As a child, when our teacher explained how the earth happened to be a broken part of the sun which cooled over the ages before life became possible on I; I had a curiosity about the sun and I wanted to know where the sun in the first place came from? Such quests would arouse the anger of the teacher because his knowledge was limited to what he had been taught and his self esteem never allowed him to admit that he only knew so much and perhaps his ego held him from telling me that he would find out the answer to my question and come back prepared next time.
As I have grown in the decades dividing my
life between my urban and rural engagements, the child in me now asks, “Where
do these viruses come from in such increased frequency as they have done in the
past decade and a half or so?” The answers don’t come and which do, don’t
convince. Why is it that we come across more of these than our ancestors of the
recent past? The last decade and a half has seen more viruses threatening
mankind than at perhaps any time in history.
In our times, the agencies of knowledge force
us to believe and accept what they want us to and most of us meekly and
unquestioningly give our acceptance to what comes from a noble profession which
perhaps is not so noble in our times as it pretends to help us battle perhaps
with manufactured enemies. Most of this
continues to be shoved down our throat in the name of science. Last few decades
have brought us knowledge of certain virus related with AIDS, Bird flu, Swine flu,
Ebola, the Yellow fever, and now Zika leaving one in doubt whether these are
some handiwork released to bolster the prospects of an industry.
When I was a child I was aware of
only a few diseases which were easily cured by some liquids, I knew of two
vaccines related with Small pox and a little later the one related to polio and
still much later the hepatitis, my injuries were normally cured by the red and
the blue potions, and occasionally by a penicillin injection. I also knew of
tuberculosis which in time came to be cured. Tuberculosis was taken over in
gravity by cancer but the latter did not become endemic. We visited the doctor
with an empty bottle, who filled it with syrup and pasted a self crafted label
on it which gave the count of doses in it. The doctor was a God; he always
succeeded in curing us.
The areas of colossal intervention it appears
lay in the area of diseases that went viral and brought opportunities for the
pharmaceutical industries to come to the rescue of the affected as fast as the
appearance of this virus which caused epidemics. The medical science was so
developed that each time some virus threatened mankind it had an answer which
followed close on heels. The surgical industry also did not lag behind and over
the decades the human who survived with a few drugs and potions, blood and
pathological tests now became dependent on so many complicated medical
examinations. These medical advantages came to the affluent urban population
across the globe.
Contrast this with the rural life. Women
deliver their children without any surgical intervention. Epidemics come and go,
but the rural population with its rigorous life largely oblivious of such developments
goes about normally and lives beyond the longevity rates of the city dwellers.
The life of the rural folk it appears lies beyond the anxiety of the medical
world because such anxiety has no market amongst the rural poor as it has in
the cities. One thing for sure the rural human lies outside the net that
targets the city people and this human is generally absent in the crowds that
throng the multi specialty hospitals.
The maladies affecting the body and mind of
the city dweller is a rarity in the rural world which does not have access to
the agencies of information as do his urban counterpart which have come to sit
on the city minds successfully making the city dweller accept what he has been
targeted to believe. The rural folk eat open food in the village markets; drink
untreated water from the village wells. Gets taste of the city junk only when
they come to the city and when they can afford such consumption, drink their
own rice beer or the toddy, and now, in the last few years or so, the spirits
allowed to them by the governments.
The rural diet has not registered any
significant change as it continues to consist in rice and salt, or roti made
from wheat or rage or rice with salted onion, a chilli, and perhaps some pickle.
Vegetables and fruits which are grown seasonally along with some occasional
mutton, fowl, and a few eggs form their diet.
This rural population rarely visits a
doctor which now in the last few years is becoming available to it and one
would get to see the effect of this interaction in the next decade or so. The
rarely clad, bare-footed rural man and
woman defy all the logic that sustains the human medical interface of the city
as one finds more health in the rural areas than in the cities as so called
advancements in medical sciences keep coming to the city folk consuming their
hard earned money by creating a well engineered fear psychosis in their mind.
The doctor who prescribed a tablet or two and a
multivitamin a few decades ago, now opens a portfolio of drugs but even before
he does so, sends you for a thorough test slipping a card into your hand
recommending where you should go for these tests. When you return with the
tests he so helpfully advises you where to buy your medicines from. Most of
these doctors sit in the pharmaceutical outlets itself prescribing medicines.
