A fine reading of the myth and reality of Indian soldiers under British Rule

The Testimonies of Indian Soldiers and the Two World Wars—Between Self and Sepoy is a misleading title. The book is neither a factual rendering of the sipahis’ testimonies nor a historical construct/reconstruct of the Indian Army—a creation of our colonial rulers to fight their wars. The book in fact is a deconstruct of not just the times that the author has trained his researcher’s lens on but an analytical reading into the minds and psyche of the many protagonists of the whole historical drama that went into creating the mythical sipahi persona. On a deeper level, it is a glimpse into the psyched consciousness of an India that is still living and believing the constructed reality of its Indianness created by its past colonial masters.

In the first section In Search of Colonial Negatives, Singh has a rather succinct passage: “The martialisation of soldiers becomes contiguous to the wholesale objectification and dehumanization of all Indians under colonialism.” The racist perceptions of Indian soldiers, a creation of the fertile minds of colonial masters, changed with each subsequent writer of the ‘Handbooks’ for the Indian Army, as each brought in his own perspective; none with any scientific, anthropological, physiological or historical roots. It is critical commentary on our collective slave mentality that till today we are still firmly entrenched in the mythical straitjackets of racial attributes created by our past rulers. We still seem to be justifying “the intellectual justifications of colonialism” living by the ‘role books’ created for the dehumanised Indian. A ‘recurring colonial fantasy’ the sipahis were treated as an abstract element in all the analyses of the writers to achieve their dream Indian soldiery. No narrative of the colonial period has given them a true voice—it is all translated, edited, transcribed and pruned to suit the purpose of the colonial rulers.

Singh makes it clear in the introduction itself that history cannot be a reliable source for real understanding of the sepoys. Yet, he painstakingly takes us through a body of historical references and narratives to unravel the real voice, mind and identity of the Indian soldier. Amid all the clutter of censored letters, courtroom depositions and interrogations, Singh tries to find the partial presence of the sipahi, maybe in a “pithy aside or a single sentence”.

The book is a fine piece of research work on a part of history that remains wrapped in layers of ambiguity. Read between the lines

Sublime Kerala cuisine and the nicest people

I was walking steeply uphill in a cardamom plantation. The man-height bushes crowded in front of me so densely that I could barely make out a path. Suddenly, I heard a soft swishing sound and in a trice, an elephant and I were trying to occupy the exact same square foot of real estate. Elephant Junction was but one spice plantation in the Idukki District, and it espoused but one method of cultivation. I had been to a few plantations that lay along the main road of Kumily, the last village before Thekkady Wildlife Sanctuary. One was owned by earnest young Shinoj Kallamakal whose plantation was covered densely with every plant that could be coaxed out of the soil. His next door neighbour packed in the tourist buses because his motto was Buy Buy Buy (at vastly inflated rates). And then, I chanced upon Elephant Junction. The tourism brochures are not too far off the mark. It really is God’s own country, except that brochures don’t capture the sounds of silence, the cool breeze, the sweep of the rains and the made-in-heaven combination of soft appams combined with fiery fish curries cooked in earthen-ware pots.

From my perch at Niraamaya Resort in Kumily, all I could see were thickly forested hills. Also called the cardamom hills, because of their crop, my resort with its little cottages sprinkled on a hillside, was actually part of a cardamom plantation. Niraamaya was not on the way to anywhere, and the last two kilometres of road was actually a dirt track. So those of us who stayed there had the place to ourselves. More than that, we hardly even got to see each other—you could, if you wished, isolate yourself completely from humanity. It was an opportunity I grabbed with both hands. I allowed myself just one day of visiting cardamom plantations. For, to have come all the way to Idukki District and not to have visited a plantation would have been akin to visiting Agra without seeing the Taj Mahal. Every plantation is completely different from its neighbour. Some are gigantic: 200 acres and more. In the middle, you’ll catch sight of a plantation bungalow, usually single storeyed, with plenty of gleaming wood in the balconies and the trademark tiled roofs. There were others that were less than an acre, and were crammed end-to-end with 250 species of plants, only some of which were spices. Elephant Junction had no sale of spices on the premises. What it did have were a herd of elephants, because K.G. Raju the owner loved elephants and also because elephant dung was said to be the best manure for cardamom and pepper plants. Raju loved his 80 hectare plantation and knew every square inch of it. While his elephant keepers treated the pachyderms like mere animals, Raju would address them affectionately in Malayalam every time one passed by. Elephant Junction is one of very few plantations that take visitors around by elephant back on a demarcated trail. Raju was a walking, talking encyclopaedia of information about his spices. “All cardamom plants require a few conditions that are plentifully available on the Kerala coast. They require a hilly topography so that the water drains off; they require shade, so corral and jackfruit trees are grown on cardamom plantations and they require an equitable temperature all through the year, with moisture-laden breezes and plentiful rain. Cardamom plants fruit throughout the year, once every six weeks as a matter of fact, which works out to seven times a year. And that is why the spice has been named ellaka in Malayalam – because the word for seven is ella!” On the day of my visit, short green stems lay on the ground. Each had a few ripe cardamoms on it, and it was these that were being picked at lightning speed by Tamilian women. “Our industry would perish were it not for these hard-working ladies,” beamed the unassuming KG Raju. Apparently, they live across the border, just 7 kilometers away from Kumily in the Tamil province of Theni and have worked on cardamom plantations in Kerala for generations.

