reade y544 s

ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL

`100

FEBRUARY 2020

od! o F t s e B ate’s t S y r e v E

A I D IN A ON

R E T T PLA

Forever Young!

8 TIPS TO LIVE HEALTHIER & LONGER

VALENTINE’S SPECIAL

Endless Love Stop Tech Addiction BONUS READ

The Man Who Buried a Treasure

ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL

CONTENTS Features

54

cover story

THE GREAT INDIAN FOOD SYMPHONY

Exploring the spectrum and confluence of Indian gastronomy.

74

inset photos courtesy of the author. locket photo: ©shutterstock

by pushpesh pant

INDIA ON A PLATTER

Readers, food critics, historians and experts vote for the best dishes from each Indian state.

68

health

How to Age Well

82

98

classic drama in real life

travel

“Please Don’t Leave Me!”

Lost in Palermo

In the midst of a blazing inferno, a little girl’s only hope is a brave firefighter.

Slow down ageing with smart choices.

by james hutchison

by tara parker-pope

92 my story

74 true love

A Writer After 200 Rejections

The Sicilian capital is a delight for travel enthusiasts. by antonia quirke

106

bonus read

The Man Who Buried a Treasure

At 83, he reunited with his very first love.

A struggling author’s dream comes true after 21 years.

Hunters scour the hills for a chest worth millions. Their only clue is a mysterious poem.

by marina lopes

by abdullah khan

by eric spitznagel

“I Never Forgot You”

readersdigest.co.in

3

20 dreamers

20 Banking on Hope by sanghamitra chakraborty

97 World Wide Weird

Conversations in my opinion

26 Is Student Politics a Waste of Time? by kamal mitra chenoy

department of wit

28 What’s Your Rating for Dating? by anne roumanoff

finish this sentence

29 If I met my first love again, I would ... good news

30 Educating the Poor and Communal Harmony by v. kumara swamy

4 february 2020

points to ponder

32 Rebecca Solnit, Dr Manmohan Singh and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad

Better Living inspiration

36 How to Fight the Good Fight as told to ishani nandi

news from the world of medicine

44 An Affordable Breast-Cancer Remedy and Benefits of an Evening Walk technology

46 4 Ways to Stop Technology Addiction by team rd

money

42 Is There a Secret Money-Making Formula? by gaurav mashruwala

47

food

47 The AntiCancer Diet by neelanjana singh

top courtesy bandhan bank below:shutterstock

10 Dear Reader 12 Over to You

Reader ’s Digest

Culturescape interview with actor jim sarbh

116 Wedded to the Story by sarbani sen

rd recommends

The Genius Section 126 5 Easy Memory Tricks by andrea au levitt

129 Word Power 132 Quotable Quotes

118 Films, Streaming, Books, Events and Rising Star review

122 An Acid Test by jai arjun singh

studio

123 Where The Bees Suck, There Suck I

by Hema Upadhyay by saptak choudhury

me and my shelf

124 Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi’s Most Loved Reads

Humour 16 Humour in Uniform 24 All in a Day’s Work 34 As Kids See It 40 Life’s Like That 50 Laughter, The Best Medicine 115 Laugh Lines

On the Cover cover image Shutterstock

India on a Platter ................................................................. 54 Forever Young! .................................................................... 68 Valentine’s Special: Endless Love .................................... 74 Stop Tech Addiction ........................................................... 46 The Man Who Buried a Treasure .................................... 106

6 february 2020

milind shelte/india today, fotosr52/shutterstock

116

VOL. 61 NO. 2 FEBRUARY 2020

Editor-in-Chief Aroon Purie Group Editorial Director Raj Chengappa editor Sanghamitra Chakraborty group creative editor Nilanjan Das group photo editor Bandeep Singh senior assistant editor Ishani Nandi assistant editor V. Kumara Swamy consulting editors Pratishtha Dobhal, Naorem Anuja, Saptak Choudhury editorial coordinator Khushboo Thakur

senior art director Sadhana Moolchandani assistant art director Keshav Kapil production Gajendra Bhatt

IMPACT (ADVERTISING)

publishing director Manoj Sharma associate publisher Anil Fernandes mumbai: senior gm (west) Jitendra Lad bengaluru: gm Upendra Singh kolkata: general manager (east) Kaushiky Gangulie BUSINESS

group chief marketing officer gm, marketing & circulation deputy gm, operations agm, marketing manager, marketing

Vivek Malhotra Ajay Mishra G. L. Ravik Kumar Kunal Bag Anuj Kumar Jamdegni

Narendra Singh SALES AND OPERATIONS chief gm D. V. S. Rama Rao senior gm, national sales Deepak Bhatt gm, operations Vipin Bagga

Reader’s Digest in India is published by: Living Media India Limited (Regd.

Office: K9, Connaught Circus, New Delhi) under a licence granted by the TMB Inc. (formerly RDA Inc.), proprietor of the Reader’s Digest trademark.

Published in 46 editions and 17 languages, Reader’s Digest is the world’s largest-selling magazine.

It is also India’s largest-selling magazine in English.

TRUSTED MEDIA BRANDS, INC. (formerly RDA Inc.) President and Chief Executive Officer Bonnie Kintzer VP, Chief Operating Officer, International Brian Kennedy Editor-in-Chief, International Magazines Raimo Moysa Founders: DeWitt Wallace, 1889–1981; Lila Acheson Wallace, 1889–1984 HOW TO REACH US MAGAZINE SUBSCRIPTIONS/CUSTOMER CARE: Email subscription.rd@intoday.com Mail Subscriptions Reader’s Digest, C-9, Sector 10, Noida, UP—201301. Tel: 0120-2469900 Toll-free No 1800 1800 001 (BSNL customers can call toll free on this number) For bulk subscriptions 0120-4807100, Ext. 4361 For change of address, enclose the addressed portion of your magazine wrapper. ADVERTISING ENQUIRIES: Phones Mumbai: 022-66063355 Chennai: 044-28478525 Bengaluru: 080-22212448 Delhi: 0120-4807100 Kolkata: 033-22825398 Fax: 022-66063226 Email rd4business@intoday.com LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Email editor.india@rd.com CORPORATE/EDITORIAL: Address Reader’s Digest, India Today Group, 3rd Floor, Film City 8, Sector 16A, Noida, UP—201301; Phone: 0120-4807100. We edit and fact-check letters. Please provide your telephone number and postal address in all cases.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/ReadersDigest.co.in Instagram: @readersdigestindia Twitter: @ReadersDigestIN Website: https://www.readersdigest.co.in/ © 2016 Trusted Media Brands, Inc. (Reader’s Digest editorial material). © 2016 Living Media India Ltd. (Living Media editorial material). All rights reserved throughout the world. Reproduction in any manner, in whole or part, in English or other languages, is prohibited. Printed and published by Manoj Sharma on behalf of Living Media India Limited. Printed at Thomson Press India Limited, 18–35 Milestone, Delhi–Mathura Road, Faridabad–121007, (Haryana) and at A-9, Industrial Complex, Maraimalai Nagar, District Kancheepuram–603209, (Tamil Nadu). Published at K–9, Connaught Circus, New Delhi–110001.

Editor: Sanghamitra Chakraborty (responsible for selection of news).

8 february 2020

Reader ’s Digest

DEAR READER

A

s a child, I first noticed complete strangers forming friendships on train journeys—inevitably they were over food! A Gujarati aunty lovingly offering her farsan; idli–vada, wrapped in banana leaves, being passed around by a Tamilian family; sandwiches and chips shared on the way to Darjeeling by an Anglo-Indian granny—this warm rapport transcended language, caste or religion.

Making lasting connections on the journey was just a big bonus.

The lunch room in our cosmopolitan convent school was also a microcosm of India, where the aroma of Parsi, Anglo-Indian, Chinese, Bohri, Bengali or Punjabi khana drew us together in a close bond.

Indian food has won over the world. But given that we are such a vast nation, with culinary tastes changing within the same district, it is impossible for each of us to be acquainted with the food from every state, leave alone taste them. We, at RD, decided

10 february 2020

to explore and celebrate our rich gastronomic diversity and heritage in this anniversary issue.

We started with a well-researched longlist that was vetted by an eminent jury panel (p 56). The critics’ choice is the basis of ‘India on a Platter: Every State’s Best Food’ (p 57). The shortlisted food choices, from each state, were put out for an open survey to determine the popular choices.

Our sincere thanks to all our jury members, especially celebrated food expert Pushpesh Pant (read him on p 54), for making this report possible.

If there are any shortcomings, the responsibility is entirely ours.

We hope you will enjoy the delightful stories of how some of these delicacies were born, and also be inspired to try out some of them.

Bon appétit!

Sanghamitra Chakraborty editor Send an email to editor.india@rd.com

P HOTO GRA P H BY A N A N D GO GO I , HAIR & M AK E - U P BY ROL IKA PR AKASH ; I NDI API C T UR E

Bonding Over Food

Reader ’s Digest

OVER TO YOU Notes on the December issue

Footprints in the Snow Thinking and caring for others instead of brooding over personal troubles can boost one’s mental health and emotional well-being. John’s providential rescue and dramatic return from the brink is a poignant example of this at work. Although Pam’s superhuman efforts were by no means less than heroic, what really brought John back from the jaws of death was that critical moment when he came out of his stupor and considered the possibility of Pam, his saviour, dying while searching for him if he ran away. His decision to cooperate with her in order to prevent such a tragedy not only saved both their lives, but also started John’s ascent from the deep, dark well of depression. Compassion and empathy rests in every human heart. Expressing these emotions uplifts both the giver and receiver, kindles the spirit of brotherhood and makes the world a better place.

—Dr Anupam Deka, Guwahati Dr Anupam Deka gets this month’s ‘Write & Win’ prize of `1,000. —EDs

37 Secrets to a Happier Life I believe the secret to happiness is embodied in 3 Cs—community

12 february 2020

service, which offers the joy of giving; compassion, which is integral to making yourself and others

happy; and cooking, which can evoke incomparable delight.

If happiness is tied to people, rather than a worthy goal, then it is doomed for failure.

We must understand that happiness does not come to us, but is found within us.

—Dr Hetal Doshi, Ahmedabad You can only be as happy as your country is and India is not happy at all. The World Happiness Index 2018 placed India at 133 out of 156 countries. People usually gauge happiness by comparing it with past experiences or with that of their peers.

But if we focus on our own performance, instead of comparing it with others, we would be happier. We chase social status, but what good is it if we are not admired?

Remember, happiness comes from within. So let’s not stay trapped in the quest for social approval.

—Vandana Chopra, Chandigarh

Æ

Reader ’s Digest Over To You Pockets Full of Love Actively working to bring happiness to other people can give you immense satisfaction. Of these, there can be nothing better than the work of selfless charity, by yourself or through organizations. There are many among the Sikh community who spare 10 per cent of their earnings—known as daswand—as a sort of contribution to social causes or to help the needy. Kudos to the writer of this article.

—M. S. Ishar, Mohali It is so great that crowdfunding has taken off in our country for charitable causes.

Solicitations for funds are regularly sent to donors who, out of love and concern for the cause, donate willingly.

Some givers have identified organizations that are doing good work in the field of child rights, education, health care, eldercare and shelter for the homeless. The only concern is that the

14 february 2020

money collected should be spent on the poor and needy and not squandered in administrative costs and publicity.

—D. B. N. Murthy, Bengaluru

The Cop With a Golden Heart Recently, the entire nation was shocked and angered at law enforcers after witnessing police brutality against the hapless students of Jamia Millia Islamia University and Aligarh Muslim University. However, the compassion shown by Dharam Veer Jakhar, a police constable in Rajasthan, towards orphan children gives us reason to pause and rethink. The school Jakhar has created— Apni Pathsala—offers not only education but also shelter, food, uniforms and study materials for free to around 450 poor children. Despite the financial burdens he faces, Jakhar gives us hope that not everyone in the police force is a

brute—there are some good Samaritans among them too.

—Tharcius S. Fernando, Chennai

Winning at Life Life is a game that must be played—the author of this story, Viney Kirpal, not only played well by choosing life while fighting back bouts of a dreaded disease and certain death, but also by sharing her story with all of us in the hope of inspiring courage and resilience. Every cancer patient must follow her advice: “Face it. Finish it! And you will win.”

—M. V. Apparao, Hyderabad

A CORRECTION The December issue erroneously cited one of the crowdfunding websites as Ketto.com (‘Pockets Full of Love’). It should have read Ketto.org. The error is regretted.—EDs Write in at editor.india@ rd.com. The best letters discuss RD articles, offer criticism, share ideas. Do include your phone number and postal address.

Reader ’s Digest

Humour in

UNIFORM I was awakened late one night by a phone call from nearby Fort Meade in Maryland, USA. me: Hello? caller: Is Sgt Rodrigues there? me: Sorry, you have the wrong number.

16 february 2020

(Hang up. R-i-i-ing!) caller: Sgt Rodrigues? me: Still the wrong number. caller: Do you have his right number?

There’s a post recall and he has to go to work. me: No, I don’t.

(Hang up. And ...) second caller: Is Sgt Rodrigues there? me: No. There’s a post recall and he went to work. caller: OK. Thanks.

—Howard Graves

In the ’50s, I was a clerk typist at our base headquarters in Verdun, France.

We were a tough group. How tough?

Our motto was ‘We never retreat, we just backspace’.

—Bill Robbins

Reader’s Digest will pay for your funny anecdote or photo in any of our humour sections. Post it to the editorial address, or email us at editor.india@rd.com

zachary kanin/cartoonstock

“I can defend this hill for another hour, but then I really need to get to the gym.”

DREAMERS Chandra Shekhar Ghosh offers millions of povertystricken Indians the means to reclaim their futures

Banking on Hope

C

handra shekhar Ghosh, 59, was first confronted with dehumanizing hunger as a young NGO worker. He was often dispatched to the remote districts of Rangpur in Bangladesh, where he found villagers who slept for three days in a row without any meals. Distressed, he had handed over a 50-taka note to help. Riding back on his bicycle, he was haunted by the predicament of these folk, trapped in a cycle of poverty.

“I figured donations don’t help; income generation was the only way to pull people out of poverty,” Ghosh tells us, sitting in the plush headquarters of Bandhan Bank in Kolkata. Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, today, is the managing director and CEO of the organization (whose business runs to ` 1,20,364 crore),

20 february 2020

which is a champion of financial inclusion with its microfinance arm, which aims to change millions of lives through income generation.

Born to a humble Bengali family of Tripura, Ghosh helped his father run a small sweet shop in his boyhood. By the time he graduated, his father had passed away, leaving him—the eldest of six siblings—to run the family.

A few years later, during a door-todoor health campaign in West Bengal’s Purulia district, Ghosh visited a young mother. She was boiling rice in a makeshift oven in front of her shack. “Her infant daughter, who played next to her, was picking up mud and putting it in her mouth,” recalls Ghosh. He tried to explain to her that ingesting dirt would make her baby sick, but the woman looked distracted. When he asked her if she had registered anything, she

photo: shekhar ghosh/india today

By Sanghamitra Chakraborty

Reader ’s Digest

“Donations don’t help; income generation is the only way to pull people out of poverty,” says Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, founder of Bandhan Bank.

readersdigest.co.in

21

Reader ’s Digest responded: “For three days, my child has been crying for some fish and rice, and I have been promising it to her. I only have rice at home, and don’t know how to make her eat it without the fish.

Can you tell me how?”

G

utted by the devastating penury he saw wherever work took him, Ghosh was determined to act.

He thought about avenues of income generation, particularly for women, the primary caregivers of children. But women were also challenged by patriarchy, which compromised their ability to access livelihoods. “This is a cycle that needed to be broken,” says Ghosh.

Around this time, an interesting phenomenon caught his attention. In Kolkata’s markets, Ghosh noticed local moneylenders on motorbikes, who lent vendors `500 each and took away `5 as interest. “I wondered why the borrowers were willing to pay more than 700 per cent interest a year?” says Ghosh. The vegetable sellers, particularly the women, said it was a godsend for them. Their loans were delivered to them, without delays or paperwork.

What if I took a bank loan and instead of `5, charged `1? Ghosh thought. This way the vendor would make `4, their income would go up and they can scale their business.

This idea obsessed him, until one day he returned home and announced to his wife Nilima that he would quit his job, to start a microfinance NGO. “I started weeping when I heard this,”

22 february 2020

says Nilima Ghosh. Her brother also tried very hard to persuade Ghosh to not give up the security of a monthly salary—then `5,000—for an absurd dream. “Even though everyone believed I was making a mistake, I was convinced I’d be successful,” says Ghosh. Running the family became difficult, yet Ghosh went ahead.

He soon discovered that raising loans for the poor was quite impossible. “But I spotted the potential, so I remained steadfast in my belief,” he says. After approaching banks and financial institutions, he failed to make the loan criteria. Investing an initial sum of `2 lakh, raised from friends and family, Ghosh started his microfinance NGO, Bandhan–Konnagar, “just to prove to the banks that the model was sound.”

The turning point came after 18 months, in September 2002, when SIDBI (Small Industries Development Bank of India) approved `20 lakh as loan. “Without scaling up, we would not be able to make an impact,” says Ghosh. To access big funding, all microfinance work had to be transferred from the NGO to an NBFC (Non-Banking Financial Company).

Attracting talent was Ghosh’s next big challenge. He set up some extraordinary criteria after struggling initially— candidates who had passed higher secondary exams in the third division, and were around 23 years old, were asked to apply. “I wanted people with hunger, who knew exactly how tough the market was. These are the people

Ghosh speaking to women interested in microloans in a village in North 24 Parganas, West Bengal

who have built the bank. They are the backbone of Bandhan today,” says a very proud Ghosh.

photo courtesy bandhan bank

T

oday, Bandhan Bank has 4,288 banking outlets, serving more than 1.9 crore customers. Yet, the microfinance arm is closest to Ghosh’s heart. Bandhan has created millions of entrepreneurs, who have built their businesses bottom-up and earn up to `50,000 a month.

“Recently in Mumbai, a young man came up to me and thanked me, mentioning his mother, who had taken a loan from us, started a small business and was able to put him through a good education. I cannot tell you how it felt,” says Ghosh. Some Bandhan borrowers generate employment themselves. “We have one crore borrowers, all over India today. Even if one job has been created by each, it would mean we have been involved in creating jobs for at least one crore people,” adds Ghosh. For him, what works is the trickle-up method of increasing the incomes of large numbers, and thus creating wealth.

Ghosh does not believe in alms.

“Give work instead, to the destitute,” he says. Bandhan also works in community development and has been making entrepreneurs of poor people for the past 15 years—1,01,530 people in 12 states so far. Of the funds allocated for development, 40 per cent goes into this programme. A woman who used to beg in Murshidabad has built a fourstorey building today, the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab in MIT has informed Bandhan. “She has done it by making and selling puffed rice, through our programme,” says Ghosh. She met Ghosh recently and offered him some of her puffed rice, which touched him deeply. “If someone says our work has changed their lives, it inspires me to do more,” says Ghosh.

Ghosh’s larger vision is to drive India’s human development index, in a meaningful, sustainable way. For this, he draws his motivation from his team.

“Together we can move mountains,” he says. Considering what they have achieved already, Ghosh and his team will be the ones to watch. readersdigest.co.in

23

Reader ’s Digest

All in a Day’s

WORK The restaurant industry can flummox rookies and seasoned pros alike. Consider: ÊA table ordered a Dr Pepper [a cola drink] and a Coke. The server brought their drinks

24 february 2020

over, and then, in front of the customers, took a sip from each drink to see which was which.

—thechive.com

ÊI once had a customer ask that his lamb not taste like lamb.

an especially exhausting day, I walked over to a couple who had just sat down, gave them each a menu and a glass of water, and asked, “Would you care for anything else?”

—June Warburton

—reddit.com

ÊOur manager

kept reminding us waitresses to encourage customers to order dessert. At the end of

Reader’s Digest will pay for your funny anecdote or photo in any of our humour sections. Post it to the editorial address, or email: editor.india@rd.com

Cartoon by Harley Schwadron

CONVERSATIONS

There is a view that youngsters in our college campuses are whiling away their time in political activism

By Kamal Mitra Chenoy

A

slogan in the student movement shaking many parts of India today is ‘Don’t be Silent, Don’t be Violent’. This slogan is good politics. Students are learning about good politics (debate, discussion, tolerance and democracy), the politics of neutrality (look the other way) and bad politics (use of force, sycophancy, hatred of others, exclusiveness). They can make a choice.

