No love, in the time of cholera!

I went to graduate school because of my naïveté.  Living in my own bubble, I thought that the causes of the miserable human condition all around me in India and elsewhere had not been clearly understood, and that graduate school would lead to a breakthrough.

Turned out that I did learn a lot through my six years--problems continue primarily because of politics that prevents us from doing the right thing.

I don't mean politics as in elections and voting, but politics as in how we as individuals and groups prefer to view the world and, therefore, how to respond to the human condition--whether it is at the street corner or in a far away country.

Consider cholera, for instance.  Sure, once upon a time humans thought that this disease and fatality was some mysterious event.  But, a cholera outbreak in London during the height of its Industrial Revolution and urbanization was also when we humans figured out what was going on.  It is a story of geography and maps.  (Wikipedia can help, if it interests you.)

My point is this: If there are people dying from cholera in the year 2017, it ain't because we don't know what causes cholera.  We know all too well.  We know how it spreads.  We know how it kills.

So, why do people die from cholera?  Politics.

The worst of that politics is being played out in Yemen:

The Yemeni farm laborer was picking crops in a hot field when the call came. His children, all seven of them, had fallen gravely ill.
Some were vomiting, others had diarrhea, and all were listless, indicating that they had fallen victim to the latest disaster to afflict this impoverished corner of the Arabian Peninsula: one of the worst outbreaks of cholera infection in recent times.

No amount of graduate schooling by any number of eager-beaver students can help, when we are hell bent on making the human condition miserable.

For much of the world, cholera, a bacterial infection spread by water contaminated with feces, has been relegated to the history books. In the 19th century, it claimed tens of millions of lives across the world, mainly through dehydration and electrolyte imbalance.
That ended with modern sanitation and water systems. When it pops up now, it is usually treated easily with rehydration solutions and, if severe, with antibiotics.

Yep, we thought had condemned killing by cholera to history.  And then we watch it happen in real time:

Since a severe outbreak began in late April, according to Unicef, cholera has spread to 21 of the country’s 22 provinces, infecting at least 269,608 people and killing at least 1,614. That is more than the total number of cholera deaths reported to the World Health Organization worldwide in 2015.

How fucked up are we humans!

In October, the government stopped paying civil servants, prompting strikes from sanitation workers and leading to garbage pileups and septic backups. That contaminated the wells that many Yemenis rely on for water, providing the ideal environment for cholera to spread. The outbreak picked up speed in April, after dirty rainwater further polluted the wells.
Not everyone who is exposed to cholera will contract the disease. But in places like Yemen, where more than 14 million of Yemen’s 27 million people lack access to clean water and 17 million do not have enough food, people are far more vulnerable — particularly malnourished children.
“The average person lives on tea and bread. It’s just one meal a day,” said Jamie McGoldrick, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Yemen. “They are in a weakened state, and that is why they are getting sick.”
Making matters worse, the war has damaged 65 percent of Yemen’s medical facilities, denying more than 14 million people access to health care.

You have to wonder why we can't seem to get along, right?

Meanwhile, acute resource constraints in a remarkably rich world:

The United Nations says it needs $2.1 billion for its work in Yemen this year, but it has received only 29 percent of that amount despite repeated pleas for donations from aid groups.

In addition to shedding my naïveté, there is one huge difference between the graduate school me versus the me now--I am not a starving graduate student.

So, I did the only thing that I could--I donated, to my favorite group that does phenomenal work in such situations: MSF.

One swallow doesn't make a summer

I heard that expression first when I was a school kid.

It was back in the old country.  With English as a special, er, second language, I originally misheard that as "one sparrow doesn't make a summer."

I figured that in England, where it was always cold and damp, only in the summer they get to see and hear birds and, therefore, an accidental sighting of a sparrow does not mean it is summer.  Unlike my old part of the world where crows crowed every single day.

I was all ok with it, until I was corrected by the English teacher.  She said it was not "sparrow" but "swallow."

"Swallow"?  Do people not swallow in the winter?  And one swallow does not make a summer?  Had I known WTH and WTF back then, I would have written that all over my English notebook! ;)

By correcting me, the teacher confused me.  I didn't have the guts to ask her what swallow meant in that sentence!  I, like most kids, typically stayed away from asking questions.

It was much later that I came to know that in this case "swallow" was a bird.

The misheard word apparently did not screw up my understanding of the idiom.

The more I recall my life, the more I am always amazed at my own idiocy.

The sighting of a bird brought back those memories.  It is summer here and a bird flew into the yard and hopped around on the ground.  I had no idea what bird that was.  I stood there watching that tiny squawking life until it took off to report to whoever that the mission was accomplished.

In the old country, rapid urbanization has led to people living in tight quarters in megacities.  The last time I was there, mother went outside their flat with a couple of small balls of cooked rice.  She then called out for crows.  Nothing.  Nada.  Zippo. Zilch.  Not a crow to be found or heard.

I helped her out with crow calls of my own.  I wondered whether there was an American accent in my bird call ;)

Not a crow in sight.

"These are city birds.  They want chips and pizza," mother said and gave up waiting for crows.

The pigeons on the neighboring building couldn't care about all this drama.  It is always summer for them.

You cannot grow a beard in a moment of passion

Carefully look at the person in this photograph:

Source

Is he:
a. Saudi?
b. Iraqi?
c. Indian?
d. Persian?
e. Afghan?
f. Italian?

Could be any one of those, right?

Now, consider the following photo of the same person without the beard:

Source

Is he:
a. Saudi?
b. Iraqi?
c. Indian?
d. Persian?
e. Afghan?
f. Italian?

Not sure, eh!

Look at the two photos again.  Doesn't the one with the beard seem more like a Muslim and the clean-shaven one more like a non-Muslim?

Doesn't the guy portrayed in the photo below look like a Muslim?

Source

Yep, that is the point.

The first two photos are of the same person--Amit Majmudar.  I have blogged about him before.

So, why do I blog about Majmudar and his photos with and without a beard?

Here's why:

Especially as a guy with a #beard, and being from the Subcontinent, I loved Amit #Majmudar's poem in @NewYorkerhttps://t.co/qt3TYnsg0G

— Am.Dr.Khe (@congoboy) July 4, 2017

Read that poem at the source that I have linked to.  Better yet, listen to Majmudar read that poem.

Oh, in case you are waiting for the correct answer to the multiple-choice question, yes, Majmudar is an American.  Ok, yes, an Indian-American.

In my previous post, I wrote:

Amit Majmudar is yet another Indian-American who makes me feel like I am nothing but a blabbering idiot who does nothing. Majmudar is a radiologist, novelist, poet, and writes commentaries. And, yes, he is a family man. Seriously, isn't that supposed to be four different people? And, oh, he is yet to turn forty! I hate such people who make a good-for-nothing out of me!!! ;)

Majmudar has more to say about his dual career life:

 Majmudar, whose poetry has appeared in The Best American Poetry 2007 and periodicals like The New Yorker and The Atlantic, won the 2011 Donald Justice Prize. Majmudar was amused when asked to explain why many Indian-American doctors are also writers, prominent examples being Abraham Verghese, Siddhartha Mukherjee, and Atul Gawande. “I don’t know why that is,” he said, “except if you look at the Indians who came over in the sixties and seventies many were doctors like my parents. Medicine is the Majmudar family profession. My sister and I are also doctors. Going forward, I don’t think we will see this split. If someone is interested in writing, he will go into writing, and that will be the end of it.”

May a million writers--bearded or not--bloom!

ps: the title of this post is a G.K. Chesterton quote.