The era of the family doctor

Looking through the book stand at the airport, I found a rack that said ‘Famous Authors’ but my recent book was not on it. Clearly I have a long way to go. But I suddenly began thinking about an interaction I had with Dr. Raghavachari. I was sitting in his office in Thiruvallikeni flipping through the pages of a magazine called, I think, ‘Outlook’ or something like that. It was a business magazine of the 60s in India that usually had a page of photos of company events and executives in transition. He mischievously looked at me and said, ‘If your father’s picture is not there, he can’t be very famous, can he?’

Dr. Major K. Raghavachari MBBS was a peculiar bird. He had served as a medical doctor in the British army which is probably where he got to resemble the British. He was fair, about 5’ 10” and walked with a stoop, and spoke Tamil like a Britisher might. ‘Pad – ma – na – bhan’ he would call out to his compounder, stressing out each syllable, as if he might otherwise get it wrong. He always wore white; white pants and a white bush-shirt.

Dr. Raghavachari was our family doctor, since he was the Company Physician at Parry & Co. where Anna worked. That meant we would have to go to him (I think everyone did except Amma) when we fell ill, which was not too bad except that his system of seeing patients had a peculiar logic. He did not believe in the ‘first-come-first-served’ principle, so we would have to wait in his waiting room hoping that nobody else pulled rank. All those who were his friends got to see him first. And he would chat with them endlessly while we were fighting our demise in his waiting room. I was a regular visitor to his clinic since I would suffer every month from tonsillitis and would have to go to him for a bottle of tincture benzoine for which he would write a prescription and I would take it to the pharmacy. God help you if you went to him for his signature on some NCC form certifying physical fitness. You had to sit there and wait till you became disabled.

But if you went with Anna, then, of course, you got to pass all those in the waiting room (‘suckers!’) and got to see him right away. He would order a horribly looking cup of coffee for Anna. And you could sit there and chat. I remember chatting with him on all kinds of things. Once, he corrected me when I said ‘preponed’ (as an antonym of postponed. Logical, right?) saying there was no such word. I rushed back home to look it up in the dictionary and he was right! Of course, it is commonly used, in India, at least, and I’m sure the gatekeepers of the language have by now included it at least in the Indian versions of the dictionary.

Dr. Raghavachari was more than a family doctor. He was a family friend. He would visit Patti (Amma’s mother) daily to give her an insulin injection; his clinic was at the other end of the same street (Nallathambi Mudali St, Tiruvallikeni) where she lived. He was also of the genre of physicians who made house calls. The only problem was that he would not come when he was needed but when it suited him, usually after 9.30 pm when he finished his clinic and was on his way home! This irritated Amma no end, who would grumble and say, “Does one have to be on the deathbed for him to come right away?’

Raghavachari and Anna went way back, to the early days in Parrys when Anna was a rising executive and a hockey player and so was Raghavachari. They would both play for the company team.

During 1947-1952, Mohana was parked with Patti at the Nallathambi Mudali St. house, I’m told, and was going to school there. One day, she ran off to a carnival at the Bharath Scouts and Guides field (on the beach road) at the invitation of Dr. Raghavachari who was the official doctor there too. She took part in a running race and even won a prize! The family was in a panic, not knowing where she was. Finally, after she was tracked down, there was a family crisis with Patti declaring that she could not be responsible for Mohana’s truant habits anymore and she had to be sent to Hyderabad pronto (where the rest of the family was). It was Raghavachari who got hold of an air ticket (as ‘Menon’s daughter’ I’m told, perhaps a spare ticket lying around) and shipped her off before she completed her 7th. Standard exams.

But Raghavachari came home many Sundays, when he was at the clinic only half a day. This was a social visit to gossip about Parry & Co. politics and have his cup of coffee (no sugar, I think he was diabetic). He would wait at the gate and honk and one of us would have to go out and open the gate for him to drive in and close it after him. Same thing when he left!

Clearly he did not think much about going home to spend time with his family. His brother-in-law and his family lived with him (living off his largesse, I’m told).

He was also the officiating physician of the Madras Motor Sports Club (Was there only one doctor in Madras at that time?) and got me a pass to attend the annual Sholavaram races. That was cool, walking through the pits, and watching all those racers pollute the air!

