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For centuries, mankind has marvelled at the intricacies of the human body. Mapping out the advances in medical science, Leeches to Slug Gluegoes back in time to help you and your children understand how we reached where we are today. This journey not only demonstrates the awe-inspiring range of human intelligence but also applauds the spirited quest for improvement and innovation. The great minds that relentlessly broadened the scope of science worked their way through many trials and failures which led to waves of change, often shattering beliefs and altering established theories.

Featuring groundbreaking ideas, trivia, factoids, and more, this book will make you question your notions of what makes a person ‘whole’. And it will fill you with wonder at the innovations, inventions and discoveries that have made-and are continuing to make-the young science of modern medicine.

Here are 6 myths that have been busted in From Leeches to Slug Glue to reveal the facts that helped medical science gain momentum. 

Myth 1: Human beings are defenceless against diseases that evil spirits cast on them.

The holistic approach propounded by Ayurveda offered man a ray of hope to dispel the darkness that shrouded all maladies. Ayurveda – the science of life – empowered man with the ability to sync the human body with its natural rhythms to strengthen its immune system and keep diseases at bay.

Does this ‘Prevention is better than cure’ theory really work, though?

Well, it certainly makes for sound common sense! Roopa Pai writes ‘….there’s no reason why you shouldn’t take the core advice of Ayurveda for good health: eat right, poop regularly, sleep early, wake up at dawn, do some yoga in the early sunlight, pause several times a day to take deep and long breaths, be disciplined about exercise, spend some quiet reflective time with yourself each day and, yes, whenever you have the time, get a massage!’

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Myth 2: The great physician Charaka single-handedly composed the 120-chapter long Charaka Samhita.

The nearly 2000-year-old Charaka Samhita is a seminal work that helped unravel the many mysteries of human physiology – namely the functions performed by various organs and matters related to digestion and reproduction.

Was it all the genius of one man, however? Maybe not.

Here’s what ‘Leeches’ has to say about it. ‘Some experts who have studied the text extensively believe there wasn’t one Charaka, but several (‘charaka’ is Sanskrit for wanderer). These charakas, they say, were scholars who had chosen to make the science of healing their specialty, and went from village to village using their extensive knowledge of pathology (the causes of disease), clinical examination, diagnosis and medicinal herbs and minerals to make sick people better.’

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Myth 3: Hippocrates was the ‘Father of Medicine’, the first to create a formal system of diagnosis.

The Greek physician Hippocrates is believed to have composed the historically and medically significant Hippocratic Corpus. Well before Hippocrates came along in 460 BCE, however, the ancient Egyptians seem to have made inroads into understanding how to treat grievous injuries, even those involving the skull and spine, as demonstrated in an important Egyptian ‘medical papyrus’ translated by famous American Egyptologist James Henry Breasted in 1930.

This was the first clear evidence we had that the healing practices of the Egyptians were more than just chants and incantations, which makes the notion of Hippocrates as the earliest proponent of a formal system of medicine debatable.

‘The Edwin Smith Papyrus,’ writes Roopa Pai, ‘describes forty-eight cases of bodily injury—fractures, wounds, dislocations, tumours—starting from the head and going downwards from there, and includes information, in each case, about how the patient is to be examined, what the likely diagnosis is and a calculated guess as to whether the injury will heal and the patient will survive (this is called prognosis).’

You go, ancient Egyptians!

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Myth 4: The ten numerals, and their symbolic representations – 0, 1, 2… 8, 9 – were the brainwave of the Arabs.

Under the patronage of the Gupta kings, who ruled north and central India between the 3^rd and 6^th centuries, the great INDIAN mathematician Bhaskara first wrote numbers as figures—1 to 9—and created what was then called the Hindu decimal system. Bhaskara was also the first to represent zero as a circle.

Why did the term ‘Hindu numerals’ not gain popularity, then?

‘Although the Arabs themselves always referred to the ten numerals as Hindu numerals (Hindu was a word the Persians used for the people of the land beyond the Indus river),’ explains the book, ‘Europeans, who were introduced to them by the Arabs around the ninth century, wrongly referred to them as Arabic numerals, and the name stuck.’

Now you know.

