Sunday, August 13, 2023

Findians association with Finland 1943 - 2024 Part 2

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. 

Thursday, August 10, 2023

Findians association with Finland - 1943 to 2024 Part 1


Annikki and Jacob decided to write this series of blog entries to share some of the major highlights of our life associated with  Finland over the last 80 years. It will later be incorporated as a chapter in Jacob’s memoirs


At the outset it is important to remember this proverb:

We hope it will help some of you, and all the members of your family, as you live your life peacefully in this beautiful country.

Recently, we received an email stating that the person was “appalled” by our behaviour. 


So far, people have only referred to us as anarchist hippies! It was a shock for Annikki and Jacob to be called terrorists by a "respected member" of O-India ry.

We thought it would be better if we reviewed our over 80 years of association with Finland (in the case of Annikki, her 79 years) to see how many of our activities could be termed as terrorist oriented?

Annikki and Jacob, with their four children, moved permanently to Finland from India in April 1984. 


We had visited Finland in the summer of 1969. 

On arrival in Helsinki we stayed in Annikki’s brother’s (Erkki) University apartment in Otaniemi in Espoo. It was in a gorgeous setting overlooking the bay. We spent a day there and visited the chapel of the University located in the middle of the forest.

University chapel in Espoo.

We did some sightseeing visiting the Helsinki Open Market place on the sea front and the copper domed chapel. 

We then drove all night from Helsinki to Oulu in a rented Beetle VW, with our two small children. Destination was to Annikki’s home town.

It was Jacob’s first experience of a nightless night. He was fascinated by driving through the green forests, blue lakes, forests and more lakes.

The roads were rough as it was just after winter. The use of studded tyres in winter made them treacherous as there were two deep ruts on the road. But there was virtually no traffic.

We stopped for a cup of coffee at a motor rest. No motorways those days. 

Annikki had not spoken Finnish for almost seven years so she felt a little hurt as a Finn when the attendant in the cafeteria complimented her on her Finnish! :-)

Jacob experienced watching a gorgeous sunset and sunrise within minutes of each other over a lake in Jyväskylä near the centre of Finland. 

Sunset and sunrise in midsummer in Finland.

We arrived at 5 am on the 3rd of July 1969 to a house bathed in the morning sunshine. 

Jacob was received in that home with a great cup of coffee and as a son of the family. 

Finns are amongst the largest coffee drinkers in the World consuming a strong brew.

It was Jacob’s first experience of pouring fresh milk from a plastic bag, something not seen anywhere else in the world before then and of special interest to him as a plastics technologist. 



The bags of milk were sold with a plastic container to hold the bag upright.


Annikki and their two children, Susanna (1 year and 9 months) and Jaakko (8 months) and her mother, Hilja - July 1969 in Oulu.


After a month we set off by train and ferry to Stockholm, train to Copenhagen, where we were met by Jacob’s classmate from his Mumbai school, Viney Sethi, who was married to a Danish lady, Hanne Pederson. Viney has been a childhood friend for over 7 decades.



Finally, Copenhagen we travelled by train to Munich in West Germany and then to Venice in Italy to board the M. S. Victoria run by Lloyd Triestino Lines to  Bombay

As the Suez Canal was closed, the trip was of 5 weeks. Out through the Straits of Gibraltar and to the Atlantic, to Las Palmas, Dakkar  to Cape Town and then to the Arabian Sea to Mombasa, Karachi and to Bombay.


Susanna in Stockholm en route to Venice

Jaakko, Susanna and Jacob in Munich en route to Venice.


Front and back of the postcard sent by Annikki to her family in Oulu letting 
them know we had  arrived safely in Venice.

Jacob with Susanna and Jaakko on board the M. S. Victoria.

Annikki and Jacob on board the M. S. Victoria on the Atlantic Ocean between Las Palmas  and Cape Town.

The reason we travelled by ship was that Jacob had collected 10 tea chests of valuable research and technical literature which was to form the foundation of the consulting company he was establishing in Madras with his brother, also a polymer chemist.


We had a wonderful time on board the ship. Annikki, with her artistic talents, dressed the two of us as Lappish people using blue and red crepe paper and we walked away with the first prize.


