It has been taken for granted that humans beyond 75 are seated near the exit. Yet, less than a century ago, humans aged 35-45 filled this position, Useful life-not just life, has almost doubled with very early discoveries such as spectacles, early discoveries such as antibiotics, vaccines and recent discoveries such as anti-diabetics, statins, blood thinners, antivirals, immuno-suppressants, vascular interventions and organ replacements.
The technological advances so far, have tackled disease. Some of the diseases have been blamed on age-Atherosclerosis, Dementia, Arthritis, Parkinson’s; but ageing itself has been accepted as normal. Yet there are life forms that live much longer than humans. Bristlecone pines in California and Rocky mountains have lived to more than 3500 years. Bow head whales aged 200 years have been found. Jelly fish have been found to be immortal. At cellular levels, these life forms are substantially similar to humans-esp. the whales are mammals and are, practically, our twins in water.

AMRIT

Scientists have always searched for ‘Amrit’-the elixir of eternal life and for the touchstone that will convert any metal to gold. While the latter remains elusive, a glimmer of hope has appeared for the former-a glimmer that is bright enough for humans to begin to think of ageing as a disease to be cured and not a normal to be endured.

Technical details of the research are fairly complex and may not interest most readers. They have, therefore been relegated, to the last. However, I urge that they be read. It will help understand what is going on in the background and enable the reader to improvise and adjust longevity techniques on his own to his individuality.

GENOME

For the moment, let us just know that Genome is the name of the set of instructions encoded in a molecule called DNA and the genome is a complete blueprint for making an organism. DNA is a linear polymer molecule shaped like a double helix coiled around each other. It looks like a twisted ladder. The rungs of the ladder are a linear chain of 4 molecules called nucleotides and named A, C, G and T. The sequence of placement of A, C, T and G within a rung and the sequence of these rungs along the helix constitutes the genetic code. Strands of DNA are coiled together into structures called chromosomes. A chromosome if uncoiled could be a few cm long. Subset of a chromosome, read together, is called a gene. The human genome, if uncoiled, is about 2.5 m long and its sequence has 3.2 billion letters—printed 1 mm apart, it will extend to 3000 kilometer.

The genome is roughly like the hard wired, read only memory of a computer. It is so stable that DNA has been recovered intact from bones buried centuries ago. The memory must be read and instructions executed. RNA-a single helix polymer-is a part of the reading mechanism, with mRNA, t-RNA and r-RNA working as a team. The body mechanism doing the reading and the execution part is called Epi-Genome. Aging research appears to suggest that whereas the genome is stable, epigenome is not and tends to get corrupted causing information to be read wrongly, leading to defective execution. That causes aging. Research has further indicated that the corruption of the epigenome can be reduced and aging can be slowed and even halted. In animals, it has even been reversed.

This series of articles will take you through what we can do now to have a longer, useful life span, in a series of 7 steps.

1. Longevity and the Technical Stuff
2. Longevity and Exercise
3. Longevity and Food
4. Longevity and Psyche
5. Longevity and Habits
6. Longevity and Pills
7. References

Before doing that, let us just take

A WALK THROUGH A CELL

A cell is the fundamental building block of living beings. Body has trillions of them of various shapes and size. A human blood cell is about 7.5 micrometers. The cell is filled with a jelly like substance called cytoplasm which is enclosed in a plasma membrane. The command center of the cell is its Nucleus which has its own envelope and it tells the cell what to do. The Nucleus houses the DNA. DNA is looped around spools of Histones to form Nucleosomes. Nucleosomes tightly coil around to form Chromosomes. A chromosome looks like a handwritten small letter x. The arms of the x are tightly bound at the center by centromere and the tips of the x are sealed off by telomeres. Humans have 46 chromosomes. Genes are small sections of DNA within a chromosome. Floating around in the cell is Mitochondria which is cell’s powerhouse and converts food to energy. Mitochondria have its own, little stock of DNA. Ribosomes also float around the cell and their job is to read, via RNA, genetic instructions from the cell and make proteins. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Pictures of a few parts of a cell we talked about therefore, follow:

WORKING OF A CELL

There are two processes going on in the cells. One is reproduction which is by division. The new cell formed is identical to the earlier cell if all is well. However the DNA within the cell is subject to damage, for example by toxins, X-rays or cosmic rays amongst other factors. A complex system called Epigenome in the body senses damage to DNA and sends a disaster team to the cell to repair the damage. At the same time, the epi genome instructs the cell to stop reproduction. When the repair is done, the epigenome gives an “all clear” and the cell begins reproduction. The trends in understanding aging at a genetic level, appear to show that faults in the epigenome degrade the disaster management and also prevent it from generating the ‘stop reproduction’ signal for the cell. Without the stop sign, the cell goes on dividing with the damaged DNA generating more cells with even more damaged DNA. The damage cascades because genetic instructions have come from defective DNA and like a bug in a program, the execution goes into uncharted territory, leading to cells with even more damaged DNA. This results, generally, in the cell gradually becoming a large zombie cell which ultimately is unable to divide but stays alive. Such cells, named senescent cells, accumulate in the body, yielding toxic secretions and interfere with the working of healthy cells. Disease and death follows. Very often, cells with damaged DNA, go into uncontrolled division and originate cancerous tumors. Either way, death follows.

LIVING LONGER & REVERSING AGE

Research has so far come to a point that we have available certain techniques which can keep our epigenome working longer. In fact in animal studies it has been possible to reset the epigenome, effectively enabling an animal aged 50% of its age to revert to an age which was merely, say, 30% of its age. In human terms it means reverting a man of 40 to when he was 24.

In the following articles, to be published, we will see how our current knowledge of the cellular processes is applied to help us live longer with good health.

Continued to Part 2

The post HOW to LIVE to 101 IN GOOD HEALTH first appeared on Anand Bhushan.

This blog is inspired by a news item.

BIRADICHAND PANNALAL JI AZAD, Aged 82, was found dead by the side of railway tracks in the city of Bombay. He was a beggar and lived in a nearby shanty. Inquiring into his death, the police found he had Rs 1,75,000 in coins, Rs 8,77,000 in interest paying fixed deposits in a Bank and Rs 96,000 in Savings Account also. This news appeared in The Tribune of Oct 8, 2019. Picture of the newspaper cutting appears below.

Read below an intriguing case, centered around a beggar, solved by none other than Sherlock Holmes, which has some similarities.

Do not miss “SMILE A WHILE” towards the end.

CASE OF THE MAN WITH THE TWISTED LIP

Isa Whitney, brother of the late Elias Whitney, D.D., Principal of the Theological College of St. George’s, was much addicted to opium. The habit grew upon him, as I understand, from some foolish freak when he was at college; for having read, De Quincey’s description of his dreams and sensations, he had drenched his tobacco with laudanum in an attempt to produce the same effects. He found, as so many more have done, that the practice is easier to attain than to get rid of, and for many years he continued to be a slave to the drug, an object of mingled horror and pity to his friends and relatives. I can see him now, with yellow, pasty face, drooping lids, and pin-point pupils, all huddled in a chair, the wreck and ruin of a noble man.

One night — it was in June, ’89 — there came a ring to my bell, about the hour when a man gives his first yawn and glances at the clock. I sat up in my chair, and my wife laid her needle-work down in her lap and made a little face of disappointment.

“A patient!” said she. “You’ll have to go out.”

I groaned, for I was newly come back from a weary day.

We heard the door open, a few hurried words, and then quick steps upon the linoleum. Our own door flew open, and a lady, clad in some dark-coloured stuff, with a black veil, entered the room.

“You will excuse my calling so late,” she began, and then, suddenly losing her self-control, she ran forward, threw her arms about my wife’s neck, and sobbed upon her shoulder. “Oh, I’m in such trouble!” she cried; “I do so want a little help.”

“Why,” said my wife, pulling up her veil, “it is Kate Whitney. How you startled me, Kate! I had not an idea who you were when you came in.”

“I didn’t know what to do, so I came straight to you.” That was always the way. Folk who were in grief came to my wife like birds to a light-house.

“It was very sweet of you to come. Now, you must have some wine and water, and sit here comfortably and tell us all about it. Or should you rather that I sent James off to bed?”

“Oh, no, no! I want the doctor’s advice and help, too. It’s about Isa. He has not been home for two days. I am so frightened about him!”

It was not the first time that she had spoken to us of her husband’s trouble, to me as a doctor, to my wife as an old friend and school companion. We soothed and comforted her by such words as we could find. Did she know where her husband was? Was it possible that we could bring him back to her?

It seems that it was. She had the surest information that of late he had, when the fit was on him, made use of an opium den in the farthest east of the City. Hitherto his orgies had always been confined to one day, and he had come back, twitching and shattered, in the evening. But now the spell had been upon him eight-and-forty hours, and he lay there, doubtless among the dregs of the docks, breathing in the poison or sleeping off the effects. There he was to be found, she was sure of it, at the Bar of Gold, in Upper Swandam Lane. But what was she to do? How could she, a young and timid woman, make her way into such a place and pluck her husband out from among the ruffians who surrounded him?

There was the case, and of course there was but one way out of it. Might I not escort her to this place? And then, as a second thought, why should she come at all? I was Isa Whitney’s medical adviser, and as such I had influence over him. I could manage it better if I were alone. I promised her on my word that I would send him home in a cab within two hours if he were indeed at the address which she had given me. And so in ten minutes I had left my armchair and cheery sitting-room behind me, and was speeding eastward in a hansom on a strange errand, as it seemed to me at the time, though the future only could show how strange it was to be.

But there was no great difficulty in the first stage of my adventure. Upper Swandam Lane is a vile alley lurking behind the high wharves which line the north side of the river to the east of London Bridge. Between a slop-shop and a gin-shop, approached by a steep flight of steps leading down to a black gap like the mouth of a cave, I found the den of which I was in search. Ordering my cab to wait, I passed down the steps, worn hollow in the centre by the ceaseless tread of drunken feet; and by the light of a flickering oil-lamp above the door I found the latch and made my way into a long, low room, thick and heavy with the brown opium smoke, and terraced with wooden berths, like the forecastle of an emigrant ship.

Through the gloom one could dimly catch a glimpse of bodies lying in strange fantastic poses, bowed shoulders, bent knees, heads thrown back, and chins pointing upward, with here and there a dark, lack-lustre eye turned upon the newcomer. Out of the black shadows there glimmered little red circles of light, now bright, now faint, as the burning poison waxed or waned in the bowls of the metal pipes. The most lay silent, but some muttered to themselves, and others talked together in a strange, low, monotonous voice, their conversation coming in gushes, and then suddenly tailing off into silence, each mumbling out his own thoughts and paying little heed to the words of his neighbour. At the farther end was a small brazier of burning charcoal, beside which on a three-legged wooden stool there sat a tall, thin old man, with his jaw resting upon his two fists, and his elbows upon his knees, staring into the fire.

As I entered, a sallow Malay attendant had hurried up with a pipe for me and a supply of the drug, beckoning me to an empty berth.

“Thank you. I have not come to stay,” said I. “There is a friend of mine here, Mr. Isa Whitney, and I wish to speak with him.”

There was a movement and an exclamation from my right, and peering through the gloom I saw Whitney, pale, haggard, and unkempt, staring out at me.

“My God! It’s Watson,” said he. He was in a pitiable state of reaction, with every nerve in a twitter. “I say, Watson, what o’clock is it?”

“Nearly eleven.”

“Of what day?”

“Of Friday, June 19th.”

“Good heavens! I thought it was Wednesday. It is Wednesday. What d’you want to frighten the chap for?” He sank his face onto his arms and began to sob in a high treble key.

“I tell you that it is Friday, man. Your wife has been waiting this two days for you. You should be ashamed of yourself!”

“So I am. But you’ve got mixed, Watson, for I have only been here a few hours, three pipes, four pipes-I forget how many. But I’ll go home with you. I wouldn’t frighten Kate — poor little Kate. Give me your hand! Have you a cab?”

“Yes, I have one waiting.”

“Then I shall go in it. But I must owe something. Find what I owe, Watson. I am all off colour. I can do nothing for myself.”

I walked down the narrow passage between the double row of sleepers, holding my breath to keep out the vile, stupefying fumes of the drug, and looking about for the manager. As I passed the tall man who sat by the brazier I felt a sudden pluck at my skirt, and a low voice whispered, “Walk past me, and then look back at me.” The words fell quite distinctly upon my ear. I glanced down. They could only have come from the old man at my side, and yet he sat now as absorbed as ever, very thin, very wrinkled, bent with age, an opium pipe dangling down from between his knees, as though it had dropped in sheer lassitude from his fingers. I took two steps forward and looked back. It took all my self-control to prevent me from breaking out into a cry of astonishment. He had turned his back so that none could see him but I. His form had filled out, his wrinkles were gone, the dull eyes had regained their fire, and there, sitting by the fire and grinning at my surprise, was none other than Sherlock Holmes. He made a slight motion to me to approach him, and instantly, as he turned his face half round to the company once more, subsided into a doddering, loose-lipped senility.

“Holmes!” I whispered, “what on earth are you doing in this den?”

“As low as you can,” he answered; “I have excellent ears. If you would have the great kindness to get rid of that sottish friend of yours I should be exceedingly glad to have a little talk with you.”

“I have a cab outside.”

“Then pray send him home in it. You may safely trust him, for he appears to be too limp to get into any mischief. I should recommend you also to send a note by the cabman to your wife to say that you have thrown in your lot with me. If you will wait outside, I shall be with you in five minutes.”

It was difficult to refuse any of Sherlock Holmes’s requests, for they were always so exceedingly definite, and put forward with such a quiet air of mastery. I felt, however, that when Whitney was once confined in the cab my mission was practically accomplished; and for the rest, I could not wish anything better than to be associated with my friend in one of those singular adventures which were the normal condition of his existence. In a few minutes I had written my note, paid Whitney’s bill, led him out to the cab, and seen him driven through the darkness. In a very short time a decrepit figure had emerged from the opium den, and I was walking down the street with Sherlock Holmes. For two streets he shuffled along with a bent back and an uncertain foot. Then, glancing quickly round, he straightened himself out and burst into a hearty fit of laughter.

“I suppose, Watson,” said he, “that you imagine that I have added opium-smoking to cocaine injections, and all the other little weaknesses on which you have favoured me with your medical views.”

“I was certainly surprised to find you there.”

“But not more so than I to find you.”

“I came to find a friend.”

“And I to find an enemy.”

“An enemy?”

“Yes; one of my natural enemies, or, shall I say, my natural prey. Briefly, Watson, I am in the midst of a very remarkable inquiry, and I have hoped to find a clew in the incoherent ramblings of these sots, as I have done before now. Had I been recognised in that den my life would not have been worth an hour’s purchase; for I have used it before now for my own purposes, and the rascally Lascar who runs it has sworn to have vengeance upon me. There is a trap-door at the back of that building, near the corner of Paul’s Wharf, which could tell some strange tales of what has passed through it upon the moonless nights.”

“What! You do not mean bodies?”

“Ay, bodies, Watson. We should be rich men if we had 1000 pounds for every poor devil who has been done to death in that den. It is the vilest murder-trap on the whole riverside, and I fear that Neville St. Clair has entered it never to leave it more. But our trap should be here.” He put his two forefingers between his teeth and whistled shrilly — a signal which was answered by a similar whistle from the distance, followed shortly by the rattle of wheels and the clink of horses’ hoofs.

