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| Prasad and Jiji's on campus home |
On the 26th, we departed from Chennai and headed west. We got picked up after breakfast in a van and drove 2.5 hours to Vellore. The roads were pretty nice and decently empty. We passed a lot of factories including Hyundai, Saint Gobain, Nokia and even Dell. Most factory workers live closer to Chennai and get driven to/from the factory by factory-owned busses.
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| Kiran and Tarun |
In Vellore, we stayed at Sonny Chayan’s son, Prasad’s house. He is married to Jiji and they have two sons Tarun (7 years) and Avinash (14 years). They are both doctors and they live and work at the Christian Medical College Hospital in Vellore (rough commute!). Prasad in general medicine and geriatrics and Jiji is an obstetrician. Jiji and Prasad work Monday to Saturday and then they get vacation 45 days a year. They took off a few days to take care of us and we greatly appreciate it!! They are great hosts and took us to see all the sites in the area, bought us skin lotion to help the kids with their mosquito bites, bought Selina some scissors, and prepared and bought a LOT of great food and desserts. It seemed like Jiji was determined to make us fat and she definitely succeeded!!
Christian Medical College
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| CMC Vellore |
The hospital was founded by an American, Ida Scudder, in 1902 because she saw first-hand the need for medical attention for women that men-doctors couldn’t attend to (i.e. Hindu, Brahmin and Muslim families would not allow a man doctor to help during childbirth). Over the years, the hospital has become a world-renowned teaching hospital with 2600 beds.
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| Nurses wear white saris |
Jiji showed Sofie around inside the women’s building (NICU level 1-3), labor rooms (level 1-2), pediatrics and maternity (anti and post). In general, there were lots of people outside the hospital and inside on the entrances. People were sitting down on the floor eating right under the sign saying “No Eating”. The labor room is for about 6-20 patients, so men are not allowed and have to wait with their families in waiting rooms. Healthy babies stay with their mothers in the maternity ward. For mothers of the neonatal babies there was a room that could sleep about 30 mothers and they can buy food in a food court, as the hospital does not provide food.
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| NICU Level 3 |
At this hospital care is given to everyone and the poor people don’t pay and rich people do pay. (It could be different at other hospitals in India). Therefore decisions are made based upon resource/outcome economics. For example, the hospital can save babies born on or after week 27 and greater than 1 kg, as the chances of survival are great. However, if the baby needs expensive, intensive care, then babies from young mothers won’t get saved, as it is cheaper for everyone if they just have another baby. Babies with heart problems will not be saved unless you have the money and then they have to be transferred to Bangalore.
For the nurses reading this… They don’t do ECMO. They do have ventilators, incubators and ultrasound. The nurses are mixing the electrolytes themselves. There is no central monitoring, as all Level 3 babies are in the same room…
Commercialized Hinduism at the Golden Temple in Vellore
It is not often that one gets to witness the birth of new branches of religion. In May of 1992, the goddess, Sri Narayani was inaugurated into the Hindu religion, as the embodiment of three other Hindu gods (Sri Durga, Sri Lakshmi, Sri Saraswati) and was even brought to earth incarnated as a 16-year old boy, Sri Sakthi Amma. This ‘new’ goddess is to represent the love and compassion of a mother.
Commentary: Yes, a goddess for a mother in the body of a boy. This is truly special.
So, somehow this 16-year old boy started this following in 1992 and has had extreme success in gathering a crowd.
His vision is to restore order and balance in the society and create peace and joy and one of his messages is that peace can be attained through prayers (so he prays for 6 hours every day). Along with the birth of a new goddess came a charity organization that created so many large scale humanitarian projects that they gathered enough money to build a huge temple plated with pure gold. Now, people come to the golden temple to perform prayers in front of the (new) goddess Narayani that is placed in the middle of the golden temple. It is surrounded by a 6-star, approx. 1.5 km covered pathway where you read Sri Sakthi Amma’s blessings on the way.
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| 6-point star walkway around temple |
Commentary: Yes, at the age of 16, he called himself a goddess, and amassed enough wealth to create a temple out of gold. This over-achiever is the true antipathy of Bart Simpson…
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| Sri Puram - The Golden Temple |
So, now this temple is a mass attraction for Hindus, and to enter the temple you cannot wear shoes, you cannot bring mobile phones or cameras, and adults have to wear clothes that cover their ankles. But you definitely should bring your wallet… It is built to pump volumes of people through the temple and politely extracts money from them at every point in the star (entry fees, parking fees, donation collections, food purchases, souvenirs, incense, clothing, etc…).
The Vellore Swimming Pool Club
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| a truly awesome pool |
As Prasad and Jiji are lifetime members of the Vellore Swimming Pool Club, we went swimming on both of our days in Vellore. The pool had beautiful water and really nice green, tropical surroundings and the kids loved to be in a pool playing around.
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| Vellore Fort |
The Vellore Fort
Prasad also took us to the Fort in Vellore that was built in the 1500s. Inside there is a temple, a church, and a mosque. Commentary: that's what we call protecting the freedom of religion.
It also contained government buildings, recreational facilities, and a museum that had statues of Hindu gods dating back to the 6th century…
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| inside the temple |
So, somehow this 16-year old boy started this following in 1992 and has had extreme success in gathering a crowd. His vision is to restore order and balance in the society and create peace and joy and one of his messages is that peace can be attained through prayers (so he prays for 6 hours every day). Along with the birth of a new goddess came a charity organization that created so many large scale humanitarian projects that they gathered enough money to build a huge temple plated with pure gold. Now, people come to the golden temple to perform prayers in front of the (new) goddess Narayani that is placed in the middle of the golden temple. It is surrounded by a 6-star, approx. 1.5 km covered pathway where you read Sri Sakthi Amma’s blessings on the way.
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