E D I T O R I A L   P A G E

EDITORIALS

A peace overdrive
GENERAL Pervez Musharraf has launched, or is about to launch, a psychological warfare against this country if his recent assertions are anything to go by. On Tuesday he admonished Muslim clerics not to indulge in reckless rhetoric or issue unrealistic statements. That he told the mullahs this harsh truth is only half-surprising. He did this at a meeting attended by 500 religious leaders to celebrate the birthday of Prophet Mohmmad.

Resolute action
IN a rather unexpected show of determination, the Ludhiana Municipal Corporation has finally demolished a few marriage pandals that should not have been allowed to come up in the first place. They had mushroomed within one kilometre of the Baddowal ammunition dump in flagrant defiance of basic safety rules, apparently in connivance with civil administration. But that has been happening all over Punjab, nay, India.

Race riots in UK
AFTER Oldham it is now the turn of Leeds to report racial violence as Britain prepares to elect a new government today. It would be unfair to blame the minorities, in the present case mostly Bangladeshis and Pakistanis, for the election-eve racial violence. A black soap box orator had said in a unreported speech at Hyde Park in 1971 that "you (the British) come and play bingo with our people, now we come and play bingo with your people". 

OPINION

The death of monarchy
The Nepal tragedy and history
Darshan Singh Maini
WHEN over 55 years ago, King Farooq of the fabled land of the Pharaohs was overthrown, and Col Nasser set up the republic of Egypt, the fat witty monarch, when asked about the future of monarchy as such, is reported to have quipped: “In the end, only five kings would be left in the world, four in a pack of cards, and one on the throne of England.”That was an extravagant witticism, but the deeper ironies of that observation were not lost upon the students of history and civilisations. 

IN THE NEWS

Fund for “poor” Pramod
Union Information Technology Minister Pramod Mahajan loves to be in the limelight. However, the kind of publicity he is currently getting in Mumbai would make any self-respecting politician go into hiding. Self respect and politics? That is another issue.

LIFESTYLE

Office humour — a joke too far?
Fran Abrams
First, a word of warning. If you ever receive an emailed dinner invitation that purports to come from your boss, do not send a reply that reads: “I have made plans to spend this evening driving nails through my toes - therefore I am far too busy to consider going anywhere with you.’’

TRENDS AND POINTERS

A king for three days only
Dipendra was King of Nepal for just three days. Here are seven other short-lived rulers:

• Fake fax frees French fraudsters
  
  
  

NEWS ANALYSIS

Prince Philip’s wit & wisdom
For a man in the public eye, the Duke of Edinburgh has an unerring talent for what someone once identified as “dontopedalogy”, or the art of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it.

HEALTH

BP drug that saves kidneys
A type of drug for treating high blood pressure appears to slow the development of kidney disease caused by the condition, researchers reported on Tuesday.

It’s risky to drive after head injury
Many motorists who have suffered a head injury may be putting themselves and other drivers at risk.

75 YEARS AGO

Beggars’ Home for Madras

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

A peace overdrive

GENERAL Pervez Musharraf has launched, or is about to launch, a psychological warfare against this country if his recent assertions are anything to go by. On Tuesday he admonished Muslim clerics not to indulge in reckless rhetoric or issue unrealistic statements. That he told the mullahs this harsh truth is only half-surprising. He did this at a meeting attended by 500 religious leaders to celebrate the birthday of Prophet Mohmmad. Naturally, he angered the assembled mullahs but surprised others by his change of attitude. This could have come from three impulses. One, he is genuinely alarmed at the fire-spitting statements of some militant leaders. For instance, the Lashkar-e-Toiba chief has boasted that his men would eliminate top Indian leaders in front of the Red Fort. It is not personal killing but a political statement of grave implication. The Red Fort is one of the symbols of Indian sovereignty and what the organisation is saying is that it will capture India again and subjugate the country. Obviously, this is a reckless statement which the General referred to. He also warned them that such action was creating a situation where the country could be labelled terrorism-exporting entity with all consequential dangers. His statement is also related to the sinking economy and he needs US help to persuade the multilateral organisations to lend money. More than the content, the context is hugely significant. Foreign Minister Abdus Sattar is going to the USA later this month where he will obviously come under relentless pressure to normalise relations with India and isolate Afghanistan.