“Now, Watson,” said Holmes, as a tall dog-cart dashed up through the gloom, throwing out two golden tunnels of yellow light from its side lanterns. “You’ll come with me, won’t you?

“If I can be of use.”

“Oh, a trusty comrade is always of use; and a chronicler still more so. My room at The Cedars is a double-bedded one.”

“The Cedars?”

“Yes; that is Mr. St. Clair’s house. I am staying there while I conduct the inquiry.”

“Where is it, then?”

“Near Lee, in Kent. We have a seven-mile drive before us.”

“But I am all in the dark.”

“Of course you are. You’ll know all about it presently. Jump up here. All right, John; we shall not need you. Here’s half a crown. Look out for me to-morrow, about eleven. Give her her head. So long, then!”

He flicked the horse with his whip, and we dashed away through the endless succession of sombre and deserted streets, which widened gradually, until we were flying across a broad balustraded bridge, with the murky river flowing sluggishly beneath us. Beyond lay another dull wilderness of bricks and mortar, its silence broken only by the heavy, regular footfall of the policeman, or the songs and shouts of some belated party of revellers. A dull wrack was drifting slowly across the sky, and a star or two twinkled dimly here and there through the rifts of the clouds. Holmes drove in silence, with his head sunk upon his breast, and the air of a man who is lost in thought, while I sat beside him, curious to learn what this new quest might be which seemed to tax his powers so sorely, and yet afraid to break in upon the current of his thoughts. We had driven several miles, and were beginning to get to the fringe of the belt of suburban villas, when he shook himself, shrugged his shoulders, and lit up his pipe with the air of a man who has satisfied himself that he is acting for the best.

“You have a grand gift of silence, Watson,” said he. “It makes you quite invaluable as a companion. ‘Pon my word, it is a great thing for me to have someone to talk to, for my own thoughts are not over-pleasant. I was wondering what I should say to this dear little woman to-night when she meets me at the door.”

“You forget that I know nothing about it.”

“I shall just have time to tell you the facts of the case before we get to Lee. It seems absurdly simple, and yet, somehow I can get nothing to go upon. There’s plenty of thread, no doubt, but I can’t get the end of it into my hand. Now, I’ll state the case clearly and concisely to you, Watson, and maybe you can see a spark where all is dark to me.”

“Proceed, then.”

“Some years ago — to be definite, in May, 1884 — there came to Lee a gentleman, Neville St. Clair by name, who appeared to have plenty of money. He took a large villa, laid out the grounds very nicely, and lived generally in good style. By degrees he made friends in the neighbourhood, and in 1887 he married the daughter of a local brewer, by whom he now has two children. He had no occupation, but was interested in several companies and went into town as a rule in the morning, returning by the 5:14 from Cannon Street every night. Mr. St. Clair is now thirty-seven years of age, is a man of temperate habits, a good husband, a very affectionate father, and a man who is popular with all who know him. I may add that his whole debts at the present moment, as far as we have been able to ascertain amount to 88 pounds 10s., while he has 220 pounds standing to his credit in the Capital and Counties Bank. There is no reason, therefore, to think that money troubles have been weighing upon his mind.

“Last Monday Mr. Neville St. Clair went into town rather earlier than usual, remarking before he started that he had two important commissions to perform, and that he would bring his little boy home a box of bricks. Now, by the merest chance, his wife received a telegram upon this same Monday, very shortly after his departure, to the effect that a small parcel of considerable value which she had been expecting was waiting for her at the offices of the Aberdeen Shipping Company. Now, if you are well up in your London, you will know that the office of the company is in Fresno Street, which branches out of Upper Swandam Lane, where you found me to-night. Mrs. St. Clair had her lunch, started for the City, did some shopping, proceeded to the company’s office, got her packet, and found herself at exactly 4:35 walking through Swandam Lane on her way back to the station. Have you followed me so far?”

“It is very clear.”

“If you remember, Monday was an exceedingly hot day, and Mrs. St. Clair walked slowly, glancing about in the hope of seeing a cab, as she did not like the neighbourhood in which she found herself. While she was walking in this way down Swandam Lane, she suddenly heard an ejaculation or cry, and was struck cold to see her husband looking down at her and, as it seemed to her, beckoning to her from a second-floor window. The window was open, and she distinctly saw his face, which she describes as being terribly agitated. He waved his hands frantically to her, and then vanished from the window so suddenly that it seemed to her that he had been plucked back by some irresistible force from behind. One singular point which struck her quick feminine eye was that although he wore some dark coat, such as he had started to town in, he had on neither collar nor necktie.

“Convinced that something was amiss with him, she rushed down the steps — for the house was none other than the opium den in which you found me to-night — and running through the front room she attempted to ascend the stairs which led to the first floor. At the foot of the stairs, however, she met this Lascar scoundrel of whom I have spoken, who thrust her back and, aided by a Dane, who acts as assistant there, pushed her out into the street. Filled with the most maddening doubts and fears, she rushed down the lane and, by rare good-fortune, met in Fresno Street a number of constables with an inspector, all on their way to their beat. The inspector and two men accompanied her back, and in spite of the continued resistance of the proprietor, they made their way to the room in which Mr. St. Clair had last been seen. There was no sign of him there. In fact, in the whole of that floor there was no one to be found save a crippled wretch of hideous aspect, who, it seems, made his home there. Both he and the Lascar stoutly swore that no one else had been in the front room during the afternoon. So determined was their denial that the inspector was staggered, and had almost come to believe that Mrs. St. Clair had been deluded when, with a cry, she sprang at a small deal box which lay upon the table and tore the lid from it. Out there fell a cascade of children’s bricks. It was the toy which he had promised to bring home.

“This discovery, and the evident confusion which the cripple showed, made the inspector realise that the matter was serious. The rooms were carefully examined, and results all pointed to an abominable crime. The front room was plainly furnished as a sitting-room and led into a small bedroom, which looked out upon the back of one of the wharves. Between the wharf and the bedroom window is a narrow strip, which is dry at low tide but is covered at high tide with at least four and a half feet of water. The bedroom window was a broad one and opened from below. On examination traces of blood were to be seen upon the windowsill, and several scattered drops were visible upon the wooden floor of the bedroom. Thrust away behind a curtain in the front room were all the clothes of Mr. Neville St. Clair, with the exception of his coat. His boots, his socks, his hat, and his watch — all were there. There were no signs of violence upon any of these garments, and there were no other traces of Mr. Neville St. Clair. Out of the window he must apparently have gone for no other exit could be discovered, and the ominous bloodstains upon the sill gave little promise that he could save himself by swimming, for the tide was at its very highest at the moment of the tragedy.

“And now as to the villains who seemed to be immediately implicated in the matter. The Lascar was known to be a man of the vilest antecedents, but as, by Mrs. St. Clair’s story, he was known to have been at the foot of the stair within a very few seconds of her husband’s appearance at the window, he could hardly have been more than an accessory to the crime. His defence was one of absolute ignorance, and he protested that he had no knowledge as to the doings of Hugh Boone, his lodger, and that he could not account in any way for the presence of the missing gentleman’s clothes.

“So much for the Lascar manager. Now for the sinister cripple who lives upon the second floor of the opium den, and who was certainly the last human being whose eyes rested upon Neville St. Clair. His name is Hugh Boone, and his hideous face is one which is familiar to every man who goes much to the City. He is a professional beggar, though in order to avoid the police regulations he pretends to a small trade in wax vestas. Some little distance down Threadneedle Street, upon the left-hand side, there is, as you may have remarked, a small angle in the wall. Here it is that this creature takes his daily seat, cross-legged with his tiny stock of matches on his lap, and as he is a piteous spectacle a small rain of charity descends into the greasy leather cap which lies upon the pavement beside him. I have watched the fellow more than once before ever I thought of making his professional acquaintance, and I have been surprised at the harvest which he has reaped in a short time. His appearance, you see, is so remarkable that no one can pass him without observing him. A shock of orange hair, a pale face disfigured by a horrible scar, which, by its contraction, has turned up the outer edge of his upper lip, a bulldog chin, and a pair of very penetrating dark eyes, which present a singular contrast to the colour of his hair, all mark him out from amid the common crowd of mendicants and so, too, does his wit, for he is ever ready with a reply to any piece of chaff which may be thrown at him by the passers-by. This is the man whom we now learn to have been the lodger at the opium den, and to have been the last man to see the gentleman of whom we are in quest.”

“But a cripple!” said I. “What could he have done single-handed against a man in the prime of life?”

“He is a cripple in the sense that he walks with a limp; but in other respects he appears to be a powerful and well-nurtured man. Surely your medical experience would tell you, Watson, that weakness in one limb is often compensated for by exceptional strength in the others.”

“Pray continue your narrative.”

“Mrs. St. Clair had fainted at the sight of the blood upon the window, and she was escorted home in a cab by the police, as her presence could be of no help to them in their investigations. Inspector Barton, who had charge of the case, made a very careful examination of the premises, but without finding anything which threw any light upon the matter. One mistake had been made in not arresting Boone instantly, as he was allowed some few minutes during which he might have communicated with his friend the Lascar, but this fault was soon remedied, and he was seized and searched, without anything being found which could incriminate him. There were, it is true, some blood-stains upon his right shirt-sleeve, but he pointed to his ring-finger, which had been cut near the nail, and explained that the bleeding came from there, adding that he had been to the window not long before, and that the stains which had been observed there came doubtless from the same source. He denied strenuously having ever seen Mr. Neville St. Clair and swore that the presence of the clothes in his room was as much a mystery to him as to the police. As to Mrs. St. Clair’s assertion that she had actually seen her husband at the window, he declared that she must have been either mad or dreaming. He was removed, loudly protesting, to the police-station, while the inspector remained upon the premises in the hope that the ebbing tide might afford some fresh clew.

“And it did, though they hardly found upon the mud-bank what they had feared to find. It was Neville St. Clair’s coat, and not Neville St. Clair, which lay uncovered as the tide receded. And what do you think they found in the pockets?”

“I cannot imagine.”

“No, I don’t think you would guess. Every pocket stuffed with pennies and half-pennies — 421 pennies and 270 half-pennies. It was no wonder that it had not been swept away by the tide. But a human body is a different matter. There is a fierce eddy between the wharf and the house. It seemed likely enough that the weighted coat had remained when the stripped body had been sucked away into the river.”

“But I understand that all the other clothes were found in the room. Would the body be dressed in a coat alone?”

“No, sir, but the facts might be met speciously enough. Suppose that this man Boone had thrust Neville St. Clair through the window, there is no human eye which could have seen the deed. What would he do then? It would of course instantly strike him that he must get rid of the tell-tale garments. He would seize the coat, then, and be in the act of throwing it out, when it would occur to him that it would swim and not sink. He has little time, for he has heard the scuffle downstairs when the wife tried to force her way up, and perhaps he has already heard from his Lascar confederate that the police are hurrying up the street. There is not an instant to be lost. He rushes to some secret hoard, where he has accumulated the fruits of his beggary, and he stuffs all the coins upon which he can lay his hands into the pockets to make sure of the coat’s sinking. He throws it out, and would have done the same with the other garments had not he heard the rush of steps below, and only just had time to close the window when the police appeared.”

“It certainly sounds feasible.”

“Well, we will take it as a working hypothesis for want of a better. Boone, as I have told you, was arrested and taken to the station, but it could not be shown that there had ever before been anything against him. He had for years been known as a professional beggar, but his life appeared to have been a very quiet and innocent one. There the matter stands at present, and the questions which have to be solved — what Neville St. Clair was doing in the opium den, what happened to him when there, where is he now, and what Hugh Boone had to do with his disappearance — are all as far from a solution as ever. I confess that I cannot recall any case within my experience which looked at the first glance so simple and yet which presented such difficulties.”

While Sherlock Holmes had been detailing this singular series of events, we had been whirling through the outskirts of the great town until the last straggling houses had been left behind, and we rattled along with a country hedge upon either side of us. Just as he finished, however, we drove through two scattered villages, where a few lights still glimmered in the windows.

“We are on the outskirts of Lee,” said my companion. “We have touched on three English counties in our short drive, starting in Middlesex, passing over an angle of Surrey, and ending in Kent. See that light among the trees? That is The Cedars, and beside that lamp sits a woman whose anxious ears have already, I have little doubt, caught the clink of our horse’s feet.”

“But why are you not conducting the case from Baker Street?” I asked.

“Because there are many inquiries which must be made out here. Mrs. St. Clair has most kindly put two rooms at my disposal, and you may rest assured that she will have nothing but a welcome for my friend and colleague. I hate to meet her, Watson, when I have no news of her husband. Here we are. Whoa, there, whoa!”

We had pulled up in front of a large villa which stood within its own grounds. A stable-boy had run out to the horse’s head, and springing down, I followed Holmes up the small, winding gravel-drive which led to the house. As we approached, the door flew open, and a little blonde woman stood in the opening, clad in some sort of light mousseline de soie, with a touch of fluffy pink chiffon at her neck and wrists. She stood with her figure outlined against the flood of light, one hand upon the door, one half-raised in her eagerness, her body slightly bent, her head and face protruded, with eager eyes and parted lips, a standing question.

“Well?” she cried, “well?” And then, seeing that there were two of us, she gave a cry of hope which sank into a groan as she saw that my companion shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.

“No good news?”

“None.”

“No bad?”

“No.”

“Thank God for that. But come in. You must be weary, for you have had a long day.”

“This is my friend, Dr. Watson. He has been of most vital use to me in several of my cases, and a lucky chance has made it possible for me to bring him out and associate him with this investigation.”

“I am delighted to see you,” said she, pressing my hand warmly. “You will, I am sure, forgive anything that may be wanting in our arrangements, when you consider the blow which has come so suddenly upon us.”

“My dear madam,” said I, “I am an old campaigner, and if I were not I can very well see that no apology is needed. If I can be of any assistance, either to you or to my friend here, I shall be indeed happy.”

“Now, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” said the lady as we entered a well-lit dining-room, upon the table of which a cold supper had been laid out, “I should very much like to ask you one or two plain questions, to which I beg that you will give a plain answer.”

“Certainly, madam.”

“Do not trouble about my feelings. I am not hysterical, nor given to fainting. I simply wish to hear your real, real opinion.”

“Upon what point?”

“In your heart of hearts, do you think that Neville is alive?”

Sherlock Holmes seemed to be embarrassed by the question. “Frankly, now!” she repeated, standing upon the rug and looking keenly down at him as he leaned back in a basket-chair.

“Frankly, then, madam, I do not.”

“You think that he is dead?”

“I do.”

“Murdered?”

“I don’t say that. Perhaps.”

“And on what day did he meet his death?”

“On Monday.”

“Then perhaps, Mr. Holmes, you will be good enough to explain how it is that I have received a letter from him to-day.”

Sherlock Holmes sprang out of his chair as if he had been galvanised.

“What!” he roared.

“Yes, to-day.” She stood smiling, holding up a little slip of paper in the air.

“May I see it?”

“Certainly.”

He snatched it from her in his eagerness, and smoothing it out upon the table he drew over the lamp and examined it intently. I had left my chair and was gazing at it over his shoulder. The envelope was a very coarse one and was stamped with the Gravesend postmark and with the date of that very day, or rather of the day before, for it was considerably after midnight.

“Coarse writing,” murmured Holmes. “Surely this is not your husband’s writing, madam.”

“No, but the enclosure is.”

“I perceive also that whoever addressed the envelope had to go and inquire as to the address.”

“How can you tell that?”

