Anecdotes
Selection of clinch line excerpts from Prem Bhatia’s writings

ANOTHER WORLD

  Once a year my Chinese friends took a golfing holiday in Taiwan and returned with stories of their escapades which for a few days replaced conversation about Sime Dary and Hew Par. There was still talk about prices but they were now quoted in American instead of Singapore dollars. They were a fine bunch of young and not-so-young men – filthy rich, lusty, hospitable and friendly for whom the affairs of the outside world had a meaning largely in terms of the stock market in Singapore.

  It was a world far removed from the problem of race relations and poetry, but a happy and industrious world where politics took a back seat and the highest income tax rate was 57 per cent.

  (From BLUE CHIPS AND PUTTING GREENS, Prem Bhatia article on his Singapore days when he was posted there as the Indian High Commissioner.

BLOWING A MYTH

  According to a research team from Jhansi, garlic may increase a man’s or a woman’s cholestral level instead of lowering it, and is particularly injurious to hearts already in poor shape. This conclusion, said to be based on clinical studies, will shock many and disenchant many more who have been using garlic as a dependable prop against the danger of heart ailments. The researchers conclusion would not be very different from a hypothetical discovery that common and hitherto accepted painkillers in fact cause pain and may even lead to brain haemorrhage. The horrible prospect of discovering danger in hitherto dependable laymen’s health prescriptions could well keep millions of people awake every night. And what about the millions of rupees already sunk in the various garlic concoctions sold in chemist’s shops? The Jhansi researchers have pricked a bubble which had been spectacularly raised to the status of a cult. 

  (From the CONDEMNED GARLIC by Prem Bhatia on researches of a group of scientists in Jhansi, India)

SALWAR POLITICS

  The sari is, after all, an Indian dress, and the effort of Pakistan, ever since its birth, has been to show that it is religiously and culturally a nation different from India. In the early days after partition attempts were made to popularise the "garara", --- a pyjama-like contraption – long shirt and "chunni" as the national dress for Pakistani women. The initiative in the matter was taken by certain former U.P. families led by Begum Liaquat Ali Khan. The attempted national fashion, however did not catch on and remained confined to a small elitist coterie. Meanwhile the sari retained its pre-eminent position in a woman’s wardrobe. In fact Pakistani women visitors to India continued to shop for saris to take home with them. The Salwar and Kameez – an elegant combination by itself – were also worn with attractive variations. President Zia-ul-Haque, determined to ensure Islamic way of life (as he saw it) did not wish to give to the sari the status which it enjoyed prior to 1947 and retained thereafter. If salwar and Kameez are a better working dress for women, the Pakistanis are welcome to it. They (men and women) are also welcome to wear this dress if it makes them better Muslims.

  (From DOWN WITH THE SARI by Prem Bhatia published January 9, 1982 in TT on the perennial controversy between sari and salwar as the suitable dress for the Pakistani women.)