Coming to think of it, his inability to speak anything other than English probably was genetic. His brother, Air Vice Marshall K. Narasimhan AVSM also spoke like him. And N. Gopi, (of Kadam – Sharanya fame) who is AVM Narasimhan’s son, is also similarly challenged!

I wonder how many of the doctors in the family remember Raghavachari. Chinni mentioned to Dasharath the other day that I am the only one of the siblings who does not have a doctor (certified or in process) in the family. His only response was, ‘Too late now.”

Catholics, like Hindus, know how their Gods look like (More on Italy)

Catholics are so much like Hindus. All the rituals, the religious imagery, and so on. Every Church and museum and palazzo (palace) had to have its pieta (Jesus after the crucifixion), the Adoration of the Magi (the three wise men at the manger in Bethlehem), Madonna and child, and so on in various interpretations. The churches were gorgeous. We managed to catch some highlights. We were at the Santa Miniato in Florence when the priests were conducting the evening vespers and sang the Gregorian chants. Hauntingly lovely. We were at the Santassima Annunziata (also in Florence) when the morning mass was being conducted by a particularly sonorous priest in front of a tabernacle where the fresco on the wall had the image of Mary whose face is believed to have been painted by an angel. There was a wedding on at the Basilica in Venice with the mammoth organ playing. We took a picture of the bridal couple with their family around them.

There was very little variation in the images of the Christ. I wonder who first conceived how he looked like and that became the dominant paradigm (much like the image of, say, Lakshmi, I guess). There was more variation in the image of Madonna. In some, she looked positively oriental. An early migrant? They all got the image of baby Jesus horribly wrong. Baby Krishna looks much better, in any variation.

I did look at the ‘Last supper’ by Leonardo da Vinci in Milan (allowed in groups of 15, reservations made about two months in advance) called the ‘Cenacola Vinciano.’ About five hundred years old. Da Vinci has painted three windows in the back of the room. Now, I have been to the room where the last supper took place in Jerusalem and that room has only two windows. Who are you going to believe, me or Leonardo?

I ran into a protest group of atheists and rationalists in front of the statue of Bruno at the Campo de’ Fiori piazza in Rome. There were about a dozen of them, with placards saying ‘NO God, http://www.nogod.it/) and flags announcing their group (UAAR, and some stuff in Italian.) The average age was about 60, having been brought down significantly by one 30 year old woman. They took turns to speak and tourists were all around clicking their cameras. Two vans of carabinieri (police) were nearby, more police that protestors. The only risk from the protestors that I could see was the possibility that some of them may have a heart attack wile protesting.)

We also did the Jewish quarter in Florence, including a visit to the Synagogue. The guide there was insistent that the community was well integrated locally, and spoke an Italian dialect with some Hebrew words, and followed the Italian rite. They were there from Roman times, and were neither Ashkenazi nor Sephardic (the two major ethnic groups in Judaism), he said. They were also a mixture of Conservative and Reform in their practices.

Transport: We did all our travel between cities by rail. Very convenient, with lots of connecting trains and easy to get seats even in this rush season. We did get ripped off by buying an ItalySaver Pass; for the travel we did, individual tickets should have been the way to go. Even with the Pass, we had to stand in line to make reservations anyway and pay extra for that. Chinni was very good at figuring out the local bus and metro systems in all the places.

Italy requires you to buy your bus/train tickets from the Tabacchi (newsstand/tobacco shop) which can explain why so many people still smoke in Italy. But oh! Those cities are a paradise for two-wheelers. The narrow streets and high cost of petrol does that to you. But it was a pleasure to see the range of vehicles – of all makes, and cc’s,(50 to 1200), two and three wheelers, the latter with two or one wheel in front, with tops and without, etc. What was interesting to see was the determination with which most two-wheeler riders were trying to add to the noise pollution and in wearing out their brake linings. When the lights changed to green, they would zoom even while seeing that the next light, 200 meters away was changing to red. It gave them a chance to screech to a halt and then zoom again.

One taxi driver in Rome lived up to the reputation of that genre. Getting to the station from the hotel, he first tried to convince me to go with him to the airport rather than take the train and mumbled when I insisted he go to the station. Then I realized that his meter was running higher than it should – he probably started it before he got to the hotel. So I ended up paying twice the fare I did for the journey in the reverse direction!

