================================================
(4) Herbal Therapy: I am totally scared of herbs. Their effects can be mind-blowing.
[Aside: I share with Thurber, and perhaps RKN, their hobby of vividly bringing to Life dead-metaphors.
The first time I hear such buzz-words, I feel immensely enriched.
There was this crank, Dr. AW, (ME), loosely attached to MIT, who suddenly made his appearance in the placid KGP Campus around 1995. As usual, someone or the other, maybe Amalendu, introduced me to him as soon as he settled down. I was like a Thermodynamic Sink for all things and folks crazy. He set himself up in the Technology Guest House, before as suddenly disappearing one day after six months. The day I looked at him I was reminded of Rabindranath's Gora (Oh, well, my tryst with Bengal started a decade or so before I happened to land there. I read a very lucid English version of Gora a half-century ago when I was in my University at Waltair; we too were 'intellectuals' then. As Supratim says in another context, it looks as though I read it only yesterday. It made a terrific impression on my young mind. I guess that was when my weakness for Bengal Renaissance took over. 500 pages of close print went down in 5 days of continuous reading. Paresh Babu, Binoy, Sucharita, Labonya, Lolita (?), Anandamoyi, Gora himself, interminable arguments between Brahmo Samaj and Orthodoxy, Love Interests, Ganges Trips....).
AW was white, Jewish, 35, lean, thin, wearing dhuti, punjabi, drinking chai at Harry's, teetotaler, non-smoker, vegetarian, Indophile, self-confessed kanjoos, travel-bitten, writing articles on Samadhi and stuff, but lately in love with a non-Jewish Latino...just a character any novelist would love meeting for his next book. By and by he used to visit my Qrs for a chat and Tea and Idli. While he was there at KGP, he was attending a Course (IIT squeezed dollars from him too). Very likable, not at all brash.
One fine morning at Harry's, where I was quietly gathering wool, he approached me with a handful of 'Local Intellectuals' and invited me to join a 'Think-Tank' they were raising at IIT KGP. I got up, bowed repeatedly like Alice in Wonderland, curtsied continuously, smiled broadly and wanly till they left me alone.
'Think-Tank'? A brand-new addition to my poor vocabulary.
By now you know that I used to run away from Harry's at the sight of this crowd whenever it was on the horizon. Maybe you also know by now, I have a fairly fertile and dirty imagination. Images crowded my mind of these thinkers swimming like toads in a shit-tank, fighting among themselves like nobody's business. Gora becoming Kaala after every bout.
Then again, after a few years, Amalendu of all people, invited me to join a 'Brain-Storming' Session they were holding to get rid of the evil effects of the existing regime, maybe. Then and there I go about vividly imagining brainstorms like booming thunder, forked lightning, fireworks, Nor'Westers, broken glass-panes, maybe hail which follows relentlessly after every Session.
But, the first time I heard: 'mind-blowing' was extremely pleasant unlike the other two.
This cute and very lovely film actress (whose films I never watched though) appeared in one of those Reality-Shows on TV, where she was a 'special judge' for a dance-cum-song competition. Since she was only there for a one-off appearance, it was evident she would like to capitalize on the show, by being as sweet as she can, leaving the harsher judgments to the 'resident judges'.
After every piece, she would be given the mike for her comments and she would smile, throw her hair nonchalantly aside like a broom, look completely enchanted by the talent, lift her fair and lovely hands Heavenwards, but, utter one and only one word repeatedly: "Absolutely mind-blowing, Absolutely mind-blowing...!".
I guess by the time the Show ended, her sweet and meaty mind would have been blown to several bits and pieces, like what happened to the innocent bystanders in a queue for chat when the 'bombs' went off disconcertingly a couple of years ago.
Since then I am reminded of her fair face and foolish figure whenever I get to read or occasionally write: 'mind-blowing']
Well, as I was saying, herbs can be mind-blowing literally.
Poppy for one. During a particularly vulnerable decade at IIT KGP, I have seen with my own eyes at least half a dozen kids going to rack and ruin by this plant and its various derivatives. Ghastly.
But, as in homeopathy, in minute doses, it has medicinal value, particularly in stopping umpteen visits to the loo, with the pleasant side effect of drowsiness, a weak form of a little 'high'.
The less said about the other leaf, tobacco, in its various alkaloidal forms, the better. It is widely agreed that nicotine dependency is the hardest to get over (I took 15 years, that too by pure and simple blackmail).
Yet, hooka is prescribed for some digestive disorders and even women in UP, I am told, take it as a medicinal swig. I myself know that when tobacco reigns, certain forms of intestinal flora are incapacitated.
And, tobacco in the leaf form is a known cure for toothache.
Tobacco leaf is known to immobilize certain palatable fish. This was widely used to catch fish rather easily. Dump some tobacco leaves in their path in streams, collect the fish and go home. Tra-la-la!
Take Tea. A wonderful herb, if any. No one objects to Tea. I have several cups a day, with negligible side-effects; the main effect being a sort of subdued happiness and 'pick-me-up'.
But these capitalist bio-pharma multinationals are not happy that the Tea Industry is reaping all profits leaving nothing to them or their associates.:
So, first there were, as the Holy Bible would have it, Vitamins and everybody was prescribing them and making us gulp them in alphabetical order. Then there were enzymes, from the home-grown to the 'phoren' ones to tone up our weak systems.
Then one heard of antacids, then cortisones, then antihystamines, and so on and so forth enriching the poor man's vocabulary and emptying his purse.
The other day I heard of a new thing called: 'antioxidants' five times in a single day. Apples were supposed to be rich in them. Also bananas if you can't afford apples. So far so good. But I found a new thing called 'Green Tea Extract'. Each capsule costs Rs 10 and makes practically no difference. When challenged they say that 'antioxidants' prevent cancers of all kinds.
There comes a stage when 'Cure is cheaper than Prevention'.
I am happy with 'Brown Tea Extract' in liquid form, with milk, ilachi, hot and sweet, costing only Rs 4.
Herbs can kill. Really. Places with too many herbs, flowers, gardens etc can be deadly for a certain type of unfortunate individuals susceptible to asthma {'allergic bronchitis', if you want it in all its glory: a chronic lung disorder that is marked by recurring episodes of airway obstruction (as from bronchospasm) manifested by labored breathing accompanied especially by wheezing and coughing and by a sense of constriction in the chest, and that is triggered by hyperreactivity to various stimuli (as allergens or rapid change in air temperature) Mouthful of asthma}.
KGP for all its greenery is deadly for them, like one of our campus ladies. Once they run away to another place they are totally free from it and would never want to visit KGP again, like DM, my Project Student, who is a big gun in GR somewhere in UK (?).
Bangalore practically killed one of my friends, who was fortunately transferred to Varanasi at the last minute.
In our school compound in our Village, there used to be a plant, whose leaves were well-known to induce terrible itching when they are brushed lightly against the skin of your fore-arm.
Again, it is a medicinal plant in some formulations against resistant forms of skin infections.
Atharvana Veda, I am told, is full of herbal remedies.
And, in Hyderabad, Herbal means 'Beauty Aid!!
=================================================
Monday, June 7, 2010
Sunday, June 6, 2010
My India 12 - 1950-55
============================================
(3) Homeopathy: This system of therapy was not as prevalent in our Village as it was in Bengal, where every alternative system of thought used to be welcome (I don't know now).
But we had an uncle who was notoriously anti-allopathic, perhaps due to its cost and side-effects. He used to dabble in homeopathy (among other things like magnets to cure BP) extensively and made us his guinea pigs.
Homeopathy is the most wacky thing I have ever known.
The practitioner would first ask all sorts of irrelevant questions like if I liked salt better than sugar, or if I prefer lying down prone or supine or on the right or left side when I went to bed, or if I like mornings or evenings a la Milton's L'Allegro, il Penseroso.
And he would make a file of it as if it is part of my CV.
Then he would urge me to stop all other medications and trust him and him only.
[Aside: In our Village, we had a charming street beggar who would dress up like a widow in all-white with false protruding teeth and go forth from house to house regaling us with her impromptu sound bytes. One such is a piece in which we would be cordially invited to the lunch party at her home; on empty stomach so that proper justice would be done to her hospitality; not do any cooking at all for the day; just take rest; BUT await her final 'house-call' before setting out for her @home lunch party]
Then he (my uncle) would produce minuscule globules, all white and identical, from his identical non-descript vials.
And would ask us to take them in without touching them, straight into the throat.
Then he would ask us to give up coffee, tea and all other good things of life.
And would warn us that our suffering would phenomenally get worse before his drug takes over.
The system is pucca.
If it fails to work, he would point out various lapses on our part from correctly describing our resume', to not heeding his precautions (which no red-blooded human can follow in toto).
Once I had a brief exchange of ideas with Dr. HKB of Behala, who was a Degree-holder and also had a thriving practice. He gave me Hahnemann's 'Principles of Homeopathy' to read, which I did try.
The two preposterous features of this system are;
1. Every ailment is caused by imbibing some chemical or other in large doses; and the cure consists of taking in the same bloody chemical in tiny doses.
2. The 'potency' of the drug increases with its increasing dilution.
Obviously, both are laughable at first sight and a Physics student would jeer at them.
But, one day, Dr. RGC, with whom I shared an Office Room and wonderful time at KGP for a year narrated this incident:
When he was a naughty kid of 12 or so, he used to fool around with his father's medicine chest at their home in Allahabad. His dad was a practicing homeopath as a hobby.
One fine morning, before breakfast, RGC impulsively swallowed a palmful of pills from the vial labeled: 'Lycopodium 2X'. As he sat down to breakfast, his extremely fair face developed red rashes. His dad looked at him asked him to immediately go over to his medicine chest and swallow just two pills of 'Lycopodium 6X'.