The spice coast of the Malabar has always been the home of two spices, cardamom and pepper. Cinnamon has always come from Sri Lanka and nutmeg and cloves from the Molucca Islands in Indonesia. Kochi has become, over the millennia, a trading post for all the spices, a throwback to the time when Arab traders would sail up to the Kerala coast on dhows, pack a consignment of pepper, ginger and cardamom, and sail on to Venice via Egypt and Istanbul. You can see the influences of all the traders along the seafront in Kochi from Dutch architecture in the trading posts and the Jewish quarter to Chinese fishing nets but on the whole, Kerala gave to its visitors more than it took from them.

My last port of call was a private (there’s that word again!) beach off Kovalam. A German professor based in Chennai, so the story goes, used to visit this part of the beach some decades ago. Around the same time, he noticed that beautiful old houses with attractive wooden frontages were being torn down to make way for concrete structures, so he bought the land where Niraamaya Surya Samudra now stands, and re-constructed cottages that were about to be destroyed. Those formed the nucleus of the lovely resort by the sea.

Not every cottage is traditional—a few are modern too. But it’s the casual juxtaposition of the two that is so organic. Two features stood out. One was the spa. Now, it may not be rocket science to get fabulous therapists trained in Ayurvedic massage in God’s own Country, but the Niraamaya Spa had a balance between traditional architecture and modern conveniences that should win it awards. The other feature of the resort was the food. The Executive Chef Prakash had worked in a Mediterranean restaurant in Delhi, aboard a cruise liner, a resort in the United States and in a small restaurant in Tuscany. Not bad for a boy from a tiny village in a forest in Karanataka, where he is still the only person to have worked outside it! The Kerala food in the open air dining room was spot on, but Chef Prakash had decided to give his customers a degustation menu on special request and he had created a meal around traditional Kerala food served up differently. One dish that stands out is three kinds of fish curry—meen moillee, meen manga curry and meen curry with kodampuli (fish tamarind), served in tiny portions off mussel shells. The western guests at the resort couldn’t seem to get enough of it. On my way back to the airport, I promised myself that I’d be back to this verdant state where even the shoe-shine men on the roads read newspapers and where banana sellers have the most photogenic shops in the country.

Mamagoto is an Asian café that is set to rock India

They are not quite the new kids on the block—in fact Kabir Suri and Rahul Khanna have been ruling the NCR food scene for some time now. However, with their latest Bandra outlet of Mamagoto up and running (and garnering rave reviews) and the Bengaluru cafe almost ready to start its kitchen fire—it’s the perfect time to shine the light on the delightfully easy-on-the-pockets and delicious play of food that is Mamagoto. Though I am not quite the Francophile, but I do firmly believe that money and food should not be discussed together—certainly not in an article dedicated to culinary arts. However, it is impossible to ignore the business acumen of the two who were “destined to start this venture together”. The first Mamagoto began in Khan Market. Suri and Khanna achieved an annual growth of 20 per cent for their business (which started with an investment of Rs1.8 crore) within a year. It has grown in number and strength since then. Though the growth story seems like a fairytale, the two did put in a lot of effort before things started.