Student politics had a niche during the Indian independence movement against the British. Institutions like Allahabad University, Aligarh Muslim University, Banaras Hindu University and others became invigorated by the freedom struggle. In 1942, when the Quit India movement was launched,

26 february 2020

university students, who joined the struggle, were jailed and punished.

This tendency intensified and widened in independent India. A number of political leaders were born based on their experiences in student politics, including jail terms. Clearly, student politics is part of ‘learning democracy’, asking questions to the establishment and speaking truth to power.

The process of politicization of Indian students could not be contained from the 1960s onwards as many universities and colleges began to be radicalized. Many students joined movements across the right, left and centre. Senior leaders tried to get student leaders from the universities into positions in the political landscape.

In the 1960s and ’70s, colleges and universities worldwide widened the horizon of the most acutely aware students and their teachers (for example, the anti-Vietnam War movement). Of course, there were

ani photo

Is Student Politics a Waste of Time?

Reader ’s Digest

Students protest at Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi.

different gradations in different universities, but through the 1980s, the political conversations and contradictions in the universities became more sophisticated and subtle.

Discussions ranged from poverty, development to gender and more.

However, some politics became increasingly based on the interests of political parties. For example, Emergency was imposed in India between 1975 to 1977, with curbs on civil and political rights, on freedom of expression and mass jail sentences. This led to a sharp reaction. In Delhi University, then student union leader, the late Arun Jaitley, was jailed. This catapulted him into deeper national politics. In Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), three student leaders were arrested during the Emergency, and many were incarcerated and suspended. They had all responded to politics.

Political parties often do not realize the need for training, learning and

developing an organic relationship with student movements. Senior students are fully aware that major political leaders are themselves a product of the university system in many parts of the world. With increased and new communication facilities, better books and journals that deal with challenges facing the student community, the Indian landscape has been dramatically changed and student politics will become increasingly consummate and widespread, as well as more complex. This should be seen as a learning process—essential for any democratic culture.

Students attend colleges and universities at an age where their minds open up to new ideas, theories, opinions and debates from local to national and global. They learn to respond to politics and policies, as these shape life around them. These policies impact everyday life—from rights or gender, to the environment, and so on. They have to learn to make choices. Moreover, as the rallying slogan of the women’s movement, that has come so far, said: “The personal is political.” As a poster in JNU, where I studied, proclaimed: ‘When politics determines your future, you should determine politics’. Students have understood that politics matters.

Kamal Mitra Chenoy was a professor and chairperson of the Centre for Comparative Politics, JNU for almost 30 years. He has been associated with activism and public life. readersdigest.co.in

27

“Experienced type who’s been around the block a few times. A bit slow in getting started but good roadholding. Tends to consume too much in liquid form, which impacts negatively on performance.”

“Lovely welcome and delightful stay in an idyllic setting but came to an abrupt end when I discovered that the owner was indulging in multiple occupancy.”

“A high-class establishment— supposedly. But hygiene and cleanliness left a lot to be desired.

To be avoided!”

“A pleasant trip spoiled by a lack of generosity without a single present, not even on the first day. Bring your own food or have it delivered—culinary skills practically zilch.”

“Top-of-the-range model, immaculate presentation, oodles of artistic sensibility but highly strung and impossible to please.”

“Modest set-up and nothing much to look at, but a warm and wellhoned welcome that quickly made me oblivious to a lack of height— and of hair. You feel so good there that your only wish is to hurry back.”

At the end of the day though, when it comes to love, it’s best to set out in blissful ignorance. No need for customer reviews to help you make up your mind. Sometimes it’s best just to listen carefully—to your heart.

DEPARTMENT OF WIT

What’s Your Rating for Dating?

By Anne Roumanoff

O

N THE INTERNET we’re constantly asked for customer reviews.

We’re invited to give our verdict on hotels, restaurants and shows by awarding stars, giving a ranking or leaving comments.

While we’re about it, we could also post user ratings for our romantic conquests:

28 february 2020

Anne Roumanoff is a well-known French humorist. She lives in Paris.

shutterstock

Reader ’s Digest

FINISH THIS SENTENCE

If I met my first love again, I would … … tell her that

my love is without an expiry date.

BHUSHAN CHANDER JINDAL, M um ba i

... run away!

BHOOMI PARMAR, Ah med a ba d

… congratulate him on being my first love and

hug him again.

RACHNA DIKSHIT,

… ask her to walk a mile with me, so that we could

G ur ugram

recall all the good times we spent together.

… stop myself from

falling in love with her all over again.

RAMESH LAKSHMAN, B e ng a lu r u

AYON ROY, Jam shedp ur

S HU T T E RSTO C K

… ask him to

return all the gifts I gave him.

not being able to recognize each other.

SOWMYA NARASIMHA,

VIPUL AGARWAL,

M an ga l ur u

Noid a

… be afraid of

readersdigest.co.in

29

Sukriti Chiripal (far left) with volunteers and beneficiaries of Sangam

GOODforNEWS a Better Planet

children Sukriti Chiripal, a student in Kolkata has been finding ways to change the lives of disadvantaged children by convincing their parents to send them to school. Many of them are beggars or ragpickers. Sukriti’s NGO Sangam distributes books and other study material besides organizing workshops on learning to those who haven’t been to school before. Sukriti has been able to mobilize more than 100 student volunteers in Pune, Mumbai, Delhi, Patna and Raigarh, through social media, to take up similar work in these cities. She claims that the network has been able to reach more than 1000 downtrodden children.

30 february 2020

A Maths Teacher With a Difference education Mathematics, somehow, isn’t always a beloved subject. It certainly wasn’t so in Preeti Sharma’s school when she joined it in Chhattisgarh’s Baghera village in the Rajnandgaon district a few years ago. Wanting to change things, she set up a ‘maths lab’ with the help of her students. The equipment was made of commonly available waste materials like thermocol, broken wooden planks, clay, etc.

The idea was to make maths fun, using these teaching aids. Sharma has evidently succeeded—the school performed very well not just in mathematics but also in other subjects. What a fine example for teachers to follow!

above: sukriti chirpal, right: alamy

Citizen Student

Reader ’s Digest

UNITED COLOURS OF INDIA How communal harmony and respect for the Indian Constitution is still a fundamental instinct

Sources: Children—The Telegraph, 7.01.20, Education—bhaskar.com, 22.12.19, United Colours of India: Mosque—The Telegraph, 30.12.19, Church—mathrubhumi.com, 04.01.20, Wedding—The New Indian Express, 05.01.20,

A Hindu Wedding At a Mosque A local mosque in Kerala’s Cheravally readily offered its premises for a Hindu wedding after it learnt that the family was not able to afford a wedding hall. The Cheravally Muslim Jamaat Committee, after being encouraged by one of its members, was approached by Bindu requesting if the family could use the mosque’s premises for her daughter’s wedding. The Committee also decided to take on the expenses of the wedding. That’s called spreading sunshine.

Muslims Pray In a Church A church in Kerala’s Ernakulam district allowed hundreds of Muslims to pray on its premises recently, setting an example in communal amity. When a group of protesters against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act realized that it was nearly time for their evening prayer, but there was no mosque nearby, one of them contacted the vicar of the Marthoma Cheriapally, a local church. The vicar agreed to provide the church’s premises for the prayers after making arrangements for ablutions. After the

prayers, the visitors took a trip of the church, which is said to be at least 1,000 years old.

A ‘Secular’ Wedding Would you consider taking wedding vows along with the reading of the Preamble to the Constitution? That’s precisely what a couple in Karnataka’s Gadag did last month. Basavaraj Bieyali and Sangeeta Gudimani didn’t stop at that. They had Hindu, Christian and Muslim priests reading the Preamble at their wedding. The couple also had Kannada ‘vachanas’ or verses by medieval saints sung at this unusual wedding. The couple said that they wanted a ‘secular wedding’. Truly, you could not get more inclusive.

—COMPILED BY V. KUMARA SWAMY readersdigest.co.in

31

POINTS TO PONDER I believe that when people die, they zoom into the people who love them. This idea that it just ends and don’t speak of them—that’s wrong.

Martin Short, actor

Nearly every book has the same architecture—cover, spine, pages—but you open them on to worlds and gifts far beyond what paper and ink are, and on the inside they are every shape and power.

Every member of a university community, if he or she wishes to aspire to be worthy of the university, must accept the truth of Voltaire’s classic statement. Voltaire proclaimed ‘I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it’.

Dr Manmohan Singh, former Prime Minister of India

Martin Short

32 february 2020

Rebecca Solnit

Dr Manmohan Singh

left: alamy (2), shuterstock

Rebecca Solnit, writer

Reader ’s Digest

Dissents speak to a future age. It’s not simply to say, ‘My colleagues are wrong and I would do it this way.’

But the greatest dissents do become court opinions, and gradually, over time, their views become the dominant view. So that’s the dissenter[’s] hope: That they are writing not for today, but for tomorrow.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, justice of the Supreme Court of the United States,

My definition of man is a cooking animal. The beasts have memory, judgement and the faculties and passions of our minds in a certain degree; but no beast is a cook …

Man alone can dress a good dish; and every man is more or less a cook, in seasoning what he himself eats.

alamy

James Boswell, Scottish biographer, diarist and lawyer

Come, today let us pledge that this country is ours, we belong to it and any fundamental decision about its destiny will remain incomplete without our consent.

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Indian freedom fighter

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

James Boswell

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad

readersdigest.co.in 33

Reader ’s Digest

AS KIDS SEE IT

One evening while playing cards with my nineyear-old nephew, he started acting up. His father said, “If you want to play cards with the adults, you have to act like one.” Without missing a beat, he replied “Well, pass the whisky, then.”

—FRANK WESTERLAKEN My daughter is in her first year of middle school and I asked if she’s planning to go to

34 february 2020

any of the dances. She said, “Only if there’s going to be food.”

— @VALEEGRRL As my sister removed her glasses at bedtime, my eight-year-old niece looked at her, puzzled.

Finally, she asked, “Auntie, if you remove your glasses, how will you see when you dream?”

—SANDRA BAILEY-ANGLIN My neighbour walked by with his grandson

Rodney in tow. I asked Rodney how old he was. He answered, “I’m four.”

I said, “You look pretty big for four. When are you going to be five?”

Rodney said, “When I’m finished being four!”

—CHARLIE GALLANT Reader’s Digest will pay for your funny anecdote or photo in any of our humour sections. Post it to the editorial address, or email: editor.india@rd.com

cartoon: susan camilleri konar

“If you get to be a stay-at-home dad, why can’t I be a stay-at-home kid?”

Reader ’s Digest

BETTER LIVING

HOW TO FIGHT THE

GOOD FIGHT

On World Cancer Day (4 February), messages of courage, hope and inspiration from those who have defeated this dreaded disease As told to Ishani Nandi

Make every moment count Cancer requires an allout response as it challenges every aspect of your being. You must marshal resources both within and without, as well as those that are yet to be discovered. I realized during the course of my journey that my strengths were my positive nature, my ability to laugh at myself as well as my personal faith.

Growing up in a family that faced setbacks with equanimity was an added asset. I was determined to be happy and not let cancer get me down. My great discovery was that cancer had

36 february 2020

liberated me. Every minute now was precious and it was up to me to make it count. My advice to those living with cancer would be: Don’t let cancer terrorize you. Look at it as the sneaky and cowardly disease it is. You are so much bigger. Your possibilities are limitless.

Go out there and live life your way.

—Harmala Gupta, founder–president of CanSupport, Hodgkin’s-lymphoma survivor

Love yourself We as women must learn to look after ourselves. Some cancers, such as breast and cervical cancer, can be detected early and cured if we are mindful of our bodies and look for telltale signs. But women are not trained to take care of

photo credit: vikram sharma/india today

Illustration by Keshav Kapil

readersdigest.co.in

37

Reader ’s Digest Better Living

Life goes on When you know you have cancer, you have to live with it. There’s just no ignoring or denying that fact. But I always keep one thought at the back of my mind—life goes on. The question ‘Why me?’ never crossed my mind. Right after I was declared cancer-free, my wife was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

She went through six years of treatment and passed away in late 2018. Any disease could afflict anyone. You could die of a heart attack or in a road accident in one day—so I saw no point in thinking ‘Why me?’. It’s a part of life.

Anup Kapur, marketing professional, bladder-cancer survivor

Your will is your weapon The most important thing to remember in the fight against cancer is that your

38 february 2020

own willpower is your biggest weapon. A partner, family member or friend can offer support and strength but the foremost thought in a patient’s mind must be ‘I will get better. I will get healthy again’. Also, I’ve seen many people, especially women, retreat from the world, unwilling to step out of their homes, because of hair loss or other physical changes caused by cancer treatment—this shouldn’t happen. Surgery has greatly changed my husband’s appearance and how he speaks, but he never lets this diminish his confidence or stop him from going out and interacting with people.

Sunila Khanna, wife of an oral-cancer survivor

Pay it forward My journey with cancer has made me stronger, more compassionate and helpful. If one has faith in oneself, one’s doctor and God, defeating cancer is not impossible. My experience motivated me to make a difference to the lives of others fighting this battle, so for the past 16 years I have worked to support cancer patients. It gives me immense satisfaction and a great sense of purpose in life. The love, respect and friendships I found along the way are a great bonus.

Chandra Rekha Gulabani, director at Jagriti, Indian Cancer Society, breast-cancer survivor

photos: vikram sharma/india today, sunila khanna, chandra rekha gulabani

themselves. We don’t prioritize ourselves or consider ourselves important enough.

This must change. Stay aware and informed.

Be watchful and ensure you reach out for help when you need it; if you see abnormal changes in your body. Early detection and timely treatment can make all the difference in the fight against cancer.

Rajni Bhagat Arora, communications professional, breast-cancer survivor

Reader ’s Digest

LIFE’S Like That At the doctor’s office, a 20-something man was trying to make an appointment for a Mrs Brown. Try as he might, he just could not remember her first name. Frustrated, he left. A few minutes later, I passed him outside the office on the phone.

“Hey, Dad,” he said.

“What’s Mom’s first name?”

—James Secor Trying to get online at my mother-in-law’s, I scrolled through various internet access names. One neighbour’s Wi-Fi really stood out: “You Kids Get Off My LAN!” —Nancy Lawson A friend was due to give birth around the same

40 february 2020

time that her oldest daughter was due to give birth to her first baby. On the morning my friend went into labour, I happened to drive by her house, wondering what she’d had. A sign on the front porch gave me my answer: “It’s an Uncle!”

—Pam Lester

suddenly growled at me. Alarmed, I got up and left. As I turned a corner, I heard his owner quietly reproach him: “You always do this, Oscar. You drive away all your friends.”

— @juliagalef

I love overhearing pet owners talking to their dogs. Recently, I was petting a pup who seemed happy until he

Reader’s Digest will pay for your funny anecdote or photo in any of our humour sections. Post it to the editorial address, or email: editor.india@rd.com

Cartoon by Jon Carter

Reader ’s Digest

MONEY

6 Habits of Wealthy People There’s only one secret to making money—find out now

By Gaurav Mashruwala

W

hat is the formula for a long life? The likely answer will be a healthy lifestyle and good fitness and nutrition habits. This is true for your financial health too.

We financial planners are bombarded by questions on quick money-making formulae from our clients, but if

42 february 2020

there was a secret formula, we’d be the wealthiest people on the planet.

Making money and creating wealth is simply a function of good habit— habits that need to be developed and nurtured over a period of time until it becomes part of us.

There are some popular notions that abound. A life-insurance coverage that is 10 times your annual income is one. Another is spreading your investment portfolio across equity (shares) and debt (bonds, debentures or fixed deposits) and splitting them according to your age. There is a view that if you are 38 years old, 62 per cent (your age subtracted from 100) of your investments should be in equity and the rest in debt instruments.

However, I would steer clear of such a formulaic approach.

There are some steps, that should become habits, to take you towards

a more robust financial health. Ê You must get insurance, depending on your age, wealth and commitments. Ê Diversify your investment portfolio across debt (debt mutual fund, fixed deposits, bonds, debentures, etc.) and equity, wisely. However, it needs to be tailored to your individual needs. Ê Identify and review your financial goals at regular intervals. These are responsibilities and dreams for which we earn, save, invest and sometimes even borrow. Ê Make it a point to create a family budget at the beginning of every month. “The term ‘budget’ can seem intimidating,” one of my clients once said. “Call it your spending list instead,” I advised. A budget is nothing but the amount of money we are planning to spend on our various needs and wants.

At the end of each month, you will know exactly how much money you are spending and, more importantly, if you are overspending. Ê Keep your family members abreast of all long-term financial transactions and also keep updating your wealth documents. It is very common for financial planners to meet clients without an updated KYC (Know Your Customer) with banks or other financial institutions. This leads to various problems sooner or later— for instance, old addresses and other personal information remain on record or investments stay linked to dormant or closed bank accounts. I suggest that couples go on a ‘financial date’, where

SMS “UTIWIP” to 5676756

To know about the KYC documentary requirements and procedure please visit https://www.utimf.com/servicerequest/ kyc. Please deal with only registered Mutual fund advisors and to know more visit the SEBI website under “Intermediaries/ market Infrastructure Institutions”. All complaints regarding UTI Mutual Fund can be directed towards service@uti.co.in and/or visit www.scores.gov.in (SEBI SCORES portal).

Mutual Fund investments are subject to market risks, read all scheme related documents carefully.

they spend at least two hours every three months to evaluate their financial situation, documents and goals. ÊMaking a will, updating nominations and re-evaluating health-insurance needs are a few other habits that go a long way in wealth creation.

If you want to become a master of your money, forget magic formulae— start by developing money-making and -managing habits through small, consistent, baby steps until they become a lifelong practice, and watch your wallet grow.

Gaurav Mashruwala is a Mumbaibased financial planner and author of Yogic Wealth: The Wealth That Gives Bliss. readersdigest.co.in

43

News From the

WORLD OF MEDICINE MAKING BREAST CANCER TREATMENT AFFORDABLE Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in women in the world resulting in lakhs of deaths per year. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), many die because of late diagnosis and lack of access to affordable treatment. But with the WHO approving a ‘biosimilar’ medicine— derived from living sources rather than chemicals— breast cancer is likely to become affordable. Currently, trastuzumab costs Rs 14 lakh whereas its biosimilar version would be 65 per cent cheaper.

44 february 2020

Just like the body’s metabolism, the brain’s metabolism tends to slow with age. In a study of more than 200 adults ages 20 to 82 with no brain damage or disease, researchers used positron-emission tomography (PET) scans of the brain to measure each individual’s ‘metabolic brain age.’ They found that at any given time, women’s brains are an average of 3.8 years younger than their biological age while men’s brains are an average of 2.4 years older.

“This could mean that the reason women don’t experience as much cognitive decline in later years is because their brains are effectively younger,” says one of the study’s authors.

“We’re currently working on a study to confirm that.”

shutterstock

Women Have Younger Brains than Men

Reader ’s Digest

from top: mut hardman. chutima chaochaiya. choochin (all shutterstock)

EVENING EXERCISE MAY NOT HURT SLEEP A workout late in the day interferes with your shut-eye—or does it?

That’s a common notion, but it’s not the conclusion of a Swiss review of the highestquality studies on the topic. The analysis found that although ‘vigorous’ training (activity that leaves you too breathless to speak) within an hour of bedtime might be bad for your sleep, exercising slightly earlier or more moderately has a neutral to beneficial effect. That’s good news for people who can’t fit a workout into other parts of their day.

Common Cold Virus Exposes Cancer Cells

RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS MIGHT LEAD TO COPD

Cancer cells are dangerous in part because the immune system cannot detect them, so the body’s natural defences don’t kick in. But there are viruses that can be used as treatment to destroy this invisibility shield.

When they enter tumours, these viruses replicate like crazy until the tumour cells burst, releasing substances that allow the cancer to be ‘seen’ and destroyed by immune cells. In one small British study, 15 patients with nonmuscle invasive bladder cancer received a dose of a common cold virus shortly before they underwent surgery to remove their tumours.

