“Being born in a farmer’s family is a privilege that not many realise,” says 37-year-old Tom Kiron Davis. A native of Thumbur, a small village in Thrissur district of Kerala, Tom is a proud banker-turned-farmer, who has dedicated his life to make farming a lucrative professional career, rather ‘a brand’ as he likes to call it.

Speaking about his motivation, he says, “Most of my childhood memories revolve around farming. Daily trips to the fields to help my father and grandfather helped me understand the nuances involved in the entire process both pre and post-harvest. It was an education that not many people appreciate, unfortunately.”

But, he did.

And that is why, despite having a Masters in Economics, and a successful career in the UAE, he decided to come back to his roots. In 2015, he quit his high-paying job in Dubai to return to Kerala and start farming.

“Almost everyone I knew was against this decision. People called me a fool. No one could imagine that a well-educated person would want to farm. You see, farming here is considered a low-income occupation that can only be fueled by necessity and compromise. I challenged that notion by making an informed choice to start farming and dedicating my efforts to make it a lucrative form of livelihood,” he shares.

Not only did he successfully manage to prove this point but he did so by overcoming another major challenge — turning hundreds of acres of barren land into fertile cultivation.

Fallow to Fertile

Once back home, Tom found out about hundreds of acres of land lying abandoned and barren for years in Velukkara panchayat. He immediately decided to take on the challenge of turning this land into fertile fields ready for cultivation.

He started this journey by leasing about one and a half acres of uncultivated land and initiated the cleaning process.

“Nothing was grown there for decades, so no one was even willing to touch it. People had assumed that this was a wasteland. So instead, I started preparing the land by removing weeds and dirt, levelling the ground and even cleared a 2km long canal that runs through Vazhukkilichira paddy field for irrigation. The next step was to enrich the soil organically. Rain is good in this area so water is not a problem but organically enriching the soil took time. We used natural fertilizers like cow dung, jeevamrit, ghanjivamrit and vermicompost and in just a month and a half, the 1.5 acres of land was finally ready for farming,” he says. In the first year, Tom started with paddy cultivation.

Within a year he reaped the fruits of his labour with a good paddy yield and his success soon encouraged other farmers to join him. Following this, many friends and neighbouring farmers took parts of the barren land on lease and began collective farming.

“I formed a youth forum and farmer’s collective to guide them through the entire process, from preparation to harvest,” he adds. Today, a total of 200 acres of barren land has been transformed into fertile cultivation, all thanks to Tom’s relentless efforts.

But, his work does not end there.

Managing the Menace of Middlemen

In time, Tom recognised the real problem ailing the farmers of his district — the menace of middlemen.

“One of the biggest challenges that farmers face is the post-harvest sale of their produce. Most of them do not market their produce and instead make the sale via middlemen, who end up exploiting them. I decided to find a way to put an end to it, and so began to leverage technology to solve the problem. I used social media as a platform to spread awareness about the indigenous varieties of paddy we grew organically and began to welcome orders online,” he says.

Today, with the help of a group of 15 youngsters and 25 farmers, Tom grows organic paddy in 15 acres of land that is directly sold online and the paddy that is grown on the rest of the land is supplied to state government-owned company, SupplyCo. He also grows rubber, coconut, vegetables, fruits, flowers and spices like nutmeg, turmeric and mace, on 4 acres of land.

“We grow four varieties of indigenous rice organically namely, Kuruva, Rakthashali, Mattatriveni and Kodukanni, on 15 acres of land. There is a high demand for good quality organic produce and by directly selling these online at a good price, we are empowering the farmers,” says Tom who sells spices, jackfruit, tamarind and mangoes in addition to rice on their online platform. He has also launched a brand called Pepenero for selling these products on Amazon.

Today, from just the online orders, these farmers earn annual profits worth Rs 50,000 per acre. With every farmer cultivating on at least 2 acres of land, their yearly profits touch lakhs of rupees thanks to Tom.

His continuous efforts of empowering farmers earned him the Swami Vivekananda Yuva Pratibha Award from the state government in 2018. Currently, the secretary of the Kannukettichira-Vazhukkilichira Padashekhara Samithi and a member of the Rubber Production Society in Karur, Tom has become an inspiration for many in Kerala.

As a message for the youth and fellow farmers, he adds, “We as farmers need to realise our worth. We are irreplaceable, no matter what happens in the world, a pandemic or anything else. We are our own brand.”

This article is part of The Better India series ‘Lessons from India’s Legends’. Stay tuned for more stories on India’s most exemplary personalities and the lessons we can learn from their body of work.

One of the key tools that helped the United States win World War II was the Willys Jeep. The vehicle was a small four-wheeler. And as Charles K Hyde wrote it became an “iconic vehicle of [the war], with an almost mythological reputation of toughness, durability and versatility”. The jeep replaced the use of horses and was deemed “America’s greatest contribution to modern warfare”.

The jeep made its way to India when the allied forces were fighting the Japanese on the Burma front. Later, as the nation was set to become independent, one company realised the emerging importance of “a motorised transport that was easy to operate, service and repair,” wrote Adil Jal Darukhanawala in his book, Timeless Mahindra.

Mahindra & Mahindra—earlier named Mohammad & Mahindra, before co-founder Malik Ghulam Mohammad left for Pakistan during the Partition—tied up with Willys Overland to produce the CJ-3B in India.

The company’s role in building the nation has been concrete ever since, and the group has only grown and diversified. Anand Mahindra, grandson of co-founder Jagdish Chandra Mahindra, can be credited for the group’s diversification into such a large conglomerate. What was initially formed as a steel company is today a key player in various sectors, including agribusiness, information technology, defence, aerospace, education, real estate, logistics, and retail. All of this has been made possible once Anand took over in 1997.

The Better India takes a look at the company’s growth, thanks to Anand’s endeavours, and what lessons we can learn from his journey with the Mahindra Group thus far:

1. ‘Don’t cling to a bad business idea’

In 2017, a video of a panda clinging to a man who was busy with work went viral on the internet. In the video, the man continues to ignore the panda, who keeps coming back to him. Jumping on the viral bandwagon, Anand retweeted the video, but with a valuable lesson: ‘Don’t cling to a strategy that keeps throwing you off’.

2. Carefully observe your setbacks:

In 1995, Mahindra Group tied up with Ford Motors to produce the Escort car, which eventually failed to make its mark. Recalling how this failure eventually led him to produce the Scorpio, which was one of the group’s most successful cars, Anand said, “Everybody enters a joint venture with a what’s-in-it-for-you-and-what’s-in-it-for-me attitude.” He added that before the venture with Ford, “we had no experience in making a hard-top vehicle, or in modern methods of manufacturing…The 300 people who put the Ford Escort together were the first ones to work on the Scorpio. It can be argued that we would not have been able to make the Scorpio without the Ford joint venture”.

3. ‘Adopt a startup mindset’

At the onset of India’s ‘Unlock 1’ phase after the initial COVID-19 lockdown, Anand took to Twitter to share a “3-step plan” for reopening businesses. He called this plan the Sanjivani Solutions, or “a potion for emerging from a Corona-induced coma”. The steps included:

• “Become as lean an organisation as possible.”
• “Nothing is sacred; all business models [are] open for debate. Create ‘feedback loops’ that constantly test product/market assumptions.”
• “Share ideas and data across the company at warp speed.”

Alongside, he called for a “Marie Kondo-style clean up of the portfolio”, and advised that businesses part with initiatives that don’t fall into the narrative of a successful future.

4. Focus on women’s participation in the workforce

In 1996, Anand launched the Project Nanhi Kali, with the aim of educating underprivileged girls across the country. The idea of the project was to mitigate low literacy rates in females and increase workforce participation of women, in addition to addressing various social issues such as child labour and marriage, dowry deaths, and the caste system. Designed as a sponsorship programme, wherein individuals and corporates could participate by sponsoring girls’ education for a minimum of one year, Nanhi Kali has transformed over 4,50,000 lives across 14 Indian states. Impacted areas include the far-flung hamlets of Krishnagiri in Tamil Nadu and tribal hills of Araku in Andhra Pradesh.

5. Keeping up with changing times

In 2013, Anand ranked 3rd among the ‘Top 30 CEOs on Social Media’, right after Virgin Group chairman Richard Branson and LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner. Anand is known for his witty, engaging and lively tweets, wherein he constantly discusses changing economic trends and ideas while remaining conversational and funny. Anand was among the first few to understand the then growing importance of social media as a tool of interaction and growth, and was the only Indian CEO to feature on this list.

6. ‘Be a people’s person’

Anand says the hallmark of a good leader is the ability to empathise and put themselves in someone else’s shoes. “Empathising helps you know things and inevitably makes you a good listener who is intrigued to know and gather information from others,” he said.

7. ‘The past is just a lesson, not a life sentence’

In yet another example of how Anand engages with his Twitter followers, he posted a tweet about the value of letting go of the past. “I try to use Mondays to break free from obsessing about what I could have done differently. I focus on the different things I can do from today onwards.”

8. ‘Find a place in the customer’s mind’

Today, the Mahindra Group holds leading positions across key industries, including IT, aerospace, energy, retail, finance, defence, and logistics to name a few. Anand said this has been because his “penchant is for building brands that find a place in the customer’s mind and for developing businesses that live or die by how well they connect with the consumer”.

9. Reimagining our future

Anand was among the top global CEOs who emphasised on how we must rebuild the economy post COVID-19, keeping in mind sustainability and not solely focussing on reverting to our old ways. The CEOs signed an open letter to call on governments to create inclusive and sustainable post-COVID-19 economies which could also benefit the society and the planet. “Today, more than ever, the world needs to be able to reimagine a new future…in which people can feel safe and protected. The initiative…is an effort towards defining the new environment…” he said.

Edited by Yoshita Rao

Millions of years ago, as the isolated landmass drifted across the Tethys Ocean, a tiny, four-legged deer-like creature traversed the remotest corners of the Indian subcontinent. Today, a descendant of that creature swims the oceans as the world’s largest mammal to have ever lived.

That whales, or rather all cetaceans (comprising whales, dolphins and porpoises), are mammals is a fact that has been long established. This is because they have two features known only to mammals — they nurse their young with milk and some have sparse hairs on their bodies. As professor Sunil Bajpai, paleontologist and Head of Department of Earth Sciences at IIT-Roorkee, wrote in one of his research papers, because mammals originated on land, it is implied that cetaceans had land ancestors that went through a transition from land to water.

In the case of whales, a tiny land animal called Indohyus (Indo — India, hyus — a hyena-like land animal), which existed over 50 million years ago, is the earliest known ancestor. The discovery of its fossils was first made in the Himalayas in 2007, says Prof Bajpai, whose interests lie in fossils of vertebrate animals.

In 1936, naturalist Remington Kellogg said that no fossils of whales had been found in the Indian subcontinent. He said there was “very strong evidence that they had not yet invaded these regions”. Bapai says that Kellogg’s inference has since been proven wrong by a series of discoveries made in India and Pakistan, first by Vijay Prakash Mishra and Ashok Sahni in the 70s in Kutch, Gujarat. More recently, in the last 20 years or so, the discovery of the remains of Indohyus by Prof Bajpai and Dutch-American paleontologist Hans Thewissen, have been notable in tracing the ancestry of whales to India.

Prof Bajpai speaks to The Better India regarding his findings over the course of the last 30 years. “Remnants of the earliest whale, which were still learning how to adapt to sea life, were found in a large number in Kutch. We discovered a number of families, which together tell us how these animals moved from land to see,” he says.

How a cat-sized land animal became the mighty whale

Speaking about the features of the Indohyus, he adds, “The animal was found to have features that are only found in whales. For example, the structure of its middle ear was exactly the same as whales. All its other features indicated that it was a land animal, including well-developed legs and teeth.”

In 1971, Indian geologist A Ranga Rao first discovered its fossils among rocks in the Kalkot region of Jammu & Kashmir. These included a few teeth and parts of the animal’s jawbone. When Rao passed away, many of these rocks were yet to be broken. Years later, his widow handed these rocks over to Thewissen. While working on them, his technician accidentally broke on the skulls, and its ear structure was first discovered.

Bajpai explains, “The animal probably jumped into water when it faced threats from predators, and later evolved in this manner. There was no other way to explain its heavy bones, which are not actually required for land animals and are meant to counteract buoyancy in the animal when it’s in water.”

Delving further into details surrounding Indohyus’s transition from land to water, the 59-year-old says, “The animal went through several changes. This included locomotion, hearing, balance, and diet.”

Another change was that of its hearing. In mammals, the ear has sensory organs dedicated to hearing and balance, the science of which differs in land and water. The discovery and study of sound transmission mechanisms played a role in early cetacean evolution. Prof Bajpai says that because elements of the hearing system are bony and fossilise, its evolution has been well documented. These findings were able to tell Bajpai and team how early whales started out with sound transmission mechanisms found in land mammals which were slowly modified as they took to water.

Modern whales swim by moving their tail flukes through the water in a vertical plane, and this is assisted by their flippers, especially while turning. The Indohyus, however, was a slow wader, similar to the modern hippopotamus. Prof Bajpai notes that it is unlikely that these mammals were fast swimmers, because their bones had thick cortical layers which would have significantly increased their inertia and drag. Modern whales have thin cortical bones and are built to be able to swim much faster.

The Indohyus is the only animal from the Raeollidae, which is a family of artiodactyls, whose skulls and bones have been recovered. Raeollidea only existed in what is now Pakistan and western India, nearly 45 to 55 million years ago.

