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This paper examines the grid of sentiment that structures medical travel to India. In contrast to studies that render emotion as ancillary, the paper argues that affect is fundamental to medical travel's ability to ease the linked somatic, emotional, financial, and political injuries of being ill 'back home'. The ethnographic approach follows the scenes of medical travel within the Indian corporate hospital room, based on observations and interviews among foreign patients, caregivers, and hospital staff in Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, and Bangalore. Foreign patients conveyed diverse sentiments about their journey to India ranging from betrayal to gratitude, and their expressions of risk, healthcare costs, and cultural difference help sustain India's popularity as a medical travel destination. However, although the affective dimensions of medical travel promise a remedy for foreign patients, they also reveal the fault lines of market medicine in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the supernatural beliefs of najar (evil eye) and bhut (ghost) and their roles in illness causation in Gujarati families in Britain today. The data arose unexpectedly in an ethnography of child rearing patterns carried out in Harrow, North West London and a short period of observation in Ahmedabad, India. I used anthropological methods of participant observation and unstructured interviews, which were transcribed using pseudonyms. The study group involved 70 Hindu and Jain Gujarati households with children and the fieldwork was conducted over a period of four years. Many of the individuals studied had migrated from India to East Africa before coming to the UK in the 1970s, but maintain links with both countries through kinship ties, marriage and rituals. I set out to study the continuity of women's roles in the transmission of religious and moral values, the rituals of childhood, views about infant feeding, and parenting relationships within joint families. The beliefs of najar and bhut in poor, rural settings in India have been described, but these Gujarati beliefs in Britain have not been well documented. This study indicates that najar and bhut continue to be a concern of women in most Gujarati families in Britain today and across all socio-economic groups, not confined to those on the 'bread-line', as have been previously suggested. These beliefs align themselves with Hindu ideas of the soul and reincarnation: powerful forces residing outside the body. An understanding of these beliefs could be informative to health professionals working with Gujarati communities in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The state of Kerala, south India, has particularly high prevalence rates for cardiovascular disease (20%, Sugathan, Soman and Sankaranarayanan 2008) and Type II diabetes (16.3%, Kutty, Joseph, and Soman 1999). Although so-called 'lifestyle' diseases can be prevented and symptoms controlled by diet, exercise, and medicines, heart disease and diabetes have become the most common causes of suffering, disability and death. This article explores the social dynamics transforming consumer lifestyles as increased food consumption, reduced physical activity and social stress contribute to the burden of cardiovascular disease (CVD). It examines the centrality of food to ideas of the 'good life', to nurture social relationships and strengthen weak modern bodies, as the principle source of embodied pleasure and health. It explores the micro and macro politics of eating and feasting, limiting the extent to which 'individuals' (can) control food habits. Thus, despite widespread recognition of the relationship between diet, exercise and heart disease, the flow of food, the immediacy of pleasure, and associations between appetite and health override latent concerns about the negative impacts of dietary excesses on long-term health and chronic illness. Findings are discussed to highlight the inherent limitations of public health interventions focusing on education and individual choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]