Thankful for Medical Tourism

Yesterday was American Thanksgiving, and I was thankful for my ability to buy a better health care system. I was up bright and early at 5am to take the morning train to Dehradun to interview some farmers near there. Just before rushing out the door I ate some new bread I had bought at a bakery the day before. Just as I was about to stuff that second slice into my mouth, I noticed a disturbingly familiar itching on the roof of my mouth. Brighter lights and closer look illuminated the tiny bits of walnut they snuck into the wheat germ bread. Ack!! What to do? Fortunately, there was a taxi waiting outside to take me to the train, so I woke up a friend to ask where the best hospital was and redirected my confused taxi driver to a posh private hospital in south Delhi.

After an hour's drive that felt like days, I arrived at the emergency of Max Super Specialty Hospital. (They are part of the morally questionable medical tourism industry here. They'll even pick you up at the airport). It was the most empty emerg I have ever seen. I was greeted by a doctor who asked what happened, and then laid out on a stretcher while someone, who may have been a trained professional of some kind, took an exceedingly long time to get an IV needle into my right hand (remember, the left is for pooping only). He kept looking at me nervously every time he poked and prodded, trying to get the damn thing into my tiny vein. It was more than a little nauseating. Anyway, I made it clear to the doctor that I wasn't going to just calmly lay there and accept whatever they chose to inject into my veins, even in my shaky condition. So after some discussion, they pumped me full of the strongest anti-allergy medication ever. I broke out in a sweat and just about passed out. Still, my throat wasn't feeling normal after some time, so we had more discussion about whether they should give me epinephrin or some steroid from the prednisone family (I think prednisone should only be used in a near-death situation, which I guess this was). Ultimately, they decided on the steroid. I passed out for a while, and got discharged after the nurse decided I was going to live. I was somewhat less than reassured when she asked me which country I was from, and then asked if Canada was part of Australia.

All in all, though, not a bad hospital experience, as they go, and surely much better than it could have been! They sent me home with a bill for Rs1900 (just under $50) and a prescription for more antihistamines and some H2 blockers. That's right, ulcer/reflux medication. Why? Because I was feeling nauseated from the walnuts when I arrived. I'd never actually swallowed a walnut before, so I think it's reasonable to feel a little nauseated. That, and I was operating on 3 hours sleep. They do love their drugs here, so I smiled to myself, took their prescription, and when on my way..... a little groggy but very thankful to be alive.

Work? Oh yes, that’s why I’m here, isn’t it?

What with all the moving around and looking for a home, work got left behind last week. Now it’s back to the grind. I’ve found a translator/transcriber to help me with my interviews. Transcription of tape to text costs about half the Canadian price here, which is good considering all the hours of tape I have. I feel a little strange about outsourcing to India, but I guess since I’m living and working here right now, it’s not technically outsourcing. Anyway, it’s a slow process of setting up meetings and trying to make contact with people, but it’s coming along. I have to keep reminding myself of the Delhi Rule: Never, never try to do more than one thing in a single day. It doesn’t matter how small a task might seem to be, generally you can only expect to accomplish one per day. On the rare occasion you can do more than one thing, count it as a very special blessing.

In the meantime, I decided to check out the India International Trade Fair that’s on this week in Delhi. The theme this year is food processing, so I was naturally pretty excited about the whole thing. It’s a massive exhibition showing and selling everything from new machines for making extruded snack foods, to handloom weaving, makeup, tractors, and “as seen on TV” personal massagers, vegetable choppers, and exercise gadgets. And all of these things were mixed together in the exhibition halls with no apparent order to it all. Among the odd collection of things for sale were some fabulous textiles (I can never resist!), and a lot of information about the food processing industry. What was really fascinating to me was the sheer number of people. I know, I’ve spent enough time in India now that crowds, of all things, should never be a surprise to me. But, it’s a trade show, and it seems to be a major activity for the general public.

Homeless, but mobile, in Delhi....

