Reflections

Quite amusing to look back over my thoughts a year later :)

It's hard to leave....

Scooters, Vacation, Fall

Crowded streets, crazy traffic.
Bustling station with porters everywhere.
Noisy cafe where workmen hammer and saw a rustic rhythm.

Strangers dine together, suspicions galore.

The bags are loaded, the seats are taken.

The coach lurches forwards- the journey begins.

Dry grass, dust, burning asphalt. The afternoon gives way to dusk.

One night at a four star- hardly a word exchanged.

Start the day at a Mughal garden.

Pictures are taken, names are asked.

The coach moves on: brown gives way to green, and silence to a friendly murmur.

Shrubs turn into fir trees, rocks into mountains.

A Victorian city shimmers from its height.

The church's spire presides over the delightful scene

Of shoppers, vendors and colourful wares.

Then a meadow of cedars and spruce.

Little ponies to take you up there.

Silvan hillsides above the clouds,

Surely heaven was near.

Next on to where our Noah docked his ark,

The journey by a little stream.

The little stream that feeds the world

That knows it as a massive river.

First the rain, then the snow.

Silver lashes from the sky,

The dainty flakes bejewel the firs

And strike my skin like burning ice.

A hundred ancient temples stand,

As pure in beauty as in faith,

A hundred miles into the sky

On cliffs of snow and windy prayers.

Snow fights, snow rides, snowmen, snow angels.

The ice was melting amid all these.

While nature froze in breath taking splendour

Hearts warmed up to one another.

And then we rowed our rubber rafts,

Not gently down the stream

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,

Though most of us did scream.

Over dinner, dance and song

And thirteen hundred miles,

Our world of fun and fantasy

Finally said goodbye.

TIME

I happened to read this article on Medscape- My Battle With Time by Jeff Wonoprabowo a med student who seems to share my problem: time management, or rather the lack of it. It contains a good number of suggestions on how to deal with it, so I'm pasting the link here http://medscape.typepad.com/thedifferential/2008/11/my-battle-with.html for the benefit of my fellow sufferers.

I have really battled to manage my studies and though it's off season now, it's not too late to ask you people for some help. Is there anyone out there who feels an irresistible urge to sleep as soon as he opens a text book? Or does anybody itch to pick up a racket and knock some balls when you have a hundred pages to read? Or are there any hopeless day dreamers like me who can while away precious hours by simply staring into space over an open book? If you have any tips on how to break these ugly habits and get focused, please share them with me. I'll be indebted.

How not to make strawberry slush

A simple step by step guide to how not to make strawberry slush for anyone who is bored out of his/her brains.

- Discover a bowl of strawberries in the refridgerator

- Discover half a cup of curd which Mum had instructed you to gobble down with lunch.

- Idle mind, devil's work shop: get to work.

-Put about 8 to 10 strawberries into the blender jar.

-Add in half a cup of curd.

-Make up for the remaining half cup with butter milk.

-*You can make the drink with only curd or only butter milk. Use one cup of either in that case.

- Throw in about a tablespoon of honey. I like it sweet so I put in a little more

- Blend until smooth.

-Allow a few chunks of strawberry to remain. It won't taste bad.

-Add in crushed ice.

-Pour into two serving glasses and garnish with a strawberry.

-Surprise Mum when she gets home.

Thank you!

One is six feet tall and the other is two inches taller than that. It's a wonder I didn't sprain my neck and they didn't break their backs as we stretched and hunched respectively to blitzkrieg our way through much of an epoch called internship. It started thirteen long months ago, when Lata Ma'am dumped the three of us together in the same unit in surgery. I was low on confidence and very nervous at that time, but it didn't take a day to discover that these two gentle giants were the best people I could have ever been lucky enough to work with.