‘Conquering the oceans’

Over the years, Bajpai and his team have found several fossils that document different phases of this animal’s transition. Next in line was the Pakicetid, whose remains were first discovered before World War II, but they were so fragmented that they were not recognised as cetaceans. Like the Indohyus, Pakicetidae are also only known to Pakistan and western India. It was found that both Raeollidea and Pakicetidae had aquatic adaptations. What is interesting to note, says Prof Bajpai, was that Pakicetidae had teeth with cusps, or elevated bumps on the tooth, that were high and separated from other cusps by deep valleys. They had large polished areas on their enamel, caused by tooth-to-tooth contact. This wear, he says, has been correlated with fish eating.

Then came the Ambulocetidae, whose remains were found in Northern Pakistan and northwestern India. The fossils were around 49 million years old. This was much larger than Pakicetidae, around the size of a large male sea lion. This early whale had short and powerful legs, four toes and five fingers, and may have resembled the present-day crocodile. Its hunting behaviour seemed pretty similar to crocodiles as well. These also had heavy limb bones and were possibly not fast-moving predators.

Next, there was the Remingtonocetidae, named after Kellogg, which existed 41-48 million years ago, in India and Pakistan, says Prof Bajpai. They were charactarised by their long snouts, and their molars had now lost the crushing basins found in Ambulocetidae and Pakicetidae, suggesting that their diets had changed as well. Their skeletal remains showed short legs and powerful tails, indicating that they may have used their tail to propel themselves in and around water, and only used limbs for steering.

Then came the Protocetids, or as Prof Bajpai says, “the cetaceans that conquered the oceans”. While the earlier cetaceans were only known from India and Pakistan, these were swimming the oceans across the globe. They were known to be found in low latitudes of Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America.

The final form that bears the closest resemblance to modern whales is the Basilosaurid. Their nasal openings had shifted back towards the eyes to form the blowhole, and had flippers for forelimbs, a fluke at the end of its tail, and small hind limbs. These limbs were far too small to support body weight on land, indicating that Basilosauridae were the first to fully remain in the ocean.

The big picture

Speaking about the long process of these discoveries and what challenges he faced along the way, Prof Bajpai says, “The biggest challenge is the discovery of fossils itself. It’s not easy to find remains that are well preserved and not fragmented. It is essential to find fossils that remain anatomically complete. If you find, say, one tooth, or part of a jaw, it won’t tell you the whole story.”

He also notes, “We have a large collection of fossils, but some parts remain missing. The issue then is that we get a number of fossils but we don’t know which belongs to which species. Fossils are often found unassociated — say you find the arm of one species and the leg of another. It is then difficult to associate both to only one. We need mechanisms to find intact fossils that will help us deal with this problem.”

Another challenge, he says, is finding adequate funds to conduct field work in India. Moreover, he says there isn’t any legislation in place in India to protect and preserve fossil sites. “Fossils once gone will never be recovered,” Prof Bapai adds.

He also cites the example of coal mines, which remove very important fossiliferous formations during the process of mining. “For them, this material is an overburden, which they have to remove in order to get lignite or coal. But for a scientist, that’s a lot of data that has been lost, worth over millions of years. It’s important for even children to know the rich treasure and heritage of fossil wealth, which there’s a lack of awareness around, unlike in most European countries, or in the US,” he says.

This awareness, Prof Bajpai says, will come from the construction of proper museums that house such discoveries.

In addition to tracing the fascinating story of whales, Prof Bajpai has also studied several land animals that originated in India. This included an excavation around 15 years ago near coal mines in Surat, where they discovered fossils of a very early land animal from which the present-day horse has descended. Others include the earliest sheep and even primates, including apes, that were found near these coal mines. “Other groups have also worked on these discoveries, but most of them were found and named by us. The latter is extremely important. We named a new family of very primitive horses. Prior to this, it was believed horses originated in China. Now it’s almost certain that their origins were in India,” he says.

“You don’t make discoveries every day. You come to understand the full story only when you find more and more fossils. These are only bits and pieces that have been scattered all over. Only when you have all of them will you be able to trace the whole picture,” Prof Bajpai says.

Edited by Yoshita Rao

Decades ago, when author and diplomat John Zubrzycki was working in India, he came across the famous ‘Hindu basket trick’ at a crowded railway station. In this trick, a young boy or girl is put inside a wicker basket, which is then pierced with swords. The swords are then removed, and the young boy/girl remerges, completely unharmed.

This, and several other magic tricks, have been picked up by western magicians from India, as early as the 1800s. Snake charmers, levitation, rope tricks, juggling — you name it. Most of these tricks find their origins in India, taken abroad by white-skinned folks to be popularised with their own tricks and twists. But in return, up until the 1950s-60s, all India received in exchange for giving the world some tricks up its sleeve was the notion that “Indian magic” was one that promoted occultism and black magic.

However, one man can be credited with changing these perceptions of the western audience. He did so cleverly, keeping in mind the West’s strange obsession and fascination with ‘exoticism’, yet introducing them to a side of India they had perhaps not seen before. This was no street magician or snake charmer — he travelled with elaborate stage props, a large team of assistants and helpers, and all the equipment one might need for grandeur and pomp and show.

Today, this man has gone down in history as the ‘father of modern Indian magic’, and rightfully so.

A new India for the West

Protul Chandra Sarkar was born in 1913 in a small village in what is now Bangladesh. Growing up, he was always drawn to the world of magic and illusion. He was a mathematical prodigy, and yet, found magic to be his true calling. He began his career by performing in circuses and theatres and eventually trained under magician Ganapati Chakroborty. Some time during his career, he changed the spelling of his surname to ‘Sorcar’, which sounded close to ‘sorcery’.

Sorcar’s breakthrough in the UK and Japan came at a time when India was viewed only as a once-regal country that was now an impoverished colony, attempting to slowly get back on its feet. The imagery of half-naked men, fakirs, broken English, snake charmers, poor people and cows was shattered by the way Sorcar presented himself to the audiences. There was no fakiri around this man, who dressed like he was royalty or perhaps a character that had stepped straight out of the Arabian Nights. When he spoke to his audiences, he did so with a clear and distinct “Indian accent”, but in a tone that was inviting and friendly, and left a sense that something otherworldly was going to take place that night.

Through his show Indrajaal, or The Magic of India, Sorcar captivated audiences with tricks he identified with his homeland. Some of these included the Temple of Benaras, which was a variation of the Hindu basket trick, The Water of India, Floating Lady, and X-Ray Vision. The Water of India involved a bucket filled to the brim with water, which Sorcar would empty from time to time, only for the audiences to find it filled to the same volume every time.

His most sensational trick, of course, remains the one where he slices his young assistant in half.

A ‘murder’ in the streets

When Zubrzycki saw the Hindu basket trick at the railway station all those years ago, his experience was marred by a tragic conclusion. When the boy emerged from his wicker basket, he did so with a knife in his neck. Clearly, there was no trickery or illusion involved here.

In the 50s, Sorcar did something similar. Or did he?

Back then, BBC’s popular investigative journalism series, Panorama, was only a few years old, but already a hit. On 9 April 1956, the show decided to deviate from its usual serious reportage to give a 15-minute segment to Sorcar. Here, he performed his famous sawing trick.

In every performance of this trick, Sorcar would slice his assistant, 17-year-old Deepti Dey, without putting her in a box first. So her body would be openly sliced, for the audience to see. Before the trick, he would hypnotise her into a trance, and after he was done cutting through her, like you would a slab of meat, he would bring her out of her stupor and make her stand before the audience to show that she was, in fact, alive and unharmed.

On this 9 April night, the trick should have gone down the same way. Sorcar hypnotised Dey once she had laid down on the bed with a menacing looking circular saw hovering over her. Slowly, and steadily, the saw, now in full motion, was lowered to her body, and the audience was engaged in a slow torture of sorts, watching it slowly slice through her body. The machine was then switched off, lifted, and Sorcar called for Dey to wake up. She didn’t.

Immediately, broadcaster Richard Dimbleby stepped in front of the camera, and announced that the programme was over. The studio’s phone lines were flooded with concerned calls by viewers across the nation, panicked that a young girl had just been killed on live television.

The show’s official explanation for abruptly cutting the programme off was that Sorcar had extended the time provided to him. However, for those privy to Sorcar’s penchant for realistic illusions, it was obvious that what had taken place that night was the ultimate sleight of hand. He was far too smart to have simply let his time run out. Everything had been planned.

The next day, headlines across the UK spoke of the alarming event that had unfolded the night before, and how an innocent girl had been killed for the world to see. They were immediately assured that Dey was, in fact, alive and well. Sorcar’s popularity skyrocketed, even more so than what he had already established. The rest of his season in London saw nothing but sold out tickets and audiences were enthralled by the man who had taken them for such a joyride.

Throughout his career, Sorcar travelled the world as India’s cultural ambassador. China, Australia, Japan, Russia, and the US — wherever he went, auditoriums and theatres were jam packed. He performed for American troops during the World War, and wrote detailed columns in magic magazines. His first show in Japan was 1932, organised by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, who was working with the Japanese to raise money for India’s freedom movement. The show was nothing short of a hit. In 1950, he performed at a convention of the International Brotherhood of Magicians and the Society of American Magicians in Chicago. He won the prestigious Sphinx Award for Magic—considered comparable to the Nobel Prize in the industry—twice, once in 1946 and again in 1954. In 1964, he was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India.

Of course, Sorcar’s soaring popularity did not sit well with all his contemporaries. In 1955, Helmut Ewald Schreiber, who was also Adolf Hitler’s favourite magician, accused Sorcar of stealing his tricks. But many magicians in the field rallied with Sorcar instead, reminding Schreiber that he had appropriated an Oriental stage name — Kalanag. He had tried to hide his nationality and had stolen the tricks he was accusing Sorcar of copying.

By the 70s, Sorcar’s health had started deteriorating. In January 1971, having ignored his doctor’s advice and flown to Japan, he was performing his Indrajaal show, which would be his last. As he left the stage after his performance, he suffered a severe heart attack and passed away. His future generations have carried forward his legacy, with all of them and their kids being involved in the field of magic. Noted Indian magicians P C Sorcar Junior and P C Sorcar Young are the magician’s sons. Sorcar also has two daughters, Ila and Geeta.

Despite his fame and glory, Sorcar was viewed as something of an outsider. But he was also instrumental in taking India’s magic to the world and enthralling western audiences with tricks from his homeland. This year, as a tribute to his 50th death anniversary, his eldest son, Indian American artist and animator Manick Sorcar, wrote that his father had two sides to his personality.

“At home, he was a simple man that took care of his family — particularly me and my four siblings — with whom he played, laughed, joked, and yet, he was still a strict father, making sure we paid full attention to our education and schoolwork,” he wrote, adding, “The other was the Great P C Sorcar, whom the world knew as the great magician…on stage he wore the trademark glamorous costume — the bright sherwani, jewellry, lockets, glittering earrings, and a pagri (turban) with gems and plume, as the ‘Maharaja of Magic’, hypnotising the whole world with his illusions, elaborate stage settings, and dozens of assistants and musicians.”

In his book about his father, P C Sorcar: The Maharaja Of Magic, published in 2018, P C Sorcar Junior perfectly encapsulated the impact that Sorcar Senior’s legacy had on audiences across the world. “Even after my father’s body was flown in from Japan…people gathered outside our house at night, expecting him to return, much like he would at the end of his disappearing tricks, appearing from a distant corner with the shout ‘I am here!’.”

Edited by Yoshita Rao

Manish Agarwal has been suffering from eyesight issues due to a retina deformity since he was a child. During his growing years, his dependence on glasses increased, and as he reached Class X, the ailment had become serious to a point where had to quit his education.

Instead, he began spending time at a cloth shop run by his father. In 2013, he lost his vision entirely. Alongside, he lost his will to live, he says. “I became severely depressed, as I had no social life, my friends had distanced themselves from me, and no person around me could sympathise or understand the pain I was in,” he says.

However, in 2017, he came across a Facebook page, Radio Udaan, an online radio platform. Here, he found many people like him who were suffering from various disabilities. They had created a support system for one another to help each other lead a meaningful life. He joined in on their conversations on social media and through video calling apps.

Now, at the age of 34, Manish is pursuing his graduation in arts and preparing for government jobs. “My life turned around after I connected with the radio team. The members inspired and motivated me. They helped me learn computer skills and provided me exposure to opportunities available for visually impaired persons. Thanks to the radio, I have friends across the world now,” he tells The Better India.

Like Manish, at least 10,000 people have married, sought jobs, learned computer skills, become singers, artists and earned a variety of skills through Radio Udaan.

Sharing one another’s pain

Hyderabad-based Meenal Singhvi, director at the radio, says the idea to start the platform stemmed from the need to help the specially-abled community at large.

Meenal herself lost her eyesight at the age of 28. She realised there would be many like her who needed support and encouragement.

“In 2007, I lost my vision during treatment for low blood pressure. I fell into a coma and recovered a few days later, only to realise that I had lost my vision. I was a homemaker, and everyone in my family accepted that my life would be confined to the four walls of the house,” she recalls.

Now 43, Meenal says that during the next couple of years, her family ensured they provided everything she needed and asked for. “I never left my room, and spent my time only listening to the television, or being alone. Doctors were hopeful that my vision could be restored. It did happen for a brief period on three occasions. I was hopeful too. However, in 2009, doctors counselled me and said my eyesight might never return,” she says.

