Of chick-lits and other books

This past month I had the misfortune of reading the most horrible books. Let me start with Chick-lits.

Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones Diary set the trend of Chick-Lits. Bridget Jones Diary is hilarious, even though it is a cleverly wrapped up Mills and Boons complete with the Tall Dark Handsome Hero in the form of Mark Darcy (so neatly she adapted the hero of Pride and Prejudice). So now there are authors and authors out there who seem to think that one ditzy heroine makes a novel. And my only source of books, the British Council Library, is flooded with them. Ugh! They are horrible; the writing is childish, and the plots non-existent. In fact, BCL might as well get Mills and Boons. At least the plot finishes in 150 pages, just enough to read it one sitting, instead of running on and on and on and on...

Then there was Phillipa Gregory's The Constant Princess. I loved Phillipa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl, which told the history of Anne Boleyn and Henry the VIII. The book told the story from the view point of Mary Boleyn who was mistress of Henry the VIII before he married Anne Boleyn. Even though the book painted Mary as an angel and Anne as the wicked witch of the west, it was interesting as each character was neatly fleshed out, the language was beautiful, and the plot was well-developed. In The Constant Princess, Phillipa Gregory talks about Katherine of Aragon, Henry VIII first wife. Katherine was married to Henry's brother who unfortunately died within months of marriage. This entire part was just another Mills and Boons replete with horrible language and no imagination. The rest of it was implausible including the lie that Katherine tells Henry regarding whether her first marriage was consummated or not. And worse of all, the image of Katherine that Phillipa paints in this book is at total variance with the image of Katherine in The Other Boleyn Girl. She should have at least got that straight.

Okay, I will admit that Phillipa Gregory is no great shakes as an author. I had such high hopes from Alice Walker. Her Color Purple was a wonderful novel. But Now is the time to Open your Heart was filled with cliches and implausible characters. There was all this talk about mysticism, about shamans and medicine men from South America, and yoga from India, and all other forms of whatever you want to call it. The heroine has achieved everything and had numerous lovers and she is searching for peace. And she is supposed to find it in the jungles of South America. After all America, the White America, especially is bad and materialistic. Ugh!

I fell back on my stock PG Wodehouse and was delighted to find finally a reference to the brainlessness of the peacock. In the saga of Florence Craye and Bertie Wooster, Florence tells Bertie that he has the brains of a peahen. Of course Florence was mistaken. As everyone knows the Peahen has intelligent. It is the peacock, given to screeching its raucous call at 3am in the morning, that is brainless.

Oh, the one other book that was truly wonderful was Nelson's Daughter by Miranda Hearn. This is the story of Nelson's illegitimate daughter, Horatia, and it was a beautiful tale.

I wish I had read The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai especially as I am journeying to Kalimpong. But maybe once I get back...

Meantime, I have Mrignayani with me. Long time back when Doordarshan used to put up wonderful serials (including Fauji which introduced Shah Rukh Khan), Mrignayani was telecast. It had Pallavi Joshi in the lead and I have wanted to read the book ever since. And lo, I found it at the railway station.

On the backs of the trucks

I love to read the pithy sayings on the backs of the trucks. There is the ubiquitous Hello, Ok TATA, Bye-bye. And Horn Please.

But there are some who display their shayari.

Bala ka husn hai, ghazab ki beauty hai
hasino par marna to Raj ki duty hai.

And beneath were the immortal, wise words:

No girl friends No Tenstion(sic)


And then there was the truck with:

Chalti hai Gaadi, udati hai dhool
Jalte hain dushman, khilte hain phool.

And finally, there was the truck I saw today with:

OWNER IS GOD.

The interpretation is up to you.

The Hippocratic oath

This has been a stressful week for Anupama, my M.Sc. student. Anupama's father was admitted to the hospital this weekend when he complained of severe pain. He has a history of heart problem, with first angioplasty done 10 year back when he was only 40. He also has diabetes. And stones in the gall bladder.
When he complained of pain, the family rushed him to the nearest private hospital- Balaji Hospitals. The hospital staff demanded money even before they would admit him. After Rs 12,000 was paid in cash, they did an angiogram and diagnosed two blocks-both 100%. However, they concluded that he did not have a heart attack. The pain he was experiencing was due to the gall bladder. They wanted to do a ballooning. Anupama fought with them. With high sugar level and 100% block, she argued that ballooning was not the procedure to be followed. The doctors discharged her father saying it was on her head.
They then brought him to AIIMS- the premier referral hospital. But at AIIMS they refused to admit him. He was kept in the Emergency room (a most horrible place, believe me) and told no room was available. Of course. You need to know someone at AIIMS to get room. We had enough experience with the system when another student of mine, Junaid, had an accident last year and broke his girdle bone.
So they took him back home and searched for a connection.
Meanwhile the pain increased and they rushed him to Escorts Hospital this time, where a sister-in-law of Anupama works.
The doctors decided to do angioplasty and yesterday they wheeled him into the operation theatre. There after the doctors opened the heart they discovered that there was a 50% block at a place where two arteries join. Either the doctors at Balaji did not notice this block or they completely misdiagnosed the case.
Her father is in the recovery room as I write. He will be undergoing a bypass tomorrow. And two months after this will come the gall bladder surgery.
Anupama is furious. She plans to take the case to Consumer courts. But her main worry now are the finances and blood donation. The entire stay and operation will cost Rs 3 lakhs. For a middle-class family this is a huge sum of money to cough out at a moment's notice. The bank, where her father works, will not pay this amount of money especially since they have gone to a private instead of government hospital.
The blood banks are not to be trusted so she is asking her friends to give blood for her father.
I wonder. We talk so much about medical tourism. Shouldn't health care-affordable health care- to our citizens be the main concern?
Our doctors are supposed to take the Hippocratic oath.
What does it really mean?

