Tag: Musings

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Open Letter

You came home, my parents’ guest. You hardly know me, we are meeting after almost a year. You see my baby, hold her….play with her. Fine.

Then you tell me, “She is so thin! Don’t you feed her?”

I felt the need to be defensive, I claim she takes after her slim grandparents. I tell you how the doc says she is thriving well. Her growth is absolutely fine for her age. I don’t give you a piece of my mind. Funny, I thought I would have given anyone who said that a long lecture. I didn’t.

Because you don’t know how many nights I stayed up feeding her by the hour. You have no idea how sore each part of my body was, coping with the stress. You don’t have a clue how much I have fretted over her pees and poops, the color and frequency- all indirect evidence of adequacy of her feed. You don’t know how it breaks a mother’s heart when someone accuses her, directly or indirectly that she isn’t giving her baby the best.

I forgive you, and I thank you. You have no idea of how much your supposed smartness can give some mother some blogging material.

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Observations

My favorite saying, Man plans, God laughs!

I am not superstitious, but one funny thing I have observed..if I plan something and tell a lot of people about it, the plans soon get swept under the carpet. Don’t know what’s the reason. Or is it because I barely stick to my plans myself? Or do they really get jinxed?

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Choices

As a kid, my brother had different ideas every day about what he wanted to be when he grew up. A truck driver, painter, clay idol maker… Any new thing he saw, he wanted to be that. I wasn’t like that. I always knew I wanted to be a doctor. Or a teacher. In fact more of a teacher than a doctor. Probably because my role model was my mom, a teacher. And I have always loved to describe anything in detail to anyone who cared to listen.

Then fate landed me in medicine, and I consoled myself that I could still teach. But somehow I had always thought that teaching kids in a school would have made me happier. The desire, adequately expressed to the family after 10th class itself, was nipped in the bud with many arguments which mainly included inadequate financial remuneration, lack of growth beyond a limit and that I was probably cut out for something larger.

I was, of course happy learning and later practicing  medicine. And forgot about being a school teacher. A few days back however, stressed with my exam, worried with the uncertainty in life and many such mundane excuses, I snapped at my dearest mom about how I would have rather been a teacher than a doctor. And no one had any business pushing me into this long uncertain alley! Talk about being thankful to the lady who believes in your talent, supports you in many ways through your education, including caring for the husband like her own son. (OK ma, I know you deserve an apology better than this!)
“You can still teach, PGs, interns and the students” she said with pride in her eyes.
“Well its not the same as shaping young minds. Like making a pot out of clay and such stuff” I said in retort and stomped out.

Then one day, I left my home keys at the hostel. While I was turning back to go fetch my keys, my dearest neighbor invited me over for a cup of tea and even offered me to camp at her place till mom arrived and opened the door. While I was enjoying my cup of tea, her daughters walked in and started regaling me with the tales in their school. Imitating their teachers, calling them names, enjoying the fact that some of their school mates are good at back answering their teachers which included saying “I’ll take you to court.” My head was spinning (yeah I was tired too) I mean, as a kid I have imitated my teachers too, but never did I have this amount of disrespect for anyone. Not even for the ones who couldn’t teach, were blatantly partial to some students and such.

I speak as if I’m so old, but with passing years, the respect we have for our elders is diminishing exponentially. More so for teachers, I noted. Mom was right. If I was a teacher to these students, I would have probably given up on them. If any one of my readers is teaching such children, my salute. I know you are doing a job for which no one is probably thankful. The students who do not know what they are doing, their parents who probably are lacking somewhere in imbibing the right values in them and sending them for tuition classes since they were gametes.

Thanks mom, for seeing the talent in me, for having a foresight which I probably would never have. And for many more things I cannot put into words.

 

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Marriage Matters

So far I believed Balika Vadhu was only on TV. Little girls getting married off at a young age was something of the past or in remotest of villages. Then I learn’t about two young girls in my neighborhood who have been “engaged to be married” since the ages of 7!

Thankfully, the girls’ in laws have “allowed” them to study. Needless to say, they are not allowed to meet their prospective spouses. This really got me thinking. I mean when you are in school and all young, it may sound like fun, to be betrothed. MAY sound to some, I repeat. But what happens when its actually time to get married?

Don’t we all have some ideas, some concept or some dreams about the kind of spouse we want to have? What if this person does not meet those criteria. And this is for both the groom and the bride… Do you still get married? Do you live with someone whom you cannot like, quietly- forced to like and even love them! What if the boy dies before the marriage? Does the girl become a “widow” without the marriage?

Then I laugh, when I think my married life must be such a culture shock to them, like theirs is to mine!
Married yet studying….
Married long enough to have 2 kids, yet happily studying…
Husband who doesn’t mind living at his sasural once in a while…

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They Are Playing My Song…..

Every song has a memory…..

Every time I listen to the songs of Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na  I feel teleported to my first year PG days. Circa 2008 when the movie had just released and the songs were a rage. The songs remind me of the lovely days I spent with my friends….staying in the dinghy musty “Call Room” on our duty days (that is the day we were on night duty at the hospital), attending calls in the hospital in the dead of the night, to save a life, or bring a new one into the world and such. Eating at the call room, bitching about our new seniors. Or going to the marine drive in the dead of the night to grab an ice cream and sit by the sea. Those were the first songs I had received on my then new phone via Bluetooth and I listened to them while travelling, while working and even falling asleep…Those songs remind me of travelling at the door of the train, feeling the wind on my face and in my hair. The songs are still a rage in my personal collection and I am never tired of listening to them. 

