Mini-meals from the pages of The Hindu

Mini-meals from the Pages of The Hindu

Long ago I had titled a post of mine as a smorgasbord. That was a mistake, as many readers may have been put off, either because they did not understand what was on offer, or, if they had understood, because they decided that whatever was on offer would smell as rotten as a smorgasbord offered at cheap eateries; not quite greasy spoons but marginally better.

Today I am calling what is available in Tamil Nadu during lunch hours, like at A2B. A full meal is served in a circular plate, ringed by katories (a Hindi word). The icture shown below maynot be from A2B.

 

containing a number of side dishes (sambhar, rasam and curd are given in these katories, with the former two unlimited and the last one limited, but at extra cost you can help yourself to one more) and a few condiments. No, I am not offering that. A mini-meal, on the other hand, consists of one type of rice (limited amount), a couple of vegetables (dry and with gravy), and a sweet. This is what is on offer today.

I have taken two items from today’s The Hindu (2025-07-29), one an editorial piece and the other, an opinion on the Editorial page. The editorial is entitled, “Culture of risk” and I will offer my comments on that first.

I do not know whether editorials carried a strap line, but this one did: The notion of a routinely planned mass gathering should be done away with. The use of this general term “mass gathering”, which include celebrations of a victorious local sports team, a rock concert, and, of course, pilgrimages on special days, or during special periods (the recently concluded Maha Kumbh Mela comes to mind), is to side-swipe any criticism from thereligious band. This is done more explicitly further down in the piece. The slant against religious “mass gathering” becomes clear towards the end of the editorial, “...annual drills under the Management Disaster Act are rarely held for regular worship (hero worship is not included here!), while funds earmarked for permanent infrastructure are often directed to festivals.” This carries clear message that income/outgo numbers trump devotees’ safety! 

I appreciated that. Put the blame where it belongs, specifically. Equally importantly, as I may have written elsewhere, the use of “must” in every item instead of the slippery “should” gladdens my heart. Yes, there has to be force behind the recommendations. I may have preferred the Biblical “shalt” or its equivalent, “ought”. No complaints though. 

I do take exception to, “...venues must publish capacity charts at entrances...” There is a lack of specificity here. The charts are needed for the safety personnel, and definitely not for the pilgrims. No pilgrim would ever have the time to read any notice; they would wish to reach the Heaven on Earth as fast as possible. I assume that the writer intended precisely that. Yet, the safety personnel are to use advanced instruments, information channels like “LiDAR and AI cameras.” Therefore, capacity charts are sooo.. last decade. Overall grade, (A-).

Now, I take up the opinion piece on how Ayurveda is better left out of medicine based on science. This is authored by two people whose competency in this issue is attested to only by they being author/co-author (this, to my logical mind could include other authors/co-authors! if there is only a single co-author, the author also becomes a co-author!) of a book, “The Truth Pill: The Myth of Drug Regulation in India”. This was an eye-opener even to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This is good, that the issue became highlighted in at least one paper, many years after FDA’s actions, as public memory is notoriously short lived, everywhere. So far, all positive.

The author and his co-author are investigative journalists. They have, to the extent I can ascertain, no background in medicine, pathology, pharmacology and other associated fields. So, both of them must have worked doubly hard on the issue to bring it to the notice of USFDA and have the latter take punitive actions on a company, and more importantly warn the doctors. Another plus point, almost no negatives thus far.

Why the “almost”? The article makes categorical statements that may not be accepted by its regular readers. The syllabus for Ayurvedha, “is an absolute mish-mash of concepts [none that can be understood by the people who approach Ayurvedic practitioners, I believe] ... with a sprinkling of modern medical concepts...”, and, “these are irreconcilable concepts...”. This, in my opinion opens the piece to arrogant questions such as, “How so?”

The simple method to avoid that discomfiture is to say whether these so-called alternative systems have undergone empirical studies, double-blind tests etc. Answering these questions in the write-up, just a short line or even a subordinate clause, would have foreclosed that avenue of possible embarrassment.

The write-up uses the phrases “evidence-based” or “based on evidence” at a few places. Instead, I would suggest the use of “empirically validated”, which automatically invokes probability. As all of science is probability (to be facetious about it, even the answer to Would the sun rise tomorrow morning? invokes probability!) none can raise any an objection.

Just one more point of interest, at least for me. A grandma saw her granddaughter suffering from a serious case of the sniffles and some fever too, and also saw her swallowing a medicine pill or two. The granddaughter told her grandma, “Grans! Don’t worry, the doctor prescribed some medicines and told me I would be normal in about seven days.” “SEVEN DAYS!” Grans shouted! “Drink up my chicken soup and you would be OK in a jiffy, LIKE WITHIN A WEEK!”

That purported joke is pretty much the so-called traditional medicine practice leads you to. The unmistakeable mark of most such systems is the lack of a time frame. It is not that the patient would sue should the situation not get better in the stipulated time. The tragedy is these “doctors” have not even been schooled so! An ‘A’ grade.

The mini-meal, I see, has been consumed; the plate is empty!

Raghuram Ekambaram