Happy New Year

Wishing all a Very Very Happy and Prosperous New Year!

Let us celebrate the New Year with Vinaini!

Konark Festival

The Konark Festival was organized from the 1^st to the 5^th December this year. This annual dance festival, featuring major classical dance forms of India, is organized against the backdrop of the famous Konark temple, by the Department of Tourism, Govt. of Odisha. I longed to watch this Festival by being present at the venue but since Konark is 60 km away from Bhubaneswar and returning at night is not convenient, I suppressed my desire. However, to my good luck, it was announced that the programme would be telecast live by DD Bharati. I was overjoyed. So I was glued to the TV from 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM on all 5 days.

The first item of the first evening was an Odissi dance presentation by Madhavi Mudgal and Group from New Delhi. She is an established danseuse and choreographer and set the tone for the 5-day event. The other item of the evening was Kuchipudi by Raja Radha Reddy and Group from the nation’s capital. I was eager and curious to watch the husband-wife duo dance together. The stage at Konark is quite large and no solo or duet performance is included. The presentation of the Group was very enjoyable. I have written about Raja and Radha Reddy in my post ‘Pati Pani Aur Woh’. Raja first married Radha and later, her sister Kaushalya also married him. Kaushalya is an accomplished dancer in her own right. That evening, Kaushalya was in the group playing the accompanying music.

Raja and Radha were married when he was 11 and she, 5. Later, so impressed Kaushalya was by the dance-skills of her sister’s husband that Kaushalya insisted on marrying him without delay. They came to an agreement to be a threesome. The two sisters each have a daughter by him, Yamini and Bhavna. The children, two half-sisters also have taken to dancing. In the following two videos, Raja, Radha and Kaushalya’s daughter talk about their life and dance.

The two items of the second evening were Mohiniattam by Bharati Shivaji and Group from New Delhi and Odissi dance by Meera Das and Group from Cuttack, the former capital of Odisha. The first item of the third evening was Odissi dance by a Group led by Kasturi Pattanaik who has set up a dance academy at New Delhi. The second item was Bharatanatyam by Mallika Sarabhai and her Group from Ahmedabad. Mallika is the daughter of the famous space scientist Vikram Sarabhai and the dance exponent Mrinalini Sarabhai.

The fourth evening started with the Assamese Satriya dance by Anita Sharma and her Group from Guwahati. I had never had the opportunity to watch a presentation of this dance form. Here is a sample of it.

The second item of that evening was Odissi dance by Surupa Sen and her Group from Bengaluru. The item was a fusion of Odissi dance with modern and contemporary dance forms. The fifth evening saw presentations of Kathak by Malabika Mitra and her Group from Kolkata. The last evening started with Kathak by Malabika Mitra and her Group from Kolkata.    

  

The 5^th and concluding day of the Festival saw a Kathak presentation by Malabika Mitra and Group from Kolkata and an Odissi dance presentation by students of Guru Kelu Charan Mohapatra Odissi Research Centre, Bhubaneswar and of Utkal University of Culture.

On each evening, there was a jugalbandi of performing and visual arts. As the world famous danseuses and danseurs were presenting dance numbers with intricate nuances, the artist Baladev  Maharatha of B K Art College, Bhubaneswar, was busy painting masterpieces reflecting the theme of the dance numbers being presented on the stage alongside. It was a feast for the eyes. By the time the dance programme of the evening came to a close, the painting also was completed.

While the precincts of the Konark temple were reverberating with the dance and music in the evenings, an International Sand Art Festival was going on 3 km away on the beach of river Chandrabhaga. Thirty sand artists from India were busy every day, creating sand sculptures on the golden sand.   

Here is a link to the Konark Dance Festival 2012.

There is another annual event called Konark Music and Dance Festival which takes place nearby. It is organized by Konark Natya Mandap founded by Guru Gangadhar Pradhan. It is available on YouTube.

The Hundredth Flower

This post is the hundredth flower in my garden.

My first post was published on the 16^th May, 2010. I was encouraged – nay, prodded – by one who was later called by a fellow blogger, the.orchestra.of.life, as his ‘Blog Mother’. After reading this, I had commented that she is my blog mother too, although biologically she is my daughter whom I call ‘Daughter !!’. I must confess that I was a little – indeed, very - shaky to traverse the arena as I was –and am still - only a marginally literate person as far as computers and internet are concerned.

