PVK Speech at the launch of Dr Kasi Visweswaran’s ‘Stumbles, Blunders and Laughter’ at Hotel Residence Towers, 23/April/2026.
Nandri, Namaste, Thank you.
I start with thank you because ONV sir, poet and politician, once told me that there were no ingrates worse than Mallus. When I countered that it was too sweeping a statement to make of a people, he declared: “There is no mudra for ‘Thank you’ in Kathakali”. A point difficult to refute. Even if you know Kathakali. Trained Kathakali artists, we are told, can depict joy in one eye and grief in the other, something I am used to seeing in my students who look at their watches with one eye and out of the window with the other. The resulting squint eyes, if it leads to that in the many ‘Suseelas’ I taught, can be taken care of by any good ophthalmologist. In a good hospital like ‘Anathapuri’, you will pass the ophthalmologist while sauntering past the nephrologist, if you have eyes for name plates and not just for the nurses.
Allow me a detour to tell you what transpired when two nurses in a male surgical ward in the Medical College, Trivandrum, were asked to have their BPs taken (not Bhariaye Pedi or, in my wife’s case, Bharthavine Pedi) one morning before the docs came on their rounds. Every male patient had high BP. So, Dr Vijayaraghavan, wit and medical doc par excellence and my relative, asked a different nurse to take the readings. Normal, all. They key to understanding was not medical but psychological or physiological. The 1st nurse was Sister Sundari. The 2nd, Eleyaamma sister, business-like and far from attractive to the male of the species.
I will end with a Good Night which will be appropriate both for an evening gathering and for the fact that you may be just descending into sleep, going through the Non REM stage before declining into actual deep sleep.
I love train travel. It is the least stressful form of travel. In February this year, I took the horrible ‘Vande Bharat’ to Calicut where I had to put an audience to sleep. Being a seasoned anaesthetist – that is what we college teachers are, old, seasoned bores – I was confident of acting as an effective melatonin tablet to knock out the audience. But the A C, far too cold for my asthmatic lungs, and the horrible food, prepared by some Telegu crook disguised as a cook, served in ugly plastic containers with ugly cutlery, made my journey insufferable.
But I had the MS of Dr Kasi’s effervescent book with me. I started reading it while seated on the platform waiting for the nasty train to start. The train pokes, like some anaesthetic’s needle, or a rapist’s you-know-what, through the landscape so fast one can hardly luxuriate in the beautiful countryside one is passing through. I finished ‘Stumbles, Blunders and Laughter’ before we had crossed Trichur. I underlined and made notations on the margin as a mnemonic aid for a second reading.
Dr Kasi’s book is so full of fun and facts, I hope it will win some prize, maybe one named after my wife, the brilliant and charming Khyrunnisa A, whose books, he said, inspired his writing style. Imitation is said to be the best form of flattery and is this case the imitation is a brilliant one. (I use the word brilliant too often. I have the audience in mind. I am the exception that proves the rule.)
I relished all parts of the book, except (I hope you will pardon some light criticism, softer than a kidney punch) those to do with Dr Kasi’s description of Chandigarh, particularly the horrendous ‘Rock Garden’. I think the students of University College used to assemble better “rock gardens” when a riot was around the corner. The University College, remember, is only a stone’s throw from the Secretariat and the Cantonment Police Station and, just yards from the bar at ‘The South Park’, Biju Ramesh’s contribution to our city’s culture. I must stress that I am an admirer of Biju Ramesh. He has expanded his father Ramesan “Kantrak’s” kingdom into an empire, complete with a catering college, one that tickles the palate of every delegate at the book, celebrity and gastronomically enriched Mathruboomi Lit Fest. Good news for nephrologists and urologists. I also hope that at 2027’s fest Dr Kasi’s excellent memoir will sell like hot vadas.
