybody seemed perplexed that the much anticipated first wave of Covid-19 had somehow swept past India without causing much damage. 'The virus cannot survive the pollution levels here!', sniggered the wags and carried on with their lives. 

People were just beginning to take it easy when the second wave - the Delta variant - blindsided us in March 2021. Suddenly all the hospitals were struggling to cope with a deluge of patients and distraught families. Just about everybody seemed to be desperately looking for oxygen cylinders, medicines, oxygen concentrators and reliable test kits. By July, nearly half a million people had died on the official records with speculation rife on the scale of unreported deaths.

When Delta gave way to Omicron there was much talk on how the healthcare system had been geared up to meet the challenge. Skeptical as always, I thought this was bluster - just the sort of pep-talk expected from politicians to keep a lid on panic levels. It took a first-hand experience for me to realise how wrong I was!

We started 2022 on a positive note from our RTPCR test labs. It had started with a throat irritation and telltale signs of a fever. When a number of friends who attended a Christmas party started testing Covid-positive, we knew that ours was not the winter usual viral. The tests only confirmed this but what surprised me is the way in which the healthcare system had actually been geared up to cope with this new wave.

Within an hour of calling a private testing lab (SRL), a sample collector was at our doorstep (~INR 900 / ~USD 12 per test). The RTPCR reports arrived online a day later, on a Saturday. It is mandatory for the private labs to send a copy of the reports to the state health department also gone to the UP government health department, and we were pleasantly surprised to see how the SoPs clicked into place. 

On Monday morning a young government doctor visited us to collect first-hand data, to check if home-isolation was being strictly followed, and to hand over free kits of medicines. A team was sent across to spray and disinfect the apartment tower and, for the next week, we got at least one call a day from the 'Central Covid Control Room' to check if the infection had aggravated in any way. Thankfully, it did not. The infection was as mild as it could be - fever for a day, a sore-throat for two.

As per the new guidelines, at the end of a seven-day isolation period, it is no longer mandatory to take another RTPCR test but we  got tests done anyway using the new Rapid Antigen Tests that were now easily available on Amazon. Interestingly, these tests were no longer being imported from Germany, South Korea or China but made locally by a company called MyLab and sold for just INR 250 (~ USD 3.5) each. Clearly a lot of thought has gone into the design and production of these kits, each of which contains a sterile swab, a pre-filled extraction tube, test-card, instruction manual (English/Hindi) and a disposal pouch. 

One of these days I hope to understand more about the kind of technology and production systems that it takes to prototype and scale up production of these kits ("with immunochromatographic nitrocellulose assay...which uses highly sensitive antibodies to detect Covid-19 nucleocapsid proteins.."), to the current levels of 10 million sets per week!

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/23/coronavirus-how-india-is-doing-now-after-delta-variant-spread.html

* MyLab - wiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mylab_Discovery_Solutions#cite_note-1

* Pune start-up makes affordable, accessible Covid-19 test kit (March 2020) - https://www.financialexpress.com/lifestyle/health/pune-start-up-makes-affordable-accessible-covid-19-test-kit/1908524/

* Producing 10 million kits per week - https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/indias-mylab-can-ramp-up-covid-19-test-production-100-mln-units-per-week-ceo-2021-05-21/

Sikkim - Hypertense Taxpayers?

A few days ago, an old friend, a physician, shared a graph that got me puzzled.

It showed an NHFS-5 graph plotting percentage of men with diabetes and hypertension across Indian states. While he was concerned about Kerala being represented as a large dot far ahead of all the other states on these two ailments, it was a smaller green dot caught my attention - Sikkim.

How did this tiny north-eastern Himalayan state full of people who always seemed so healthy, relaxed and friendly top the charts for hypertension in India? 

Maybe I was being nostalgic about a trek in Sikkim more than a decade ago, of endless bowls of Thukpa washed down with Dansberg beer. That was a business trip to the main hospital in Gangtok, and these lifestyle diseases certainly did not figure prominently then. What had changed over the years? - was this something to do with the diet? 