My usual palatial home in Delhi, at my friend Lauren’s apartment, is full up with Lauren’s out of town friends this month, so I had to seek out other options. I arranged with a colleague from the Schumacher Centre for Development to stay at an apartment they keep for visitors, but discovered that the hot water geyser wasn’t hooked up (and you need hot water during Delhi winters), and it was a little dark and dingy. These things may have all been fixable, but the deal breaker was the strange man sleeping in the living room. He didn’t speak English, so I was a little confused, but it turns out he is the driver and sleeps there all the time. This was a little too much for me, so I decided to move on. I found a nice, clean, very cheap guest house in the Tibetan refugee colony of Majnu ka Tilla, north of the city centre. No kitchen, and it’s a bit far out, but there is a Metro station not too far away. It’s different out here, not like being in India in some ways. There’s a lot of poverty and not much good to eat, but thankfully less eve teasing (this is the new word I learned yesterday).

As for the Metro rides, they are amazing. It’s like nobody told India that the Metro is here. It’s like leaving Delhi and walking into a parallel universe. It’s clean, not crowded, safe, efficient, and fast. There are places fitting that description elsewhere, but they are in the world of the elite. The Metro is cheap – I pay Rs9 (less than 25 cents) to get halfway across town. Why isn’t everyone taking it? The only explanation I can think of it that the process of entering the shiny underground stations, using tokens or pass cards, and crossing the security barriers is foreign and intimidating for many people. It really is a different world than where the average person here lives. Maybe it will catch on with time, because it’s by far the best way to move around this city that I’ve seen.

Mcleod Ganj, His Holiness, and Diwali

Having bailed out from the slightly oppressive vibe on the farm, I moved to a hotel in the town of Mcleod Ganj, just north of Dharamsala. Mcleod is the town most people are referring to when they say Dharamsala. This is where the Dalai Lama’s temple and residence are. It’s a town full of Tibetan refugees, Indians who have lived here since before the influx from Tibet, and many many western tourists. The tourists apparently seem to fall into one of three categories: (1) backpackers, (2) Buddhists and folks concerned with the Tibetan cause, and (3) people who come here to visit and just never leave. It’s that kind of place. A little surreal, peaceful as northern India goes, incredibly beautiful, and somehow contagious. I can’t say I really like the town, in fact I’m looking forward to leaving, but I can see how someone could come here and just forget to go home. (In my case, it helps that this seems to be the best source of coffee I’ve found in India. You can actually get something resembling a proper espresso at random bohemian looking cafes around town. One of them even makes great cake and muffins. Other than that, though, it’s not the place for a foodie. It’s been nearly impossible to track down a decent meal. The food seems safe and clean enough, but completely devoid of flavour, variety, and texture.)

I stayed here a little longer than planned. It was meant to be a couple days of respite, but then I heard that the Dalai Lama was giving a teaching at the temple on November 9. It was a great experience to get to attend a teaching by His Holiness at the temple, but I have to admit I didn’t get the great spiritual experience from it that I might have hoped for. There were hoards of people, and you could hardly get a glimpse of him. (Although when I did, he was of course sporting that amazing jubilant smile he always has.) He speaks in Tibetan, and they have simultaneous translation over FM radio. The crappy radio I bought didn’t work, so I had to leave to buy a new radio, which sort of worked, but it was tough to follow the intense Buddhist philosophy with Tibetan going into one ear and a scratchy translated English voice in the other. Still, a pretty amazing thing to be there.

The Dalai Lama’s teaching coincided with Diwali, the Hindi festival of lights. It’s a crazy day of fireworks and firecrackers. I was just hoping not to get hit with random crackers being thrown into the streets. It sounded like bombs were going off all over town. I suspect there was some drinking going on as well, and thought better of taking the all night bus through the mountains that night, so the return to Delhi was put off for yet another day.

Unable to delay it off any longer, we jumped on the night bus for Delhi on November 10. Twelve hours downhill on twisty, dark, narrow roads with gorges far far below. Night might be more dangerous, but it sure it nice not to have to see all those potential horrific accidents waiting to happen!