Also the four of us were the only ones who were never sea-sick even in the roughest weather, so we appeared on time for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The only problem  was that being an Italian ship, they served us pasta for every meal, only the shape of the pasta changed!


We arrived in Bombay for the next stage of our life in India.


Part 2  of the blog will cover the period 1975 to 1984.

Thursday, August 03, 2023

Proud Parents

Today we received some wonderful news. 


Last week we were also proud to watch our older daughter, Susanna, graduate with her Master’s Degree in Education from the Bishop Grosseteste University in Lincoln, England. 

One year ago our younger daughter, Joanna, got the Newcastle University Vice Chancellor’s Education Excellence Award 2022. 



And today we got a write up that Joanna had been named National Teaching Fellow (NTF).


“Winners of prestigious teaching excellence in higher education awards

Published on: 3 August 2023


Leading educators at Newcastle University have received prestigious accolades for making an outstanding impact on student outcomes and the teaching profession.


Innovative teaching approaches





Dr Joanna Matthan, Dean of Academic Affairs, Newcastle University, received her NTF for excellence in teaching within her subject area, anatomy, and her innovative teaching approaches.

She has also had significant impact in the development of a range of anatomy courses during the pandemic; her work on EDI and widening participation; and for her outstanding pastoral support for all her students.

Dr Matthan’s dedication to equality, diversity and inclusion, in particular, has been recognised, both at Newcastle University and wider across the higher education sector.

She said: “I am thrilled and honoured beyond measure to be recognised as a NTF and to represent my beloved Newcastle University in a forum that shares excellent practice across institutional boundaries.

“My ethos has always been to offer positive learning experiences and compassionate encounters for students, staff, patients, and healthcare professionals – and anyone I encounter – on this journey through academia.

“It has, however, only been possible for me to even begin to put theory into practice through having been nurtured and guided by numerous wonderful educational enablers inhouse and externally – and through collaborations with the Anatomical Society and other external organisations who have so graciously given me opportunities to thrive.”


Both of our daughters have been outstanding in whatever they have done. 


They take after their mother,Annikki, who is a person extraordinaire in her life work as wife, mother, grandmother, artist in several modes from sketching and painting, photography, cake design, garden design, crochet creativity, educationist, activist, author, researcher - and a role model for everyone around her!


Our hearts are filled with thanks to our dear Lord who has blessed us so fully in our years. 


Both our daughters have inherited the very best characteristics from their great grandparents, Dewan Bahadur Kuriyan “Mysore” Matthan and his wife and the Doyen of Kerala K. C. Mammen Mappillai and  his wife. 


We are honoured to call these two daughters our own as they prove their excellence in different parts of the world. 


They are the shining light of our worldwide Findians Community.


Wednesday, December 08, 2021

Continuation of Blog Entry Western Recycling Doomed

 This is clear proof of our 1994 article "Western Recycling Doomed" in Findians Briefings, which was republished on this blog last year.



India recycles 60% of all plastics products whereas the USA, the largest consumer of plastics products, recycles just 9%.

The question is "WHY?"

The answer lies in motivation of the consumer.

Take this with the question why Finland recycles 98% o all plastics bottles, ther answer is self-explanatory. 

'Monetary motivation.

Even if the refund is just €0.20 per large PET bottle, the consumer knows the value for money and recycles the product. 

After large festival events, unemployed and hard-up students scour all the trash cans to pick up the empties which they convert to cash at almost all retail shops.

This is why in India, the thrifty housewife keeps all the recyclable waste and waits for the trash collector to come crying down the street and converts it to money.

There are several ways western countries can motivate the consumer to recycle all the waste generated in the course of their normal life. Any sane thinking government should explore the obvious possibilities.

However, to find sensible politicians is a rarity. Till then they will take stupid steps of banning plastics bags or other ridiculous solutions which will make no dent in the amount of plastics waste being generated or recycled.

Sadly, the plastics industry is tilting at windmills with their solutions. None of the players consider that plastics waste is an enormous resource and that this resource can be converted to a monetary stream for BOTH the consumer and the country!