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Thursday,
May 29, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Non-resident cheats Majesty unconquered Panic reaction |
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Mountaineering then and now When the Everest was scaled Jangveer Singh Fifty years ago the scaling of the Everest upstaged the coronation of Queen Elizabeth as she took control of a doddering British empire. Though the Everest was scaled on May 29, the news of the epoch-making event was released from London by Reuters on June 2, along with the details of the coronation ceremony of Elizabeth II as the Queen of Britain.
The genetic package
How a religious Website was hijacked
Taking care of skin with food
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Non-resident cheats Wanted a beautiful, homely girl for a multi-millionaire NRI with huge property in India and abroad. Girl’s merit main consideration. This is the kind of advertisement that entices parents of girls of marriageable age day in and day out. But the dreams that are evoked turn out to be a nightmare in many cases, so much so that the letters N, R and I appearing together now mean trouble. Yet, there are many who still get lured into the trap only to regret their decision for life. Some of the victims came together in Chandigarh on Tuesday and narrated their tales of woe. Nothing could be more pathetic than to see so many innocent women — several with children whom they are bringing up without the husband’s support — leading the lives of widows even though their husbands are very much alive. While it will be unfair to tar everyone that comes back to his roots to select a bride of his choice, it is true that many prospective grooms living abroad have proved to be betrayers of the worst kind. They generally fall into three categories. First are those who want to marry girls from back home for their conservative outlook and traditional upbringing. But when they take these girls from mostly rural areas into the western countries, they start berating their conservatism and innocence as backwardness. The hapless girls are rebuked so badly that their lives become miserable. Then there are those who marry only for dowry. The girl suffers if she does not bring in enough dowry and she suffers even if she does, because she is deprived of every bit of it in no time. But the worst are the tricksters who are already married and come here to acquire yet another wife. Many of these prospective grooms manage to settle in a foreign country by getting married to a local girl. This fact is hidden from those families in India whom they approach to seek the hand of their daughter. For these unscrupulous men, a marriage may be nothing more than a ploy to settle abroad but the news of a prior marriage shatters the dreams of innocent girls. This is clear-cut cheating. For decades, the victims have either suffered in silence or fought individually. That is why the problem has become so widespread. It is now for the society in general and public-spirited organisations in particular to come to their aid. The government should also lend a helping hand by agreeing to amend the rules which come in the way of their quest for justice. Mr B.S. Ramoowalia, whose Lok Bhalai Party provided a platform to the unfortunate women, has suggested that passports of NRIs should bear the picture of both husband and wife after marriage and ‘streedhan’ should be legally accounted for. This may sound like an extreme measure but the problem has become so acute that moderate steps may not work. |
Majesty unconquered Fifty years ago, on this day, Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary stood atop the highest point on earth. It was a singular achievement in terms of grit and determination as the two men bent their sinews to set foot on the peak of ‘the mountain without mercy’— the majestic Mount Everest. The conquest was hailed worldwide as a tribute to man’s indomitable spirit to conquer challenges offered to him by nature, of which the Everest was the toughest. The successful climb came after several attempts to conquer the summit had been beaten back. So far, about 175 persons have lost their lives in trying to scale what the locals call Chomolungma (Mother Goddess of the World) or
