The joy of making pickles . . .

As was mentioned in one of my very earlier posts, a common aspect here is the cost of vegetables which go down to unbelievable extents. After a good monsoon the previous year and a not very cold winter, the vegetable production in this region has been quite good.

And to my horror, couple of weeks back, I found out that garlic was just 25 INR a kilogram. And the same time, I called up my friends in the south and found out that it cost 160 INR a kilo there. I just could not let the opportunity go waste.

So, out went a search for a good garlic pickle. And the results were great that already 3 kilograms of garlic has turned into pickle.

Well, for those interested, the recipe - - -

THE INGREDIENTS

1 kilogram of garlic cleaned . . . This is a painful job. Thanks to our maid, Malu, who baby sits Charis, we did not feel the pain.

10 gms each of Coriander seeds, Fenugreek seeds (methi/uluva), cumin seeds (jeera) and Asafoetida (hing/kayam). Fry them without any oil and grind it together into fine powder.

100 gms of brown sugar/jaggery

10 gms of mustard seeds

Juice of 20 lime. You can use the lemon rind to make lime pickle.

Salt to taste – Depends on how salty you want the pickle to be. I used about 8 teaspoons

Chilly powder – Again depends on how hot you want it to be. I used about 3 teaspoons

Tamarind paste – 4 teaspoons. I’ve always used dried tamarind dipped in water for about an hour to make the paste rather than the ready made tamarind paste.

200 ml of oil. Connoisseurs demand gingelly oil but I used refined soyabean oil for convenience sake.

PREPARATION

1. Heat the oil. Once well heated, put mustard seeds till they all burst and become darkish.

2. Add the garlic to the oil. Keep in low fire for about 10 minutes till the garlic is cooked. Ensure that you stir it every 2 minutes.

3. Mix the salt in the lime juice and add this mixture to the garlic.

4. Add the prepared masala powder mix to the garlic and cook for about 5 minutes.

5. Add the chilly powder followed by tamarind paste and last of all the jaggery. It is better to powder the jaggery before adding to the pickle.

6. Cook for another 10 minutes.

As I told earlier, the results were smashing. Three bottles disappeared in no time. We had to make more.

Well, couple of days back, we had one of our retired staff who brings vegetables for sale bringing cherry tomatoes.

I tried the same recipe substituting the garlic with the cherry tomatoes. Again, the resulting pickle was a grand success. Below are few snaps. 

Shalom admiring the cherry tomatoes

The tomatoes half cooked

We're almost there . . . 

The final product . . . 

Prayer Bulletin . . . 24th March, 2012

1. Today is a bandh (general strike) in this region. It is the 57th bandh of this financial year. A bandh does quite a lot of damage to the state. Kindly pray that there will be a change in the social milieu of this region where people will be able to live peacefully and without hitches. I hear that before the end of this month, there will be 2 more bandhs.

2. We have a young boy of about 4 years admitted today evening. We strongly suspect if it is an index case of viral encephalitis which was quite common last year. He is totally unconscious. We have started him on antibiotics and anti-viral drugs. He's made some improvement. Please pray that he makes a complete recovery.

3. Last week, we’ve had quite a number of visitors. We thank the Lord that everything went smoothly. There were no bandhs during their period of visit, the trains were all on time, nobody fell sick, the weather was good . . . lots of things to be thankful about.

4. As expected, after the implementation of RSBY in the hospital, there has been a steady increase in the patients. Any day we would be breaking through the magic 200 outpatient barrier. We thank the Lord that we are becoming more accessible to the poor. Till date, there have been about 80 outpatients and 25 inpatients treated under RSBY. I've not been able to post about many very sick patients including maternal near misses we've had over the last month. We thank the Lord for all the patients. 

5. We thank the Lord for journey mercies for all of our staff who were travelling. Especially Dr Titus, who was at Herbertpur for the Medicine CME.

6. The burns unit construction is on steady progress. Kindly continue to pray for the needs as well as speedy progress of the work.

