Obama Re elected

I have always been Obama's admirer. Not because I share his skin color but because of his basic qualities of head and heart. Social concerns are difficult to implement as they cost money and will be resisted by the affluent upper class [it will mean more taxes]. Spending money on welfare will necessarily mean more taxes and who will pay more taxes? Those who can afford to pay. The upper economic group. Many who belong to this group will have reached there after hard struggle and naturally will grudge the government who will ask them to pay more taxes to look after the less privileged.

Is there no other way to raise money other than taxation? There is. Our basic living style has to change. The way we now live encourages consumption and wastage. If we consume less and thus spend less we will improve savings and an economy based on savings is better than an economy based on borrowing and increased taxation. If there is less consumption what about production and what about job creation? Won't we have increased unemployment?

Difficult questions to answer. But watching wasteful living indulged by many just because they can afford,I am convinced that less consumption is the answer.

I hope USA is better off with Obama and democrats.

Hope and Despair

Hope
It is nearly a month since I wrote about Arvind Kejriwal.Since then he has come up with some startling revelations about corruption at high places with names of the powerful personalities involved. He also said that in the present system of governance prevailing in the country these will come to nothing despite these being true.
His sole purpose appears to be to sensitize the population to the large scale wrong doing that is going on in this country and then prepare them for a peaceful revolution at election time. Will he be able to put up the right candidates to contest elections, will he have the wherewithal,  will he be able to build an infrastructure of motivated workers, and will the emasculated voters of the country wake up to his call? This is my worry and hope.

Despair
Deepawali is a festival of lights. Over the years this festival has become a festival of noise and pollution. The city's air becomes murky and the streets littered with graffiti strewn from the fire crackers. These two days
are also occasions to show off the wealth. Gift giving and taking used to be a delicate and informal affair and now it has become an affair bordering on vulgarity. Unable to personally come, the gift giver has taken to sending the gift with a courier who demands a receipt for the goods received!
I received a four page ornate wedding invitation which must have costed the sender at least two hundred rupees! Imagine the kind of money he would be spending on the actual wedding. Founder of our nation, M.K.Gandhi tried teaching us the virtues of simple living. We are doing any thing but that.
This is despair

West Indians.

There is something special about these people. They are naturals and uninhibited. Whether it is dance , music, sport, one can see the exuberance and when they win there is spontaneous joy that erupts on their faces and impromptu dances will be performed.

Yesterday, Darren Sammy and his men won the semifinals of the twenty twenty cricket against the much fancied Australians.This win brought back memories of the sixties when the Calypso Islands were the kings of cricket. Then the team was led by the legendary Sir Frank Worrel and had Clyde Walcott, Everton Weeks [the famous 3Ws]. If I remember right it also had Sir Garry Sobers in the team.

The present team too has big talent yet to be proved on field and they proved it yesterday in style. Chris Gayle with his black head scarf with a back drop, enormous height and the inscrutable face which only on rare occasion breaks into a smile and characteristic dance, reminds me of  some medieval King.

Even the West Indian spectators are a pleasure to watch. They are more or less the same as the players. I am glad this rather dull game of cricket has the west Indians playing. They add the much needed spice to the game

Arvind Kejriwal's new party

This was launched on 2nd of this month which happens to the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, the founding father of independent India. The party was launched with very little fanfare and principally aims at contesting elections with honest candidates and aims at clean and efficient governance. India against corruption had many active and silent followers and all of them with two notable exceptions are in this new, yet to be named party. These notable exceptions are the prime mover Anna Hazare and the other is Madam Kiran Bedi.

Anna feels any form of political party is no good and agitation approach is the best and Ms Bedi feels that it is better to support BJP than floating another party. Most feel BJP is also in its own way corrupt and not much can be gained by supporting it.

Building any political party from the grass roots is not easy given the vitiated atmosphere in the country. Sympathy need not necessarily convert into votes. This brings back memories of Swatantra Party floated by Late Rajagopalachary who was fed up with woolly headed, and what he thought with good reasons, self destructive policies of Jawaharlal Nehru. This party did get some support but failed in the electoral politics and died a natural death. When the party was floated, I remember the optimism that some of us felt.

I feel the same optimism with Kejriwal and his group and I wish them all success.

Few minutes with Venus

Those were pre penicillin days. Penicillin came into universal use only in the late forties and early fifties of last century and revolutionized the treatment of many infections. Venereal diseases [diseases that are transmitted by sexual contact] were amongst these. When I was a medical student in the early sixties we saw a few of these relics who were suffering from the effects of having contacted gonorrhea in the pre penicillin days. The common complication was stricture [narrowing of the urinary passage]. These sufferers would periodically come to the hospital to get the passage dilated. The instruments uses were called bogies [don't ask me why this name] . These were graduated curved steel tubes which were slid down the urethra one after the the other and the narrowed portion was forcibly opened. Then the whole passage and the bladder would be irrigated with liquid mercuric chloride solution [an antiseptic].The victim would howl with pain during the procedure.

