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Abraham Verghese, M.D., is a noted Indian-American doctor and author.
His family originates from Kerala, India. He was raised in Ethiopia where his parents along with hundreds of Keralites worked as teachers. Many countries in Africa (Nigeria, Zambia, etc.) and Asia (Malyasia, etc.) witnessed similar inflows of teachers and nurses from Kerala given the absolute lack of employment opportunities in their homeland, and the relatively high levels of education amongst Keralites, especially amongst the Syrian Christians like the Verghese family. These communities led fairly uncertain lives in these host countries as they possessed neither the political clout of white expatriates nor the economic clout of long-settled minorities such the Chinese in S E Asia or the Lebanese in Africa to buffer them from localization programs or political upheavals. Kerala ( ; Malayalam: കേരളം; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of southwestern India. ...
Following the overthrow of the royal family in Ethiopia, circumstances changed for the worse for the Kerala community. Abraham had begin medical college in Ethiopia, but was forced to return to India to pick up the threads of this medical education there. He came to Madras where his brother, George, was enrolled in the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. In the meantime, his parents had managed to immigrate to the United States. Following a fairly tortured route, he managed to complete his medical degree (MBBS) from Madras, and joined his parents in the US as one of thousands of foreign medical graduates from India seeking open residency positions here. As he describes it in his book, these FMGs (foreign medial graduates) specialized in the unpopular, unglamorous specialties like infectious diseases, etc. He obtained a post in rural Tennessee where he encountered the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s. He wrote a bestselling book called My Own Country: A Doctor's Story about his experiences in displacement, diaspora, responses to foreignness and the human lives affected by the AIDS epidemic; it was later made into a movie by Mira Nair with Lost (TV series)'s star Naveen Andrews playing his role. Official language(s) English Capital Nashville Largest city Memphis Largest metro area Nashville Area Ranked 36th - Total 42,169 sq mi (109,247 km²) - Width 120 miles (195 km) - Length 440 miles (710 km) - % water 2. ...
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS or Aids) is a collection of symptoms and infections resulting from the specific damage to the immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). ...
Mira Nair (born October 15, 1957 at Rourkela, Orissa) is an India-born, New York-based film director. ...
Lost is an Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning serial drama television series that follows the lives of a group of plane crash survivors on a mysterious tropical island, somewhere in the South Pacific. ...
Naveen William Sidney Andrews (born January 17, 1969) is an Emmy-and Golden Globe-nominated English actor. ...
His second book,The Tennis Partner, deals with physician drug abuse and the death of a friend.
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