Amit is a warm, talkative, happy-go-lucky fellow who can brighten up the rainiest of days- days when it rains thirty-five patients, testy JR's, marauding bed bugs and a squall. He will regale you with stories of drunk medical students just as you're inserting a Foley's into a foul mouthed, not so sober street fighter, give you an elaborate recipe for the world's best chicken biryani while you dash down to the microbiologist's with a sample for a hanging drop preparation on curt instructions from MG and colourfully describe his Basic Mountaineering Camp with its Survival Night as you trudge up the stairs for the sixth time in two hours armed with lab reports from the CCL. He's the kind of guy who will wrestle down a violent patient at midnight, debride his infected wounds while he's showered with expletives and then greet the fellow with a wide smile in the morning. An artist par excellence, he fills up the lives of those he meets with the brightest colours from the palette of his good nature.

Ulhas, on the other hand, is the quiet gentleman, towering over everybody but intimidating none. A man of few words but still very amiable, he was the hard working, punctual, sincere and efficient worker we relied on to help us sail through the grimmest of ED's. Just when you're staring down at a seemingly endless list of tasks, Ulhas will appear out of nowhere and silently set about getting things done. He will cover for you at your every slip, step up to the job just as you show the first sign of weariness and stand up to anyone who tries to bother you. When you're running up flights of stairs to do odd jobs, a bunch of bored guys may feast on a Temptation that you bought for someone who is just right for Amul Chocolate, but Ulhas will be right there to help you finish your work, and share the chocolate later.

Thirteen months of sweat and grime, and I wouldn't have gotten through without the two gentle giants. It sometimes fills me with wonder when I look at the way we bonded, the way we became a team, the way each of us had made a silent promise to ourselves that we would never let the other person down for the sake of our own individual interests. They have given me something to miss when I leave this place, something to keep my heart here, something to make a goodbye just as hard as it should be so that it doesn't feel empty.

Guys, thanks for everything! May life bring you the very best, because you truly deserve it.

I'll agree with Mr. Bachchan, partly

We Indians are a proud lot. We should be too, because we're privileged enough to be born in that part of the planet whose evolution to it's present form is not just remarkable but also riveting. It is the land where saints have trod, where the bravest have been born and the wisest interred. The key word though, is privileged.
We middle class, educated, English-speaking, Oscar-loving Indians have grown such a habit of being proud of all things even remotely Indian, that we have all but numbed our brains with it. In fact we Indianise things so that we can be proud of them. Take the example of Sunita Williams: a brilliant lady she is, and I my respect for her remains immense and unmitigated, but really, can we as a nation stake any claim to her success? She is 'of Indian origin', a term that describes most of our present day national heroes, and that means born to an Indian father and Slovenian mother in her home country of the United States, bred there. She set out on her space expedition in an American made craft, with an American team, from American soil. Yes, I'll admit there may have been many more hands of Indian origin involved in the success of that mission, but did that justify the nationalistic euphoria that broke out here, one that would be befitting an entirely Indian mission? And back home, our own home grown Sania Mirza, sweating it out on Indian courts, under the guidance of Indian coaches, in a not so sports-other-than-cricket friendly Indian environment, gets a fatwa for wearing what all women players wear and has her national commitment questioned time and again.
The latest case in point is the movie Slumdog Millionaire. As The Times of India put it, the original novel is written by an Indian, the movie has Indian actors and was shot in India, so that makes it an Indian movie. Alright, that's not hard to buy. It is an Indian movie with the story set in Dharavi, but that's exactly what we should not be proud of. It's a movie of horrors, that follows the lives of two little boys from the slums of Dharavi, orphaned by riots. Some may whine that the movie portrays India in a negative light, but they've missed the point entirely. They worry about what image of India it portrays to the world, which is always limited to the white world.(Agreed, many scenes in the movie, especially the depiction of the police, are distinctly discomforting, but they subscribe to the image that most Indians have of their own country.) Much as we would like to portray India as an emerging superpower to use that over over-used phrase, the fact remains that that kind of poverty and misery very much exist in the shadow of our sky scrapers and lake cities and you can't just wish it away. I certainly wouldn't call it the 'real India', another oft used phrase, but it is definitely a very real part of the real India.
Yet, the movie has won critical acclaim and it definitely is a fine example of film making, and above all, it is a front runner for the Oscars , so we must be proud of it and wear that on the sleeve. So we must ask Dev Patel ridiculous questions such as whether shooting in the in the muck lanes of Dharavi "helped him connect with his roots", to which if he answered in the negative, we all know, he would immediately be labelled racist, conceited, arrogant, traitor and generally an enemy of the state. It must ruffle our feathers that such a film was made by a foreigner, and a gora at that, so we must file cases in court accusing the film makers of insulting all Indians by calling them slumdogs, there by proving at once that we have plenty of time and money at hand. And we must cow down anyone in the industry and who was not a part of the film for expressing views contrary to the prevailing exhilaration.
However, I'd like to believe, and I think it is right, that these varied reactions to the movie are rooted in the common sympathy that we all feel for the under privileged. It is more of a case of people living in denial, rather than a case of being so accustomed to it that we don't care anymore. It's more of being so horrified by it that we want to turn away and run, rather than a case of selfishly deserting a sinking ship. Whatever it is, there are many Indians who valiantly wage a battle to better as many lives as they can. God bless them