Sagarmatha. Alongside, as many as 1,600 climbers have tested the challenges offered by the peak and emerged successful. Of course, technology has softened the tough conditions that the Everest offered 50 years ago. From special suits to climbing equipment, everything has been customised to overcome the odds and make it as convenient as possible for the climber to label himself as a ‘summiteer.’ But despite these advancements and the continuous activity along its slopes, the Everest still stands tall and manages to scoff at many attempts to conquer it yet again. An international expedition preceding the Indo-Nepalese team on May 22 had failed to score. The ongoing 50th anniversary celebrations, the toast of which is obviously the surviving partner of the first climb, Sir Edmund Hillary, have largely focussed on the ‘conquest of Everest.’ They typify the rivalry between man’s unbroken spirit and the challenge thrown at him by nature. In fact, the first remark that Hillary had reportedly made on reaching the base camp after the ‘assault’ was: “We knocked the bastard off.” Unconsciously, he articulated the competitiveness in this adventure, and also the callousness. Team after team went up ruthlessly caring little for its fragile ecology. About 100 tonnes of garbage still remains on its heights after 300 tonnes have been removed since 1996. But, the Everest is much more than an aspiration for conquest. Successful expeditions cannot humble it. It exists for its own purpose, and even after being ascended hundreds of times, it never fails to fill an onlooker or a climber with awe and wonder. Therein lies its majesty, its appeal; its challenge and its
fulfilment. The golden jubilee celebrations cannot escape the spirit of the Everest that motivates men and women to risk their lives and limbs and try harder to reach higher than before. And when they do it, Tenzing’s immortal words come to mind: “Chomolungma, I am grateful.” Humility and gratefulness are, hence, the twin strands that weave the motif of the spirit of the Everest. They need to be preserved. They need to be celebrated. |
Panic reaction With the US economy still in recession and unemployment on the rise, popular sentiment is turning against outsourcing or the transfer of jobs to developing countries. The loss of jobs is an emotional issue in the US. Politicians do a lot of posturing and the media too tend to get carried away. Instead of being guided by reason, they allow themselves to get even paranoid. How else does one explain the introduction of a Bill in the House of Representatives slapping restrictions on Indians working in the US on the L-1 visa? The Bill will bar employees of Indian companies from onsite work in US companies. There are no similar curbs on US companies’ employees. Such denial of market access to Indians is against globalisation, which allows a free flow of capital, technology and talent. It violates WTO provisions too. Commerce Minister Arun Jaitley has already conveyed the Indian concerns to the US Trade Representative. To discourage outsourcing, a number of states -— New Jersey, Maryland, Connecticut, Missouri and Wisconsin among them — have proposed legislation imposing a ban on state-funded companies from moving service jobs outside the US. Offshore job transfers render locals unemployed. In the Silicon Valley, for instance, unemployment has risen from a low level of 1.8 per cent in September 2000 to 8 per cent at present. Many IT companies have transferred IT-enabled services to countries like India. Another consequence of outsourcing is a dent in salaries for others. Social repercussions become loud and clear, forcing politicians to do what they are doing now, even something unreasonable and against their own long-term interests. There is no need for Indians to overreact. The US measures are a sort of panic reaction to their economic compulsions and these won’t do much harm to Indians. The US states’ curbs will generally apply to companies that are relatively small and depend on state aid. Large companies will continue to do outsourcing offshore. The economic downturn has forced US companies to cut costs. They are also under investor pressure to perform. They have no option other than contracting out services to low-cost countries like India and China. The fact that Americans themselves will stand to benefit in the long term has got buried in the job-loss noise. A McKinsey analysis shows the US economy will save up to $390 billion in costs through outsourcing IT-enabled services alone by 2008. Their last spurt in growth was fuelled by cost savings from the transfer of manufacturing work to countries with cheap labour. Americans then responded by upgrading their skills for new growth areas. This time services are getting transferred. Again, Americans will have to redo their skills for high-end jobs, while Indians will have to prepare themselves for the emerging jobs. It s a win-win situation for both. |
