Exploring the World : Lunch and Evening Festivities

Yum.

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Luncheon at Dr. Tibrewala's:

This afternoon, Dr. Tibrewala, (the surgeon I'm working with) invited me over for a luncheon at his home for the residents and attendings. His place was beautiful with white stone walls and art pieces from his travels around the world- Greece, Africa, Italy, France, and many more. His wife made an unbelievable amount of food for all of us. I took little bits so I could try every dish. We had sallimurg (a chicken curry dish), ghosth dhansak, rice and kabobs, kachori, gobi, carmel custard desert dish, strawberries with cream, and more. It was amazing!

I enjoyed listening to them talk about films and how much they love movies. The film industry is huge here. They tell me people just want something to get their minds off everyday life, a break, a couple hours where they don't have to think about daily stresses, and can just enjoy a good film. They knew about the Hindi films of Bollywood as well as our Hollywood stars, films, and the latest news- things that I was oblivious to and movies that I haven't even seen. They were making a list of Hindi movies that I "must see." Haha I loved it. Perhaps, in addition to my first Telugu film, I can see a few Bollywood films before I leave. The world of Tollywood/Bollywood/Hollywood- apparently I have much more to learn and so many films to catch up on.... :)

Evening Festivities with Friends-of-Friends/ Social Entrepreneurs

After our luncheon, I took a cab to my friend Nilima's place where she was having a group of people over for the evening. Many of her friends have traveled all around the world for work and for fun. Many of them are here in India as social entrepreneurs, working in areas of business, engineering, women's rights, improving ecosystems, sanitation, and education. They have projects here in Mumbai and all over India to help improve conditions in whatever field they are focused on. One of the girls, Sandra, was telling me that she works for "the prevention of violence against women and children." She goes to the slums to improve education, health, sanitation, and ways to end violence against women and children. It was inspirational to hear about so many projects going on here. I have been on medical relief trips to Guatemala, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Belize, and Costa Rica to provide health care in areas of poverty, but it is very cool to see people working here with sustainable projects. I have only experienced medicine in Central and South America, the States, and now India, but I wish I could create more sustainable projects to improve health care and address these drastic health disparities.

Sandra was telling me that over 53% in India live in the slums, below the poverty line. With <<2% of the GDP spent on public health care and much of the poor population choosing to not even go to these hospitals (due to lack of money for transportation, no money for continued treatment, religious reasons, bad experiences with the system, etc), I can only imagine the amount of work that could be done to improve health care here. I am aware that providing quality health care and surgical needs to those in poverty is a challenge everywhere in the world, but it's encouraging to see these social entrepreneur groups finding ways to make sustainable impacts in their different areas. The large scale of health disparities is daunting, making it seem nearly impossible to fix. I wonder what the solution is. Even in Detroit, I can see so many things I wish we could improve. And during our surgical/medical relief trips, we are only there a short period of time... How much impact are we making? Can several small projects fix such a huge problem? Is it possible to make global change by helping little bits of the world at a time? Or do we need a bigger solution?

Anyway, these were a few of my thoughts as I traveled home in my bumpy little rickshaw ride. I am becoming very fond of this place and am enjoying the quirky little things around me. On my way home around 10pm, we turned near my street, and my guy was honking and competing with five other rickshaws (like bumper cars) to dodge around a giant elephant in the middle of the street. Haha. I love this place.

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