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Category: Excerpts

Sanskrit love poetry at its peak

Posted on by ananya

Amaru Shatakam is a collection of a hundred love lyrics. It is regarded as the greatest of such works in ancient Sanskrit.

Little is known of the poet Amaru, except that he could put the emotions of a whole poem into a single stanza. More than a thousand years old, each of these verses gives vivid glimpses of human love in quite a modern manner.

The love these lyrics picture, has physical, emotional as well as social aspects. Delightful or  painful, it is felt by women as well as men.

To give readers a feel of these sensitively drawn portraits of love, in separation and loss, in desire and fulfillment, here are a few samples of these Amaru lyrics.

 

A first look

 

Your gaze is languid, soft with love,

you shut your eyes repeatedly,

and open them for just a moment

to stare or shyly dart a glance

full of some inner feeling.

Say, young lady, who is he,

that lucky man you are looking at ?               (4)

 

A first query

 

‘You simple girl, do you intend

to be so naive all the time?

Compose yourself and mind your honour,

don’t be artless with your lover’.

Thus advised by friends, the maid

with a timorous look replies:

‘Hush! Softly! My lord may hear you,

he is here within my heart.                             (70)

 

Lover to beloved

 

‘Beautiful, give up your pride.

Look at me, I’m at your feet.

You’ve never been so cross before’.

By her loved one thus addressed,

she cast a glance from half-closed eyes,

she’d many tears, said not a word.                 (39)

 

A memory of love

When to the bed my lover came,

my skirt not opened by itself,

I held the string, but the dress slipped off

with just a bit left on my hips.

That is all I know, dear friend,

for when he took me in his arms,

who was he and I myself,

or what we both then did together,

I can’t at all remember.                                  (101)

 

Another memory#

Somehow, in a play of pique,

I told him to get out, and he

hard-hearted, just left the bed

and walked away abruptly.

His ardent feelings seem at an end,

but my shameless heart still yearns

for that callous spoiler of our love,

O good friend, what shall I do?                      (15)

 

Once again

 

They were on the same bed,

but lay back to back,

distressed,and they did not speak,

though conciliation with each other

was in the heart of both,

they preserved their dignity.

Than,gradually, the couple turned

heir eyes on one another:

their quarrel gone, and with a laugh,

they embraced each other.                              (23)

 

 

N.B. Numbers at each verse end refer to the book as a whole.

Clash of the opposites

Posted on by vanyajaiswal

Avni believes true love is a myth. Unlike her gregarious Punjabi parents, she prefers to live in her own little world and wants nothing more than to be left alone with her books for company. When she comes across her new neighbour Sidharth, she is irked by his behaviour. A fun and outgoing Gujju boy, Sidharth is everything Avni detests. As fate would have it, he is instantly drawn to her on their first meeting. But Avni wants nothing to do with the boy who seems to be ruining her chances of securing the top position in college. A series of miscommunications makes Avni believe the worst of Sidharth, further ruining his hopes of ever having a chance at love.

Can’t Quarantine Our Love is an epic love story of two neighbours with a twist of fate that puts everything they know to a heartbreaking test. Here’s an excerpt from the book!

**

Sometimes life throws things at you that are way beyond your control. Sidharth chose to stay silent and not react to Avni’s slap. He knew he was equally at fault. But he had to face the heat from the head of the department who had asked him to bring his parents to college the next day or else he would get suspended.

When he reached home, he barely interacted with anyone and went straight to his room and locked himself in. He wanted to spend some time just by himself and his thoughts. He felt anxious thinking Avni would never talk to him again and that it was perhaps over before it could even begin. Adding to his anxiety was the fact that he had to tell his mother about what had happened. He didn’t know how to bring it up and called Bani for advice.

‘My mom will kick me out of the house if she finds out what happened,’ Sidharth said.

Bani tried to calm him down with an idea. ‘Dude, do not tell your mom anything. I know someone who can come to college as your fake dad. He had acted as my fake dad in the twelfth standard when my parents were hauled up for my low attendance. No one will come to know, trust me. We can pay him with bottles of his favourite alcohol.’

‘That’s asking for more trouble. If I get caught, I’ll get screwed,’ Sidharth replied. He wasn’t too enthused about the idea. ‘I shouldn’t have got drunk. It’s all your fault. You pushed me to keep drinking. And I lost control.’

‘Yes, and I also pushed you to dance with Avni without her permission, right?’ Bani replied.

‘Anyway, I think I have no choice.’

Sidharth hung up and stepped outside his bedroom. His grandfather was watching a reporter screaming on the top of his lungs on a prime time news show, unaware that Sidharth had some breaking news of his own.

‘Mom, I need to talk to you.’

‘I am busy right now, can’t you see?’ his mom said as she kneaded the dough for dinner.

But Sidharth pleaded with her and she finally stepped out of the kitchen, washing her hands in the basin on her way out. Nana knew something was up, and switched off the TV. As she stepped closer, his mother finally saw the bruises on his face. She panicked and rushed towards him.

front cover of Can't Quarantine Our Love
Can’t Quarantine Our Love || Sudeep Nagarkar

 

‘What happened? Is everything okay?’ she asked worriedly.

