Dev Anand's Demise

On the 4th of December2011, early in the morning, Dev Anand left this world. The death did not take place in India but in London. The news spread like wild fire. I do not know about people of the present generation but for those of an earlier generation Dev saab was indestructible and a perpetual mascot  of agelessness with whose screen role every man, young or old, liked to identify himself  and every woman, again young or old, loved to romance with.. A columnist described  beautifully how every woman in the audience imagined  that Dev, while expressing his love for the heroine on the screen ,seemed to  love her also.I believe that having such incredible charm is a decisive proof that God created the person as someone special. And Dev Saab was indeed someone special. Otherwise, how would you explain a petty clerk working in an army office rising to be the heart throb of the millions, not only for  a year or two but perhaps for decades! Of the troika of that age, viz. Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar and DevAnand, the first two, perhaps,  were rated as better actors. But the actor whose entry on the screen raced the heartbeat of the spectators was Dev Anand. For many he represented the ne plus ultra of the male beauty which was not only physical but ehereal too.
Yes, this was that ethereal quality of his persona that made him a legend. I suspect that reason for Dev Anand becoming what he became was that his love for his heroines was not just screen love. It was genuine.He really fell in love with his female co-stars, although for obvious reasons he could not admit that publically.I do not think most of his heroines reciprocated the same way. His failure to get married to Surraiya is too well known but he  was more than  disappointed when Zeenat Aman bolted into Raj Kapoor's camp for getting a role in Satyam Shivam Sundaram..However, he never stopped in his tracks. It was not in his nature to wallow in his failures and disappointments. Therefore,he would launch another movie with another heroine, newer and younger, not bothering about the fate of the previous ones.Although everybody says today that he was an evergreen personalty the fact remains that , after the Eighties he failed to read the changing tastes and thus can be said to have failed to keep pace with the time. Otherwise,  flop after flop would not come out from the Navketan. But it is a fact that he had what  for want of  a better expression can be called 'star power'. Jug Suraiya, the Times of India columnist describes how Dev Anand transformed a hostile atmosphere in Nepal  when Hare Rama Hare Krishna was being shot at Kasht mandap into a friendly one just by holding a press conference at which every person in the audience felt that he was in fact a participant instead of being a mere spectator  or a passive listener. .
Dev Anand's life tells us once again, if there is a need to tell that Time is bigger than even the biggest in this world.Of course, there would not be another Dev Anand.           

Dr. Dolkar and her Herbal Medicines

Ankit suggested that we should consult Dr. Dolkar, a Tibetan doctor who treats patients with herbal medicines..One of Ankit's friends' father who had been suffering from cancer and about  whom  the doctors practicing allopathy had declared that he would survive only three months had been treated by Dr. Dolkar.  The man  then  lived for more than ten years.Well, it was tempting. Who knows her medicines could work for me too?What was the harm in giving it a try?
So we went to the Kalkaji area of Delhi.There was no need of a prior appointment.We could go there between 9 a.m. and 12 noon in the mornings and between 5p.m. and 7 p.m. in the afternoons and wait for our turn.We reached there around ten a.m.. A young man and a young woman behind an almost semi circular counter were dispensing medicines, attending telephones and were also giving small slips of paper containing serial numbers for the visitors.The visitors would take their slip , read the serial number, look at a small screen on the wall behind the counter to know the visitor of what serial number was with the doctor, look at the serial number on their slips, assess  mentally how much more time they are likely  to be waiting for their turn and begin waiting patiently.The number on our slip was 9. The small screen on the wall behind the counter indicated that the  visitor with the doctor carried the slip containing the number four meaning thereby that we might have to wait for a considerably long time for our turn. And wait we did.
After about an hour we were seated before Dr. Dolkar, a reasonably stoutly built Tibetan woman in her late forties ( or that is what I thought).. She glanced through my reports and made three observations: it was a treated case i.e. the surgery had been performed to remove the tumour; the disease appeared to be at an initial stage since the biopsy plate did not show a fully blown up flower that is apparent when the disease has advanced  considerably;and that no relevant blood tests had been conducted to assess the level of cancer in the body.She advised that I should undergo the following cancer marker blood tests and show her the reports to enable her to make necessary changes in the doses or contents of the medicines she was asking me to start immediately:
LDH (Lactate Dehydroganese)
AFP (Alpha Fetoprotein)
CEA (Carcino Embryonic Antigen)
CA19.9(Pancreatic Cancer Marker)
Beta 2 CgA (Chromogranin AMicroglobulin, Serum and
FDP (DR- 70)
The reporting process took many days, may be a month and the reports were more or less normal except for the following:-
FDP (DR-70) was H1.7,the normal would be less than 1; Chromogranin A was 169.39 ng/ml,the normal would be less than 100ng/ml; CEA was 7.30 ng/m/l; the normal ranges were less than 5 for smokers and less
than 3 for non-smokers
On our next visit Dr. Dolkar looked at the reports and said that there would be a need to repeat one of the tests after about two months and that  the decreased levels in that report would indicate that the medicines were having an effect. She further said that only when the markers are within normal ranges continuously for three long years can the patient be declared as having been freed of the cancer The treatment would continue for three years and the cost of medicines would be between three and five hundred rupees every week ( She had told us about the costs and the duration of the treatment at our first visit)
Since my first visit I have been taking the medicines regularly at mornings,between 10a.m. and 11 a.m.,between 3p.mp. and 4p.m. and the last thing at nights. In the first week the doses comprised four pills  but now they are five pills each time. She has told me that I could continue with these medicines even if I have to undergo chemotherapy at a later date.
Incidentally, I am simultaneously taking what may be called the desi treatment comprising neem leaves, basil leaves and linseed oil leavened into freshly made cottage cheese from cow's milk.This latter i.e. cottage cheese concoction is courtesy Shri Jagroshan Lal Sharma, my daughter's father-in-law who procured the freshly extracted linseed oil from somebody in Meerut where he stays.I really do not know how I can repay the debt of all these people including my wife who makes cottage cheese every day in the morning.I sincerely hope and pray that earnest efforts of all these people do not go in vain .

Abhinav Bindra's A Shot at History

If one wants to get an idea as to what all goes into making of an Olympic champion, one should grab this book and read it from cover to cover. Bindra's book is good to read, written in a somewhat chatty style but a long list of references  at the end of the book confirms that a lot of hard work and scholarly research has gone into making of this book. Credit should be shared by Rohit Brijnath whose name has been given as a co-author. Brijnath, who is a senior journalist, has given a style to the content that makes this book an enjoyable read.