I once referred my friend, mentor of most things botanical, manager of my rubber estate and tapper Sukumaran, to Dr Kasi for a relative’s kidney problem. He visited me at Kamalalayam, my home, to tell me how grateful he was to the good Dr Kasi. Such a great “dakkitar” as they used to say in Thonnakkal, but so warm and caring he reminds every one of their mother. True, some mothers deserve to have their kidneys forcibly extracted but we are talking of normal mothers, caring, compassionate and full of loving demonstrations of their love. Like those who prepare delicious dishes that are not good for your kidneys. That is no problem because Dr Kasi, or Kasi Pattar the binomial by which people refer to him, will care for your kidneys. Not all mothers. A mother like Khyrunnisa or Dr Hema. My son Amar is one of Jayaram’s closest friends. Amar and his gang refer to Jayaram as “pattar’ more out of affection and respect for his affable nature than any hint of the old exploitative ‘pattar’ caricatured brilliantly by people like VKN. Read his superb satire ‘Kaavi’, (2004).
I will conclude, reciting a poem that I cannot read at any gathering but this. It is from ‘The Sphere Book of Improper Verse’ edited by Alan Bold, a British poet and anthologist. It is a sonnet written by Sir A. P. Herbert, who, on a voyage to India, found that the ship’s library had only one book: ‘Gray’s Anatomy’. After reading it he wrote:
There are two or three versions of the poem. Let me read the more refined one, with today’s company in mind.
The portions of a female which appeal to a man’s depravity
Are constructed with considerable care,
And what appears at first a simple little cavity
Is really an elaborate affair.
Now Doctors of distinction have examined these phenomena
On numbers of experimental dames,
And classified the organs of the feminine abdomina
And given them delightful Latin names:
There’s the vulva, the vagina, and the jolly old perineum,
And the hymen in the case of many brides;
There are many other things you would love if you could see’em.
The clitoris and lots of things besides.
So, isn’t it a pity when we common people chatter
Of the mysteries to which I have referred,
We should use for such a delicate and complicated matter
Such a short and unattractive word.
My favourite parts, not of a woman’s anatomy, but of Dr Kasi’s book, are those that describe his way of getting around our bureaucrats / rats. Most notable is the part that described a mirror as “Reflecting apparatus, Non Digital, Rectangular, Wall Mounted. Dimensions: 183 x 9.5 x 0.5 cm.”
I have been reading Dr Rajendran Nair, the famed neurologist’s interviews in Desabhimani Weekly that came out in 1984. My Malalayam is now greatly improved. So, allow me to add:
ഈ അവിരാമം ഇല്ലാ എന്ന് ധരിപ്പിക്കുന്ന പ്രഭാഷണം ശ്രദ്ധിച്ച്ച എല്ലാവരോടും എന്റെ അഗാധമായ കൃതജത രേഖപ്പെടുത്തട്ടെ. കുറച്ചു ഗ്ലാനത അനുഭവപ്പെട്ടെങ്കിലും മസ്തിഷ്ട വൃണങ്ങളോ, മോഹാലക്ഷ്യമോ, മരണമോ ഒരു ച്ചുവട് മുൻവശത്തുള്ള എടുപ്പ് സാധ്യം ആക്കുകയില്ല എന്ന ആകുലതക്ക് അസേഷം സംഭവനീയത ഇല്ല എന്ന് ഞാൻ നിചയദാർഷ്ട്ടത്തോടെ പ്രഖ്യാപിക്കാട്ടെ.
വിനയത്തോടും ബഹുമാനത്തോടും ആദരവോടും,
PVK
PS.
I declare that no part of this speech is generated by Chat GPT / Shat GPT or AI. I prefer natural idiocy to artificial intelligence.
Thank you and good morning.
PPS. I was more than a little surprised to find errors in the text, even the blurb of Dr Kasi’s book. Remember, no serious library will pick a book with errors of that nature in it. When R. Mohan, the brilliant scholar and economist wrote ‘Story of Schisms and Isms: Kerala – from the Twilight of Monarchy to the Present’ (2025), it had innumerable errors and typos. Both Mohan and his best friend N. E. Sudheer defended it. I wrote a detailed review of the book. Even Akkar’s editor Mr Saxena was unconcerned. But a book that would have been part of every developmental economics library in the world chose to withdraw its application to join those libraries. I understand that the error is now being rectified.
This book has chosen the same path, for reasons I cannot diagnose.
Thank you.
Contact: profpvk@gmail.com / 8129190623. I prefer email. No Whats’App. Not until it is called ‘Enterappi’.
P. Vijaya Kumar / PVK
profpvk@gmail.com
Thank you. Nandri. Namaskaram.
PVK 08/June/2026
PVK's Book mark 