NALLADHUKU KAALAM ILLAI

 

 Recently I watched a movie called 'Jerry Maguire', though the movie was average one I liked Tom's character very much. People being honest and acting according to their heart always are taken for granted and end up in the receiving end. His characterization was very nice and something where people can relate to.  I am pretty sure many of us must have had bitter experience in the past for being truthful/honest and often we wonder ‘Nalladhu kaalam illai’. Everything must be glossy and glamorous to get one’s attention and a celebrity draws so much attention from public for a six hours makeup whereas frontline healthcare warriors like Doctors, Nurses, Sanitary workers who are exposed to COVID patients and dress up with PPE kits for eight straight hours hardly get any notice. Recently I came across a gentleman whom I patronize for the past three decades had to close one of his Tiffin center due to poor response from public.

   Let me give you a rough idea as far as group of audience whom I would like to categorize into five groups – Group A, B, C, D and E as far as eating habits. If you take Dosa for example you may have a star hotel sell it for 500 (Group A), Family restaurant sell it for 250 (Group B), Bhavans sell it for 120 (Group C), Tiffin centers sell it for 50 (Group D) and road side shops sell it for 30 (Group E). A hard working couple in my area runs grocery store on top of that also a tiffin center. They serve breakfast and lunch and since food is kind of homemade they had steady flow of customers. Things were going good for the couple but with the growing number of roadside shops they were not able to compete with the price. With Covid they began to lose money too and finally had to close the shop recently.  This is unfortunate to see a well deserving and hard working couple close the shop. Road side shops have absolutely no overhead expense like rent, tax, maintenance, EB bills etc., and they are able to translate this to lower price which draws people towards them. Even road side owners are hard working and put up lots of time and effort to run the shop in a profitable manner.

 But if you look into both the cases I feel couple who closed the shop are victims of the system.  Road side owners bribe authorities/officials in order to run the shop at a prominent junction or a congested road, they also offer free food to these authorities to be in good books, create more congestion by having people stand around their shop, do not pay rent and in no way help in revenue generation for the corporation, makes the place messy by having food all round their place and the worst thing I personally hate is they draw so much of stray dogs in and around their shop. You give me a challenge that of making me watch one hour of Prathap Bothen’s speech I can but facing these stray dogs in the streets makes me realize I can run as fast as P.T Usha. Some people feel odd to stand in a road side shop hence choose tiffin centers who are grounded and people with humble background.  Facing unfair competition from road side shops they have no other choice other than to close their business.

So if you look at the loop – Why do people bribe? Because authorities are paid low salary; why are authorities paid low salary? Because respective departments do not allocate funds; why do departments run short of funds? Because Government does not allocate appropriately; why do government not allocate funds? Because they do not get anticipated taxes from public? Why do people not pay taxes properly? Because people are salaried with blue color jobs and do not fall under tax bracket? Why do people not earn enough to pay taxes? Because they do not have proper education; why do people not educate themselves? Because Education is becoming a costly affair and am afraid it may fall under luxury category in near future. If education is made affordable then I would call that as fixing the system. But that may never happen because most of the educational institutions are owned by Politicians. 

Rather than focusing on fixing the problem we need to fix the system. Road side shops should be encouraged to form SHG (Self help groups) and start to work collectively to improve their living conditions. But all these can be nice to read and good to watch on movies and if these have to be implemented then we need to inject young blood full of energy something similar to Shri.Jagan Mohan Reddy – Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh. Unless we see system gets fixed it is always going to be dindigul towel on top of your head for honest folks with the slogan ‘Nalladhuku Kaalam Illai”

 

 

 

 

Idli Upma

 Life is joyful when things are kept simple and that is exactly what this blog is all about. There are numerous breakfast dishes out there with so much glitz and glamour but here we are with a simple dish called ‘Idly Upma’ which can take you by storm.  It requires very little time for preparation and the dish has been patented by ‘Tamilnadu Thaikulam’ and endorsed by ‘Tamilzhan’.  There is a English proverb which says ‘When the going gets tough then tough gets going’ and I would like to rephrase the proverb as ‘When there are leftover Idlis we make Idly upma and just to have more Idly upma we make more Idlis”.  With the advent of Microwave it has become more convenient to sprinkle water over Idly and keep it in the oven for 10 seconds on either sides which slowly resulted ‘RIP’ for Idly Upma. But off late the trend now is all the old stuff is getting new lease of life. 

    In 1980’s and 1990’s Trichy had an advantage of having a Passport office other than the one in Chennai. So people down south rather than going all the way to Chennai come to Trichy to take care of their passport needs. So it was common to have relatives visit Trichy and the formula for food used to be “One oil item + one sweet + one dish with side” (I even remember the menu like Masala cheeyam/Vada for oil item, Kavun arisi / Kummayam for sweet item, Idly/Dosa/Idiyappam for the main dish served along with a side dish).  This was a great menu and time and tested one too which neither gave boredom nor overwhelming. It gave ample of time for people to meet and greet and exchange conversation.  Slowly definition of hospitality changed and concept of ‘Buffet’ was introduced. Once people believed ‘Ludo’ is better than ‘Thayam’ then it is difficult to change people’s perspective of seeing things. Even conservative community like mine is trapped and people started making an army of dishes. Though the intention is good but it is just overwhelming to see the number of dishes prepared by the host.