There can also be another reason. The General must have relished the very favourable publicity he gets every time he makes a positive statement on peace. And he must remember the euphoria on the-eve-of-the-Lahore-yatra days. This time he wants to hog the limelight. He is also feeling more confident of himself than he felt on two earlier occasions when he had to retreat on the Blasphemy Law and crackdown on tax cheats. All this makes the Indian government's task more complicated. General Musharraf wants to emerge from his summit with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee as a good boy capable of delivering the goods. He is likely to remain tough on Kashmir, trying to place all the blame for failure on India. That makes the pre-summit preparation a delicate and balanced affair. India cannot let the summit collapse. It cannot let the General walk away with the champion trophy either.

Resolute action

IN a rather unexpected show of determination, the Ludhiana Municipal Corporation has finally demolished a few marriage pandals that should not have been allowed to come up in the first place. They had mushroomed within one kilometre of the Baddowal ammunition dump in flagrant defiance of basic safety rules, apparently in connivance with civil administration. But that has been happening all over Punjab, nay, India. What the Ludhiana officials have shown is that they can resist pressure. And the pressure must have been tremendous, considering that even the Chief Minister had gone so far as to say that he was seeking the shifting of the ammunition dump itself. Perhaps the instructions of the High Court firmed up the resolve of the administration. Those in the habit of defying the law are bound to raise a lot of ruckus. But now that a bold first step has been taken, the anti-encroachment drive must be taken to its logical conclusion. There are several other similar unauthorised buildings in the vicinity which have been issued eviction notices. Perhaps the resolute action will persuade them to fall in line. If they do not, the corporation ought to tackle them equally boldly. That will also address the allegation that its action so far has been selective. It is strange that the people why defy the law in the first place protest in the name of law when they are punished. An attempt is made to misuse the legal process to avoid, or at least delay, demolition. In the national capital itself, at least 4000 acres of government land is under illegal occupation. Since the encroachment has continued for decades, the encroachers consider The lands as theirs. Try evicting them and politicians of various hues rise to their defence.

The Ludhiana action is a good augury. It will be a lesson for others that the law is going to catch up with them sooner or later. The demolition was all the more necessary in Baddowal, considering that the encroachment compromised the safety of a vital defence installation. After the horrible ammunition dump fire in Bharatpur, and recently near Suratgarh, it was imperative to take preventive measures. But certain difficulties remain. The ammunition dump is surrounded not only by encroachments, but also certain inhabitants who belong to the area. Their presence close to the dump is as much a risk as that of the encroachers. Not only is the presence of civilian population so close by a security threat to the vital installation, but is also dangerous for the people living there. 

Race riots in UK

AFTER Oldham it is now the turn of Leeds to report racial violence as Britain prepares to elect a new government today. It would be unfair to blame the minorities, in the present case mostly Bangladeshis and Pakistanis, for the election-eve racial violence. A black soap box orator had said in a unreported speech at Hyde Park in 1971 that "you (the British) come and play bingo with our people, now we come and play bingo with your people". In a way racial discord is a legacy the British inherited when the sun finally set on their empire. The present round of violence, in Leeds, was provoked by the reported arrest of a resident of Asian origin. In Oldham too the Asians were instigated into reacting to external provocations. Among the incidents which upset the Asian communities was the attack on the house of Oldham Deputy Mayor Riaz Ahmed. There is speculation that the incidents of violence have been engineered to influence the electoral verdict. Be that as it may, the larger picture would show most Britishers to be as racist in their attitude to members of the other communities as they were when they virtually ruled the world, not fairly, but by treating the natives as their slaves.