Nana walked towards him to inspect the bruises more closely. ‘Did something happen in college?’

Sidharth didn’t know what to tell them. He looked down, unable to make eye contact. He knew what would follow but somehow he gathered courage and spoke up.

‘Mom, the thing is that today in college . . . we had a freshers’ party and . . .’

‘Come straight to the point. Did you pick up a fight with someone?’

How should I tell her? If I tell her about Avni, she’ll take an avatar of Kali Ma. I better stick to the fight. ‘Actually, I got into a fight with some seniors, and the professors saw it. They’ve called you to college tomorrow to meet the HOD.’

I want to tell her the entire episode. Why am I focusing on just the fight that happened after the party? If she comes to know about Avni tomorrow, she’ll be even angrier. No . . . I can’t tell her. I’ll think of a more plausible explanation tonight.

His mom was devastated. He was half expecting her to slap him blue in the face, but she just stood in her place looking zapped. Sidharth could see tears in her eyes. He looked at Nana, who was his usual cool self.

‘Mom, I am sorry.’ He thought of telling her the whole story but just couldn’t find the courage to do so.

His mother finally spoke up. ‘Didn’t I tell you that you have responsibilities? Do you know the amount of effort we are making so that you can get the best education? And how are you repaying us for it? It’s hardly been a few days since college started, and look at you! These years will decide the course of your life.’

Damn, why are all parents as dramatic as a Sooraj Bharjatiya movie?

**

 

A witty, moving and intensely personal retelling of a woman’s battle with infertility

Posted on by penguin

When Rohini married Ranjith and moved to the ‘big city’, they had already planned the next five years of their life: job, home, and then child. After three years of marriage and amidst increasing pressure from family, they decided to seek medical help to conceive. But they weren’t prepared for what came next-not only in terms of the invasive, gruelling and deeply uncomfortable nature of infertility treatment but also the financial and emotional strain it would put on their marriage, and the gnawing shame and feeling of inadequacy that she would experience as a woman unable to bear a child.

 

What’s a Lemon Squeezer Doing in My Vagina? is a witty, moving and intensely personal retelling of Rohini’s five-year-long battle with infertility, capturing the indignities of medical procedures, the sting of prying questions from friends and strangers, the disproportionate burden of treatment on the woman, the everyday anxieties about wayward hormones, follicles and embryos and the overarching anxiety about the outcome of the treatment. It offers a no-holds-barred view of her circuitous and highly bumpy road to motherhood.It was 8 a.m. on a Saturday and the reception area was already packed with couples at various stages of treatment. As first-time visitors, we paid the registration fee and went into a consultation room. A bespectacled, presumably junior consultant motioned us to sit down and began inquiring into our condition, reading out queries from a four-page data sheet in her hand and filling it in as the Q&A progressed.

 

There were questions on our medical history, the nature of my menstrual cycle, our lifestyle, hereditary diseases and, of course, the most critical query: how long we had been trying to conceive. That probably did not tick all the boxes, so what followed was a point-by-point probing of our sex life.

 

‘How often do you have intercourse?’
‘Once or twice a week.’
‘When was the last time you had intercourse?’
‘Last Sunday.’
‘Have you experienced any sexual dysfunction?’
‘No.’
‘Do you have any history of sexually transmitted diseases?’
‘No.’

 

Our tone was flat and deadpan, betraying none of the unease we felt, as if it were routine to discuss the schedule and specifications of our sex life. Of course, only I spoke.

 

Ranjith leaned back in his chair, arms folded across his chest, and uttered a syllable or two when a question was specifically directed at him. He had come there only for me.

 

Once the patient history form was filled up the doctor said she would have to examine me and pointed to a bed in the same room. I knew what was coming and didn’t look forward to it, but agreed obediently. Removing my shoes, I stepped on a two-rung stool and climbed onto the steel examination table while she drew a curtain around it.

 

‘Please remove your pyjamas,’ she ordered.

 

I loosened the knot of my salwar, pulled it down along with my underwear and lay down on my back. She wore her gloves, dipped her index and middle fingers in jelly and inserted them inside my vagina, feeling the contours of my insides in rough, rapid moves. I held my breath, interlocked my fingers tightly and focused unblinkingly on the ceiling.

 

What’s Lemon Squeezer Doing In My Vagina | Rohini S. Rajagopal

After a few seconds she noted, ‘There is nothing anatomically wrong with your body.’
‘Hmm,’ I exhaled. The only thing I cared for was the departure of the groping fingers and restoration
of dignity to my half-naked self.

 

Back at the table, she handed us a printout that laid down the next steps. ‘Please come back once you finish all the tests on this sheet,’ she said. We nodded dutifully and stepped out of the room, our to-do list in hand. We chose the diagnostics lab first. There were twenty odd tests to strike off the list—from HIV to blood sugar to the various hormones that govern reproduction. The phlebotomist1 indicated a student chair and asked me to place my extended arm on the foldable writing pad. He drained several millilitres of my blood into colour-coded vials. I did not fear needles and breathed easily through the prick of skin and tightness of strap. It was certainly easier than offering access to the inner recesses of my vagina.