Mountaineering then and now It was not for nothing that a television series aimed at the simplistic sensibility of an American audience chose for its catch line, to embody the spirit of adventure in a group of humans on a spacecraft hurtling into the blackness of outer space, the phrase — “to boldly go where no man has gone before”. “Star Trek” may have been fictitious but, in our own lifetime, many of us have watched — and been powerfully moved — by men bringing to life that evocative phrase from the television series. For the generation now grown old, such an occasion was the ascent of the Everest. At a recent function in New Delhi in the run-up to the fiftieth anniversary of the Everest climb on May 29, 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary said wonderingly: “I had no idea of the impact it would have. It had a tremendous effect. Telegrams of congratulations poured in. When we got back, there were crowds everywhere. We had become heroes.” But the public euphoria was understandable. He and Tenzing Norgay had gone where no man had gone before. To be a pioneer means to know not what to expect, and the awe and adulation stemmed from that. As Hillary explained, the death of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine — the only other pair of men that had tried to chart a course into the feared, unknown region of the summit — weighed heavily on him and Tenzing. “The challenge was mainly because we didn’t know if one could do it, we didn’t know if it was possible to survive up there. It was always hanging over our heads,” recalled Hillary. Graciously obliging audiences in New Delhi and Kathmandu eager to hear the tale in his voice, Hillary has repeatedly recalled the historic climb. He has described cutting a continuous line of steps to the top, wriggling up the 40-ft rock wall later named Hillary Step, and offering his hand for an “old-fashioned” handshake with Tenzing who instead threw his arm round his shoulder. Most of all, he has remarked on the fact, “Half a century later, I clearly remember that day”. Far more remarkable is the fact that June 2 was enshrined in the memory of members of the public who had nothing to do with the Everest or climbing. I recall gazing at a nearly full moon in 1969, and exclaiming to my father: “At this precise moment, there are two human beings on that.” He had smiled at my wonder but, later as an adult, I was to sense how enormously moved he himself had been in 1953 when, as a young man, he had witnessed the arrival of the news that the highest mountain had been climbed. He had worked for “The Statesman” in Kolkata and recalled: “On the evening of June 2, we were all ready to go to press with the story and pictures of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. The entire front page was a display for the coronation. And then the news came that the Everest had been climbed. We rushed to re-do the front page. Now the Everest story occupied all of the front page and the coronation package was shifted inside.” He was telling the story more than two decades on but something of the exhilaration of that evening still lingered. In sharp contrast to today’s live telecasts from the Everest, in 1953 the world learned that mankind had stood atop the Third Pole four days after the event because the news reached London in a now-famous coded message that travelled a tortuous route via runner and telegraph. James (who later famously became Jan) Morris was privileged to accompany the British expedition led by John Hunt as a reporter for “The Times” of London. He found that his despatches were often intercepted and upstaged by other newspapers but was determined to ensure that the news of success would remain exclusive. The coded message that he sent to his paper read: “snow condition bad…abandoned advance base…awaiting improvement…all well”. This innocuous message was correctly interpreted at the “Times” office as indicating that the Everest had been climbed on May 29 by Hillary and Tenzing. It was released to the rest of the Press and Morris was overjoyed to hear a “delightful man on the radio” say that the momentous news had come in an exclusive despatch to the “Times” as he tuned in to the BBC from his camp beside a mountain stream on his return journey from Everest. Morris showed an extraordinary understanding of what he called “perhaps the last truly innocent adventure of all”. His phrase encapsulates the nostalgia of those who had known mountaineering as pure adventure for the love of it and were forced to watch in dismay as, after 1953, climbing Everest was gradually reduced to a none too laudable form of an adventure race. Half a century on, the trend is to go to the mountain, put everything one has into getting up it — sometimes with an appalling inclination to take risks — and, once you have reached the summit, rush down and head off from base camp back to civilization to bask in the glory that accrues to those who stand on the roof of the world. This was so especially in the 1990s. Books on Everest expeditions no longer make as fine reading as earlier ones did in at least one aspect — simply celebrating the pleasure and joy of climbers. Earlier, mountaineers would enjoy every day of their stay on the mountain’s flanks for it was a legendary mountain. In the past, the vast majority of those who arrived at the base of Everest had admirable climbing resumes. They had worked their way to the Everest by way of other, sometimes more difficult and dangerous, mountains. It was the accepted practice to, so to speak, prove that one had the credentials to attempt the Everest. But the advent of commercial expeditions in the last decade ushered in new trends. To be able to pay for a berth