Another graph presents a different different picture. This one maps a state-wise per-capita collection of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), and the big surprise here is that Sikkim was the leading state with an average contribution of INR32,568 from each of its ~ 600,000 citizens!

Perhaps this is a pointer to the rapid industrialisation that has taken place in Sikkim over the past decades, with all its attendant health problems. Or maybe there is no correlation at all between these two unrelated  indicators.

One thing is for sure - the numbers need to be examined more closely.

Misheard: I Love Goat Cheese! :)

What happens when the sublime meets the ridiculous? Maybe one of the things you get is goat cheese.

Carmina Burana (Songs of Beuren) is supposed to be one of the great compositions of western classical music. Written in the 13th century it was was famously set to music by the German composer, Carl Orff, in the 1930s and went on to become hugely popular as a score that set the mood for dramatic or cataclysmic situations. In India most people remember it as the background music for an advertisement featuring an aftershave lotion - Old Spice - with images of a surfer riding tumultuous waves, a pretty face, and a face splashed with a liquid that was supposed to be the 'mark of a man'.

Recently some creative genius on YouTube (or was it Tiktok?) posted a video with the title "You'll never listen to this song the same way again!". Sure enough it transforms this classic to a hilarious meme with these lyrics - 

I love goat cheese, Give me cookies!

They'll give us Gonorrhoea

This octopus, Let's give him boots!

Send him to North Korea!

As if to add to this cheerful confusion, a university choir has actually recorded  a performance  using these 'alternate' lyrics. So it takes a bit of digging to get the the original lyrics, and to figure out the specific lines that have been parodied. Perhaps these are the lines that go with the one who loves goat cheese - 

Sors salutis, et virtutis

michi nunc contraria,

est affectus, et defectus 

semper in angaria.

(English:  Fate is against me; in health and virtue, driven on and weighted down, always enslaved)

This is of course only one in a long series videos featuring misheard lyrics. There is one Russian folk song that has been doing the rounds as a Malayalam song, and Shakira's popular theme 2010 Football World Cup song, Waka-Waka, that does sound like Hindi slag for taking a bath at Charminar!

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* O'Fortuna - Misheard lyrics - https://youtu.be/pQEfxhvAy0c 

* Original - André Rieu - O'Fortuna - https://youtu.be/EJC-_j3SnXk 

* Original Lyrics + translation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Fortuna

* Story behind Carmina Burana - https://www.classicfm.com/composers/orff/guides/story-behind-orffs-carmina-burana/ 

* Russian song misheard in Kerala - https://youtu.be/_zEbRrV-flw

Revisited: Gupta Period Sculptures

Lighting changes everything. 

Last week I visited the Indian Museum in Kolkata after more than a decade, and I was struck by the way in which an improvement in the display of exhibits could bring about a qualitative change in the way people relate to them. It make you stop and observe more carefully, to spot variations in style that were missed out earlier, and to spend more time marvelling at the milieu, the social and cultural environment that enabled these artists to flourish. So much so that even a random visitor like me could begin to see clearly, for the first time, the differences between the various schools of art.

I was fascinated in particular by the earthliness and realism of sculptures created during a period that is known as the Golden Age of Indian Art - the Gupta Period (~ 100 to 500 CE). Quite unlike the idealised, supra-human versions of gods that are popular in modern iconography, here we see figures that look like  earthly, familiar, just like the the ordinary people who were walking past these exhibits in the museum. Sometimes the similarity is so striking it is hard to believe that these sculptures were created more than 1800 years ago!

Take for instance this panel of three pillars excavated from Bhuteshwara, near Mathura, in North India. On one side we have three lovely ladies  representing three Yakshis, and on the reverse you see scenes from the Jataka stories about the life of Bodhisatvas in their various incarnations.

