It's a Miracle!

A research paper entitled “Emergence of a new antibiotic resistance mechanism in India, Pakistan, and the UK: a molecular, biological, and epidemiological study” published by Karthikeyan K Kumarasamy et al in Lancet Infectious Diseases has generated an enormous amount of controversy over the last 48 hours. The article has resulted in an staggering media uproar in India primarily based on certain recommendations presented in the conclusions section. The authorities have also issued a Clarification on this matter, something I’m at least not aware of any government ever doing in the aftermath of a single peer-reviewed biomedical publication. (Incidentally, it is a minor point, but the Clarification misstates the name of the journal as Lancet when it was published in Lancet Infectious Diseases, a sister publication).

The summary of the manuscript is here and has been discussed in accessible terms by Maryn McKenna. A number of concerns have been voiced in various outlets and I’m discussing some here.

1) The first concern is that the naming of the plasmid enzyme as New Delhi metallo-β lactamase and the gene as bla_NMD-1 are malicious. However, this type of strain designation is not uncommon in microbiology. In fact, the location where the strain is most likely to have originated is quite often used. For example, the most common metallo-β-lactamase enzyme (which confers resistance to antibiotics) in clinical isolates is the VIM-2 β-lactamase named after Verona in Italy where it was first isolated. Incidentally, Italy did not lodge a formal complaint anywhere (as far as I know) after it was discovered. I’ll discuss why India chose to do so when I get to the third concern.

Additionally, there are other diseases and pathogens named after locations as diverse as Marburg, Germany; Ebola, Congo; and even the Rocky Mountains in the US. No one ever blinked as far as I know.

Now, some information on the history of the NMD-1 strain is warranted. The first case using this designation was discovered in the middle of 2009 in an article published later in December. In other words, the strain was named a year to six months before the Lancet Infectious Diseases paper at the center of the current storm came out.

In the earlier article, the case history of the first patient harboring a bacterial strain with NMD-1 was provided.

In November 2007, [the patient] traveled to India and on 5 December was hospitalized in Ludhiana, Punjab, with a large gluteal abscess. In December 2007, he was admitted to a hospital in New Delhi, where he was again operated on and where he developed a decubital ulcer. On 8 January 2008 he was referred to Örebro, Sweden. During his stay in New Delhi he received amoxicillin (amoxicilline)-clavulanic acid, metronidazole, amikacin, and gatifloxacin (all of them parenterally). Clinical isolate K. pneumoniae 05-506 was derived from a urinary culture on 9 January 2008.

It is this clinical isolate that bore the plasmid with the infamous NMD-1 strain. While it is formally possible that the patient picked up the infection during his flight back to Sweden, knowing what we know about the bacteria that harbor it and how it spreads nosocomially in susceptible patients during operative stages, it is very likely that it was picked up during the patient’s operation and hospital stay in December 2007 in New Delhi because the patient simply had not had an operation after that date in any other location. In light of this information the hue-and-cry over the naming is overblown.

2) The second concern is about a potential conflict-of-interest. This has been treated as a revelation by sections of the media. The lead author received a travel grant from Wyeth. Another author holds shares of some major pharmaceutical companies. This was not not unearthered through any investigative reporting; in the interest of full disclosure, this information was mentioned in the actual research paper itself (as is customary practice for all biomedical journals):

KK has received a travel grant from Wyeth. DML has received conference support from numerous pharmaceutical companies, and also holds shares in AstraZeneca, Merck, Pfizer, Dechra, and GlaxoSmithKline, and, as Enduring Attorney, manages further holdings in GlaxoSmithKline and Eco Animal Health. All other authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest… Our work was funded by EU grant LSHM-CT-2005-018705 and WellcomeTrust grant 084627/Z/08.

Obtaining travel money or external seed money does NOT preclude an author from publishing work. All papers at major scientific journals go through a rigorous peer-review process regardless of funding source. What this means is that two or more anonymous, independent scientific experts review the manuscript prior to consideration for publication. I’ll be the first to admit that this process isn’t perfect. But over 130 years, it is the process that scientists have stuck with. The due peer-review process happened for the Lancet Infectious Diseases article too.

What those screaming about “conflict-of-interest” are really implying is there is an  occurrence of a gross ethical violation that may be tantamount to the falsification of data. This is a serious unsubstantiated allegation and were those harping loudly to say this directly, they would probably face libel charges in a court of law. An easier way to get around that is to dispute the conclusions which is what the government has done by putting out the release.