The Organic Farm

From Amritsar, I came north to Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh to visit my friend Ramesh on his farm outside of town. I also wanted to visit some folks I met at a local community health organization called Nishtha. Ramesh lives on a 14 acre organic farm that he started 3 years ago. He is experimenting with different crops and growing methods, and is trying to preserve some of the traditional local crops. He went up into the villages in the hills to find the old seeds, and is now growing the traditional black rice from this region. He’s also got five cows which he uses for milk, curd, and paneer. He’s hoping to set an example for the local people to show that they can earn a good living without pesticides, and wants to show the value of preserving traditional ways. The traditional culture here is quickly being lost as people start eating western foods, smoking western cigarettes instead of beedis, drinking soft drinks instead of jal jeera (a really cooling mixture of water and spices) or lassi (blended yoghurt drink), and buying packaged chips and cookies instead of snacking on the traditional chaat (fried salty snack foods usually bought from roadside dhabas, or food stalls). These habits are usually considered a sign of status, because they cost money, so people can show off by being seen consuming these western products. It’s not all status, though. There is definitely a convenience factor here, especially if you are not from a family wealthy enough to hire a full time cook.

It’s a remarkably peaceful place here. A beautiful farm settled in a valley next to a river, with the Dhauladar Mountains rising up to the west and mango and banana trees covering the hillsides. Neighbouring farms and villages have covered much of the hills with terraced plots of rice and wheat. Unfortunately, Ramesh has been caught in a drama with a local man trying to expropriate his land from him. Dealing with it has become his full time job, leaving him less time to focus on the farming and working out his ideas for helping the local people get involved in some small-scale value-added food processing ventures. Hopefully things will work out in Ramesh's favour soon so he can get back to focusing on the reasons he is there: the land and the local community.

A selection of the absurd occurrences in Punjab

When Nathan and I travelled to Chandigarh and Amritsar for a five days, odd things seemed to keep happening. Just when we thought things wouldn't get any stranger, well, you get the ideal....

28 October 2007: Chandigarh

1. The thali place, which serves only thali (no sharing), has no thali.
2. Went to the surreal Whole Foods market.
3. Distain from hotel man when we mention possibly taking a rickshaw from the city centre.
4. Took rickshaw to the Magic Maze Rock Garden filled with canyons, temples, statuaries, and figurines entirely constructed from roadside garbage.
5. Magic garden is surreal. Find young couples making out behind various stone structures.
6. Swing on swing.
7. Have two young men ask to take a photo with us.
8. Have two more young men ask to take a photo with us, puts arm around Karen.
9. Have an older man want a picture just with Nathan.
10. Have two students want pictures with us; they get blocked for putting their arms around Karen by Nathan’s protective arm after one tries to go for the reach-around boob grab.
11. Everyone stares at us.
12. No, I mean everyone stares at us.
13. Walk to ‘temples of democracy;’ relatively unimpressed by buildings, but very impressed by the sheer quantity of ineffective barbed wire fencing.
14. Take rickshaw to city centre; have to stop at police checkpoint to ask for directions.
15. Coffee in 70s diner with waiters wearing dishcloth erections on their heads and broad green belts.
16. Walk out of capitalist playland (large open-air mall with multiple iterations of glossy multi-national stores and thousands of people) into desert of fallen consumption (large multi-story concrete buildings that look as if they have been bombed, with the only sign of life being men bathing in water fountains and the ubiquitous rickshaw drivers).
17. Stumble upon nightclub, into which young people in absurd western 80s clothing are going into at 4:30 in the afternoon, lured in by loud thumping of western rock and roll.
18. See constipated dog. Saddened.
19. Stumble upon a body building competition on the street. Lots of muscle men wearing black speedos with oil and red body paint slapping each other on the inner thigh.
20. Karen is tempted to ask for a photo with nearly naked, greased up men. Nathan succeeds in convincing her not to act upon such a death wish.
21. Somehow, us being fully dressed merits our getting cat called by near naked Indian men.
22. Try to go to an internet café, get Nathan’s drivers licence inspected and noted, but cannot get internet.
23. Have Patron Saint of Chandigarh accost us on street and give us directions to a chemist and bestow bejewelled bangle upon Karen’s slender wrist, for good luck.
24. Watched Bugs Bunny in Hindi while eating dinner in ‘classy’ hotel.

Total number of times asked if we wanted a rickshaw: 8 billion.

