Life

Reason

2012-01-24T02:12:00.001-08:00

As I walked down the endpoint hill drenched in sweat, I see a sparrow bringing down a wriggling worm to its death in fury putting to torture as a part of the prey predator completing the cycle of hunger. The worm gave away in no time and left it’s flesh and blood for the sparrow to feed upon. The sparrow now flies away as it notices me nearer abandoning its hard earned food for it’s own life and spirit. I looked at the civilization from the hill. As these mere living forms fed, mated and struggled to survive; man made bows and arrows to tame the world, made BMWs and Benzs from class C to E and made the world the world a very big place to live in and then made telecommunications to make it smaller again. Cut trees and started the Global Warming campaign to save earth for its children tomorrow. Every bad act results in an inconspicuous vicious cycle that inevitably results in something bad unless intervened upon.

I frequently lose my thoughts to understand the meaning and purpose of things imagining a beautiful destination, a beautiful answer but mindlessly wandering through the streets without knowing directions. The time spent on such an adventure in all our lives have innumerate examples each of us constantly ending up somewhere that we want to believe is our destiny or reach there and then accept it as our destiny or nowhere NOWhere questioning destiny and still wandering hoping to find light at the end of the tunnel.

Through all of mankind’s survival, the thought to reason I feel has been the most significant change that altered the very essence of survival and progress we made across our existence. There is something in the evolution of the human brain that we have developed to understand, logically reason and prioritize a particular fact or statement. Tagging a reason to any interpretation of the many from the most complicated human brain validates it over its counterparts. Eason is all we look out for. Why? Reason again!

We find those reasons in different things, every one of us in different objects, persons in love and other abstract emotions and in passion. Irrespective of a possibility that this all could be a meaningless existence we constantly endure pain, suffering and seek the ‘Pavlonian’ pleasure consciously or subconsciously in search of the purpose in our lives for reasons many.

How does it happen that all life you believe in something or someone and suddenly it all crashes into abyss like an ambitious wave shattered as it dives into its own waters only to be embraced gently as it returns again. Is it that a person acts superior to make up for his inferiority complex or is it just that he is superior. Does somebody say something to mean it or acts like to mean it or because it sounds best in a given situation or may be for no reason at all only to be interpreted, analyzed and talked about by people who are themselves so lost and confused.

To me, we are desperate to find patterns cramming up our Anatomy, Physiology and Medicine ultimately trading it in an attempt to fulfill another man’s need in an existence wanting to mean something to somebody in life or after death perhaps only to return again.

On a very broad perspective we see that life isn’t in its whole in our hands despite our best efforts and most serious thoughts from, to whom we were born to whom we meet and to where and when we meet our awaiting death. The best I understand we can do is to accept things as they are and to make the best out of life in being a good friend to a friend, a good son to a father and a father to your son, a husband to a wife and a master of yourself all as an ‘expression of HappYness’ to make tomorrow, a ‘better’ tomorrow.

Autonomic dysfunction!

2012-01-24T01:38:00.000-08:00

14/01/2012, Manipal.

Yesterday’s night was one of the most dreadful nightmares of my life. 3 weeks ago when the grand finale was finally about to commence I wished for just a few things. One, I should not fall sick or meet with accidents, both in and out of hell. Two; Nobody I know (or don’t know too, if possible) should fall sick (and need me). Three; Let me be a machine and just pass this phase.

2 days ago as I was walking up and down the corridor trying to master the science of Carpentry in the given day, I suddenly felt a strong surge from the inside. This surge was no enthusiasm or the spirits or the usual episodes of exacerbated palpitations that have been in last 3 months and in not less than 2 minutes, I was staring into the washbasin, vomiting out everything I ate since morning. I never vomited even the times I got drunk and wondered if it was food poisoning or the force-fed excessive knowledge to the brain in the last few months.

I continued to roam around the house to keep myself just enough distracted with a book in my hand but ran to the basin every 20 minutes. I ate nothing so I guess I had to vomit ‘just water’. The nightmare of unknown origin [MUO] healed magically by that mid-night. Love from the housemate and the neighbors fastened the cure. The next day, after a satisfying theory exam I came home and convinced myself to take a short nap to freshen up and start preparation for the 5 specialty Surgery paper-2 subjects for the next day morning. The aim of revision was to basically turn the pages without reading much but the latest I got a look at those pages was 2 weeks before, since I began with Surgery paper 1 and Medicine followed since. As great God would have it, my landlord aunty happened to take her first dose of Tramadol for her usual backache and suddenly felt dizzy and I had to respond. They were very sorry for the disturbance but I wouldn’t pass it either, at least not after they fed me with easy digestible Idlis before I left for exam today as I was on an empty stomach since yesterday morning. It was not only a social responsibility but also the word that 2 to-be-docs live upstairs and none of them around when the need arose; at the least to call it an emergency and to respond to the moment. I thought of it more of a moral responsibility that presents itself with greater complications than answering on the blank papers and scoring marks. That night, running through the incessant names of surgeons and their surgeries and distances from the anal verge, I found myself at the verge. I was lost and then like always began to worry about nothing. I finished, closed and then the next day filled the 16page booklet served to me. The paper was easy, so simple that our immediate seniors who had to face the brunt of the previous year paper and sat to write the exam again with us were seen literally jumping with joy and hitting their chests and fists against each other as the bell rang and I only thought to myself that I survived this- a nightmare.

I have always believed that the body finds wonderful means to cope up with anything presented to it. During our classes and clinics, I was amazed to see how an infant adopts a squat to tolerate a cyanotic spell, how a man with a varicocele walked into the OPD wearing 2 undergarments to alleviate the dragging pain (though the increased temperature due to the double wear might exacerbate a lil’ bit). Stress too precipitates something of a similar response making our body go nuts and finding ways to ‘let go’, both through voluntary (movies and addictions) means and involuntary (autonomic dysfunction) means.

A friend of mine said over stress manifests in him as allergy/ hypersensitivity reaction. Another friend said he and his roommate had to be on Proton pump inhibitors for their gastritis. Mine usually being insomnia and a lil’ worry, this time was accompanied by a few episodes of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, not to forget palpitations, pale stools (steatorrhoea) and high colored urine that resolved spontaneously with the last exam giving me no chance to see which one of my differentials were correct!

WHAT’S YOURS?

Night mares and hares

2012-01-24T01:37:00.001-08:00

Owing to my yet to heal broken shoulder and the recent radiculopathy, I sat at home and just like any other exam season I began to question everything in life. Where was I headed and what I was doing.

It’s about 2 into the dark. I ran out into the balcony hearing a ‘scream of death’. It was the second of the 3 kittens that Tony, the landlord’s dog downstairs has killed in the past few days. I stood there in strange agony wondering if it died the same way as it’s sibling; the same foul play along the narrow edges of the roof?! The last one among Kitty kitty’s (the name of the cat that adopted us) litter tremblingly leaned over the edge and looked as the dog bit the body of it’s dead brother again and again. Do they ever learn from their mistakes like we do, I thought in curiosity.

Maybe, the key to our evolution is that we learn from the mistakes of our ancestors not only through history but also very quickly than other genes and species that need greater Pavlovian conditioning.

As Kitty kitty jumped on the roof to return home with a fresh dead rat, I wondered if she realized that all of her litter is reduced to one. Not surprisingly she did more than I thought she would, she purred in agony all night long searching for the missing kitten, the same purr that the black cat owing to its unlucky color gives away in the neighborhood. Only now did I know what the sound meant. A dose of Alprazolam or Diazepam in the night’s milk could be of some help to her, I thought. The last kitten with blue eyes was fear struck with the death of it’s 2 brothers and didn’t let her mother leave to go hunting for food and played with it’s tail all day. The next day everything seemed fine again and Kitty kitty got herself pregnant again! The black cat helped. 9 weeks later, not in my house Kitty!

p.s 9 weeks is the gestational period for cats.

p.s.s Cats eat rats and eat them with delight but why do dogs have to bite cats when they don’t eat them?!

p.s.s. Do they experience love as the same way as we do?

Insomnia- I

2012-01-24T01:36:00.000-08:00

After sitting hours straight and have accumulated enough toxic gases, my head erupted in a yawn and I was glad that sleep was coming because if the human brain truly had any limit or capacity, I think mine just exceeded the limits. When the altered consciousness says that it can’t take it anymore, sleep is a wonderful thing. It makes everything go away and gifts you a new silent start tomorrow.

I turned the lights off and holding my 14week potbelly like a pregnant women with lardosis and wondering what I would be dreaming today, I reached my bed 4.5 feet away with great difficulty. May be one of those Richie Rich dreams where I get to be the king and have to play a 3D virtual ‘Game of scratch’ to save my queen and the kingdom or oh ooh, one of those where the world is about to an end only to survive at the climax of the dream where the whole of mankind spent all of it’s money, resources or finished off with it’s ‘bucket list’ that many of us had nothing to live for after the unexpected survival! Death as a whole, when it comes it all, at once, doesn’t seem like a bad idea at all now. In one of those dreams which I still vividly remember, I was at Marine drive when the skies began to crack open and spill down avalanches and I ran to save myself all across the globe, from the Pyramids to the Red sea and the Alps of Europe all at once. Ooh! I think I even spotted a few dinosaurs!

But it’s been a while I dreamt in sleep. Actually, I have to admit that I began to have trouble sleeping. It’s not the barking of the dogs or the cats that find way inside the house that disturb me anymore but my own pounding heart. It beat so hard and gave me a constant company like pain during my post-operation that I worried if I would have to lay in bed all night awake until the first rays of the morning would forcibly make me throw the blanket off. I doubted even if any sleeping pill would be an antagonist to this disease. A few years ago, I enjoyed a 7-hour sleep even before my 1^st year university exams and there was never a problem before either. Oh good great sweet killer education, I ask thou, what have you done to me?

Health Care Of Rural India- An essay

2011-08-27T03:38:00.000-07:00

It makes me wonder how eligible I am with the mere knowledge for a 10 mark question from the chapters of Community Medicine, having visited an ENT surgeon for a small furuncle and the Dermatologist for acne under insurance coverage this morning to speak of the poverty my country is struck with, complex issues which affects the lives of millions, whom I might never encounter in my whole life and yet have an impact on mine.

While adopting the Constitution on January 26, 1950, we, the people of India, dedicated ourselves to the creation of a new social order based on equality, freedom, justice and the dignity of the individual and, to the end, decided to eliminate poverty, ignorance and ill-health.

