Journal articles on the topic 'Red Can Oranda Gold fish'

<strong>ABSTRACT</strong> Ornamental fishes are considered as one of the most important means of home entertainment, because of its diversity and beauty of picturesque colors. This research work has been conducted to show that the ornamental fish mainly Red Can Oranda Gold fish (<em>Carassius auratusauratus</em>) are mainly affected with parasites like <em>Argulus</em> sp. and also reveal the prevalent and unforeseen parasitic infection in commercially available ornamental fishes which may credit to their marketable value. During the period of March 2014 to April 2015, around 30 numbers of fish farms of West Bengal have been surveyed and three species of <em>Argulus</em> namely, <em>A. coregoni, A. japonicas</em>, and <em>A. foliaceus </em>have been isolated and identified from the skin or gill of the fresh water fish species. Clinical signs in infected fish include scratching on aquariumwalls, erratic swimming, and poor growth. It causes pathological changes due to direct tissuedamage and secondary infections. In the present study, it has been noticed that crustacean parasites were prevalent during pre-monsoon season but their intensity was very less during the other season of the year. This is the first report of infection with three species of <em>Argulus of</em>Red Can Oranda Gold fish <em>(Carassius </em><em>auratusauratus</em>) in India. <strong>Key words : </strong>Red Can Oranda Gold fish, <em>Argulus foliaceus, Argulus japonicas ,Argulus coregoni, </em>First reporting, Prevalence, India <strong>REFERENCES</strong> Abd, el-Mohsen., H, Mohamed. and Amany, M. 2013. Studies on argulosis in some freshwater ornamental fishes with special reference to treatment trials. New York Science Journal, 6(10) 37-41. Abele, L.G. 1982. The biology of Crustacea. Systematic, the fossil record, and biogeography. Academic Press, New York. Al-Dulaimi, F.H.A. 2010. Infection with a Fish Louse <em>Argulus foliaceus </em>L. in A Gold Fish (<em>Carassius auratus)</em>at Earthen Ponds and Aquarium Fish in Babylon Province, Iraq. Journal of Babylon University/Pure and Applied Science/ No. (2)/ Vol. (18): 2010. Ali Adnan, AL-Darwesh1, Maytham, A., Alwan, Al-Shabbani and Bushra, H. F. 2014. Diagnostic and pathological study of <em>Argulus japonicas </em>in goldfish (<em>Carassius auratus</em>). G.J.B.B., VOL.3 (4) 2014: 384-387 Azadikhah, D., Masoumian, M., Motallebi, A. A., Male, K M. 2009. Survey of parasitic infection of pikeperch (<em>Sander lucioperca</em>) in Aras Reservoir (west Azerbaijan). Proc 1st Int Congr Aquat Anim Health Manag Dis Teh Iran. Bauer, R. 1991. Erkrankungender Aquarien fishe.Verlag Paul Parey. Berlin and Hamburg. Behrouzfar, I., Sharefian, B., Goodarzi, M. A. 2009. Study on the parasitic Infections of Aquarium Fishes. Proc 1st Int Congr Aquat Anim Health Manag Dis Teh Iran. Buchmann K, Bresciani J. 1997. Parasitic infections in pond-reared rainbow trout <em>Oncorhynchus mykiss </em>in Denmark. Int Res Dis Aquat Org. 28:125-138. Burgu, A., Oguz,T. 1984. The results of parasitological examination of Carassius fish. (in Turkish) Ankara Univ J Vet Fac. 31:197-206. Burgu, A., Oguz, T., Korting, W., Guralp, N., Mikrobiyol. 1988. Ankara Univ Vet Fak Derg, 6, 143-166. Bykhovskaya-Pavlovskaya IE, Gusev AV, Dubinina MN, Izyumova NA, Smirnova TS, Sokolovskaya IL, Shtein GA, Shulman SS, Epstein VM. 1964. Key to Parasites of Freshwater Fish of the U.S.S.R. Leningrad. Bykhovskaya-Pavlovskaya, I. E.; Gusev, A. V.; Dubinina, M. N.; Izyumova, N. A.; Smirnova, T. S.; Sokoloskaya, I. L.; Shtein, G. A.; Shulman, S. S. and Epshtein, V. M. 1962. Key to parasites of freshwater fish of the U.S.S.R. Akad. Nauk, S.S.S.R., Moscow: 727 pp. (In Russian). Chanda, M., Paul, M., Maity, J., Dash, G., Sen, S., Bidhan, G. and Patra, C. 2011. Ornamentalfish goldfish<em>,Carassius auratus</em>and relatedparasites in three districts of West Bengal, India.Chron Young Sci 2011 2(1):51-54. Eissa, I.; Badran, A.; Aly, S.; Abd El-Eal, A.A. and Heba, A.A. 2002. Clinical studies onparasitic diseases among some ornamental fishesand their associated pathological lesions. SuezCanal Vet. Med. J. 301-322 Eissa, I.A.M. 2002. Parasitic fish diseases in Egypt. El-Nahda El-Arabia Publisher, 32 Abd El-Khalek Tharwat Street, Cairo, Egypt. Eissa, I.A.M.,andMohamed,A.H. 2004.&nbsp; Studies on argulosis among some ornamental fishes with special reference to treatment, SCVMJ, Vll (1),211-216 Ekingen, G. 1976. Some parasites found on European catfish (<em>Siluris glanis</em> L.) and brown trout (<em>Salmo trutta</em> L.) in Turkey. Firat &Uuml;niv. Vet. Fak. Derg., 3: 112-115. Geldiay, R., Balik, S. 1974. Mainly endo and ecto-parasites observed on the fresh water fish in Turkey (in Tukish). Ege Univ. Matbaası, Izmir. Jaameei, M., Khanbabazade H., Notash S. 2009. Case report of infection with Argulus in gold fish from fish farms. Proc 1st Int Congr Aquat Anim Health Manag Dis Teh Iran. Kaur, P., Pandey, S. 2014. Effect on marketability of ornamental fishes due to parasitic infection. Biolife&nbsp; 2(4):1094-1099 Lucky, Z. 1977. Methods for the diagnosis of fish diseases Amerial Publication Co.PVT, Ltd, New Delhi and New York. Margolis, L., Esch, G.W., Holmes, J.C., Kuris, A.M. and Schad, G.A. 1982. The use of Ecological Terms in Parasitology (Report on an ad-hoc Committee of the American Society of Parasitologists), Journal of Parasitology, 68<strong>, </strong>131-133. Mayer, J., Hensel, P., Meji-Fava, J., Brando, J., and Divers, S. 2013. The Use of Lufenuron toTreat Fish Lice (<em>Argulus sp</em>) in Koi (<em>Cyprinuscarpio</em>). J Exot Pet Med, volume22, issue 1, January 2013, Pages 65-69. Mehdizadeh, M.S. 2009. Study of ectoparasite infestation of 10 common imported freshwater ornamental fish species. PhD Thesis, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran. Mokhayer, B. 2006. Disease of cultured fish, University of Tehran press, 5th edition, pp. 432 [in Persian]. Mokhayer, B., Mousavi, H.E. 2009. Fish lice (<em>Argulus spp.</em>) from ichthyofauna of Iran. Proc 1st Int Congr Aquat Anim Health Manag Dis Teh Iran. Molnar, K.., Szekely, C. 1998. Occurrence of skrjabillanid nematodes in fishes of Hungary and in the intermediate host, <em>Argulus foliaceus </em>L. Acta Vet Hung. 1998; 46:451. Mosafer, S., Khoshnood, Z., 2009. Infection of the Persian sturgeon, Acipenser persicus with crustacean parasite: <em>Argulus sp</em>. Proc 1st Int Congr Aquat Anim Health Manag Dis Teh Iran. Mousavi, H.E. 2003. Parasites of Ornamental fish in Iran. Bull Eur Ass Fish Pathol 23(6):297-300. Mousavi, H.E., Behtash, F., Bashman, M.R., Mirzargar, S.S., Shayan, P. and Rahmatiholasoo, H. 2011.&nbsp; Study of <em>Argulus spp</em>.infestation rate in Goldfish, <em>Carassius auratus</em>(Linnaeus, 1758) in Iran. &nbsp;HVM&nbsp;<em>BIOFLUX</em>, 2011. Volume 3, Issue 3.198-204. Noaman, V., Chelongar, Y., Shahmoradi, A.H. 2010. The First Record of <em>Argulusfoliaceus </em>(Crustacea: Branchiura) Infestation onLionhead Goldfish (<em>Carassius auratus</em>) in Iran.Iranian J Parasitol: Vol. 5, No. 2, 2010, pp 71-76. Noga, E. J. 2010. Fish disease Diagnosis and Treatment.2nd Edition Mosby-yearbook, Inc. watsworth publishing Co., USA. pp.366. Notash, S. 2013. Study on prevalence of <em>Argulus </em>in Goldfishes (<em>Carassius auratus</em>) of east Azerbaijan province of Iran. <strong>Ann Biol Res</strong>, 3(7):3444-3447. Peyghan. R., 1999.&nbsp; Fish Parasites and Fish Parasitical disease. Noorbakhsh publications. Tehran, Iran. Purivirojkul, W. 2012. Histological Change ofAquatic Animals by Parasitic Infection.&quot;Histopathology &ndash; Reviews and RecentAdvances&quot; book edited by Enrique PobletMartinez, ISBN 978-953-51-0866-5, and Published:December 5, 2012 under CC BY 3.0 license. 179-180. Richards, R. 1977. Diseases of aquarium fish- 2.Skin diseases. Vet Rec.; 101:132-135. Rushton-Mellor, S. K. 1994. The genus <em>Argulus </em>(Crustacea:Branchiura) in Africa: identification keys. Syst Parasitol 28:51-63. Sarieyyupoglu, M., Saglam, N. 1991. <em>Ergasilus sieboldi </em>and <em>Argulus foliaceus </em>observed on <em>Capoeta trutta </em>caught in the polluted region of Keban Dam Lake (in Turkish). E U J Fish Aquat Sci. 8:143-154. Sharma, M., Shrivastav, A.B., Sahni, Y.P. and Pandy, G. 2012.&nbsp; Overviews of the treatmentand control of common fish diseases.Int. Res. J. Pham .2012,3 (7), p: 123 &ndash; 127. Soulsby, EJL. 1982. Helminths, Arthropods and Protozoa of Domesticated Animals.7th ed. Bailli&egrave;re Tindall, London, UK. Toksen, E. 2006.&nbsp; <em>Argulus foliaceus </em>(Crustacea: Branchiura) infestation on Oscar, <em>Astronotus ocellatus</em> (Cuvier, 1829) and Its Treatment. A case study. E.U. J. Fish. Aquat. Sci., 23:177-179. Vasilean, I., Cristea, V., Dediu, L. 2012. Researches regarding the argulosis treatment toHusk Huso juveniles with NaCl Lucrări Ştiinţifice- Seria Zootehnie, vol. 58: 203-207. Walker, P.D. 2008. <em>Argulus </em>the Ecology of a Fish Pest, Ph. D. thesis. Nijmegen: Radboud University; 2008. Yildiz, K., Kumantas, A. 2002. <em>Argulus foliaceus </em>infection in a goldfish <em>(Carassius auratus). </em>Isr J Vet Med. 57(3):118-120.

AbstractOne of them is the problem of disease Argulus sp. is ektoparasite which often attacked in activity of good conducting of sea water and also freshwater. Argulus sp. attacking at part of fin, husk, gill and entire all its body exterior of him. attacked by fish is Argulus sp. will seen is thin, often rub body and arise red pock which later can generate secondary infection. Utilize to prove the existence of bacterium which emerge effect of lession (secondary infection) which because of bite of Argulus sp. that is by identifying bacterium and biochemical test. Media which used in identifying bacterium for example that is TSA (Tryptic Soy Agar), TSIA (Triple Soy Iron Agar), MIO (Motility Indol Ornithin), O/F medium (Oksidative/Fermentative), sugar test medium (maltosa, laktosa, arabinosa, inositol, manitol, sukrosa). Target of this research is to know the existence of gram negative bacterium and gram negative bacterium any kind of which is found at fish hurt of gold fish (Carassius auratus) effect of infestation by ectoparasite Argulus sp. Research which is use descriptive method. That is with infestation of Argulus sp. into containing aquarium of gold fish counted 1 tail and Argulus sp. counted 5, 10, 15, 20 tail. After Argulus sp. patch all at gold fish is later then perceived until gold fish arise lession effect of bite of Argulus sp. is afterwards identifyed by bacterium to know the bacterium that were formed on gold fish lesions. The result showed that the lesions of gold fish, isolation at TSA medium and identified by biochemical test to diagnose bacteriums found on gold fish lession. Identifications of the three gram negative bacterium as follow : Aeromonas hydrophilla, Pseudomonas flourescens, Flexibacter columnaris while for the Edwardsiella tarda was not be found in this study

Histamine, an important safety index for aquatic products, can also be used as a freshness indicator for red-fleshed fish. In this work, magnetic graphene oxide (Fe3O4@GO, MGO) was applied to immobilize diamine oxidase (DAO) through a method of adsorption and covalent bonding. Under the optimized conditions, magnetic DAO prepared by adsorption immobilization had a higher enzyme activity than that of free enzyme, which was selected for the sensor construction. A colorimetric biosensor based on magnetic DAO induced etching of gold nanorods (AuNRs) was developed for the detection of histamine in fish. The developed biosensor showed an excellent response toward histamine with a low detection limit of 1.23 μM and had negligible interference from other diamines. With increasing the histamine concentration, the AuNRs after the reaction exhibited colors ranging from dark green to blue-green, blue, purple, red, and colorless. The etching induced multicolor change of AuNRs indicated the presence of different contents of histamine in mackerel during storage, and was consistent with the overall change in the content of the total volatile basic nitrogen (TVB-N). Thus, it was indicated that the proposed colorimetric biosensor with a naked-eye-detectable readout has a great potential to evaluate the freshness of red-fleshed fish high in histamine.

Gold mining activities produce mercury waste which is very toxic. Mercury can enter the waters and accumulate in fish, and if consumed it can cause health problems, for example neurological dysfunction. Research objective was to analyze the risk of mercury in red snapper on cognitive dysfunction at the community in Bilato Sub-District, Gorontalo District. This study was observational study with cross-sectional design and Environmental Health Risk Analysis (EHRA). The population is all red snapper that live and forage in Bilato waters, and buyers who consume red snapper sold in Bilato Traditional Market. The research sample was red snapper which was sold in it, and 100 respondents were obtained using purposive sampling technique. Mercury content data were obtained through laboratory test results, and respondent data were collected through interviews. Data analysis technique used EHRA method, chi-square and spearman correlation test. The results showed that level of mercury in red snapper was 0.00035 ppm, 68.0% of respondents consumed it and 92.0% had impaired cognitive function. The realtime RQ values were 0.00223 (no risk) and 3.43 (risky) for lifetime RQ. There is a relationship between consumption of red snapper and impaired cognitive function (p=0.043). Meanwhile, the unrelated variables were frequency of consumption (p=0.772), amount of consumption (p=0.602), and duration of consumption (p=0.843). It’s recommended that the public consume more varied fish to minimize accumulation of mercury in the body.

This study was conducted during the period September 2020–January 2023 at ICAR-Central Institute of Fisheries Technology, Cochin. The study was to develop a cost-effective freeze indicator using gold nanoparticles. Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) were synthesized using chitosan and trisodium citrate (TSC) as a reducing agent. Various chitosan samples with different molecular weights were obtained from commercial chitosan units. Chitosan was employed at two distinct concentrations. The UV-Vis spectra exhibited the characteristic peak of AuNPs at 520–530 nm in all analyzed samples. The samples containing chitosan displayed a light pink color, whereas those containing TSC exhibited a ruby red color. An increase in chitosan concentration led to an increase in absorbance of the SPR peak. The full width at half maximum (FWHM), zeta potential, and conductivity of the nanoparticles were also investigated. The stability of the synthesized nanoparticles was assessed during frozen storage at -18°C, revealing that the sample containing TSC became colorless upon freezing. The stability of chitosan-containing samples improved with higher concentrations and molecular weights. No distinct color change upon freezing was observed in the samples synthesized using chitosan. The AuNPs synthesized using TSC were evaluated and the significant color change demonstrated by the sample confirmed that the nanoparticle solution synthesized using TSC at a gold concentration of 1 mM can serve as an effective freeze indicator for food and pharmaceutical applications.

Hickey fish (Betta sp.) Is famous for its aggressive nature and habits of fighting with same-sex, so called fighting fish. Fish body color is colorful, so the appeal of the fans and hobbyists to collect it. Classic colors such as red, green, blue, gray, and combinations are common. New colors also appear from yellow, white, orange, to metallic colors such as copper, platinum, gold, and a combination thereof. The research was conducted from May to August 2017 at the aquaculture laboratory of Satya Negara Indonesia University (USNI), the test fish used was betta sp. (0.24) with an average length of 4 cm, kept in glass jar As many as 12 units. The results showed that the artemia to be fed with a ratio of 1: 1 can provide the most optimum effect in improving the brightness of betta fish. Parameter of survival rate, growth rate of weight, absolute long growth, analyzed using F test with 95% confidence interval. Data were analyzed using the help of Microsoft Excel 2010 and Minitab 16 software. Some parameters were discussed using descriptive analysis. The best stocking density on the maintenance of betta fish with 50% change of water occurred at density 3 tail / liter with value of SR 93,47%, LPS with value 0,72 ± 0,19 gram.

