A Trip To SRJBTK*

 * Sri Ram Janm Bhoomi Teerth Kshetra

This week our son is visiting us.  Back in USA he had heard a lot about the Ram Temple and expressed a desire to visit it.  We cautioned him about the mammoth crowds visiting the shrine each day.  But his curiosity got the better of him.

We started looking for information that could help us during our visit.  We visited the website SRJBTKshetra.org.  The site is quite rudimentary and doesn't provide much help.  I found a recent post by a neighbor on FB telling us of her visit to the temple.  I called her up.  She gave practical tips and a good deal of information.  She also told us about the huge crowds but kept assuaging our anxiety by telling us that the arrangements were good enough and that though it is going to take time, it will be worthwhile.  One strange thing was that the rest break for the Lord was mentioned incorrectly on the website as 11:30 am to 2 pm, while it had been changed to 12:30 to 13:00.  The trust can do a good job by keeping its site up to date.

Another issue is that of Aarati passes mentioned on the website.  Though the site suggests that these passes are available online, the link doesn't work.  My neighbour told us that it has to be done at a camp in Ayodhya where the crowds are just as huge, if not more, as at the temple for regular darshan.  So there is little point in wasting time for a pass.

I knew that a lot of demolition, road widening and construction work was going on and so chose not to go through the city of Faizabad, now renamed Ayodhya and so merged with it.  Prior to this renaming Faizabad and Ayodhya were twin cities, separate from each other.  Since I spent my childhood in Faizabad, this causes much confusion to me.  So when the highway from Lucknow shows a signage saying distance to Ayodhya is in single digit, I often get misled into thinking that I have gone past Faizabad.  And it takes some processing to guess where exactly could I be.

So I reposed my trust in Google Maps and it led me to the multilevel parking in Ayodhya with just one human correction.  Google asked to take a turn, we checked with a group of people standing there and they advised us to go straight.  We followed their advice and found the parking a short distance away.  On our way back when we asked for directions to the parking, people kept asking us whether we want to go to the parking close to the river Saryu or the other one.  So, probably, Google Maps was trying to take us to the other one.  Though, I still don't know whether we were in one close to the river or the other.

There are, in fact, two multilevel parkings opposite to each other.  The guard let us in after confirming that a vacant slot was available.  We were told that AC buses were regularly plying between the parking building and the temple and we did see quite a few of them on the other side of the road.  However the buses seemed very crowded and we decided to take an autorickshaw.  The rickshaw wallah told us that he will take us to a point very close to the temple through the narrow lanes, and that we are not allowed to go up to that point through the main road.  He asked for ₹500 and we bargained it down to ₹300, though my younger sister had availed the service a few days earlier for ₹250.  True to his word he took us through a labyrinth of narrow lanes and to a point where we were supposed to enter the temple premises.

It doesn't take much time to realise that the construction is not complete yet, not even half-way through.  The walkways are not yet constructed and carpets have been laid on bare and uneven earth for moving from point to point.  There is a locker facility for depositing your phones and bags.  Phones are not allowed and there is an announcement repeatedly that phones will be confiscated.  Though we found people using phones for selfies and photos beyond that point and around the temple block and no one seemed to be eager to confiscate the phone.

Next is facility for depositing your footwear.  It may be noted that socks need not be removed.  Then the march towards the temple begins.  We came to a tree with a platform around it on which a huge agarbatti (incense stick) was burning.  At this point the female and male visitors are segregated with woman on the right and men moving to the left of the tree.  This is done for frisking purposes.  Booths for ladies are on the right and those for the men on the left.

At the booth entrance on the top are two signs - a hand and a circle.  I saw people hitting the hand sign and thought that probably it was meant to keep count.  However later I heard an announcement asking people not to touch it.  I hope I heard the announcement correctly and am trying to figure out the reason for the display.  The screening is very perfunctory.

