No one in the entire continent is willing to operate on him," said Jonathan, on arriving from Africa with his younger brother Jude. I glanced at the MRI films and wasn't surprised. "Gosh," I thought, projecting composed confidence, as the two waited to hear the next words from me.

Jude was a 16-year-old pleasant kid. He had started having headaches a few years ago but had got a brain MRI done only recently, when he began to lose vision. The MRI showed a colossal 10 cm tumour within the ventricles of his brain, occupying 80 per cent of it.