Dr. RGC didn't elaborate on what happened then, but this set me thinking.
Maybe there is something in it after all.
First, I recalled the allopathic 'vaccine' therapy, which we whole-heartedly welcome since it at least eliminated the dreaded small-pox from the Earth for the nonce at least.
And, what is a vaccine? Is it not the same damn germ that produces small-pox, suitably diluted and altered? Yet, we don't object to it. We cite 'acquired immunity' and stuff in its support.
The detail is in the dilution process. Some vaccines are the same germ in a different form, others are dead germs suitably grown in, ahem, mice.
Homeopathy does have an elaborate 'system' of dilution. You have to take the chemical and 'triturate' it. Which means it should be crushed, ground, dissolved in a suitable solvent and the concoction shaken vigorously a counted number of times, say a thousand depending on the 'potency' you want.
This gets really curious: What happens in dilution and trituration?
A probable answer is that the globules get tinier and tinier.
What is it that increases as the bits get tinier in size?
Obviously the surface area exposed. That gets more and more for the same initial volume of the stuff.
[Aside: Around 1967, there was a bit question in JEE: "A 1 liter kettle has boiling water in it. Another 10 liter kettle of the same metal, shape etc also has boiling water in it.
Which of the two cools faster, and why?
I posed this question to my illiterate but all-wise mom.
She replied at once: "The smaller thing cools faster"
I asked her why.
She scowled; "Why not? Every housewife know it. That is why"]
So, what is the chemical effect of increased surface area?
One obvious answer is: 'Catalysis'.
I rest my case; just as a plea not to reject wacky things outright.
However, Dr. HKB couldn't cure my problem. I had to wait till I got married to an allopathic medico, who tried Metrozyl which worked somewhat.
But the complete cure came only with 'one-meal-a day' (not to be confused with 'miss-a-meal-a-day), externally administered enzyme supports like: 'Aristozyme'; and intake of soil micronutrients.
============================================
(3) Homeopathy: This system of therapy was not as prevalent in our Village as it was in Bengal, where every alternative system of thought used to be welcome (I don't know now).
But we had an uncle who was notoriously anti-allopathic, perhaps due to its cost and side-effects. He used to dabble in homeopathy (among other things like magnets to cure BP) extensively and made us his guinea pigs.
Homeopathy is the most wacky thing I have ever known.
The practitioner would first ask all sorts of irrelevant questions like if I liked salt better than sugar, or if I prefer lying down prone or supine or on the right or left side when I went to bed, or if I like mornings or evenings a la Milton's L'Allegro, il Penseroso.
And he would make a file of it as if it is part of my CV.
Then he would urge me to stop all other medications and trust him and him only.
[Aside: In our Village, we had a charming street beggar who would dress up like a widow in all-white with false protruding teeth and go forth from house to house regaling us with her impromptu sound bytes. One such is a piece in which we would be cordially invited to the lunch party at her home; on empty stomach so that proper justice would be done to her hospitality; not do any cooking at all for the day; just take rest; BUT await her final 'house-call' before setting out for her @home lunch party]
Then he (my uncle) would produce minuscule globules, all white and identical, from his identical non-descript vials.
And would ask us to take them in without touching them, straight into the throat.
Then he would ask us to give up coffee, tea and all other good things of life.
And would warn us that our suffering would phenomenally get worse before his drug takes over.
The system is pucca.
If it fails to work, he would point out various lapses on our part from correctly describing our resume', to not heeding his precautions (which no red-blooded human can follow in toto).
Once I had a brief exchange of ideas with Dr. HKB of Behala, who was a Degree-holder and also had a thriving practice. He gave me Hahnemann's 'Principles of Homeopathy' to read, which I did try.
The two preposterous features of this system are;
1. Every ailment is caused by imbibing some chemical or other in large doses; and the cure consists of taking in the same bloody chemical in tiny doses.
2. The 'potency' of the drug increases with its increasing dilution.
Obviously, both are laughable at first sight and a Physics student would jeer at them.
But, one day, Dr. RGC, with whom I shared an Office Room and wonderful time at KGP for a year narrated this incident:
When he was a naughty kid of 12 or so, he used to fool around with his father's medicine chest at their home in Allahabad. His dad was a practicing homeopath as a hobby.
One fine morning, before breakfast, RGC impulsively swallowed a palmful of pills from the vial labeled: 'Lycopodium 2X'. As he sat down to breakfast, his extremely fair face developed red rashes. His dad looked at him asked him to immediately go over to his medicine chest and swallow just two pills of 'Lycopodium 6X'.
Dr. RGC didn't elaborate on what happened then, but this set me thinking.
Maybe there is something in it after all.
First, I recalled the allopathic 'vaccine' therapy, which we whole-heartedly welcome since it at least eliminated the dreaded small-pox from the Earth for the nonce at least.
And, what is a vaccine? Is it not the same damn germ that produces small-pox, suitably diluted and altered? Yet, we don't object to it. We cite 'acquired immunity' and stuff in its support.
The detail is in the dilution process. Some vaccines are the same germ in a different form, others are dead germs suitably grown in, ahem, mice.
Homeopathy does have an elaborate 'system' of dilution. You have to take the chemical and 'triturate' it. Which means it should be crushed, ground, dissolved in a suitable solvent and the concoction shaken vigorously a counted number of times, say a thousand depending on the 'potency' you want.
This gets really curious: What happens in dilution and trituration?
A probable answer is that the globules get tinier and tinier.
What is it that increases as the bits get tinier in size?
Obviously the surface area exposed. That gets more and more for the same initial volume of the stuff.
[Aside: Around 1967, there was a bit question in JEE: "A 1 liter kettle has boiling water in it. Another 10 liter kettle of the same metal, shape etc also has boiling water in it.
Which of the two cools faster, and why?
I posed this question to my illiterate but all-wise mom.
She replied at once: "The smaller thing cools faster"
I asked her why.
She scowled; "Why not? Every housewife know it. That is why"]
So, what is the chemical effect of increased surface area?
One obvious answer is: 'Catalysis'.
I rest my case; just as a plea not to reject wacky things outright.
However, Dr. HKB couldn't cure my problem. I had to wait till I got married to an allopathic medico, who tried Metrozyl which worked somewhat.
But the complete cure came only with 'one-meal-a day' (not to be confused with 'miss-a-meal-a-day), externally administered enzyme supports like: 'Aristozyme'; and intake of soil micronutrients.
============================================
Saturday, June 5, 2010
My India 11 - 1950-55
=============================================
To continue with the alternate therapies of our Village:
(2) Amulets: Our Village had a sizable population of Muslims as I said repeatedly in my blogposts. And we all lived in perfect harmony, each minding their own business, customs, festivals and participating in each others' traditions harmoniously.
We were periodically visited by wandering Hakims, well-known for their knowledge and piety. They used to look at any patient in the household proffered to them, pray a little and bring out from their satchels what I can only refer to as amulets or talismans, or tawizes of sort. They had the appearance of a couple of cms long and a few mms radius cylinders made of white metal. They were tied to our shoulders by silk or twine thread. We were supposed to wear them as long as they lasted. No one is supposed to prise them open and look for the contents, if any. Maybe a powder or nothing. I feel sorry now that I felt browbeaten then and didn't pry, which I would now do, but I am no longer in my Village. The beauty of it was that they cost nothing. Mother used to just give a glass of water or maybe a fruit or two and then they go away reciting Urdu pieces of sweet-sounding poetry.
[Aside: At KGP in B-140 Qrs, a set of boys and grownups used to invade our Qrs, knowing my wife's weakness for Shirdi Sai Baba. They wore black dresses and would ring the bell, try to barge in when my wife or maid opens the door, but just into the lobby. One of them, just a kid of 12 or so was prolific in his words and eye-commands and tell tall tales to my wife about her 'inner' secrets of long-last ancestral family or something. I never used to either indulge him or expel him. Live and Let Live! He would ask for a tenner and when my wife used to offer it, he would do something with it and return it to her and ask her to keep it in her Puja Room as a charm. No problem. My wife was impressed by his absolutely selfless blessings, and used to tell me about it. I kept silent.
And, after a couple of these visits, one fine rainy morning, when I was busy preparing for my gul in the afternoon lecture, he visited our Qrs again and apparently 'commanded' my wife to fish me out. She was by then also scared, because these saints who are absolutely selfless can bless as well as curse. She came in and told me sheepishly, knowing my no-nonsense nature, that her Boy-Saint is asking for me. I then got wild and barged into the lobby and asked him abruptly to let me know 'how much' quickly, since I was in a hurry. He was taken aback and said that since he and his party were embarking on a Shirdi Yatra by walk, he would love to have an umbrella gifted to him. I then took out one from its peg and gave it to him and asked: 'enough?'. He then greedily looked at the two others that were hanging (I am an Umbrella Devotee of RKN and in KGP, you need at least a half-dozen in working condition for a family of three plus the indispensable maid, with whom the umbrella traffic is strictly one-way). I then pulled out the second and threw at him nonchalantly. He was eying the third. I took that out also, and flung it at him. He deftly picked it as if it were a cricket ball at the second slip. I then asked him to quit and never again show his selfless face in our lobby. From then on, neither he nor any of his kind rang our bell, and my wife was chastened. To this day she would never like to be reminded of this incident].
Coming back to amulets, they perhaps work at some level. I don't know.