 

Once I was done, Ranjith sat on the same chair and went through the same motions. Next was sperm collection. A male technician handed Ranjith a small plastic container with a white label on it. He asked him to make use of a room at the opposite end of the corridor with the sign ‘Sample Collection’ outside. Ranjith hid the cup in his closed fist and walked into the room. As the door closed I caught a fleeting glimpse of its interiors—peeling walls and a broken chair. I sat on the bench, facing the closed door, trying to block all thoughts. After fifteen minutes he emerged.

 

The final stop was ultrasound. I was led into a room overpowered by medical equipment and asked to lie down on a long, narrow bed. My salwar and underwear rested on hooks in the bathroom. A chirpy radiologist photographed the insides of my uterus with the transducer, noting down measurements of my ovaries on paper. Once or twice she yelped in delight at the images that appeared on the screen.

 

‘Excellent. A triple lining!’ she said. I maintained my breathless silence, again fixated only on when the ultrasound probe would be withdrawn from my vagina.

 

As soon as Ranjith and I stepped into the clinic, it was as if an invisible wall had emerged to separate us—husband and wife—snapping the lines and wires of marital communication. We walked around the clinic like zombies, taking instructions, undoing zippers, lowering underwear, offering arms for needles . . . It was like a spontaneous, self-imposed blockade. We resisted processing the happenings around us. We resisted conversation. We resisted each other’s eyes even, each feeling sickeningly guilty that the other had been dragged into such a distasteful setting.

 

We had come in expecting the privacy and safety of a cosy consultation room, but the fertility clinic turned out to be an open parade in which our self-respect and dignity were systematically poked, squeezed and drained out. It was only about one and a half hours later, when the stripping and skinning were complete, that we were ushered into the cabin of the doctor we had come to meet in the first place.

Success stories of people with diabetes

Posted on by ronjini

Making Excellence a Habit is a behind-the-scenes account of a person honoured internationally for delivering path-breaking care to hundreds of thousands of people with diabetes. While hard work, passion and focus emerge as winning lessons, delicate and tender learnings from Dr Mohan’s life, such as empathy or spirituality, are not forgotten.

Here is an excerpt from the book that talks about success stories of people with diabetes.

 

Front cover of Making Excellence A Habit
Making Excellence A Habit || Dr V. Mohan

Many people with diabetes believe that because of their illness, they cannot achieve their ambitions. Of the two most common forms of diabetes, type 2 and type 1, the former can be treated with tablets, diet and exercise, although some individuals may need insulin at some point in their life. Type 1 diabetes, on the other hand, is a more severe form of the disorder where insulin injections are needed from the beginning, and often several times a day, in order to maintain good health. I have seen that when people develop type 1 diabetes (or even type 2 diabetes, for that matter), they often tend to give up. Their family also thinks that they are doomed to a life of mediocrity, devoid of any ambitions or success.

 

Doctors, too, unknowingly, reinforce this mindset. We were taught as students that if somebody is fifty years old and has had diabetes for twenty years, their arteries and blood vessels would be seventy years old. We therefore recognize what’s referred to as the ‘chronological age’, which is the actual age of the patient, and the ‘biological age’, which is the age of the arteries. In the case of people with diabetes, almost every study has shown that diabetes decreases the lifespan of an individual. Statistics show that in both men and women between seven to eight years of life are lost due to diabetes. Currently, the average lifespan of an Indian is sixty- seven years for males and sixty-nine years for females. Hence, for Indians with diabetes, one would expect that the average lifespan would be around sixty years for both males and females. By this calculation, one would assume that it would be almost impossible to find an elderly person with diabetes in India. Only 0.001 per cent of India’s population today are nonagenarians, that is aged ninety years or above. Hence, finding a ninety-year-old person with diabetes in India would be an absolutely rarity.

 

While these statistics are well established, they’re not necessarily true, and moreover, there are a lot of exceptions to the rule. Over the last few years, we have been noticing at our centre that our patients with diabetes, presumably due to better control, are living longer and longer. In 2013, I published a paper to show that patients with type 2 diabetes could live for forty or fifty years despite their diabetes. This paper was published in the prestigious American journal Diabetes Care and became a landmark paper. My colleagues and I were pleased that we as Indians were the first to report on the long-term survival of patients with type 2 diabetes.

 

After we had submitted the paper, Dr William Cefalu, then the editor of Diabetes Care, visited me in Chennai. Dr Cefalu told me that he was delighted to receive our paper and wanted to learn more about the survival among people with type 2 diabetes. Dr Cefalu then suggested that we have, as a control group, patients who were ‘non-survivors’, that is, had not survived for forty years. I mentioned to him that this would take time, as we would have to painstakingly match the ‘survivors’ and ‘non-survivors’ from our large electronic records. He gave us additional time to do it, and once we were done, we submitted the paper again to the journal. The paper was an instant hit—and was the first in the world to demonstrate the long-term survival of patients with type 2 diabetes of more than forty years duration.

