🌌Life - A poem by Biswajit Basu

LIFE

I

I look up at the starry firmament

Heavenly stars dot the velvet curl of the sky,

Trillions of planets, billions  of miles away

Seemingly living forever: never to die.

II

Cast your eyes through the verdant forest

Vertical trunks support the spreading branches in everlasting rest,

In a silence broken only by the songbird

Cedar tops sway as the wind whispers through its crest.

III

Look at that lovely landscape

Undulating fields of golden corn that lean towards the gurgling stream,

Laughing at their private joke in nature's open book.

As they go along their lives as if its an unending dream.

IV

Look at the hills yonder of varying height,

Colourful toy houses cling to their basking sides,

Illuminated by the soft light  from a clouded sky

Wherefrom the sun filters through its misty light.

V

Look at the lonely cheetah poised high on a tree

And the herd of elephants in the turgid stream

Trumpeting their happiness, gambolling.

Celebrating their existence in this life, a dream.

VI

But the beauty of our world is not for all to see

My just born puppy lies forlorn and quiet on my lap,

Eyes unopened, hoping to live in a new world

Breathing softly as if in a dreamy nap.

VII

I put him in an old woollen sock and close to my chest

To keep him warm and keep him alive

I stayed awake whole night long,

And wiiled the powers that be to make him well and thrive.

VIII

But it was all in vain for he died early that morn

And I remember I cried so, for a life snuffed out for no reason at all

I realised that day that everybody lives according to his destiny,

Its duration is till you get the call.

IX

It has been written when you will be born and when your time will be up

And nothing can deter the course of your destiny

For life and death are preordained

And lives in mysterious secret within Mother Earth.

X

What remains then is the intervening time

Which we call life and is fraught with uncertainty

And what you make of it has a bit of your choice,

But is still mostly a continuous series of devious  probability.

XI

So I look back now at my own passage through the vicissitudes of life.

Happy it has been interspersed infrequently with events, sad

And I realise that my days of undulating corn fields, whispering cedars and bubbling brooks are gone 

And they will not come back again to be had.

XII

When destiny rings the bell to end my watch, like on my ship

And this world takes me back to its folds,

Some will grieve my departure but I will be beyond any worldly care

As I walk through the whispering cedars on other worlds.

-Biswajit Basu 

-----------

🔬Journey into Cytopathology

When I started this blog to record the memories of our older generation, little did I know we would lose Ma, Dr. Monisha Choudhury, within 3-4 months. Her recollection of facts, places, events and people always added and expanded the narrative, painting a richer picture of times gone by. She had so many stories to tell, such an amazing life lived… I wish we had more time to record her memories. Alas, all we have now are snippets from her old conversations and recollections from her colleagues and friends. Here is a glimpse of how she got into CytoPathology. 

From Dr. KB Logani (her senior at Lady Hardinge Medical College, Delhi) on her memorial website:

We all, professional colleagues, are extremely proud of the great work done by Dr. Monisha in Cytopathology. Initially, Dr. Monisha was not interested in this subspecialty of Cyto, but when I re-joined LHMC in 1985 from MAMC, we advised that she must develop expertise in it so as to be recognized as cytopathologist in the future and; if I remember correctly she was later awarded Commonwealth Medical Scholarship to U.K. on her excellence in Pathology. She has excelled in this sub-speciality beyond our imagination and she has become a decorated National and International cytopathologist. Dr. Monisha and her professional work will be remembered by younger generations in the time to come. 

As Dr. Logani mentioned, she was indeed awarded the Commonwealth Medical Fellowship in Cytopathology at Imperial College, London, UK 1992-93. She went on to get her Diploma from the Royal College of Pathologists in Cytopathology, London, UK 1994. Recently, I found a mail from her to one of her many students who had requested her help in applying for a technical fellowship. In the mail, she refers to her own fellowship and recounts a bit of her history:

My qualifications are MD MNNMS DipRCPath(CYT) Lon. FIAC
One can do a CYT diploma only after FRC but my MD and experience and recommendations from Imperial College made me eligible for Path CYT Dip. Cleared it first shot and first person from London and India to do it. In its very first exam started by Royal College in 1993. Just some history for you! Since pass percentage is less than 43 they decided to stop the exam I think!! Ashish (Chandra) cleared in second attempt after his FRC and one yr in Cytology training school. Check RC website. 