But, having lived in Bengal all my working life, I was very curious about the Bengali penchant for rings with stones, on their fingers. Indeed my favorite TV Idol is Bhappi Lahiri. I don't watch much of TV, but I have left standing instructions to everyone in the household that they should call me up whenever Bhappida is on. I just love him. He has a 'presence' I haven't seen in any other filmy folks. For one thing, he is so overwhelmingly bedecked with malas around his neck and body and has so many rings on his fingers that I lost count. Then again, he has a beautiful set of eyes covered with dark glasses. And he has a silence and calm about him that is enchanting. His smile is a curative to all that is absurd in the filmy dunia. He is one who is never caught on the wrong foot because no one dares fling nonsense at him.
OK, one day I was chatting with Professor C L Roy in one of our JEE things. I asked him why he wore a ring with a red stone all the while. I asked him if it was just fashion, or to please a wife or mother, or anything else serious. He replied to my astonishment that this stone has curative properties for his bronchial problems (he was a chain smoker).I said he must be kidding. I reminded him of the Sanskrit saw: Prishtha thadanath dantha bhangah! ('kick the arse and teeth will break!'). He said he was serious. He was a Solid State Theorist and knew all about slow and steady diffusion of metals from skin to the interior of targeted body organs. I didn't hear of the word then but read it later; 'Prof CLR was wearing his ring with stone as an ant-nicotine patch'.
So all those amulets of our childhood were 'patches' for various ailments.
As soon as I retired and tried to settle in this weird Hyderabad, I was struck by a mild hypertension and stuff. The doc here told me that I was beginning to age and must reconcile to it and leave my wild ways and eat heartily. I told him I can't eat like a Hyderabadi (4 meals a day minimum). I consider eating and mating as necessary evils, and in old age, one must happily get out of the habit. He then suggested I take a capsulette of Riconia Silver, one per day at bed-time. It cost Rs 5 and I said I would try since I can just about afford the price. And from day 1 of falling into its charms, Riconia Silver has found in me an addict. It just works wonders. I then looked at its composition. I found it has about 40 'micronutrients' in it. This word I first read in my sons' class X Science Book (CBSE) in the Chapter on Agriculture: soil and its micronutrients. Oh, well! I may not be eating food, but straightaway eating the soil from which it is produced. The capsulette has all the edible elements of the Mendeleev's Periodic Table. I have converted many of my relatives and friends to Riconia Silver. We are all a happy lot. I just go about with one meal a day happily; which I call my 'breakfast' (in the real sense of breaking a 24-hour fast).
This conquest of 'Chemistry' over mind was brought face to face to me when I fell into a Severe Depression. Now, I knew I was in for it when the symptoms were unmistakable: Prof TKD of Cryogenics at IIT KGP, who is basically a Physicist, one day told me when I happened to walk alongside of him, that I am known as 'Professor Cool' in their circle. I didn't probe him because, coming from Cryogenics, he must be knowing all about Low Temperature Behavior. I took it that he meant I never lose my temper, since I don't have one to lose (even with Shirdi Sai Fake Devotees). Well, I take it to mean that my thoughts are slow-going, say at the rate of about 60 words a minute like the Lower Grade Typists. (Thoughts are nothing but unspoken words).
So, one fine morning I found that the rate has gone first up to 120 and then 500 and reached a pinnacle of 1000 wpm and still going up and up. The result was that I lost whatever little sleep I was addicted to. Then I visited a shrink. He immediately asked me what was my Profession. And then said it was a Professional hazard, and scribbled a couple of cheap tablets and asked me to get lost. I asked him what would they do to my system. He dismissed the query saying that they would help restore my 'biochemical imbalance'. I just was dumbstruck. I thought that my thoughts were my personal possessions and he says they are just 'biochemical imbalances'!
Well, then I remembered a book which I read 5 years ago which details how our biology is governed by minute amounts of 'micronutrients' of just the right milligram composition.
I retrieved the book just now:
It is titled: 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' by Bill Bryson. Now, don't think I would ever 'buy' such a book. It was gifted to me by Surptim and so I HAD to read it.
I almost forgot about it till an hour or two ago. Apart from other sweet words, the dedication ends, as an afterthought, with the Supratim Command:
'May You Never Retire from Teaching Physics'.....Supratim, July, 2005 (exactly a month before I retired from IIT KGP).
Ahem...just this morning I got a phone-call chased by an e-mail from the VC of a certain Knowledge University asking me to give a set of 50 Video Lectures for the benefit of their First Year Students.
Sorry, Supratim, my Teaching Physics is confined to my blogs.
I obey your command thus far and no further!
==============================================
To continue with the alternate therapies of our Village:
(2) Amulets: Our Village had a sizable population of Muslims as I said repeatedly in my blogposts. And we all lived in perfect harmony, each minding their own business, customs, festivals and participating in each others' traditions harmoniously.
We were periodically visited by wandering Hakims, well-known for their knowledge and piety. They used to look at any patient in the household proffered to them, pray a little and bring out from their satchels what I can only refer to as amulets or talismans, or tawizes of sort. They had the appearance of a couple of cms long and a few mms radius cylinders made of white metal. They were tied to our shoulders by silk or twine thread. We were supposed to wear them as long as they lasted. No one is supposed to prise them open and look for the contents, if any. Maybe a powder or nothing. I feel sorry now that I felt browbeaten then and didn't pry, which I would now do, but I am no longer in my Village. The beauty of it was that they cost nothing. Mother used to just give a glass of water or maybe a fruit or two and then they go away reciting Urdu pieces of sweet-sounding poetry.
[Aside: At KGP in B-140 Qrs, a set of boys and grownups used to invade our Qrs, knowing my wife's weakness for Shirdi Sai Baba. They wore black dresses and would ring the bell, try to barge in when my wife or maid opens the door, but just into the lobby. One of them, just a kid of 12 or so was prolific in his words and eye-commands and tell tall tales to my wife about her 'inner' secrets of long-last ancestral family or something. I never used to either indulge him or expel him. Live and Let Live! He would ask for a tenner and when my wife used to offer it, he would do something with it and return it to her and ask her to keep it in her Puja Room as a charm. No problem. My wife was impressed by his absolutely selfless blessings, and used to tell me about it. I kept silent.
And, after a couple of these visits, one fine rainy morning, when I was busy preparing for my gul in the afternoon lecture, he visited our Qrs again and apparently 'commanded' my wife to fish me out. She was by then also scared, because these saints who are absolutely selfless can bless as well as curse. She came in and told me sheepishly, knowing my no-nonsense nature, that her Boy-Saint is asking for me. I then got wild and barged into the lobby and asked him abruptly to let me know 'how much' quickly, since I was in a hurry. He was taken aback and said that since he and his party were embarking on a Shirdi Yatra by walk, he would love to have an umbrella gifted to him. I then took out one from its peg and gave it to him and asked: 'enough?'. He then greedily looked at the two others that were hanging (I am an Umbrella Devotee of RKN and in KGP, you need at least a half-dozen in working condition for a family of three plus the indispensable maid, with whom the umbrella traffic is strictly one-way). I then pulled out the second and threw at him nonchalantly. He was eying the third. I took that out also, and flung it at him. He deftly picked it as if it were a cricket ball at the second slip. I then asked him to quit and never again show his selfless face in our lobby. From then on, neither he nor any of his kind rang our bell, and my wife was chastened. To this day she would never like to be reminded of this incident].
Coming back to amulets, they perhaps work at some level. I don't know.
But, having lived in Bengal all my working life, I was very curious about the Bengali penchant for rings with stones, on their fingers. Indeed my favorite TV Idol is Bhappi Lahiri. I don't watch much of TV, but I have left standing instructions to everyone in the household that they should call me up whenever Bhappida is on. I just love him. He has a 'presence' I haven't seen in any other filmy folks. For one thing, he is so overwhelmingly bedecked with malas around his neck and body and has so many rings on his fingers that I lost count. Then again, he has a beautiful set of eyes covered with dark glasses. And he has a silence and calm about him that is enchanting. His smile is a curative to all that is absurd in the filmy dunia. He is one who is never caught on the wrong foot because no one dares fling nonsense at him.
OK, one day I was chatting with Professor C L Roy in one of our JEE things. I asked him why he wore a ring with a red stone all the while. I asked him if it was just fashion, or to please a wife or mother, or anything else serious. He replied to my astonishment that this stone has curative properties for his bronchial problems (he was a chain smoker).I said he must be kidding. I reminded him of the Sanskrit saw: Prishtha thadanath dantha bhangah! ('kick the arse and teeth will break!'). He said he was serious. He was a Solid State Theorist and knew all about slow and steady diffusion of metals from skin to the interior of targeted body organs. I didn't hear of the word then but read it later; 'Prof CLR was wearing his ring with stone as an ant-nicotine patch'.
So all those amulets of our childhood were 'patches' for various ailments.
As soon as I retired and tried to settle in this weird Hyderabad, I was struck by a mild hypertension and stuff. The doc here told me that I was beginning to age and must reconcile to it and leave my wild ways and eat heartily. I told him I can't eat like a Hyderabadi (4 meals a day minimum). I consider eating and mating as necessary evils, and in old age, one must happily get out of the habit. He then suggested I take a capsulette of Riconia Silver, one per day at bed-time. It cost Rs 5 and I said I would try since I can just about afford the price. And from day 1 of falling into its charms, Riconia Silver has found in me an addict. It just works wonders. I then looked at its composition. I found it has about 40 'micronutrients' in it. This word I first read in my sons' class X Science Book (CBSE) in the Chapter on Agriculture: soil and its micronutrients. Oh, well! I may not be eating food, but straightaway eating the soil from which it is produced. The capsulette has all the edible elements of the Mendeleev's Periodic Table. I have converted many of my relatives and friends to Riconia Silver. We are all a happy lot. I just go about with one meal a day happily; which I call my 'breakfast' (in the real sense of breaking a 24-hour fast).