Also unlike my visit a decade earlier, this time I was armed with the power of the internet on my mobile, so it did not take long to expand on the display tags, and learn that one panel depicted the Jataka tale  about Sibi, a king once celebrated for his righteousness.  This story is told in just three blocks on a single pillar - a little bird seeks refuge from a hawk, perched on the lap of the king; the hawk demands compensation from the king for having to give up its food, so the king cuts a part of his own to flesh to feed the hawk. 

The other two pillars seem to be from other stories though, featuring elephants and monkeys. Wonder where I could find some more details, not only about about the stories that have been sidelined here but also about the Gupta Period in general.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Indian Museum, Kolkata - Virtual Gallery -  https://indianmuseumkolkata.org/cmspages/virtual-gallery

* Google Arts and Culture - Life of Buddha in Indian Art - https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/the-life-of-buddha-in-indian-art/uwLycg_jrsTeKg

*  https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/38742 

 

Kolkata Diary

I am now in a South Kolkata state-of-mind. 

It took me a couple of days to get used this, and it is so, so different from the mental framework you need elsewhere in North India. For starters, you don't wake up to smoggy, cold mornings, wondering whether it is safe to take in a deep breath. The air is relatively cleaner, the sun rises earlier, and ebb and flow of social interactions is lot more relaxed, friendlier and jovial.

Thanks to the Covid lockdowns, I had not been in this city for more than two years, and I wondered how things had changed in the interim.

As has been my habit for more than a decade now, I started my day around 05:45am with a walk to the lake, aka Rabindra Sarobar. The streets were slowly coming to life in the twilight - flower sellers stringing up garlands, milk-vans doing rounds of the kirana shops, and sweepers cleaning up the roads, oblivious of protests from crows and sparrows. Further down from Dhakuria, on both sides of the narrow roads of Jodhpur Park, people filled up water from roadside taps, sipped chai at tiny dhabas, or bargained with the fish-vendors.  

Everything seemed just the way it was before, until i crossed the railway lines I found my usual entrance to the Lake Park barred by a locked gate. This was new - why had they closed this particular entrance to the park? I went across to a group of men sitting under a tree and asked them if there was another open gate nearby. A portly, bearded old man just laughed and said, "Andar jana he? - bas tapki maaro!" (want to get in? just hop across!) :)

Turns out that the gate was designed for doing a tapki, with easy, well-worn footholds for climbing across the 10ft gate. Welcome back to Kolkata, I said to myself, a place where unreasonable rules are meant to be broken.

Another unreasonable rule that is always broken in Kolkata is about footpaths. They are not exclusively for pedestrians. Here footpaths are an egalitarian public space meant for anybody who seeks a livelihood, and pedestrians get just enough space to file past the shops. On the busiest streets it is quite normal to see more than half the footpath width taken up by an endless row of tiny shops, and eateries. This has been going on for so long that even trees adapt themselves to the shape of these little shops, as is the case with this teashop enveloped by a banyan tree near the Jadavpur University crossing.

The hustle and bustle at these shops is a bit misleading though. People are still recovering from the Covid lockdowns. "People mostly come to just look at the wares", said one shopkeeper at Gariahat market, "It is a lucky day when we manage to sell half of what we used to sell before covid!". The same sentiment was repeated at Bedwin Rolls, an eatery famous for its mutton rolls but there is nothing remotely mutton on the menu now. "At INR 800+ a kilo, we just cannot afford it...usually a kilo works out to be enough for 10-12 rolls, but each would have to be priced at INR 150 for us to make a profit...and nobody wants a mutton roll at that price."

Unlike in NCR Delhi, few shops have had to close down entirely. Most of the small shopkeepers here seem to have adapted by changing the menu or product mix. There are more boards that display availability of oxygen and medicines, and, as expected, home-delivery services seem to be thriving now. For some reason jewellery shops are thriving too.  It seem the arrival of the big boys like JoyAlukkas, has had no impact on the numerous, tiny jewellery shops that dot the lanes of Dhakuria. Ditto for beauty saloons. The one nearest to us is "Rita's Parlour - Your Beauty is Our Duty"! :)

Yet, one big surprise is that hardly any shops accept digital payments. Again unlike in NCR, Tamil Nadu or Kerala, where just about every street vendor offers you the option of paying by PayTM, PhonePe or GooglePay, each and every shop I visited here insisted on a cash payment. 