7. We are delighted to have facilitated a workshop on Advocacy last week at Ranchi. We thank the Lord for the work happening through Mr. Mark Delaney. We’ve formed a forum for furthering this endeavour. Kindly pray that the Lord will use us to minister to the poor and the marginalised through this.

8. We are coming to the end of this financial year. We thank the Lord for the all the progress and learning we had. Kindly pray that the Lord will give us discernment to evaluate well on how we fared and on how we should go ahead.

9. Summer has already arrived. It is quite hot and we depend on the Lord for seeing us through the harsh weather especially with regard to availability of water until rains come. Kindly pray for the health of all staff during the very hot summer.

10. We’ve 3 staff expecting babies within the next month. Kindly pray for each of them – Sr. Chandrakala, Sr. Kanchan and Dr Angeline. We thank the Lord that one of our staff kids was saved miraculously from a possible serious burn injury. Boiling milk fell on Anush, 2 years old, daughter of Sr. Deepti and she escaped with about 3% of scalding of the chest. It could have been worse.

11. The NH 75 which connects us to Ranchi and Daltonganj is in quite a bad shape. In addition, we had been having accidents on a regular basis. Over the last week, 2 people lost their lives. Kindly pray that the road repair work would progress fast and we would have good roads at the earliest.

12. We thank the Lord for the installation of fire fighting equipment in the hospital early this month. Kindly pray that we would never be able to use it.

13. We thank the Lord for the smooth functioning of the neonatal unit. We already feel the pressure of a high rate of admission. We need a full time paediatrician in addition at least couple of warmers and phototherapy units.

14. We continue to be on the look out for a physician and an additional surgeon. There are vacancies for at least 2 more BSc nurses and 4 GNM nurses for the smooth functioning of the unit. EHA plans to present North Indian mission is a Church Camp at Kothamangalam, Kerala during the Passion Week. Kindly pray for Dr Sam David who will be giving the challenge to the believers attending the camp towards outreach missions in North India. Kindly pray that the Lord will move the hearts of committed young men and women to respond to the needs of the places like ours.

15. Dr. Nandamani is on his way to Vellore for attending a worshop on Secondary Hospital Posting for MBBS Students from CMC, Vellore. Kindly pray for his travel as well for each of the students who would be visiting us in the last week of April.

16. Today is World TB Day. TB patients make a major chunk of our clinical work. Incidentally over the last 2 weeks we had 7 patients for whom we had to put a chest tube. Please pray for the work we do is a source of hope for each tuberculosis patient who comes to us. Dr Johnson leads the TB work at NJH along with Mr. Manohar, Mr. Sunil and Mrs Namitha.

Visitors at NJH . . .

Over the last week, we had quite a crowd at NJH.

It was amazing as we got a church group to come over to NJH and see for themselves what we were doing. I'm not very sure if there has been quite this large a group from a church come over before.

The Parish Mission of the Marthoma Church, Kolkota under the leadership of Rev. Issac  arrived at NJH via Ranchi and left on Sunday, the 18th March.

It was amazing that the train arrived on time. We had been planning for a late arrival. Since the train was on time, we got time to visit the St. Thomas School, Ranchi. It was quite an encouraging time that we had at the school which is being taken to new heights under the leadership of Rev. Joseph Ayrookuzhy.

The front of the school with the Mar Thoma Church, Ranchi

Meeting Rev. Joseph

The visitors

After spending about one hour at the school, we were on our way to NJH. I had planned to take them to a rural church in the region. I selected a church under the Bihar Mennonite Mandali. The members of the team were amazed at the faith of the fledgling church in Boddha, a remote area of Latehar district near Chandwa.

Proposed railway route between Lohardaga and Chandwa.
Once this becomes operational, Ranchi would be easily accessible by rail from NJH

Walking to the village

Mennonite Church, Bodha

With the believers of Bodha church

After lunch at Chandwa, we reached NJH by around 5 in the evening.