It has taken a majority of the British nearly 50 years to accept that the hot Indian curry excites the palate more than the bland English food. It has taken them as many years to accept that Asians may now be playing better cricket than their best players. In the 90's a right wing politician demanded that Asian settlers should cheer the English team when playing India or Pakistan or Sri Lanka. It came to be know as the "Tebitt test" and provided dubious immortality to the author of the obnoxious idea. Surprisingly English captain Nasser Hussain said much the same thing in the course of the just-concluded Test series against Pakistan. The comments in a section of the British Press against Pakistani captain Waqar Younis in particular and the team in general after the dramatic end to the second Test should help objective observers identify the source of racial mischief. In the 70s right-wing politician Enoch Powell had warned of rivers of blood flowing through Britain if the entry of Asians was not stopped. However, in the present situation the only effective remedy to prevent the Powell prophecy from coming true is to give the minorities in England the respect and dignity they deserve as British citizens.

The death of monarchy
The Nepal tragedy and history
Darshan Singh Maini

WHEN over 55 years ago, King Farooq of the fabled land of the Pharaohs was overthrown, and Col Nasser set up the republic of Egypt, the fat witty monarch, when asked about the future of monarchy as such, is reported to have quipped: “In the end, only five kings would be left in the world, four in a pack of cards, and one on the throne of England.”That was an extravagant witticism, but the deeper ironies of that observation were not lost upon the students of history and civilisations. And today, with the stunning and awesome tragedy enacted in the royal palace in Kathmandu, a tragedy becoming more and more mysterious, if not macabre, with each new “official” version, one feels compelled to understand the phenomenon of king killing against the wider and larger backdrop of the mystique of the Crown and the lust for power. This little essay, then, is a psycho-historical study of the phenomenon of royalty, and of its future, and is, for reasons of space, confined to the barest essentials.

However, even then, I would be examining the issue in some larger contexts — from the metaphysical to the Mephistophelean, or from the so-called “divine rights of the king” to the evil and abominable aspects. And, of course, as usual, I would be using both recorded history and great historical plays, in passing, to sustain my argument.

To begin with, the institution of monarchy is not a fact of history from the time of the Creation. And though nearly all the religious texts or scriptures talk of the king as God’s own on earth, or at least, created by Him as a special dispensation, over a period of millennia, the word ‘King’ acquired an abiding metaphorical garb, and we began to hear of the lion as “the king of the jungle”, of a supreme leader as “the king of this or that”. And the lexicon even found its way into the idiom of the religious thinkers and enchanted devotees. Thus: Jesus as “the King of kings”, and Guru Gobind Singh, to take an example nearer home, as “Sacha Padhshah” or “the True King”. And to be sure, such a usage was in its context true and proper.

Thus, the institution of monarchy got so deeply entrenched in the mass consciousness as to have become a part of “the collective unconscious”, to recall a Jungian phrase. And this deep, racial, unconscious conditioning of the common mind, a State of inner colonialism has continued till this day to colour our perceptions.

And yet not only history itself has, time and again, shown the falsity of the monarchical doctrine, but certain religious divines also have not spared the institution when it loses its mandate, and degenerates into an open tyranny. Guru Nanak’s great political composition in verse, Babarvani, in particular, is a stinging satire on the subject, for in the first Sikh Guru’s view, “the real royalty” was not a question of crowns and theme, but of the human spirit in “kingly” action. A question of the royalty and, therefore, the divinity of man’s soul, of its great magnanimities and opulences.

When we turn, then, to the sad and brutal story of kings in country after country, what we see is the inescapable corruption of the royal principle en route, and the consequent degradation, mutual king-killing, horrendous wars of extermination etc. Once again, I take up just two examples, the first from Shakespeare’s history plays and the second from the annals of Sikh history. In Shakespeare, who has often been misunderstood where his deeper ironies are concerned, is referred to by the literary critics as “the royal bard of England”, as the historian of “the royal soul of England” etc. And yes, speeches from his plays can be cited to prove the point that way also. However, in his own history plays and in his Roman plays, he has left no doubts in the mind of the reader about the moral blindness and spiritual erosion of king after king, monarch after monarch. And in Richard II, he, in fact, produces a marvellous portrait of a villain-king, as in his tragedy Macbeth shows a hero-king who has usurped the throne through the heinous crime of killing his invited sovereign under his own roof!