A highly sensitive and selective colorimetric assay for the detection of Hg2+ ions was developed using gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) conjugated with polyethyleneimine (PEI). The Hg2+ ion coordinates with PEI, decreasing the interparticle distance and inducing aggregation. Time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry showed that the Hg2+ ion was bound to the nitrogen atoms of the PEI in a bidentate manner (N–Hg2+–N), which resulted in a significant color change from light red to violet due to aggregation. Using this PEI-AuNP probe, determination of Hg2+ ion can be achieved by the naked eye and spectrophotometric methods. Pronounced color change of the PEI-AuNPs in the presence of Hg2+ was optimized at pH 7.0, 50°C, and 300 mM·NaCl concentration. The absorption intensity ratio (A700/A514) was correlated with the Hg2+ concentration in the linear range of 0.003–5.0 μM. The limits of detection were measured to be 1.72, 1.80, 2.00, and 1.95 nM for tap water, pond water, tuna fish, and bovine serum, respectively. Owing to its facile and sensitive nature, this assay method for Hg2+ ions can be applied to the analysis of water and biological samples.

AbstractThe aim of this work was to evaluate the yield parameters (number of fruits per plant, total yield per plant and average fruit weight), level of ascorbic acid, and pungency (SHU units) of different genotypes of chilli pepper in protected cultivation in the Czech Republic in order to identify a suitable and prospective chilli cultivar which could be recommended to the Central European growers. The experiment took place in two years (2016 and 2018) in a plastic greenhouse with 17 genotypes of the species Capsicum chinense Jacq., C. annuum L., C. baccatum L. and C. pubescens Ruiz. &amp; Pav. From the viewpoint of yield parameters and stability of yield, ‘Habanero Red’, ‘Jamaican Yellow’, ‘Jwala’ and ‘Rocoto Orange’ can be recommended for Czech conditions. The majority of the tested cultivars were a good source of vitamin C (mostly reaching a value of at least 800 mg kg−1). From the perspective of pungency, the following cultivars can be recommended: low pungency – Fish, Jalapeño, Jwala, Pimiento de Padrón and Rocoto Orange; medium pungency – Cayenne Gold, NuMex Piñata and Scotch Bonnet Orange; and high pungency – Aji Lemon Drop, Cayenne Purple, TMSR and Tricolor Variegata.

Background: Bangladesh is enriched with huge water bodies which are considered as the gold mines fisheries sector as well as national economy. The main rivers of Dinajpur districts are: Dhepa, Punarbhaba and Atrai. Aims: The study aims to investigate the health condition of Cirrhinus reba in Dhepa and Atrai river of Dinajpur district by evaluating the water quality parameters, body indices and haematological parameters. Methodology: Nine fishes were randomly collected from each source for determining the body indices (hepatosomatic index, intraperitoneal fat and viscerosomatic index) and haematological parameters analysis (haemoglobin, red blood cell, white blood cell count, total platelet count, differential leucocyte count and erythrocyte sedimentation rate). The study was conducted in the Dhepa River near Hajee Mohammad Danesh Science and Technology University, Dinajpur and the Atrai River near Mohanpur Bridge, Dinajpur, for six months from October 2019 to March 2020. Fish sampling and water quality parameters (air and water temperature, depth, transparency, pH, dissolved oxygen, alkalinity and hardness) were monitored monthly. Results: The highest air and water temperatures were recorded in October, while the lowest were found in December in the Dhepa and Atrai rivers. The highest transparency and pH were observed in January in the Dhepa and Atrai rivers, while the lowest were recorded in October and November, respectively. The body indices result revealed that HSI (0.04-0.09%), IPF (0.17-1.47%) and VSI (14.25-20.38%) of C. reba were observed in both Dhepa and Atrai rivers. The lowest WBC, lymphocyte and monocyte counts were found in the blood of C. reba collected from both sources in December, while the highest total platelet count and ESR were recorded from the fish collected from the Dhepa River only in October. The highest levels of Hb, WBC and lymphocyte count were observed between February and March 2020 in both the Dhepa and Atrai rivers. Conclusion: It can be said that the health condition of C. reba collected from both sources are apparently healthy, and better haematological parameters were observed in the months of February and March 2020.

Kirkemosegård – a votive site with ornaments from the Early Germanic Iron AgeThe Kirkemosegård ornaments were recovered following a metal detector survey and subsequent archaeological investigations of the find site in a cultivated field with wet hollows at Spentrup, north of Randers (fig. 2). The archaeological investigations showed that the finds probably represent a votive deposit on the margin of a wetland area referred to on historical maps as Kirkemose (figs. 3‑4).The offering comprises a button-bow fibula, six scutiform and four circular pendants, all of gold (fig. 1). All the objects had been ploughed up and lay in the plough soil. The precise location where the gold objects had originally been buried could not be identified during the excavation, but careful recording of their distribution in the plough soil makes it possible to narrow down the area of their deposition. There is a concentration of finds roughly in the middle of the excavation trench, around which the other objects are distributed. It must be within this area that the ornaments were originally deposited (fig. 3).This article includes a detailed description of the individual ornaments. In general terms, the fibula can be described as a hollow construction of sheet gold with a stabilising clay core (fig. 10). The upper surface is decorated with filigree consisting of very small rings of miniature beaded wire soldered on to and covering the entire surface (figs. 5 and 11). Along the edges, slightly heavier beaded wire has been used as a frame. The fibula measures c. 8 cm in length.Gemstones and glass were mounted in cloisonné, in which the cells were formed of smooth gold bands. Some of the settings contain red stones, probably garnets, while others hold a yellowish-green fragmented mass, presumably degraded glass (figs. 6, 8, 9, 12). On the foot of the fibula there is a stylised fish-like bird and two stylised bird’s heads with curved beaks (fig. 13). The catch consisted of a silver pin construction (fig. 7).The four circular gold pendants have diameters of 1.19‑1.32 cm and a weight of c. 1.2‑2.1 g (fig. 14). They are constructed in openwork with three rings of smooth or beaded filigree wire forming an edge. The suspension loops consist of ribbed gold band. Three of the pendants have the same pretzel-shaped motif at their centre – a kind of scutiform figure. Two of the pendants have two of these figures and the third has three. Soldering traces indicate that there were also originally motifs at the centre of the fourth pendant.The six scutiform pendants can be divided up into two types, based on their size, method of manufacture and decoration. They do, however, possess common features. They all have a band-like ribbed suspension loop and are edged with beaded filigree wire. Moreover, at their sides, at the transition to the side-pieces, there are rings of filigree wire with bosses, two punched concentric circles or granulation spheres at their centre. This is interpreted as depicting the eye of an animal seen in profile. They probably represent bird’s heads, where the side-pieces represent a curved beak. The round eye and the hooked beak are typical of the early animal style of the Early Germanic Iron Age. They constitute mirror images about a vertical axis and there is thereby symmetry in their decoration.The three small crescent-shaped pendants measure 1.21‑1.23 cm at their broadest point and have a height of 1.18‑1.23 cm from the top of the suspension loop to the base. They weigh 0.65‑0.74 g. They were stamped using the same die and are decorated with filigree (figs. 15‑16).The three large crescent-shaped pendants have a width of 1.59‑1.65 cm at their broadest point, a height of c. 1.5 cm and a weight of 1.12‑1.82 g (fig. 17). They are individually decorated from the front with stamped circular patterns consisting of two concentric circles, pretzel-shapes – small representations of the form of these ornaments – and figures of eight in filigree as well as granulation in the form of individual gold beads.The pendants show obvious traces of use wear, evident in that the outer surface of the beaded wire has been worn smooth along the edge. The beaded relief is more distinct inside the suspension loops (fig. 18). Greater wear is also evident on each side of these loops than further down the sides. This wear was possibly caused by spacers in the form of beads or knots intended to hold the pendants apart (fig. 18). Several of the pendants have visible wear to the suspension loops, interpreted as being due to suspension on a string, plaited leather thong or chain.The Kirkemosegård ornaments were not found in a datable context and their age and origin has therefore been ascertained on the basis of a description and discussion of parallel finds.There are not many gold filigree fibulas of Kirkemosegård type, but examples are known from Skodborg in southern Jutland, Elsehoved in southeast Funen and Kitnæs near Roskilde Fjord. There are also fragments from Rytterbakken on Bornholm (fig. 19), Adslev near Aarhus and Nørre Tranders in Aalborg. On the basis of these parallels, the Kirkemosegård fibula is dated to the early 6th century AD. Filigree fibulas are only known from southern Scandinavia.There are several known examples of circular pendants resembling those from Kirkemosegård. This ornament type can take various forms, but basically consists of a garland of smooth or beaded ring with a beaded wire running around the inside and outside. In most cases there are three rings, but examples exist with two or four rings. The centre of the pendant can be open or decorated with two or three pretzel-shaped motifs, various forms of crosses and spiral motifs (figs. 20‑22). Apart from Denmark, this ornament type is also known from England, Norway, Sweden and southwest Germany. The circular pendants from Denmark are generally dated to the Early Germanic Iron Age.Scutiform pendants are considered to be of Roman origin and are known from the late 2nd century AD. Their occurrence extends over a longer period of time and in many respects they represent a very heterogeneous group of finds that, in addition to pendants, also includes hanging ornamental plates on hair pins, jingle-plates on horse harness and tack and belt ornaments. The scutiform pendants show contacts towards the southeast to the Black Sea area – links that extend at least as far back as for example the Brangstrup hoard found in southeast Funen that includes examples thought to have been manufactured in the 4th century AD in the Black Sea area. Scutiform pendants have a wide geographic distribution and long period of use, as there are also records from the 7th century in England.The execution of the ornaments, and motifs employed, show that they were probably manufactured in southern Scandinavia. Comparisons with the various parallel finds indicate that the Kirkemosegård ornaments should be dated to the early 6th century AD. These are ornaments that clearly are worn, showing that they were either heavily used by their owner or of considerable age when offered.On their own, these finds give only a very fragmentary picture of the local cultural landscape in the Iron Age. Settlement traces and graves (fig. 23) that have been investigated demonstrate that the area was populated at this time, but they provide no indication of the immediate presence of the social elite of which the Kirkemosegård hoard is a clear expression (fig. 24).Benita ClemmensenMuseum Østjylland

Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia (APL) is a subtype of Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), classified by a translocation between chromosomes 15 and 17 [t(15;17)], that is notably distinguished clinically by a rapidly progressive and fatal course. Due to the acute nature of its presentation, prompt and accurate diagnosis is required to initiate appropriate therapy that can be curative. However, the gold standard genetic tests can take days to confirm a diagnosis and thus therapy is often initiated on high clinical suspicion based on both clinical presentation as well as direct visualization of the peripheral smear. While there are described cellular morphological features that distinguish APL, there is still considerable difficulty in diagnosing APL from direct visualization of a peripheral smear by a hematopathologist. We hypothesized that deep learning pattern recognition would have greater discriminatory power and consistency compared to humans to distinguish t(15;17) translocation positive APL from t(15;17) translocation negative AML. To best tackle the problem of diagnosing APL rapidly from a peripheral smear, study patients with APL and AML were identified via retrospective chart review from a list of confirmed FISH t(15;17)-positive (n = 34) and -negative (n = 72) patients presenting at The Johns Hopkins Hospital (JHH). Additional inclusion criteria included new disease diagnosis, no prior treatment, and availability of peripheral blood smear image uploaded to CellaVision. Patients were separated into a discovery cohort presenting prior to 1/2019 (APL, n = 22; AML, n=60) and a validation cohort presenting on or after 1/2019 (APL, n = 12; AML, n = 12). A multiple-instance deep learning model employing convolutional layers at the per-cell level (Figure 1A) was trained on the discovery cohort and then tested on the independent prospective validation cohort to assess generalizability of the model. When compared to 10 academic clinicians (denoted with red +) who consisted of leukemia-treating hematologists, oncologists, and hematopathologists, the deep learning model was equivalent or outperformed 9/10 readers (Figure 1B) with an AUC of 0.861. We further looked at the performance of using proportion of promyelocytes (per CellaVision classification) as a biomarker of APL which had an AUC of 0.611. Finally, we applied integrated gradients, a method by which to extract per-pixel importance to the classification probability to identify and understand the morphological features the model was learning and using to distinguish APL (Figure 1C). We noted that the appearance of the chromatin in the non-APL leukemias was more dispersed and focused at the edge of the cell whereas in APL, the chromatin was more condensed and focused at the center of the cell. These morphological features, taught to us by the model, have not been previously reported in the literature as being useful for distinguishing APL from non-APL. Our work presents a deep learning model capable of rapid and accurate diagnosis of APL from universally available peripheral smears. In addition, explainable artificial intelligence is provided for biological insights to facilitate clinical management and reveal morphological concepts previously unappreciated in APL. The deep learning framework we have delineated is applicable to any diagnostic pipeline that can leverage a peripheral blood smear, potentially allowing for efficient diagnosis and early treatment of disease. Figure 1. Disclosures Streiff: Bayer: Consultancy, Speakers Bureau; Dispersol: Consultancy; BristolMyersSquibb: Consultancy; Janssen: Consultancy, Research Funding; Pfizer: Consultancy, Speakers Bureau; Portola: Consultancy; Boehringer-Ingelheim: Research Funding; NHLBI: Research Funding; PCORI: Research Funding; NovoNordisk: Research Funding; Sanofi: Research Funding. Moliterno:Pharmessentia: Consultancy; MPNRF: Research Funding. DeZern:MEI: Consultancy; Abbvie: Consultancy; Astex: Research Funding; Celgene: Consultancy, Honoraria. Levis:Astellas: Honoraria, Research Funding; Menarini: Honoraria; Amgen: Honoraria; FujiFilm: Honoraria, Research Funding; Daiichi-Sankyo: Honoraria.

