As result of Kabir’s illness last month, we fell short of teachers in senior school, but saw it as a window of opportunity to travel. So for three days, our older students visited schools and health centres in KG Halli, on Nagavara road in north Bangalore. In my role as a doctor, I have been working in the urban health project of the Institute of Public Health with this community of 42,000 people since 2008.It would be described as a low income melting pot of humanity with three languages and three religions represented in 0.7 square kilometres of city space.   It was interesting to see the context afresh through the eyes of these twelve young teenagers. They had the opportunity to visit, with the field staff, Ms. Nagaratna and Ms. Leelavati  three schools, where they interacted with students of classes five, six and seven. Some visited homes of people in these crowded lanes along with Dr. Mrinalini and all got a detailed tour of the Sarvagnya dialysis centre with...

On Tuesday morning we were brought to KG-Halli to visit IPH (Institute Of Public Health) which was where Roopa Aunty had worked earlier. We soon found out that the area was broken up into many wards and we would be spending our time in ward 30. The van dropped us off near the main IPH clinic centre and we were divided into three groups. Kailas, Mansi and I were to go on home visits within ward 30. The aim of the house visits was to find out what the response was to the IPH diary. This diary was given to a sample of people some months ago; all of them were suffering from diabetes. We would be visiting them and finding out what the response was towards the diary after all these months. The personal diaries were given as an alternative for the doctor’s prescriptions that are received by the patient. So, to keep tabs of doses of what medicine to take when, this diary is a much more convenient way of having your medical records in one place rather than on loose flying sheets of pape...

A couple of hours away is a place bustling with sounds. Cramped, polluted and smelly, what is this place we have found? People from all cultures, their apparel so unique to their ways, This place we have come to know, is worth a visit I must say! The dialysis center, a building bathed in peach, Located central to the ward making it convenient to reach. The entire ground floor is dedicated to the poor and their kidneys For the cost for them is nil, treatment is without a fee. Lying on the beds, the patients are bored and tire quite fast. I can only imagine how they must feel when their four hours have gone past. Although the patients suffer from boredom and pain thrice a week, They smile and see the positive, I can hear it when they speak. The spirit and attitude with which the dialysis patients live their life, It’s truly an amazing thing, especially with all the strife!  On the first floor amongst the crowd there are a few draped in white. Docto...

The dialysis ward was brightly lit, well ventilated, and was neither too cold nor to hot. It was not a very large room, and therefore one could see all of the ten beds in the ward; next to each one of which sat the large squat machines in whose innards the process of dialysis took place, clicking and beeping. The room was empty, as the clock had only just struck eleven, and the first patients would only arrive at a quarter past that hour.    To the casual onlooker, these environs would not have seemed grim or foreboding, and yet my stomach lurched and a sense of dread welled up in my stomach as I imagined the dialysis machines at work.    We whispered to each other in muted tones, discussing the functions of various aspects of the dialysis machines, and the intricacies of the procedure itself with Jomon Kuriakose, one of the managers of the institution. As we talked, we moved along the rows of beds, and then retraced our steps to end up in our original positi...