in an Everest team and then be guided up the mountain meant that climbers no longer had to bother about logistics nor did they have to accumulate the experience that was earlier indispensable. Besides, as many of the new crop of top-class mountaineers were drawn into the commercial expedition business, paying clients had the psychological reassurance of knowing that they would be shepherded up and down the mountain by men who ranked among the world’s best climbers. Suddenly, the Everest was no longer a dream — it was affordable even in terms of ability. Today, though the Everest remains the ultimate mountaineering goal, it has been shorn of true adventure. Fittingly, the greatest lament has come from none other than Hillary, “We had an enormous advantage when we were climbing in those early days because we were the only people there. You never saw another party or another climber. You had to pioneer your own routes and be able to take care of yourself. Nowadays they have thousands of feet of fixed ropes in all the difficult places. They have sixty aluminium ladders on the icefall. I mean, the whole mountain is sort of tied down almost. Made tamer by all this sort of equipment. I feel lucky to have been up there climbing when it was a different sort of mountaineering.” Adventure is dead, long live the Everest. The writer is a freelance journalist and mountaineer |
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When the Everest was scaled The Tribune treated the news of the conquest of the Everest with a banner headline reading “WORLD’S HIGHEST MOUNTAIN PEAK CONQUERED” along with a photograph of the Everest and those of the ‘conquerors’ — New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Nepalese Sherpa Tensing. The new Queen’s photograph was published below that of the Everest, signifying the importance of the event. Elizabeth II was herself forced to acknowledge the importance of the achievement as she sent a telegram to the British Ambassador in Kathmandu half an hour before she was to leave for her coronation congratulating the team on its stupendous performance. For the then 18-year-old Tejinder Singh the conquest of the Everest and the coronation of the Queen were events which occurred on a day which had even greater significance for him. The newspaper that day also carried the result of the F. Sc. Agriculture examination of Panjab University, which he had topped. Tejinder Singh, who was then a student of Government Barjindra College, Faridkot, kept a copy of the newspaper as a memento and has kept it in his possession ever since. Tejinder Singh went on to become an Agriculture Inspector. He continued with this job from 1957 to 1962 following which he was selected as a Block Development Officer
(BDO). He eventually retired as a Deputy Director of the Panchayat Department and now lives in Patiala’s Prem Nagar on Bhadson Road. Tejinder Singh says that recently while going through his old papers, he came across the clipping and the entire events of the period came back in a flashback to him. The “fateh” of the Everest was definitely a landmark event, he says, adding that youngsters then had kept talking about it, more than even having a youthful and beautiful woman as the Queen of Britain. The spirit of adventure is more appealing to a youngster and the very fact that the legend of the mountain being hazardous to scale was cast away. “To me, the event has a special meaning as this was also the day my eventual career took shape”, he added. Meanwhile the news story of the scaling of the Everest released by Reuters from London did apparently not do justice to Tenzing Norgay, the hardy Nepalese mountaineer who accompanied New Zealander E.P. Hillary to the top of the world. Tenzing has been referred to as Sherpa Tensing instead of his full name. Reuters, which gave a life sketch of Hillary could not do so in the case of Tenzing with the Press Trust of India being relied on to do the honours. The news item highlights the fact that it was the special oxygen equipment carried by the British team led by Col John Hunt, which was the key to the conquest of the Everest. It said Col Hunt’s team took an improved type of equipment of two kinds — a close circuit system by which the climber received hundred per cent oxygen from the cylinder — as well as an open circuit one in which a certain proportion of fresh air is absorbed as well as pure oxygen. It also quotes Admiral Byrd, the well known American polar explorer saying “the conquest was typical of the bulldog tenacity of the British which always wins through.” |