They say India has a national health policy but doesn’t have a national health service. The first part of the statement, I understand through a look at my 800 odd paged Park’s textbook of Preventive and Social medicine. The latter part, anybody would agree when they take a stroll down Dharvi, one of the worst hit slums of the alpha world city- Mumbai or a far flung off village in Bihar where people still die off Diarrhea.

As may be easily anticipated, the overall picture of the current health care is a mixture of light and shade, of some outstanding achievements whose effect is unfortunately more than offset by grave failures.

India stands at 134th position in the UN Human Development Index. When it comes to healthcare or for that matter anything, there are two Indias: One India that provides high-quality medical care to middle-class Indians and medical tourists, and the other in which the majority of the population lives—a country whose residents have limited or no access to quality care. Nearly 74% of the rural population doesn’t enjoy all the benefits of modern curative and preventive health services. Also, 73.6% of the doctors are concentrated in the urban areas and a mere 26.4% in the rural areas where a near 75% of the population lives. Not only does the wide variation exist between the rural and the urban but also the geographical distribution of hospitals vary according to local socioeconomic conditions all across the country with a wide gap between Uttar Pradesh and Kerala.

‘Health by the people, placing people’s health in people’s hands.’

Primary Health care is considered one of the greatest milestones in the history of health care in India, the very basic roots of survival for millions. The building of PHCs- the 1^st level of contact, constitute the fundamental requirement of a sound referral system and the realization of ‘Health For All’.

One driver of growth in the healthcare sector is India’s booming population, currently 1.1 billion and increasing at a 2% annual rate. India will surpass China by 2030 and by 2050, the population is projected to reach 1.6 billion.

Figures from Rural Health Statistics reveal some startling trends. Sub-Centers, Primary Health Centers and Community Health Centers — the bedrock of rural health delivery — have grown in absolute numbers since Independence: From 725 in 1951 to 57,353 in 1981 to 1,71,687 as of March 2007. They remain the backbone of rural health-care in the absence of private sector presence.

‘Rural health care in India faces a crisis unmatched by any other sector of the economy’. - Arvind Panagariya, The Economic Times.

Besides tremendous progress, not all Health statistics are healthy for rural India. Considering the limited facilities available in a sub-centre, 50% of the sanctioned posts of Specialists at CHCs remaining vacant, run-down infrastructure, poor supply of drugs and equipment, illegal selling of the public welfare supplies and soaring rates of chronic employee absenteeism, commission practices that exist between the rural unqualified doctors and the doctors from the health institutions in the nearest cities or the district heads; quality health-care remains a mirage for much of rural India. There is no healthy Comparison of this with the hospital (public and private) beds available in the urban areas, which are greatly uneven. While the rural poor are underserved, at least they can access the limited number of government-support medical facilities that are available to them. The urban poor fare even worse in terms of primary health care and they cannot afford to visit the private facilities that thrive in India’s cities.

The launch of National Rural Health Mission [NRHM] 2005-2012 is a giant in the creation of a national service whose need was conceived almost 30 years before; aims to provide effective healthcare to India’s rural population, with a focus on 18 states that have low public health indicators and inadequate infrastructure. Through the mission, the government is working to increase the capabilities of primary medical facilities in rural areas through Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) and Link Workers and ease the burden on tertiary care centers in the cities, by providing equipment and training. It integrates multiple vertical programmes and also embraces the Indian system of medicine [AYUSH].

The new course (Bachelors of rural health care) for 3 year and six months that demands for a five-year service in a rural area is a potential solution as primary health care is the need of the hour but are we compromising rural health care just in the desperate attempt in making more doctors to bridge the gap is an intriguing question. The extension of regular MBBS study period for rural service raised a huge out cry from the students. Though it was a shrewd idea of the politicians to fill their vote banks by promising the rural population, doctors at their doorsteps; the consequences of such a bill would have changed the entire face of rural health.

Solutions including the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), Janani Suraksha Yojana(JSY), fundamental reform of the long established Public Distribution System (PDS), a new Food Security bill under consideration by parliament which proposes to issue coupons direct to BPL families, Vandemataram Scheme, RCH programme and programs to encourage sustainable farming practices are being implemented for the overall development.

Indian health services have carved out meaningful programmes of health services, research and demonstration. Mobile based primary health care systems, Automated Medical records, and development of innovative roles for allied health professionals, Telecommunications and Telemedicine—the remote diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of patients via videoconferencing or the Internet. It’s only through solutions such as these that a rural population approaching 700 million can be benefitted with proper healthcare facilities.

The misdistribution of biomedical services and the lack of penetration of public health services create a dilemma for Indian patients. They encounter a bewildering array of medical services, ranging from qualified traditional medical practitioners to untrained, self-taught purveyors of medicines and cures. This frequently accounts for this type of patient use, which may be described as “forced pluralism,” and for provider practice that is “unethical and dangerous”. This by-now entrenched pattern of inappropriate medical practice and patient abuse, calls for a review of policy, a plan for regulation, and action against the unqualified. The Government is undertaking strategies in order to harness the available local resources by incorporating the existing self -made rural health professionals to the mainstream of health care.

Private sector spending dwarfs the total healthcare being financed by the public sector. In 2003, fee-charging private companies accounted for 82% of India’s $30.5 billion expenditure on healthcare. Most of the population is forced to seek health care from the private sector and pay out of pocket at the time of illness. Eighty percent of our healthy care is met through individual household expenditure, one of the highest internationally. Studies show that an average of 24 percent of Indians are impoverished because of medical expenses.

In such circumstances there are two alternatives, either that government increases it’s spending on healthcare and to improve the quality of care in its institutions and thereby protects the poor from catastrophic health expenditure, or the poor resort to some mechanism that protects them when they fall sick. While the former option seems to be materializing in various forms in our country the only solution to provide health care facilities to the poorer sections of the society could be the community health insurance through which the basic health care needs can be taken care of.

Only 11% of the population has any form of health insurance coverage. The Employees State Insurance Act (1948), Janarogya Yojana (1996-97), Yashaswini Insurance scheme (2002)- a micro insurance initiative, in the state of Karnataka by a public–private partnership for the farmers who previously had no access to insurance. Recently launched government-sponsored health insurance schemes, such as Arogya Sree scheme (Andhra Pradesh) and Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), target poor Indians, offering cashless cover while allowing beneficiaries to choose among empanelled public and private providers.

More state governments should pursue such initiatives so that most or all of the population can afford to purchase at least a minimum level of coverage. Also the problems such as reimbursement, a process that can take up to six months,

should be efficiently tackled . The widespread availability of health insurance would help to drive demand for services and provide additional revenue to improve the quality of care.

‘There is a great difference between medical facilities available in Western countries and that in India. But there is a common thread — Indian medical professionals.’

The usual cycle of migration of health care professionals from villages to cities, cities to metropolitan and from the metropolises to the US and abroad where they believe are better amenities, better job satisfaction, better professional brethren, better adaptability, better experience and most importantly ‘Better Quality of Life”. Reports are that close to 38 per cent of practicing doctors and dentists in the US are of Indian origin. Ironically the migrating doctors do not hesitate to work in the rural areas of the developed nations, as the pay for doctors who prefer to work in their rural areas is more while it is just the opposite in India.

The term ‘health’ is not found in the US constitution but yet they have always taken extreme measures to provide their citizens with the 3 sentinel services- Defense, Education and Health care. In 2008, U.S. health care spending was about $7,681 per resident and accounted for 16.2% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP); this is among the highest of all industrialized countries.

The National Health Account shows that India’s total expenditure on health amounts to 5.10% of the gross domestic product (GDP), while its per capita total expenditure on health is $80 compared to an average of over $220 spent by many other developing countries. Consider the contrast with the Bhore Committee recommendation of 15% committed to health from the revenue expenditure budget, against the WHO, which recommended 5% of GDP for health. In this very year India spent 300 bn to hold the most expensive Common Wealth Games ever.

Does the elixir of dynamic economic growth distract us from acknowledging that the superpower status will be denied to us until our country can bestow social justice to its own citizens?

"Taking real time data and immediately feeding it back into the product, tapping local entrepreneurial talent, doing incredible marketing and education based on aspirations and not avoidance will make health care as ubiquitous as Coca- cola", said Melinda Gates in her TED talk. Only through real education can the masses be made to realize the ‘felt needs’ and they shall be more receptive to hear when their stomachs are full enough. It is through research into cheaper modalities of health care delivery like ORS, a revolution can happen.

I look forward for that day, when we can pride ourselves on our determination, enough wealth, organizational skills, intellectual and technological capacities to develop an ideal health care model such as the NHS and provide health care to every citizen in need.

Change appears to be the hallmark of this generation. This is fortunate, for change is the hope of the future. But let’s remember, true prosperity starts in the countryside.

P.s. This essay on the 'Health Care Of Rural India' has been a product of a hot furnace in my head for a

National essay writing competition- DR. VISHWAS PATIL MEMORIAL ESSAY COMPETITION supposedly conducted by APCM, Dhule during my preparation time for the third year university examinations which included Community Medicine.

Like, all things are not appreciated in life, I never got a reply despite calls to Dr.Singh or my mails to their society. Well, let there be a reader for this hard-made piece at the least!

-Raviteja Innamuri

My love!

2011-07-06T09:42:00.000-07:00

I remember the first time I saw her. The evening was hot and the inners wet. The Sun poured down sweat that precipitated on the cooler mortals. She stood in the corner of the dark room along with her other friends. She was different. She smelled different. I couldn’t help noticing her. At first from the corner of my eyes and then, inevitably staring at her. The mirror glare from the rider passing by disturbed her grace. She noticed me and broke my stare, threw my head down and filled me with guilt to the brim. I had no reason, why? I stared at the Taj Mahal much longer and nobody said a thing!

I was at the same place the next day. Maybe, it was just coincidence. She was there too. None of us said a thing. I was there the next evening and perhaps the next one too until all it took was a simple handle- shake.

I don’t really remember much after that. The ride was always pretty smooth with her. I could never get bored. The feeling was always like the wind sweeping through my hair making curls and sweet subtle music as it sensitively touched my eardrum as it left softly brushing my pinna. She took me to new places, introduced me to new fellas. There was always something to do, something new. She rarely complained and though there were a few misunderstandings; the mechanic was not far away.

