The Pay-Out Traitor

It was 9^th July 2005. The Pune sky I saw overcast with the monsoon clouds, sent forth infinite drops of the familiar “Pune Piddle”. I was in my car driving upto this college with my dad from Jabalpur via Bangalore. A year before, I had never imagined that I would end up joining the best medical college in the country, for various reasons. However, as I sat reading The DaVinci Code in a reclining seat I knew I had finally arrived. Then, there was no Bhairoba Nala for me, no complications, there I was with me and my future laid out in front of me.

It was in the “Faccha Term” I came to know that for reasons unknown, the autowallahs weren’t familiar with what AFMC was. So was my dilemma as well. And thus we were given advice by our seniors to ask the autowallahs to take us to Bhairoba Nala Police Chowki. It’s an advice which still endures in its authenticity. I still ask the autowallahs to take me to Bhairoba Nala and from there too, straight ahead (they are confused as to whether to go left or straight, mostly scowling upon being asked to go straight).

The autowallahs have remained ignorant but I have not. In the years that went by I have learnt a great deal about this college, its traditions, culture etc. I have followed them, fought for them, had issues with others regarding them and even disregarded some of them. But now, after four and a half years, I can call myself a Kilroy. I have come to love this place as it has been and as it has changed. I don’t regret a bit about what I have done and not done, I believe it was maktub, meaning it was written.

It was my last month there. I had decided that I won’t be joining the Forces. It wasn't my hatred, it wasn't because of the money but it was simply because I had a different dream. And I had been called a traitor, betrayer…had been questioned am I even a worthy AFMCite? It hurts. After sharing four and a half years of everything with my college, I had been labeled a “gaddaar” by those who are too busy warming their chairs in air conditioned offices. What had I done? I had given so much to this place, taken too but never with the intentions of stealing away and I was subjected to this? Many others like me said – “How does it matter?” On appearances it doesn’t but deep inside it does.

Was I running away from responsibility? Was I stealing? People have their priorities. I like most others joined the college because I wanted to become a good doctor. Joining the Forces was an option that was added on when I joined this college. Can’t people just simply understand the simplicity of this fact?

But I am not angry, I am not repulsed; I am just saddened. After so many years I am still led to believe that I am still a newbie. A fresher who is yet to discover what AFMC is. Like that autowallah who still believes in the landmark of the wretched Bhairoba Nala Chowki and who, after spending so much time in that city is yet to know what AFMC stands for. Does it stand for all this? And to mock it all, they still charged me the fee for the Alumni Fund! Ridiculous! Let them live in their little worlds and be happy. I have paid the fee.

Like Everyday

The light goes out at 6.30 in the morning. Its cool outside but inside the confines of my room, heat descends on me like a patient predator waiting all night to have beads of my sweat for an early morning breakfast. I wake up. The birds outside are in a furore. Everyday holds so much adventure and promise for them. I envy their noise. I stretch out my arms trying to shrug off the weight off my yesterday so that I can take on what today has to offer to me.
That's how my day begins. Everyday. I do my routine in the gym, have a long bath (though in minutes I am sweating again and I think what good was the bath?), take my car keys and wallet from the desk, pick up my bag and my apron and head up for breakfast. There's no time for reading the newspaper. I quickly munch on the food, drink my daily dose of Lassi and reverse out the car out of the house to drive the 7.5 km to the hospital.
I know that the traffic will be pathetic even at 9am in the morning near the bus stand. Everyone is in a hurry and almost no one is bothered about the rules of the road. So my hand automatically puts the gear in 2nd or even 1st for that matter. Like everyday. I know the expected bumps and potholes, I know where the thullas will be (though the traffic is actually better without them), I know where I can speed up the car and I know where I am going to park it inside the hospital. Like everyday.
The hospital is not much of a change either.I give the patients OPD numbers, write prescriptions, explain to them that they won't get most of the medicines in the hospital's drug store, listen to the monotonous whine of the medical representatives, take attendance and come back. Like everyday.
Once I reach home, I am sick of the heat. The car had been baked in the sun and even the AC on full blast could do little to drive that heat away. I have lunch and sit on my desk for a date with the buggers who wrote these PG entrance exams books. I invariably have some post prandial sleep but I am able to carry on. By 8.30 in the evening I am thoroughly bored. Like everyday.
I have no friends here. One disadvantage for being away from home for 12 years. There is no one to hang out with. The thrill in life is gone. In college, plans used to be formulated in moments. One moment you would be sitting and studying and the other you might just be speeding off on a bike to a nearby lake. The adventure and the thrill of the uncertainty of the next moment has disappeared. I have nothing to do and there is nothing much I can do about it. I have to study, I have to go to the hospital, I have to wake up early and I have to live each day like everyday. It's killing me.