I still silently laugh when I recall the day when the head of the Circle Office of my Bank called me and told me, “From tomorrow you will be the TOE of the Circle.” I was at a loss to understand what he was saying. Then it occurred to me that TOE meant ‘Technology Overseeing Executive’. The earlier TOE had been transferred, (His earlier designation was DM-IT, Divisional Manager – Information Technology, and teasingly he was called “Dam-It’) and I was to step into his shoes and oversee the Technology Management of the Circle, in other words, look after the computerization of the Branches and Offices of the Bank under our Circle. Much earlier, I had once headed a partially computerized Branch but there were so many trained youngsters in the Branch that technical matters hardly came to me. This first brush of mine with computers did not rub me much. But I had now no escape and so had to accept the Big Boss’s diktat. Even then, my personal handling of computers was confined to sending and receiving e-mail. To my relief, my official duty was to ‘manage’ technology and not handle it much.

I used to send long e-mails to the daughters and these were narratives of my experiences, of the places I visited and, some times, my views. After my retirement, during a visit to Daughter II, she suggested a way for filling my free time. “Why don’t you start blogging?, she suggested. To dilute my fear of computers, she retrieved one of my old e-mails to her, chiseled it and posted it as my first blog-post. Then she prodded me to edit and convert some of my e-mails to blog-posts. Since then, I have progressed a little bit in the area and so here I am, releasing my hundredth post!

While doing this, I am reminded of the fact that a few months ago, Sachin Tendulkar scored his Hundredth Century and the cricket-world went ga ga over it. He has scored Centuries in 51 Tests and 49 ODIs, making a total of a hundred. Of course a few odd critics said that you cannot add 51 potatoes and 49 oranges and call it a hundred! In their view, a person can be credited with a hundred Centuries only if it is in either 100 Tests or 100 One Day Internationals!!

The late Chinese leader, Mao Zedong once said, “Let a hundred flowers bloom.” This was to encourage emergence of a lot of ideas. In the course of a speech in February, 1957, he said, “Letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend, is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and sciences and a flourishing culture in our land.” The slogan was used during the late 1950’s when the Chinese intelligentsia was invited to criticize the political system and bring to the surface, its flaws. However, it is suspected that the initiative was a deliberate attempt to bring out the secret dissidents into open by encouraging them to show themselves as critical of the Government. Such suspicion arose out of the fact that many of those who put forward views which were unwelcome to Mao, were executed.

This slogan is commonly misquoted as, ‘Let a thousand flowers bloom.’

However, the misquotation improves the idea of letting a number of ideas emerge.

To celebrate my 100th post let me a get a thousand Chinese hands dance.

Time Management

Very often, we hear people saying, “ I want to do this but I don’t find time.”? It was Henry Ford who said, “The busy man has time for everything.” When a person says that he/she has no time what it really means that he/she is not able to manage his/her time. Time-management is life-management. One who manages her/his time can manage her/his life.

When a person really wants to do something she/he will definitely find the time to do it. The way lies in prioritizing the tasks on hand. The most important task should get priority no. 1. This way, one should prioritise the things one wants to do in order of their importance. The least important task should be the last item in this list.

Stephen Covey, author of First Things First, narrates the story of a speaker who demonstrates as he speaks to his audience about filling a bucket with rocks, gravel, sand and water. He first puts rocks into the bucket and asks, “Is the bucket full?” The audience says, “Yes.” Then he puts gravel into the rock-filled bucket and watching him, people realize that the bucket can take more. Then he puts first sand and then water into the bucket and declares that the bucket is full. The audience realizes that it truly is full only now! Stephen Covey explains that if one tries to fill the bucket in any other order, not as many rocks, or as much gravel or sand could have been accommodated.

In this story, our time is the bucket and the big rocks are the most important tasks; the next important things are the gravel, sand and water in that order. If we start with filling the bucket first with water, sand or gravel, we would miss the most important thing, the rocks. The lesson of the story is that we should first arrange tasks on hand in order of their importance and start doing the most important task first. (Here we need not waste our time over the thought that if one first fills the bucket with water, the bucket can still take rocks, gravel and sand and the excess water will flow out. 'Water' here can be treated in a different sense and we can ignore this normal nature of water.)