She always farted silently. She was always very polite and waited patiently for me. She always took hours long to clean up but always looked prettier than the last time I saw her. She intimidated the other girls. Oh boy! You could tell! She could never bear thirst. You had to get her the drinks else she wouldn’t budge.

She needs to be treated more delicate than a flower. I feared every second if I would bruise her if I hit, any harder. But she could endure any pain, race any distance and a great opportunist. She never backed down. For her, stamina is nothing more than one extra foot when your heart is ‘one hundred percent exhausted’ and your mind says ‘no more’. Man! She is a winner.

In the many years I have known her I could never tell how special she is to me, until now. You are a miracle. Happy anniversary Laura! You are the most wonderful thing anybody could ever own!

p.s. Laura is a bike.

What make great quotations GREAT!

2011-07-06T09:33:00.000-07:00

I have always wondered what made good quotations great. Is it really who said them or are they great because the ones who heard them have interpreted them greatly. Many times in life, we hear people say profound things just in the passing; things that are capable of igniting minds and changing lives.

As a tribute to my wonderful friends, here are some of my best catch!

"Cases are not stupid; only case sheets are."
- Priyanka Shuklae. 13/05/2011.

"We all just pretend."
-Krithika Singh on her latest night out.

"You are distracting yourself."
- Roopa Patel on things distracting me.

"The vaguest of symptoms precipitate the sophisticated of investigations."
- Me; on the patient's investigation report for 'giddiness'.

"Teach me something."
-Miss Ann in her intermittent awakening phases of her sleep- wake cycles at clinical postings.

"There is an old dictum of mine. If you know, write. If you don't; write more."
-Anonymous; who had taken 8 additional s for the OBG exam.

"Off the eyes is off the mind."
- Re-quoted by Mr. Roy.

5 ways to know if an Indian women is anaemic. . .

2011-07-06T09:32:00.001-07:00

The content below is extremely offensive under United States Code, Title 18, Section 2257-

1. All FAIR Indian women are anemic unless proved otherwise.

2.They have always wanted to donate blood but never did.

3. They speak of bearing 'red plump' children, all the time.

4. They eat chicken though never touch real foood. [Controversial]

5.They pay close attention to the indicator as they pass through the walk through metal detector.

Find more and get a personalized signed copy of Nikil Nandineni sleeping in LR's class.

p.s.A walk through metal detector detects the metal on your body. Here, we speak of the Iron in Haemoglobin ;p ;)

One step further. . .

2011-07-05T09:45:00.000-07:00

It was a cold winter morning. As the breeze was busy cracking the tender dry skin, we were preparing for the cross-country race for the early Sunday morning. The bells rang with no indifference like any other weekday as everybody left their laziness in their previous day night clothing.

The first boy and the first girl who make it across the entire village, the valley down the bridge and into the forest and back will be declared champions for the week’s cross country race will proudly hoist the national flag upon the school’s administrative office and will have their names in red bold letters on the main notice board for an entire week until somebody else will run his ass off!

As we assembled in those lines according to heights and spacing each other with our hands as rulers, I realized that I was standing next to the all time cross country champion! Who wouldn’t dream of being a person like that of him?! I had to satiate my share of curiosity and so asked him the question that had been so tirelessly running round & round in my head,

“Do you ever get tired?”

He turned towards me and gave me a weird look. I know it was a stupid question but I had a reason- I was just too young!

Then, more questions hit my head.

“Aren’t you scared of entering the forest alone before the entire group makes it?”

“What do you do when you feel really thirsty and when your legs ache very badly?”

“Do you take breaks?”

“How do you build your stamina?”

I didn’t know what to ask. He waited as I simply stared at him. I finally asked-

“What do you do when you when you feel like stopping?”

“Take a step further”; he simply answered.

The whistles blew and we ran in colorful shorts to entertain the drowsy on looking villagers. As I took the first breaths of the unused air scented with Eucalyptus, all I could think of is what he said.

Alas! It is not who that is stronger or who with the greatest potential that matters. The question that matters is, “ who endures it the hardest and the farthest of all?” When every cell in your very existence is devoid of energy; when the very breath is about to run out; when every iota of energy is spent- Can you dare to take one step further?

Stamina is no virtue or skill, my friend. It is just the will to take one another steps further!

p.s. Dedicated to Madhusudhan Reddy and to the conversation at the Amphi theatre hill on the Sunday morning.

Aamchi Mumbai!

2011-03-31T11:32:00.001-07:00

My life in Manipal begins at the Syndicate circle and ends at Tiger Circle or might go as far as Kamath Circle if my delicate time permits me to travel to the campus buzzed MIT for some sumptuous dinner at the new food court.

I began scribbling this piece as I told my Dad I would, sitting in a Mumbai local train from Borveli to Andheri, which is now far different from what I experienced this morning. The cabin presently is accommodating an accurate 21 that in the morning carried a near 250, with each person’s face shoved into someone else’s armpit, literally! What you really need to be worrying about is the odor produced by the mixture of sweats as a collective collaboration rather than the individual contribution. Everybody talks to the other as if nobody else is listening. They sing songs in choir as if nobody else exists. That’s what seeing soo many people everyday does to you, I guess. Some old man talked of his retirement and his son leaving to the U.S for a high pay job. A woman complained about her husband. Young men discussing about their jobs, making more money and new weekend plans. Some girl just wanted some Vodka! Well, I was listening. Nobody cared if you; the stranger is eavesdropping not.

Bombay is prosperous. All they repeated was- ‘Bombay, the city of dreams, where everything is possible. A city that never sleeps.’ The locals run beyond 1:30am into the night!

Bombay is cheap. Anybody can survive in Mumbai. A vadapav for Rs. 6, Nimbu pani Rs.4 and there is food everywhere. There are these, amazing stuff just made out of bread and hand-made like the mini pizza and sandwitches that are a big hit with the aam aadmi.

Bombay is luxurious. There are cafes at bay and alongside popular streets like the European style (the way, I like to call them) flooded with the fair skinned foreigners. They are a true bliss. The buildings grow notoriously longitudinally, oh, what do you think, we have no other choice, the only direction left, they will say! The night before on my way to Mumbai, the co-passenger suggested me to sit by the Marine drive where romance is high even under the hot commercial Sun and stare at the cars that pass by. He said, at first you’ll say this to yourself and then out loud; “fuck, when has India got so rich man?!”

I randomly remarked in my RABITS that I can’t eat too much cheese and a maximum of 5 spoons of pasta that I can relish in one sitting. I hate beer too; too much of a time and calorie consumption to get to a 50ml high spirits. But the combination of these at the Leopold’s was something I never tried before and I must admit, it was amazing. It’s that weird feeling of your stomach burning with hunger and the temperature rising with the beer and you satiating it with the cheese paparika sprinkled cream Chicken pasta alongside!

Life in Manipal may begin from TC and ends in KC but life in Bombay is beyond Borevili to Churchgate. . .

Back to square one!

2011-03-01T11:19:00.000-08:00

My dad is a simple man. He has been a practicing general surgeon for decades now. He enjoys his government job like any other chronic government official. He sleeps late, almost everyday and wakes up a bit late for his office. With a towel round his belly, and an old song on his lips, he goes directly to the pooja room after bath and lights an agarbathi that’s fills the house with its fragrance.

He is that kinda person who socializes extremely well and cracks good jokes for everyone to laugh. People love to have him around. I learnt the socializing part well but when it comes to my poor jokes, I end up laughing at most of them, inevitably alone. He is always, well, most of the times in a constant thought loop, unable to hear you talking to him even though you are standing right beside him. Hell, once, he even asked me, who I was and what did I want as I stood at his cabin door waiting for him to finish talking to the other white coat bearers. That’s a different story all together!

He never did really beat me when I was a kid like my mother used to (to teach me the hard lessons) but the few times he got angry, I used to feel real bad. He used to let me enter the OT in those long scrubs while he was operating and let me stare at the blood soaked meat and the puddles of pus. He got me an ice cream each time I fainted off the stool and whenever I visited the dentist. I always preferred him for injections. He knows the ‘pain free’ way, believe me.

He made crazy bets with me for all sorts of change and got me speaking on topics to earn my prize money that went in my Santa bank.

He is a workaholic. He loves the share market. He is also very generous to his poor patients. He spent years away from home, my mom and me for studies and clinical experience. He is always there to join me into an institution and re-visits the place to take me home only after the course is over, years later. He was there for my medical college counseling but he hasn’t visited Manipal, since then. I go home for vacations, of course! Yesterday, in one of his enlightening hour-long/once-in-a-week conversations he shared with me something that goes like this-

(Do leave your comments; I’m sure he would love to hear from you)

Into a mysterious world I entered naïve and innocent with perhaps a vacant head. All these years I continued to live in the same mystery and yet again I feel the same, fearing atrophy and turning vacant, as I can’t recollect names and dates which once I did so well. I wouldn’t compare to say that an unripe and a rotting ripe fruit are the same but I’m back to square one, I would say.

I fought with my father to get what I wanted and the world thereafter. In little arguments I spent so much of my life and all I learnt was to learn to compromise in the end. I flew away from my native town in search of life and now, I fear my children will fly away from me. Back to square one.

They failed me in my final MBBS for not delivering the answer for a single question. I wondered why? Maybe, all the others did well and they needed someone to flunk and they found me and I convinced myself to reading the same for another six months. Back to square one.

I struggled in my government job for many years as a doctor and saved enough to invest in the share market to make some good money. I created many occasions and shared enough drinks to impress those expert brokers and businessmen and spoilt my health alongside. I made a lot of money but now; I invest it all to enjoy good health. Back to square one.

When our lifetime is almost spent and all the time is gone. What is that we see when we look back to? Life teaches us both good and bad. It leaves us experience to teach but aren’t we back to square one?

The Mental Journey 3

2010-12-10T10:22:00.003-08:00

The way the history and the patient are looked upon can change the entire course of therapy and the thereby, the life of the patient.

History = Clinical diagnosis

In some instances I did feel that that there were heavy lapses in the research areas and a great lot is yet to be unveiled. What I despised the most while attending the Psychiatry clinics was that, most of the final diagnoses were based on the history and the doctor’s interpretation as specific clinical investigations do not yet, exist; making it biased.
For once, give it a thought. If you happen to impress a Psychiatrist well enough, whatever you see could be termed as visual hallucinations and whatever you hear are auditory hallucinations! Even a child not wanting to go to school and play is pre-morbidity! Gross and eventful!
But there are doctors efficient enough to see those thin lines and brainy enough to analyze the understanding of those firing neurons. Still, I await that day when I shall be relieved of the slightest doubt that a person can never be wrongly placed in a mental asylum. After all, everything is a mind’s perspective. Even happiness fits perfectly to be called a mental ailment!