It seems like they all decided to swoop down on me today. They hardly know each other, one of them definitely doesn’t know that I even exist and I’m sure they never conspired to set my brain in a fine muddle of self directed questions. In only living their lives the best that they can (and by best, I’m talking superlative) these fine people have got me thinking- yes thinking- and for once, not in terms of beguiling mark numbers and misleading grades: what on earth am I really up to?

The first of these three did intend to make me think. Not me, really, but all those who have an elegant habit of reading good books, or those like me who have friends with this elegant habit, and the even more elegant habit of gifting good books. I wonder if Richard Bach is really aware of how a simple stroke of his pen can send my neurons into a tizzy, on a wild chase to dig out that effulgent being he claims is hidden somewhere inside of me. I could, he professes, achieve everything that I want, if I only believe. But the trick is to believe. (There’s another trick, a much more basic one too, that is I have to know what I want, but we’ll deal with that later.) Jonathan Livingstone Seagull knew what he wanted. Nobody understood it, and they certainly didn’t understand why he went after what he did, and Jonathan never cared to explain. He didn’t know why he wanted it either, but that didn’t matter: he wanted it bad enough to achieve it. As I curled up in my bed with the book, soaring with Jon’s every effort to reach break neck speed, crashing into a heap of feathers and water with his every failure, I found woven into the words before me, a poignant depiction of the pain I have become so familiar with of late. I identified with Jonathan as he lay broken on the water, staring at another unsuccessful effort, thinking of his limitations, while his heart burst with the agony of not being able to give up and accept the mundane. Of course, Jon took wing again, soared to reach his dreams and much more, to finish the author’s work of sending out a message of self belief and perseverance and raising my spirits with him. Oh, and of course, making me think. But the part of the book that really brought a tear to my eye, was when Jon leaves Fletch to move on to another world. You don’t need me to teach you anymore, he tells Fletch, may be you have to find your teacher in yourself. There are few people who understand those lines the way I do.

My teary reverie was broken by my buddy, who called to tell me that he’d sent me a draft of his curriculum vitae, and that he wanted my suggestions to polish it to perfection. Getting online, I found this twenty three year old had a four page cv! Four pages! Geesh! I wondered what my cv would look like. It would barely fill four lines, I guess. Name: Ashkelonian Relic. Qualifications: Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery. Other activities…. No; it’s too painful. No writing cv’s for now. I opened other mail, and found one from G.

