As booming India goes crazy over slimming centres, weight loss gadgets and obesity-curing wonders ... the future of the country stays hungry and malnourished, helplessly looking at the present for help as it dies everyday... One-year-old Harinder, who is suffering from severe malnutrition cries in his mother's lap. © Danish Siddiqui Foundation Finally, I get down to updating my blog, which has been lying stale for a few weeks now…This is a very special story to me… A few weeks back I packed my bags again and traveled into the interiors of the country with my Chief Photographer Reinhard Krause. The intention was to look for stories that stay neglected by the media; stories that don’t get the ‘numbers’ because the audiences responsible for the latter, are too busy with their own lives to bother about such matters. These stories, however, give me the strength and confidence to pursue many more such subjects relentlessly. For our latest excursion, Reinhard and I ...
Mahatma Gandhi famously said: "An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind". But even he'd be proud to note that that may not be the case always ... like in Madurai . In this temple town, the eyes of a few good people are giving vision to those who have been deprived from seeing the beautiful colors of the world. An organization called Aravind Eye Care System (which I am sure most would'nt have heard of) has been providing free eye care to the poor in rural India where otherwise even basic medical facilities are hard to come by. Headquartered in Madurai , the Aravind Hospital draws visitors from all over the state of Tamil Nadu. With the support of its benefactors, it has treated 29 million patients so far. It is a less-known statistic but India is home to 25% of the world’s blind. Every year at least 4 million Indians develop cataract that is a major cause for blindness ...