BRACED-UP!

2010-12-10T10:22:00.001-08:00

She sat a step diagonally higher to me munching away the 20mg Diclofenac tablet, occasionally tossing it between her teeth, probably convincing those agelessly old archeological tools that the pain will soon be gone. Now, she held that half dispersed pill between her teeth and broke it into a perfect two. I couldn’t help noticing it. I am guessing that the taste would be something like the color of the tablet itself.
I still remember that day when I had the ceremony to undertake the vow to sparkle each time I smile, sporting those stainless steel hangings in the oral cavity to manipulate stuff- yet another molded medical invention!
Staring at the giant picture overhanging the wall in front of me, I sat in the hyper- specialized chair, which is everything for the dental clinic and the dentist himself, whatever it is, just say it- out patient Rx, operation theatre, anything and everything.
The picture was of a beautiful village woman carrying a pot of water, teeth, milk (jus’ guessed it) carved out of a really big tooth. ‘Soo huge!’ that it must be a property of a really big carnivorous non-human, I thought.
Like an ant sting, the sharp needle with a sharper hole pierced through my hard red jelly and blew out my cheeks like I was with my mouth-FULL. Then, to my surprise, he struck tongs into my mouth and with all his visible strength pulled out a huge milky bar out which looked very similar to the one in the picture. It’s like the iceberg concept thing, I wondered, with the entire blood brimming.
He pulled out the 4 pre-molars to finally defy the very nature’s human dental principles.
A lotta things in life change after this. You get a new brush with a mid-partitioned bristle-less wave, a new tooth paste with a worse color (placebo effect, maybe) but you teeth still stink, anyway, so I suggest you better mix both the pastes. It takes much longer to brush and makes one more efficient to piss off other neighboring brushers and the ones waiting in line for the washbasin.
Then what? Years pass in waiting, you grow half in size outta starvation and after check up after check up, you are promoted to a temporary wire brace which now makes it harder to even talk and then you lose it all one day only to worry about getting it all back again, very possible with the shorter Australian wire technique and a lil’ more safer with the longer American technique!

p.s. One hell of an experience!

HappYness

2010-11-10T10:48:00.000-08:00

Happiness is jus’ a relative understandin’ of the lil’ things in our lives.

It’s a perspective. Sometimes, overrated and sometimes underrated. Remember, what we said in the beginning- ‘RELATIVE’.

However a situation may seem to be and however bad it may look in a particular circumstance, at that very moment somethin’ may happen or appear to happen and the way you look at it can change so drastically enough that the smile reappears on those sensitive lips and a whistle takes over those musings. I’m sure it happened to all of us one time or the other, only if we had given a chance for it to happen.

I always tried to understand the most common of things by relating them to the most common of things to suit their nature- the BASIC.

Often, friends complain to each other about the other possibly good friend who remembers them only in times of need. Okay, let’s talk about that for a while.

Do you think of the bathroom, all day? I sound really funny. Don’t I? I know. It’s obvious too that we think of it only when we need to take a piss. But what if the bathroom feels about you the way you thought of your other friend. It may sound indifferent, but it’s not. Jus’ try to reason it with me. You remember it when you need it and go for it. The only reason I see the bathroom to feel disappointed is when you go to your neighbor’s bathroom for the piss. I hope you are getting the drift.

There is this awesome example I came across in a TED talk on a context of choice and happiness. There are many circumstances when we feel something does really make us happy but in fact, it does not. Here’s one such situation.

A group of 40 Harvard students were sent around to click pictures of their campus, these were to be the ones they can hold close to the heart years later to relish college memories. Two pictures were to be selected from each of these individual collections. Now, the group was divided in to two. The first group was asked to choose the best picture of the two and asked to go home with it with no choice. However, the second group got 1 picture alone though they could come back 3 days from that day and switch it with the other if they feel they are not satisfied with the one they had.

Guess, what happened! More than half of group 2 exchanged their pictures on the 3^rd day as expected. When stats were taken a few months from then to see how many were happy with the decision made; surprisingly, the most of the members of group 1 said- ‘ well, this is the one’ while most of the group 2 said-‘hmmm. . .I ‘m not really sure you know, I still love the other picture more.’

I don’t know to call it compromise or whatever but it does seem that takin’ away decision did make them happy, at least here!

As days pass by and time flies; each day when you lay in bed at the end of the day, though these seem so obvious, and you don’t have anyone to talk to about these and so does many of those times, you feel, like me, wondering, what is the missin’ link!?

Illuminati '10

2010-09-03T12:08:00.003-07:00

4:45 pm, 29th August, AFMC, Pune:

It was a cloudy day. As I entered the stage of the 1500 capacity Dhanvantari auditorium at AFMC, Pune, the water began to hit from all the sides. The silence was broken.

The podium almost hid me leaving my eyes and forehead, making me aware of my height. I began to speak. Not before I even completed my first sentence, I paused. I went blank. At each passing second, my heart pumped harder and my head pulsated along, making me feel so heavy that I almost sank to the ground.

The crowd, now, began to whisper and I looked around. My teammates, anxious and shocked waited patiently behind the curtains for an answer. I just wanted to run behind to them and cry but that would not have made any point. All those sleep deprived nights, a thousand kilometer travel for a day, all that effort and thinking would at once scoop to just a ‘nothing’.

I looked into the center of the auditorium and made a brief laugh staring into its blankness and went on to do what was undone and ran back as soon as my part was done. I was sure of being referred to as ‘that crazy short guy’.

I was ‘red hot’. My mind was bombarded by a million thoughts, all interrogatives. My team asked me to stay cool and get ready for my final part of the symposium. I tried to breathe, slowly but consciously. I went out of the auditorium through the back door. It was pouring now. I noticed that my lost umbrella was ‘getting wet’ lying in the veranda, which I must have forgotten during lunch, and wondered if I should walk till there and get it back. I started to walk, before I made the decision and decided to bring it, anyway. It didn’t matter anymore, for that matter, nothing mattered, anymore. ‘Hasn’t all that could be screwed up has already been done?’ I asked myself. I paced up and down. I was called once again. This time, I knew I had no choice but to live every word that I would utter and stand for what I had come to stand for.

After the speech, there was a brief pause, the same heavy silence, which had passed when I paused just a few moments ago, but this time, the crowd burst into applause.

I wondered if I could catch any glimpse of ‘weeping microbiologists’, if any, in some corner of the hall, to talk about it after I come back home. I gave up and left the podium, a little happy but still disappointed.

p.s. I should speak more often.

Medical mumble jumble. . .

2010-08-14T00:41:00.000-07:00

The Endocrinology class went 'blank'.

"That's why I always said, we shouldn't be having Stethoscope as our symbol; rather a Ryle's tube would suit better."

The class still; blank.

- Dr. Murlidhar Verma; on spoon feeding college education.

p.s. Ryle's tube (rylz) n. a thin flexible tube of rubber or plastic, which is inserted into the stomach through the mouth or nose of a patient and is used for withdrawing fluid from the stomach or for giving a test meal. [ J. A. Ryle (1889–1950), British physician]

Door creaks to open into the dark room.

Dr. Krishna Rao: Soo, why are you late by 22 minutes. What's your excuse?
No response.
Dr. KR: At least tell me the last night's foot ball match's score!
...[No response. Out of coverage area.]
P S: Chile!
KR: Chh. . .i. . .leee??
R T: No, BraziL!
K R: Br. . a. . .zilll??? Why are you even here!

Okay, I repeat. What's your take on the 'paper thin' walls in the Ophthalmology dept.? ;p

Never did the World 'blur' more than it did today.

All courtesy to the Tropicamide at the Ophthal OPD which got my eyes wiiide open. . .!

An 'Ayoo' in the Ophthal Septic OT. . .

We enter into the 'SEPTIC' Theatre terribly awaiting renovation, obviously! It looks like a kitchen filled Operation theatre stuff; damn it!

Patient undergoing {multiple Chalazion incision and curettage}; moaning, groaning, with clenched fists!

Dr. Lavanya Rao: You have to wait. If you don't cooperate, I can't finish and you'll have to come again and again.

Patient: (Howls and kicks in the air) Ha ha ha! That's true but (shouts in pain again) shhh. . . .ah ahhh, it's terrible madam, unbearable! Ayooo! Why don't you give an injection or something[ raising his hand to his eye and gesturing a poke in poke out.]

Dr. L R: I already gave two.

Patient: [Again, in his normal tone] Ooh! You already removed the big one!

Technician[ to students]- It's over. Change your scrubs. You can't go back to the OT directly from the Septic theater.

p.s.-"Septic" OT; so much for the name!

". . . . . .is the percentage. It is not my figure. It is Davidson's. . . . . . .is the approximate number. It is not my figure. It is Davidson's."  ...

-An extract from today's Medicine class on Headache!

"The most important thing about Skin is that it is very important."
-The introductory class on Skin appendages.

"God, somehow, is an arranged person. . . ."

"DON'T bundle anybody up, IMMOBILIZE!"

- Dr. Arjun Chacko @ the Saturday Neuro- Surgery Class!

p.s Sagnik Surya said; one of the best neuro-surgery classes eva ....." durin bath ...the last amt of water in a bucket which ppl cant leave behind..." haha..damn...

‎"Statistics are like Bikinis; they never reveal the most important things!"

-Dr. Varma on the deceivable nature of neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio. . .

p.s. On public demand! Well, you were expecting it, weren't you! ;)

A minute of Dr. K P Sir's ENT class!

Note:
'[x]'- indicate the gaps and pure spaces between spoken words.

. . .[2sec] Cystic fibrosis. [8sec later]. .can be allergy also.[10sec]. .some of them can be Auto-immune conditions.[8sec]. .can be associated with other syndromes. . .blah. . .blah[]. . .blah. [ 13 sec later]. . .I aleady mentioned about Cystic Fibrosis! [10 sec]. . . . . . .

p.s. Well, you can see the stats yourself ;p

"Sure. This is the last slide.
I'm jus' going in the reverse order."

- Dr. Sudhir Nayak@ Fungal infections class.

‎"I want to 'hear' him 'think'."