She adds while this news caused her immense pain, she decided she could not spend the rest of her life in bed. “I learned that visually impaired people could learn computer skills. I asked my husband to provide me with one. A friend of mine helped install the required software that assists the blind through voice, and I started learning in 2010,” she says.

Meenal’s horizons expanded, and she started accessing information and making friends with special abilities. “I became part of groups and learned that many people were facing problems of emotional disconnect, depression, and lack of support from families, and were struggling to cope with life. A few members started brainstorming ideas to find ways to connect people from the community,” she adds.

A platform to build a better life

“We were firm about not starting an NGO. Eventually, we realised there was no media platform dedicated for specially-abled persons,” she says, adding that she and one visually impaired Danish Mahajan from Punjab, whom she met online, started Radio Udaan in 2014.

Meenal adds that on the first day itself, the radio registered around 1,000 listeners. Slowly, the team expanded to six, as people began to offer their help to design the website, create content, manage technicalities and handle other aspects of the operations.

The first month saw 5,000 listeners, and over the years, this has increased to a steady listenership of 45,000 from across 119 countries. The shows are accessible via the website, mobile app, Alexa and Google Home. The content is available in Hindi, Urdu, English, Telugu and Kannada.

Meenal says the job is voluntary, and no one gets paid. “All of us have other jobs. I work as a junior assistant at the Deputy Commissioner’s Office. I find time to run shows through the week. We don’t have an office, and everyone works from their home,” she adds.

Danish, who doubles up as a clerk at Punjab Mandi Board, says the radio organises a show called Community Colours to inform listeners about job vacancies meant for specially-abled in government and private sectors. “It is the only dedicated programme for the community. The other show, Tech City, explains how they can access technology and learn computer operations. It also updates them about new software in the market,” he says.

Danish, who lost vision at the age of 14, says other programmes initiate discussions on specially-abled issues. “We invite guests from NGOs, corporates, civil service officers and celebrities to encourage and motivate the listeners. It also exposes them to opportunities and helps bring ideas about potential skills or career choices they could pursue,” he adds.

The 32-year-old says that to maintain listenership, the radio organises contests like RJ Hunt to identify radio jockey talent, reality shows of singing competitions, plays, matrimony events, broadcast music, and arrange other engaging programmes. The programmes are accessible on YouTube, and the videos receive thousands of views.

Creating a safe space

Watch Manish performing stand-up comedy

Danish says they never thought the radio would have a massive impact. “We aimed to reach a listenership of 10,000, but have managed to surpass that. All volunteers manage their tasks alongside full-time jobs. The responsibility to prepare the script, create content, produce, edit and upload the show lies with the show host. It is a highly demanding task. But we all help one another. We have no financial support, and occasional donations help us experiment with the programmes,” he says.

He adds that maintaining an online radio to compete with other social media platforms like WhatsApp, where information is shared faster, becomes another challenge. “We aim to expand our reachability and hire full-time employees in future,” Danish says.

“The unique aspect of the radio is that it is the only place where we reach out to the specially-abled people who are scattered, live in isolation and waiting for emotional support and help to make something better of their life,” he says.

Resonating similar sentiments, Manish says, “Radio Udaan came as a huge support, especially when I had no friends and felt alone in the world. Only a specially-abled person can understand the plight of another.”

Edited by Divya Sethu

If one had to apply the viral social media trend #TheTellMeChallenge, to talk about Goa without mentioning ‘Goa’, it is no doubt that one would think to talk about Bebinca. This ghee-lathered sweetmeat encapsulates the state’s unique cultural and historical identity within its seven layers of glistening brilliance.

A flavourful vestige of the state’s colonial past, Bebinca is as unique to Goa as cartoonist Mario Miranda’s delightful illustrations portraying the lives of Goans.

And that is why it’s no surprise that the chief minister of the state, Pramod Sawant recently announced to push for a geographical indication (GI) tag for the dessert, in addition to the Mankurad mango, local brew coconut Feni, Taleigao brinjal, Saat Shireacho Bhendo (okra) and the Kunbi saree.

But underneath the luscious multi-layered slice of warm bliss, often served with vanilla ice cream, lies interesting stories of Goa’s culinary adventures.

A history lesson on sustainable baking

Also known as ‘bibik’, this Portuguese-influenced dessert is undisputedly the most popular sweet delicacy in the state. It makes special appearances at every occasion, be it a wedding, Christmas or any other feast. This indeed has earned Bebinca the sobriquet of ‘Queen of Goan Desserts’.

However, its origin is still shrouded in mystery. Some legends claim that much like other confectionaries of the convent (doces conventuais in Portuguese) Bebinca was also invented by Portuguese nuns in the 17th century. But what stands out is their zero-waste baking approach.

Contrary to most baked foods that use egg whites, here the yolks take the limelight. Using egg whites to starch clothes was a common practice of the colonizers which is still prevalent in parts of Old Goa. As a result of this, most people, much like the Portuguese nuns of Santa Monica Convent in Old Goa, would end up with an excess of leftover egg yolks. Legend has it that Bebinca came to be a solution to leftover yolks.

These stories and a prominent historian Fatima da Silva Gracias’ book, Cozinha de Goa: History and Tradition of Goan Food, states that one of these nuns from Santa Monica Convent was called Bebiana. She invented a seven-layered pudding using leftover yolks to symbolise the seven hills of the old city of Goa and Lisbon. This pudding was then sent to the priests, possibly those living in the Convent of St Augustine—the Order to which Santa Monica belonged—who although impressed, pointed out that seven layers weren’t enough for them. They advised Bebiana to increase the dessert’s size to accommodate at least a dozen layers. Today, this pudding is known as Bebinca in her honour and boasts from 7 to as many as 16 layers.

Patience — a critical ingredient

There’s nothing quite like cutting through the layers of Bebinca to reveal the wonders of complex flavours created with rather simple ingredients.

The warmth locked inside each layer, melting the vanilla ice-cream as you take a bite, is quite spectacular and is a result of four primary ingredients — eggs, all-purpose flour (maida), coconut milk and sugar. To enhance the flavours and create the cascading layers, lots of ghee and a hint of nutmeg is added.

But the one critical ingredient when baking Bebinca is patience. A true labour of love, one needs to keep it aside for 4 to 12 hours in order to religiously follow the recipe. Make the two separate batters (one dark and light), pour a thin layer of either batter, lather melted ghee on top, bake and then repeat, alternating between the dark and light layers. In other words, in the case of a 16-layer Bebinca, you would need to painstakingly layer, lather and bake each layer of batter 16 times!

Food experts say that the best results can be achieved only by following the traditional method of baking, which involves using a special earthenware oven called tizals. Unlike other baked desserts, Bebinca made in these pots is not baked over a fire but by placing a few burning coconut husks over the lid. A hack for those cooking it in a conventional oven is to select the heat source setting that allows the heat to be released from the top and not from under the Bebinca dish. This method allows the heat to spread evenly and helps the sugar to slowly caramelize and create a more rounded taste with smoky undertones.

Goa’s crown jewel, Bebinca, is not only sensational in India but across the world. According to experts, the Portuguese had taken it across their colonies, from Goa to Sri Lanka, East Africa, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines to even Hawaii and the Pacific. With every trip, it influenced a variation—be it the layer-less bibingka in the Philippines or the bibikkan in Sri Lanka—only to be immortalised as one of the many Indian gastronomic wonders.

Featured image source: notoutofthebox/Instagram

Edited by Yoshita Rao

On April 19, Nagpur-based Simran Nashine logged into her Twitter account to seek help for 41-year-old Girish Kesai, a COVID-19 patient. His oxygen saturation levels had dropped to 82%.

It had been well over 24 hours since his health had started deteriorating, and the wait for a hospital bed with an oxygen facility was only increasing. Fortunately, within the next few hours, Girish was able to receive admission. In those critical hours between his oxygen levels dropping and him finally being admitted to the hospital, his life depended on an oxygen concentrator.

This machine filters oxygen from the atmosphere and helps patients access it through a mask or cannula.

“The machine helped maintain his oxygen levels and prevent his health from deteriorating faster. It bought us time to scramble for an oxygen bed for further treatment. Without the concentrator, it would have been difficult to sustain for long,” Simran tells The Better India.

Like Girish, millions of COVID-19 patients across India are struggling to breathe during the initial stages of infection. Hospitals and the medical infrastructure are overwhelmed, resulting in a lack of oxygen beds and ventilators. If the administration of oxygen is delayed, a patient’s health can deteriorate so fast that the results can be fatal.

Buying time in crucial hours

Aarti Nimkar, former president of the Indian Medical Association (IMA), Pune, says an oxygen concentrator can be a life-saver during cases in which a patient needs mild oxygen.

“Ideally, oxygen levels in the body should be above 95. However, in COVID-19, the disease causes lung fibrosis and affects breathing among patients. A feeling of breathlessness, shortage of breath, chest pain and other respiratory issues are common symptoms. In such cases, the patients need oxygen therapy at the soonest, as the levels may start dropping. Such patients need assistance to compensate for inadequate breathing capabilities,” she says, adding, “The device can help boost oxygen levels if they drop to 80-85.”

She adds that the devices are available in 5-10 litres per minute flow capacities, cost between Rs 25,000 and Rs 60,000, and should be used under the supervision of doctors. “The machine can buy crucial time for patients. They may rely on the device before the ambulance arrives and they are hospitalised,” Aarti adds.

Aarti says the device can help boost a patient’s oxygen levels from 85 to up to 90 or 95, and even maintain these parameters to some extent. “Increased levels reduce the struggle for the patient and risks of health complications caused due to shortage of oxygen,” she adds.

Gujarat-based Ami Joshi, director of Ashmi Healthcare Private Limited says that over a hundred patients have benefited from oxygen concentrators since the surge in cases during the second wave.

“The device is simple to use, as it does not have a manual regulator like oxygen tanks. It prevents excess discharge and can be handled by the patient as needed. The maintenance cost is low as it does not require refills. Only the water dehumidifier needs replacement as per the use. In some cases, two devices of 5 litres/per minute flow can be used for a single patient if required,” she says.

“The oxygen concentrator has also helped patients showing oxygen levels as low as 70,” Ami says, adding that each machine is available on rent at Rs 400 or sometimes lent for free to people who cannot afford it.

Explaining the functioning of the device Pune-based Sundeep Salvi, director of Chest Research Foundation (CRF), says, “The atmospheric air consists of about 21% oxygen, 78% nitrogen, and then other gases. The oxygen concentrator works by absorbing air from the surroundings and filtering out nitrogen and other gases. The oxygen is stored in a cylinder to be inhaled by the user.”

How it works

The machine operates on electricity and requires uninterrupted power supply with power-back ups.
The machine starts releasing oxygen at the push of a button.
The device filters nitrogen and increases the concentration of oxygen for inhalation.
It is recommended to use the concentrator only if the SPO2 (oxygen saturation) level drops below 95.
It is mandatory to have a doctor’s approval to use the device.
Use an oxygen mask or nasal cannula as recommended by the medical expert for inhalation.
Ensure the filters are cleaned and do not block the air entry. It may affect the performance of the device.
Patients with asthma, COPD and respiratory ailments can also use it if prescribed by the doctors.

‘Best during the recovery stage’

Sundeep cautions that an oxygen concentrator cannot be a replacement for oxygen or a ventilator. “It can only act as a cushion before the severity of the disease increases. Patients with moderate and severe health conditions will need higher doses of oxygen, and the device cannot meet those heavy requirements,” he explains.

“On many occasions, the severity increases dramatically. The oxygen levels in the patient drop suddenly. In such cases, the patient should be moved immediately to oxygen or ventilator beds. The oxygen concentrator will prove futile,” he adds.

Sundeep believes that oxygen concentrators can be more beneficial post-treatment. “The device can work as a support system during the recovery stage of the COVID-19, as here, smaller doses of oxygen are required. This way, bed occupancy at the hospital reduces, and the patient can continue the treatment at home. The vacated bed becomes available for another patient who is in more urgent need of oxygen or a ventilator,” he adds.

Sudha Khisti from Nagpur is one such COVID-19 patient recovering from the disease. “I was diagnosed on March 25 and remained hospitalised for almost 20 days. As I suffer from asthma, the doctor was concerned about my health and suggested I buy an oxygen concentrator,” she says.

The 68-year-old adds that moving out of the hospital reduced the chances of getting reinfected and her family members contracting COVID-19. “The device has proven to be a game-changer. After using it for a week, my oxygen levels have increased, and my dependency on the device has reduced. Earlier, I used it for almost five hours a day. But now, I use it only for a couple of hours. It has made me confident about my health,” she says.

Aarti emphasises that oxygen concentrators do benefit patients, especially in difficult situations. “It would be appreciated if the government can waive taxes or reduce the prices of these devices. It will make it more affordable for common people and prove beneficial in times of the pandemic,” she adds.

To procure an oxygen concentrator, please click here, here and here.

Edited by Divya Sethu

Physical distancing is a privilege not many of us realise, especially for those who rely on others for basics such as taking a bath, getting dressed, going to the washroom, and eating.

Among the many things lacking in the way India is tackling the coronavirus pandemic is the absence of a disability-inclusive response to the crisis. Around 2.2% of India’s population lives with some form of mental or physical disabilities.

The definition of ‘disability’ presently includes 21 kinds of disabilities after the Rights of People With Disabilities Act was introduced in 2016. It includes anyone whose physical or mental ailments contribute to lack of mobility – for example, those with neurological and blood disorders, mental retardation and permanent inability to move, speak, hear, or see. It also includes those with deformities or injuries such as acid attack victims.