- Dr. Monisha Choudhury, 7 April 2021

Indeed, from those beginnings, she charted a trajectory in the area of Cytopathology that rose to National and International acclaim. Dr. Radhika Srinivasa, Secretary of the Indian Academy of Cytologists said in her Prayer Meeting address - “Dr. Monisha won literally every award there was to win in the area of Cytopathology!”

Indeed, her list of accomplishments is long, and that includes being elected the President of the Indian Academy of Cytology! Her career details and other tributes from friends and colleagues can be found on her memorial site 

here.

<sub>On the cover of St Mary’s Hospital during her fellowship from Imperial College, London



With the Duchess of Kent and other commonwealth fellows, 1992-94


Representing India as a Commonwealth Fellow



With her IAC Presidential Medal and PN Wahi Oration Medal


With her students, Dr. Mukta and Dr. Ashish Chandra. Dr. Chandra is part of the Executive Council of International Academy of Cytology, 2019-22 as Vice President, UK.</sub> 

🇬🇧My Early Memories of the UK (1955-56)

We reached London in August 1955. It was probably the worst time in the year to go to the UK.

We disembarked from SS Batory in Southampton and went by train to London. We had a flat on the First Floor on 5, St Charles Square, Ladbroke Grove, London W 10 with a kitchen and a bathroom on the left as you look upwards and our bedroom/drawing room on the right facing the front. I went back to this address around 2005 and it was still there.  Better painted but still otherwise the same. In front of our window, where earlier there was nothing, now was a school.  Beside our house on the lane on the right was a bus terminus which is not there any more.

My earliest memory is of post-war London. Cold, grey, drizzling and an acrid smell in the air. I first joined Oxford Junior School but it was quite far from home and I changed over to Bevington Primary School which was closer and at the junction of Portobello Road, famous till today for its Saturday market when second hand goods and antiques were sold for a pittance.

My classrooms were bright and airy we were always in one fight or more at the same time (especially with the girls). At our 11o'clock break we would get a sealed bottle of whole milk which was compulsory but an ordeal to drink because it was so cold. Then we would go out into the playground to play or fight (usually wrestling). We would play a game called "conkers" where we would attach a thorny fruit (a conker) to a string and swing it about the adversary's conker and deftly pull the string till one conker broke away.  The conker that had parted with its string was the loser.

It was back to classes till lunch which was in a huge hall. There we would have to collect our plate which would have some bread, potatoes, vegetables (usually spinach) and some gruel with a piece of meat. Ma told me many times to enquire whether it was beef and then not eat it if it was. But I never did because there was no substitute and if it was beef then I could not eat it and would have to go hungry and attract the attention of the teachers whose main purpose in life seemed to be to ensure that the children gorge themselves right up to their throats. In any case it tasted good and the brown sauce was a treat. Sometimes it was fish and chips which was also nice. Then, at the end of the school day, it was a weary walk back home with Ma and Moon in her pushchair stroller pram. Ma would take this opportunity to do her shopping on Portobello Road. I was always fascinated by the wares that were sold and also the big Woolworth's there. Ma had a stiff leather bag shaped like a bucket which Daddy called "balti bag" into which she would stuff her purchases. Once, I remember, her purse was picked from this bag and we never got it back.

Right at the junction of our school and Portobello Road was a butcher's shop. Ma would buy lamb (no goat's meat there) and our weekly treat would be lamb curry and rice. This had a superb flavour and taste which I have never tasted since. They also sold some exquisite cold meats which Ma would buy once in a rare while as a special treat.  After all, we had to subsist on £80/- per week which was the allowance Daddy got (an absolute pittance in today's money but somewhat reasonable for us 4 then). The unsavoury part of the story was that the meat had been in cold storages for a decade or more as a wartime buffer. On the other corner was a post office which sold all kinds of stuff from newspapers to cigarettes and everything in between including small eats. Moon would often get a lollipop from this shop if she had been a good girl.