A fair amount of bicycles on the streets too. In Florence, the guidebook says that the city offered free bicycles for those who wanted them, if you could find the stands. I found the stand in Rome and was tempted to take one, but could not figure out the instructions about their use. (Apparently you visit an office and get a pre-paid card and then use it to release the bikes from the automated stands they are tied to.)

Rome, with all its monuments, and ruins from centuries BC gave you that sense of continuity of history. There would be an internet café in a 600 year old building. (Signs all around these cities in Italy tell you the geneology of the building.) They have started holding concerts in the Colosseum, a sports arena of over 1500 years old. You can see people jogging in the grassy oval of the Circus Maximus, where Ben Hur and his contemporaries raced chariots.

Italy is not doing a favor to its immigrants. With a falling population growth rate, it needs immigrants, but the police regularly chase the ones we see around the tourist sites. The Africans have a tight grip on the trade in spurious handbags. You see them at all the tourist sites. The South Asians are working in restaurants as waiters or in tourist stalls selling souvenirs. Some sell dark glasses, cleverly arranged on a large board, that can be quickly unfurled to resemble a table, and quickly folded to run when the police decide it was time to chase. Haroon, from Bangla Desh, trying to eke out a living selling roses was thrilled when Chinni and I flung our random Bengali phrases at him. He claimed to have landed there 2 years ago after paying 13,000 euro to a dalal who claimed there was a future in Italy where he could make money. (IMF projection is 0.3% growth for Italy this year.) He complained that there were many Bangla Deshis in town but they would not help him. It was an Indian who told him about the rose trade. (He promptly dialed Borun da on his cell phone and I had to speak to Borun and fling more phrases.) The Chinese, (oh, those smart Chinese) were running the restaurants and shops. They also have a strong hold on the wholesale trade of souvenirs etc. Recent clashes between locals and Chinese traders shows some resentment is building.

I hope I have triggered your interest. It was a great trip! So pack your bags. We’ll be happy to send you the maps and guide books.

Opinionated post-modernist and post-renaissance thoughts on a visit to Italy

I had a conference in Milan and Chinni decided to make a vacation out of it. She joined me after my meeting on 4 July and we did two days in Milan, 4 days in Florence, and two days in Venice. I then went on to Rome, while Chinni returned to Boston via Milano. I had work in Roma, a couple of schools to visit. (Hey, somebody has to do the hard work, you know.) Here are some random observations.

Don’t go on a trip to Italy during their tourist season unless you want to feel like being on the platform when the Coromandel Express gouges out its passengers at Madras Central. (I can hear Shanti saying, ‘That’s why we rent a cottage in the Tuscany country side and don’t go to the cities.’) That’s true. There are thousands of people in all the tourist spots, students groups, professional tour groups and others assorted people jockeying for space on the pavements, in the museum hallways, and in the lines for everything. The only way to deal with it is to look at that as an important feature of your holiday and start guessing games about where they are from, their relationships with each other and so on. That can be fun. Really!

Italians are said to be known for style and design. So, in Milan, I went to a department store looking for clothing and found them all made in China. I then went to a specialized clothing store and found the fashionable Italian clothing made in Italy but sold at prices that you would need to take out a bank loan to be able to buy. A shirt for 170 euros! However, I am happy at seeing all the assault being made on Italian fashion sensibilities. Walking around the streets, I saw odd clothes. (Those tourists!). I found some of the slogans on blouses and t-shirts inexplicable. There was a woman with ‘Aggressive’ in glistening sequins across her chest; another guy who wore a t-shirt with ‘Go ahead Release You’ on it. Now, what was that? Perhaps it is all part of a Chinese plot to spoil the Italian fashion image.

Bathrooms across the world always contain a mystery. It is usually one of trying to figure out how the shower works after you have suffered bursts of cold water on your body. In the Milan hotel I stayed in before Chinni came, there was a cord hanging in the shower stall. I thought it was a clothes line meant to dry clothes but could not find a hook or place to tie the other end. When I asked another academic from New Zealand who was staying in the same hotel what the cord was, he said that it was to turn on the exhaust fan, but did not work in his bathroom. I guess mine was faulty too for I would only hear a slight buzzing sound when I yanked at the cord, which would stop when I released it. Two hotels later, in Florence, I met a similar cord beside which there was a sign painted on the wall which read, ‘Alarm – for Emergency use’! Now, I wonder why nobody responded to all the yanking I did in those other hotels.

