August 17, 1998

Outlining a post-Pokhran agenda for a nuclear nation.

By Manoj Joshi

NUCLEAR INDIA
EDITED BY JASJIT SINGH
KNOWLEDGE WORLD-IDSA
PAGE: 324 PRICE: Rs 295

The Delhi-based Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) is well-placed to have produced the first of what will undoubtedly be a bumper crop of books on India's nuclear tests and their aftermath. IDSA's researchers have been writing on the subject for several years. Being part of a semi-government outfit, they have on occasion been privy to official thinking on the subject. But the main persons behind this effort are Jasjit Singh, the editor of the volume and IDSA's current director, and K. Subrahmanyam, IDSA's former chief.

Between them, the two provide the focus of this collection of essays. Subrahmanyam, who has been associated with nuclear issues from the mid-'60s, uses the device of personal reminiscence to give the first overview of India's nuclear decision-making -- from the Chinese tests of October 1964 to the May 1998 tests in Pokhran. He has to do this, he says, with the idea of pressuring the Government to provide an authoritative account. Subrahmanyam's recounting on a subject of such importance is depressing, especially that in the period of Rajiv Gandhi's government.

The book provides a fairly comprehensive picture of the nuclear realities confronting India and the policy options to be examined. The Government should be grateful to Singh and his colleagues for their coherent analysis of the Shakti decision and their suggestions about the direction in which India ought to head.

Singh's nuclear strategy for India is a sober argument for a minimum deterrence posture based on some 30-40 warheads that could be mounted on medium-range missiles, sea-launched systems and nuclear-capable aircraft. Since this will take some time to develop, Singh argues in the interim for a posture of "recessed deterrence". This he terms as the ability to deploy nuclear weapons "within a defined timeframe".

AUTHORSPEAK
ABRAHAM VERGHESE
Doctor Write

Agony, empathy--and stirring prose

By Arthur J. Pais

When he moved to Johnson City, Tennessee, in the '80s, Abraham Verghese was won over by its good-hearted people and their exotic cuisine -- squirrel stew and hog brain omelette included. Born and brought up in war-torn Ethiopia -- where his parents were teachers -- and having had his medical education in Chennai and then the US, Verghese thought he had finally found home in Johnson City. Soon he would spend long hours in the local hospital treating aids patients. An outsider, he also became a confidant to many dying, young, gay people who had exiled themselves from Johnson City and were now seeking reconciliation with their friends and family. The encounters led to the poignant My Own Country (1994).

Now, in The Tennis Partner (HarperCollins), the good doctor offers another doomed life. But again there are hopeful meditations about life and death, about friendship and the loss of it, and the gain of a wider view about human bonds. "The book is about the way we, the healers, live and die," says Verghese. "It asks questions many of us do not think about." Advance reviews have been enthusiastic. "Verghese has shown us once again that he is an old-fashioned physician of the soul," notes bestselling author Kaye Gibbons.

This book is culled from the struggles of the gifted David Smith who, unable to overcome his drug addiction, kills himself at 35. When Verghese meets Smith, he is a medical student who had come from Australia on a tennis scholarship and even played briefly on the pro tour. The two are strangers on the very edge of America, living in El Paso on the Mexican border. Verghese tries tennis therapy: "On the tennis court, David was my teacher. At the hospital, I was his mentor." The two grow close. Smith confesses he is an intravenous cocaine addict. When Smith is sent to a rehabilitation clinic in Atlanta, Verghese visits him there: "I found more than half of the patients there were doctors. So I began to ask myself: why is it that we, the healers, cannot take good care of ourselves?"

The question haunts Verghese as Smith's recovery goes awry. At the end of The Tennis Partner, published four years after Smith's death, the author writes, "I cannot help but believe that David's aloneness, his addiction, was worse for being in the medical profession -- and not just because of the ease of access, or stress or long hours -- but because of the way our profession fosters loneliness." Do doctors cry?

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