If we do not prioritise the tasks, we shall miss out the important things.

Another way of managing time is to arrange things to do in order of our control over them. The item over which we have no control, for example the rush-hour traffic, should be on the top and the item over which we have full control should be at the bottom. We should try managing the time of items over which we have full control and move up to the next upper item, so that we will have some elbow-room while attending to tasks in situations over which we have no or least control.

The 80-20 Rule can be applied to time-management also. Eighty percent of the things we do in a day have only 20 percent value for us. Twenty percent of the tasks on our hand have eighty percent value. Hence we should concentrate on these 20 percent of the tasks, which should be our top priority. These are like the rocks in Covey’s story. If we fill our time first with ‘water’ or ‘sand’ in the story, we shall have no time left for the ‘rocks’, which give us eighty percent value.

In the present day of information-explosion and our unceasing accessibility thanks to mobile phones and communication-revolution, the demands on our time have increased manifold. Hence choosing what we can and should ignore has become one of the most important tools of time-management.

So throughout the day, ask yourself: What can I do now, which would be the most useful and beneficial this moment?

SOME TIME-SAVERS:

1. When we go to some place where we know we may have to wait for some time, like going to the airport or railway station to receive someone or visiting our doctor or our hair-dresser, we can carry some light reading material like magazines which we plan to read, so that the waiting time can be gainfully utilized. The hair-dresser or the doctor may be keeping some reading materials to keep  the waiting customers occupied but these may not be of much use to you even if you read them for ‘time pass’ which will be really 'time-kill'.

      2. While traveling in a bus or car, which may not be suitable for reading, utilize the time for     

           thinking or planning.

       3.  Remember the Store Management Principle  PEEP - a Place for Everything and Everything in its Place. The second part is more important, everything in its  place.

So, keep back everything in its place after using it.   Arrange things in your kitchen, on your study table and in your office room properly and uncluttered, so that you don’t have to waste time searching for things. While working in my garden, I use different tools, big and small. Sometimes, due to laziness I would place the tool wherever I would be working and would forget to bring it while  leaving the spot. Because of this, sometimes I temporarily lose small tools and have to waste a lot of time searching for them. On one occasion, I found a lost small tool after about a year!!! It had got embedded under the earth and resurfaced when I dug the spot for some other work.

In the same way we have 'lost' some household items at the time of some of my several transfers when I was working with my Bank. We usually found these at the time of my next transfer!                        

4. In office, follow the principle that you don’t have to see the same paper twice. Dispose incoming letters the first time you see them.

5. Do not postpone doing things. Remember the saying, ‘Jo kaal karna hai, aaj karo; jo aaj karma hai, abhi karo’. (Do today what is to be done tomorrow; do now what is to be  done today.)
6. Do not postpone; just do it. 
7. Never put off till tomorrow, anything that you can dump for ever. 
8. Nothing gives you more free time than being punctual.    
 

TAIL PIECE:

Q. What is the meaning of the word ‘procrastinate’?.

A. I shall look into the dictionary tomorrow.

2. a.I am going to stop putting off things - starting from tomorrow 

     b.Boss to subordinate: "Procrastination isn't your worst problem. I like it when you put off  
         your mistakes till tomorrow." - Cartoon by Randy Glasbergen

On The Face Of Him

What differentiates a man from a woman? And a man from a boy? Apart from the soft voice, it is the facial hair. At the onset of puberty, the voice of a boy breaks and loses its softness. Around the same time, seedlings of dark hair sprout above and below a boy’s lips and later, they spread to the cheeks. The area below the temples slowly become hairy and the hair on the head join the growth on the chin. Facial hair marks out adolescent boys from girls.

A bushy, luxuriant set of whiskers is considered as symbol of virility and alpha maleness.