G, of course, is the one who started it all. She introduced me to Richard Bach years ago, with my now favourite “Illusions”. She was now e mailing to tell me that she was in this exotic country, teaching computer science to college students older than her, because she wanted the experience. G has way of doing things in a grand, though understated, way. She’s a researcher, and researchers always fascinate me as being those blessed people who are so enchanted by the beauty of the universe that they yearn for more than it offers the untrained eye. They’re the ones who want to change the earth every second, and to keep up with the changes that happen by a power beyond us, the wide eyed curiosity that we’re all born with being their faithful companion their entire lives. It was with G that I honestly spoke about my dreams for the first time in many years. We talked about chasing it, and how the path seemed strewn with minor obstacles I had seen few people overcome. We talked about what it would mean to realise it, and what it would mean to give it up. Though I was listening to everything G had to say, I was really thinking about the difference between myself and what I wanted to be. The reason why G is this fascinating person, why my buddy has this four page cv, why Bach’s Seagull shines immaculate is that they all found the courage to break the bonds of common conventions and wisdom that teach us to be ‘one of the flock’. While most of us find an illusion of security in the mundane, and balk away in fear from the unexplored, these guys eschew that which reduces life to a programmed cycle of night and day. They are the ones who keep alive inside of them, the zest for living each day to the fullest. And they have the audacity to live life the way they like it. Without giving in to ostents and laws and norms handed down for generations. I thought about it: None of us is going to live forever. For the Universe, we’re hardly a speck. It really matters to nobody whether you live life on the edge or just roll along a physical existence, living by rules you accepted without ever questioning their authenticity. Nobody other than yourself. So I think it’s up to each one of us to make the call- grovel with the unimaginative, or soar with the courageous.

Republic Day- Salaam!!

A question to my brethren: Are you what your country makes you, or is your country what you make it?

To my pal and her hubby, on December 8th

Love Birds


They flew along from perch to perch,
In no preset direction
Till fate would have them meet one day
Through some divine connection.


And having found a new beginning,
They took flight together-
Their hearts in love, their dreams now one,
Their souls entwined forever.




And as I watched from earth below,
This miracle in the air
I crossed my heart and closed my eyes
And said a little prayer.


“Oh God, may this fledgling love
Grow deeper than the sea
And higher than the sun that shines
Upon their destiny.

And fill them up with so much joy,
That it spills to those around.
And let the lives they touch be changed
By the love that they have found.


Let there be no dearth of friends,
Of wealth and worldly charms-
But let them find all that they need
In one another’s arms.


And even as they spread their wings
In all alacrity-
Watch them, guide them, love them, Lord,
And keep them close to thee.”

Uncommon Wealth Heroes

It was at the uncommon wealth games
That my sporty colleagues shone bright,
The golds they won did us all proud-
Their heroics rocked the night.

Cd was the swimming champ:
He could beat a motor boat;
Usne subah se sirf do glass doodh piya tha,
And that kept him afloat.

Su's team took the football gold.
Their match was such a sleeper,
The credit goes to his sixty girlfriends
Who distracted the opposite'keeper .

AP ruled the boxing ring,
You could hear his victims squeal;
When, Oh when, will those fellows learn
That his bones are made of steel?

Ar was the high jump king-
He jumped twenty feet and five!
Thanks to PK who, before each jump,
Announced that she would drive.

San won the wrestling crown,
He reduced his challengers to fudge
While seven wada pavs in his tummy
Made sure he didn't budge.

And I took the slow biking title.
Of course, it didn't matter-
That no one told me to ride slow and not speed
And what I did was precisely the latter!

