Shame on us

Mahatma Gandhi once remarked "We need to be the change we wish to see in the world".

That was the father of modern India, an India which has been feted for its hospitality & welcoming culture which makes people from every culture & background feel at home. Indians are known for their warmth, their willingness & curiosity to learn from foreigners & for our rich history. Countless scholars from Europe, Persia & China came to India & found a country whose citizens were open to knowledge & who were willing to share their own knowledge. From time immemorial, India has welcomed people from other lands with open arms & a warm smile. Most of all, we were a people who were comfortable in our skin, knowing who we are & being happy with that.

So what has changed? Why is there this need, this weird urge to prove ourselves superior to others? Why does every newspaper & radio channel hark about India's glorious past & how we have a duty to reclaim it? Why do reports from the Prime Minister's office focus on gains in the stock exchange & how the Indian economy is one of the five largest economies in the world & not on the fact that there is nothing being done to help the millions of poor people who can't get 2 meals a day or those villagers who commit suicides because they have lost hope? Most importantly, when did we lose our hearts?

It saddens me when i see what we have become. Where is the humanity? A man who met with an accident & is bleeding will probably only get a long stare from passer-bys who will offer their support through a look of pity. No one will come forward. Have we forgotten in our march to glory & world dominance that in the end, when it's all said & done, we are all flesh & bones? That we are humans. And being human means having emotions & a heart. It means helping each other out. Being there for each other. What do we aim to achieve these days? Prosperity, wealth, money. But what is the point of such wealth if you lose the ability to be a human. What is the point of being the largest economy in the world if people can die on the streets in broad daylight? In our blind rush to be competitive & above everyone else, we have sacrificed our soul. We longer care. It's all about being the best. Having rules & policies & guidelines.It permeates every facet of our lives. We no longer even realize how heartless we have become. A french exchange student in my college, whose grandmother had just expired, was nonchalantly told to mail all the relevant details to the teacher concerned when he asked this lady about how to expedite his departure to his homeland to pay his last respects. I am deeply saddened & ashamed of her behavior as it portrays Indians as heartless beings with faces who believe that paperwork is the most important thing.

The way we treat maids or domestic helps is shocking. We treat them like "servants", whereas they are just people doing a job for us, & making our lives a little bit easier. Why do we need to stamp our authority on them by calling them "servants" or not treating them at par with other people we know? What sadistic satisfaction does a man get if he treats his domestic help as someone inferior? And such disgusting behavior is not limited to domestic helps. The way we treat men & women from other countries is another case in point. Africans are perceived to be drug dealers & are given second class treatment. An African in my college had real problems in communicating & settling down because people would just not accept him as their equal. Why? Is this not racism? When did we become racists? A land where people from Europe,Africa & Asia have mixed & formed the base of a civilization 5000 years old should be above all this. But we are so damn smart, aren't we? We are the smartest people on the plant. We are the most intelligent. My college mates talk to the french students as a rocket scientist would talk a kindergarten kid. How can the french be even close to us in brain power? They don't need to be consulted or be a part of the discussion. We are the smartest & the little private spaces that we have are our private universes. Whatever happened to humanity & equality? Why do we have this twisted superiority complex? What good would it bring to this nation & the people who choose to end their lives because they can't afford a meal & can't take the hunger?

A world without antibiotics

Just 65 years ago, David Livermore's paternal grandmother died following an operation to remove her appendix. It didn't go well, but it was not the surgery that killed her. She succumbed to a series of infections that the pre-penicillin world had no drugs to treat. Welcome to the future.

The era of antibiotics is coming to a close. In just a couple of generations, what once appeared to be miracle medicines have been beaten into ineffectiveness by the bacteria they were designed to knock out. Once, scientists hailed the end of infectious diseases. Now, the post-antibiotic apocalypse is within sight.

Hyperbole? Unfortunately not. The highly serious journal Lancet Infectious Diseases yesterday posed the question itself over a paper revealing the rapid spread of multi-drug-resistant bacteria. "Is this the end of antibiotics?" it asked.