Apart from the Preface which has been written by Brijnath,
 the book also has a prologue and an epilogue in addition to a customary Acknowledgements written by Bindra himself.
The book begins with the defeat at the Athens Olympics, at which Bindra lost at the Finals winning not even a bronze medal. A detailed description of his performance there has been given as also of the resultant heartbreak. Athens figures again in the chapter 'The Greek Tragedy' where Bindra reveals somewhat cannily that the shooting plane on which he stood for the final shoot was defective which ruined his scoreThe Athens experience is not, however an entire waste. This experience is used by the shooter and his support staff and his parents to prepare him in a  more assured  manner for the next Olympics i.e. the Beijing ones where the shooter finally wins the coveted gold medal In between he also wins the World Championship and  some other individual events
The theme that runs through the entire book as a perennial stream is that the Olympic champions are not made just like that.Apart from the back-breaking hard work--reaching the shooting range at 3 am everyday for months together and practicing steadfastly with an almost monk-like singlemindedness and concentration-the journey to the medal also involves mechanical, psychological, psykinetic training and, to a large extent, divine support. And this is more so in the sport of air-pistol shooting in which Bindra participates.More than all this is the parental support which luckily he received to the fullest extent.
Bindra acknowledges gratefully the support and assistance provided by his parents.But other than the parents he expresses his indebtedness to his German coaches-a husband-wife team of Heinz and Gaby and his friend and buddy Amit Bhattacharjee. Of course the contribution of other coaches has not been ignored.. He has a huge respect for his fellow shooters from India-Anjali Bhagwat, Gagan Narang, Suma Shirur Samaresh Jung and Deepali Deshpande and makes it clear that there is no rivalry between him and Narang.
After the failure at Athens, Bindra gets obsessed  with the idea of getting a gold medal and starts working like a man possessed to win it at the Beijing event. He describes lucidly how his mental state of readiness at Beijing was different from what it had been at Athens and how some physical and mental adjustments made him win a gold there while at Athens he could win no medals. He states and quotes the fellow shooter Anjali  Bhagwat that Bindra's performance at Athens was better than that at Beijing.
Bindra describes unenthusiastically how he was felicitated and lionized after his victory at Beijing---receiving letters from the prime minister, the president and almost everybody who was somebody in India. Being invited by different States and sports bodies, being felicitated by them,throngs of people waiting at the either side of the roads etc was a surreal experience which Bindra enjoyed to the hilt. But , and it is to his credit, that he did not lose his head as he mentions categorically that your past record means nothing and that the next Olympics begin the day the previous ones have ended.
Like many sports persons in the country, Bindra, too, does not have many kind words for the sports administrators. According to him, administrators do not know much about the  training requirements of the sports persons -their diet, their equipments  their physical and mental well-being and the overall environment needed to excel, which all world level competitions in general and Olympics in particular require.
Bindra, who has recently been conferred an honorary rank of lieutenant colonel is a candidate for the London Olympics also. Let us hope he does not disappoint a nation of a billion plus. Bindra is the only Indian to have won a gold medal in an individual event in any Olympics.The book should be read by every sport person who aspires to win a medal in any worthwhile event, his/her parents, coaches, support staff and lastly by sport administrators.

Swarn Jayanti Park Indirapuram

Visiting the Swarn Jayanti Park in the October mornings is a beautiful experience. The Park is a boon to the residents of Indirapuram area. It is quite big but not expansive. You can take a round of the Park in about twenty minutes walking with a reasonable brisk pace along the outer most pathway which covers almost the entire area  but is not exactly circular. Men, women and even children walk. There is an area earmarked as Play Area, where mostly children entertain  either themselves or through their indulging parents or grandparents. There are rushes and swings too. Perhaps this area is more in use in the afternoons or evenings when children are more free from their schools and tuitions . By the side of this play area  there is a musical fountain,  which spews water perhaps in different colours and in different pitches, usually  in the summer evenings. In the month of October it is, however, dry. There are busts of eminent  people who contributed significantly in the freedom struggle of India.Incidentally, these are only female busts. Rani of Jhansi, Kasturba Gandhi,Sarojini Naudu, Anne Besant, Meera Ben and many other well-known and lesser known  women  have their busts there adorning the inner perimeter of the Park. The Rani of Jhansi occupies a place of prominence. Her bust on a horseback is the tallest and is located centrally. A brief description of what they contributed is given underneath each bust making a visit to the Park an educative exercise as well. At one corner,  there is a restaurant selling tea, coffee and soft drinks.Cool drinking water is also available  at a water-cooler.For a change, the Park is not without toilet facilities which I sincerely hope, are of a reasonably adequate standard. I have not used any till the time of writing but I hope they are. Then there are  sculptured representations of animals at different places some of them carrying cans for collecting garbage. There are kangaroos and pelicans and tigers and bears all giving an amusing look .A portion of the park  which is closed is marked as 'Ghaziabad Haat'.May be it is aimed at emulating the Delhi Haat which, of late has become fairly popular amongst  the young upwardly mobile Delhites.The Park boasts of a number of trees also. Unfortunately I am not a person who would like to know their species or genres. Unlike a botany man I just enjoy the company of trees without bothering which species they belong to.The trees are not tall but have a promise. In years to come they would become  highrise, shade- giving and flush with leaves. Of course, they will not be fruit-bearing, for then they may create a problem of disposal of the government property leading to calling for bids and tenders and consequently to corruption.
People do yoga exercises, laugh out loudly(this too is some exercise, they say).At one corner RSS people hold a SAKHA i.e.doing  physical exercises and chanting  'sada vatsla matribhumi'...etc. There are a few enclaves where women do yoga exercises. perhaps they bond more cohesively while stretching limbs.
For me the Park provides a place to walk in the mornings full of oxygen and the morning sunlight highly conducive to generating vitamin D in our bodies,which is a natural anti-dote to cancer as some websites would like you to believe.
The problem is how to reach there from my place of residence.If I walk down from where I stay, I am considerably tired by the time I reach there. And a tired man can not enjoy either the walk or the sunlight or the trees. Going by the car is an option but that works out rather expensive given the steep hikes in  petrol prices that the oil companies have been effecting  at  regular intervals. On top of that one is always mindful of the safety of the vehicle, given the rampant car thefts north India is notorious for. How can you enjoy a walk or for that matter anything when your mind is preoccupied with something as important as the safety of your vehicle?I am going by car these days but I don't know for how long I can afford this little luxury.     