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Myth 5- Surgeons have always occupied the highest rung of the medical ladder

In the present medical scenario, surgeons are revered as the physical embodiment of the leaps that the science has taken over the centuries. But it wasn’t always the case. In fact, in Europe of the Middle Ages, it was lowly ‘barber surgeons’ – barbers who otherwise shaved people and cut their hair – who conducted all surgeries.

Here are more details. ‘In those days, dissections in medical colleges were done by barber surgeons according to the instructions of the professor, while the students gathered around and watched. Physicians—the ones who went to college and learned to treat disease—considered themselves far too posh for something like dissection or surgery; that was the job of the unlettered barber….’.

Well, thank the Lord they didn’t think to use butcher-surgeons, right?!

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Myth 6: Full moon nights triggered ‘madness’ in people.

In his Treatise on Insanity, Philippe Pinel campaigned for the moral and compassionate treatment of mentally ill people, thereby laying the foundation for the discipline called psychiatry.

Could he rupture the notion of ‘insanity’ being a result of ‘demonic possession’? It was not easy, but in the end, Pinel succeeded through dint of sheer force of will, a strong moral compass, and tons of patience.

‘He closely observed, documented and named a number of different mental disorders, spending hours talking with patients, in keeping with his belief that while the sufferer may seem irrational or delusional in certain ways, they had seldom ‘lost all sense of reason’, and could therefore, often, be ‘talked out’ of their problems. Pinel also insisted that not every kind of mental illness was permanent—some were temporary, result of stressful events in the person’s life, and not the result, as was commonly believed, of cosmic events like, say, the phases of the moon.’

Yes, phases of the moon! Where do you think the ‘luna’ in ‘lunatic’ comes from?

To discover dozens of ‘No way!’ nuggets like these in this fun, info-packed romp through 2500 years of human health and healing, read From Leeches to Slug Glue!

From food columnist and star journalist Vir Sanghvi comes a collection of insightful, witty and myth-busting pieces about the ingredients in our kitchens.

In his distinctive, no-holds-barred style, Sanghvi introduces the reader to not only the Indian pantry but also the culture, history and unique experiences that make Indian food so popular the world over.

Here’s a delectable excerpt for you!

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So what do you do if you want to eat good sausages in India? Well, there is always the Oberoi option. Some food stores will sell imported
sausages. And if you know a good artisanal sausage maker, you will be fortunate enough to be spared the plastic torpedoes of Big Meat.
Alternatively, you can look for the delicious Goan chorise (a descendant of the Portuguese chorizo), which is always made by artisans,
and which more and more chefs seem to be sourcing. Thomas Zacharias gets it for the Bombay Canteen and O Pedro. Manu Chandra serves the
real thing at many of his restaurants (though Manu may well be making his own). So do many others. If you can get your hands on good sausages, what should you do? Well, speaking for myself, I nearly always look for something interesting to do with sausages. This is a lesson I may have learnt from an Indian-style curry made with chunks of pork sausage sourced from a local cold storage in Mumbai.

Of late, I have been experimenting with the use of sausages to flavour rice. Most Goans are familiar with the idea of a chorise pulao (though
they may call it something else) in which the white rice is streaked red from the vinegar as it escapes the sausages in the pan and in which the
fat from the chorise coats each grain of rice even as the masalas flavour the pulao.

The Goan idea comes from southern Europe where sausages have been used to flavour rice for centuries. But there is also an oriental
equivalent. It is not difficult to find slightly sweet Chinese sausages in most metropolitan Indian cities now. These sausages work better as a
condiment than on their own. I chop them into little dices and stir-fry them with rice and chopped black olives, with just a little soya. You get a
perfect fried rice with virtually no effort. If you are fortunate enough to gain access to more unusual sausages, the possibilities are endless. One of the advantages of going to Bangkok so often is that my wife and I are able to buy Thai sausages fairly regularly.

There is one sausage in particular—easily available at branches of the Tops supermarket chain—called a northern Thai sausage that we always
bring back. (This is a fresh sausage, unlike the salami-style Chiang Mai sausage that I also like.)

The northern Thai sausage is not much good on its own—it oozes liquid when you cook it—but it is terrific in a curry because it imbues the
gravy with the flavours of its stuffing: coriander seeds, makroot, lemon grass, etc. And four sausages are enough to make a brimming pot of
curry.

