Aequanimitas

A Marriage of True Minds

2012-03-23T20:37:00.001+05:30

Ayan-da and Atreyee-di at their wedding. One word: REGAL!

Sonnet 116: William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Ayan-da and Atreyee-di were two of the most well-known faces in Medical College, Kolkata and it was a matter of pride for me to be able to attend their wedding reception. Although I had to skip their wedding ceremony because of an impending examination, I was able to attend their reception (on the evening of the examination).

It was as if the whole of Medical College, Kolkata had descended onto the reception area. It was a wonderful experience to see the two of them. While Ayan-da cut a regal figure in his outfit and demeanor, Atreyee-di was looking fit to be a Queen.

What made it more special was because Ayan-da was someone we all looked up to and held in high esteem. He was a role model for many of us. His oratorial style, the dignified manner in which he carried himself, his personality and his literary and linguistic skills had mesmerized all of us.

While my memories with Atreyee-di, admittedly, are thin, the profusion of memories of Ayan-da more than makes up for it.

I shall never forget the hours we spent in the Union Room, the dais-lectures (aka daisings), the way he led us… sweet memories all…

I wish the couple the very best. I hope to remain their “beloved junior” for ever.

The evening of 29th January, 2012, somehow blurred the separating wall between the mundane from the transcendent reality as the two loving hearts beat all impediments to get welded together in holy matrimony.

Kashi Katha: Row Row Row Your Boat…

2012-03-20T11:02:00.001+05:30

Benares is a city that is defined by the River Ganga. The river has more than just geographical importance for Indians. It has a rather unique sacrosanct cultural connotation. Despite the fact that under immense human pressure the river has become burdened with pollution, dirt and human sins, the Ganga remains a special body, especially if you are in Varanasi.

This reminds me of the seminal paper by Dr. Hanbury Hankin which was published by the Institut Pasteur, where he demonstrated the cholerilytic properties of Ganga water. He put Vibrio cholerae in distilled water and Ganga water and found that the bugs were eliminated from the latter in about 3 hours. He also found that this bactericidal action was destroyed by boiling the Ganga water. A detailed description of this phenomenon is discussed in simple terms here.

I would love to go on a rant about this as it is a topic that I have studied and studied for quite some time, but that is a post fit for Scepticemia, not here…

One of the attractions is the Ganga boat ride. While it does cost an arm and a leg sometimes, it is totally worth the experience. Some pictures from my river ride:

The Dashashwamedh Ghat is an experience to be had…

This is the Shivala Ghat and was near the place where I was staying. I spent a lot of time everyday in the evening sitting here, just listening to the lapping of the Ganges, and soaking in the bliss of solitude.

On the way upstream, we hitched a ride with a motorboat since ours was an manually worked one, and it would have taken a long time to go from Shivala (where I was staying) to Manikarnika.

I took a dip at Manikarnika. Legend has it that Shiva and Sati were taking a dip here when Shiva lost his Mani (gem) and Sati lost her Karnika (earring) and though they searched high and low for it, they did not get it. They were understandably furious and cursed the place that there would be crematory pyres burning here for ever.

Ever since, the burning ghats of Manikarnika have never gone empty even for a minute. These images are from my nocturnal trip down the Ganges…

Anyways, back to cheerier images – this is the Kashi Khandar, which is a half sunk, precariously placed temple right at the edge of the water. The boatman said he’s seen this just this way ever since he can remember it as a child. Fascinating!

And we came across this sadhu who was taking a float down the river!

We also saw a bunch of people fishing on the river. Though I wanted to get close to them and see how they did it, Ram-ji, the boatman, said that it would scare the fish away and though the fishermen would not say anything it would harm their catch. He said he could take me to a fishing trip if I had the time, but unfortunately, I did not. I took the ride on the last day of my stay.

Ram-ji, my boatman, was a dear old fellow. He used to be a carpenter but since he got old, he was having trouble with tremors and vision and could no longer do the fine work needed of him. So he decided to take up rowing. His two sons were carpenters like him. I felt sad to hear that the old man had to take up such a laborious job. Sometimes the poverty in India makes me mad. I tried to assuage my guilt by paying him a generous tip and asking him to get his eyes checked out, I assured him that it was very common to get cataracts at his age and if done under proper care it needed a very simple surgery to set his eyesight right. I wished I could do more, but there literally was nothing more for me to do!

And finally, on the way downstream, I decided that I needed to learn how to row and asked Ram-ji to give me lessons. After some cajoling and needling, he relented and taught me the tricks, which were simple, really. Damned hard work, but essentially simple. So, after a wobbly start and a meandering gait (thanks to an overactive right hand, which made my boat go in an arc!), I got the hang of the thing and rowed us back!

Benares gave me some of the best memories in a really difficult time… more to come in upcoming posts!

Kashi Katha: Cow-a Cow-a Holy Cow-a

2012-03-17T23:45:00.001+05:30

I went on a trip to Varanasi (aka Kashi) primarily on a journey of self discovery and introspection... and secondarily to write an exam paper. It was a wonderful experience, parts of which I shall try to write about... some are just too obnoxiously personal to voyeurize on the internets (and I would not be able to make you understand the full portent of the same even if I tried to, to be honest!).

One of the most interesting things about Kashi is the bovine population. Considered holy by the God-fearing Hindus, they are supposedly the bearer of the Hindu God of Destruction, Lord Shiva, who is the resident deity of the city. Hence, they get a lot of respect and leeway in Kashi. Like the foreigners traveling through the city, I could not resist the temptation to take pics of the official beast of the city.

In a city where beggars abound and a large segment of the population seems to be struggling for food and shelter, these cows seem to very well cared for.

Now isn't that an irony!

Where the cows come to roost…

Tongue lashing: Going… Going…

Tongue Lashing: …gone

The Magic K

2012-03-15T23:58:00.000+05:30

Ketamine - A magic fast-acting antidepressant or expensive illusion? We won't know until the trials are properly done: j.mp/yVbIi3
— Noah Gray (@noahWG) March 8, 2012

More details on the linked blog post by Neuroskeptic.

In case the Twitter link is not working or something, try reading the whole post, and the subsequent, rather riveting discussion in the comments here.

So, dissociative antidepression now too? Interesting!

Sir Iain Chalmers on BBC Radio4: The Life Scientific Interview

2012-03-12T23:28:00.000+05:30

I could not think of a better way to kick off the resurrection of this Blog.

Jim al-Khalili interviews Sir Iain Chalmers and the talk freewheels from his foray into evidence based medicine and his Gaza experience to his take on non-publication of research (on which he has a brilliant presentation that I shall try to embed someday).

Enjoy this awesome interview!

"... but I learnt many things there and one of the things that has influenced everything that I have done since then is that I realized that things that I had been told in medical school were quite clearly wrong. So it induced in me what some people have called a SCEPTICEMIA (yay) - an inability to take things on trust when evidence might be available to validate a claim."

Simply brilliant stuff! You can follow The Life Scientific podcast here.

Or catch the interview on the BBC Radio4 channel here.