 

In fact, when I received the Harold Rifkin Award for Distinguished International Service in the Cause of Diabetes from the American Diabetes Association, Dr Cefalu was present at the ceremony. I walked up to him and asked him whether he remembered me. Dr Cefalu smiled and said, ‘Why do you think you are receiving this award?’ By then, Dr Cefalu was the chief scientific officer of the association and, despite his high position, he hadn’t forgotten my paper in his journal. ‘That paper of yours was definitely one of the highlights of your career,’ he said. I agreed. I was humbled to receive the award, and even more so because I was the first diabetologist from India to have been chosen for the award.

 

However, in that study we did not take the age of the patients into consideration—only the duration of diabetes. Only recently have we started looking at our electronic medical records again to see how many patients lived very long lives. This time, our study showed that 325 of our patients with type 2 diabetes had survived beyond ninety years of age. This meant that if one applied the formula taught by our teachers, the biological age of these patients was unbelievably long. By now, I have several patients who have crossed ninety-five years of age and are approaching their hundredth birthday. I have also seen my first patient with diabetes cross the coveted hundred-year birth-anniversary mark. This man was the former vice chancellor of two universities and has had diabetes for almost sixty years. This means his biological age would be 160 years!

 

To understand the fundamentals of what makes a person achieve meaningful success, get your copy of Dr Mohan’s Making Excellence A Habit

If you think a higher IQ guarantees mental dexterity, think again!

Posted on by vanyajaiswal

Intelligence is usually seen as the ability to think and learn, but in a rapidly changing world it might matter more that we can rethink and unlearn.

Organizational psychologist Adam Grant is an expert on opening other people’s minds and our own. Think Again invites us to let go of views that are no longer serving us well and prize mental flexibility, humility, and curiosity over foolish consistency. If knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom.

**

Mental horsepower doesn’t guarantee mental dexterity. No matter how much brainpower you have, if you lack the motivation to change your mind, you’ll miss many occasions to think again. Research reveals that the higher you score on an IQ test, the more likely you are to fall for stereotypes, because you’re faster at recognizing patterns. And recent experiments suggest that the smarter you are, the more you might struggle to update your beliefs.

One study investigated whether being a math whiz makes you better at analyzing data. The answer is yes—if you’re told the data are about something bland, like a treatment for skin rashes. But what if the exact same data are labeled as focusing on an ideological issue that activates strong emotions—like gun laws in the United States?

Being a quant jock makes you more accurate in interpreting the results—as long as they support your beliefs. Yet if the empirical pattern clashes with your ideology, math prowess is no longer an asset; it actually becomes a liability. The better you are at crunching numbers, the more spectacularly you fail at analyzing patterns that contradict your views. If they were liberals, math geniuses did worse than their peers at evaluating evidence that gun bans failed. If they were conservatives, they did worse at assessing evidence that gun bans worked.

front cover of Think Again
Think Again || Adam Grant

 

In psychology there are at least two biases that drive this pattern. One is confirmation bias: seeing what we expect to see. The other is desirability bias: seeing what we want to see. These biases don’t just prevent us from applying our intelligence. They can actually contort our intelligence into a weapon against the truth. We find reasons to preach our faith more deeply, prosecute our case more passionately, and ride the tidal wave of our political party. The tragedy is that we’re usually unaware of the resulting flaws in our thinking.

My favorite bias is the “I’m not biased” bias, in which people believe they’re more objective than others. It turns out that smart people are more likely to fall into this trap. The brighter you are, the harder it can be to see your own limitations. Being good at thinking can make you worse at rethinking.

When we’re in scientist mode, we refuse to let our ideas become ideologies. We don’t start with answers or solutions; we lead with questions and puzzles. We don’t preach from intuition; we teach from evidence. We don’t just have healthy skepticism about other people’s arguments; we dare to disagree with our own arguments.

**

Discover how rethinking can lead to excellence at work and wisdom in life with Think Again.

The story of unapologetic women and their quest for agency

Posted on by penguin

Women Who Misbehave, much like the women within its pages, contains multitudes and contradictions-it is imaginative and real, unsettling and heartening, funny and poignant, dark and brimming with light.

 

At a party to celebrate her friend’s wedding anniversary, a young woman spills a dangerous secret. A group of girls mourns the loss of their strange, mysterious neighbour. A dutiful daughter seeks to impress her father even as she escapes his reach. A wife weighs the odds of staying in her marriage when both her reality and the alternative are equally frightening. An aunt comes to terms with an impulsive mistake committed decades ago.

 

In this wildly original and hauntingly subversive collection of short stories, Sayantani Dasgupta brings to life unforgettable women and their quest for agency. They are violent and nurturing, sacred and profane. They are friends, lovers, wives, sisters and mothers. Unapologetic and real, they embrace the entire range of the human experience, from the sweetest of loves and sacrifices to the most horrific of crimes.