In all cases, the virus successfully increased cancer-cell death; in one, it appeared to have completely eradicated the cancer. Moreover, it did so without any significant side effects.

An analysis of the medical records of 50,000 people found that those who had rheumatoid arthritis (RA) had a 47 per cent greater risk of being hospitalized for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) than those who did not. The prolonged inflammation of RA may predispose some people to COPD. Genetics also plays a part: Another study identified a DNA variation that was associated with COPD, RA and other autoimmune diseases. RA sufferers need to look out for early symptoms of COPD, such as wheezing and coughing, and avoid risk factors, such as smoking.

—WITH INPUTS FROM V. KUMARA SWAMY

readersdigest.co.in

45

Reader ’s Digest

4 Ways to Stop Technology Addiction Today’s ‘idiot boxes’ may be smaller but can be just as bad for your well-being

By Team RD

N

ew RESEARCH SUGGESTS that at least 64 per cent of people now spend up to four hours daily of leisure time in front of a screen. Just as TV watching has been linked to higher rates of obesity and diabetes, this extra sedentary time is bad news for our health. Break the habit now. ) Choose outdoor activities When you’re at home on weekends, make it a rule that you can’t be online if the sun is shining. Instead, you have to go for a walk, ride a bike, swim or get some other kind of healthy physical activity for at least an hour before you can pull out your phone or tablet, or take a seat at the computer.

46 february 2020

) Limit social-media use Social networks have transformed computer and mobile use for people of all ages.

Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Snapchat, impose limits on the amount of time you spend on social media. Avoid aimless browsing and give your time online a purpose: Research holidays or catch up on the news of the day. Then log off. ) Set aside reading time Challenge yourself to read at least 30 pages of a great book before you check your computer or mobile device.

Pick the right reading material and you’ll soon find you’ve discovered an enjoyable pastime. ) Create projects for yourself It’s amazing how much you can accomplish when you’re not glued to a screen.

Compile a list of one-hour evening projects. Some suggestions are organizing kitchen cupboards, sorting through old paperwork or cleaning your car.

Then try to do one each evening.

shutterstock

TECHNOLOGY

Reader ’s Digest

FOOD

The AntiCancer Diet A powerful weapon in the fight against breast cancer is the food on your plate

by Neelanjana Singh

H

ere’s some news that may be heartening for those with a family history of breast cancer.

There is a growing body of evidence that suggests that appropriate lifestyle modifications can significantly reduce the risk of this disease even in women genetically predisposed to breast cancer. The least expensive yet most powerful weapon in the preventive strategy is the food on your plate.

TRUST PLANTS AND DAIRY The general dictum is that a diet rich in plant-based foods has immense cancer-fighting power. Besides the several compounds present in fruits and vegetables that reduce the risk, it is the fibre present in them that lowers the oestrogen levels in the body (low oestrogen means low risk). Women who consume adequate low-fat dairy also seem to be better protected, probably because of the high calcium available through this food group.

Also, a high-fibre plant-based diet prevents obesity, and maintaining a healthy weight is a well-established aspect of breast cancer prevention in postmenopausal women. Check the following list of specific food groups that have cancer-fighting properties.

CRUCIFEROUS CURES Broccoli and other vegetables from the cruciferous family such as cauliflower and cabbage (all colours) contain phytochemicals (glucosinolates), which produce a protective enzyme that may readersdigest.co.in

47

Reader ’s Digest Food

GARLIC GOODNESS What works are garlic cloves and not the supplements sold in health stores.

For best results, chop cloves and let sit for 15 minutes before cooking or eating as this waiting period allows for the activation of beneficial enzymes present in this superfood.

BERRY POWERS Include all kinds of berries in your diet because they are high in flavonoids, known for their anti-cancer properties.

Eat strawberries and other local berries like mulberries and jamun. The cancerfighting compound, carotenoids, found in tomatoes and pomegranate (they too are berries) make them potent warriors; eat them raw.

TEA RULES Tea lovers will love this piece of news: all three kinds of tea—black, green and oolong—are good sources of flavonoids. A study conducted on 3,000 postmenopausal women indicates that flavonoids from tea protected them against breast cancer. However, this protection does not work for premenopausal women.

SPICES SPEAK A study in the British Medical Journal draws our attention to the power of spices that may help reduce the

IS SOYA BAD NEWS FOR BREAST CANCER? Women are wary of soya and flaxseeds as they contain high levels of phytoestrogens (substances found in plant foods that act like oestrogen).

Both soya and its by-products (soya milk, tofu, edamame, soya nuts) and flaxseeds rank very high in the phytoestrogen content of foods. But recent studies have given them a clean chit—almost. The advisory for those with a diagnosis of breast cancer is to take limited portions: 1–2 tbs of flaxseeds and not more than 2 servings of soya in a day. One serving of soya translates into 250 ml soya milk, 125 g tofu or ¼ cup of soya nuts.

risk of death from cancers. All the spices stacked in your kitchen have beneficial properties. But the spice that is leading the crusade against cancer is turmeric, which has shown promise even against the most drug-resistant forms of breast cancer.

Neelanjana Singh, a nutrition therapist with 30 years experience, is a member of the national executive committee of the Indian Dietetic Association and author of Our Kid Eats Everything.

UPDATED AND ADAPTED FROM PREVENTION INDIA © OCTOBER 2015, LIVING MEDIA INDIA LIMITED.

48 february 2020

all photos: shutterstock

prevent the formation of cancer cells in the body. Eat them raw or lightly steamed for maximum benefits.

LAUGHTER The best Medicine

That evening, Jim came home with a small package for his wife. Emma ripped open the wrapping paper, tore into the box and pulled out her gift—a book entitled The Meaning of Dreams.

—thetrendinsights.com

I describe my husband’s style as “Is that what you’re wearing?”

— @sixfootcandy

One morning, Emma woke up with a start.

Her husband, Jim, asked what the matter was. “I had a dream that you gave me

50

february 2020

a pearl necklace for Valentine’s Day,” she said. “What could it mean?”

“You’ll know tonight,” Jim said slyly.

Every year, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe celebrates the world’s funniest comics. Here’s what had us giggling in our kilts this year: Ê“I accidentally booked myself into an escapology course.

I’m really struggling to get out of it.”

—Adele Cliff Ê“A thesaurus is great. There’s no other word for it.”

—Ross Smith Ê“A cowboy asked me if I could help him round up 18 cows.

I said, ‘Yes, of course.

That’s 20 cows.’ ” —Jake Lambert Cartoon by Dan Reynolds

Æ

Reader ’s Digest

I have all of Marie Kondo’s books. Now, I just need a way to organize them.

—Submitted by Rob Sowby Ê“After learning

six hours of basic semaphore, I was flagging.”

—Richard Pulsford;

bbc.com

A widower and a widow attend their 70th class reunion, and a long-ago spark is rekindled. At the end of the night, he asks, “Will you marry me?”

“Yes, yes, I will!” she says enthusiastically.

The next morning, the widower wakes up troubled. Did she say yes or no?

Confused, he calls her and asks, “Did you say yes or no to marrying me?”

“I said yes! And I’m glad you called, because I couldn’t

remember who asked me.”

—thechattanoogan.com

Finally getting around to calling all those kids that wrote in my middle school yearbook, “We should hang out this summer!”

— @Cheeseboy22

Reader’s Digest will pay for your funny anecdote or photo in any of our humour sections. Post it to the editorial address, or email: editor.india@rd.com

fotosr52/shutterstock

THINGS YOU’LL NEVER HEAR A THREE-YEAR-OLD SAY Ê“It doesn’t really look like a dragon, but never mind, I’ll eat it anyway— food is food!” Ê“Yep, that’s exactly how I wanted it done. You’ve nailed it. Again.” Ê“Don’t need it. Already have three.

Let’s just stick to our shopping list.” Ê“For Pete’s sake, Dad. It’s 3:30 in the morning. Please, go back to bed you’re starting a new job, and this is the one night you really need some decent sleep.” Ê“Don’t hide that square millimetre of zucchini behind the pasta. More! More green! I’m into micro-sprouts at the moment too.”

Ê“It doesn’t matter how we did this yesterday. Things change!” Ê“Here’s the remote—I don’t really know how to use it anyway.” Ê“I bet I can get in my car seat before you can say the words, ‘My back. I can’t ... straighten ... up ... ’” Ê“Here’s your phone back.”

—Olivia Appleby on mcsweeneys.net

readersdigest.co.in

53

54 february 2020

COVER STORY

The Great Indian Food Symphony

Cuisines from different regions of our country are like musical notes that create a mesmerizing melody

T

By Pushpesh Pant

he political map of India demarcating different states— carved out on a linguistic basis, strategic reasons or political expediency—isn’t perhaps the best prism to appreciate the colourful spectrum of Indian cuisines. A better access to this resplendent inheritance is provided by the concept of ‘zones of taste’ roughly corresponding to the geographical regions celebrated in our national anthem: “Punjaba, Sindhu, Gujarata, Maratha, Dravida, Utkala, Banga”, and so on. India’s identity, its gastronomic footprint, can’t be confined by boundaries drawn by man.

The diversity of streams that have intermingled to create a delightful confluence, resembling a great river

system, is remarkable. It is futile to look for a mainstream or to arrange cuisines of different regions in a hierarchy. For millennia, ingredients and influences (cooking techniques) have travelled across the length and breadth of this land with intrepid traders, soldiers of fortune, marching armies, pilgrims and scholars. The Indian genius lies in imbibing diverse influences without losing its own moorings. India is no ‘melting pot’ homogenizing all that is put in it; Indian foods from different regions are best seen like musical notes that contribute to a mesmerizing melody.

The zones of taste are easily identified by the staple cereals: rice, wheat or millets; preferred cooking mediums— mustard, sesame, peanut or coconut readersdigest.co.in

55

oil; most popular souring and sweetening agents. Using these ‘filters’, we will discover that the food footprint of any state extends to the adjacent districts of its neighbouring state.

While it may appear that food reinforces separate identities, at times leading to discord, a closer look reveals that the strength of our socio-cultural fabric is strengthened by the diversity of threads with which this rich tapestry is woven. Saffron from Kashmir is used to prepare kesari bath deep down south, and aromatic spices from Kerala—peppercorns, cardamom and cloves make the food redolent in other distant kitchens. Tandoori delicacies have proliferated in post-Partition India, are now popular in almost every state. The same is true of the south Indian dosai, idli, vada, sambar and rasam. Mention ‘sweets’ and the prefix ‘Bengali’ springs to mind immediately. There are other geographical indicators: Bikaneri bhujiya, Hyderabadi biryani, Awadhi gilawat kebab, Benarasi paan—the list is endless. Fusion has taken place effortlessly to create paneer dosa, paneer dhokla sandwich and tandoori momo.

It’s fascinating that Indian food is an integral part of the shared identity of different communities that add up to more than 1.35 billion people.

Microscopic segments like Parsis, Bohras, Sindhis and Anglo-Indians have lovingly preserved their foods and culinary traditions for centuries, through vicissitudes. There are others like itinerant-migrant Marwadis, settled in different parts of India, who have influenced the eating habits of locals.

There are also many myths that need to be dispensed with. Not all Brahmins and Vaisyas in India are vegetarians— recall Kashmiri Pandits, Maithil and Saraswat Brahmins and the descendents of Chetttinad merchant princes.

Within a small state like Kerala, half a dozen culinary streams coexist happily without muddying the waters.

What we are witnessing currently is a revival of interest, particularly among the youth, in our roots. This, at times, expresses itself as parochial prejudice and misplaced ethnic pride.

We should, perhaps, begin to turn our gaze to branches that reach out in different directions from the trunk of the grand banyan tree to strike out roots elsewhere; extending the area of the canopy that provides shelter and shade.

The author is a former professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. He has spent the last two decades documenting the rich diversity of Indian cuisine.

OUR EMINENT JURY PANEL: Food historians: Colleen Taylor Sen, Pushpesh Pant, Salma Husain and Pritha Sen. Restaurateurs and chefs: Manish Mehrotra, Manu Chandra, Zorawar Kalra, Mariyam Kachwala, Regi Mathew, Saby Gorai, Shaun Kenworthy, Thomas Zacharias and Anahita Dhondy. Food writers and critics: Rahul Verma, Prima Kurien, Hoihnu Hauzel and Pawan Soni.

56 february 2020

previous spread: alamy, all other photos: shutterstock & alamy

Reader ’s Digest

Cover Story

India on a Platter Here, a list of foods picked by our jury and winners of the open survey

NORTH ZONE Delhi Chhole Bhature: Punjab has a deep relationship with chanak (chana-gram and chickpeas) from the Vedic times.

Certain regions in undivided Punjab such as Rawalpindi are proud of their chana with a bite. When refugees from Punjab settled down in Delhi after Partition, they introduced the city to their entrepreneurial ways. And among all they set up in what was a hick town, were little eateries.

Some served chhole bhature—puffed, floury, deep-fried breads, presented with a spicy chhole preparation, served with raw onions and green chillies and often a side dish of boiled gooseberries or pickled carrots.

Popular Choice: Chhole Bhature

Haryana Bajrey ki Khichri: Khichri ke chaar yaar—ghee, papad, dahi, achar. In Haryana, where bajra khichri is a much-loved dish, these accompaniments are a must. In regions not known for cultivating rice, bajra khichri—made with millets—is a speciality. Khichri comes from the Sanskrit khicca, and archaeological evidence suggests that it was consumed in 1200 BC. The grains are cooked until soft, then cumin, asafoetida, turmeric and red chillies are added to hot ghee, and splashed over the khichri. And then, the four yaars are brought to the table. Bliss!

Popular Choice: Bajrey ki Khichri

Himachal Pradesh Kullu trout: Among the memorable British legacies to India was the trout.

Delhi’s perennial favourite, chhole bhature

readersdigest.co.in

57

Reader ’s Digest The British introduced the fish to what is now Himachal Pradesh in 1909 and because the region’s rivers were so clean and clear, the species proliferated. The river Beas and its tributaries soon became its home. By the early ’40s, trout farms had been set up in Kullu. The trout that you find in Manali restaurants—served steamed, grilled, in gravy or just fried with a dab of butter—is a big draw for tourists.

Popular Choice: Chha Gosht

Jammu and Kashmir Gushtaba: A Kashmiri-Muslim dish, this is essentially an Indian meatball.

Traditionally, lamb meat is beaten with fat, fennel, ginger and coriander, until it is almost white, then shaped into balls and left to simmer in a yogurt sauce. The dish is known as the ‘king of dishes’, which explains why during 21or 31-course Kashmiri Wazwan feasts, gushtaba is the last dish to be served— to ensure that the taste stays with you, long after the last morsel goes down.

Popular Choice: Rogan Josh

Ladakh Thukpa: The thukpa—a hearty meal of noodles in a broth filled with vegetables and meat—is believed to have crossed over to India from Tibet centuries ago. When the Dalai Lama fled Chinese-controlled Tibet, he is said to have survived on this filling soup through the long journey to India. This one-bowl meal is especially popular in areas with Tibetan settlements. A good bowl of thukpa once included yak meat, but now mostly comprises minced mutton, ginger, garlic and cabbage leaves. People put in whatever is available to their thukpa cauldron— and every ingredient adds to the taste.

Popular Choice: Thukpa

Punjab Makke ki Roti and Sarson ka Saag: This leafy mash was first mentioned in the holy texts Acaranga Sutra, and, later, in the Charaka Samhita. The leaves are pulped and cooked with greens such as bathua and palak and a bit of makke ki atta. Once it is cooked, The Punjabi classic, makke ki roti and sarson ka saag

58 february 2020

Cover Story it is lashed with ghee and white butter and eaten with makke ki roti or maize flatbreads. Maize is believed to have reached India after 1492, but a 12thcentury temple outside Mysuru shows 92 figures holding something similar to an ear of corn. No matter this mystery, there’s no doubt that Punjab’s much loved saag and roti combo is a winner.

Popular Choice: Makke ki Roti and Sarson ka Saag

Rajasthan Dal Baati Churma: Legend has it that Rajput soldiers would bury balls of dough in the sand and set out for battle. When they returned, they found them baked to a golden yellow under the desert sun. The word baati, according to food historian K. T. Achaya, is derived from the Sanskrit word vatya. Baati is a hard, roasted ball of wheat, which is cracked open, doused with ghee and eaten with dal. Churma is a roasted roti that is crumbled, mixed with ghee and sugar, and relished, bit by bit.

Popular Choice: Dal Baati Churma

Uttarakhand Bal Mithai: It is well documented that this sweet was invented by Joga Lal Sah of Malli Bazar. The roasted khoya pieces are covered with roasted and sugar-coated poppy seeds, which add a nice crunch to the sweet. Bal mithai is made all over the hills now

but it’s the exceptional quality of khoya from the villages near Almora that makes the sweet truly special. What made it score over other sweets was its long shelf life. Soldiers returning home could carry it to distant villages and migrant workers in the plains took it along nostalgically.

Popular Choice: Bal Mithai

Uttar Pradesh Gilawat ke Kebab: Gilawat means tenderizer, so gilawat is the kebab that practically dissolves when you bite into it. Popular lore has it that gilawat had been created especially for an elderly nawab who lost his teeth but not his zest for food. But according to other sources, gilawat ke kebab originated to suit the requirements of elderly pilgrims to a Sufi dargah in Lucknow’s Kakori. Food experts hold that the meat for the gilawat has to be minced and ground 13 times for the right texture. And once done—and eaten—it cannot be forgotten.

Popular Choice: Gilawat ke Kebab — Rahul Verma

EAST ZONE Bihar Litti Chokha: A favourite of farmers and soldiers, littis were consumed widely during the 1857 uprising, since they require no vessels to cook and very little water. Small roundels of whole readersdigest.co.in

59

Reader ’s Digest wheat and sattu, they are mixed with seasoning and simply thrown into ovens and baked.

Travelling down centuries from the Magadhan kingdom, today they are Bihar’s foremost delicacy. Drizzled with ghee and relished with chokha on the side, littis have travelled to other states too. Chokha is a mash of roasted potatoes or eggplants, with tomatoes, sauteed raw onions, chillies and fresh coriander with a generous helping of pungent mustard oil.

Popular Choice: Litti Chokha

dish—Odisha’s showstopper dessert— is one. The story goes, in the first half of the 20th century, Sudarshan Sahu, the owner of a sweet shop in Nayagarh, added sugar and cardamom to some leftover chenna (Indian cottage cheese), kept the mix in an oven and went to bed. Next morning, he was pleasantly surprised to find an aromatic dessert that was soft inside and caramelized and crusty on top. Today, the flavoured, sweetened chenna is wrapped in sal leaves and baked in a charcoal oven for many hours, producing this subtle Indian cheesecake.

Popular Choice: Chenna Poda

Jharkhand

West Bengal

Rugda curry: Rugda mushrooms

Kolkata Biryani:

grow mainly around sal trees in the damp, wild forests of Jharkhand. They are available in plenty during the monsoons and are dug out by tribal women from the undergrowths and sold in the markets. Generally muddy when collected, they are rubbed clean and winnowed before they can be cooked into a curry—hence the name. Meaty and delicious, they are cooked into a rich curry with spices and mustard oil, and can be a good substitute for those who cannot afford meats. Rugda curry, a tribal dish, is fast gaining a reputation as Jharkhand’s best-known food.

Popular Choice: Rugda Curry

Chenna Poda: There are many happy

When Wajid Ali Shah, the ousted Nawab of Oudh, reached Calcutta in 1856, he wanted to recreate Lucknow in Metiabruz.

Shah’s bawarchis set up a royal kitchen, but were financially constrained. Saffron was eliminated and, to compensate for the shortage of meat, they added potatoes and eggs—and, thus was born the Kolkata biryani. Another theory suggests that the region’s climate may have led to the choices as well. Pale yellow and fragrant, this biryani is lightly spiced and cooked in mustard oil. Of course, there are many gharanas now, each of which is stoutly defended by argumentative Kolkatans.

