Trivandrum Zoo

As always, the visit to my home at Trivandrum also included a visit to the zoo. It must be the 7th or the 8th time that Shalom has visited the zoo. This time, he was very specific. And it was special for us as Chesed was visiting any zoo for the first time. 

Shalom was sure about what he wanted to see. Yeah, the big animals . . . He bypassed most of the enclosures of the smaller animals in favour of the bigger ones. He was not disappointed. 

A few snaps from the visit . . .  

The cappuchian monkey

Vulturine guinea fowl

Camouflaged . . . hope you can spot the lioness 

The hippos . . . a favourite enclosure

The shy rhinoceros

Watching the sambhar deer

A deer begging for food from the visitors

The lonely zebra

The lioness in the previous picture enjoying her lunch

The enclosure of the pygmy monkey

A Guide to Food in the Dhanbad-Alleppey Express

This is for those travellers who get bored of the food from the pantry in the Dhanbad-Alleppey Express of the Indian Railways. It is not that the food from the pantry is not good. It’s just that it could become boring to you very soon.    

I’ve not covered the Dhanbad-Ranchi section as I’ve only experience of travelling from Ranchi onwards.

First of all, the train does not stop for much time at Ranchi so that one can something from the Birsa Munda Food Plaza which serves quite decent snacks and meals. We usually have our lunch at the Birsa Munda Food Plaza before entraining the train at Ranchi. 

Dinner – Day 1: The train reaches Rourkela around 6:30 pm. The schedules stoppage is for 30 minutes. This allows you to make a dash outside the station where there are umpteen road side eateries selling from dishes varying from dosas, parathas, noodles, idlis etc. There is also a Baskin Robbins outlet nearby. This time I opted to buy dosas and we did not regret about the option. I was also surprised to find quite a lot of the pantry staff of the train hanging around these wayside eateries rather than eating from the pantry. Says a lot about the 'quality and taste' of these wayside eateries. 

Breakfast – Day 2: You would have just left Orissa and starting the day long travel across the state of Andhra Pradesh as day breaks. For breakfast, there is the option of trying out the stuff from the pantry or waiting till station named Bobilli which arrives at around 7 am. The best stuff available here is the vada which tastes yummy with sambhar and chutney. The idlis were a bit too hard for me.

Lunch – Day 2: Here again you can opt for the lunch from the pantry. I opt to wait for a station called Samalkot which arrives a bit late in the afternoon from where you can buy lunch packets being sold by ladies in the platform. I wonder if they belong to some Self Help Group. One lunch packet is enough for a sumptous for 2. This time, one packet was priced 80 INR.

Dinner – Day 2: Here if we need to have a culinary experience other than the pantry food, we would need to buy food from the Comesum Plaza in the 1^st platform at Vijayawada. The train stops for 20 minutes which is more than enough to buy dinner from Comesum Plaza. There is quite a lot of variety available. We had brought Rumali Roti, Vegetarian Thali (one ordinary and one special).

Breakfast - Day 3: The best bet for breakfast is the dosas at Jolarpettai. We ensure that we've some empty plastic vessels to take the sambhar and coconut chutney separately. 

Lunch - Day 3: There are many options. You can opt to have lunch at any of the stops from Erode to Palakkad. If you want to have curd rice which is one of my favorites, you'll need to search for it in either Erode or Tiruppur. It is available in Coimbatore too, but only in one part of the platform . . . usually towards the engine. 

There is a long stop at Shoranur around 3 pm. Which gives us ample time to rush to Platform 6 and have a sumptuous feast of ice-creams from the Amul outlet. 

Of course, dinner usually waits for us at home. We would be almost fed up of non-home food by the time we reach Alappuzha. 

No body to cry . . .

In addition to the news item about the drug company Ranbaxy paying fines in the US, another news item which may have missed many of our attention during the last fortnight would be the collapse of Rana Plaza garment factory in Bangladesh which left about 1100 death. The tragedy has been touted as the world's worst industrial accident after the Bhopal gas tragedy of 1984.

In addition to the dead, it is reported that almost the same number of people have been permanently maimed for life, having lost at least one limb. The snaps from the accident site are harrowing and numbing. 