Why is Kolkata / West Bengal bucking the national trend? 

Affordable eBikes

Something unusual happened today - I stopped to gawk at a bicycle. 

It was a mildly smoggy winter morning in Noida, and I was driving down one of those long, flat, tree-lined service roads running parallel to the expressway when I went past a man riding a bicycle. On the face of it this was nothing out of the ordinary - the bicycle was one of those black, clunky, mass-produced models and the man seemed like a factory employee, with his head covered in a muffler, a small bag on his back, going down the road - except for the fact that he was not pedalling his bicycle!

I did a double-take, noticed a neat white bracket behind his seat, and realised that this one was running on a battery - an ordinary bicycle in its new avatar as an electric bike.

Having never seen such a thing before, I pulled up a little ahead, and requested him to stop. The cyclist gladly obliged, and with the pleased look of a man accustomed to such attention, explained that he had got this fitting at a workshop in Badarpur, Delhi. It had cost him about INR 15,000 and that the battery lasted him quite comfortably for his 40 km commute everyday.

These units are manufactured by new company called Accelero Cycles India Ltd., and sold under the brandname "eBik". Founded by a youngster named Anant Jain, this startup aims to make 'affordable, eco-friendly, motorised mobility for everyone'. 

How will ACIL take on established companies like Hero Cycles which has come out with a range of electric bicycles under the brandname "Lectro"? Is there sufficient demand for retro-fitted budget cycles? Does the enterprise have a network of service centres? As of now not there is not much information about this company in the public domain. 

The answers to these questions may unfold in the days to come, but one thing is sure - as of now, the company has at least one happy brand ambassador on this side of Yamuna!

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* eBik - https://ebik.in/product.html 

Celosia

 

A few decades ago, one of my professors used to be fond saying, "Nothing in nature exists without a purpose!".  His point was that while humans may not have figured it out yet, but every colour, texture, movement and behaviour in nature tells you a story of evolution and adaptation.

I keep thinking about this while looking at a solitary Celosia plant that has bloomed on our terrace. It started out in one form, and now, it looks completely different. It appeared unbidden, out of a forgotten corner, needing no special attention, and soon after the tiny saplings put on their striking variegated leaves, the squirrels found them tasty and ate up most of the new leaves. 

The Squirrels were of course not the only ones who found celosia so yummy.  It seems celosia and plants of the Amaranth family have long been consumed as vegetables in Asia, Africa and South America. So much so that in Nigeria celosia is called 'soko yokoto', meaning "make husbands fat and happy"!

On our terrace, the squirrels spared one single plant, and this is the one that has been changing costumes over the past four months, like a stage artist working overtime. Soon after the plant reached a foot high, a tiny bloom appeared which seemed to take away all the purple colour from the leaves. A month later, after the monsoons it became velvety and curly, spreading out wider to get the classic cockscomb look.

As of now the stem looks gaunt, but this bloom shows no signs of fading away. In fact it now seems to be in a mood to give back some colour back to its leaves, which now look narrow and spindle-like, a far cry from the rounded, multicoloured ones of the initial days.

Why does this plant go through such a transformation? Which are the insects it attracts as pollinators? 

As usual, when you try to figure out something, you only end up with more questions.. :P

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LINKS & REFERENCES

Celosia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celosia_argentea_var._cristata

Amaranth - super feed, super weed - https://www.phillyorchards.org/2018/04/17/amaranth-super-feed-super-weed/

Life and Beyond

 Call it a calculated conspiracy of algorithms but over the last week I watched two 'recommended' TED videos, each dealing with with dimensions of life and death.

The first one was by Isabel Stenzel Byrnes titled the "The Art of Saying Goodbye", and the second one by Nancy Trivellato on Out-of-Body Experiences (OBE).