M.S. University, Baroda

The past weekend I in Baroda. The Paschim express was late by about 3 hours, which is nothing as compared to the Ahmedabad-Madras Navjivan Express. Its scheduled hour of arrival was 5 pm but it very rarely made it at the correct time. The Jalgaon-Surat was a single track and the trains were invariably late. Once when I took the train it arrived in Baroda at midnight long after the hostel gates were closed. A kind fellow passenger took me home and I made my way back to the hostel in the morning.

It is always a pleasure to get back to Baroda. Even though close to 17 years have passed since I left Baroda, nothing much has changed. Stepping out of the train, I could see the STD/ISD booth from where we (Ritu, Vidya, and I) made phone calls to home. Ritu and Vidya would always accompany me. Not because they too wanted to call home but because they were the ones who remembered my home phone number. They also would check the address on every letter I wrote ensuring the address as well as the country was written clearly and legibly.

The gate which we often climbed over after the curfew hours is still there though it is little bit dented and does not look as imposing as it did when we broke the rules.

The Hotel Kalyan where we gorged on the club sandwiches and the Dairy Den which we frequented for its lovely ice-creams are still there. As is the large bus stands minus buses (somehow Baroda never went in for public transport) and the medical store where we purchased our medicines.

The Kamati Bagh, opposite the girls hostel, is as lovely as before. We girls spent quite a lot of time there.

The department has run down quite a lot though. Lack of funds is one of the major reason. But the entire faculty is still there. And it was very disconcerting to realize that there were few of them who saw through our demure facade.

Prof. Ali Baquer

Prof. Baquer died on Saturday.

I first heard about Prof. Baquer through Sneha, who told me that I should meet him as he is an interesting character.

Almost a year passed before I met Prof. Baquer, even though he lived on the campus. The occasion was a site visit to Concerned Action Now(CAN), an organization founded by Prof. Baquer. CAN runs vocational training program for disabled children and they wanted to start a non-formal education center for children in one of the nearby slum. For this they wanted funds. I was more entranced by their vocational training program and convinced them to submit a proposal to us. Alas, that proposal has been languishing for the past two years. This year finally after much prodding from Sabita and others, Asha-SV became interested in it. But it was simply too late.

Prof. Baquer was an advocate of equal opportunities for the disabled. He pushed for legislations, his organization helped the disabled living in the slums access the government schemes, he wrote books, and he ran CAN. For a person who had two by-pass surgeries, who had a complete organ failure last year and who clawed his way back to life, who had a minor heart attack again late last year, he was full of energy and enthusiasm. Every holiday, be it Id, Holi, Diwali, or New Year, he would send us a card or an e-mail.

And every email correspondence I had with him over CAN, he would never fail to remind me of Ghalib's gazal:

Hum ney maana ke taghaful na karogey lekin
Khak ho jaein gey hum tum ko khabad honey tak

(I accept that you will not be indifferent to my needs but I may mingle with dust by the time you react)

I had hoped it might not be true but fate had something else planned apparently...

global warming and us

This being the second straight day without AC and internet connection (it comes and goes) I have been forced to do some soul-searching. The internet connection in the school has been intermittent for the past one month. No explanation has been forthcoming. The AC has stopped working. They tell me it is the phase but since the entire school is without it I am wondering which phase. No explanation has been deemed necessary. So I searched and found one- Global warming. After all, the newspapers are full of global warming and the harmful effects of the greenhouse gas. And we have decided to do what we can to curb global warming. So no AC. No Internet.

I told my students that at this rate we might as well shut shop and go home. Pravin, my student, pointed out:
"There is no electricity at home either Ma'am."

He lives outside the campus. I assumed he meant that. But no. He was talking about his small village in Samastipur district. Electricity is available there for couple of hours.

Sometimes I need to be thankful for small mercies. At least there is electricity here. The fan feebly sends in some air. For now. Touch wood.