Total number of photos taken: 9

Total number of bangle ceremonies performed: 1

29 October 2007:

1. Coffee at Café Coffee Day, ordered directly from the menu, that required two attempts and at least five consultations between entire fleet of staff before it could be procured by the manager. Tried ordering at least four food stuffs, none of which were available, and given questioning looks from waiter for not having any food.
2. Indian lunch buffet where everything, I mean everything, is explained, as if we had never seen food before. (“This is rice,” as he points at large tray of white rice).
3. “You’re a tourist”….Quote from Indo-Canadian woman on first trip back to India with family in 25 years, to enormous white blond guy taking pictures of palm trees at highway rest stop. “You’re from Vancouver!” …Quote from Indo-Canadian woman on first trip back to India with family in 25 years, to pale-faced woman fixing hair in bathroom at highway rest stop, working off tip given by American faux husband in parking lot.
4. Get ejected from bus at undisclosed location in Amritsar. Pack of rickshaw drivers that would make hyenas look like sloths descend on pair of white folks, while completely ignoring large groups of NRIs who clearly have large sums of cash and have not been to India in some years.
5. The drunken cycle rickshaw man who wouldn’t die. No matter where we tried to hide, he was always in front of us, blocking our escape across the street and insisting “I help you! I help you!”
6. Crossing the raging river of a street. Nathan manages to ford first, leaving Karen afraid and alone on the other side, trying to prevent loss of toes from passing motorcycles. Karen narrowly avoids pushing over family of five on motorcycle when they block her one chance of getting across.
7. Karen twists an ankle while trying to cross next street, falls into the road unable to stand up, and gets comfort from a gaggle of Sikh men offering water, tea, and brief respite from the remainder of Amritsar.
8. Giving up, taking a rickshaw almost to the wrong hotel – giving a rickshaw driver directions in a town we have never been in.
9. Getting to the hotel, shopping around, making the wrong choice because we’re cheap ass. Taking the downstairs room with no balcony because of assured hot water on ground floor.
10. Request filtered water from hotel man. He instructs “Boy” to fill the bottles. Boy returns shyly, silently and always looking at the floor, with filled water bottles.
11. Eat Thai food for dinner in strange “French” restaurant. Waiter whispers in Nathan’s ear to inquire whether he would like beer. Karen later asks out loud for a beer, and waiter moves in to keep the conversation surreptitious. Bill arrives, and the man is told that the bill was not printed because there was no VAT added.
12. Hormones + Events of the Day = Karen crying into Nathan’s shoulder for no apparent reason. Nathan is thankfully patient and gracious.

30 October 2007:

1. Slept late, didn’t leave hotel room until noon.
2. Uneventful afternoon, until we decided to visit India-Pakistan border closing ceremony, along with several thousand other spectators. Watch military officials with Chinese fans on their heads face off against black-clad, bad-ass-looking Pakistani military officials with Chinese fans on their heads in an elaborate big dick contest, while sweaty man in black t-shirt riles crowd into patriotic frenzy. School children and middle aged couples take turns rushing the border gate carrying Indian flags. Gender-separated bangra dancing in front of crowed yelling “HINDUSTAN!!!”
3. Ride home in back of overstuffed jeep, during which Nathan gets knee stroked by the only Indian man lankier than himself.
4. Request drinking glasses from “Boy”, who proceeds to pick up two dirty glasses from shelf, rinse under mystery water from bucket while rubbing inside with grubby fingers, and present them to Karen.
5. Visit Jimmy Jimmy Ice Cream Zone for dessert, where Nathan is presented with a butterscotch sundae with radioactive yellow wafer dragon carefully constructed and perched proudly atop scoops of ice cream.
6. Karen questions hotel staff about lack of hot water, in her best assertive tone, only to be assured that there is only hot water from five to six am. Assertive Karen, desperately in need of hot shower, barely refrains from turning into assaultive Karen, but receives assurance that “Boy” will come in 10 minutes, which led to the question, “What will Boy do in 10 minutes?” In ten minutes, there is hot water. No sign of Boy.