The problem arises after crossing the frisking booths as families try to reunite.  It seems that the queue at the frsiking booths moves faster in the female lanes than the other ones.  We were separated ourselves and spent a long anxious time looking for my wife and sister.  Then it occurred to us that while we had left all our phones etc in the car, one phone had stayed with us in the sling bag worn by my wife.  We thought that they might have been sent back because of that.  We approached a security person in military fatigues who was kind enough to lend his phone to us.  We called the number with the ladies several times but kept getting a busy tone.  We later found out that they had gone ahead of us and were sitting on the stairs of the temple at the exit.  We suspect that a jammer may be installed to cover the main temple and a small periphery.  We thanked the guard, who expressed concern about the ladies and said, "You see, I live close by.  Yet, because of this maddening crowd, I am yet to bring my own family for Darshan!'

The crowd had been huge and there was too much pushing and jostling right up to the booths.  Not finding the ladies we became very anxious and worried if they had suffered a fall, not a remote possibiliity at all.  We next approached a lady in fatigues and enquired if there was an announcement booth.  She took us next to the booths where a microphone was being used by a person with another person waiting, it finally came to us.  We made announcement several times but to no avail.  One reason being that it is not possible for the other person to respond and coming to an indicated point not easy either.  We wondered why each visitor had to make his own announcement but then realised that this was the only option because of the nature of the crowd;  there were people from every corner of the country and the number of languages and dialects spoken was too large to be handled by one or two announcers.  This was an issue in crowd management too.

In the light of this experience, and we were not the only ones undergoing this, I would suggest the following to the authorities there -

• Please allow visitors to carry their phones to avoid such incidents.  Quite a few people are flouting this meaningless requirement and only the rule sticklers suffer.
• Advise visitors through displays and announcements for gents and ladies to wait for each other immediately beyond the booths and to proceed only after they are together.
• Display signages showing directions and what is coming up next.  There is a total lack of these.  This makes the visitor feel lost.  It will be good if each visitor is given a map of the premises. 

Having failed to contact the ladies, we decided to have a Darshan and then resume our search hoping for best all that time.  Beyond the booths six queues are formed for going to the temple without the gender segregation.  It is a rather long walk, 100 meters or more.  The barricades separating the lanes are metal ones lined up one after the other and there is a risk of your finger getting caught in the gaps between two.  There are constrictions in between.  These are very dangerous with the operation of the Bernoulli Principle that subjects those in the constricted area to lot of push and sway and poses a danger of barricades and people toppling over.  It did happen immediately before the steps going up to the main temple.  The barricade fell down and I was saved from a similar fate by my son.  As people sense coming close to the temple building, the shouting of Jai Sri Ram gets louder.  One young chap chanted the phrase so loud and so close to my right ear that it kept ringing for quite some time after that.  We were all tightly packed in each lane almost like a simgle mass that had a life of its own and kept swaying and moving.  I felt an apprehension several times that there might be a stampede or the jostling may lead to a domino effect.  Thankfully it didn't happen.

As you climb up to the floor of the temple,  you notice the intricate carvings on the pillars and the ceiling.  The stone used is neither red nor yellow but cream or off-white in colour.  At present it looks rather monotonous.  It also struck me that the temple is not as huge as I had imagined it to be.  The idol looks small, more so because you are not allowed to go close to it.  Also because of the heavy crowd you hardly get a few seconds to focus on the idol.  Just a few seconds after hours of jostling.

We were so exhausted that I forgot to look for a portion of the floor that looks very realistically like water, as told by my neighbour. As you climb downstairs and head towards the exit, you reach the locker counters on the opposite side, i.e., opposite to where items were accepted.  Same is the case with footwear.  Then you walk down and reach the main street where you see the buses and huge crowds.  As the buses were too crowded we enquired with a policeman where we could get an auto for going to the parking.  It seems most of the police people were from outside Ayodhya and not too familiar with the geography.  Same was the case with various security guards deployed along the path on the exit.

Finally we figured things out and walked a little distance towards traffic signal where we saw autos on a side road.  We also figured out that the tempo ride in the morning had saved us a walk of probably 1/2 a kilometers, the distance from the auto stand to where I think the entry point was.  The exit was another arm of the rectangle.

I feel that till the crowds have thinned out a bit or better facilities like golf carts become available, it is not safe for very elderly people to visit the temple.  I was told by my neighbour that wheel chairs were available.  But we didn't see any during our trip.  All we saw were two office chairs with wheels which were being carried by two people and I don't think it could serve that purpose.

