“Boom-Boom Afridi” has been brought in by Pakistan to “bowl” out polio in what it hopes is the decisive over of the seemingly hopeless match against the virus. The mercurial cricketer — who is already a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime — signed up as Polio Champion last weekend; kicking off an advertisement campaign featuring him asking people in Urdu and Pashto whether they wanted to hand their children a cricket bat or crutches.
In a cricket-crazy nation, picking up Afridi for the task had more to do with his background. He hails from the Khyber Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and is a Pashtun by ethnicity. Pashtuns accounted for 77 per cent of all the polio cases reported in Pakistan last year though this ethnic group constitutes only 15 per cent of the country’s population.
Pakistan, along with Nigeria and Afghanistan, are the last three countries reporting polio cases. In fact, Pakistan — which had brought the incidence of polio to 30 in 2005 — saw a quantum leap to 198 cases in 2011. Apart from battling deep-seated apprehensions about the polio immunisation programme, Pakistan has to reckon with unsafe working conditions as the Taliban have issued diktats against the campaign. Plus the internal displacement owing to the security situation has resulted in the virus travelling with the internally displaced people.
Still, according to official records, the immunisation programme is making headway as in the first half of 2012, only 22 confirmed cases of polio were reported from 13 districts across the country. This is an improvement over the 58 cases reported from 24 districts between January and June 2011.
Afridi has promised to bring his aggressive “all or nothing” approach to the campaign; using his standing and religious convictions to help walk the last mile in the bid to make Pakistan polio-free.
Anita Joshua
Empire monument
London’s oldest mosque has an Indian connection not many know about.
It is not widely known that London’s oldest mosque, the East London Mosque, was founded by Indian Muslim immigrants more than a hundred years ago — long before the Arabs arrived with their oil money and started taking over Muslim institutions.
It says something about the inter-faith understanding of the age that the project was backed by some of Britain’s leading non-Muslims, including the Jewish banker Nathan Rothschild who went on to become the first Jewish member of the House of Lords. The mosque was built under the shadow of a synagogue — the Fieldgate Street Great Synagogue — and the two still exist side by side though the mosque has since outgrown its neighbour in size.
Syed Ameer Ali, a jurist from India and a recipient of Queen Victoria’s Order of the Indian Empire, established a London Mosque Fund whose first meeting, attended by prominent Muslims and non-Muslims, was held at the plush Ritz Hotel on November 9, 1910.
The meeting discussed plans to found a “mosque in London worthy of the capital of the British empire”.
“The support from non-Muslims was key...The mosque was founded out of cooperation and mutual understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims,” writes Salman Farsi, media and communications chief of the East London Mosque trust, in New Statesman.
The mosque has been accused of links with radical groups but the management dismisses the allegation as an attempt to “smear us’’.
Hasan Suroor
Rambutan time!
Treat yourself to this hairy fruit and enjoy being messy.
Come summer, and Rambutans are all over south-west, and south Sri Lanka. The popular garden fruit is sold on roadsides, and in supermarkets, and is the fruit of choice of the season.
It’s easily one of the cheapest in the country, where fruits and natural foods command a premium price. Depending on where one buys it, the price could vary from LKR 2 to LKR 15 (1 INR = 2.5 LKR). During the season, sellers put up small stalls on the roadside and entice travellers. Business is brisk, as evident from anecdotal accounts of some of the sellers on the Colombo–Galle Road.
Both the tree and the fruit are called Rambutan (Malay word, meaning hairy). A more apt expression of what the fruit looks like from the outside is in Vietnam, where, apparently, the fruit is called “chom chom” (messy hair). True, the fruit has an unattractive, thickly “haired” — blonde or red — exterior. Despite the way it looks, the fruit, which resembles a lychee when the outer cover is removed, is a treat that any visitor to Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Vietnam, and regions close to the equator in Asia should savour.
South India too has a few orchids that grow Rambutans, but nothing can match the vastness of the farms in south Sri Lanka, along the Kelani.
R.K. Radhakrishnan