31 October 2007:

1. Waking at five to go to the Golden Temple.
2. Saying no to our first photograph.
3. Getting accosted at massacre museum by group of curious young men.
4. Visiting the ‘modern shopping center’
5. Eating the Punjabi Five pizza (5 toppings: corn, tomato, onion, green pepper, and French fries. Yes, French fries.) Served with ketchup.
6. Nathan accidentally tries to kill Karen with mislabelled unsatisfying chocolate bar.
7. Nathan performing own personal musical, complete with show tunes, during stupidly short rickshaw ride to gelateria.
8. Awkardly entering contact lens and eye clinic to purchase lenses, to be shuffled in ahead of screaming boy with severe eye wound despite pleas that “I think he was here first.”
9. Experiencing the awkward yet elaborate wine pouring ritual during splurge on nice dinner in fancy hotel.
10. Trying churi nan, which resembled a pita wrap filled with maraschino cherries and marshmallow fluff.
11. Being victim of a drive-by groping during rickshaw ride home.
12. Pay same amount for 3 nights in hotel as for one nice dinner in fancy hotel.

1 November 2007:

1. Rickshaw to bus terminal.
2. Discover that the bus ride to Dharamsala is 7 hours on the “ordinary” bus.
3. Rickshaw to train station to avoid 7 hour bus ride.
4. Purchasing 2 tickets for Rs38 for 3-hour train ride.
5. Watching helplessly as train arrives, is full before coming to complete stop, and leaves 2 whiteys and many Indians in its dust as it pulls away from the station.
6. Rickshaw back to bus terminal.
7. Watching man weighing approximately 2/3 of Karen’s weight effortlessly carry bag weighing approximately 2/3 of Karen’s weight on his head to the top of the bus. We pay him 50 cents for his efforts.
8. Seven hour trip on the “ordinary” bus, during which bus stops for 15 minutes while many men urinate together on the roadside.
9. Changing to local bus and careening up steep mountain roads after dark, to be dropped at random roadside alley next to screaming drunk man sitting in middle of street.

Ultimately, we left Punjab, but are still drunk on India.

A series of unfortunate events

For some reason, I’ve had the great misfortune to experience much more of the Indian male attitude toward western women recently. I’m not sure if it’s the places I’ve been going, if I’m just tired of pretending it’s not happening, if the extremely tall blond man I’ve been travelling with attracts more attention, or if I’ve lost some of my precious inner bitch, but there’s something up. I have been gawked at and leered at by groups of giggling school boys or obnoxious young men more in the last week than I have been in all my travels in India over the last year. I almost always wear very modest Indian clothing, and everything I wear seems to be looser than what most of the local women have on.

In Chandigarh, men and boys would stop and stare and jeer openly. I experimented with different reactions: glaring back, pretending not to notice, looking away, and nothing seemed to make a difference. Strange men were asking to have their picture taken and attempting the reach-around-boob-grab before shaking my hand (which apparently is considered a come-on here). Going anywhere in Punjab seemed to attract more unwanted attention than navigating the touristy streets of Udaipur, which involved walking a gauntlet of leering shopkeepers who seemed to remember my every move when I was alone and took no notice of me when I was with a man. The absolute winner in the “Western Women are Easy and Thus Not Deserving of Any Personal Space or Respect” contest was the drive-by groping I fell victim to in Amritsar. A friend and I were riding back to our guest house in a cycle rickshaw late one evening. I was wearing conservative Indian dress, including a shawl covering my head and entire upper body. A man drove by us on a motorcycle, and as he passed us he slowed down and reached out a hand to grope my side. I’m not talking about a quick touch of the fingers as he sped past. This was a full-on, slow-motion hand wrapped around my ribcage, sliding forward going for the chest grab. I yelled a few choice words as he sped away, but he was too quick for me to reach out and grab that wayward arm and yank him off his moving bike for his affront to my dignity.

It's too bad that has become the most memorable part of my trip to Amritsar, because there really is a lot of beauty there - not the least of which is the Golden Temple. An impressive place, not just for the beauty of the temple itself, but for what happens there. They have a massive kitchen, and feed anyone who comes through, regardless of background, caste, or religion. No questions asked. No money required. We had a great meal - all you can eat - of rice and chapati and dal. It's simple food, but it's good, clean, and healthy. After eating, we were allowed to wander into the kitchen where thousands of chapatis are rolled and huge vats of dal are brewing all day long. The amazing Indian hospitality is such a beautiful contrast to the hassles of street life here.