What you may not know is the fact is that often the most successful scientists in medicine and biomedical research are those with stakes in companies and startups or those who receive grant-money from pharmaceutical companies. What about those that work for pharmaceutical companies? Should they be banned from ever publishing? Many of us would be out of jobs if that ever came to pass.

As an anecdote I’ll mention that at any cancer meeting, almost all the presenters mention funding sources and startups they are associated with for the sake of full disclosure. Those outside of science may be uncomfortable with this approach, but it is not sufficient to single out a particular paper in a field where it  is a common occurrence.

3) The third concern is that the conclusions will harm India’s economy. The most vehement arguments are against the final conclusion of the paper which is stated below:

Several of the UK source patients had undergone elective, including cosmetic, surgery while visiting India or Pakistan. India also provides cosmetic surgery for other Europeans and Americans, and blaNDM-1 will likely spread worldwide.

This is what it is all about, folks! This is the center of the acrimonious debate and is stated directly in the accompanying news-feature too. This is the line that UK media outlets are seizing to call for a moratorium on medical tourism and that their counterparts in India are quashing as biased. The underlying concern is that were medical tourism to get reduced then the Indian economy would get impacted. This is a valid economic concern, but irrelevant to the scientific argument regarding the concern that surgical practices might be unsafe.

With respect to this concern I agree, at least in part, with the government clarification and the viewpoint in the Indian media. The size and scale of testing (44 isolates in Chennai, 26 in Haryana, 37 in the UK, and 73 in other sites in India and Pakistan) does not warrant avoidance of all surgical treatments in India – a country of over one billion people. And the fact that some major media outlets are portraying surgery in India as unsafe is disconcerting.

However,why is a single interpretation in the discussion section being used to question the credibility of the results of the entire study? In my opinion, the proper procedure for damage control in the light of the warning sign that the paper presents is to exert caution and to heighten surveillance. Make sure the doomsday scenario doesn’t happen. So often we’ve seen wounded nationalist pride and blame-shifting, and the potential it has to turn ugly . When SARS first erupted, in order to save its economy, China hid reports so that it could deny the severity of the outbreak – an action that ended up endangering countless lives and devastating the economies of a number of East Asian countries.

By drawing the analogy I am not implying that this is what is going to happen with the NDM-1 strain. What I am saying is that I, you, or anyone else cannot claim to know the severity of a possible outbreak should it happen.  Before accepting or denying the threat possibilities shouldn’t we first try to do a proper risk assessment?

For exceptional commentary on additional points related to the unnecessary outrage, I highly recommend reading Sakshi’s and Bongopondit’s responses to some of the other relevant concerns.

Disclaimer: These are my personal views and do not necessarily represent the position of my current or former employers. I am not a physician and do not profess to offer any medical advice here. If you feel you are suffering from an infectious disease ,seek immediate medical attention.

Christopher Nolan’s Inception is an exceptionally ambitious film about the journey of thought-thieves who enter into the dreams of others. The film intertwines multiple story arcs into one viewing experience.

The main character in the film, Dom Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is a thief adept in the art of extracting thoughts from the dream-state of individuals as required by his business clients. Inception, is a film about his last assignment which requires him to do the exact opposite – to insert an idea in the mind of a young business tycoon.

At the heart of the film is a reinterpretation of the old-fashioned heist movie filled with car chases, gun-fights, and resplendent pyrotechnics. These sequences are wondrous spectacles unlike anything I’ve ever seen. In a particularly dazzling progression of scenes in the second half of the film, Nolan splices layer upon layer of difference visual sequences to Hans Zimmer’s mesmerizing soundtrack. What is most audacious about the endeavor is that these sequences are layered in the alternative reality of dreams.

On another level, Inception is a film about emotions, perception, and reality. Cobb brings a lot of emotional baggage to the table, and the film is as much about his perception of reality and the emotional bonds he shares with others as it is about the mind of the people he enters.

Finally, in order to build the framework for examining dreams, Nolan also spends a substantial amount of time in Inception building a set of rules for dream examination and extraction. While plot structure, attention to detail, and character are central to the experience, these components of the film have been dealt with in detail elsewhere. Because Inception is purported to be a thinking person’s film and because the director’s invests significant time in explaining the theoretic underpinnings of thought-capture in the film, it is constructive to examine them in detail.

