From horse's mouth

Madonna is trying to conceive and for that she has included a course of ayurvedic tablets, writes Dr Saumya Balsari.

Everyone knows that Madonna is trying to conceive. That's the price of fame (Mrs. Ranganathan of Ealing is desperately trying to conceive despite a travelling salesman husband, but that's not likely to become common knowledge). The report on Madonna - mildly interesting though it is to a few dispirited souls - is newsworthy due to the inclusion of the information that she is currently on a course of Ayurvedic tablets to become fertile.

"Tablets were sent over from India to her. They are supposed to increase potency," said an insider. The news has set desis aflame with curiosity (and action). Oddly-shaped couriered parcels from India are now arriving to desi homes in the British Isles with increasing frequency - indeed, every day, according to a insider who sorts the post. Everyone (except Auntyji?) could do with a little potency in their lives.

There are, however, a few drawbacks to popping these pills. Firstly, the men - like Madonna's husband Guy Ritchie - also have to ingest the tablets. This greatly boosts a couple's chances of having a baby. It's not a woman thing. Basically, the man can't shrug responsibility to say it's her baby (desi men never do that).

There is a second deterrent. According to the knowledgeable insider, the pills resemble "horse tablets". "They were just so huge!" the source is supposed to have exclaimed. To the ignorant among us, horse tablets mean nothing. What do horse tablets look like? We didn't know horses pop pills along with their carrots.

The comment on the size of the tablets is interesting. Surely we can commiserate with Madonna? Chewing horse tablets is no horseplay. It must be said though, a clever desi would simply grind each tablet with pestle and mortar and disguise the powdered concoction in a traditional spoonful of honey. Desis know it's not sugar that helps to make the medicine go down in the right places. Perhaps Madonna is finding out that it is simply a bitter pill to swallow. It's not Calpol, after all. The thing is, as Richard Toteman said, "Take anything that is either nasty, expensive or difficult to obtain, wrap it in mystery and you have a cure." That's another way of saying that there's much pain before gain. Desis are Stoics. They know that already. There is much from which they abstain.

Speaking of abstinence, a rumour needs to be sent packing. The Auntyji who fainted in the crisps aisle at the supermarket yesterday was simply overcome by the heat. There is no connection whatsoever with the experience of the 33-year-old Welsh housewife who ended up in hospital after wearing a vibrating article of Ann Summers intimate clothing to her local Asda supermarket in Swansea.

(Saumya Balsari is the author of the comic novel 'The Cambridge Curry Club', and wrote a play for Kali Theatre Company's Futures last year. She has worked as a freelance journalist in London, and is currently writing a second novel.)