Popular Choice: Mishti Doi

accidents in our culinary history. This

— Sanghamitra Chakraborty

Odisha

60 february 2020

Cover Story

NORTH-EAST ZONE Arunachal Pradesh Dung Po and Kholam: Dung po and kholam both celebrate the staple cereal rice. For dung po, rice packed in leaves is placed in two brass utensils, arranged to serve as a double boiler, steamed and served leaf-wrapped. With kholam, the rice is cooked in the hollow of a bamboo tube and buried in the dying embers of a fire, which lends the rice a distinct smoky flavour. The bamboo tube is then carefully hacked to reveal a cylinder of rice. This method of cooking sticky rice is also practised in Assam, where it is called sunga bhaat.

Popular Choice: Dung Po and Kholam

Assam Masor Tenga: Perfect for the humid Assamese summer, masor tenga means tangy fish curry. Prepared with river fish, sour notes singing through it, masor tenga makes for a delightful summer lunch. Mildly spiced and eaten with rice, this preparation is

light and refreshing on the palate.

Some of the souring agents used are tomatoes, outenga (elephant apple), thekera (mangosteen) and the kazi nemu (a variant of lemon). Every Assamese home has a cherished recipe for this dish.

Popular Choice: Masor Tenga

Manipur Singju: Think of a spicy salad bursting with flavour, tossed up with green leafy vegetables, crunchy lotus stems or thinly sliced raw papaya, combined with a dry, ground dressing made of thoiding (perilla seeds), groundroasted yellow peas and seasonings.

This is no boring salad—the non-vegetarian variant includes ngari or fermented fish. Eaten as an accompaniment to meals or an evening snack in homes, it is widely sold in small eateries across Manipur. Singju is now available in several variants, one of which is Wai-Wai singju that includes the very popular instant noodles.

Popular Choice: Eromba

Assam's beloved masor tenga

readersdigest.co.in

61

Reader ’s Digest

Meghalaya Doh-neiiong: Doh-neiiong, from lush, scenic Meghalaya is a rich, mouth-watering delight. Derived from doh (meat) and neiiong (sesame seeds), this meal traditionally belongs to the Jaintias, one of the three major matrilineal tribes of Meghalaya, the other two being Garo and Khasi. Both Khasis and Jaintias make liberal use of black sesame seeds in their food. The sesame, which lends this dish a nutty flavour, is slow roasted and ground to a paste, then added to the meat, lending the dish its almost velvety, dark green colour.

Popular Choice: Jadoh

Mizoram Bai: A delicately spiced, flavourful stew, bai is served at home, as well as in feasts. A slow-cooked, no-oil dish, bai is made by dunking beans, mustard leaves, cauliflower, cabbage, pumpkin leaves into a pot of boiling water and seasoned with meat. Like most tribal cuisines, Mizo cooking reflected the socio-economic disparity of the people Juicy, steamed momos

62 february 2020

of these remote areas. Meat being a luxury, bai was made with boiled vegetables, no salt and su-am (preserved pork lard), then cooked in a pot. Some recipes now use potatoes or rice to thicken the stew.

Popular Choice: Bai

Nagaland Smoked Pork with Akhuni: A carnivore’s delight, it is bound to singe your olfactory senses, but we suggest you brace up and dig in. It is prepared with meat that has hung over an open hearth for a few days, and smoked to perfection along with akhuni—fermented soya bean—that lends its umami flavour and sharp smell. They are cooked together, until the fat is rendered and the moisture evaporated. Akhuni was originally made by Nagaland’s Sema tribe and had a flavour similar to the Japanese natto.

This ingredient boasts legions of fans across India’s north-east region.

Popular Choice: Smoked Pork with Akhuni

Cover Story

Sikkim Momo: This dumpling’s leap to streetfood stardom is undisputed now.

Doughy parcels filled with various meats and steamed, momos have been traced back to Tibet. In 1928, Charles Alfred Bell, British India’s ambassador to Tibet, and among the first Tibetologists, noted that the locals ate “10 or 15 small meat dumplings” for lunch. From the highlands of Lhasa, momos travelled to Nepal with Newari traders, who brought the momo to wherever they settled in India—Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Gangtok. In the 1960s, when Tibetans w e re f o rc e d t o f l e e t h e i r l a n d and scatter across India, the momo found a new home.

Popular Choice: Momo

Tripura Wahan Mosdeng: Wahan Mosdeng is built on the meat for all seasons in north-east India—pork.

Crafted with shredded or thinly sliced pork, mixed in with coriander, onions and a generous amount of paste of charg r i l l e d g re e n c h i l i e s, Wahan Mosdeng is a muchloved side for a Tripuri meal.

Containing no dry spices or extra oil, the gorgeous pork fat rendered from the meat is what gives it its delicious flavour.

Popular Choice: Chakhwi —Naorem Anuja and Hoihnu Hauzel

WEST ZONE Goa Goan Fish Curry: B e cau s e o f G oa’s popularity, Goan fish curry is firmly planted on the food map, with everyone from Rick Stein to Jamie Oliver interpreting it! But the original version—a rich, coconut curry, redolent with the fragrance of spices and fresh, ocean fish—eaten by hand with a mound of aromatic steamed rice, is bound to send you into a susegad stupor! Its authentic flavour comes from dried teppal (triphal) and the deep red colour from Byadgi chillies from neighbouring Karnataka. You’ll taste the sweetness of coconut and sautéed onions, the smoky-sourness of Malabar tamarind and the zing of chillies—all in one mouthful.

Popular Choice: Goan Fish Curry

Gujarat Undhiyu: Come winter and every Gujarati household has pots simmering with this glistening green delicacy. Vegetables such as eggplant, green beans, pigeon peas, potato, green banana, yam and sweet potato are combined with fried muthia (made of gram flour and chopped fenugreek), ghee, green garlic and readersdigest.co.in

63

Reader ’s Digest other spices. There are minor variations from region to region, but in the original process, the ingredients are placed in an earthen pot called a matlu, buried upside down underground and fired from above to slow cook the contents to perfection over several hours.

When the undhu (the upside-down pot) is retrieved and opened, the aroma is unbelievable and the explosion of taste and texture is unmatched.

Popular Choice: Khaman Dhokla

Maharashtra Puran Poli: It hardly seems possible that humble ingredients such as g r a m f l o u r, wheat and jaggery or sugar can produce something so sublime! But they do, especially when you add a dash of powdered cardamom and nutmeg to the mix. This delicate wholewheat pancake is filled with puran (stuffing) before being roasted on a griddle. Hot ghee slathered over it gives it the knockout punch, be they hardy farmers or city sophisticates! What’s amazing is that a written recipe for puran poli appeared as far back as the 14th century in the Telugu encyclopedia called Manu Charitra!

Popular Choice: Vada Pav —Priya Pathiyan

64 february 2020

CENTRAL ZONE Chhattisgarh Muthia: Another rustic delicacy that has gained popularity, muthia are savoury dumplings eaten as snacks or part of a breakfast menu. Made out of rice dough and flavoured with the traditional spices of the region, these are steamed and then shallow fried.

Muthia is regarded as pakwan—to be served to guests at feasts. Highly popular as a village delicacy in the state, they have a special status now, thanks to a growing fondness for traditional cuisine.

Popular Choice: Dal Pitthi — Sanghamitra Chakraborty

Madhya Pradesh Dal Baafla: Legend has it that this humble dish originated when Rani Jodha Bai introduced the Rajasthani baati to the Mughal court after being married to Emperor Akbar. These wheat breads leavened with yogurt are boiled in hot water before baking.

The dal is usually made by combining a variety of lentils—usually tuvaar, chana and moong. Tempered with mustard and cumin seed, the dal provides a delicious counterpoint to the baafla, and is served by pouring it over the soft bread, with a huge dollop of ghee.

Popular Choice: Jalebi —Priya Pathiyan

Cover Story

SOUTH ZONE Andhra Pradesh Fish Pulusu: Pulusu in Telugu means sour or tangy. In fact, any gravy that has tamarind in it is called pulusu.

Although fish pulusu is cooked across the region, it enjoys unrivalled popularity in coastal Andhra Pradesh. Unlike in some other parts of the country, here fish is not fried before it is added to the curry. A pulusu is cooked with both seawater and freshwater fish— marrying the heat of Andhra chillies and sour tamarind, with the fish lending its own flavour to the gravy.

People avoid too many other spices in this as it may come in the way of the tartness of the dish.

Popular Choice: Gongura Pacchadi

Karnataka Bisi Bele Baath: According to the food historian K. T. Achaya, this is a modern version of a 10th-century dish, but others argue that it was created 300 years ago in the Mysore Palace. Another view is that the dish

originated in the Udipi Mutt.

Whereas it was a lunch item then, it is primarily eaten for breakfast now. The Byadgi chilli’s unique sweet spiciness infuses its special flavour. Some may confuse it with khichri by its looks, but the lentil used in bisi bele baath is tuvaar dal and not moong. Local cooks use several spices, with a generous sprinkling of cinnamon, making it a spicy dish.

Popular Choice: Mysore Pak

Kerala Fish Molee: It is said that several centuries ago, a group of Portuguese spice traders found the local curry too strong. A woman named Molly stirred up some lightly spiced fish with a generous portion of coconut milk to mellow it and, voila, the fish molee was born. A staple in Syrian-Christian homes during Easter and Christmas, this dish is often served at breakfast.

Appams (hoppers) straight off the oven and molee make for a great Andhra's famous fish pulusu

readersdigest.co.in

65

Reader ’s Digest combination. Pearl spot, the most preferred fish for molee, is first pangrilled and then added to the gravy.

Popular Choice: Puttu and Kadala Curry

Tamil Nadu Dosa: Mentioned in ancient Sangam literature, the dosa has a rich history.

According to historian P. Thankappan Nair, it originated in Udupi, in present day Karnataka. According to other sources, it was once called osai, referring to the sizzle when it was cooked, and goes by the name kal dosa when cooked in a stoneware (kal) vessel. There is a huge variety of dosas available nowadays—most of which owe their origins to popular local restaurants. Temples in Tamil Nadu used to serve dosas made with rice, lentils, pepper and curry leaves.

Aromatic Hyderabadi biryani

66 february 2020

Cooked on a griddle, they were served without accompaniments.

Popular Choice: Dosa

Telangana Hyderabadi Biryani: There are multiple legends of the Hyderabadi biryani’s origin: Timur the Lame is supposed to have brought it from Kazakhstan; some claim Mumtaz Mahal created it for Mughal soldiers; others trace it to the royal courts of the Nizams of Hyderabad. Made with long-grain basmati and saffron, raw meat is stir-fried with spices, covered with rice and cooked further in the ‘dum’ style. Mirchi ka saalan (green-chilli gravy) and raita are the two popular accompaniments with this biryani.

Popular Choice: Hyderabadi Biryani —Chef Regi Mathew

Cover Story

COMMUNITIES Bohri cuisine Mutton Khichda: Khichda is made with cracked wheat and has meat in it, apart from three or four types of lentils. While it’s similar to haleem or harissa, which dates back to earlier than the 10th century, in the mutton khichda, the meat isn’t ground and cooked to a paste, but appears chunky. The coarsely chopped meat is fried with whole aromatic spices and garam ma s a l a b e f o re b e i n g a d d e d t o the grains and lentils to be slowcooked in a pot. Often left to simmer overnight, it’s topped with fresh mint and deep-fried onions to add an extra layer of flavour.

Popular Choice: Dum Mutton/ Chicken Biryani

Parsi cuisine Salli Boti: For a hearty meal, you can’t go wrong with meat and potatoes. And this preparation, which blends the Parsi penchant for meat with the

Gujarati love for all things crunchy, is particularly flavourful. The dish is a luscious mix of tomatoes, onions, jaggery and vinegar, mixed with ground spices and boneless meat. A generous topping of the salli (deepfried potato slivers) helps to balance out the strong flavours and gives it an added layer of texture. Usually enjoyed with piping hot wholewheat rotlas.

And perhaps a Parsi peg or two, if it’s a celebration!

Popular Choice: Dhansak

Sindhi cuisine Sindhi Kadhi: Food historians o f t e n d e b at e whether the name kadhi is a corruption of the Tamil kari from as far back as 1500 BCE, which lends its flavour as well as name to ‘curry’. Whatever its origins, Sindhi kadhi has a global fan base, wherever the diaspora has spread. The addition of vegetables makes it a nutritious and satisfyingly tasty meal.

While there are restaurants serving it these days, most people try to find a Sindhi friend’s home where they can enjoy the authentic taste, like actor Aamir Khan, who admits he loves the Sindhi kadhi at producer Ritesh Sidhwani’s place!

Popular Choice: Sindhi Kadhi — Priya Pathiyan readersdigest.co.in

67

HEALTH

Age HOW TO

Well What really works and what doesn’t

By Tara Parker-Pope adapted from THE NEW YORK TIMES

68 february 2020

Reader ’s Digest

readersdigest.co.in

69

Reader ’s Digest

W

hile you can’t control getting older, the good news is you can slow the decline of ageing with smart choices along the way. And it’s never too late to start. From the foods you eat and how you exercise, to your friendships and retirement goals, there are simple and effective ways to keep your body tuned up and your mind tuned in.

What You Eat Studies have found that eating one serving of processed meat a day, like bacon, sausage and deli meats, was associated with a 42 per cent higher risk of heart disease and 19 per cent increased risk of diabetes; other research has implicated processed meats in a higher risk for colorectal cancer. Processed meats have on average four times more sodium and 50 per cent more nitrate preservatives than unprocessed meats.

Overall, the best strategy is to skip all processed foods and beverages.

This will immediately eliminate added sugars from your diet. How do you know if a food is processed? One

70 february 2020

good indicator is if it comes packaged.

Of course, some whole, unprocessed foods that are good for you come in packages. Think nuts, eggs, olive oil and milk to name a few. Try to live by the one ingredient rule. If a packaged food contains only one ingredient (ground turkey, for instance) it’s probably a reasonable choice.

There’s a lot to be said for eating blueberries on a regular basis as well as other dark-coloured fruits and vegetables. A high consumption of all fruits and vegetables has been shown to lower blood pressure and reduce your risk for diabetes. Once you cut out packaged foods, you will start eating a lot more fruits and vegetables, lean meats, fish and wholegrains, which have been shown to be good for you.

What about Supplements?

Study after study has seemed to debunk the benefit of taking supplements. The best advice: Save the money you would spend on them and invest in a new pair of walking shoes,

all photos: shutterstock

First, a note about weight. Losing just five per cent of your body weight has been shown to reduce your risk for diabetes and heart disease and improve metabolic function in liver, fat and muscle tissue. While we’d all love to shed all of our extra pounds, it’s a lot easier to start with a 5 per cent weight-loss goal and keep it off.

a gym membership or a delicious healthy meal with your family and other loved ones. All of those are likely to do more for your emotional and physical health than a supplement.

Move A body in motion will age better than one on the couch. Consider these tips for exercise as you age.

In recent years, high-intensity interval training has generated considerable attention. This type of workout, typically lasting less than 15 minutes, and including a warm-up and cooldown, but has been shown in multiple studies to provide health and fitness benefits that are the same as or greater than an hour or more of continuous and relatively moderate exercise.

A Mayo Clinic study published in 2017 found that interval training led to changes in muscles at the cellular level, essentially reversing the natural decline that occurs with ageing. Even if you’re not an exerciser, it’s not too

late to start. In the study, older people’s cells responded more robustly to intense exercise than the cells of the young did. Weightlifting can help you maintain muscle mass and stronger bones as you age. And the good news is you don’t have to lift weights like a bodybuilder to reap the benefits.

Scientists have found that a light weight lifting routine is equally as effective at increasing muscle mass and strength, as lifting very heavy weights.

The key is lifting the weight enough times to grow tired, not the heaviness of the weights themselves. Strength training can also help keep you from slowing down. Focus on strengthening muscles in the calves and ankles.

During a 2017 study, researchers looked at the neurological effects of country dancing with those of walking and other activities. Male and female study participants in their 60s and 70s were divided into activity groups that included brisk walking, a programme of gentle stretching and toning work and a dancing group. readersdigest.co.in

71

The dance group practised increasingly intricate country-dance choreography. Each participant learnt and alternated between two roles for each dance, increasing the cognitive challenge. After six months, scans showed that while cerebral white matter (a major factor in brain ageing) had decreased in the other groups, it had actually increased in the cognitively challenging dance group, suggesting that activities that involve moving, socializing and thinking have the potential to perk up an ageing brain.

Yoga and Meditation If you don’t have the ability to take part in vigorous activity, a routine of yoga and meditation may strengthen thinking skills and help to stave off ageingrelated mental decline.

One study compared people who took part in a yoga programme that included meditation with those using memory enhancement exercises.

Those who practised yoga and meditation did better on a test of visuospatial memory, a type of memory that is

72 february 2020

vital for navigating while walking or driving and recalling locations. In reviewing the brain scans, researchers found those who had practised yoga had increased their brain connectivity and thus had more communication between different parts of the brain.

Use Your Brain Most of what we do to keep our bodies fit is also good for the brain. Learning while moving may be a potent way to slow the effects of ageing, strengthening both the body and the mind at the same time.

Tap into Your Inner Artist Art can inspire an ageing body and mind but there is evidence of the benefit of art for ageing. A study sorted active seniors aged 65 and older, into an intervention group and a control group. The control group maintained its usual activities, the intervention group was assigned to an intensive community-based art

Health programme, painting, creative writing, jewellery making, pottery and singing in a choir. They met weekly for art instruction and also attended concerts and art exhibits.

At the end of the study, the participants in the art programme enjoyed better health, used less medication and had fewer doctor visits compared with the control group.

The artists teaching the programmes described how the participants were exhilarated by the process and they were motivated to continue after each creative endeavour.

Take Your Meds An extraordinary number of people don’t take their prescribed medications. Studies show that 20 to 30 per cent of medication prescriptions are never dispensed at a pharmacist’s, and that approximately 50 per cent of medications are not taken as prescribed.

Here’s the bottom line: If you’ve gone to the trouble to visit a doctor to check on your health, why not follow through and take your meds and put yourself on a path towards better ageing.

Connect Staying in touch with family and friends—and forming new relationships—can keep you healthier longer and may add years to your life.

A large body of scientific research

shows that social interaction—having strong, happy relationships with family, friends and community members—is an important factor in good health and longevity.

Friendships can get you through the inevitable health setbacks that occur with ageing. Friends and family give us emotional support that can help us cope with stress. Perhaps most important: As we age, our friends and family give us a sense of purpose and a reason to keep getting up in the morning.

Studies show that people who keep working past retirement age, tend to have better health and stay more socially connected. But it’s tough to parse out whether healthy people tend to keep working or whether work tends to keep us healthy. Even so, most research supports the idea that staying busy, maintaining social connections and finding meaning and purpose in your daily routine are all part of healthy ageing.

Studies also suggest that the type of work matters. If you find work fulfilling and enjoy the company of your colleagues, you should consider sticking with it. If your job is backbreaking or high stress, consider checking out around retirement age—but make a plan for your second act. Volunteer or find paid work somewhere that will keep you active, engaged and give you a reason to get up in the morning. The main benefit of work—[and volunteering]—may be the social network it offers.

this version was condensed by reader’s digest. copyright © 2018 by the new york times co.

readersdigest.co.in

73

TRUE LOVE

Forgot ” You

After more than six decades, a doomed teenage romance gets a second chance

By Marina Lopes from the washington post magazine

O

n a sunny Saturday in April 2017, the phone rang in my grandmother’s house in São Carlos, Brazil. “I’ve been looking for you for decades,” the man on the line whispered in Italian. “You were my first love.”

It had been more than six decades since my grandmother had heard the voice of Aldo Sportelli, now 83.

74 february 2020

inset photos courtesy of the author. locket photo: ©shutterstock

“I Never

Reader ’s Digest

readersdigest.co.in

75

Reader ’s Digest She pictured his youthful face and wondered what he looked like now. Aldo’s voice trembled as he recalled the last time he saw her in southern Italy.

He had spent years tracking her down.

For 10 minutes they caught each other up on how their lives had unfolded—both married for half a century, my grandmother widowed, Aldo’s wife in the last stages of Alzheimer’s, kids, grandkids, careers.

“You just don’t think this type of thing will ever happen to you,” my grandmother told me.

ALDO WATCHED AS MARILENA'S TRAIN PULLED AWAY. IT WAS ONE OF THE SADDEST MOMENTS OF HIS LIFE.

