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Hindustan Times
16 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Home run: Wknd sits down with Jeet Thayil to talk about his deeply personal new book
It's a 'conundrum of a novel', says Jeet Thayil, of his new book, The Elsewhereans. It begins with his father, the journalist TJS George, flying from Bombay to Cochin in the 1950s, to visit Ammu George, a teacher he is set to marry. Against convention, he wants to privately meet her once before the wedding. The book takes off from there, merging fact and fiction, memoir, travelogue and supernatural saga in mind-bending ways. The reader isn't meant to know which is which. 'I want you to wonder… to keep guessing,' Thayil says. Fragments of postcards, letters and photographs add to the sense of confusion. A few years on, he enters the tale, born in the backwaters of Kerala, followed by his sister Sheba Thayil (who would also go on to be a journalist and writer). The family would move from Bombay to Bihar, then Hong Kong and New York; the novel unfolds also in Vietnam, France, Germany and the UK. As it traces his teen years, when he 'lived to defy and dismay my father', and builds itself around his deep love for his mother, what emerges is Thayil's most personal novel since The Book of Chocolate Saints (2017; a pacy, autobiographical work that also married memory and fiction). Incidentally, in 2013, Thayil became the first Indian author to win the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, for his debut novel, Narcopolis, about opium, Mumbai and one man's struggles with drugs. (The novel was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.) 'This is a story about a family of Indians out in the world,' says Thayil, 65. Excerpts from an interview. * Where did the idea for The Elsewhereans come from? This is material I've been saving, or hoarding, all my life; material that never found its correct form. The novel — discrete stories, some written in the third person, some in the first, set in different eras, on different continents — assumed its true shape only towards the end of the writing. Some of those stories were gratifying to relate. For example, the story about my father starting AsiaWeek in Hong Kong. They sold a majority stake to Reader's Digest, which sold the shares on to Time, and then Time eventually shut AsiaWeek down. This is a story only journalists in Asia, Europe, America and India knew about, that AsiaWeek was a magazine run by Asians for Asians, in the '70s, and that it was killed by Time… Like that story, there are others that illuminate forgotten corners of history. * This is also a book about your difficult relationship with your father…. For most of my teens, I tried to be the opposite of what he wanted me to be. My father (now 97) is gifted in many ways, but not so much when it comes to the minutiae of fatherhood. He comes from a long line of conservative Malayali Syrian Christian men for whom parenting is about distance, punishment and anger. But if you don't have a relationship where you're also a friend to your children, you miss out on a lot. The child may end up self-destructive or recalcitrant. For a long time, I wanted to upend his image of himself by becoming the black sheep, by doing things that would have made any parent upset. I think of it now as a waste of time, but… that's how it was. I don't think I got over that very childish way of dealing with myself, my parents, and the world until my 40s. I was living in New York, working for a newspaper, trying to get by, and I realised it takes so much space in one's head to define oneself in opposition to a single person or idea. I realised it just wasn't worth it. It seems like a basic lesson, but it took me ages to get there. * Your love for your mother forms the sort of nucleus of this book. She was always my biggest champion. And yes, she is the moral centre of this book. Her story begins the narrative and her end ends it. In terms of our financial lives, if it weren't for my mother, I wouldn't be writing novels. I'd be working, earning a living, trying to pay the rent. She was the one who, right from the beginning, invested small amounts of my father's earnings. My father had very little sense of money as a living quantity. She always did. Which is why I can afford to spend the day writing a poem or a song. In that sense, I suppose I owe her everything. I wanted to chronicle her life in The Elsewhereans. A life can be remarkable, but unless you put it down, unless you record it in some way — not necessarily in the form of a novel, but in some way — what's the point? All those extraordinary moments are gone. * Her death (six months ago; aged 90) was an emotional trigger to the ending of the book… Yes… I knew it was finished the moment she passed