This conquest of 'Chemistry' over mind was brought face to face to me when I fell into a Severe Depression. Now, I knew I was in for it when the symptoms were unmistakable: Prof TKD of Cryogenics at IIT KGP, who is basically a Physicist, one day told me when I happened to walk alongside of him, that I am known as 'Professor Cool' in their circle. I didn't probe him because, coming from Cryogenics, he must be knowing all about Low Temperature Behavior. I took it that he meant I never lose my temper, since I don't have one to lose (even with Shirdi Sai Fake Devotees). Well, I take it to mean that my thoughts are slow-going, say at the rate of about 60 words a minute like the Lower Grade Typists. (Thoughts are nothing but unspoken words).
So, one fine morning I found that the rate has gone first up to 120 and then 500 and reached a pinnacle of 1000 wpm and still going up and up. The result was that I lost whatever little sleep I was addicted to. Then I visited a shrink. He immediately asked me what was my Profession. And then said it was a Professional hazard, and scribbled a couple of cheap tablets and asked me to get lost. I asked him what would they do to my system. He dismissed the query saying that they would help restore my 'biochemical imbalance'. I just was dumbstruck. I thought that my thoughts were my personal possessions and he says they are just 'biochemical imbalances'!
Well, then I remembered a book which I read 5 years ago which details how our biology is governed by minute amounts of 'micronutrients' of just the right milligram composition.
I retrieved the book just now:
It is titled: 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' by Bill Bryson. Now, don't think I would ever 'buy' such a book. It was gifted to me by Surptim and so I HAD to read it.
I almost forgot about it till an hour or two ago. Apart from other sweet words, the dedication ends, as an afterthought, with the Supratim Command:
'May You Never Retire from Teaching Physics'.....Supratim, July, 2005 (exactly a month before I retired from IIT KGP).
Ahem...just this morning I got a phone-call chased by an e-mail from the VC of a certain Knowledge University asking me to give a set of 50 Video Lectures for the benefit of their First Year Students.
Sorry, Supratim, my Teaching Physics is confined to my blogs.
I obey your command thus far and no further!
==============================================
Friday, June 4, 2010
My India 10 - 1950-55
=======================================
As far as therapy went, our Village embraced a robust Pragmatism...the end and antithesis of all -isms.
Just so. When one is troubled by a splitting headache, cure comes first and only then 'faith'.
Truly multicultural outlook as far as medicine goes.
[Joke: A Villager goes to town and finds the Name-Plate: Dr. Shyam. Enters and asks Dr Shyam a cure for his bellyache. Upon which Shyam shamefacedly confesses he is a Doctor of Philosophy. Undeterred, our Villager declares that he would like to try it too, if it helps, at an affordable price]
Here is a listing of the concoction of therapies we had to endure in the desperate attempts of our parents to see us through, for better or worse:
1. Home Remedies: These are not only remedial but also preventive, palliative and fictional.
The most hated thing on which we were tenaciously brought up from Day 1 of our sojourn was the nasty Castor Oil. People just went crazy about its wellness. It is supposed to be not only purgatorial, but also spiritual; its appalling odor, color, texture, taste and outlook prepares one for the serious business of Life.
An ounce or two every other week was compulsory. Taken in the early morning on empty stomach, it is sure to spoil at least the first half of a Saturday.
Apart from frequent runs to the loo, it had the tragic effect of becoming addictive. I have known Justices of the High Court, otherwise wise, who can't live without a spoon in the morning to start their Day's Judgments. Imagine an innocent accused on a Day of his Fateful Trial, when the Oil went into the Black Market all of a sudden!
However, as in all our home remedies, I find that the West has discovered lately the ineffable virtues of our Castor Oil, and is on the point of Patenting them as her own IPR: it appears that, while their allopathic drugs can kill worms, bacilli, amoeba, and all other God's own Lifelines, they are just unable to DESTROY their eggs, cysts, larvae and such other incipient occupants of our intestinal homelands. So much so that after a month or so, the newer generation erupts with a vengeance and the Battle of the Belly joined again, rather one-sidedly.
Apparently, our home-made Castor Oil can wipe out the entire lineage for generations to come like Aswathama tried to do to the Pandavas.
My mom says frying the Castor seeds to the right temperature at the right rate is an art known only to a few in our Village. Overdo it or underdo it just a wee bit and the germs will peep in again and mock their landlords.
But the mystery she never explained was that if it was so powerful, why take it every other week? One shot should do. But then she will embark on Preventive Medicinal aspects which only geneticists of current science can understand....the various strains, mutations and stuff.
All in all Castor Oil has been a curse on us till we fled the Village to the Modern Towns.
How I wished that Castor Oil were as sweet as honey and did the trick by just one visit to the loo. But then we were also being trained to face the unpleasant worldly inequities,I guess.
By the way, it worked the other way too: whatever was good for the tongue was supposed to be inherently bad for the stomach. This is a stated and practiced rule, though not proven.
For instance, fried aloo is very good to taste, oh, no doubt about it; chips and all that, but we used to get only the inedible boiled potatoes in our food. Ice Cream is swell, but we got only boiled milk with cream removed, which goes to make curds, not as such, but churned into weak buttermilk.
Then comes neem : In all its various allotropic modifications like leaves, buds, flowers, fruit, bark, oil, shade etc, neem is supposed to be good for every type of nuisance.
Unlike Castor Oil, however, one can easily acquire a cultivated taste for the products of the neem tree. Without doubt, neem grows on one. Every house in the Village has one neem tree in its front-yard or access to one. It is a tree one gets fond of. Somehow, its shade is soothing to the system.
When I left Village, and went to various towns and cities, I missed the neem tree.
At KGP, once I visited the majestic Railway Hospital. And found in front of its Casualty Ward, a whole dozen huge big neem trees in a semicircular row with benches beneath them to rest. I was so happy that I missed no chance of making visits to the BNR Hospital, whenever a friend of mine was admitted: As Maugham said in his Moon and Sixpence, I was rather pining for excuses for such friendly visits.
Betel Leaf was also remedial, not only for its juice as a digestive, but also as an external application for stomach ache. Just warm the leaf and apply it near the navel, wrong side up, and it acts as a panacea. Let's no talk about Tobacco for toothache, since we had none.
Haldi, or turmeric is a well-known bactericidal: Americans are fighting for its IPR. All women of all ages used it as an applications in paste form to their bodies and faces. It is supposed to be great for preventing skin diseases as well as toning up the skin texture. But I find the turmeric powder bought from the local market infested with crawling 'wormicles'...I can't explain why...maybe adulterated.
Don't forget Tulsi (Basil). Every house had a pot in which a Tulsi plant is compulsorily grwon; and worshiped. Note that the Bio-IT Firm in which my son is a dashing PM is named "Ocimum Biosolutions". Apparently Ocimum is the Lamarckin or some such botanical name for the plant. Indeed the owners of the Firm, our ex-student couple from IIT KGP Physics Class of maybe 1995, are planning a Building of their own which is architecturally just like a Tulsi Plant in its Plan and Elevation.
Best of all, for skin infections, is the Mustard Oil. I used to laugh at it, thinking of the pervading odor of mustard oil in our Faculty Hostel in which several poor fish were deep fried day in and day out. But I suffered from a skin infection around the button which refused to go away despite all allopathic ointments including several combinations of Cortisones. And was reconciled to live and die with the rather juicy and itchy shame. Then, one day, my son's Hindi Tutor, Mishrajee, at KGP looked at my son's resistant pimple on his face, brought out a vial of Antibactrin from his pocket and asked for a bit of cotton and applied it. My son's pimple shriveled and vanished within 12 hours. And my son asked me to try it. I said ok. Just one miraculous application of the rather warm thing, and I am cured of it permanently, at least for the last 20 years. And I found that its ingredients are: Mustard Oil and Tulsi juice.
No doubt the poor fish have no CHANCE!
========================================
As far as therapy went, our Village embraced a robust Pragmatism...the end and antithesis of all -isms.
Just so. When one is troubled by a splitting headache, cure comes first and only then 'faith'.
Truly multicultural outlook as far as medicine goes.
[Joke: A Villager goes to town and finds the Name-Plate: Dr. Shyam. Enters and asks Dr Shyam a cure for his bellyache. Upon which Shyam shamefacedly confesses he is a Doctor of Philosophy. Undeterred, our Villager declares that he would like to try it too, if it helps, at an affordable price]
Here is a listing of the concoction of therapies we had to endure in the desperate attempts of our parents to see us through, for better or worse:
1. Home Remedies: These are not only remedial but also preventive, palliative and fictional.
The most hated thing on which we were tenaciously brought up from Day 1 of our sojourn was the nasty Castor Oil. People just went crazy about its wellness. It is supposed to be not only purgatorial, but also spiritual; its appalling odor, color, texture, taste and outlook prepares one for the serious business of Life.
An ounce or two every other week was compulsory. Taken in the early morning on empty stomach, it is sure to spoil at least the first half of a Saturday.
Apart from frequent runs to the loo, it had the tragic effect of becoming addictive. I have known Justices of the High Court, otherwise wise, who can't live without a spoon in the morning to start their Day's Judgments. Imagine an innocent accused on a Day of his Fateful Trial, when the Oil went into the Black Market all of a sudden!