Some men try to clean out this ‘dirt’ from their faces and try to have a pre-puberty look but in vain. Their daily struggle with nature in this regard becomes endless. Even after a clean and close shave, the darkish shade remains on the skin. Some men make a virtue out of this natural growth; they either surrender to nature or try to give this natural gift a shape of their choice. This opens up myriad possibilities and an endless facial hair designs. Some people sport a linear and horizontal or even diagonal growth under the nose and shave off the remaining growth. Some men follow the path laid down by their religion and either shave off the growth blow the nose leaving the remaining crop untouched; some leave the entire growth untouched.

Ancient sages of Indian myths like Valmiki, Vyasadeb or Kanwa Muni had long flowing facial hair. Mention of the name 'Rabindranath Tagore' brings to mind the image of a sage with a luxurious flowing mane.

Talking of facial hair-designs, there is the trade mark Amitabh Bachchan design and that of the Odisha-born Sam Pitroda, who brought about the revolution in Indian telecommunication system when he agreed to be an advisor to Rajiv Gandhi. There is the ‘small triangle’ design just below the lower lip. There are ‘butterfly moustaches’ and ‘goaty beards’. These are only a few of the numerous designs and designing male facial hair designs has become a thriving industry!

The moustache on the male face symbolises honour. Some men are not satisfied with the density of their facial hair. There is good news for such people. A new and lucrative field in cosmetic surgery has started growing on male upper lips. Moustache transplant has started in the Middle East. A Turkish plastic surgeon performs about 60 such corrections in a month. A French surgeon is providing moustache transplants to a number of patients from the Middle East who travel to Paris as medical tourists.  

Men in the Armed Forces generally prefer to have big moustaches. Big whiskers give them a macho look. We once had a retired Army man with big moustaches as our neighbour. He used to love drinking milk. Whenever he drank milk, a white mark of this healthful liquid would remain on the lower part of his moustache, giving him a funny look. Looking at his huge moustache, my small daughter used to ask me, “While making tea, he would not need to strain it as his moustache would do the job of a strainer while he would be sipping tea!”

While on moustaches and beards, I am reminded of pictures of Akbar in story books. While his facial hair would be perfectly grey indicating his advanced age, his queen would invariably be a young woman. Did he discard his older queens.

Gyani Zail Singh, the former President of India used to dye his hair and moustache and beard jet black. He is reported as having once made a statement, somewhat like this, after being chosen as the Congress candidate for election of President of India, “I would do whatever assignment Madam (Indira Gandhi) gives me; even if she gives me a broom and asks me to sweep the streets, I would gladly do it.” Yet this man came to his own when, after her assassination, Rajiv Gandhi became Prime Minister and did not treat Zail Singh well. So much so that when the Post Office Bill strongly supported by Rajiv Gandhi and passed by both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha went for assent of the President, Zail Singh killed the Bill by just sitting over it. There is no time limit for the President of India for giving or withholding his/her assent, or sending the Bill back for re-consideration. (If a Bill sent for reconsidered is passed by the two Houses once again, the President has no option but to give assent.) Zail Singh did nothing and so the Bill was ‘killed’.

Facial hair leads one to ‘side burns’, the hair that grows below the temples and near the ears. At one time, having long sideburns became the rage. It is reported that this facial hair style was first sported by one General Sideburns of the U S Army. The style was named after him and called ‘sideburns’.

The latest fashion among the film heroes and heroes on the small screen has been sporting a 2-day old stubble on the face. But in the ads for razor blades, the girl still prefers a clean-shaved chin of her hero.

Talking of facial hair on male body takes me to chest-hair. In several novels and short stories which I have read, the lady, when close to her man, gently draws lines on his chest-hair with her finger-nails or strokes it with her finger.

Hormone imbalance leads to the growth of some facial hair on some girls to different extents. Sometimes, a single hair grows out of a mole on a female face. Many girls wax their hands and legs to remove the unwanted hair. Recently there was a news-item saying that a Sikh girl has facial hair and a mischievous person put this on the net for all to see. This should have embarrassed and enraged any ordinary girl but she is made of better stuff. She took this calmly and explained cogently on the net her belief in the sacredness of the body and why it should not be disturbed. The offender got the point and apologized.