-Dr. Suresh Pillai; as Varun Gynaeshwar was shakin' to make them. . . ;p

"It's got Menthol. It goes to places you have never known to exist. It doesn't open up your nose. You just feel it does."

-Dr. Suresh Pillai on Vicks inhaler.

'When you are deprived of your normal supply of microbes, the immune systems get a poor education.'

"There are 3 kinds of lies-

Lies,

Damned lies and

Statistics

-Dr. Asha Kamath @ intro Bio Statistics class

p.s- from the back benches; " Head lice, body lice. . ."

"Doctors, learn to err on the safer side. Anything you do not know, blame it on the genes."

-Akaash vaani; the voice from the skies ;p

The reality of life-

"Diseases do not read text books. Only we do."

"Thumba heat aagida body alli"; the patient will say. The side effect of drug combination.

-Dr. Mularidhar Verma

"What makes me more wise than that guy begging on the street? Is it me knowing, that an Amoeba exists!!

-Raviteja. :)

The 'mental' journey [contd.]

2010-07-26T23:28:00.001-07:00

Q. Define Bizarre.

Ans. I see a man standing on the moon and peeing on the Earth.

I looked around. Faces struck in windows, mouths wide open and eager hands stretched out, with periodic pronation and supination waiting to grab you in the very first catch. This was the impression the Bolly/ Tolly- woods and friends who already happened to visit the Psychiatric wards (especially the ones who got slapped while taking a patient’s history) left on me. I didn’t find any of them though it was easier to recognize the wards, as it was the only one with the entrance closed and a guard attending it, at all times.

I ran across the hall with ‘symmetrically’ parallel beds occupied by ‘unsymmetrical’ minds as they moved their eyeballs from one corner to the other, from where laughter arose, which seemed more intelligent and sane over the others that filled the hall, which is perhaps, the venue for my class. I was alone, but not scared. I opened the door slowly, just to make enough space for one single eye of a suspicious peeping Tom. The room was fully packed and not surprisingly, everybody was already examining this innocent eye through the narrow hole. Now, knowing that I am late, scared, I said nothing. The bespectacled, rough bearded man, the only one not in an apron other than the patient, who seemed to be the oldest and the wisest of all brought his double chin to his chest at once and again. The classic non-verbal! As I entered, he looked towards a serious young doctor who continued . . .

“ Mr. Balasubramaniam, aged 32 years, who hails from the Shimoga district of Karnataka presents to Kasturba Hospital on 16/07/09 with the chief complaints of . . .[which generally is the starting point of unbelievable non-existent, non- English, this time struck me like a thunderbolt!]

I see God (full stop) My heart (hyphen) his gateway.”

My jaw fell to the ground. He continued-

“ History of presenting illness-

I feel all energetic and believe in the capability of achieving anything I want . . .

The people of this country need a great leader and I am ready to give it to them . .

After my BSc Chemistry, I felt closer to him [G O D] . . .”

Past history-

h/o thorn prick. Didn’t feel like going to school.

I was tempted enough to grab a copy of the patient’s history. The duration of the conversation with the patient was recorded as an unbelievable whole 2 and half hours! Further, in the report-

Content: {All the dominant preoccupations of the subject including ideas of reference, persecution, grandeur, worthlessness, hopelessness, guilt, sin, nihilism, negation, love, control, infidelity, etcetera}

“ I feel the power of ten [10] people within me.”

Insight: {Awareness, attribution and acceptance of intervention}

“ I have no problem. Ask God, if you want.”

As I flipped through the pages, a lot of thoughts were randomly being fired in my mind. For once, I, funnily, thought-

Well, here is an ideal Indian and where should he be?

Y-e-a-h! The Psychiatry ward.

The Professor closed his eyes half way through the presentation, life less till the moment, suddenly erupted from his old wooden chair and exploded.

“ You! The young man in the blue, yes, blue checks”, he said. “ Is Malaria curable?”

My class mate took the chance and ran down the entire list,” Chloroquine, Quinine, Atovaquone, Proguanil . . .”

“ Oh? That’s impressive. So what are these drugs for? Against whom are your murderous intentions?”

The room giggled in union.

“I mean the cause of your Malaria, young man. The cause!”

“The protozoan parasite. The species of Plasmodium. “

“Exactly.”

“Let me ask you one more question, give me a cure for a mental disorder. Okay. I’ll be lenient this time. Any mental disorder. Any!

Silence.

“ What happened?” He laughed violently. “I wont blame you. Humans haven’t found the antidote for emotion yet. Emotions have no reason.

To find a cure, you need the cause. When your target is lame, bizarre, retrospective, where is the word ‘cure’. There is no mental illness with a cure”, he declared. “ So is Hypertension, Diabetes mellitus, other chronic diseases, and psychiatric disorders, controllable, BUT are not curable.”

Suddenly, the nurse in the milk white uniform entered and spoke in a hurry.

“Doctor, doctor! The patient in bed no.32 is trying to kill herself again!”

“Aah! That old woman! Not again!” he said, flung the door wide-open and stormed out.

Roma

2010-06-14T10:24:00.000-07:00

You've Never Lived Until You've Loved in Rome!

Three coins in the fountain,
Through the ripples how they shine,
Just one wish will be granted,
One heart will wear a valentine.

Which one will the fountain bless?
Which one will the fountain bless?
- From the movie “Three Coins In The Fountain” [1954]

In Rome, the past is the key to the present and the present to the past. Each stone has a history of ages and like all the historical monuments all over the world from the Ajanta & Ellora, The Pyramids of Egypt to the ruins of Rome, it’s always the story behind it. It’s always the story behind everything that’s more impressive than the deceptive appearances.
The Vatican was, of course, the holiest place in the trip. They got everything there, from ceilings painted by Michelangelo, extreme social respect, political power, influence of the Church, that richness and the Swiss security. What else needs to complete the list?!
To get to Pisa and Florence, we just had to travel too much to arrive at one foci of architectural beauty! Wonderful!

The miscounted days plus 1

2010-06-13T02:45:00.000-07:00

Then, we drove to Swarovski, Wattens, Austria where the wonder- making Daniel Swarovski’s patented electric cutting machine had begun to change the beauty of crystal glass, itself! First, Chambers of wonder display followed by emptying of the dazzled disoriented visitors like all the other European industries.

That night at Innsbruck, no song was unsung and no wine left untasted.

Entry into the land of Italy didn’t mesmerize me as I expected. Maybe, the last days or the much more fashionable display in the movies, I didn’t know. I jus’ missed something.

All in all, as you stand at the Piazza San Marco aka Saint Mark's Square licking your Italian Gelato letting the salty breeze of the Adriatic Sea add flavor to those cold lips and still let you wondering about this floating city with its canals and bridges, those rotting colorful bricks, the richness and history, the Murano glass, the brides and the bells, the famous lover Casanova, the masks, the billion ‘Euro’ project to save this sinking islands and those Gondolas; you are standing on the most romantic place on this planet. That, you’ll know.

Day 10- Liechtenstein

2010-06-10T10:12:00.000-07:00

Liechtenstein, with it’s capital Vaduz, the only alpine country to lie entirely within the Alps inhabited by approximately 35,000 freaking rich German speaking people. It’s one of few countries in the world that maintains no military and with more registered companies than citizens!

Not very surprisingly, they almost had the whole area shut down for a marathon where (many sobbing, all cute) children ran through the streets with their anxious mums running behind them.

Though it was mentioned in the itinerary, I couldn’t imagine we were just stopping for lunch, getting our passports stamped [optional for a few Euros], using the free toilets (a rare thing to cherish in Europe; generally a visit can cost you around 0.3-1.3 Euros equivalent to 20- 80 INR!) and continuing with our journey. Later, we were explained that there wasn’t much to see either. Very clever!

Vaduz Castle, home to the Prince of Liechtenstein stands majestic on the hill just above the stop, right below which was the museum. The prince woke up each morning, brushed his teeth and discarded the toothbrush, which flies right out of the window landing in the Royal gallery of the museum. Take it easy. I just made that up!

Somewhere in the middle of Europe

2010-06-10T07:14:00.000-07:00

No sooner the trip began, I lost the count of the days and nights. Then, one fine day after crossing five countries border to border, I pull out my hand from the warm pocket to count my fingers as I heard my neighbors on the bus discussing plans of return. I only thing that reminded me of the passing time was my faithful growing beard.

Each passing day got me more tired. Tired of giant price tags. Tired of meticulous marvels, surprises and cheap bargains with the blacks. Tired of low battery indicator beeping at the end of each tiring day and me running to fetch a travel adaptor only to lose more of the little permitted sleep. I blinked less too, I suppose, maybe I subconsciously couldn’t afford to miss any passing beauties. I never understood the reason we get tired after traveling for long hours though we do nothing. I wrote less and instead made many new friends.

So, at this saturation point, when the memory was low and surprises were not surprises anymore and your head is bursting with information like at the end of a 3-hour straight study session, I scribbled-

With so lil’ time in each place, you wish you didn’t know they existed rather than now knowing that you traveled a 5 thousand miles to miss something at some place you’ve been and probably will never be again!

Day 6- Chamonix, France & Switzerland

2010-05-22T17:26:00.000-07:00

"Bon Voyage!"
- The Swiss officer at the border without checking our passports! ;)

Chamonix, France is perhaps going to stay as my favorite place. A lovely place, hidden deep in a valley surrounded by the French Alps, secluded from the rest of the bustling world with its river L'Arve running in rivulets calmly, can steal any given heart. For the very first time I had a longing to return to a place so much, no sooner than we left. Love at first sight, indeed.

What a view! What a sight! Into the oblivion till the horizons meet! 'Mountain clad' snow, melting white stuff creating falling waters and those infinite shades of green. I could starve to stare at it forever & ever, all my life. The two way cog wheel train ride with a single intersection point can equally mesmerize, as we watch those stretches of steep mountain land change from green to tall dark green to barren brown to thick milky white. Heaven! Even the cable car ride is available, if you wish, all the way to Italy!

Just yesterday, we rolled our heads high at the foothills to trace the bright bulb glowing on the peak and wondered how anybody could get there. Today, under the good God's warm Sun, we stood and stared from a 4,810 m high. All these interventions and pioneering began in these strange small lands in the beginning of the 20th century itself and by the way, who own the planet's highest peaks?! Oh boy! I ain't saying anything. I just feel so poor and backward.