I have no idea whether it was because she heard me babbling about my mother’s sausage curry, but my wife makes a killer Thai curry
with these sausages. As with all improvised dishes, I am sure it is not authentically Thai, but it is truly delicious.

The only special ingredient you need is the sausage. Everything else is easily available in most large Indian cities. And after much persuasion,
I persuaded my wife to part with her recipe for the quick and easy Thai sausage curry. You should try it.

Seema’s Sausage Curry

Ingredients
Oil: 4 tablespoons
Thai sausages: 4
Thai red chillies: 3
Green onions: 1 small cup, chopped small
White onions: 1 small cup, chopped small
Garlic: 1 whole bulb, chopped small
Thai galangal: 3 tablespoons, chopped small
Lemon grass: chopped into big chunks (easy to remove later)
Kaffir lime leaves: 6
Kaffir lime: half
Coconut milk: 1 can
Green curry paste: 1 packet
Krapow paste: 1 packet
Fish sauce to taste
Basil leaves: a handful

Method
Let the oil heat in a large pan. Make a vertical cut in the chillies and fry
in oil. Add kaffir lime leaves and allow them to crisp up. Add ginger and
garlic, and sauté. Then add the green and white onions and cook until
translucent. Chop the sausages into rounds. Add them to the pan and
cook until they are browned. Then add the curry paste and krapow paste
and stir. Once the paste has coated the sausages evenly, add the coconut
milk. Let the curry boil for a couple of minutes and then reduce the heat
so that the curry simmers.
Add fish sauce and lime to taste. Garnish with fresh basil leaves,
roughly torn. Serve with sticky rice.
Vegetarians can substitute shiitake mushrooms and baby corn for
the sausages and use the same recipe, using soya sauce instead of fish
sauce. The recipe works with most artisanal sausages if you can’t get your
hands on the Thai sausage.

Get your hands on more such scrumptious recipes in The Indian Pantry

Written in a beautiful, simple and conversational style, Come Home to Yourself by Sadhviji covers the most pertinent issues affecting all of us-how to discover inner peace, find love, let go of anger, know your purpose, and connect with God, regardless of your religion. Born and educated in the US, Sadhviji has a PhD in psychology. She came to India approximately twenty-five years ago and has since lived at the Parmarth Niketan Ashram in Rishikesh, on the banks of the Ganga.

This book emerged from the satsangs held each evening after the sacred Ganga aarti at the Ashram, and will resonate deeply with everyone, whether you are old or young, rich or poor, religious or not, traditional or modern. It will touch you deeply, awaken your spirituality and connect you to your true self, allowing you to become the best version you can be.

Here are some helpful tips from the book to have more meaningful relationships!

“In our relationships, in order for me to give myself fully to you, I have to expect that you’re not going to hurt me. If I’m going to give you my heart and love you with all that I am and all that I have, I have to expect that you’re not going to take a knife and stab it in my heart.I have to expect that you’re going to take my love as the precious gift that it is, and not stomp on it.”

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“If we look carefully at what hurts us, it always has to do with an expectation we had of how someone was going to behave. Sometimes it’s a small thing, such as remembering a birthday; sometimes it’s a big thing, such as not being left alone or betrayed. For love to be a path to spiritual awakening and true peace, we have to recognize that the love we experience is its own reward.”

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“Love comes with no guarantees. Just because I love you, it isn’t guaranteed that you’ll love me back, bring me flowers or make choices in your life that I want you to make. If the focus of my love is making you dance to my tune, today or tomorrow I’m going to get hurt. Or, alternatively, you’ll just become my slave and I’ll squeeze the life out of you. Many of us do that unconsciously— we pressure and nag the people around us in such a way that they just give up.”

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“If all you wanted was someone who will do your bidding, there was no point seeking a relationship in the first place. You don’t want to live with a servile person either. That’s not how you want your love to be. Love has to be alive. And if love is alive, then you have free will.”

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“So your focus needs to be on love as its own reward, and not on how you can manipulate or convince or badger your beloved to do what you want. The love itself is what feeds you.”

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“Unfortunately, we’ve filled up our relationships with a lot of baggage. When we move out of the experience of love into the everyday logistics of life—who is going to wash the dishes, go grocery shopping, change diapers, scrub the toilet—that is where we lose harmony and think we are falling out of love.”

