The other day, I was chatting with a friend who lives in the US. She was crowing about having gone for her Covid vaccination. Pfizer, she informed me. She went a step further (many steps further) and told me it’s officially called the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine. And how clinical trials proved that the vaccine is 95 percent effective at preventing laboratory-confirmed Covid-19. And what was the demographic breakup of the people included in the clinical trials. And how many of them were of Asian origin…
I cut her off at this point. The smugness was getting too much for me. These foreigners (which of course includes NRIs whose only connection now to India is a heightened enthusiasm for our politics) seem to think the West is the last word in scientific research. As if we, from the land of Charak, Sushruta and Jivak, know nothing about the scientific temper. As if we are sitting back and waiting for the West to save us from the coronavirus.
I quickly took over the conversation and launched into a detailed explanation of the massive strides in Covid research here in India. None other than the Central Government, in conjunction with the All India Institute of Medical Sciences at Rishikesh, is going to do research on whether chanting the Gayatri Mantra can treat Covid. AIIMS, and with Central funding: isn’t that enough to show how serious the government is about controlling this pandemic?
In 2019, the then Chief Minister of Uttarakhand, Trivendra Singh Rawat, had shown an impressive prescience (literally pre-science) when he had announced that cows can exhale oxygen. Despite all the scoffing it attracted then, this has obviously been proven true. Why else would Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath announce the formation of 700 help desks in the state, just to protect cows from Covid? While Pfizer, ConSino, Moderna, etc are trying to churn out vaccines, we in India are also looking at alternative treatments: gaushalas as the hospitals of the future, cows as the oxygen concentrators. Soon, Gau Mata forbid, you get Covid, it won’t matter if there are no hospital beds available. The nearest gaushala will be far better.
In the meantime, you can always try one of the many quick-fix medical hacks doing the rounds on WhatsApp. Squeeze lime juice into your nostrils. Hold your breath. Guzzle bitter gourd juice by the litre, breathe in hot air from your hair dryer. Eat cubed onions, raw, and no drinking water after that.
My friend interrupted me this time, with some stupid acronyms. LOL, ROTFL, LMAO. ‘That is science?’ She typed. ‘If that’s science, I’m Marilyn Monroe.’
Laugh all you want, Marilyn. We’ll see who has the last laugh. Haha.
Madhulika Liddle
Twitter: @authormadhulika
Novelist and short story writer