Isabel describes her own harrowing experiences with Cystic Fibrosis, numerous encounters with the death, end-of-life issues, and organ donation. She also talks about her realisation that there is no right or wrong way to say goodbye to a loved one, and that grief is an art, a deeply intellectual and spiritual process of making sense of loss.

I was particularly touched by this description of grief by Isabel's friend, Christine:

"If you were to ask me what stage of grief I'm in, I would say denial, anger, fear, profound sadness...sequentially, and then all at once, and sometimes not at all."

The second TED video by Nancy Trivellato, a researcher from Brazil, begins with a question that has long been familiar to ancient Indian philosophers - "Is the reality we live in the actual reality?". The point being made here was that the 'reality' being presented to us by our sense organs give us, at best, only a small fraction of the many realities that exist in parallel. Nancy makes this point by presenting a set of photographs of the cosmos, each showing how instruments that detect different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum see the same slice of the night sky so differently.

However Nancy's talk is not about the EM spectrum or the cosmos but something more subtle. She describes how as a child she had an out-of-body experience of 'seeing' a beloved uncle on a hospital bed in Sao Paolo. He and his wife had gone there for a gall bladder operation without informing anybody and were quite astounded to hear the little girl describe his hospital room.

The common thread that runs through both these videos is that there is more to life and death, and dimensions of consciousness that needs our attention with tools that are beyond the reach of existing scientific instruments and conceptual frameworks. 

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* TED Video - "The Art of Saying Goodbye" (Isabel Byrnes) - https://youtu.be/Dkffpibi-Dc

* TED - Nancy Trivellato on OBE - https://youtu.be/NMBNZspmn7I

* The Power of Two - A Twin Triumph Over Cystic Fibrosis - https://www.amazon.com/Power-Two-Triumph-Cystic-Fibrosis/dp/0826217540 

The Gentle Way to Self-Defence

 

Today's Doodle honours Kano Jigoro, the 'Father of Modern Judo' on his 161st birth anniversary.

A series of neat panels illustrate the life of this remarkable man who developed the institutions that globalised Judo (柔道 lit. "gentle way"), to take it beyond the Samurai class, to make it an international olympic sport.

This also brought back memories of the University of Tsukuba where I had my first brush (and bruises, sprains and near dislocations!) with this remarkable art of self-defence. Memories of stepping into the airy, well-lit Budokan for the first time; the tatami-matted practice halls; the feel of coarse, stiff judo-gi outfit that would break your fingernails, and that peculiar smell of deodorants mixed with sweat, blood and dried. 

I had been amazed to see how men and women trained together, and how once a month,  the elite Tsukuba Blue Team held an open house with other enthusiasts. Olympic medallists sparred with schoolchildren on one side, and grandfathers teaching pigtailed grand-daughters on the other.

A portrait of Kano Sensei  and his many quotations lined a wall in the Budokan,  looking down on us with with his bemused, slightly bored expression, watching over various groups going through their paces - sparring, fighting, and learning how an opponents physical strength could be used against them.

Tsukuba University apparently grew from the educational institutions Kano set up a century earlier. Sometime during 2010 the university suddenly decided to replace the statue of a Greek hero with that of this venerable teacher. So imagine our surprise when during a visit to the post office, we looked up to find that in place of a naked, muscular European, stood a fully clothed statue of the man who repackaged Jujitsu into Judo for the world!

Perhaps it would have been more appropriate - and less expensive -  to have a sporty statue of his in front of the university Budokan or Sports Department, but then, when it comes to sentimental matters, the Japanese do not seem to believe in Kano Jigoro's dictum -  "Maximum efficiency with minimum effort" (精力善用 seiryoku zen'yō)!

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* The pioneer of Judo  - https://www.tsukuba.ac.jp/en/about/history/kano/index.html

* The Olympic Movement and J Kano - https://www.joc.or.jp/english/historyjapan/kano_jigoro.html

Orion and Friends

It's 5:30AM and there is a nip in the air. You look out from the balcony and your gaze moves up from the empty roads, the streetlights, over the tree-tops, to one single bright star in the sky.