However, as in all our home remedies, I find that the West has discovered lately the ineffable virtues of our Castor Oil, and is on the point of Patenting them as her own IPR: it appears that, while their allopathic drugs can kill worms, bacilli, amoeba, and all other God's own Lifelines, they are just unable to DESTROY their eggs, cysts, larvae and such other incipient occupants of our intestinal homelands. So much so that after a month or so, the newer generation erupts with a vengeance and the Battle of the Belly joined again, rather one-sidedly.
Apparently, our home-made Castor Oil can wipe out the entire lineage for generations to come like Aswathama tried to do to the Pandavas.
My mom says frying the Castor seeds to the right temperature at the right rate is an art known only to a few in our Village. Overdo it or underdo it just a wee bit and the germs will peep in again and mock their landlords.
But the mystery she never explained was that if it was so powerful, why take it every other week? One shot should do. But then she will embark on Preventive Medicinal aspects which only geneticists of current science can understand....the various strains, mutations and stuff.
All in all Castor Oil has been a curse on us till we fled the Village to the Modern Towns.
How I wished that Castor Oil were as sweet as honey and did the trick by just one visit to the loo. But then we were also being trained to face the unpleasant worldly inequities,I guess.
By the way, it worked the other way too: whatever was good for the tongue was supposed to be inherently bad for the stomach. This is a stated and practiced rule, though not proven.
For instance, fried aloo is very good to taste, oh, no doubt about it; chips and all that, but we used to get only the inedible boiled potatoes in our food. Ice Cream is swell, but we got only boiled milk with cream removed, which goes to make curds, not as such, but churned into weak buttermilk.
Then comes neem : In all its various allotropic modifications like leaves, buds, flowers, fruit, bark, oil, shade etc, neem is supposed to be good for every type of nuisance.
Unlike Castor Oil, however, one can easily acquire a cultivated taste for the products of the neem tree. Without doubt, neem grows on one. Every house in the Village has one neem tree in its front-yard or access to one. It is a tree one gets fond of. Somehow, its shade is soothing to the system.
When I left Village, and went to various towns and cities, I missed the neem tree.
At KGP, once I visited the majestic Railway Hospital. And found in front of its Casualty Ward, a whole dozen huge big neem trees in a semicircular row with benches beneath them to rest. I was so happy that I missed no chance of making visits to the BNR Hospital, whenever a friend of mine was admitted: As Maugham said in his Moon and Sixpence, I was rather pining for excuses for such friendly visits.
Betel Leaf was also remedial, not only for its juice as a digestive, but also as an external application for stomach ache. Just warm the leaf and apply it near the navel, wrong side up, and it acts as a panacea. Let's no talk about Tobacco for toothache, since we had none.
Haldi, or turmeric is a well-known bactericidal: Americans are fighting for its IPR. All women of all ages used it as an applications in paste form to their bodies and faces. It is supposed to be great for preventing skin diseases as well as toning up the skin texture. But I find the turmeric powder bought from the local market infested with crawling 'wormicles'...I can't explain why...maybe adulterated.
Don't forget Tulsi (Basil). Every house had a pot in which a Tulsi plant is compulsorily grwon; and worshiped. Note that the Bio-IT Firm in which my son is a dashing PM is named "Ocimum Biosolutions". Apparently Ocimum is the Lamarckin or some such botanical name for the plant. Indeed the owners of the Firm, our ex-student couple from IIT KGP Physics Class of maybe 1995, are planning a Building of their own which is architecturally just like a Tulsi Plant in its Plan and Elevation.
Best of all, for skin infections, is the Mustard Oil. I used to laugh at it, thinking of the pervading odor of mustard oil in our Faculty Hostel in which several poor fish were deep fried day in and day out. But I suffered from a skin infection around the button which refused to go away despite all allopathic ointments including several combinations of Cortisones. And was reconciled to live and die with the rather juicy and itchy shame. Then, one day, my son's Hindi Tutor, Mishrajee, at KGP looked at my son's resistant pimple on his face, brought out a vial of Antibactrin from his pocket and asked for a bit of cotton and applied it. My son's pimple shriveled and vanished within 12 hours. And my son asked me to try it. I said ok. Just one miraculous application of the rather warm thing, and I am cured of it permanently, at least for the last 20 years. And I found that its ingredients are: Mustard Oil and Tulsi juice.
No doubt the poor fish have no CHANCE!
========================================
Thursday, June 3, 2010
My India 9 - 1950-55
======================================
Before looking at the various Alternate Systems of Medicine to which we were subjected, let me talk about the general health condition of our Village 60 years ago.
We were somewhat special in that ours was a sea-side village in South India.
This at once meant that it was sandy and sun-drenched. These two features led to the blessed state of no water-logging at all. Every drop of water that was spilled either by clouds or ourselves was at once soaked by the sand and vanished as groundwater. So, we never had swamps or stagnant pools that breed the mosquito menace. We used to sleep in the open blissfully without any nets or mosquito coils or ointments (this was not at all so in all the subsequent half a dozen pleces I lived in later on).
We didn't have Malaria or Filaria (Vizianagaram, a town in AP, had such large polluted water bodies, that it used to be called the 'Mother of Malaria and Father of Filaria', deservedly).
We never saw an obese person. Due to the incessant outdoor play by kids and heavy physical labor for all males and females, and lack of Radio, TV and such sedentary idle pursuits, obesity and its related diseases were unseen and unheard of. No one died of heart problems unless they were congenital, in which event they died before schooling. I never lost any one of my schoolmates while in school. We somehow survived.
There was one obese couple though: The 'Pappu Chetti & his wife' (Village Provision Shopkeeper couple). Their entire time was spent behind the counter with a beam balance (no doubt loaded) in their wizard hands. So, there was a toy too named for them. It was a spherical plastic thing heavily weighted at the inside bottom by an unseen iron semicircular block. Tilt it any which way, it will set itself right-side up after a few oscillations. It didn't look like one, but it was a pendulum; instead of suspended, it was sort of 'pivoted' by a flat bottom. Several of such weird-looking toys based on the pendulum principle appeared in the Toy Market later on; but the most beautiful one was the Chinese Albatross with low-swung protruding wings that was pivoted on a sharp point tip by its nose, which appeared in the KGP shops round 1998. The original Chinese thing was just fantastic. I bought one and used to show it off to my Physics Students visiting our Qrs. It also had another beautiful feature: Swing it about its two natural axes (Principal Axes), and the time periods wee roughly 1:2. Just lovely. If I were a II Year Lab-in-Charge then (which I was fortunately not) I would have picked it up, suspended it and asked the students to plot its Momental Ellipse, a nice UG Lab Experiment playing with Tensors.
So much for Physics buffs like Vineet who are unhappy with this Series.
So, we had no Hypertension, Sugar, Thromboses of various kinds of fat-folks-diseases in our Village. W were all having some kind of malnutrition, but that just meant that we were lean and mean and fighting fit. When I passed out from my High School, I was 4' 6" short, and weighed 34 Kg. But I could outrun any bully in the town. And when our Drill Teacher had to take his Annual Data for Sports and Athletics for us in our SSLC Register, he would put me up on the very high (for me) horizontal bar and leave me for push-ups. He would lose count after fifty and brusquely ask me to drop down on the sand cushion.
None of us had the unheard-of Triple Antigen Vaccine. But none suffered from Tetanus or Diphtheria. But all of us without exception had a bout of whooping cough (Pertussis) each for a week or two, but none was the worse for it (forced holiday); we got lifetime immunity from it. But while it lasted, it was hellish: we coughed and coughed our hearts and souls out. But we were young and it didn't matter much, since we all had it. There was only one remedy; there was a tree (which I never saw among the thousand varieties at KGP). It had elliptical coin-shaped green unripe fruit. They used to make a garland of them and hang it round our necks for the nonce. But I guess these things go away by themselves if you are sturdy enough, which we all were due to our non-stop play round the year.
I and my siblings did have small-pox vaccination in our first year or so, and we have ugly scars on our upper-arms to prove it. And once in a couple of years, a Govt Uncle used to visit our home with his kit, take out his oil lamp, ask for a matchbox (they never supplied it) and light up the thing while we waited in a row. He would sort of ticklingly drill his hot needle with its medicine on our forearms and go away. It swells for a couple of days and vanishes. I later learned that these were 'booster' doses for small-pox.
But I guess this immunization for small-pox wasn't Universal then in our Village. As soon as word spread that small-pox has hit the neighboring village and is heading towards ours, the school would be shut and all folks who can would run away to a far-enough town, wait a fortnight, and slowly limp back peeping in ones and twos till the All-Clear is blown . There would be stories of many who couldn't and were lost. Sad! But, we fled, and when we returned, none of our schoolmates vanished. The only 'remedy-cum-precaution' was several branches of neem leaves that were hung all over homes and places and bedsides. I guess, it took away almost half of the population who couldn't flee. But it left the survivors who were struck by it with life-long scars all over the body and face and sometimes left them blinded and deaf ( ?).
Terrible Plague!
Stomach problems like mild and severe indigestion, and typhoid and at at times cholera were very much there. But Terra- and other -mycins were yet to arrive on the scene. For typhoid (and for much else) the only 'remedy' was strict 'starvation' for 21 days.
Half of the deaths were due to typhoid and the other half due to starvation.
For cholera, just trust God since even 'saline drip' was unknown in our Health Center.
Once again, we never lost any of our schoolmates, luckily. We did have typhoid cases in our school, sometimes, para- as well as double-, but I guess once aagin our outdoors-sturdiness helped us build our general resistance and fighting spirit (there were many scores to settle in the Play-Ground).
=========================================
Before looking at the various Alternate Systems of Medicine to which we were subjected, let me talk about the general health condition of our Village 60 years ago.
We were somewhat special in that ours was a sea-side village in South India.