How do you insert an idea into someone’s head? Let us consider the idea presented in the film first. According to the film, in order to have a successful inception of an idea, it must be planted as a “seed” or a vague notion in the subconscious and allowed to grow into a full-fledged idea. To gain access to the mind, it must be inserted when the subject has his or her guard relaxed: the best way to enter the mind of a subject is when he or she is dreaming because it is at this time that it is exceptionally vulnerable to the power of suggestion. Why can an idea not be planted through the power of suggestion in a wake subject or through hypnosis? Well, for one there would be no science-fiction blockbuster woven around this simple, yet true explanation. Nolan tries to hammer across the notion that “ideas” are “parasites” that elicit a reaction similar to an immune response in the brain. This is untrue, and there is an inherent paradox in the explanation. We know that very few behaviors, mostly associated with survival, are instinctive. However, if an idea is not innate, then by definition it has external roots and it is susceptible to the power of suggestion – dream state or otherwise. In other words, most ideas do come from outside the mind and are subject to constant modification. This paradox does not detract from the narrative, but it is worth bearing in mind.

Law enforcement officials and magicians have known for years the relative ease by which false memories can be implanted. Psychologists have studied many of the ways by which memories can be changed in alert individuals without their conscious knowledge. Recent studies have affirmed that when there is mismatch between a decision and its outcome, subjects retrospectively rationalize choices they never made in the first place. Clearly, the mind is a place ripe for tricking!

Also, as we all painfully know, the act of forgetting is also a common occurrence. For many years the general assumption was that once a memory had been consolidated and turned into part of a long-term memory system, it was maintained indefinitely. Recent research has demonstrated that even consolidated memories are susceptible to decay. Whenever a memory is retrieved, it is prone to change. In other words, every time you recall events from your childhood, you change these through reconsolidation. Over time, these events add up so you either remember incorrectly or even forget.

There are additional preconditions to the foundations of the plot. First, is the assertion that dreams influence conscious decision-making in individuals. Second, is the corollary that that the rules of conscious decision-making apply to dreams too. Both are required to believe the premise of the film, even though neither has been scientifically substantiated.

Nonetheless, setting these preconditions aside, the dreams in Inception are vivid, though for the most part, linear. Even the most creative filmmakers are constrained by the limitations of their imagination and their art. I suspect that Nolan knew that it would be foolhardy to even try to replicate an actual dream, so he broke dreams down into two fictitious components. The first is the architectural structure that is created by the thieves and somehow uploaded into the mind of the dreamer. The second is the people that populate these hollow architectural structures which he calls projections in the film. Both are ingenious devices that allow Nolan to rein in dreams so that they resemble recognizable locations such as street corners in Paris.

Nolan also uses a very early Freudian notion of deep layers of thought, which has since fallen out of favor. At one stage, Cobb perpetuates the “we only use a part of our brain” fictitious meme. His use of “subconscious” (which has no concrete scientific meaning) throughout the movie to the more commonly used “unconscious” is also likely deliberate in order to put forward the idea that there are layers below the conscious. This comes into great effect in the final act when there are layers of “subconsiousness” which can be controlled and navigated like different levels of a video game. The denouement may also leave some viewers exasperated. However, given the complexities of the plot it was one of only few resolutions logically possible.

So is Inception worth watching? Definitely. Is it rooted in the current understanding of how the mind works? No, but that should not detract from the viewing experience. Inception is a thoughtful and beautifully-shot film. In addition, how many other commercial films can claim to ask us to delve deeper into the recesses of our own minds?

© Text, 2010-2012, Anirban

(With apologies to Erich Segal)

As you probably know, Joel Stein wrote a piece entitled “My Private India” for the July 5 issue of Time that created a lot of anger in the desi community. To put it mildly, Stein brusquely stated his beef with the fact that so many Indian immigrants had decided to settle in his former hometown, Edison, New Jersey. In response to the ensuing outrage, Time put out this apology:

We sincerely regret that any of our readers were upset by Joel Stein’s recent humor column “My Own Private India.” It was in no way intended to cause offense.

This apology got me thinking. What does it mean to actually say you’re sorry?

“It is easier to ask forgiveness than to get permission,” as Grace Hopper reportedly said. But there are also ways to look like you’re apologizing without actually doing so. My personal favorite is the “IF-THEN (ELSE)” conditional statement common in psuedo-apologetic syntax. “I didn’t mean to, but IF I hurt your feelings, THEN I’m sorry” is a commonly-used version of the “IF-THEN” which isn’t necessarily as heart-felt as “I am sorry I hurt your feelings.” The unsaid part of the “IF-THEN” construct is, of course, the “ELSE” condition. In other words “IF I hurt your feelings, THEN I’m sorry (ELSE I may not actually be sorry at all).”