Why couldn't things have been easier?

Life is complicated. Being a human makes it worse. By giving this body a brain worth 1.3kgs, things totally spin out of control. Constantly thinking, analyzing. What to do? What will happen next? What if I do this? What if I don't do that? And to think of it, they say we use just a miniscule portion of our brain's potential power!
When I am driving on the road, I think which gear to use, where to break, is the speed too much, do I have my license? Things that are in the bigger scheme of things, totally worthless.
When I am around in a public place I feel like singing. My sister tells me not to. Why? Is it prohibited? I want to fart but I can't so I go to a relatively isolated place and open the nozzle. Now no one can smell what the Rock is cooking! I want to drink when I go out to dinner with the family but I don't because I know it is not good manners. When I study I constantly think about what will happen if I don't clear the exams and that takes up a lot of my study time.
When I am thinking about the person I love, things go absolutely haywire. I think what she might be doing. I think what should I write in my next message. I think why isn't she replying. Has she started loving someone else? Does she even like me now?
Think, think think. To what end? I really don't know. Sometimes I wish I was like my dog. He doesn't have to think while peeing on the car's wheels. He doesn't bother what a person feels if he licks them. He doesn't care if he farts in the middle of the room( yes dogs do fart!). He doesn't mind being without a bath for days together. He doesn't mind eating anything below Pedigree. He doesn't even remember who was the last bitch he nailed! Life is so much more easier for him. I envy him.
But then I guess the world has been defined by us humans. I have to live by the rules. Think all the time. In other words be human. I really like that CBZ Extreme advertisement, "Thinking is such a waste of time!"

What I've Done?

Eight years ago I didn't know I'd be a doctor, two years hence I wasn't sure I'd even clear the Pre-medical exams, a year later I had joined AFMC, during the 5 years at AFMC I wasn't sure if I'd leave or join the forces, today I don't know if I would be a successful doctor. My father asks me what do I want as a graduation gift, I say I haven't thought about it, simply because I really don't want anything.
I toiled very hard in my final year to get good grades in the exam which I never got in the previous years and my hard work paid dividends. In the previous years I have gone through 'stats', read what is just the bare essential, studied really during the crunch time for exams and even failed once or twice in the internal exams. In short I have lived my college life just like any other "normal" guy. I have gone on road trips, have drunk my ass out, jammed with my band, smoked up, landed up in disciplinary action and god knows what all, never ever keeping studies as my first priority. Yes, the last year I have changed myself because of the notion that it is an important year in the my MBBS life.
I haven't disappointed my parents. They were happy with my grades and everything else for these five years. It's hard not to admit that I have this uncanny knack of getting decent grades despite studying really on the edge. I haven't disappointed my teachers either. I have surprised my batchmates with my result. I have even surprised people from other colleges with my result.
You might think it is totally justified for me to ask for that graduation gift. I know batchmates of mine who were gifted expensive cars, cheques worth lakhs and really fabulous gifts. But I am really not interested.
When I retrospect, I feel I won't be justifying the feeling with which my Dad wants to gift me that. I have cheated in exams, I know in the deepest recesses of my mind that I have not put in my best, I know that I have already extracted 15 odd lakh rupees from my parents for my freedom and most of all I think that is it really such a big deal to pass a graduation exam?
After all what am I after these 5 years? Just a MBBS doctor with an absolutely hazy future ahead. I don't have a job, I am not earning, neither have I earned some status in the society. I am on an uncertain road right now and that road doesn't demand a car or a bike to reach my destiny, whatever it is.