“The name, you see, is in perfectly black ink, which has dried itself. The rest is of the grayish colour, which shows that blotting-paper has been used. If it had been written straight off, and then blotted, none would be of a deep black shade. This man has written the name, and there has then been a pause before he wrote the address, which can only mean that he was not familiar with it. It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles. Let us now see the letter. Ha! there has been an enclosure here!”

“Yes, there was a ring. His signet-ring.”

“And you are sure that this is your husband’s hand?”

“One of his hands.”

“One?”

“His hand when he wrote hurriedly. It is very unlike his usual writing, and yet I know it well.”

“ ‘Dearest do not be frightened. All will come well. There is a huge error which it may take some little time to rectify. Wait in patience.-NEVILLE.’ Written in pencil upon the fly-leaf of a book, octavo size, no water-mark. Hum! Posted to-day in Gravesend by a man with a dirty thumb. Ha! And the flap has been gummed, if I am not very much in error, by a person who had been chewing tobacco. And you have no doubt that it is your husband’s hand, madam?”

“None. Neville wrote those words.”

“And they were posted to-day at Gravesend. Well, Mrs. St. Clair, the clouds lighten, though I should not venture to say that the danger is over.”

“But he must be alive, Mr. Holmes.”

“Unless this is a clever forgery to put us on the wrong scent. The ring, after all, proves nothing. It may have been taken from him. ‘

“No, no; it is, it is his very own writing!”

“Very well. It may, however, have been written on Monday and only posted to-day.”

“That is possible.”

“If so, much may have happened between.”

“Oh, you must not discourage me, Mr. Holmes. I know that all is well with him. There is so keen a sympathy between us that I should know if evil came upon him. On the very day that I saw him last he cut himself in the bedroom, and yet I in the dining-room rushed upstairs instantly with the utmost certainty that something had happened. Do you think that I would respond to such a trifle and yet be ignorant of his death?”

“I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner. And in this letter you certainly have a very strong piece of evidence to corroborate your view. But if your husband is alive and able to write letters, why should he remain away from you?”

“I cannot imagine. It is unthinkable.”

“And on Monday he made no remarks before leaving you?”

“No.”

“And you were surprised to see him in Swandam Lane?”

“Very much so.”

“Was the window open?”

“Yes.”

“Then he might have called to you?”

“He might.”

“He only, as I understand, gave an inarticulate cry?”

“Yes.”

“A call for help, you thought?”

“Yes. He waved his hands.”

“But it might have been a cry of surprise. Astonishment at the unexpected sight of you might cause him to throw up his hands?”

“It is possible.”

“And you thought he was pulled back?”

“He disappeared so suddenly.”

“He might have leaped back. You did not see anyone else in the room?”

“No, but this horrible man confessed to having been there, and the Lascar was at the foot of the stairs.”

“Quite so. Your husband, as far as you could see, had his ordinary clothes on?”

“But without his collar or tie. I distinctly saw his bare throat.”

“Had he ever spoken of Swandam Lane?”

“Never.”

“Had he ever showed any signs of having taken opium?”

“Never.”

“Thank you, Mrs. St. Clair. Those are the principal points about which I wished to be absolutely clear. We shall now have a little supper and then retire, for we may have a very busy day to-morrow.”

A large and comfortable double-bedded room had been placed at our disposal, and I was quickly between the sheets, for I was weary after my night of adventure. Sherlock Holmes was a man, however, who, when he had an unsolved problem upon his mind, would go for days, and even for a week, without rest, turning it over, rearranging his facts, looking at it from every point of view until he had either fathomed it or convinced himself that his data were insufficient. It was soon evident to me that he was now preparing for an all-night sitting. He took off his coat and waistcoat, put on a large blue dressing-gown, and then wandered about the room collecting pillows from his bed and cushions from the sofa and armchairs. With these he constructed a sort of Eastern divan, upon which he perched himself cross-legged, with an ounce of shag tobacco and a box of matches laid out in front of him. In the dim light of the lamp I saw him sitting there, an old briar pipe between his lips, his eyes fixed vacantly upon the corner of the ceiling, the blue smoke curling up from him, silent, motionless, with the light shining upon his strong-set aquiline features. So he sat as I dropped off to sleep, and so he sat when a sudden ejaculation caused me to wake up, and I found the summer sun shining into the apartment. The pipe was still between his lips, the smoke still curled upward, and the room was full of a dense tobacco haze, but nothing remained of the heap of shag which I had seen upon the previous night.

“Awake, Watson?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Game for a morning drive?”

“Certainly.”

“Then dress. No one is stirring yet, but I know where the stable-boy sleeps, and we shall soon have the trap out.” He chuckled to himself as he spoke, his eyes twinkled, and he seemed a different man to the sombre thinker of the previous night.

As I dressed I glanced at my watch. It was no wonder that no one was stirring. It was twenty-five minutes past four. I had hardly finished when Holmes returned with the news that the boy was putting in the horse.

“I want to test a little theory of mine,” said he, pulling on his boots. “I think, Watson, that you are now standing in the presence of one of the most absolute fools in Europe. I deserve to be kicked from here to Charing Cross. But I think I have the key of the affair now.”

“And where is it?” I asked, smiling.

“In the bathroom,” he answered. “Oh, yes, I am not joking,” he continued, seeing my look of incredulity. “I have just been there, and I have taken it out, and I have got it in this Gladstone bag. Come on, my boy, and we shall see whether it will not fit the lock.”

We made our way downstairs as quietly as possible, and out into the bright morning sunshine. In the road stood our horse and trap, with the half-clad stable-boy waiting at the head. We both sprang in, and away we dashed down the London Road. A few country carts were stirring, bearing in vegetables to the metropolis, but the lines of villas on either side were as silent and lifeless as some city in a dream.

“It has been in some points a singular case,” said Holmes, flicking the horse on into a gallop. “I confess that I have been as blind as a mole, but it is better to learn wisdom late than never to learn it at all.”

In town the earliest risers were just beginning to look sleepily from their windows as we drove through the streets of the Surrey side. Passing down the Waterloo Bridge Road we crossed over the river, and dashing up Wellington Street wheeled sharply to the right and found ourselves in Bow Street. Sherlock Holmes was well known to the force, and the two constables at the door saluted him. One of them held the horse’s head while the other led us in.

“Who is on duty?” asked Holmes.

“Inspector Bradstreet, sir.”

“Ah, Bradstreet, how are you?” A tall, stout official had come down the stone-flagged passage, in a peaked cap and frogged jacket. “I wish to have a quiet word with you, Bradstreet.” “Certainly, Mr. Holmes. Step into my room here.” It was a small, office-like room, with a huge ledger upon the table, and a telephone projecting from the wall. The inspector sat down at his desk.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Holmes?”

“I called about that beggarman, Boone — the one who was charged with being concerned in the disappearance of Mr. Neville St. Clair, of Lee.”

“Yes. He was brought up and remanded for further inquiries.”

“So I heard. You have him here?”

“In the cells.”

“Is he quiet?”

“Oh, he gives no trouble. But he is a dirty scoundrel.”

“Dirty?”

“Yes, it is all we can do to make him wash his hands, and his face is as black as a tinker’s. Well, when once his case has been settled, he will have a regular prison bath; and I think, if you saw him, you would agree with me that he needed it.”

“I should like to see him very much.”

“Would you? That is easily done. Come this way. You can leave your bag.”

“No, I think that I’ll take it.”

“Very good. Come this way, if you please.” He led us down a passage, opened a barred door, passed down a winding stair, and brought us to a whitewashed corridor with a line of doors on each side.

“The third on the right is his,” said the inspector. “Here it is!” He quietly shot back a panel in the upper part of the door and glanced through.

“He is asleep,” said he. “You can see him very well.”

We both put our eyes to the grating. The prisoner lay with his face towards us, in a very deep sleep, breathing slowly and heavily. He was a middle-sized man, coarsely clad as became his calling, with a coloured shirt protruding through the rent in his tattered coat. He was, as the inspector had said, extremely dirty, but the grime which covered his face could not conceal its repulsive ugliness. A broad wheal from an old scar ran right across it from eye to chin, and by its contraction had turned up one side of the upper lip, so that three teeth were exposed in a perpetual snarl. A shock of very bright red hair grew low over his eyes and forehead.

“He’s a beauty, isn’t he?” said the inspector.

“He certainly needs a wash,” remarked Holmes. “I had an idea that he might, and I took the liberty of bringing the tools with me.” He opened the Gladstone bag as he spoke, and took out, to my astonishment, a very large bath-sponge.

“He! he! You are a funny one,” chuckled the inspector.

“Now, if you will have the great goodness to open that door very quietly, we will soon make him cut a much more respectable figure.”

“Well, I don’t know why not,” said the inspector. “He doesn’t look a credit to the Bow Street cells, does he?” He slipped his key into the lock, and we all very quietly entered the cell. The sleeper half turned, and then settled down once more into a deep slumber. Holmes stooped to the waterjug, moistened his sponge, and then rubbed it twice vigorously across and down the prisoner’s face.

“Let me introduce you,” he shouted, “to Mr. Neville St. Clair, of Lee, in the county of Kent.”

Never in my life have I seen such a sight. The man’s face peeled off under the sponge like the bark from a tree. Gone was the coarse brown tint! Gone, too, was the horrid scar which had seamed it across, and the twisted lip which had given the repulsive sneer to the face! A twitch brought away the tangled red hair, and there, sitting up in his bed, was a pale, sad-faced, refined-looking man, black-haired and smooth-skinned, rubbing his eyes and staring about him with sleepy bewilderment. Then suddenly realising the exposure, he broke into a scream and threw himself down with his face to the pillow.

“Great heavens!” cried the inspector, “it is, indeed, the missing man. I know him from the photograph.”

The prisoner turned with the reckless air of a man who abandons himself to his destiny. “Be it so,” said he. “And pray what am I charged with?”

“With making away with Mr. Neville St.- Oh, come, you can’t be charged with that unless they make a case of attempted suicide of it,” said the inspector with a grin. “Well, I have been twenty-seven years in the force, but this really takes the cake.”

“If I am Mr. Neville St. Clair, then it is obvious that no crime has been committed, and that, therefore, I am illegally detained.”

“No crime, but a very great error has been committed,” said Holmes. “You would have done better to have trusted you wife.”

“It was not the wife; it was the children,” groaned the prisoner. “God help me, I would not have them ashamed of their father. My God! What an exposure! What can I do?”

Sherlock Holmes sat down beside him on the couch and patted him kindly on the shoulder.

“If you leave it to a court of law to clear the matter up,” said he, “of course you can hardly avoid publicity. On the other hand, if you convince the police authorities that there is no possible case against you, I do not know that there is any reason that the details should find their way into the papers. Inspector Bradstreet would, I am sure, make notes upon anything which you might tell us and submit it to the proper authorities. The case would then never go into court at all.”

“God bless you!” cried the prisoner passionately. “I would have endured imprisonment, ay, even execution, rather than have left my miserable secret as a family blot to my children.

“You are the first who have ever heard my story. My father was a school-master in Chesterfield, where I received an excellent education. I travelled in my youth, took to the stage, and finally became a reporter on an evening paper in London. One day my editor wished to have a series of articles upon begging in the metropolis, and I volunteered to supply them. There was the point from which all my adventures started. It was only by trying begging as an amateur that I could get the facts upon which to base my articles. When an actor I had, of course, learned all the secrets of making up, and had been famous in the greenroom for my skill. I took advantage now of my attainments. I painted my face, and to make myself as pitiable as possible I made a good scar and fixed one side of my lip in a twist by the aid of a small slip of flesh-coloured plaster. Then with a red head of hair, and an appropriate dress, I took my station in the business part of the city, ostensibly as a match-seller but really as a beggar. For seven hours I plied my trade, and when I returned home in the evening I found to my surprise that I had received no less than 26s. 4d.

“I wrote my articles and thought little more of the matter until, some time later, I backed a bill for a friend and had a writ served upon me for 25 pounds. I was at my wit’s end where to get the money, but a sudden idea came to me. I begged a fortnight’s grace from the creditor, asked for a holiday from my employers, and spent the time in begging in the City under my disguise. In ten days I had the money and had paid the debt.

“Well, you can imagine how hard it was to settle down to arduous work at 2 pounds a week when I knew that I could earn as much in a day by smearing my face with a little paint, laying my cap on the ground, and sitting still. It was a long fight between my pride and the money, but the dollars won at last, and I threw up reporting and sat day after day in the corner which I had first chosen, inspiring pity by my ghastly face and filling my pockets with coppers. Only one man knew my secret. He was the keeper of a low den in which I used to lodge in Swandam Lane, where I could every morning emerge as a squalid beggar and in the evenings transform myself into a well-dressed man about town. This fellow, a Lascar, was well paid by me for his rooms, so that I knew that my secret was safe in his possession.

“Well, very soon I found that I was saving considerable sums of money. I do not mean that any beggar in the streets of London could earn 700 pounds a year — which is less than my average takings — but I had exceptional advantages in my power of making up, and also in a facility of repartee, which improved by practice and made me quite a recognised character in the City. All day a stream of pennies, varied by silver, poured in upon me, and it was a very bad day in which I failed to take 2 pounds.

“As I grew richer I grew more ambitious, took a house in the country, and eventually married, without anyone having a suspicion as to my real occupation. My dear wife knew that I had business in the City. She little knew what.

“Last Monday I had finished for the day and was dressing in my room above the opium den when I looked out of my window and saw, to my horror and astonishment, that my wife was standing in the street, with her eyes fixed full upon me. I gave a cry of surprise, threw up my arms to cover my face, and, rushing to my confidant, the Lascar, entreated him to prevent anyone from coming up to me. I heard her voice downstairs, but I knew that she could not ascend. Swiftly I threw off my clothes, pulled on those of a beggar, and put on my pigments and wig. Even a wife’s eyes could not pierce so complete a disguise. But then it occurred to me that there might be a search in the room, and that the clothes might betray me. I threw open the window, reopening by my violence a small cut which I had inflicted upon myself in the bedroom that morning. Then I seized my coat, which was weighted by the coppers which I had just transferred to it from the leather bag in which I carried my takings. I hurled it out of the window, and it disappeared into the Thames. The other clothes would have followed, but at that moment there was a rush of constables up the stair, and a few minutes after I found, rather, I confess, to my relief, that instead of being identified as Mr. Neville St. Clair, I was arrested as his murderer.

“I do not know that there is anything else for me to explain. I was determined to preserve my disguise as long as possible, and hence my preference for a dirty face. Knowing that my wife would be terribly anxious, I slipped off my ring and confided it to the Lascar at a moment when no constable was watching me, together with a hurried scrawl, telling her that she had no cause to fear.”

“That note only reached her yesterday,” said Holmes.

“Good God! What a week she must have spent!”

“The police have watched this Lascar,” said Inspector Bradstreet, “and I can quite understand that he might find it difficult to post a letter unobserved. Probably he handed it to some sailor customer of his, who forgot all about it for some days.”

“That was it,” said Holmes, nodding approvingly; “I have no doubt of it. But have you never been prosecuted for begging?”

“Many times; but what was a fine to me?”

“It must stop here, however,” said Bradstreet. “If the police are to hush this thing up, there must be no more of Hugh Boone.”

“I have sworn it by the most solemn oaths which a man can take.”

“In that case I think that it is probable that no further steps may be taken. But if you are found again, then all must come out. I am sure, Mr. Holmes, that we are very much indebted to you for having cleared the matter up. I wish I knew how you reach your results.”