Two Milestones

Last week it was Steve Jobs and yesterday it was Jagjit Singh. Of course the people outside India may not be very much aware of the existence of  the latter. Singh was a singer of light classical music who had made a name for himself mainly in ghazal singing.What made him unique was his style which was not rigidly classical but contained elements of modernity as well. Not only did he experiment with harmonium in place of sarangi, he used guitar too as an accompanying instrument in rendition of a ghazal which was unthought of before. Add to that the velvety voice of the singer and the enjoyers of ghazal  would get transported to a different world altogether when Singh sang.Jagjit Singh was born in a sikh family.His life is an example how bigotism is given a good bye when someone achieves something remarkable. No so called guardians of sikhism raised any voice at Jagjit Singh giving up his hair.Obviously, he would have been as good a singer and a musician with kesh or hair as he was without it. A personal tragedy made him turn to singing  divine songs -bhajans and sabads.It also lent a certain poignancy to his singing which endeared him more to his fans.Most newspapers have made a mention of his wife Chitra Singh stopping singing after the tragedy but no body has come up with what she has been doing of late. There is just a photograph of hers in some of the newspapers of  12th October-that of a distraught wife who has lost not only her husband but also a fellow singer. As for experiencing pleasure, man (and that includes woman also) has immense capacity for enduring sorrow too. When their son died in an accident,the Singhs must have thought that that was the ultimate limit of sorrow that they could endure. Now after the death of Jagjit Singh, Chitra must be wondering whether she was not wrong in assuming so.
This is my homage to a person who made a name for himself  through his hard work  and his stupendous talent.
Much has been written about Steve Jobs before as well as after his death on 5th October. A man has hailed him as the greatest inventor since Edison.I think it is rather pre-mature. Only after a century will we be able to make such a comparison. For only then, will we be able to assess the impact of the inventions of Jobs on the life of common man.Only then will we be able to gauge the usefulness and ubiquitousness of his inventions,which, incidentally, were not created by Jobs alone-there was a team of dedicated men and women who worked very hard to produce what Jobs wanted.People of my age i.e. above sixty may not be very much appreciative of what Jobs and his team did but for people younger than what we are  he was almost God.And as was expected he did not tread the straight and narrow path always. He did some kind of hacking also and made money. But then who cares for these things in today's world where means are not important- only ends are.
The important thing about Jobs , so far as  I am concerned is that he too was suffering from cancer as I am suffering.His death has left  me with the thought that one can not win a battle against cancer even if he may be Steve Jobs--rich and famous and highly original a thinker. But then he was able to manage it for four -five years.I do not know how long I will be able to manage mine.
It is true that both Singh and Jobs were high achievers in their fields but then the world goes on even when they are not here now.And it will go on.     

AIIMS

Shri Santosh Sharma had made valiant efforts to get me an appointment with a cancer specialist at All India Institute of Medical Sciences. He made Shri Rao, a joint secretary in the Union Health Ministry, to speak to one Mr. Rakesh who was the personal secretary to the Director of the Institute. I visited the Institute on a Thursday to request Mr. Rakesh  to arrange a meeting with Dr. Rath., the head of cancer department there. Rakesh informed me that both Dr. Rath and Dr. Julka, his second in command had gone out of the country to attend a conference and that they would be available only on the 7th of October at the earliest. He suggested that I should get in touch with him on telephone on the 5th to ascertain whether Dr. Rath would indeed be available on the 7th for consultation.On the 5th October when I spoke to him on telephone he asked me to call him on the 7th of October. When I called him on the 7th October he was kind enough to speak to Dr. Rath on intercom and get him agree to see me  at 10am on the 8th of October which would be a Saturday. I then requested Ankit and Lipika to depute their driver to drive me to the hospital. The driver was supposed to have come  to my residence at 8am on the 8th October. My wife and I had planned first to visit the Hanuman temple before going to the Institute. However, since the driver came around 9am and we did not want to miss the appointment with Dr. Rath we decided to go to the hospital first. The driver took the Barapulla overbridge and we reached the office gate of Dr. Rath at 9:25 am. The man at the gate informed us that Dr. Rath was not in the office and his secretary too had not arrived and that he could not let us in unless either of them was present in the office. I scribbled my name on a slip of paper and the fact that I had an appointment with the good doctor at 10 am.We then called the driver to reach the same spot where he had earlier dropped us  and we then directed him to take us to the Hanuman temple.
After returning from the temple, we came back to the Institute. It was 11o' clock. Dr.Rath was still not in his office. His secretary therefore asked us to wait and arranged to seat us in what was perhaps a pantry. After what appeared an interminable wait, a young doctor came to where we were sitting and asked us to gve him our papers. His young age betrayed that he could not be Dr. Rath who being the head of the department should be  at least in his fifties, which the doctor in our room certainly was not. He disappeared for a short while and when he returned he was accompanied by Dr. Rath who however did not enter the pantry. I walked up to him and tried to convey to him what my problem was. He was a cheerful person but told me that he was sending his man the young doctor with me to his colleague Dr. Julka who was the expert in the field.According to him, the subject was his concern, and therefore I should go to him.On being asked whether he was not a surgeon he answered in the negative. I was disappointed because I had earlier met Dr. Julka on two occasions and my assessment was that the person was not sincere. Anyway, the young doctor, whose name, as we discovered later, was Dr. Harish took us to where Dr. Julka was seeing the patients. Breaking the queue the young doctor placed my PET-CT report before Dr. Julka and waited for the pearls of wisdom from his mouth to drop. Dr. Julka never had a look at the PET-CT plate but went over the concluding part of the written report and stated in no uncertain terms that there was a definite requirement of not only radio but chemo therapy too.He said he did not give much importance to the FNAC test result which had indicated that there was no cancer in the region that was  shown in the PET-CT as carrying a recurrent tumour. Dr. harish then explained to us what further we were required to do .There would be five weeks of radiotherapy, five days a week and there would be chemotherapy too. My wife and I were shattered. We told him that we would decide and then inform him soon.
On 9th Oct. which was a Sunday, I telephoned Dr. Zaidi of RGCI&RC and asked him how much reliable the FNAC test was. He said it was 99% reliable. I further asked him that since he had seen the hard copy of the test  result whether he could confirm that the test was conducted correctly. He did but a doubt continues to linger in my mind.

Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute and Research Centre ----Part 3

On Monday, the 3rd October,2011, Aishwarya, my son,.brought the report of FNAC test conducted at Sir Ganga Ram hospital. Before he could get it home he had read it out to Ankit, my son-in-law. Ankit gave me a phone call. His voice sounded elated. He said Aishwarya had read out the report to him and that it was good. I was a little apprehensive, for I thought that Aishwarya might not have been able to understand the medical terminology in which such reports were generally written.
Ankit and his parents came to visit in the evening, Soon Aishwarya also reached home. I took the report from him and read it. As expected, there was a lot of jargon in the report but a layman could still get the drift. No cancer was reported. Somehow I was still not convinced but we could all feel a sense of well being Now we were to show the report to the doctor who had advised me to undergo the test. Dr. Zaidi was kind enough to have given me his card and therefore, his telephone number was available with me. However, I did not want to disturb him at night. So I decided to wait till the next day. On the 4th October I spoke to him in the morning and sought an appointment for the day. He was considerate enough to ask me to come around 4pm although it was his OT day. Aishwarya and I drove down to the Dilshad Garden metro station and boarded the train  which would take us to the Rohini West station. Ankit was to come direct to the hospital.  When we reached the office in front of the operation theatre, it was 4:27pm. The lady sitting there informed me that the doctor would be available only later as he was busy in an operation and that we should wait. The doctor came out for a few minutes around 6pm and asked us to wait some more. At 6:30pm he sent a message from inside the OT that he would be out in about ten minutes time. He could come out only at 7pm and straight away apologised for keeping us waiting. Then he had a look at the report and asked me whether the procedure was conducted by Dr. Mandhir Kumar himself. It was then that the sweetest words came out of his mouth- there is no cancer i.e.there is no new growth and that I could continue with my daily tasks unhindered. He also said that I should continue to get reviews done at an interval of three months either from Dr. Anil Agrawal , the surgeon who had performed the surgery or  from them i.e. RGCI&RC unless there is some problem in between.. On being asked whether there was a need   to consult Dr.Doval ,the medical oncologist, he answered in the negative saying that there was no need of any medication at this stage. We thanked him profusely and came out. Ankit said that it was reassuring to hear from a doctor's mouth what we had ourselves  derived from the report the day before.  We  reached home around 8:15pm first reaching the Dilshad Garden metro station by metro and then by car which we had parked at the station. We  dropped Ankit on the way. I was tired but reasonably satisfied. It was as if I had come out of jail.  