Tracing the origin of psychoanalytical interpretation of the literary texts M.A.R. Habib writes: Critics, rhetoricians, and philosophers since Aristotle have examined the psychological dimensions of literature, ranging from an author’s motivation and intentions to the effect of texts and performances on an audience. The application of psychoanalytic principles to the study of literature, however, is a relatively recent phenomenon, initiated primarily by Freud and in other directions by Alfred Alder and Carl Jung. The notion of the “unconscious” was not in itself new, and it can be found in many thinkers prior to Freud, notably in some of the Romantics such as Schlegel, in Schopenhauer, and in Nietzsche.(Habib 571) Moreover, “Psychoanalysis is a theory about the human mind. Psychoanalytic concepts are prevalent in our everyday life, and criticism related to these is psychoanalytic criticism.” (Nagarajan 216) In this hard running meaningless, absurd, life “people are motivated by desires, fears, and conflicts of which they are unaware and unconscious of these forces. These forces are stored in our memory, and are repressed. This is the unconscious mind. This is a part or a section, a sub system of the mind, but lying below the level of consciousness, and it organizes our current experiences and emotions. (Nagarajan 217) Likewise, “Death and sexuality are the fascinating themes for study in psychoanalysis. Critics of this persuasion have varied notions on how these concepts can be fruitfully applied to literary criticism. (Nagarajan217) Sigmund Freud regarded dream as the “royal road”. Events are represented in a dream very much like they are represented in literary works. Abstract ideas and feelings are concretised. Dreams show or reveal things as literature does. Dreams are like literature. The purpose of a work of art, like the purpose of the dream, is the secret gratification of a forbidden infantile wish. That is the reason why literary critics have great interest in the Freudian methods of analysis, and interpretation… psychoanalytic reading involves explaining…It can be author based , text based, or reader based. The oedipal dynamics, family dynamics, relationship to death, sexuality, the narrator’s unconscious problems etc., can be tackled with this persuasion. All these relate to the author of the work. (Nagarajan 217, 221) The trend of interpreting texts is also changing according to the need of the time and as per new challenges of society. “Today, texts are read for the ‘desires’ they seem to conceal, the kinds of ‘drives’ in their character and the ‘unconscious in them. The critical move to explore the nature of the human psyche by exploring the deeper, hidden meaning of texts and their characters is identifiable as a major critical method today, one that we can define as ‘psychoanalytic’. (Nayar 63) Psychoanalytic reading was established by Sigmund Freud a trained doctor and psychiatrists. If we take it in simple words then it can be said that psychoanalytic criticism aims at the authors’ or characters’ psychoanalytic interpretation in a given text. There are several essays and texts that focus on the psychoanalytic interpretation of the texts. Freud’s <em>The Interpretation of Dream</em> (1899), Jones’ “Hamlet and His Problem” etc. Psychoanalytic critics may differ at several points. C.G.Jung notes in this regard, “human imagination draws upon images and ideas from myths and legends that occur across cultures and time- spans. (Nayar73) Jacques Lacan compares our unconscious to langue (rules, sentences, grammar) and our conscious to parole (individual manifestation). Like other criticism Psychoanalytic criticism may be very useful to find out symbols, actions, and setting in a literary work. Psychoanalysts co-related a work of art with dream. According to them a literary work of art is the projection of mind or it also may be treated as the suppressed desires of the writer or of the character. But the later critics like Jones broke away from Freud. They took a text as a portrayal of myth, images, desire etc. The present paper will analyse the depiction of family in Rohinton Mistry’s <em>Such a Long Journey </em>under the shadow of psychoanalysis. Jhabwala writes, “The concept of the family rests on the happiness of the heart and contentment of the mind. It has but little to do with how you live or what you earn. Only that you must. It is but a psychological question.” (Jhabwala 78, 79) We are living in a world full of opportunities. We can work throughout the day and late at night. But after a span of time, we need to return to a place where we can take rest to become fresh and energetic. In the worldly sense, the place where we take shelter, where we return after whole day’s work is called home. If one lives in a home all alone, it becomes tiresome and frustrating for him. Hence, we need some people with whom we can share our feelings and pent up emotions. Therefore, a person needs a home and a home needs a family. We can also say that a happy family makes a happy home. In general, family is considered as living together of people related by blood. A traditional family consists of a father, mother and children. Father is regarded as a breadwinner, master, and decision maker while mother is regarded as a home maker; who nurtures and looks after her children, her husband. She takes important decisions for the welfare of the family. In India, a family can be perceived with multiple perspectives. First is a group of people who are related by blood. Second who are not related by blood but are neighbours who have emotional bonding and reciprocal relationship. The third type of family is in which people are connected with a sense of love, sacrifice, nationality and brotherhood. For example, when two Indians meet abroad, they do not ask which caste or religion they belong to, but treat each other as ‘Indian’, a sense of belonging to a family develops in them. In a happy family, values of compassion become an acme where greed and selfishness are demoted, where welfare of others is put forward. In a happy family, harmony prevails; everyone has a sense of regard and love, compassion for others. In this rapidly changing modern and globalized world, everyone pines for mental peace and what to be part of a happy family. Because it gives us happiness and teaches human values, norms and sacrifices for others’ welfare and happiness. It is family that teaches us to be unselfish, which is the key to happiness and satisfaction. However, in this materialistic, capitalist, competitive and cut throat world, to keep a harmonious family is the most difficult task. In order to possess a happy and peaceful family, every member compromise and sacrifice to promote others’ will first. Though it is a difficult task but it can be achieved if we have love, compassion, patience and an unselfish nature. Gustad Noble, a middle aged man of the middle class is the chief protagonist of <em>Such a Long Journey. </em>He is the ultimate bread winner for the family. His family consists of three children--two sons and a daughter—Sohrab, Darius and Roshan and his wife Dilnavaz. They dwell in a Parsi building. Like Baag, once again the building is divided into three storeys. The building is owned mostly by Parsis. The novel opens in the morning, “Gustad Noble faced eastward to offer his orisons to Ahura Mazda.” (SALJ 1) The milk-man arrived to supply milk. Miss Kutputiais a dominating lady by nature, though she does not purchase milk but she threatens the bhaiya (milk man), “Mua thief! In the hands of the police only we should put you! When they break your arms, we will see how you will add water!” (SALJ 2) But the milk man was accustomed to hearing such threats and accusations. He would mumble, “As if I make the milk. Cow does that. The malik says go, sell the milk, and that is all I do. What good comes from harassing a poor man like me?” (SALJ 2) Dilnavaz too waited with aluminium pan for milk. Gustad is portrayed a man of society. But he is shown as a very affectionate husband and father as well: And so, as he watched Sohrab sleep his innocent sleep, with the face that seemed on theverge of a smile; and Darius at fifteen a younger, shorter reflection of his father’s muscular frame; and little Roshan who filled such a small part of the bed - with -the- door, her two plaits sidelongon the pillow: as Gustad observed them silently, in turn, he wished for all the nights in his sons’ and daughter’s lives to be filled with peace and tranquillity. Very, very softly he hummed the wartime song he had adapted to sing them to sleep when they were little: “Bless them all, bless them all, Bless my Sohrab and Darius and all,/ Bless my Sohrab and Darius/ Ad Roshan and… (SALJ 9) Gustad is very pained with his current status because his childhood days were very prosperous. He reminiscences about his grandfather and his father who owned a grand shop of furniture and books. The family was very happy but later misfortune shattered the family. Gustad’s father was ailing for months. He postponed his operation until he became serious and was rushed to hospital in an emergency. His father defiantly refused to listen to anyone’s suggestion and handed over the charge of his well-established bookstore to his drunkard lackadaisical brother. Gustad’s uncle became careless towards shop and family responsibility and left the family in penury, while the bookshop went bankrupt. Gustad’s mother could not bear all this misfortune, she became ill. She was hospitalized and very soon she passed away. Gustad’s defiant father cried bitterly and asked forgiveness from Gustad for failing to help him to finish his college education. The weakness shown by his father made him serious. As Mistry narrates: His father called him to explain and fell to pieces. He wept and begged forgiveness for failing him. Gustad did not know what to say. Seeing once his invincible father behave in this broken manner did something strange to him. He began to utter scornful things, while silently swearing to himself, then and there, that he would never indulge in tears—not before anyone, nor in private, no matter what suffering or sorrow fall on his shoulders; tears were useless, the weakness of women, and of men who allowed themselves to be broken. (SALJ 101) Gustad’s own ambition was diminishes and unfulfilled, so it led him to hope that his spoilt ambition will be fulfilled by his elder son Sohrab. Gustad would generally sit in morning with his newspaper and say to Dilnavaz with love and pride, “Sohrab will make a name for himself, you see if he doesn’t…At last our sacrifices will prove worthwhile” (SLJ 3) The happiness of family is doubled as Roshan’s ninth birthday came and Sohrab qualified for the prestigious IIT (Indian Institute of Technology), in which most of the students want to study. He planned to bring a live chicken from Crawford market to throw a party. The past memories from his childhood flash across his mind when he used to go to Crawford market with his grandmother to bring live chicken on special occasions and family get-togethers: When Gustad was a little boy, live chickens were standard procedure in his father’s house. Grandma would have it no other way. Not for her the scraggy fowl broughthome slaughtered and plucked and gutted. Gustad remembered them arriving in a covered basket balanced on the head of the servant who walked behind his father, sometimes two, sometimes four, or eight, depending on how many guestswere invited. Grandma would inspect the birds, invariably applauding her son’s Choice selections as they clucked away then check off the packets of spices and ingredients against her list” (SALJ 19). Gustad did his best to make his family happy, but could not provide liberty to his son to choose his own career. He imposes his own will on Sohrab to pursue IIT. Sohrab does not want to take admission in IIT. He feels to be trapped, overburdened. He yells at his father at dinner, “I am sick and tired of IIT, IIT, IIT all the time. I’m not interested in it, I’m not a jolly good fellow about it, and I’m not going there…Why don’t you just accept it? IIT does not interest me. It was never my idea, you made all the plans. I told you I am going to change to the arts programme; I like my college and all my friends here” (SALJ 48). We find similarity between Arthur Miller’s protagonist Willy Loman and Gustad Noble. Both live in the past and are not ready to comprehend the contemporary situation. Both want their sons to be successful. However, both fail in their dream and both do not accept their sons’ wish. Sohrab’s denial to take admission in IIT infuriates Gustad extremely and he starts crying, yelling, abusing and beating to Sohrab. When Dilnavaz intervenes and tells him to calm down, he replies: What have been all these years not patient? Is this how it will end? Sorrow, nothing but sorrow.Throwing away his future without reason. What have I notdone for him, tell me? I even threw myself in front of a car. Kicked him aside, saved his life, and gotthis to suffer all my life’. He slapped his hip. ‘But that’s what a father is for. And if he cannot show much respect at least, I can kick him again. Out of my house, out ofmy life!’(SALJ 52) Gustad’s affluent past and its memory always disturb him. Despite all the hardships he faced during his childhood, he was very responsible and careful towards the general interests of his children. Darius had developed an interest catching butterflies and moths, killing them with the help of petrol; he has also interest in possessing varieties of fish, different types of birds like parrots, sparrows, finches, love birds etc. Gustad does not only help Darius in catching all these animals but also he makes desperate visits to Crawford market to purchase things for his sons and daughter. Though he is a caring father but sometimes he fails to understand the psychology of his family members. When Roshan falls ill and does not show improvement, Dilnavaz yells at him: Always I shout and scream,whilenice Daddy watches quietly to finish their food, to do homework, to pick up theirplates. Without a father’s discipline what can you expect now but disobedience? ‘Yes! Blame me for that also. It is my fault that Sohrab is not going for IIT…Myfault Roshan is sick… ‘Don’t deny it! From the beginning you have spoilt the boys!Not for one single thing have you ever said no! Not enough money for food or school uniforms and baap goes and buys aeroplanes and fish tanks and bird cages. (SALJ 166) Indeed, it is not the case that only grown-ups understand the family matter. Even the younger one too understands the psychology and affair of the family. The bitter exchange of words between Gustad and Dilnavaz is overheard by Roshan who is suffering with Malaria. It pains her. She can understand the seriousness of the argument. She comes out of her room and urges her parents to kiss each other in order to resolve the dispute: I don’t like it when you fight, she said through her tears. ‘No one is fighting. We werejust talking’, said Dilnavaz. ‘Sometimes grown-ups have to talk about these things’. But you were shouting and angry, sobbed Roshan. ‘Ok, my bakulyoo’, he said, putting his arm around her. You are right, we were shouting. But we are not angry. ‘Look, andhe smiled: Is this an angry face?’... Go kiss Mummy…He kissed her…No, no. I cannot sleep till you kiss. That’s not a real Mummy Daddy kiss. Do it like when Daddy goes to work in the morning. Dilnavazrested her lips against Gustad’s. ‘Eyes closed, eyes closed!’ yelled Roshan. ‘Do it properly!’ (SALJ 167) Perhaps, through Roshan’s above episode, Mistry wants to convey the message that mere kissing cannot symbolise love in a family. Mistry also wants to convey the message that children generally become the medium in families to mitigate the quarrelling between the couple. Gustad fulfilled every need of his children, especially Sohrab’. He fed him well, sent him to a good school but he lacked one thing as a father that he never listened or gave preference to the words and thoughts of Sohrab. As a result, Sohrab became good for nothing in his eyes. Though Gustad becomes tensed when he receives money and a letter from his friend Major Billimoria, but he does not pay attention to the advice given by Sohrab; and starts scolding him. A family becomes happy and lives long only when everyone has freedom to express her/his view without fear and listen carefully to each other: But what about the leaders who do wrong? Like the car manufacturing license going to Indira’s son? He said Mummy, I want to make motorcars. And right awayhe got the license. He has already made a fortune from it, without producing a single Maruti, hidden in Swiss bank accounts.’ Dilnavaz listened intently as Sohrab described how the prototype has crashed in a ditch during its trial, yet was approved because of orders from the very top. She was the self-appointed referee between father and son, her facial expressions registering the scores. (SALJ 68) Gustad in response utters: “When he talks like this, the brain in my brain begins to boil! If I have a stroke, it will be your son’s fault, I am warning you”(SLJ, 69). There is compatible relationship between Gustad and Dilnavaz. Gustad plays the role of bread winner while Dilnavaz plays the role of home-maker. She is ready to go to any extent for the comfort of her family members. She always sends fresh food for Gustad with Dubbawalla. And Gustad would send some notes with Dubbawalla: …over twenty one years, was the one constant in their lives, always written andalways read, no matter how much they fought or quarreled… ‘My Dearest, Busy day today, meeting with manager. Will tell you later. Love &amp; XXX’. Or: ‘My Dearest Dhandar-paatyo was delicious. Aroma made everyone’s mouth water. Love 7 XXX’ (SALJ 70). Dilnavaz is not only a hard-working wife and mother but she is also a good caretaker of everyone. She takes care of Roshan and gives her medicine on time when she needed it. She plays the role of mediator between her son and husband. She takes even superstitious pain to mind the behaviour of her son. She nurses Gustad Noble with all care and affection when he had an accident. She tirelessly adheres to all the instructions given by Madhiwala Bonesettler. Love, compassion, care, sacrifice are some ingredients to keep a family happy and both Gustad and Dilnavaz are well equipped with all these ingredients. Family is not a group of people who are related by blood, instead those who love, care and have compassion for one another are actual family members. Major Billimoria is not related by blood to Gustad anyway, but Gustad refers to him as a brother. He was like a family member to them. Children of Gustad used to call him ‘Major Uncle’. As Mistry narrates: But although Gustad would not admit it, Jimmy Billimoria had been more than Just a neighbour. At the very least, he had been like a loving brother. Almost one of the family, a second father to the children. Gustad had even considered him as their guardian in his will, should something untimely happen to himself and Dilnavaz. (SALJ 14) Gustad Noble misses Jimmy at the time of Kusti’s prayer in the morning. Major Billimoria used to visit Gustad’s family every Sunday for lunch. Dilnavaz would cook special food on that day. Jimmy would narrate adventurous tales of the war; on border during 1948: “The retired major loved to regale Sohrab and Darius with tales from his glorious days of army and battle. For his young listeners, the stories quickly acquire the stature of legend, with their Major Uncle the legendary hero, as he told of the cowardly Pakistanis who turned tail and ran in 1948, when confronted by Indian soldiers in Kashmir…” (SALJ 13) Though Major Billimoria was like a brother to Gustad, and Uncle to the children but he disappeared from the Khodad building without delivering any information to Gustad or to his family. It became a matter of great worry, resentment and frustration for Gustad. After several months, a letter arrived with the information that he has joined ‘RAW’ (Indian Research and Analysis Wing) and is working currently on a secret mission. In the letter Billimoria wrote that he needed Gustad’s help. The letter also directed him to go to Chor Bazaar. Though he was stopped by his wife but he decided to help Billimoria because once he was near to his family. After a great discussion with his wife, he visits Chor Bazaar, a place where Gustad avoids going. He takes risk of depositing ten lakh according to Billimoria’s planning. Gustad does not stop here. When he hears from Ghulam Mohammad about his imprisonment and hospitalisation, he journeys to Delhi to meet Major Billimoria. Mistry has not only dealt with normal characters but he also portrayed characters like Tehmul Lungra and Miss Kutputia. Nilufer Bharucha opines: Physically handicapped and mentally slow man could be symbolic of the fragile, endangered, in-bred Parsi race itself. Gustad is one of the few inhabitants of Khodad Building who had any time of patience with Tehmul. Tehmul was a victim of hip fracture that had never mended properly. His fall from a tree had not only fractured his hip but ‘although he had not landed on his head something went wrong inside due to the jolt of the accident. (Bharucha125) Most of the adults especially women do not like Tehmul but he plays with children and they like him. Though Tehmul is weak in mind yet he has human feelings. Tehmul steals Roshan’s doll and sleeps with it to shed his repressed desire of sexuality. Gustad witnesses and feels bad but he lets him sleep with it. Tehmool even visits red area but unfortunately he is humiliated and kicked out from there. When the municipality men come to break the wall, riot breaks and Tehmul is hit by a brick and dies on the spot. On Tehmul’s death, it is Gustad who picks up the dead body and takes it to his room, sits beside it and recites the passages of Asham Vahoo. He breaks his oath and weeps for Tehmul’s death. It sheds his repressed emotions. Since his father’s death he has never wept. His son notices the transformation in his father and asks forgiveness and Gustad forgives him. Though one may be a bread winner for a family but he/she should have loving and familial behaviour for others too. Gustad is one of those who possess such qualities; a girl in tattered clothes with her three brothers was examining the used bottles for any trace of milk. The attendants threatened them not to come there again. But the children ignored their order. The girl is caught and beaten by them. Gustad asked them to leave the girl. He purchased a bottle of milk and gave it to the girl who reminded him of Roshan. The girl after drinking some milk and handed over the bottle to her other three brothers. On Gustad’s query, the girl replied honestly, “My brothers. They also like milk’, she said shyly, looking down and tracing a design in the dust with her toe” (SALJ 200). With this incident, perhaps Mistry wants to highlight that the familial love does not only stands for higher class and educated people but also for the poor, deprived and marginalised as well. However, another family that is portrayed in the novel is Dinshawji and his wife Almai. They don’t have compatible relationship as he calls her “My dear domestic vulture.”They don’t have children. So Almai has adopted her sister’s son. When lunches are delivered in the bank by the dubba wall as everyone gets fresh food from their home but Dinshawji’s wife sends him leftovers from the night before, kept between two slices of bread. Mistry narrates: Dinshawji approached Gustad’s desk with his packet of sandwiches. Unlike the others,he carried his lunch in his briefcase every morning, usually last night’s leftovers slopped between two slices of bread. He often turned up with gems like cauliflower sandwiches, brinjal sandwiches, French bean sandwiches, pumpkin sandwiches, and ate them cheerfully, saggy bread and all. If he was teased about his epicurean delights, he would say, ‘whatever my dear domestic vulture gives, I eat without a word. Or she will eat me alive. (SALJ 70) Though Dinshawji’s relationship with his ‘dear domestic vulture’ Almai is not very compatible but he has the ability to make a tense situation jovial. However, he accommodates himself according to the situation very easily. He is dynamic in his talents. He can sing songs comparing biceps, can compose poems on mundane, day today matters and also he can sing a birthday song: “I wish you health, I wish you wealth, I wish you gold in store;/ I wish you heaven on earth./ what can I wish you more” (SALJ 46). Despite all, Dinshawji is related to Gustad not due to his profession only but he has emotional attachment. He visits Gustad’s home frequently. On one such occasion when he visits Gustad’s home, he finds Roshan ill and Gustad was not at home. He starts playing with Roshan. He plays with them all the traditional childhood games like Arrung-Darrung, Kaakareya Kumar, Ekka-Per-Chaar, etc. Though he becomes mischievous but he makes everyone’s mood very cheerful with his jokes. He cracked jokes during lunch time in the office in several languages including Gujarati, Punjabi etc. He has familial bonding with every worker in the office. He flirts with clerk Laurie Countino. His comments on Laurie were often in Gujarati and full of hidden meanings. He earned a title of ‘the Casanova of Flora Fountain’ which is cherished by him. Though he has familial relationship with everyone in his office but he ought to care about the honour of the lady whom he hoots, flirts in different disguised languages: Every day in the canteen, over lunch, their regular group told jokes…They told perennially popular Sikh jokes…Madrasi jokes…Guju jokes…Lunch-time was the highlight of the drab working day. Invariably, Dinshawji was the star performer, the group hanging onto his every word. They were contributions from others too, but these seemed to pale in comparison. Dinshawji stored away everything he ever heard; weeks, even months later, he would bring it forth, refurbished and improved a brand-new story. It was a necessary bit of plagiarism that no one minded. (SALJ 70-71) Gustad and Dinshawji are epitome of familial relationship. Both have good mutual understanding. Dinshawji faces all the atrocities of his wife. Without even a single complaint. Mistry witnesses the wretched condition of Dinshawji when he was hospitalised and lies in bed. But his wife does not visit him. Once again it is Gustad who shows his compassion for Dinshawji. He provides him company at least twice in a week. He makes jokes in order to entertain him when Dinshawji finds difficult to adjust his morsel to his mouth. It is Gustad who helps him to take his food: Dinshawji dipped the spoon in the bowl and conveyed it to his mouth. But his hand shook wildly, the soup dribbled throat wards down his chin. He smiled sheepishly, trying to wipe it with the back of his hand. Hesitantly, Gustad unfolded the napkin and cleaned him up. When Dinshawji let him do that without protest, he took the spoon and began feeding him. ‘A little bread with it?’(SALJ 218) However, it seems that in <em>Such a Long Journey</em>Parsis are presented as a minority and psychologically confined to their own community only. They are not ready to accept Hindus as their own family members and always have conception that they are not safe among majority Hindus. Gustad worries about his son’s future when he refuses to take admission: “What kind of life was Sohrab going to look forward to? No future for minorities, with all these fascist Shiv Sena politics and Marathi language nonsense. It was going to be like the black people in America—twice as good as the white man to get half as much. How could he make Sohrab understand this?” (SALJ 55)

