Category: Mamata Pandya

He Said It!

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My day started well. This morning my newspaper informed me that May 5 is being celebrated as World Cartoonists Day! That brought a smile to my face even before I turned to the daily cartoon strips in my newspapers…something I do before I read the headlines. Faced with the continuous ‘breaking news’ of a world gone mad and bad in every which way, the cartoons remind me that, depending on what lens you use to see the world, there can still be something to laugh about!

Quite by coincidence, I recently read the autobiography of R.K. Lakshman, India’s best known cartoonist, illustrator, and tongue-in-cheek commentator on life and times.  Lakshman was an essential part of my growing up and growing older, as it was for at least two generations of Indians. Lakshman’s You Said It! daily cartoon provided a glimpse into the world through the eyes of the silent spectator, the Common Man.

Reading his autobiography The Tunnel of Time provided a peep into  Lakshman—the man himself, as he rambled through memories of places, people and events with humour, wit and yes, some irreverence! Since the time he can remember he wanted to be an artist. “An artist is what I wanted to be…I decided that I would pass my examinations but I never attempted to get high marks….My parents and elders were a great help, for they never took it seriously when one of the sons got pitiably low marks or even failed!”

As the youngest of 6 sons (one of whom was the famous author R.K. Narayan) and 2 daughters Lakshman grew up in a big household; he was left to himself all day, happily spending his time playing or drawing. So much so, that his parents did not realise that it was time that he was sent to school until a visiting uncle noticed him at home when all other children of his age were at school. He was promptly taken to the nearby municipal school—kicking and crying! From where the young Lakshman promptly ran away, and resumed play, until some months later another visitor took him back to the school. And there he stayed; as he says, “I moved year after year, class after class,” all the time filling the margins of his notebooks with sketches and doodles. The same continued through college days until he graduated with a BA degree; and immediately moved to Madras to try and get a job in one of the newspapers while his elders “as usual generously cheered me on my way into the world.”

As we continue to travel through the tunnel of time with the budding and determined cartoonist we learn about attempts and adventures as he makes his way into the world as an aspiring cartoonist, until he eventually became a cartoonist for the Times of India, and there he remained for the next five decades!

For all of us who imagine that a cartoonist just has a Eureka moment and with a few swift strokes produces a cartoon, it was indeed revealing to learn what it really took to put the Common Man on the front page every morning without fail. “I would be at the drawing board in the office exactly at 8.30 in the morning, reading and concentrating on news items, political analyses, editorial commentaries, opinions, spending the time tormenting myself, waiting hopelessly for the muse of satire to oblige me with an idea for next day’s cartoon before the deadline. When the idea did at last dawn, the rest of the work was comparatively easy. It was like shooting a movie—choosing a suitable setting, selecting the characters, compressing the script into a brief caption. By then I would have put in six hours of continuous work. Mentally and physically exhausted I would go home. But the sense of fulfilment and creative satisfaction would be immense.”

R.K. Lakshman shares delightful anecdotes about his travels and his many interesting friends, his close encounters with the powers that be, and the highs and lows of chronicling the facts and foibles of every aspect of social and political life. The Tunnel of Time is a treat of a read.

–Mamata

 

 

WHODUNNIT? THEYDUNNIT!

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I love detective stories! From the time I cut my teeth on Enid Blyton’s Famous Five, Secret Seven and Fatty and gang, I was hooked on mysteries, and the sleuths who cracked them. As I am sure many other 10-year olds have done, I even attempted, with a cousin, to write The Mystery of the Missing Pillow.

Graduating to the classic Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie I began to enjoy not just the answer to ‘whodunnit?’ but equally the cleverly crafted plots, and distinguishing nuances of the sleuths who cracked the cases, starting with Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, and Hercules Poirot and Jane Marple, right up to the ‘traditionally built’ Mma Ramotswe. Over the years I have discovered, and delighted in, the quirky characters of the detectives created by writers in many parts of the world. I continue to explore, and discover, new and exciting detective fiction authors and add to my list of favourite detective characters.

On my last visit to the British Library I chanced upon a book called the Detection Collection. It was a collection of short stories by a number of authors I like. What made me curious was reading that the book was first published to celebrate 75 years of the Detection Club, and republished in 2015 to mark 85 years.