Which one is it? you wonder..

As your eyes get accustomed to the darkness, other less bright stars peek out through the haze, and a familiar pattern emerges - the three stars that make the belt, two for the dagger, another two pairs each for the shoulders and limbs... and Orion the Hunter emerges in all its glory. Then again on either side of the hunter two more bright stars - Aldebaran and Sirius marking the positions staked by the constellations Taurus and Canis Major.

We are now the Navaratri festival season, a period of nine nights when the moon transforms from a thin sliver barely visible in evening sky, to a bright autumn full-moon marking, not only two of the most important festivals in India, Dussehra and Diwali, but also the onset of winter.

I often wonder - why are our night skies filled with stellar patterns that carry mostly Latin names, with a few Arabic ones thrown in for variety? What did the ancients in India, South America or Australia make of these patterns in the night sky?

As Raj Vedam explains so well in his videos, ancient astronomers in India looked at the skies in a very different way, with oral traditions that record and mark the changing positions of the moon, planets and stars with almost obsessive detail. So much so that with modern software simulations it is possible to triangulate the time-period of certain historical events that could only have happened thousands of years ago. 

The Ecliptic, or the path taken by the sun to traverse the sky, is one of the key reference points. They observed that - "The moon appears on the eastern horizon at a different time every day, offset by about 48 minutes, agains a different backdrop of stars." Also, it was noticed that it takes 28 days for the moon to return to the same backdrop of stars. From this emerged a system based on Nakshatras and Raashis.

Nakshatra refers to the principal or brightest star in each segment of the night sky, formed by dividing the ecliptic into 27 segments of 13.33 degrees (13.3 * 27 = 360). As a mnemonic to remember the right sequence these stars were woven into mythology to represent 27 wives of the moon.

Similarly the 12 lunar months were made by dividing the sky into 12 segments of 30 degrees each (12 * 30 = 360), represented by the constellation in which the full moon made its appearance. These were called the Raashis.

So when the full moon appeared in Chittira Nakshatra (Spica in Virgo Constellation) it could immediately be understood that in that month, the sunrise took place 180 degrees opposite in Ashvini Nakshatra (Sheratan or Beta Arietis in the Aries constellation).

What about old familiar friend Orion and his companions? For some reason it seems ancient astronomers in India were not too keen on conjuring up figures from the stellar patterns. They highlighted only three stars in the Orion and Taurus constellations:

• Nakshatra no. 4 -   Rohini (Aldebaran in Taurus constellation)
• Nakshatra no. 5 - Makaram (Mintaka or Delta Orionis in Orion constellation)
• Nakshatra no. 6 - Thiruvathira (Betelgeuse in Orion constellation)

One big surprise is that in the subsequent 13.3 degree segment they completely ignored the brightest star in the sky, Sirius and instead selected Pollux (Gemini constellation) as Nakshatra no. 7. To put this in perspective, Pollux  or Beta Geminorium is an orange giant with a magnitude (brightness) of 1.1 while Sirius (Greek for 'scorching' and also called Alpha Canis Majoris) has a magnitude of - 1.5 which is about 2.5 times brighter!

Maybe there is something more to this that I am missing, but ignoring the brightest star in the sky! - you can't be Sirius! 

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Orion Constellation - ultimate guide - https://www.planetguide.net/orion-constellation/

*  https://www.astrosoftware.com/SiriusNakshatra.htm

* Inca Astronomy - https://www.peruforless.com/blog/inca-astronomy/

The Sense of Smell

Remember this post about 'The Most Translated Books of the World'? 

Well, a few days ago, I decided to pick one of the few European books that I had not read in that collection - the most translated book from Germany -   Patrick Süskind's "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer', which apparently has been translated into no less than 49 languages.

