HELPING HAND:Ramakrishnan with his escort Patric Nisson (sic: he spells Patric without the k)

Venki and the Calcutta connection

All week in Stockholm, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Chemistry Nobel Prize winner, has been looked after by a nice young Swedish foreign ministry official, Patric Nisson, who normally works for the department of consular affairs and civil law.

He has been in Gaza and other such hot spots because his job is to “ care for distressed people”. Being Venki’s escort has made a pleasant change.

“Here,” says Venki, “Patric would like to talk about Calcutta.”

Patric, who is 30 and wired up to his mobile phone, is enthusiastically looking forward to his Calcutta trip from December 21 for about two weeks.

“Will you be there?”

Alas, I won’t but family and friends can show him round, I suggest.

“I am going to Calcutta for the first time,” says Patric.

Well, that’s not exactly true for Patric reveals: “I was born in Calcutta, all I know is my birth mother was between 12 and 13 years of age, and I was adopted by a Swedish couple when I was three months. I will be going back to visit an orphanage called Sicwind”.

Family and friends will look after him, I promise.

Tails up: Lars Allde, outfitter to Nobel Laureates

Nobel business

There is no business like Nobel business — at least, for the outfitters set up 60 years ago by a man called Hans Allde.

With row upon row of dark tail suits, the place feels like one of those establishments back in England that has been kitting out boys at an ancient public school for generations.

“Now stand still, I looked after your dad and before him his dad,” you expect someone to say.

Hans Allde is now in his eighties and the business is run by his son, Lars, who says that all week he has been busy providing the tails, shirts, white ties and other “special items of clothing” needed by guests for the banquet attended by King Carl Gustav and other members of the Swedish royal family in honour of the Nobel Laureates.

“We have been fitting out the Nobel Prize winners as well,” says Lars.

I assume the Laureates, being honoured guests, have their bills for clothes hire paid for by the Nobel organisation.

“No,” Lars shakes his head. “We bill the Nobel people direct and they take it out of the prize money.”

By the time poor “Venki” has shared his $1.4m with two others and paid for little extras, he will probably be left with just enough for a coffee — a cup sets you back by 25 kroner or Rs 1,642.

Tiger’s tale

The story of Tiger Woods (plus Swedish wife) is not the only tiger’s tale in town. I popped into a big Stockholm bookshop to find a Swedish translation of Aravind Adiga’s 2008 Booker winner, The White Tiger, retailing for 279 Swedish kroner, which works out to nearly Rs 2,000.

This compares with my Rs 100 paperback which I bought off a “street urchin” in Mumbai on the way to the airport after finding that the Nalanda Bookshop at the Taj had sold out.

Put another way, 279 SK would have bought me 20 copies.

Rush hour?

May be I am extrapolating on the basis of insufficient research but Stockholm’s rush hour on the Metro means that not everyone manages to get a seat and half a dozen commuters per carriage have to stand.

Chandni Chowk this isn’t at 7.30 pm on the Calcutta Metro or even the Northern Line on the London Underground.

Mine is a rough calculation based on the number of people per square kilometre but Sweden offers a vision of what life in India would be like if its population was 63.6m.

Imagine what Calcutta would be like if its population was 396,756. No pushing, no shoving, no quarrelling, no hanging out of buses, not enough people to mount a bandh — I don’t think we would like it very much.

STARRY NIGHTS: Swedes love their stars, in real life and in their shop windows which sparkle for Christmas

Stockholm syndrome

Hostage taking is a very serious crime but in 1973 something unusual happened in Stockholm which gave birth to a new expression in criminology — “the Stockholm Syndrome”.

The phrase was coined by psychiatrist Nils Bejerot after a bank robbery in which four hostages almost fell in love with the robbers who had taken them hostage. The sense of dependency that developed among captives for their captors was used to explain the bonding.

The six-day siege began on August 23, 1973, when Jan Erik Olsson, on leave from prison, held up the Kreditbanken in central Stockholm. When police arrived, Olsson opened fire, injuring one policeman and ordering another to sit on a chair and “sing something”. He obliged with Lonesome Cowboy.

Olsson was joined by another crook, Clark Olofsson, who walked around in the vault, occasionally firing guns and singing Roberta Flack’s Killing Me Softly. One of the hostages, Kristin Enmark, said she “felt safe” with Olsson and Olofsson but feared the police might provoke violence by storming the bank.

Olofsson was released and returned to crime. Olsson got 10 years and even received admiring letters from lonely women who found him “attractive” and later even became engaged to one of them.

In time, scholars wrote learned papers on the deeper meaning of the siege, Swedish television made a feature film and songwriter Derek Webb and the Swedish rock band Backyard Babies made a soulful album, Stockholm Syndrome.

There are psychiatrists who think there is also a Calcutta Syndrome to explain how a whole people have developed a bond of dependency with the politicians who have held them hostage in trying conditions for more than 30 years.

Too some: there is no escaping the bollywood babes

Bollywood babes

Just when I thought I was safe in the middle of Stockholm’s busiest shopping street, two familiar faces, advertising Tissot and Longine watches respectively, swum into view.

I wonder if the Swedes know who Deepika and Ash are because Indian cinema does not have much of a following in Sweden — the nearest thing to Bollywood they have had is Slumdog Millionaire.

It seems the pair were there only to catch escaping Indians: “You can run but you can’t hide. The Bollywood babes will always get you.”

Tittle tattle

It has been a privilege being in Stockholm for Nobel week although attending lectures was for me just like old times at university — sitting with students and writing down pages of science notes and then finding I did not understand a word of it.

One surprising feature about scientists is they like risking jokes.