At Mumbai-based Shraddha Rehabilitation Foundation, which houses destitute mentally ill patients and reunites them with their families, the biggest challenge has been ensuring the safety of their inmates. “While many inmates have recovered well and are craving to go home, all reunion trips have been kept on hold for an uncertain period, after witnessing the sudden surge in cases and related deaths,” says founder Dr Bharat Vatwani. “A few inmates are experiencing homesickness, depression, and other such symptoms.” Handling medical emergencies is also a major challenge, he adds, now that beds and other facilities are preoccupied.

For the caretaker staff, there is an increased sense of worry for their families and relatives back home, along with a sense of helplessness when they watch recovered care receivers grapple with anxieties about their own families, with whom they are unable to reunite.

Meanwhile, Amrit Kumar Bakhshy, caregiver to his 21-year-old schizophrenic daughter Richa, says, “My daughter sees only me and the maid who comes to work, in particular, her illness has aggravated because of limited exposure to the outside world. We were visiting a psychiatrist once a month, but that’s been put on hold now. Caregivers are also affected in terms of bearing the brunt of their wards changing behaviours. My daughter refused to go for vaccination. I thought I’d enrol her in a halfway home due to worsening conditions, but they required a negative RT-PCR report, and she refused to submit a test for that either. We were finally able to send her, but it was tough, as she didn’t want to leave. These issues could perhaps have been avoided were there no restrictions on movement.”

What are some measures that PwDs (persons with disabilities) and caregivers can take at this time?

Dr Vatwani says, “Caregivers must ensure the provision of timely nutritious food for maintaining good health, as well as supplements to improve the immunity of PwDs. Moreover, get them vaccinated as soon as possible, depending on age and co-morbid specific protocols.”

He adds, “Limit outdoor activities to bare minimum. If there is a need to step outside, maintain protocols of masking, safe distancing, and sanitising. [For those who possess the physical and mental capabilities], incorporate a workout regime and eat nutritious food to maintain and improve immunity.”

Caregivers or PwDs living alone should keep an advance stock of groceries, medicines, and basic necessities. “Also, try to keep them engaged in timetabled activities to bring about a sense of control in their mental outlook,” Dr Vatwani adds. “Most importantly, take one day at a time.”

In the case of caretakers with more than one care receiver, it must be ensured that only one person maintains contact with the respective care receiver to minimise infection.

He also adds, “Care receivers should be kept engaged in regular and planned indoor activities. However, this is easier said than done. To some extent, interactive group sessions and games help maintain a stable frame of mind.” There should be regular checks on blood pressure and sugar to keep a check on comorbidities such as hypertension and diabetes, Dr Vatwani says.

As per the World Health Organisation, some issues being faced by these groups, which may contribute to them contracting the virus, includes:

1. Inability of both caregiver as well as PwD to enforce physical distancing due to required support in daily activities.
2. Pre-existing underlying health conditions of PwDs.
3. The need to touch things to obtain information about the current environment or for physical support.
4. Serious disruptions in the healthcare services that PwDs rely on.

Further, a report by the Government of India and the National Institute of Mental Health & Neurosciences states some additional problems such as:

1. Caregivers being unable to restrict the mobility of older persons with disabilities, such as those with dementia.
2. An increased sense of isolation due to not being able to socialise or go outside.
3. An increased sense of anxiety, apprehension, fear, and depression.
4. Breakdown in the daily routine for caregivers and increased facetime with their wards, mostly due to restrictions in other avenues.

As per NIHMAN’s guidelines, the intervention of a counsellor may aid the PwD in maintaining a better state of mind. Intervention may help in:

1. Acknowledgment of the distress that the PwD is currently in.
2. Provision of general mental health advice as dictated under common rules and guidelines for PwDs.
3. Provision of specific advice unique to the PwD in terms of their disability and with context.

At this time, with physical movement being restricted, online avenues can be accessible in times of need. Some resources include:

1. Radio Udaan is an online support group for persons with disabilities, and has people listening in from over 115 countries. Their radio station runs 24×7, is manned by persons with disabilities, and has helped over 15,000 PwDs find companionship, jobs, and love. You can read more about Radio Udaan on their website or here.
2. For PwDs struggling with jobs, Atypical is an online talent platform that connects recruiters with job seekers with disabilities, so such persons can find work solely on merit. Around 400 job seekers have registered with the website so far. It includes categories such as photography, art, graphics design, physiotherapy, sign language interpreters, and so on. You can read more about Atypical on their website or here.
3. Parivarthan for Parkinson’s is a Chennai-based support group for people with Parkinson’s disease, as well as their caregivers. For more information, you can visit their Facebook page.
4. The Mind Clan offers curated lists of counsellors, events and workshops, support groups and group therapy sessions, and stories and resources. They have also listed helplines here which they verify and update regularly, and have also answered some frequently asked questions. For more information, visit their website.
5. Nayi Disha is a resource platform for caregivers across India, especially for parents of children with intellectual and learning disabilities. It offers a detailed repository of verified services such as paediatric neurologists or instructors for dance, yoga, music, etc. It also provides extensive reading material on various conditions such as autism, and down syndrome, to name a few. It also has online support groups for parents and caregivers to prevent burnout and find respite in these challenging times. For more information, you can visit their website or Facebook page. You can also read more about them here.

Edited by Yoshita Rao

Earning the title of the ‘Pickle Queen of India’ is no easy feat. What earned Chennai-based Usha Prabakaran this title was Usha’s Pickle Digest, a laborious piece of work that took over 15 years to complete. The book contains over 1,000 pickle recipes sourced from generations of family members and friends and is considered a bible for pickle lovers all over the world.

Prabakaran recalls the days when she was newly married and introduced to the simple yet elegant world of vegetarian cooking.

“Not a day passed by without my mother-in-law preparing a variety of pickles, chutneys, thuvayal, podis, and wafers (vathals, vadams, and vadagams) during the summer months,” she tells The Better India. “Her cooking repertoire was difficult to replicate because there were so many nuances to it. Besides, she belonged to the old school, who knew everything by the handful, fistful, pinch, ollock, padi, and so on. Spoons and weighing machines were alien to her.”

‘No fuss, no mystique’

She says her tryst with pickling began in the late ’80s when she would watch her mother-in-law prepare elaborate dishes. Before this, she says, she knew next to nothing about cooking. Her family, and mother, in particular, believed it was an affair that could be rustled up in 30-35 minutes. “My mother didn’t believe in elaborate meals, but whatever she prepared was tasty,” Prabakran says.

“My father-in-law would dutifully take me to the market and I began mastering the fine art of buying vegetables and fruits, judging whether they were tender or past their prime,” she recalls.

Over the years, Prabakaran went through an extensive learning process, where she tried new recipes she gathered from her husband’s family, relatives, friends, and acquaintances. She says writing a book was never on the cards. She adds that everything she would prepare — from pickles to chutneys and podis —would vanish so fast that she would rarely get to taste her own food.

“On the suggestion of friends and family, I began handing out a list of around 25 recipes each, which eventually piled up to around 5,000. Sifting, sieving and selecting the best 1,000 among them was not easy, as I was head over heels in love with every one of my recipes.”

But sift and sieve she did, and these 1,000 recipes eventually became Usha’s Pickle Digest, published in 1998. The book has been divided into nine sections — Classique, Unique Flavours, Exclusive, Exotic, Quick Serve, Assorted, Oil-Free, Dietary, and Anti-Waste. It also includes notes on how to detect contaminants in ingredients, the vitamin and mineral content of the raw material and health benefits of some pickles.

“I studied and understood the need to be methodical in making available clean and dry spoons and jars, sun dried and home ground masalas, and organic and nutritious vegetables, fruits, herbs, spices and oils. Pickles are not complicated in their preparation. Almost all recipes can be prepared in the average kitchen — there’s no fuss and no mystique, only rewarding authenticity,” Prabakaran notes.

However, before the book could hit the stores, Prabakaran was diagnosed with brain tumour and her health deteriorated. “Three months after two brain surgeries, I started reading about and preparing pickles in the wee hours of the morning,” she says.

Humorously, she recalls, “Once in passing, my son asked me if I could conjure up a pickle from bubble gum. I’m still trying to fathom the meaning of that seemingly innocent question.”

Preserving India’s past

Her personal favourites from the recipe book include the cooling mango ginger pickle, the immunity-boosting garlic pickle, multi-spiced and versatile mango avakkai pickle, and the anti-diabetic magical tailed fenugreek sprouts pickle. “I also love the freshly prepared curd gooseberry pickle, the drumstick pickle, which is hot, sweet and sour, the mahani pickle in spiced buttermilk, refreshing green tomato pickle, and the iron-rich banana flower pickle,” she says.

Usha’s Pickle Digest has been a hit within India, as well as with the diaspora, finding its rightful mention in international publications, podcasts, and blogs.

Talking about the significance of this book, Prabakaran says, “The whole world realised that food plays a major role in disease prevention only in the 20th century, but ancient India seems to have realised this much earlier. The medicinal potential of spices and oils has been underestimated. The linkage between the past and future of medicine is much more important, and can give us new directions for understanding health and disease.”

She goes on to add, “Pickles were introduced by our ancestors to overcome the negative outturn of several food items. Besides being mouth-watering, the spices and seasoning have established characteristics that help the body in particular functions. For example, ginger, asafoetida, and turmeric are all considered good digestives. Cumin and cardamom are cooling, and clove and cinnamon are warming. Pepper and mint are good for the common cold. Garlic is useful in treating hypertension. Red chillies in small doses offer antiseptic action. Tamarind acts as an antiseptic and laxative. Spices are important in promoting health.”

In terms of publishing, Prabakaran says, “Publishers quoted high figures, which I could not afford, as I was just a beginner and not well-versed in the trade. It did not even carry my mail id, and many tried to locate me for close to a decade. And so, I self-published.”

Over 1,000 copies were printed and gifted by Prabakaran herself, but in the initial period of the book being published, getting hands on a hard copy was tough. She notes that ascertaining the exact number of copies sold thus far would be hard. The book was photocopied and passed around for free, but she says she took great pleasure in this.

Rasam — the ‘jack of all trades’

‘Pickle Queen of India’ is not the only title that Prabakaran holds. She’s also known as the ‘Rasam Queen of India’. “My previous book was written to demystify the myth that pickle preparation was difficult and cumbersome. While doing my research, rasams, which were then not much tried or experimented with, caught my attention. The idea was to string together recipes that ranged from spicy to sour and sweet, light as air or broth-like, and those that made use of vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, herbs and spices. Rasam can also ward off many diseases.”

Owing to two more major brain surgeries, writing her book had to be put on hold for about 5 years, except for occasional trials for when she was feeling up to it. Once Prabakaran’s health improved, her work on Usha’s Rasam Digest began. This book contains 1,000 rasam recipes, which can be prepared in minutes and keep health issues in check.

She says she chose rasam as the subject of her second book for a myriad of reasons. “Rasam can be tailor-made to address various health concerns. It can range from simple to exotic. It takes little time to prepare, which is a boon for office goers, and is budget friendly. It can be fiery and pungent, or soothing and mellow, depending on your palate. It’s unbelievably accommodating — anything and everything can make a rasam, including any dal, any sour item, a spice mix…that’s all it takes.”

The extensive rasam book has recipes that use a vast range of ingredients, including tomato, pepper, ghee, cumin, jaggery, milk, curd, mustard seeds, coriander, and curry leaf, to name a few. The book also has certain tips to get the most out of a warm, soothing bowl of rasam. “The key to making appetising rasam lies not only in selecting the right spices, but also adding them in the correct sequence, and seasoning them fittingly. Seasoning of spices and herbs is an age-old method to extract the complete flavour of the spices.”

On how she feels about the titles she holds, Prabakaran says, “I have always been passionate with regards to any task I do. My books are truly a labour of love, and while I’m very happy with these titles, I never worked towards that goal. My aim has always been to give my best. This happened by chance and I consider myself fortunate to have spread the diversity and variety of India’s rich culinary heritage.”

“It would not be a misnomer to term every household in India as a ‘gourmet kitchen’. The regional diversity of our country, abounding with its rich and varied vegetables, fruits, spices, herbs, and cooking variations have made it possible to write on any culinary subject,” she says.

Edited by Yoshita Rao

On the night of 22 April, Sanchari Pal from Shimla plunged into a crisis that millions of Indians are struggling with today — to seek medical assistance to cure COVID-19. Her 69-year-old father, Rajendra Prasad Pal, who has diabetes and hypertension, was facing the threat of increasing complications. As his condition worsened with mild pneumonia, the doctors at the Kasturba Gandhi Hospital in Chitranjan, West Bengal, prescribed Remdesivir for treating COVID-19.

However, the drug is still in acute shortage across India.

Panicked, Sanchari reached out to friends, family and strangers via social media, mentioning the details of her father’s case to seek urgent aid. “The doctors asked to arrange for the drug and oxygen tank. I scrambled to reach all possible resources to procure Remdesivir, including the available helplines. I also put out a post mentioning my phone number for people to reach out but to no avail,” she tells The Better India.

Sanchari says that after being turned down by multiple sources, she found light at the end of the tunnel. By virtue of strangers over the internet, she started receiving calls who claimed to have stock of the drug.

But little did she know that it would turn out to be a scam.