Doctors and scientists have not been complacent, but the paper by Professor Tim Walsh and colleagues takes the anxiety to a new level. Last September, Walsh published details of a gene he had discovered, called NDM 1, which passes easily between types of bacteria called enterobacteriaceae such as E. coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae and makes them resistant to almost all of the powerful, last-line group of antibiotics called carbapenems. Yesterday's paper revealed that NDM 1 is widespread in India and has arrived here as a result of global travel and medical tourism for, among other things, transplants, pregnancy care and cosmetic surgery.

"In many ways, this is it," Walsh tells me. "This is potentially the end. There are no antibiotics in the pipeline that have activity against NDM 1-producing enterobacteriaceae. We have a bleak window of maybe 10 years, where we are going to have to use the antibiotics we have very wisely, but also grapple with the reality that we have nothing to treat these infections with."

And this is the optimistic view – based on the assumption that drug companies can and will get moving on discovering new antibiotics to throw at the bacterial enemy. Since the 1990s, when pharma found itself twisting and turning down blind alleys, it has not shown a great deal of enthusiasm for difficult antibiotic research. And besides, because, unlike with heart medicines, people take the drugs for a week rather than life, and because resistance means the drugs become useless after a while, there is just not much money in it.

Dr Livermore, whose grandmother died for lack of infection-killing drugs in 1945, is director of the antibiotic resistance monitoring and reference laboratory of the Health Protection Agency. Last year, the HPA put out an alert to medical professionals about NDM 1, urging them to report all suspect cases. Livermore is far from sanguine about the future.

"A lot of modern medicine would become impossible if we lost our ability to treat infections," he says. He is talking about transplant surgery, for instance, where patients' immune systems have to be suppressed to stop them rejecting a new organ, leaving them prey to infections, and the use of immuno-suppressant cancer drugs.

But it is not just an issue in advanced medicine. Antibiotics are vital to abdominal surgery. "You safeguard the patient from bacteria leaking into the body cavity," he says. "If you lose the ability to treat these infections, far more people would die of peritonitis." Appendix operations would carry the same risk as they did before Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928.

It may not be over yet, he says, but "we are certainly scraping the bottom of the barrel to find antibiotics that are effective against some of the infections caused by bacteria."

Running out is not the only issue, he says. When somebody has a severe infection – say blood poisoning – causing a high fever, a hospital clinician will dispatch blood samples to the lab to find out exactly what he is dealing with. But that takes time. "He will start you on antibiotics because that will kill infection within 48 hours," says Livermore. "So during 48 hours, you are being treated blind. The more resistant your bacteria are, the less likely the antibiotic is going to work."

Studies have shown, he says, that the chances of dying from hospital pneumonia or septicaemia (blood poisoning) are twice as high if the bacteria are drug-resistant, rising in the case of pneumonia from 20-30% to 40-60%.

For a long time now, doctors have known they were in a race to stay a few steps ahead of the rapidly growing resistance of bacterial infections to antibiotics. Ten years ago, the so-called superbug MRSA caused front-page panic. Hospital patients were picking up Staphylococcus aureus infections that were resistant to the hitherto powerful antibiotic methicillin. All-out war, led by the government's former chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson, against MRSA and also C. diff (Clostridium difficile) has reduced the threat of what are known as Gram-positive bacteria. Hospital hygiene has been massively stepped up and, in response in part to public anxiety, pharmaceutical companies have put money into finding new antibiotics for those infections.

Chlamydia trachomatis bacteria. Photograph: Eye of Science/Science Photo Library

But it's like putting a finger in a hole in the dam, only to find the water surges out somewhere else. Bacteria are great survivors. The biggest threat now, experts believe, is from multi-drug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria, such as NDM 1-producing enterobacteriaceae and an enzyme called KPC which has spread in the US (and in Israel and Greece) which also gives bacteria resistance to the carbapenems, the most powerful group of antibiotics we (once) had.

"The emergence of antibiotic resistance is the most eloquent example of Darwin's principle of evolution that there ever was," says Livermore. "It is a war of attrition. It is naive to think we can win."