The Ayodhya that I saw (from the parking to the temple) is very different from the congested areas and narrow lanes that I remember from my childhood.  That area has a very nice look now.

Persistent Nausea

What causes nausea?  I am aware of two reasons.  You may have eaten something that had its inedibility masked by strong flavours or there is a mismatch between sensory input from two of more organs - as happens in seasickness.

I feel quite nauseous these days, do you too?  What may be the reason?

For sure there is a terrible mismatch between the gloomy signals that we get from managing our own budgets and affairs, and the incessant chatter of relentless progress, investment pouring in, the globe fawning to us and a certain face staring at you from all the directions seeking your acquiescence, and whose intent gaze you cannot avoid at any place or time.  There is absolutely nothing that confirms your feeling of gloom except what you feel in your guts.  Any voices that once provided a confirmation have gradually been muffled into total silence.  Is it this terrible and stark mismatch that make you and me nauseous?

Or is it something that we have eaten? A forbidden fruit, lured by painstakingly applied colour and fragrance to mask its real ones that could have warned us?  And having ingested it we are not unable to get it out of our system, and hence the persistent nausea.

Think hard and find a cure lest this permanent nausea should kill you by making it impossible for you to ingest anything healthy that is good for you.

Organ Donation

 Being advanced in age, I often think of organ donation as an act of compassion. However what deters me is the thought that it might go to a corrupt and powerful person who can easily pull strings in a system that isn't exactly known for its uprightness, instead of to a more deserving recipient. This will be an unethical act and I wouldn't want to be a party to it.

In my opinion, a person who wants to pledge organ donation in his lifetime should be allowed to specify eligibility criteria for the ultimate recipient. Such an instrument should be legally binding on the deceased's legal heirs too. That will rule out any chance of influence or money entering the picture.

As the time available for selecting a recipient is short in case of cadaver donation, a prospective donor should be encouraged to give multiple criterion and also a negative list if he wishes to. For example, if I were to opt for donation, I wouldn't want my organs to go to a politician wielding power unless I have explicitly named him in my criteria list.

In case a person dies intestate in this matter, the right to choose a recipient must remain with his legal heirs.  It cannot be given to a system known for its callousness. If money or influence has to enter the picture, let the benefit go to the heirs rather than a corrupt official.

A Piece Of Good News Amongst A Storm Of The Bad.

My sister-in-law's son-in-law, we call him Ashu, has made a full recovery from the dreaded Covid.  A CT scan had shown him with a count of 20, a cause for immense worry.  Ashu lives in N Delhi and works in the Medical Equipments industry.  He is an energetic young man with an entrepreneurial bent of mind.  He had set up his own business from a scratch and had received an award for entrepreneurship from the Times of India.  The business, unfortunately, died down in the aftermath of demonetisation and GST, and he was forced to take up a job once again.  Currently he is the sole breadwinner in the family and supporting his mother-in-law and father-in-law too.  And so there was a palpable gloom in the family that deepened as his scan revealed less than hopeful prognosis.

Ashu has shared with me his treatment regimen, which I feel compelled to share with everyone.  Of course I have no medical qualification to recommend it to others but am still sharing it in the hope that this may form a starting point when a Covid patient or a caregiver discusses a line of treatment with a qualified doctor.

His successful treatment is based on a regimen recommended by some doctors and shared on Facebook.  I am providing a link to one of these videos at the end of this post.

These doctors ask to mark the day of start of symptoms including fever as day one.  In most cases, the fever should go away on day 6th necessitating no further treatment.  However if the fever persists or worsens, they recommend a heavy dose of methylprednisolone - 40  mg twice a day for five days, an anticoagulant, such as Apixaban 5mg, to be taken once a day, and nebulisation with Formoterol Fumarate and Budesonide mixture TDS and SOS.

Initially Ashu was given steriod but in a very low dose of 4 and 2 mg.  When he went to another doctor who subscribed to the regimen mentioned above, he increased the dose to the level recommended in the videos.  It is now three days after Ashu went off the medication and he is feeling absolutely fit and fine.  He maintains that with all his problems in breathing, had he gone to a hospital to be put on oxygen, the result would not have been a happy one.  He also practised proning and steam inhalation to relieve the symptoms.