This can be taken to annoying, condescending extremes as I recently witnessed in a disclaimer for the Bangla film,  Aamra. The film, a rather somnolent bore,  had a number of scenes shot with hand-held cameras, a defiant, non-apologetic apology and a word of advise* before the starting credits. Translated into plain English, it is as if the filmmakers wanted to say, “We shot this film this particular way on purpose. All the cool people are doing it. We’re sorry if you’re an idiot who doesn’t appreciate it.”

On the other hand, I do have to give credit to the filmmakers for not attempting to apologize for the actual content in this disastrous film. Genuine or fake, that one would never have been accepted.

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*The disclaimer had “advise” instead of “advice”. My opinion is that if you’re going to look down on your viewers, at least be grammatically correct.

© Text, 2010-2012, Anirban

The cable TV network Nickelodeon airs a popular animation series called Avatar: The Last Airbender. Last week, The Last Airbender, a cinematic version directed by Indian-American M. Night Shayamalan, hit theaters worldwide to nearly universal derision. Besides being critically panned for content, the film also ran into a storm because of the casting of white actors in characters that were non-white in the original series.

As Floating World notes in a lengthy write-up on race-bending in films:

Perhaps the greatest offense that the “heroic” characters are portrayed by lily white actors while the “villainous” characters are portrayed dark-skinned Indian actors in lieu of the fact that all the characters have distinctly Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian and Inuit characteristics regardless of their “good” or “badness.”

I felt bad reading that M. Night Shayamalan was a racist. He used to be the pride of the global Indian community. Which desi doesn’t remember when Sixth Sense was nominated for multiple Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director at the 1999 Academy Awards? Shame on you, Mr Shayamalan for putting us through The Village, Lady in the Water, and The Happening, and now for becoming a race-bender! You are a disgrace to the entire global desi community.

Real Chinese actors in a Hindi film

In any case, I don’t usually read up on the machinations of Hollywood media moguls. I get most of my entertainment from Bollywood Hindi films. It is lighter fare, yes, but in the Indian tradition of multiculturalism and tolerance towards all races, it is free from preferential treatment towards any particular community or race.

Real African actors in a Hindi film

In terms of casting, Bollywood films always cast the best actors for the best roles. Our films don’t indulge in the despicable act of whitewashing for audiences. Say what you will about Hindi films not being as polished as Hollywood blockbusters. At least the Hindi film industry is free from  racism.

White actors in a Hindi film

Fair-use rationale for images: All images are low-resolution and used only for purposes of demonstration for no monetary gain where a free alternative does not exist.

© Text, 2010-2012, Anirban

Mulla Nasruddin*, the Sufi scholar, returned home from a trip he had taken with his wife to find that his house had been burgled. The thieves had taken every valuable object in the house.

Nasruddin’s wife was visibly displeased. “It is all your fault.” she said to him. “You should have checked to make sure the doors were locked before we left.”

As she scolded him, a crowd gathered outside his house. A neighbor shook his head disapprovingly. “Why didn’t you lock the doors and windows? You shouldn’t have been so careless,’ said the neighbor.

“Your lock is faulty. You should have changed it before you left,” said another.

“You need new, stronger windows. Didn’t you know that?” said another wise passerby.

Nasruddin was flabbergasted. “Wait a minute. Surely, I am not the only one that should be blamed?”

“Who else should we hold responsible?” asked everyone in unison.

“Why, the thieves of course!” said Nasruddin.

The Scapegoat

These days in India, with every nefarious activity, you will find pundits eager to search for scapegoats instead of putting the responsibility at the door of the direct perpetrators.  I definitely advocate letting the judiciary reach a verdict in due course, but if and when the identities of those responsible are established beyond a reasonable doubt, justice should be meted out.

Is this happening? The direct catalyst for this post is the unwillingness on the part of certain power-wielding citizens to implicate the Maoists in the recent train-wreck in West Bengal even in the light of growing (and arguably, insurmountable) evidence.