Once when I was doing this procedure, hearing the cries of the patient my senior said 'few minutes with Venus [sex worker] and life long with Mercury'

Happiness

As most agree, it is a state of mind influenced by external inputs.Few days ago I was very happy when Khalin  became the number one amateur golfer of the country. That he also broke the course record by playing the round in 62 strokes only added to the pleasure.His father Hitesh Joshi [a scratch golfer] is a personal friend, topped my cup of joy. Khalin Joshi who is all 18 years will turn pro by the year end, and I hope he will keep making us happy.

Some days I feel happy even when there is no such input. This kind of stupid happiness and elation is akin to feeling sad for no reason. A state of mind devoid of all thoughts is supposed to give one great mental peace and many are the methods of meditation that are taught to achieve this. I have failed to achieve a thoughtless brain or mind.

As you age and see the world around you becoming increasingly unfamiliar, you begin to think that it is the ageing process. This is not really true. It happens because you are no longer in the thick of things and your utility to the community is much less or not at all.This creates a sense of dejection and older persons thus become mentally and physically aloof. The only way one can avoid this state of mind is to keep it occupied.

Occupying the mind is not easy with out exercising the senses. If one is idle then he will be forced to live in the past and his company will be so tiresome that people will avoid him adding to the misery. Using the eyes to appreciate the beauty around you, ears to listen to fine sounds of music, nose to smell the scent of flowers or aroma of a cup of coffee or the whiff out of a bottle of mature single malt whiskey, get the warmth of the morning sun and the cooling breeze of the evening wind on to your bare skin, stretch your muscles and bones. These activities will keep your brain cells so occupied that the mind [ a collection of past and present thoughts] has very little time for mischief and this is the best way to avoid depression of  old age.

Talking of old age, many elderly are over medicated. Older persons need lesser and fewer medications. But I see the reverse. Any number more than four is not easy to follow. I mean if one were to take four medications at different times, one can be sure that an elderly man or woman will not follow the regimen.
Most vitamins, minerals, tonics, nose drops eye drops, ear drops are useless and waste of good money. Medication for high BP should be such that pressure doesn't fall too much.Low BP is as much of a problem as the high BP.

It is time I stop these ramblings of my mind which started with some thing and ended up with some thing else.

Old age?

Bismillah and his Shehanai

Since I gave up my evening clinic work I find some idle time at my disposal. I use it to play golf, badminton, afternoon naps, reading and more importantly, listening to music. Readers of my blog are familiar with my love towards Hindustani classical music.Though my first love is vocal music, I often listen to this music played on Shehanai. Shehanai is a reed instrument and the note produced is smooth and easy flowing. I have found a lot of mental peace listening Shehanai.

Common knowledge is that the instrument came to India along with the invading Muslim armies around the 10th century. I also was under the same impression till I read a well researched article written by Dr Dileep Karanth, [who incidentally is my wife's nephew][Indian Oboe reexamined, published in the journal of Asian studies] Dileep is by profession a physicist and has other interests as one can make out if one reads this article.

Shehanai in one form or the other existed in old India since prehistory and spread from there to other parts of the world and the music played of course came under a lot of foreign influence notably Sufi Islam.

The greatest exponent of Shehanai was Late Bismillah Khan, Bismillah died recently at  the ripe old age of 90. Honours came to him aplenty including the Bharath Ratna. Despite all this he remained a simple person managing his large family and dependents. His home was the temple town of Banares and in one of the interviews he said he found the presence of God while playing the shahnai on the banks of river Ganga which flows by Banares. He also often performed inside the Kashi Viswananth temple. He in fifty years transformed shehanai from an instrument performed during festivals and marriages to that of an principal instrument of classical Hindustani music performed on stage like any other.

Though he is no longer with us I have vivid memories of him playing the shehanai. It was a visual and auditory treat. I remember his face with the trimmed white beard and the laugh lines around his twinkling eyes. With black coat and a write cap he had  stage presence rarely seen these days. What I liked about his music is that he rarely gave in to musical calisthenics to impress the audience. His was smooth and easy on the ears and played as much for us as for himself.

Traditional music as we have seen is slowly disappearing. Shorter versions with more titillation seem to be the order of the day. But old music like old wine is still available thanks to quality electronic storage devices.