 

Here is an excerpt from the book, Women Who Misbehave:

 

 

It is a Friday evening, but you can’t head home and settle in front of the TV with beers from your fridge and mutton biryani from the dhaba across the street. It’s already been a long day and doesn’t seem to be anywhere close to ending. You now have to go to your friend’s home for a dinner party. Well, she isn’t really a friend. She is a former colleague, so you can blow it off. But you’re not an asshole, and she has invited you to celebrate the three- month anniversary of her wedding. You care neither for the occasion nor the husband. Still, you board an auto and head her way because you are a good person.

 

The two-storeyed bungalow-style home has a wrought- iron gate and a small garden. It is conveniently located a hop, skip and a jump from the bustling Hauz Khas market. You can’t help being envious. They probably just stand on their balcony and holler for all sorts of vendors to come rushing with platters of pakoras, samosas and hot jalebis straight from the fryer. You, on the other hand, live in the hinterland by yourself because that’s what you can afford on your salary. Which is really why you tip the dhaba boys so generously every time they deliver your order. You cannot risk angering the one source of palatable food in your neighbourhood.

 

You reread the directions your friend texted you this morning. You are to go straight upstairs and neither loiter around the ground floor nor accidentally ring the bell. The husband’s widowed mother lives on the ground floor, and you’ve been warned that she has little tolerance for anyone under the age of seventy.

 

You walk past the tidy square garden until you hit the mosaic staircase. With each step you take, the strain of jazz music grows stronger. The stairs lead you to a heavy black door, and you let your finger hover over the bell. You’re no expert, you don’t know the names and types of woods in this world, but you can tell this is expensive. And you’re happy for your former colleague, you truly are. After all, how many people your age, and with practically the same goddamned salary, get to disappear behind a door like this every evening?

 

You take a deep breath and press the bell even though your throat feels like it is closing in, like flowers whose petals clam up at night. We are done preening for you, sucker! You hear the momentary lull in conversation, but you have already recognized the voices. You quit these people a few months ago in pursuit of a flashier salary, but now you have to spend an entire evening with them. You press the doorbell again. Urgently. As if you are here to take care of serious business.

 

Tanu opens the door, her face awash with happiness. Marriage hasn’t changed her, at least not on the outside. She is dressed simply in her usual blue jeans and a pale T-shirt, her outfit of choice for practically every occasion. She gives you a hug and you breathe in a cloud of familiar smells— lemon verbena soap, sandalwood perfume. Mahesh slides up beside her, his shaved head hovering like an egg over her bony shoulder, his arm possessively gripping her tiny waist. He smiles too and says, ‘Welcome, welcome. Please come in.’

 

Women Who Misbehave | Sayantani Dasgupta

You say ‘thank you’ although you can’t help but think that the deep lines under his eyes and the tight way his skin stretches over his face make him look less like Tanu’s husband and more like a creepy uncle. Somehow, the fifteen-year gap between them is more pronounced this evening than it was on the day of their wedding, when you saw him for the first time. But you were too drunk then, and so all you remember is how after a few drinks Mahesh began telling everyone what he would like to do to every man who had ever hurt Tanu. You had giggled along with the others, but, secretly, you had wondered what it might feel like to be the object of such passion. You catch Mahesh’s eyes sweeping over your black shirt. His gaze doesn’t linger on your breasts—maybe if you weren’t so flat-chested things would be different—but out of habit, you surreptitiously glance down to check that the buttons haven’t come undone.

 

‘Black really suits you,’ Mahesh says. You laugh because you haven’t mastered the art of accepting compliments. You follow Mahesh and Tanu into the drawing room where a cluster of familiar faces acknowledge you with varying degrees of nods and smiles. It’s a smartly put-together room—stainless steel and white leather, with tasteful accents of bamboo. Two love seats face an enormous couch and the side tables have neat stacks of expensive-looking coffee-table books, lit up just so by stark, Scandinavian-looking lamps. On one of the love seats, Pia and Projapoti are smashed next to each other, gazing into a glossy book of black-and-white photographs of umbrellas. Their romance is as new as it is tumultuous, so you tell yourself to forgive them if they ignore you. But they don’t. Pia looks up to give you a cheery wink and Projapoti, who took you under her wing when you first joined the company, sets downs her drink, stands up and wraps you in a hug.

 

Rani is sprawled on the couch. Swathed in a voluminous pink and red sari, she looks like a porcelain doll. Her eyes are closed; her lips are pressed together. She is the picture of calm, a far cry from the perpetually anxious person she is at work. Auro, the only other man in the room besides Mahesh, is on the other end of the couch. He was hired to replace you, and you trained him during the last week that you were there. But from the cocky, two-fingered salute he gives you, you would think it was the other way round. He slides towards Rani to make space for you on the couch. You sit beside him, and as if to deliberately ignore your irritation, Auro stretches languorously and crosses his long legs at the ankles.

The fascinating history of canals in the Indus basin

Posted on by penguin

In Indus Basin Uninterrupted: A History of Territory and Politics from Alexander to Nehru, Uttam Kumar Sinha paints a vivid historical narrative of the Indus Basin and how it shaped India’s history. The book looks at the interplay of the territory and politics through the ages, starting from the Indus Valley Civilization to the medieval and colonial periods till the time of Partition and the difficult years of negotiation that led to the treaty. Here is an excerpt from the book that tells us what gave birth to the idea of the Bhakra Dam.