I

n 1951, when my grandmother, Marilena, was 14, she set off on a year-long trip to Italy with her grandparents. Her grandfather, Antonio Lerario, was the son of an illiterate fisherman who, in 1885, at the age of 14, had left Italy for Brazil as a stowaway. He joined thousands of Italian immigrants in São Paulo, where he sold bags of rice on the street. He eventually saved enough money to open his own warehouse and went on to create a multimillion-dollar cereal empire.

76 february 2020

After World War II, he decided to return to Italy and invited Marilena, his eldest granddaughter, to come along.

In April 1951, the SS Conte Biancamano, an Italian ocean liner, departed the Brazilian port of Santos. My grandmother was the youngest passenger in first class, which included counts, members of the Brazilian aristocracy and the archbishop of Rio de Janeiro.

After the ship docked in Genoa, Marilena and her grandparents took a train to Puglia, the heel of the boot.

The war had been over for six years, but destruction lingered. The rubble, though, could not dampen the bleached beauty of Polignano a Mare, her grandfather’s hometown. The village is perched on limestone cliffs on the edge of the sea. As a returning rice tycoon, Antonio would stay with his family in the Hotel Sportelli.

The hotel was three stories, with a terrace facing the sea. Underneath, scooped into a cliff, was a vast cave that held the Grotta Palazzese luxury restaurant. Visitors from around the world came to dine.

Marilena, who spent her days people-watching from the hotel terrace, was never allowed into the cave. After catching some businessmen ogling her from the restaurant, her grandmother started shooing her to the kitchen as soon as the lunch-rush began. Svelte, with a tiny waist, she exuded the kind of aloof, effortless glamour of a Hollywood movie star.

Dark curls framed her face. She had

photos courtesy of the author

Marilena Lerario and Aldo Sportelli met in Polignano a Mare, her grandfather’s hometown, when she spent a year in Italy in 1951.

heart-shaped lips, a dainty nose and a curious smile.

While making herself useful in the kitchen, Marilena picked up Italian and got to know the Sportelli family.

Aldo Sportelli, one year her senior, was smitten. Lanky, with a shy smile, he would hang around the kitchen when he came home from school. “It was my first infatuation,” Aldo would tell me.

They spoke about their plans for the future. He wanted to become an engineer. She had no idea what awaited her when she returned to Brazil.

After school, Aldo served the glamorous patrons in the restaurant; my grandmother spent her nights listening to the music from the cave below. Every now and then, Aldo joined her on the terrace, always under the watchful eye of a family member.

One day, as Marilena was going down the stairs to the kitchen, Aldo went in for a hug. Unsure of what to do, she rushed away.

My grandmother’s family was not happy with the budding romance.

The son of a hotel owner was not what they had in mind for the family heiress. Aldo’s mother told him the social distances between him and Marilena were too large to bridge. “At that time, I thought they were right,” Aldo recalls.

The two continued an awkward but friendly relationship over her last few weeks at the hotel. Before she left, she asked him to sign her memory book.

“Marilena, if you allow it, a friendship can be an enduring bond,” he wrote.

When she left, he went to the station and watched as the train pulled readersdigest.co.in

77

Reader ’s Digest away. It was one of the saddest moments of his life, Aldo says.

M

y grandmother met my grandfather in college, and by 1969, she was married with four children. Her marriage was happy, but my grandfather’s jealousy contained her curiosity about the world. When they ate at restaurants, she faced the back to avoid other patrons’ wandering eyes.

Shortly after the wedding, they moved three hours away from São Paulo to a town in southern Brazil.

My grandfather enjoyed small-town life, but my grandmother struggled to adjust. After he died, she started spending half the year with my mother in Miami.

Meanwhile, Aldo studied engineering. For most of his career, he worked on urban planning for local communities. In 1959 he met Beatrice at a party. They married and had two children.

Beatrice suffered from depression, and the marriage was hard on Aldo.

Their circle of friends was small, and they rarely travelled. After his mother died in 1995, he came across a wedding photo of his beloved Marilena among her letters. Her grandmother must have sent it.

“I thought, ‘Where is she? How is her life?’” he recalls. “The thought that I would never again hear from the girl who captured my boyhood heart tormented me.” And so began his search.

78 february 2020

Aldo tried to reach the wedding photographer, but he was long dead.

He emailed the mayor’s office of São Paulo, asking for information on a Marilena Lerario. “We’re a city of 12 million people,” Aldo was told. “We can’t help you.”

In 2012, Beatrice was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

She eventually stopped speaking and barely recognized her children. She refused at-home care from nurses and relied on Aldo for her every need.

Finally, two decades after he started his search, Aldo contacted the daughter of a family friend who worked at the Brazilian tax authority.

She found Marilena, and passed him her phone number.

When Aldo phoned that afternoon, he told Marilena, “I never forgot you.”

My grandmother was speechless.

T

he next day, Aldo called again.

What did her children do? he asked. What were her days like?

“I don’t even know what he looks like, and we talk every day,” my grandmother said to me.

“Let’s look him up on Facebook,” I suggested.

I pulled up Aldo’s photo. He had white hair but the same sad eyes and shy smile he had at 17. “He’s handsome,” my grandmother said.

I suggested they communicate by video chat. The following weekend I went to her house for a family get-together and messaged Aldo to

True Love arrange the call. My family was eager to see the man my grandmother wouldn’t stop talking about.

There was Aldo on the computer screen, beaming. “You didn’t use to be blonde!” he said. My grandmother burst into giggles.

Week after week, Aldo kept calling.

"SO BEAUTIFUL," ALDO SAID, TREMBLING AS HE HUGGED MY GRANDMOTHER. “It is nice to have someone care about me again,” my grandmother told me.

The messages soon grew rosier: heart emojis and photos of flowers.

“For when you wake up: Good morning,” he messaged once, when it was daytime in Italy but still dark in Brazil.

My grandmother, who had shut herself off from the world, came back to life. She began dressing up for their virtual dates, putting on lipstick and fixing her hair.

“We have to take you back to Polignano!” my mother said one day. My grandmother rejected the idea, saying, “He has a wife!”

My mother was persistent, and soon Marilena called Aldo with the news. “We’ll be there for two weeks in September,” she said. He agreed she should come.

A

ccompanied by my mother, my dad, my aunt, two cousins and me, my grandmother landed in Bari, nervous but smiling. When we arrived at the hotel in Polignano, a bouquet of pink roses was waiting for her. “Welcome to your hometown,” Aldo had written on the card.

“I hope you don’t wait another 68 years to return.”

The next morning we drove past miles of twisted olive groves. My grandmother sighed and said, “It’s interesting, isn’t it? An old lady, seeing an old man.”

Aldo had asked us to meet him at the church of San Vito, where Mass would soon be starting. When we pulled up to the entrance, he was waiting. With sky-blue eyes hiding behind silver Ray-Ban sunglasses, slickedback hair and a tan jacket, he was as cool an octogenarian as I’ve seen.

My grandmother leapt out of the car and walked toward him, her arms open.

“So beautiful,” he said, trembling as he hugged her. She blushed and introduced him to the family. “It’s a historic moment, a miracle,” he announced.

Later, my grandmother handed Aldo two gifts. One was a new iPhone— his was old and always cutting out during their conversations. “And this is for Beatrice,” she said, pointing to the second gift. He opened it to find a grey shawl. Aldo stared at my grandmother, tearing up and mouthing, “Thank you.” readersdigest.co.in

79

We asked him out for lunch, but he said he had to go home and relieve the housekeeper who was watching his wife. Aldo sent my grandmother a message late that night. “There we were, you and I, as if we had been good friends for 68 years, helping each other in sorrow and rejoicing together in joy,” he wrote. “I thank God for allowing me the chance to be with you.”

T

hey met for coffee daily, during the few hours he could get out of the house. My grandmother refused to be alone with him. “What would people think if they saw us together?” she said. “It looks bad.”

At first I laughed this off as an antiquated sense of modesty. But everywhere we went Aldo seemed to run

80 february 2020

into an acquaintance. “Aldo Sportelli!” a friend would shout from across the street, making my grandmother cringe.

On one date he brought his daughter and grandson. I was worried about what they would think of my grandmother, but all anxiety disappeared when we met them. Sabrina, Aldo’s daughter, pulled my grandmother into a tight hug. My grandmother had brought her a necklace, which she put on right away. “Give Grandma Marilena a hug,” Sabrina told Giorgio, her 12-year-old son.

“It’s been a gift for Dad,” Sabrina said later that day when I asked how she felt about their relationship. “He’s a victim of Mother’s condition.”

When we weren’t with Aldo and

photo courtesy of the author

Marilena and Aldo in Polignano a Mare. “I thank God for allowing me the chance to be with you,” he wrote to her.

True Love his family, my grandmother wanted to explore Polignano. It was still a charming hamlet with narrow limestone streets leading to scenic outposts overlooking the sea. But much had changed since her last visit.

Red Bull had chosen Polignano as the site for its annual cliff-diving competition, and the town was now overrun with tourists.

The restaurant in the cave was still operating, and my grandmother, who was allowed to watch guests dine there only from a distance at 15, wanted to see it up close. On one of our last nights in Polignano, we descended the 60 steps into the cave for dinner.

When we emerged onto the wooden deck, the view took my breath away.

We were suspended some 30 feet above the sea. The emerald water’s reflection danced against the limestone dome of the cave.

Aldo had refused to come because the memories of losing the nearby Hotel Sportelli in a financial dispute 20 years ago were too painful. My grandmother respected his decision.

“Isn’t it amazing?” she said, gazing out at the sea. “Only nature knows how many millions of years this has been here.”

The next day, at another coffee shop, Aldo pulled out a family photo from 1934, and my grandmother studied it. “I met every one of them,” she said.

“We’ve had this shared life together.

Isn’t that crazy?”

Aldo caught her up on what

happened to each person in the photo.

“When do you leave?” he asked.

“Tomorrow,” she said.

They still had 40 minutes before Aldo had to head home. After chaperoning every moment they spent together, I left my grandmother alone to enjoy the last moments of her last date.

T

he next morning, Aldo, Sabrina and Giorgio met us at the hotel. We thanked them for their hospitality and for making my grandmother so happy. “Our family will be an extension of yours,” my dad said.

I was surprised to see tears running down Sabrina’s face. “Take care of him,” my grandmother said, hugging her. She nodded, sobbing.

Aldo took my grandmother’s hand in his. “Now, I will do the hardest thing: Turn around and walk away,” he said.

My grandmother didn’t allow herself to indulge in the finality of the moment. She gave Aldo one last hug, and, as we walked away, she held up her phone and said: “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Aldo and Marilena continue to speak daily. Marilena had said that she may visit Italy later this year, if she is in good health. Aldo’s wife is still alive but her health continues to decline.

Aldo has told Marilena that he believed her to be the love of his life when they first met and that their reuniting was “a blessing from God.”

washington post (6 february, 2019), copyright © 2019 by marina lopes, washingtonpost.com

readersdigest.co.in

81

CLASSIC DRAMA IN REAL LIFE

"PLEASE

DON'T LEAVE

ME!"

by James Hutchison

FIRST PUBLISHED IN READER’S DIGEST, AUGUST 1991

82 february 2020

Reader ’s Digest

readersdigest.co.in

83

L

Reader ’s Digest

Gaylene drove the trio to the mall in her sister’s white Cortina, stopping at the kerb on busy Wiri Station Road to drop them off. As Shirley headed across the car park to join the throng of shoppers she suddenly realized she didn’t have her purse. “Wait Mum!” she yelled, running back. “I forgot my money.” Shirley opened the passenger door and leaned in.

Further back along the busy road, Buddy Marsh shifted gears on his huge Scania tanker as he headed up the rise. The 40-tonne truck and trailer held more than 30,000 litres of petrol destined for a service station in central Auckland. A cautious driver, Marsh kept well to the left of the two-lane road but, as he neared the mall, a taxi pulled out of the car park, blocking his lane. Marsh swung his rig away. A glance in his mirrors showed the trailer just cleared the front of the taxi. Then, as he looked ahead, Marsh gasped in horror. Not 20 metres away, directly in his path, was a stationary white car.

Marsh yanked on the steering wheel and hit the air brakes, locking up

84 february 2020

several of the 14 sets of wheels. The truck slammed into the rear of the car, spinning it round like a child’s toy and rupturing its fuel tank. Petrol sprayed both vehicles, igniting them instantly.

Carried on by its massive momentum, the trailer jackknifed, reared over the kerb and toppled on top of the wrecked car.

One second Gaylene was talking to her daughter; the next, she was whirling around in a vortex of crumpling metal. She sat stunned as flames poured into the car and a single, terrible thought rose in her mind. Shirley!

Where is she? Gaylene groped frantically around in the darkness but the passenger seat was empty. Thank God. She’s made it out of here. An excruciating pain shot up her legs; her sneakers and trackpants were on fire. Gaylene struggled to open the buckled doors, but they wouldn’t budge.

“Brian!” Marsh called on his two-way radio to his shift-mate Brian Dixon in another truck. “I’ve had an accident!

I’m on fire! Call emergency services!”

Marsh jumped down and ran around

photo, previous spread: ©getty images

et’s go, Mum!” Shirley Young begged her mother. It was Thursday, 9 August, 1990—late-night shopping at the Manukau City Shopping Centre in South Auckland. One of the highlights of the week for the 12-year-old Maori girl was to spend a few hours at New Zealand’s biggest mall with her aunt and cousin. Her mother Gaylene, a single parent struggling to improve her job prospects, appreciated having a few hours by herself to catch up on her studies.

Classic Drama In Real Life the front of the tanker to the burning car. Flames were licking the trailer’s tanks. Worse, fuel was leaking from relief valves on the overturned trailer and spewing from a hole in its front compartment. The whole rig could blow.

Marsh reached the car just as a bystander hauled Gaylene out and smothered her flaming clothes with his own body. He and other bystanders then carried her a safe distance away.

A

sky. Shoppers in the car park ran for their lives. Shielded by the tanker from the full force of the blast, Marsh shouted, “There’s a little girl trapped under the trailer.”

“Let the firefighters handle it,” a policeman replied. “Clear the area now!” Truck, trailer and car were now lost in a cauldron of fire. “That poor little girl,” Marsh said, holding his head in his hands. “She didn’t have a chance.”

Wit h a blaze of sirens, a pumper and re s c ue t r uc k s f rom Manukau Station arrived. Immediately the vehicles stopped, senior firefighter Royd Kennedy had an armful of hose out of the locker and his partner was lugging foam containers down behind him. Driver Tod Penberthy was sprinting to connect the pump to the nearest hydrant. Waiting for the water, Royd saw his boots, fireproof overtrousers and the rubber on his breathing apparatus begin to singe.

When they turned the hose on the fire, the heat was so intense that the water steamed away before it reached the flames.

Senior station officer John Hyland, in charge of the initial response, had never seen such potential for disaster in 19 years of fighting fires.

The tanker was burning end to end,

A WALL OF FIRE RAN THE LENGTH OF THE TANKER ALMOST AROUND WHERE SHIRLEY LAY. THEN CAME A THUNDEROUS ROAR.

bove the hiss of escaping compressed air and the roaring fire, Marsh heard a voice calling “Mum! Mum!” At first he couldn’t see anything.

Then, as he searched underneath the toppled trailer, he saw a young, dark-haired girl trapped in a tiny space between a rear wheel and the chassis. “Mum!” she cried. “Mum!” Marsh grabbed her beneath the arms.

“You’ll be all right. You’re coming with me,” he said. But he couldn’t budge her: Her lower body was pinned to the ground by the wheel assembly.

“I want my mum!” she wailed.

A wall of fire ran the length of the tanker, threatening to sweep around under the trailer where Shirley lay.

Then, came a thunderous roar. An explosion tore a hole in one of the trailer’s four fuel compartments. An immense fireball ballooned into the

readersdigest.co.in

85

Reader ’s Digest shooting flames 100 metres into the air. Petrol poured from holes and relief valves into a widening lake and a river of fire raced down the road into stormwater drains.

Only a few metres away were 550 other potential fires—the cars in the crowded car park.

Within minutes of blowing up, a great fuel/air vapour conflagration—known to firefighters as BLEVE (Boiling Liquid E xpanding Vapour Explosion), reaches out for hundreds of metres and incinerates anything in its path. Only 100 metres from the burning tanker was the mall, packed with almost 20,000 late-night shoppers.

More fire crews arrived. “Concentrate on pushing the f lames away from that tanker!” ordered divisional officer Ray Warby, who had arrived to take control. As if to underline his words, the fuel in another compartment exploded in a monstrous fireball, forcing Royd and his crew mates back 20 metres. The vehicles in the car park around them had begun to melt, plastic bumpers and mirrors sagging, paint bubbling.

As the firefighters readied themselves for another assault, a long, high-pitched wail cut through the night. At first, it was dismissed as the

sound of expanding metal. When the eerie sound came again, it raised the hair on the back of Royd’s neck. I’ll be damned, he thought. It’s coming from the tanker. Shielding his eyes, Royd peered into the glare, but saw only a flaming wall 50 metres high.

Then, for a split second, the flames parted. From beneath the trailer he saw somet hing waving. It was the hand of a child.

“Cover me!” Royd shouted. He dropped his hose and ran straight into the inferno.

SHIRLEY'S HIPS AND THIGHS WERE PINNED UNDER THE WHEELS, HER LEGS TWISTED UP NEXT TO HER CHEST.

86 february 2020

F

or 10 minutes little Shirley had been slowly roasting in a sea of fire. It’s hopeless, she told herself, No one can hear me in here.

Giddy with pain and petrol fumes, she felt her mind begin to drift and suddenly saw a vivid image of her grandfather and grand-uncle—both of whom had died years before. They are guardian angels now, she thought. They’ll be watching over me. The idea gave her new strength. Straining to see through the wall of fire, Shirley glimpsed moving figures, I’ve got to let them know I’m here! Mustering every ounce of strength, she screamed louder than she had ever done in her life.

As Royd neared the flames, the heat hit him like a physical blow, stinging his face through his visor. Shielding

Classic Drama In Real Life his head with his gloved hands and Whooosh! The firefighter braced fireproof jacket, he crawled under the himself as the air exploded around trailer. Shirley was trying to hold her- them. This is it, he thought. Now self up by clutching a cable over her we’re goners. Shirley whimpered. head, but her hips and thighs were Royd felt sick with helplessness as under the wheel assembly and her the f lames washed over her. Then, legs were twisted up, like a grasshop- for a moment, the fire drew back. per’s next to her chest.

“This is pretty rough, eh Shirley?”

“I’m scared. Please don’t leave me,” he said, unstrapping his helmet, she wailed. Royd “Put this on,” At tucked his air least it may help cylinder under s ave h e r fa c e , her shoulders to he thought. He support her upcinched the per body. “Don’t strap tight unworry,” he told der her chin and her. “I’ll stay, I f l i p p e d do w n promise you.” the visor. As he Royd meant hunkered down what he said; he thought: he had always Where the hell is made it a rule my cover?

Truck, trailer, car and 12-year-old never to break T he stat ion Shirley Young caught in the fiery cauldron promises to his officer was runown three kids. n i ng t h roug h “My name’s Royd,” he said. “We’re t he car park to t he rest of t heir in this together now, so we have to team, yelling at the top of his voice. help each other.” He reached into the “Royd’s under the tanker. Get that tiny space and cradled the small body hose up here!” Struggling with the in his arms. Having fended for himself water-filled hose, they took no more since his teens, he knew what it meant than a minute to get within striking to be alone and afraid. “Is my mum distance, but it seemed an eternity. alright?” Shirley asked. Royd replied: A second wave of fire washed over “She’s a bit burnt, but she got away. Royd and Shirley. Then more exploMy mates will soon get us out, too.” sions rocked the trailer, and Royd’s The air was so thick with fumes that heart sank. We don’t have a chance the two of them could barely breathe. now, he thought. He looked down at Royd knew it would be only seconds the girl’s tortured body. I won’t leave before the vapour ignited. you. That I promise. Then he wrapped readersdigest.co.in

87

Reader ’s Digest his arms tightly around her and waited for the final surge of flame that would surely immolate them both.

Instead of fire, they were hit by an ice-cold waterfall. “My mates are here!” yelled Royd. Divisional officer Warby appeared through the curtain of water. “Don’t worry, we’ll get things moving,” he told Royd, then he took quick stock. The two were shielded from the full force of the main fire above and beside them, but the burning wreckage of the car was in the way, hampering the firefighters’ efforts to protect and rescue the pair.