The team had a quite hectic time at NJH.


In between, we also had a very quick visit from Pastor Clive and his wife, Joy from New Zealand. They were kind enough to visit us along with Mrs. Margaret, our Regional Director, who happened to visit us on Saturday last. We are thankful to the wonderful family for the visit . . .

Mrs Margaret, Regional Director along with Pastor Clive and Mrs Joy

The team at NJH. Almost all the snaps were taken by Adv. Chacko Mathai

We at NJH have been encouraged by the visit from all of you.

Images from NJH . . .

An assorted group of images from NJH over the last couple of weeks . . .

RKS's hand after skin graft

The palmar aspect of RKS's hand. We would be able to do a better job next time as we have acquired a skin mesher.

Diabetes was not a problem till about 3-4 years back. Now, we get bad diabetic foots like this.

A raspberry tumor

A truck which smashed into a tree near the hospital.
But, below is the snap of what he did before he crashed into the tree.

The pillion rider, a lady lost her life. The bike rider was lucky to escape with not much injury. 

The new RSBY counter in the outpatient department of the hospital

Thermospots, an innovation from TALC being used at NJH thanks to Wendy and Jerry

Snap of an Intra Uterine Death where the umblical cord made a true knot around the leg

A limbs of a langur monkey and her kid through the window of the Neonatal ICU

An ovarian tumour found during a routine Cesarian Section

X-Ray of a man with tuberculosis. Quite a common sight in NJH

Agrarian injury. It is quite common for such incidents in our community.
This child walked into a threshing fan and was lucky to have escaped with only this. 

Branchial sinus. Nandamani did a successful surgery for this. . . 

RSBY . . . Update

Well, the reason for not having any posts regarding RSBY has been because we’ve been caught up with work and I was away for an important meeting.

Since 5th March, 2012, when we officially rolled out RSBY at NJH, we’ve had quite a good crowd. The whole of last week we had about 800 OPD and about 40 deliveries. Of which, 75 OPD and 21 in-patients were treated under RSBY.

And our experiences have been varied.

1. The best part has been about patients who may have never thought about coming down for treatment readily coming for treatment. 2 girls with inguinal hernia – a rare occurrence in females came for surgeries. I’m sure that they would not have been brought for treatment if not for the RSBY Card. So, an example of emancipation of the girl child through the RSBY Card.

2. The food was well received by almost all patients. However, we had one episode where one of the patients had stolen the tiffin box in which food is given. However, we were able to trace out the culprit and ensure that it was returned.

3. There were couple of episodes where the Smart Card Holder wanted to take a Private Ward by paying the rest of the bill. I had quite a tough time denying the option. We have taken a decision to be quite strict in this matter as we are sure that this is going to be quite a very common demand.

4. One patient had gone off without thumb printing after discharge. She was from a nearby village and therefore we did not have much problem.

5. One potential problem we’ve recognised is that of patients coming with pre-term labour. The first one, we admitted as normal delivery, but later her pre-term pains subsided and then we discharged her after unblocking her from the normal delivery package. We put her on medical treatment but later realised that we get only the amount from the day we register her as medical treatment. Thereby we lose money. It also happens when we take couple of days to come to a diagnosis. And also, if there is a change in diagnosis.

6. The most unfortunate story was that one of our potential success stories decided to take a discharge against medical advice. It was a shame – but we had tried our best, but to no avail. For those of you who had been following this case, we found out that the lady did not actually have any lower limb weakness. Rather she was malingering – and there was something more to it.

7. And we’ve put notices all over the hospital regarding RSBY, so that no body will miss it. Unfortunately, after all the publicity we find patients who are totally unaware about the usefulness of the Smart Card.

The counter

Information banner

Another view . . .

8. There were also some hitches with the software. I’m not putting details here as it is quite intricate. However, we’ve had quite a good help from Mr. Maneesh, Eagle Software co-ordinator at Palamu District.