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Articles by Damayanti Datta
From the India Today archives (2013): Child sexual abuse: The monster next door
Damayanti Datta (NOTE: This article was originally published in the India Today issue dated May 6, 2013) A five-year-old is fighting for life at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi. Grievously injured, she lives to see another day. A thousand kilometres away, in Nagpur, another four-year-old is lying in a coma in a hospital Intensive Care Unit. She lies tethered to a ventilator, with a broken body and serious brain injury.
From the India Today archives (2012)
(NOTE: This article was published in the INDIA TODAY edition dated December 24, 2012) It was a day like any other in March this year. But to the bewildered 46-year-old it didn't bode well: Try as he might he just couldn't get out of bed. Two days later, when it happened again, Ratan Dharkar knew he was up against a major crisis. As a chartered accountant running his own firm in Mumbai, he had faced his share of challenges. But this was something no balance sheet could capture.
'For Me, It’s All Been About The Love Of Science'
“I have multiple types of days. No two days are alike,” she laughed, eyes sparkling. Mondays are for planning the week and the month, Tuesdays and Thursdays for meetings and developing new business ideas, Wednesdays for long term activities (strictly no meetings), Fridays for projects, Saturdays for relationship-building. Sundays are Jugnu Jain’s own, leisurely and carefree, filled with books, music, good food and yoga.
Igniting Ideas For Impact – Podcast
Audiobooks.com: 30 day free trial and get your first 3 audiobooks on us! 🙌 More than 375,000 premium audiobooks in one app. Episodes Indians Building the Future of India’s Workforce: This chapter explores concrete examples of how certain platforms pioneered by ordinary Indians are helping the country encash its demographic dividend, while also facilitating the entry of those often ignored, or left out of the formal workforce.
If you are the only woman in the room, so what?
The year was 1991. India was about to launch its supercomputer, besting many developed countries in the race. A team of brilliant scientists, under Vijay Bhatkar, were hard at work at the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC). Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was watching keenly. A young girl, just out of college, had joined the research team at C-DAC. She was put in the integration team but got bored within a year and wanted to quit.
Our Intimate Relation With Sugar, Why It Holds On To Us So Doggedly?
Sugar: The Silent Killer by Damayanti Datta attempts to demystify the way we eat now, the pre-eminence of refined sugar in our diet, what it does to us and what we can do to mitigate its malign influence. An excerpt: In the heart of Varanasi, the Saptarishi Aarti is on. Seven purohits chant in unison, some hold flaming lamps, some fan the ceremonial chamara, some clang cymbals, some ring the prayer bell, some beat the enormous jaydhaak— in tandem with your heartbeats.
Books that tell you to train your mind and control your diet Original
These July books tell us how to control our eating habits, train our mind to deal with physical changes in an aging body and usher in joy in life These July books tell us how to control our eating habits, train our mind to deal with physical changes in an aging body and usher in joy in life Sugar: The Silent Killer By Damayanti Datta; Rupa Publication Indians are known for their sweet tooth. We also have enough reasons, occasions and festivals to celebrate.
This book on geriatric care is useful, but not an easy read
What exactly do you do?” Dr Prasun Chatterjee, a geriatrician at AIIMS, Delhi, faces that question time and again. Typically, he explains: “We prepare seniors for active and purposeful ageing.” That triggers a deluge of questions: how to enjoy one’s golden years with dignity and quality of life, how to find the greatest care available for a loved one, how to cope with the challenges of failing body and mind.
The ‘Vaccine Row’ in India explained: between a jab and a hard place
On December 21, US President Joe Biden rolled up a sleeve and smiled at television cameras as he received a Covid-19 jab. “I urge you to take it. There is nothing to worry about,” tweeted the 78-year-old. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 71, took a shot on television, to encourage his country. Days later, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, 94, and Prince Philip, 99, received theirs at Windsor Castle. At Vatican, Pope Francis, 84, took his shot and told reporters: “It is a moral choice.
Combatants of the virus-triggered warfare are not just vaccines and its makers but also nations
Inside the dark caverns of the human body, a war is on. Nano-sized, silent and invisible to the naked eye, but brutal and singularly cunning. A viral predator is planning to storm the body’s citadels: the cells. Covert operations are underway. The virus is undulating its spikes, like balloons on a string. Each spike is coated with sugar—the primordial molecule—to trick the cells into believing what’s landing is safe. The camouflage works: cells pop open.