**

The history of canals in the Indus basin offers a fascinating narrative of its interactions with power and knowledge, and how the rivers were negotiated through formal engineering and localized skills. It brought forth, in significant ways, the pioneering role of the civil engineers whose understanding of the hydrology advanced the irrigation system. However, engineers and civil administrators often disagreed on how to run the canal system. While the engineers believed in their surveys, the administrators had their own ideas about the administration of science. Notwithstanding the tussle, many engineers did impress, through constant interactions, the administrators of the overall imperial imperatives of

 

. . . control, profit and colonisation.

 

The overriding economics created a new class of administrators referred to as the ‘colonial-official scientist’. This new class formation in a class-conscious England did not go unnoticed. In 1870, the Spectator of London described the qualities required of the engineer working in India thus:

 

The ideal engineer for India is a man who will take £1000 pounds a year as his average income for life, and insist that all under him shall be content with their wages . . . who will regard an offer of a commission from sub-contractors as a deadly insult; who can keep accounts like a bank clerk . . .

 

For the engineers, the Indus basin presented a new work culture and a new professional outlook. Some of the colonial civil engineers in the Punjab in the latter half of the nineteenth century were making a scientific mark by writing professional papers on the connection between engineering and management of nature. Prominent among them was Proby Cautley and his works, Report on the Ganges Canal Works in 3 volumes (1860) and A Disquisition on the Heads of the Ganges and Jumna Canals (1864). Other significant works that become a repository of irrigation knowledge and reference include Captain Haywood’s Practical Gauging of Rivers (1870) followed in 1879–80 by four papers published in the proceedings for the Institution of

front cover of Indus Basin Uninterrupted
Indus Basin Uninterrupted || Uttam Kumar Sinha

 

Civil Engineering: W.H. Grethed’s Irrigation in Northern India (1872); Robert Buckley’s Keeping Irrigation Canals Clean of Silt (1879) and Movable Dams in Indian Weirs (1880); and C. Greaves’s Evaporation and Percolation (1879). All these findings had a deep impact on the irrigation system in the Indus basin. Others engaged in important comparative studies and brought in the best practices from other water development works in Europe. For example, Baird Smith’s Italian Irrigation (1855), Allen Wilson’s Irrigation in India and Spain (1867) and as earlier mentioned Scott-Moncrieff’s Irrigation in Southern Europe (1867–68).

At times, the sheer perchance of a natural site inspired impossible engineering as when the governor of Punjab, Louis Dane, an engineer who shifted to administration, floated down the Sutlej in 1908 from his official tour to Bilaspur State and saw with transfixed gaze

 

. . . a narrow gauge with high abutments . . .

 

that made him in wonderment conceptualize a high storage dam which had never been built before in the world. Dane’s restless eagerness led to many investigations on the feasibility of the storage dam before, in 1915, the spirited H.W. Nicholson, working in the Punjab Irrigation Department, volunteered to take on the task. In1919, after extensive study, a detailed proposal was put forward that

 

. . . visualised a dam at Bhakra across the Sutlej, 390 ft high impounding 2·50 million acre-ft, of water to extend irrigation in the famine areas of Hissar, Rohtak and all the adjoining states of Patiala, Jind, Faridkot and Bikaner.

 

And thus was born the idea of Bhakra Dam.

Inside the barricaded city of Srinagar’s football stadium

Posted on by penguin

This World Below Zero Fahrenheit: Travels in the Kashmir Valley is an insightful travelogue that breaks away from the clichéd view of Kashmir, one that sees it either as an earthly paradise or a living hell. In this book, Suhas Munshi takes you to unexpected places, into the homes of poets, playwrights and street performers; to a heartwarming Christmas service with the minuscule Christian community in Baramulla; and inside the barricaded city of Srinagar’s football stadium, which is a lively refuge for the elderly and their memories of a glorious past.

Here is an excerpt from the chapter ‘Merry Christmas in Baramulla’ for you to experience the Kashmir presented by Suhas Munshi in his book.

–

Up there, on the bridge, it was so cold that staying a minute longer was impossible. I spotted a masala-wallah. Masala is a unique Kashmiri street-food item. Soft bread wrapped around chickpeas laced with a spicy chutney. I polished it off as I reached my destination, St Joseph’s Church. St Joseph’s school and hospital, two institutions run by missionaries of the church for hundreds of years, were the best in the area. They had also suffered casualties during the 1947 tribal raids. But I hadn’t come to talk to anyone about violence, old or new. It was 24 December, and I was here to celebrate Christmas Eve.

front cover This World Below Zero Fahrenheit
This World Below Zero Fahrenheit||Suhas Munshi

As I stood outside the church, beside a cheerful-looking Santa Claus figure, a woman approached me. ‘Excuse me, who are you?’ she asked. It naturally made a lot of sense to be watchful around these parts. I told her that I was writing a travelogue. I had met the vice principal of their school two days earlier and sought permission to join in the Christmas Eve celebrations. I couldn’t say for sure how much my answer had satisfied her because just then a man, who looked like a local and was presumably an employee there, arrived with some sweets and extended his best wishes to the nun. She asked him to stay a while but he was in a hurry. She offered to take him on a quick tour of the church. ‘You also,’ she said to me with unquestionable authority, ‘you also come along. We’ll all pray.’