Digging deeper, I discovered that The Detection Club comprises the cream of British crime writing talent.  It was founded in 1930/1929/1932 (ambiguity surrounds the exact year) on the cusp of the Golden Age of detective, crime and murder mystery fiction which began in the early 1930s. The club’s first president was GK Chesterton, and since then the mantle of presidency has passed to some of the most significant names in the history of crime fiction including Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, Julian Symons and HRF Keating.

The Club in true British club tradition has a Constitution and Rules dating back to 1932. As described by one of its members “It is a private association of writers of Detective Fiction in Great Britain, existing chiefly for the purpose of eating dinners together at suitable intervals and of talking illimitable shop…if there is any serious aim behind the avowedly frivolous organisation of the Detection Club, it is to keep the detective story up to the highest standards that its nature permits, and to free it from the bad legacy of sensationalism, claptrap and jargon with which it was unhappily burdened in the past.”

Besides contributing individual stories to The Detection Collections, the writers have also occasionally come together to create a multi-authored single novel. One of these, published in 1932 was titled The Floating Admiral. Each chapter was written by a different Detection Club member and at the end of the book most of them also offered their solutions to what happened, and who had perpetrated the murder!

Imagine the best writers of detective fiction in Great Britain coming together three times a year—to dine, to exchange ideas, and to plot murders! Theydunnit!

“The detective story is the normal recreation of noble minds.” Philip Guedalla

–Mamata

The Pelican Has Landed

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Raghu often lectures in various places. One of his favourite places to do so is the Silver Oaks School, a unique school in many ways. When he went for a talk there a few years ago, they gave him a potted plant. It looked pretty nondescript. We just left the pot on the verandah and watered it occasionally. But then, a few months later, it burst into flower! The flower whose pic you see below! Pretty exotic! It never grew very much but gave about 2-3 flowers a year, and were we proud of it! All our visitors made quite a fuss over it. We asked the gifters the name of the plant, but they didn’t know.

 

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20180415_091803And then we moved to Bangalore, and decided to plant it in the ground. And were we in for a surprise! It was a climber, and boy, did it climb. It climbed to the first floor and went all over the terrace rails and roof. And flowers? About a hundred a year! Huge purple ones, with yellow centres. And very cute kind of seed pods—they burst into a parachute shape when they were dry. Our house became known for this creeper which was all over the roof.

Everyone was fascinated with the flowers, though a lot of people were a bit uncomfortable—as we sometimes are, especially with some types of orchids.

Then a friend decided to do a bit of research, and told us it was a Pelican flower (Aristolochia grandiflora). With that lead, we did our own research, and figured this was Aristolochia littoralis, a sort of cousin of the Pelican flower.

Apparently, these flowers are called Calico flowers (because they look like cloth?). Or Elegant Dutchman’s Pipe, because the flowers look like Sherlock Holmes’ pipe (now why would that be? Holmes was not Dutch to the best of my knowledge. But he may have been elegant, I concede.)

A lot of people had commented that our flower looked kind of carnivorous. But actually, it is not. Apparently, it is pollinated by flies and it does trap the fly inside to ensure pollination, but lets it out in a day or two, when the job is done. So machinating yes, but carnivorous no (sensitive readers, please excuse my anthropomorphism).

Nor do the flowers smell of dead carrion, as the books say they do. At least, ours don’t!

This plant, which is a native of South America, is an invasive species in Australia. But hopefully, not here. A lot of friends asked for the seeds but they couldn’t propagate it, so while my plant grows and grows, at least it is not spreading.

—Meena

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Bibliophile’s Supermarket

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Know the feeling you get when you walk into your favourite store with gift coupons to be spent on whatever takes your fancy! The delicious sense of anticipation, the excitement of browsing the shelves, the difficult decision making…should you get clothes? Something for the house? Toiletries or accessories? You spend a happy time wandering and comparing before you make up your mind. You go home happy with a bag of goodies–an afternoon well spent!

That is just the feeling I get when I go to a library! Faced with an array of books, what could be more fun than to browse? What do I feel like this month—something light and happy? Something thrilling and gripping? Something serious and profound? A favourite familiar author? Best seller or Booker winner? Decisions, decisions!

This wonderful feeling has been a part of my life ever since I fell in love with books. The B.C. Roy Children’s Reading Room, more familiarly known as Shankar’s Children’s Library—a haven through the hot Delhi summer vacations; Grover’s hole-in-the-wall lending library in the neighbourhood market where one graduated from Archie comics to Mills and Boons! The American Centre library where one discovered the classics and the contemporary.

