PART 2
Our next holiday in Finland was in 1975 when the European Security Conference was being held in Helsinki hosted by the Finnish Government when President Urho Kekkonen was the President.
This was the time that Indira Gandhi had declared Emergency Rule in India.
Due to some issues, with Indira’s draconian laws of the emergency, we had to remain in Finland from July till November.
During this visit we had the opportunity to visit Kuusamo as Annikki’s childhood friend, Iris, was living there with her husband.
Iris with her three children, now two doctors and one dentist. 1975
Iris is the daughter the famed Oulu pianist, Helge Luk. Iris was born a pianist. When she was a small child she just sat at the piano and played.
She tried to teach Annikki to play, but was quite unsuccessful. Annikki’s musical talent was singing. She sang all the time, never speaking to anybody in School intervals, but singing.
Even today, with advanced short term dementia, Annikki can hum along with hundreds of tunes she learnt as a child! The melodies have been permanently imprinted in her brain.
Iris married a doctor, Eero Vierimaa, who became the Head Doctor in Kuusamo. Annikki used to send letters from India to Iris and the address label was
“Iris Vierimaa, Kuusamo, Finland.”
On this visit we drove up to Kuusamo and stayed with Iris and her family. We visited Ruka, which was quite a desolate place in summer with only the chair lift.
The view was super. On the clear day we could view into Russia, just a short distance away.
We were even shown a couple of caged bears, which the Finns claimed were coming across the border!
The pictures of Ruka in 1975 should be viewed against the enormous development of today, as Ruka has become an international tourist destination with a wonderful national park nearby, as well. In Winter Kuusamo today hosts as many as a million visitors! These black and white photos are from Ruka 1975.
Black and photographs from 1975 from Ruka near Kuusamo.
Ruka 2023 international Holiday Centre.
We used the chair lift to view the magnificent scenery overlooking the Russian border.
We visited the open air art exhibition at Purnu, near Tampere and got an idea of Finnish contemporary art. The Art Center Purnu is located in the centre on the shore of Längelmävesi. Purnu organises summer exhibitions with changing themes. It brings out harmony between nature and culture. The setting creates a wonderful situation for experiencing art. Finland’s first summer exhibition was arranged in Purnu in 1967. Over the years over 500 artists have been exhibited, chosen by the changing curators.
We spent time with Anneli’s uncle (a Professor at the Swedish School of Business in Helsinki) and their family in their summer cottage near Tampere on the lakeside called Witch’s Nose.
During this visit to Finland an article appeared in a leading Finnish publication, Koti Posti, about our life in Madras.
It was written, with some lovely photographs by the late Mathew Verghese who was then resident in Espoo.
Family photograph by Mathew Verghese on the steps of our beautiful home on Velacheri Road, Madras.
Annikki’s brother. Erkki, drove us to the very north of Finland and to Skiboten in Norway.
Annikki in 1975 at the Norwegian Finnish border.
This was a highly sensitive border as it is a narrow strip which separates the east of Norway from the west. If this strip was compromised the entire east of Norway would be helpless. This narrow corridor was heavily guarded. It is believed that NATO forces and aircraft are stationed in the caverns built into the hillside. Photography was strictly forbidden in this area.
Saana - Holy mountain of the Lappish Saame people.
On our return trip we climbed the Holy Mountain of the Saame people, Saana, at midnight. It was a most deceptive mountain as you thought you were at the top only to see another plateau ahead! We ate freshly boiled new potatoes on the top! Annikki spent her time warming her hands on the steaming potatoes in the cold but bright summer night.
We spent a day and a night at Erkki’s summer cottage on the shore of a lake adjoining a National Park.
Jacob experienced the Finnish giant mosquitos and the fish flies that stung one bitterly! He vowed that this would be his last visit to the Arctic in summer!
During that time Jacob wrote his first pseudo-science semi-fiction novel, “FINDIANS”, still unpublished due to the inability to find a suitable ending!
Jacob had left some funds lying in his Barclays Bank in London when he was a student and worked in England prior to 1969. As our stay in Finland had been unexpectedly extended, Jacob thought it would be possible to draw on some of the money lying there. There were no Barclays Bank branches in Finland or Sweden but there was one in Copenhagen.