“I reached this one,” said my friend, “by sitting upon five pillows and consuming an ounce of shag. I think, Watson, that if we drive to Baker Street we shall just be in time for breakfast.”

SMILE A WHILE

Beggar to Home Owner: “I beg of you, give me a coin, please, in name of God.”

Home Owner:”I am sorry, I got no change”

Beggar: “I have not eaten for days. Let me have a little bread”

Home owner: “I got no bread. Go next door.”

The Beggar persisted: “I am sick. I am burning with fever & head ache. You may have some pill.”

Home owner: “I got no pills. I am not medicine store.”

Beggar (not the one to accept, a no): “May be you can give some old clothes. It is cold, I am shivering.”

Home owner (not the one to melt): “Get the hell out of here-I got no clothes.”

Beggar (the type to have the last word): “You got nothing, like me, then come along with me-we will beg together!”

The post BEGGAR WITH A DIFFERENCE first appeared on Anand Bhushan.

The Brook is the story of a creek. It begins its journey high in the mountains and goes past valleys, farms encountering birds, fish, ferns, people on its way until it joins the river. Written in 1886, it is a gem of reading, beautiful and remarkable for its resonant words that conjure corresponding sounds and images to the mind.

I come from haunts of coot and hern,
   I make a sudden sally
And sparkle out among the fern,
   To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
   Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorpes, a little town,
   And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip’s farm I flow
   To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
   But I go on for ever.

I chatter over stony ways,
   In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
   I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret
   By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
   With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
   To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
   But I go on for ever.

I wind about, and in and out,
   With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
   And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake
   Upon me, as I travel
With many a silvery waterbreak
   Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow
   To join the brimming river
For men may come and men may go,
   But I go on for ever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
   I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
   That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
   Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
   Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars
   In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
   I loiter round my cresses;

And out again I curve and flow
   To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
   But I go on for ever.

ALFRED LORD TENNYSON

Tennyson was a British poet. He lived from 6th August, 1809 to 6th October, 1892. He wrote this poem in 1886. Picture above has been borrowed from The British Museum. The poem above, moving lightly, has an underlying sobering refrain of the transience of humans in contrast to the permanence of nature.

TENNYSON SAID:

ON PERSEVERANCE

To Strive, To Seek and not to Yield

ON NEW YEAR

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

ON BREAKING OUT

The Shell must break

Before the Bird can fly

ON LOVE

A man had given all other bliss,

And all his worldly worth for this

To waste his whole heart in one kiss

Upon her perfect lips.

ON BRAVERY

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die.

ON DISTRACTION

If you don’t concentrate on what you are doing

then

the thing that you are doing is not what you are thinking.

LOVE & ETERNITY

If I had a flower for every time I thought of you…

I could walk through my garden forever.

FOR THE INFORMATION SOCIETY

Knowledge comes but wisdom lingers

SMILE A WHILE

Question: Why was John Keats always hounded by creditors?
Answer: Because he Ode so much.

You might like to visit: http://www.allanwolf.com/poetry-jokes/ to which site, the above joke is ‘ode’.

The post MEN may COME, MEN may GO……………… first appeared on Anand Bhushan.

Perhaps due to genetics or may be due to the aforesaid, I have loved poetry and good reading. One of his favorites was Geetanjali by Rabindra Nath Tagore. I could follow short stories by Tagore-“The Home Coming”, for example. But I could not understand “Geetanjali”. I would interrupt the reading to ask him for an explanation. He would say: “The thought is too deep for you child. You will understand when you grow up. Just read on.”

SHARING WITH YOU

I have read and read on ever since. There were passages of Tagore which I read again and again, to get to and appreciate the beauty & depth of his thought & feeling. These are priceless gems on the shores of a fathomless ocean that is literature. I share those gems with you, here, to save you the time of searching in the myriad pebbles that clutter the shores.

GEETANJALI and OTHER VERSES

I have taken upon myself the job of adding a relevant picture to the poems. This is an on going process and I have just begun. My attempt is to use pictures from my own camera. But sometime I may have to beg, borrow or steal.

1……………….

TODAY the summer has come at my window with its sighs and murmurs; and the bees are plying their minstrelsy at the court of the flowering grove.

Away from the sight of thy face my heart knows neither rest nor respite and my work becomes an endless toil in a shore less sea of toil.

I ask for a moment’s indulgence to sit by thy side. The works that I have in hand I will finish afterward

2…………………

LET only that little be left of my where by I may name these my all

Let only that little be left of my will where by I may feel thee on every side, and come to thee in everything, and offer to thee my love every moment.

Let only that little be left of me where by I may never hide thee.

Let only that little of my fetters be left where by I am bound with thy will, and thy purpose is carried out in my life-and that is the fetter of thy love

3……………………..

WHERE the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free:

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestics walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection:

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit:

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action-

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

4……………………..

THIS is my prayer to thee, my lord-strike, strike at the root of penury in my heart.

Give me the strength lightly to bear my joys and sorrows.

Give me the strength to make my love fruithful in service.

Give me the strength never to disown the poor or bend my knees before insolent might.

Give me the strength to raise my mind high above daily trifles.

And give me the strength to surrender my strength to thy will with love.

5……………..

WHEN the heart is hard and parched up, come upon me, with a shower of mercy.

When grace is lost from life, come with a burst of song.

When tumultuous work raises its din on all sides shutting me out from beyond, come to me, my lord of silence, with thy peace and rest.

When my beggarly heart sits crouched, shut up in a corner, break open the door, my king and come with the ceremony of a king.

When desire blinds the mind with delusion and dust, O thou holy one, thou wakeful, come with thy light and thy thunder.

6………………….

TIME is endless in thy hands, my lord. There is none to count thy minutes.

Days and nights pass and ages bloom and fade like flowers. Thou knowest how to wait.

Thy centuries follow each other perfecting a small wild flower.

We have no time o lose, and having no time we must scramble for our chances. We are too poor to be late.

And thus it is that time goes by while I give it to every querulous man who claims it, and thine altar is empty of all offerings to the last.

At the end of the day I hasten in fear lest thy gate be shut: but I find that yet there is time.

7………………

IT is the pang of separation that spreads throughout the world and gives birth to shapes innumerable in the infinite sky.

It is this sorrow of separation that gazes in silence all night from star to star and becomes lyric among rustling leaves in rainy darkness of July.

It is this overspreading pain that deepens into loves and desire, into sufferings and joys in human homes: and this it is that ever melts and flows in songs through my poet’s heart.

8……………………..

I HAVE got my leave. Bid me farewell, my brothers! I how to you all and take my departure.

Here I give back the keys of my door-and I give up all claims to my house. I only ask for last kind words from you.

We were neighbors for long, but I received more than I could give. Now the day has dawned and the lamp that lit my dark corner is out. A summons has come and I am ready for my journey.

9…………………

AT this time of my parting, wish me good luck, my friends! The sky is flushed with the awn and my path lies beautiful.

Ask not what I have with me to take there. I start on my Journey with empty hands and expectant heart.

I shall put on my wedding garland. Mine is not the red-brown dress of the traveler, and though there are dangers on the way I have no fear in my mind.

The evening star will come out when my voyage is one and the plaintive notes of the twilight melodies be struck up from the King’s gateway.

10………………………….

 WHO are you, reader, reading my poems an hundred years hence?

I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds.

Open your doors and look abroad.

From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of an hundred years before.

In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across an hundred years?

11………………

NO it is not yours to open buds into blossoms.

Shake the bud, strike it; it is beyond your power to make it blossom.

Your touch soils it; you tear its petals to pieces and strew them in the dust.

But no colours appear, and no fragrance.

Ah! It is not for you to open the bud into a blossom.

He who can open the bud does it so simply.

He gives it a glance, and the life-sap stirs through its vein

12…………….

“WHO among you will take up the duty of feeding the hungry?” Lord Buddha asked his followers when famine raged at Shravasti.

Ratnakar, the banker, hung his head and said; “Much more is needed than all my wealth to feed the hungry.”

Jaysen, the chief of the King’s army, said, “I would gladly give my life’s blood, but there is not enough food in my house.”

Dharmapal, who owned broad acres of land, said with a sigh. “ The drought demon has sucked my fields dry. I know not how to pay King’s dues.”

Then rose Supriya, the mendicant’s daughter.

She bowed to all and meekly said, “I will feed the hungry.”

“How!” they cried in surprise. “How can you hope to fulfill that vow?”

“I am the poorest of you all.” Said Supriya, “that is my strength. I have my coffer and my store at each of your houses.”

13……………………

“SIRE,” announced the servant to the King, “the saint Narottam has never deigned to enter your royal temple.

“He is singing God’s praise under the trees by the open road. The temple is empty of worshippers.

“They flock round him like bees round the white lotus, leaving the golden jar of honey unheeded.”

The King, vexed at heart, went to the spot where Narottam sat on the grass.

He asked him, “Father, why leave my temple of the golden dome and sit on the dust outside to preach God’s love?”

“Because God is not there in your temple,” said Narottam.

The King frowned and said, “Do you know, twenty millions of gold went to the making of that marvel of art, and it was consecrated to God with costly rites?”

“Yes, I know it,” answered Narottam, “It was in that year when thousand of your people whose houses had been burned stood vainly asking for help at your door.

‘And God said, ‘The poor creature who can give no shelter to his brothers would build my house?’

“And that golden bubble is empty of all but hot vapour of pride.’

The King cried in anger,  “Leave my land.”

Calmly said the saint. “Yes, banish me where you have banished my God

14…………..

I KNOW that at the dim end of some day the sun will bid me its last farewell.

Shepherds will play their pipes beneath the banyan trees, and cattle graze on the slope by the river, while my days will pass into the dark.

This is my prayer, that I may know before I leave why the earth called me to her arms.

Why her night’s silence spoke to me of stars, and her daylight kissed my thoughts into flower.

Before I go may I linger over my last refrain, completing its music, may the lamp be lit to see your face and the wreath woven to crown you.

15……………………

LET me not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless in facing them.

Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain but for the heart to conquer it.

Let me not look for allies in life’s battle field but to my own strength.

Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved but hope for the patience to win my freedom.

Grant me that I may not be a coward, feeling your mercy in my success alone; but let me find the grasp of your hand in my failur

16……………..

THOSE who walk on the path of pride crushing the lowly life under their tread, covering the tender green of the earth with their footprints in blood:

Let them rejoice, and thank thee, Lord, for the day is theirs.

But I am thankful that my lot lies with the humble that suffer and bear the burden of power, and hide their faces and stifle their sobs in the dark.

For every throb of their pain has pulsed in the secret depth of thy night, and every insult has been gathered into thy great silence.

And the morrow is theirs.

O Sun, rise upon the bleeding hearts blossoming in flowers of the morning, and the torchlight revelry of pride shrunken to ashes.

17……………

LET thy play upon my voice and rest on my silence.

Let it pass through my heart into all my movements.

Let thy love like stars shine in the darkness of my sleep and dawn in my awakening.

Let it burn in the flame of my desires.

And flow in all currents of my own love.

Let me carry thy love in my life as a harp does its music, and give it back to thee at last with my lif

STRAY birds of summer come to my window to sing and fly away.

And yellow leaves of autumn, which have no sons, flutter and fall there with a sigh.

Now a short “break” about Tagore Centenary—poems continue thereafter.

TAGORE CENTENARY

Tagore’s 100th Birth Day was celebrated on May 7, 1961. Govt of India issued 2 postage stamps to commemorate the event. Picture of one of the two stamps has been reproduced below.

My friend, Murli, from IIT Kharagpur, is an avid stamp collector and he has been kind enough to contribute the picture above and below.

A FEW RANDOM COUPLETS

O TROUPE of little vagrants of the world, leave your footprints in my words.

* * * * *  * * * *

THE world puts off its mask of vastness to its lover.

It becomes small as one song, as one kiss of the eternal.

* * * * * * *  * *  *

IT is the tears of the earth that keep her smiles in bloom.

* * * * * * * * * *

THE mighty desert is burning for the love of a blade of grass that shakes her head and laughs and flies away.

* * * *  * * * *  * * *

HER wistful face haunts my dreams like the rain at night.

* * * *  * *  * * *  *

ONCE we dreamt that we were strangers.

We wake up to find that we were dear to each other.

* * * * *  * * * * *  *  *

LISTEN, my heart, to the whispers of the world with which it makes love to you.

* * * * * * * * * * *

THE mystery of creation is like the darkness of night-it is great. Delusions of knowledge are like the fog of the morning.

* * * * * * *  * *

DO not seat your love upon a precipice because it is high.

* * * * * * * *  * *

THESE little thoughts are the rustle of leaves; they have their whisper of joy in my mind.

* * * *  * * *  * * * *

I Cannot choose the best.

The best choose me.

* * * * * * * * * 

REST belongs to the work as the eyelids to the eyes.

* * * * * *  * * *

“MOON, for what do you wait?”

“To salute the sun for whom I must make way.”

* * * * * * * *

HIS own mornings are new surprises to God.

* * * * * * * * * *

Do not blame your food because you have no appetite.

* * * * * * * * * *

YOU smiled and talked to me of nothing and I felt that for this I had been waiting long.

* * * * * * * * * *

THE stars are not afraid to appear like fireflies.

* * * * * * * * * *

YOUR idol is shattered in the dust to prove that God’s dust is greater than your idol.

* * * * * * * * * *

WE come nearest to the great when we are great in humility.

* * * * * * * * * *

THE sparrow is sorry for the peacock at the burden of its tail.

* * * * * * * * * *

THANK the flame for its light, but do not for get the lamp holder standing in the shade with constancy of patience.

* * * * * * * * * *

GOD grows weary of great kingdoms, but never of little flowers.

* * * * * * * * * *

THE woodcutter’s axe begged for its handle from the tree. The tree gave it.

* * * * * * * * * *

YOUR voice, my friend, wanders in my heart, like the muffled sound of the sea among these listening pines.

* * * * * * * * * *

LET life be beautiful like summer flowers and death like autumn leaves.

* * * * * * * * * *

THE artist is the lover of Nature; therefore he is her slave and her master.

* * * * * * * * * *

HOW far are you from me, O Fruit?”

“I am hidden in your heart, O Flower,”

* * * * * * * * * *

YOU are the big drop of dew under the lotus leaf, I am the smaller one on its upper side,” said the dewdrop to the lake.

* * * * * * * * * *

THE scabbard is content to be dull when it protects the keenness of the sword.

* * * * * * * * * *

DEATH’S stamp gives value to the coin of life; making it possible to buy with life what is truly precious.

* * * * * * * * * *

THE cloud stood humbly in a corner of the sky.

The morning crowned it with splendour.

* * * * * * * * * *

THE dust receives insult and in return offers her flowers.

* * * * * * * * * *

ROOTS are the branches down in the earth.

Branches are roots in the air.

* * * * * * * * * *

DO not insult your friend by lending him merits from your own pocket.

* * * * * * * * * *

DREAM is a wife who must talk.

Sleep is a husband who silently suffers.

* * * * * * * * * *

“IN the moon thou sendest thy love letters to me, said the night to the sun.

“I leave my answers in tears upon the grass.”

* * * * * * * * * *

Now a short “break” about GEETANJALI manuscript having been lost. Couplets continue thereafter.

THE GEETANJALI MANUSCRIPT HAD BEEN LOST & FOUND!