Warby crawled out and ran to Peter Glass, the officer in charge of a rescue truck. “Get that girl out. I don’t care how you do it as long as you do it fast!”

As four firefighters sprayed the life-giving water that kept the fire away from Royd and Shirley, they were exposed to the full radiated heat of the main tanker blaze. It gnawed through their multilayered bunker coats as if they were tissue paper, blistering their skin. But they didn’t dare back off. If the spray wavered, fire would instantly sweep back over.

Even changing crews was too risky.

Ironically, now Shirley and Royd began to shiver violently: 80 litres of freezing water were cascading over

them each second. Soon they were in the first stages of hypothermia.

“I’ll get someone to relieve you,” Warby yelled. “No,” Royd retorted. “I must stay with her. I made a promise.”

Glass brought his rescue vehicle in as close as he dared while a crewman sprinted to the car and hooked a winch cable to the winds c r e e n p i l l a r. T h e winch was not powerful enough to drag the car out so they rigged it to the rescue truck’s crane and, using it like a giant fishing rod, hauled the burning wreck away.

Assistant commander Cliff Mears from the fire brigade headquarters, had set up a mobile command post and called in a fourth, then fifth, alarm. Any vehicle in the city that could be useful was on its way to the scene. However, the firefighters were facing yet another potential catastrophe. Fed by tons of fuel, a torrent of fire was pouring into storm-water drains in the car park and on Wiri Station Road. But what route did the drains take?

The answer came with a deafening explosion. A manhole cover blasted out of t he ground at t he main ent rance of t he mall, narrowly missing a woman and f linging her shopping trolley into the air.

Rumbling underground explosions

SHIRLEY AND ROYD SHIVERED VIOLENTLY: 80 LITRES OF FREEZING WATER WERE CASCADING OVER THEM EACH SECOND.

88 february 2020

Classic Drama In Real Life began lifting and blowing out manhole covers all over the complex.

One-and-a-half k ilometres away, storm-water drains emptying into the Puhinui Stream sparked five separate fires in the scrub on the stream’s banks.

The entire shopping centre was now permeated with petrol fumes. “Evacuate the centre. Quick as you can,” Mears ordered.

B

ack at the burning rig, Warby approached a paramedic from a waiting ambulance crew. “There must be something we can do to ease the girl’s pain—do you think you could make it under there?” he asked.

Biting back his fear, the paramedic donned a bunker coat and helmet and headed into the inferno. As he crawled into the tiny space where Shirley and Royd lay, he realized he wouldn’t have room to get an IV drip going. He considered administering a painkiller, but decided against it: Shirley seemed to be coping and side effects such as suppression of her breathing might hamper the rescue operation. Trauma victims need to get to hospital within an hour of injury—dubbed the ‘golden hour’ by emergency services—to have a decent chance of survival. Crawling out, he was conscious that timing was vital. Shirley had been under the tanker for more than 30 minutes.

With her massive injuries, burns and now the cold, she could easily slip into shock and die.

Royd had been trying to take her mind off her predicament. “What do you watch on TV?” he asked, and they talked for a while about her favourite shows. “If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?”

“Disneyland,” she said emphatically, “I love Mickey Mouse.” This man’s so brave, she thought. He could get out of here any time he wants.

Grandad and Uncle Vincent must have sent him.

Whenever she was startled by a sudden noise, Royd would explain what the firefighters were doing. He tried to reassure her: “You’ve got a few broken bones and burns, but it’s marvellous what the doctors can do.” Occasionally she would let out stifled moans. “It’s OK, yell all you want,” he encouraged.

“Bite me if it helps.”

The pain from the injuries to Shirley’s lower body was becoming unbearable. She cried out, burying her hands in Royd’s thick hair, pulling hard to ease her agony. As a firefighter, Royd had seen grown men with very little wrong with them blubbering like idiots, yet here was a 12-year-old girl who had not shed a single tear.

The steady flow of water wavered for an instant. God no, thought Royd, the fire can’t take us now. Shirley barely managed to move her arms as the flames rolled in. Then the water came pouring back and Royd was horrified to see several layers of skin on her arms had slid down and bunched up round her wrists. “I’m still with readersdigest.co.in

89

you, Shirley,” he said. “Do you like horses?” he asked, desperate to get her talking again.

“I’ve never been on a horse.”

“W hen we’re out of here, I promise you a ride on my daughter’s horse, Gilly.”

As Royd talked, he kept a finger on Shirley’s wrist to check her pulse. Now it was growing noticeably fainter and more erratic. She’d been trapped for nearly 40 minutes. Dear God, how much more can she take?

With the wreck out of the way, Glass was trying to lift the trailer off the girl.

He faced a knife-edge decision. A hydraulic jack would be quicker, but it risked tilting the trailer, tipping out more fuel and incinerating the pair.

“We’ll use the airbags. They’ll give a straight lift,” Glass told his crew. Only

90 february 2020

25 millimetres thick and made of rubber reinforced with steel, the 600millimetre-square bags could each lift a railway wagon 60 centimetres. They slide one under each set of rear wheels and began feeding in compressed air.

As the trailer moved, they slipped in wooden blocks to keep it on an even keel.

Royd felt Shirley’s pulse flutter and she closed her eyes, “Shirley, talk to me!” he pleaded. She rallied for a couple of moments but her pulse was so faint now he could barely feel it.

She lifted her head and looked into his eyes. “If I don’t make it, tell Mum I love her,” she whispered.

“We’re losing her, Warby,” Royd shouted. “Throw me an Air Viva!” He put the mask of the portable resuscitator over Shirley’s face and forced air

photo courtesy royd kennedy

After she had sufficiently recovered, Shirley got her promised ride on Gilly with Royd.

Classic Drama In Real Life into her lungs. She stirred a little and opened her eyes. “You tell your mum yourself,” he scolded. “I promised I wouldn’t leave you. Now don’t you leave me!”

“I’ll hang on,” she murmured.

T

he rescue team had run into trouble. Part of the trailer was on soft ground, which was sodden from all the water, and the airbag under the wheel that was trapping Shirley was sinking into the mud instead of lifting. They blocked one more time and inflated the bag to its maximum, but the wheels had risen only 10 centimetres. “We must have her out now,” Warby told Glass.

Praying it would give them that extra few centimetres of lift without tipping the trailer, Glass shoved a small hydraulic ram under the chassis. He held his breath. The trailer lifted some more. Now he had a 15-centimetre gap between ground and wheels; it would have to be enough.

“Go for it!” he yelled. Royd gently, but quickly, untangled Shirley’s legs from under the wheel; they were crushed so badly they were like jelly in his hands. Warby helped him juggle her crumpled body from its tiny prison. Then they carried her to the stretcher. Just before Shirley was lifted into the waiting ambulance, she smiled at him and he bent down to kiss her on the cheek.

“You’ve done it, Shirley,” he said.

Then, overcome by fumes, shock and

cold, he pitched forward into the arms of a fellow firefighter.

For Shirley, the ordeal continued. As the ambulance headed for hospital, the paramedic bathed her burns in saline solution and gave her nitrous oxide to relieve her pain. If anyone deserves to live, he thought, it is this girl who has fought so hard.

Back at the mall, firefighters were able to pour foam into the tanker.

Before, it would have endangered Royd and the girl; now they quenched the burning rig in just three minutes.

When Hyland revisited the scene the next morning, he saw something that will haunt him for the rest of his life.

For 70 metres the top layer of tar on the road had burnt away, in places down to bare gravel—except for a patch the size of a kitchen table that was lightly scorched by fire. This was where Shirley had been lying.

“It was as if the devil was determined to take that girl,” Haycock said later, “and when she was snatched away, he just gave up.”

Shirley’s recovery was slow, and included a series of painful skin grafts to her legs. Orthopaedic surgeons found the right calf muscle too badly damaged to repair and decided to amputate her leg below the knee.

Royd Kennedy now lives in Australia and retired at the end of June in 2019 after 44 years in firefighting and emergency service work. Shirley has three young children. readersdigest.co.in

91

MY STORY

A WRITER AFTER

200 REJECTIONS The story of a struggling author, whose dream came true after 21 years

By Abdullah Khan Illustration by Atri

I

was born in Pandari, around 30 kilometres from Motihari in Bihar. My education started in my village madrasa and then in an Urdu-medium government school.

I did not have any English then.

When I discovered, at age 20 or 21, that Eric Arthur Blair aka George Orwell was born in Motihari, it made me wonder if I could be a writer too. That day, it became my dream.

My Abba was the one who opened up the world of books for me. I must have been seven or eight, when he first gifted me a Hindi storybook. He was

92 february 2020

posted in a small town near Patna and visited our village home. Looking at the book, I asked Abba if it was for my next class. I did not know then that books existed beyond the classroom. When Abba explained, I was fascinated to hear about storybooks. I couldn’t believe I would not have to pester my mother or grandmother for my daily dose of bedtime stories. That was the beginning of my love affair with books.

By the time I was in class 10, I had finished reading hundreds of novels— literary as well as pulp fiction. Some of my favourite writers were Ibn-e-Safi,

Reader ’s Digest

readersdigest.co.in

93

Reader ’s Digest Devaki Nandan Khatri, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Prem Chand, etc.

Nanaji (my maternal grandfather), who ran an Unani and Ayurvedic medicine shop in a small kasba (town) called Bairagania, used to be the only person from the area who knew English. My father cited him to motivate me to improve my English. Also, my private tutor, Janak Babu, made me believe that it was possible for a Bhojpuri-speaking, Hindi/Urdu-medium student like me to learn the language. After 10 months with Janak Babu, I started reading comics in English. Two years later,

WHEN ARUNDHATI ROY WON THE BOOKER PRIZE, I WAS SO FIRED UP THAT I DECIDED TO RETURN TO MY NOVEL ONCE AGAIN. in 1988, I read my first English novel, Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan.

The first book I actually bought myself was A Strange and Sublime Address by Amit Chaudhuri, for the princely sum of `30 from a roadside bookseller.

At the time I lived in Patna, where my father was posted. I decided that I should first try my hand at writing newspaper and magazine articles, improve my skills and then progress to longer forms. I approached a couple of Hindi newspapers with submissions but was promptly turned down. One

94 february 2020

editor even mocked my Hindi. Gutted, I decided to start writing in English.

A few weeks later, I arrived at The Hindustan Times office to meet Daniel Thomas with a handwritten article.

The genial and kind-hearted Daniel published my first article after heavy editing and my journey as a freelance writer began. After a dozen articles and reviews, I knew it was finally time to plan my novel. Looking back, I realize I did not know the first thing about creative writing—naturally, I struggled with the plot and characters. After almost two years, I dropped the idea of the novel and started focussing on my studies. While I pursued a master’s degree, I also prepared for the civil services and banking exams.

I

n 1997, when Arundhati Roy won the Booker Prize, I was so fired up that I decided to return to my novel once again. I bought a notebook and a fountain pen, the very same day, and managed to scribble the first draft of the first chapter of my first novel! In the next few weeks, I progressed to five chapters. There was no dearth of ambition in me: I sent these chapters to Mary Mount, a well-known editor at Picador, London right away. She rejected my submission, but advised me to keep working on my writing to improve it. I was thrilled and grateful just to hear from her.

A year later, I found a job with a public-sector bank and was posted to Gurdaspur, Punjab. Homesick,

My Story

(Left) The author with his wife, Tarannum; (Right) at The Hindu Lit for Life festival

I began to dr ift away from my writing. After returning from office, I spent my time cooking and watching mindless TV soaps, and abandoned reading.

all photos courtesy the author

F

our years passed, and I was transferred to Basti, a small town in Uttar Pradesh. This is when I also got married. Tarannum and I had never met before the nikah and did not know much about each other either. When she came to live with me, she discovered newspaper clippings of my published articles and the partially written manuscript of my novel. I confessed that I had stopped after a writer’s block, but she insisted that I start over. She even offered to type out whatever I wrote. Thus, it became a sort of ritual for me to scribble at least 100 words every morning and typing

them out was among Tarannum’s daily chores.

Believe it or not, we continued this way for five or six years, but in this time I had barely added a couple of chapters to the earlier draft. My habit of reworking chapters meant that I could not progress with the narrative.

Unbelievable though it may sound, I wrote more than 200 drafts of the prologue and the first chapter.

Meanwhile, I moved to Ludhiana with another bank. Our home was close to the office and work pressure was minimal, so Tarannum insisted this was a good time to seriously start work on my novel. She bought me a new laptop, and using her powers of persuasion, extracted a promise that I’d finish my novel first and then edit or rework the chapters. If I tried to achieve perfection I’d never complete readersdigest.co.in

95

Reader ’s Digest My Story my novel, she pointed out. Her wisdom and guidance paid off: Within a year, in 2009, I finished the first draft.

I was not happy with my manuscript, though. I contacted a literary critic, who agreed to review my manuscript for a fee. A month later, the feedback landed on my table, but it was devastating, to put it mildly. I wept, believing I’d never get published.

When I shared it with Tarannum, she remained unfazed.

She simply said I should get to work on it on the basis of the feedback.

is when my friend, Kishore Ram, suggested that I should change the title of my novel. Tarannum agreed, adding that Three Kinds of Dreams said nothing about my novel’s theme and that I should include ‘Patna’ or ‘Bihar’ in the title. We began to list some probable titles and I suddenly hit upon Patna Blues. She loved it. In 2015, I submitted nQ>ZyμOm my ma nu s c r i p t t o a ãb few publishers and a few days later, I got a call from Renu Agal of Juggernaut Books.

Hw$N> μ»dm~ AYyao go

AãXþëbmh ImZ

F

inally, to my utter disbelief, the book was published in September 2018. t took me more than At the cost of sountwo years to redraft ding immodest I must my novel. My book say Patna Blues was was a mushy romance received with much when I had started love from readers writing it, but ended up and critics alike. It differently—it was seen The cover of Patna Blues in English, is now being transas a culturally insightHindi, Kannada and Tamil lated into 10 Indian ful coming-of-age tale set languages. The Kanagainst a socio-political backdrop. The feedback and moral nada translation is out already. The support received from three of my Hindi, Tamil, Bengali and Malayalam friends also helped me improve my versions will be out this month, folmanuscript further. When I felt that I lowed by some others. A few produccould not improve it anymore, I started tion houses and film directors have approaching agents and publishers in even expressed interest in adapting it for the screen. And, now, book pubIndia and abroad.

After more than 200 rejections since lishers are sending me feelers and 2010, I was ready to give up, exhausted queries about my second novel.

Not bad at all, I say. by the long, arduous journey. This

I

96 february 2020

Reader ’s Digest

WORLD WIDE WEIRD

by Erika Morris

pierre loranger

A Spicy Discovery When citizens of Aylesbury, England, found a large orange bird that was having trouble flying in early July, they thought they’d discovered an exotic creature in peril. Upon bringing it to a wildlife hospital, though, they found out it was the animal’s bold behaviour that had led to its bold colour: The distressed bird was a seagull that had managed to get itself covered in curry. Seagulls are inquisitive by nature and are known to put themselves in similarly spicy situations. Thankfully, a couple of baths returned it to its naturally unseasoned state.

Taking It Offline Phil Demers was surprised to find the police at his door when

he came out of the shower on 24 July.

The evening before, he’d sent what he believed to be an innocuous tweet: ‘Life is short. Steal a Walrus.’

But Demers’s tonguein-cheek missive had prompted MarineLand, Canada, to call the cops. Demers, an employee-turnedwhistleblower, had exposed the aquatic theme park’s animal cruelty in 2012. In 2013, he was slapped with a lawsuit (still ongoing) for allegedly plotting a walrus heist, a charge he has long denied. The officers left without incident, and Demers is still intent on “saving the walruses” without stealing them.

Unlikely Invader One evening in May,

Nate Roman returned to his Massachusetts, USA, home to find that his door was unlocked, and his house smelled different. Clean, in fact.

Roman saw that his five-year-old son’s room had been meticulously tidied, with his stuffed animals lined up neatly on the bed. The other bedrooms and the bathrooms were similarly orderly. The mysterious organizer hadn’t stolen anything, which left Roman to speculate that this was the work of a housecleaner who happened to go to the wrong home on a day he’d left the door unlocked. His son, on the other hand, was just thrilled to have gotten out of cleaning his room that day. readersdigest.co.in

97

Reader ’s Digest

Lost in PALERMO

By Antonia Quirke

from CONDÉ NAST TRAVELLER

98 february 2020

TRAVEL

With its mix of grit and grandeur, the Sicilian capital has something interesting to offer wherever you wander

Palermo's Cathedral Santa Vergine Maria Assunta combines Arab and Byzantine architectural styles.

readersdigest.co.in

99

P

art Greek, part Phoenician, part Roman, part Arab, the city of Palermo is strong stuff. Snugly spectacular in its bay setting at the foot of Sicily’s Monte Pellegrino, it looks, as a garibaldino* approaching it from the sea once said, like a city imagined by a poetic child.

Colourful relics of Arab domination mix with the Norman and Baroque, so the back of a building might look entirely different from its front or sides.

This has always struck me as impeccably gallant: an acceptance of this, a pragmatic incorporation of that.

Beauty, rot and salvage. Renaissance palaces next to hovels, more than 100 churches and oratories and the domed roofs of one-time mosques— all reminders of countless invaders.

Sunbathing one afternoon in the roofless remains of a Greek temple that sits by the pool at the Grand Hotel Villa Igiea, I noticed that someone had drilled holes through its ancient columns to fix an electric plug for a minibar. Momentarily I was outraged. But as a cloud of cabbage whites [a type of butterfly] idled past an American supine on his lounger, time thickened with that drugging Sicilian intensity that comes on as though gigantic pyres have been lit on the surrounding hills, and I lost track of my indignation.

*A follower of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the mid19th century Italian general and nationalist

100 february 2020

In the hot months, you notice the city’s rampant dereliction more.

Streets and squares in the historic centre, still shattered from the 1943 bombardments, unpack their rubble like the innards of pillows, leaving little trails even into the famous La Vucciria market with its stalls selling multicoloured Slinkies and pigs’ trotters.

In the collapsed Piazza Garraffello you’ll find an anatomically immaculate, gigantic heart graffitied on the wall opposite what was once an elegant bank. Beyond a stretch of myrtle hedges off the Via Squarcialupo, outside the Conservatorio di Musica Vincenzo Bellini, students sit on 17thcentury stone slabs, murmuring to one another, heads touching.

Where am I now? I’m lost. There may be a lovely simplicity to the old city’s layout—two straight roads dividing everything into four quarters—but my three maps each tell me something different, especially when the streets condense in the southeastern Albergheria quarter into alleys where teenage boys race their boxer dogs alongside pimped-up scooters. Here I saw a man leading a harness-free, sun-tired horse into a dim Moorish courtyard, his fingers scratching its nose.

Horses are everywhere in Palermo.

On the motorways in the early hours of the morning they are raced illegally, the survivors left to gently plod tourists in comfy little traps to and from

photos: (top) © shutterstock. (bottom) courtesy of the grand hotel villa igiea

Reader ’s Digest

Top: Palermo's mix of architectural styles is a reminder of the city's countless invaders.

Bottom: The remains of an ancient Greek temple stand next to the swimming pool at the Grand Hotel Villa Igiea.

readersdigest.co.in

101

Reader ’s Digest the Catacombe dei Cappuccini, where the embalmed corpses of monks and city prelates hang from hooks.

One such tour, through the shabby grandeur of the streets radiating from the Quattro Canti—a grand, rounded intersection of elaborate balconies and cornices—which should have lasted 30 minutes, becomes an hour (roadworks, the milling of pedestrians). A furious argument rages between driver and tourist, and the police get involved, making flamboyant gestures in everyone’s direction.

You feel sure it will end with a swipe on someone’s temple. But as usual it dissipates to nothing, overlooked, as everything in this city is, by stone saints and shrines to the Virgin, who is to be found even in the knife shop off the Piazza Caracciolo with her eyes raised in a peasant’s ecstasy, surrounded by a halo of candles and meat cleavers.

M

y friends Luca and Domenico tell me that whenever they pass a derelict building in the city, they feel a mounting rage.