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The genetic package The lab in Hyderabad where DNA fingerprinting is done must be working overtime. Who is the father of the foetus found in the womb of the woman referred to as the Lucknow poetess? Who are the mothers of the two — or is it three? — boy babies who have been exchanged for girls in Hyderabad and its districts? We too in Pune have just had a baby spirited away — a boy, of course — from its mother in the Sassoon Hospital though here a girl was not put in his place. Yes, the lab must be busy. Molecular biologists are greatly in demand the world over. Five years ago I met one such at the University of Western Ontario. She told me that she had been working at Hyderabad’s Institute of Molecular Biology when she had applied to join UWO in London, Ontario. Her visa was rushed through in 12 days by the Canadians; she must have been outstanding indeed. Her English was below par; her clothes for the horrendous Canadian winter — she arrived in January — were quite inadequate; she had come alone though her husband joined her later. Soon after we had returned from there to India — my son was doing an MBA at UWO — we were told that she had gone across the border to an American university. I did say she must have been brilliant, didn’t I. I did not know till last week — so much is appearing in the newspapers about Watson and Crick’s discovery — that molecular biology dates from that time 50 years ago as a new science. Although I read English literature in college I have always been interested in the body. I bought two copies of Anthony Smith’s fascinating book many years ago called The Body (one for each of my sons). I can’t wait to get hold of James Watson’s new book, DNA: The Secret of Life. A recent issue of
London's The Week carried an account of what some critics had to say about the book; a review of reviews. Here is what some papers in England said. A wonderful book; its author is plain-speaking and opinionated and mounts a spirited defence of the proposition that knowledge is always preferable to ignorance. Another says that he deals with everything from genetic fingerprinting and gene therapy to the possible redesign of the human race. Watson resigned from the Human genome Project after gene patents were proposed. (He opposed them). Controversy is not new for this great scientist who helped make the greatest scientific discovery of the last century. In Germany he created an uproar by suggesting diagnostic tests in early pregnancy to “screen out rare genetic diseases”. Many years ago he publicly resigned as a founding fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, because a Chapel was proposed. He “saw no reason to perpetuate mistakes from the past”. Here is a genetic titbit to end with from an earlier issue of The Week. Geneticists have concluded, after testing the Y Chromosomes (the genetic package passed on from father to son) of 2,000 men, that there was hardly any difference in the DNA pattern. One member of the team suggested in jest that this could be due to the genetic fingerprint of Genghis Khan being passed on, he having had several wives and countless affairs. More delving into the data proved that this was no joke. One in 200 men on earth is related to the great Khan. |
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How a religious Website was hijacked The SGPC has lodged a complaint with the Amritsar police that a foreign Website is using the
word “khalsa” in its name. The matter is under investigation. Our enquiry shows that a perfectly legitimate religious Website was hijacked. What seems to have happened in this case is that a Website was established by New Delhi-based Sarab Sanjha Khalsa 3rd Centenary Environment Trust as a Web-presence of the Khalsa Environmental Trust, probably two or three years ago. According to the information provided on the Website at the time of its inception, the Trust “launched Project Environment with the Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Management Committee in Delhi. This project is run with guidance from an England-based Environmental Organisation called Alliance for Religion and Conservation and in future their help will be sought for the different projects that will be undertaken by us.” The Trust undertook environmental work and received positive media attention in India and abroad. It comprises eminent persons who are prominent Sikhs in Delhi and abroad. The Website was probably launched in 2001. It is only after April 7 this year that the domain name, or the address that one types into the browser to get to a Website, was hijacked for pornographic purposes. This could only have happened after the registration of the domain expired. Efforts to contact the original owners of the Website to find out how this transpired were not successful till the time of writing. All Websites have to be registered with an organisation called InterNIC, which is a registered service mark of the U.S. Department of Commerce. It is licensed to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. InterNIC has appointed various registrars to register Websites. InterNIC has a service that allows anyone to check the owners of a Website and from that we know that this domain was registered in the name of Mr Alain Roe of Bucuresti, Romania. Mr Roe has not replied to an e-mail requesting him to let this writer know why