{"id":1483,"date":"2012-02-03T08:14:35","date_gmt":"2012-02-03T08:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/2012\/02\/03\/s-ramgoolam\/"},"modified":"2019-11-25T13:42:14","modified_gmt":"2019-11-25T09:42:14","slug":"s-ramgoolam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/s-ramgoolam\/","title":{"rendered":"Sushy is fifty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>By Suren<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u00ab\u00a0Dr S. Ramgoolam\u00a0\u00bb was scribbled on the folded paper that Sushy fished out from the pigeonhole at the department of medicine, university of Sheffield, in June 1986. It was the handwriting of Jane, a secretary at the Registry \u2013 faithful to her word that she would try to have a peek at the examination results. \u201cCongrats to the new doctor! When do we celebrate \u2013 with the big slice of the cheese cake you\u2019ll be putting in the oven for your dad?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">She slumped into a chair, all emptied out, exhausted \u2013 the culmination of her efforts, her dream. It had not even crossed her mind to think of an alternative career. She rushed off to bed, into oblivion, but not without a silent mumbling of the Gayatri mantra. She was shaken out of her slumber by her boyfriend who pressed for an answer, and she finally said yes to Bruno, the glass engineer from Portugal, who had been bowled over by her performance of Kathak dance.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The joke was that the pioneering Portuguese navigators Diaz, Vasco da Gama and Pereira did not find any woman in Cirne Island, but the wait of five centuries was worthwhile for their reward was Sushama. The wedding of 1989 gave her two sons, Jaime and Ricardo, who liked to see Mum bustling about in her Carcavellos clinic.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">It was not hard for her to keep body and soul together but fate will have its own way \u2013 a cancer removed the soul to the cosmic cycle leaving the body to be cremated in Lisbon in 2003.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Her ashes have been confined to the waters \u2013 at her favourite Guincho beach, near her home in Cascais, at Haridwar, Varanasi, Triveni and at her birth place, Curepipe. Her brother Shailen\u2019s twins, Ilina and Yohann, call out \u201cPhuphu\u201d on coming across her photograph.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Hers was a short and sweet life, leaving fond remembrances all round. Thousands like her, unknown, anonymous and routine-bound help us to live pleasant and peaceful lives; they can rest assured of our grateful appreciation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008080;\"><em><span style=\"color: #008080;\">* Published in print edition on 3 February\u00a02012<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Suren \u00ab\u00a0Dr S. Ramgoolam\u00a0\u00bb was scribbled on the folded paper that Sushy fished out from the pigeonhole at the department of medicine, university of Sheffield, in June 1986. It was the handwriting of Jane, a secretary at the Registry \u2013 faithful to her word that she would try to have a peek at the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":294,"featured_media":6560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[34],"tags":[20236,5195,20235,20234,7725],"class_list":["post-1483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-readers-speak","tag-cirne-island","tag-dr-s-ramgoolam","tag-portuguese-navigators-diaz","tag-suren","tag-vasco-da-gama"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/MT-Logokk.jpg?fit=1200%2C880&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8QzSF-nV","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/294"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}