Enough for my argument. As for the infamous king-killing spectacle that followed the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the first Sikh monarch in history, the facts and the “disgrace abounding” still appal the Sikh mind. The moral of all that I have sought to say is clear enough. It’s now the time to turn to the Kathmandu “Jacobean” tragedy and to the deposed Farooq’s quip. The history of the Nepal monarchy (again divine origin claimed from Bhagwan Vishnu) and its diminution or marginalisation during the usurper Prime Ministership of the Rana clan and the return of power with King Mahendra — and then the enthronement of the slaughtered monarch, King Birendra as an absolute authority, and his renouncement of constitutional powers and the establishment of a nominal monarchy as in England now (with all the privileges of palaces and wealth etc) under huge political pressures — all, all are now clear straws in the air of the only Hindu kingdom on earth. The Maoist groups in Nepal have already declared war on monarchy as an institution, and the grim irony of the history repeating itself may well be seen in the parallel tragedy of the Ramanovs during the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the palace-made tragedy of the King Birendra family’s wipeout in Kathmandu. The scale of the killings in the latter case is, indeed bizarre and more disturbing, for it has no ideological legs even to stand upon. The whole “theatre of the absurd-macabre” enacted one grim evening needs to be understood in its overarching context, and needs to be exposed; the sooner, the better. The king’s brother — now a king himself — may have to do a lot of explaining. Such kinds of killings with automatic weapons cannot be explained away under spurious and suspect language.

Nor does, at the moment, the “given-out” story of the crown prince gunning down the assembled Royal family for its Friday dinner in a fit of hysteria and then his own attempted suicide — all over the question of a bride for him — are going to be even a passable proxy tale. It has only added to the sum of unspeakable rumours.

So how do the Nepalis and the neighbouring countries, India, above all, view the situation? The anti-Indian sentiment already on the boil (remember the — Hrithik Roshan hangama and the Pak ISI-staged hijacking drama — from Kathmandu to Kandahar —) needs to be dovetailed into the gory details of the recent tragedy. A very very testing time for the Indian diplomacy.

There are also the vexing questions of the Gorkha troops in Indian and British armies, and their reactions if the panic spreads back home.

Let me end this piece with a quotation from Shakespeare’s love-tragedy of the Greek prince and his beloved, Troilus and Cressida:

“Then everything include itself, in power,

Power into will, will into appetite,

And appetite, a universal wolf,

So doubly seconded with will and power

Must make per force a universal prey

And last eat up himself. 

Fund for “poor” Pramod

Union Information Technology Minister Pramod Mahajan loves to be in the limelight. However, the kind of publicity he is currently getting in Mumbai would make any self-respecting politician go into hiding. Self respect and politics? That is another issue.

What if Mr Mahajan claims the money being collected for lifting him above the politicians’ poverty line?

Girl students excel

In keeping with the trend noticed during the past few years, girl students have performed better than boys in the school-level examinations. This phenomenon is not confined to any one region, but is spread almost throughout the country.

Votaries of women’s cause see it as a sign of empowerment of the fair sex. They feel that girls are more dedicated and focused in their studies. They happen to be more sincere too. Since they are aware of the sacrifices made by their parents, they take studies far more seriously.

More prosaic analysts attribute it to a rainbow of causes, including the fact that in India, girls are mostly confined to their homes and can thus devote more time to studies. Boys happen to be more involved in extracurricular activities.

A typically male explanation is that at the school level, studies are mostly by rote. As a result, girls are better able to mug up. An argument in favour of this thesis that is usually given is that boys later perform much better in competitive examinations.