‘He took advantage of my desperation’

“My hopes escalated. But I was doubtful as many suppliers demanded full advance payment. I did not want to take risks. However, one potential lead offered the Remdesivir at market price of Rs 24,000,” she says, adding a person claiming to be ‘Rahul’ from Kolkata shared pictures of the refrigerated drug and assured her four vials.

To double-check, she asked for more pictures and the details of how she would procure the medication from him. He said the drug could be received by Sanchari’s relative who was attending to her father. “As a precaution, I told Rahul that I would not make the full payment. He agreed to my request but asked me to make half the payment in advance. He seemed genuine and expressed concerns about my father’s health too. Rahul said he wants to help humanity and that he understood the pain and trauma people were undergoing in this crisis,” she adds.

Sanchari says that he even explained how Remdesivir requires storing under 4 degrees Celsius, and needed a flask to be transported. “He sent a picture on WhatsApp showing how the flask is being cooled to prepare for the three-hour journey from Kolkata to Chitranjan. He said the medicine would travel by Janshatabdi Express departing at 2 pm and promised to share the contact details of the train guard to whom he would hand over the medication,” she says. Sanchari then made a payment of Rs 12,000, but was left with a kernel of doubt.

“He asked me to make the payment to an account holder named Deepak Kumar. In my state of desperation and wanting to access the medicine for my ailing father, I did not give it a second thought fearing the loss of opportunity,” she says.

However, just minutes before the train could leave, Rahul stopped answering her calls, and eventually switched off his phone, never to respond again.

“It took only moments to realise that it was a scam and I was duped. Besides taking care of my father, I had to make a complaint to the cybercrime department with the concerned police department,” she shares.

Sanchari urges people to learn from her experience and fears there may be hundreds more falling for these scams. “Everything seemed genuine until the last minute, and the person took all the efforts to gain my trust. Only now do I realise he was luring me into making the payment,” she says.

Aside from being suspicious of unscrupulous people asking for huge amounts of money in return for essentials like the Remdesivir drug, there are some pointers one could keep in mind to ensure the authenticity of the vials.

Make sure that you ask for pictures of the vials of Remdesivir that the person is offering. Look carefully at the label and packaging.

For example, the pictures mentioned show the label does not have an ‘Rx’ symbol and has grammatical mistakes with alignment errors, too. Spelling mistakes like the name of the place of manufacturing or unnecessary capitalisation can help identify the fake drugs from the real ones and save you from being duped.

Edited by Yoshita Rao

Snow-capped mountain peaks where no one ever ventures, a secret government mission, dangerous nuclear devices and a disaster supposedly waiting to happen — the Nanda Devi mystery has all the makings of a Dr Strangelove-esque movie.

The story dates back to the 60s, a little after China had conducted its first nuclear tests near Lake Lop Nur in Xinjiang Province. It came full circle in 2018 when Uttarakhand Tourism Minister Satpal Maharaj urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to reopen a cold case. Moreover, the incident was thrust further into the spotlight after a glacier burst in Raini, Uttarakhand, in February this year.

So what connects a government mission, over half a century old, with a recent calamity in 2021?

A buried secret

Back then, Cold War hysteria was at its peak, and the entirety of the United States of America was neck-deep in it. The American Central Intelligence Agency reached out to the Indian Intelligence Bureau for help in spying on Chinese nuclear tests and missile firings.

Even the beginning of this story is nothing short of the intro of a war movie. In his book ‘Spies in the Himalayas’, internationally renowned mountaineer Captain Manmohan Singh Kohli wrote that he believes the idea was born in a Washington cocktail party. National Geographic staff photographer Barry Bishop shared a drink with US Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay, and the discussion was sparked. “On the surface, [the two] seemed to have little in common. But when Bishop spoke of the unique vantage point from atop the Himalayas — with an unfettered view across Chinese-occupied Tibet — LeMay was all ears.”

Around the same time, halfway across the world, Captain Kohli had just wrapped up the first successful scaling of the summit of Mt Everest by an Indian climbing team. Basking in the expedition’s brand new glory, he was approached to lead the Indian team on a “secret mission”.

“Due to a pressing requirement for unique skills, the intelligence agencies of the United States and India could not turn to their normal roster of spies or paramilitary operatives,” Kohli wrote in his book. “Instead, they had to draw on a small fraternity of elite mountaineers to place a delicate monitoring device at the “roof of the world”.”

And so, in October 1965, a group of Indian and American climbers began scaling the Nanda Devi, India’s second-highest peak, to reach its summit and plant nuclear-powered monitoring devices. These included seven plutonium capsules and surveillance equipment, weighing around 57 kg, to be placed near India’s north-eastern border with China.

Of course, this was no easy feat. As Kohli wrote in his book, “For generations, expeditions have attempted to navigate up the Rishi Ganga. This meant overcoming expansive stretches of downward sloping rock slabs, followed by a narrow staircase of stones, naturally cut across a huge wall. The latter is aptly dubbed as ‘Stairway to Heaven’ by the locals. If you are successful in traversing this feature, you can see the heavenly grandeur of the sacred Nanda Devi. One misstep and you plummet thousands of feet into the gorge, reaching heaven via a more direct route.”

In an interview with Mint Lounge, Kohli said that the team was not aware of the exact nature of the mission. “I was told we had to carry something to the summit of a mountain, alongside the Americans. It was, or the fact that it was composed of 80% of the radioactive material that destroyed Hiroshima, were details we didn’t know. Nobody told us how dangerous it was.”

With the dangers of the route in mind, Kohli kept his team’s safety as his goal. “As our team was approaching the summit, there was a powerful blizzard. We had to leave the generator in a small cave and return because the weather conditions were too dangerous to continue,” Kohli, now 89, tells The Better India. “Our team’s safety was my priority at that point.”

A year later, the team returned to the same point to recover the device and perhaps carry the mission they had been entrusted with. “However, we found the generator was missing. In 1968, we brought in two helicopters from Europe, which could fly at 34,000 feet and went across Nanda Devi. But even those were unable to locate the machine. There was no sign of it whatsoever,” he says.

Some theories suggest the device was lost to an avalanche. Kohli says these plutonium capsules have a longevity of about 100 years and could be buried in the snow somewhere.

In some remote areas of the Himalayas, residents have believed the same for generations. In particular, there was a wave of panic after the glacier burst in Raini this February, which claimed 50 lives and destroyed four villages.

The official cause, as told by scientists, was that a piece of the glacier fell into the water and triggered massive floods in the area. According to a report by the BBC, the glacier was on a slope and held up by a massive rock, which had weakened over time due to repeated freezing and melting. A chunk of ice broke and slid down the steep mountain, and when it reached the floor of the valley, the rocks, snow and sediment it had carried alongside fell into a narrow mountain stream, effectively blocking it. Once the water level increased, a surge of water and rubble burst through the dam, causing massive floods.

However, residents of Raini believe the lost device at Nanda Devi had a role to play in the tragedy. “We think the devices could have played a role. How can a glacier simply break off in winter? We think the government should investigate,” a resident of the village told a BBC reporter.

Kohli tells me he believes a part of the generator was dislodged due to the melting of snow, fell and exploded, which led to the floods. “After ‘65, I was posted near Raini village, and during the three years we spent looking for the device, we tested the water in the Rishi Ganga. We were worried that if the generator slid down the slope, it could contaminate the water, so when people came to bathe there, it could pose serious risks for them. The glacier burst made the story a little clearer. For now, it seems the water is diluted and has flown down to the ocean.”

In 2018, Satpal Maharaj, Uttarakhand Tourism Minister, had met with the Prime Minister to express similar apprehensions that the atomic device could be polluting the Ganga.

A slew of conspiracy theories

For almost a decade after the 1965 expedition, the incident remained a secret before the story broke out in 1978, picked up by the Washington Post. “Until the plutonium deteriorates, which may take centuries, the device will remain a radioactive menace that could leak into the Himalayan snow and infiltrate the Indian river system through headwaters of the Ganges,” the journal warned.

Then Indian Prime Minister Morarji Desai was forced to “drop a bombshell” in the Parliament once the story went public, acknowledging how India and America had collaborated at “the top-level” to plant the device at Nanda Devi. Back then, the enigma surrounding this sudden discovery was only fueled by the mysterious deaths of Lal Bahadur Shastri, former prime minister and minister in charge of atomic energy, and Homi Bhabha, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission.

At the time of Bhabha’s death, a newspaper had reported that a Pakistani diplomat based in Paris was the first to reach the air crash site in which the nuclear physicist had perished and was responsible for removing classified documents that he was carrying to America. It was speculated that the papers were related to a small nuclear power project in the Himalayas. Before Desai’s admission in the Parliament, this theory had been dismissed as outlandish.

In 2018, reports stated that the Nanda Devi incident was being made into a Hollywood movie. The project is being pursued by American producer Scott Rosenfelt, who also produced movies including Teen Wolf and Home Alone.

Meanwhile, despite the numerous speculations surrounding all aspects of the secret mission, the whereabouts of the device remain unknown. All that’s left is a series of legends, myths, and fears surrounding the unknown and what risk the nuclear device might pose in the future.

Edited by Vinayak Hegde

A  Monday morning in B.B.D.Bagh, Kolkata’s commercial hub, is a riot. Also known as office para, the area is a picture of chaos, capturing the traffic-clogged streets swarmed with people, either rushing to work or gulping down breakfast at the street-side eateries, which serve almost everything — a plate of rice and fish, bread omelette, chowmein, chilli chicken and fried rice, to name a few.

But all this hubbub comes to a pause at Mahendra Da’s Samovar Tea shop, not because it’s any less crowded, but because of how magical the tea served here is.

What makes it so special, you ask? It is the giant kettle-like metal vessel called samovar, which brews soul-stirring sustenance served in clay cups, all day long, to fuel the city’s workforce.

Tucked away in a corner of Bentinck Street, this 101-year-old tiny tea joint is unmissable, thanks to both an ever-present crowd of tea-lovers, as well as this 20-litre copper tank. One of the few surviving Samovar tea shops in the country, Mahendra Da’s store, locally known as ‘tanki chai shop’, is the only one in Kolkata that serves tea made in a samovar.

Song of Samovar

Traditionally used to heat and boil water for tea, this metal container, whose name literally means ‘self-boiler’, was invented in Russia in the 18th century.

But according to Russian author Daniil Kharms’ book ‘Ivan Ivanych Samovar’, a samovar is much more than just a copper boiler. It is believed to have a soul that sings. A rather romantic interpretation of its mechanism, this idea comes from the fact that the urn, when placed under firewood and charcoal, produces gentle gurgling sounds of water, slowly brewing the tea leaves.

A common Russian household utensil at the time, its ability to infuse tea with an unmatchable smoky flavour and fabled immunity-building properties because of copper, soon made samovar quite popular in several parts of Europe and the rest of the world, including India.

Today one can spot samovar tea shops in parts of South India and even Kashmir. In Bengal, however, it is a fading antique, painstakingly kept alive by the Samovar tea shop, run by 66-year-old Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

A namesake of the Indian cricketer, Mahendra is a second-generation samovar tea-seller, running this shop for the past 40 years. But this family-run shop has managed to hit a century with unwavering popularity, despite several competing tea establishments multiplying in the area. Talking about this sustained popularity, he tells the Indian Express, “The unique taste that comes from the water boiled in copper vessels cannot be recreated. So, this tea leaves an ever-lasting impression.”

Keeping the tradition alive

The tea shop was started by Juhuri Singh in 1920, a time when samovars were not rare in the city. He had just moved from the United Provinces to what was then Calcutta in search of a livelihood and decided to set up a tea shop in the city’s business district.

The idea to invest in the huge samovar was to be able to boil large quantities of water and keep it piping hot for hours. Over time, the popularity of these vessels faded in the city, mostly because of tedious maintenance, but Mahendra continues to stay true to tradition by brewing tea in the same vessel.

According to him, the samovar keeps the tea hot for several hours, without having to run on the gas the whole day, saving him both time and money. He adds that making tea in this vessel is quicker than that made in a kettle or other modern utensils.

Unlike other samovar tea shops in South India, which use gas stoves as a heat source, Mahendra likes to stick to tradition and make use of fire made with charcoal and wood that heats up a vertical tube inside the copper urn to slowly brew the tea leaves.

It is only while serving the tea that his version of samovar tea moves away from the original Russian tradition. Usually, samovar in Russia, as well as several other countries, is used to brew leaves to extract a rich concentrate of the tea liquor, which is later diluted with hot water and sweeteners. Mahendra, however, adds milk instead of more water, just before serving it in clay cups.

Serving more than a thousand cups a day, this tea-seller is doing his bit in keeping a unique brewing technique alive, hoping that future generations will follow.

Featured image source: Shashi Ghosh/Indian Express

Edited by Divya Sethu

The year was 1903, and the otherwise quiet village of Great Wyrley in Staffordshire county, England, was bogged down by a terrifying occurrence. A series of gruesome slashings of horses, cows and sheeps had the area’s residents worried sick. Horrified villagers would wake up every day to find their cattle lying mutilated across fields, and the area soon began to be known as the “village of fear”.

The M.O was always the same. The killer came in the middle of the night, slashed the animals, and then disappeared without a trace. The local police tried to crack down, increase surveillance and nab the culprit, but to no avail. Children were told not to venture out at night, and people began locking their cattle up.

Things became worse when the police began receiving letters from a supposed gang, which named their alleged members. One name, in particular, stood out.

It was that of one George Edalji, a half Parsi, half English man who was a village resident. He was the son of Reverend Shapurji Edalji, a Bombay-born man who had travelled to England and eventually became the first person from South Asia to be made a vicar of an English parish.