Food: The problem with Italy is that you got to be prepared to eat Italian food. Which is OK for a change but all the time? By my fifth day, I was ready to eat anything other than a mixture of flour, pomodoro (tomato) and mozzarella cheese in different forms – as caprese (cold sandwich), as pizza margherita (hot, melted and sticky), or as pasta vegitariana. Chinni and I finally found a Lebanese restaurant in Milan where we could get some falafel, and a Chinese restaurant in Venice where we got some vegetarian noodle dish. Oh, and a heavenly Tandoor restaurant in Milan where Pakistanis made us some palak panneer and tarka dal. But many Chinese run regular Italian restaurants too so don’t let their presence in the doorway inviting you in fool you. And the gelaterria! They were great and made up for the missing calories! There are two to every street corner. Similar to ice-cream, they help to finish off a tiring day. (I have a couple of months to go for my next cholesterol check.)

Nobody drinks tap water in Italy. When you ask for water in a restaurant, they will offer ‘naturale (non-fizzy)’ or ‘fizzamente (fizzy).’ Both come in bottles. Restaurants charge you a minimum of 1.5 euro for a 50 cl bottle when you can get a 1 litre bottle in a grocery store for 0.50 cents. Now, during Caesar’s time, they established cast iron water posts at various piazzas (squares) in these cities from which water constantly pours out. There seems to be no way of shutting them off. So, after the first prohibitively expensive bottle of water, save the bottle and refill it at these taps. In case you are worried about quality, by now you must know that there is nothing that a few pellets of Pudin Hara cannot cure.

Museums: Italy continues to live off the Renaissance! The museums and the churches are lovely, filled with frescoes, statues, and paintings of unbelievable beauty. Not being a student of art history but one of economics, may I add here that the law of diminishing marginal utility rapidly set in. After the third museum, I could not distinguish between a Michaelangelo, or a Pampolini, or Vasari. They all looked the same. The statues outside in the street corners looked the same and as good to me as the statues inside the museum for which we paid from 6 to 15 euros as entrance fee. And the more popular museums required booking well in advance otherwise you waited for hours in line to get in.

Chinni, the project manager, had done her research and booked us at the more important ones, weeks before our departure. Chinni would also rent an audio guide in the museum, a digital hand held device that guided you through with descriptions, usually with some additional information giving you history and tidbits about the painting, al for an additional 2 to 3 euro. She would point out to me the highlights that I seemed to regularly miss. But when we went from room to room in the museums all the art began to look alike. ‘Did you see the Giotta fresco which was commissioned by Cosmo Medici the first when he had just won the battle of Lebano?’ Chinni would ask me while I rested on a bench. I would say ‘Yes’ because, well, I mean, I must have seen it right? (I did glance about each room.) Or was it in the previous room. Or the previous museum? Or, maybe, in the piazza in the previous town?

The Iffizi museum in Florence was monstrous, and the guide book says, competes with the Louvre in Paris and the Prado in Madrid. Both of which we have seen so we can check this off in our to-do list.

Often, the museum and church employees had a resigned attitude at the hordes passing through. Cameras would click and flash right next to a sign saying no photos, and the employee would be either chatting to his colleague or staring bored at her finger nails.

Tour groups with guides were often fun to watch too, and distracted me from the works of Michaelangelo. Many families were accompanied by youngsters, who would have frustration written on their faces as they clung to their parents’ arms hoping this was the last room of the museum.

Some of the guides have figured out what the average tourist wants and cater to it. So have the museum employees. When I stood near the bulletin board at the entrance to the Santa Croce basilica in Florence trying to figure out the map, a museum employee walked up to me and said, ‘The third chapel on the right has the two important frescoes. Michaelangelo’s tomb is in the middle on that side, across from it is Gallileo’s, and Dante’s is here.” She probably meant to add, ‘You Philistine, you can see those and get the hell out of here.” That’s what the guide books do to us. They point out these must see things, and those spots have all the crowd, and when you return home, someone is sure to ask, ‘Did you visit Michaelangelo’s tomb’ so I had better see it.

Chinni has been inspired by all the beautiful artwork. She plans to commission Sreshta to do a mural in our Palm Meadows living room. But I worry. Sreshta may instead decide on an installation and we would have a projector with images in one room and something on the floor in another, reducing living space significantly. Stay tuned for more on Italy.

