I'm attending a marriage today. You might ask why it deserve a tweet. Well groom is dead actually. And bride is dead too. Like about 30 years ago.
And their marriage is today. For those who are not accustomed to traditions of Dakshina Kannada this might sound funny. But (contd)
This pock marked face of Sri Krishna known as Parthasarathy .. Partha aka Arjuna’s sarathy.. charioteer… depicts Krishna’s promise to not fight in the Kurukshetra war.
He did not raise a hand except to blow Panchajanya, the conch.. his Shanku.
Mahavishnu in his Sri Krishna avatar did not fight… in his previous avatar, he fought.. as Rama, he had to slay Vali from behind as Vali had the boon of drawing the strength of his opponent in front of him.. and so in this avatar, he came face to face to the arrows and allowed them to pierce him.
Vali was the son of Indra and hence his amsa. As was Arjuna who was born with Indra’s amsa. In one avataram, he shot at Vali and in the next, he protected Arjuna from the front by bearing the onslaught of arrows.
Even gods have to do prayaschitta.
Om Namo Bhagawate Vasudevaya 🙏
His name was Yellapragada Subbarao.
He was born on January 12 1895 in Bhimavaram, in present-day Andhra Pradesh. His family was poor. Several of his siblings died young from disease.
He studied at Madras Medical College but his British professor deliberately gave him a lesser diploma instead of a full MBBS degree.
He scraped together enough money and sailed to America in 1923. He arrived in Boston with almost nothing.
To pay his fees at Harvard Medical School he worked as an attendant at a hospital, cleaning rooms and changing bedsheets at night. Colleagues called him the Indian who cleans toilets.
He did not stop.
At Harvard he began research with chemist Cyrus Fiske. Together they developed the Fiske-Subbarao method for measuring phosphorus in body fluids, still used in biochemistry today.
He then discovered the role of phosphocreatine and adenosine triphosphate in muscular activity. That discovery entered biochemistry textbooks worldwide.
It is what we now call ATP, the energy currency of every living cell.
Harvard denied him a full professorship. He was a foreigner and had few friends in the right circles.
His colleague Cyrus Fiske suppressed and destroyed many of his contributions out of jealousy. Years of Subbarao’s work had to be rediscovered by other scientists because Fiske would not let them be published.
He joined Lederle Laboratories instead. There he developed the first method to synthesise folic acid, Vitamin B9.
He showed it could treat megaloblastic anaemia and tropical sprue. He then helped develop methotrexate, one of the first chemotherapy drugs, still used today to treat cancer and rheumatoid arthritis.
He led the team that discovered Aureomycin, the first tetracycline antibiotic, more powerful than penicillin, which saved hundreds of thousands of lives during and after World War II.
He never became an American citizen. He lived in the United States for 25 years on a temporary visa. He applied for permanent residence and never received it.
On August 8 1948 he died of cardiac arrest in New York. He was 53 years old. No citizenship. No Nobel Prize. No fame.
A writer named Doron Antrim wrote this about him in 1950. “You have probably never heard of Dr. Yellapragada Subbarao. Yet because he lived, you may be alive today.”
The drug that treated your anaemia. The antibiotic that fought your infection. The chemotherapy that gave someone more time.
All of it traces back to a man from Bhimavaram who cleaned hospital rooms to pay his Harvard fees.
India forgot him. Science did not.
Follow for stories India deserves to remember.
🚨 Six children danced at their school's annual day in Dindori near Nashik. All six were dead by midnight, along with three adults who had come to watch them.
They did not die because of some unforeseeable tragedy. They died because an open, uncovered 40-foot well stood at the end of a concrete road, waiting to kill.
What makes this even worse is that this danger was not unknown. Locals said a biker and even a cow had fallen into the same well earlier.
Everyone knew it was a disaster waiting to happen.
No one fixed it. No one covered it. No one stopped people from using that road.
Multiple factors are believed to have contributed to the hazard, including the conversion of farmland into non-agricultural land, a dispute between a local landowner and the nagar panchayat, recent road construction, and alleged negligence.
last night I had an argument with my papa & grandpa…
in anger I said, “if you don’t let me travel, I’ll run away & never come back” in the morning I forgot everything like nothing happened… busy with office work
today afternoon, aunty was cleaning the house, so she kept some bags in my room…
grandpa saw them & suddenly asked, are you planning to leave?
I laughed & said yes I’m going
next moment… he started crying
he even said sorry…
that moment hit me hard.
sometimes we say things in anger…
but the people who love us feel it deeply 💔