Here I shall let out a secret about my ‘youngish’ look even as I am a senior citizen. I do not wear a moustache or a beard. In later years, I found out a benefit out of this. I have a good crop of dark hair on my top. This darkness has not disappeared lost its sheen with age; only very few strands have become grey but these are so overwhelmingly outnumber by the dark ones that they are hardly noticed. So, most people are unable to guess my age.  In contrast to the crop on the head, a single grey member in moustache stands out and gets noticed as it is on the eye-level of the viewer. Hence even a couple of grey hairs below the nose or below the lower lip of a male’s face indicate that he is past his prime!L(((((  My clean-shaved face serves me well in this regard.:))))))))))))))

And this leads me to the hair on male arms, which helped prevent a fraud in my Bank. A burqua-clad person came to a bank counter and presented a cheque. The bank-employee found that the particular Account belonged to a well-known and valued customer who had kept large sums in the Bank. The employee smelt something fishy, briefly left the counter, came back and told the cheque-presenter that the Branch Manager would like to meet her in his cabin. When the person went to the Branch Manager, the latter politely asked her to sit, placed the cheque on the table and said, “There is a small difference in the signature; please sign once again.” When the person took out ‘her’ hand to sign, the Manager noticed that there was a thick growth of dark hair on the fore-arm. He asked the person, “Are you Mrs. Khan?” The answer was, “Why, yes’ and the voice was a course male one!

It turned out that the son of the customer (a Muslim lady) had stolen a leaf from his mother’s Cheque Book, had forged her signature and was trying to withdraw a large sum from her Account without her knowledge!!!    

The whiskers on a cat’s face serve a good purpose. Before entering through a hole in the door or any other entering point, the cat puts its face through it and ‘measures’ the width of the opening. If its whiskers pass through it easily, it indicates its body can pass through the hole. So the cat enters it. If the whiskers get bent, it means that its body cannot pass through the hole. So it decides against trying to enter it. Nature’s this gift to the cat is made use while making the body of lorries. Two protruding thick spring-like projections are fixed on either side of a truck. While entering a narrow lane, the driver comes to know that if ‘these’ whiskers pass through, the whole truck can pass through.   

Here is poem on theft of moustache, by the the Bengali King of Nonsense Verses Sukumar Ray, father of the more well-known film-maker Satyajit Ray:   

Mustache Thievery
Sukumar Ray
Head Officer Chief Babu was a very peaceful man--
And then he turned mental--who knew how it began?
He sat drowsing in his chair, smiling a happy smile
When suddenly, it seemed, something drove him wild.

He leapt up and flung his arms about, his eyes red as brick,
He shouted out, “I’m lost, I’m lost, do save me quick!”
Some ran for a doctor, some yelled “Police!” with all their might,
Some advised restraint: “Careful, he could bite!”

Everyone was rushing frantic, leaving letters untyped--
Then the Babu cried, “Oh help, my mustache has been swiped.”
Lost his mustache? Incredible! How could it be?
But his handlebars were just the same, plain for all to see.

They tried to explain things, held a mirror to his face:
His whiskers weren’t stolen, that couldn’t be the case.
But angry as fire, an eggplant in hot oil, he sputtered and shook:
“I don’t believe a single man, I know each of you crooks.

Dirty and ragged, an over-used broom--an obvious pretender!--
This kind of mustache was kept by Shyambabu’s milk vendor.
I’ll shoot the whole lot! if you say this mustache is mine.”
And right away he proclaimed for all a rather hefty fine.

Getting hotter by the minute, he wrote and underlined in red:
“Give anyone an inch of rope, they’ll climb up on your head.
These monkeys at the office, with brains of dung and hay--
Where my perfect mustache went, not one of them can say.

I should grab their whiskers and dance them up and down
Or shave their sorry heads with a spade upon their crown.
They claim the mustache is mine--as though it’s something you can own!
The mustache owns the man, my friend--that’s how we all are known.”

© 2003 by Prasenjit Gupta

How true! The moustache owns the man!!!

TAIL PIECE:

Do women love their men to sport a moustache? Here, there are as many views as there are women. A ‘sweet young thing’ was once overheard telling her buddy, “Being kissed by a man without a moustache is like having an omelette without salt; it doesn’t tickle.” 