Read about it:

On the 16th June 1912, Rabindranath Tagore reached London after a train journey from Dover. He had spent the three weeks of sailing from India to complete the last lot of his translations and was relieved that he had finally made it. In fact, he had been greatly disappointed in March of that year doctors did not permit him to travel to England, because his health was not good. This sadness was now finally overcome. Edward Thompson has written about  Tagore telling him how he had been compelled to leave Kolkata after March. He had to take rest — for this he chose picturesque Silaidaha on the mighty river, Padma in present-day Bangladesh. “I simply whiled away time”, said Tagore, “translating the Gitanjali songs. I felt sure my translations were only schoolboy exercises”.

As we know, it is these “school boy exercises” in translating his poems from Bengali to English that would soon confer on him the honour of being the first Asian, indeed the first ‘coloured man’, ever to win the coveted Nobel Prize. But very few people know that neither his award nor the Gitanjali would have seen the light of the day, had it not been for the honesty of the English people and the efficiency of the London Tube. His son, Rathindranath, has written that his father, his own wife Pratima and he were all extremely charmed at the “sight of the modern marvels of the Tube”. So engrossed were they in the delights that greeted them on their first experience of travelling by the ‘underground’ train from Charing Cross station, that they completely forgot to pick up their attaché case. It contained a lot of valuable papers and what is most important for us is that these included the manuscripts of the English translation of Tagore’s poems. These  would later be published as Gitanjali and the Gardener.  

It is only the next day when Rabindranath asked his son for the manuscripts just before they were to meet Rothenstein, that they realised that the leather case was missing! All three of them made a frenzied search of their luggage and belongings, but that briefcase was nowhere. Rathin Tagore was determined to call the police, but the poet pacified him, saying “please understand my condition.” His dream of presenting in English some of the finest poems of his life was gone for ever. As he sank into the couch in despair, it struck him that one last try could be made at the Left Luggage Office of the London Tube. 

Rathin was despatched and he described those fateful moments as how he “hastened to the office with my heart in my mouth”. One can understand full well the tension and the dread of what would have happened if someone else had picked up that attaché. What if had thrown out the papers to keep the bag for himself? After all, the Bengali handwriting would have appeared as gibberish to a Londoner. Rathin Tagore was, therefore, ecstatic to find that the railway authorities had not only found the much-used attaché, but had kept it safely. “One can imagine my relief”, he exclaimed, “when at last I discovered the lost property there”.

Not only was the family grateful, but we are all equally so. In fact the poet has written of this frightening incident, saying that “losing the Gitanjali script” remained a “constant nightmare” that never left him. (Based on narration by Jawhar Sirkar and given to me by Prabir Thakurta)

COUPLETS CONTINUED

NOT hammer-strokes, but dance of the water sings the pebbles into perfection.

* * * * * * * * * *

ASKS the Possible of the Impossible, ‘Where is your dwelling place?”

“In the dreams of the impotent,’ comes the answer.

* * * * * * * * * *

WOMEN, with the grace of your fingers you touched my things and order came out like music.

* * * * * * * * * *

ONE sad voice has its nest among the reuins of the years.

It sings to me in the night, – “I loved you.”

* * * * * * * * * *

“WHO is there to take up my duties?” asked the setting sun.

“I shall do what I can, my Master,” said the earthen lamp.

* * * * * * * * * *

“THE learned say that your lights will one day be no more,” said the firefly to the stars.

The stars made no answer.

* * * * * * * * * *

THE sunflower blushed to own the nameless flower as her kin.

The sun rose and smiled on it, saying, “Are you well, my darling?”

* * * * * * * * * *

THE water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark.

The small truth has words that are clear; the great truth has great silence.

* * * * * * * * * *

IT is the little things that I leave behind for my loved ones, – great things are for everyone.

* * * * * * * * * *

THE sunshine greets me with a smile.

The rain, his sad sister, talks to my heart.

* * * * * * * * * *

THEY hated and killed and men praised them.

But God in shame hastens to hide its memory under the green grass.

* * * * * * * * * *

THE bow whispers to the arrow before it speeds forth- “Your freedom is mine.”

* * * * * * * * * *

WOMEN, in your laughter you have the music of the fountain of life.

* * * * * * * * * *

A MIND all logic is like a knife all blade.

It makes the hand bleed that uses it.

* * * * * * * * * *

“I HAVE lost my dewdrop,” cries the flower to the morning sky that has lost all its stars.

* * * * * * * * * *

THE burning log bursts in flame and cries, – “This is my flower, my death.”

* * * * * * * * * *

“I CANNOT keep your waves,” says the bank to the river.

“Let me keep your footprints in my heart.”

* * * * * * * * * *

PRAISE shames me, for I secretly beg for it.

* * * * * * * * * *

LIFE has become richer by the love that has been lost.

* * * * * * * * * *

THE fountain of death makes the still water of life play.

* * * * * * * * * *

THE raindrop whispered to the jasmine,  “Keep me in your heart for ever.”

The jasmine sighed, “Alas,” and dropped to the ground.

* * * * * * * * * *

ROCKETS, your insult to the stars follows yourself back to the earth.

* * * * * * * * * *

THIS life is the crossing of a sea, where we meet in the same narrow ship.

In death we reach the shore and go to our different worlds.

* * * * * * * * * *

THE stream of truth flows through its channels of mistakes.

* * * * * * * * * *

MY heart is homesick to day for the one sweet hour across the sea of time.

* * * * * * * * * *

“ARE you too proud to kiss me?” the morning light asks the buttercup.

* * * * * * * * * *

MAN is worse than an animal when he is an animal.

* * * * * * * * * *

DARK clouds become heaven’s flowers when kissed by light.

* * * * * * * * * *

LET not the sword-blade mock its handle for being blunt.

* * * * * * * * * *

I DO not ask thee into the house.

Come into my infinite loneliness, my Lover.

* * * * * * * * * *

DEATH belongs to life as birth does.

The walk is in the raising of the foot as in the laying of it down.

* * * * * * * * * *

LET my thoughts come to you, when I am gone, like the afterglow of sunset at the margin of starry silence.

* * * * * * * * * *

THE lamp of meeting burns long; it goes out in a moment at the parting.

* * * * * * * * * *

WE live in this world when we love it.

* * * * * * * * * *

LET the dead have the immortality of flame, but the living the immortality of love.

* * * * * * * * * *

I HAVE seen thee as the half-awakened child sees his mother in the dusk of the dawn and then smiles and sleeps again.

* * * * * * * * * *

WHILE I was passing with the crowd in the road I saw thy smile from the balcony and I sang and forgot all noise.

* * * * * * * * * *

LOVE is life in its fullness like the cup with its wine.

* * * * * * * * * *

PUT out the lamp when thou wishest.

I shall know thy darkness and shall love it.

* * * * * * * * * *

CLOUDS come floating into my life from other days no longer to shed rain or usher storm but to give color to my sunset sky.

* * * * * * * * * *

THE storm of the last night has crowed this morning with golden peace.

* * * * * * * * * *

THAT love can ever lose is a fact that we cannot accept as truth.

* * * * * * * * * *

WHEN all the strings of my life will be tuned, my Master, then at every touch of thine will come out the music of love.

* * * * * * * * * *

MAN’s, history is waiting in patience for the triumph of the insulted man.

* * * * * * * * * *

A FEW SHORT POEMS/STORIES

I WAS walking along a path overgrown with grass; when suddenly I heard from some one behind, “See if you know me?”

I turned round and looked at her and said, “ I cannot remember your name.”

She said, “I am that first great Sorrow whom you met when you were young.”

Her eyes looked like a morning whose dew is still in the air.

I stood silent for some time till I said, “Have you lost all the great burden of your tears?”

She smiled and said nothing. I felt that her tears had time to learn the language of smiles.

“Once you said,” she whispered, “that you would cherish your grief for ever.”

I blushed and said,  “Yes, but years have passed and I forget.”

Then I took her hand in mine and said, “But you have changed.”

“What was sorrow once has now become peace,” she said.

* * * * * * * * * *

A PAINTER was selling pictures at the fair; followed by servants, there passed the son of a Minister who in youth had cheated this painter’s father so that he had died of a broken heart.

The boy lingered before the pictures and chose on for himself. The painter flung a cloth over it and said he would not sell it.

After this the boy pined heart-sick till his father come and offered a large price. But the painter kept the picture unsold on his shop wall and grimly sat before it, saying to himself. ‘This is my revenge.”

The sole form this painter’s worship took was to trace an image of his god every morning.

And now he felt these pictures grow daily more different from those he used to paint.

This troubled him, and he sought in vain for an explanation till one day he started up from work in horrow; the eyes of the god he had just dawn were those of the Minister, and so were the lips.

He tore up the picture, crying, “My revenge has returned on my head!”

* * * * * * * * * *

In the depths of the forest the ascetic practiced penance with fast-closed eyes; he intended to deserve Paradise.

But the girl who gathered twigs brought him fruits in her skirt, and water from the stream in cups made of leaves.

The days went on, and his penance grew harsher till the fruits remained untasted, the water untouched; and the girl who gathered twigs was sad.

The Lord of Paradise heard that a man had dared to aspire to be as the Gods. Time after time he had fought the Titans, who were his peers, and kept them out of his kingdom; yet he feared a man whose power was that of suffering.

But he knew the ways of mortals, and he planned a temperature to decoy this creature of dust away from his adventure.

A breath from Paradise kissed the limbs of the girl, who gathered twigs, and her youth ached with a sudden rapture of beauty, and her thoughts hummed like the bees of a rifled hive.

The time came when the ascetic should leave the forest for a mountain cave, to complete the rigour of his penance. 

When he opened his eyes in order to start on this journey, the girl appeared to him like a verse familiar, yet forgotten, and to which an added melody had made strange. The ascetic rose from his seat and told her that it was time he left the forest.

“But why rob me of my chance to serve you?” she asked with tears in her eyes.

He sat own again, thought for long, and remained on where he was.

That night remorse kept the girl awake. She began to dread her power and hate her triumph, yet her mind tossed on the waves of turbulent delight.

In the morning she came and saluted the ascetic and asked his blessing, saying she must leave him.

He gazed on her face in silence, then said, “Go, and may your wish be fulfilled.”

For years he sat alone till his penance was complete.

The Lord of the Immortals came down to tell him that he had won Paradise.

“I no longer need it,” said he.

The God asked him what greater reward he desired.

“I want the girl who gathers twigs.”

* * * * * * * * * *  *

  THE man had no useful work, only vagaries of various kinds.

Therefore it surprised him to find himself in Paradise after a life spent perfecting trifles.

Now the guide had taken him by mistake to the wrong Paradise –one meant only for good, busy souls.

In this Paradise, our man saunters along the road only to obstruee the rush of business.

He stands aside from the path and is warned that he tramples on sown seed. Pushed, he starts up; hustled, he moves on. 

A very busy girl comes to fetch water from the well. Her feet run on the pavement like rapid fingers over harp-strings. Hastily she ties a negligent knot with her hair, and loose locks on her forehead pray into the dark of her eyes.

The man says to her, “Would you lend me your pitcher?”

“My pitcher?” she asks, “to draw water?”

“No, to paint patterns on.”

“I have no time to waste,” the girl retorts in contempt.

Now a busy soul has no chance against one who is super emely idle.

Every day she meets him at the well, and every day he repeats the same request, till at last she yields.

Our man paints the pitcher with curious colours in a mysterious maze of lines.

The girl takes it up, turns it round and asks, “What does it mean?”

“It has no meaning,” he answers.

The girl carries the pitcher home. She holds it up in different lights and tries to con its mystery.

At night she leaves her bed, lights a lamp, and gazes at it from all points of view.

This is the first time she has met with something without meaning.

On the next day the man is again near the well.

The girl asks, “What do you want?”

“To do more work for you.”

“What work?” she enquiries.

“Allow me to weave coloured stands into a ribbon to bind your hair.”

“Is there any need?” she asks.

“None whatever,” he allows.

The ribbon is made, and thenceforward she spends a great deal of time over her hair.

The even stretch of well-employed time in that Paradise begins to show irregular dents.

The elders are troubled; they meet in council.

The guide confesses his blunder, saying that he has brought the wrong man to the wrong place.

The wrong man is called. His turban, flaming with colour, shows plainly how great that blunder has been.

The chief of the elders says, “You must go back to the earth.”

The man heaves a sign of relief: “I am ready.”

The girl with the ribbon round her hair chimes in: “I also!”

For the first time the chief of the elders is faced with a situation, which has no sense in it.

* * * * * * * * * *  *

FREEDOM from fear is the freedom I claim for you, my Motherland!-fear, the phantom demon, shaped by your own distorted dreams;

Freedom from the burden of ages, bending your head, breaking your back, blinding your eyes to the beckoning call of the future;

Freedom from shackles of slumber wherewith you fasten yourself to night’s stillness, mistrusting the star that speaks of truth’s adventurous path;

Freedom from the anarchy of a destiny, whose sails are weakly yielded to blind uncertain wind, and the helm to a hand ever rigid and old a Death;

Freedom from the insult of dwelling in a pupper’s world, where movements are started through brainless wires, repeated through mindless habits: where figures wait with patient obedience for a master of show to be stirred into a moment’s mimicry of life.

* * * * * * * * * *  *

NONE lives forever, brother, and nothing lasts for long. Keep that in mind and rejoice.

Our life is not the one old burden; our path is not the one long journey.

One sole poet has not to sing one aged song.

The flower fades and dies; but he who wears the flower has not to mourn for it for ever.

Brother, keep that in mind and rejoice.

There must come a full pause to weave perfection into music.

Life droops towards its sunset to be drowned in the golden shadows.

Love must be called from its play to drink sorrow and be borne to the heaven of tears.

Brother, keep that in mind and rejoice.

We hasten to gather our flowers lest they are plundered by the passing winds.

It quickens our blood and brightness our eyes to snatch kisses that would vanish if we delayed.

Our life is eager; our desires are keen, for time tolls the bell of parting.

Brother, keep that in mind and rejoice.

There is not time for us to clasp a thing crush it and fling it away to the dust.

The hours trip rapidly away, hiding their dreams in their skirts.

Our life is short; it yields but a few days for love.

Were it for work and drudgery it would be endlessly long.

Brother, keep that in mind and rejoice.

Beauty is sweet to us, because she dances to the same fleeting tune with our lives.

Knowledge is precious to us, because we shall never have time to complete it.

All is done and finished in the eternal Heaven.

But earth’s flowers of illusion are kept eternally fresh by death.

Brother, keep that in mind and rejoice.

PRINT VERSION

I had the above printed as a small booklet. Should any of you like to have the print version, he may message me with his email id or phone no.

AUDIO VERSION

We lived in Delhi. I left Delhi for 5 years to study Electronics & Communication Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. located in West Bengal, India. I had then made a audio cassette, of many, translated (into English) works of Tagore, so, my Dad could listen to it. It is a pity, it has since been lost and probably lying with a junk dealer, for recycling of the plastic. I hope I will be able to make another one, one of these days.

SMILE A WHILE

A sentence

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The post TAGORE SELECTIONS first appeared on Anand Bhushan.

Here is such a gem, shared with you-delve into its sensitivity of feeling-Published almost 35 years ago, it is a true story.

WOMAN IN BED No 10

by Sui Baier

MY TOES tingled. Nothing too alarming, but unusual. There was no time for concern that Monday morning. I had to get moving. I was in charge of the volunteer mothers at my daughter Elizabeth’s school, and this was my day on duty.

                         As my husband Bill shaved, I brushed my hair and slipped on my dressing gown before going down to get breakfast.

