What the F?

Formula one, the world’s richest sport arrives in India this weekend with a $650 million bet even as Chinese and Korean Grand Prix reported losses. The event is being funded without any government backing, pretty unusual for a debut Grand Prix. Jaypee group, controlled by billionaire founder Jaiprakash Gaur has spent $450 million to build a track and another $200 million in royalties over five years. The company has priced tickets at an average $200 with the most expensive tickets costing up to Rs 1,30,000. As regards entertainment, there are dozens of F1 parties, a Metallica concert and a 20-minute show by Lady Gaga at a track side club.

The Delhi event is basically showcasing the nation’s newfound wealth and power of Indian elite. According to the Credit Suisse Bank, 170 000 Indians out of a population of 1.2 billion are worth between $1m and $50m.  And they will enjoy this weekend of debauchery. (Must mention, some from my family have gone there as well)

Ironically, the track lies just outside the capital's limits in Uttar Pradesh, the vast northern Indian state which has poverty levels often worse than those in sub-Saharan Africa.  The World Bank estimates 800 million people live on less than $2 a day in India and our very own Planning commission has revised the poverty line cut-off figures to Rs 32 a day in urban areas and Rs 26 a day in villages, which would further inflate this number. Earlier this month, we had Mayawathi inaugurating the Noida Park in Uttar Pradesh after spending a whopping Rs 685 crore. 

I remember walking in the streets of Moradabad, Badaun and other districts in UP during my days with the WHO in the late 1990's asking them whether their children took the Polio vaccine.  

I feel like doing the same now, with a different question ‘Did someone take your money?’ 

PS  - Rahul Gandhi is apparently doing what I want to do in UP.. ...me thinks he should start with a certain area in Janpath instead 

Shoots and leaves

This is not the James Bond stuff to shoot and leave. This more of the shoot-and-flush kind 'cos the title refers to ‘shoots and leaves’ as nouns.  


This blog is coming your way, since I told a patient yesterday '"Take fibre" and he gave me a look as if I told him to take his neighbor's' wife or the neighbor himself and asked 'Fibre?'  I understand that my blog readers are an intelligent lot and know shit from Shangri-la… but do you know that dietary fiber is the Shangri-la to prevent a lot of problems.

Our lifestyle has changed so such that our food contains very little amount of fiber.  Fiber is essential to maintain a healthy digestive system.. it softens your poop and ensures a quick and smooth passage. You could call it a travelator of the intestines.

First off, dietary fiber is the undigested residue that is majorly presented in the outer plant wall material.  You could find truckloads of them in fruits, vegetables, peas, lentils, nuts and seed etc. Don't waste your time looking for them in sodas, alcohol, fast foods and dessert. 

Ok.. here is what a fiber-rich diet can do to you.  It lowers your cholesterol… the rascalas of  heart problems.  It also lowers the blood glucose levels and hence useful for people with diabetes too. The best part is fiber rich food is ideal for weight-watchers as it is fills up your stomach without much calories.

Fibre ..optical or dietary is here to stay .. so make hay 

A true Story

There was this man from Pondicherry, India, aged 57 years. He was an extremely lovable person, helpful to everyone and very religious. He had a high profile job, was financially stable and socially well settled. He was a non-smoker, consumed alcohol occasionally and enjoyed good food. He was concerned about his health and went for regular check-ups. He was neither a diabetic nor a hypertensive, had normal cholesterol levels and ECG/TMT were normal. In short he was ‘risk-free’ from heart disease.

He was happy and healthy. At least, that was what he thought….. until one day on his 30th wedding anniversary he had a massive heart attack and did not live to see another day. That man was … my father and today happens to be his birthday.

My father became just another ‘heart disease’ statistic!

He was one of the 50 million Indians who suffer from Coronary Heart Disease 

He belonged to 50% of those for whom heart attack is the first symptom of heart disease

He belonged to 50% of those having heart attack, who die during the first attack.

What had happened? What went wrong? How could a person have normal BP and a normal ECG and then have a massive heart attack later? Had the doctors been negligent? Did they make a mistake while reading the ECG? Or was the ECG itself wrong?

The answers to these questions are not very simple. The conventional diagnostic techniques like ECG, TMT, which failed to detect his heart disease have their own limitations and newer diagnostic procedures are either not available or nor utilized adequately.