There have been a number of Australian memoirs written by adoptees over the last twenty years—Robert Dessaix’s A Mother’s Disgrace, Suzanne Chick’s Searching for Charmian, Tom Frame’s Binding Ties:An Experience of Adoption and Reunion in Australia, for example—as well as international adoptee narratives by Betty Jean Lifton, Florence Fisher, and A. M. Homes amongst others. These works form a component of the small but growing field of adoption life writing that includes works by “all members of the adoption triad” (Hipchen and Deans 163): adoptive parents, birthparents, and adoptees. As the broad genre of memoir becomes more theorised and mapped, many sub-genres are emerging (Brien). My own adoptee story (which I am currently composing) could be a further sub-categorisation of the adoptee memoir, that of “late discovery adoptees” (Perl and Markham), those who are either told, or find out, about their adoption in adulthood. When this is part of a life story, secrets and silences are prominent, and digging into these requires using whatever resources can be found. These include cookbooks, recipes written by hand, and the scraps of paper shoved between pages. There are two cookbooks from my adoptive mother’s belongings that I have kept. One of them is titled Miss Tuxford’s Modern Cookery for the Middle Classes: Hints on Modern Gas Stove Cooking, and this was published around 1937 in England. It’s difficult to date this book exactly, as there is no date in my copy, but one of the advertisements (for Bird’s Custard, I think; the page is partly obscured by an Orange Nut Loaf recipe from a Willow baking pan that has been glued onto the page) is headed with a date range of 1837 to 1937. It has that smell of long ago that lingers strongly even now, out of the protective custody of my mother’s storage. Or should I say, out of the range of my adoptive father’s garbage dump zeal. He loved throwing things away, but these were often things that I saw as valuable, or at least of sentimental value, worth keeping for the memories they evoked. Maybe my father didn’t want to remember. My mother was brimming with memories, I discovered after her death, but she did not reveal them during her life. At least, not to me, making objects like these cookbooks precious in my reconstruction of the lives I know so little about, as well as in the grieving process (Gibson).Miss Tuxford (“Diplomée Board of Education, Gold Medallist, etc”) produced numerous editions of her book. My mother’s is now fragile, loose at the spine and browned with age. There are occasional stains showing that the bread and cakes section got the most use, with the pages for main meals of meat and vegetables relatively clean. The author divided her recipes into the main chapters of Soups (lentil, kidney, sheep’s head broth), Sauces (white, espagnol, mushroom), Fish (“It is important that all fish is fresh when cooked” (23)), Meats (roasted, boiled, stuffed; roast rabbit, boiled turkey, scotch collop), Vegetables (creamed beetroot, economical salad dressing, potatoes baked in their skins), Puddings and Sweets (suet pastry, Yorkshire pudding, chocolate tarts, ginger cream), Bread and Cakes (household bread, raspberry sandwich cake, sultana scones, peanut fancies), Icings and Fillings, Invalid Cookery (beef tea, nourishing lemonade, Virol pudding), Jams, Sweetmeats and Pickles (red currant jelly, piccalilli) and Miscellaneous Dishes including Meatless Recipes (cheese omelette, mock white fish, mock duck, mock goose, vegetarian mincemeat). At the back, Miss Tuxford includes sections on gas cooking hints, “specimen household dinners” (206), and household hints. There is then a “Table of Foods in Season” (208–10) taking the reader through the months and the various meats and vegetables available at those times. There is a useful index and finally an advertisement for an oven cleaner on the last page (which is glued to the back cover). There are food and cookery advertisements throughout the book, but my favourite is the one inside the front cover, for Hartley’s jam, featuring two photographs of a little boy. The first shows him looking serious, and slightly anxious, the second wide-eyed and smiling, eager for his jam. The text tells mothers that “there’s nothing like plenty of bread and Hartley’s for a growing boy” (inside front cover). I love the simple appeal to making your little boy happy that is contained within this tiny narrative. Did my mother and father eat this jam when they were small? By 1937, my mother was twenty-one, not yet married, living with her mother in Weston-super-Mare. She was learning secretarial skills—I have her certificate of proficiency in Pitman’s shorthand—and I think she and my father had met by then. Perhaps she thought about when she would be giving her own children Hartley’s jam, or something else prepared from Miss Tuxford’s recipes, like the Christmas puddings, shortbread, or chocolate cake. She would not have imagined that no children would arrive, that twenty-five years of marriage would pass before she held her own baby, and this would be one who was born to another woman. In the one other cookbook I have kept, there are several recipes cut out from newspapers, and a few typed or handwritten recipes hidden within the pages. This is The Main Cookery Book, in its August 1944 reprint, which was written and compiled by Marguerite K. Gompertz and the “Staff of the Main Research Kitchen”. My mother wrote her name and the date she obtained the cookbook (31 January 1945) on the first blank page. She had been married just over five years, and my father may, or may not, have still been in the Royal Air Force. I have only a sketchy knowledge of my adoptive parents. My mother was born in Newent, Gloucestershire, and my father in Bromley, Kent; they were both born during the first world war. My father served as a navigator in the Royal Air Force in the second world war in the 1940s, received head and psychological injuries and was invalided out before the war ended. He spent some time in rehabilitation, there being letters from him to my mother detailing his stay in one hospital in the 1950s. Their life seemed to become less and less secure as the years passed, more chaotic, restless, and unsettled. By the time I came into their lives, they were both nearly fifty, and moving from place to place. Perhaps this is one reason why I have no memory of my mother cooking. I cannot picture her consulting these cookbooks, or anything more modern, or even cutting out the recipes from newspapers and magazines, because I do not remember seeing her do it. She did not talk to me about cooking, we didn’t cook together, and I do not remember her teaching me anything about food or its preparation. This is a gap in my memory that is puzzling. There is evidence—the books and additional paper recipes and stains on the pages—that my mother was involved in the world of the kitchen. This suggests she handled meats, vegetables, and flours, kneaded, chopped, mashed, baked, and boiled all manners of foods. But I cannot remember her doing any of it. I think the cooking must have been a part of her life before me, when she lived in England, her home country, which she loved, and when she still had hope that children would come. It must have then been apparent that her husband was going to need support and care after the war, and I can imagine she came to realise that any dreams she had would need rearranging.What I do remember is that our meals were prepared by my father, and contained no spices, onions, or garlic because he suffered frequently from indigestion and said these ingredients made it worse. He was a big-chested man with small hips who worried he was too heavy and so put himself on diets every other week. For my father, dieting meant not eating anything, which tended to lead to binges on chocolate or cheese or whatever he could grab easily from the fridge.Meals at night followed a pattern. On Sundays we ate roast chicken with vegetables as a treat, then finished it over the next days as a cold accompaniment with salad. Other meals would feature fish fingers, mince, ham, or a cold luncheon meat with either salad or boiled vegetables. Sometimes we would have a tin of peaches in juice or ice cream, or both. No cookbooks were consulted to prepare these meals.What was my mother doing while my father cooked? She must have been in the kitchen too, probably contributing, but I don’t see her there. By the time we came back to Australia permanently in 1974, my father’s working life had come to an end, and he took over the household cookery for something to do, as well as sewing his own clothes, and repairing his own car. He once hoisted the engine out of a Morris Minor with the help of a young mechanic, a rope, and the branch of a poinciana tree. I have three rugs that he wove before I was born, and he made furniture as well. My mother also sewed, and made my school uniforms and other clothes as well as her own skirts and blouses, jackets and pants. Unfortunately, she was fond of crimplene, which came in bright primary colours and smelled of petrol, but didn’t require ironing and dried quickly on the washing line. It didn’t exactly hang on your body, but rather took it over, imposing itself with its shapelessness. The handwritten recipe for salad cream shown on the pink paper is not in my mother’s hand but my father’s. Her correction can be seen to the word “gelatine” at the bottom; she has replaced it with “c’flour” which I assume means cornflour. This recipe actually makes me a liar, because it shows my father writing about using pepper, paprika, and tumeric to make a food item, when I have already said he used no spices. When I knew him, and ate his food, he didn’t. But he had another life for forty-seven years before my birth, and these recipes with their stains and scribbles help me to begin making a picture of both his life, and my mother’s. So much of them is a complete mystery to me, but these scraps of belongings help me inch along in my thinking about them, who they were, and what they meant to me (Turkle).The Main Cookery Book has a similar structure to Miss Tuxford’s, with some variations, like the chapter titled Réchauffés, which deals with dishes using already cooked foodstuffs that only then require reheating, and a chapter on home-made wines. There are also notes at the end of the book on topics such as gas ovens and methods of cooking (boiling, steaming, simmering, and so on). What really interests me about this book are the clippings inserted by my mother, although the printed pages themselves seem relatively clean and uncooked upon. There is a recipe for pickles and chutneys torn from a newspaper, and when I look on the other side I find a context: a note about Charlie Chaplin and the House of Representatives’s Un-American Activities Committee starting its investigations into the influence of Communists on Hollywood. I wonder if my parents talked about these events, or if they went to see Charlie Chaplin’s films. My mother’s diaries from the 1940s include her references to movies—Shirley Temple in Kiss and Tell, Bing Crosby in Road to Utopia—as well as day to day activities and visits to, and from, family and friends, her sinus infections and colds, getting “shock[ed] from paraffin lamp”, food rationing. If my father kept diaries during his earlier years, nothing of them survives. I remember his determined shredding of documents after my mother’s death, and his fear of discovery, that his life’s secrets would be revealed. He did not tell me I had been adopted until I was twenty-three, and rarely spoke of it afterwards. My mother never mentioned it. I look at the recipe for lemon curd. Did my mother ever make this? Did she use margarine instead of butter? We used margarine on sandwiches, as butter was too hard to spread. Once again, I turn over this clipping to read the news, and find no date but an announcement of an exhibition of work by Marc Chagall at the Tate Gallery, the funeral of Sir Geoffrey Fison (who I discover from The Peerage website died in 1948, unmarried, a Baronet and decorated soldier), and a memorial service for Dr. Duncan Campbell Scott, the Canadian poet and prose writer, during which the Poet Laureate of the time, John Masefield, gave the address. And there was also a note about the latest wills, including that of a reverend who left an estate valued at over £50 000. My maternal adoptive grandmother, who lived in Weston-super-Mare across the road from the beach, and with whom we stayed for several months in 1974, left most of her worldly belongings to my mother and nothing to her son. He seems to have been cut out from her life after she separated from her husband, and her children’s father, sometime in the 1920s. Apparently, my uncle followed his father out to Australia, and his mother never forgave him, refusing to have anything more to do with her son for the rest of her life, not even to see her grandchildren. When I knew her in that brief period in 1974, she was already approaching eighty and showing signs of dementia. But I do remember dancing the Charleston with her in the kitchen, and her helping me bathe my ragdoll Pollyanna in a tub in the garden. The only food I remember at her stone house was afternoon tea with lots of different, exotic cakes, particularly one called Neopolitan, with swirls of red and brown through the moist sponge. My grandmother had a long narrow garden filled with flowers and a greenhouse with tomatoes; she loved that garden, and spent a lot of time nurturing it.My father and his mother-in-law were not each other’s favourite person, and this coloured my mother’s relationship with her, too. We were poor for many years, and the only reason we were able to go to England was because of the generosity of my grandmother, who paid for our airfares. I think my father searched for work while we were there, but whether he was successful or not I do not know. We returned to Australia and I went into grade four at the end of 1974, an outsider of sorts, and bemused by the syllabus, because I had moved around so much. I went to eight different primary schools and two high schools, eventually obtaining a scholarship to a private girls’ school for the last four years. My father was intent on me becoming a doctor, and so my life was largely study, which is another reason why I took little notice of what went on in the kitchen and what appeared on the dining table. I would come home from school and my parents would start meal preparation almost straight away, so we sat down to dinner at about four o’clock during the week, and I started the night’s study at five. I usually worked through until about ten, and then read a novel for a little while before sleep. Every parcel of time was accounted for, and nothing was wasted. This schedule continued throughout those four years of high school, with my father berating me if I didn’t do well at an exam, but also being proud when I did. In grades eight, nine, and ten, I studied home economics, and remember being offered a zucchini to taste because I had never seen one before. I also remember making Greek biscuits of some sort for an exam, and the sieve giving out while I was sifting a large quantity of flour. We learned to cook simple meals of meats and vegetables, and to prepare a full breakfast. We also baked cakes but, when my sponges remained flat, I realised that my strengths might lay elsewhere. This probably also contributed to my lack of interest in cooking. Domestic pursuits were not encouraged at home, although my mother did teach me to sew and knit, resulting in skewed attempts at a shirt dress and a white blouse, and a wildly coloured knitted shoulder bag that I actually liked but which embarrassed my father. There were no such lessons in cakemaking or biscuit baking or any of the recipes from Miss Tuxford. By this time, my mother bought such treats from the supermarket.This other life, this previous life of my parents, a life far away in time and place, was completely unknown to me before my mother’s death. I saw little of them after the revelation of my adoption, not because of this knowledge I then had, but because of my father’s controlling behaviour. I discovered that the rest of my adoptive family, who I hardly knew apart from my maternal grandmother, had always known. It would have been difficult, after all, for my parents to keep such a secret from them. Because of this life of constant moving, my estrangement from my family, and our lack of friends and connections with other people, there was a gap in my experience. As a child, I only knew one grandmother, and only for a relatively brief period of time. I have no grandfatherly memories, and none either of aunts and uncles, only a few fleeting images of a cousin here and there. It was difficult to form friendships as a child when we were only in a place for a limited time. We were always moving on, and left everything behind, to start again in a new suburb, state, country. Continuity and stability were not our trademarks, for reasons that are only slowly making themselves known to me: my father’s mental health problems, his difficult personality, our lack of money, the need to keep my adoption secret.What was that need? From where did it spring? My father always seemed to be a secretive person, an intensely private man, one who had things to hide, and seemed to suffer many mistakes and mishaps and misfortune. At the end, after my mother’s death, we spent two years with each other as he became frailer and moved into a nursing home. It was a truce formed out of necessity, as there was no one else to care for him, so thoroughly had he alienated his family; he had no friends, certainly not in Australia, and only the doctor and helping professionals to talk to most days. My father’s brother John had died some years before, and the whereabouts of his other sibling Gordon were unknown. I discovered that he had died three years previously. Nieces had not heard from my father for decades. My mother’s niece revealed that my mother and she had never met. There is a letter from my mother’s father in the 1960s, probably just before he died, remarking that he would like a photograph of her as they hadn’t seen each other for forty years. None of this was talked about when my mother was alive. It was as if I was somehow separate from their stories, from their history, that it was not suitable for my ears, or that once I came into their lives they wanted to make a new life altogether. At that time, all of their past was stored away. Even my very origins, my tiny past life, were unspoken, and made into a secret. The trouble with secrets, however, is that they hang around, peek out of boxes, lurk in the corners of sentences, and threaten to be revealed by the questions of puzzled strangers, or mistakenly released by knowledgeable relatives. Adoptee memoirs like mine seek to go into those hidden storage boxes and the corners and pages of sources like these seemingly innocent old cookbooks, in the quest to bring these secrets to light. Like Miss Tuxford’s cookbook, with its stains and smudges, or the Main Cookery Book with its pages full of clippings, the revelation of such secrets threaten to tell stories that contradict the official version. ReferencesBrien, Donna Lee. “Pathways into an ‘Elaborate Ecosystem’: Ways of Categorising the Food Memoir”. TEXT (October 2011). 12 Jun. 2013 ‹http://www.textjournal.com.au/oct11/brien.htm›.Chick, Suzanne. Searching for Charmian. Sydney: Picador, 1995.Dessaix, Robert. A Mother’s Disgrace. Sydney: Angus &amp; Robertson, 1994.Fisher, Florence. The Search for Anna Fisher. New York: Arthur Fields, 1973.Frame, Tom. Binding Ties: An Experience of Adoption and Reunion in Australia. Alexandria: Hale &amp; Iremonger, 1999.Gibson, Margaret. Objects of the Dead: Mourning and Memory in Everyday Life. Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne U P, 2008. Gompertz, Marguerite K., and the Staff of the Main Research Kitchen. The Main Cookery Book. 52nd. ed. London: R. &amp; A. Main, 1944. Hipchen, Emily, and Jill Deans. “Introduction. Adoption Life Writing: Origins and Other Ghosts”. a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 18.2 (2003): 163–70. Special Issue on Adoption.Homes, A. M. The Mistress’s Daughter: A Memoir. London: Granta, 2007.Kiss and Tell. Dir. By Richard Wallace. Columbia Pictures, 1945.Lifton, Betty Jean. Twice Born: Memoirs of An Adopted Daughter. Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1977.Lundy, Darryl, comp. The Peerage: A Genealogical Survey of the Peerage of Britain as well as the Royal Families of Europe. 30 May 2013 ‹http://www.thepeerage.com/p40969.htm#i409684›Perl, Lynne and Shirin Markham. Why Wasn’t I Told? Making Sense of the Late Discovery of Adoption. Bondi: Post Adoption Resource Centre/Benevolent Society of NSW, 1999.Road to Utopia. Dir. By Hal Walker. Paramount, 1946.Turkle, Sherry, ed. Evocative Objects: Things We Think With. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT P, 2011. Tuxford, Miss H. H. Miss Tuxford’s Modern Cookery for the Middle Classes: Hints on Modern Gas Stove Cooking. London: John Heywood, c.1937.

