Author: Deeya Nambiar

I believe in taking every day as a learning phase, and exploring my writing skills. I have enjoyed the challenges as a journalist, content writer and college lecturer, and at the moment am living life analysing the extraordinary in the ordinary!

Tourism With A Difference

· Leave a comment ·
India has a special place in “the must visit list” world over. Today it has also become one of the favourite destinations of medical tourism.

The developing concept of health tourism, better known as medical tourism, is a wonderful package deal that takes care of the medical and relaxation needs of people (patients) travelling to India.

They travel all the way to get a knee transplant, undergo a heart surgery, correct their looks with cosmetic surgery or prepare for dental care.

The reasons are simple: India has some of the best hospitals, treatment centres and facilities. Not only this, our infrastructure and technology is at par with the west. Also the treatment provided are cost effective, ensuring critical cases have less waiting time.

For instance, a joint replacement surgery in the US would have cost a stupendous $50,000 while the same could be done for only $8000 in India.

In fact surrogate mothers in India are also a much sought after section as the total cost including the air tickets and hotels for two trips to India (one for the fertilisation and a second to collect the baby) comes to around $25,000, “roughly a third of the typical price in the United States.”

According to a news report, “Reproductive outsourcing is a new but rapidly expanding enterprise in India. Clinics that provide surrogate mothers for foreigners say they have been inundated with requests from the United States and Europe in recent months, as word spreads of India’s combination of skilled medical professionals, relatively liberal laws and low prices.

Commercial surrogacy, which is banned in some European countries and subject to a wide spectrum of regulation in US states, was legalised in India in 2002.”

Thus, with the Israeli gay couple having a baby, by a Mumbai-based surrogate mother, it is clear that medical tourism has solutions for the needy in the west.

———————————————————————————–
Surrogacy succour for gay couples

Tue, Nov 18 02:15 AM

LESS THAN a year ago, Omer and Yonathan Gher dropped a rose in to the Arabian Sea with a silent prayer, just as a fortune teller had told them to do. The Israeli gay couple’s prayers were answered on Monday as they boarded a flight home with a son in their arms – a month after he was born to a surrogate mother at Mumbai’s Hiranandani Hospital.

“I couldn’t believe my luck when the doctor called from India announcing that we were pregnant,” said Yonathan, 30, a social activist. The gay couple had been living together for seven years and desperately wanted a child, but the laws in Israel did not allow them to adopt or beget one through a surrogate mother.

So they decided to come to India to find a surrogate mother. “There are two options – India and the US,” said Omer, 31, a psychiatrist.

“We chose India because it was cheaper and our money would help a woman here much more than elsewhere.” The Ghers are among numerous gay couples coming India to look for surrogate mothers.

“Last year, India saw the first case of surrogacy to a gay couple from Israel,” said Dr Gautam Allahbadia, IVF consultant who facilitated the procedure. “Since then, we’ve been flooded with similar requests, although we have to turn back some couples because of laws in their countries.

http://www.in.news.yahoo.com

Urban Kids

· Leave a comment ·

Recently Times of India conducted a survey to understand “what works – or doesn’t – for the current crop of urban kids in India.” Here are some interesting observations:


Leisure : 94 per cent kids in urban India spend their leisure watching TV.

And in between the marathon TV sessions, if they were to feel thirsty, 55 per cent kids honestly said they would yell out to their parents to get them a glass of water. At least there is a  30 per cent who does it on their own.

Studies: 82 per cent take tuition.

Health matters: 61 per cent children go out to play.

66 per cent feel they are fit.

64 per cent enjoy ghar ka khana or mom’s cooking.

Friends: 72 per cent kids in major cities have a boy/girlfriend.

Celebrating Success

· 3 Comments ·

Sidis in Gujarat celebrated the historic win of Barak Obama, the man of mixed-race African-American, as the 44th President of America. These small communities of people of African origin felt one with the president elect.  Though they have completely assimilated into the local communities of Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, Sidis still yearn for their identity.

Tracing their journey to the west coast of India, it is likely that their predecessors may have come as slaves, or may have been traders, or even sailors who voluntarily settled on the land.

“‘Tracing the route’ is, perhaps, a bit exaggerated. There are quite a few good historical studies about the East African slave trade and its range in the Indian Ocean world, which give some clues about the areas from where slaves were drawn as well as about the geographical shifts of the recruitment areas over time. They also tell us that the numbers of the slave trade never even approximated those of the transatlantic slave trade from West Africa to the American continent,” says Prof Helene Basu, a leading authority on Sidis.

“ In the 13th and 14th centuries, slaves were mainly drawn from lower Egypt, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan – the Nile area. Many of them ended up being so-called ‘slave-soldiers’ in the armies of conquerors and Sultans all over the Islamic world. After the 16th century, when the Europeans, specifically the Portuguese, entered the scene, slave-trade routes moved further south along the East African coast, as far as Mozambique. Slaves were drawn from the hinterland of the coastal regions, such as inland Tanzania, Malawi or even the Congo,” she adds.

According to her, Zanzibar emerged as the hub for the distribution of African slaves mainly to Arabia, southern Persia and western India in the 19th century. “About three quarters of the population of Zanzibar consisted then of slaves serving the aristocracy and wealthy traders. Even after the nominal abolition of the slave trade by the British, a small number of male and female African slaves continued to be shipped to the western coasts of South Asia, especially to Makran and Gujarat, where they were mostly employed as servants and bodyguards at the courts of local rulers.”

Today, especially in Gujarat, where there are only 10,000 of them, Sidis have merged with the masses and identifies with the urban-working class quarter. A fragmented East African Muslim community of mixed ancestry, Sidis speak Gujarati and Kutchi with only a few Swahili/Bantu words and expressions that is said to be mostly associated with their Sufi ritual dances and music.

Thanks to Western anthropological and historical interest in the various Sidi communities, they are going global.

Interesting Facts

· Leave a comment ·

Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh celebrate State Formation Day on November 1.

Here are some interesting facts that I came across about Kerala:

1. Kerala was named as one of the “ten paradises of the world” and “50 places of a lifetime” by the National Geographic Traveler magazine (In 2008).

2. Kerala is one of the few regions in the world where communist parties are democratically elected in a parliamentary democracy.

3. UNICEF and the World Health Organization designated Kerala the world’s first “baby-friendly state”.

4. Kerala’s road density is nearly four times the national average, reflecting the state’s high population density. Kerala’s annual total of road accidents is among the nation’s highest( Kumar KG (2003). ‘Accidentally notorious’, The Hindu Business Line. Retrieved on (2007)).

5. Interestingly, The Cochin International Airport at Kochi is the first international airport in India that was built without Central Government funds, and is also India’s first publicly owned airport