away. Obviously, I couldn't do anything for a while, but once I got back to work, I finished it very quickly. I rewrote portions, added the last few pages, and it just put a lock on the book for me. * Did the idea of a documentary novel, a blurring of truth and reality, make The Elsewhereans easier to write? At first, I thought it would be a work of non-fiction, but that would have made for a narrow narrative. One can't inhabit other people's heads and other people's lives in an immersive way unless one is writing fiction. At the same time, a number of elements here are factual, taken from life, with actual photographs, letters and documents. Which is why I think of it as a documentary novel. The point is, life isn't easily categorised. Life is open-ended. It doesn't have labels, and it doesn't have happy endings. I like the form of the documentary novel. I might do another in the same vein. * You suggest that we are all on a lifelong journey, never belonging to a place. And yet you capture how the world is turning to hate because of ideas such as nationality and race… As someone who began travelling at the age of eight, I've known for a while that all travellers are not equal. A traveller of colour understands this before they begin to understand cultures other than their own. It's more than the colonial-era hierarchy of the visa process. It's also a question of belonging. As the world becomes increasingly intolerant, it becomes increasingly intolerable. When divisions between nations and races deepen, you realise there are places you are not welcome. For me, the sense of being an outsider has always had an upside. It has sharpened my perception. * Are we all Elsewhereans then? All of us. There's a moment in the book that describes what it's like to feel like a foreigner in one's own house. Even if you've never left your hometown, you might feel as if the world around you has changed so much it doesn't feel like home anymore. * Given that it is set across 70 years and a dozen countries, what did the research for this book involve? I looked up accounts of the various time periods and places in which each chapter is set. I interviewed my parents over the course of about three years. That was a useful thing about moving to the family home in Bengaluru in 2018. I started work on this book in 2020. As soon as I knew I was going to write it, I began talking to my parents about the past. They remembered a lot of it, in striking detail. Then I looked at my dad's notebooks. He kept extensive notes of his years as a journalist. I went through a lot of material and asked both their permissions before I started to write. My mother may not have been very pleased with the idea, but there's no way she was going to say no, which is why the first epigraph in the book is Czeslaw Milosz: 'When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.'
CairoScene
2 days ago
- Business
- CairoScene
Foreign Work Permits in Egypt Rise Sharply to Over 22,000 in 2024
Foreign Work Permits in Egypt Rise Sharply to Over 22,000 in 2024 Europeans and Asians made up 70% of Egypt's foreign workforce in 2024, with most employed as managers, scientific specialists, or technicians across key sectors like energy and construction. Foreign work permits in Egypt rose significantly in 2024, with a total of 22,909 foreign nationals receiving authorization to work in the country. This marks a 32% increase compared to the 17,357 permits issued in 2023, according to newly released official figures. Of the total permits granted, 43.7%—equivalent to 10,003 individuals—were issued to first-time applicants, while 56.3%, or 12,906 individuals, had their existing work permits renewed. European nationals made up the largest share of foreign workers in Egypt at 38.4%, totalling 8,798 individuals. They were followed by non-Arab Asians at 31.5% (7,224 individuals), Arab nationals at 21.1% (4,826), non-Arab Africans at 4.5% (1,026), and Americans at 3.8% (868). Workers from Oceania accounted for 0.5%, or 110 individuals. Permits were issued through several administrative channels, with Labour Directorates accounting for nearly half at 48.9% (11,197 permits). Investment Offices issued 27.9% (6,392), Company Offices 19.9% (4,558), and Petroleum Offices 3.3% (762). In terms of occupations, managers represented the largest group at 36.4% (8,343 workers). Scientific specialists followed at 23.8% (5,453), with technicians and assistant specialists comprising 15.4% (3,530). Foreign nationals were primarily employed in public administration, defense, and social insurance, which together accounted for 24.4% of the total, or 5,587 workers. Other major sectors included electricity, gas, and steam supply at 20.6% (4,726 workers), construction at 16% (3,676), and wholesale, retail trade, and repair services at 12.5% (2,859).