Unfortunately, this is the new trend. So when Mayawati accepts a garland made from 1000-rupee notes and the media reports it, her champions come out of the woodwork to point a finger at upper-castes for discrimination. When Maoists take innocent lives through horrific acts of violence, the same armchair pundits blame India’s government for lack of rural development. The trend of justifying the acts of criminals because you feel sorry for the perceived injustices faced by them is unconscionable. I understand that voices need to be heard, but India is a democracy. Anarchy as a form of governance never worked. And definitely, shifting blame is not a sign of maturity in modern India.

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*I read the original anecdote in one of Idries Shah’s books. It stayed with me, but of course, I don’t remember it well enough to paraphrase.

If you are searching for sarcasm in the following sentences, you will be disappointed. What you will find is sincere appreciation for two landmark scientific studies. In an extreme example of social asymmetry, while privileged individuals can debate whether or not to drink purified bottled water, over one billion others on this planet do not have access to clean drinking water.

I do not need to introduce cholera and other waterborne diseases to anyone from South Asia. These diseases infect hundreds of thousands (and possibly millions) in India and neighboring Bangladesh alone.

We have made strides in eradicating these diseases. In 1854, the British physician John Snow successfully traced the source of a cholera outbreak to a region of London in what is generally considered the first ever epidemiological study. Years later, one of the founding figures of microbiology, Robert Koch isolated and characterized the bacterium that causes cholera. Koch was also able to isolate cholera from contaminated pond water used by a community in India that was in the throes of a lethal epidermic. Koch published these results in the British Medical Journal in 1884 and won a Nobel Prize for other pioneering work on tuberculosis.

Now, a bit of background on the two research papers that I’d like to discuss today. Rita Colwell, a former director of the US National Science Foundation, is a renowned scientist who works on infectious diseases including cholera. In the 70s and 80s, her lab discovered that disease-causing cholera microbes clung to small organisms such as crustaceans in contaminated water. For reference, let me remind you that larger crustaceans that you are familiar with include crabs, shrimps, and lobsters.

Because of arsenic contaminated tube-well water, village populations in West Bengal, India and Bangladesh often drink surface water collected from rivers and ponds that contain small crustaceans. Boiling the water kills the disease-causing germs. On a personal note, I grew up drinking a lot of boiled water, but this approach isn’t feasible for poor people because of associated energy costs.

In a landmark scientific article published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2003, Colwell and others tested a simple hypothesis in the field. Villagers in India and Bangladesh often use sari-cloth to filter water before drinking. Colwell asked a tantalizing question: if cotton sari-cloth can filter out crustaceans, can also it reduce the concentration of cholera microbes below a disease-causing threshold? Using the scientific method, she and other scientists followed villagers in 65 villages in Bangladesh for three years, and found that the low-tech process of filtering water through a cotton sari folded four-times resulted in almost 50% reduction in the incidence of cholera!

Colwell didn’t stop there. Researchers kept collecting data for years. Now, in new research published this month in the new journal mBio, Colwell and colleagues show that 31% of the villagers still use sari filtration. Therefore, not only is this process effective, it is also sustainable. This point is worth bearing in mind for any application to truly have real-world implications.

You may wonder why I mention these two studies today. Call me hopelessly naive, but I sincerely believe that the role of a scientist – especially one hailing from a developing country such as India – is to participate in building a better society through honesty, ingenuity, and dedication. To give you a sense of how I felt reading the two papers authored by Colwell, let me provide an imprecise cinematic analogy. In Asutosh Gowarikar’s Swades, Mohan Bhargava, the NASA scientist (played by Shahrukh Khan) provided an outlandish solution to the problem of lack of electricity in a village in India. The resolution in the film was exceedingly implausible, but the message resonated with me. I fervently believe that scientists and engineers have the wherewithal to come up with ingenious low-cost solutions for problems facing people in South Asia. There are many other examples, but these two papers underscore my belief in science as the only “candle in the dark”.

© Text, 2010-2012, Anirban

In 1999, Pappu Patligali “passed out” of the New Elite Institute of Technology with a job in hand. He had been recruited on-campus by Technotomorrow, an IT firm that promised to send gullible prospects on-site to their Connecticut branch to work on VLP (very-low priority) coding solutions for the Y2K problem. Technotomorrow wasn’t innovative and they certainly didn’t pay well, but their share price kept skyrocketing. They had adopted a simple business model: they hired engineers straight from the state colleges for as cheap as possible, trained then in the minimum skills necessary to do the job, and worked them until they quit for better paying jobs. A constant supply of fresh engineers ensured that they could undercut the major IT competitors, and a cadre of perennially-angry managers with no technical skills made sure that deliverables were always on time and on budget.

