I have a confession to make.

With that tantalising hook extended, I am going to tell you about anemia instead. Anemia - a low blood iron level - is typically seen as a minor ailment, a Western invention to keep us occupied in our stupor of wealth, much like cheese strings and Tamagotchi pets.

Anemia kills new mothers. It makes women too weak to work and causes young girls to miss vital schooling. It is a disgusting cultural travesty that Indian women suffer with this because they do not eat so well as the men. These ladies are sick not because of insufficient scientific advancement or political failures, but because of a lack of spinach and beans.

I am surveying the women of Sukeri in Himachal Pradesh for anemia so that I can advise them to collect iron tablets from Sukeri daycare centre. I wrote in my blog last week that I was going to describe this experience to you.

So to my confession: I pre-wrote my blog entry. Before I had even started my survey, I wrote a blog entry about it featuring the following sentence:

"Today I have identified anemia in and recommended iron supplements to ___ of India's millions of anemic women."
I left myself a blank to fill in the number. This blog almost deviated from accounting my experience to conforming to my expectations of India.

I expected to find anemia in most women. I expected these women to be interested in and concerned about their health. I expected them to be deranged with joy that I, the almighty Western visitor, could inform them of a free and simple cure.

I cannot with good conscience post my pre-written blog entry. Once again my expectations have been attacked (nigh on left for dead, in fact) by my actual experience in Sukeri.

The women of Sukeri do not care whether they are anemic if they are not pregnant. They value their own health that little. One woman, Anju Devi (pictured) downright refused my advice to pick up some iron tablets. During her last pregnancy, her iron level had receded to dangerous levels.

The healthcare provision is largely present. A sense of self importance amongst Sukeri's women, it seems, is not.