So the game now is to keep bacteria at bay. Hygiene is an obvious weapon. Better cleaning, hand gels and stern warnings to staff and public alike have helped reduce infection rates in hospitals. But Professor Richard James, director of the centre for healthcare associated infections at the Nottingham , warns that bugs don't stay in hospitals (indeed, the NDM 1- producing bacteria appear to be widespread in the community in India, passed on through contaminated water, in which people bathe, wash clothes and also defecate).

"The worry is once these organisms are out in the community," says James. "There probably is some need for public education about infection and, for instance, kitchen hygiene when you are cooking. People of my generation were taught a lot about washing your hands before every meal. It was automatic that it was done. A lot of that has gone." There are some innovative ideas about, he says, on ways of teaching children in school to wash their hands – in the hope that they will then go home and pester their parents to do the same.

Beyond that, there is a real need to conserve those antibiotics we have. "To me, it has many parallels with the problems of energy in economies around the world," he says. Carbon trading was dreamed up to try to conserve oil and reduce its pollutant effects. There have now been a couple of interesting papers suggesting a Pigouvian tax – which he defines as one levied on an agent causing an environmental problem as an incentive to mitigate that problem – for antibiotics.

Like oil, he points out, antibiotic usefulness is finite. And the cost of drug resistance is not reflected in the price of the drug. "If you consider antibiotic sensitivity as a resource like oil, you want to maintain that by introducing a tax," he says. It would be worldwide and the proceeds could fund new drug development.

But should you tax life-saving drugs, especially in poor countries? "If you don't do anything, there won't be any antibiotics anyway," says James starkly. "At least it is a suggestion of something that could be done."

If anybody had doubted it for a moment, Walsh's paper shows that neither the UK nor any other country can pull up the drawbridge. "This report shows that the battle to control the emergence of antibiotic-resistant superbugs through appropriate use of antibiotics must be fought at an international level," says Kevin Kerr, consultant microbiologist at Harrogate district hospital. "It illustrates the importance of considering health issues as a world issue – how antibiotics are prescribed and controlled in one part of the world can very rapidly have consequences elsewhere," says Christopher Thomas, professor of molecular genetics at the University of Birmingham.

"Frankly, pharmaceutical companies as well as governments and the European Commission need to really get their act together," says Walsh, who has been urging co-ordinated efforts across the world to put in place good surveillance systems to find out what resistance is developing and where, and then look for interventions. He had Columbia, Mexico, Thailand and India all willingly on board for one surveillance scheme, but the European Commission would not fund it. "What we need is for somebody to give us something like €3m [£2.5m] a year. It's not a lot of money."

The fact is that many people have still got their heads in the sand. But soon we will start seeing patients in NHS hospitals whose infections won't clear up. In the battle for survival of the fittest between human beings and bacteria, just now it looks as though the best we are going to get is a draw – if we are lucky.

After antibiotics: what happens when the drugs don't work

• Transplant surgery becomes virtually impossible. Organ recipients have to take immune-suppressing drugs for life to stop rejection of a new heart or kidney. Their immune systems cannot fight off life-threatening infections without antibiotics.

• Removing a burst appendix becomes a dangerous operation once again. Patients are routinely given antibiotics after surgery to prevent the wound becoming infected by bacteria. If bacteria get into the bloodstream, they can cause life-threatening septicaemia.

• Pneumonia becomes once more "the old man's friend". Antibiotics have stopped it being the mass-killer it once was, particularly among the old and frail, who would lapse into unconsciousness and often slip away in their sleep. Other diseases of old age, such as cancer, have taken over.

• Gonorrhea becomes hard to treat. Resistant strains are already on the rise. Without treatment, the sexually transmitted disease causes pelvic inflammatory disease, infertility and ectopic pregnancies.

• Tuberculosis becomes incurable – first we had TB, then multi-drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and now there is XDR-TB (extremely drug resistant TB). TB requires very long courses (six months or more) of antibiotics. The very human tendency to stop taking or forget to take the drugs has contributed to the spread of resistance.

Herbivore >>> Carnivore !!!