Ma soon started attending evening classes in cooking, knitting and sewing (probably what is known as fashion design in modern parlance). I remember she would come home awfully late at night while Moon and I cowered in fear as the roads were not safe at night. Daddy studied on oblivious to the world.

Then came the shattering news that the Suez Canal was closed and we could either wait till it opened or go back to India round Cape of Good Hope as Vasco da Gama had done about 450 years earlier to reach Calicut. We waited a few months and then, when the Suez War was getting more strident, Daddy took the decision to return via the Cape. So we returned to Bombay on SS Circassia boarding at Liverpool with a stop at Cape Town riddled with apartheid. Circassia was a more luxurious and faster ship than Batory, but I do not remember it being as much fun as the Batory where the Cheese Scrambled eggs were divine and it was my first sea voyage. I think we finally reached Delhi in March/April 1957 and I joined back St Columba's for half a year before starting in St Joseph's Bangalore in January 1958.

Added by Biswajit Basu based on the displayed picture:

In fact, this first one is THE very house as it looks now. It was a dark red during my time. On the lane running beside the house was a bus terminus where there were a couple of double-deckers which are not there now.  At the back we had a retractible double rope on pulleys strung to the back of the house behind to dry our clothes in those rare days of sunshine.

You would climb up the stairs to the front door.  The owner, Mr EP Young stayed in the Ground Floor and his daughter, Mary, would often answer the bell.  Once inside you walked down a short corridor (with the only phone) and turned left, to go up the stairs.  On the first floor landing, on the left was the kitchen and the bathroom and across the landing corridor was the door to a huge room which was our combined bedroom and drawing room.  The bed was huge and all 4 of us slept on it.  There was a sofa and some chairs and a lovely cosy fireplace which we only ran occasionally and lived to the heat from a paraffin heater in the centre of the room.  The huge windows that you see in the front of our house on the first floor were our bedroom/drawing room windows.  The Pathak's were on the second floor and were replaced by the Gangulys.  Their son, Monomoy Ganguli, who was not yet born then but retired recently as a Lt General as the Director General of Medical Services (DGMS).  He is presently the head of the Parsi Petit Hospital in Bombay.  Their flat, above ours, was exactly the same as ours.

I would come down the stairs, emerge out of the door and turn right to go to school.

I can draw you a sketch of our flat to give you how we lived in these cramped circumstances for 2 years.  I got appendicitis on that bed in December 1955!

Post Script:

Daddy went to study for DO (Diploma in Opthalmology)

Author note: 

More about the voyages are in these posts -

My first sea voyage

The first voyage back home

A mention of neighbours is in this post - 

Famous neighbours from the past

🖋My Life - A poem by Biswajit Basu

MY LIFE

By Biswajit Basu

‘Dedicated to my sister, Moon’

1

I look past the drizzle on my window at the mellowed sun

Mellowed by the decades of passing clouds of life,

And I sit today and look back at years of ups and downs,

Mostly up and rarely down, I must honestly admit.

2

But it has been a respledent, flowery and full life.

With every path therein forecharted into an indistinct passage

With slight tinges of design sometimes  thrown in. 

More in hope than any certitude of events to follow

Visible mostly in retrospect, rather during its passing

The journey has been  the life of a venerated old ship

That has toiled its life in the service of mankind

But was never spared the buffeting of vicious storms

when they came a-roaring by.

Only to sail victorious into calmer seas that always followed a rough passage

As I look back at the years that have passed,

A feeling of peace settles deep in my heart

And I know I have done in the brief flash that was my life

Playing to mankind a small but significant part.

But everything in this Universe that is born

Is destined to be consigned to flames in the end

Whether it be billions of years in the timeline of the Universe

So it is to roughly seven decades allocated to a  man

It all ends in fiery glory to a grand finale.