he had chosen this particular domain name. However, when one opens the Website, it shows a page which says “Hi I’m Laura, I’m F/19/Bombay. What follows is a list of my favourite adult links. You must not enter if you are under 18 (21 some states). You will not want to enter if you find this material objectionable. By going beyond this point, you acknowledge that you are 18 years or older. All the models on the following pages are over 18.” This is the typical legalese under which a pornographic site functions, and in any case, if you have any doubts, the domain name now changes to a pornographic one. Unfortunately, the hijacking of Websites for nefarious purposes is a common phenomenon for the Web. There is even a pornographic Website named after the White House, which proclaims that it has been visited by over 75 million persons since its inception in 1997. Though .com Websites are the most common, there are also Websites like .net, .org and .edu, for which the registration requirements are far more stringent. As far as the .com registrations are concerned, anyone can do so, and it seems that the legitimate domain of the Website was taken over by the pornographic site. However, as Sandeep Chauhan, a computer expert, says action can be taken against anyone who hijacks a legitimate Website, or takes over a domain name with intentions of making one pay in order to get it back (cyber squatting). It is a bit tedious, because one has to go through the registrars, the ICANN and if that fails, the courts, but it can be done. Given the attention that this case is garnering, this is what is likely to happen in this case.
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Taking care of skin with food Acne is generally thought of as an adolescent affliction, although my experience suggests otherwise. In my practice, I see a regular stream of individuals who continue to suffer from `bad skin’ long after puberty. In fact, statistics show that more than one in two women and 40 per cent of men over 25 have some acne, and for a few this problem persists into middle age. Traditional nutritional advice is to avoid fatty food, especially chocolate. However, recent evidence suggests it is not fat but another commonly found ingredient in chockie bars that incites the skin to break out. Clues to the causes of acne may be found by comparing the nutritional habits of different populations. Researchers looked at the diets and dermatological health of two indigenous populations: the Kitavan islanders from Papua New Guinea and the Ache hunter-gatherers from Paraguay. While the Kitavans subsist mainly on fruit, vegetables, fish and coconut, the Ache diet is comprised almost entirely of wild, foraged-for and locally cultivated foods. Intriguingly, the prevalence of acne in both these groups eating essentially natural foods was found to be nil. This is in stark contrast to the high rates of acne seen in industrialised nations. Some have suggested that such differing propensities to acne are a matter of genetics. However, the observation that populations swapping their traditional diet for something less natural become more acne-prone points strongly to nutrition as the critical factor. The typical Western diet is renowned for its high fat content and this supports the view that fatty foods cause spots. However, some researchers have put forward the notion that it is sugars and starches (carbohydrates) that are the major culprits in acne eruptions. While carbohydrates in traditional diets generally come in whole, unadulterated forms, those consumed in the West are typically refined, and may contain a load of sugar. Eating a diet rich in foods such as white bread, biscuits, cakes, confectionery, sweet drinks and sugary breakfast cereals may have important implications for our skin. One effect these foods have is to stimulate the production of copious quantities of insulin. Laboratory experiments show that rushes of insulin encourage the secretion of a skin waterproofing agent called sebum, and may initiate changes in the skin that block the glands that make it. It is this backlog of sebum, often coupled with a bacterial infection, that causes spots, pimples and acne. The evidence suggests that keeping the carbs in our diet based on natural sources such as fruits, vegetables, beans, pulses and brown rice makes for healthier skin. The good news is that chocolate isn’t necessarily off the menu: dark varieties containing 70 per cent or more cocoa solids are relatively low in sugar, and are therefore the treats of choice for those keen to keep their skin clear.
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Fifty years ago the scaling of the Everest upstaged the coronation of Queen Elizabeth as she took control of a doddering British empire. Though the Everest was scaled on May 29, the news of the epoch-making event was released from London by Reuters on June 2, along with the details of the coronation ceremony of Elizabeth II as the Queen of Britain.