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“The only way to have harmony in relationships is to stop expecting the other to behave in a certain way, speak in a certain way and be a certain way in order to fill our holes, and to be fully aware that the love that we feel is generated within us. The beloved is a divine vehicle, the one who has catalysed it, but if they start acting in a way that we don’t anticipate, it’s not their fault that we are no longer able to access that place of love within ourselves.”

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“It is our commitment, our attachment to being right that keeps us from being happy. We can be right or we can be peaceful. We have to make that decision in our relationships. In every situation,when we run into conflict, we really have to ask ourselves: in this moment, is being right more important to me than maintaining peace? Am I prepared to relinquish my attachment to proving I’m right in exchange for peace?”

Get your copy of Come Home to Yourself today!

After being forced to take a sabbatical from work because of her chronic breathing troubles, Jhelum Biswas Bose turned to flowers for solace and healing. Her blossoming connection with flowers deepened her understanding of herself and the world around her. Over the years, she has learnt to recognize and respect the soft energies of blooms with the help of healing therapies such as Bach flower remedies and aromatherapy.

Phoolproof is a complimentary bouquet to flowers, especially Indian flowers, and brings to our plain sight their subtle power and meaning. From the book’s various whorls, Jhelum teaches us how to gainfully use flowers in living spaces, foods, and beauty and healing treatments.

Here are some ways you can incorporate flowers into your daily lifestyle:

Flower essences are flower infusions/concoctions/tinctures that are consumed for healing the mind, body and soul. It is believed that flowers hold the essence or the life force of the plant, and when water is infused with flowers, the imprint of that particular floral energy is taken up by the water crystals and then preserved when diluted with highgrade alcohol.

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If you had to pick just one essential oil for your life, then lavender would surely qualify for the spot. The most versatile of all essential oils, lavender has clean, fresh, floral top notes and subtle, herbaceous undertones. It is antiseptic, analgesic, anti-allergic and an excellent healer. Plus, it has a warm soothing aroma that makes it an ideal single-note perfume for daily wear.

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While eating flowers may seem somewhat exotic, in reality we have been eating quite a few flowers in our meals. The humble cauliflower and broccoli, and the pineapple (a combination of several flowerets), and some spices like clove/ laung, saffron/kesar, star anise and mace/javitri are all flowers used extensively in flavouring dishes.

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Rose essential oil has also been used widely in skin and beauty care. The best way to reap its antiseptic benefits is to add a few drops of the oil into any DIY creams or oil blend. 

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A gentle massage of rose oil works wonders to reduce menopausal symptoms. Very effective for the immune system, the oil protects our body from various viruses and reduces chances of catching viral infections. Try a blend of 30 ml olive oil with two drops of desi gulab oil and four drops of khus oil.

 Get your copy of Phoolproof today!

The Rule of One speaks about the power of social intrapreneurship in the developing world. Colleagues at Intel, Kazi I. Huque and Narayan Sundararajan founded an intrapreneurial venture between Intel and Grameen, called Grameen Intel Social Business, working with Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus. Along with Jacen Greene, they have collected and presented their original and transformational ideas in this book that explores crippling challenges like poverty, healthcare and education which plague the developing world and how problems related to these challenges can be solved in a sustainable and comprehensive manner.

This book tells us that nearly half of the people living in developing countries are yet to benefit from information technology. Peppered with illustrative and useful examples and case studies, The Rule of One provides a comprehensive roadmap for any foundation, development agency and company to engineer solutions to deal with social and economic issues.

Here’s an excerpt from the introduction!

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Take out a world map and a pencil. Draw a circle with the centre in Bangladesh and a radius of 1500 miles.

The circle covers much of India, Pakistan, China and Indonesia, some of the most densely populated countries
in the world. There are more people living inside this circle than outside it, and many of them live in poverty(Quah, 2016).

When people think of economic development in developing countries, they often think of handouts: direct charity, development aid and low-cost loans provided to local governments. However, at the end of the day, the real solution to poverty is economic opportunity through education and jobs. We have seen information technology become a key economic driver in the West. We have seen outsourcing add millions of jobs in India. We have seen banks and microcredit institutions evolve to provide access to credit for the poor. Can we do more to create viable economic solutions using information technology for the impoverished parts of the world?