This at once meant that it was sandy and sun-drenched. These two features led to the blessed state of no water-logging at all. Every drop of water that was spilled either by clouds or ourselves was at once soaked by the sand and vanished as groundwater. So, we never had swamps or stagnant pools that breed the mosquito menace. We used to sleep in the open blissfully without any nets or mosquito coils or ointments (this was not at all so in all the subsequent half a dozen pleces I lived in later on).
We didn't have Malaria or Filaria (Vizianagaram, a town in AP, had such large polluted water bodies, that it used to be called the 'Mother of Malaria and Father of Filaria', deservedly).
We never saw an obese person. Due to the incessant outdoor play by kids and heavy physical labor for all males and females, and lack of Radio, TV and such sedentary idle pursuits, obesity and its related diseases were unseen and unheard of. No one died of heart problems unless they were congenital, in which event they died before schooling. I never lost any one of my schoolmates while in school. We somehow survived.
There was one obese couple though: The 'Pappu Chetti & his wife' (Village Provision Shopkeeper couple). Their entire time was spent behind the counter with a beam balance (no doubt loaded) in their wizard hands. So, there was a toy too named for them. It was a spherical plastic thing heavily weighted at the inside bottom by an unseen iron semicircular block. Tilt it any which way, it will set itself right-side up after a few oscillations. It didn't look like one, but it was a pendulum; instead of suspended, it was sort of 'pivoted' by a flat bottom. Several of such weird-looking toys based on the pendulum principle appeared in the Toy Market later on; but the most beautiful one was the Chinese Albatross with low-swung protruding wings that was pivoted on a sharp point tip by its nose, which appeared in the KGP shops round 1998. The original Chinese thing was just fantastic. I bought one and used to show it off to my Physics Students visiting our Qrs. It also had another beautiful feature: Swing it about its two natural axes (Principal Axes), and the time periods wee roughly 1:2. Just lovely. If I were a II Year Lab-in-Charge then (which I was fortunately not) I would have picked it up, suspended it and asked the students to plot its Momental Ellipse, a nice UG Lab Experiment playing with Tensors.
So much for Physics buffs like Vineet who are unhappy with this Series.
So, we had no Hypertension, Sugar, Thromboses of various kinds of fat-folks-diseases in our Village. W were all having some kind of malnutrition, but that just meant that we were lean and mean and fighting fit. When I passed out from my High School, I was 4' 6" short, and weighed 34 Kg. But I could outrun any bully in the town. And when our Drill Teacher had to take his Annual Data for Sports and Athletics for us in our SSLC Register, he would put me up on the very high (for me) horizontal bar and leave me for push-ups. He would lose count after fifty and brusquely ask me to drop down on the sand cushion.
None of us had the unheard-of Triple Antigen Vaccine. But none suffered from Tetanus or Diphtheria. But all of us without exception had a bout of whooping cough (Pertussis) each for a week or two, but none was the worse for it (forced holiday); we got lifetime immunity from it. But while it lasted, it was hellish: we coughed and coughed our hearts and souls out. But we were young and it didn't matter much, since we all had it. There was only one remedy; there was a tree (which I never saw among the thousand varieties at KGP). It had elliptical coin-shaped green unripe fruit. They used to make a garland of them and hang it round our necks for the nonce. But I guess these things go away by themselves if you are sturdy enough, which we all were due to our non-stop play round the year.
I and my siblings did have small-pox vaccination in our first year or so, and we have ugly scars on our upper-arms to prove it. And once in a couple of years, a Govt Uncle used to visit our home with his kit, take out his oil lamp, ask for a matchbox (they never supplied it) and light up the thing while we waited in a row. He would sort of ticklingly drill his hot needle with its medicine on our forearms and go away. It swells for a couple of days and vanishes. I later learned that these were 'booster' doses for small-pox.
But I guess this immunization for small-pox wasn't Universal then in our Village. As soon as word spread that small-pox has hit the neighboring village and is heading towards ours, the school would be shut and all folks who can would run away to a far-enough town, wait a fortnight, and slowly limp back peeping in ones and twos till the All-Clear is blown . There would be stories of many who couldn't and were lost. Sad! But, we fled, and when we returned, none of our schoolmates vanished. The only 'remedy-cum-precaution' was several branches of neem leaves that were hung all over homes and places and bedsides. I guess, it took away almost half of the population who couldn't flee. But it left the survivors who were struck by it with life-long scars all over the body and face and sometimes left them blinded and deaf ( ?).
Terrible Plague!
Stomach problems like mild and severe indigestion, and typhoid and at at times cholera were very much there. But Terra- and other -mycins were yet to arrive on the scene. For typhoid (and for much else) the only 'remedy' was strict 'starvation' for 21 days.
Half of the deaths were due to typhoid and the other half due to starvation.
For cholera, just trust God since even 'saline drip' was unknown in our Health Center.
Once again, we never lost any of our schoolmates, luckily. We did have typhoid cases in our school, sometimes, para- as well as double-, but I guess once aagin our outdoors-sturdiness helped us build our general resistance and fighting spirit (there were many scores to settle in the Play-Ground).
=========================================
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
My India 8 - 1950-55
============================================
Let me now talk about the Health Care in our Village during this period.
Well, to make it sharp, there was little health and less care, but what there was was enough of it for me and my six siblings and parents to survive it quite handsomely. That was because we were just then in a state of flux, so to speak, of the World Health Revolution; I come to this later.
If our benevolent Queen Victoria (of the Memorial fame) deemed it fit to peg the Retirement Age for Her Servants at 55, after which She will have to dole out life-long pension, it is safe to assume that She calculated meticulously, using Statistical Tables via Actuaries, that Her Majesty's Blessed Servant is sure to die by 54 [It is a different matter that She was unaware of the impending the arrival of Penicillin on the scene...had She known She would have passed a Law preventing its import into Her Colonies. Let us recall once again that the Brits were here, whatever they may say about the White Man's Burden and all that kind of rubbish, not to feed us the Indians but to feed on us...like the Fisherman who goes to enormous trouble to choose and prepare his bait...not to feed the fish, but to feed on it].
I am rather sorry for my Father's generation (say starting Production around 1940). They were caught in a bind not of their making.
At the height of the British Rule, the man who survived till marrying age, that is around 15, could be assumed to die around 45, by when he would have his second or third wife by his side, who would in all have, as in a Series Production System (on which I wrote a learned paper in IJPR, UK, in collaboration with learned Production Engineers), gone through a couple of dozen pregnancies, abortions, child births, infant mortalities and maternity fatalities.
He was ensuring that one or two sons would survive to cremate and perform the much-needed last rites (Aputrasya Gatir Naasthi).
The population of British India remained stagnant if not declining under Her Majesty's Benign Rule.
I am told that the overall life-expectancy was around 27 (excluding Government Servants, as I said before).
My father and his various brothers would have 'received wisdom' and 'planned' accordingly.
As it turned out for their apple cart, all of their children and most of their wives survived, pauperizing them at one unexpected stroke.
Like, imagine, for instance, the reader of this, if any, planned to have just one kid; and landed up with thriving and kicking quintuplets...he/she would have to revise their entire outlook on Life and its inequities.
Dad, I am truly sorry for you, but our Health Care System in our Village tried its best, but we were just unbeatable, even before it became worse with the advent of various '..llins' and '..cins'.
We survived because the Brits left in a hurry, without dismantling all the infrastructure they built for their own good (they split the country though).
First there was the Rural Dispensary: This had an LIM, LMP or GCIM. Big names but just rural doctors possessing some knowledge of the Local Diseases and the Local Remedies for various 'Indian' diseases ('I' there is for Indian, 'L' for Licentiate, and 'M' of course, for 'Medicine').
Often he didn't have a stethoscope, or if he had one supplied, didn't rely much on it; forget about BP Apparatus; neither he nor us heard about such a weird thing called Blood Pressure.
But he was adept at two things:
(1) Pulse: He would automatically 'take' your pulse with the left hand while scribbling on his 'brown paper' pad (post-World War II, we all had only brown paper, and squat ink pots into which 'ink powder' would be periodically emptied from a pouch with added water; into which a 'pen' like a mini-rocket at the end of which a sturdy 'nib' would be pushed and dipped and withdrawn with blobs of ink spilling all over).
(2) He would take a deep and dirty look at your proffered tongue, and ask you to retract it vehemently.
He would then complete his diagnosis and prescription, both of which would be limited to around half a dozen bits each of highbrow vocabulary, unreadable to all but his Compounder, who would make his own 'guesstimates'.
[I do remember, even when I was just 8, the 'Case' of a rather well-known fairly wealthy handsome and smart but profligate son of the soil, picking out an injection vial from his pocket and requesting his Doctor 'friend' to 'push' it urgently into his arm. But that 'injection' was perhaps bought from the Madras Market (maybe Black); but during my stay of 7 years in our Village, few from my large family had been 'injected', with one exception to which I will return presently...injections were unheard of].
The Compounder would be ringed by just 3 huge bottles of 'Mixture' this or that, of 3 colors, red, while and orange. He would ask for the 'bottles' which we were supposed to bring along and, looking at the prescription quizzically, would pour some of each in various proportions, MIX and let go.
Sometimes when the disease we were suffering from turned out to be malicious and mixtures proved ineffective, the Doctor would scratch and scribble something else and the Compounder would take a bit of newspaper, fill it up with one of three 'powders', fold it intricately and ask us to get the hell out. By then we would have made three trips to the Dispensary in about a week and since we came from sturdy stock (look at me, 67, going strong blogging daily at 4 A M), we would cure ourselves despite all their Mixtures and Powders.