Just another day

G actually thinks her blog would have been more interesting if she had taken up medicine. In the sense that brain machines and exploding fire hydrants don't thrill her as much as eye witness accounts of valiantly fought battles for life and heroic resuscitations. Of intracardiac injections (not recommended any more) and ER thoracotomies.Of precipitate labours and emergency PCF decompressions. Of the thrill of being called "doctoreen bai" by a patient after three hundred before her have driven me SICK with "shishterrr".
That's the ground reality.It's 9 am on a typical day and I'm rushing to the ophthal OPD, for that's where I shall be incarcerated for the next few days. Trust me G, a sewing machine would be a thousand times more interesting than anything I've ever done at work so far; brain machines sound delectable. The waiting room outside the OPD looks like Woodstock, the OPD looks like the Kumbh Mela. A dozen trodden toes and the accompanying expletives later, I reach a chair and call for the first patient to have his vision tested.
" Cover your right eye, " I say.
He promptly covers his left.
" Can you see the chart at the far end of the room?" i say, pointing to the Landolt's.
" Yes I can"
" Well, now count the number of dots in each box from top to bottom, using only your right eye. can you tell me how many there are right on the top?"
Silence.
" How many dots do you see?"
Silence.
" Are you unable to see them?"
Silence. Then," there are five in the middle line."
"Huh?"
"And nine there. And seven."
"Huh?" Really, HUH! There are four huge dots there on the top, I can swear! My eyes are fine!"Wait a minute," i say, "let's go a step at a time. How many are there right at the top?"
"Four!"
Whew! " Okay, now below that?"
" Five!"
"Well, let's stick to the rules, okay? Let's read from left to right. How many are there on the left?"
"Four!"
"Good! Now next to that?"
"Six."
HUH! There are four right on top, and two boxes in the second line with four in the left and five in the right. And he just said five, for crying out loud! " Are you sure? Count again carefully."
"Six!"
"Can you see it clearly? Does it appear hazy?"
" I can see it clearly. There are six!"
Something is wrong with my eyes!! " Go step wise! Start a line from the left. Which line are you reading?" There are three different boxes with six dots in three different lines. Which line is this guy reading?
" O shishterrr!!! I'm telling you there are six!!! Do think I'm lying? Can't you see? There! See there!! In THAT line?"
"Which line?"
"THAT!!!!"
"Okay, read the entire line."
"Six, five, three, five, four."
Well, there is a line that reads four-five-three-six-five from left to right and five-six-three-five-four from right to left. "Can you read it for me from left to right please?"
"O shishterrr, i came here to have my eyes checked, not to count dots!!"
That's it. My waterloo. I guess his vision is 6/12. Thank God for automatic refractometry. I'm checking into psychi. Brain machines, anyone?

Hollow

Ah! These disappointments seem like a mountain; the tiniest task could seem like a burden. Every turn in the road seems to run into a wall; Every step forward seems to end in a fall;
As everyday passes and all my plans flop; As my idle mind becomes that devil's work shop
I sit here at my pc, as creative as a log
And generously share my boredom with those who read my blog!

Tell me why...

Why do fruit vendors rip you off when you're buying stuff for the sake of some change?
Why don't people have time for one movie when they have time for 7?
Why do alternator wires snap on Sundays?
Why do birds poop on your hair just after you've washed and conditioned it?(That too on a completely treeless packed-to-the-brim overcrowded road)
Why don't babies warn you before they spray you?

Because....
Because there are fruit vendors who help you when you fall off your bike in the most inelegant manner.
Because people steal time just to meet you in spite of ridiculously jam packed schedules on trips home from the other side of the world.
Because there's someone who'll travel half way across town to help you fix it and then all the way across town to get you home comfortably. And there's someone who'll Google for the numbers that were lying in your glove compartment all the while.
Because bird poop is supposed to be good luck.
Because then they give you that toothless smile that's worth being sprayed a hundred times.

Could you suggest some more please?

Here are some words that I invented with their meanings (at best that I can express them). If you can invent some more, could you please add them to my list? They should be original though.

• Psykick (v)- To wish dearly to thrash someone. Bludgeon someone in wishful thinking. All I can do right now is psykick him.
• Cerebum (n)- Someone who is a genius but otherwise a bum.
• Blugger (n)- A blogger and a bugger
• Divastated (v, past)- Turned down because you weren't good enough for her
• Politicks (n, pl)- Those bugs in the parliament. (s. politick)
• Democrazy (n)- Anarchy: of the people, by the people, for the people
• Flied-rice (n)- Unhygeinically prepared food.
• Prisoner-of-ward (n)- Junior resident (abbr. POW)
• Dope-amine (n)- The predominant neurotransmitter in dopes
• A-tisshoo (n)- What you need when you have a cold

Just a thought...

Far across desert sands,

Across the seas, in greener lands,

In different worlds of a similar kind

We seek, we seek but never find.

In gold and stones and costly treasures,

In thrills and fun and common pleasures,

In friends, in mates, in ties that bind

We seek, we seek but never find.

All around us, far and near,

Through gloom, despair and many a tear,

Keeping hope but seeming blind

We seek, we seek but never find.

Our search for that eternal bliss-

That long pursuit of happiness-

Would end inside a purer mind,

And if there we seek, then we shall find.

Court Rules

As a regular on the bench and an extra in the erstwhile LTBA (L standing for Limbu), I consider myself experienced enough to give out 6 handy basketball tips:

Don'ts-

-Donot trip the opposite captain when the referee is looking.