Whatever the causes may be, the good show by girls is a welcome development that will give them the much-needed confidence to hold their own in a male-dominated society.

Professor’s seven steps

Although in corporate circles, Prof Mohanbir Sawhney no longer needs any introduction but the general reader may not have even heard of him. Professor Sawhney, a widely acclaimed consultant, speaker and writer, holds the position of McCormick Tribune Professor of Electronic Commerce and Technology. He is also Director of the Centre for Research on Technology, Innovation & E-Commerce at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

Along with Jeff Zabir, a research fellow with a firm called DiamondCluster International, Prof Mohan Sawhney (he seems to have dropped “bir”) has come out with a book which is much sought after, given the US slowdown and its adverse impact on electronic business.

Called “The Seven Steps to Nirvana”, the 312-pages book priced at Rs 295 provides “strategic insight into e-business transformation”.

In his book Professor Sawhney, who was in Chandigarh a few months ago, asks and answers questions like: Are you a ‘knowledge’ factory? Do you have multiple layers of resellers and many different types of channels? Do you spend a lot of money on new product development?

His recommended steps to climb the e-business ladder include: inform, automate, integrate and reinvent.

Office humour — a joke too far?
Fran Abrams

First, a word of warning. If you ever receive an emailed dinner invitation that purports to come from your boss, do not send a reply that reads: “I have made plans to spend this evening driving nails through my toes - therefore I am far too busy to consider going anywhere with you.’’

No. The smart thing to do is to take a good, hard, sideways look at the office prankster. If he is doubled up in giggles, delete the email and say nothing. Believe me, I know. It’s easy to be wise after the event.

Most office jokes are harmless, of course. There has been no reported case yet of an employee sacked for running an electronic sweepstake on what time the laziest man in the building will log on to the computer system; or of anyone losing their job for passing on one of those joke lists of workplace terminology containing gems such as: “What’s a consultant? Answer: any ordinary bloke more than 50 miles from home.’’

But many employers - particularly the large corporations - are taking an increasingly tough stance on office humour that may be construed as sexist, racist or just plain rude.

Last week, John Crook, a regional manager for the UK recruitment firm Manpower Services, had cause to rue the day he cracked a joke in an emailed memo to his boss, Angela Brunton. Recommending a colleague for a pay rise, Crook had praised her work rate and then added: ``And she was a grrrreat shag as well.’’ Crook, who worked in Norwich, in the east of England, was sacked.

Last Thursday, an industrial tribunal in the UK turned down his claim for unfair dismissal, rejecting Crook’s explanation that he knew Brunton well and believed that she would find the remark amusing. The colleague about whom he was writing had seen the email and had also thought it funny, he added, but his explanation that ``it was in the context of a culture I’d become used to’’, fell on deaf ears.

John Crook’s name is thus added to a growing list of those who have come to grief after taking office humour just that bit too far.

There have been other cases. Late last year, Cable and Wireless dismissed six staff for sending smutty emails, and a turbo-charge maker in the north of England, Holset Engineering, successfully defended the sacking of two employees for a similar offence.

Perhaps the best-known case was that of Bradley Chait, a lawyer with the London firm Norton Rose. He was disciplined last December after passing on a flattering message from a girlfriend, Claire Swire, about his sexual prowess. His boastful email was subsequently bounced around the globe, first by colleagues and later by complete strangers, accompanied by the challenge: “Where is Claire Swire?’’

Chait’s case demonstrates the havoc a single email can cause. Smutty office jokes have always been passed around, of course, but in the past they were circulated on scraps of paper, copied and recopied so many times that they became almost illegible. Now, with one click of a button, a lone message can be projected into dozens of different workplaces and from there can multiply with almost unimaginable speed.

Earlier this year, no fewer than 10 employees at British insurers Royal & Sun Alliance were sacked and a further 77 suspended after the circulation of an email that showed the cartoon character Bart Simpson flashing at his naked sister Lisa. A subsequent investigation was reported to have unearthed a number of other such visual jokes.

