WHERE DOES PREVENTIVE HEALTHCARE BEGINS?

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Health begins with preventive healthcare but it can’t be found anywhere today within easy access for common people or aam aadmi or seniors for that matter!

EVER since I reviewed anew all the junk food lined up in the counters of the GMC hospital new and old cafeterias I’ve been thinking … nobody wants humans to be healthy! All the big daddies and mummies want them to be perennially sick, sicker, dead – it’s mega business whereby the few may live great lives while the many keep sacrificing themselves at their various altars of commerce. Something like that.
All of this week I’ve been dreaming wistfully about a van or a bicycle or scooter arriving at my doorstep with food cooked with intelligent, educated love! It would be a dream and boon for many and especially women who are no longer able to manage their kitchens like they once did in their younger years…what would this kind of delivery of nutritious snacks and meals entail? I’m not talking of restaurants upper crust and not so upper crust who do home deliveries on much promoted menus online, via Zomato and other delivery services.
I’m thinking of small fresh menus, basic: say the flatbreads of India, a whole gamut of them…nachne, jowar, bajra roti, makai, etc, packed with nutrients and much-needed fiber which does a world of good for seniors rusticated at home. Say a local veggie sabzi, or a beans or peas recipe, say snacks like poha, upma, uttappam or amboli, even red rice pez with chemnim mango! Say sprout portions and fruit…say jowar idli and yummiliciouos sambar, ukde tandul or soft red rice…a mix of garghutee Goan and Maharashtrian food worth eating, basically what will give you daily food values. Not a whole range or feast but say half-a-dozen items worth eating for better health and fitness!
More and more we learn that we put in our mouth defines health and fitness for years to come right into our senior years. We have so many self-help women’s groups which the government is constantly funding. But no group of entrepreneurs on the lines of say Bombay’s Kutumb Sakhi entrepreneurs, women willing to invest in desirable snacks and food delivered at home or via mobile vans parking themselves at vantage points around city areas, easily accessible.
I LIVED and grew up some for 30 years in Bombay which later became Mumbai from 1970 to 2001, first in working women’s hostels downtown Bombay and later in my parents’ home in Juhu in what became Mumbai. For years on end it was commuting by ordinary buses, special direct A/c buses when they came along, by suburban Central and Western Railways…catching the locals or fasts from Chembur to VT, later on Vile Parle (East) to Churchgate.

I knew where to get off to go where to find the most decent and best fare to eat (Panshikar’s at Dadar for first class fasting food like hot peanut-potato missal, “sabudana kichadi” and a “singdana ladoo”…and so much more. So many of us lived courtesy the down-to-earth preparations of the Kutumb Sakhi vans and outlets which retailed good food (sometime erring on the side of deep frying but one had limited choices).
Today’s overwhelming carcinogenic industrial junk foods did not exist in my vocabulary! The Udipi eateries of Sion-Matunga and downtown Flora Fountain were mainstays for working folk like me….they were great for perfect hot fresh idli, dosa, meduvada, upma, poha and some more. Ramashraya’s at Matunga had badam halva for a treat. Many were the times when I parceled to take back for the family back home in Juhu (then there was a family) – toing and froing from office and home and vice versa meant stopovers at stations to shop for this, that and the other.
I loved the al fresco market off the Vile Parle (East) railway station, walking down the lanes to find a myriad treats – there was Radha Krishna’s for the most excellent south Indian food. Near Crawford market there were places and Bhuleshwar – several perfectly agreeable places to catch a bite or a drink…kesar falooda at Royal’s; no, not Coco-Cola or Red Bull and today’s plethora of vile energy drinks.
There was the junka-bhakar place behind The Times of India and the Bombay Press Club outside where there was a Kutumb Sakhi outlet retailing at aam aadmi prices such desirable things as chappaties, millet bhakri, dry and wet sabzi, spouted offerings, thalipeeth…all snacks honestly made and absolute value for money be it puran poli, poha, sabudana kichadi or hot puri-bhaji or best of all junka-bhakar which I loved with its crush of onion-tomato thecha and tangy chutneys.
I WISH Dr Pradip Sarmokadam of the Goa State Biodiversity Board could swing a service similar to what the Kutumb Sakhi women do in Mumbai, courtesy the Govan women in Panjim, in Goa! Goa is so abundantly rich in fresh foods and snacks…I would buy it. How I wish for a Kutumb Sakhi-style food availability/delivery service in Panjim. In Mumbai I recall the movement was initiated sometime in the mid-70s by women like Dr Chandrakala Hate (SNDT professer of sociology and Vandana Navalkar…the Kutumb Sakhi outlets and vans became so popular at Nariman Point and Azad Maidan and at VT areas, lunchtime officegoers would flock to them. Do they still exist in Mumbai?
This is one way of empowering women and these women did a superb job of servicing the public of working folk…providing food and snacks and mini meals at both nutritious and pocket friendly rates, absolutely gharguttee with love. Of course there were the puran poli of various avatar, the tel poli I never liked but the puran poli were delicious with some fresh chutney. One think I always loved were the “singdana ladoo” nutty and jaggery sweetened. Wonderful chappatties, yes, Rs1 each and I could dry roast a dozen of them into khakra in my room at the hostel, snack on them with Guju mango pickle “chundo” an aunt would provide me.

Of course we had birthday parties in our rooms at the hostel after getting the warden’s permission, but only women please. All male friends had to be entertained only in the hostel’s cafeteria be it breakfast, lunch, tea time or dinner! All paid for of course. As a matter of fact both famous editors of Mumbai Vinod Mehta and Behram Contractor came to our Women’s Graduates Union Hostel for Working Women to dine on a couple of times! I remember hilarious evening and no liquor permitted of course and they had to be introduced to warden Miss Francis.
Honestly, today in Goa I dream of such a hostel-styled lifestyle for so many of senior friends! It’s a perfect system for seniors who have no where to go at life’s end years, there’s no fraternity for happy longevity as in a hostel. Well, I’ve said my bit here for whatever good it does or not at all. If you’re asking me the hundreds of Goa’s self-help women’s groups can do much better in the larger interests of preventive health all around!