Moving cities, the first thing one looked for was the nearest library. In Nairobi it took the form of the next-door neighbour’s collection of crime and detective fiction which kept the suspense going! In Ahmedabad it was Raju’s circulating library that provided a menu of “time-pass” options. And now the British Library beckons every month. At the rate of 4-5 books a month, I seem to be running out of books to borrow. Panic!

But till then, every day is World Book Day for me!

–Mamata

MKG–LLB MD(Hon)

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“His vocation to be a medical healer was deeper than his vocation to practice law.  He practiced law for about 20 years and then quit forever (though vigorously engaged in politics); his medical healing of sick individuals continued throughout the rest of his life.”

A recent lecture by Dr Mark Lindley at the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad explored Gandhi’s persona as a healer, and health advisor as well as practitioner. Lindley himself wears many hats! An internationally renowned musicologist, as well as an ecological economist, he is also a Gandhi scholar with particular interest in Gandhi’s views on health.

While I was aware of Gandhi’s strong and passionate views on health, diet and lifestyle, a lot of which can be found in his seminal work Key to Health, Lindley’s talk revealed several new aspects of Gandhi which I felt would be interesting to share.

We all know that Mohandas Gandhi went to England in 1888 when he was 18 years old to study law, under advice from family elders. What is perhaps not as well known is that Gandhi’s own desire was to study medicine there. At that point however, apparently the popular perception that becoming a barrister would be an ‘economically’ more practical choice prevailed.

The idea resurfaced around 1908 after he had already been practising law in South Africa. Gandhi may have felt that he could serve people better by practicing medicine than by practicing law. This time, it was the fact that studying medicine would involve vivisection that led him to reject the idea. During his visit to London in 1909, he wrote to a friend that a certain doctor there “…tells me that in the course of his studies he must have killed about fifty frogs. An examination in physiology without this, he tells me, is not possible. If this is so, I have absolutely no desire to go in for medical studies. I would neither kill a frog, nor use one for dissecting if it has been specially killed [by someone else] for the purpose of dissection.”

Interestingly Gandhi’s writings soon after that visit reflect a radical change of view. In Hind Swaraj which he wrote on board the ship while returning from England in 1909, Gandhi vociferously avers “I was at one time a great lover of medical profession. It was my intention to become a doctor for the sake of my country. I no longer hold that opinion.”

“It is worth considering why we take up the profession of medicine. It is certainly not taken up for the purpose of serving humanity. We become doctors so that we may obtain honours and riches. I have endeavoured to show that there is no real service of humanity in the profession, and that it is injurious to mankind. Doctors make a show of their knowledge, and charge exorbitant fees. …The populace, in its credulity and in the hope of ridding itself of some disease, allows itself to be cheated.”

Reading these lines, 109 years later, I was struck by how much this sounds like some of the concerns about the medical profession today!

As the famous French epigram goes “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”, in other words “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

–Mamata

How-to-be-Happy Curriculum

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Psyc 157: Psychology and the Good Life is reported to be the most popular course ever offered at Yale University. Within a week of registration being open, nearly one third of Yale undergraduates had signed up for the twice-weekly lectures. What is the course all about?

Basically about teaching college students how to be happy! In an age where “getting there as quickly as you can” and “excelling” are seen to be the key indicators to success, it is sad that young people who are just about entering one of the best phases of their lives—with so many journeys of exploration and discovery ahead of them, need to take a course that teaches them how to lead less stressful, more satisfying lives. Such is the irony of the times we live in.

I think back to my undergraduate days as the most enriching, exciting, and yes, some of happiest years of my life. Ok, so I did not go into the ‘pressure cooker’ of an IIT or a medical college (I was “one of those Arts types”) but I did get into an Indian equivalent of an ‘Ivy League’ college. For someone who had never enjoyed her school years as much as many seemed to have done, stepping into college, was from day one, a joyous journey that lasted three years. It was indeed a time of the opening up of the mind, not just in terms of the curricular, but more so in the extra-curricular. It was the Film Club that opened windows to different ways of seeing; the Hiking Club that opened up unforgettable vistas of nature; it was the invaluable exposure to music and dance and theatre, all of which we always had time for.

Even more precious it was the making of friends that have remained so for almost fifty years! This was the gang for hanging out with in the canteen, with laughs and giggles, and the pouring out of woes. It was the bunking of classes to go see the morning show, or catching a bus to go all the way to centre of town just have a lassi between classes, and the book fairs at which entire wholly satisfying, and oh-so-happy days were to be spent.