Many large companies are now making it clear to their workers that such jokes are not considered acceptable.

Steve Field, the UK head of employee services for KPMG business consultants, says he would consider the passing on of emails showing cartoon characters in lewd situations a sacking matter.

Sue Sadler, a spokeswoman for UK retailer Marks & Spencer, says the company now tells workers they will be breaking their terms of employment if they pass on jokes that may be seen as malicious, defamatory or offensive. “We have had cause to discipline people in the past because of this,’’ she says.

She adds, though, that standards of acceptable behaviour are stricter for those who work on the shop floor than for those in offices. While it may be acceptable to crack an inoffensive joke to a colleague at the next desk, giggling with a workmate while customers wait unattended is considered the worst possible level of service.

Some firms still take a more relaxed attitude. Jason Fisher, UK Managing Director of eCircle, a company that runs email operations, says he could hardly afford the time to monitor the communications of its 100 or so employees.

“At the end of the day you don’t have control,’’ he says. “Even if we wanted to be rather fascist about it, we don’t have the resources. The guys in the office sometimes forward a couple of jokes, but it’s never been an issue for me. As long as they’re doing their jobs, it’s fine - you have to trust people.’’

Diane Sinclair, employee relations adviser with the UK’s Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, says it is important for all companies to make sure that their workers understand what is acceptable and what is not.

“The advice that jumps to my mind is that you should never, ever send anything by email that you wouldn’t show across a crowded room,’’ she says. ``I think people feel that email is private, that it’s only coming onto one person’s screen - but that isn’t the case.’’

Although office culture has grown to be more informal in many ways, with most employees and their bosses on first-name terms, legislation now outlaws jokes that can be construed as sexual harassment or discrimination.

“Obviously it’s a positive thing if people have good relations and enjoy their workplace,’’ says Sinclair, ``But it has to be the right kind of humour in the right environment.’’

In some places, however, office humour is considered not just desirable - but obligatory. Some firms in India now start the day with a ``laughter club’’ at which senior staff are abandoned to the mercy of a man with a megaphone and a joke book.

Maybe it should catch on here, too. A hearty dose of workplace chuckles might even put the office prankster out of business. The Guardian

A king for three days only

Dipendra was King of Nepal for just three days. Here are seven other short-lived rulers:

Xerxes II, King of Persia in 424BC, reigned for only 45 days before being murdered by his half-brother, Sogdianus.

Edward V was King of England from April 9 to June 26 1483 when he and his brother were imprisoned in the Tower of London by their uncle, who ascended the throne as Richard III. The boys were killed.

Lady Jane Grey was Queen of England for nine days in 1553 at the age of 16, after the death of Edward VI, but was forced to abdicate in favour of Edward’s sister, Mary. She was imprisoned in the Tower and later beheaded.

Uthumphorn became the king of Ayatthaya (Thailand) in 1758 but reigned for only 10 days before abdicating in favour of his elder brother, Prince Anurak Montri, who went on to reign as King Ekathat.

Christian Frederick, the crown prince of Denmark, was elected king of Norway on May 17 1814, but was ousted when Norway was taken by Sweden in October of the same year.

Frederick III, Emperor of Germany and king of Prussia, ascended the throne in March 1888, but died of throat cancer 99 days later and was succeeded by his son.

King Umberto II of Italy reigned for 27 days in 1946, until the Italian people voted in a referendum to abolish the monarchy and become a republic. The Guardian

Fake fax frees French fraudsters

Three French prisoners escaped through the open doors of their jail after warders fell for a fake fax and released them, judicial sources in Corsica said on Tuesday. Written on official stationery, the fax ordering their release was signed by the magistrate investigating them on charges of attempted extortion and illegal possession of firearms.