Not eating meat is a decision, eating meat is an instinct

So said some wise-ass American. I had made a decision, which technically speaking was by default the status quo, of not consuming meat.
But my instincts were awoken on a recent trip to that land of beautiful women & cheese & strange accents, France.
A friend of mine was instrumental in pushing me over the edge & though it was only supposed to be a one-time thing, i discovered that i have pretty strong instincts !!!

Now the basic premise on which i had based my decision not to eat meat ( rhymes well doesn't it ??!!) was that it was like eating a corpse. Now if you think of it from that point of view, it certainly seems a bit inhumane..to me at least. I mean, come on, eating a corpse !!! (a v.tasty corpse i must admit )
But then, on one balmy midnight in Dubai, a voracious meat-eater friend of mine & i got into THE debate, one about the moral aspect of eating meat & i suddenly realized the glaring holes in my argument.
Eating "plants" is considered to be morally correct, but they are living creatures to right? Photosyenthesis & other -thesises i might not be aware of are breathing mechanisms of these living beings & they might not be able to struggle when being uprooted from the ground & hacked from the branches, but they are living & breathing beings. No less than the deep fried chicken they serve at KFC & which i used to (not any more !!! Yaaay !!) avoid.
And all this coming from me seems daft considering i had eaten eggs (& tons of them...1 of the reason i myself weighed about a ton). Now eating an egg is virtuous, but eating meat ??? Oh absolutely wrong. Well if you can eat an unborn creature mate, you might as well let them live a while & then eat them. That does actually seem better !!!

060709

A special world for you and me
A special bond one cannot see
It wraps us up in its cocoon
And holds us fiercely in its womb.

Its fingers spread like fine spun gold
Gently nestling us to the fold
Like silken thread it holds us fast
Bonds like this are meant to last.

And though at times a thread may break
A new one forms in its wake
To bind us closer and keep us strong
In a special world, where we belong.

Deemed Unfit

Well, to err is human. Haven't we all heard that before somewhere? The basic assumption is that once the person has "erred", he would not be castrated because no one is perfect & he would be making amends, lest he be a true fool. But what if the error you are making is part of your very nature ? What if you are accused of not being "interesting"? How do you make amends ? Well, being or not being "interesting" is a rather subjective question, but there might be certain universal qualities that might make a person immune to the allegation altogether, though not a 100% interesting person.

What constitutes an "interesting" person? Is the allegation leveled at me justified or is it just a case of subjectivity? I really want an answer, & maybe it's time i went out & got one.

Of Red Storms

The Indian Elections are just beginning. Billed as "the greatest democratic spectacle", these elections will decide which coalition will lead the Indian people for the next 5 years. Mindless squabbling & nonsesical verbal jousting are complimentary. "Promises", a staple of any electoral process, will be made.These "Promises", though they may be as realistic as a mirage for a dying man's parched throat, are nevertheless lapped up by an apparently knowledgeable Indian populance because of one simple reason. These "Promises" mean hope. A fool's hope, but a well-intentioned hope. The Indian government, past, present & future, are similarly hoping that the naxalite problem, if they are indeed foolish enough to regard it as merely a "problem", will disappear by itself. The reality is that a sizeable chunk of what we were taught is the "Indian Union" is now in the hands of these militant communists. Government writ no longer runs in over 240 districts in an arc that comprise Jahrkhand, Bihar, Orissa & Andhra Pradesh. The Maoists have attacked police patrols, schools, villages & electoral booths with impunity & more worringly, little resistance. A couple of days ago, a passanger train was hijacked by the naxalites & their raids have been increasing in ferocity & audacity. The only thing that stands in between a naxalite-inspired anarchy & India's heartland is a band of rag-tag police officials armed with wooden rifles & a "Salwa Judum" force armed with spears & the occasional smattering of WW-II era rifles. The maoists are armed with an arsenal obtained from raids on army depots & police armouries. The "Salwa Judum" is actually a paradigm of Government impotence & absence of any moral & constitutional responsibility. What do you do when your citizens are attacked by militants & living in a constant state of fear for their family & property? Well the Indian leadership very gallantly offers you WW-II rifles, some spears, 1 dozen bananas & a pat on the backside. So at the end of the day, you will still live in fear of an inevitable naxalite raid, but you will have a spear to keep you standing, a banana to eat & a rifle to beat your wife & kids. Has our Government lost all sense or do we expect too much from people who spend days trading charges & conter-charges over "pappis" & "jhappis"? Is this not a matter of national security of the utmost importance? Why hasn't it been an issue in the present election campaigning? It seems that unless the naxalites attack the Indian Parliament or attack a major metropolis & get coverage on CNN, the "Salwa Judum" & their bananas are the only major "threat" to their operations. The politicians & the Indian public at large needs to awaken to this very real threat to India's soveriegnity. The Army must be mobilized to crush the maoist menance which has left vast tracts of India under the red banner. Dedicated paramilitary forces need to be raised to engage the naxalites on all fronts. Rome was not built in a day & the ocean is made of a countless number of drops. The naxalites have already created a red lake, & it is imperative to check their advance & ultimately wipe them out before their rebellion fans the fire of other seaparatists.