Paranormal

Yesterday night, I had gone out with family with one of our family friend's birthday treat. Yesterday was different because of the extremely interesting discussion that happened amongst us. We talked about the possibilities of the Higg's Boson being the God particle, the mysteries of space, the power of God, the epic magnificence of the Mahabharata and also something about the Lost Symbol, the Seven Ancient Wonders and medical knowledge. Hardly a party table discussion matter, but nonetheless very interesting.
I don't exactly remember the spark for this discussion but it began with my Dad criticizing the Hadron Collider which has been built by the CERN to prove the existence of the Higg's Boson. He was quoting one of the eminent neurosurgeons of Mumbai who writes for the Speaking Tree in Times of India that mankind's incessant and unnecessary search will never be over. They will find the Higg's Boson, then what? Another scientist will question the origins of Higg's Boson and a new hunt will start but to what end? Instead if the billions of Euros being spent on this experiment were used to address the poverty and hunger and war raging in almost every continent wouldn't it be much better? I liked one of the statements of this neurosurgeon, he said when you perform an experiment you become a part of that experiment. You can only see what the experiment shows. We live in such a microscopic cocoon. There are millions of galaxies and millions of stars with innumerable planets, yet we consider ourselves the masters of the universe. Why can't we accept the being of a Higher Power?
We then talked about the relationship of the Gayatri Mantra to the universe. How Vishwamitra discerned that the sound produced by the millions of galaxies moving and spinning away was the primeval sound Om. And how concentrating to the sound Om we can actually connect to God.
An interesting fact was also brought to light that Aryabhatta's calculation of the Moon's distance from the Earth is just some meters in discrepancy with NASA's calculations. It's really hard to imagine. We, with all the advancements are still unable to grasp the knowledge which was harnessed by the ancient without them. From that I spoke about the branch of Noetic Sciences of which Dan Brown mentions in his new novel, the Lost Symbol which exactly focuses on this power of the human mind to harness it's true energy.
Then from somewhere the topic shifted to the Pyramids of Egypt. The pyramids as many of us know are arranged in the exact same alignment as those of the stars of the constellation Orion. and it is also a fact that when the Orion is directly above the Pyramids, the shaft of light from the stars directly illuminates the place where the Pharaoh's head lies. Truly astounding! There is also a reference in the book Chariots of God that the Pyramids were an alien construction as the rocks and the material used to build them was not in the capacity of the Nile Civilization. Of course, the Pyramids have always been a source of mysteries and legends.
We then spoke about Mahabharata. The epic story of Hindu mythology. It is believed that Mahabharata did happen and it possibly can't just be a figment of Ved Vyas' imagination. Even scientists have found traces of radioactive material in the Kurukshetra wastelands. We also talked about the vast intricacies and linked stories of the epic.
I finally concluded as I have, often before while talking about paranormal things, that there is definitely a higher power. We can't just explain everything on scientific principles. The answer to WHY is never there. The WHY is just there. And it's fascinating. There are two lines which I remembered from a ghazal-
सामने है जो उसे लोग बुरा कहते हैं,
जिसको देखा ही नहीं उसे खुदा कहते हैं।

Harsh Realities

It's been just over 20 days since I have started my Compulsory Rotatory Internship at the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Medical College, Jabalpur. What a big name for a college and a hospital that is downsized by the very ethics and purpose it stands! Moving from Pune to Jabalpur, from AFMC to NSCBMC it has been an about turn in my perception of health care.
Where in AFMC I never had to think once before rubbing my hands with Sterilium in the wards, or not touching the newborns without disinfecting my hands, or advising the patients to go and buy some medicine; I now have to think so much! There is no Sterilium, newborns are handled like any other general patient, intracaths are inserted without much thought about asepsis, patients beg to receive free medication, it is all so shaking and true.
The India as it is, has been visualized by me. A medical college where the corridors smell of shit, where patients and their next of kin cook and feed their children in open grounds, where they stand in a line for drinking water which God knows how drinkable it really is! These sights have shaken me beyond imagination and unfortunately I have to just watch it like that. I can't do anything about it. All I can offer is some sympathy and kind words. What do I say to a father whose son has been bitten by a rabid dog and who has come to the hospital on a holiday demanding a free injection? He doesn't have the money to buy a vaccine. I send him to another government run hospital where there might be some hope of getting a free vaccine. What do I do when a newborn is actively seizuring in front of me and the basic medicine required for him is not available in the ward? I just stand helpless looking at the residents and the senior doctors to do something meaningful. The poverty, the helplessness, the lack of resources just overwhelms me.
I guess I am feeling this way because it's just been 20days for me here and coming from one of the best colleges in the country to a place which is like this is really hard to digest. But for now I feel truly helpless.

Orphan: Review

Lot of anticipation went through my mind before watching this flick. I was disappointed though. Orphan is the story of a 9yr old girl who is adopted by a family who lost their third child because of still birth. The girl, Esther is not innocent as she pretends to be and gruesome accidents keep happening where she is involved. Finally the truth is revealed when Kate, her step-mother discovers that she is actually a runaway from a mental hospital in Estonia and is extremely dangerous.
Orphan relies on its classy direction, jump in your seat sequences and brilliant cinematography. But it is totally spineless when it comes to the storyline. Though I could not guess the twist in the end but the twist was a very ordinary and unsatisfactory one. The director tries to fit everything into one disorder that is Hypopituitarism and that comes off as a poor solution to the complicated plot.
The performances are good, especially those of Kate and Esther. But then this is not one horror/thriller flick that you would remember. I will go out on a 3 on 5, purely for its direction, visuals and performances.