After six months of working in a converted-godown in NOIDA, Pappu decided he had had enough. He called it quits. In the meantime, he had looked up graduate engineering programs in the US and had taken the GRE. He hired a professional editor to write his required “statement of purpose” and letters of recommendation. He applied to twenty graduate programs and got  a few nibbles. Most of them panned out into “we regret to inform you” letters. however, after an extended dance with a potential Master’s thesis advisor at a very small program, he received a coveted letter of admission.

By the time Pappu was ready to leave for the US, he was very well-prepared. He had taken the necessary medical checkups, bought cheap textbooks for courses, found temporary housing and potential roommates, and contacted his advisor. The Office of International Students at his school had been particularly helpful in making sure that he would have everything he needed to make a smooth transition.

Or so he thought. What the Office had not told him was that he was about to have The Conversation.

The Conversation

For Pappu The Conversation happened the day before his flight out of India. Pappu was sitting in his room at the time trying to fit 200 grams of besan laddoos into a pressure cooker. The pressure cooker was going to go into Suitcase Number One which was exactly 200 grams less than the maximum permissible weight for checked-in baggage.

“Make sure you have the Gita and the framed picture of Guruji with you at all times,” said Pappu’s father who was now standing in front of the door.

“I have put the tulsi-chandan in his moneybag,” said Pappu’s mother agitatedly as she joined him.

Pappu was a bit upset that his parents had been going through his things and had inserted various divine charms without his knowledge. Still, he didn’t dare to defy his father or to hurt his mother’s feelings especially since he was about to leave the country.

“Pappu, remember your heritage,” his father continued. “You come from a line of rishis who wrote the Rig Vedas. Our ancestors were solving abstract mathematical problems when savages were roaming the rest of the world.”

Pappu sat still. He had heard these stories before, but was puzzled why his father was mentioning them to him now.

“You know, Pappu. You have an opportunity that we never got. You can study modern advances and of course you will apply your knowledge when you come back in India.”

It had already been decided that Pappu would be coming back, although no one had told him.

Pappu’s father cleared his throat and the continued. “Remember to recite the Gayatri Mantra every day during your bath. Never touch alcohol and other impurities. Stay pure and eat only satwik food. Remember cow is like your mother.” (Pappu was glad that his father didn’t say it the other way around).

There was silence. Pappu’s father stopped for a minute and lowered his voice. “And remember… don’t go in that direction.”

What was his father talking about? “Which direction?” asked Pappu.

“That direction,” repeated his father as if it was self-evident what he was referring to.

After a pause, Pappu’s father continued. “Chatranang adhayanam tapa. You know son that there are four ashramas in life. Bhahmacharya is for studying. There will be many enticements in foreign lands. Of the six vices – kaama, krodha, lobha, moha, mada and maatsarya – kaama is the worst. It is like a fire that engulfs a man’s soul. Don’t go in that direction.”

When Pappu finally understood what his parents were hinting at, his face turned bright red. Just the previous day his friend Bhola has infuriated him by saying “Going abroad, Pap-pu. Everything there is open, no?” At the time Bhola was winking and nudging like a professional Kathakali maestro. But you could expect Bhola to say stuff like that. Bhola was a philanderer. These were his parents.

“I want you to touch your mother’s feet and vow that you will not go in that direction,” said Pappu’s father.

Pappu was uncomfortable. Not because he had any impure thoughts in his mind at that time, but because he was being asked for an agnipariksha by his parents. Pappu revolted in his mind. He would not put up with this embarrassing situation. He froze.

All three of them were quiet for what seemed like hours. Pappu’s parents were staring at him trying to gauge his reaction. Pappu was looking straight at the ground and hoping it would open up to engulf him like it had swallowed Sita.

Pappu’s mother finally spoke. “No, I know my son. He is not like that. He is being a bit shy. Our Pappu has grown up.” She laughed nervously. “He is a good boy. He will study in abroad only, not do any mischief. We know what is best and will fix one bride for him from our caste.”

Pappu’s father nodded. Having somewhat convinced themselves that they had done their duty, Pappu’s parents left the room as mysteriously as they had come in.

Pappu thought to himself, “what the hell just happened?”

More of the Charmed Life of Pappu Patligali here.

© Text, 2010-2012, Anirban