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Obituary
訃告
Two voices of sanity
兩性智慧
Counsels of imperfection
關(guān)于不完美的忠告
Katharine Whitehorn and Mahinder Watsa died on January 8th and December 28th respectively, aged 92 and 96
凱瑟琳·懷特霍恩和馬欣德·沃特薩分別于1月8日和12月28日去世，享年92歲和96歲
When, as a young woman looking for solid work, Katharine Whitehorn was moving round from one grungy digs to another, she realised that the cookery books of the time were no use. To begin with, they assumed a knowledge of food and its preparation she simply didn’t have.
年輕時的凱瑟琳·懷特霍恩想要找一份可靠的工作，當(dāng)她不停地更換簡陋的住處后，她意識到那個時代的烹飪書根本毫無用處。首先，這些書本假定受眾對食物和烹飪有一定的了解，而她根本對此一竅不通。
Besides, it was hard to produce a decent meal, let alone anything impressive, when all you had was a gas ring in one corner of your room and water down the hall; and when the problem wasn’t just to assemble passable ingredients, but to find somewhere to put down the fork while you took the lid off the saucepan. So was born “Cooking in a Bedsitter” (1961), a bible for the cookery-challenged for decades afterwards, with its cheery insistence that yes, you could cook cabbage, if you chucked in a crust of bread to stop the smell getting into the curtains; and yes, you could knock up a delicious little dinner à deux out of packets and tins, as long as you got rid of the evidence.
再者，要做一頓像樣的飯菜都困難，更別提什么美味佳肴了，因為僅有的條件也就是房間一角的煤氣爐和走廊盡頭的自來水。因為問題不僅是湊足像樣的食材，還得在打開鍋蓋的時候找個放叉子的地方。1961年的《單間烹飪》橫空出世。在那之后的幾十年里，這本書被那些不善廚藝的人奉為“圣經(jīng)”。懷特霍恩用輕松的口吻介紹，沒錯，只要你丟一層面包皮，防止味道滲入窗簾，你就可以煮卷心菜；沒錯，只要你銷毀掉盒裝和罐頭這些證據(jù)，你就能盒裝食物和罐頭做一頓美味的雙人套餐。
Such down-to-earth advice, practical, witty and, if necessary, sharp (essential to have a sharp knife, as Ms Whitehorn said) came equally from Mahinder Watsa in Mumbai, who realised that an increasing amount of his time as an obstetrician-gynaecologist was taken up with counselling people who knew little or nothing about the birds and the bees. In the 1960s he started a “Dear Doctor” column in a women’s magazine; in 2005, at 80, when counselling had long overtaken his medical practice, he became the daily “Sexpert” on the tabloid Mumbai Mirror.
這些樸實無華的建議，實用，逗趣，有必要還得展露鋒芒(正如懷特霍恩所說，一把鋒利的刀十分重要)。同樣來自孟買的馬欣德·沃特薩也在為很多人答疑解惑。他意識到，作為婦產(chǎn)科醫(yī)生，自己需要花越來越多的時間為那些對性知識所知甚少或者一無所知的人解答問題。20世紀(jì)60年代，他在一家女性雜志上開設(shè)了“親愛的醫(yī)生”專欄；2005年，80歲高齡的沃特薩，咨詢工作量已經(jīng)遠(yuǎn)超過他的醫(yī)療實踐，這時的他成為了小報《孟買鏡報》每日“性專家”。
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