To understand why George was a particular person of interest in this notorious case of cattle mutilation, we must first understand his life as a person of colour in an otherwise white society.

Who was George Edalji?

George was the eldest of three children to his parents, Reverend Shapurji and his English wife, Charlotte, born in Great Wyrley in 1876. The area in which the family lived was apprehensive about non-whites in the village, and George had always been subject to hostility and racism. Today, a better nomenclature for this phenomenon exists — ‘institutionalised racism’.

Much before George was accused of the heinous animal killings, the Edaljis had been subject to harassment and threats. In his book ‘Conan Doyle and the Parson’s Son’, Gordon Weaver details how Captain Anson, posted as the Chief Constable of Staffordshire, held the then-common view that those of foreign origins were miscreants or villainous. He questioned how “this Hindoo, who could only talk in a foreign accent, came to be the clergyman of the Church of England and in charge of an important working class Parish”.

Much of the misfortune that befell the small English village was pinned on George. These included anonymous letters to a member of the parish council detailing the sexual abuse of his 10-year-old daughter and naming George as the sender, as well as anonymous threats being sent to various village families.

Meanwhile, as a student, George was actually a quiet and studious boy who had won accolades for his academic performance and even written a book about railway laws. It’s said that he led a generally mundane life — taking the train to work every evening, returning home, eating dinner, and falling asleep. He was never seen drinking at the local watering hole and more or less kept to himself.

Real-life Sherlock Holmes

In 1903, George was 27 years old and working as a solicitor. Around this time, maimed cattle began showing up all over Great Wyrley, starting with two horses on February 1 that year. While livestock killings were commonplace in settling scores in the farming communities, the village had never seen murders of such levels, and there was widespread panic.

Owing to the suspicious nature with which George and his family had always been viewed by the police force and residents of Great Wyrley, the law forces began observing the young lawyer. Captain Anson, in particular, heavily suspected him. Years later, he alleged that Edalji had had a reputation for roaming the area late at night, and on a few occasions, footprints at the scene of the crime led to the vicarage and its surrounding areas.

On August 18, an injured pony was discovered early in the morning. A police team arrived at George’s house and recovered a coat, a few razors, and a pair of boots. They claimed the coat had hair that resembled the pony’s and that the razors had been used as a weapon of some sort. George’s affirmations that he had not left his home that night fell on deaf ears. He used to share his room with his father, the Reverend, a fact that the police found absurd because George was nearly 30. And so, even as Reverend Shapurji claimed that George had been in the room the entire night, the police arrested the solicitor.

In prison, George spent his time reading books about an English private detective, who cracked the toughest cases with his exceptional skills of deduction, observation, reasoning and forensic science. Meanwhile, his own case had gained the attention of top lawyers across the country, and the public quickly rallied with him, with a petition to have him released, gaining over 10,000 signatures. George was released on parole after three years, but the stench of the crime clung to the air around him, and he was barred from continuing to practice as a solicitor.

Desperate to clear his name, George wrote to the author of the book about this famous detective, none other than Sherlock Holmes. Around four hours away, in Edinburgh, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was recovering from having recently lost his beloved wife, Louise. When he received George’s letters, he knew helping out a family burdened by the grief of their oldest son being falsely accused would be the best way to pull him out of his own misery.

Before this, Doyle had often received requests and letters from readers everywhere to don the hat of his most famous creation and help them solve crimes. But never before had he paid heed to any of these. Something about George’s appeal, however, stood out. And so he wrote back to the Parsi, setting up a meeting in London’s Grand Hotel on Charing Cross.

George arrived at the hotel on the decided date, a few hours before Doyle. As he sat waiting, he was biding his time reading newspapers placed in the lobby. When Doyle arrived, right off the bat, he noticed the young lawyer bending close to read the newspaper properly. Almost immediately, it dawned on the author — George’s eyesight was compromised, a fact that had never been brought up in all those years of the trial.

The murder accused confirmed to Doyle that he was, in fact, astigmatic. A common symptom of this condition is blurry vision. Meanwhile, the fateful August night after which George had been arrested was windy and rainy, and so, there was no doubt in Doyle’s mind that a man whose vision was compromised could not have seen through the storm and murdered animals. Also included was the fact that these killings had continued even after George’s incarceration.

An unlikely alliance

Doyle listened patiently as George detailed other aspects of the trial, his public image as a strange Asian man whose skin colour was different, and how it was believed that Parsis, who worshipped the fire and sun, used to sacrifice animals for prayers, a fact which contributed to George’s conviction. Doyle travelled with George to Great Wyrley, where he inspected the crime scene and interrogated the locals.

In 2015, the letters of Doyle’s correspondence with the Staffordshire police were made public for the first time. In her book, the Mystery of the Parsee Lawyer, author and journalist Shrabani Basu detailed how Doyle believed that race had a huge role in George’s conviction and how the author attempted to rectify the lawyer’s wrongful arrest and public perception.

Doyle wrote about George’s case for the first time in The Daily Telegraph in 1907, in which he wrote how, in true Sherlock fashion, he had forensically analysed all the “evidence” found against George, how much of the case had been fabricated, and how years of torment that the Edaljis had faced at the hands of the whites had played a role in the blame placed on the young lawyer’s shoulders.

The Home Office of the UK Government cleared George of the previous charges against him but refused to compensate him for the years lost. While Doyle attempted to find the real culprit to help George attain his compensation, the ‘Wyrley Ripper’ was never found. However, several good things came from the unlikely alliance of the famous British author and a young Indian man.

For one, George’s case eventually led to the establishment of the Court of Criminal Appeal (England and Wales). Moreover, George was once again inducted into the Solicitors’ Roll and spent the rest of his life practising in London. George’s was only one of the two cases that Doyle ever took up, and the two remained good friends until the author died in 1930.

Over a century later, discussions around race have only highlighted how George’s incarceration is just one of the many cases of how someone’s skin colour predetermines their guilt or lack thereof in the public’s eye, often without any proof.

In 2013, then Solicitor-General of England and Wales Oliver Heald declared that poor George’s trial had been a farce – perhaps too little, too late.

Edited by Vinayak Hegde

Before the pandemic, at any time on any given day you would find lakhs of Delhiites on the streets of Karol Bagh, one of the city’s oldest and most popular destinations. Thousands of street vendors set up shop amid the tiny gullies, selling a variety of clothes, jewellery, shoes, electronics, and any item you might be looking for. You’d also find an array of food stalls that boast a variety of dishes and cuisine — chow mein, momos, chaat, sweets, chole bhature, kulfi — you name it.

Over the years, Old Delhi has come to be home to a variety of old eateries. One of these is the beloved Roshan Di Kulfi, over seven decades old, nestled among the bustling streets of the marketplace and thronged by a sea of hungry visitors looking to satisfy their sweet cravings.

A safe haven after the Partition

The story of this eatery dates back to 1947, right after the Partition of India, when then 19-year-old Roshan Lal Soni migrated from Lahore to Delhi. Born and brought up in Himachal Pradesh, he had moved to the former as a teenager in search of a livelihood. After the Partition forced millions out of their homes, Roshan found himself unwittingly being part of the sea of refugees that left their old lives behind.

In order to earn a livelihood, young Roshan began selling dry fruits in neighbourhoods in Connaught Place, where he would walk from door to door to sell his products. He later moved to Karol Bagh, and inspired by the scorching Delhi heat, decided to venture into selling kulfis.

“At the time, a new market of refugees had emerged in the area,” Roshan’s 33-year-old grandson Ishan Soni, who currently helms the business, tells The Better India. “My grandfather put up a street stall here. Today, we have a multi-storey and multi-cuisine store, in the exact same area where he had first set up his tiny stall as a street hawker.”

Kulfis, the delicious and desi answer to ice creams, are made by slowly thickening and evaporating milk, which is then sweetened with sugar. After this, additional ingredients such as chopped nuts and saffron are added, and the dish is frozen in moulds. A favourite addition to kulfis is falooda, made from vermicelli noodles and added condiments such as rose syrup.

When Roshan first began selling kulfis, he would walk four kilometres, from Shakti Nagar to Karol Bagh, carrying giant tins of milk on his shoulder to begin selling for the day. “Transportation was not easily available at the time, so he’d have to walk everywhere. Even work opportunities were lacking at the time, and finding jobs was not as easy,” Ishan says. “Of course, there were no digital platforms at the time. Most of the store’s popularity spread through word of mouth.”

Roshan’s legacy was taken forward by his sons, Joginder Kumar Soni (Ishan’s father), Pradish Kumar Soni, and late Ashok Kumar Soni. Ishan notes that over the years, the family has tried their best to stabilise business, but have faced their fair share of challenges along the way. “One challenge was us maintaining the quality with which our grandfather began. Meeting profits, procuring quality raw ingredients, and moderating flavours according to diversifying tastes were some others. Our priority has always been to ensure that the quality of our kulfi never changes,” Ishan says.

Customers return with a smile

Roshan started by selling the kesar pista falooda kulfi, which Ishan notes is their most popular dish to this date. Today, their portfolio has diversified to include delectable Indian sweets, snacks and thalis. The family also runs a catering and food supply business. Other than their most famous variety, their kulfies include the mango falooda kulfi (which Ishan says is a hit during the summer months), sugar-free falooda kulfi, pan falooda kulfi and the chocolate oreo kulfi. Snacks include chole bhature, chole puri, paneer pakora, aloo tikki, samosas, chaat, pav bhaji and kachori.

They also sell tandoori items like paneer tikkas, mushroom tikkas, soya chaaps and rolls, as well as south Indian snacks such as dosas, idlis, sambar and uttapams. The items are priced anywhere between Rs 125 and Rs 200, making this a place where people from all walks of life come to unwind and enjoy mouthwatering food.

Ishan recalls his grandfather was both strict about his routine, as well as fun-loving — a unique combination that lent to the thriving of Roshan Di Kulfi. “He was hard working, and put all his efforts into the business, which is what we try to carry forward even today.”

When I ask Ishan how many customers he thinks would have thronged to their beloved eatery before the pandemic, he laughs saying, “Our elders say that we shouldn’t delve too much into these things, and continue our business with an honest and dedicated mind.” It seems fair, given that it could be hard to keep a track of the hundreds of customers who have come to love Roshan Di Kulfi so much that visiting it became a regular affair.

Speaking about how coronavirus changed the picture, Ishan says, “After the first lockdown, when we reopened our store, we faced a lack of both labour as well as customers. Those days were hard. We were just beginning to come back on track before this second lockdown was announced. Our store is located right in the middle of the main market, and is not surrounded by many residential areas, so deliveries are also low. Food delivery services have not been reliable either. Moreover, we’re also scared of the new strain of COVID-19, so we’ve locked up shop to keep safe for now.”

In 1997, Roshan Di Kulfi found itself as the epicenter of one of the two bomb blasts that shook Karol Bagh right before Diwali. The blast, which took place in the customer seating area, took the life of one woman, while injuring several others.

Ishan recalls, “Our store was severely damaged. My father spent the next several months staying back at the restaurant till late at night, returning early morning the next day, to ensure that the renovation work was completed as quickly as possible. However, our doors were open to customers the very next day.” Business was in no way affected, as people readily returned to their safe haven, refusing to give up despite the horrifying incident that had taken place.

Over the years, the store has come to be loved by stalwarts such as Kapil Dev and Atal Bihari Vajpayi. “It feels wonderful to hear the praises of the legacy our grandfather has created,” Ishan says. “Whoever comes here returns with a smile on their face, and that keeps us going.”

Edited by Yoshita Rao

Growing up amid the hills of Garhwal, Uttarakhand, Babita Bhatt’s childhood had made her privy to the rich crop diversity of the Himalayas. Eating delicious and organic food was a daily affair she had known all her life.

After marriage, the 43-year-old moved to an urban landscape to work as a software professional in a big media house. For years, she worked in the shelter and safety of her comfortable job, but things changed when her baby girl was born.

“I was looking for millets and maize that would have been good for my baby, and found that whatever I could get my hands on was far from pure, and completely polished. My childhood in Garhwal had equipped me with the understanding of what real organic produce is, and my search for the same in big cities came up short. From the look to the taste of the produce I found, everything seemed artificial and laden with chemicals,” Babita tells The Better India.

‘We can grow, but where do we sell?’

Babita was also acutely aware of the remarkable variety of crops that were found in the Himalayas. “If you consume 50 per cent organic products, but the rest is laden with chemicals, then the entire purpose of eating organic is defeated,” she notes. “I wanted to bring the lesser-known and indigenous produce of the hills to people’s doorsteps.”

Alongside she harboured a desire to provide Himalayan farmers a better market to sell the vast range of produce that they were growing. “I also had relatives back home who grew their own produce, and everyone’s complaint and fears were centred around the fact that even if they grew crops, where would they sell it?” she says.

In 2016, Babita quit her high-paying job to move to Dehradun, and began Himalaya2Home, an online platform that sells a vast range of produce grown by a network of over 2,000 farmers in the region. From flour to pulses, millets, spices, rock salt, ghee, oil, pickles, sugar, herbs and tea, the venture’s portfolio includes over 140 products that aim to cover as much of the hill’s rich crop diversity as possible.

Each crop is grown, processed and packaged in an ethical and sustainable manner, without the use of any chemical fertilisers or pesticides. While promoting organic eating and preserving Himalaya’s diversity, the company also aims to establish direct partnerships and empower farmers by providing them a channel to sell their produce.