To the English, such a thing is an absurdly romantic prop of the past, but to a Sicilian it is an expression of the foulest moral decay. The mafia, for so long in control of the construction industry here, cares only for quick-buck new buildings, not old. They would raze the entire city to the ground if they could, rages Domenico, and stick up a forest of brutalist high-rises, like

102 february 2020

they already have in what remains of the olive and lemon groves that enclosed the old city walls. Mafia, mafia, mafia. It is the secret litany of every exchange.

In the afternoon, off the Piazza della Kalsa, I watch the evening begin.

At 4 p.m. come the swallows in a rapid, swooping carnival. At 5 p.m. a man starts frying cockles in a cauldron. At 6 p.m. another man makes his chickpea pancakes for a few cents each, and people queue to transport bags of them away on Vespas.

At 7 p.m. fresh swordfish is put on ice, and braziers are lit outside restaurants in readiness for early diners.

From the open doors of a nearby church comes the sound of choir practice. A waiter tells me that this is the choir of a priest once cherished for his ability to heal, for the laying on of hands. Apparently, some years ago he had gone to prison in connection with celebrating Mass with a mafia fugitive.

“He has changed,” says the waiter solemnly. “Now he is sad.”

Struck by their seriousness in contrast to the wacky Neapolitans, I once asked Luca if he thought Sicilians were pessimistic. “Oh no,” he said, carefully shaking his head, “not pessimistic. But our wisdom lies in expecting the worst.” You can feel this grief in the churches. The statue of a spindly Christ with deep welts in his knees in La Gancia on the Via Alloro. The fake head in a glass case a couple of chapels along, made to look like Christ

photos: Š shutterstock

Top: Mondello Beach lures people out of the city during the hot summer months.

Right: This building in the Plaza Garraffello is just one example of the dereliction that runs rampant in Palermo.

immersed in a fathomless sleep.

In Palermo they love nothing more than a stricken Jesus, and a cherub, thighs rippling with so much fat you can scarcely believe that mere cement keeps the creature stuck on.

Even the food here tastes extra visceral. The spleen sandwiches. The caponata made with aubergine the colour of deep bruises, simmered

until its skin eases away like a stocking in your mouth, leaving just the tanned flesh that feels slightly like cannibalism. Wild mulberries in the Ballarò market. Still-bleeding tuna, squashed, dripping figs and honey as rust-dark as henna.

Once, on a flight to the city during a blustery February, the woman across from me recited the rosary from readersdigest.co.in

103

Reader ’s Digest

D

rive 30 minutes out of the city in spring to the fishing village of Sferracavallo, and eat fresh seaurchin spaghetti while watching the multicoloured fishing boats rocking so intensely beyond the sharp rocks that when you get up to leave you walk with a sailor’s roll.

Pastries on display in Palermo

A little closer to town is the resort of Mondello, where wealthy palermitani built elegant weekend villas in the early 1900s, and where from June to October crowds of schoolfree teenagers buy ice cream at the seafront gelateria Latte Pa. Fourteenyear-old girls with salt-mussed hair

104 february 2020

TRAVEL TIPS lodging: Gorgeously romantic and elegant, BB22 lies behind a rundown square whose few remaining residents play tango records out of their windows at night and passers-by stop to dance. Via Pantelleria 22 (Angolo Largo Cavalieri di Malta), doubles from 110 euros, bb22.it. Tucked away in the ancient Arab quarter, Chez Jasmine has a little roof terrace overlooking a church dotted with hundreds of swallows. Vicolo dei Nassaiuoli 15, there are only two rooms, priced from 75 euros, chezjasmine.biz. dining: Trattoria Torremuzza serves fresh swordfish cooked on braziers in the street, and a caponata with flaked almonds worth crossing the city for. Walk to Ilardo around the corner for ice cream afterward. Via Torremuzza 21, about 40 euros for two.

Two minutes’ walk from the Teatro Massimo, the small Trattoria Del Massimo serves the best ragu or spaghetti with seafood. Plazza Guiseppe Verdi 25/26, about 40 euros for two. what to do: Via Chiavettieri is the best street for people watching.

It comes to life after 5 p.m., when bar owners put out their tables and start serving wine and olives. By 11 p.m. the street is packed. The anti-pizzo (extortion) movement runs deeply personal walking tours about the history of the mafia in Sicily and the civil anti-mafia movement in Palermo that is finally rebelling against it, addiopizzotravel.it.

1 euro was `80.64 at the time of going to press.

photo: © shutterstock

take-off to landing with only a break to buy a scratch card from the stewardess. “In Naples,” Domenico says, “all hell is sure to break loose, but they know it will be OK. In Palermo, we just pray all hell doesn’t break loose in the first place.”

Travel snaking down their slim backs stand about imperiously. The boys hold themselves more shyly, infinitely younger-seeming.

In Sicily, says Luca, the girls are a nightmare. “Mio dio,” he sighs, “the bowing and scraping required, the declarations of eternal love—really they think they smell like paradise, it’s just ridiculous.” I console him with ice cream flavoured a tooth-raspingly sweet double-caramel nougat.

“Better than Naples?” Luca challenges. I nod. “Let them have their pizzas,” he mutters.

I

ce cream is worshipped in Palermo, where many claim it was invented. In betting shops, hardened gamblers stand in front of TV screens with eyes screwed up in anxiety, licking frantically on a cone. In café after café, businessmen thrash out deals over hilariously fluted, whippedcreamed nostra coppas. At Ilardo, moments from the Piazza Santo Spirito, or at La Preferita further into town, mothers and daughters lean against walls silently eating brioche buns filled with mint choc chip.

After such a cold binge, the warm glow of Palermo’s stone hits the eye anew. The city was once known as the granary of ancient Rome—wheat was grown in vast estates outside the walls—and it’s as though the shimmering crop long ago cast the whole place a golden yellow.

There is nothing for it but to walk as far as your limp will take you, through the Piazza Magione with its lushly flowered cloister tucked into one corner, and marvel at how in the middle of this crammed city you can suddenly feel as though you are in some remote Persian village. Then out on to busy Via Guiseppe Garibaldi, past the cabinetmakers’ workshops and garages, faded palaces, and emporiums piled with panamas and trilbies (how Palermo adores a hat).

Only here and in Rajasthan have I seen shops entirely devoted to mending the wheels on suitcases or the rope soles on canvas shoes.

Palermo pulls you along with smells of roasting coffee and rotting boxes of oleanders. Street football games divide to let you pass, and housewives lower baskets from their high apartments down to fishmongers, sarcastically haggling five storeys up into the windless air.

This is the world’s best city to be lost in, the best place to be aimless.

Sooner or later you’ll find a main street, or recognize the man who sells dried persimmons or the museum with the wall painting by the Inquisition-tormented sailor accused of romancing a mermaid.

This is a city that becomes familiar far faster than others, and with such a weirdly vivid intimacy it’s as though you had been here before, and each step and turn is already a memory.

antonia quirke/condé nast traveller. © 2014 by condé nast publications ltd.

readersdigest.co.in

105

BONUS REA

D

The

N A M

a d e i r Who Bu

E R U S A E TR

hest c a r o f s Ro c k i e e h t ons. i g l l n i i r m u h o t c r dl y wo rs are s e e t t r n o u p h e l r u s poem s fa c t u e Hopef t o i r r a e t d s n i n a my e w el s a j e i , l d l s o e g u l f c full o it? The s i y l t c a W h e r e ex l pitznage

By Eric S A T IO N A L

EN from TH

106 february 2020

Illustrations by Toby Pennington Photograph by Daymon Gardner

Reader ’s Digest ’

Forrest Fenn with just a few of his collectibles and his dog, Willie

readersdigest.co.in

107

Reader ’s Digest

“Please don’t say I buried it,” says the email from Forrest Fenn, the 89-year-old retired antiques dealer from New Mexico, USA, who engineered one of the biggest treasure hunts of the 21st century. “Just say I hid it.”

I read this line over and over, wondering what Fenn meant—and looking for a clue. He didn’t write, “I never buried the treasure.” He just doesn’t want me to tell anybody else he did.

Which means ... what, exactly?

My mind races, and I briefly consider giving up on journalism to become a full-time treasure hunter. That is the power of Forrest Fenn’s treasure, a prize that in the past nine years has lured a surprisingly large and enthusiastic group of treasure hunters.

Fenn and his wife ran a high-end gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and amassed a personal collection that included [the famous Native-American chief ] Sitting Bull’s original peace pipe and a mummified falcon from King Tut’s tomb. In 1988, Fenn was diagnosed with kidney cancer. Faced with his own mortality, he came up with a crazy scheme: He would bury some of his favourite artefacts somewhere in the Rocky Mountains and then die next to them. “My desire was to hide the treasure and let my body stay there and go back to the soil,” he explains.

He beat the cancer and put the treasure idea on hold for two decades, until his 80th birthday, when he decided to finally go through with it (minus

108 february 2020

the dying in the wilderness part). Fenn filled an antique bronze lockbox measuring 10 inches by 10 inches with hundreds of treasures: gold coins and nuggets, rubies, diamonds, emeralds, Chinese jade carvings and pre-Columbian gold bracelets. The contents are worth somewhere between $1 million and $5 million, based on estimates Fenn has given over the years. Then he took his treasure chest out into the Rockies and hid it.

He wanted it to be found. That was the whole point. But he wasn’t going to just give it away. “This country was going into a recession,” he writes to me.

“People were losing their jobs, and despair was the headline in every paper. I wanted to give some hope to those who were willing to go into the mountains looking for a treasure.”

In 2010, Fenn self-published his memoir, The Thrill of the Chase. In addition to stories about his adventures as an Air Force pilot and selling moccasins to the Rockefellers [one of the richest families in the US], it includes a 24-line poem that Fenn claims contains nine clues that “will lead to the end of my rainbow and the treasure”.

(See page 111.)

At first, nobody really noticed.

The Thrill of the Chase was sold only

Bonus Read in a local New Mexico bookstore. But word spread, and by 2011 there was a small community of determined hunters. Once the media told Fenn’s story, the chase was on. (The book is now out of print, and copies show up on Amazon for as much as $3,200.) Fenn estimates that 3,50,000 people from across the globe have searched or are currently searching for his treasure. Yet nobody has found it. How, one might reasonably wonder, could that be?

The problem with Fenn’s poem—or perhaps the reason it has become such

an obsession—is that the ‘clues’ can be interpreted a million different ways.

The 'home of Brown', for instance, could be Browns Canyon National Monument in Colorado, or Brown Cemetery in Montana, or Brown Hill in New Mexico. Or a cabin or a bear.

Maybe it’s the colour brown. Or maybe the treasure is hidden under some

FACED WITH HIS OWN MORTALITY, HE DECIDED TO BURY HIS FAVOURITE ARTEFACTS AND DIE NEXT TO THEM.

readersdigest.co.in

109

Reader ’s Digest porta-potties. (Don’t laugh; several people have already looked.)

The treasure has attracted an eclectic bunch of hunters, including ‘Tim Nobody’, who collects pinball machines; a one-legged motorcycle rider named Michael Hendrickson; and a Connecticut woman everybody calls Grandma.

Dal Neitzel, 72, manages a community cable-TV station in Bellingham, Washington, and has taken about 70 road trips in search of the treasure.

He runs a blog named the Thrill of the Chase that has become an online hub for hunters to post theories about where Fenn might have stashed all that gold. He gets thousands of visitors a day.

Marti Kreis from Blue Ridge, Georgia—better known by her handle, Diggin’ Gypsy—searches an average of

110 february 2020

seven times a year, for weeks at a time. The 49-year-old grandmother is usually joined by her extended family and, room permitting, a pet rooster named John Wayne. She searches only in West Yellowstone, Montana, no longer bothering with Wyoming, Colorado or New Mexico, the other three mountain states where the treasure might be hidden. She says it’s because Fenn once blogged about her, claiming, “If I were a betting man I’d bet on this woman.”

That was enough for Kreis to think she was on the right track.

She’s hardly the only optimist.

The truly devoted meet for an annual gathering in New Mexico called Fennboree. Since 2014, when only 10 people attended, it has grown to become a hot ticket, with hundreds mingling around campfires and sharing stories.

With so much at stake, there are also rivalries and infighting. Some people claim that the treasure never existed—“[Fenn] should be arrested for scamming,” a local once grumbled to the Santa Fe New Mexican—or that it was discovered long ago and never reported.

Some frightening people have come out of the woodwork in search of the valuable cache. A Nevada man pleaded guilty to stalking after he became convinced that the treasure was actually Fenn’s granddaughter. Another

searcher, a Pennsylvania FORREST FENN’S man who was certain that MILLION-DOLLAR RIDDLE it was hidden in Fenn’s home, was arrested after he As I have gone alone in there And with my treasures bold, used an axe to break in. And I can keep my secret where, Fenn wrote to one overeager And hint of riches new and old. sleuth, “Please don’t dig up my parents’ graves.”

Begin it where warm waters halt Then there are the faAnd take it in the canyon down, talities. Four people have Not far but too far to walk. died while searching, three Put in below the home of Brown. of them in the summer of 2017: Jeff Murphy, who fell From there it’s no place for the meek, 500 feet while hiking in The end is ever drawing nigh; Yellowstone National Park; There’ll be no paddle up your creek, Eric Ashby, who drowned Just heavy loads and water high. while rafting the Arkansas River in Colorado; and If you’ve been wise and found the blaze, Look quickly down, your quest to cease, Paris Wallace, whose body But tarry scant with marvel gaze, was discovered 11 kms from Just take the chest and go in peace. his car in the New Mexico mountains. It’s a peculiar So why is it I must go plot twist, given that thouAnd leave my trove for all to seek? sands have been searching The answers I already know, for Fenn’s treasure since I’ve done it tired, and now I’m weak.

2011. Has the terrain gotten inexplicably more treacherSo hear me all and listen good, ous, or have the searchers Your effort will be worth the cold. started taking bigger risks?

If you are brave and in the wood Fenn, who has been I give you title to the gold. loath to give away additional clues—“It’s all in the poem,” he would tell inquisitive hunters—has recently started cautious and don’t take risks.”

More clues he has revealed: The sharing more details. After Ashby’s drowning, he wrote in a blog post, treasure isn’t in a mine—“I mean, they “Please remember that I was about 80 have snakes in ’em,” he has said—or when I made two trips from my vehicle a tunnel. It’s between 5,000 feet and to where I hid the treasure. Please be 10,200 feet above sea level. It’s not in readersdigest.co.in

111

Reader ’s Digest Montana

Where Could It Be? Probable

Wyoming

Possible Impossible Cities Water State and national parks Outside of the poem, Fenn has given few clues other than that the treasure is somewhere from 5,000 feet to 10,200 feet above sea level, near pine and sagebrush.

This map narrows the field.

112 february 2020

Colorado

Bonus Read

SEVERAL PEOPLE HAVE BEEN WITHIN A FEW HUNDRED FEET OF THE TREASURE. Canada or Idaho or Utah or a graveyard. “Where warm waters halt” is not a dam, and it’s not “on top of any mountain [though] it may be close to the top.”

When I asked why the searchers didn’t seem to be getting any closer, Fenn told me that “they don’t seem to be focusing on the first clue.” He of course didn’t reveal what the first clue was.

Why are Fenn’s treasure hunters so into what seems like a ridiculous thing to do with their time? Many are quick to say that their lives have been enriched by their experiences. Neitzel says that prior to learning of Fenn’s treasure, he never took a walk that wasn’t necessary, but in the past decade he has climbed mountains. Kreis will tell you how she used to cower in her tent, terrified of grizzlies or other wild beasts, but now feels fearless. “It’s changed us,” she says. “My sisters and daughters, we’re brave Viking women. Nothing scares us anymore.”

For some, such as Bill Sullivan of Seattle, the mystery of Fenn’s treasure chest is literally all they have. Sullivan, 60, is homeless and lives mostly out of his car. He’d like to have a roof over his head and dependable meals. But that’s not why he’s

focussed on Fenn’s elusive jackpot. For him, it’s about following in the footsteps of his ancestors. “My grandfather prospected gold in Alaska a hundred years ago,” Sullivan says. “He had a sledge dog team and trapped beavers.

So that’s in my blood.”

The big question: Will Fenn’s treasure (assuming it really exists) ever be found? Neitzel says he has no intention of stopping until he or somebody else finds it. “I know I’m kidding myself,” he says, laughing. But he took four trips last summer and fall [2018]. “What people get wrong is, it’s not all just about finding the treasure. It’s about finding treasures, plural. It’s about getting outside and exploring. That’s why Forrest called his book The Thrill of the Chase. It’s not The Thrill of the Find.”

Many claim that even if they found Fenn’s chest, they wouldn’t

readersdigest.co.in

113

Reader ’s Digest Bonus Read necessarily spend the money—and might even rehide the chest. Sullivan says he’d like to keep the chase going for a new generation. “Wouldn’t it be a hoot to be the wise guy writing the new poem?” he says.

As for Fenn, he hopes someone finds the treasure while he’s still alive.

Several people have been within a few hundred feet, he says. He knows because they’ve emailed him and asked whether they were close. Fenn, who’s not about to give anyone a free pass, said nothing.

But he reads every email, many of which can be surprisingly revealing about the type of people who would drop everything to go hunting for gold. They confess their fears. They thank him for saving their marriages, for giving them a reason to take a risk, for giving their lives meaning.

Fenn received one email from a law student thanking him “for reminding me of a part of who I am that has waned greatly during the last years of my legal studies.” Responding with an impassioned plea that offered more clues to his real intentions than any of the secrets hidden in his poem, Fenn

told the man, “Don’t you dare work as a lawyer. If you do, you will wear a coat and tie, sit at a desk all day. You will not have time to smell the sky or experience the soft breeze ripe with sun. Go looking for my chest full of gold and all of the other treasures that lurk once you leave the fluorescent lights behind.”

Another hunter had this tantalizing insight: “Somewhere deep inside, I hope that I never find your treasure.

The journey will be treasure enough.”

And so the hunt continues.

THE NATIONAL (april/may 2018), copyright © 2018 by eric spitznagel, AMTRAKTHENATIONAL.COM .

US$1 was `70.88 at the time of going to press.

The Latest Maritime Signal Q: Why do Norwegians put barcodes on their battleships?

A: So when they dock, they can Scandinavian. reddit user csgo_kriptonas

114 february 2020

Reader ’s Digest

LAUGH LINES If my calculations are correct, slinky + escalator = everlasting fun.

zaidi razak/shutterstock (lego), nana_studio/shutterstock (pin)

— @ray

You deserve whatever happens to you on a pogo stick.

— @TigNotaro

This morning, I brushed my hair with an American Girl doll brush because apparently she’s the only one in my house who puts things back where they belong.

— @mommajessiec

My daughter loves all the toys she sees in commercials, so of course I have to tell her that they don’t exist in real life, just on TV. — @Jenny4ashley

Toy Wonders

When I was a kid I made all my toys watch Toy Story so they knew I was on to them.

— @JakeNotStFarm

If The Lego Movie is about anything other than parents cursing after stepping on Legos, it’s not based on a true story.

— @andylassner

readersdigest.co.in

115

CULTURESCAPE

Books, Arts and Entertainment

Wedded to the Story For Jim Sarbh, it’s the script that matters and not the length of his roles

by Sarbani Sen

’’

Was acting always your first love?

Acting, yes—but essentially, I like telling and being part of stories. I love discovering new people, uncovering the imagination of the writer, adding to it and shaping it.

Tell us a bit about your experience as a student in the US. I had a good time at the Alliance Theatre group, while graduating in psychology in Atlanta. They had a great team of ‘power women’— the artistic director Susan Booth, producer and casting director Jody Feldman and director of new projects Celise Kalke. I was a literary intern and I acted in their show called Tennis in Nablus.

116 february 2020

Reader ’s Digest

milind shelte/india today

Back in India, Death of a Salesman drew a lot of attention. Would you say that a wider audience noticed you after it? Did it help you land roles in Hindi films too?

I suppose it all played a part. But no, I do not think this particular play led me into Hindi cinema. It isn’t that I was using it as a stepping stone.

I always wanted to act in both [films and theatre] and have never viewed my life in the cause-and-effect way that some strategists can. I’m a bit more fatalistic that way.

arc. I think the limits are still being pushed and the experimentation with its form and structure are still at a very nascent stage. I am currently acting in an international web series, but it is all hush-hush. I hope to act in many more.

