About 100 Indian students study medicine at St. Kitts

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About 100 Indian students study medicine at St. Kitts

Basseterre (St Kitts), June 25 (IANS) St Kitts has a varied Indian populace. There are businessmen, IT guys, engineers, but a lot of them are medical students.

There are about a hundred of them, all studying at the Windsor University School of Medicine, situated about five minutes' drive westwards from the town centre. In fact, most of the students in the school are Indians.

A few of them were watching St Kitts' first-ever Test match, between the West Indies and India, but not too many. One of them: Saurabh Mishra explained: 'Almost all of us were here for the one-dayer (played last month) ... and what's happening in this Test now is boring.'

He was talking when West Indians Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Marlon Sameuls were in one of their defensive moods during their 156-run stand for the sixth wicket.

Even among the Indians at the school, there are two types: those who are children of NRIs, living mostly in the USA, and those from India. Saurabh, 24, a final year student at the school, is one of the latter. His hometown is Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh. He says that most of the students in the school are the former.

It is easy to understand why. It costs a lot, Apart from the tuition fees, which is about Rs 1.2 million for the entire course (four-and-a-half years), there is also the cost of board and lodging. Saurabh says that costs about USD 300 a month.

The good thing is that Indian food is easily available in St Kitts. Not in restaurants: 'That is too expensive' explains Saurabh. 'All the ingredients we need to cook Indian food are available... I never used to cook before I came here but now I manage, make rice, rotis, a few curries...'

So how did he get here, to the Caribbean, and to this tiny island?

'There's an agent in Delhi, she guided me. There were other places, like Ukraine, too, but I chose this.'

He has been here since 2002 and says he's hasn't been home to India since he got here. Neither have his parents visited him. He misses India very much.

When asked whether he would go to the US after finishing his studies here, he replied: 'Eventually. But first I want to go home. To India.'

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About 100 Indian students study medicine at St. Kitts