     

2. It is heartening for whisker-sporting males to know that during a discussion in Indian Parliament on measures for strengthening security at banks and ATMs, one member felt that prominent moustaches can be intimidating enough to become a deterrent against heists.  Banks can train security guards but  they cannot obviously order them to change their facial appearance. Not every man has the means to grow and maintain sufficiently menacing moustaches; probably, providing guards with artificial whiskers of suitably daunting size can be thought of.

Sorrow From Cancer

In my last post ‘Joy of Cancer’, I had narrated about one of my close friends who had been afflicted by blood cancer.

He succumbed to the disease in the night of last Saturday, the 10th November. I received the news the next morning. I calculated that when he was taking one of his last breaths, I was having dinner at the marriage reception of one of my nieces.    

On receiving the news on Sunday morning, I rushed to his house. His body was encased in a frozen state inside a glass casket with ice. The family was waiting for the arrival of his younger daughter and son-in-law from Nigeria. They reached in the morning of Monday and soon after, his body was taken to ‘Swargadwar’ in Puri fror cremation. ‘Swargadwar’ literally means ‘gateway to heaven’. It is located near the temple of Lord Jagannath. In Odisha, it is believed that when a body is cremated in Swargadwar, the soul reaches salvation. I was there to bid him the final ‘goodbye’ when the vehicle carrying his body left his house for the final journey. Fittingly, the words ‘sheshayatra’ (final journey) was written on the rear of the vehicle. I looked on till the vehicle disappeared into the bend of the road.

After death, a person becomes a ‘body’! Talking of body, I am reminded of a scene in a T V Serial in which a accident occurs and several persons die. A man looking for his brother comes and enquires in the hospital where the injured were admitted. The person at the reception checks the list and says, “Your brother’s name is not in the list. Some unidentified bodies are kept in the morgue. Go and check.” The first man gets enraged and shouts, “What do you talk of ‘body’? He is my brother.” One man’s ‘brother’ becomes ‘a body’ for another!

My friend’s problem was detected on the 20^th July and he lived exactly for 3 months and 22 days after that.

He was an established writer of short stories. His stories contained delicate and powerful emotions and human relations and were not of the run-of-the-mill ‘boy-meets-girl’ type. For his creative writings, he had received several Awards including the Sahitya Akademi Award. He was in the Jury for selecting books for Sarala Puraskar, an award for excellence in Odia literature, established by a well-known industrial house. He could not attend the function to release his latest collection of short stories as he had just been admitted to the hospital at Vellore. A review of this book was published in a newspaper and I had read it out to him over phone when he was in the hospital-bed.

After our studies, both of us had appeared at the State Civil Services Examination. I stood First in it and he occupied the Second Position. A month after joining this service, I left it to join a Public Sector Bank. When I was leaving, he quipped, “Now I have become Adwitiya (second to none”. He was referring to the fact that he was no longer second in seniority in that batch.

Good bye, dear friend! 

Post Script

I read a piece by Mukul Sharma in the Economic Times of 12.09.2013.  He has quoted from Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, "It happens rarely, but there are cases of sel-induced healing... Due to some reason, the tumour starts in the opposite direction, gets smaller, resolves and disappears." The International Noetic Institute found medically-reported cases of spontaneous healing. There is a possibility that the altered state of prayer, religious faith and medication may allow the process of self-repair greater freedom to operate. "Neurotheology, a new field which seeks to discover the neurobiological basis of spirituality and health, tells us that the well being of our body depends almost slowly on the strength of our belief in ourselves.", Mukul Sharma says.   

'Joy' of Cancer

In my post ‘Death Shall Die II’ of the 30^th March, 2012, I have narrated about my visit to a relative dying of blood cancer. He died a few days after our visit. Now I have come face to face with another case of blood cancer. One of my closest friends, a retired senior Govt. officer and reputed short story writer, has got the same affliction. He retired a little earlier than me. His house is close to mine. My house is located near the route of his morning walk. Very often, he would drop in. (I do not need walks as I get enough exercise working in my garden in the mornings and afternoons.) He would straight go to my garden, I used to stop whatever I would be doing and then we would sit and talk about topics from kings to cabbages for about an hour or so and then he would leave. Often I used to give him some flowers and other produce from my garden.

I also used to visit him occasionally.