Prison officials in Borgo, in the north of the Mediterranean island, were so sure the fax was real that they neither checked the number from which it was sent nor contacted the judge to confirm he wanted the prisoners freed. Reuters

Prince Philip’s wit & wisdom

For a man in the public eye, the Duke of Edinburgh has an unerring talent for what someone once identified as “dontopedalogy”, or the art of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it.

Only last month, he was in the news again when it was claimed he considered his son and heir to the British throne, Prince Charles as a “royal lightweight,” lacking the “dedication and discipline needed to make a good King”.

He denied the charges, but the newspapers would not let the story die, given his track record in such matters and scenting a royal rift.

Over the years, Prince Philip has been branded a bigot and a racist.

Age has not mellowed him either, as he showed two years ago when he commented that a fuse box in an electronics factory near Edinburgh that he was visiting “looked as though it had been put in by an Indian”.

He was forced to issue a statement regretting any offence and conceded “what were intended as light-hearted comments were inappropriate”.

The allegations of racism stem not only from an oft-quoted passage from his 1982 book,‘‘A Question of Balance”, in which he wrote: “The lesson of history is that the most prevalent sources of conflict are the racial and eventually the national differences between people.”

They are also the result of some embarrassing public gaffes. In 1986, on a visit to China, he told an Edinburgh University student studying in Xian: “If you stay here much longer, you’ll get slitty eyes”. He later tried to put the record straight by saying the actual word was “slit-eyed”. AFP

BP drug that saves kidneys

A type of drug for treating high blood pressure appears to slow the development of kidney disease caused by the condition, researchers reported on Tuesday.

Calcium channel blockers stop the entry of calcium into cells, also leading to the relaxation of blood vessels and therefore lower blood pressure. Reuters

It’s risky to drive after head injury

Many motorists who have suffered a head injury may be putting themselves and other drivers at risk.

A new study showed that a traumatic head injury could cause problems which severely affected a person’s driving ability months later.

Yet only 16 per cent of motorists are advised not to drive after suffering a head injury, according to the study published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.

Although most of those who had returned to driving were physically competent to drive a vehicle, some were putting themselves and others at risk due to their psychological, emotional and mental problems.’’

The researchers said both the physical and mental state of head injury patients should be assessed before they return to driving. DPA

75 YEARS AGO

Beggars’ Home for Madras

MADRAS: A Beggars Home with the management vested in the Corporation and open only to adults, is to be shortly opened in Madras by the City Municipal Corporation. The establishment would consist of a Superintendent, who should be a Medical man of 10 years’ standing in the service of the Corporation, and a qualified mid-wife and nurse as the matron.

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

Discipline

Yoke your mind to the Persian wheel,

with its endless chain and pots;

Bring up the water of immortality and fill the field of the body with it -

You will then be a great gardener.

Make sensuality and anger into your spade, O brother

Dig the earth - As much as you dig,

So much you will gain,

Good work can never be lost.

****

Make your life a shop with True Name as its capital. Store it with

True knowledge and the Word.

****

You go to bathe in the holy water;

the name is the holy pool.

The holy shrine is meditation on the Word

And the knowledge acquired thereby.

****

On the stone of mind,

Rub the sandalwood of Name;

Mix it with the colour of good deeds,

Worship within the Self.

****

..by killing thy own self,

Merge thyself in Him.

Burn egoism, individuality and avarice,

remove impurity with the help of God's Word.

—Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Basant M.1, Sorath M 1,
Dhanasari M 1, Gujree M 1, Bilawal M.1

****

When I learnt the lesson of love,

My heart dreaded the sight of mosques.

I then entered the abode of the Lord,

Where resounded a thousand melodies.

Ever new, ever fresh is the spring of love!

When I grasped the hint of love,

I banished 'mine' and 'thine' from me.

I was cleansed within and without.

Now wherever I look, the Beloved pervades.

Ever new, ever fresh is the spring of love!

—From Bulleh Shah: The Love - intoxicated iconoclast by J.R. Puri and T.R. Shangari