The shocking thing that came out after the disaster was the harrowing conditions and paltry compensations that the workers of such factories received. And the end products they churned out graced multinational garment stores in the developed countries.

And one can only imagine the huge profits that were being made by the middlemen who are involved in this sort of business. For the thousands of consumers who buy the garments made at this sort of factories, either they don't know about the background of the origin of their purchase or they're not bothered about that. 

My fear is that the majority of us belong to the latter group. 

I firmly believe that most of the so-called development in most regions of the world happen at the expense of the poor and marginalized. 

Recently, I was exposed to this hard truth in two different ways. 

The first instance was when we were exploring ways to promote some form of local industry in our region. One option we thought about was apparel making especially those with embroidery. I was shocked when I was told that we would not be able to compete with the low labour costs which was available in countries like Bangladesh. 

The plot thickens as costs of production are much lower in countries where environmental and regulatory laws are lax which further decrease costs. 

The second incident was a discussion with few colleagues on the costs of keeping domestic maids in our homes. The costs are quite prohibitive in states such as Kerala. Whereas costs are quite low when women/girls are brought from poorer parts of the country for the same purpose. 

Which of course, has fueled the incidents of human trafficking in many parts of the country. The poor tribals of Jharkhand, where I serve, is a major victim of this social evil. 

One can only imagine the furor that would have been created if the tragedy had occurred in the US or any other developing country. 

Were not human beings created equal in the image of God? If that is true, it is imperative that we treat all fellow human beings as equal . . . which should transcend racial, religious, regional and national barriers. 

Flawed Pharmaceuticals

I wonder how many of us in India noticed about the news that the pharmaceutical giant Ranbaxy generic drug maker Ranbaxy pleaded guilty on Monday to federal drug safety violations in the US and will pay $500 million in fines to resolve claims that it sold subpar drugs and made false statements to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) about its manufacturing practices at two factories in India. 

If you missed the news please read it either in The New York Times or Reuters or our own Economic Times. 

For a country which is obsessed with the Indian Premier League and the personal lives of it's film stars, I don't think this sort of news would garner much attention. Of course, there will one group of us who will be term it as US's vendetta on Indian business interests. 

The quality of drugs available in the Indian market has always been doubtful. The details from the news items is alarming . . . unreliable shelf lives, absence of proper quality and safety tests, batches of atorvostatin contained glass particles, lying to the FDA and falsified data. I wonder how much of this is true with the other companies. 

In the US, there is a FDA to keep a tab on the companies. Who does that in India?

We've all heard enough stories of how different brands of the same drug differ in their effectiveness. To make matters worse, the number of unethical combination preparations very much against the principles of any drug formulary has been an issue of major concern. 

In the corrupt scheme of things in the country, I wonder how much of a policing can one successfully do in the area of pharmaceutical regulations. 

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, the plot thickens in a situation where doctors are educated and updated by the pharmaceutical industry on prescription practices. One can only imagine about the sort of flawed information they will end up getting. 

Now, what can the common man do about this. 

First of all, there is the well known fact that medicines may not be needed for quite a lot of conditions. It is time we asked ourselves about how serious we are to assimilate interventions such as lifestyle modifications, exercise and diet changes. 

There are enough stories about how drugs touted as miracle chemicals turned out to be big killers. 

Do recheck if you really need the antibiotic or the analgesic or the anti-histamine being prescribed. And you may not need the umpteen number of multivitamins and supplementary pills. Do query your doctor about why a particular medicine is being given. 

And when you have to buy a medicine, buy it from a government run pharmacy if possible. But again, in India you can never tell. 

The bottom line . . . prevention is better than cure.  

Vizhinjam Harbour

Similar to last year's holiday, we decided to go scouting along the coastline this time too. This time, we visited the Vizhinjam harbour. The breakwaters putting up a strong front to the enormous waves was quite a site. However, we were in for more sights inside the fishing harbour. 

The family walking into the harbour

 

Boat engines lined along the water front

Crowds waiting for the boats to come in

A fisherman sells his catch (tuna) to a fishmonger

Another view of the harbour

Fishmongers beside the harbour. In spite of the plentiful catch, fish was very expensive

Pomfret and mackerel 

Fishmongers wait for the boats to come in

Panoramic view of the Vizhinjam fishing harbour