The Efforts in this area thus far have centred on cheap devices, such as a $100 computer and greater broadband internet access, sometimes coupled with additional services. A typical approach is to donate computers to schools and hospitals, or to set up an Internet-enabled service centre in a remote village. The service centre comes with a promise to serve the low-income community by providing, for example, harvest information, or by processing online forms for land registries that help establish ownership claims. These efforts have only generated limited success in alleviating poverty, because more is needed than just setting up a computer with an internet connection. Entire government bureaucracies and organizations have to be created or redesigned to process this information to produce the required output. But more importantly, there has to be clear cash flow for
the beneficiary—better agricultural information leads to more income, or the ability to process a land registry leads to lower costs. Our approach to information technology adoption is ineffectual without those clear economic benefits.

In 2007, Craig Barrett was the chairman of Intel Corporation. He had previously served as CEO, and in his new role he acted as a technology ambassador travelling the world. In each country he visited, he met with the leaders of the government and major corporations. He talked about the impact of technology on education and healthcare, and he talked about how countries can catalyse their economic growth through the increased
adoption of technology. On one of these trips, he met Muhammad Yunus, who had recently received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on microcredit. Yunus shared the prize with Grameen Bank, which he had established to loan small amounts of money to those in poverty for income-generating purposes, enabling millions of people to alleviate their poverty by establishing access to financial credit.

One of the ideas that came up during their discussion was to create a company to focus on how technology solutions might be designed for low-income populations. Could we create solutions and services that had real tangible benefits? Not for the rich, but for the poor— those who were yet to benefit from the incredible growth of information technology. The company would be set up as a social business, a non-loss and non-dividend
company. In other words, the company would try to recover its operational costs, but if it generated any surplus cash, that would be reinvested into the company to support its mission.

Intel found two employees, Kazi I. Huque and Narayan Sundararajan, who were passionate about and committed to the use of technology for social impact. We, at different points in our Intel tenure, had pitched other business ideas for how to do that, and this was a perfect opportunity. Setting up a business with a goal for social impact is why we are called social entrepreneurs. When that happens within an existing organization, we refer
to ourselves as ‘social intrapreneurs’.

Get your copy of The Rule of One

Manish Sisodia, Delhi’s deputy chief minister and education minister, is the visionary instrumental in ushering in evolutionary change in the public school education system. Recounting his experiences and experiments as an education minister, Shiksha offers blow-by-blow account of this amazing success story.

Read to find out what experiments he did that revolutionized Delhi government schools forever:

Budget: A Game Changer

The Delhi government’s biggest achievement with regard to the education sector has been that in our very first budget the allocation for the education department was doubled.

Infrastructure: Beginning with Basics 

We calculated that to accommodate the present number of students and teachers, and to manage them well, we needed another 30,000 rooms. The solution was to either build new schools or add rooms to the existing ones. We adopted both approaches.

Principals: Empowering Leadership

In Delhi, we have taken crucial steps to strengthen the position of the principals and establish them as responsible leaders.

Teachers: Re-establishing Trust 

I realized that there was a segment of very capable and enthusiastic teachers but because of a few politically inclined or lazy ones the whole system had got a bad name. I kept talking to these teachers and decided to make their ideas an integral part of my vision for our education system.

Mentor-Teacher: A New Tradition 

My advisers, Atishi and Shailendra along with the officers in the Directorate of Education, designed a
framework to initiate the mentorship programme for teachers. 

Parents: Participation with Dignity

Students usually come from localities far removed from the places the teachers inhabit…This is the reason for the limited social interaction between the teachers and the parents of the students after school. This could also be the reason for the lack of communication between them. I felt that it was critically important to break this wall.

Shiksha is available now!

Pico Iyer calls his new book , A Beginner’s Guide to Japan , a “beginner’s guide” not only because it’s aimed at beginners, but mostly because it’s written by one. Being in Japan has taught him to say, “I wonder,” more often than “I think.” The first rule for any foreigner in Japan is not to talk of this- or- that; the second is never to take anything too seriously.

Here we try to understand some reasons why this land of streamlined surfaces and the home of collected inwardness has made the author live in the country for thirty-two years; inspite living all of it on a tourist-visa.