Sir Ganga Ram Hospital

Dr. Chaturvedi of RGCI&RC finally wrote his observations on the slip of paper, the substance of which was that there is only about 10% chance of the needle reaching the place where the lesion appears to be located. Dr. Zaidi then suggested that I would need to undergo a  test  viz. endoscopic ultrasound guided FNAC to determine whether the sub-carinal lesion appearing in the PET-CT plate is malignant or not. The Google informed us what FNAC meant. It means Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology.This process involves a fine needle being guided through ultrasonic waves to the place in the body where the lesion is seen to be located.The needle thereafter sucks up tissues which are then sent to cytology lab for examination to determine malignancy. Dr.Zaidi advised that the test could be got done at Sir Ganga Ram hospital because the RGCI&RC did not have the facility. As the cost involved was rather high (Rs.15000 approx.) I rummaged  through the internet again, hoping to find a lab. in Delhi where this test could be done. I was hoping to locate a lab. on the approved list of CGHS so that I might not be required to pay the money myself. But I was not successful. It is not as if there were no such facilities but they were in hospitals- mostly cancer hospitals. And the cancer hospitals wanted that I should first get myself registered with them so that they could fleece me (or the Government, which would pay the bills). My dispensary would not grant me the permission to avail treatment from another hospital unless  the permission given to RGcI&RC in the first place was withdrawn. This did not seem feasible as the RGCI&RC had already charged me for a number of tests and consultations.  Finally, I had to seek an appointment  with Dr. M. Kumar a senior consultant at Sir Ganga Ram hospital. Although the website had informed me that I would need to be on an empty stomach for about four hours, Dr. Kumar wanted me to be  so for twelve hours. Of course I could drink water but nothing more. Dr. Kumar was not willing to advance the time for the test which was after 10:30 am . Since I normally take my last meal of the day between 8 and 9 pm, I would be without food or nourishment for more than 13-14 hours the next day when the test would be undertaken. But I was helpless. Helplessness is  what a serious disease leaves a human being with. I had to take the test, there was no option And therefore I had to abide by what the doctor had wanted me to do.So I had to go to the hospital at the appointed hour.As apprehended, the test would not start at 10:30 am. There were many formalities required to be completed. The completion of formalities consumed another 15 minutes. Then there was that mandatory wait for about half an hour before I was ushered in to the testing arena which was a cubicle large enough to accommodate the necessary machines and beds and tables.They asked me to lie down on the left side . After injecting me with the necessary amount of sedative they inserted the tube and needle . Of course I barely noticed anything as the sedative had begun to have its effect. The process was over in about thirty minutes. When I came to, I found myself lying among two three  patients who too might have gone through some similar procedure.Ankit and Aishwarya went about paying the money which I had given to them before I was taken to the test arena. I was still groggy when I got in to the car. I ate something in the car and came home. The report would be available on the following Monday. The effect of the sedative was huge as I continued to sleep till about  5 pm. Now I am waiting for the report, keeping my fingers crossed. 

Shoaib Akhtar's Controversially Yours

Shoaib Akhtar, the Pakistani fast bowler, who announced his retirement from the International cricket  a few months ago even when the World Cup matches were going on, has come out with  his autobiography. It  appears that Akhter has just talked and it is Anshu Dogra who has made it into an intelligible book.As the title of the book suggests it has something to do indeed with controversy. The book certainly does not aim at quelling any. It may, on the other hand ,give rise to a number of more controversies.
The book  can be called a collection of complaints and grievances, some real and some perceived that Akhtar has had against  almost every body----the Pakistani Cricket Board members, it's chairmen from time to time, team members - mostly the seniors, the coaches,the Pakistani government, the umpires and even the media. It
appears that Akhtar has been fairly honest in his impressions.That is why almost nobody has been spared.
Coming from the family of a nightwatchman at a petrol station belonging to the Attock oil refinery,. Akhtar was the youngest son of the four surviving sons. A sister younger than Shoaib by eleven years was born later. Shoaib was initially the name of a brother  who died before Akhtar was born. But the name Shoaib , which means the one who unites as also the one who separates depending on the context, was so much dear to his mother that the new born Akthar was also given the same name.
Akthar's childhood was spent in poverty like that of many  other children in the subcontinent. What made Akthar's situation different were  his over weening ambition, his overabundant  energy, his complete trust in Allah (so he says)and his mother's sapience and sagacity who denied herself and her family of  most  of the small and everyday pleasures to ensure that her children got good education.His overabundant energy made Akhtar do things which to others seemed a manifestation of  a streak of madness.This streak of madness continues to dog Akthar till the time the book ends.He does not mind citing examples of this through out the book---  running incessantly on roads and forests,mocking the authority even when not warranted, playing practical pranks on fellow team mates, refusing to fall in line when needed and so on. Akhtar  feels that his seniors, coaches, PCB members etc. never understood him. They never did anything to guide and protect him and were never sympathetic when he was really injured or in some kind of trouble. Not only that,according to Akhtar if anything went wrong with the team, mostly the blame would go to him.He also feels that the Board has no consideration for  players' well-being, paying them a pittance and keeping them under a constant threat of expulsion from the team. The Board also does not protect them from harmful influences and does not do  anything to prevent the bookies' access to players. Players from modest economic background are targeted by these bookies as they are considered easy preys and that is why so many Pakistani players  find themselves  accused of match-fixing. .
Akhtar also touches upon the subject of ball tampering and asserts categorically that all bowlers do this The game of cricket is getting more and more batsmen friendly forcing bowlers to be more and more innovative. The ball tampering is one such ploy that fast bowlers resort to to counter this says Akhtar.
Akhtar has strong opinion about Pakistani cricket captains.While he is all praise for Imran Khan, not only for his having won the World Cup for the country but also for the fact that he nurtured young cricketers who had talent, he i.e. Akhtar is less than enthusiastic about Wasim Akram, who according to him, though  a great bowler, cared much less for the team members and who, even when trying most to keep the PCB members happy, eventually fell out of their favour.About Inzmam ul Haq he says that though a good guy, in his captaincy the Pakstani team became obssesed with the rituals such as namaz and roza. He declares himself a confirmed muslim but feels that rituals such as the above when required to be followed even in aeroplanes smack of hypocrisy, especially as the ones insisting on following them continue to indulge in less than honourable deeds.
Akhtar does acknowledge the greatness of some of his contemporaries and predecessors such as Viv Richards, Brian Lara, Sachin Tendulkar and Rickey Ponting and narrates with relish the episodes where he got the better of them ( not Richards). Dismissal of Dravid and Sachin with consecutive balls at Kolkata finds a mention more than once.At one place he also hints that Sachin had moved away apparently in fear when he had charged at him with an approximately 100 miles per hour ball. He also derives pleasure in recalling how his ball had almost killed  Brian Lara. Of the other Shoaib i.e. Shoaib Malik he says that he was a ghulam of the Board.
Of the chairmen of PCB, the only man who can find his name mentioned with  any amount of respect is Lt.Gen.Tauqir Zia who apparently helped Akhtar even before he was appointed as the Chairman of PCB and continued to help him till his resignation. Akhtar also speaks how Asif Zardari ,the President of Pakistan ,had to help him when the matter once became political.
Shoaib does not fail to talk about money and girls. After he became a star, he was chased by girls everywhere.Girls in dozens and scores would stand in front of the   hotels where the team stayed for hours together in the hope of meeting their beloved stars.Cricketers would also befriend them and make good use of the time and money the girls provided. Promises of undying love would also be made in some cases and there would be tearful departures at the conclusion of the tour.Incidentally, this would be repeated at almost every city hosting the  match. Akhtar  feels that avenues for earning legitimate money such as match fee, endorsements etc for Pakistani players are rather limited and therefore,players are always on tenterhooks and once they fail to get selected in the team for some time, there future is indeed dark and gloomy. Akhtar notes with regret that an ex-captain of the Pakistani team drives a taxi in London because the PCB failed to look after him in his retirement days as it fails to do for most of the ex-players.
There are more than two dozen photographs capturing momentous moments in the cricketer's life including the dismissal of Sachin Tendulkar in Kolkata and the ball which broke the 100 miles per hour barrier.
In the pages of this book, Akhtar comes out to be a wild, untamed and untameable personality that he is already known to be...The book will provide immense pleasure to those who love cricket gossip which many of us surely do. To many Indian readers, it may also provide an experience of schadenfreude, for the PCB appears much worse than our BCCI..    .

Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute and Research Centre part 2

Ankit, my son-in-law had obtained an appointment with Dr. Doval, the Head of Oncology Medicine at RGCIRC for Monday. the 19th September201.I was to meet the doctor at 4:45pm in the OPD on the second floor of the building. However, Ankit had to leave for the USA on the 19th morning very  early. Now, I had  to be escorted to hospital by somebody else. If my wife would accompany me ,the entire household work  would come to a standstill.The solution was offered by an old friend Mrs. Sharma. She has been a friend for more than three decades.She said that she and her son, whose name is Ankit too, would go with me to the hospital. At the last minute, however, she dropped out saying that she was superstitious and that three persons should not go together. So  her son and I went  to the hospital, he coming to my house all the way from his own residence after driving  down some twenty five kilometres and then picking me up to take me to the hospital which must have been about forty kilometres from my residence.. He is a young boy and loves driving. So he took a route that was longer but familiar. We reached the hospital at 3:35 pm  and announced our arrival to the staff.They asked us to wait and  desired that we should  be paying the consultation fee. The girl at the counter asked us to deposit Rs. 242 as the fee. We had to argue again that I was a retired employee and that the transaction had to be on a credit basis.
Then came the hard part. We began waiting and it seemed that the wait would never end, for the doctor was not there even when the appointment time was long over. The staff, however, continued to ask us to wait and we continued doing that i.e.  waiting. At long last the doctor was spotted and after a few minutes we were able to enter his cabin at 6pm. Meanwhile, the junior doctor had already seen the blood report as also the CT and PET-CT review reports.While the blood report was normal, the review reports had voiced the same doubt i.e. there could be a recurrence of cancer.
Dr. Doval pored over the reports and looked somewhat confused. He sheepishly looked at me and said that unless it was confirmed that the cancer had recurred it would be risky to start chemotherapy especially as I had not been exposed to this as yet. He said that chemotherapy could nave many unintended harmful  side effects.He further stated that since I had no perceptible symptoms it would not be desirable to go ahead with the chemotherapy. He finally advised that I should see his colleague one Dr. Zaidi, the cancer  surgeon in the hospital. Dr. Doval referred the file to Dr. Zaidi and asked me to meet him.     .      Dr.    Zaidi was a serious looking person comparatively younger but  earnest. He looked at the PET-CT plate carefully and felt that it would not be easy to reach a needle to the place in the body where the PET-CT showed a possibility of the recurrence of the tumour. ( In the absence of PET-Ct report saying categorically that there was a recurrence, the confirmation that the cancer had come back could be done only by taking a tissue from the affected part by inserting a needle there). He, however, suggested that I should go to one Dr. Chaturvedi ,the Head of Radiology department to whom he was referring my file. He also said that perhaps, Dr. Chaturvedi might have left for the day and that I might be required to see him the following day. We took the reference to Dr. Chaturvedi's cabin only to be told at their reception office that Dr. Chaturvedi had left  for the day. We went back to Dr. Doval's cabin. He was busy with a patient and therefore. asked us to wait for a couple of minutes more. When we could finally meet him he repeated what he had told us before but asked us to see him the following day with the observations of Dr Chaturvedi on the reference from Dr.Zaidi.
We came home,this time taking a different route  which was shorter.    

Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute Rohini New Delhi

Review of the progress of recovery from the surgery undergone by me for removal of a cancerous esophagus entailed undertaking some more scans  such as CT scan and PET-CT scan.CT scan suggested a  recurrence of the tumour. PET-CT scan was indicative of a cluster of nodes suggestive of  a likely metastasis. In a layman's language the cancer had come up again. Or perhaps it had  never gone away. I was never convinced  that a mere surgery for removal of a cancerous growth would have led to a complete cure.This was later confirmed when I surfed the net. The net enlightened  me that cancer could  never be  cured, it could only be managed.
The good surgeon Dr. Agrawal studied the scans and concluded that perhaps there would be a need to  undertake a chemo or radio therapy and wrote his advice that I could get it done at a private hospital approved by the C.G.H.S.(central government health scheme).Reports about the Dharmshila Cancer Hospital were not very encouraging and therefore, I had to opt for the Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute and Research Centre  because I found that I might not be able to penetrate the bureaucratic system of  All India Institute of Medical Sciences to get myself registered  in their cancer therapy department.The Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute and Research Centre (RGCIRC) was  far away from the place I reside.A visit by car would take  at least two hours.
Our first visit took three hours because before reaching that  place I had to visit the dispensary from where I get my medicines on a regular basis. The in-charge of the dispensary on the previous day had refused to grant the permission to undertake the therapies from the RGCIRC. I had  to request her bosses to intercede to make her agree to accord the permission. On the 16th of September2011, I finally got the permission letter.
At the RGCIRC the experience was more harrowing .The bureaucracy was more stubborn than the one we encounter in government offices. We were asked to fill in a form and submit that at a counter .We stood in a queue for about fifteen minutes at the counter before they were able to prepare the file.But then arose the question of payment . When we insisted that I was a CGHS beneficiary and a pensioner and that  my treatment had to be on a credit basis, the girl at the counter asked us to get the necessary endorsement from one Ms. Ghosh working at their basement office. Ms. Ghosh was a middle aged  grumpy woman who had perhaps no traces of sympathy in her personality.. She saw our papers and then curtly told us that we should get a colour photocopy of my CGHS card and submit it to her. On being told that it was not proper she shamelessly admitted that that  was indeed so but pleaded  her helplessness saying that that was a CGHS requirement.We had a black&white photocopy but that was of no use.She wanted a colour photocopy and that was final. We went out of the hospital in search of the photocopying facility.At a distance of about one and a half kilometre we spotted a Kodak laboratory on the opposite side of the road.After taking a U-turn we reached the place only to be told that that was a photographer's lab. and that  we would need to go to the  sector seven market to get a colour photocopy. We were able to  locate that sector after some time. Ankit, who had always been  accompanying me,  walked up to the first floor of a building which was housing  a photocopy shop and returned after about fifteen minutes.Two colour photocopies cost Rs.20 and two  black&white photocopies cost only Rs.two. On a photocopy of the permission letter Ms. Ghosh appended the required endorsement .We took the endorsed letter  to the reception window and produced the endorsement. The girl at the window then completed the file .At first she wanted us to deposit Rs. 242, a discounted amount for a CGHS beneficiary,as the consultation fee.But on our insistence that it had to be a cashless transaction  as I was a pensioner, she looked into the endorsement once again and relented finally.Then she directed that we should go to the second floor of the building and wait for our turn and that our file would be sent  through their own channel.Our file did reach after some time but our wait continued.We  had to wait for one hour and forty-five minutes before we could get to see the doctors.The doctors looked in to the history of the case and decided that a) I should get a complete hemogram done ,and
b)CT and PET-CT scans should be reviewed  so as to be certain that the cancer had returned.That would
 enable them to determine whether there was a need of chemotherapy or radio therapy or of both .
Again we had to stand in a queue to get us the receipts which were necessary for us to get the said tests done. While Ankit went to get the review done, I came to the second floor again to give the sample of blood. I was told that I could get a provisional report   around 4:30 pm the same day, but the final report would however, be available only the following day late in the afternoon. Similarly, the review report would also be available the following day. We came out of the building and boarded the car. Ankit got himself dropped  just about a kilometre away from the hospital and I moved  towards my residence certain that I would have to return soon.

Bail and Jail

A couple of days ago the Indian news channels went almost berserk when Amar Singh, an erstwhile Samajwadi Party leader was sent to jail.Amar Singh is a well-known figure in the Indian politics and people thought that he was so well connected that no one would dare send him to jail, no matter what he might have done.But this was proved as false and the magistrate Ms. Dhingra ordered that he be sent to the judicial custody, disregarding his plea for leniency on the ground that he was sick having undergone a surgery and a kidney transplant operation.
Of late, we are witnessing a strange phenomenon--instead of granting bail being a norm , denying it is becoming a norm. Nobody has the answer to the question :what happens if ultimately the person is acquitted? Who and what can compensate for his lack of freedom ? Perhaps ,we the people are not enough sensitive towards freedom. We do not value it enough . Amar Singh had been fully co-operating with the investigating agencies.            He is a well-known person and is not likely to run away from the law and the police. He is genuinely sick and is living on borrowed kidneys.Why is it then necessary to keep him in custody?
Not only Amar Singh, there are many other  well-known people who have been kept behind the bars for months together denying them bail which should have been  given to them in normal circumstances because their alleged crime is not in the category of most heinous crimes.They have not been accused of having committed a  murder; they have also not been accused of rape or of treason.They have been accused of having caused presumptive loss of thousands of crores of rupees to the Indian exchequer and in the process  having feathered their nest or having  caused unintended benefit  to some of the corporate houses in which they had  monetary interest.These are crimes indeed but these crimes are not such as to entail denial of bail.Then what is the reason? I think there are two important reasons---the gravity of their crimes has been blown out of proportion by the media-both print and electronic.And they are comparatively well-to- do people. In India, the spectacle of seeing the rich behind the bars is so rare that when an opportunity as such presents it self, media are far too eager to overplay it and people, who are the consumers of the media, are more than willing to lap it.That feeling of schadenfreude becomes more intense and consequently more satisfying  when the misfortune strikes those who are rich and powerful.
But all this leaves a big question  before us: are our destinies to be decided by the media? After all, it should have been media's pressure, direct or perceived,  that may have prevented the judges and magistrates from granting bail in these cases. Can we therefore expect any justice in such circumstances? The answer is an emphatic NO.Most of the Indians, at least those who are capable of thinking for themselves,  know it for certain that there is no such thing  as justice in this world and it is only a ruse used conveniently by the rulers of all countries to befool the public. We should all ponder for a minute  and ask ourselves: whether human progress, over the millennia has only meant  media becoming a tool of power in place of a piece of stone--perhaps the earliest tool used by man to exert power.

Release and other stories by Rakhshanda Jalil

The jacket of the book says that this is the debut collection of short stories by Rakhshanda Jalil but she  has earlier  edited a collection of short stories by Pakistani women which was extremely successful. And there is no doubt that it would be so.Because in Ms. Jalil  the literary world has  found a   sincere writer, at least of short stories.
All protagonists in her stories of the present thin  volume are muslims but not the muslims of ghettos or those on the margins of the Indian society but those who are reasonably well- to- do and perhaps not fundamentalists.For most of them drink alcohol  and are in the white collar jobs . Even women of these stories do not mind a swig at times.The title story Release is a mildly poignant tale of two cousins who were betrothed even before one of them was born  and how despite an intense affection and almost absolute devotion at least of the female protagonist the two could never get married because of the mulish stubbornness of the boy's mother and a little pusillanimity on the part of the boy  who fails to assert himself when  needed most. The boy, Hasan, and the girl, Azra do meet finally  but then  Hasan is 70, long retired from the Foreign Service and Azra is on a hospital bed in a coma.Perhaps not a modern tale but written beautifully nevertheless.In The Perfect Couple,  a husband, discovering that his wife has a paramour treats him with a kind of fellow- feeling ( instead of bashing him) when the latter comes to the hospital where the wife has been taken and is unconscious in the ICU. Some of the stories appear to be pen portraits such as The Failure and The Strange Man.  Surprisingly the stories are refreshingly free from the  politics except  A Real Woman wherein the chief protagonist Dia Mirza seems deeply affected by the contemporary incidents, so much so that she forgets all pleasures of  the  body  being promised to her by a long-known  visitor when the news of  serial bomb-blasts flashes on the television  channels.
Some of the stories are stories within stories -a style known to the humanity since the days of the Puranas . The Alif Laila tales have made an exquisite use of this style.But the stories in which Jalil makes use of this style are comparatively weaker.The Incident of Frozen Snake and A Holiday Gone Awry are two such stories.Humiliation and indignation of the girls and their twelve year old brother, in front of whom they are raped, has not been brought out  in depth in the latter story.  The former,  in which a frozen snake sent to an aspiring starlet by her  experienced rival just makes the starlet lose her mental balance ruining her promising career,  gives an impression that the things operate at a shallow level.
I read the book in just one sitting.The stories reveal a facet of the life of Indian Muslims that we may not be familiar with or we may not have tried to know,  swamped as we might have been by the stereotype images of Muslims of this country--- bearded men, having a scull cap on their heads, illiterate or half-educated, employed in unskilled or semi-skilled jobs, spawning a large brood of  malnourished children who would be  easy recruits for a terrorist organization etc. This thin volume of short stories tries ,albeit not much successfully, to dispel that erroneous impression of Muslims of the contemporary India. We look forward to more such and indeed much deeper stories  from the pen of Ms. Jalil. 

