Tag Archives: blog

Liverpool

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When I was doing experimental work in a physiology laboratory in London during the early 1970s, a new technician joined us. She was a lovely young girl from Liverpool. The job suited her perfectly and she was a great worker, full of cheer.

After two weeks, she announced that she was leaving us and returning to Liverpool. When asked why, she said: “I love working with you all, but nobody talks to each other on the bus. Back home in Liverpool everyone chats on the bus.”

Several decades later, I visited the lovely city of Liverpool. As soon as I was able, I took several rides on the city’s buses. On not one of these journeys did any of my fellow passengers chat to me nor to anyone else. I was so disappointed: I had been looking forward to speaking with the loquacious Liverpudlians, whom our technician had missed when she spent two weeks working with us in London.

Thoughts

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Someone, maybe it was a great composer such as Beethoven, once said:

“Forget the past, don’t be satisfied with the present, and have hope for the future.”

I don’t agree with all of this, but then I am not Beethoven. The past teaches us valuable lessons. Enjoy every moment of the present. And, look forward to the future.

By the way, does anyone know for sure whether Beethoven or another composer came up with the words I quoted?

A precocious child

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Sometimes it pays to keep your mouth shut at the dental surgery.

In the 1950s and early ’60s, our family dentist was a kindly German Jewish refugee called Dr Samuels. In those days, I learned later while I was studying dentistry, sugar used to be an ingredient of toothpaste made for use by children. I doubt that my mother provided us with children’s toothpaste, which she would have regarded as being gimmicky.

Dr Samuels had a very upmarket practice in London’s St John’s Wood. His waiting room floor was covered with thick pile oriental carpets and the reading matter was glossy journals such as Country Life.

The surgery, where Dr Samuels performed his dentistry, was old-fashioned. Instruments were kept on display in glass fronted metal cabinets. His x-ray machine looked antiquated even to my young, inexperienced eyes. So, did most of his other equipment, much of it made by the German Siemens company. One of my uncles, also a patient of Dr Samuels, once asked him if a museum might be interested in displaying this historic looking dental equipment. Samuels answer was that it was not quite old enough for a museum.

Dr Samuels drilled teeth with a cord driven dental handpiece. He told us that he had an air driven high speed dental drill, but he did not like it because it cut too fast in his opinion. So, having fillings in his surgery was quite a noisy and bumpy experience.

Dr Samuels was a gentle, kindly man, like a benevolent grandfather. He never frightened me.

At the end of an appointment, he used to reward me with a boiled sweet. I looked forward to receiving these. However, one day when I was about 8 or 9 years old and he offered me the sweet, I said to Dr Samuels: “No thank you. Sweets are filled with sugar and bad for my teeth.”

The price I paid for my precociousness was that he never again offered me a sweet at the end of my appointments with him. I should have kept my mouth shut and graciously accepted his kind but unhealthy gift.

Coffee by the yard

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Traditionally, South Indian filter coffee is served piping hot in small conical metal breakers. The beakers, which are almost too hot to hold, stand in deep cylindrical metal saucers, as shown in the picture.

To cool the coffee so that it reaches a drinkable temperature, one lifts the hot beaker out of the saucer, and then pours the coffee from the beaker into the saucer from as greater height as you dare. Then, you pour the slightly cooler coffee back into the saucer. The procedure is repeated until the beverage reaches the desired temperature.

The person making the coffee repeatedly scoops the bubbling boiling milk, which is added to the coffee, from its pot on the heat, and then pours it back from a great height. The stream of boiling milk is often quite long.

My late father-in-law, a witty man, referring to the pouring from a height involved in filter coffee making and drinking, used to ask us when we visited a coffee house in Bangalore : “How many yards of coffee do you want?”

Note: 1 yard is a measure of length a little less than 1 metre

Thrown out of a library

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When she was about two years old, our daughter dressed in a unisex romper outfit, rushed into the Men’s Bar at the Bangalore Club. An elderly gentleman conducted her back to the entrance of the bar, saying: “You can’t come in here yet, young man. You’ll have to wait until you’re twenty one.”

My wife explained that our child is a girl. The gentleman replied: “In that case, my dear, you will never be able to enter the Men’s Bar.”

The Bangalore Club was founded by British officers in 1868 at the time when Mahatma Gandhi was born in faraway Gujarat. Until after about 1945, women were not allowed into the main Club House. There was a separate annexe reserved for women. And until 1947, with the exception of servants and a very few high ranking military officers, no Indians were permitted to enter any part of the Club.

The Bangalore Club and many other similar still existing colonial era clubs in India maintain many of the old-fashioned rules that applied in elite clubs in the UK. For many years, men could only enter the Club House at the Bangalore Club wearing ‘proper’ shoes, not sports shoes or sandals. Now, sandals are allowed providing they have a back strap around the ankle.

Once, I stayed at the Kodaikanal Club deep in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Dress code seemed to be non-existent there until I stepped into the club’s small library. Within a few seconds, a member of the library staff escorted me out of the library. I was wearing sandals. I was told that one could only enter the library if formal leather shoes were being worn.