Strangers routinely sleep with their heads on strangers’ shoulders on Japanese trains, and the leaned- upon agree not to flinch. A sign of trust—of community, perhaps……

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Japan is the land of the bento box. Portions are small, and divisions absolute. Everything is in its place— right down to the condiments— and no sauce slops over the side, as it might in a tiffin box in India.

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You can imagine yourself to be anyone— anywhere— for a moment, so long as you accept that you can’t be what or where you choose most of the time.

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Identities are fluid, flexible in Japan, perhaps because reality is not. And in a culture based upon impermanence, you can give yourself up to any disguise, because it doesn’t last.

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The smiles we see in Japan are, less an attempt to get something from us than an attempt to give something.

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The Japanese aesthetic is less about accumulation than subtraction, so that whatever remains is everything.

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In Japan, a great conversationalist is one who listens.

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It is the crowds that make a festival, much more than the spectacle itself. It’s their unembarrassed gasps, the high- pitched cries of delight, the collective roar— the whole sense of being part of a large and happy unit— that gives a public celebration its warmth.

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Japan’s streets are less threatening to women than those of almost any other country…..

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Japan is a society based more on trust than on faith and lack of transparency can be less the enemy of trust than its perfect safeguard.

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Japan’s toilets are famous for their ability to measure your urine sugar, to offer air-conditioning, to produce music to cover up a tinkle, even to self- deodorize.

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The holiest shrine in the land, at Ise, is completely rebuilt every twenty years, and all the twenty- five hundred ceremonial objects and instruments within the shrine are carefully re- created.

A Beginner’s Guide to Japan is a playful and profound guidebook full of surprising, brief and incisive glimpses into Japanese culture.

On 26 July 1999, the Kargil conflict officially ended. The Indian Army announced complete eviction of Pakistani intruders; but a price was paid for it in blood and tears.

Kargil- Untold Stories from the War pays tribute to the do-or-die spirit of the Indian armed forces. The book takes you into the treacherous mountains where some of Indian Army’s bloodiest battles were fought. Interviewing war survivors and martyrs’ families, Rachna Bisht Rawat tells stories of extraordinary human courage, of not just men in uniform but also those who loved them the most.

This blog takes you through a few of those unforgettable moments from the war.

When Kargil martyr Lance Naik Bachan Singh’s son, Lt Hitesh was asked to share some memories of his father, he said he hardly had any.

“We were too young then to understand the enormity of the event. Our father had been shot in the head and my uncle, who was also posted in 2 Raj. Rif., had called up to inform my mother,”says Hitesh, talking clinically about the life-shattering event that left him fatherless at four years of age.

The Army Aviation Corps was awarded two Vir Chakras, one Yudha Seva Medal, three Sena Medals (Gallantry) and one Sena Medal (Distinguished) for its exception role in the

Not only did the daredevil pilots of the Army Aviation Corps initially lift troops and carry material to points close to where the bloodiest battles were fought, they dropped essential supplies to the fighting troops and evacuated over 900 casualties during the war, carrying injured soldiers to field hospitals and martyrs closer to their grieving families. They did this with fearless disregard to enemy small-arms and artillery fire, landing and taking off from makeshift helipads.

The Doctor with a Maroon Beret

The Army Medical Corps remain amongst the unsung heroes of the war. Dr Capt. Vikram Singh Grewal and his team attended to seventy-five casualties during the operations conducted around Muntho Dhalo in the Batalik sector. These came from the attacking units in that area—5 Para, 10 Para, 1/11 GR, 2 Vikas and the Engineers. They also treated two Pakistani POWs.

Devender Pal Singh (retd), of 7 Dogra, proves his mettle off the battlefield.

When the soldiers come running to his tent, they find that Major Devender Pal Singh’s stomach has been ripped open, exposing his intestines, and all the flesh has been blown off his right leg,knee downwards. They quickly drape a blanket around him and carry him across to where an ambulance is waiting. He is driven two and a half hours on a mud track to the closest hospital in Akhnoor. It is a 60-km ride that he endures in excruciating pain.

Carie and his men, who sit crouched on the mountain have experienced enemy rounds falling around them earlier in Siachen. Mentally prepared to die, they know that nothing worse can happen to them now.

Carie has been hit in the head by metal shrapnel. He is lucky to be alive. The men quickly pull him back, remove the pieces and bandage him as best as they can. Col. Shrivastava is shocked to learn of Carie’s injuries and asks him to de-induct while it is still daytime. A bleeding Carie refuses outright, tell him that vacating the position would make the sacrifices of the two men they have already lost worthless since the enemy would move back in.