In all those seemingly ending but 'still- an- hour to reach' bus rides, which the Cox & Kings called leisure drives, there was always, Michelle, our tour operator to comfort everybody, saying,
"Like in life, rather than the destination; it's the journey we undertake that makes the difference" to which we couldn't help but agree except for the ripened arse. Also, the wonderful vent for expression- 'Ooh là là' was something everybody took to and chanted day in and out, helplessly.

Switzerland is one supremely talked about place for its Alps, film shooting, honeymoons, neutrality, richness, quality of life and everything. Sparing the sarcasm in those dialogues of Ranbir Kapoor in the movie 'Bachna Ae Haseeno', yes! There were the grass and the cows, let's add dark chocolate to the list and let's complete the statement with the word 'imported'!

"It's what you have seen on the post cards and wall posters or perhaps may have dreamed of, in the wildest of dreams. It's picture perfect."
- Michelle, as we touched the Swiss border on the 'false perfect' count of 10.

After the visit to the Mount Blanc, we didn't dare to miss out any optional tours. Next, Jungfraubahnen! To Jungfraujoch, Top of Europe, a UNESCO world heritage of the Swiss Alps via Lauterbrunnen and Kleine Scheidegg stations by the Cogwheel train again, was another such visit. Quoting, 'The high Alpine tour, a simple stroll, skiing in eternal snow, the breath taking views of France, Germany and Italy from the Sphinx' and including half naked men Sun bathing in freezing temperatures, sculptures in the Ice Palace, 'moving frozen' glaciers and the hot Indian lunch.
Art flourished, may be because their tummies were already well fed to think about 'after food' unlike in the developing world. Signboards flourished, with the names of UNO, ECE, ICC, ILO, ITC, UNHCHR, WHO, WMO, UNESCO et cetera et cetera.

At Trümmelbach Falls, more than the sight of the series of glacier- water falls; what's remarkable to understand and notice is that these tons of water penetrated through the mountain forming crevices and how man decided to dissect open this huge chunk of rock and made it accessible. A marvel created when nature's best gifts are coupled with man's best efforts.

P.s Mahatma Gandhi lives in many gardens all around the globe.

All in all, from the fantastic view from the hotel window to the night walk with Dr. Adilakshmi and Dr. Ramanuja, it was an amazing stay.

DAy 3

2010-05-13T10:59:00.000-07:00

Like all the other cities of Europe, Pari was different and stunning. Everybody knew it the moment they entered the trance. Each of these European cities apart from their lavish beauties and histories are known more importantly for how beautifully their history and culture is preserved. Though our India is good with the history part, not so good with the protecting part.

Parc Asterix was a great set up. It actually feels like you are in a different land.

Though we couldn’t get to interact much with the local environment, that day apart from “Hello sir! Do you speak English?” and running around for change for as much as 100Euros, I met a friendly group in the train to Paris. Also, took a stroll down the Paris lanes sipping cold drinks with a camera in one hand and an exotic dinner of crepes and pizza in broad evening light! I only wished if all this happened without the all panicky Sardars around! You know, the group changes everything; even pure crap can be fun! ;p

Even the junctions stretches to acres of land though the streets barely fit a bus and a car at once in a parallel row! Aah! What else! Perfumes! Fragrance! Fragonard.
Tour Montparnasse; the 59-floor skyscraper is one gothic black building above the rest of landscapes but offers some of the most spectacular views of the city of lights, love, romance, beauty, fashion & education (which we missed, of course, since it wasn’t getting darker any sooner).

‘View from the top is the most beautiful in Paris, since it is the only place from which one cannot see the tower.’
-Guy de Maupassant who loathed the Eiffel Tower and ate lunch there daily.

As we got down the bus to visit the Grand Louvre, this is what I could comprehend from what I heard from the tour manager.
“Welcome to one of the world’s largest museums. As you enter this most visited monument and continue to stare for a few minutes at each of these masterpieces it would take a minimum of your remaining lifetime. You have an hour and a five-minute buffer, please hurry up and if you miss the bus you know where to find us (which is generally followed by some unrealistic obsolete names of places and hotels; never mind). I then, ran through centuries of story telling art created by the greatest of artists like Michelangelo, Leonardo da vinci; the Napoleon apartments to the Egyptian ruins. It was beyond anything. By the time I returned thinking to have missed my bus, panting and holding my crumpled map I saw most of them back enjoying their coffee. I wish they didn’t miss the Monalisa at least, not that it was as great as it was meant to be; at least you get to tell you saw it to folks back home ☺ I wish I bought the duplicate Monalisa for 3 euros as a souvenir! So many times it was stolen and so many great eyes it stole in return.

The other things that were more shocking were the free education policy, how incredible no. of museums are constructed for encouraging tolerance among the young, how the old were taken care off, why no one begs though some rare people choose to live like that and how blandly she showed one of the finest places in Paris around the Arc Of Triumph and why they considered it unfit for residence. In her words, “ For us, there is no quality of life if there is not enough silence, peace, freedom and enjoyment in living.” That struck me.

That day as I lay in bed with my eyes closed, all I could see were no dreams but the great rich London, the canals, tulips and lush green lands of Netherlands without a patch of bareness, the beautiful city of Brussels with all its palaces and streets warned for pickpockets and Paris with its great stretches of Rapeseed fields for bio diesel, old ancient architecture on the same stunning level as modern while the narrow streets being modified to suit the present day needs; so organized and well managed.
Napoleon’s loot was indeed a great one.
“Hail Napoleon!”

P.s Where are the electric wires?!

A dam in the river Amstel. Euro Trip- Day 2

2010-05-10T11:00:00.000-07:00

The people of Amsterdam are relaxed. Easy going. Chilled. They are spiritually inclined and they smoke weed.

- Michelle, The tour manager.

The world's legal capital, popular sex capital stormed with sex shops, vodka palaces, sex and cannabis museums; Amsterdam apart from all the hoax is in fact a charming place to lay the eyes upon.

The voyage on the cruise ship from London to Netherlands was brilliant, especially the variety of seafood, just the variety. Not the taste. I hardly felt the cruise liner move the entire night. The rare times it shook, all I had to remember was to stay calm and remind myself that it was an acceleration or a turn and not, not an earthquake.
I could hardy catch any sleep. I could hardly eat what I imagined to be the most delicious food as I boarded the flight in India. Although it tasted different and sometimes convincingly yummy, it was raw and mostly sugarless. The fish scales and fins were conspicuous and the name plated had no use except to help with the name of the species it belongs to. I chewed, swallowed and closed my eyes to recollect the taste. Lame.

I was spell bound as we entered Netherlands. It was very different from London and I hardly could believe that people actually live in a place (I didn’t spot many, either) with such green grass, colorful flowers, quacking ducks and houses far apart adjacent to lovely lakes and canals.
Where is the noise? At least, don’t the boats have engines? Actually, they don’t. They are electric. Don’t the vehicles have horns? Well. They don’t use them, either. Where, where is the pollution? Yeah, as many as 465,000 bicycles exist and as many as 54,000 bicycles get stolen in a year. Think B!KE.
It’s unbelievable, I know.

It may be used, as a synonym for heaven except it’s hard to imagine what would happen to such a low- lying land if Global Warming took a toll.
The trip to Keukenhof Tulip Gardens was spectacular too. The same descriptions of flower apply to all of them or maybe better. It’s the result of the finest deal between every possible color shade on a painter’s palette and the most intriguing genetic principles known to man. Indigestible.
The ferry will take you across many narrow leaning wooden houses, houseboats decorated aesthetically and large adorned windows that welcome the warm sunlight is a thought beyond geographical choices.

P.s. Of course, we spotted the same windmills, both, old and new.

Great London. Euro Trip- Day 1.

2010-05-10T10:57:00.000-07:00

“Poor people. Pooar people. What is this?! They rule half world and now, look, look; they pick up dog poop on roads, tap water drinking and coffee no milk, and, by the way, look! Soo old cars and they riding cycles! Waht is this!
- Somebody in the bus, after the stop at the gas station.

“
Patchy shades of green from the skies,
so is the land near by.
Small streets yet so smooth,
rich palaces and economical bikes.

The cars, very different.
Smart, black and sometimes color on sides.
The queen is old and their families, older.
The whole world’s looted treasures slammed into one small yet gigantic land.

“
As the bus passed by this highly populous metropolitan area, I couldn’t help noticing, how much people enjoyed having a smoke, strolling in those big parks, jogging and exercising, anywhere and everywhere. The blue sky had numerous dissipating white contrails. The stunning architectural beauty and how seemingly more beautiful they appear on the silver screen is something really annoying. Men here have very long working hours, visibly seen where all the sweat in the cold is going into.

“A great part of the world might have been exploited by the Great Britain, I agree.
But it wasn’t anything more than that of the people of Britain itself. “

-Mark, our London tour operator.

Then, all of a sudden you find yourself in a moment of madness when you are clicking the camera button not any less than a child enjoying the click, each time as the first time.

Each time you discover something, something different in color, tradition and culture and it strikes you with speechlessness and you wonder, is it even possible?

Very visibly, the people here pay great importance to mannerisms. Thank you, sorry, excuse me are chanted in and out. Nobody needs to tell another to stay in queues or let alone say anything for that matter. It just moves very smooth, a smoothness undisturbed by squeaking horns. Fines are heavy too but I guess, you wouldn’t want to litter a perfectly spick and span green garden not even with your dog’s poop. Or would you?

P.s. I am thirsty. I am starving. Man, they eat raw!

Thoughts for food!

2010-02-23T11:31:00.000-08:00

The Indian pan chewers are confused modern wall artists.
They are not even sure whether to spit out or swallow what they have just eaten!

Coincidence is the closest word to 'no reason'.

People who coin bad and slang words are men, who employ, great imagination and creativity in the wrong place.

Why do none donate their swimming costumes for the flood relief, isn't it what the people there essentially need?! [issued in public interest]

Everything always existed, only made noticeable.

I can't eat too much cheese.

When the nose is blocked; life turns upside down, literally!

Parasitology- The study of the distance between the butt(buttocks) and mouth and how nature chose the long deviated mazes, giving purpose to countless organisms.

Self called tall men are intellectual dwarfs.

In the language of Medicine, the naked is no porn.

All great philosophers, including me, are the ones who are greatly troubled within themselves.
- Me

Not talking _ _ _ is talkin _ _ _; said Pandit shree shree shree. . .naah, nobody, I am jus' makin' that up! ;p

Are your dreams color or black&white?