It is important to add that Ashu doesn't have any history of diabetes and hence this line of treatment did not present any complications for him.  However, as steroids are known to raise sugar levels, diabetics must mention the fact to their doctor and must abide by their advice.

Ashu also tells me that doctors normally use the tradename Medrol for the steroid and because of this the drug has disappeared and is available in the black market at 100 times the printed price!  Though the same drug from different companies and with different tradenames is available at the normal rate but doctors and pharmacists are failing to suitably advise the patients in the matter.  In case the drug is not available in the required strength, multiple tablets with lower strength can be taken to make up the dose.

I must emphasize that I have no medical qualifications and have narrated this case merely for information of my readers.  They must not follow this line of treatment without consulting a qualified doctor after disclosing all their existing ailments to him.  It can be fatal for diabetics to go for it without the recommendation and supervision of a doctor.

Here is the link to one of the videos that I had mentioned.

Yet Another Obituary!

 Yesterday, the day started out well and the pal of monotony was broken by messages from some old and dear friends. Two of them called too and we had longish voice chats that cheered me up and, hopefully, the other side too.  However as my wife and I were going to call it a day after dinner, the bolt from the blue came.  My cousin called and enquired if I had received the bad news.  When I replied in the negative, he broke the news of the death of a nephew, my elder sister's eldest son, at the hands of the dreaded virus.

It is the kind of news that makes one go numb both in the limbs and the mind. Everything is frozen to a standstill in that moment.  Then, gradually, a door opens in the mind letting in a swarm of memories, like furious bees, and the mind flails around, stung by them, till it drops down in sheer exhaustion.  The cycle repeats itself, mercifully in diminishing intensity and finally it all dies down and sheer stupor prevais.

An analogy arises in the mind.  I am at the head of a queue for check-out and someone far behind me loses his patience at my slowness in proceeding and jumps the queue.  It leaves me with the feeling that I used to get in my younger days when I had a recurrent nightmare which will leave me paralyzed and unable to breathe and just as I got to the verge of desperation, I would wake up perspiring with a jolt and a sharp breath. I despair at the curse of having to watch someone to go, when it should have been the other way round.

There was a long age gap between my elder sister and me.  My nephew, his pet name was Guddu, was born in my parents' home when I was in the tenth standard and about 13 years of age.  I vividly recall my brother-in-law visiting us and beaming with pleasure as he held Guddu.  Guddu had inherited the firmness and some of the strictness of his father and in him I saw an image of my brother-in-law.  Both my elder sister and the brother-in-law had passed away a few years ago.

Guddu was being attended upon in the hospital by his wonderful son, an MBBS, who insisted upon remaining in the hospital clad with an PPE all the time!  And though the exhaustion and utter lack of sleep were getting to him, he sounded happy at his dad's improvement only a couple of days ago.  And then everything fell apart.

Guddu is survived by his son, wife and two daughters.  My heart bleeds as I pray for them to be given the strength to bear this terrible loss.  Dear Guddu, may you find peace and love as you are united with your parents. Hari Om Tatsat.

Two Obituaries

Six is a small number, and thus the rule of six degrees of separation  suggests that no one is too far removed from another person in this world. Yet, when Covid struck last year we knew few victims that were separated from us by two or three degrees or less.

This year it has menacingly closed in on us.  It has struck some near and dear ones, and some fatally too.

On 16th I lost my Bhabhi, elder cousin's wife, to this terrible contagion.  Both Bhaiya and Bhabhi had taken their first dose of Covishield and were staying confined to home.  They had fever a few days later but tested -ve for Covid.  Even as the fever was subsiding a little, their oxygen level dipped a little and then some more.  It took major efforts by her daughter and son-in-law, both doctors, to find them beds with oxygen in a Covid facility.  Despite all these valiant efforts and the best medical care, Bhabhi succumbed to the disease.

Bhabhi's son, my nephew, working with Intel in Bangalore, had flown down to Lucknow soon after getting the news of their affliction.  He is deeply attached to his mother and it is difficult to fathom the shock that he experienced.

Added to this loss was the inability to conduct a normal dignified funeral because of the regulations and crowded cremation facilities.  No family member could be in attendance at the funeral except her son and son-in-law.  The subsequent rituals were also shortened to a Shanti Path at an Arya Samaj facility.