The Scare

It was Ankit who collected  the x-ray report.He reached my residence and immediately logged on to the internet.When I came to the room where the computer is located I found him  mulling over the numerous sites explaining 'pleural effusion'.Yes that was what the report had suggested.The left CP angle was obtuse meaning thereby that there was fluid in the outer layer of the the lung.The discovery, to say the least ,was nothing but a shock. There are many causes for the pleural effusion, but the most important include --tuberculosis, pneumonia and cancer. Since I had no symptoms indicative of the first two ,the ineluctable conclusion would be the third. This meant that the disease was now trying to get into the lungs and that I should bid farewell to any hopes I might be nursing.. Needless to say,the night was nothing but a long , uninterrupted  stretch of anxiety.Not only for me but also for my wife.So much so  that Monu, the son of my wife's brother, who was visiting us,  became thoroughly restless.The following day, he insisted that he would accompany me to hospital where the good surgeon had agreed to meet us to discuss the reports Ankit, my son-in-law was with us as he has always been .Even my daughter went along. As the Capital of the country was readying itself to tackle the likely law and order situation that Anna Hajare's fast for adoption of the Jan Lokpal Bill could create, traffic on many roads had been diverted resulting in long jams and denser crowds.We were late for the appoint ment.Dr. Agrawal, helpfully suggested on the mobile phone that we could see him in the OPD if we did not reach his office room in time. And we did not . He was in the OPD  with one of his team members examining patients. He greeted us  and asked us to wait. When finally he could go through the reports and the x-ray plate he said "Everything is okay".I expressed my apprehension about pleural effusion but he dismissed it as inconsequential and suggested that I could go for a CT scan if I so desired. It was an immense relief writ large on our faces.We thanked the surgeon and came out.
I realized how man can never be without fear and how important a role fear plays in our lives .

Review of Progress

 On  Wednesday , the 10th August 2011,I was again seating in front of Dr.Anil Agrawal,the surgeon who had operated upon me exactly seven months ago for removal of a cancerous growth in my esophagus. Ankit, my son -in-law was with me, as he always has been.Apparently, Dr. Agrawal was satisfied with the progress, since I was not losing any weight and was also not experiencing any pain or discomfort. As usual, he exhorted me to have a positive attitude and not think of the illness as such. I nodded and asked whether there was any way of disabling the programme that has caused the cells to so  misbehave as to cause this disease. He said  that that was in the hands of the Power above.Then he advised that I undergo some  blood tests and also get a chest X-ray done and report to him the findings at the next seating which could be as early as the  coming Wednesday.We thanked the surgeon and moved out of the room wondering whether anybody really knew enough about cancer.I was reminded of the Pulitzer Prize winning  author Dr.Mukherjee's book on cancer wherein he has called  this disease the emperor of maladies and revealed to the layman that there are a number of maladies covered by the generic name cancer but each of them is different.Some cancers, according to him, are on the verge of being deciphered as a lot of progress has been made in researching their causes and the course  they will take over a period of time; however, in the case of most others, we are not much ahead of what we knew about them in ancient Babylon when the disease was first noticed.Yes, the questions why the cells  begin  going berserk suddenly and why we can not re-programme them to become normal have not been answered satisfactorily till now.But the quest is on and millions of dollars are being spent on research projects to find an answer.But, does the causality principle really work? Should there always be a cause for a condition? People argue that God has not been caused by another cause.He is the first cause..But then God is not seen or is not perceived whereas, cancer is very real ,and causes immense pain and discomfort not only to the patient  but also to others who have some affinity with him.I sometime wonder what this world would be  if the mankind had not been having faith in the causality principle. (Yes it is faith only, for ,an action can have many effects or results, both immediate and long-term and nobody can predict all the consequences of an action.We still do not know all the consequences of the first major event of this Universe-the Big Bang ). Well, there would be no progress as we know of.There would be no cure for any of the ailments,there would be no airplanes, no electricity,perhaps no cities and even villages and not even the human race, for, even a caveman would know that if he threw a stone (cause) the animal or the bird would be killed (the effect) providing him with food,-- his and our basic need.Why only human beings,even animals have this innate sense of causality! How would they, otherwise, get their food?But I am waiting for the day when the principle of causality would stand debunked as generally false . Have not many things we had faith on  earlier, been debunked since then?What would life then be? 

Eternal Questions and Shourie's Answers

Asking the so-called eternal questions such as :why  we are here; whether there is a God; whether He is really omnipotent , omniscient and merciful is meaningless or say, the least helpful seems to be the theme of the latest book written by Arun Shourie---an ex-journalist, and an ex-minister who had also worked at the World Bank.The question precisely is: if there is an omniscient, omnipotent and merciful God, why is there suffering in this world--for individuals, for communities and for nations?Shourie seeks answers in the context of his son -Aditya's congenital illness (he is suffering from cerebral palsy) and seems to be coming to the conclusion that it is perhaps, no use asking these questions, for, there is no satisfactory answer in most of the religions  presupposing the existence of God. More helpful is the Buddhism---an atheistic religion which emphasizes action to alleviate the suffering rather than seeking it's causes. The book starts poignantly.What do you do to a father who thrashes, punishes and humiliates a son at every breath the son takes.You might think of reporting him to the police.But what if the father is The Father---both T and F capitalized!Yes , what if the father is God! What Shourie does not say in so many words but alludes quiet clearly is that his son's condition amounts to thrashing, punishing and humiliation .Can the same then, be attributed to God?If yes, then what happens to the tag of mercifulness He has been made to carry by most of the religions? Shourie  quotes extensively form the Old Testament ,the New Testament and the Quran and tries to quash the widely held belief that God is all-knowing, all-powerful and an unfathomable ocean of mercy. He then proceeds to do the same, albeit with much less success  to   the Karma theory described in Hindu scriptures and interpreted by sages and savants over the ages. A full chapter has been devoted to two great  sages of modern India---Raman Maharshi and Swami Ramkrishna Paramhans.These two sages of modern India are revered almost as gods. The number of their followers ran into lakhs and was spread in   several countries of Europe and America in addition to those in Asia  Africa and Australia. Many of their followers had highest reverence for them and not a small number believed that they had miraculous powers and could cure even incurable diseases.To their credit, the sages never claimed any supernatural powers.The astounding fact is that both these savants suffered from cancer and finally succumbed to that disease suffering not only the excruciating pain but all other consequences  as well. Some of the people believed that these sages had taken upon themselves the sufferings of some of their followers  so that the latter could stay free from pain. ( A similar tale is also carried about Sai Baba of Shirdi). Shourie just about hints at these tales but does not say much about them.Instead, he seems to ask the question: why did these god-like, sinless and pure men suffer?Having found that the Hindu scriptures, the Bible and the Quran do not answer these and other such questions satisfactorily, Shourie turns to the Buddhism and  finally finds some solace in the Buddhists' principle that there is suffering in this world and we should do whatever we can  to mitigate that suffering in a selfless way free from all traces of arrogance or pride.
 Needless to say the book is provocative making you think and think hard.  Erudition of the author is palpable at every page and so is the skill of referring to and quoting from whatever supports and sustains his argument.The author  also seems to be well-versed in the Urdu literature and seems to be fond of Faiz Ahmed Faiz whose couplet :laut aatee hai uther ko bhi nazar kya keeje-- has been quoted by him very appropriately by him.(Faiz  is the only Urdu poet who has been quoted more than once ) Let the book be read and re-read, debated and discussed and commented upon  fiercely Do all this and much more if you like, but please do not ignore  the book
.A few things that caused a mild irritation though, include a misprint of the word "vice-regent"  that too, twice at page 74. Another mistake is at page 363.Ten to the power 68  is 1 followed by 68 zeros and not 10 followed by 68 zeros as given in the book It would have been helpful if the English translation of bhajans and Urdu couplets had been given. But for most North Indian readers  this is perhap no shortcoming. ( Does He know a mother's heart? How Suffering Refutes Religions :Arun Shourie--HarperCollins India 2011,New Delhi) Pages435,Price Rupees 599) 