La Vie - I

It's like in the great stories Mr.Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of danger & darkness, they were, & you didn't want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was, when so much bad had happened..but in the end, it's only a passing phase..this shadown even darkness must pass..a new day will come, & when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer..those were the stories that meant something..that stayed with you..even if you were too small to understand

The analogy may not be quite appropriate.

Frodo & his mission to save the world from annihilation. Me & my endeavor to prove myself & fulfill expectations. But they are similar in one very important aspect. The importance of the journey to Frodo's existence is mirrored in the importance of this task to mine.

Everything has a beginning & my journey had one too.

On a rainy Saturday morning, i opened my eyes, breathed & so it began.

The first few years are a blur, but a scolding from a teacher in pre-school & a cherished blue sweater stand out. Nursery came & with it began a friendship that has lasted the rigor of time & human nature.

Lauren & Hardy.

Apart from the occasional sparring, it's been a constant in my story. And will always be. Here's to you mate.

Prep flew by, with a female teacher with mustaches ranting about discipline, being the only worthy mention.

Of course, how can we forget to mention a new entrant. Mum & me always talked about a kid sister. It sounded really good. We decided some names. I even told my friends about her.

Too bloody premature, as it turned out.

One fine May morning, freed from the confines of the school, i ran back to see my expecting Mum.
I expected it to be another usual day. I would be given a chocolate by the canteen guy, which would be consumed while running up the hospital stairs. My grandpa would be huffing & puffing & screaming at me to be careful. I would not look at the ward boys or nurses who called out to me, now accustomed to my presence & this daily ritual. I would reach her cabin on the IIIrd floor & throw my bag on the couch opposite her bed. She would smile at me & I would jump onto the bed & lay at her side & sleep till the world ended.

But that day, something was different.

Grandpa didn't scream at me, the ward boys & nurses didn't call out & worst of all, Mum had someone else in her arms. In a line that has gone down in family folklore, I asked her what was this thing & she should put it down or keep it on the table because i wanted to sleep.

The "thing" was my baby brother. And apart from that day, he has had all of me.

Always protected, i grew up believing that my parents were the masters of the Universe.

Life was simple. Get good marks, get whatever you want.
A smiley from the teacher was met with orgasmic elation. My mouth was always stuffed with food & naturally, i was never the skinny kid.

Cute, chubby, intelligent, talented. Not exactly a dream PR exercise, but well it wasn't so bad.

Times were good, the tummy was always full, the friends were happy & the parents were at their doting best.

Baby bro was growing up at full gallop & Yanni sang in front of the Taj Mahal.

But time & tide wait for no one.
Add puberty to that list.
Complicated everything.

The waters became choppy & i went overboard. Almost drowned, but i somehow managed to reach the shore, but not without some nasty bruises & shark bites. (Apologies for the nonsensical analogy)

The shore is a dangerous place. I liked it a bit too much & spent the next two years gorging on food. Took a dip now & then, but never went back. But then, it wouldn't make a good story, would it?

Well, i went looking around the island.

And i found a mermaid.