Bhabhi was a simple woman of my generation, always smiling and caring.  She loved light reading and afternoon siestas.  She was rooted in tradition, always dressed in a saree, and never took to the salwar suit that other ladies in the family had adopted.  She was very fond of Dahi and sometimes we joked that it was because she hailed from the village Chakdahi.  It is so difficult to believe that this dreaded disease snatched her away from us in one fell swoop!

She will be fondly remembered and missed, always.

_______________________________________________________________________

Two weeks have passed since we lost Bhabhi, while Bhaiya remained hospitalised.  Extreme care was taken not to break the news to him and fend off his queries about her with concocted responses.

His condition kept fluctuating and he had to be shifted to the Ram Manohar Lohia hospital four days ago as the facilities at Vivekanand Hospital came under pressure because of large addition of Covid patients.  He succumbed today.

Even as the memories of our shared childhood in the joint family of my father and his brother keep flooding my mind, the cruel fact of his death at the hands of this dreaded disease keeps jolting me into this dreadful present.

We studied at the same Government school in Faizabad.  He was a bit of a star there as he was a good cricketer and had played at the district level.  However our middle class compulsions to focus on studies to the exclusion of everything else, weaned him away from cricket.  He had an athletic build and was the tallest person in the family and stopped just shy of six feet.  I am sure that had he followed his interest, he would have gone a long way.

We were all science students, and I vividly remember an incident when he happened to bring a small chunk of sodium and put it in water as I watched from the side.  It erupted and some debris reached his eyes.  Fortunately it didn't cause any damage.

He started his career in the Intelligence Bureau and later, like many others in government jobs, moved to Central Bank of India as a Vigilance Officer.  He was an absolutely upright and straightforward person.  After retirement sometimes he used to share with us his encounters with top management and union leaders.  He never yielded to pressures and was both respected and feared.

Like my father and chacha, Bhaiya too lived in a joint family with his elder brother.  The eldest one, Bade Bhaiya, had passed away four years ago after fighting a resurgent metastasised cancer.  He had been a bit lonely since then.  He also developed a severe problem in his knees which kept worsening as he kept delaying the knee replacement.  This made him sedentary and his fitness level had dropped too.

He had planned and managed a tour for the whole family in March 2020 to Dudhwa National Park.  The entire family had a good time and enjoyed the trip.  No more than a month ago, we were planning a trip to some place in MP.   As we struggle to come to terms with his death, I recall this memory and it fills me with a sense of disbelief.

It is a deep shock for me, and I can only imagine the pain that my nephew and niece must be experiencing having lost both parents in a fortnight!  We are dumbfounded at two from our immediate family being cruelly snatched away by a disease that we had been mocking only a month ago and believed that it had gone away!  My niece and her husband, both doctors, did their absolute best to get him all medical facilities that he needed.  But doctors can only fight illness, not death.  We owe a deep debt of gratitude to Dr Virendra Sharma, my niece's husband.

Do say a prayer for the departed souls and also a prayer for us whom this bereavement has left heartbroken.

Born As A Diaper

At times I feel that we are all born as diapers.  I do not use that word in any derogatory sense but because of the properties that make a diaper useful, properties that a sponge or plain cotton wool obviously don't have.

A lot comes our way after we are born, in the form of language, culture, traditions et al.  If we were like a sponge or cotton wool, we could easily wring out whatever we didn't want after we grew up.  But being like a diaper, we internalise and solidify it; it becomes an inalienable part of us.

Not only this, we human diapers have an additional property.  Those with the same absorbed contents tend to stick together while showing no such affinity to other diapers with different absorbed contents.  This is a feature that the inanimate diapers don't have.

There are those, both amongst scientists and artists, who feel a sense of deep alienation because they somehow have been able to rid themselves, in varying degrees, of the absorbed contents and hence the ability to stick to others too.  This could be viewed as a defect or an evolution depending on one's inclinations.

Do you think it would be better if we were born like cotton wool, with an ability to wring out the bulk and hopefully the spots too?  Only then we could come somewhat close to saying with Kabir, "Daas Kabir jatan se odhi, jyon ki tyon dhar deeni chadariya."