At a time when a trip abroad was out of the reach of most women, even if they could not make the journey, Australian women could imagine “abroad” just by reading popular women’s magazines such as Woman (later Woman’s Day and Home then Woman’s Day) and The Australian Women’s Weekly, and journals, such as The Progressive Woman and The Housewife. Increasingly in the post-war period, these magazines and journals contained advertisements for holidaying abroad, recipes for international foods and articles on overseas fashions. It was not unusual for local manufacturers, to use the lure of travel and exotic places as a way of marketing their goods. Healing Bicycles, for example, used the slogan “In Venice men go to work on Gondolas: In Australia it’s a Healing” (“Healing Cycles” 40), and Exotiq cosmetics featured landscapes of countries where Exotiq products had “captured the hearts of women who treasured their loveliness: Cincinnati, Milan, New York, Paris, Geneva and Budapest” (“Exotiq Cosmetics” 36).Unlike Homer’s Penelope, who stayed at home for twenty years waiting for Odysseus to return from the Trojan wars, women have always been on the move to the same extent as men. Their rich travel stories (Riggal, Haysom, Lancaster)—mostly written as letters and diaries—remain largely unpublished and their experiences are not part of the public record to the same extent as the travel stories of men. Ros Pesman argues that the women traveller’s voice was one of privilege and authority full of excitement and disbelief (Pesman 26). She notes that until well into the second part of the twentieth century, “the journey for Australian women to Europe was much more than a return to the sources of family identity and history” (19). It was also:a pilgrimage to the centres and sites of culture, literature and history and an encounter with “the real world.”Europe, and particularly London,was also the place of authority and reference for all those seeking accreditation and recognition, whether as real writers, real ladies or real politicians and statesmen. (19)This article is about two Australian writers; Helen Seager, a journalist employed by The Argus, a daily newspaper in Melbourne Australia, and Gwen Hughes, a graduate of Emily McPherson College of Domestic Economy in Melbourne, working in England as a lecturer, demonstrator and cookbook writer for Parkinsons’ Stove Company. Helen Seager travelled to England on an assignment for The Argus in 1950 and sent articles each day for publication in the women’s section of the newspaper. Gwen Hughes travelled extensively in the Balkans in the 1930s recording her impressions, observations, and recipes for traditional foods whilst working for Parkinsons in England. These women were neither returning to the homeland for an encounter with the real world, nor were they there as cultural tourists in the Cook’s Tour sense of the word. They were professional writers and their observations about the places they visited offer fresh and lively versions of England and Europe, its people, places, and customs.Helen SeagerAustralian Journalist Helen Seager (1901–1981) wrote a daily column, Good Morning Ma’am in the women’s pages of The Argus, from 1947 until shortly after her return from abroad in 1950. Seager wrote human interest stories, often about people of note (Golding), but with a twist; a Baroness who finds knitting exciting (Seager, “Baroness” 9) and ballet dancers backstage (Seager, “Ballet” 10). Much-loved by her mainly female readership, in May 1950 The Argus sent her to England where she would file a daily report of her travels. Whilst now we take travel for granted, Seager was sent abroad with letters of introduction from The Argus, stating that she was travelling on a special editorial assignment which included: a certificate signed by the Lord Mayor of The City of Melbourne, seeking that any courtesies be extended on her trip to England, the Continent, and America; a recommendation from the Consul General of France in Australia; and introductions from the Premier’s Department, the Premier of Victoria, and Austria’s representative in Australia. All noted the nature of her trip, her status as an esteemed reporter for a Melbourne newspaper, and requested that any courtesy possible to be made to her.This assignment was an indication that The Argus valued its women readers. Her expenses, and those of her ten-year-old daughter Harriet, who accompanied her, were covered by the newspaper. Her popularity with her readership is apparent by the enthusiastic tone of the editorial article covering her departure. Accompanied with a photograph of Seager and Harriet boarding the aeroplane, her many women readers were treated to their first ever picture of what she looked like:THOUSANDS of "Argus" readers, particularly those in the country, have wanted to know what Helen Seager looks like. Here she is, waving good-bye as she left on the first stage of a trip to England yesterday. She will be writing her bright “Good Morning, Ma'am” feature as she travels—giving her commentary on life abroad. (The Argus, “Goodbye” 1)Figure 1. Helen Seager and her daughter Harriet board their flight for EnglandThe first article “From Helen in London” read,our Helen Seager, after busy days spent exploring England with her 10-year-old daughter, Harriet, today cabled her first “Good Morning, Ma’am” column from abroad. Each day from now on she will report from London her lively impressions in an old land, which is delightfully new to her. (Seager, “From Helen” 3)Whilst some of her dispatches contain the impressions of the awestruck traveller, for the most they are exquisitely observed stories of the everyday and the ordinary, often about the seemingly most trivial of things, and give a colourful, colonial and egalitarian impression of the places that she visits. A West End hair-do is described, “as I walked into that posh looking establishment, full of Louis XV, gold ornateness to be received with bows from the waist by numerous satellites, my first reaction was to turn and bolt” (Seager, “West End” 3).When she visits Oxford’s literary establishments, she is, for this particular article, the awestruck Australian:In Oxford, you go around saying, soto voce and aloud, “Oh, ye dreaming spires of Oxford.” And Matthew Arnold comes alive again as a close personal friend.In a weekend, Ma’am, I have seen more of Oxford than lots of native Oxonians. I have stood and brooded over the spit in Christ Church College’s underground kitchens on which the oxen for Henry the Eighth were roasted.I have seen the Merton Library, oldest in Oxford, in which the chains that imprisoned the books are still to be seen, and have added by shoe scrape to the stone steps worn down by 500 years of walkers. I have walked the old churches, and I have been lost in wonder at the goodly virtues of the dead. And then, those names of Oxford! Holywell, Tom’s Quad, Friars’ Entry, and Long Wall. The gargoyles at Magdalen and the stones untouched by bombs or war’s destruction. It adds a new importance to human beings to know that once, if only, they too have walked and stood and stared. (Seager, “From Helen” 3)Her sense of wonder whilst in Oxford is, however, moderated by the practicalities of travel incorporated into the article. She continues to describe the warnings she was given, before her departure, of foreign travel that had her alarmed about loss and theft, and the care she took to avoid both. “It would have made you laugh, Ma’am, could you have seen the antics to protect personal property in the countries in transit” (Seager, “From Helen” 3).Her description of a trip to Blenheim Palace shows her sense of fun. She does not attempt to describe the palace or its contents, “Blenheim Palace is too vast and too like a great Government building to arouse much envy,” settling instead on a curiosity should there be a turn of events, “as I surged through its great halls with a good-tempered, jostling mob I couldn’t help wondering what those tired pale-faced guides would do if the mob mood changed and it started on an old-fashioned ransack.” Blenheim palace did not impress her as much as did the Sunday crowd at the palace:The only thing I really took a fancy to were the Venetian cradle, which was used during the infancy of the present Duke and a fine Savvonerie carpet in the same room. What I never wanted to see again was the rubbed-fur collar of the lady in front.Sunday’s crowd was typically English, Good tempered, and full of Cockney wit, and, if you choose to take your pleasures in the mass, it is as good a company as any to be in. (Seager, “We Look” 3)In a description of Dublin and the Dubliners, Seager describes the food-laden shops: “Butchers’ shops leave little room for customers with their great meat carcasses hanging from every hook. … English visitors—and Dublin is awash with them—make an orgy of the cakes that ooze real cream, the pink and juicy hams, and the sweets that demand no points” (Seager, “English” 6). She reports on the humanity of Dublin and Dubliners, “Dublin has a charm that is deep-laid. It springs from the people themselves. Their courtesy is overlaid with a real interest in humanity. They walk and talk, these Dubliners, like Kings” (ibid.).In Paris she melds the ordinary with the noteworthy:I had always imagined that the outside of the Louvre was like and big art gallery. Now that I know it as a series of palaces with courtyards and gardens beyond description in the daytime, and last night, with its cleverly lighted fountains all aplay, its flags and coloured lights, I will never forget it.Just now, down in the street below, somebody is packing the boot of a car to go for, presumably, on a few days’ jaunt. There is one suitcase, maybe with clothes, and on the footpath 47 bottles of the most beautiful wines in the world. (Seager, “When” 3)She writes with a mix of awe and ordinary:My first glimpse of that exciting vista of the Arc de Triomphe in the distance, and the little bistros that I’ve always wanted to see, and all the delights of a new city, […] My first day in Paris, Ma’am, has not taken one whit from the glory that was London. (ibid.) Figure 2: Helen Seager in ParisIt is my belief that Helen Seager intended to do something with her writings abroad. The articles have been cut from The Argus and pasted onto sheets of paper. She has kept copies of the original reports filed whist she was away. The collection shows her insightful egalitarian eye and a sharp humour, a mix of awesome and commonplace.On Bastille Day in 1950, Seager wrote about the celebrations in Paris. Her article is one of exuberant enthusiasm. She writes joyfully about sirens screaming overhead, and people in the street, and looking from windows. Her article, published on 19 July, starts:Paris Ma’am is a magical city. I will never cease to be grateful that I arrived on a day when every thing went wrong, and watched it blossom before my eyes into a gayness that makes our Melbourne Cup gala seem funeral in comparison.Today is July 14.All places of business are closed for five days and only the places of amusement await the world.Parisians are tireless in their celebrations.I went to sleep to the music of bands, dancing feet and singing voices, with the raucous but cheerful toots from motors splitting the night air onto atoms. (Seager, “When” 3)This article resonates uneasiness. How easily could those scenes of celebration on Bastille Day in 1950 be changed into the scenes of carnage on Bastille Day 2016, the cheerful toots of the motors transformed into cries of fear, the sirens in the sky from aeroplanes overhead into the sirens of ambulances and police vehicles, as a Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, as part of a terror attack drives a truck through crowds of people celebrating in Nice.Gwen HughesGwen Hughes graduated from Emily Macpherson College of Domestic Economy with a Diploma of Domestic Science, before she travelled to England to take up employment as senior lecturer and demonstrator of Parkinson’s England, a company that manufactured electric and gas stoves. Hughes wrote in her unpublished manuscript, Balkan Fever, that it was her idea of making ordinary cooking demonstration lessons dramatic and homelike that landed her the job in England (Hughes, Balkan 25-26).Her cookbook, Perfect Cooking, was produced to encourage housewives to enjoy cooking with their Parkinson’s modern cookers with the new Adjusto temperature control. The message she had to convey for Parkinsons was: “Cooking is a matter of putting the right ingredients together and cooking them at the right temperature to achieve a given result” (Hughes, Perfect 3). In reality, Hughes used this cookbook as a vehicle to share her interest in and love of Continental food, especially food from the Balkans where she travelled extensively in the 1930s.Recipes of Continental foods published in Perfect Cooking sit seamlessly alongside traditional British foods. The section on soup, for example, contains recipes for Borscht, a very good soup cooked by the peasants of Russia; Minestrone, an everyday Italian soup; Escudella, from Spain; and Cream of Spinach Soup from France (Perfect 22-23). Hughes devoted a whole chapter to recipes and descriptions of Continental foods labelled “Fascinating Foods From Far Countries,” showing her love and fascination with food and travel. She started this chapter with the observation:There is nearly as much excitement and romance, and, perhaps fear, about sampling a “foreign dish” for the “home stayer” as there is in actually being there for the more adventurous “home leaver”. Let us have a little have a little cruise safe within the comfort of our British homes. Let us try and taste the good things each country is famed for, all the while picturing the romantic setting of these dishes. (Hughes, Perfect 255)Through her recipes and descriptive passages, Hughes took housewives in England and Australia into the strange and wonderful kitchens of exotic women: Madame Darinka Jocanovic in Belgrade, Miss Anicka Zmelova in Prague, Madame Mrskosova at Benesova. These women taught her to make wonderful-sounding foods such as Apfel Strudel, Knedlikcy, Vanilla Kipfel and Christmas Stars. “Who would not enjoy the famous ‘Goose with Dumplings,’” she declares, “in the company of these gay, brave, thoughtful people with their romantic history, their gorgeously appareled peasants set in their richly picturesque scenery” (Perfect 255).It is Hughes’ unpublished manuscript Balkan Fever, written in Melbourne in 1943, to which I now turn. It is part of the Latrobe Heritage collection at the State Library of Victoria. Her manuscript was based on her extensive travels in the Balkans in the 1930s whilst she lived and worked in England, and it was, I suspect, her intention to seek publication.In her twenties, Hughes describes how she set off to the Balkans after meeting a fellow member of the Associated Country Women of the World (ACWW) at the Royal Yugoslav Legation. He was an expert on village life in the Balkans and advised her, that as a writer she would get more information from the local villagers than she would as a tourist. Hughes, who, before television gave cooking demonstrations on the radio, wrote, “I had been writing down recipes and putting them in books for years and of course the things one talks about over the air have to be written down first—that seemed fair enough” (Hughes, Balkan 25-26). There is nothing of the awestruck traveller in Hughes’ richly detailed observations of the people and the places that she visited. “Travelling in the Balkans is a very different affair from travelling in tourist-conscious countries where you just leave it to Cooks. You must either have unlimited time at your disposal, know the language or else have introductions that will enable the right arrangements to be made for you” (Balkan 2), she wrote. She was the experiential tourist, deeply immersed in her surroundings and recording food culture and society as it was.Hughes acknowledged that she was always drawn away from the cities to seek the real life of the people. “It’s to the country district you must go to find the real flavour of a country and the heart of its people—especially in the Balkans where such a large percentage of the population is agricultural” (Balkan 59). Her descriptions in Balkan Fever are a blend of geography, history, culture, national songs, folklore, national costumes, food, embroidery, and vivid observation of the everyday city life. She made little mention of stately homes or buildings. Her attitude to travel can be summed up in her own words:there are so many things to see and learn in the countries of the old world that, walking with eyes and mind wide open can be an immensely delightful pastime, even with no companion and nowhere to go. An hour or two spent in some unpretentious coffee house can be worth all the dinners at Quaglino’s or at The Ritz, if your companion is a good talker, a specialist in your subject, or knows something of the politics and the inner life of the country you are in. (Balkan 28)Rather than touring the grand cities, she was seduced by the market places with their abundance of food, colour, and action. Describing Sarajevo she wrote:On market day the main square is a blaze of colour and movement, the buyers no less colourful than the peasants who have come in from the farms around with their produce—cream cheese, eggs, chickens, fruit and vegetables. Handmade carpets hung up for sale against walls or from trees add their barbaric colour to the splendor of the scene. (Balkan 75)Markets she visited come to life through her vivid descriptions:Oh those markets, with the gorgeous colours, and heaped untidiness of the fruits and vegetables—paprika, those red and green peppers! Every kind of melon, grape and tomato contributing to the riot of colour. Then there were the fascinating peasant embroideries, laces and rich parts of old costumes brought in from the villages for sale. The lovely gay old embroideries were just laid out on a narrow carpet spread along the pavement or hung from a tree if one happened to be there. (Balkan 11)Perhaps it was her radio cooking shows that gave her the ability to make her descriptions sensorial and pictorial:We tasted luxurious foods, fish, chickens, fruits, wines, and liqueurs. All products of the country. Perfect ambrosial nectar of the gods. I was entirely seduced by the rose petal syrup, fragrant and aromatic, a red drink made from the petals of the darkest red roses. (Balkan 151)Ordinary places and everyday events are beautifully realised:We visited the cheese factory amongst other things. … It was curious to see in that far away spot such a quantity of neatly arranged cheeses in the curing chamber, being prepared for export, and in another room the primitive looking round balls of creamed cheese suspended from rafters. Later we saw trains of pack horses going over the mountains, and these were probably the bearers of these cheeses to Bitolj or Skoplje, whence they would be consigned further for export. (Balkan 182)ConclusionReading Seager and Hughes, one cannot help but be swept along on their travels and take part in their journeys. What is clear, is that they were inspired by their work, which is reflected in the way they wrote about the places they visited. Both sought out people and places that were, as Hughes so vividly puts it, not part of the Cook’s Tour. They travelled with their eyes wide open for experiences that were both new and normal, making their writing relevant even today. Written in Paris on Bastille Day 1950, Seager’s Bastille Day article is poignant when compared to Bastille Day in France in 2016. Hughes’s descriptions of Sarajevo are a far cry from the scenes of destruction in that city between 1992 and 1995. The travel writing of these two women offers us vivid impressions and images of the often unreported events, places, daily lives, and industry of the ordinary and the then every day, and remind us that the more things change, the more they stay the same.Pesman writes, “women have always been on the move and Australian women have been as numerous as passengers on the outbound ships as have men” (20), but the records of their travels seldom appear on the public record. Whilst their work-related writings are part of the public record (see Haysom; Lancaster; Riggal), this body of women’s travel writing has not received the attention it deserves. Hughes’ cookbooks, with their traditional Eastern European recipes and evocative descriptions of people and kitchens, are only there for the researcher who knows that cookbooks are a trove of valuable social and cultural material. Digital copies of Seager’s writing can be accessed on Trove (a digital repository), but there is little else about her or her body of writing on the public record.ReferencesThe Argus. “Goodbye Ma’am.” 26 May 1950: 1. &lt;http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22831285?searchTerm=Goodbye%20Ma%E2%80%99am%E2%80%99&amp;searchLimits=l-title=13|||l-decade=195&gt;.“Exotiq Cosmetics.” Advertisement. Woman 20 Aug. 1945: 36.Golding, Peter. “Just a Chattel of the Sale: A Mostly Light-Hearted Retrospective of a Diverse Life.” In Jim Usher, ed., The Argus: Life &amp; Death of Newspaper. North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing 2007.Haysom, Ida. Diaries and Photographs of Ida Haysom. &lt;http://search.slv.vic.gov.au/MAIN:Everything:SLV_VOYAGER1637361&gt;.“Healing Cycles.” Advertisement. Woman 27 Aug. 1945: 40. Hughes, Gwen. Balkan Fever. Unpublished Manuscript. State Library of Victoria, MS 12985 Box 3846/4. 1943.———. Perfect Cooking London: Parkinsons, c1940.Lancaster, Rosemary. Je Suis Australienne: Remarkable Women in France 1880-1945. Crawley WA: UWA Press, 2008.Pesman, Ros. “Overseas Travel of Australian Women: Sources in the Australian Manuscripts Collection of the State Library of Victoria.” The Latrobe Journal 58 (Spring 1996): 19-26.Riggal, Louie. (Louise Blanche.) Diary of Italian Tour 1905 February 21 - May 1. &lt;http://search.slv.vic.gov.au/MAIN:Everything:SLV_VOYAGER1635602&gt;.Seager, Helen. “Ballet Dancers Backstage.” The Argus 10 Aug. 1944: 10. &lt;http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/11356057?searchTerm=Ballet%20Dancers%20Backstage&amp;searchLimits=l-title=13|||l-decade=194&gt;.———. “The Baroness Who Finds Knitting Exciting.” The Argus 1 Aug. 1944: 9. &lt;http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/11354557?searchTerm=Helen%20seager%20Baroness&amp;searchLimits=l-title=13|||l-decade=194&gt;.———. “English Visitors Have a Food Spree in Eire.” The Argus 29 Sep. 1950: 6. &lt;http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22912011?searchTerm=English%20visitors%20have%20a%20spree%20in%20Eire&amp;searchLimits=l-title=13|||l-decade=195&gt;.———. “From Helen in London.” The Argus 20 June 1950: 3. &lt;http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22836738?searchTerm=From%20Helen%20in%20London&amp;searchLimits=l-title=13|||l-decade=195&gt;.———. “Helen Seager Storms Paris—Paris Falls.” The Argus 15 July 1950: 7.&lt;http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22906913?searchTerm=Helen%20Seager%20Storms%20Paris%E2%80%99&amp;searchLimits=l-title=13|||l-decade=195&gt;.———. “We Look over Blenheim Palace.” The Argus 28 Sep. 1950: 3. &lt;http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22902040?searchTerm=Helen%20Seager%20Its%20as%20a%20good%20a%20place%20as%20you%20would%20want%20to%20be&amp;searchLimits=l-title=13|||l-decade=195&gt;.———. “West End Hair-Do Was Fun.” The Argus 3 July 1950: 3. &lt;http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22913940?searchTerm=West%20End%20hair-do%20was%20fun%E2%80%99&amp;searchLimits=l-title=13|||l-decade=195&gt;.———. “When You Are in Paris on July 14.” The Argus 19 July 1950: 3. &lt;http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22906244?searchTerm=When%20you%20are%20in%20Paris%20on%20July%2014&amp;searchLimits=l-title=13|||l-decade=195&gt;.

