2005-05-05 - 11:23 a.m.
notes from mudurai, Tamil Nadu- India
spent last night and this morning delivering hot, awesome south indian food to the mentally ill and schizophrenic population on the streets of Mudurai. hot idle, sambar, pongal and water.
i am here in Pavi's Arvind Eye Hospital office. She put me in the care of one young Krishnan, a hotel worker/cook who was working in Bangalore at a fancy hotel learning cooking and hotel stuff three years ago when his dad got sick. He came back to mudurai, started cooking for his dad and noticed one poor man without any food. He started to buy that man food too. Then he saw a mentally ill man eating feces. He started feeding him too.
When I asked him what made him feed this man He just remarked, "a man be eating shit in my city, this can't happen" So he quit his job and started three years ago, cooking and delivering 5 star quality food full time to the schizophrenic and super aged population in Mudurai. now 120 some odd people. He wakes at 4 am and stops at 11 pm after he delivers his last dinner meal. upbeat and rowdy, full of energy he's only 23.
it was amazing see all the destitute mentally deranged folks sleeping under sheets and rags with all kinds of flies circling. The van would just stop and I realized my eyes hadn't even noticed the human life slumped on the sidewalk. full, dirty dreads, goofy smiles, so similar to the folks who wandered the psych wards. Krishnan and the helpers have made up names for these mostly men and few women on the streets and they scream out the window some tamilian names as the van comes to a halt.
And they respond, some with arrogance, some mumbling, some lauging to themselves, scratching their dreads up out of their lump of dirty clump of rags to get the food. They wait in the same area at meal time and do not really acknowledge anything but the food for the most part.
one women with an amputated foot and a bead sore. sitting in the pouring rain, bugs swarming her foot. The government hospital is across the street. They won't take her. I wanted to wrap her foot but she screamed. She is going to get sepsis.
There are so many things that I came away with but what is surely striking and applicable to medical care is the quality of the food. He insists on the absolute highest quality ingredients for food in order to be healthy and delicious. With all the medical talk on cost effectiveness for any poor population and dealing with some money vs care issues for the Tibetan population it makes sense to give the poorest people the absolute best medical care. They need it the most.
so many other stories from south india but i am stalling on this assessment i need to write to try to get some medical doctor over to the tibetan hospital i have been working at.
sri
