MY TRIP TO THE US

I am blogging after a few years.No specific reason, i suppose i got busy with so many things,profession,freemasonry,my involvement in the blood bank ,may be sheer laziness!
I recently visited the US east coast for three weeks with my wife.Even though i had a medical meeting in NYC it was more of a vacation.We have loads of relatives all over and we were careful not to inform everybody!Most people including couples work in the US and run around the whole week,they get two days off which is spent in household chores,shopping and the rest.If there are small kids in the house it is literally mayhem.So if you are visiting somebody ,either be prepared to do your own sightseeing or go only on weekends.We had our own ideas,though.I had booked an online aircruise which took us to Niagara,Toronto,Pennsylvania,Washington and back to NYC in 6 days.It was cool, we got VIP treatment, private plane and five star hotels with super guides and a well planned trip.It was really worth the 1600 dollars we paid.The US is of course a very impressive country.Lots of wealth,cosmopolitan culture and no hint of racism  anywhere.Life is indeed hassle free and it is an addictive place.The single most important drawback of living in the US is that as Indians ,we miss everything Indian.Loneliness, being cut off from parents and loved ones , and  lack of home help are major drawbacks. Children are really starved of  affection that only a close knit family can provide.Most people seem to think that making money is the only thing u need to do in life.I wondered if quality of life in the US would match what u can get back home.Ultimately it is all in the mind. But having travelled to most of the so called developed countries
I still feel at home in India.I desperately wanted to come back by the time our vacation was over.I suppose it was the Indian in me .Would I want to go to the US again? I doubt it, i could do three holidays with the money i spent on the US trip.So my list would be someplace else, may be Mauritius,Indonesia or Ladakh,all exotic places.No more malls and skyscrapers for me!!

HELICOPTERS AND POLITICIANS

Looks like YSR along with the other four forgotten chaps who also died with him need not
have died at all;they were going to a hilly rural area where the weather was bad with rains.
Why risk a journey at all. Quite possible YSR compelled the pilots to fly .I have once been ina heyly licopter, from Las Vegas to look at the Grand Canyon and the surrounding areas including the hoover dam .It was a breathtaking sight and something I still remember.The whole trip lasted 2
hours and we were back by 9am! If the weather is good and there are no technical hitches a helicopter is probably the best way of covering ground in a vast country like India,especially if u are a bigwig.If u travel by road,it will inconvenience a lot of road users.jayalalitha does it when she visits her estate in the Kodanadu area of Nilgiris.We were there recently on a short trip.
U know when u see a very small plane u do feel scared;the kind of scare I had when i first
was getting into a 50 seater ATR that does short flights.Somehow it looked like a toy plane
compared to the huge jumbo jets where u feel a lot safer.Coming back to helicopeters
I do feel YSRs untimely demise along with the other four, the pilots and the officers whose names only found passsing mention in todays papers could have been avoided. India has lost
many promising politicians in the past to helicopter crashes.But of course destiny is something
I strongly believe in. May be it was a call from above for the five who died.

THE SWINEFLU SCARE

Many doctors now believe that WHO is to be blamed for the confusion and panic about this so
called swine flu.Americans are quick at creating fancy names for diseases and in this case
pigs those harmless creatures have got the wrong end of the noose.In fact Egypt had an idea of killing all the pigs in that country .just becos only Christians eat them and in islam it is banned.
I dont think it happened though.What is now happening in India is nothing short of a manmade
disaster.Malaria,dengue, diseases caused by mosquitoes kill lots of people every year and
there no end in sight.These and diseases like cholera and TB are easily controllable by improving
hygiene and that is what the govt should be doing.We are spending precious money on masks,tamiflu and will spend moree money on vaccine whenever it arrives in the market,apart form so called testing for swine flu.Somebody is making a lot of money here.The best way to c ontain flu is to stay at home if you have definite symptoms,that is what we do if we have a bad cold,anyway.Media and press have increased fear amongts the people that now whatever we do
is going to be a waste of resources.This flu is nothing compared to what already exists in this country in terms of diseases associated with poor environmental standards.If the swine flu
can teach our government to clean up this country it will be a big boon and we acn think of erecting swine statues to thank the poor animal.

THE FAREWELL TO MJ

It was a typical hollywood extravaganza.The MJ send off I mean.I wonder who is going to pay for the bills,becos they say he had a 200 million dollar debt.Never mind.Seems Diana Ross was his mentor and all that.She was missing.I have a feeling she felt too guilty to attend the funeral.Becos what MJ needed was medical rehabilitation from his addiction to all those death
cocktails.can u believe one of the ddrugs that he took was an anaesthetic drug? Which means
it can only be given in the operation room by a qualified specialist in anesthesia .and MJ was
taking it in his home.These drugs killed him.And what were all his wellwishers who turned up at the funeral were doing all along.It is a shame! And it can happen only in America,a country where you can stock narcotics at home ,buy cocaine on the street and a gun over the counter
has to be a crazy country!!