Introduction "Barbie has a great day every day, but Ken only has a great day if Barbie looks at him", states the narrator in Barbie (2023). Directed by Greta Gerwig, the film not only claimed the title of the highest-grossing film of the year but also prompted its audience to reconsider a character they had previously mostly overlooked; another one of Barbie’s many accessories: Ken. Ken's identity as Barbie's companion is fundamentally dependent upon the presence and recognition of his more prominent female counterpart. This highlights Ken's secondary role, where he serves as a supporting figure to Barbie's idealised existence. Akin to a Manic Pixie Dream Boy (MPDB) overshadowed by Barbie, we realise Ken’s lack of identity. Throughout the film, Ken, initially depicted as identity-less, embarks on a journey of self-discovery, challenging the confines imposed by white patriarchy, although it doesn’t seem that way at first. This article will first establish Ken's MPDB status, highlighting traits such as (a) seeking to elevate and challenge the main character’s beliefs, (b) harbouring both gentleness and deviousness, while also engaging in playful yet mildly destructive mischief, (c) acting as a catalyst for change, (d) exhibiting a desire to escape, disappear, or transform, leaving valuable lessons behind, and (e) existing solely within the perception of or for the benefit of the main character. Subsequently, it will follow his journey, ultimately examining how a humanoid doll undergoes healing particularly concerning gender issues. Through the deconstruction of his narrative, this article aims to uncover the underlying power dynamics at play and to explore how Ken's transformation contributes to broader conversations surrounding gender fluidity and representation. By doing so, the article will provide an understanding of Ken's role and contribution to the feminist cause, while also offering insights into the broader cultural significance of the film. Manic Pixie Dream Girl In contemporary discourse, the term MPDGirl has gained recognition following its coinage by Nathan Rabin: “that bubbly, shallow, cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures” (Rabin, "The Bataan"). It rapidly gained eminence within popular culture, precipitating a widespread societal fixation on the quest for mining more MPDGs, up to the point where Rabin himself voiced his regret about coining the term ("I’m Sorry"). However, the MPDG was already a presence among us. As Laurie Penny states in the article "I Was a Manic Pixie Dream Girl", “Like scabies and syphilis, Manic Pixie Dream Girls were with us long before they were accurately named”. Additionally, Gouck contends that “the Pixie is a descendant of the Classical Muse and also has roots in the Pygmalion myth” (527). Thus, tracing from these foundational mythical and ancient iterations to contemporary relatives such as the Earnest Elfin Dream Gay (EEDG) and the “Magical Negro”, popularised by Spike Lee, reveals a diverse family tree. Although various writers for online platforms have declared the demise of the MPDG (Eby; Harris; Stoeffel), the trope constantly found ways to revive itself. Harris, in her 2012 article "Is the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Dead?", claimed that the trope has been turned on its head with later iterations like Ruby Sparks, “depicting a writer (Paul Dano) whose idealistic, winsome female character comes to life and challenges patriarchal notions of what women actually want”. Tannenbaum, on the other hand, suggested that the MPDG isn’t dead but just evolved through a loophole: the tragic backstory. This article contends that as long as a concept remains in circulation, it cannot die. Thus, even this article itself contributes to the preservation of the phenomenon in question. Manic Pixie Dream Boy In 2012, Molly Lambert introduced a notable extension of the MPDG archetype: the MPDB. Lambert described the MPDB as a character who uplifts the heroine's self-confidence through comfort, inspiration, and nurturing support, without expecting anything in return. He … tamps down her … temper while appreciating her quirks … . He’s a nerd, but not an angry … one. He’s handsome, but he has no idea … . His … hobbies might be immature … but it doesn’t extend to his emotions … . He’s a selfless, responsible Peter Pan. (Lambert) The likening of the MPDB to a selfless and responsible Peter Pan is flawed. One of the main reasons that make Peter Pan Peter Pan is that he doesn’t want to become an adult and be burdened with responsibilities. Additionally, the notion of the MPDB wanting nothing in return is flawed, as the MPDB's actions are usually driven by a fixation obsession rather than genuine altruism. Consequently, rather than epitomising selflessness, the MPDB defined by Lambert aligns more closely with an idealised EveryWoman’sDreamBoy archetype. In 2015, Anna Breslaw introduced another definition, labelling the MPDB as a “self-mythologizing ‘free-spirited’ dude”; however, it still remains unclear and unsatisfactory. Since its inception, there has been a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of the MPDB. Originally rooted in a female-centric trope, it requires careful interpretation. When the definitions of the MPDB are applied as previously stated, it effectively transforms into an archetype that conventionally represents many women's ideal. However, unlike the MPDG, who is characterised by her eccentricity, the previous definitions of the MPDB reject this norm. Drawing inspiration from figures such as Peter Pan, Puck, King Kong, the Amphibian Man, the Beast, and Edward Scissorhands, the MPDB embodies a blend of comfort and chaos. This dichotomy is exemplified in Ken, who fulfills the role of comfort and chaos for Barbie, yet finds himself unwanted and unneeded. The real MPDB is defined by five core features that distinguish it from the misinterpreted notion often associated with the trope. a) The MPDB seeks to elevate and challenge the main character’s beliefs: Ken consistently tries to alter Barbie’s perceptions, as evidenced by his persistent attempts to reshape her opinion of him beyond superficial interests. This is exemplified by his pursuits beyond conventional activities, such as his daring act of running into the plastic waves, a seemingly unprecedented action that surprises, shocks, or scares those around him. b) The MPDB harbours both gentleness and deviousness, while engaging in playful yet mildly destructive mischief: Ken exhibits a dual nature, demonstrating kindness and charm towards Barbie while simultaneously harbouring ulterior motives, including a deep-seated desire to become Barbie's romantic partner. This complexity in character can be likened to the “nice guy syndrome”, where benevolent actions may mask underlying intentions. Furthermore, upon his return to build patriarchy, this desire is accentuated, showcasing his multilayered personality. c) The MPDB acts as a catalyst for change: Ken serves as an important force in instigating transformation, as demonstrated by the significant shifts that occur in both Barbieland and Barbie's life due to Ken's presence. His actions challenge Barbie's beliefs, whether intentionally or inadvertently, leading her to perceive new perspectives and undergo personal growth. d) The MPDB exhibits a desire to escape, disappear, or transform, leaving valuable lessons behind: Throughout Ken's MPDB journey, his inclination towards escapism, disappearance, or transformation becomes evident. While his initial desire to accompany Barbie may stem from romantic aspirations, it is also fuelled by the rivalry among the Kens. Once Ken realises there is more than Barbieland and he can want different things, he expresses his desire for change. As Ken evolves and heals, he undergoes a transformation, ultimately becoming a changed entity, yet leaving behind significant lessons that pave the way for the transformation of Barbieland and Barbie. e) The MPDB exists solely within the perception of or for the benefit of the main character: Ken’s presence is exclusively crafted within the perspective of, or to serve the needs of, the main character. According to a 2017 GQ article, Michael Shore, the head of Mattel's global consumer insights at the time, states that, “Ken was really viewed as more of an accessory in Barbie’s world, to support the narrative of whatever was happening with the girls” (qtd. in Weaver). This perspective reinforces Ken's role as arm candy within Barbie's world, serving as a complement to her endeavors at a ratio of about 1:7 (Weaver). This aspect highlights the trope's function as a narrative construct intended to support and shape the protagonist's storyline and growth. The MPDB Ken Ken (Ryan Gosling) makes his debut appearance in the Barbie movie at the eight-minute mark. While the narrative primarily revolves around Barbie, Ken's introduction is a subtle but significant moment. As Barbieland unfolds before us, Ken's delayed entrance, as another inhabitant of Barbieland, draws attention. Barbie is everywhere, but where is Ken? Amidst the cheerful exchanges of “Hi Barbie, Hi Ken”, Ken's behavior stands out—he doesn't reciprocate the greeting with other Kens, he only greets Barbie. Ken's omission from acknowledging his fellow Kens seems like a deliberate choice—a denial of their existence, perhaps suggesting that he perceives himself as the sole Ken of significance in Barbieland. His exclusive greeting to Barbie highlights this notion; in his world, Barbie is paramount, and other Kens are unimportant in comparison. We understand that there is a rivalry going on between the Kens; there is no Kenship, mainly between Ken (Gosling) and Ken (Simu Liu). The same evening at the party, while all the Barbies wear complementary yet distinct clothes, the Kens are dressed uniformly in identical outfits. This lack of individuality strips them of identity, claims Roche, “it is a training, an element in the education of controlled individual power ... designed to shape the physique … of [an] individual” (228-9). Uniforms shape individuality into collectivity and thus cause a lack of identity. The white and gold motifs on Kens’ jumpsuits may symbolise collectivity. They are a team; they are minds that have never been shaped before, they are accessories. The 'K' emblem on their jackets further emphasises their lack of identity. Costume designer Jacqueline Durran “imagined Gosling’s character as ‘almost like an accessory’ where his main function is to just be there and match her look. The Kens could all be dressed the same because there wasn’t meant to be anything distinct about them” (Zemler, "Dressing Barbie"). This point is even more highlighted in a scene where Barbie and Ken are in the car going to the real world, where Ken has another jumpsuit that is covered with the letter “B”. In the absence of the other Kens he is even more of an accessory, and even wearing something with his initials is denied, he is Barbie’s property. Contact with Patriarchy Barbie and Ken enter the real world, and interestingly, while throughout the travel sequence, Barbie is in front of Ken, leading Ken, in the shot where they enter the real world, Ken is in front of Barbie. Ken, for the first time alone, somehow ends up at Century City: “it is the antithesis of Barbieland”, says Greenwood, “there is an homage to the male construction industry and the male gaze” (Zemler, "On Location"). Men who are passing him say “excuse me, sir, thanks man, what’s up bud”. This new world that he encounters in Century City is giving him an identity. For the first time, he is something more than an unwanted MPDB. He is sir, he is man, he is bud. Since the Kens exist as a second-class species whose sole purpose is to cheer the Barbies on, he cannot comprehend his actual yearning, he thinks common decency (someone saying excuse me) is what patriarchy is. A fish out of water, the manic pixie Ken creates a pastiche of everything he encounters to assume this new identity: male presidents, mini-fridges, golf, a fur coat, and even horses. His first interaction with horses is through two police officers riding horses. Believing that horses are an important part of patriarchy, Ken wearing a cowboy outfit too, internalises the bond between horse and man. Pickel-Chavelier, in a study about horse stories, states that “the horse has been a fundamental element in the evolution of Western civilization” (120). Robinson argues that historically “the human-horse relationship was male-dominated, reflecting the horses’ role as a work tool and the traditional placing of power and power sources under the control of men” (44). Thus, the rider has been considered to have “increased power and an increased sense of power” while evoking “a sense of inferiority and envy” in pedestrians (Robinson 43). Studying the human-horse relationship through the American mounted police, Lawrence claimed that the mounted police have close relationships with their horses. Robinson states that “the officers spend much time with their animals each day and develop a sense of trust” (43). Ken's admiration of horses likely symbolises his evolving understanding of masculinity and power dynamics within patriarchy. Being introduced to horses as symbols of authority and control, he understands them as companions embodying strength, loyalty, and trust. This explains how he understands masculinity as a realm where power is defined by mutual respect and partnership, rather than dominance, which is also probably the reason why he loses interest in patriarchy when he realises it’s not about horses. Nicholas, in their article "Ken’s Rights?", claims that “radicalization … is often motivated by feelings among … men of being left behind by a feminist world or system that doesn’t value them. This then leads them to long for an imagined natural order of patriarchy where women are back in their place and men regain their entitlements”. Ken’s frustration leads him to introduce patriarchy to his fellow Kens, envisioning a transformation of Barbieland into a new Century City. This shift reflects Ken’s Manic Pixie healing journey: rather than being solely an MPDB, Ken slowly constructs an identity under patriarchy for himself. Drawing from Connell's perspective on hegemonic masculinity, which posits that masculinity is always constructed in response to subordinated masculinities, we see how Ken's desire for change extends to altering the very fabric of Barbieland, from its constitution to its name, renaming it Kendom. This name change holds significance, echoing the concept of “Inceldom” within the larger misogynist ecosystem of the Manosphere, where men perceive themselves as deprived of love and intimacy due to feminist ideals. In addition to incels, the ‘Manosphere’ is comprised of Men’s Right Activists, Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), AND Pick-Up Artists (PUAs). Each of these groups subscribe to the same underlying philosophy, referred to as the ‘red pill’… When an individual has ‘taken the red pill’, they have enlightened themselves to a reality in which women wield feminism as a weapon against men, depriving them of sex and love. (Gothard et al. 1) Ken’s new outfit is another important change. As patriarchy leaks into Barbieland, Ken's outfit begins to