🔄 6 Decades, 2 Six year old girls and 1 Hula hoop

While going through Mom’s (Monisha Choudhury) old photos, I came across this little gem on her Facebook. 

^{(L-R: Anima Basu, MK Basu, Monisha Choudhury, Pronoti De, Biswajit Basu)}

“With my parents, brother and aunt. Bangalore 1959.

This house was special and beautiful . It had a solid teak round door opening into the balcony on the first floor where we are standing in a curved corner. The grill...partly visible had a silver paint and was quite unique in design. 2/1 Broungton Cross Road just off Mahatama Gandhi road was a house in then a serene suburb. On A bread nut tree across the road where Bush babies..Loris who were spotted rarely!”

Added by Biswajit Basu, May 2021:

“Our address in Bangalore was 2/1, Brunton Cross Road. It was parallel to the Mahatma Gandhi Road and between Brunton Road and Primrose Lane at right angles. There lived an old English couple in a sprawling house in front of ours and the Manekshaws. It had breadfruit, jackfruit and silk-cotton trees. The lovely forested environs is completely built up now and our house is an ad agency office!

The English gentleman treated us as Mr Wilson treats Dennis! 😃. I walked two miles to school from home.”

(There’s a little more about Brunton Cross Road neighbours in this post as recounted by Ma, just three months back)

In Mom’s inimitable style, she could recall every detail in every old photo or memory, and layer stories and stories on them. I wished I could run to her with this photo and ask her about it. The photo did spark off a story of my own. 

February is the best season here, and we spend a lot of time in the garden. One such day was February 24, 2019. We were in the garden and the children were playing with hoops. My younger daughter, Aria, wanted to learn how to hula hoop. But I had never played with it. Then, we discovered that Mom had been an avid hooper in her childhood! She was instantly roped into the hooping madness! 

She talked of hooping with different body parts, and demonstrated with her arm (the only one she could do without having to get up from the chair!) Much hilarity ensued as she tried to teach the technique to the children. 

A sunny February morning spent in fun and games. No, Aria did not get the technique of hooping down at that time. But, the next year brought the Covid 2020 lockdown. Stuck at home, she tried it again late summer. 

In August 2020, she turned 6, just as old as her Dida had been in the 1959 photograph. By October 2020, she had the technique down and was hooping away till she got tired! She even started hooping to songs. And all along, her Dida was there - to cheer her on, and watch her skill rekindle in her granddaughter.  

6 decades, two 6 year old girls and one hula hoop. 

👭Sisters Day out

By Asmita Basu (Toto):

Here is my favourite story of MM (Moon Maashi aka Dr. Monisha Choudhury) for your collection. 

I can’t remember the year exactly, it would have been 2005 or 06, with Diwali a few days away. The Metro had just started. Ma and Baba were visiting me in Delhi. There was excitement in the air as I got ready for work in the morning. ‘Moon’ was taking Ma (Atreyi Basu) out for the day. Of the many delights planned (and related repeatedly… in great detail…), a Metro ride was the main attraction!! I rolled my eyes and said ‘have fun’ before I left. I returned to Netaji Nagar late in the evening to the news of the bomb blasts in Sarojini Nagar. I was greeted by two giggling and slightly hysterical sisters. So this is how their day went—

Before boarding the metro to Darya Gunj, Ma decided to take photos, as was her wont. MM posed obligingly. All this INSIDE the Metro station. I doubt if even Metro promos have such extensive and joyous clicks. Unfortunately, the Metro officials didn’t take this ‘security breach’ too kindly. Ma’s camera was confiscated and they were marched off to the Metro office. Unfazed by her captivity, MM had long chats with the security personnel and everyone else around. They discovered that the halwai that supplied samosas to Lady Hardinge, was also favored by the Metro personnel. Much praise was heaped on the halwai and a consensus reached on the superiority of his samosas. Before letting the geriatric threats go, said samosas were ordered. They were fed, gently rebuked and made to promise that they will never take photos inside Metro stations again. You’d think that the sisters had learnt their lesson. But no. 