Endorsing the enemy’s bravery

One of the most heart-warming observations the author made while writing war stories is that soldiers recognize and respect bravery, even if it is the enemy. A perfect example of this is the case of the late Capt. Karnal Sher Khan of the Pakistan Army, who was martyred at Tiger Hill during the Kargil War. Very few people know that the Indian Army was instrumental in the officer being awarded the , Pakistan’s highest gallantry award, which is equivalent to India’s Param Vir Chakra.

A young officer takes off his engagement ring and leaves it behind before heading out for a battle.

The action led by Capt. Anuj Nayyar resulted in the death of nine enemy soldiers and destruction of three MMGs positions of the enemy. For displaying indomitable grit and determination, motivating his men by personal example and making the supreme sacrifice in the true traditions of the Indian Army, Capt. Anuj Nayyar was awarded the Maha Vir Chakra posthumously.

It was a glorious victory but achieved at a very high price. The battalion had lost five of its brave men, including Capt. Batra who had been promoted on the battlefield at Tololing after an earlier victory.

In the fifty-four days of deployment in the war, the 13 J&K Rifles recaptured five heights and won thirty-seven gallantry awards, including two PVCs.

Kargil-Untold Stories of the War is available now.

In his new book, Savarkar – Echoes from a Forgotten Past, historian Vikram Sampath paints a powerful portrait of one of the most contentious political thinkers and leaders of the twentieth century- Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.

A man who simultaneously meant many things to many people – An alleged atheist and a staunch rationalist who strongly opposed orthodox Hindu beliefs and the caste system and dismissed cow worship as mere superstition, Savarkar was also the most vocal political voice for the Hindu community through the entire course of India’s freedom struggle.

Read on to know some facts provided by the book on his ideology and political movement:

“Right from his childhood, Vinayak found the caste system that plagued Hindu society reprehensible.”

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“It was in these very narrow lanes of Tilbhandeshwar that the first modern, organized secret society of young revolutionaries in India took shape. Under sixteen-year-old Vinayak’s stewardship, and Mhaskar and Paage as members, the Rashtrabhakta Samuha, or The Society of Patriots, was formed towards the end of November 1899.”

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“The Congress, Vinayak said, kept harping on about cutting leaves and pouring milk (prayers and petitions) to the poisonous tree. According to him, following the path of the Congress and Gokhale—of peaceful petitions and prayers—might get a few Indians jobs and fanciful titles, but not total independence for the nation.”

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“Vinayak’s Abhinav Bharat was far from a bunch of misguided youth hurling bombs and assassinating random officers. It had a clear road map of how to instigate that ultimate pan-India revolution, taking inspiration from the seeds of 1857, and extinguish the Empire in its massive blaze.”

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“It was into this mysterious and enigmatic world of pain and torture that Vinayak was ushered in the wee hours of the morning. His arrival in the settlement has been recorded as on 30 June 1911.”

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“The radial, seven-winged monstrous jail with a high watchtower at the intersection sent shivers down the spine of many brave hearts. The seven wings, with three storeys each and having a series of cells totalling up to 698, radiated outwards like the spokes of a bicycle wheel. A large bell hung on the tower to raise alarm. Each cell measured 13’6″ by 7’6″. There was a small ventilator at a height of 9’8″ from the ground. The solitary cells were so arranged as to prevent any communication among prisoners. It was named ‘Cellular Jail’ because there were only cells and no barracks.”

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“Many prisoners were let out of the jail for outside work after they had completed six months of stay. In Vinayak’s case, while his solitary confinement of six months ended on 15 January 1912, he was not let out of prison even after he had adhered to all prison norms….On one such hot afternoon, while pulling the grinding mill, Vinayak began panting for breath and felt faint. His stomach was cramped and excruciating pain wracked his body. He fell to the ground and his eyes closed. For a couple of minutes, a sense of nothingness engulfed him. This near-death experience opened his mind to the idea that leaving the body was a far better proposition than making it endure so much pain and suffering.”

Read this well-researched biography to know more about Savarkar’s philosophy and its place in the rise of Hindutva, an idea dominant in Indian politics today.

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