Yes, to talk about my injection ordeal:
One evening myself and my elder cousin were playing hooky at his place at Nellore. His father, my uncle, sent us on an errand to the Trunk Road. Since we were keen to return to our aborted play as early as we could, my cousin took me by a short-cut through gullies dark and deep. On our return, we both were challenged by the well-known Hound (of the Reddy-villes). Neither he nor I knew the approved procedure: just stay put and pretend to pick up a stone or chappal. My cousin juts RAN, leaving me straggling behind. The Doggie had its shame-faced Day: around 1" piece of flesh was missing from my lean and mean thigh by the time we reached home by and by.
My Uncle was suitably kind to me and harsh to my cousin, his Town-Made-Son. But in the end, my Father brought some Carbolic Acid from the Family First-Aid Chest and dressed my wound after stanching the flow of blood and we all forgot about it.
But, my Maternal Uncle, who was just then an MBBS from Madras arrived and had a curious look at it, and asked if I could identify the Doggie so we could keep it under observation for TEN days. I said sorry, thinking that was the end of it. He said, in that case, to be on the safe side, I had to take 14 bloody injections around my navel. I didn't know what I was in for and guessed that they wouldn't be available in Nellore, not even in its thriving Black Market.
But this young chappy was very 'influential and resourceful'. He went to the BIG Government Hospital at Nellore, and without my knowledge and consent procured 14 of the deadly vials along with 14 huge syringes with 1 cm thick needles. He traveled with me and my Father kindly to our Village and met the LMP, showed off his MBBS erudition, demonstrated how to push one as a sample in his presence, and left for his Madras the next day.
The remaining 13 days were Hell for me and my Country Doctor: he was kind and cordial, but just couldn't manage the thick needles and used to take ten minutes for pushing each into my tummy around the sweet spot. As soon as I went home, they would swell like balloons and needed continuous fomentation to prepare and provide the tummy for the next push the next day.
Rabies would perhaps have been less violent as far as suffering went.
.............To be continued tomorrow............
==============================================
Let me now talk about the Health Care in our Village during this period.
Well, to make it sharp, there was little health and less care, but what there was was enough of it for me and my six siblings and parents to survive it quite handsomely. That was because we were just then in a state of flux, so to speak, of the World Health Revolution; I come to this later.
If our benevolent Queen Victoria (of the Memorial fame) deemed it fit to peg the Retirement Age for Her Servants at 55, after which She will have to dole out life-long pension, it is safe to assume that She calculated meticulously, using Statistical Tables via Actuaries, that Her Majesty's Blessed Servant is sure to die by 54 [It is a different matter that She was unaware of the impending the arrival of Penicillin on the scene...had She known She would have passed a Law preventing its import into Her Colonies. Let us recall once again that the Brits were here, whatever they may say about the White Man's Burden and all that kind of rubbish, not to feed us the Indians but to feed on us...like the Fisherman who goes to enormous trouble to choose and prepare his bait...not to feed the fish, but to feed on it].
I am rather sorry for my Father's generation (say starting Production around 1940). They were caught in a bind not of their making.
At the height of the British Rule, the man who survived till marrying age, that is around 15, could be assumed to die around 45, by when he would have his second or third wife by his side, who would in all have, as in a Series Production System (on which I wrote a learned paper in IJPR, UK, in collaboration with learned Production Engineers), gone through a couple of dozen pregnancies, abortions, child births, infant mortalities and maternity fatalities.
He was ensuring that one or two sons would survive to cremate and perform the much-needed last rites (Aputrasya Gatir Naasthi).
The population of British India remained stagnant if not declining under Her Majesty's Benign Rule.
I am told that the overall life-expectancy was around 27 (excluding Government Servants, as I said before).
My father and his various brothers would have 'received wisdom' and 'planned' accordingly.
As it turned out for their apple cart, all of their children and most of their wives survived, pauperizing them at one unexpected stroke.
Like, imagine, for instance, the reader of this, if any, planned to have just one kid; and landed up with thriving and kicking quintuplets...he/she would have to revise their entire outlook on Life and its inequities.
Dad, I am truly sorry for you, but our Health Care System in our Village tried its best, but we were just unbeatable, even before it became worse with the advent of various '..llins' and '..cins'.
We survived because the Brits left in a hurry, without dismantling all the infrastructure they built for their own good (they split the country though).
First there was the Rural Dispensary: This had an LIM, LMP or GCIM. Big names but just rural doctors possessing some knowledge of the Local Diseases and the Local Remedies for various 'Indian' diseases ('I' there is for Indian, 'L' for Licentiate, and 'M' of course, for 'Medicine').
Often he didn't have a stethoscope, or if he had one supplied, didn't rely much on it; forget about BP Apparatus; neither he nor us heard about such a weird thing called Blood Pressure.
But he was adept at two things:
(1) Pulse: He would automatically 'take' your pulse with the left hand while scribbling on his 'brown paper' pad (post-World War II, we all had only brown paper, and squat ink pots into which 'ink powder' would be periodically emptied from a pouch with added water; into which a 'pen' like a mini-rocket at the end of which a sturdy 'nib' would be pushed and dipped and withdrawn with blobs of ink spilling all over).
(2) He would take a deep and dirty look at your proffered tongue, and ask you to retract it vehemently.
He would then complete his diagnosis and prescription, both of which would be limited to around half a dozen bits each of highbrow vocabulary, unreadable to all but his Compounder, who would make his own 'guesstimates'.
[I do remember, even when I was just 8, the 'Case' of a rather well-known fairly wealthy handsome and smart but profligate son of the soil, picking out an injection vial from his pocket and requesting his Doctor 'friend' to 'push' it urgently into his arm. But that 'injection' was perhaps bought from the Madras Market (maybe Black); but during my stay of 7 years in our Village, few from my large family had been 'injected', with one exception to which I will return presently...injections were unheard of].
The Compounder would be ringed by just 3 huge bottles of 'Mixture' this or that, of 3 colors, red, while and orange. He would ask for the 'bottles' which we were supposed to bring along and, looking at the prescription quizzically, would pour some of each in various proportions, MIX and let go.
Sometimes when the disease we were suffering from turned out to be malicious and mixtures proved ineffective, the Doctor would scratch and scribble something else and the Compounder would take a bit of newspaper, fill it up with one of three 'powders', fold it intricately and ask us to get the hell out. By then we would have made three trips to the Dispensary in about a week and since we came from sturdy stock (look at me, 67, going strong blogging daily at 4 A M), we would cure ourselves despite all their Mixtures and Powders.
Yes, to talk about my injection ordeal:
One evening myself and my elder cousin were playing hooky at his place at Nellore. His father, my uncle, sent us on an errand to the Trunk Road. Since we were keen to return to our aborted play as early as we could, my cousin took me by a short-cut through gullies dark and deep. On our return, we both were challenged by the well-known Hound (of the Reddy-villes). Neither he nor I knew the approved procedure: just stay put and pretend to pick up a stone or chappal. My cousin juts RAN, leaving me straggling behind. The Doggie had its shame-faced Day: around 1" piece of flesh was missing from my lean and mean thigh by the time we reached home by and by.
My Uncle was suitably kind to me and harsh to my cousin, his Town-Made-Son. But in the end, my Father brought some Carbolic Acid from the Family First-Aid Chest and dressed my wound after stanching the flow of blood and we all forgot about it.
But, my Maternal Uncle, who was just then an MBBS from Madras arrived and had a curious look at it, and asked if I could identify the Doggie so we could keep it under observation for TEN days. I said sorry, thinking that was the end of it. He said, in that case, to be on the safe side, I had to take 14 bloody injections around my navel. I didn't know what I was in for and guessed that they wouldn't be available in Nellore, not even in its thriving Black Market.
But this young chappy was very 'influential and resourceful'. He went to the BIG Government Hospital at Nellore, and without my knowledge and consent procured 14 of the deadly vials along with 14 huge syringes with 1 cm thick needles. He traveled with me and my Father kindly to our Village and met the LMP, showed off his MBBS erudition, demonstrated how to push one as a sample in his presence, and left for his Madras the next day.
The remaining 13 days were Hell for me and my Country Doctor: he was kind and cordial, but just couldn't manage the thick needles and used to take ten minutes for pushing each into my tummy around the sweet spot. As soon as I went home, they would swell like balloons and needed continuous fomentation to prepare and provide the tummy for the next push the next day.
Rabies would perhaps have been less violent as far as suffering went.
.............To be continued tomorrow............
==============================================
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
My India 7 - 1950-55
============================================
Time to revert to utter nonsense from its moderate impostor:
Yes: "Waterbury Compound vanished into the Black Market".
By the time Nation States settled down from the crippling World War II, they imbibed one of 3 Model Economies, broadly speaking, by choice or force.
Now, 60 years on, they realized that none of the 3 is viable in its pristine form and made necessary adjustments, sometimes with upheavals; at others, slowly but surely.
The 3 pure types are:
(1) Closed Economy: Here everyone is a Government Servant.
'They' look after your minimum needs like housing in hovels, black bread, and a 100 Roubles pocket money for everyone other than Party Workers who 'make' you work. The Party decides what is good for you at any given point of time and promises to give it to you. You have no worries, your wife and kids are looked after, in a way. Only thing is that there is no incentive for you to work. So, you shirk, take it easy, and as time passes, no one works and there is neither hovel nor black bread produced any longer.
Then, you break the Wall and embrace a different kind of Economy for a change.
The beauty of this is that there is never a Waterbury Compound nor Black Market (or any other color of Market, so to say) for it.
