A PASSAGE TO INDIA

Our children, Aliyu and Halima, have been seeing our excellent and quite efficient Nigerian doctors over the past several months, including many weeks of hospital admissions apiece, yet their ailments kept recurring. Sadly, we kept getting conflicting diagnoses of their ailments, so we decided to get a second opinion. As I said, it was no […]

Our children, Aliyu and Halima, have been seeing our excellent and quite efficient Nigerian doctors over the past several months, including many weeks of hospital admissions apiece, yet their ailments kept recurring. Sadly, we kept getting conflicting diagnoses of their ailments, so we decided to get a second opinion. As I said, it was no ego trip: we could have gone to Britain (where Aliyu was born) or Germany (where Halima was born), or the popular Saudi-German in Saudi Arabia, but we were advised to go to India, a tropical developing country with ailments much similar to ours. So to India we went.

Therefore, this week we shall share some titbits about the world’s biggest democracy, and growing centre of medical tourism.

INCREDIBLE INDIA

India is home to 1.2 billion people and, in a few decades hence, she will overtake China as the most populous nation on earth. The country has 28 states and, by March 2009, India’s installed electricity power generation capacity stood at 147,000 MW.  The government has set an ambitious target to add approximately 78,000 MW of installed generation capacity by 2012. (Compare this to our modest, yet unsuccessful, ambition of reaching 6,000 MW by December 2009 and 10,000 MW by end of 2011).

WOMEN’S RESERVATION BILL

The current legislative debate in India is not about new ministers. It is about an act, introduced by the ruling party, to reserve 33% of all elective positions, especially in the federal and state legislatures, to women. (India is a parliamentary democracy, like its former colonial master Britain). This is a very significant development in a country where it is the bride that pays a dowry to the groom, where female foeticide is rampant and there is a scarcity of women because of the age-old preference for a male child (as in neighbouring China)! For further reading on this, see ‘Female Foeticide: Unabated in Modern India’ at http://www.merinews.com/article/female-foeticide-unabated-in-modern-india/124946.shtml. Allah Ya sauwake!

THE ‘FAIR SKIN’ AFFLICTION

In a phenomenon called ‘The Snow White Syndrome’, Indians are bleaching themselves to death (or at least to skin cancer). Fuelling this demand are the country’s 75-odd reality TV shows where being fair, lovely and handsome means instant stardom. According to a BBC report from Indian sources (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8546183.stm?lsm), the Indian whitening cream market is expanding at a rate of nearly 18% a year. The country’s largest research agency, AC Nielsen, estimates that figure will rise to about 25% this year – and the market will be worth an estimated $432m, an all-time high.  ‘With the Indian middle class expected to increase 10-fold to 583 million people by 2025, it looks as if things will only get better for the cream makers. But there have been questions by medical experts about the effect of these creams on the skin. The implicit assumption by many is this: the whiter the skin, the more attractive you are.’ (And I always thought Indians are fair enough!)

SHE OF THE LONG HAIR

There was this nurse in our hospital whose hair was so long that it reached to her, ehm, ehm, it reached to half her height when she sought to let it loose. I didn’t notice the nurse’s long hair, honest! But my daughter Halima did. She asked the mother when, and if, her own hair would grow that long. Now, this vegetarian hospital (no meat of any type is served) supplies patients a glass of milk three times a day, and Halima didn’t like to take hers. So the mother hit on the idea that if Halima would take her milk diligently, per chance her hair would grow longer. Aliyu was recruited into the act. From then on, every morning Aliyu would use the ruler from the Emirates gift-set they were given on board to measure Halima’s hair and announce, with all flourish, that it had indeed grown one millimetre longer. Halima continued to gulp down her milk! By the end of the show, it appeared that Aliyu himself, like Halima, had also started believing that Halima’s hair was indeed growing longer. Children!

INDIAN PREMIER  LEAGUE

When they talk about sports in India, they are invariably talking about cricket, a game I have never come to understand. When I worked at the BBC in London and sometimes had to present the Sports News, my colleagues, the late Roger Ketskemety and Usman Mohammed tried to explain Overs and Centuries and Not-Out to me; they had to give up, as I was Not-In. Cricket is to India what football is to England (which introduced cricket to India in the first place). So when you hear about the Indian Premier League, it has nothing to do with Arsenal.

ISLAM AS ALTERNATIVE

India is a Hindu-majority country. But if anyone wanted to make a point in that society, they would become Muslim. The Dalits, once known as the Untouchables, still flock to Islam as it offered them equality which the Hindu caste system would not. Another example: perhaps some of you remember the legendary love story between Bollywood actor Dharmendra and actress Hema Malini back in the 1970s? Now, their on-screen love blossomed into the real thing but, according to Hindi tradition, since Dharmendra was already married, there was no way he could marry a second time if his first wife was alive. And the first wife refused to give him a divorce (perhaps because to her The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born, even if it was Hema). So what did Dharmendra and Hema do? Both of them converted to Islam – a religion which permits men to have up to four wives at the same time – and they married in 1980. Hema was admitted as second wife. Would our women understand!

ALIYU AND HALIMA

Yes, I know you would like to know how the patients fared. Alhamdu lillah they are much better and, when we returned, they promptly went back to school. I also saw that, apart from Halima’s hair, they had increased in weight as well, despite the fact that, as I mentioned earlier, the hospital we went to was purely vegetarian. And when we were released from the hospital, we went to a non-vegetarian restaurant and wolfed down chicken tandoori, chiken tikka, mutton biryani and all sorts of meats. Penance!

COLLATERAL DAMAGE

Did I mention that we took Emirates Airlines to India? Well, (sniff, sniff, sigh, sigh), there has been a collateral damage to my social and economic wellbeing. You see, (sniff, sniff), my wife has discovered Dubai. (Boohoohoo! Remember the translation of Wayyo?!). Yes, she has discovered Dubai! So pray pour moi! Namaste!