We decided to drive to Copenhagen to see whether we could access that money. There was no internet banking those days, so it had to be physical visit.
We hired a car and Annikki’s younger brother, Eino (called Eika) said he would come along to help out with the driving.
We decided to visit the Lake District of Eastern Finland near Kuopio, on the way,
We spent the first night in sleeping bags in the forest. In the morning visited a nearby cafe for our morning coffee and to freshen up.
We then drove to Imatra where the lock connects to the Saimaa lake to Russia. This was an important waterway connecting Finland with Russia. This gave eastern Finland waterway access to the Gulf of Finland. This was then a strategic lifeline for Finnish trade.
From there we went to Helsinki and stayed with one of Annikki’s younger sisters, Anneli. We left our two girls with her and we took the ferry from Naantali to Kapelskar in Sweden.
While cruising through the archipelago, the person at the helm of the ship forgot to do a sharp right turn and drove the ship into an island
Helsingin Sanomat report on the ship going aground on 15th August 1975.
This is described in detail in the article Jacob wrote called “Vikings invade Järvisaari”, which was the name of the island.
The company was callous in the way it treated the passengers and even resorted to lies. When the media on helicopters arrived in the morning of 16th August, the company put all the crew in the dining hall, and they pretended to be passengers, who then told the press that it was just a minor incident and that they were being looked after by the company very well. It was a touch and go situation as was told by the divers who assessed the damage and the way the ship was wedged on the rocks.
They got the tug boat called Naantali to pull the ship off the rocks. The ship tilted and rocked dangerously as they pulled. The steel wire cable snapped during the first effort. Yet the company did not evacuate the passengers and tried again. Luckily the ship came loose.
Jacob wrote the Managing Director asking for explanations, only to receive no acknowledgement or reply. The investigation, as is typical in Finland, was just a cover-up and whitewash.
As a result we could not reach Copenhagen on Friday as scheduled and the banks were closed on Saturday, making it a wasted trip.
We got back to Kapelskar to find the same ship to take us back to Naantali. The crew were rude and uncaring. We have not used Viking Line again after this incident!
This experience, amongst others. in Finland demonstrated that both Annikki and Jacob were social activists prepared to speak their minds truthfully and openly on important issues.
Jacob wrote about his understanding of the Finnish plastics industry in the leading plastics journal called “Muoviuutiset” (Plastics News).
He criticised the move by the Finnish milk distribution authorities for changing the packaging of milk from co-extruded plastics bags to coated cardboard containers. He explained that Finland was badly using its green gold while paying royalty on every carton to US multinationals. The co-extruded plastic bags had made Finland the pioneer in using them to distribute milk.
This method was later to be used by Magsassy Award winner, Padma Bushan Dr. M. Verghese Kurian of the Indian National Diary Board to successfully distribute milk in the white revolution, Operation Flood, all over India. Dr. Kurian had followed Jacob’s considered advice in his strategy of the early stages of the White Revolution. This was even as Tetrapak was pushing to introduce their coated paper cartons for milk distribution in India.
This visit to Finland brought home the reality that Finland was then a xenophobic country where power was wielded by half a dozen oligarchs who controlled the political, bureaucratic and legal machinery!
The shooting dead of a man fishing peacefully in a lake in Helsinki by Finnish Security while the European Security Conference was on, showed to what extent Finland could go to preserve their “Security”!
Except for the brief period of Indira’s emergency, India was a secular democratic country and Annikki and Jacob never felt insecure in India. Annikki read four newspapers every day The Hindu, The Indian Express, The Times of India and The Deccan Herald and enjoyed the diversity of opinions of leading journalists.
The period in Finland in 1975 was prolific in many ways. We wrote about many subjects. We found the treasure trove of our articles when cleaning up a few weeks ago. We intend to publish them on our FINDIANS Blog.
Already the first one is now on line at https://findians.blogspot.com/2023/08/vikings-invade-jarvisaari-august-1975.html
We were also very active trying to get appropriate technology to transfer from Finland to IndiOne of the first we identified was to extract furfural from bagasse without affecting the calorific value when using bagasse as a fuel. Furfural is a very important intermediatory chemical.