reflect iconic images of masculinity, such as Sylvester Stallone in a mink coat. Previously, Ken's clothing complemented Barbie's, but now, his fanny pack displays his full name instead of just the letter K, positioned over his non-existent genitalia. This deliberate placement implies a newfound connection between his new identity and his imagined sex. When discontent Barbies strategise to disrupt the new order, they manipulate Kens' fragile egos, inciting conflict just before the crucial constitution vote. The fighting sequence starts with Ryan Gosling’s "I'm just Ken" song and imagery reminiscent of Rodin's iconic statue “The Thinker”. The Rodin Museum describes the figure as “a being with a tortured body, almost a damned soul, and a free-thinking man, determined to transcend his suffering through poetry”, mirroring Ken's current state of turmoil. In Rodin’s lifetime, there were “many marble and bronze editions in several sizes” that have been executed (Zelazko). Similarly, there are countless iterations of Ken, undermining his belief in his uniqueness. The general anticipation of the statue being impressive but then feeling let down when seeing its real size serves as a poignant metaphor for Ken's inflated self-importance, contrasted with his inherent fragility and insignificance. As the chorus “I’m just Ken” starts, Ken (Gosling) rides into the battle “on paddle boats reminiscent of cannon-loaded ships, while [Ken (Liu)]’s crew carries him over their shoulders, spinning umbrellas like wheels and holding stick horses as if they were human chariots” (Lee), having frisbees, tennis rackets, and other sports equipment in their hands. This imagery not only captivates the audience but also serves as a reflection of the sports and war imagery in media representations of men. The notion of hegemonic masculinity is intricately woven into such depictions. Jansen and Sabo point out “that the sport/war metaphor is embedded within a “deep structure” of patriarchal values, beliefs, and power relations that, in turn, reflect and advance the agendas of hegemonic masculinity” (2). This metaphor not only reflects but also advances the agendas of hegemonic masculinity. By glorifying competition and valorising traits associated with aggression and dominance, media representations perpetuate narrow and rigid norms of masculinity, reinforcing the hierarchical gender dynamics prevalent in society. However, through playful exploration of these notions, Barbie introduces a significant step in the healing journey of MPDBs, all while cleverly critiquing the inherent associations society makes between masculinity, competitive sports, and even aspects of warfare. Kenough As Ken continues his performance, seamlessly transitioning from a part-power ballad, part-battle sequence into a dream ballet, the narrative takes a profound turn. Connell's concept of “gender order”, referring to “a historically constructed pattern of power relations between men and women and definitions of femininity and masculinity” that emerge and are transformed within varying institutional contexts (98-99), becomes particularly relevant when applied to dancing, seen as an institutional context. Silvester, discussing how gender dynamics within dancing evolved, notes that in the 60s, with the twist and later with disco dancing, dancers did not have to have partners any more, which made the “presumptions about the effeminacy of professional male dancers” widespread (qtd. in Owen 18). Because in performance culture female dancers were the objects of desire for usually male spectators, dancing found itself a place inside the borders of femininity, “and homophobic prejudices against male dancers grew” (Owen 18). Initially, at the party, dancing symbolises their confinement to their identities as Barbie’s accessory, and later it serves as a catalyst for shedding the performative shackles of masculinity and patriarchy. Through dance, MPDB Ken embraces authenticity, breaking down the barriers of the embarrassment of showing admiration to his fellow Kens and fostering genuine connection and affection. The Kens help each other up, they giggle, and they kiss each other on the cheek; they are no longer threatened by each other or by showing affection. As the battle sequence comes to an end, one Ken acknowledges that they were only fighting because they didn’t know who they were. What initially began as a melodramatic expression of the insecurities of an incel, angry at his object of affection, transforms into a collective affirmation of self-worth, fostering unity and acceptance among the Kens. Lee aptly describes this transformation as an elevation from internal conflict to self-affirming validation, marking a pivotal shift away from self-destructive behaviours towards mutual respect and understanding. Ken finally has an identity that is not defined through Barbie’s gaze or patriarchal vision of masculinity. He is not an MPDB that only exists for the protagonist anymore. He finds an identity; however, one he does not know how to express. Connell and Messerschmidt state that “men can adopt hegemonic masculinity when it is desirable; but the same men can distance themselves strategically from hegemonic masculinity at other moments. Consequently, ‘masculinity’ represents not a certain type of man but, rather, a way that men position themselves through discursive practices” (841). Ken still does not abandon what he has found in the real world. Knowing he has been defeated he tries to “strategically” reposition himself. Like a toddler having a temper tantrum, he runs to his mojo dojo casa house, throws himself on his bed, and starts crying, while Barbie tries to comfort him. Myisha et al. suggest that Barbie, as a woman, again is cast in the role of nurturer and comforter, and thus the movie finds itself repeating gender stereotypes. However, missing the point that Ken is crying in this scene, these criticisms are themselves reinforcing gender stereotypes by mistaking common decency for an intrinsic association with women. Ken later denounces patriarchy and learns from Barbie not to define himself by his possessions, his relationship, or his job. Embracing his individuality, he declares, “I'm Ken, and I'm Kenough”, going down the slide, symbolizing a rebirth. In his final shot, Ken is seen with a sweatshirt proclaiming “I’m Kenough”. In embracing his past identities through the bandana and the color pink, he constructs a new identity, one that welcomes all colors. bell hooks defines feminism as “the struggle to end sexist oppression” for all women without “[privileging] women over men” (26). Greta Gerwig, in an interview with Time, acknowledges the struggles faced by both men and women throughout history, highlighting the universal pressure to meet unrealistic standards (Carlin). This suggests that while women face specific forms of oppression, men too are ensnared by other rigid societal norms, if not the same. By recognising these challenges, feminism advocates for the involvement of men in the movement. Whether it is standing in solidarity with women or confronting their own biases, men play a pivotal role in advancing gender equality. For feminism to thrive, it necessitates men's active participation, urging them to support women's rights and challenge patriarchal structures while remaining open to introspection and growth. Feminism has consistently aimed to dismantle the rigid gender binaries epitomised by the Barbie/Ken dichotomy, advocating for the separation of attributes from their gendered associations. From Barbie, we can glean the lesson that hierarchical and inflexible gender norms benefit no one and that power and social roles should not be determined by one's biological sex. Nicholas, in their article "Ken’s Rights?", claims that online antifeminist discourses reveal parallels between Ken's journey in the movie and themes found in Men’s Rights Activist spaces. Ken's transition from aggrievement to a more enlightened perspective on masculinity mirrors the narratives prevalent in such spaces. This underscores the importance of understanding and addressing men within the context of feminism, as their experiences are intertwined with broader societal structures and expectations. True progress cannot be achieved if we continue to view those who perpetuate patriarchy or toxic masculinity as “others”. We should see them as humanoid Ken dolls, and in doing so help them to help us trigger answers and solutions. Understanding and addressing these issues is crucial for healing and reducing harm inflicted by patriarchal norms. While Barbie may have its flaws, focussing solely on its shortcomings detracts from the opportunity to address deeper issues regarding society. MPDB Ken's portrayal as a subservient accessory to Barbie raises important questions about gender dynamics and the impact of societal expectations on individuals. Rather than vilifying Ken because he brought patriarchy to Barbieland, and reducing him only to a man, I advocate for understanding his journey and recognising him also as a brainwashed character, alongside the brainwashed Barbies, who needed the help of his friends to heal. By acknowledging and addressing the influence of patriarchal norms on all individuals, including men like Ken, we can work towards healing and progress for all. References Barbie. Dir. G. Gerwig. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2023. Breslaw, Anna. “Beware the Manic Pixie Dream Boyfriend.” The Cut, 13 Sep. 2015. &lt;https://www.thecut.com/2015/09/beware-the-manic-pixie-dream-boyfriend.html&gt;. Carlin, Shannon. “The History Behind Barbie’s Ken.” Time, 20 Jul. 2023. &lt;https://time.com/6296386/barbie-ken-history/&gt;. Connell, Raewyn. "The Social Organization of Masculinity." Feminist Theory Reader. Routledge, 2020. 192-200. ———. Gender and Power Cambridge. Polity, 1987. Connell, Raewyn, and James W. Messerschmidt. "Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept." Gender &amp; Society 19.6 (2005): 829-59. “Director Spike Lee Slams ‘Same Old’ Black Stereotypes in Today’s Films.” YALE Bulletin &amp; Calender 29.21 (2 Mar. 2001). &lt;http://archives.news.yale.edu/v29.n21/story3.html&gt;. Eby, Margaret. “The Death of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.” Brooklyn, 15 Jul. 2014. &lt;https://www.bkmag.com/2014/07/15/the-death-of-the-manic-pixie-dream-girl/&gt;. Gothard, Kelly Caroline, et al. “The Incel Lexicon: Deciphering the Emergent Cryptolect of a Global Misogynistic Community.” University of Vermont and State Agricultural College, 2021. Gouck, Jennifer. “The Problematic (Im)persistence of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl in Popular Culture and YA Fiction.” Women's Studies 52.5 (2023): 525-44. Harris, Aisha. “Is the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Dead?” Slate, 5 Dec. 2012. &lt;https://slate.com/culture/2012/12/manic-pixie-prostitute-video-is-the-latest-critique-of-the-manic-pixie-dream-girl-archetype-video.html&gt;. hooks, bell. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Pluto Press, 2000. Jansen, Sue Curry, and Don Sabo. “The Sport/War Metaphor: Hegemonic Masculinity, the Persian Gulf War, and the New World Order.” Sociology of Sport Journal 11.1 (1994): 1-17. &lt;https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/ssj/11/1/article-p1.xml&gt;. Stoeffel, Kat. “The ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl’ Has Died.” The Cut, 29 July 2013. &lt;https://www.thecut.com/2013/07/manic-pixie-dream-girl-has-died.html&gt;. Lambert, Molly. “1D Internet Fantasies: Liz Lemon, One Direction, and the Rise of the Manic Pixie Dream Guy.” Grantland: Hollywood Prospectus, 3 Dec. 2012. &lt;https://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/1d-internet-fantasies-liz-lemon-one-direction-and-the-rise-of-the-manic-pixie-dream-guy/&gt;. Lee, Ashley. “How Hilarious ‘Barbie’ Earworm ’I’m Just Ken’ Brings Toxic Masculinity to Its Knees.” Los Angeles Times, 28 Jul. 2023. &lt;https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2023-07-28/barbie-movie-ryan-gosling-im-just-ken-lyrics-dance-moves-explained&gt;. Mason, Derrit. “The Earnest Elfin Dream Gay.” Public Books, 9 Nov. 2018. &lt;https://www.publicbooks.org/the-earnest-elfin-dream-gay/&gt;. Myisha, Nabila, et al. “Decoding the Perpetuation of Patriarchal Culture in the Barbie Movie.” Cultural Narratives 1.2 (2023): 71-82. Nicholas, Lucy. “Ken’s Rights? Our Research Shows Barbie Is Surprisingly Accurate on How ‘Men’s Rights Activists’ Are Radicalized.” The Conversation, 25 Jul. 2023. &lt;https://theconversation.com/kens-rights-our-research-shows-barbie-is-surprisingly-accurate-on-how-mens-rights-activists-are-radicalised-210273&gt;. Owen, Craig Robert. Dancing Gender: Exploring Embodied Masculinities. 2014. PhD dissertation. Bath: University of Bath. &lt;https://purehost.bath.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/187931069/OWEN_Craig_PhD_Thesis_1_6_2014.pdf&gt;. Penny, Laurie. “Laurie Penny on Sexism in Storytelling: I Was a Manic Pixie Dream Girl.” The New Statesman, 7 Aug. 2014. &lt;https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/06/i-was-manic-pixie-dream-girl&gt;. Pickel-Chavalier, Sylvine. “Popular Horse Stories and the Invention of the Contemporary Human-Horse Relationship through an ‘Alter Ego’ paradigm.” Journal of Sports Science 5 (2017): 119-137. &lt;https://hal.science/hal-01571632/document&gt;. Rabin, Nathan. “The Bataan Death March of Whimsy Case File #1: Elizabethtown.” The A.V. Club, 25 Jan. 2007. &lt;https://www.avclub.com/the-bataan-death-march-of-whimsy-case-file-1-elizabet-1798210595&gt;. ———. “I’m Sorry for Coining the Phrase 'Manic Pixie Dream Girl'.” Salon, 16 Jul. 2014. &lt;https://www.salon.com/2014/07/15/im_sorry_for_coining_the_phrase_manic_pixie_dream_girl/&gt;. Robinson, I.H. “The Human‐Horse Relationship: How Much Do We Know?” Equine Veterinary Journal 31.S28 (Apr. 1999): 42–5. DOI: 10.1111/j.2042-3306.1999.tb05155.x. Roche, Daniel. The Culture of Clothing: Dress and Fashion in the Ancien Régime. Cambridge UP, 1996. Romero-Medina, Pablo, and Júlia Vilasís-Pamos. “Alt-Right, Neomasculinities and Video Games: A Narrative Review.” Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA), 2023. &lt;http://digra.org:9998/DiGRA_2023_CR_1583.pdf&gt;. Tannenbaum, Emily. “The ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl’ Isn’t Dead – She Has Just Evolved.” Glamour, 25 Aug. 2020. &lt;https://www.glamour.com/story/the-manic-pixie-dream-girl-isnt-dead-shes-just-evolved&gt;. “The Thinker.” Musee Rodin, n.d. &lt;https://www.musee-rodin.fr/en/musee/collections/oeuvres/thinker&gt;. Weaver, Caity. “The Ken Doll Reboot: Beefy, Cornrowed, and Pan-Racial.” GQ, 20 Jun. 2017. &lt;https://www.gq.com/story/the-ken-doll-reboot-beefy-cornrowed-and-pan-racial&gt;. Zelazko, Alicja. “The Thinker.” Britannica, 20 Feb. 2024. &lt;https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Thinker-sculpture-by-Rodin&gt;. Zemler, Emily. “On Location: Unboxing Barbie in Venice Beach.” Conde Nast: Traveler, 21 Jul. 2023. &lt;https://www.cntraveler.com/story/barbie-movie-venice-beach&gt;. ———. Dressing Barbie Was Always the Best Part: Just Ask Costume Designer Jacqueline Durran. Yahoo! Movies, 20 Feb. 2024. &lt;https://ca.movies.yahoo.com/dressing-barbie-always-best-part-130045950.html&gt;.