“We began after spending a year trying to finalise a name, location, menu and staff. The restaurant gets its name from a Japanese word which means to play with food and true to the name we started to experiment with not just food but also with the decor,” Suri explains. And Khanna takes us through the ethos of the restaurant—affordable, quality-focused and fun. “The wall art, almost the Mamagoto signature, was more contained before. One of our investors came in and commented that the place looked more like a gallery. So, we created a more messy wall. The art is our signature. From our recipes to our aesthetics, we have created colourful Asian homages. We wished to create a space which was diametrically opposite to dark, sombre, bamboo shoot and dark-lanterned décor (seen in most Asian diners),” Khanna explains.

Though the Khan Market restaurant was the first one, the restaurant is not quite the mother ship. If one is looking to steal recipes (or chefs) one will have to covertly travel to a more industrial part of the town—at least one of the several industrial areas of the NCR. There, within a three-storeyed food factory and “show off laboratory” the magic happens. The “show off lab” is not something we coined recently, but a hygiene and quality laboratory that Khanna and team like to show to visitors if they ask politely enough. The day I visited the lab, a bottle of maple syrup was resting on a sill waiting to be ‘tested’ for quality. While in Khanna’s office, all manners of delicious condiments soaking in liquer were resting in glass jars, quite the witches’ brew. It was quite a sight really! One of the most impressive bit about the duo’s attitude towards food is their absolute disdain for MSG. We all know that omnipresent ingredient that one cannot avoid while dining Asianstyle? It is not allowed in Mamagoto mother ship or into any one of the kitchens. Yes, believe the earnest Panda on the menu.

Now for the real deal—the food. After hearing colleagues rant about Mamagoto for an year, I finally arrived at the Khan Market restaurant as member of a raucous and ravenous group of seven. It is important to point out that the raucous group fell silent soon after they began to eat and playing the game of passing the plate. Between the seven of us, we managed to eat pretty much everything on the menu that day. From a state of “hangry -ness” (when one is hungry, thereby angry, one is “hangry”. It is a word in the urban dictionary, check it out), we were soon cooing like babies. The oriental clear soup (chicken) was a broth of such wholesome goodness that it improved my temper. As did the soggy Thai basil fried rice. But it was the crispy fish fillet with black pepper sauce and the steamed fish in oyster sauce that hit the spot (I swear I dreamt of both later). It was one of the first times that I tasted basa and I remember the textured flakiness of the meat perfectly complimenting the sweetness of the sauce.

Relaxed, quirky and casual atmosphere with authentic yet affordable food (and drinks—but those I found to be less impressive), Mamagoto believes in making Asian food fun. Mamagoto dishes are not always ‘pure bred’ south-Asian, they are more akin to homages to Chinese, Thai and Japanese cuisines. For people seeking their favourites there is the traditional crispy lamb with spring onion and bell peppers, Thai chicken and water chestnut salad, java grilled fish in red hot sambal salsa (bursting with flavours) and the street vendor’s Panang curry bowl—all slightly tweaked versions of the familiar food.

If we had to really nitpick, we would simply point a finger at the desserts section. Yes, the Banoffee pie is good on most days. But mostly the desserts section seems limited. Some more options would not hurt.

I remember leaving Mamagoto for the first time swearing to return even if it was to sample their Khau Suey. Well, I did return a few times to the Khan Market outlet, as well as to the other outlets across the city. Heck, I became quite a fan. Overall Mamagoto food has successfully maintained its consistency. It is an issue that Khanna and Suri worry about. With the plan to have 30 outlets across India—and some more overseas in the near future—consistency of quality and taste are indeed the two worrisome factors that would determine the success of the venture. However, if they and their 650-odd team remain as fastidiousabout quality as they are now, I would not mind travelling to Mumbai, Bengaluru or Goa to eat either.