Thoughts on the Royapettah house

Gopi has put out some great stuff on the house, the beginnings, anna's passion and so on. This is Anna's first house and I recall he took the money out of the Insurance policy.. we had lived in Rajasekhara Mudaliyar Road, Chandrabagh avenue and then moved on to Mahadevan's house in Gopalapuram. Mahadevan was in Cudalore and JSPradhu was going to bring him down to Madras...and then Anna has to move out of this property quicker..I recall also going down to the plot and pouring water to cure the bricks. Anna bought the land from Hari who lived across and he was the Manager at Higginbothams. Our other neighbor was ST Narasimhan's daughter and son-in-law (Mohana's old friend) who was a psychiatrist and ending up going insane and then the Jains moved in ( ask Mohana about Mrs, Jain!!). Anna loved the mosaic and also the window grill that he designed ( though it was a difficult design , it gave us pain to close the windows putting our hands through those holes!!). The upstairs verandah was also a great place and at one time he wanted to enclose it...

Anna loved crotons ( I googled to see the plants) and we never know what crotons are in this country...it is just a beautiful plant with different colors and anna's also use to cross-breed them to get different shades of the leaves...he had several varieties... his reason for not moving into the Adyar bungalows and be with the British guys, Popni Iyengar, SN Lal, John John and others were because he liked the independence to work on the yard, folding up his dhoti.......

Another thing that came to my mind was my interest in dogs!!!!! I hope you guys remember we had Sheba in Coimbatore and she finally ran away( I think Prem and Usha might have taken care of the dog), Mohana loved Tommy in Secunderabad ( a street dog that she cared) and then the white German Shepherd that was in he Royapettah house... In 1964, I had gone to Nellikuppam to work in the sugar plant, Shanti perhaps 3 years old and Gopi around 14.....he loved to play with this dog in the front and I still remember him pulling his tongue and enjoying it going in circles..the dog played with him..however, whenever I came from Nellikuppam, he barked and never let me through the front door ( I might have thrown some stones and he might have remembered) and one day, I recall his food plate had fallen down and when Anna was going to pick it, he did bite him ( or did he bite Venkatesan..) and then the dog was sent off to the Fireworks factory....

I really enjoyed the cane furniture in the front porch and Anna had the greatest relationship with Jayabaratham guy...and we had that little green cane chair that was used by every grandchild and I am sure it is still somewhere.... I was thinking of Amma's room ( her favorite Godrej where she kept her Cadbury's chocolate) and the only bathroom with the Indian toilet..she insisted on it!!!

Mythili always liked Anna's taste for furniture and he always brought in a few great pieces..he also loved polishing the wood around the house--- I recall the staff from Parrys' who used to frequently come and polish our rosewood furniture and other tables....I still remember his face and he probably drank half the spirit bottle...Anna wanted his brass polished and he did it and made us do it too.....

I was thinking of the gifts anna used to get in the Royapettah house from all his distributors-- particularly fruits and the visits of people like Periaswamy, Kali and so many others-- and we had a tough time distributing all the fruits to family and friends... I was also thinking of people like Padam Singh, Parijatham, venkatesan etc who were part of our lives growing up there....

Well, Mohana remembers all the things around our house-- and hopefully she will tell us more...

I somehow, remember the teacher that used to come for Dasharath..D will sit on the Pai for sometime and move to the chair and the teacher will follow wherever D went....was he learning music!!

Having your own wheels

Having your own wheels

Tatiana, a colleague from Bulgaria, said to me last week that she did not know how to ride a bicycle. Did not know how to ride a bike! That amazed me since I thought it was a basic skill that everyone learned, like walking. I don’t remember when or how I learned, but I always knew it. I just assumed that I was born with bike riding skills.
I recall running down the street in Nehru Nagar teaching Dasharath how to ride a bike. (So he probably now thinks he was born with it.) But Dasharath also got his own set of wheels very early. Usha decided to buy him a tricycle as a gift on one of her visits from Calcutta. Off they went to Mint Street in Parry’s corner which was THE place to buy bicycles. A number of big shops there offered a lot of choice. Not that it mattered. Dasharath sat on the first tricycle he saw in the first shop they entered, and refused to get off. After the bill was paid, Rajan, the driver, had to carry him with the bike and put him in the car in the back seat and he came home riding his trike in the car.