This World Cancer Week, let's separate the myth and reality surrounding it
For representational purposes Fake, fun and fantastic, myths usually tell us something about why the world is the way it is. But believing myths about cancer can be outright dangerous. Consider this: cancer is contagious and you need dollops of positivity to beat the dreaded C-word. Or this: cancer is caused by a fungus and it’s actually your body’s attempt to protect itself from the infection.
Nutrition Warriors | How Chandra Sekhar Kundu Managed To Serve 90,000 Plates From Waste Food
It was July 6, 2015, eight-year-old Srideep’s birthday. His parents, Chandrima and Chandra Sekhar Kundu, had splurged on a party for him. In the end, there were masses of leftover food that even the catering men were unable to polish off. Much of it was trashed. Later that night, Chandra Sekhar witnessed a scene that changed his life: two children rummaging for food in a garbage dump. One stood guard with a stick to fend off stray dogs; the other foraged the heap.
Nutrition Warriors | A Mizo Village's Fight To Ward Off Stunted Growth, Underweight Children
Home » Magazine » National » Cover Stories » Nutrition Warriors » Nutrition Warriors | A Mizo Village's Fight To Ward Off Stunted Growth, Underweight Children Damayanti Datta January 08, 2020 00:00 IST Nutrition Warriors | A Mizo Village's Fight To Ward Off Stunted Growth, Underweight Children outlookindia.com 2020-01-10T16:01:14+0530 Lawngtlai has 35.3 per cent stunted, 21.3 per cent underweight and 5.9 per cent severely wasted children under the age of five—highest on all counts in Mizoram.
Nutrition Warriors | In Naxalite Land, A Doctor Couple's Crusade To Save Tribal Communities In Jharkhand, Odisha
Ancient trees close in overhead on the long, undulating road from Khunti to Chakradharpur in Jharkhand, as the musty smell of red earth wafts up, waterfalls cascade down craggy rocks and forest-clad hills alternate with valleys in the distance. Yet, you are warned: it is part of the Naxalite ‘red corridor’. There are many ways to understand danger here.
‘We Do Not Know How To Feed Our Children’
Dr Vinod Paul is an internationally renowned paediatrician, academic, medical researcher and public health exponent, especially newborn health. A member of NITI Aayog, he leads the health and nutrition verticals. In a conversation with Damayanti Datta, Dr Paul talks about healthcare initiatives such as Ayushman Bharat and Poshan Abhiyaan, and how to resolve the problem of malnutrition.
Mahua Laddoos To Leftover Food From College Canteens -- Meet Nutrition Warriors Aiming To Conquer Starvation
One unremarkable morning last year, Jhingru died. Shrunken, emaciated and grey, he looked older than his 42 years. His family members say he had not eaten for ten days: there was no food at home, no money, nothing. As the word spread, district officers arrived, photographers in tow. In the end, Jhingru’s body was taken away for autopsy. The officers needed to know if he had really died of starvation or the family was cadging for sarkari largesse.
Nutrition Warriors | How Chandra Sekhar Kundu Managed Serves 90,000 Plates From Waste Food
It was July 6, 2015, eight-year-old Srideep’s birthday. His parents, Chandrima and Chandra Sekhar Kundu, had splurged on a party for him. In the end, there were masses of leftover food that even the catering men were unable to polish off. Much of it was trashed. Later that night, Chandra Sekhar witnessed a scene that changed his life: two children rummaging for food in a garbage dump. One stood guard with a stick to fend off stray dogs; the other foraged the heap.
Ring Out The Old And Ring In The New
The hippest word to flaunt when talking nutrition in 2020 will be PLANT-BASED. It’s actually a lifestyle trend, as health, environmental and ethical concerns drive more people around the world to eat clean and live clean. So there are plant-based snacks, plant-based milks, plant-based meats, plant-based drinks, plant-based protein, now doing the rounds.
Goodbye Handshake, Hello Namaste
Next time you visit a hospital or a clinic, don’t shake hands to greet your doctor. There’s no guarantee that your doctor’s hands are clean. Say “Hello,” instead. Follow the Don’t-shake-hands campaigns that are in the air across the world. Or just do a “namaste,” as doctors from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) are saying now. Do the history first The year was 1846.
Avocados Or Onions?