Thoughts on Foods

Just a few thoughts on some of my adventures in eating so far here in India. Photos to come once I get to a decent internet connection....

Sugar

People here put sugar in everything. I have consumed more sugar in the last month than I have in the last year. The little place where I took breakfast on my way to Hindi school in Mussoorie sells chocolate waffles. I'm not kidding. They are full of chocolate syrup, and they break up Cadbury's chocolate and put a little bit in every square on the waffle and serve it all with chocolate sauce. It's crazy. I have so far refrained from such a sugar buzz first thing in the morning, but the novelty is tempting. It’s reminiscent of the chocolate cakes they always served at the breakfast buffets in Brazil.

Jaggery

I have a new favourite comfort food. Jaggery. It’s solid molasses. You can carry it in your pocket and chomp off a bite whenever you want. What more can I say about this little bit of heaven on earth?

Milk

I was horrified the other day after a conversation with Rani, our Hindi tutor in Mussoorie. We were sitting having tea at Chaar Dukand (literally, Four Shops), about halfway up the hill between the town and the Hindi school. The milk man was walking down from the hills carrying his metal jugs of milk. He carries these on his back in a net made from crude jute rope that loops around the front of his forehead. Some of them also use mules. The milk man stopped outside the tea shop and refilled some of his jugs from a bucket of water that was sitting by the side of the road. Rani said that he stops there every day to adulterate his milk; he waters it down to about half its full thickness before he gets to town. Anil, the man who owns one of the tea shops, puts out the buckets of water (which, not surprisingly, is not purified) for the milk man to use. It’s completely out in the open and accepted. Even more shocking is that Anil buys the adulterated milk from this man! Rani said that all the milk sold in the town is adulterated. The only way to get pure milk is to buy the horrible UHT milk from Amul (the national dairy cooperative) which has had the life sucked out of it by the high-temperature sterilization process, or to know (and trust)somebody in the village who has a cow and get milk directly from them. I had noticed that the chai seemed a lot more watery, and the consistency was inconsistent. (How’s that for an oxymoron?) I mentioned this story to my friend Ramesh, who owns a farm near Dharamsala, and he said it’s the same situation here.

Just one more reason to keep things local and know where our food comes from!

Curd

Curd is the English word for dahi, which is the Hindi word for yoghurt. I am more convinced than ever that curd is the elixir of life. OK, maybe it’s not an elixir, but doesn’t that have a nicer ring to it than semi-gelatinous white goop? Anyway, I’m a big fan of curd. At home, I make my own and eat it every day. And I firmly believe that it should always be made out of the freshest local milk you can get. I’ve been convinced that the best way to avoid nasty GI issues when travelling is to eat lots of yoghurt and take acidophilus tablets (the friendly bacterial culture that makes milk into yoghurt) before leaving home, and to eat as much local yoghurt as you can wherever you end up. Normally, I eat vast amounts of curd in India. Definitely every day, and every meal if I can get it. The very few times I’ve had any stomach issues while travelling in India have been after a day or two without curd. Twice on this trip there have been short times before I’ve found a good curd source in a new town. The first time resulted in vomiting, and the second in the dreaded liquid ass.

Veg/Non-Veg

One thing that I love about the way people talk about food here is that "Veg" (the Hinglish world for vegetarian) is considered the norm. All menus are divided into Veg and Non-Veg sections. If you don't specify, people might ask to make sure you want "non-veg", because this is a little different. The use of the qualifier "non" makes the consumption of flesh somehow secondary to vegetarian diets, unlike in the west where vegetarian is still considered a little freakish in many places. I don't mean to sound like a righteous vegetarian here, especially considering my recent experimentation with omnivorous consumption patterns, but it's refreshing to see the primarily plant based diet taking the predominant, normalized place in the culture.