                        In the kitchen, I poured a glass of orange juice for Bill and one for myself. From the cupboard I took out bowls and a box of cereal. Then the bread went into the toaster. I reached for the first sip of juice, all in the easy rhythm of habit.

                       The orange juice burned my tongue-and my lips. How odd. The toast popped up and I buttered it. Again the rhythm took over as I carried the bowls, the cereal, the toast, the juice to the table. I took another drink. Again the burning sensation. It had to be my imagination; I had mixed it just last night.

                     I watched Bill as he drank his juice. “ Is it all right?” I asked. He glanced at me, puzzled, so I added, “It seemed to burn my tongue and lips.”

               “Mine’s okay,” he said. “It’s fine.” I tried the cereal. It tasted normal.

                          Bill left and I found myself wishing it weren’t Monday. Today especially, with the long weekend just finished, I wondered why I’d volunteered anyway.

                          It was 7.05. I gathered up our dishes, put them in the dishwasher and then ran upstairs to dress.

                        Houston’s morning air was balmy-it was December 1, 1980 -as I walked to the garage. When I put my foot on the car accelerator, the tingling was still there. I stopped for petrol and chatted with the attendant, but it was hard for me to concentrate. I nodded, rubbing my fingers absently, trying to stop the tingling I now felt in them too. And I wiggled my toes.

                             At the high school I walked down the hall towards the main office. The corridor seemed darker than usual, although the lights were all on. The hallway itself seemed longer.

                             I was relieved when I could finally sit down at the desk reserved for volunteers and search for my nametag in the file box. I struggled with the clip. Awkward gadget. It just didn’t want to go on right today. I glanced towards the window. It had started to rain. Suddenly I felt so tired, weak. Perhaps it was the weather – or the weekend was catching up with me.

                             The tingling in my toes and fingers had become more persistent. But there wasn’t time to dwell on such irritations. My job was to take all the incoming calls. The phone kept up steady ring-calls to transfer messages to note. Writing becomes increasingly difficult.

                             By ten o’ clock I could no longer ignore how I felt. A call came for one of the teachers who were on a free period in the common room. I trudged wearily down the hall to summon her. Then I found that I had to force my way back to the volunteer’s desk with real effort.

                             My mind raced for the name of a doctor. We didn’t have a family physician, just our pediatrician and my gynecologist. Today I needed some one else. I thought of Dr Lohmann *, my mother’s doctor whose clinic was near by. At least he knew me, having often seen me with Mother.

                            I rang Bill. “ I feel like something is wrong. I need to see a doctor.” Within minutes Bill drove up. He had phoned Dr Lohmann, who agreed to see me immediately.

                            Everything checked out normally. Dr Lohmann was puzzled. Then Bill mentioned that I’d had an intestinal virus the week before, and that gave the doctor a clue. Perhaps, he concluded, it was dehydration or an imbalance of electrolytes. He recommended rest and lots of liquid, “And if things aren’t better by Thursday, we’ll do some blood tests,”

                             My mother lived close by, so I went to her flat to spend the afternoon. I rested, just as the doctor ordered. Mother had been with us for part of the weekend. Our elder daughter, Katherine, away at Vanderbilt University for her first year of college, had been home for several days, and Mother wanted to hear about the rest of her visit.

                             That night Bill and Elizabeth prepared dinner. The evening passed quickly, normally. I had no difficulty negotiating the stairs; thought the bed was most welcome. I was sure I would wake up in the morning and be fine, all the tingling gone.

                             Bill’s alarm clock emitted its early morning call. Sleepily I shuffled to the bathroom for a drink of water. I stood there stunned, the glass in my hand, as the shock jolted me fully awake. I couldn’t swallow!

Nightmare World

BILL TOOK me directly to the hospital. Dr Lohmann had arranged for me to be admitted immediately. We gave the admissions clerk the customary information, and she handed me a form to above the paper, but I couldn’t write. What’s happening to my body?

                               Nurse and technicians came to my room. I was measured and weighed. Thermometers, blood pressure cuffs, syringes for blood. Dr Lohman arrived at eleven o’clock. He had been waiting for the lab reports, but they provided no clues. He was going to call in Dr Muenkel, he said, a top neurologist.

                                Throughout the day, the nurse tried to get me to eat and drink: jelly, ice cream, fruit juice, Nothing would go down. Dr Muenkel finally came at 7 p.m. Now, surely, we would get some answer. He checked my reflexes, which he said were good, and did some pinpricking without comment. “At this point,” he began, “I can only tell you it is probably one of three things: multiple sclerosis, myasthenia gravis, or Guillain Barre` syndrome,” He paused. “We’ll have to wait until we do a lumbar puncture tomorrow. Then we’ll know.”

                               As the doctor said goodnight, I repeated the names he had mentioned. All three sounded terrifying. The hospital room suddenly seemed cold and stark. I looked out into the night. Oh God, I want to go home! Bill held me, and we both fought back tears. “It’ll be all right; Sue,” he said. “I know it will.”

                                   At 10.30 the head nurse came in. Her words were measured. “I think. Mr. Baier, that we had better take your wife to the intensive care unit.”

                                  “Intensive-care!” I could hardly speak. “ No, I don’t need intensive care.” Terrified, I looked from the nurse to Bill for concurrence.

                                    I could hear the nurse speaking to Bill, but the words swirled incoherently. Bill came to my side and spoke gently. “I think you’d away better go, Sue.”

                                    ‘If I go, you can’t stay with me.”

                                     His voice was barely a whisper. “You have to, Sue. You haven’t been able to eat or drink all day. You must go so they can take care of you.’

                                     A huge hard mass formed in my stomach as we packed up my things. The nurse returned with a wheelchair. Then we were on our way through a blur of quiet corridors.

                                     Bill held open the door, and I looked around. There were a dozen or so beds in small, partitioned cubicles along the walls of a large room. Each cubicle opened into the main room, where the nursing station was located. Patients who were wired to all manner of machinery occupied most of the beds. The wheezing sounds of respirators filled the air. I prayed to be gone from this place. Instead, I was wheeled over to a bed with a number printed behind it on the wall. This was my welcome to Bed Number 10.

                        ‘I’ll be your nurse for the evening shift,’ a young man named Bruce said, as he helped me on to the bed. “You’ll have to wear a hospital gown in here. You can put it on now, if you don’t mind.” He walked out towards where Bill was waiting, and I could hear him say, “You can take home her pyjamas and everything else. All she’ll need here is her toothbrush.”

                         When Bruce returned, he reached for some kind of apparatus attached to a plastic tube. He told me to lie down and pushed the tube down my throat. I gagged and he pulled it out again. “I just want you to know what we’ll be doing when your condition gets worse,” he said.

                         This can’t really be happening I thought. This has to be a nightmare. Then Bruce told me to take of my rings.

                         “No, please,” I begged. “Not my wedding ring. I never take it off.”

                           “If has to come off,” he said flatly.

                           I fought tears as IU tugged at the engagement and wedding rings. My fingers were almost nonfunctional, but the anger made them work. I could not look at my husband when I handed him the rings. As Bill gathered up my pyjamas and dressing gown, Bruce gave him a paper bag to put them in and then asked him to leave.    

                           I was terrified. Bill was security. Everything else seemed so abrupt, so unreal. I clung to his hand. He kissed me. One last look and he was gone. Utter despair; total abandonment. Everything in the world was gone with him.

Nothing Moves!

THE NEXT morning the lumbar puncture was taken. Later a nurse inserted a catheter, and I was attached to an intravenous drip tube (IV), so that I could be fed.

                              Bill arrived at 11.30am. I tried to reach up to him, but I could not. The paralysis was growing steadily worse. I wanted to say “I love you” as he kissed me, but my lips would not move. Bill looked down and seemed to be studying his hands. “Dr Lohmann called me with the diagnosis. It’s Guillain Barre`, Sue.” His voice broke as he said my name.

                       “I don’t know much about the disease,” he went on. “They say it’s rare. Dr Lohmann has seen only one other case, and he said that one was quite mild. Yours may be more serious.’

                       A long, low, horrified “No-o-o” escaped my lips. “No! No! No!”

                       Bill clasped my hand, concern vivid on his face. “I stopped in to talk to the company nurse,” he said, speaking as reassuringly as possible. “She pulled out a medical book that had a paragraph on Guillain-Barre`.”

                        He reached for his note pad. “It’s an inflammation of the nerves, and usually follows some other infection like your intestinal virus. It causes paralysis, often starting in the legs and moving up rather quickly.”

                        By the rules of the intensive-care unit, visits could last only 15 minutes, three times a day. Already Bill’s visiting time was up. He kissed me good-by and told me he’d be back with Mother and Elizabeth at 5.30.

                          How, I wondered, would my mother and younger daughter deal with all this? Bill and I had already decided that we would not tell Katherine exactly how ill I was. At college for the first time, and one week away from her exams, this was one concern she didn’t need.

                           Right now, I didn’t want to alarm Mother or Elizabeth any more than necessary. I would try to be in good spirits for their visit, I told myself.

                           When Elizabeth walked into my room, she radiated confidence. Her smile was warm and genuine as she assured me that I would get well. But mother’s expression kept no secrets from me.

                           Always a woman of strength, she was at this moment over-whelmed with shock. She excused herself on the pretext of wanting Bill to be able to return to my bedside. I watched her shoulders heave with silent grief as she walked away.

                           Soon after the family left, two nurses arrived, pulling a trolley loaded with equipment. I was going to be hooked up to a respirator. They were placing a tube in my nose and down to my lungs to facilitate my breathing. It had come to this. I was too exhausted to care.

                          I awoke several hours later, terrified. My neck was limp and my head rolled to the said. There was a new noise-of course, the respirator. I tried my voice. No sound. My sense of panic intensified as I realized I couldn’t even call for help.

                          Suddenly Bill appeared at the foot of the bed. A nurse had phoned to tell him I was on a respirator. Was the tube uncomfortable, he wanted to know. I tried to respond, but my mouth would not move, except for a small twitch to on side. I could produce no movement of my head, hands or any other part of my body.

                          My eyes widened in frustration and terror, and Bill read the look. ‘You’re blinking your eyes. Can you blink just once if you’re able to control the movement of your eyelids?’

                         I forced my self to be calm. Then one slow, deliberate blink.

                         Bill smiled. “Good. Now your mouth seems to twitch to one side. Try to move it. And then blink once-yes-if you can control that too.’ With effort I moved my mouth. Then I blinked. “Great!” Bill said. ‘The mouth can indicate no, and a blink for yes. Now, Is the tube down your throat terribly uncomfortable?”

                      No, I signaled. Bill followed with a series of questions. We could communicate. But I had questions I could not ask. What if I lost control of my mouth, my eyelid? What else was going to stop working? Perhaps Bill could read those thoughts in my eyes, for he asked one more question. “Shall we pray together, Sue?”

                       My response was one blink.

                       Cupping his strong, comforting hand around my limp fingers, he bowed his head and prayed silently. For his brief moment, at least, I felt at peace.

Simple ABCs

THE NEXT morning I took inventory of every part of my body. Toes: nothing. Legs: no movement. No muscle tensing. My torso knew only the enforced breathing prompted by the respirator. No movement of my neck, or my mouth.

                         My mouth! I could no longer move my mouth. How would I communicate with Bill? My heart began to pound. At least it was till beating.

                         Bill arrived at 7.30. “Did you sleep well last night? Frantically I fluttered my eyelids. “No, Sue, one blink for yes; move your mouth for no.” Again I blinked repeatedly. He understood. “You can’t move your mouth, can you? Is that what you’ re trying to tell me?”

                         One firm closing and opening of the lids. Yes.

                         “Well, then how about one blink meaning yes, and two for no? Did you sleep well last night?”

                            I blinked once, paused an instant and then blinked again twice. Bill smiled. “Yes and no/” I responded with one blink.

                          The minutes passed quickly, and too soon Bill was telling me, ‘I’ll be back at 11.30.” When he returned as promised, he was rubbing his hands together in a way that told me he had hit upon a splendid idea.

                           “Your yes and no answers aren’t enough. You can’t tell me anything.” I did one very exaggerated blink. “All right, is there one word you’d like to tell me?’

                           Yes I had no problem choosing the word.

                           “All right. First letter-is it a consonant?” One blink.

                            “Is it a B?” Two blinks.

                             ‘Is it C?” Again two blinks.

                              On he went, until he got to H, where I respond with just one eye movement. The second letter, I indicated was not a consonant, so he began with the vowels until I responded affirmatively to O. Next we went back to consonants. Realizing how long it had taken to reach the first letter, he asked, . “Is it in the first half of the alphabet?” No, I blinked. He began with N and still had a long way to go before reaching T.

                            Bill was pleased. “Hot! You’re hot?”

                             Yes. Oh, how warm I was. The respirator spewed out a steady blast of hot air close to my bed.

                           Bill felt my forehead. “Why, you are hot.” He wiped my face and neck. “Would you like me to take blanket off?”

                              Oh, please. Yes.

                              Now I knew that I could cope. I could actually tell Bill what it was I needed.

                              I basked in that reality for only a few minutes after Bill left. Then my shift nurse came in to check my IV and turn me over. “Oh, Sue,” she said as she turned on the light. “You’re all uncovered. You must be chilled.” And she covered me snugly with the blanket.

                             Eventually I had an idea. Need chart, questions, I spelt to Bill a few days later. The idea clicked.

                                 ‘You want a chart with questions so the staff can find out what you need?” he asked.

                                  Yes. And one by one I indicated the questions he should incorporate. Hot? Cold? Radio on? Radio off? Back hurt? Turn? They all had to be questions with yes or no answer.

                                    The following day, Bill returned with my chart. He hung it on the wall behind my bed, under the number 10.

“Sue’s Stable”

IN THE early days of my hospitalization, a number of difficult procedures were performed. Often I avoided facing them by escaping into fantasies at out my past life, blotting out the doctors and nurses at my bedside….

                                   I’ve just graduated and am working in the accounting department of an oil company. I join the bowling league, and one Friday night we bowl against a team that has this fellow Bill Baier on it. He’s terrific. It’s obvious that he is showing off, but he’s nice-looking and I can’t help noticing him. The next day I look in the company records to find out something about Bill Baier….

                               “Tracheotomy,” they were saying to me, but I refused to listen. I felt a needle pierce my throat. Pain! Then numbness, Rough hands. I shut them out with closed eyelids and my fantasy. They cannot harm me if I’m not here. Dreams merge with reality. Then a faceless, white blur is shaking me. “Sue…. Sue.’

                                   They were giving me a nasogastric tube, a NG tube for short. A nurse, Phil had been instructed to insert the tube, which had to go up my nose, down my throat and into my stomach. The nurse tried and tried, but apparently couldn’t get it past a small growth in my nostril. I felt like a rag doll. It was a nightmare of agony, anger and fear. The nurse didn’t speak to me-didn’t tell me what he was trying to do or that he was sorry it was so difficult. I don’t think he even realized I was conscious. Finally, he gave up and a doctor came to do it.

                                       From then on I was fed supplements through the NG tube. I was also given regular intravenous feedings through the subclavian – a tube inserted in my shoulder, held in place by a couple of stitches, replacing the IV that was in my arm. I had been losing weight drastically and so they were forcing nourishment down as fast as possible.

                                          I now had a tube for everything. O counted them: the NG, the subclavian, the respirator, the catheter, and four sensors that plugged me into the nurse’s monitors.

