Gardening in the time of lockdown

The University officially closed on March 21st though we are supposed to be on duty.  We have to conduct classes online.
The campus is now deserted as most of the students have gone home and everyone is cooped inside.
Nanku Ram, my gardener, called to inform that he cannot come because of the curfew, which means that I have taken over the gardening activities now.  Before the lockdown he had sowed the seeds for bhindi and brinjal.  He also planted bitter gourd, which is now beginning to climb up the fence.  Last year, we had a good yield of the vegetable.  I am crossing my fingers for this year.

We planted the dahlia plants late this year and they are now beginning to bloom.  The weather has also been very strange.  Even though we are now at the end of March, the summer has not yet begun. There is a cool breeze through the day,  it rained couple of days this month, and the dahlias seem to like it enough to flower. 

Few years back my mother had planted lemon seeds in a pot.  It has now grown into a full tree.  Two years back amma advised me to mix rock salt in the soil so that the tree will bear fruit.  Which I did so last year.  This year, I can see tiny fruits.  Yay!

Coronavirus and social distancing

With the number of cases of Coronavirus positive patients increasing, the University has finally closed down.  All the students have been asked to leave the hostel, exams and classes have been cancelled. Ostensibly this is till 31st March and I devoutly hope so.   I am kind of resigned.  The labs in the University has not been functioning since last November when the students went on strike.  We open and we close down.  Again and again.  This time we functioned at least for 2 months before closing down.

Every one has been talking about social distancing. It can be done if we have large enough flat/house.  What will Sumitra, my help, do?  She lives in one room with her husband and two sons.  There is a tiny kitchen.  The room has two beds, one refrigerator, one cooler (summer without one would be simply impossible), and one washing machine.  What social distance can the four of them practice?  This, unfortunately, is the reality for the majority of the people living in our country.

My colleague, extremely cynical at times, pointed out that this is an infection of the well-to-do.  The ones who traveled abroad carried it back to the country.  If, he said, it had been infection affecting the poor, no one in the country would have bothered.  Which is what happens with TB- the poor are majorly affected and kills more than what Coronavirus will do-but who talks about it?

A lab of one's own- Patricia Fara

I picked this book up in the book fair.  Bookstores are becoming scarce in India as the independent book stores are closing and we do not have anything like Barnes and Noble. 

Patricia Fara reveals the stories of female scientists, doctors, engineers against the backdrop of the first world war.  Women were admitted to colleges by 1869 in England.  However, the scope of their work was limited.  Most ended up as teachers.  However, when World War I happened, men were conscripted and what was initially thought as something would last only weeks or months ended up lasting for years.  This when the doors opened for women.  They worked in munition factories, they were engaged as engineers, as doctors and of course as nurses.  Patricia Fara examines the role of these unsung women in the war.  Intertwined is the Women Suffragette movement and women get the right to vote- not all women but some of them-during the war.
Of course, when the war ends the women are expected to take a back seat to men.  People expect things to go back to as usual but things have changed subtly.  Women no longer are willing to take a back seat.  There are still struggles (in fact it continues today also) but slowly there is a grudging acceptance too.
I really enjoyed the book- in fact I finished half of the book during the flight from Delhi to Chennai.  It was an absorbing tale.

The stories are limited to England but I was asking myself about India.  Of course, this was the time of Freedom struggle.  But it was also the time when child marriages were the norm and girls were not educated.  If the husband died, then the wife (whether the marriage was consummated or not) became a child widow with her head shaven and forced to wear the widow's garb.
The first college for Women was Isabella Thoburn College in Lucknow which was started in 1870 as a school and later became a college.  Queen Mary's in Chennai was started 1914.   Much before Queen Mary's was started, the first women graduate in Chennai was  Sister Subbalakshmi who attended Presidency College.  I remember reading her memoir in Imprint where she says that used to go to college in a rickshaw.  She was, in fact, a child widow but her father refused to shave her head. Instead he had her educated.  She later opened Sarada Vidayalaya in Chennai where my mother studied.
But education for girls remained a rarity except in few of the highly educated/enlighted houses.  The woman professor, most celebrated, was Janaki Ammal  who studied in Queen Mary's and later obtained Ph.D at the University of Michigan. 

Information about these early women is scarce or at least I have not come across the information.  Something to do later on.