After getting to Daryagunj and spending happy hours shopping and gorging, MM decided to buy firecrackers for Rupesh (who was still a notun jamai, and took Diwali very seriously). So they went back to the Metro station, with a bagful of crackers… or explosives as the Metro prefers to call them. They didn’t make it past the x-ray machine. They beat a hasty retreat before being declared bona fide security threats. It was a sheepish auto ride home. And just as they settled down, the news of the Sarojini Nagar blasts broke!!

Author notes:

- Lady Hardinge Medical College - LHMC - was where she worked for over 35 years till retirement in 2018

- The Sarojini Nagar blasts occurred on 29th October, 2005 (Wikipedia), 2 days before Diwali. 

- Rupesh and I shifted to Gurgaon from Mumbai in the summer of 2005, to be closer to my parents. That was our first Diwali together in the same city. 

- Recent picture of the sisters, brother Biswajit Basu and family. Sep 22, 2020 video meeting in lockdown times. Pic Credit to Prajna Sen (Taddy Maashi) 

😞 REQUEIM FOR MY SISTER

By Biswajit Basu for Monisha Choudhury

Moon you have  relinquished your worldly status and left your friends, relatives, students and colleagues forlorn.  We, you left behind, will miss you sorely and we already realise how much.

Yours was a life of honest, steadfast and straight thinking, of keeping your focus on your objectives, of the grit of steadfast determination.  On the other side, you held the world in compassion in a profession where people tend to lose theirs.  I remember the time when you cried and cried when your patient who had been bitten by a rabid dog and who you had been desperately trying to save died.  I also remember how much you cried when you got your quota of vasectomies and tubectomies that you had to deliver to the government in those horrid Sanjay Gandhi days.  I always marvelled how you could be so prim and proper and headmistressly on one side and still retain a soft heart of pure gold on the other.

Yesterday marked the end of of our 68 year sojourn that we walked this Earth together.  I remember the day you were born and Daddy, Dadu, me and Mama had gone to visit Ma in the maternity ward.  Ma offered me a banana which was on her bedside table which I accepted and demolished it with a gusto which I  exclusively reserve for  eatables.  On the return in the car, Dadu castigated me for accepting that banana which he said was actually meant for you.  So even before you were born, I was stealing things that were yours!

And so we led our happy army childhood in big houses with big compounds and gardens which, incongruously Daddy described as 'genteel poverty'.  I remember you as a 3 year old in London with a big parakeet, as big as you, on your shoulder.  I remember we played catch me if you can in the garden and the catcher was supposed to be dirty (a guinea pig) and when caught he/she was 'guinea-ed'.  Remember our lovely vacations every summer to the hills? Then came the years of separation as we chose the trajectories to our respective careers. 

Then we saw Daddy go first after a five year ordeal with strokes.  Then came Ma's turn and she left after a short illness.  We were now suddenly orphans!

We passed our lives busy with the work in our respective professions. We got married, you to Panna and ne to Tulu.  Panna was a friend and today, a God, and I still ask him for guidance in troubled times.

Even when we were apart we always stayed in contact and sometimes met in distant cities (I remember that lunch in London when we got sozzled on wine and champagne and I prayed that you would reach your hostel back  safely)!

Today you are gone leaving us for a better world.  So be it. But I wish you would have stayed longer.  

So farewell, Moon, you will not be forgotten in this world.  You led a good and productive life.

 But all things, even our Universe, must come to an end  and  goes through different dimensions.  So have you departed our dimension forever to a better one. 

 *Au revoir*.

 That was the essence of our lives  We fought, played and cried together. 

Those were the days, dear Moon,

They have come to an end, but too soon

We'd laugh and play forever and a day

We led the lives we chose

We fought, but never to bruise

Those were the days

Yes, those were the days.

Farewell Moon.  We had a great life!

Jan 2021