    Now let us go over Idly upma preparation which is quite simple. Make sure you pester your wife to make more idlis by that way there are leftover idlis from yesterday.  Sauté onion, Chana dal, urad dal and then add green chillies. Number of green chillies you may want to use is directly proportional to the number of co sisters your wife possess (remember green chillies add so much spice to the food item).  Add plenty of curry leaves (once again number of curry leaves may be directly proportional to the number of sister in laws your wife possess) and remember curry leaves adds so much flavor to the dish. Now cut the idlis into small chunks and mix it along with the onions and green chillies.  Making Idly takes few minutes – time it takes for Mother in law to appreciate their daughter whereas Idly upma just requires two minutes to cook – the time it takes for any Mother in law to appreciate Daughter in law for any of their work.  Now Idly upma is ready and it absolutely does not require any side dish.

   If you are running short of resources and you have to make best use of your current resources then Idly upma is a standing testimony. On top of not requiring any side dish you can either have it warm or even take it later. By this time if you are reminded of Devayani preparing Idly upma for her dad in Suryavamsam then we strike a same wavelength . 

 

Start the music  “Rosa poo nalla rosa poo” .....

 

 

 

COVID Vaccine

 Tamilnadu is waiting for Sundays, cricket fans are waiting for IPL and in particular Dhoni, US is waiting for Biden to take over, Japan is waiting for Olympics to start and if at all the whole world is waiting for something then it has to be COVID Vaccine. Covid-19 is something which has left no stone unturned irrespective of one’s social status, religion, country,  gender,  age etc., Initially it used to be a flash news that someone has been infected with Corona virus, then slowly it used to be friend’s friend, then friend ..Now pretty much every street has few cases in India and home quarantine has been so common which makes me feel many are eligible to participate in Big boss show. We had Nipah virus which was constrained to Kerala and it was categorized as ‘Epidemic’ making things lot easier though the state had to bravely fight and come out of it. COVID-19 is categorized as Pandemic which makes things very challenging since we are talking about diverse population spread across the globe.

 Let us look into different phases involved before a vaccine is introduced in the market. To start with preclinical research works happen pulling many parties together funded by many different groups together. Objective is to come up with a treatment that is safe and effective. It involves the following phases:

 Phase 0: Since this is the first phase a very small group of people (around 10 - 15 people) are considered. The aim is to see how a drug is processed and how it affects the body. 

 Phase 1: Less than 100 people are considered for this phase and the primary objective is to see the best dose of the new drug with the fewest side effects. Doctors start by giving very low doses to few patients and monitor them for side effects. This phase checks whether the body produces antibodies and at the end of this phase they must have figured out what is the optimal vaccine dosage. 

 Phase 2: This phase is carried out with hundreds of patients and some of the audience may be people belonging to a type of cancer. New combinations of drugs are tested. Apart from safety and effectiveness, dosage and immunization schedules are also taken care of this phase.  

 Phase 3: This phase is carried out with few thousands of patients and patients are categorized into different treatment groups. Computer program randomly picks individuals to form a treatment group and people normally have no clue which group they belong to. Every patient is studied carefully, and overall phase is 'Double blinded" which means neither clinical investigator nor the participant knows what sort of therapy is employed. This phase provides information to assess the benefits and risks of the new therapy before seeking approval from authorities. 

 Phase 4:  This phase happens post approval and helps to uncover any problem that would happen only when a large set of audience uses the drug. Doctors, Health practitioners learn more about how the drug works when used with other treatments. 

 

Status of current vaccines: Right now we have as many as nine vaccines in Phase 3, Fourteen in phase 2 and twenty four vaccines in phase 1 and hundreds of vaccines in preclinical stage. There are two vaccines in phase 3 which are showing promise.

As of now German company BioNTech, Pfizer based out of US and Chinese firm Fosun PhArma are jointly coming up with a vaccine and showing promising progress so far and they are raining with Funding measures from Trump administration.
Secondly Swedish company AstraZeneca and University of Oxford is coming up with a vaccine which looks promising as of now. US once again supported the effort by awarding a huge sum. AstraZeneca even went a step ahead and announced they may be able to deliver emergency vaccines by October based on their studies.

Let us look into the challenges in coming up with a vaccine:

 Side effects: This would be the topmost priority for researchers in making sure there are no side effects associated with the vaccine. Side effects may develop upon time so there is no other go other than to monitor closely how the vaccine is working. Being a pandemic, we may have a person having Fish & Chips in U.K; Triple whopper cheese sandwich in US and rice, rasam and potato fry in Tamil Nadu. Right from eating habits, lifestyle, and immune system everything matters in how side effects arise.  

Number of doses: If you look into other vaccine schedules like Hepatitis B, Typhoid, MMR, Varicella there are many doses one had to take and there is a pattern one has to follow before your body is fully resistant to such viruses. When it comes to Covid-19, by the time entire world came to know it was already March 2020.  So with the ongoing research if they establish a pattern that one has to take so many number of doses spread across a time interval then obviously it may take that much time before they say drug is effective.

 Strength of Dose:  We have several factors like age, gender, and people with co morbidity before determining strength of the dose. Once again research has to come up with solutions for this and can be a challenging task considering the virus is a pandemic.  

 Overall, I feel vaccine will take quite some time to come into the market. Since Covid-19 has pretty much got the entire world’s attention there is no problem as far as funding, manpower, manufacturing, logistics, warehousing, distribution etc., but the key is ‘Time’ required to come to a consensus; If a research proves that we need “3 doses of vaccine span across 12 months with equal intervals between each dosage” which means research took 1 year. Virus made its presence felt throughout the globe only by March 2020 and even if we assume research started in March then we are talking at least 12 months from that time with so many if’s and but’s to be considered in the equation. Assuming a vaccine will come any sooner is like trying to understand ‘Inception’ movie without reading Wikipedia – simply not possible.

 P.S: I will be super duper happy to get my opinion wrong as far as Vaccine’s timeline but if a vaccine comes now I will definitely doubt on its efficacy.