We have sung nursery rhymes about oranges and lemons. We have been told that it’s healthier to be a pear than an apple when it comes to body shape. We have compared apples to oranges, only to find that it’s not the smartest thing to do. Fruity Idioms always add a touch of tang and spice to our conversations. But Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram has taken it to a whole new level by bringing avocados and onions to the nation’s political discourse on December 5.
Sorry, It’s No Sugar Day
How tea shops in a little township of Kerala refused to serve sugar to customers on World Diabetes Day. Talk about community best practice So who did what on World Diabetes Day?
'The Prime Minister Has Framed Poshan Abhiyaan As A Jan Andolan. That Makes Malnutrition A Collective Problem': Professor K. 'Vish' Vishwanath
(Image Credit: Suresh K. Pandey) It’s a bright feather in Poshan Abhiyaan’s hat when someone like K “Vish” Vishwanath talks about the transformative potential of Modi government’s flagship programme to make India malnutrition-free.
A Day Before Diwali, ‘Choddo Shak' To Appease The Ancestors? Think Again.
Fourteen nights from Durga puja, as the moon reveals its dark side, 14 generations of your forebears come down to visit you. So goes the saying. Tonight is the night of the dead—“bhoot chaturdashi”—a time to bring closure to the past and begin afresh with the new moon of Deepavali. Choddo Shak Day It’s a day to worship and thank your ancestors for their benevolence. Fourteen lamps are lit in all dark corners of the home, to guide your ancestors in.
Saptaparni Moment: Extended Festivity At Kolkata Apartment Over Economics Nobel
Way back in the 1990s, economist Dipak Banerjee had introduced a new word to a bunch of young students of the Centre For Studies in Social Sciences in Calcutta: “polyphony,” or music where many notes and melodies play out simultaneously. It was his way of teaching. He would draw on musical analogies to break down economic processes. With his son, Abhijit Banerjee, winning the world’s most glorious award, the Nobel Prize, the memory of his classes comes alive.
Why You Are Actually What You Eat
Nutritional psychiatry is an infant discipline. But it is emerging fast, with exploding research on gut-brain linkage. In brief, the discipline—focused on the use of food, supplements and essential nutrients—offers a great opportunity to treat patients who suffer from depression, anxiety and other mental health disorders.
In the shadowland of money launderers
Modi's 'war against the black economy' has spawned another thriving shadow economy. Graphic by Anirban Ghosh IndiaToday.in has plenty of useful resources that can help you better understand the coronavirus pandemic and protect yourself. Read our comprehensive guide (with information on how the virus spreads, precautions and symptoms), watch an expert debunk myths, and access our dedicated coronavirus page. Get real-time alerts and all the news on your phone with the all-new India Today app.
Cancer: Precision medicine finds a new mantra - cure is inside the patient
He was a ruggedly handsome man in life: shirt unbuttoned, muscles rippling, cigarette dangling rakishly from his lips. He was unrecognisable in death: pinched, pale, almost skeletal. For those who knew him onscreen, there was shock and despair at the final terror of his illness. Vinod Khanna, one of the last screen titans of a generation, battled a lethal form of bladder cancer, resistant to chemotherapy, for six long years and finally succumbed on April 27.
Beef, ban and bloodshed
In the heart of Uttar Pradesh's Bisahra village-an island of brick-and-cement houses in the middle of open fields that extend to the horizon-the redness of the sun is slowly being consumed by a cold, empty darkness. It's 7 p.m. The sun has just set, and the narrow by-lanes are covered with black shadows. Everyone is indoors, except for a sea of policemen standing guard at the village chaupal, the silver stars on their shoulders glistening in the pale moon light.
BEWARE! Selfie Elbow, Text Neck, Phantom Ringing Syndrome, Facebook Depression...What Internet Is Doing To You
India may embrace technology with open arms, but doctors are worried about the range of behavioural aberrations they come across: from anxiety and irritability to sleeplessness, neglecting important activities, avoiding face-to-face interactions with family and friends, and drifting away from intimate relationships.
Selfie Death Capital Of The World, Mobile-Loving India Faces Strange Digital Disorders
She sits pretty on the railing of a bridge, smiling at the camera. A clear blue sky above her and a river far below. She is holding the end of her red saree about her head, as if bracing against the wind. If a picture says a thousand words, the 20-year-old’s photograph tells the sweet story of a newly wed woman. What it doesn’t say is, it is also her last photograph.