Arvind Adiga's Last Man In Tower

You may be forgiven if, after reading  Arvind Adiga's latest novel, Last man in Tower (HarperCollins India Hardcover), you come to the conclusion that behind the decent facade of civility , human beings are essentially evil and that it needs just a slight trigger to reveal their true nature.The trigger in the story is provided by the  "can't be refused' offer made by a builder -Dharmen Shah and all  hell breaks loose.Shah ,a man who has built an immense construction empire from a scratch, wishes to consolidate it further by constructing a fancy complex at a plot of land  which, at the time the story begins, is occupied by a co-operative group housing society, namely, the Vishram Group Housing Society ,Vakola, Mumbai..Although there are two Towers of the Society-Tower A and Tower B , the story is confined mainly to the residents of Tower A. The residents of this Tower are simple middle-class people, not rich but by and large happy with their lot,notwithstanding many unfulfilled desires  and unabated sorrows.They have  a pleasant togetherness and an  inclination to help one another in meeting their puny aspirations.There is Ibrahim Kudwa the internet cafe owener and his family.Then there  are the Puris,the Ajwanis,the Pintos,the Nagpals, Mrs. Rego and some others including Yogesh Murthy ,a retired school teacher who lives alone having lost his wife not many months ago.Murthy ,known in the society as Masterji had lost a daughter much earlier and his son Gaurav,with his own family, stays away in another ,more prosperous part of Mumbai  itself. Cat is thrown amongst pigeons when Shah's man makes an offer to buy their flats at Rs.20000/ per square foot when the going  market rate is much much less.Most of the residents jump at the offer.A few people are sceptical initially but gradually they too give in when they are assured that the builder would indeed give the money and would not hoodwink them.There is ,however, one gentleman--Masterji who is not willing to sell his dwelling unit,not because the money offered is not adequate,but because it is a matter of principle.The problem is that the building can not be sold unless every member of the society has expressed his willingness to sell his unit.The members of the society ,thereafter start coaxing and cajoling Masterji into agreeing to sell his flat.When that does not work they enlist the help of Gaurav,-Masterji's son.When that too, does not work they apply pressure tactics--resolving in the meeting of the society to abrogate his membership and disconnecting water and electricity supply to his flat ,sending street vagabonds to beat him at night and all that.So much so ,Masterji's priest of long acquaintance also refuses to officiate in performing the first anniversary "shraadh" of  his deceased wife.They (the residents) start a campaign that Masterji has gone mad. The Masterji still does not yield.What happens then is something that the reader should himself find out by reading the book. It is a hard-hitting commentary on   changing mores of the Indian society just as Adiga's earlier novel was. How one builder's ego and ambition can transform the conduct and behaviour of hundreds of other human beings by playing on one of their baser instincts i.e. greed has been brought out in a lurid detail. Greed transforms simple law-abiding friendly middle-class residents into demons is what the novel seems to be telling us.But then what is new in this?Do we not already know this?Have not our religious books been shouting this truth throughout the ages?Then what is new? The novelty is that though the theme is old, the presentation is   more than modern.. It does not say in so many words but the feeling is inescapable that the author is not comfortable with neo-liberal India that we have been witness to since 1991, when the economy was thrown open unleashing the demons of  I, me and myself , self-centredness and greed ,when Greed became not only good but also  God. The other significant feature of the novel is  a liberal sprinkling of similes and metaphors, at least in the initial parts reminding one of The Ramcharitmanas of the great Tulsidas  of which it was said that there could no doubt be a chaupai which is without  a simile or a metaphor but there can be no page which is bereft of these figures of speech.
Protagonists in the novel, though unreal,never look anything but lifelike.The book is readable and it stirs too but perhaps, is not disturbing enough.Perhaps, it was not meant to be.

Shivoham shivoham

Just a few days ago, I came upon this wonderful stotram -chidanand roopah shivoham shivoham rendered soulfully by Roop Kumar Rathore and Ravindra Sathe .Traditionally known as Atmasaksaatkar ashtak attributed to Adi Shankaracharya, the stotra tries to get into the Self-with a capital S.What is the essence of human beings or for that matter anything and everything in this Universe,or of the Universe it self ?.The ashtak-a set of eight stanzas-tells us that all of us are just eternal bliss. The problem is that it is not possible to define  the eternal bliss  satisfactorily.Hence the poet  resorts to negative metaphor, i.e. he tells us that he is neither this nor that, he is just the eternal bliss.He is not mind, intellect,ego,heart, ears, tongue,eyes, nose(for smelling), sky, earth,light, air,  the vital force, the awareness,the five Pranas,the seven Dhatus, the  the five koshas, the speech,  hands, feet, excretory organs ,sex organs,hatred, attachment, anger, greed,jealousy,pride,responsibility, wealth,desire, salvation,virtue, sin,happiness, sorrow,mantra, place of pilgrimage,the Vedas,theyajnya,food,the eater,the fear of death, differences in status,mother, father, the birth, the sibling,the friend, the guru, the disciple, he is just eternal bliss.That is all of are Shiva if we realize ourselves.Needless to say, I was transported to a different world all together,forgetting the dreaded  disease  I was suffering from.Such diseases have no meaning when you identify yourself as Shiva who is the eternal bliss.It is a different matter whether we can unexperience the pain.and be oblivious of it when it is unbearable.