Bharadwaj was truly amazing in how rapidly he picked up bike riding. I was giving him the heave ho in the parking lot of the apartment complex at Sunderland, where we were in 1986. He did a few rounds with me alternatively holding and letting go from the rear when I heard the phone ring. I ran back into the apartment. As I was answering the call standing near the window and looking out, I saw Bharadwaj hoist himself up the little bike using the entrance steps of the apartment and doing his own round of the parking lot! That’s it. Lessons over.

But knowing bike riding is not the same as owning a bike. And that took a long time for me. There was a bicycle rental place on Royapettah High Road near the Edward Elliots Road (now Radhakrishnan Salai) intersection, and next to a barber shop (Muthu, M. A. Hair Dressers. MA were his initials, not his qualification.) One could rent by the hour and so rental bikes were called ‘hour bike,’ or pronounced ‘avar bike’ in Tamil.)

I never even thought I would get a bike when, in 1961 or so, the door bell rang late in the evening. We were at Kandaswami Gramani Street apartment. Out stood Chellaswami’s butler (yes, he really did have a 60 or so year old butler whom he called ‘boy’!) with a brand new bicycle, saying it was a present from Chellaswami for my birthday.

We need a sidebar here. Now Chellaswami was a well to do barrister from London (‘Inner Temple. Same as Gandhi and Nehru’, he would say) who lived down the street. He seemed to have plenty of money, was single (‘my wife left me’ he once said), and had few clients (‘family property’ was whispered behind his back) , and so had plenty of time to stand in the balcony of his apartment watching me and my friends playing in the street. We would all occasionally visit him too and get some snacks and lemonade, served by the butler. Earlier that evening, I had celebrated my birthday with him, complete with a cake and candles to boot. Now it seems odd, but I never thought of it at that time. My friendship with him, needless to say, provided no end of merriment for the rest of the family that I had learned to ignore.

Anna was flabbergasted by the bicycle. It was truly over and beyond the norm for gifts and he asked the butler to take it back. I don’t recall what happened after that, I must have (at least hope I did) thrown a tantrum, but there was an exchange of messages between Anna and Chellaswamy and I got to keep the bike.

The feeling of freedom that comes from owning your own set of wheels is impossible to explain. From then on, I was on the bicycle every waking and non-school moment. I was not allowed to go to school on the bike, school being about 7 kms away. As a compromise, I was allowed to ride it till the school bus stop at the Music Academy intersection where I would park the bike in the house of ‘George’ Ramanujam, Anna’s colleague at the office. By the time I came to high school, I was allowed to ride it to school on Saturdays, when the NCC drill took place. Final year of school I graduated to riding it to school during weekdays too.

Ah, the freedom! One could stay back late, playing games, joining clubs, and not having to rush to catch the school bus! It came in handy for all the shopping that was to be done, buying vegetables from Thannithuravu market, going to TUCS on Royapettah High Road, going to Ajanta Hotel for dosais on a Sunday afternoon to serve as tiffin for all at home.

Now, Prem had a bike too, at that time. He would ride it to Guindy Engineering College (now Anna University), and take it across on the ferry boat while crossing Adyar river. See, I’m not the only crazy one.

When I joined Vivekananda College, it was the same bike that was the preferred means of transport for four years. When I went to Delhi for my Masters, I saw how it would fit the bill quite nicely. I was in Jubilee Hall, a University graduate students’ hostel, just a bike ride away from Delhi School of Economics. When I returned to Delhi after the first term vacation in Madras, it came with me on the train. From the station, it rode with me that foggy January morning, in the autorickshaw all the way to north Delhi where the University was located. It came back with me to Madras in 1972 and then I upgraded to a Yezdi 250cc motorcycle. (I did grow up.)

It was with me for a long time after that. I don’t recall if I gave it away or sold it, but I wish I had kept it. Last summer (2006), I went looking for a bike to rent in Adyar. I thought a bike a more pleasurable alternative to arguing rates with the autorickshaw drivers. I could not find a single one. I went searching down Guindy Road for the bike shop that I knew used to be there, but the new generation of shopkeepers around there looked at me like I was an alien. Chennai-ites had moved on to other forms of transportation.