Chennai calling

On the day that India soft landed near the South Pole of the moon, I was in Chennai. In the hustle and bustle of a historic town which reminds me so much of Abossey Okai some times, I am struck by the fact of how unaccidental the Indian achievement is. On Chennai streets, the motorbikes are competing with the tricycles, competing with the small cars, competing with the big buses. The steering wheel is on the other side of the car, the cars are on the other side of the street, and the bikes are all over, zipping in between the cars. I am disoriented… this is a dizzying city.

As for the pedestrians they just show that they were all there before the vehicles… and all this on streets which are one car wide in some places. Driving is a contact sport here. It’s just intriguing to watch from the comfortable back seat of the spacious? car gifted by Apollo Hospitals, the medical group that ‘runs’ this city’s healthcare. About 50 years ago Dr Reddy returned from training in Canada and decided to start up this revolution in healthcare in this very city. In this hood, multiple hospital buildings have sprung one after the other, joined by a single vision: to be at the cutting edge of healthcare excellence, unhindered by nothing but the drive to heal.

Now they host the most modern cancer treatment in the whole of South Asia. They are the destination for health care tourism from all over the world. One morning I stood in the operating room of a neurosurgeon who has been operating for 42 years. The client was doctor who had suddenly grown stiff in one leg, the culprit: a tumour in her back. As he slowly tugged the tumor with microscopic movements I stood in silent respect. After the case, he was able to tell the Doctor’s mother that the whole tumor was out. The elderly lady broke down in relief. And Apollo, had platformed a process of healing. Dr Reddy’s vision fulfilled, right before me. On the corridors of the operating rooms, an Indian-built operating robot sat by standard equipment that sits in my hospital. 50 years ago when the dream started, India was 15 years behind modern medicine, now they are at par. Sometimes they have even leapfrogged, because they have achieved future trends faster, and much cheaper. And on the day that they landed on the moon with the smallest budget of all the space agencies, I am deeply reminded of the will to succeed that spills over from the industries crowding Chennai’s streets, into the ORs and corridors of the Apollo Cancer Centre.

As we drove back to the hotel, school had closed and there were dozens of yellow buses whizzing home, competing for? the same narrow streets. I had missed them in the morning, I was out too early. They were all government owned buses, with kids in uniforms animatedly bustling in the airconditioned, mechanized? sancta of functional education.

It’s not by accident that India has landed on the moon. Piercing the Chennai skyline are high rise hospitals, technology malls, engineering training institutions, diary factories… there is even a national leather institute, so I know the Bata store just down the road from the huge walled complex is not going to run out of shoes anytime soon. In Chennai I am reminded that the people who make do with what they have, to the best of their ability, will always thrive.

The numbers say that in 50 years every fourth human being will be Indian. I wonder if the number will not be higher for every four educated humans. In 50 years most of the world’s youth will be in Africa, but will they be educated? Would they be equipped to crank up the algorithms that take humans to the moon?

There are some things that time does not need to tell.