Suddenly, he stopped coming for what seemed an unusual period. When I telephoned to him, his son received my call and told me that my friend was suffering from fever for quite sometime and was sleeping at that time. During the preceding one month or so, he used to have fever rather frequently. I telephoned to him after a few days. This time, his daughter received the call (on his cell phone) and told me that they were in the hospital at Vellore and he had been diagnosed for blood cancer! I felt crest-fallen. I did not know what to say and only the word “What?” escaped my lips. Our conversation ended after exchanging a few words. My next call was received by his son-in-law, who informed me that my friend had responded well to the initial treatment and that the chances of his recovery were bright. My next call was received by my friend himself and his voice appeared confident. He felt happy talking to me. I felt equally happy.

For the next one month, I called him once a week and things appeared to be reassuring. He used to ask me to read out the headlines in the local Odia newspapers which I did gladly. Once a review of his latest book of short stories appeared in a local newspaper and I read it out for him. He was very happy. After staying at Vellore for about two months, he was advised that he could return to Bhubaneswar and have the follow-up treatment by regular visits to a local hospital. When I called him up the subsequent time, he was in a local hospital. But to my disappointment and apprehension, his voice was weak. His family-members told me that doctors had advised against his having any visitor.

Then he was discharged and the treatment is continuing at home. When I called his home, his son told me that he had been quarantined to avoid any possible infection as the immunity system of his body has become weak. I have been talking to him every week and his voice continues to be weak. Last week, I spoke to his son and told him that I deeply wished to see my friend once, even if for a few minutes. He agreed and so my wife and I went with a heavy heart to meet my friend. We met his wife, son and other members of his family. Then my friend came with a slow gait. The hairs on his head have fallen off due to the effect of chemotherapy. He came wearing a mask covering his mouth and nose to prevent any possible infection. I spoke to him briefly after which he went back inside.    

  

My friend is a person of joyous nature and always used to talk with a lot of enthusiasm. Those were missing when I met him.

A couple of weeks before meeting him, I had come across an article titled ‘Joy of Cancer’ in an Odia daily. A part of this article was about the book ‘The Joy of Cancer’ by Anup Kumar. I found out some more about this book in the net. It is not only about the emotional and physical  anguish following the diagnosis of cancer but also about the power of human mind and body to turn ‘a death sentence’ around. It is said that the real experts on cancer are only the cancer-patients themselves. The book deals with questions like these:

- How do you accept cancer in your life?

- How do you conquer the fear?

- What are the side effects of chemotherapy? What precautions should you take?

From the net I read about the 10 good things about having cancer listed by Michele R Berman, M D. a cancer-survivor. The author says that the first good thing is finding out that “I was stronger than I was, with God’s help.” Some other good things listed in the book are: finding out what great people you have in your life, discovering your inner control freak or other part of yourself, being able to come up with creative answers when you don’t want to talk about something.

I had lost to cancer another close friend of mine, who succumbed to it at the age slightly above 50 years. He was a bachelor and is survived by his sister, a spinster and elder to him. He had no other sister or brother. She lives in my city and when we meet, we reminisce about him. To end his own suffering and the difficulties of his family-members, my elder brother’s father-in-law committed suicide by jumping before a running train when he realized that he had no escape from the clutches of cancer.

In 2006, there was a small growth at a spot on my body. It was diagnosed as a cyst and after trying oral medicine, my doctor advised a minor surgery to remove it. After the surgery, it was sent for examination to find if the growth was malignant. The test result was negative. I have never seen my wife as happy when she saw the report. She lost no time in telephoning all our relatives and friends to tell them about the test-finding.

In the early 70’s I had watched the film ‘Anand’ starring Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachan. In this, Rajesh Khanna plays the title role and Amitabh plays the role of his doctor. The protagonist, Anand, is a cancer-patient. Fully knowing that he had only a couple of months to live, and as if to justify his name, he spreads joy (anand) and cheer all around him. Here is the film.

I am trying to get and read the book. I am not able to decide whether I should present a copy of the book to my friend or to suggest to him to watch the film ‘Anand’ as both Anup Kumar and the Anand had ultimately succumbed to the life-taking illness.     

I don’t want to lose my friend.

Pray for him.