We first gazed at the life-sized figure of Santa Claus. One of his arms was extended in an invitation for embrace. The other one rested on a stick. Next to him was a tree with strings of decorative, colourful lights. From the canopy above the church door were hung several loops of the same decorative lights. High above the church was a neon-lit Star of David. It was a small church built mostly of stone and brick.

‘You know the story of Santa Claus comes from St Nicholas actually. There was once a poor man who was very worried about how to marry off his three daughters. He was very distressed. St Nicholas arrived at his doorstep and quietly dropped off three bags of gold. That’s how Santa Claus, the quiet, silent beneficiary, came into existence. So every Christmas Eve we invite him to come to us again and shower us with gifts,’ she explained.

We took a step sideways to admire the Christmas tree. ‘This tree symbolizes the cross where Jesus died and also his birth. In Rome I have seen bread becoming flesh. When the priest prays over it, holy wine becomes blood. Jesus Christ comes alive in the mass. Come,’ she said in a staccato burst and asked us to step into the church. We took our shoes off and went in.

 

People praying at St Joseph’s Church, Baramulla, on Christmas Day

 

Despite four bukharis—the large wood-burning stoves that are Kashmir’s traditional heaters—the church was as cold within as it was outside. And the outside was very cold. These were the days of Chillai Kalan, the harshest forty-day period in Kashmir when even piped water freezes and all water, including the Dal, turns to ice. But it was extra cold this season. ‘It mostly snows by this time and the temperature improves. But this time it hasn’t snowed, so it is much colder this time,’ the watchman outside the church had told me.

Next to the pulpit, the parishioners had built a beautiful minisized manger, complete with snow and colourful lights, small plants and dry twigs, in the backdrop of a blue satin-like material. From the ceiling were hung cut-outs of various letters in different languages. Colourful lights made these letters glow brilliantly. Right in front of us, the pulpit was decorated with lights and colourful fabric, and in bold white three words were inscribed on it: ‘WORD MADE FLESH’. To our left were placed a keyboard, guitar and drums. The sister walked right towards the manger and said, ‘See, these are letters from different languages—English, Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, Urdu, Gurmukhi—which teach us the oneness and love there is in all our cultures. Come, let us bow our heads and pray,’ she said. I quietly tiptoed my way back, leaving the two of them.

Behind the pulpit was the image of Jesus on the cross. Placed beside it were two figurines, of Joseph holding baby Jesus and Mary. Mary stood slightly taller than her husband. Above us were carved arches of wood. Although the church was carpeted quite comfortably, it was still getting colder by the second. The other two walked back to the door of the church as soon as they finished their prayers. The man offered some more gifts and sought her permission to leave. I couldn’t believe I had come empty-handed.

The tense borders of the subcontinent

Posted on by ashmita

Is India in a position to focus on its foreign policy, or does it have more pressing domestic matters at hand? In this excerpt from his book Flying Blind, Mohamed Zeeshan takes a look at the relationship between India and South Asia.

~

Welcome to the world’s most fearsome neighbourhood. It hosts two nuclear-armed residents, has seen civil wars in at least three countries, and houses the world’s oldest, earliest and longest- running United Nations military observer mission. There is a third nuclear power just outside the door, and one of those civil wars ran for as long as three decades. All this is while discounting other nearby countries (hint: Afghanistan) which have been ravaged by multilateral fighting and terrorism for decades.

South Asian countries rarely contain problems within their own borders. Over the years, the region has witnessed cross-border military action on numerous occasions on multiple fronts—from Afghanistan in the north-west to Sri Lanka in the south-east. Domestic troubles often have region-wide implications—and civil wars in one country have killed prime ministers in another. Domestic political interests in provinces of India have often compromised deals and agreements with neighbours. In 2011, India and Bangladesh tried to sign a water-sharing agreement, in a bid to put an end to the long-running dispute over the Teesta River that flows across the two countries. The deal was quickly thwarted by opposition from the state of West Bengal.

front cover Flying Blind
Flying Blind||Mohamed Zeeshan

Such difficulties have led South Asia to become the least integrated region in the world. In his 1914 poem titled ‘Mending Wall’, Robert Frost wrote, ‘Good fences make good neighbours.’ South Asia took him seriously. South Asia is one of the world’s fastest-growing regional economies, but that is not because of ties among its members: Trade between South Asian countries is a negligible 5 per cent of the total trade conducted by all South Asian countries (it was 3 per cent in 1990)—and represents just 2 per cent of South Asian GDP. Compare all this with the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in South East Asia: Trade within that region is a healthy 25 per cent of all trade by ASEAN countries—and represents more than 20 per cent of ASEAN GDP. With nearly all intra-ASEAN tariffs eliminated, trade grew from $68.7 billion in 1995 to $257 billion in 2017, according to the Asian Development Bank.