College was indeed the cradle for what was later to be described as the “all round development” of the personality, for which today there are Life Coaches and Grooming Gurus (not forgetting the ultimate go-to-Guru Google!).

Sadly college life today sounds different—unhealthy competition; the pressure of justifying the sky-high fees that parents are shelling out; the continuous looking at how to ‘plan’ one’s future career; and the dangerous encroachment of politics into campuses….and news that young people are ‘burning out’ at an age when they should be blossoming into vibrant human beings…What a tragedy indeed!

To top it all we need a Yale Professor to remind us that feelings of happiness are fostered through socialization, exercise, meditation and plenty of sleep! How sad is that?

PS: I am proud to be an LSRite!   (And yes, intercollege rivalry was healthy and produced excellence rather than antagonism).

–Mamata

A Sad Ending

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We are wakened at dawn every day by the melodious duet of the Coucals. The Coucal couple share our little garden, and we watch over each other. The Coucal or Crow Pheasant is a handsome bird; its glossy black body, chestnut wings and long black tail lends it a special dignity and grandeur. After the morning duet of soft whoops and klak-kloks, they join us as we have our morning tea. Sitting amongst orange flowers of the Cordia tree, or flitting across to the Champa tree, they offer a reassuring start to our day. As the day progresses, they descend lower to drink from the water container, as the smaller birds respectfully make way for them. Then as the sun reaches its peak, the omnivorous birds stride confidently across our small patch of lawn, looking for sustenance. Through the rest of the day, they call to each other using an amazing repertoire of calls. We could never have imagined that a single bird could produce such a variety of sounds.

About a month ago we noticed that the Coucal couple were more than usually busy. We saw them flying back and forth all day long, carrying in their beak a strand of the creeper with the white flowers, twigs from the nearby neem tree, long blades of grass and other trailing vegetation. Some days later, having tracked their destination, we discovered that they had made a nest high up in the tangle of our bougainvillea. The nest was very large, and from ground level looked quite messy! Even though we only had a worm’s eye view of their new home; there it was, testimony to the well-coordinated effort of our faithful couple. We were honoured that they liked our garden enough to move on from cooing and courting to setting up home! We were not quite sure when Mrs Coucal decided to start her family in her new home. But we watched and waited eagerly, like anxious grandparents-to-be. We hoped that at least one or two eggs had successfully hatched. While we could not follow all that went on in the nest, we were reassured that the parents were assiduously flying back and forth, this time with morsels in their beaks. It was amazing to see how the couple worked relentlessly and in perfect tandem—getting food, keeping an eye on the nest and around, being alert and protective—all the while calling to each other, with gurgling chuckles and raucous croaks.

Then yesterday we heard a rustling in the dry flowers and leaves piled under the bougainvillea. A closer look revealed a tiny little cluster of black and brown feathers fluttering weakly in the undergrowth. The chick had not yet developed wings strong enough to make it back to the nest. We were very concerned, and felt quite helpless as the anxious parents hovered nearby. We prayed, and tried to see how it could be safe. When we did not see it late last evening, we hoped for the best.

Sadly this morning we saw the still little bundle of feathers. Nature had not meant it to grow into a handsome young Coucal, and to share our garden. Today, the Coucals do not call.

–Mamata

The Cup That Bonded

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So the newest management mantra is FIKA. This is a Swedish word that roughly translates as drinking coffee, munching homemade goods and spending time with people. In many companies it is mandatory for all workers to have a designated time during the day to sit down and do fika. Most Swedes have Fika several times a day.

Over two decades before Chai pe Charcha became the flavour of the nation, CpC was an integral part of our working day. Twice a day, as the footsteps heralded the bearer of the teas, it was literally and (later) figuratively ‘pens down’. Time to cluster around and “fika” as it were. It was a time for sharing—news and views, happenings and unhappenings (propah English not mandatory, and language khichdi quite delicious!), cribbings and crabbings–and above all, energising. There were snacks too—“hey taste what I baked yesterday,” “oh great, banana chips all the way from home state”, “guess what, I discovered this new naasta shop with 50 flavours of khakhra….”

Tea table became the venue for easing in the newcomers; teasing and ribbing the old-timers; there were no hierarchies and no bosses. The agenda was whatever the mood of the table—sharing, admonishing, admiring, agonising and venting, and yes, laughing a lot.