It seemed to deal with an interesting topic - the sense of smell - which is perhaps the most evocative of our sense perceptions, and one that often triggers a flood of memories. There is a certain agarbatti fragrance that instantly takes me back to my wonder years in Hyderabad, a childhood filled with sunny days squinting at floating kites, of playing and wandering about without a care in the world; The smell of musty books takes me to my grandfather's library in Kerala, of hours spent flipping through books I had been explicitly banned from reading (was that a trick to get me interested in books?). A couple of years ago when I landed up for my first UN assignment in Afghanistan, I kept wondering why buildings at Green Village reminded me so much of Tsukuba University in Japan, until it struck me that they were using a floor cleaner with the exact same fragrance! 

This book tells us the story of an orphan named Grenouille who was born in the 1700s and promptly discarded  in an offal heap at a slaughterhouse in Paris. The child grows up to discover that he has an unusual talent, an obsession for smells and odours as well as the ability to recreate them.  He first starts earning his keep as an apprentice at a tannery, then wheedles into a becoming an assistant to a leading perfumer in Paris, before becoming a serial killer who ultimately never gets punished for his crimes.

As expected, the narrative serves dollops of gyan on the art of making perfumes, but then goes overboard over their power to influence human behaviour: 

"Odours have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions or will. The persuasive power of an odour cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fill us up, imbues us totally. There is no remedy for it... for people could close their eyes to greatness, to horrors, to beauty, and their ears to melodies or deceiving sounds. But they cannot escape scent. For scent is the brother of breath...

"There are scents that linger for decades. A cupboard rubbed with musk, a piece of leather drenched with cinnamon oil, a glob of ambergris, a cedar chest - they all possess virtual eternal olfactory life. While other things like lime oil, bergamot, jonquil and tuberose extracts, and many floral scents -- evaporate within a few hours if they are exposed to the air in a pure, unbound form."

The book itself is fast-paced and describes Paris and France in a way that is not very different from Victor Hugo's "Les Misérables". In this storyline you travel from Paris southwards to the barren hills of Plomb du Cantal,  Montpellier, Grenoble and then to Grasse, north of Cannes.  

Yet, unlike Hugo's classic it descends into incredulous levels, like a pet peeve that has run amok, taking the story to a point where you just wonder - Why would anybody want to translate this book into so many languages? Is this really the most translatable book that German language has to offer? 

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REFERENCES

* Book - Süskind, Patrick (1985): "Perfume - The Story of a Murderer "

* The Smell of Evolution (NatGeo)

Under the Shadow of Covid: Train Journeys Across India

Paravur Kayal (lagoon), Kerala

Has the Covid Pandemic changed the way Indians travel? What has been the impact of the cascade of lockdowns  imposed across the country since March 2020?

An opportunity to seek answers to these questions presented itself a few weeks ago. A bunch of old friends had planned a get-together in Krishnagiri district of Tamil Nadu and it had been nearly two years since I met my folks in Kerala. So at short notice, I decided to travel across the country to these two states in the cheapest way possible: Second-Class Sleeper on the Indian Railways.

Thanks to the pandemic and the lockdowns that came with it I had grown nostalgic about the magic of unhurried traveling. The joy of settling down with a nice book on a long train journey, of watching the shifting landscapes float by, feeling the rush of wind through the open windows and the occasional explosive rush of a passing train, tasting different foods (and drinking the awful tea!) along the way; the chance to meet and travel with all sorts of different people... just about everything that seemed the opposite end of a lockdown spectrum :)

My two-week itinerary was fairly simple - a 2400km train ride to Bangalore (Train 06528), to be picked up by friends for a drive across the border from Karnataka to Krishnagiri district in Tamil Nadu. A couple of days later, another longer road trip to Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, a week with the family, and finally,  the 3040km long rail journey (Train 02625) back to Delhi. 

Two train journeys ~ 5,500 km

Traveling under the shadow of an impending "third wave" of the pandemic, I had expected to see a lot of restrictions along the way. Sure enough, railway stations along the route were a lot less crowded than usual. This may have been because access to the platforms is now tightly controlled, visitors are no longer issued "platform tickets", nearly all hawkers were in designated uniforms and everybody was wearing a face-mask, at least to avoid getting penalised. 