The Hindu
5 days ago
- Health
- The Hindu
Rising cases of COVID-19 bring to fore associated threat of deep vein thrombosis
India has registered a rise in COVID-19 cases beginning from last week of May this year. As of June 16, the country has 7,264 active cases. The World Health Organisation in its recent report (week of May 19 to 25 2025) that SARS-CoV-2 activity was generally low globally, though elevations have been reported in a few countries in Central America and the Caribbean, Tropical South America, South West and Northern Europe, Western Asia, Southern Asia, South-East Asia, and Eastern Asia. While doctors have stressed that there is no need to panic as a majority of the cases are mild and do not require hospitalisation, this spike in cases, has brought to the fore once again, several associated health risks including deep vein thrombosis (DVT) -- both during and after infection. 'This risk of DVT remains elevated even after recovery from Covid-19, with the risk ratio increasing up to 70 days post-infection,'' said Anil Bansal, member, Delhi Medical Association (DMA). The risk is particularly high in the first week after diagnosis. While the risk decreases in subsequent weeks, it remains elevated for several weeks post-infection, he added. Understanding DVT Deep vein thrombosis (DVT) occurs when a clot forms in one of the deep veins of the body. This usually occurs in the leg. DVT can be dangerous, as the blood clot can break free and travel through the bloodstream. If the blood clot gets lodged in the lung and blocks blood flow, it can lead to pulmonary embolism, which can be life threatening. Venous thromboembolism (VTE) occurs with deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE). It can result in significant mortality, morbidity, and healthcare costs. Approximately 30% of patients with symptomatic VTE manifest with PE, and others with DVT. The incidence of DVT in India in the general population is about 1.79 per thousand. More than 50% of post-surgical procedure patients are at risk of developing VTE. The prevailing notion that the incidence of VTE in Asians is less than that in the Western population has been disproved by recent reports. Task force report Previously, a taskforce report by the National Academy of Medical Sciences (India), Delhi on Venous Thromboembolism had noted that in view of the ageing population of India and the increasing burden of non-communicable diseases along with infectious diseases affecting healthcare service delivery, there is a dire need to understand the early impact on the incidence and burden of deep venous thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE) in India. Increasing age, being male, trauma, surgery, prolonged hospitalisation, malignancy, neurologic disease, central venous catheter, prior superficial vein thrombosis, and varicose veins have been identified as some of the major risk factors for developing VTE. In women, oral contraceptive pill use, pregnancy, and hormone replacement therapy are established as independent risk factors. Some of the important risk factors for surgical patients developing VTE are age, type of surgery, length of procedure, and duration of immobilisation. The task force stated that appropriate prevention and management of VTE was vital but in India, lack of trained human resources (healthcare professionals); inadequate laboratory diagnostic support; inadequate availability of pharmaceutical supplies; lack of awareness in the community; need for suitable research along with equitable distribution of facilities for the management of VTE – hamper 100 per cent safety of patients. The Covid-19-DVT link Aabid Amin Bhatt, medical director, Ujala Cygnus Group of Hospitals explained that COVID-19 and its link with a higher chance of VTE, including DVT and PE, is now well established. 'This link comes from the virus's ability to cause a strong inflammatory reaction, often called a cytokine storm, which can disrupt the usual way blood clots. Research has found that patients, particularly those in the hospital with severe COVID-19, have a hypercoagulable state, meaning their blood is more likely to clot. The virus also directly harms the endothelial cells that line blood vessels, which further increases the risk of clots forming,'' said Dr. Bhat. He added that recent research indicates that even after recovery, individuals who had COVID-19 may remain at an elevated risk for thrombotic events for several months. This has prompted ongoing updates to clinical guidelines recommending thromboprophylaxis (blood thinning treatment) during hospitalisation and, in some cases, even post-discharge. The medical community now regards COVID-19 not just as a respiratory illness, but also as a systemic vascular disease with serious implications for blood clotting and cardiovascular health, he said. Severe Covid-19 and vaccines Abhishek Bansal, senior consultant and chief interventional radiologist, Aakash Healthcare said that a very high percentage of patients admitted with severe COVID-19 infections were observed to be affected by this condition. 'This was noted to be primarily because they had been hospitalised in the ICU for extended periods. Any duration of immobilisation or prolonged bed rest was noted to increase the risk of developing DVT or pulmonary embolism,'' he said. Dr. Bansal stressed that COVID-19 vaccines demonstrated that they are highly efficacious in preventing the occurrence of DVT and pulmonary embolism. 'At the same time, some concerns had been raised about the vaccines themselves potentially causing DVT in a few individuals. However, it has been clearly documented that this risk is extremely low—estimated at approximately one in 10 lakh (one million) patients. Even in such rare cases, the condition is generally mild. It has been emphasised that if the individual had instead suffered from an actual COVID-19 infection, the risk of developing DVT or pulmonary embolism would have been substantially higher,'' he said. Treating and tracking 'Anticoagulant medicine have now been added as a standard treatment protocol of Covid-19 and many deaths have been prevented after we established the relationship between the two medical conditions, '' noted. Surinder Kumar Gupta, associate director, pulmonology, Paras Health, Panchkula. Meanwhile, the WHO noted that it is currently tracking several SARS-CoV-2 variants including variants of interest (JN.1) and variants under monitoring (LP.8.1, NB.1.8.1, XEC, KP.3.1.1, KP.3, and LB.1). 'The most prevalent variant, LP.8.1, accounted for 27% of all submitted sequences in the week ending on 25 May 2025 which is a decrease from 32% in the week ending on 27 April 2025. NB.1.8.1 accounted for 21% of all submitted sequences in the week ending on 25 May 2025, a significant increase from 9% in the week ending on 27 April 2025,'' it said in the recently released data. WHO added that during this reporting period, all other variants showed a stable or decreasing trend. 'Available evidence suggests that JN.1, XEC, LP.8.1, and NB.1.8.1 do not pose additional public health risks relative to other currently circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants,'' it said. At the regional level, LP.8.1 decreased in the Americas and the Western Pacific Region, but slightly increased in the European Region. XEC decreased in all regions with sufficient data. NB.1.8.1 increased in the Americas, Europe, and the Western Pacific Region, but decreased in South-East Asia.