Wanted; A Leader For Indians

The General Elections–2014, Bharatiya Janata Party launched its campaign based on socioeconomic and aspirational politics uniting fragmented millions. After being elected leader of the BJP parliamentary party, Prime Minister-elect Mr Narendra Modi repeated his campaign motto of taking all segments of society along and promised development for all. He has a daunting task ahead. He needs to reform an economy suffering the worst slowdown since 1980s. His government needs to reduce fiscal deficit—which will help to bring down inflation and enable lowering of interest rates, which should be his second goal. Then, there needs to be modernisation and expansion of irrigation facilities to reduce dependence on unpredictable weather conditions, increase expenditure on R&D, facilitate connection between small farmers and final consumers, build adequate infrastructure for better transportation of food supplies and raw materials, and develop modern facilities for storage and distribution. People are impatient now. The public will not give our Prime Minister-elect much time to deliver. True, Modi has run a slick campaign but his economic policies are far from well-defined. He needs to remember that delivering at a state level is one thing; national level politics and economics is a whole new ball game altogether. So good luck to the man. Having secured a huge mandate where all sections of society voted for him, Modi must now be a Prime Minister for all Indians rather than sections—he would not be able to fulfil his growth and development goals unless he manages to unite not just the millions but the billion.

Continuing on the theme of daunting tasks and strong leadership, we have Mr R. Gopalakrishnan on the cover. He has steered companies through tough times and has four books to his credit; in this exclusive interview he talks of what it takes to be a good business leader. His words are not just for those in corporate sector. Though we have the usual fare of articles—I would especially emphasise on the Issue section. Finally, a salute to democracy and people’s choice, and hopefully, to secularism as well!

Meet the Director of Tata Sons, R. Gopalakrishnan, as he talks of human resources and leadership

“Doing politics” (seen as non-student-like behaviour) vis-àvis studying (a benign student phenomenon) is a dichotomy that many from West Bengal higher education system will be familiar with. Long before “apolitical” became a cool word across campuses in West Bengal, students who showed even remote interest in college politics or interacted with people who were genuinely involved, had to face one stern lecture from either family, seniors or teachers. For Calcutta-born Director of Tata Sons, R. Gopalakrishnan, it was his Head of the Department at IIT Kharaghpur who did the honours. Gopalakrishnan was then a youngster completing his BTech degree at the IIT after completing his graduation in physics from Calcutta University. The reason why he was showing any interest in “politics” was purely academic. He was enticed by the opportunity of public speaking which political campaigning provided. It was merely an extra-curricular activity, and not the only one he was pursuing, there was debating for the college team; and writing and editing for the college magazine along with attending regular classes for BTech degree.

The Director cuts quite a figure. Yes, he is the “corporate honcho” but he harbours a humourous side, is honest to the core (he was the one to share the IIT story with us), and prefers to stick to simple answers when trying to explain anything. How he speaks is how he writes. In all of his three books, Gopalakrishnan is fluent with anecdotes and instances to describe and define. He resorts to jargon only when the situation demands it. There is little of that in his usual answers unless it is a pointed query. Also, a not-so-hidden aspect to this extraordinary leader is that he genuinely loves to teach. “I knew clearly that I was to be in a mercantile career but the instinct to teach remained an unfulfilled part of my personality,” Gopalakrishnan explains. It could be the fact that Gopalakrishnan and his siblings were the first college graduates in their family. Or that he did have a great time learning, but through the years whenever he received an opportunity to share his knowledge bank, he seized the chance.

Our talk was the perfect time to ask one of the leaders of the industry about what makes good business and business leaders; considering that he also worked as a dispatch clerk in a depot, and an invoice clerk in the accounts department while working for Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL).

Good People

“A few months before graduation, I appeared for the HUL interview for computer traineeship and was asked whether I would consider marketing instead of computers. I responded negatively: an engineer to visit shops to sell products? No way! A couple of comfortable weeks in HUL’s headquarters, I was given a ticket to go to Nasik and meet a certain Mr Kelkar who was to teach me to work as a salesman in his territory. I was upset. In Ozhar (a town in Maharastra), I was moving from shop to shop with a bullock-cart full of products and a salesman’s folder. Imagine my embarrassment when an IIT friend appeared in front of me and exclaimed, ‘I thought you joined as a management trainee’. But this was the most leveling experience of my life. Later, I realised the value of grassroots level experience. My advice to young people would be to seek out nail-dirtying, collar-soiling and shoe-wearing tasks. That is how you learn about your organisation, about the true nature of work and the dignity of the tasks that go into building great enterprises.”