(2) Open Economy: You are in the Wild West and all on your own. None to control you. You grab the Marketplace by your ingenuity. Find what your neighbor has and invent a gimmick that 'appears' a thousand times better at half the price. And there is none to check you except your neighbor who doesn't like your product. Go in for a better version. Compete, diversify or die. There is no Government nor its Servants to check you. Dog eat Dog. Everyone produces and consumes better and more better products and services; otherwise they will be impoverished and go down the penury hole, along with their families. Gang up and create a Bubble if everything fails. Then inspire the moribund Government busy fighting Oil Wars and ask for 'relief' and threaten that the Bubble will burst and take down the whole World with it.
As neat as that!
Here, within a month of a Waterbury Compound hittting the Market, there will be a dozen equivalent or better Compounds at cheaper prices. My son, who visited a Mall in an NJ Suburbia lately tells me that they have at least 20 varieties of Tea and 40 of Coffee there. My mom knew only one, the Nilgiris, and that was good enough for all of us.
(3) Controlled Economy: This is the Real Beauty. Whoever invented it deserves the Prize!
Here you are not yet a Govt Servant but hope that your son will be one in due course. To become a Govt Servant is the Big Dream of all. There are only a minuscule vacancies, but they are enough to wreck the Nation. First the Govt thinks that you don't need a Waterbury Compound. So, they don't allow it to be produced or imported.
Everyone is happy.
Then one day, some Crony wants to make his pile and offers part of the pile to everyone down the line from the respective Min to the Clerk in the Civil Supplies Depot. Then they allow an 'import license' to the Crony. He will flood the Nation with prescriptions and advertisements and thereby 'create' a Market where none was there before. Then your neighbor gloats that he buys a dozen of the bottles for himself and his family and his friends because his health has iundergone a radical improvement after he had only one bottle: his appetite is better, digestion is keener, metabolism (whatever that may mean) has electrified, and he feels younger by a decade and that much more 'virile' (that seals it!).
You, your family and friends invade the Market Stores asking for a Crate of it. Obviously the Govt has thought over this and had issued licenses only for two bottles per month per outlet. So, the Dealer says that the stock is exhausted and you come home unhappy. Then your 'foil' down the street whom you cordially dislike brings one from the Stores and shows you the bottle he just brought with a hint that you can't afford its 'Blak Market' price.
You then spit on your hands and run to the Stores and confront its Keeper. He whispers to you and guides you down dark alleys into the innards of his really 'Black' godown and shows you the very last piece he had especially reserved for you knowing that you are a connoisseur of the stuff. He also hints that the Police would be after him and you both if you leak out its existence to even your foil's foil. And asks you triple the price to cover his tips to the Customs and other Inspectors down the line. You promise, and buy it, and go home, and show it to evryone including the worst enemy of your foil.
The Market expands and everyone is happy; till Questions are raised by the Opposition in the Parliament for whatever wild reason they feel. Then the 'import license' is cancelled and the general health of the Nation is restored; physical, mental and financial.
Till Gripe Water takes over where Waterbury Compound left off.
I have known this and been a victim to this System, because my wife unfortunately couldn't breast-feed my golden son, and everybody advised me that cow's or buffalo's milk is too rich for the buffoon, and would hit his brain in spots where it really matters like JEE etc; and that only Large Tins of Lactogen would see to it that his long-term general health would be able to stay him in the Rat Race, forever. And I had to be sucker for it, because I can take chances with myself and my wife but not my kid; if things go wrong he will point out Lactogen deficiency for his Class III Failure in Math, which however is genetic; but he doesn't believe it.
So, I was spending half my salary (after 3 PF Loans were recovered for my hasty decision to marry without means) on the blessed Lactogen. And, moreover, I had to promise to do one-on-one coaching to the daughter of the only Shopkeeper who is licensed to stock the dreary thing.
Fortunately the SPS of Nehru died slowly but surely and the Market now is much less controlled, so my granddaughter Ishani can't really attribute her poor perforamnce in Math to lack of Waterbury Compound or for that matter Gripe Water.
Indeed, 20 years after the Gripe Water originally hit the Indian Market and was still going strong, a US-returned Pediatrician blasted her when the mother of a just-born asked if her baby should be on Gripe Water:
"Yea! Buy 30 bottles, drink them yourself everyday, and feed your silly enriched breast-milk to your cute baby...both of you will be healthy!"
So much for the Black Market of my 1953 childhood.
=============================================
Time to revert to utter nonsense from its moderate impostor:
Yes: "Waterbury Compound vanished into the Black Market".
By the time Nation States settled down from the crippling World War II, they imbibed one of 3 Model Economies, broadly speaking, by choice or force.
Now, 60 years on, they realized that none of the 3 is viable in its pristine form and made necessary adjustments, sometimes with upheavals; at others, slowly but surely.
The 3 pure types are:
(1) Closed Economy: Here everyone is a Government Servant.
'They' look after your minimum needs like housing in hovels, black bread, and a 100 Roubles pocket money for everyone other than Party Workers who 'make' you work. The Party decides what is good for you at any given point of time and promises to give it to you. You have no worries, your wife and kids are looked after, in a way. Only thing is that there is no incentive for you to work. So, you shirk, take it easy, and as time passes, no one works and there is neither hovel nor black bread produced any longer.
Then, you break the Wall and embrace a different kind of Economy for a change.
The beauty of this is that there is never a Waterbury Compound nor Black Market (or any other color of Market, so to say) for it.
(2) Open Economy: You are in the Wild West and all on your own. None to control you. You grab the Marketplace by your ingenuity. Find what your neighbor has and invent a gimmick that 'appears' a thousand times better at half the price. And there is none to check you except your neighbor who doesn't like your product. Go in for a better version. Compete, diversify or die. There is no Government nor its Servants to check you. Dog eat Dog. Everyone produces and consumes better and more better products and services; otherwise they will be impoverished and go down the penury hole, along with their families. Gang up and create a Bubble if everything fails. Then inspire the moribund Government busy fighting Oil Wars and ask for 'relief' and threaten that the Bubble will burst and take down the whole World with it.
As neat as that!
Here, within a month of a Waterbury Compound hittting the Market, there will be a dozen equivalent or better Compounds at cheaper prices. My son, who visited a Mall in an NJ Suburbia lately tells me that they have at least 20 varieties of Tea and 40 of Coffee there. My mom knew only one, the Nilgiris, and that was good enough for all of us.
(3) Controlled Economy: This is the Real Beauty. Whoever invented it deserves the Prize!
Here you are not yet a Govt Servant but hope that your son will be one in due course. To become a Govt Servant is the Big Dream of all. There are only a minuscule vacancies, but they are enough to wreck the Nation. First the Govt thinks that you don't need a Waterbury Compound. So, they don't allow it to be produced or imported.
Everyone is happy.
Then one day, some Crony wants to make his pile and offers part of the pile to everyone down the line from the respective Min to the Clerk in the Civil Supplies Depot. Then they allow an 'import license' to the Crony. He will flood the Nation with prescriptions and advertisements and thereby 'create' a Market where none was there before. Then your neighbor gloats that he buys a dozen of the bottles for himself and his family and his friends because his health has iundergone a radical improvement after he had only one bottle: his appetite is better, digestion is keener, metabolism (whatever that may mean) has electrified, and he feels younger by a decade and that much more 'virile' (that seals it!).
You, your family and friends invade the Market Stores asking for a Crate of it. Obviously the Govt has thought over this and had issued licenses only for two bottles per month per outlet. So, the Dealer says that the stock is exhausted and you come home unhappy. Then your 'foil' down the street whom you cordially dislike brings one from the Stores and shows you the bottle he just brought with a hint that you can't afford its 'Blak Market' price.
You then spit on your hands and run to the Stores and confront its Keeper. He whispers to you and guides you down dark alleys into the innards of his really 'Black' godown and shows you the very last piece he had especially reserved for you knowing that you are a connoisseur of the stuff. He also hints that the Police would be after him and you both if you leak out its existence to even your foil's foil. And asks you triple the price to cover his tips to the Customs and other Inspectors down the line. You promise, and buy it, and go home, and show it to evryone including the worst enemy of your foil.
The Market expands and everyone is happy; till Questions are raised by the Opposition in the Parliament for whatever wild reason they feel. Then the 'import license' is cancelled and the general health of the Nation is restored; physical, mental and financial.
Till Gripe Water takes over where Waterbury Compound left off.
I have known this and been a victim to this System, because my wife unfortunately couldn't breast-feed my golden son, and everybody advised me that cow's or buffalo's milk is too rich for the buffoon, and would hit his brain in spots where it really matters like JEE etc; and that only Large Tins of Lactogen would see to it that his long-term general health would be able to stay him in the Rat Race, forever. And I had to be sucker for it, because I can take chances with myself and my wife but not my kid; if things go wrong he will point out Lactogen deficiency for his Class III Failure in Math, which however is genetic; but he doesn't believe it.
So, I was spending half my salary (after 3 PF Loans were recovered for my hasty decision to marry without means) on the blessed Lactogen. And, moreover, I had to promise to do one-on-one coaching to the daughter of the only Shopkeeper who is licensed to stock the dreary thing.
Fortunately the SPS of Nehru died slowly but surely and the Market now is much less controlled, so my granddaughter Ishani can't really attribute her poor perforamnce in Math to lack of Waterbury Compound or for that matter Gripe Water.
Indeed, 20 years after the Gripe Water originally hit the Indian Market and was still going strong, a US-returned Pediatrician blasted her when the mother of a just-born asked if her baby should be on Gripe Water:
"Yea! Buy 30 bottles, drink them yourself everyday, and feed your silly enriched breast-milk to your cute baby...both of you will be healthy!"
So much for the Black Market of my 1953 childhood.
=============================================
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