Mishti Dohi

This is an amazing Bengali sweet. I'm not much for India sweets, on account of my general distaste for sugar and the Indian tendency to put as much sugar as possible into all things, but I will go to great lengths to seek this one out. The name means "smoked curd," which admittedly sounds awful. It's sweetened yoghurt made in a little single-serving earthen pot, which is then somehow smoked. It's just a little bit sweet, very creamy, and has a very distinctive flavour - not quite yoghurt, not quite pudding, but oh so yummy. Sadly, it's hard to find outside Bengal, where I've never been. I was introduced to it by Shakti Maira, a Delhi artist and son of my friend Usha. Shakti is not a cruel man, so he also told me the best place in Delhi to find mishti dohi: Annapurna Sweets in the DDA Market near Gulmohar Park. The best one I've found yet though, was at the Britannia Restaurant in Mumbai. It's a Parsi place, but they must have bribed a few Bengalis to get this recipe.

The meaning of healthy

I've come across a few health food stores so far in my travels in India. There aren't many out there, and those that are there are, well, a little strange. In general, there seems to be either a focus on simple organic foods, or else a slightly disturbing illustration of how the nutrition science and food processing industries are taking control over ideas of what makes food good to eat. Health food stores appear to be the place to go for imported processed foods - wholesome products like McCain frozen french fries and Cadbury chocolate, not to mention Coke and even microwave popcorn. Health food seems to mean hygienic food, which seems to mean processed, controlled, uniform, and packaged. Even the organic packaged foods often contained “permitted colours” or “permitted preservatives.” I suppose they are healthier than the banned ones. It’s a start for sure, but a little distressing, especially when the traditional foods of the place are in general fresh, wholesome, and free of artificial ingredients.

I've also seen quite a few products that are tailored to specific diets, usually gluten-free or diabetic. In a way, it's great to see these kinds of products becoming available. However, it is a little distressing to see that “health food” means processed food. Traditional Indian food would fit well into a diabetic diet, as long as one stays away from too much gulab jaman and rasgullah. As for gluten free, it could be tough in northern states where wheat-based breads like chapatti, nan, or roti are a dietary staples, but rice is widely eaten at just about every meal and could easily replace the breads. Even better, older grains that have largely been forgotten (certain varieties of corn, millets, and amaranth) make interesting breads that are naturally gluten free. More disconcerting is that all the gluten-free or diabetic products I’ve seen so far have been altered versions of western foods — cookies, pancakes, crackers, sweets, condiments, and other snack foods.

The first place I found resembling a health food store is the Navdanya retail outlet in Delhi. It's attached to the Navdanya Slow Food Cafe in the Hauz Khas enclave of New Delhi (they also have one in the Dilli Haat market and several other Delhi neighbourhoods). The Navdanya outlets primarily sell organic dry goods grown by Navdanya farmers across India. There is a pretty good selection of spices, dals, rice, wheat flour, forgotten grains such as millets and amaranth, as well as pickles, jams, squashes (juice concentrates), and oils produced by women's groups in some of the villages where Navdanya works. They also sell tulsi teas from Organic India, some soaps and personal care products from the Khadi label, handmade paper, and natural incense from Auroville. It's a pretty basic set-up, and caters mostly to people who already know about organic and seek out these products. There isn't much of a store-front, and the outlets tend to be outside of major market areas. They rely on memberships and word of mouth. Most of the products are their own brand.

FabIndia sells its own line or organic foods and personal care products. They seem to be mostly basics like grains and dals, cereals, pickles and jams, and soaps and creams. Like the foods, many of the natural or herbal personal care products I’ve seen contain potentially dangerous preservatives like parabens. We find the same stuff in so-called natural products in North America as well.

In Chandigarh I came across a shop called Whole Foods. The name seems to come from a line of natural food products manufactured in Delhi by a company with the same name. Judging by the design of the labels, I don't think the name "Whole Foods" is a coincidence. The store was a really interesting mix of products. About the half the store was filled with organic cereals, grains, teas, and baked goods, all sourced from within the region or country. There were also ayurvedic and herbal skin care products. The rest of the store was stocked with sugar cereals with health claims on the label, western brands of skin care products, and things like ketchup, mayonnaise, and salad dressing (some imported, some local and dairy free).

In Amritsar, I wandered into a health food shop to be met with a display of imported chocolate bars, Lays chips, and Pepsi. Next to these was a shelf of gluten-free and diabetic products and imported colognes (apparently Calvin Klein now makes “healthy” perfumes…). I even found ayurvedic breast enhancing cream. Tempting… (it said “all-natural”).