In an earlier interview Gopalakrishnan had described a “professional manager”, as “one who tries to match his/her firm’s capabilities and resources to the mindset prevailing in the target market. One who assesses the mindset of his target market by the interplay among consumers, competitors, policy administration and politics. In management jargon, the mindset of the country pertains to the collective sense of destiny, direction, and discovery (what the Late CK Prahalad, Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Corporate Strategy at the Stephen M Ross School of Business in the University, Michigan, had coined as strategic intent)”. It is an idea that he adheres to even today and ones that he went on to write about in his first book The Case of the Bonsai Manager: Lessons for Managers on Intuition. In the book, Gopalakrishnan encourages managers to listen to their “gut” in times of difficulties. “Though no manager sets out to become a bonsai manager, yet they can reach out to new directions and goal by following their innate genius”. The Case Of The Bonsai Manager discusses the basic characteristics of human nature, how to chart out an agenda for change and explore complexities of employee behavior within organisations. In his second book, he further explored what he called “gut instinct” and drove the theme beyond it to “intuitive wisdom”. “All knowledge is the result of experiences. While theoretical knowledge can be acquired in institutions, putting it into practice and gaining intuitive wisdom requires many years of experience. If a person keeps an open mind and is willing to listen, this process can be expedited by learning from triumphs and failures,” explains Gopalakrishnan.

However, for a man who comes from a strictly empirical background, it is a surprise that Gopalakrishnan writes so extensively on behavioral and socio-economic sciences. “Yes, my training might have been strictly in the sciences where logic is everything, but in my early 40s I realised that the rules were not that simple. Technology may have developed over a decade, but the human brain was a more complex mechanism which had centuries to evolve. I realised that the human brain adapts far more slowly than technology does. So, behaviour of people was a more complex and fascinating process for me, governed by a bit more than logic. I have managed people who were articulate and yet did not succeed as much as reticent people who managed to do better than them. Physiologically as we have toxins in our bodies, psychologically, too, we have toxins which inhibit successes. I wanted to study these toxins or attitudes.”

A lot of ideas that Gopalakrishnan wrote in his first book were germinating around the time when HUL offered him (and several other seniors) a chance to conduct a mentoring programme for the less experienced company managers. Obviously, the man who loved and wished to teach “grabbed” the chance. “Teaching from experiences and drawing lessons from life itself, is a fascinating and a more effective process. Throughout my years in HUL, I have been part of several internal training courses,” he says. In 1984 Gopalakrishnan became the head of the export department in HUL. In those days there was little data on export worthiness; quality; documentation and entering new markets. Gopalakrishnan and a few of his good men, began to encapsulate what they had learnt through their experiences into modules. The modules were divided into 30 lectures that Gopalakrishnan took to the Bombay University and those were incorporated into the degree course on export, a part of business studies. Through the years Gopalakrishnan has internalised a favourite saying of Sir Thomas Lipton; “There’s no greater fun than hard work”. This attitude also helps us to understand how he expects a positive worker and a manager to behave. “The manager has to first capture the heart, then the mind and then the body (his/her inclination to work) of the people s/he is there to manage. Eloquence or simplicity are two paths to capturing the heart. Manmohan Singh managed this through his simplicity. A more powerful orator such as Prime Minister Narendra Modi captured the world through his eloquence. But getting the attention is not enough. You need to keep that undivided attention with you, on you and with your goals. A good manager manages to do exactly that.”

Good Business

One of the best examples of “good business” can be derived from Gopalakrishnan’s resume; the Tata Group. The “Tata’s biggest achievement will be for it to be recognised as an ethically upright corporation that uses capitalism in a socialistic way (currently the company is worth more than `6 trillion approximately). It is a company that epitomises the entrepreneurial Indian spirit, Tata’s promise to become a meaningful business may not be far from its laudable goal.

“What any company needs is a group of unstoppable workers as innovators. These unstoppable innovators must not be prolific in only idea generation but must have the innovation stamina or the follow-through skills of advocacy and persistence; innovators should not seek instant gratification as a reward, as the Bhagavad Gita states. Leaders of a company must be so emotionally entangled with innovation and young people’s aspirations that they do the job for which they are really paid, which is to groom younger people.” So get a holistic idea of the job that you do, desire what you deserve, take care of your physical health and know that direction is more important than distance. Recently speaking at a debate in Mumbai along with Mani Shankar Aiyyar, Gopalakrishnan chose to look at India’s economy as a “long term view”.