“Giving up a stable job to enter the risky world of entrepreneurship was definitely a challenge,” Babita says, adding, “I moved there with an idea in mind, and spent over a year finding and trying to connect with different farmers in the area to get them on board. I met villagers to understand what crops they grow, how they grow them, and what challenges they were facing in selling them. I got myself registered with Uttarakhand’s Organic Board. To collect the information of thousands of organic farmers single-handedly was also a challenge.”

Speaking about Himalaya2Home, Babita says the name is a reflection of the company’s aim. “Our idea is to show that everything you need in your kitchen can be organic. We started with pulses and spices and eventually expanded,” she says. The platform currently ships to all over India, receives at least 3,000 orders a month and has a customer base of around 4,000 buyers.

Additionally, Babita also collects heirloom seeds from all over Uttarakhand to sell to farmers. She also introduced a native variety of black rice—indigenous to Imphal—to farmers in Dehradun. “I studied both Dehradun’s as well as Imphal’s environment to understand that the climatic conditions are similar. I procured the seeds from Imphal and gave them to my network of farmers. The rice took to Dehradun very well, and now many farmers grow it,” she says. “Many of these organic seeds are not available in other parts of Uttarakhand, so I want to popularise them and propagate organic farming,” she says.

Towards healthy eating

Babita gives a 100 per cent buyback policy to the farmers. She says. “No matter what happens to their crops, the amount that is paid to them won’t be reduced.”

In Maldevta, 70-year-old Kathait ji, is a testament to this. “I have been a farmer all my life. Our entire family has been in it for generations,” he tells me. “I have been selling my produce to Babita ji for the last 4-5 years,” he says, adding, “Earlier, I used to sell to another company. In the first two years, they gave us a decent rate for our produce, but later they started slashing our rates and stopped a major chunk of our payment. Our livelihood came to a standstill. We survived by selling locally. But the officials of the organic board introduced us to Babita ji, and things have improved since. She pays us for whatever she buys from us without flinching.”

“I think of the benefit to farmers in two ways. One, of course, is steady income that they receive for their produce. The other is that, say, when these farmers feed their cows this organic grass, the animal is healthier, and their milk is of superior quality. So their hard work is paying off,” she says.

On her journey as a woman running a business of her own, Babita notes, “Balancing motherhood and your own business is certainly tough. When I was a software professional, I’d get certain hours of free time. But ever since I began Himalaya2Home, I’ve been working day and night. I am constantly supervising the packaging and production, and making sure that all crops are being grown with the standards of ethics and sustainability that our company aims for. These challenges always exist for a woman entrepreneur, given the society we live in. I try my best to maintain the balance,” she says.

As far as women entrepreneurs are concerned, she says, “You have to take charge. Draw your own lines and find your own balance. Remain focused regardless of what notions others might hold about you running a business and taking care of a family.”

To see Himalaya2Home’s vast range of products, or for more information, you can visit their website.

Edited by Yoshita Rao

The governments of Goa, Karnataka and Uttarakhand recently sanctioned the use of Ivermectin for COVID-19 treatment. The 12 mg drug has been enlisted by the Union Health Ministry, aiming to prevent the surge in the number of patients. While it was not part of the COVID-19 guidelines in 2020, the ministry has included it in the protocol in line of treatment this year.

However, the World Health Organization, US Food and Drug Administration and the scientific community have discouraged using the drug for therapy, citing safety concerns and saying that there is no evidence that the drug supports treatment among the patients.

What is Ivermectin?

Ivermectin, an anti-parasitic, is commonly used as a deworming drug for horses. Its use was extended to humans to address intestinal worms and skin ailments.

In February, Merck, parent producer of the drug, issued a statement citing that preclinical studies have shown no scientific basis for the drug having potential therapeutic results against COVID-19. The company also mentioned the absence of robust evidence for clinical activity or efficacy in patients suffering from the disease. It emphasised that there was a concerning lack of data in the majority of the studies conducted.

The directives issued by the Health Ministry on 21 April also acknowledge this, mentioning it as ‘may be’, suggesting that the medicine may be used by patients with mild symptoms or those undergoing home isolation treatment.

Placebo effect?

Experts say that despite no evidence of its role in curing patients and differences among the community, there are multiple reasons why the drug is widely being used in the treatment.

“The WHO strictly advises against the use of Ivermectin. But India is still holding on to soft data or personal experiences of the patients. In 2020, doctors were providing everything that could potentially help reduce suffering among COVID-19 patients, and this continues this year as well, despite discouragement from global medicinal bodies,” Dr Ravindra Mehta, chief of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Apollo Hospitals, Bangalore, tells The Better India.

Dr Ravindra says that he recommended the drug initially as well. “But we stopped the usage entirely as its effects could not be relied upon. The current usage by the medical community is experiential and based on the responses of patients, which cannot hold as a blanket solution. It could be a placebo effect. There is no evidence that the particular drug has helped improve the patient’s health, as multiple drugs are administered during the treatment,” he says.

The expert emphasises that the treatment should be based on facts and science and not opinions.

‘More studies required for clarity’

However, Dr Sheela Chakravarthy, director, internal medicine, Fortis Hospital, tells The Better India, “The drug is prescribed to prevent multiplication of the virus in the body. It restricts attachment of the coronavirus with the spike protein, which mediates in granting entry in the host cells.”

She adds that using the drug stops the rapid multiplication of the virus in the system responsible for health deterioration. “It also helps reduce the spread among others. If the viral load decreases, the chances of reducing the spread increases,” she says, adding that while it is difficult to prove, the medicine has a role to play.

However, she adds that more studies are needed to find evidence for its use. “Studies cannot happen during an ongoing pandemic. It would be up to the researchers to test patients treated with and without the Ivermectin to find concrete proof for its results in future,” Dr Sheela says.

Edited by Divya Sethu

Kalyan Varma is a Bengaluru based naturalist, environment conservationist, photographer and documentary filmmaker who has won many accolades from BBC, National Geographic and the Karnataka State Forest Department. Interestingly, he graduated as a mechanical engineer in 2001 and excelled in the field. He then quit his job in 2014 to follow his passion. Since then he has worked extensively in conservation projects which have been published worldwide on platforms such as BBC Wildlife, Lonely Planet, The Guardian, Nature, National Geographic, Smithsonian, GEO among others.

Kalyan was recently featured as a part of the Sony BBC Earth initiative – ‘Earth Champions’ which recognises individuals who have contributed towards a sustainable future. The channel aims to celebrate heroes who are working tirelessly to inspire others and take a step towards a safer planet.

Watch the conversation with Kalyan here:

Dr Kim Ati Wagner, a Danish-British historian of colonial India, received a peculiar email sitting in his London office in 2014. It was from an old English couple who owned The Lord Clyde pub in Kent, a county in England.

They wrote that they had discovered a human skull hidden under a bundle of unused boxes and crates in 1963. The skull was missing its lower jaw, the few remaining teeth it had were loose, and a note was found lodged in its eye socket.

The note, written in elegant 19th-century handwriting, read:

“Skull of Havildar “Alum Bheg”, 46th Regt. Bengal N. Infantry who was blown away from a gun, amongst several others of his Regt. He was a principal leader in the mutiny of 1857 & of a most ruffianly disposition. He took possession (at the head of a small party) of the road leading to the fort, to which place all the Europeans were hurrying for safety. His party surprised and killed Dr Graham shooting him in his buggy by the side of his daughter. His next victim was the Rev. Mr Hunter, a missionary, who was flying with his wife and daughters in the same direction. He murdered Mr Hunter, and his wife and daughters after being brutally treated were butchered by the roadside. Alum Bheg was about 32 years of age; 5 feet 7 ½ inches high and by no means an ill looking native. The skull was brought home by Captain (AR) Costello (late Capt. 7th Drag. Guards), who was on duty when Alum Bheg was executed.”

In their email to Dr Wagner, the couple detailed how their years of internet searches on ‘Alum Bheg’ had come up short, and how they “did not feel comfortable with the ‘thing’ in their house, and yet did not know what to do with it”. Their research had, however, led them to Dr Wagner, who was known for his particular interest in the Indian Uprising. He wrote back, telling the couple that he would collect the skull to study it further.

“And so it was that I found myself standing at a small train station in Essex, on a wet November day, with a human skull in my bag,” writes Dr Wagner in his book, ‘The Skull of Alum Bheg’ (2017).

Dr Wagner also says that as he held the skull, and thought over how a man had “once looked through those eye-sockets” and “chewed with those teeth”, he was determined to “restore the humanity and dignity that had been denied to him”. And so he traces the life of Alum Bheg, a young soldier in the Indian Revolt of 1857, and how his remains ended up in an English pub over a century after his death, alongside highlighting the lesser-known chapter of this uprising in Sialkot, Punjab (now located in Pakistan).

Who was Alum Bheg?

For Dr Wagner, ensuring that this skull was, in fact, that of a late-19th century soldier was a difficult task, for no mention of Alum Bheg existed in the history that recorded the Revolt of 1857. Of the soldiers who had served in Sialkot, only three names existed in the records, and those were all of the soldiers who had stayed loyal to the British. Preliminary examinations of Alum’s name established that, firstly, the correct spelling of his name was possibly ‘Alim Beg’, and that he was a Sunni Muslim from North India. Dr Wagner details that Alum was a ‘havildar’ who was paid a sum of Rs 14 per month, which was double that of ordinary sepoys.

On 13 May 1857, a British trooper arrived at Sialkot to inform the regiment of the fall of Delhi and the violence in Meerut, which was increasingly getting out of hand. While deeply perturbed, the British establishment decided to maintain a facade of calm, possibly to keep their own soldiers in line. But Dr Wagner writes that the soldiers, as well as civilians of Sialkot, were well aware of the uprising taking place in other parts of northern India. Up until this moment, the soldiers would hide their discontent with the British and carry on with their duties, but “as news of the outbreak became known, the irritation of the sepoys increased”, writes Dr Wagner. “If the news of the mutinies at Meerut and Delhi burst upon [Sialkot’s] inhabitants ‘like a desolating cyclone’…the clouds had been gathering for some time.”

An innocent life caught in the wake of a war

Meanwhile, British occupants of the region had begun to feel a sense of fear with every passing day, hoping that their own infantry would not revolt the same way that Delhi and Meerut had. As July rolled in, an increasing number of whites had fled the area, but one Dr James Graham, superintendent surgeon in Sialkot, and his daughter had stayed back. The rebellion around the country had only reached Sialkot through letters and not in person.

However, the tone of the letters was becoming increasingly morbid and desolate, and so, on 9 July, Dr Graham and his daughter mounted a buggy and rode towards safety. However, Dr Graham was shot in the head. His daughter, Sarah, managed to escape to safety. Next to be killed were Reverend Hunter and his family, as detailed in the note.

However, it is pertinent to note that as Dr Wagner sat to trace Alum’s, as well as Sialkot’s role in the 1857 uprising, he found that, firstly, Dr Graham and the Hunters were killed on separate roads leading up to the Sialkot Fort. No evidence was found that Hunter’s wife and children—one of whom was a son, rather than a daughter, as incorrectly stated in the note—were “brutally treated”, i.e, sexually assaulted. Alum’s whereabouts on 9 July remained unknown, and he “might even have been one of the loyal [soldiers] who protected [British women],” Dr Wagner adds.

“What is clear….is that Alum was not responsible for the murders of Thomas and Jane Hunter and their baby, nor of that of Dr Graham; these were explicitly recorded as having been killed by sowars of the 9th BLC (Bengal Light Cavalry) or by Hurmat Khan, the ‘chaupprassi’. Several key eyewitnesses…were furthermore clear on this general point: the men of the 46th BNI did not kill anyone in Sialkot. Alum Bheg, in other words, was innocent,” Dr Wagner says.

Over the next four-five days, most of the Indian soldiers were captured. Some were flogged, some hanged, some shot, and some dismissed from service. Those who had remained loyal or saved the lives of Europeans were given promotions and financial compensations. Dr Wagner notes, “All Indian servants and soldiers who joined the uprising were considered simply as traitors and, regardless of their actual actions, considered equally guilty and deserving of the most severe punishment. The notion of betrayal was indeed central to the British understanding of the outbreak…”

Alum, considered the ringleader of the mutiny in the region, was sentenced to death. He was blown from a cannon. It was decided that his execution would take place in Sialkot to “set an example”, although what example was to be set was unclear – “There were no longer any sepoy regiments left to be forced to watch their comrades be blown apart, nor any crowds of sullen villagers made to witness the spectacle to the point of bayonet,” writes Dr Wagner. Alum was one of the very last rebels to be executed in this manner.

‘It’s time he came home’

Present at Alum’s execution was Captain Costello, and allegedly the person who decided to bring Alum’s skull to England with him, three months after he witnessed the execution. “What we will never know,” writes Dr Wagner, “is what moved Costello to pick up the bloodied head of Alum Bheg and go through the visceral process of defleshing the skull to bring the grisly trophy home…” However, this act was commonplace after the Uprising, wherein several British troopers collected the remains of dead soldiers as souvenirs. Details of how the skull went from Costello’s position to the Kent pub remain hazy. The owner of the pub, Lord Clyde, played a major role in suppressing the Revolt, and this could be a possible explanation for the final resting place of the skull.

The real murderer of the Hunters was eventually caught, but by then, Alum was long dead, and his skull had already made its way to some corner of Britain. Dr Wagner ends his book by making a poignant note of how Alum, “neither a martyr nor a murderer, deserves better than to have his remains displayed in a case or museum somewhere, or to be pressed into a political agenda he himself would not have recognised. Instead, it is high time he came home”, the author adds.