                                          Each evening looked long and bleak after Bill left. So many hours it seemed, I was a silent object without awareness or needs.

                                    The problem became clearer to me over time. The intensive –care unit was not a place for long-term patients. The staff was trained for life-support care of the critically ill. They were neither equipped nor prepared to handle a long-term, totally helpless patient. I promised myself that if I ever got out of this, I’d do something for other people who found themselves in my predicament-helpless, unable to move. I would become a voice for those who couldn’t speak for themselves.

                                     The first time my respirator alarm sounded, I was terrified. I’d heard other monitors go off, but I wasn’t prepared for the proximity and loudness of my own. In the beginning, the alarms did bring immediate responses. But once the staff ‘knew” I was stabilized, they became more causal. Little things, such as a loose sensor on the subclavian, could trigger the alarm. Because of the difficulty of turning me, it was a constant problem to keep the sensors attached.

                                        One night when my alarm rang, Bruce was sitting at the desk studying. He glanced over at me with a why-are-you-bothering-me look, set down the book and came to check the machine. He found nothing wrong and reset it. Then it happened again.

                                          After several tries, Bruce said, “You’re fine. You’re just going to have to live with that.’ So the alarm screamed in my ear.

                                          After what seemed an eternity; a respiratory therapist came running into my cubicle. How long has this alarm been sounding? Why didn’t someone call me?” He was asking the wrong person.

                                       When I told Bill about the alarm and other examples of insensitivity, it was hard for him to understand. He had never been hospitalized. How could he appreciate that patients want to be turned when they are sore and tired not just when the clock or someone’s mood indicates it is time? They want to be looked at, talked to, seen as human being.

“Yes, Bill Knows”

 KATHERINE was home from college, and Bill was trying to prepare her for her first visit- for the tubes, the machinery, and the gauntness. But there was really no way to do so.

                                   She stood at my bed, almost frozen in place. She tried not to show her shock and disbelief. Dependable actress that she was, after barely a moment’s pause, she was smiling her impish grin, Learning to spell with me, “listening,” and answering with animation. Only months later would mother tell me that after Katherine left the hospital, she broke down and sobbed, “That can’t be my mother!”

                    One morning Bill stood quietly at the foot of the bed. There was a sparkle in his eyes. Slowly he raised his hand, and in it was a single Tiffany rose in a but vase. Tears filled my eyes, but inside I was a huge, beaming smile. 

                          After Bill and U were married, I began hinting that no one had ever given me roses. For years I kept after him, until finally I caught on that hinting to Bill Baier about something is the best way not to get it. He liked to surprise me. Finally, one Valentine’s Day, he gave me six rose. The blossoms are pale pink with a yellow centre, and the fragrance is magnificent.

                                                            I hoped the staff wouldn’t notice the rose cut from my garden at home. I was so afraid it would be taken away; there was a rule against having live plants in the ICU since they might carry contaminants.

                                   Happily, everyone seemed to overlook the single rose near my bed, and Bill continued to bring me a fresh one every few days until the season ended.

                                   Weeks later, while I was still confined to the ICU, my daughter Elizabeth confided in me: “So often at night, after we eat, Daddy goes up to his room-your room-and shuts himself off. Many times, I can hear him crying. I go to the door, wanting to go in, but I don’t know what to say to him-except that I know you’re going to get well. He knows that, too, doesn’t he, Mother?”

                      Yes Elizabeth, he knows. And it was his faith that kept me going.

A Christmas Gift

EARLY on Christmas Eve night, the three of them came-Bill, Elizabeth and Katherine-wearing their bravest smiles and carrying a tiny plastic Christmas tree, about 20 centimeters tall, bedecked with little bows.

                   It was so thoughtful of them, but so sad. The little plastic tree was almost too much for me to bear. I fought back tears and tried to show my gratitude with my eyes.

                      Bill and the girls were meeting friends for dinner at seven o’ clock, so their visit had to be brief. But I wanted them never to leave.

                      The night was bad. When turning me, a nurse new to my case repeatedly asked if I was all right. She couldn’t understand my response, and the harder she tried to position me comfortably, the worse it got. There was no way I would sleep this Christmas Eve. I just watched the clock and prayed for morning and the new shift.

                          Around 7am Bill, Mother, Elizabeth and Katherine paraded in. And what did I do? I immediately told them about my trouble. The brave, happy expressions drained from all four faces.

                          I hated what I’d done. Here they were, all wishing me Merry Christmas and trying so hard to be cheerful, and I had ruined everything.

                           When they returned in late morning, I was in better spirits, and there was a look of relief on their faces. Katherine and Elizabeth chattered away, telling me about their gifts. Bill was surely remembering, as I was, the early years when the girls rushed to tell us what the Santa had brought them.

                             Soon other visitors arrived, among them Paul, the priest who worked with the young people at our church. I was touched by the generosity of his visit on such a holiday. After initial pleasantries, his face became somber as he spoke of Nancy, a member of the church.

                              “Nancy is in intensive-care also, Sue. You might say a prayer for her. She’s had a heart attack. We don’t know if she’s going to make it.”

                               Nancy was a dear, thoughtful woman. I had just received a post card from her a few days ago. The reality of her illness brought me up short and made me realize I wasn’t the only person in the world in intensive care.

                               I began to spend more time looking about the unit at the other patients. I saw them being brought in from surgery or the emergency room. I wished I could let the solitary ones know that I was lending moral support to them. I knew now, having been tended by nurses helpful as well as indifferent how important caring and support can be. But I felt frustrated, unable to help anyone.

                                  Then I remembered Paul’s asking me to pray for Nancy. That was something I could do for her and for the patients here-pray for them! I wasn’t totally useless. I felt a bright, new sense of involvement, of worth.

Coming Back

AFTER only a week in the ICU, I started to receive visits from a man in a blue lab coat with perhaps the broadest, warmest smile I’d ever seen. He told me he was Charles, a physiotherapist, and from the first I trusted him. Twice daily he worked on my circulation, massaging my hands, fingers, arms, feet, toes and legs.

                                    Every day I took inventory of my body. I was convinced that if I thought hard enough about moving, I would be able to do it. After two weeks, a muscle above the front of my knee twitched. I believed I had made it happen! I was so excited. Usually, but not always doctors had assured Bill and me, Guillain-Barre` stabilizes after a while. Then the patient begins to return to normal. Was I beginning the long road back?

                                  I could hardly wait to show Bill. Leg, I spelt and I made the muscle twitch until he saw it.

                                “Hey, it does move!” he said. “Do it again.”

                                 But I found it hard to cope with my disappointment when days passed without further progress.

                                 I’d asked Bill repeatedly to find out something that would serve as a signal, or call button, for the nurses. Finally one noon he arrrived carrying a parcel-jingle bells!

                                 It was a 30-centimetre-long strap across my thigh, positioning it carefully.

                                 “Now, move that muscle.” I did. The strap fell off my leg and the bells jingled. A nurse passing by stopped to see what the sound was, and Bill was very pleased to explain to her and the others on the staff, that this would be my call bell. He showed them how to position it. 

                                 But even this ingenious device couldn’t allay my fears. One day I woke to find that a nurse had come by to adjust the respirator and had flipped the machine’s alarm system off so that it wouldn’t sound while she was working. She forgot to switch it back on!

                                  Fear churned in my stomach. What if the setting on the machine was incorrect? If anything went wrong, no one would know.

                                  I tried to look down to see if my lungs were expanding, but I was on my side and my gown was puffed away from my body. I had to be breathing, or I would pass out.

                                  I stared at the respirator. It sounded right. The same as it always did-but was it? My heart raced.

                                  When I caught movement in my peripheral vision, I tipped the sleigh bells. No one noticed. Now I had no away to signal. For over an hour, I waited in dread until, finally, someone came.

                                   I blinked alarm. Yes, the nurse understood. He flipped the switch back on and I began to cry. No one had told me the machine had a built-in back-up alarm. As he wiped away my tears, the nurse said, “I’ll be sure the staff watches this more closely, Sue.” But would they?

                                   By the end of December, a respiratory therapist noticed that I was showing some lungpower, but the slowness of other responses following my leg twitch had taught me that I couldn’t get too excited about one little sign. The next day the lungs did nothing on their own. A day or two later, though, they again showed some indication of being able to work. I allowed myself more optimism.

                                   On January 15 my head moved-not too much, but I could consciously move it.

                                   Bill had been doing research on Guillain-Barre` at a medical library. He explained to me how the disease attacks the coating of the peripheral nerves and then, occasionally, the nerves themselves, destroying them and causing paralysis.

                                   The nerve fibre grow back slowly-at the rate of about two-and-a-half centimetre height, it would take a long time for all the tissue to grow back. 

                                   As my lungs increased their ability to assist the respirator a little, the therapists began changing the setting of the machine for brief periods-to make my lungs work harder. The new setting was very frightening. The machine seemed to pause, trying to force me to breathe. If I didn’t breathe sufficiently for a certain number of seconds, which seemed an eternity, the machine would supply me with another few breaths and then pause again. It was exhausting to struggle with the irregular pattern of breathing, and coping with the fear left me drained.

                                   Gradually, every three or four days, the number of “breaths” per minute on the respiratory was decreased. Finally, late in January 1981, two of my favourite nurses, Harriet and Kay, changed the respirator setting so that I could breath without its assistance for a brief period.

                                   I couldn’t feel anything happening. “You’re doing fine, Sue. Think breathing,” Kay encouraged.

                                   “Look,” Harriet said, ‘she’s taking some.”

                                   A minute passed; a minute and a half.

                                   “Keep on, Sue. You’re breathing. Just try 30 seconds more.” They both cheered, and Kay reset the respirator to help me again.

                                   ”Two minutes,’ she said. “You did it!”

                                  Their excitement was infectious. I had taken a major step forward! That evening when Bill visited me, There were no complaints. Before he left, I spelt one word: hug. His eyes were moist as he reached carefully around all the tubes and sensors and held me close.

Up and Down-And Upstairs

I STARTED sitting in a wheelchair to build my strength. The first day I lasted 30 minutes.

                                  While sitting up, I finally could see my legs and arms. They were a ghastly sight. Charles estimated that I weighed 39 kilos. Bones protruded everywhere. They were a problem when I was lying down, but it was far worse when I was sitting, for my weight was concentrated on a small area. After just a few minutes in the chair, my hipbones jabbed painfully through the thin layer of skin. Nevertheless, my time in the wheelchair slowly increased, and by mid-February, I was at two and half-hours.

                                   The next step was to have the subclavian taken out. It had been my IV for two months. I felt enormous relief, not only to be rid of the tube, but also to be rid of the irritating sensor attachment that so often set off the monitor alarm.

                                  About two weeks later, another milestone: I realized I could swallow just a little bit. Several days later, while Elizabeth was visiting, Dr. Muenkel came in. The neurologist picked up my chart and studied it.

                                  “What has she been given to eat or drink since she began swallowing?” he asked.

                                  “Nothing, as far as I know,” replied the nurse.

                                  “Get her some ice chips.” The thought of ice chips was magnificent. Elizabeth watched the scene expectantly.

                                  The nurse brought a cup of crushed ice and held it out, uncertain what to do with it. Dr Muenkel took the cup from her, selected one small ice chip and positioned it on my tongue. It was cold, wet and fresh. After a moment of pleasure, I started thinking about my throat. A swallow is not something one can see. I concentrated, closing my eyes to avoid distraction. Then I felt muscles move ever so slightly, and the drop of melted ice slid down my throat. My eyes flew open in excitement.

                                  Dr Muenkel to the nurse. “Now give her a few chips every couple of hours-and anything else she feels she can manage.”

                                  I was delighted that Elizabeth could share the moment. So often she saw only the bad times, with any good news coming secondhand from Bill. “I can’t wait to tell Daddy,” she said, beaming.

                                  My times off the respirator, breathing with only supportive oxygen, were stretching out. Finally, on March 9, I was off the respirator from early morning until evening. The next day, I made a decision. I was going off the machine for good!

                                  Shallow though it was, my breathing never stopped that night. I could make it without the respirator! I could sleep and still breathe. Two days later, the respirator was removed from my cubicle. Now I was ready to get out of intensive care and into a regular room.

                                  Fatigue was becoming my enemy. I was exhausted all the time. I knew there was a problem, and Dr Lohmann ordered chest X-rays. I had pneumonia. I sank into despair when the respirator was rolled back into my cubicle-I had come so close to escaping from the ICU. “Just a little touch of staph,” I was told. “Nothing to worry about.”

                                 I hit bottom. Would there ever be an end to this? Would I ever get out of this mechanical horror?

                                  March wore to an end. Outside, spring was in full bloom. Slowly I was weaned from the respirator again. At last the day came. April 17. It was Moving Day! Upstairs to a regular room in intermediate care                                   Charles rolled me out of the door in a wheelchair

A Snug Universe

 “THIS is it, sue, Room 219.” As Charles turned the chair to face me into the room-my room-I saw Mother and Bill waiting. I nearly burst with happiness when I noticed the window next to the bed. Imagine my own window!

                                 That night Bill settled in to sleep on the cough in the room. For the first time in four and a half months, my little universe was quiet, snug and secure.

                                I was tended by my own private nurse – Elaine and Yvonne during the day, Marjean on the week-ends. Our daily routine developed quickly. At seven, when Elaine came on duty, we took care of my medications and breakfast. They still had to go down the tube. Then we went to physiotherapy.

                             After that came lunch , which took forever. Elaine gave me as much as possible from my tray, to force the mouth and throat muscles to work, but it was agonizingly slow. Then back to physiotherapy.

                           As parts of my body began to move, Charles gave me exercises to work on at night.

                           Except for two schedule turns, I usually slept through to morning. I could now lift one elbow a little, so engineer Bill had begun thinking up a new signal. His creation was a switch that attached to the bed’s guardrail near my elbow and was wired into the hospital call button.

                              With a tough of my elbow, the light went on in my room, outside the door and at the desk.

                              One day, despairing of my long and straggly hair, my morning nurse Elaine arranged to have it cut and styled. Charles even showed up to supervise. When the cut was finished, he announced, “Now you have to see how nice you look.”

                               Before I could protest, he turned the chair around and I gazed into a mirror for the first time in five months. My breath stopped. How thin I was! My face gaunt, pulled on one side by wasted muscles, distorted. The ugly NG tube hung out of my left nostril, down below my chain.

                               I tried to lift a hand, wanting to touch, my skin, but nothing moved. It didn’t matter: there was nothing left of the person I remembered.

“Hi, Bill”

 I SPENT two hours each morning and afternoon in physiotherapy. All muscle was gone, all of it. Charles and I had to work to rebuild every one, which meant getting the joints mobilized first.

                            After all these months of paralysis, most of my skeleton was rigid. Calcium deposits had formed in the joints, and they had to be broken loose for me to regain mobility. I would brace myself as Charles shoved against my shoulder. Finally, the arm would go flat. Breaking through each joint produced excruciating pain. Charles pushed my limbs until they wold move no further. Then pushed a little harder.

                                 I tried to keep my emotions in check. But a screaming pain continued tears flowed every day.

                   O_N M_AY 11, at the end of the afternoon therapy session, Charles pulled me up into a sitting position and set me alongside the table, so I could hang on to the edge and sit alone.

                               “Just one more thing, Sue,” he said His grin grew impish. “I think it’s time we stood you up.”