“Two or three years in a nation’s life is a tiny blip and all nations go through ups and downs. To get a fair picture, one needed to consider a longer span,” he said. He chose the year 2000, the start of the new millennium, as the inflexion point; from that to now was 13 years, and to draw comparisons with that, he looked at 13 years before 2000. Looked at this way, progress in every parametre was astonishing. Gopalakrishnan remains optimistic about India and her growth story, and on a smaller scale quite content with the direction that his life has taken him. Armed with his Kindle (more than 60 books in a gadget, what’s there to not like?), disciplined life (to bed at 10pm and up by 5am) and his zeal for life (a regular tennis player and a golfer), he is now on his fifth book. What is it about? Well, one has to wait and watch.

Telengana, India’s 29th State

NDA’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government swearing-in ceremony took take place on May 26, 2014. Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa were among a slew of foreign dignitaries who arrived in Delhi to attend Modi’s swearing-in ceremony. PM Narendra Modi firmed up the top-level appointments of Nripendra Misra as principal secretary and Ajit Doval as national security advisor in the first week. Other people who were expected to be part of Modi’s entourage is Andhra Pradesh cadre officer Satish Chandra, who looks set to get the important job of private secretary to the PM. He has earlier served as special secretary to N. Chandrababu Naidu during his past 25 months as CM of Andhra (2002-04). S. Jaishankar, India’s Ambassador to the US, is being considered for the role of foreign policy advisor to the PM. Also on June 2, 2014, Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) chief, K. Chandrasekhar Rao was sworn in as the Chief Minister of newly-carved state of Telangana by Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan at Raj Bhavan in Hyderabad. Eleven others were also sworn in as cabinet ministers by Narasimhan, who administered them oath of office and secrecy. The Cabinet includes Rao’s son K.T. Rama Rao and nephew T. Harish Rao.

US, UK Add Pressure

Release// Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram is prepared to start releasing up to half of the kidnapped schoolgirls in the coming days after dropping demands for the release of top commanders in talks with the Nigerian government.

The militant Islamist group, which kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls a month ago, is willing to conduct a gradual release of its hostages in return for the freeing of Boko Haram prisoners in Nigerian jails, it was claimed. In a significant concession, the group has abandoned demands for its top commanders to be released, seemingly aware that this would be politically impossible for the Nigerian government. Officially designated a foreign terrorist organisation by the State Department in November, Boko Haram burst into public view in 2009 with a series of attacks on public buildings in northeastern Nigeria. A brutal counteroffensive by Nigerian security services followed, leaving hundreds dead.

The precise structure and membership of Boko Haram and its affiliates, and even the tenets of their extremist ideology, are unclear. Nigerians I spoke with on a research trip late last year unanimously condemned the group’s violent tactics, as well as its focus on imposing a locally outlandish brand of Islam. Still, it has a real following in the country’s impoverished northeast. “Ninety-five percent of our youth in Borno have a connection to them,” Biye Peter Gumtha, a national assembly member from the region, recently told German radio. “Young men without prospects are open to radical offers.”

What Really Happened

Electi ons// The fact that BJP won a majority on its own in the 16th Lok Sabha has drawn comparisons with previous elections in which parties have won a majority of seats on their own. What has not quite figured in most of these comparisons is the fact that no party has ever before won more than half the seats with a vote share of just 31 per cent. Indeed, the previous lowest vote share for a single-party majority was in 1967, when the Congress won 283 out of 520 seats with 40.8 per cent of the total valid votes polled. This statistical fact points to an important aspect of the latest wave. Far from spelling the end of a fractured polity, the 2014 results show just how fragmented the vote is. It is precisely because the vote is so fragmented that the BJP was able to win 282 seats with just 31 per cent of the votes. Simply put, less than four out of every 10 votes opted for NDA candidates and not even one in three chose somebody from the BJP to represent them. Those who picked the Congress or its allies were even fewer, less than one in five for the Congress with a 19.3 per cent vote share (incidentally higher than BJP’s 18.5 per cent in 2009) and less than one in every four for the UPA. Unfortunately for the Congress, its 19.3 per cent votes only translated into 44 seats while BJP’s 18.5 per cent had fetched it 116 seats. With the combined vote share of the BJP and Congress adding up to just over 50 per cent, almost half of all those who voted in these elections voted for some other party. Even if we add up the vote tallies of the allies of these two parties, it still leaves a very large chunk out. The NDA’s combined vote share was 38.5 per cent and the UPA’s was just under 23 per cent. That leaves out nearly 39 per cent— or a chunk roughly equal to the NDA’s—for all others. Is the 38.5 per cent vote share for the NDA the lowest any ruling coalition has obtained? No. The parties that constituted UPA-1 had just 35.9 per cent of votes polled and the Congress won just 38.2 per cent of the votes in 1991, when it ran a minority government under PV Narasimha Rao.