Jordan News
5 days ago
- Health
- Jordan News
Factors That Accelerate Graying – Tips to Delay It! - Jordan News
Graying hair is a natural part of aging, but the timing of its appearance varies from person to person. While some notice their first gray strands in their 20s, others may not experience graying until their 50s. اضافة اعلان Typically, gray hairs first appear at the temples, then gradually spread toward the back of the head. What Causes Premature Graying? Dr. Dipali Misra-Sharp, a general practitioner and women's health expert, notes that premature graying can be linked to several factors, including: Smoking Nutritional deficiencies (especially vitamin B12, iron) Thyroid disorders Autoimmune diseases She recommends seeing a doctor if graying occurs suddenly or at an unusually young age, though in most cases, it's simply a normal sign of aging. Tips to Delay the Onset of Gray Hair To help preserve your natural hair color for as long as possible, Dr. Misra-Sharp offers the following advice: Eat a balanced diet rich in: Iron Zinc Protein These nutrients are essential for maintaining hair strength and pigment. Quit smoking Smoking has been directly linked to early graying and hair damage. Manage stress levels Chronic stress may accelerate the aging process, including the loss of hair pigmentation. Avoid excessive heat styling and chemical dyes Overuse of heat tools and harsh dyes can weaken hair follicles, making them more susceptible to damage and color loss. Does Ethnicity Influence When Graying Starts? Yes—genetics and ethnic background play a major role. According to Misra-Sharp: People of European descent often start graying in their mid-30s Asians tend to gray in their late 30s People of African descent usually see graying begin in their mid-40s Graying before these ages is generally classified as premature graying. Also, hair color affects visibility: gray strands are more noticeable on dark hair than on blonde or lighter shades, making the process appear more rapid in brunettes. In Summary While graying is inevitable, you can take steps to delay its onset by focusing on a healthy lifestyle, balanced nutrition, and gentle hair care. And if gray hairs do appear early, it might be worth investigating potential underlying health factors.
Daily Mirror
7 days ago
- Health
- Daily Mirror
GP says common vitamin deficiency could be making your hair go grey sooner
A leading doctor has shared some of the reasons why people may be going greyer sooner - and how you can change certain habits to prolong the ageing process of your hair While no one likes to spot a grey hair it's is inevitably going to happen one day - however there are some simple lifestyle changes you could make to prolong the greys from coming. Some people will start to notice greys in their twenties, while some won't have any until their fifties and the greys tend to first appear at the temples and make their way around the back of the head. Despite some people proudly embracing their greys, some people have a stigma around the silver strands and are doing all they can to cover them up. GP and women's health specialist, Dr Deepali Misra-Sharp revealed what could be speeding up the greying process and advised that if greying happens suddenly or very early, it's worth a quick check-in with your doctor, but for most people it's just a part of the "natural rhythm of ageing". She told the Daily Mail that smoking, certain nutrient deficiencies such as low vitamin B12 or iron, as well as thyroid issues or autoimmune conditions could affect the hair strands earlier than usual. The expert urged people to avoid using heat or dyeing your hair as there is "no proven way to bring colour back once a hair has gone grey". However she has said there are things to do to keep your hair strong, healthy, and maybe slow down the overall process such as vitamins, iron, zinc and protein as a varied diet really does help your hair. Help us improve our content by completing the survey below. We'd love to hear from you! Quitting smoking will help reduce oxidative stress and help your overall hair and skin health, and also keeping your stress levels down is also beneficial. Dr Misra-Sharp also suggested opting for gentle hair care - avoiding dyes and heat - and certain supplements (only after speaking to a doctor) can also help to slow down the greying process. She further detailed: "When it starts really depends on your background and your genes For example, people of White heritage often see their first greys in their mid-30s, those of Asian descent in their late 30s and individuals of African descent in their mid-40s. If it kicks off earlier - say, before 20 for Caucasians, 25 for Asians, or 30 for people of African background - that's classed as premature greying." The expert also said the natural shade of your hair can also make a difference in how quickly you notice the grey or silver strands. "Grey strands are far more obvious against dark hair, so they often stand out earlier. With lighter hair - like blonde - it can take longer to spot, even if just as much pigment loss is happening underneath," Dr Misra-Sharp explained.