However once the train rolled out of the platform in New Delhi, ticket examiners were not checking to see if passengers had been vaccinated. Hygiene and safety standards had improved though - cleaning of the coaches and mopping with disinfectants was more frequent, a couple of armed police officers patrolled up and down the trains, reminding everybody to keep the doors closed and even warning us to down the shutters and stay away from the windows at a place in Maharashtra because "children pelt stones in this area!".

All along the journey across multiple states, only at one station did RTPCR test results become an issue. At Bangalore Cantonment as soon as passengers disembarked, all of us were lined up for a quick health-check: 

"Are you coming from outside Karnataka? Where are you going? Do you have an RTPCR negative report? If not, what is your mobile number?"

Straight, simple questions. I had not taken an RTPCR test 72 hours prior to this journey. For a moment I though they were going to send me off to a week-long quarantine but quickly realised that this was just a precautionary measure. The staff who noted down my mobile number checked with the national database accessed through the CoWIN app. Once it was confirmed that I had taken both shots of the AZ-CovidShield vaccine, my destination details were logged in and swab samples were taken for an RTPCR test. By the time I stepped out of the railway station, a message had come in, reminding me of the precautions to be taken, and within the next 24 hours, I had a digital certificate confirming an RTPCR negative report - all for free! Totally understated, efficient and super impressive.

On both the long distance journeys - from Delhi to Bangalore and from Thiruvanantapuram back to Delhi - one big change was that there were very few people travelling all the way. On the onward trip, most of my co-passengers were migrant workers - mostly travelling from the northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to serve factories, malls and the gig economy for sending money back home. There were also a few tech workers - interns or trainees taking up their assignments in Bangalore and discussing the finer points of Java and Python along the way.

The return journey from Kerala was quite different. Most of my travel companions from Kerala got off just across the state border in Coimbatore, an industrial city that attracts a lot of workers and students; those who boarded from Tamil Nadu were again traveling a short distance to Tirupati, a centre for pilgrimage. My coach was practically empty when it passed through the states of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Madhya Pradesh. 

The fear of Covid had transformed many of the landmark stations along the way. The famous stalls selling fresh fruit juice had disappeared from Vijayawada station; Chilly chicken was no longer on the menu at the Warangal station canteen. Hygiene seemed to have become an overriding concern - meals were now being sold in sealed plastic trays. Flexible pricing was also in - an egg biryani which cost INR 90 at 12:00 when the train reached Warangal would be available for INR 50 when the train reached Vijayawada a few hours later. If you were not in a hurry to pick up a packet as soon as the train stopped the price would go down still further to INR 40!

Another great transformation was the near seamless availability of broadband internet through the journey. Except for a few uninhabited areas of Telangana and Madhya Pradesh you can use the net to check the news feeds, catch up with old friends on WhatsApp, watch YouTube videos and, most importantly, see your own train moving across the country as a blue dot on Google Maps. This not only allows you to read up on the history and geography of the places you are passing through but also be well prepared to compose photographs of the fleeting yet stunningly beautiful landscapes of !ncredible India!

The Covid Pandemic seems to have changed not only the way in which Indian Railways operates  but also reduced the sense of chaos and uncertainty associated with train travel. If this trend continues I will be looking forward to my next long distance train ride - maybe from Gujarat to the North Eastern states for a change!

Godavari River, Andhra Pradesh

Paddy fields, northern Andhra Pradesh

Windmill farms and cloudscapes, Tamil Nadu

Thiruvanthapuram Central Station, Kerala

Palm plantations, Tamil Nadu

Paddy fields in coastal Andhra Pradesh

Sunset across Wardha river, Maharashtra

Cattle grazing at Vrindavan, Uttar Pradesh

Chambal Ravines, Madhya Pradesh

Zzz..

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Journey Map - https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/2/edit?mid=1SpiOwFl7nMqDxqKgqBYHsQ9ZiduMZ49u&usp=sharing 

* Kerala Express (02625) - https://www.cleartrip.com/trains/12625/