But, except in 1991, they had to depend on outside support to keep the government afloat, which meant that the total vote share of those in the government or supporting it was higher. In 1989, the National Front, consisting of the Janata Dal, DMK, TDP, and Congress (S) won 146 seats and a vote share of 23.8 per cent. To this was added the 85 seats and 11.4 per cent of the BJP and the 52 seats and 10.2 per cent of the Left, taking the total including those supporting from outside to 283 seats and 45.3 per cent of the votes.

The NDA does not need any outside support to form the government. Indeed, the BJP can form it even on its own. But unless it ropes in others, it will become the government with the lowest popular support in terms of vote share after the PV Narasimha Rao government.

Thousands Flee Homes

Flood// in Maglaj, Bosnia, tens of thousands fled their homes to escape the worst flooding in a century. Rapidly rising rivers surged into homes, sometimes reaching up to the second floors, sending people climbing to rooftops for rescue. Hundreds were also evacuated in Croatia. After the floods, Bosnia and Serbia struggled to recover, after three months of rain fell in just three days in the Balkan countries. At least 40 people have died in Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia. Half a million people have fled their homes, and tens of thousands are without drinking water. Bosnian Foreign Minister Zlatko Lagumdzija compared the physical destruction to the country's 1992-'95 civil war. Hundreds of landslides have swept away homes. Rescue workers from the European Union, Russia and Turkey have been helping stranded people and delivering food, blankets, generators and clean water to those in shelters. There have also been reports of thousands of dead animals—cows, sheep, pigs and dogs—washing up as floodwaters have receded. But the Bosnia and Herzegovina Mine Action Center has been working around the clock on another emergency: dislodged land mines. About 2 million land mines were planted during Bosnia's civil war. The mine action center helped remove most of them. Only 120,000 remained in a 460-square-mile area, marked by some 25,000 signs that the centre spent 10 years marking.

A brief introduction might be appropriate to start our story but I shall try to be real brief.

I have been practicing plastic surgery in Salaja hospital, Vijayawada since 1984 along with my husband, Dr M A Saleem, a General and a Laparoscopic surgeon. We were together as classmates since 1966 at Guntur Medical College, P G I, Chandigarh, and did MS in 1975. We got married in Chandigarh after MS in the presence of surgical faculty, friends and few relatives. Most probably, on gender basis, I was denied the job of Registrar in general surgery and I applied for plastic surgery with some reluctance. Prof C Balakrishanan, Plastic Surgery Professor, probably thought that I might not do justice to my profession as I was a married woman-surgeon, but he was magnanimous to offer me the registrar post for four months to observe if I could be trained as a plastic surgeon.

We had our daughter during that time and I took only one week of maternity leave and continued the residency. Under such a strict, meticulous and methodical teacher and boss I could finish MCh in 1978 and also change his attitude towards woman plastic surgeons. He went ahead and offered me a decent job in the same department after my qualifying in M Ch.

After qualifying in Plastic surgery from the PGI, Chandigarh, my options were to continue working there or look for a job elsewhere. Although we had the opportunity to continue as the faculty in PGI we opted to go to UK to work and learn more in our respective subjects and also left a good chance of going to UAE.

After spending five to six years in Belfast UK, we had the options of settling there; or going back as faculty to PGI; or join the Andhra state service; or get into practice. We chose to take the latter option and settled in my native place, Vijayawada in private practice.

Coming back to our UK stint, it was a cloudy winter day on November 23, 1978, when we landed at Heathrow holding our two year old daughter. I was going through a roller-coaster of emotions and was wondering if I could fulfill all my dreams of getting trained further in micro-vascular surgery and cosmetic surgery while looking after our daughter and family. I only prayed that I should have the courage to accept whatever be the experience, either disappointment or achievement.

Dr Mann, our senior from Chandigarh, came to the airport to receive us and took us home. While having lunch, he said that I shall be disappointed as I might not get a chance to work and learn plastic surgery as I was hoping and I shall be frustrated. He asked us to go back home at the earliest. But I told him that we had spent all our savings to reach London and we could not afford to go back to India. He told us that he would support us for the return and suggested us to go back and look for jobs. Then I told him that we would certainly take his advice if things turned so bad.