Introduction The first “Aquarius Festival” came together in Canberra, at the Australian National University, in the autumn of 1971 and was reprised in 1973 in the small rural town of Nimbin, in northern New South Wales. Both events reflected the Zeitgeist in what was, in some ways, an inchoate expression of the so-called “counterculture” (Roszak). Rather than attempting to analyse the counterculture as a discrete movement with a definable history, I enlist the theory of cultural memes to read the counter culture as a Dawkinsian cluster meme, with this paper offered as “testimonio”, a form of quasi-political memoir that views shifts in the culture through the lens of personal experience (Zimmerman, Yúdice). I track an evolving personal, “internal” topography and map its points of intersection with the radical social, political and cultural changes spawned by the “consciousness revolution” that was an integral part of the counterculture emerging in the 1970s. I focus particularly on the notion of “consciousness raising”, as a Dawkinsian memetic replicator, in the context of the idealistic notions of the much-heralded “New Age” of Aquarius, and propose that this meme has been a persistent feature of the evolution of the “meme cluster” known as the counterculture. Mimesis and the Counterculture Since evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins floated the notion of cultural memes as a template to account for the evolution of ideas within political cultures, a literature of commentary and criticism has emerged that debates the strengths and weaknesses of his proposed model and its application across a number of fields. I borrow the notion to trace the influence of a set of memes that clustered around the emergence of what writer Marilyn Ferguson called The Aquarian Conspiracy, in her 1980 book of that name. Ferguson’s text, subtitled Personal and Social Transformation in Our Time, was a controversial attempt to account for what was known as the “New Age” movement, with its late millennial focus on social and personal transformation. That focus leads me to approach the counterculture (a term first floated by Theodore Roszak) less as a definable historical movement and more as a cluster of aspirational tropes expressing a range of aspects or concerns, from the overt political activism through to experimental technologies for the transformation of consciousness, and all characterised by a critical interrogation of, and resistance to, conventional social norms (Ferguson’s “personal and social transformation”). With its more overtly “spiritual” focus, I read the “New Age” meme, then, as a sub-set of this “cluster meme”, the counterculture. In my reading, “New Age” and “counterculture” overlap, sharing persistent concerns and a broad enough tent to accommodate the serious—the combative political action of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), say, (see Elbaum)—to the light-hearted—the sport of frisbee for example (Stancil). The interrogation of conventional social and political norms inherited from previous generations was a prominent strategy across both movements. Rather than offering a sociological analysis or history of the ragbag counterculture, per se, my discussion here focuses in on the particular meme of “consciousness raising” within that broader set of cultural shifts, some of which were sustained in their own right, some dropping away, and many absorbed into the dominant mainstream culture. Dawkins use of the term “meme” was rooted in the Greek mimesis, to emphasise the replication of an idea by imitation, or copying. He likened the way ideas survive and change in human culture to the natural selection of genes in biological evolution. While the transmission of memes does not depend on a physical medium, such as the DNA of biology, they replicate with a greater or lesser degree of success by harnessing human social media in a kind of “infectivity”, it is argued, through “contagious” repetition among human populations. Dawkins proposed that just as biological organisms could be said to act as “hosts” for replicating genes, in the same way people and groups of people act as hosts for replicating memes. Even before Dawkins floated his term, French biologist Jacques Monod wrote that ideas have retained some of the properties of organisms. Like them, they tend to perpetuate their structure and to breed; they too can fuse, recombine, segregate their content; indeed they too can evolve, and in this evolution selection must surely play an important role. (165, emphasis mine) Ideas have power, in Monod’s analysis: “They interact with each other and with other mental forces in the same brain, in neighbouring brains, and thanks to global communication, in far distant, foreign brains” (Monod, cited in Gleick). Emblematic of the counterculture were various “New Age” phenomena such as psychedelic drugs, art and music, with the latter contributing the “Aquarius” meme, whose theme song came from the stage musical (and later, film) Hair, and particularly the lyric that runs: “This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius”. The Australian Aquarius Festivals of 1971 and 1973 explicitly invoked this meme in the way identified by Monod and the “Aquarius” meme resonated even in Australia. Problematising “Aquarius” As for the astrological accuracy of the “Age of Aquarius meme”, professional astrologers argue about its dating, and the qualities that supposedly characterise it. When I consulted with two prominent workers in this field for the preparation of this article, I was astonished to find their respective dating of the putative Age of Aquarius were centuries apart! What memes were being “hosted” here? According to the lyrics: When the moon is in the seventh house And Jupiter aligns with Mars Then peace will guide the planets And love will steer the stars. (Hair) My astrologer informants assert that the moon is actually in the seventh house twice every year, and that Jupiter aligns with Mars every two years. Yet we are still waiting for the outbreak of peace promised according to these astrological conditions. I am also informed that there’s no “real” astrological underpinning for the aspirations of the song’s lyrics, for an astrological “Age” is not determined by any planet but by constellations rising, they tell me. Most important, contrary to the aspirations embodied in the lyrics, peace was not guiding the planets and love was not about to “steer the stars”. For Mars is not the planet of love, apparently, but of war and conflict and, empowered with the expansiveness of Jupiter, it was the forceful aggression of a militaristic mind-set that actually prevailed as the “New Age” supposedly dawned. For the hippified summer of love had taken a nosedive with the tragic events at the Altamont speedway, near San Francisco in 1969, when biker gangs, enlisted to provide security for a concert performance by The Rolling Stones allegedly provoked violence, marring the event and contributing to a dawning disillusionment (for a useful coverage of the event and its historical context see Dalton). There was a lot of far-fetched poetic licence involved in this dreaming, then, but memes, according to Nikos Salingaros, are “greatly simplified versions of patterns”. “The simpler they are, the faster they can proliferate”, he writes, and the most successful memes “come with a great psychological appeal” (243, 260; emphasis mine). What could be retrieved from this inchoate idealism? Harmony and understanding Sympathy and trust abounding No more falsehoods or derisions Golden living dreams of visions Mystic crystal revelation And the mind’s true liberation Aquarius, Aquarius. (Hair) In what follows I want to focus on this notion: “mind’s true liberation” by tracing the evolution of this project of “liberating” the mind, reflected in my personal journey. Nimbin and Aquarius I had attended the first Aquarius Festival, which came together in Canberra, at the Australian National University, in the autumn of 1971. I travelled there from Perth, overland, in a Ford Transit van, among a raggedy band of tie-dyed hippie actors, styled as The Campus Guerilla Theatre Troupe, re-joining our long-lost sisters and brothers as visionary pioneers of the New Age of Aquarius. Our visions were fueled with a suitcase full of potent Sumatran “buddha sticks” and, contrary to Biblical prophesies, we tended to see—not “through a glass darkly” but—in psychedelic, pop-, and op-art explosions of colour. We could see energy, man! Two years later, I found myself at the next Aquarius event in Nimbin, too, but by that time I inhabited a totally different mind-zone, albeit one characterised by the familiar, intense idealism. In the interim, I had been arrested in 1971 while “tripping out” in Sydney on potent “acid”, or LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide); had tried out political engagement at the Pram Factory Theatre in Melbourne; had camped out in protest at the flooding of Lake Pedder in the Tasmanian wilderness; met a young guru, started meditating, and joined “the ashram”—part of the movement known as the Divine Light Mission, which originated in India and was carried to the “West” (including Australia) by an enthusiastic and evangelical following of drug-toking drop-outs who had been swarming through India intent on escaping the dominant culture of the military-industrial complex and the horrors of the Vietnam War. Thus, by the time of the 1973 event in Nimbin, while other festival participants were foraging for “gold top” magic mushrooms in farmers’ fields, we devotees had put aside such chemical interventions in conscious awareness to dig latrines (our “service” project for the event) and we invited everyone to join us for “satsang” in the yellow, canvas-covered, geodesic dome, to attend to the message of peace. The liberation meme had shifted through a mutation that involved lifestyle-changing choices that were less about alternative approaches to sustainable agriculture and more about engaging directly with “mind’s true liberation”. Raising Consciousness What comes into focus here is the meme of “consciousness raising”, which became the persistent project within which I lived and worked and had my being for many years. Triggered initially by the ingestion of those psychedelic substances that led to my shocking encounter with the police, the project was carried forward into the more disciplined environs of my guru’s ashrams. However, before my encounter with sustained spiritual practice I had tried to work the shift within the parameters of an ostensibly political framework. “Consciousness raising” was a form of political activism borrowed from the political sphere. Originally generated by Mao Zedong in China during the revolutionary struggle to overthrow the vested colonial interests that were choking Chinese nationalism in the 1940s, to our “distant, foreign brains” (Monod), as Western revolutionary romantics, Chairman Mao and his Little Red Book were taken up, in a kind of international counterculture solidarity with revolutionaries everywhere. It must be admitted, this solidarity was a fairly superficial gesture. Back in China it might be construed as part of a crude totalitarian campaign to inculcate Marxist-Leninist political ideas among the peasant classes (see Compestine for a fictionalised account of traumatic times; Han Suyin’s long-form autobiography—an early example of testimonio as personal and political history—offers an unapologetic account of a struggle not usually construed as sympathetically by Western commentators). But the meme (and the processes) of consciousness raising were picked up by feminists in the United States in the late 1960s and into the 1970s (Brownmiller 21) and it was in this form I encountered it as an actor with the politically engaged theatre troupe, The Australian Performing Group, at Carlton’s Pram Factory Theatre in late 1971. The Performance Group I performed as a core member of the Group in 1971-72. Decisions as to which direction the Group should take were to be made as a collective, and the group veered towards anarchy. Most of the women were getting together outside of the confines of the Pram Factory to raise their consciousness within the Carlton Women’s Liberation Cell Group. While happy that the sexual revolution was reducing women’s sexual inhibitions, some of the men at the Factory were grumbling into their beer, disturbed that intimate details of their private lives—and their sexual performance—might be disclosed and raked over by a bunch of radical feminists. As they began to demand equal rights to orgasm in the bedroom, the women started to seek equal access within the performance group, too. They requested rehearsal time to stage the first production by the Women’s Theatre Group, newly formed under the umbrella of the wider collective. As all of the acknowledged writers in the Group so far were men—some of whom had not kept pace in consciousness raising—scripts tended to be viewed as part of a patriarchal plot, so Betty Can Jump was an improvised piece, with the performance material developed entirely by the cast in workshop-style rehearsals, under the direction of Kerry Dwyer (see Blundell, Zuber-Skerritt 21, plus various contributors at www.pramfactory.com/memoirsfolder/). I was the only male in the collective included in the cast. Several women would have been more comfortable if no mere male were involved at all. My gendered attitudes would scarcely have withstood a critical interrogation but, as my partner was active in launching the Women’s Electoral Lobby, I was given the benefit of the doubt. Director Kerry Dwyer liked my physicalised approach to performance (we were both inspired by the “poor theatre” of Jerzy Grotowski and the earlier surrealistic theories of Antonin Artaud), and I was cast to play all the male parts, whatever they would be. Memorable material came up in improvisation, much of which made it into the performances, but my personal favorite didn’t make the cut. It was a sprawling movement piece where I was “born” out of a symbolic mass of writhing female bodies. It was an arduous process and, after much heaving and huffing, I emerged from the birth canal stammering “SSSS … SSSS … SSMMMO-THER”! The radical reversioning of culturally authorised roles for women has inevitably, if more slowly, led to a re-thinking of the culturally approved and reinforced models of masculinity, too, once widely accepted as entirely biologically ordained rather than culturally constructed. But the possibility of a queer re-versioning of gender would be recognised only slowly. Liberation Meanwhile, Dennis Altman was emerging as an early spokesman for gay, or homosexual, liberation and he was invited to address the collective. Altman’s stirring book, Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation, had recently been published, but none of us had read it. Radical or not, the Group had shown little evidence of sensitivity to gender-queer issues. My own sexuality was very much “oppressed” rather than liberated and I would have been loath to use “queer” to describe myself. The term “homosexual” was fraught with pejorative, quasi-medical associations and, in a collective so divided across strict and sometimes hostile gender boundaries, deviant affiliations got short shrift. Dennis was unsure of his reception before this bunch of apparent “heteros”. Sitting at the rear of the meeting, I admired his courage. It took more self-acceptance than I could muster to confront the Group on this issue at the time. Somewhere in the back of my mind, “homosexuality” was still something I was supposed to “get over”, so I failed to respond to Altman’s implicit invitation to come out and join the party. The others saw me in relationship with a woman and whatever doubts they might have carried about the nature of my sexuality were tactfully suspended. Looking back, I am struck by the number of simultaneous poses I was trying to maintain: as an actor; as a practitioner of an Artaudian “theatre of cruelty”; as a politically committed activist; and as a “hetero”-sexual. My identity was an assemblage of entities posing as “I”; it was as if I were performing a self. Little gay boys are encouraged from an early age to hide their real impulses, not only from others—in the very closest circle, the family; at school; among one’s peers—but from themselves, too. The coercive effects of shaming usually fix the denial into place in our psyches before we have any intellectual (or political) resources to consider other options. Growing up trying to please, I hid my feelings. In my experience, it could be downright dangerous to resist the subtle and gross coercions that applied around gender normativity. The psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott, of the British object-relations school, argues that when the environment does not support the developing personality and requires the person to sacrifice his or her own spontaneous needs to adapt to environmental demands, there is not even a resting-place for individual experience and the result is a failure in the primary narcissistic state to evolve an individual. The “individual” then develops as an extension of the shell rather than that of the core [...] What there is left of a core is hidden away and is difficult to find even in the most far-reaching analysis. The individual then exists by not being found. The true self is hidden, and what we have to deal with clinically is the complex false self whose function is to keep this true self hidden. (212) How to connect to that hidden core, then? “Mind’s true liberation...” Alienated from the performative version of selfhood, but still inspired by the promise of liberation, even in the “fuzzy” form for which my inchoate hunger yearned (sexual liberation? political liberation? mystical liberation?), I was left to seek out a more authentic basis for selfhood, one that didn’t send me spinning along the roller-coaster of psychedelic drugs, or lie to me with the nostrums of a toxic, most forms of which would deny me, as a sexual, moral and legal pariah, the comforts of those “anchorage points to the social matrix” identified by Soddy (cited in Mol 58). My spiritual inquiry was “counter” to these institutionalised models of religious culture. So, I began to read my way through a myriad of books on comparative religion. And to my surprise, rather than taking up with the religions of antique cultures, instead I encountered a very young guru, initially as presented in a simply drawn poster in the window of Melbourne’s only vegetarian restaurant (Shakahari, in Carlton). “Are you hungry and tired of reading recipe books?” asked the figure in the poster. I had little sense of where that hunger would lead me, but it seemed to promise a fulfilment in ways that the fractious politics of the APG offered little nourishment. So, while many of my peers in the cities chose to pursue direct political action, and others experimented with cooperative living in rural communes, I chose the communal lifestyle of the ashram. In these different forms, then, the conscious raising meme persisted when other challenges raised by the counterculture either faded or were absorbed in the mainstream. I finally came to realise that the intense disillusionment process I had been through (“dis-illusionment” as the stripping away of illusions) was the beginning of awakening, in effect a “spiritual initiation” into a new way of seeing myself and my “place” in the world. Buddhist teachers might encourage this very kind of stripping away of false notions as part of their teaching, so the aspiration towards the “true liberation” of the mind expressed in the Aquarian visioning might be—and in my case, actually has been and continues to be—fulfilled to a very real extent. Gurus and the entire turn towards Eastern mysticism were part of the New Age meme cluster prevailing during the early 1970s, but I was fortunate to connect with an enduring set of empirical practices that haven’t faded with the fashions of the counterculture. A good guitarist would never want to play in public without first tuning her instrument. In a similar way, it is now possible for me to tune my mind back to a deeper, more original source of being than the socially constructed sense of self, which had been so fraught with conflicts for me. I have discovered that before gender, and before sexuality, in fact, pulsing away behind the thicket of everyday associations, there is an original, unconditioned state of beingness, the awareness of which can be reclaimed through focused meditation practices, tested in a wide variety of “real world” settings. For quite a significant period of time I worked as an instructor in the method on behalf of my guru, or mentor, travelling through a dozen or so countries, and it was through this exposure that I was able to observe that the practices worked independently of culture and that “mind’s true liberation” was in many ways a de-programming of cultural indoctrinations (see Marsh, 2014, 2013, 2011 and 2007 for testimony of this process). In Japan, Zen roshi might challenge their students with the koan: “Show me your original face, before you were born!” While that might seem to be an absurd proposal, I am finding that there is a potential, if unexpected, liberation in following through such an inquiry. As “hokey” as the Aquarian meme-set might have been, it was a reflection of the idealistic hope that characterised the cluster of memes that aggregated within the counterculture, a yearning for healthier life choices than those offered by the toxicity of the military-industrial complex, the grossly exploitative effects of rampant Capitalism and a politics of cynicism and domination. The meme of the “true liberation” of the mind, then, promised by the heady lyrics of a 1970s hippie musical, has continued to bear fruit in ways that I could not have imagined. References Altman, Dennis. Homosexual Oppression and Liberation. Sydney: Angus &amp; Robertson, 1972. Blundell, Graeme. The Naked Truth: A Life in Parts. 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