An efficient technology which even gave the byproduct of methanol was developed by the Finnish company, Rosenlew Oy. We approached them with a proposal but with the rider that engineering would be done by an Indian group as otherwise the cost of the plant would be prohibitive considering the cost of Finnish engineering. Also the plant size would have to be suitable for medium sized sugar plants in India. The proposal was not agreed to and later Rosenlew wound up their development of the technology.
Another technology identified by us as far back as 1968 was to dehydrate a soft wood and impregnate it with styrene monomer and then polymerise the polymer in the wood to give a superb hard wearing material. Finland had used this technology to make the flooring for Helsinki airport. The technology in Finland was held by a polymer manufacturer, Pekema Oy, which was part of the Neste Oil Company. The Finnish owners of this technology were too short-sighted and the technology just faded into oblivion.
Many years later, I revived interest in a friend, Teddy Sointi, whose father was the brilliant Indian scientist who had patented the treatment of wood with aresenic pentoxide to make telephone poles resistant to termite attack. He had licenced it to Bell Telephones who held back the patent till expired and then made millions in selling the technology all around the world including back to Ascu Hickson owned by the Sointi family.
Teddy came to Finland but by that time Pekema Oy and the technology had been lost.
In 1975 there was 5-star hotel building boom in India. We approached the leading sauna manufacturers in Finland with a proposal to sell saunas to India. They shooed us away saying they were very busy with business in Brazil. So we got Swedish saunas to fulfil the demand. Two yers later the Finnish sauna manufacturers were at our doorstop wanting orders, but they were turned away as it was too late!
There was a lot of interest from cement company, Partek Oy, to set up prefabricated cement housing blocks for industrialised building. Unfortunately, this time it was the Indians who could not see the benefits of setting up this manufacturing process.
Airam Oy is a leading manufacturer of light bulbs in Finland and they had set up a plant in India. Finnish management did not know how to manage an Indian organisation and it was heading down hill. They approached Annikki to convert their know-how documents from Finnish to English so they could dispose of their plant.
In 1978., the leading Finnish forest, pulp and paper consultant, Jaakko Pyöry Oy landed a contract in Karnataka to set up the Bhadravati paper plant. A whole team of engineers and their families arrived in Bangalore en route to Bhadravati. Annikki helped them orient to life in India. One of the small boys ,Kari, lived with us and we admitted him to Bishop Cotton Boy’s School alongside our son Jaakko. His parents became good friends and came down from Bhadravati quite often.
Annikki and Jacob at Bangalore Club hosting Jaakko Pöyry engineers and their families.
Everything went wrong with the paper project. The Project Manager from Finland found they had been misled as there was not enough bamboo to feed the plant. They turned to Jacob for help as they wanted to leave before they were in deep trouble. Jacob’s namesake, his uncle, Jacob Matthan, was the Chairman of the Life Insurance Corporation, one of the largest investors in the paper project. Jacob organised for the Project Manager to meet with his uncle who advised them to close down their operations before it was not possible to extricate themselves.They could then go for arbitration in London and settle the issues. The whole team of engineers and their families packed their bags and left. It was at that stage the paper mills had to change their raw material input plan from bamboo to bagasse.
We also had the pleasure of hosting the Finnish Rally Driving team who were test driving Datsuns from Bangkok to Helsinki. They stopped over in Bangalore and our son Jaakko and his friend, Kari, flagged them off to Bombay!
Annikki was mad when they wrote a report in the leading Finnish technical journal “Tekniikan Maailma”, where they quoted the salary paid by Annikki to her maid. What they failed to understand that besides the salary, Annikki’s maid got free food, free medical and several other benefits which could not be quantified in the actual cash salary payment!
So, besides our work in Finland, FINDIANS was actively involved in bringing Finnish culture to India and vice versa all through the 1970s!
The next visit to Finland was in 1979, which for Jacob was a short one while Annikki and the four children enjoyed their stay of four months but were happy to finally return to India. The return of Jacob and Annikki to India was very incident prone. This and the corruption faced in daily life, especially by Annikki, as is described in her book “…for the hour of his judgement is come:…” were major factors why we decided to move to Finland.
Annikki was devastated to leave behind her adopted country. The circumstances will be outlined more fully in Jacob’s memoirs, but in 1984, it was the only viable option. Her belief in her faith knew that she was being led on in the right direction. Which proved more than correct in many ways.
We were then 1984 the only Indians in Oulu.