My father had to wait for a heart attack to know that he had heart disease, but it was too late.

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The above writing is an excerpt from the ‘Welcome address’ made during the inaugural ceremony of Safe Health Heart Centre on his birthday at Hotel Green Park Hyderabad.  Safe Health focuses on Preventive Cardiology. Safe Health has been instrumental in making more than 4000 people and their families happier. 

Thank you Dad ... but I wish you were around!

Thank God. its Wednesday

In Hyderabad, the second largest urban Indian agglomerate, a lady can have an alcoholic drink totally free of cost almost throughout the week. 

Surprised?  Don’t be... read on

It is pretty much the same scene in other India metros too. It all started with a humble or should I say ‘noble’ intention to get more women to drink. Not sure who brewed the idea ... but all are merry - the pub owners, the booze manufacturers, the gals and most importantly the guys. Ladies night is not for ladies only. It only means that the fairer sex can have her share of alcohol on the house till a certain time .... no upper limit. It’s drink all u can when you can. And since most women don’t go alone, they get their guy friends along and that’s where the money comes from.  Of course, there are a lot of guys, who would pay even more to watch women drink or get drunk.

Must admit, ladies night is a good sales pitch. Wednesdays was the first choice, where it is assumed that most of us suffer from the mid-week syndrome. A night out on Wednesday sure is refreshing. But for female guzzlers its more fun now with some pub or the other having Ladies night on other days too. 

The only flip side is – you will never find the toilets clean or empty. The young things who cannot hold their drink throw up all over the place, they use the rest room to chat with their boyfriends and amongst themselves and few others doze off in the couch. What happens that night should be a good storyline for HANGOVER-3.   That reminds me of an old line ‘Many things can be preserved in alcohol ... dignity is not one of them’.  And there are long queues... this is the only place in India, where I see ‘first come, first served’ (or first relieved?) religiously followed.

For every six men in India, there is one only one woman consuming alcohol. But if she happens to be in a big city, she only has to look up and say  ‘Thank God it’s a Wednesday’

INTERNET.. the new Piazza Del Popolu

(Warning – this blog may be didactic and void of humor)

If you think women talk only about shoes and jewelry…guys.. you are sadly mistaken. Last night a routine chat with my intelligent neighbor (named after Goddess of Wealth and in her case also Goddess of Inquisitiviteness)  and her more intelligent Saggi son… well ... was on Tim Berners Lee and his invention. The conversation led to various questions

Are Internet and the Web synonymous?

Who invented Internet and the web?

And who made e-mails possible?

The Internet is basically an interconnection of computer networks. It connects millions of computers globally using something called ‘protocols’.  The internet and Transmission Control Protocols TCP/IP were initially developed in 1973 by an American computer scientist Vinton Cerf for the US Department of Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA). It was called ARPANET before it came to be called internet.

Today, no government owns Internet. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN,) a non profit corporation headquartered in California is responsible for managing the IP address spaces

Decades later the World Wide Web was invented by a British Physicist Tim Berners-Lee at CERN (European Centre for Nuclear Research) Switzerland. In 1990, he developed the backbone of the Web -- the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and thereby the first web browser. In his own words "I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the Transmission Control Protocol idea and—ta-da!—the World Wide Web”

Both Tim Berners-Lee and Vinton Cerf are called internet daddies (Father of the Internet!)  

The Web is just one of the ways that information can be disseminated over the Internet and hence it is just a portion of the Internet. To put it in a simple way, if Internet is a menu, then the web is the most popular dish.

The Internet, not the Web, is also used for Email which relies on SMTP as against HTTP. Email was invented by Ray Tomlinson an American computer engineer  in 1971 on the ARPANET. Ray used @ symbol to tell which user was "at" what computer. The first email was sent between two computers that were actually beside each other.

The most interesting part is that Tim Berners Lee and his co- inventors Robert Caillau of CERN did not make any money through their invention of www. They refused to patent it. They feared that by doing so, the usage will become prohibitively expensive and thus passed up a fortune so that the world could learn for free.

“The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow”  ~Bill Gates

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Piazza del Popolo  (meaning People Square in latin) is a large urban square in Rome designed in 1811 for people to meet and discuss.          More over to 2011.. you know where people are meeting.