                                     The table was low enough for my feet to be flat on the floor. Charles put my hands on his shoulders and placed his large, strong hands on my side. “Hold me, Sue, and let’s pull.” I was excited, but not afraid. Slowly, steadily, he stood me up. It was astounding, thrilling. Tears came immediately to my eyes. But I also felt a smile pushing on my lips.

                                       It was only a minute or two before Charles eased me down again, but I had actually stood up for the first time! The therapy staff celebrated. There would be more celebrations: but in between there would be more days of frustration and pain.

                                      On May 12, the tracheotomy tube finally came out. As soon as the little hole in my throat closed up I would be able to talk.       

                                          When that day arrived: after all the months of being unable to speak, I couldn’t think of anything to say. I didn’t even know if my voice would work. Bill stood at the door, waiting.

                                              ‘Hi, Bill,” I finally managed, thrilled to death by the sound. The two of us just grinned and cried. When he was ready to leave, he leaned over to kiss me. “I love you,” I whispered, my heart brimming over.

                                             “Oh, Sue. I’ve been waiting so long to hear you say that.”

First Step

                                  CHARLES. Once my supporter, my friend, now became my taskmaster. One day, he helped me to my feet.

                                        “Okay, Sue, lift your foot and take a step,’ he ordered.

                                  I concentrated on every muscle and joint in my left/leg. Nothing wanted to move. Then, ever so slowly, the foot responded to my commands, It took a step!

                          “Now the other foot, Sue.” Again total concentration. I issued the message to my right foot.

                                   It shuffled only the slightest bit. But it was a step.

                                              “You did it, Sue, you did it!’ Charles said. ‘There are people in this hospital who said you’d never move again. But they were wrong. You’ve just walked!’

                                           Yet with every high, a low always followed. On July 15, after seven and a half months, I felt I was still helpless. In the ICU I had fought fear and anger. Now I battled depression – and the demoralizing pain of therapy.

                                             September came, and with it another milestone; I picked up a fork-with both hands- and put something into my mouth. Soon Marjean found a double-handled cup, and I began drinking unassisted. Then she padded my toothbrush handle so I could grasp it.

                                                Firsts came faster and faster. My first shower was heavenly, as was my first hamburger-a mess, but delicious. I now walked around my hospital floor. The exertion helped build my lungpower, and soon I could make the journey without stopping to rest.                                                    In October I got my first weekend pass-and then another and another. Finally Dr Lohmann decided I could be discharged, but I would require a nurse, five days a week, to handle my personal care and therapy, and to take me to the hospital regularly for physiotherapy. Learning this, Marjean announced that she would be my nurse. I was ready to go home permanently.

An Extraordinary Life

FRIDAY the 13^th of November was my lucky day. A huge, lovely cake arrived in my room at noon, and word spread throughout the hospital; after nearly a year, sue was leaving. Staff members swarmed in. I felt blessed and grateful.

                               It was strange as we drove down our street in the last glow of dusk. My first glimpse of home was breathtaking. Now at last I could begin rebuilding my life. This was a night for joy and thanksgiving.

                            S_EVEN years after leaving the hospital, I continue to surprise myself with my progress. Today I can use muscles that seemed useless even six weeks ago.

                         When I first arrived home, I was barely walking without crutches. I could not take care of my personal hygiene or dress myself. Like a small child, I was beginning everything anew.

                               The first Sunday I was home, we sent flowers-a token thank you-to our church family. On New Year’s Day, we slipped quietly into the last row of seats, just as the service began, so most of those gathered did not know I was there. When the service ended, the loving excitement of the entire congregation enveloped us. It was another emotional homecoming.

                            By May 1982 I Felt ready to resume control of my life. The time had come to go it alone, without a nurse. I could manoeuvre around the house quite well. And, thanks to Marjean’s training, I could handle much of my own personal care and simple household tasks.

         I still experience some problems with balance. I April 1983, I got over-zealous and stepped on to a kerb without anything to hang on to. Down I went, breaking my elbow. That injury set me back.

                     Even after five years, I could not get up on my knees from the floor and then stand without help. I can do it now, and my balance steadily improves. I can wiggle my toes, but they still do not curl under for balance. I wear simple, plastic leg braces when I’m out, but Charles has assured me that I’ll be able to throw them away as soon as I am able to life my toes and turn them under.

                             I ride an exercise bicycle a kilometer and a half every day. I spend at least 20 minutes on the floor, working my whole body. And often I swim for an hour every evening.

                     Occasionally I still feel sorry for myself for things I cannot do, but then I remember where I’ve come from. With the help of God, My family, my friends, and the support of an entire church congregation, I am leading a nearly normal life – an extraordinary life!

Did you like this article? Please share.

SMILE A WHILE

APPENDIX

The You Tube video below explains the basics of respiratory support using a ventilator.

The post STORY OF A PATIENT ON VENTILATOR first appeared on Anand Bhushan.

I wade a lot in the ocean that is reading and play with the pebbles on its shores . Sometimes, I find gems. Carried in the torrent that is today’s life, not everybody has the time to play with pebbles.  I share those gems with you, here, to save you the time of searching in the pebbles. These gems have many colors. These colors are sometimes of tears, sometimes awe, sometimes science, sometimes medicine, sometimes love, sometimes introspection, sometimes smiles, sometimes anything.

Here is such a gem, shared with you. It brings smiles.

One Giant Step Sideways

By Will Stanton

My Grandfather Willets had been dead for some time when America put a man on the moon. I remember thinking what a shame he had to miss it. Not that he would have cared about reaching the moon-but it beautifully   illustrated the central question of his life: if mankind is so good at doing hard stuff, how come it’s so bad at doing easy stuff?

He had this wonderful old car. Then the family somehow persuaded him to turn it in for a new one, all-automatic. In a way, the new car was a blessing, because it provided Grandpa with daily proof of his favourite theory: all changes are for the worse. The automatic windows began to stick after the second month. The ones on the old car worked perfectly after 20 years.

You stepped up into the old car with dignity and pride. You didn’t have to crouch down, crack your elbow and get your hat knocked off. The old car had high wheels with plenty of clearance-handy for taking a short cut across a meadow. With the new one, even a small boulder that the old car could have cleared like a gazelle was enough to tear out the whole exhaust system.

I spent quite a bit of time with Grandfather Willets when I was a boy, and there are those who say my somewhat sceptical and distrustful nature comes from that association. Nonsense. The old man simply happened to be right. From him I learnt:

1. The improved model is rarely as good as the thing improved.

2. For every person who does something right, there’s another person ready to talk him out of it.

3. Nothing is so simple it can’t be bungled.

Take the coaster-the kind you put a glass on. A perfectly good one can be made from a cardboard box by a first standard pupil. The improved one I’m talking about was a kind of plastic saucer with comical sayings on it. Someone gave us a set. It was a sultry afternoon and I was enjoying a tall, frosty drink on the porch. As the condensation trickled down the glass, it gradually filled the coaster. This caused the coaster to stick to the glass (unnoticed by me.) so when I tilted it up for the last swallow, the ice water in the coaster emptied into my lap. Some improvement !

I guess not many people would remember the old-fashioned toaster with the door on either side where you put the bread. Any time you wanted, you could open it and see how the toast was browning. Now our family has a modern, four slice pop-up, the kind cartoonists love to show hurling toast all over the kitchen. Ours is just the opposite. It gives up the toast grudgingly if at all.

Milk used to come in bottles. The cream was on top so you could pour it off and use it for coffee or strawberries. The milk was left for the children. The cream was loaded with calories and cholesterol, but we didn’t care; we thought stuff like that was good for you. Then they began to homogenize the milk, and the calories and cholesterol got mixed together for everybody equally, and not just the strawberry eaters.

Nowadays they put out the milk in cardboard cartons-the kind where you pull out the top to form a spout. In theory. Actually they have the cardboard glued together so the spout usually tears along the side. When you pick up a glass to pour your child some milk, most of it goes down your sleeve. One giant step sideways.

Not long ago Roy and Sammy got into a fight over the last jelly doughnut. I thought I’d give each one half and they‘d both be satisfied. Ha-ha. Sammy got the half with all the jelly in it, so I had to scoop out the other half and fill it with jelly from a jar.

And for a moment there, it seemed to me I could hear my Grandpa Willets:-

“What the devil is this?” he was demanding in his rasping, querulous voice. “They can put a man on the moon, but they can’t get the jelly in the middle of the doughnut!”

The post A Grand Father’s View first appeared on Anand Bhushan.

Here is such a gem, shared with you-delve into its depth of feeling.

What is a Father? Anyway?

By Erma Bombeck

A funny thing happened on the way to divorce. You know, the father who didn’t get custody and who wasn’t around too much anyway and what’s to miss?

The kids missed him. For what?

He didn’t breathe with his wife when the child was born. He was out in the lobby having a cigarette with a guy who sold real estate!

He never knew where the nappies were and when he burped the baby it felt like he had a brick in his hand. When the kids sat on the kerb and waited for him to come home from work, all he did was run his hand through their hair and say, “ How’ s it going, kid?” That was it

Whenever a child cried, you know what he did? He yelled to the mother, “Something’s wrong. He wants you.” He never realized the child wanted him.

Sometimes, he looked like he wanted to kiss the children, especially when they were hurt or at bedtime, but he hung back. Very often you felt he didn’t think he was important – just someone to wait until he got home so he could give the kids a firing.

As a mother, I wonder what is that magical elusive quality that children see in their fathers.

Is it the strength of the hands they trust never to drop them when they are thrown into the air?

Is it the calm he brings to a volcanic confrontation when he asks the children what they think before he makes a judgment?

Maybe they seed the fear that is deep inside that never surfaces or the tear that is there but never shed, or perhaps the love that is rarely accompanied by words.

I honestly don’t understand it.

As mothers we are taught that love and respect have to be earned. I know what fathers don’t do, but what is it they do to earn that respect and love?

Without ironing a shirt, baking a birthday cake or reading a story, they occupy a place at the summit of a child’s existence

Is it possible that children sense a unique human being who was there at the beginning and will remain until the end and will not be a mother – but will fulfill that rare role that is father?

I don’t understand it.

But the kids do.

A short history of Father’s day

Father’s Day falls on different days in different countries. In the United States it falls on the 3^rd Sunday of every June. The history of Father’s Day reaches back to 1910 and owes its birth to a lady- Mrs Sanora Dodd. She was one of 6 children who lost their mother early in life and were brought up by their Father alone. She was grateful to her father and wanted to have a day named after Fathers to honour fathers and thereby honour her father, in a unique way. A campaign was launched and in 1913 a bill was moved to have Father’s  day as an official day. The bill was rejected. Importance of father’s day was felt during and after the world wars when so many families were left fatherless. The great depression is also said to have contributed to enhanced appreciation of Father’s role and his needs-for example by buying him a necktie which he would not buy on his own-the way things were in the days of depression. Father’s day a was finally signed in as Father’s day by President Nixon.   

Greatest Sorrow on Earth

This is small anecdote from the Indian epic Mahabharta-The Pandavas were once, very thirsty during their exile to the forests. Searching for water, they chanced upon a fresh water lake owned by a Yaksha. The Yaksha would not let them have water unless the Pandavas correctly answered his 10 questions. The Pandavas-except Yudhishtra-the eldest- did not care and proceeded to take water without meeting the condition set by the owner of the lake and fell unconscious by the side of the lake. Yudhishtra acted with wisdom and answered all the questions of the Yaksha correctly. Pleased, the Yaksha revived all the Pandavas. One of the questions, the Yaksha asked, is relevant to the Father’s day.

He asked: “O Yudhishtra, tell me what is the greatest sorrow on earth?”

Yudhishtra answered: “O Yaksha, the greatest sorrow on earth is for a Father to have to light the funeral pyre of his son !”

Such is the relation of a Father to his offspring!

Smile a While

Mr A visited the home of Nasruddin, said to be Prussia’s Birbal, after several years. A brought along with him a fine duck as a gift for the host. The host loved it and was very happy. The duck was killed and Nasruddin’s wife made a delicious soup out of it. The soup was really tasty and A loved it and left after saying profuse thanks.

A couple of months passed and B visited Nasruddin. B said: “I am friend of A, who is a friend of yours and who had gifted a duck to you.” Remembering the duck gifted by A, and the liking of A for her cooking, Nasruddin’s wife bought a duck from the market and made soup of the duck again, which was enjoyed by everybody.

Another couple of months, C visited and by way of intro explained:“I am C-a friend of B who is a friend of A who is  friend of yours and who had come along with a fine duck. He had loved the soup made by your wife.” A duck was bought again, soup of which everybody enjoyed and C left after saying many thanks. After the guest left, Nasruddin’s wife, mentioned the price of the duck to her husband.

Nasruddin was not surprised when D visited him after another 3/4 months. D explained: “I am friend of C, who is friend of B, who is friend of A, who had visited you with the gift of a duck recently.” Nasruddin consulted his wife and she said: “Don’t you worry, Dear”

The guest was once again served ‘soup’, which was probably dish water. The guest had a spoonful and asked: “What kind of soup is this, my friend?!!” Nasruddin replied:

“This is the soup of the soup of the soup of the duck, which………..”

The post A Father missed first appeared on Anand Bhushan.

I am mostly about engineering education, a lot about nature conservation and a little about rural empowerment. Engineering education is incomplete without its laboratories. That is where I come in. Right from school time, I loved making things (& teaching). The former took me to doing engineering, which I did from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. I continued to complete M Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. I found plenty of time to spare from studies. I used the time to work part time in a company making oscilloscopes in Delhi, very near to IIT Delhi.  I worked here for about 3 months and that was enough to teach me entrepreneurship. My Dad, always supportive, gave me some money and got me a premises on rental and had a Bank account opened.

And there I was, making in India, right after M Tech, many years before “Make in India” caught on. No MBA done-no lessons for start ups taken.

I began making instruments and other things which I had seen in I.I.T. Labs. In making such products, my love for making things & and the love for education joined hands. My first product-(shown in the picture below), was an Analog Computer and my first customer was Punjab Engineering College in Chandigarh.

Subsequently, I made hundreds of things-Laser range finders, infrared imagers for defense labs, custom power supplies for our Space organization, Coding stuff for Signal Intelligence, instrumentation for earthquake monitoring and practically everything needed for Electronics Engg Education. This included Basic Electronics lab, Instrumentation lab, Control Systems lab, Microwave lab, Fibre Optics Lab, Communication lab, Radio & TV lab, Digital Lab and so on so forth. My stuff covered course from Vocational to Diploma to Post Graduate.  A Director General level officer once said behind my back-if you give him an order for a satellite, he will make it. He was perhaps being sarcastic, but I took it as a complement.  If there were an award for making the largest variety and types of products, I might get it. There are few educational institutions in India which do not have something or the other made by me. A lot of stuff was exported also after importance of education dawned upon Africa and Middle East and World Bank began to fund their Universities.

I like to flatter myself with the thought that I have the spirit that I.I.T.’s were established for and in practicing hard core engineering; I gave my heart & soul to it. I am happy about it.

Today, I continue to tinker & make things, and have no regrets except one: – A product we wholly made  decades ago in India, does not have even its packaging made here today. We go ga-ga over plants set by foreign multi nationals and even they don’t do the core stuff. I fail to comprehend why India could not become a manufacturer, a core engineering giant like China.

What happened? I wish somebody would post an answer.

And I am here to help you start up, help you tinker with things, mentor you if you enjoy transforming raw materials into finished products, help you educate the uneducated and attempt to infuse in you a love for the beauty that is nature.

MORE ABOUT THE PRODUCTS WE MADE will be found if you click on the picture below:

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