Malnutrition Above Politics, Children Aren’t Vote Banks: Smriti Irani
Mothers come in all stripes: time-constrained mothers, overworked mothers, ignorant mothers, anaemic mothers, underweight mothers, far-too-young mothers. And they always come under the scanner of policymakers, trying to set right the wrongs of historical hunger and malnutrition that haunt India.
Rage Of A Silent, Invisible Killer Called Malnutrition - Why Shining India Is In Grip Of An Epic Calamity
It’s a crisis that hides in plain sight. And Prime Minister Narendra Modi singles it out in his radio talks, from the ramparts of the Lal Qilla, for his 49.3 million followers on Twitter. He hammers home his impatience for the scourge to go away: “Main bechain hoon, main besabr hoon, main vyakul hoon” and pledges a new tryst with destiny: a malnutrition-free India by 2022. A new national lexicon is gaining ground for something that isn’t often in the news.
Think Different: Why Mahatma Gandhi's Nutrition Habits Matter Today
He was a frail man, weighing a mere 46.7 kgs. With his 5 ft. 5 in. frame, his body mass index, retrospectively, would be 17.1. Today’s doctors would definitely have pronounced him, “underweight”. Imagine taking on the mighty British empire with that level of frailty. It was all about soul power for Gandhi. But why are we talking about him now? First, it is August. In 1942, he had started the Quit India movement from August 8.
Indian men have a disease, that explains why they're sex offenders
Now I know what’s wrong with Indian men. At least, a lot of them. They are suffering from a disease, an infection, that has reached epidemic proportions. Not just: of all the epidemics that have swept over the nation, it is perhaps the most devastating and the most toxic. Frotteurism. That’s the name of the disease, from the French verb frotter, meaning, “to rub”. Frotteurs let loose In everyday speak, we call it groping.
Modi's sleeping habits bad for you
How long can you survive without food? Forty days max. And how long can you carry on without sleep? A meagre 11 days. No wonder, the world loves its "sleepless elites". Prime Minister Narendra Modi sleeps for three and half hours a night. Former PM, Indira Gandhi slept for four hours. Her friend, the British PM, Margaret Thatcher, also got by with four. Napoleon Bonaparte, the 18th century French supremo who often took naps on horseback, apparently thought only fools needed eight hours of sleep.
Not Just Muzaffarpur, AES Is Spreading Across India And Doctors Are Baffled
There are two children and two sets of parents on every bed. Young mothers cradle limp children. Fathers fuss over immobile babies, barely visible through a maze of tubes and masks. Many more lie on the floor, with parents frantically fanning them to beat the stifling heat. Nurses and doctors run around. Machines blink and glow. High-pitched wailings hush the crowd, sometimes, as little bodies swathed in white are carried out.
Sabarimala row: History has been made, messily perhaps, but made nonetheless
Sometimes, history happens when no one is looking. Sabarimala kept making headlines ever since the Supreme Court lifted the bar on women to worship at the hilly shrine on September 28. And through months of protest, politics, bandhs, lathi-charge, violence, high drama and tense moments. Then, suddenly, everything changed on February 6 — the hum, the buzz, the turbulence.
Uncontrolled sand mining led to Kerala floods. This is only waiting to happen again
Neyyattinkara on the banks of the Neyyar in South Kerala is now a forbidding landscape of swirling waters. There should be a rickety old hut at the end of a wobbly bridge somewhere out there. The solitary resident of that island, grandmother Darly, has been the voice of protest against illegal dredging of sand from the river bed for long. Does anyone know where she is? Up north, Kannur is still reeling under flood fury, with landslides and mudflows destroying everything on their way.
Why Delhi is gasping for breath
Those who live in Delhi will certainly remember these surreal times: June air blowing like hot breath from morning to night and a world seen through a semi-transparent haze of dust. The city glows with an unholy orange light during the day and at night street lamps shimmer like fuzzy globules. Every moment feels like the calm before a storm. It’s like Dante’s inferno: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” It’s not end of all hope for all.
Why do men rape children? This is what experts told me
Kathua, Surat, Etah, Balasore, Indore, Chatra, Chandrauli. And now Alwar. Yet another child has been raped. Once again. Since April, cases of extreme brutality on children have brought people out into the streets in anger, frustration and disgust. The trial of the eight accused in the Kathua rape-murder case has just started. Yet, the crimes continue unabated. Are child rapists blind? Can’t they see the protests, hear the outrage? Don’t they feel scared? Who are they really?
