HEALTHCARE IS MORE ABOUT HARDWARE THAN SOFTWARE TODAY!By Tara Narayan

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HEALTHCARE IS MORE ABOUT HARDWARE THAN SOFTWARE TODAY!By Tara Narayan

A FRIEND called to say if I’m going to the old or new GMC hospital Sodexo Yoo cafeterias, please get her a plate of ragi idli and sambar/chutney. Well! Dear heart, I had to tell him that I don’t go out there daily and only went out for a couple of mornings recently, more out of curiosity — to see if anything has changed for the better or for the worse. For the better I’d say with the exception of a few things. Since I have already covered the scene of counters packed with junk food and fyums, industrial beverages, etc – contrary to all the gorgeous educative posters put up on the walls of the new GMC hospital cafeteria at least …. I assure theirs is no onion uttapam or Thai green curry rice here, only ragi idli, boiled eggs omlet-pau but the handful of things get over pretty much before 10am and I’m only talking breakfast time, okay.
What should a genuinely preventive healthcare cafeteria have…according to me, here’s my short list: veggie redolent upma and poha, uttappa, besan ka cheela, sprouted chaat…omlets and boiled eggs are good, and for beverages fresh fruit juices and nimbu pani, buttermilk, cut fruit (I think cut fruit is up on the menu but few order it I think), most don’t read the menu, they only look at the counters packed with the savoury fryums and puff pastries. A lot of fryums because they have a longer shelf life and how can one fight that! Everything is about shelf life and this is mockery of any kind of preventive healthcare vis-à-vis what is you are sold to put into your mouth morning, noon and night. Mostly mod con convenience so called food. So, no, I do not go out at 8am daily in search of ragi idli at the GMC’s Yoo cafeteria, okay! My thing is enough number of folk must boycott the junk food fryums and that will make a difference for the better!
MY search for aamras-puri took me to Mira Café down down Tonca in Panaji and there it was, 3 puri with a medium katori of mango ras. But the puri were more or less burned outside and raw within, fried in to over hot oil by someone in a hurry. But they do a good sprouted chana sprout chaat and it’s a popular place, one of the few places which you may find neer dosa (delicate “water dosa” that is wafer soft pancakes served with veg kurma)– but if you really want to do good neer dosa-kurma breakfast try my favorite Siddhi’s down the Dona Paula road some morning early morning. I’ve become rather fond of Siddhi’s, nothing like an honest Udipi to warm up the cockles of the heart. At Sher-i-Punjab to uy dahiwada I said you have so many dessert from cut fruit to caraml custard to rice kheer, how about the season’s aamras? They smiled, talk to the boss, they said. Same story at Southern Basil and where else? Somewhere along the week I found out that at Gauri Kerkar’s Pastry Cottage there’s a board outside announcing mango falooda but no pure aamras and so it goes, but they have started doing probiotic antioxidant Kombucha which is refreshing)…hurrah, I wish confectionary outlets would become more health-conscious! Even a bowl of fresh curd drizzled with honey is a dessert, okay, but not priced at Rs250 please. Incidentally, one of these do cut mango in curd – naturally sweet or savoury with pinch of chaat masala.
Of course with the monsoon around the corner it will be time to say goodbye to dairy products, at least that’s the traditional wisdom. Dairy products do impact respiratory issues. Remember, dairy is not the natural food of humans … in this respect I always say coconut milk first for Goa please, just as it’s soy bean milk out in the orient. Oh yes, instead of aerated drinks make it kombucha (most expensive health beverage at Rs250 per small bottle)!

Preventive healthcare hospital cafeteria must offer all or some of this and more! But you won’t find them for love or for money!

COST of living! Everyone is doing cost of living nowadays and I assure you nobody wants to spend the rest of their life feasting on Melody toffees and my advice to Italian premier Georgia is not eat them either even if India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is fond of them, life may be a piece of toffee for him, but for the vast majority of Indians it is not. Life is not a sickening toffee. In fact, increasingly I’m which sane prime minister will ban refined sugar out of the market. It is one top selling industrial ingredient which is contributing to the world’s ill-health of mind and body, heart and soul! Better to discover jaggery (we have all kinds of fruit and veggie jaggeries including sugar and beets), use honey, use maple syrup, use any other natural sweetener.
Sugar is the first refined killer carbohydrate of the industrialized world and after that came a slew of other industrial ingredients and foods…cut them off your list of food for life otherwise it qualifies as a list of food for more or less speedy Gonsalvez death.
Instead of presenting Georgia Meloni with Parle toffee PM should have presented her with a few boxes of Guju “sukhdi” — made of wholesome wholewheat flour, unsulfured jaggery, pure desi cow’s ghee, and finally redolent of memories of vital ginger or seductive cardamom!
ANYWAY, to move on some more, I’m thinking how I’ve been buying seemingly fresh fruit these days and the imported fruit is the worst and most expensive. Indian grapes are out of the market and mangoes are here but for a change I bought some plums and guava – imported. I love guavas and bought these imported version which looked good but tasted ghastly. Likewise with the plums. Imported fruit is oftentimes a waste of time and money buying. Give me Indian peaches, plums, cherries, apples, khumani…from our very own mountain states of Kashmir, Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarkhand…and the bananas of Kerala or Karnataka! Our fruit still has a taste of ambrosial life in them while fruit mostly tastes like …er…a premonition of impending death. Don’t get carried away and waste your hard-earned money, unless it is not hard-earned!
IN Goa we are so lucky with our bounty of seasonal fruit: even if bananas up to Rs100 dozen now and mangoes are Rs150 upwards, pineapples are Rs100 each and no, vendors don’t know how to cut them finely for you for love or for money (for that you have to go to the super friendly wet markets of Mumbai, say Vile Parle (East) or Grant Road wet markets. (Sigh) I miss Mumbai which was Bombay in poor little rich Goa. Say after 25 years of living in Goa there’s still a Bombay girl in me and more than that of I want to die in a hurry I would like to go to my old hometown of Penang (Malaysia)….where my real friends still are.