It was an important support system in so many ways. After just 15 minutes, one returned to one’s desk feeling much better. You weren’t the only one who struggled to keep going as you juggled work and home; your child’s behaviour was not as worrisome as you imagined it was; and yes, in-laws happened to the best of us!

It was not only about chit-chat and food; it was where serious discussions took place—about work and work culture; about the state of the world and the nation; about books read and films seen, people met and to be met. It was where so many “aha” moments happened—the title of a new book; the resource person to invite; the sequence of sessions for the seminar…

The two tea times were the significant watersheds of our daily schedules. I did not realise how much we took this for granted, until I spent three months working from an office in Washington DC. Everyone was so “busy”–each communing with their machines as they sipped their coffees (also from a machine) in silence, and lunch sandwiches in solitary isolation. I craved so much for some human connect and communication, I took myself off, to perhaps some raised eyebrows, to the nearby park to spend 20 minutes watching the world go by. “Time wasted”, my diligent workmates may have thought; “what wasted opportunities to bond” thought I.

It’s not just in a CCD that a lot can happen over a cup of tea!

–Mamata

FrogFest

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Over 35 years ago, when I spent two years living in Nairobi, my sister Seema, then a young zoology student came to visit. Among the souvenirs she picked up from the local market was a potholder made of cane that was shaped like a frog. After that trip, wherever she went, it was almost as if frogs were jumping out from everywhere, urging to be picked up! Frogs in all materials, shapes, sizes and poses. And so, Seema became a ‘frog collector’! It also made it easy for friends and family to find her a gift. Over the years, the frog artefact collection grew and grew till her house was bursting at the seams with frogs big and small. One day the thought came, how could this be shared with more people, and what would be the purpose of the sharing? Over a couple of years, and a combination of fortuitous circumstances, this idea metamorphosed into FrogFest.

FrogFest began as a brainchild of Seema’s old school friend Aditya Arya whose creative mind has always leapt way ahead of the average plodders and hoppers. Let’s do an exhibition called FrogArt, he said. With his vast experience in photography and exhibit design, he offered to curate the show. That done, it worked out that WWF offered to host the display. This was indeed serendipity! WWF was where Seema began her professional life as a volunteer (while still a college student). What better way to “give back” to an institution that was the first to nurture what became a lifelong passion (as well as vocation) for biodiversity and conservation!

Then came the challenge—how to use the frog artefacts to highlight the larger issues of amphibian conservation; how to creatively bridge the traditional gap between Art and Science? Seema invited me to join the team as co-curator, to apply my experience as an environmental educator. After six months of being steeped in all matters Batrachian (along the way we discovered that the study of frogs was known as Batrachology!) we were ready to launch FrogFest—Celebrating Frogs in Art and Nature.

As the name suggests, FrogFest focuses on the amazingly diverse interpretations of a single element of nature–the frog! It showcases Seema Bhatt’s personal collection of frog artefacts from over 40 countries, including a rendering of frogs in folk art, as well as contemporary art by young artists.

The display of the artefacts and art is supported by a series of panels that highlight the fascinating aspects of frogs, and the conservation significance of frogs in nature. Far from the dusty tomes of academic journals, the visual-rich and reader-friendly panels also offer a peep into the fascinating world of frogs in India and the important initiatives to conserve them.These have been supported and enriched with expert inputs from Dr S.D. Biju and Dr Gururaja, India’s foremost amphibian scientists.

 

The bridge between art and nature is further strengthened by the organisation and display of artefacts. For example, where the panel describes the role of colour in frogs in Nature, there is also a display of nearly a hundred frog artefacts, made from glass, ceramic, clay, stone and more, with vibrant colours, along with a ‘Frogtoid’ that reminds that while artists have let their imagination run riot, nature has bestowed frogs with a colour palette on which their very survival depends (attracting mates, warning predators).

 

With its brilliant interweaving of the facts and fun FrogFest offers a feast for the senses. It also provides food for thought by putting the spotlight on the Frog. At a time when the focus of wildlife conservation is primarily on charismatic ‘megafauna’, there is a dire need to reflect on the conservation of smaller, but equally significant fauna around us. While frogs may not always hit the headlines as the ‘Superstars’ of the grand epic of nature, they are no less fascinating, and indeed, no less important in the Web of Life.

FrogFest is on at WWF India, 172-B Lodi Road, New Delhi till the end of April 2018.

–Mamata