Crush.

2010-02-03T10:02:00.000-08:00

It was a noisy class of seventy-four, I remember. The Math teacher entered the class with her invisible dominant aura of strict unmeasured silence that could fathom the class, but not for more than a second or two. She carried the class six final examination papers. The noise rose. She pulled back her glasses, into her hair, and shouted: “Silence!”; and attached to it, one brief but long lasting look with her narrowed eyes.

She pulled out the first paper. “Prafulla!” she shouted. A lean figure rose from the corner of the class. He felt shy.
He could have made no mistake, everybody thought.
The teacher smiled, and there were whispers all around.
“99/100.” Everybody gasped.

To my right, sat the girl with her big brown eyes, which innocently showed every expression that ran through her mind. She leaned forward, took out her diary, carefully opened a page and started to draw lines with a short plastic foldable ruler. She made columns for each of the toppers in the class including a small one for her. I continued to stare in jealousy.

She shook, all of a sudden. The teacher had called out her name. With her, I shook.
“98/100.” She returned to her place, not so happy.
“Raviteja, 100/100!” I stood in shock.

To this, she pulled out her ruler again and drew a small line, making just enough space for another column. She wrote my name on the top of it. I was high. I had never had a column for myself and, now, a column in her diary was entirely for me! Ever since I experienced the high, I never left the column for someone else.

It’s funny how childhood crushes are; when you lay in bed, one day before Rakshabandhan, and wonder what would happen. She actually ties the band around your wrist the next day, and you still come home happy!

It’s funny how college crushes are. Much like an ICMR research proposal; it’s always better to put forth your proposal and give it a chance. It is easier to break-up than to wait till your girl has a break-up!

It’s more than funny that I’m speaking of crushes!

p.s.

Crush.
noun, A brief but intense infatuation for someone, esp. someone unattainable or inappropriate.

With this, I have a documented special column and more than a blog.
My thanks Sneha!

For no reason. . .

2010-01-31T11:30:00.000-08:00

“Mamma, how am I here?” The little girl asked, her eyes sparkling with innocence.
“Sweety,” said the mom, “when a man and a woman are very deep in love, a piece of the blue sky falls to the Earth and there you are!”

The most beautiful things in the world are for no reason, either because we failed to find a reason or perhaps there is no reason at all. Oh wait; or may be we don’t care enough to find one as it’s so beautiful the way it is, out of purity; unconditional- ‘no reason’!

Very often, it is said, learn from a kid. The way he shoots up his tiny lil’ hand in the class for anything and everything. The way he dusts off his shorts, each time he falls to get back on his toes in no time, running.

As an adult, even the wisest hesitate when asked. We dig into our failures deeper that we fail to realize that all that matters is to pull oneself together, again. On an average, 90% of thoughts that occur to us in a day are the same of yesterdays’. We live not, now and here. We search for a reason.

At variance, mankind would not have gotten this far with out great minds sacrifice in search of reasons. We prolonged life span, stretched dimensions of luxury but are we losing the happiness of our basic existence all along with reason coming? Was the early caveman a happier person?
I have no answer.

Only in the later years the lil’ girl found out the truth. There is neither a sky nor its shades of blue. Its just when a man and a woman have sex; as a result of a drunken evening, or a contraceptive failure and some fancy; she was born.
Tell me, which answer sounds beautiful; the much imagined blue skies or the reasoning contraception?

The 5th Semester

2009-10-27T12:43:00.000-07:00

Except for ‘no company’ for dinner, it was a fine evening. Finding no identifiable faces at the food court, I sat on a ‘just-till-now’ empty table. Soon, I had my senior citizens all around me. As I couldn’t jus’ stay silent till the last morsel and leave dumb, I asked the most ‘frequently asked question’ a junior asks a senior- “Sir, how is 5th semester??”
First; he giggled and stopped abruptly. Then; gave that let-the-cat-in the bag- out- look to all around. Finally, raised his eyebrows and spoke-
“Are you interested in the railways?”
That was strangest ‘reply in question form’ I ever heard.
“Well, I …yes, I guess.” I said hesitantly.
He bent forward and as if repeating a rhyme and rhymed-
“Mangala
Ernakulam-Nizamuddin- 10:30pm and 2:00am
Trivandrum- Kurla 1:25am and 5:10am. . . ”
and continuing the unfinished giggle continued “Oh! Don’t you worry kiddo, you’ll figure that out, very soon.”

Exams get us crazy, each one of us, at some point or the other. Well, I admit; they drive me crazy at more than jus’ some point; in fact many.
In the 3rd semester; a year ago, as it seems, I went out for a jog in the rain jus’ before the Pathology exam to let out some steam.
It was so cold that I had goose bumps, flattened by falling drops. Cold stares from fellow mates added to the cold. Undecipherable stares from strangers under the umbrella and the ones enjoying the hot tea with no Pathology exam the next day, added further.

In the 4th semester, I bicycled off a few miles in the lightened dark headed towards Parkala road; not able to withstand the joy of the downhill ride, after the pathology exam.
Each of the times, I jumped off my study chair and put on my sneakers with my innocent roomy watching with his eyes wide open, to pump blood to the already pounding grey-white matter. While my good meticulous mates persevered on understanding- how and why a guy’s life can get so fucked up when his 9 and 22 chromosomes throw their long arms around each other, I took off a few minutes to breathe heavily and bathe in sweat all over. Sometimes, to think of nothing, I just think of what I was doing.
I moved my body from one foot to another, transiently suspending myself into the dense air, feeling it momentarily, with ear phones plugged into my ears to distract me from my own thumping heart, synchronously beating with another in the head. My hands were swinging along but opposite. My cramping legs still moved for my naked head to feel the chill in the still air I was pushing through.

In the 5th semester, I stayed home and continued to read, unbothered of my growing lard.

They are over. Today, I traveled a 100km to reach one of the most hyped Sunset view points of the Western ghats at the 14th hair-pin bend Manipal-Agumbe terrain, in an another attempt to discover myself considering the PET [Post Exam Trauma].
I sat there enthralled, rejuvenating myself.
I could see the perfect ball, I bet, made with one single perfect stroke, on the most diversified shades.
Now I know the obvious reasons why Lord Hanuman mistook it for an Orange.

Photo & company courtesy- Tejaswi

Masel(piece of good luck in German) for the upcoming.
p.s. Rock, we will.
#There is a reciprocal translocation of the part of the long arms of chromosome 22 to the long arms of chromosome 9 in the Philadelphia chromosome. It is associated with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML).

#I did figure it out. The rhyme was the Udupi Railway Schedule. The signor must have heard the same rumbling snore of the night trains, time and again, that, curiousness took him further to know their names which pass by. Good for him, he did really burn the midnight fluorescent bulb. Good for me, I always had my 6 hour slumber ;D

My Mental Journey [Day- 1]

2009-08-31T11:53:00.000-07:00

A joke broke out into the thick humid air that was so heavily lightened that the fog in it was merely visible for the naked eye very close to it.

There was laughter. Then, there was more, all at once, with mouths wide open, each displaying the age-old primitive tools struck up their red bumpy fleshy fields.

The seemingly thinner taller man at the right corner of the Carom table slipped out his upper lateral incisor tinged with yellow like Gold. Next to him sat a plump seemingly shorter man who seemed curious about the carats but continued to laugh along to please the tall, visibly making efforts to pull down his lips to curtain his Tobacco- stained doorway.

Opposite to them sat their company who chuckled for what so reason unknown to them selves. The doctor stood by the doorway, silently watching them and from the angle of his mouth crawled out a smile that on trying to reenter through the cheeks produced a dimple.

They all looked to be enjoying their each own lil’ game.

Above them, overhanging the primeval wall, the once polished shiny chunk of wood now rendered a granular texture with fresh layers of dust stood as a blind witness unbiased and unread.

‘THE PSYCIATRIC WARD’, it read.

Casino Royale

2009-08-11T10:26:00.000-07:00

Everybody wants miracles to happen. Everybody loses in a casino.
-Me, after losing.

The best prophylaxis to not lose is not to indulge in one just like Park suggests complete abstinence from sex. The beauty of this place is that everybody knows that there is one only lucky man among the bunch on the table and everybody think themselves as that lucky one. The rest lose as designed and make the casino richer. One lucky chance, one lucky opportunity and the very same unexplained luck that happens at birth, destiny and death. Here, it’s just with a few bucks.
It’s the miracles happening and the hope that keeps people going. It’s the one that doesn’t let your eyes close and races your heart even though you are half drunk and though you know its full of crap. It’s a casino. It’s luck. It’s high. It’s luck.
Even in those moments of extreme probability and insaneness, you still prefer to pick those lucky numbers yourselves and blame yourself for whatever is the result.

My failed numbers. . .

The Pandemic Puke

2009-08-10T11:10:00.000-07:00

"Hey, what's it all about with the Swine Flu?"

layman

"Don't you worry.
It's just flu with not-so-understandable virus. . ."

another not-so-layman

The diction ran to save the fainted fallen fat plump lady.
The six foot tall man entered and stood before them.
He said "Nobody is going to die today."
He lifted her small frail hand; judged her pulses and tried to know her unconscious intentions and declared it as an emergency!
"Geeez" She shouted. " Where the hell are you guys carrying me?" She asked
"The hospital needs you" They collectively answered. She yelled a " Noo!' which rather seemed long.
"But why?"
" Its better to pass out here than to die of that strange P.I.G flu in the hospital there. . ." and the rest was a feeble mumble.
The intelligent someone asked "Did you mean the swine flu?"
"Hell yeah; yuck!" she replied with folds of disgust- three and half on her forehead and two on either side of her tiny nose.
She, then stood, shook to gather herself and left the crowd; dumbfound.

p.s. Based on a real life incident.
Infront of the SBI Atm Manipal @7:46pm.
The brave tall man chose to keep his identity; hidden.

A shake up!

2009-08-06T14:56:00.000-07:00

Somebody, somewhere, once said; "It is when you create something, you know more about you; a lil' more than anybody else in this world. . ."
Passions of a true kind always jog through innovations.

The smile shutter camera- the one which, in its automatic photographer mode clicks the face; smiling as if asking; "Do you have a digitally recognizable smile?"

An iphone literally saw my jaw falling to the ground. I can never believe myself that such a thing could exist. Frankly, I think it has just traveled accidentally through a time hole from the next century.