But this sort of heavy fencing makes South Asia a problem for India; indeed, it is so critical a problem that New Delhi’s plans for global leadership will fall flat if India does not win support in South Asia. Consider this the veto vote over Indian leadership. No global power ever rises if it is constantly putting out fires in its neighbourhood. And the bad news is that it is much easier for India to take action and gain influence as far as Nicaragua or New Zealand than it is to win over its neighbours.

In recent years, South Asia has increasingly become a distraction for India while it seeks to spread its reach further afield in the world. For little gain to anybody in the region, New Delhi’s resources of strategic thinking have been drained disproportionately by intractable challenges in the neighbourhood. With every country, there is a headline dispute to which everything else is often held hostage: In Sri Lanka, it is the rights of the Tamil minority and Indian Tamil fishermen; in Nepal, it is the rights of the Madhesi tribes which populate the Terai plains; in Bangladesh and Pakistan, it is the partitions and their many associated headaches. In all countries, there is of course the big white elephant: Chinese interference to counter-balance Indian hegemony.

Indian diplomats are often frustrated that South Asia is not well-integrated. All large neighbours are always treated as threats by default anywhere in the world. But economic interests often help boost at least economic integration. This is what China has managed to do in East Asia and South East Asia, despite long- running animosity in those regions towards Beijing and even explosive ongoing disputes. The Philippines, for instance, welcomes in Chinese investment on its railroads and highways, even as it locks horns with Beijing in an international tribunal over the South China Sea. Yet, in South Asia, even economic ties are scorned at suspiciously.

~

Flying Blind is an essential read for anyone hoping to understand the multi-layered complexities of India, its relationship with the subcontinent, and its foreign policy.

 

 

All the unmoored heart seeks is love

Posted on by vanyajaiswal

What if you ran away from your life today?

Twenty years later, three people are looking for you.

One is dying to meet you again.

The other wishes you had never met them.

The third wishes they could have met you at least once.

You are one person. Aren’t you? But you are not the same person to each of them.

In You Only Live Once, find the answers about your own life in this story about searching for love and discovering yourself. Join a broken but rising YouTube star Alara, a struggling but hopeful stand-up comedian Aarav, and a zany but zen beach shack owner Ricky as they undertake a journey to find the truth behind the disappearance of Elisha.

Here’s an excerpt from the book that throws light on the quandaries in Alara’s heart and her longing for love.

 

**

 

Irena, my stepmother, is a new-age fashion influencer and helped me set up my YouTube channel. She isn’t really talented, but she married a wealthy guy, and fancy social media accounts are part of the assets you create if you have a lot of money. After all, rich people can afford to buy new clothes for every post they make.

Having said that, she is a nice person at heart. I don’t really hold anything against her.

I’m not close to anyone at home. Not really. I’m close to my guitar. It’s because it always meets my expectations. People? They often fail to do so. Unfulfilled expectations lead to unfulfilled relationships.

‘Hey! Alara,’ says my step-aunt Betty as I enter La Epicurean.

‘You’ve grown up to be a beautiful woman,’ she continues.

‘Thank you,’ I respond. I don’t talk a lot when it comes to Irena’s siblings. They’re five women, full of gossip and unnecessary banter. Also, here in Czech, women outnumber men, so they’re on a constant lookout for a foreigner to settle down with. Betty is the youngest one and I heard her own siblings discuss her relationship with a guy from New York who is half her age. He is the one who gave her the name Betty too. Living the American Dream has fascinated the world since the 1960s.

‘Which song are you performing tonight?’ she asks.

‘Time,’ I say, wondering if she would even understand the depth of the concept. Time it is, the one thing that has never been on my side. Time is what ruined my game early on. Time is what I challenge as I hope to find my mom, or perhaps, an answer.

‘You have not published a new song in months. What keeps you busy these days?’ she inquires. ‘You don’t even have a day job,’ she adds.

front cover of You Only Live Once
You Only Live Once || Stuti Changle

 

Yes, this is where I draw the line. Relatives can get so unbearable at times. I am facing a writer’s block, I write my own songs after all. What would she know of it? She is the kind who would seek Irena’s help to write even an email.

‘Soon,’ I smile wide. Curt. Short. Sweet. She deserves to know that much.

It’s been quite some time since I last published a song on YouTube. I wish to release my first album. But I have run out of ideas, literally. I know deep within my heart that leaving this place would help me ideate and write songs. Here, I am consumed with much more than writing and performing at cafes. I have to attend customary functions like today. My dad is respected in the community, and that’s the thing about rich people. They never get bored of partying and socializing. Me? I told you, right? I struggle with a sense of belonging.

I long to be myself sans all the responsibilities and sensibilities I find myself compelled to fit into. I long to meet you, mom. Let me tell you, your mother would perhaps be the most overlooked person by you, trust me. You might not even appreciate the food that she cooks with all the love. But there are people like me who don’t even know what food cooked with love tastes like.

 

**

 

 

 

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