Well, if you join a club, you should respect its rules however idiotic they might seem. Vide the UK and the EU.

As time moves on, rules change. A couple of years ago , for reasons best not explored here and they were nothing to do with gender equality, women were permitted to enter and use the Men’s Bar at the Bangalore Club. Since that date, the formerly masculine sanctuary has been renamed “The Bar”.

The old gentlemen who evicted our daughter from the Men’s Bar is probably no longer alive. I wonder what he would have thought when his prediction proved to be wrong. Let’s finish by raising a glass to his memory.

View of palms

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I am not certain when I first saw palm trees. Maybe, it was when I was three years old. Then, my parents took me for a holiday in South Africa, where they were born.

Some of the first palm trees that I remember seeing are still growing in a small garden next to the entrance of St John’s Wood Underground station near Lord’s Cricket Ground in London. We used to visit St John’s Wood regularly when I was a child because our family dentist, Dr Samuels – a refugee from Nazi Germany, had his surgery opposite the station.

My first view of palm trees growing en-masse was from the air on an early morning in late December 1993. Our plane was landing at the airport in Colombo, Sri Lanka. We were travelling via Colombo to Bangalore in India. A week or so after seeing this vast plantation of palms, my wife and I were married during a colourful Hindu ceremony.

Although I have seen many, many palm trees since then, I still find them beautiful and exotic.

Book sniffing

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As long as I can remember, I have been sticking my nose into any book that I am reading so that I can smell its pages.

I suppose that in brand new, recently printed books I am smelling the paper and the ink. Books printed in different countries often have distinctly differing odours.

As books get older, the smells of their pages change. This is both the result of ageing ink and paper and also a consequence of the environment in which the book has been stored. For example, if the book has been housed in the shelves of a reader who smokes, the pages acquire a tinge of the smell of tobacco and its smoke.

At first, I believed that I was the only person who sniffs the interiors of books, but now I know that I am not alone. The world of book readers is divided into page sniffers and those who do not poke their noses into books for reasons other than reading.

How China viewed Albania

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HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!

Albania is one of the smallest countries in Europe. Between 1944 and late 1990, it was isolated from the rest of the world by a stern dictatorship that held in high regard the Russian dictator Joseph Stalin and his methods of government. In brief, Albania was ruled by a pro-Stalin dictatorship.

The dictatorship, led by Enver Hoxha from 1944 until his death in ’85, had few allies. For a couple of years after 1945, Albania maintained an uneasy friendship with Tito’s Yugoslavia. Then for a longer period, the USSR became its ally and provider of assistance. With Stalin’s death and his replacement by Nikita Krushchev, who denounced Stalin posthumously, Albania rejected the USSR.

For a period between about 1964 and the mid to late 1970s, tiny Albania became closely allied with the enormous Peoples Republic of China. This period included the ten year Chinese Cultural Revolution. Albanians were subjected to Enver Hoxha’s own version of what the Chinese people had to suffer. Eventually, China’s drift away from Albania’s approach to Marxism- Leninism, caused an end to friendship between the two countries.

I have met several retired diplomats who served in China during the period of Sino-Albanian friendship. Their anecdotes make interesting reading.

When I was last in Tirana, I met a retired Albanian diplomat, who had served in China during the years of Sino-Albanian friendship. He said that in those days the Chinese newspapers were full of pictures and articles about Albania. One day, some Chinese people approached him. They told him that because there was so much about Albania in the news, it must surely be a huge country like China!

A retired Indian diplomat, who had served in China during the Cultural Revolution, collected atlases, something that I also enjoy doing. He found a Chinese world atlas and looked for Albania. In this particular atlad, Albania was hidden away near the spine of the book where two pages met. The country was barely visible except by opening the atlas as widely as possible without cracking the spine. When some young Chinese students asked the diplomat to show them Albania in his atlas, they were surprised at its almost hidden representation in the book. They could not believe that their country’s socialist ally in Europe was so tiny and insignificant. Almost immediately, the students began insulting him with phrases like: “capitalist spy”, “imperialist lackey”, and “enemy of the people”. They refused to believe that the country, which was so important to China, was so tiny.

Another retired Indian diplomat, whom I met in India, came up tomeafter I had given a talk about Albania. He told me that he was serving in China when Enver Hoxha sent the open letter declaring that he was terminating the friendship between his country and China. He told me that he was amazed that such a minute nation like Albania had the nerve to throw mud in the face of a major power and ally such as China was and still is.

These anecdotes help illustrate that tiny Albania had a larger than life history during the 20th century.

Resident non Indian

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A Non Resident Indian or NRI is someone, most usually of Indian origin, residing outside India.

There are Indians living in India who try to make their lifestyle as un-Indian as they can possibly manage. These people are usually fabulously wealthy. They try to isolate themselves from the material reality of India as much as they can. A friend of ours refers to these people as “Resident Non Indians”, which is a great way of summarising the way they try to live.