Voice command module in our mac through which you can operate by word of mouth.
Softwares with which, you can flip through songs just by a flap of your hand and a blink hard enough without even touching the machine. you got to 'Awe Some'!

Home-made stuff is always relished, so, here are some . . .

ROBKING ~

Lounging comfortably on a Manipal Study cane chair with an comprehensible para from Robbins and Cotran- The PAthologiCal BasIs Of DiseaSe could be fatal.

Cause of death is a potentially dynamic combination of traumatic asphyxia( an angle created by the wooden plank and the tremendously humongous ~ 1.78 kg Robbins on top of it with the frail chest) and mental trauma (of course!)

Concept adopted from 'BURKING' (Forensic Medicine)- a combination of smothering and traumatic asphyxiation named after Burke and Hare who used to kill their victims by this method for the purpose of selling them to anatomical schools.

Raviteja's Sign Of Pyrexia ~ A Confirmatory Test For Fever.

[Actually designed in class six, just couldn't find the right words till professional college ;)]

When you have fever (well, I said confirmatory, Dint I?!)
Sit straight. Shake your head, completely, sideways, and vigorously to be precise. when you feel the dull diffuse ache in the head. . . Voila! there you go, YOU HAVE FEVER!

Modified Raviteja's Sign Of Pyrexia For Older People (who involuntary shake their heads for various unknown neuronal reasons!) is still in the experimental stages.

THE HAVELI CONCEPT ~

Founded by- AT
Developed by- IRT &
Typed by- TT!

There are things that you fantasize.
Fantasizing them makes you happy.
They may not be visibly present anywhere and everywhere;
But we fantasize them anyway because they make us happy.

p.s. Our business is to create.

Di-ar-rhea

2009-05-23T08:19:00.000-07:00

It was one of those evenings, you know something is wrong and you just do not know, what it is. Just to convince yourself that everything is as fine as ever, you go out to dinner with friends; talk about life and all its goodness, return to your room, turn to your final call to know that the worst thing turned up- diarrhea!

Exams change lives(not as much as loose stools do) but diarrhea during exams; a ‘big’ yes. The change is crazy. Some people look into the metaphysical translucence and what responsibilities offer them. Social workers set out to advice their juniors What-Not-To-Do-In-The-Next semester. While ‘Men of the past’ recount their green ‘not chosen’ career, ‘Men of the future’ make the time table for the semester of tomorrow. Lovers of art love, sing, write and b.l.o.g.

You begin to wonder why every author turns emotional when it comes to writing- “ The Pharmacologial Basis Of Alcohols” and why, why in this whole damn world, Park in his “Preventive And Social Medicine” takes to understand the ‘feelings of the flea’ in starvation and its frantic efforts with its proventriculus blocked; in the spread of Plague, while Robbins and Cotran in their “Pathological Basis Of Disease” chose a full stop to it a paragraph ‘ago’.

You use the breaks between reading the biographies of incessant GODS [somebody said “ If all that is invisible is God, Bacteria suit as well”] to say a hello to your commode rather than playing a game of Nokia 1650 Cricket or checking out how your friend is coping with the mental torture.

You worry about people visiting to sympathize and take away your precious preparation time and worry if they do not visit coz’ you want to be cared. You hear the names of a large number of total alien twisted distorted drugs and appreciate the giant progress humanity has made.

You eat ‘nothing’. Either because each time you see the glory of food, you hear a voice from behind calling it a not-to-be-eaten-in-diarrhea or you wouldn’t want to walk out in the middle of a viva session asking permission to use the toilet as an ‘emergency’.

You feel the subtle differences in the pitch, quality and loudness of each voice answering to the attendance call in the exam hall.

You do not fart, as there is no guarantee that it is a fart. You discover yourself.

You learn to enjoy jokes better; such as,

wassup?

di--ar--rhea. . .

Dude, its DOWN. What is UP?!

The alarm innocently blew off along with the seemingly all others in the hostel at once, unattended; I stopped it at the first ring as I watched the starless night take up the lighter shades of prismatic blue and realized that I haven’t slept all night and yet my eyes were not tired enough. I, then, succumbed to all those receptor agonists and antagonists; slept.

Perhaps sleeping is the element that takes man through the stages of evolution and probably the greatest contribution from ‘a’ man to the mankind till he figures out what Diarrhea 'actually' is and how on Earth can people die of it.

p.s. I got two days off for my Forensic Medicine and needed something to celebrate for “You-Know-Who” has finally gone away.

I have always been fascinated by the skies and the vastness beyond; therefore you find me gazing at it in all my blogs. . . :)

Post Script

2009-03-24T12:38:00.000-07:00

It isn’t as easy as it appears, to add an extra topping to an already ‘a’ masterpiece. If Tejaswi isn’t continuing to read; no doubt, he’s on his way to bash me up for adulteration!

Many times; I did request people to allow me one chance to be a ‘hero’; oh well, I used to ask them to drown, or if they can; atleast pretend to. Everybody would laugh over and I would join them. It never happened.
Besides the beauty of Jog; subtle water slipping down gigantic rocks; like amorphous snow dispersing into the thick air; carrying along the lustrous colors of the rainbow, more magnificent than the finest sparkle of laser created on the screens of water at the Songs Of Sea, Santosa Islands, Singapore and the 15083 steps we took on the back trek minus 198, if shortcuts taken [I remember; believe it or not, because the return seemed more tiring]; I felt something which not in a million years I can forget. I wondered, why, even though I never repeated my stale joke during our long journey, he was ‘inhaling water’!
Its hard to picture; anyone; in fish; sprouting from nowhere; yell help and gulp help. I couldn’t think of anything; doubtless there wasn’t anything to think. I jumped. I almost reached than I realized I was drowning too. I must admit; he was quite heavy for me and the water was ultra cold, just shy of freezing. I wanted to call for help; but thought it would seem ridiculous . . .
Moments later; as I was sitting beside him staring into his tired eyes through my tired ones. I saw things were different; things inexpressible, best told as a strange experience. It didn’t seem heroic to me. I will never want it to happen again.
Besides watching the cunning water at the origin seemingly so calm about its existence; like a lion for its prey; fiercely stabbing the air and carving rocks as it roars through the heights; and having my soma under it; I had something more to take home.

As I laid down on my bed; watching the voluptuous full moon suspended in the dark; my roomie asked “Hey, how was your trip?”. Then, I guess, the remnant energy wasn’t perhaps sufficient to make the word incredible sound ‘Incredible’, but I had a great time. Obviously because it is the best time to visit Jog or probably its this wonderful group who took me along or may be I just want to think it is.

END POINT

2009-03-24T12:33:00.002-07:00

dedicated to the beautiful sun of the East

[ACT 1]

Falling from the greatest heights, under the spell of the divine nature, ‘it’ hit the ground, shredding itself for unknown glory. ‘It’ unveils the fragrance of ecstasy hidden beneath. It inspires life. The rumbling of a distant thunder shook off the lethargy I wore. It was a weekend. The drizzle prompted fun.

A jog to the End point, come back drenched, bathe, and then a hot cup of coffee would make the perfect evening. Fastening shoelaces with one hand, I call for company ...."I know it would be fun, but.....hmm...the road's bad..." ; "Hey sorry, I got to attend a party"; "leave this shit man! why not join us in a computer game...." chuck ! beep..beep...
The lazy bones creaked as I stretched myself. I gazed at the sky, ready to tumble. Unexpectedly, the murky skies turned bright. A catastrophe!
A mystical cerebration swarm into me. The sweet 'salad days' took over my existence. I simply lived in them. They are beyond narration. Of the millions, one surfaces calling for attention.

[ACT 2](scene 1) NOSTALGIA

I was 8, then. I was breathing the air of 'Bheemili'; a heavenly abode. I visit here once in every year but then it was my second cousin's marriage. We were getting into the little mischief we could with our ball. I was all into it. We needed a six to win, I focussed. It came straight into my face. I gave it all; the bat into air, and it struck the bride's head. Everything stood still. All hypnotized, stared. My eyes flooded. I began to explain but it wasn't me they were staring at ! Two shadows sprouted behind me, a thick and a thin; the labyrinthine world of opposites!

[ACT 2] (Scene 2)

I was knocked to the ground by a middle aged, dark, fat lady who entered the hall. Before I could even realize what happened, high pitched cries swept the scene. Fear gripped me and I ran into my mom's arms. Carrying loads of attention, the lady continued to speak. I questioned ; "Who is she? What's going on?" The answer seemed weird; "She is a far relative, they believe that she is possessed by her 'late' parents..." I jumped down and wanted to be a hero. "This is a drama" I shouted. "Nobody is interested to hear us, just enjoy the show.." mamma whispered and winked. I stood and listened to a bed time story.
The lady (credited to be 'possessed') spoke of everything that occurred in the parents absence and unbelievably predicted the future. It ranged from the matters of conceptions , marriages to business matters & all one can find on an astrologer's incessant list. It was occasionally intervened by moans and hugs. Each seemed to exhibit the working of a magnificent 'limbic system' but no signs of 'neocortex'. At first, the so called mother spoke and then surprisingly, unannounced as if switching over a telephone, the father began. I remained there, flabbergasted, jaw-dropped with a half eaten laddu ; I was deprived of, since morning. The portly lady was the star of the day. After the 'spirits' left, she was still in a delirium, while the superstitious crowd comforted, massaged and worshipped. I still stared....

[ACT 3] RETURN

The sky camouflaged. The pitch blackness interrupted by twinkling stars trying desperately to convey something from the cosmos; the incessant questions unanswered. A distant laughter slowly fading away in the subtle air brought me back. It's almost 10 years, since then. Anybody would be astonished to hear, this possession happens every year, since then, no more as an accident but a celebration awaited.
Those memories we cherish 'now'; what's 'now' is laters'. I did not go to end point. I skipped dinner. Another regular weekend at Manipal.' Point ends'.

From the writer's desk;

* Based on a true life incident
* 'It' in the 1st paragraph of Act 1 refers to a 'rain drop'.
* Irony - A point has no beginning ; therefore no end. (Oh! Of course, you haven't mistaken the title. It's our end point)
* End Point in Manipal is famous for its panoramic views and wonderful lush green landscape overlooking Swarna river. It is one of those quite, scenic places where time comes to a stand-still.

From my 5th intercostal space, 1.25 cm medial to the left mid-clavicular line (the apex/bottom of the heart). . .