I ENJOY CREATING THE ENTIRE WORLD OF A PLAY AND BEING SURPRISED

BY ACTORS.

You directed your first play, Bull, in 2014. Are you planning to write and direct more plays?

Bull was very hard because of a personal tragedy. And it happened right in the middle of the rehearsals.

I haven’t thought of directing again.

I enjoy creating and imagining the entire world of the play, and I enjoy pushing and being surprised by actors and all there is to discover about the interpersonal dynamics of a scene.

At this moment, however, I am more interested in exploring the world as an actor.

The short film, Sometimes I Think About Dying, was shortlisted for the Oscars, and your portrayal of Robert impressed viewers. How do you choose your roles? What tips the scales before you say yes?

I try to think about the story and how my character affects the flow of events and truth. I loved this script, but I did this particular project because a friend asked me to. We managed to pull together a team of old friends (seven of us, in fact, who all went to Emory in the US together) to make it.

You have done a few web series and enjoy a huge fan following there. Can we expect to see you more on that platform?

Yes, I suppose so. It is such a blossoming medium. I don’t think we fully understand just what is achievable with such a long story

Tell us about your upcoming projects.

There is season two of the web series, Made in Heaven. Then there is Ballet Boys (about two working-class boys learning ballet) by Sooni Taraporevala, Taish starring Pulkit Samrat and Harshvardhan Rane, directed by Bejoy Nambiar.

’’

readersdigest.co.in

117

Harrison Ford in The Call of the Wild

RD RECOMMENDS

Films ENGLISH: Based on the popular novel

by Jack London, THE CALL OF THE WILD will chronicle the adventures of Buck, a pet dog forced to be a sled dog in Alaska. Starring Harrison Ford and Karen Gillan, the movie hits theatres on 21 February.

In BIRDS OF PREY (AND THE FANTABULOUS EMANCIPATION OF ONE HARLEY QUINN), comic-book characters take centre stage in this film set in fictional Gotham. Heroes and villains team up to protect a girl on the hit list of a crime lord, throwing the whole city in chaos. Starring Margot Ayushmann Khurrana in Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan

118 february 2020

Robbie and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, the film releases 7 February.

In BRAHMS: THE BOY II, a family moves into the Heelshire mansion, completely oblivious of its scary past.

Strangely, their young son soon tries to become friends with a doll called Brahms. Starring Katie Holmes and Ralph Ineson, the film releases on 21 February.

HINDI: SHUBH MANGAL ZYADA SAAVDHAN is the love story of two men, portrayed by Ayushmann Khurrana and Jitendra Kumar. Set against the backdrop of the landmark Section 377 judgement, the film promises to provide an important message on homosexuality, alongside some laughter.

Reader ’s Digest

Streaming

The cast of Hunters

HUNTERS: This Al Pacino starrer on Amazon Prime is set in the US in 1977 where hundreds of Nazis have mingled amongst the public to usher in the Fourth Reich.

What follows is a race against time to stop a genocide. According to creator David Weil, this is an allegorical tale drawing from the past to highlight xenophobia, racism and antiSemitism. Streaming from 21 February.

#WATCHLIST: 0N OUR RADAR Outlander Season 5:

In season 5 of the historical, time-travelling series, fanfavourites Claire and Jaime face challenges and try to adjust to life in pre-Revolutionary America. The series streams from 17 February on Amazon Prime.

act with a number of potential unknown interests, to strike a worthwhile and lasting connection.

Streaming from 13 February.

Locke & Key: This Net-

flix series will follow

the quest of the Locke siblings to solve their father’s murder. It is set in Keyhouse, the siblings’ ancestral home filled with magical keys intricately linked to their father’s death. Streams from 7 February.

netflix

Love is Blind: In this

Netflix reality series, the show’s hosts invite single people to inter-

A still from Outlander Season 5

readersdigest.co.in

119

Reader ’s Digest

Books The Dalai Lama: An Extraordinary Life by Alexander Norman, HarperCollins Publishers

How to Tell The Story of An Insurgency (HarperCollins): Edi-

ted by author Aruni Kashyap, these 15 stories are harrowing accounts of civilians caught in the middle of conflict in Assam. more stunning are the revelations of the Dalai Lama’s spiritual practices, based on magic, vision and prophecy.

This book unpacks the iconic figure of the Dalai Lama like never before.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE ... Fearless: Stories of Amazing Women from Pakistan

by Amneh-Shaikh Farooqui, Penguin Random House: From Fatima Jinnah

to Malala Yousafzai, Pakistan has seen several women who have courageously changed the course of history and society. This book, replete with bold illustrations, details stories of 50 amazing and inspirational women from across the border—scientists, lawyers and politicians among them.

120 february 2020

The Dharma Forest (Penguin): Keerthik

Sasidharan’s debut novel portrays the key characters of the Mahabharata caught in the throes of a merciless war that breaks the boundaries between good and evil.

Jubilee Kumar (Hachette): Drawing

from recollections, Seema Sonik Alimchand’s book offers a candid look at the life, both on- and offscreen, of one of India’s greatest stars, Rajendra Kumar.

book covers courtesy: harpercollins publishers (2), penguin random house

Author–scholar Alexander Norman delivers what promises to be an engrossing biography that is both detailed and revealing. The Dalai Lama recounts his extraordinary journey, starting from a remote Tibetan village, to his exile in India and then wide admiration from around the world.

Norman unravels the Dalai Lama’s unease at being deemed a political mastermind, but also shows his sagacity in an increasingly complex and divisive world. Even

Culturescape

Events Kala Ghoda Arts Festival:

One of India’s major art festivals returns to Mumbai between 1–9 February to be held at several locations across the city. The festival includes sections on cinema, literature, dance, theatre, architecture and visual arts. For lovers of arts and culture, this is a must visit.

Jaisalmer Desert Festival: This three-day

festival, between 7 and

Rising Star top: wikimedia commons

Prateek Kuhad The past two years have been breakout ones for the 29-yearold Prateek Kuhad.

His 2018 song Cold/ Mess made waves, winning him thou-

The Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, Mumbai

9 February, promises to showcase the best of traditional Rajasthani culture. Folk tunes and songs will fill the desert

sands of fans worldwide. It also earned him the Independent Music Award for Best Song—Folk/SingerSongwriter and featured in Barack Obama’s ‘Favourite Music of 2019’ list. With several performances across the world, Kuhad has deservedly cemented his

landscape, while polo matches, camel races and diverse performers are sure to captivate audiences.

status as one of the top Indian indie acts in the world.

—COMPILED BY SAPTAK CHOUDHURY

readersdigest.co.in

121

Reader ’s Digest

A still from Chhapaak

REVIEW

An Acid Test A gentle, empathetic story about acid-attack survivors becomes over-expository in its final stretch

By Jai Arjun Singh MEGHNA GULZAR’S CHHAPAAK is the se-

cond major Indian feature film of the past 12 months (along with the Malayalam film Uyare) about an acid-attack survivor. Both stories are about a woman picking up the pieces of her life and serving as an inspiration to others, but Chhapaak—being based on the real-life experiences of Laxmi Agarwal—is also explicitly an ‘issue’ film about the campaign against easy availability of acid in the market.

This makes for an

122 february 2020

absorbing story that is well-performed all round, notably by Deepika Padukone as Malti, Madhurjeet Sarghi as her lawyer Archana and Vikrant Massey as the diligent journalist-turnedactivist Amol.

Malti is fighting to get her own assailant convicted, but she is also trying to help and empower others. The film doesn’t shy away from suggesting that—with well-off benefactors facilitating the best medical treatment for her— she is more privileged than many other lowermiddle-class acid-attack survivors. In one quiet, nuanced scene, another girl, badly scarred, is astonished to learn that

Malti has had seven surgeries already.

The film slackens in its final section when it provides Malti’s backstory in an unnecessarily extended flashback, complete with a slo-mo recreation of the attack and the cliched image of a courtroom in sombre silence. But it pulls off the smaller moments very well: the depiction of the gently confrontational relationship between Malti and Amol, scenes involving the lawyer’s family life or a dialogue that very fleetingly but pointedly raises the question of whether an acid ban can really achieve anything, given the levels of toxicity in the hearts of many.

Culturescape

STUDIO

IMAGE COURTESY: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Where The Bees Suck, There Suck I

by Hema Upadhyay Mixed-media installation, dimensions variable, 2008 MANY OF THE WORKS

of the late Hema Upadhyay are autobiographical—deeply personal explorations of gender, migration, socio-economic realities and urban growth, and the

underlying chaos beneath them. As she admitted in an interview, “So much chaos in my work actually came from the city. When I work in my studio in Mumbai, there are lots of elements—of decay, of life, of chaos. It’s a doubleedged condition … ” These elements are present in Upadhyay’s famous installation, Where The Bees Suck, There Suck I, which shows a huge excavator hovering threateningly over a pile of multicoloured, unorganized

shacks. The work, the artist admits, is “more about destruction” and portrays the paradox of socio-political development—growth and decay, slums and highrises—all coexisting regardless. The work also painfully evokes a sense of the inevitable loss of identity and the accompanying dislocation and relocation of people due to ‘development’, in a country already beset by over-population and vast socio-economic disparity.

— BY SAPTAK CHOUDHURY

readersdigest.co.in

123

ME & MY SHELF Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi’s debut novel, The Last Song of Dusk (2004), won the Betty Trask Award. A former contributor to The New York Times, Shanghvi’s most recent book is The Rabbit & The Squirrel. A memoir, Loss, is forthcoming this summer.

BY MICHAEL ONDAATJE, Bloomsbury Publishing, `499 “We die containing a

richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves.” Michael Ondaatje’s serai of broken souls seeking rescue, correction, redemption, solace, this book has the presence of an opera.

Beloved

BY TONI MORRISON, RHUK, `499

Toni Morrison legitimizes an invisible and challenging thing: the friendship between a living person and a ghost in this book

124 february 2020

which recreates the private cosmology of a band of former slaves united by love or horror or liberation.

Light Years

BY JAMES SALTER, Penguin Modern Classics, `499 James Salter is a paragon

of elegance. This is the story of Viri and Nedra, and their marriage afflicted by inertia. It is also about how we suffer regardless of our lot—in big beautiful houses, at dinner tables with friends, around lovers. Salter proves middle-class life is another kind of enslavement—what’s tragic is that it is voluntary.

Kitchen

BY BANANA YOSHIMOTO, Faber & Faber, `499 Banana Yoshimoto draws from the whirlpool of modern Japanese life— where emotion fails reason, with

photo: siddharth dhanvant shanghvi

The English Patient

Reader ’s Digest an abiding weight that the world we inhabit is a thing of glittering deceits.

Brokeback Mountain

BY ANNIE PROULX, Scribner, `410 A blue

sky, a river, gorse and adder enter stories of American life that is brutal, isolated and without love—except when you read Brokeback Mountain. Then it’s love all the way, the kind that can knock you down.

Less Than Zero

BY BRET EASTON ELLIS, Picador, `450 This mir-

The Virgin Suicides

BY JEFFREY EUGENIDES, Picador Modern Classics, `750 I return to

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides to see why four beautiful sisters might kill themselves over a year. A novel of perfect sentences that might have thrilled Capote, it taught me how detail brings fiction alive.

The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara

BY FRANK O’HARA, University of California Press, `1,767 Frank O’Hara’s

poetry paid homage to abstract expressionism, yet they were masterful documents of how to speak directly to the reader. Each sentence is a singular work of art, meticulously arranged and conceived, as when we read: I wouldn’t want to be faster or greener than now if you were with me O you were the best of all my days.

rored a time when I grew up in India, where the arrival of money had left so many people I knew— like in this glorious debut—as glamorous vessels of drugs, greed and sexual misdirection. Its bareness and vacuity is as moving as a room made empty when someone has died, their clothes and prayer beads set aside, the window open.

Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales

English, August

BY HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN, Puffin Classics, `299

BY UPAMANYU CHATTERJEE, Faber & Faber, `399 This book draws from the

dark sludge of boredom that is perhaps the essential nature of life. The protagonist, posted in government jobs that might make someone suicidal from sheer drabness, hangs on to his life with wit, observation and nostalgia, slipping into a masturbatory rhetoric of college life, as though his youth might endure if its language were repeated.

What is truly simple will endure, and what is powerfully sad resonates with us all—Andersen’s enchanting tales. In stories as varied as The Little Mermaid or The Snow Queen the grief has so much voltage it illuminates the pages as if it were lightning in the night sky.

—COMPILED BY SAPTAK CHOUDHURY

Book prices are subject to change.

readersdigest.co.in

125

THE GENIUS SECTION 6 Pages to sharpen Your Mind

126 february 2020

Reader ’s Digest

5 EASY MEMORY TRICKS You know that eating healthy, staying active and solving a few brain games can help keep you sharp.

But these lesser-known habits work wonders too

By Andrea Au Levitt

1

Sit tall

When we are sad or afraid, we naturally collapse or cower. Studies show that the converse is also true: When we slouch, this defeated position actually causes us to feel anxious or depressed—which makes it harder to think clearly and remember things.

In a study of 125 college students, 56 per cent found it easier to do math problems when they sat up straight than when they slumped down.

Erect posture apparently improves memory because it boosts blood and oxygen flow to the brain—by up to 40 per cent, according to one estimate.

2

Exercise—once

Having trouble remembering faces? Break a sweat. In a small study, researchers at the University of Iowa, USA, showed pictures of faces to older folks (average age: 67) on two different days and after two different kinds of workouts. On one day, they pedalled a stationary bike for 20 minutes at a pace that was intense

Photographs by Matthew Cohen

enough to make them breathe heavily but still be able to talk. On the other day, they simply sat for 20 minutes on a self-pedalling bike.

On average, people remembered the faces better after the intense exercise. What’s more, the memory gains after a single workout were similar to the gains after three months of regular exercise.

3

Limit TV

Every parent and grandparent has heard that too much screen time can hurt a child’s cognitive development. But what about those at the other end of their lifespan?

To find out, researchers at University College London, UK, analyzed data from more than 3,500 participants, who were age 50 or older and did not have dementia at their initial assessment, in a long-term study. Controlling for physical activity, health conditions and demographic factors such as education, they found that people who watched more than three and readersdigest.co.in

127

Reader ’s Digest

4

Doodle

Researchers at the University of Waterloo, Canada, recruited a group of younger adults and a group of older adults, gave them a series of 30 words and asked them to either draw or write them out. After a short break, both groups were asked to recall as many words as they could. In both age groups, those who drew the words remembered the most. The effect was actually greater in the older adults.

According to one of the study’s authors, this happens because while some parts of the brain involved in memory retrieval deteriorate with age, the visual-processing regions usually don’t. Hence, sketching can help adults of any age keep their memory sharp.

5

Walk backwards

Next time you’re trying to recall something, don’t just think back—walk back. In a series of experiments, participants viewed a video of a staged crime, a word list or a set of pictures. Then they imagined walking forwards or backwards, watched a video that simulated forwards or backwards motion or actually walked forwards or backwards.

Some people also sat still. Backwards motion—whether real, imagined or watched—helped people remember the information better than sitting still and, in most instances, better than forwards motion. It may be that moving backwards in space mentally helps us move back in time to the moment we learnt something.

No Man Is An Island, But …

Eighty-four-year-old Elsie Eiler is the sole resident of Monowi, Nebraska, USA, a rural town that peaked with a population of 150 in the 1930s. Eiler serves as Monowi’s mayor, librarian, treasurer and bartender.

She has no plans to leave. source: mnn.com

128 february 2020

previous spread and this page: neosiam 32896395 (tv), vl adyslav starozhylov (bicycle), yeamake (chair), tanach (shoes) (all shutterstock)

a half hours of TV a day for six years experienced a greater drop in verbal memory test scores (an average decrease of 8–10 per cent) than those who watched less (an average decrease of 4–5 per cent). On a related note: Another study found that watching violent programming elevates stress hormones, which impairs memory.

The Genius Section

WORD POWER These words feature prominently in political speeches and diplomatic addresses by ministers and ambassadors around the world. Stymied by this stately vocabulary? Don’t demand a recount— just turn to page 130 for answers.

By Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon

9. scrutiny n. ('skroo-tuh-nee) a examination. b uprising. c mystery.

10. emolument n. (ih-'mawl-yuh-ment) a payment. b essential piece. c bronze.

11. magnitude n. ('mag-nih-tood) a attractiveness. b monarchy. c great size.

1. sovereign adj. ('saw-vuh-rin) a communal. b independent. c from abroad.

5. recant v. (rih-'kant) a take back. b narrate. c pour out, as wine.

12. compliance n. (kum-'ply-ents) a falsehood. b obedience. c makeshift tool.

2. discernment n. (dih-'surn-ment) a secession. b lack of agreement. c perception.

6. pecuniary adj. (pih-'kyoo-nee-air-ee) a traitorous. b related to money. c insignificant.

13. impunity n. (im-'pyoo-nih-tee) a devilishness. b oneness. c freedom from harm.

3. inviolate adj. (in-'vy-uh-let) a purplish. b ravaged. c pure.

7. maxim n. ('mak-sim) a upper limit. b true saying. c winter coat.

14. upbraid v. (up-'brayd) a criticize. b pleat. c improve.

4. propitious adj. (proh-'pih-shuhss) a favourable. b mighty. c patriotic.

8. vicissitude n. (vi-'sih-sih-tood) a shift of luck. b legal exception. c check on power.

15. reiterate v. (ree-'ih-teh-rayt) a pay back. b say again. c flee from danger.

readersdigest.co.in

129

Reader ’s Digest

A Blessed Beginning In ancient Rome, an augur interpreted signs (often the flights of birds) to determine whether the gods favoured a new venture. The words auspices (favourable signs), augment (to increase), and august (respected) all connect to this act of consecration. So etymologically, an inauguration is not just a beginning but a benediction.

ANSWERS 1. sovereign (b) independent. In 1776, the 13 colonies [in the US] declared themselves a sovereign nation.

6. pecuniary (b) related to money. Ebenezer Scrooge is famously fixated on pecuniary matters.

7. maxim (b) true saying.

My favourite maxim is “Measure twice, cut once.”

2. discernment (c) perception. Using her powers of discernment, Ahana determined that the ‘free trip’ she’d won was a scam.

8. vicissitude (a) shift of luck. Farmers are especially vulnerable to the vicissitudes of Mother Nature.

3. inviolate (c) pure.

Suresh puts a splash of water in his bourbon, but his devotion to a good Scotch is inviolate.

9. scrutiny (a) examination. I doubt your theories about the Loch Ness Monster will hold up to scrutiny!

4. propitious (a) favourable. Fumbling the kick-off is hardly a propitious start to the Super Bowl.

10. emolument (a) payment. Since Punit is head waiter, his emolument includes free desserts.

5. recant (a) take back.

Given the new evidence, will you recant your earlier statements?

11. magnitude (c) great size. The sheer magnitude of the new soccer stadium is awe-inspiring.

130 february 2020

12. compliance (b) obedience. A couple of dog treats ought to assure Jojo’s compliance.

13. impunity (c) freedom from harm.

Shivam is the boss’s son, so he’s allowed to break the rules with impunity.

14. upbraid (a) criticize. After her first novel was upbraided by reviewers, Sheila considered quitting writing altogether.

15. reiterate (b) say again. “Let me reiterate what I stated last night: You are grounded!”

Mom said.

Vocabulary Ratings 9 & below: diplomat 10–12: minister 13–15: ambassador

bodor tivadar/shutterstock

Word Power

Reader ’s Digest

QUOTABLE QUOTES I hate people who are not serious about meals.

It is so shallow of them.

‘Life is short’ really means ‘Do something’.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author

In whole, men need to be feminized in their love. The femininity of love has no gender, neither sexual orientation. It simply talks about the other in [a] tender, calm and responsible way.

Suraj Yengde, scholar

Oscar Wilde

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Suraj Yengde

Want a strong profitable brand?

For brand building be persistent, insistent & consistent.

JAGDEEP KAPOOR, brand guru Contact : Tel: 022-28477700 • enquiry@samsika.com • www.samsika.com Copyright © 1995. Jagdeep Kapoor

left: alamy (2), yasir iqbal/india today

Oscar Wilde, dramatist