Shame, Shame Ireland

In India, women deliver at home, they deliver in the autos while on the way to hospital, in ambulances. Sometimes they deliver babies even on the doorsteps of hospitals because the hospital sentry did not allwo them to enter the hospital. We have a maternal mortality of around 250/ lakh which comes to a staggering number of 250,000 maternal deaths (well, I might have missed a couple of zeroes). So if Savita Halappanavar had died in India, she would have been only a blip on the map of maternal mortality in India. but unfortunately, she died in Ireland, where the MMR is 6/ lakh! And it is a country with a mere population of a mere 4.5 milliion. Are you kidding me?, Bangalore has 10 million people, and India has 1000 million.

A mother and newborn in a district hospital in Karnataka.

It is a tragedy of enormous proportions when a mother dies in a developed country like Ireland because of lack of medical care. And that too because of trivial religious excuses. "This is a Catholic country", is what her husband was told by the doctors who refused to terminate her pregnancy. I would consider this as a case of medical negligence. Any doctor is bound by the Hippocrates oath and the Geneva convention which urges you to save the life of the patient irrespective of religious or racial/ethnic concerns. If a doctor waited to terminate a pregnancy and endangered the life of the mother because of it, he/she is guilty of failing to provide the expected standard of care. They cannot hide behind the excuse of the country's laws and rules. After all, what law is there which outlaws saving the life of a person?

Will this happen in India? Yes, why not? Here patients lose eyesight after cataract surgeries in camps, women are sterilized by scamsters and ward boys give injections. Anything can happen in India. But no hospital waits for the foetal heartbeat to stop before deciding to terminate the pregnancy. It is plainly an outrage. As Savita's mother lamented "You sacrificed the life of my 30 year old daughter to save a 17 week old foetus".

Now the Irish government is on record offering all help for Savita's husband to rebuild his life. What are they gonna do? Provide him with women to date so that he can select a suitable wife? How does a government help to rebuild the vaccuum left by the loss of a spouse? A responsible government should have never let that happen in the first place. And to this moment, the Irish politicians are evasive and dilly-dallying about legislating to make abortions legal. How many more lives have to be lost for them to wake up and act? Shame on you Ireland.

What's (not) in my bag?

It is a common joke to contemplate what you may find in a lady's bag. They say you can find almost an entire house inside the hand bag! Initially it used to be funny for me before I decided to throw away my old bag and empty the contents so that I could transfer them to a new one I just recently brought. I had a mini-shock to see the things which spilt out of my handbag, stuff I din't know I owned, other stuff which I had taken for granted as lost. .

I found lumps of bus ticket stubs from journeys of yore. Bills from restaurants I ate few months ago. ATM receipts from god knows when. Old toffees which had flattened out with age and pressure of things lying above them A white hairband which I had never used and had turned brown with time.

Buttons from tops which I have forgotten how they looked like, broken off ends of zippers. A packet of face wipes (provided thoughtfully by R) which I always ended up using as hand tissues.

2 wallets (why? why? I keep asking myself), 2 mobile phones (geez). A plastic cover (I really don't know why I kept it there). A comb, an umbrella (ok i get it, when you are from Kerala, you are under a perpetual rain cloud in side your head). A notepad. 2 pens of which I can never find more than one at a time. A pouch with pencils, eraser, sharpener, scale. A set of head phones (what if I have a sudden urge to listen FM radio), well its another matter that they are always out of my bag when I really need them. A lip gloss, a spare sanitary napkin  (for the ever unpredictable female physiology, which has come in handy for a couple of my girlfriends). A bunch of keys from houses and rooms and almiras I moved out months ago.

Given the clutter, I find it difficult to retrieve any given item at any given point of time. Visual inspection is useless and I often resort to stereognosis (thank god for that sensation!) to retrieve any thing. 
 Why cant I de-clutter ?, I often ask myself. But what if I go out and my hair clip gives way, then I need that old white hairband, so goes the line of thought.
 I sometimes envy women who can walk out of their houses with their hands free, like my mom, she as a matter-of-fact, hates handbags.The biggest drawback has been that if I want to go out with another handbag, it takes me 10 minutes to transfer the contents, after all, everything is essential! The solution I came up with - have a bag-within-a-bag, so that all you have to transfer is the smaller bag!!
Oh how so sweetly neurotic.

A Coorg Get away - Stewart Valley homestay

It was on a whim that I decided to stay in Stewart Valley home stay in Madikeri. The inner critic gnawed my thoughts day in and day out questioning whether it was right to risk taking my parents to a place which has not been listed in trip advisor or reviewed anywhere. “What the heck? Let’s go and see” I thought. All I knew when we drove into Madikeri was that it is a red painted house in which Mr.Ganapathy and his wife lived. The house is an old but tastefully re-furbished and well maintained ancestral house. He gave us directions to reach the house (past the TV tower) and was waiting outside the house to make sure we dint get lost (which of-course, we did). But even if he wasn’t waiting, I think we would have identified the house, after all who would miss a huge red-painted house bang on the road? 

The courtyard and garden

Gerberas in the garden

The moment we drove past the gate and stepped out of the car, somehow I felt very relieved. May be it was the sight of the smiling Mr. Ganapathy and his wife Veena, or maybe it was the sight of a beautiful portico and a beautiful garden with flowers, or it was the cool breeze brushing our  sweaty, grimy faces. Whatever the reason was, it was a really cozy, homely feeling that swept over me and I felt relieved that I had chosen rightly. The house is sort of in the middle of the town, just a 5-10 min walk downhill (yes, it’s kind of the highest point in Madikeri town) and you will be walking past Raja’s seat, Gen. Thimmiah circle, the markets, the bus stand, good hotels and everything else. Despite being so close to the town, you are never perturbed by the hustle and bustle, being far removed from the noise and dust of the city. You can simply laze around in the veranda surrounded by the garden and enjoying the view of the hillside, or you can sit in their back yard and do nothing and snooze. We stayed in 2 rooms on either side of the house. This was kind of good; being in a house and at the same, not unncessarily bumping into other people. The bathrooms were extremely neat and clean and modern (yes, we are fussy bathroom people), they had also provided soap etc.etc. The rooms aren’t that big as you would expect in a hotel, but then who would want to remain cooped up indoors in Coorg, when there is so much to see outside?

A what's- its-name climber in the garden with beautiful pink flowers

They give complimentary breakfast and we had kadubu, sambar and a delicious coconut chutney to go with it. R also had some bread and honey. It was a welcome break after all the hotel food we were eating from outside. Veena aunty was always ready with coffee or tea whenever we requested.

Kadubu with sambar

My father had interesting long chats with Mr.Ganapathy. My mother was happily doing rounds of their beautiful garden with vibrant flowers. R even managed to try his hand at Mr.Ganapathy's airgun. He gladly regaled us with vignettes of Kodava culture. He was more than ready to tell us how to drive to Abbi falls, Talacauvery and other places, where to buy wines from and so on. We also had a tryst with Blacky, the family dog who was in a playful mood and had to be dragged back into his cage. We had to leave at 5.30 in the morning and Aunty graciously offered to make breakfast that early also but we declined. I can confidently say that one of the highlights of our trip was our stay in Stewart Valley.

[ PS: the credit for the pic below goes to R, he hinted he would kick my a*# if I dint mention him in the credits ;-) ]

A night view of Madikeri from Stewart valley