Such is with Dil Chahta Hain, circa 2001 when I had just joined MBBS. The movie was about coming of age, of 3 boys Akash, Sameer and Siddharth. And in a strange sort of way, the same year I too went through a similar coming of age when I became, from a bound to and sheltered at home college girl a hostelite medical student out in the world almost by herself. I remember watching this movie on a large screen at our first college festival and the songs still remind me how awed I was by the movie and by the whole college crowd. and being in college, studying what you always wanted to.

Every song has a memory; every song has the ability to make or break your heart, shut down the heart, and open the eyes. But I’m afraid if you look at a thing long enough; it loses all of its meaning
— Andy Warhol.

I still do not understand the last line of this quote, and its relation to the first two lines. But I love this quote, it says what I feel deep in my heart
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This Precious Life….

On Thursday night, A called his wife M from office, and told her he will be home late. Few hours later in the middle of the night a stranger called M and told her that he had admitted A, to the hospital with multiple injuries. Few hour later, in the morning, doctors declared to M that they could not save A and he was no more….
 Life is so unpredictable…. In the 3 years of their married life, A and M would have made so many plans for their future. A name for their child not yet conceived,  the dream car to buy from their funds saved, so that A can use a car to travel to work instead of his bike, the place where they want to build their retirement home. She had probably cooked his favorite dinner that night. But he never came home to relish it. Fate had some other plans for them…..


Life gives you cruel surprises. I guess, we must live each day like its probably the last day of life. Never leave home or go away from your loved ones with a frown or some harsh words…lest you never return to make amends.
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What DO Men want?

sGo to www.myntra.com and check out t shirts for men! Also visit the
largest community of Indian Bloggers at BlogAdda.com




Incidentally my 100th post, thank you!
Never imagined my 100th post will be anything more that “Yay my 100th post”. But no, Blogadda has some plan for me! So I put on my thinking cap and though….


I believe that most men want
To be heard out…
….about the day they spent at work, job hiccups, boss bitching (yes you heard that right).


Gadgets…
….need I say more?


To be looked after and even pampered, like their moms did…
….clean home, warm food, hot tea and all they want at hand. With minimal effort. Or just a bit more than minimal effort (lets be fair to them)


A Strong Woman…
….who can fight her own battles. A silly scared girl may be cute (I said MAY be) to some, but most guys want a woman who is strong independent and not a sissy.


Peace of mind…
….no nagging and a mom and wife who can stay with each other with love. Each one has a special place in his life that cannot be replaced by anyone else


To be loved and accepted…
….unconditionally, with the the bald head, with the pot belly and with the sometimes small pay packet.


Freedom…
….to fart, burp, sneeze at any time of the day, in the confines of his home.


Happiness…
….in the eyes of his partner and children.


Appreciation…
….of all that he does for his loved ones. The efforts and the sacrifices.




I am sure there is lot more, all the men out there, tell us what you want. We want to hear you. Women out there, tell me what more men want!
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There are these moments…..

…when you are so tired, dying to hit the bed. And when you do, you realise you are too tired to even fall asleep!!

…when you wish you could change the direction in which your life is drifting….

…when things go so well you wonder whats wrong!

…when things go so so well that you need to pinch yourself to know its real.

…when things you are confident of doing well screw up royally and what you fear you won’t manage goes fantastically well

…when you wished you looked in your photographs as nice as others look in theirs!!

…when you wished you could shed in a night the pounds you gathered over a year….aargh

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Randomness

Currently posted in ECT…that is for the past 2 weeks and two more weeks I shall be providing short General Anaesthesia (Short GA) or TIVA (Total Intravenous Anaesthesia) to patients undergoing ECT or Electro convulsive therapy, the so called “shock therapy”

No, shock therapy is NOT as scary, greusome as shown in films and soaps on TV.
1) The patient is well sedated, rather anaesthetised and doesn’t remember that he underwent shock therapy

2) He/She is relaxed and does not convulse like “oh-my-god-he’s-going-to-die”

3) After the procedure, in 5 minutes flat, te patient walks out of the ECT room to his bed, on his own

Ward 1 is our Psychiatry ward. Secluded from the rest of the hospital, this ward has a mix of patients. The ward (thankfully) has staff who is EXCELLENT…..all in caps. Patient with their patients, efficient, with a decent amout of sense of humour…all that you need to survive in a ward of so called “mad” people (Its a CRIME to call them that)

There’s a girl who’s violent, one who is so quiet that it hurts, one who sings aloud and dances all over the ward, when she is not crying for her “mummy”, two schizophrenic brothers……They all make me wish I had taken up psychiatry as my field of specialisation. Though I’m not too sure I would have been able to digest their sorrow, heal their pain, face the fact that I may never be able to treat them and live peacefully inspite of and amidst all that…….

Whatever…..

Came across a nice blog of an Anaesthesiologist from Boston…. Notes of an Anesthesioboist.

Inspired by her old post I too would love to make a list of what I would have loved to be if I wasn’t an Anaesthesiologist (read studying to be an anaesthesiologist)

1. Psychiatrist
2. Ophthalmologist
3. Pastry Chef
4. Own a Coffee shop
5. Classical Music Performer
10. Stage Actor
20. Preprimay teacher
50. General Surgeon
100. Dentist
5,000. General Practitioner
1,00,000. Spiritual Guru (Heh heh, suggest me a good name)
3,99,999. Ob Gy
4,00,000. House wife

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Faith

She was deft at dumping work on the world….she behaved as if she was the only one who had exams….I did my work sincerely. Never shirked. I was eager lo learn.

I don’t deny she studied. And I don’t deny I didn’t.

She cracked the exams…I didn’t.

I know ONLY hard work pays in the end…but somehow I still believed in natural justice…….

Disclaimer: This may not really make much sense…..leave it