GAYS OF THE WORLD

It is no longer a criminal act to be a gay in India ,that what judges of the high court in delhi have said.Fine, of course it shouldnt be a crime .It is nothing surprising that some humans are attracted to their own gender.To the purists it may seem outrageous.That you call being gay or lesbian legal or noncriminal but to me it is the freedom of the individual.I personally beleive that
being gay is unnatural and a bit of a joke.I dont approve of it .It is my personal view.At the same time we shoudlnt go too far like say canada or US.Like approving a gay marriage,now that is being ridiculous.Marriage can only be between a man and a woman becos you procreate.A gay
couple can live together but dont call it marriage or legally approve it as marriage.Becos they are not going to procreate.Mind u there would be some reduction in population if there were gay
couples instead of the normal ones.All of know AIDS was first spotted in the gay community of Los Angeles,so we can expect more AIDS like viruses being spread by gays but it happens anyway otherwise too.As a doctor I think gays and lesbians are pervertts and not exactly
normal people.But psychiatrists estimate atleast 40% of normal looking humans to have some
abnormal mental condition.It is true,no jokes here.So what do I think about the latest Indian
news on gays.Let them have their space! The world is full of funny people and here is another group,that is all.As long as they dont start converting normal people to their 'gay'community.That would be danegrous to say the least!!!

MICHAEL JACKSON - END OF AN ERA

I first heard MJs pop while I was living in London in the early 80s when he was a sensation, a singer par excellence and a great stage personality; I remember the crowds in London when he
visited for a concert.There only popsingers could pull crowds like no one else.And I had most of his songs on cassette,there were no DVDs then.I also had a record, that huge circular disc of
BAD oneof his master pieces.Fame and money I feel drive many humans crazy.The most important problem is how to face success.May be one needs to be taught ,how to face these situations in life,when you go out and are mobbed by crowds;you have so much money you dont know what to do with it.It is well known that successful and not so successful people in the entertainment industry get hooked to drugs, have an affair a day,rarely have strong family lives and usually end up divorcing and remarrying their costars, you wonder what is really going on.
MJ had his share of controversies,from pedophilia todrug addiction .He tried all crazy stuff like changing his skin color with plastic surgery, living in oxygen cchamber etc etc,He forgot how to lead a normal life.When u haave lot of money the people around u are usually not genuine friends rather who are there to make a fast buck.So MJ was surrounded by all these cronies and I am sure he didnt have a single genuine pal who could have saved him from death.Who might have put him in a correction facility and tried to make him a normal human being.He died at the untimely age of 50 obviously due to a drug overdose,and in a room where there wAS A doctor,funnily enough.I believe he was skin and bone with nothing but pills in his body..
what a way to go.Poor chap.And in the crazy country where he lived he was allowed to possess
all these drugs like pethidine like mineral water,I wonder what drug laws are existing in California.A country where you can buy a gun and coacaine is a crazy country.I would blame the system rather than MJ.He was a sick man who needed good medical care and rehab...which he didnt get.He was preparing for a 50 concert tour!!! Nothing could be more ironical..

INDIA AND TOBACCO CONTROL

Today 31 May is WHO sponsored World No Tobacco Day,reserved for creating awareness about
the ill effects of tobacco.No doubt a very important step.What exactly are the facts? Yes , regular tobacco use in various forms increases chances of getting cancers especially of the gastrointestinal tract esp.mouth and food pipe,lungs,bladder,stomach etc.There is also increase
in the incidence of heart attacks and vascular disease since tobacco tends to narrow blood vessels
and of course well known are the effects of passive smoking on people around smokers like their familles and children. This is oneaspect.The other side of the coin is that tobacco use and for that matter any vice like alcohol, drugs eetc are of course the concerned.Personal choice and freedom about use of tobacco should not be the in the hands of government.If you take the leading ritcauses of deaths in young people in India accidents,malnutrition and infections like tuberculosis,cholera,dengue and malaria are way ahead of deaths linked to tobacco.What is the government doing about it? In India we first have to conquer the scourge of diseases linked
to our filthy environs and poverty before we talk of lifestyle problems like smoking and drinking.
Thhe western countries have conquered these problems and now they are focussing on tobacco control.We in India are no where near them as far as clean and pollution free enviroonment is concerned.let us get our priorities right.let us tackle the problems of malnutrition directly linked to over population, infection directly linked to environmental abuse first.Then let us talk of tobacco and alcohol.Tobacco industry is a big economic entity i n giving employment to thousands of farm labourers and industry workers.What alter ecom native plans are there if you want to close down the tobacco industry.the same applies to liquor industry as well. If you assume that alcohol is an addicting agent and that it kills, aare we going to close down this industry as well? many state !economies will collapse! Let us be prudent before delivering sermons on the illeffecst of tobacco and alcohol.If a person makes a conscious decision to smoke and if he dies of say lung cancer why bother? It is his problem. In our country our priorities must be elimination of poverty, control of population and education.If these improve automatically awareness of people about health will improve and tobacco will take its natural place in the economy of the country.There is no need for strict control of either bthe tobacco or alcohol indstry in our country.This is my view.