We were staying at Downpatrick, a small town in Northern Ireland as Saleem got his first job in surgery there. We were given a big independent bungalow to stay in the residential area of the town.

In December, it was very cold and it was lonely too staying without any acquaintances in a strange land. However we had a middle aged lady to mind our daughter when we were away at work in two different hospitals. We did not have a car and I used to start from home by 5:30 am to walk a mile to reach the bus station and then another mile to the hospital where I worked.

Wearing a regular saree and slippers to walk in the mornings in that cold December was not an easy task. In the evenings, it used to get dark around 4 pm and many a times initially I lost my way to home and had to walk around for hours to locate the house. Everything became a routine in a week but I used to feel self-conscious in the bus as the rest of the passengers stared at me in my ‘strange’ dress.

Life in general used to be very organised either in the supermarkets or on the roads and also at work. The doctors in the hospital were friendly and helped me to understand the system.

As we were staying in Belfast, during those times of trouble with IRA (Irish Republic Army) in late seventies and early eighties, I came to know many facts of the troubles of the people staying there. The discrimination of the catholic and protestant communities was very obvious and felt that the Falls road always reminded me of one of Indian city roads with its graffitti on the walls and unclean areas in the residential locality. I took time to understand the reasons for the fights and bomb blasts and the security measures taken, even in hospitals like Royal Victoria, situated just next to Falls road. But I never felt scared to talk to anyone or see the patients at any time of the day or night whenever I was on the call.

The situation reminded me of religious and caste conflicts in India but the violence here was on a much larger scale. I used to express to the professional colleagues that we Indians were very much at peace in spite of the diversity of religion and language and we accepted the inter religious and inter caste marriages with open hearts, unlike them. I came to know that the marriage between protestant and catholic individuals was not welcome and usually such couples left the place to settle abroad. We saw so much of bomb blasts and destruction in Northern Ireland that we began to wonder if peace could ever be restored and if all the people here could ever lead a normal life like people in other cities of the world. We used to hear about Bobby Sands, born out of catholic mother and protestant father and jailed as a terrorist. I was pregnant with my son and used to look forward to end of troubles.

It was May 6, 1982, all the roads were blocked as Booby Sands died in jail while on hunger strike. On the same night I started having the labour pains and was taken late in the night around 11 pm to the hospital for the delivery and our son Aman (peace) was born. We named him so with the wish to see peace in the world, but we nicknamed him Bobby.

After Bobby was born, I stopped going to work to take care of my two children, while Saleem continued working at White Abbey hospital. In 1983, we got Ammu, our daughter, admitted into a private school. Though most of the people were friendly with us in the work place, Ammu faced a small problem at the school. One of the girls sitting next to her used to make faces as if Ammu was smelling foul. I did not know how to solve the issue, though I could have gone to the principal to talk to the girl and her parents. But I wanted to solve it in my own way. With her parents’ permission, I brought the girl to our house and made her spend time with Ammu in her room with all her toys and both of them became very good friends and never had an issue about anything else after that.

I always had the desire to serve my own people, having got the training from one of the most prestigious institutes in India. Also we both felt that we can bring up our children in an Indian environment. I chose Vijayawada to practice for the selfish reason of it being my native place in spite of the discouragement from family and friends as they feared that we might not be welcome due to our inter-religious marriage. We were confident that it could be misplaced apprehension and settled in private practice with the first exclusive private plastic surgery practice set up Salaja Hospital in 1984. We named our hospital to be as neutral as possible—SALAJA (Sa—for Saleem, La—for Lakshmi, Ja—for Janma meaning birth)— on February 21, 1984, which happens to be our wedding day. We stayed in my father’s house where I was born, converting the prayer room into operating room and had 10 beds. No patient was refused surgery for want of money and we always tried to be professional and helped each other in surgery. There were occasions when we were exploited and some underpaid for our services. In four years we could shift to our new premises where we had 30 beds with two operating rooms. Academically speaking, we have presented scientific papers in national and international conferences.

Though life was comfortable and the pay was decent in UK, I had felt like a bird in a golden cage and had longed for freedom for myself and my soul. Hence, I returned to my motherland India.