“It would be worth bearing in mind that the manner of Alum Bheg’s execution was deliberately intended to deny him his funeral rites, and, for what it is worth, I think the peaceful site of the Battle of Trimmu Ghat [where Alum and his fellow sepoys had taken refuge on the first day of the battle], on the island in River Ravi, which today marks the border between India and Pakistan, would be a fitting place to bury him. Ultimately, this is not for me to decide, but whatever happens in the final chapter of Alum Bheg’s story is yet to be written,” Dr Wagner concludes.

Edited by Yoshita Rao

In West Bengal’s South 24 Parganas district, 27-year-old Sonali Bajkhan Pradhan spent most of her days confined to her home. She occasionally offered voluntary services in her local gram panchayat during the implementation of government schemes. However, because she didn’t receive payment for her work, she’d return home every day to taunts from her father-in-law, who expected her to remain home and care for her children and husband. Moreover, she would watch helplessly as he, an alcoholic, would beat her mother-in-law regularly.

Like Sonali’s mother-in-law, many women in her village are plagued by regular abuse and deteriorating mental health. A lack of representatives in local governing bodies who could empathise meant that there was no real platform to voice their grievances.

While there’s much emphasis on women’s representation in Indian politics, many challenges hinder such empowerment — existing patriarchal notions, threat of sexual violence, and social stigma, to name a few. Meanwhile, at the Central level, India has seen many women leaders, but by the time we reach down to grassroot institutions, such as the panchayat, their representation dwindles.

In a bid to work against this phenomenon, West Bengal-based Equidiversity Foundation, founded by 45-year-old Anindita Majumdar, works to integrate women into local politics to ensure that they move past being mere figure heads to be empowered to move actual change.

The organisation has helped several women across the state, like Sonali, build a system that considers women an equal participant in India’s political landscape.

Today, Sonali works as a community leader with the foundation’s Nari Jagran Committee to take up the cases of women facing domestic violence subsequent mental health issues to, firstly, make women aware of their basic rights, and then to seek legal guidance and mental support. She has been able to empower her own mother-in-law to make informed decisions about her own rights, informed her father-in-law of the ramifications of his actions, and earn a decent livelihood for her family.

“Before joining the committee, I was not even aware of what the Constitution of India has laid down for women like my mother-in-law and I, and what rights we bear. After Equidiversity approached us, we were able to understand that we have the same freedom as men to choose the kind of lives we want,” Sonali tells The Better India.

Equidiversity was launched in 2016 to empower women with adequate rights and abilities of decision-making. As of now, it covers Purulia, Birbhum and the Sundarban areas, and is directly working with around 1,600 people. So far, Birbhum has seen 9 elected representatives, who have all been reelected this term. South 24 Parganas saw three re-elected members this term, and two new representatives from the Nari Jagran Committee.

How we can gain by supporting women

Born and brought up in Kolkata, Anindita has been working in the development sector and around issues pertaining to women empowerment for over 20 years. “As a woman, when you’re growing up, you understand pretty soon that you’re different — in the way that you are treated and looked at by society. For me, that came along with an understanding of my privilege, and the urge to make a difference,” she tells The Better India.

For around 12 years, Anindita worked as a caseworker for an organisation aimed at eradicating gender-based violence. However, her experience taught her that it was important to ensure that the local administration was held accountable in such cases, so that these issues could be addressed at their root. “I also understood that women needed to move beyond being proxy leaders,” she notes.

In 2017, Equidiversity conducted a short survey to understand the status of elected women representatives, and found that almost 65% had no income of their own and less than 4% were graduates. “Around 77% said they had faced some form of gender-based violence. Interestingly, around 64% told us they had filed their nominations because they were asked to do so by their husbands and political parties to reserve these seats, so they actually had no real interest in politics. Moreover, only 22% of them had previous experience in political leadership,” she notes.

Anindita adds that reservations for these seats are often rotated — so a seat reserved for a woman in one term may come to fall under the general category in the next. In these cases, the women go back to their old lives of being housewives.

Equidiversity works with these representatives to build their capacities, hand-hold them to make them understand their roles, along with helping them get in touch with their own gender trappings.

The organisation educates them about aspects such as budget-making, the workings of a panchayat, and laws available to them. “We also work with male elected officials and opinion leaders who tend to control the entire process to sensitise them to women. It’s a question of shared leadership and understanding how they can also gain by supporting women,” she adds.

The foundation also works with women voters. “The idea is not only to inspire new leaders among them, but also equip them with the awareness of the rights and responsibilities they have as voters. We teach them how to hold the panchayat accountable and to raise their grievances and issues with them. When we began working with these women and asked them about some problems they were facing, gender-based violence was among the top issues. Then came issues regarding income and livelihood. These women have then mobilised into Nari Jagran Committees,” she says.

The goal of these committees is to support the rights of women, provide support to survivors of violence, and help women engage with members of the panchayat. “There are sansad sabhas that are held where members of this committee hold discussions with panchayat members and form planning committees. Then we withdraw and Nari Jagran Committees hold up their own and lead the women of their communities,” Anindita says.

Building a robust democracy

Equidiversity also ensures the setting up of child parliaments in primary schools, and working with these children to enhance their life skills, empathy, values of democracy, and other such aspects. These schools now also have a platform for children to put in their grievances, which the elected prime minister will open up regularly to discuss. “Children can submit their problems anonymously and approach us later for counselling. Many issues have been raised — feelings of helplessness, alienation and loneliness, problems they face at home, being beat up by teachers, loss of loved ones, not having access to sanitation, quality of food in the school, and many such other issues,” she adds.

Anindita explains, “The average age for dropping out of schools and getting married for boys is around 19, while girls get married at 16. So girls become mothers by the time they’re 17, and the boys either join the unorganised sector or join local political outfits with skewed understandings of machismo. We want to work to provide them with a safe space to understand the ramifications of these and let out their inhibitions and take up issues. We encourage them to take up social causes. For example, some boys are running a community-led library to offer aid to students who have lost their access to academic material after [cyclone] Amphan and during the pandemic. They also formed theatre groups to spread awareness about sexual assault.”

Speaking of some challenges that they face, Anindita says, “Our organisation often falls into two categories — facilitating partnerships with the panchayats or working as an activist entity. These lines get blurred in cases where, say, there’s gender-based violence and the perpetrator is someone from the local governing body. Moreover, we’re ultimately a small organisation that struggles a lot with funding — we rely mostly on small and individual donations. There are many unresolved issues that the people we work with, particularly the youth, face, so tackling them all can be a challenge.”

Other changes that Equidiversity has brought about include setting up of nutrition gardens led by women and children in various homes that have produced over 14,000 kilos of vegetables in 2020.
During the pandemic, and natural calamities such as cyclone Amphan, the foundation partnered with many groups to provide relief work and aid to over 6,000 people. The team handled around 100 cases of gender-based violence, increased applications of disability certificates, housing schemes, installation of boundaries around girls’ schools, public toilets, renovation of playgrounds, and setting up of COVID isolation centres.

Meanwhile, Sonali, who has now worked with around 30 children with disabilities to give them a better life, says, “This work has given me love and respect in a manner that my family has never given me. Now that I am earning, I feel more empowered to make decisions and raise my voice. As women, we have a right to be open about our wants and needs, and that is something that working with the foundation has taught me.”

Edited by Yoshita Rao

Perhaps one of the greatest unions in the history of music is that of Pandit Ravi Shankar and former Beatle George Harrison. Their meeting in 1966 birthed an instant yet unlikely connection and albums full of wonderful music. The two came together despite differences in their age, cultures, backgrounds and even social status, but developed a solid camaraderie that would last till Harrison’s death from cancer in 2001, with Shankar being at his bedside with the rest of his family.

This historic union took place in the house of portrait painter and novelist, Patricia Clare Angadi, and her husband, a relatively lesser-known Indian man named Ayana Deva Angadi. While Patricia remains “best known as the person who introduced Harrison and Shankar”, her ex-husband’s name remains more or less missing from the mentions of this famed encounter. However, his efforts to popularise Indian music, yoga and dance in the western world paved the way for artists such as Pandit Ravi Shankar and Akbar Ali Khan.

So who was Ayana Deva Angadi?

‘Shining hope’

Born in 1903 in Jakanur village in Mysore State, now in Karnataka, at the age of 21, Ayana went to London in 1924. His goal in London was to finish a degree he’d started back home at Bombay University, but he soon realised that normal jobs were not for him.

Instead, he became increasingly involved in political activism and wrote several articles and journals under the pseudonym Raja Hansa. He joined the Labour Party and wrote on Japanese imperialism, fascism and capitalism. His deep interest in politics meant that he was never really employed long-term, and flitted in and out of radical left political circles for most of his youth.

At the onset of World War II, Ayana met his future wife, Patricia. In Ray Newman’s Abracadabra: The Complete Story of the Beatles’ Revolver, Ayana’s son Shankara said, “He was very striking looking, with long hair and aquiline features, and that went to his head. He…lived as a kind of toy boy to various socialist women for ten years or so. Then he met my mother. One version of the story is that she saw him from the top of a bus on Regent Street and said, ‘I have to paint that man’.”

Patricia and Ayana’s union was met with disdain, particularly because she belonged to a well-off family and he had given up his wealth for a life of activism. Alongside, of course, were differences of race, which contributed to Patricia’s parents’ overall disdain for Ayana. Regardless, the two married in 1943 on Labour Day in a registrar office.

In an obituary upon his death, The Guardian wrote that he came from a large family and was their “shining hope”.

The assimilation of Indian culture with the UK

In 1946, the couple founded the Asian Music Circle in their home to promote Asian culture and music in Britain. From hereon, the Angadis began shaping Indian arts as something more than just a fancy of the elite left circles of Britain, and more towards something that the masses could enjoy.

“…In the mid-1950s, Patricia and Ayana Angadi began the slow process of bringing Indian art to the chattering classes. They imported musicians and dancers, putting them up and, in their own chaotic way, organising and promoting tours. Some musicians stayed, forming the core of a musical “repertory group” who, as well as performing in their own right, would back visiting celebrity musicians or hire themselves out to record and film companies,” writes Newman.

This “repertory group” included renowned violinist Yehudi Menuhin, English classical composer Benjamin Britten, and world-famous yoga teacher B K S Iyengar. In fact, in the case of Iyengar, from the day he held a session in the Angadi’s north London home, the face of yoga changed in the UK forever — it became the popular discipline it is known to be today.

Around 1955, Menuhin had become the president of the AMC, which had started gaining massive notoriety for its performances. He had gained funding to stage a giant music festival — Living Arts of India Festival — in New York, and his first choice was Pandit Ravi Shankar, who he had previously met at a concert in New Delhi in 1952. However, Shankar was forced to turn down the opportunity owing to problems in his marriage, and the festival instead called in Sarod player Ali Akbar Khan.

This festival by the AMC marked the first formal recital of Indian classical music in America. Owing to its massive success, the centre organised for Khan to play in London and was finally able to bring Ravi Shankar alongside. This marked the sitarist’s first western concern, held in October 1956. The year also marked the entry of famed sitarist Vilayat Khan to the UK for the first time.

Angadi’s introduction to The Beatles happened particularly during the recording of ‘Norwegian Wood’, which featured Harrison playing the sitar. The story goes that during a recording session, one of the sitar strings broke, and Harrison made contact with Angadi in search of a replacement. In an interview for Newman’s Abracadabra, Shankara said, “There’s a story in my family, which I don’t believe, that my father had never heard of the Beatles. He was heard shouting into the telephone: ‘Yes, but Ringo who?’ As luck would have it, we did have some sitar strings in the house, and the whole family went down to the studio at Abbey Road and watched them record, from behind the glass. My mother drew several sketches of them recording ‘Norwegian Wood’, which are still in the family.”

As Harrison became further involved with the Asian Music Circle, he was introduced to Ravi Shankar, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Returning to his roots

It was due to Angadi and the AMC that Harrison, and subsequently The Beatles’ music, was so influenced by Indian culture. Many of the Beatles’ tracks featured Indian musicians from the AMC, in particular, Anil Bhagwat, who played the tabla for ‘Love You To’. He received a credit on the album sleeve for Revolver, which was a rare occurrence for an “outsider”. Songs on St. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts, including Within You Without You, feature AMC members on the dilruba, swarmandal and tabla as well. In 2017, a few of these musicians, who had remained unknown up until then, were tracked down for a live performance.

Some time in the 70s, Angadi and Patricia split, leading to the dissolution of the AMC. Angadi’s roots beckoned him home, and he returned to Jakanur and immersed himself in rural development projects in his homeland. “He came to believe that his theorising in London had served its purpose but had done nothing for his home village,” journalist Reginald Massey said, writing for The Observer. “And so he went back to Jakanur and organised rural upliftment projects. Houses were built, a school was started, electricity was brought in and a well was sunk. He got buses to service the village.”

On Angadi’s death in ‘93, Massey further noted, “The death of Ayana Angadi, aged 90, will be mourned by all Britons and Indians who value mutual respect, tolerance, understanding and cultural exchange. He was a man of immense energy whose crusading work, often behind the scenes, influenced the great and the good. The acceptance of Indian culture — the art, music, dance, or yoga — in the United Kingdom today is due in no small measure to Angadi’s endeavours.”

Edited by Yoshita Rao