The April of apologies: Why the entire world is suddenly feeling so sorry
"April is the cruellest month." Most of us have quoted the first line of TS Eliot's The Waste Land without ever wondering what it really means: Why is April the cruellest month? Is it the cruellest month? What makes it more cruel than any other month? The answer is finally blowing in the wind: April 2018 is turning out to be the cruellest month for a whole lot of people. Because a whole lot of people are being forced to say, "sorry", this month.
What India Today sex survey 2018 reveals about Indians having sex at workplace
Do you think it’s all right for co-workers to engage in sexual relations? Which of the three options do you think most Indians would choose? No-brainer, did you say, in a country famously skittish about sex? Hold on, wait a minute. Look behind the numbers of the 2018 India Today Sex Survey: “Sex At Work”. The India Today Sex Surveys have thrown up a dizzying array of numbers over the past 15 years.
What it was like inside Madame Tussauds Delhi
I spent a delightful afternoon on November 31. I rode Salman Khan’s rickshaw, said “hi” to Sachin, “namaste” to Prime Minister Modi, took a selfie with Gandhiji, tried to crowd in on Subhas Bose and Sardar Patel, checked out Mary Kom’s lean muscles and Marilyn Monroe’s alabaster cheeks. Memorable moments frozen in time…er…wax. For, the curtain has finally risen on Madame Tussauds world of wax in India.
Judges bribery case: Has Supreme Court damaged its reputation?
Where there's smoke, there's fire, or pollution or, at least, a scandal. That was the buzz last week, as unprecedented fireworks flared up between the top judges and high-profile public interest lawyers, upsetting the tranquillity of the Supreme Court and keeping the nation on the edge. At stake was not just the authority of the judiciary but the reputation of lawyers and credibility of the Supreme Court Bar Association.
Is Yogi Adityanath serious about restoring Taj Mahal’s glory?
As Yogi Adityanath wielded the broom outside the Taj Mahal on October 26, smiling enigmatically, a whole lot of unanswered questions hung about, a bit like the smog and stench that surround India’s one and only “wonder of the world”. First: why did the Uttar Pradesh chief minister need to make such a spectacle of his first visit (as CM) to the Taj? After all, he is (arguably) the first Indian to claim (publicly) that the Taj does not represent Indian heritage.
What former President and politician par excellence Pranab Mukherjee can teach us
Pranab Mukherjee has just published the third volume of his memoirs (The Coalition Years, 1996-2012) chronicling his long and extraordinary political life. He has given an exclusive interview to India Today Editorial Director, Raj Chengappa, and excerpts from his book. He is the cover story of India Today magazine this week.
Talwars acquitted: Questions about Aarushi murder that remain unanswered
CBI special judge Shyam Lal had quoted from the Gita, “Dharmo rakshati rakshitaha (protect dharma to be protected by dharma),” before pronouncing life-term for Aarushi Talwar’s parents. That was 2013. Today, that line took on a poignant significance when justices BK Narayana and AK Mishra of Allahabad High Court acquitted Rajesh and Nupur Talwar, pointing a finger at shoddy probe and loopholes in investigation.
How I discovered fingerprints of elderly can make Aadhaar cards invalid
For the last one year, I have been dashing about on all sorts of missions. First, from banks to ATMs and now, from one Aadhaar card camp to the other. My only solace is that I am not alone. It started on November 8, 2016, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced demonetisation in an unscheduled live televised address at 8pm. I missed it. I was on a flight from Chennai to Delhi.
What would Gandhi and Shastri have done had they been alive?
“Is Gandhi relevant today?” In October 1976, India Today magazine asked that question in a cover story. It mentioned how each year on October 2 a parade of commemorative meetings, speeches and seminars took place with unfailing regularity, “only to be forgotten till next October". It’s a question that has been asked hundreds of times in the past four decades: in civil service exams, in classroom interactions (JNU to IIMs), in countless essays, books and speeches.
Why we need to take heart risk more seriously
For the last 17 years, we have celebrated the World Heart Day. And in the last 17 years, we have changed our diets drastically (several times over), turned into gym rats, given up what we used to enjoy once, taken to expensive annual check-ups, read up all we could — just in the hope of keeping our hearts ticking. Yet, the explosion of heart disease continues to rage around the world, accounting for more than 31 per cent of all deaths now. Why is that?
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