-Donot hug an opponent when he/she walks towards you with open arms - the player is guarding you, so don't mistake that for camaraderie

-Donot allow any of your male friends to proclaim their love for a female player in the rival college's team, especially with her brother sitting behind him in the stands. (Trust me. Experience tells me that this can happen).

Do's

-Trip the opposite captain when the referee is not looking.

-Communicate. Make some noise out there in the middle. You can cluck, squeal, beep, burp or threaten to bring up your last meal.( For best results in case of the latter, try version Projectile 0.6 without worrying about what Miss K is going to say about this.)

-Stand on tip toe for as much of the match as you can. This should leave your opponents hobbling by half time. Of course I mean that you stand on the tips of your opponents' toes.

*Disclaimer: Relic has found that the field trials of the above methods so far on record donot show any statistically significant advantage over fair play.

What's in a name?

A while ago, I read about a woman who lost a case to change her family name from Cooperman to Cooperperson. Cooperman, she said, was unfair, chauvinistic and subscribed to the principle of a male dominated society. Cooperperson was more politically correct in the eyes of the self styled feminist. Imagine if she'd won. Then every Ms. Goodman would want to be Goodwoman and refuse to act like one until allowed to call herself so. Ms. Bradman would be Bradwoman, Ms. Hopman would be Hopwoman, while Ms. Henman wouldn't just be Henwoman, but would also claim copyright to the new super heroine by that name. All '-sons' will be replaced by the less gender biased '-issue'. So now one would use band aids from Johnissue and Johnissue, read text books by Harissue and Davidissue, and learn clinical methods by Hutchissue (bless you). To be more universal in the approach, all bars will serve hentails with cocktails, hotdogs will be served with hotbitches and markets will now trade in cows and bears. Little children must know to shed the gender stereotypes, so it shall now be taught that Little Miss Muffet wasn't frightened by the spider, but instead she rolled up her newspaper and whacked him on the head sending him into a period of retrograde amnesia during which he mistook himself for a honeybee. And honeybees, being thoughtful enough to call their females queens (and treat them like that too) while driving the drones out of the hive shall be spared this painful discussion.
Well, what was Miss Cooperman thinking? Will changing all '-man's' to '-person's' really do much for the women who aren't fortunate enough even to have the freedom to be feminists? Will it stop the wolf hooting and eve teasing that is so rampant, it's almost a given? Will it prevent every case of sexual assault from turning into a cheap discussion of a woman's
wardrobe? More importantly, will it prevent sexual assault? It's sad that even today, women's rights remain only a topic of discussion at kitty parties and election campaigns, and efforts are limited to eyewash like reservation, which in my opinion, is like a pair of crutches for a perfectly able person, to tag him handicapped permanently. The change required is much more radical- a change in outlook and perception, a need to uproot from every mind some dark, hardwired misconceptions. Treat her like an individual, for heaven sake, and respect her as one. And if changing a name is going to help, by all means go ahead.

Operation Dessert Storm

Date: December 24th, 2007. (Solo repeat on January 5th,2008)

Place: So's Kitchen.

Time: 1hr 36min

The Mission: Brownies and Hot chocolate sauce.

Partner in crime: JMo

The beginning:

The middle:

The end:

The MBBS Anthem

A little humour, after all that crankiness which surprised even me.
To be sung to the tune of Kya kare kya na kare from the film Rangeela.

(Ahem...)
Kya padhe kay na padhe, yeh kaisi mushkil, hai,
Koi toh bataaye iska hul oh mere bhai,
Ki ek taraf toh din aur raat padhe hum
Par exam mein toh marks hume mile kum!
Toh kya padhe kya na padhe...

Roz roz hum
Sochta yehi
ki din mein 48(in hindi) ghante hote the yadi,
Toh aisa padhega, s**la, vaisa padhega,
Exam mein examiner ko hum phaad dalega
Jab viva voce hoti hai
Saans hi atakti hai
Aur a yeh zubaan chalti hai phisal....

Toh kya padhe kaya na padhe yeh kaisi mushkil hai....