Healing

diary or an attempt of it

2012-01-12T22:48:00.000-08:00

I don’t know what the government wants to achieve by building such primary health centers and by compelling us new doctors to work there as bonded medical officers… do they want us to forget our medical knowledge, ethics, and to learn to manipulate the situation, to exploit the lack of knowledge of others? What’s the role of a phc? Aren’t we there to take care of their health? Or are we there just to satisfy illiterate whims of the village people? Isn’t health education mandatory or at least necessary? Why the useless, old age, antique drugs still exist in phcs? What the doctor is supposed to do if nearly all of her patients refuse to follow health advices and keep on demanding ‘magic drugs’ that would cure everything within time period of minutes or even seconds?

How nice it would have been if I were ignorant, not a doctor, or even illiterate… I would be able to live. Drunkards (mostly village politicians) come here, fully laden with alcohol, and say to me that, “alcohol causes dehydration. I’ve consumed two bottles of it in morning. You must administer intravenous saline to me.” When I tell the ailing to open their mouths to examine oral heath, I encounter tobacco, pan masala or paan blocking my sight to their pharynxes. Even kids have these things, leave apart male and female adults. Even if I give strict warning about avoiding cold foods and drinks kids go for infective ice candies on street as soon as they get out of the hospital after taking treatment, that too in front of me and then blame me for giving them ineffective tablets. People laugh at me when I tell something like, “smoking would deteriorate your lungs.” And get disappointed and even curse me when I don’t examine their arthritic knee or shoulder with stethoscope.

Is it advisable to administer IV drugs like metoclopramide and dexamethasone to everyone, even when they don’t need it? People are addicted to a ‘saline’ (a formula having a bit of many drugs in NS) and they want me to administer that ‘saline’. One of their superstitions is that tablets and capsules are useless and to get ‘cured’ and to gain some strength you need a saline and some injections, the only injectable available here is chlorpheniramine maleate. Doing private practice in government hospitals is a common trend; people hate me when I refuse doing that. I have no words to describe the corruption in this field, maybe I lack strength, or maybe my brain freezes when this topic comes into my mind. The only one person I can keep away from this dirty business is me, and I do it successfully… but still… it’s very very hard to handle everything, and still be able to think.

I feel like an alien, an outsider. It’s very hard to blend in this business… also it’s very hard to convince them about the small acts of taking care of their health… I keep on trying… but I’m not some deity, I’m a human. And I get frustration too. To the world I’m a successful person, a medical officer, with a staff of ten working under my command… but to me, I’m as helpless and depressed as I was never before. I even can’t call for help, because I don’t see anyone… In fact it’s so dark here that I see nothing.

Maybe… one day I’ll be able to think, to find some solution, or to seek some help to change the situation… till then the biggest challenge before me is to keep my dreams and my own innocence alive.

to get it or to forget it

2011-12-29T05:46:00.000-08:00

Satisfaction is a strange word, or it’s vague, obscure having no clear meaning… or it’s some ideal condition unachievable in real situation. It’s a stimulus driving some strange humans to do some strange things. Not all people are mad for it, but for sure it drives those people mad who strive for it. It’s not money, not pride, fame; it’s not security, position, not physical pleasures, not even love… but alas, it’s not ‘nothing’. People get tricked when they search it in the above things, they sell their self esteem, sacrifice their innocence, do the bad things, get corrupted to feel secure to get some money, position, fame or anything they think will make them satisfied, and die in the end unsatisfied, worried, hungry or forlorn.

Maybe it’s different for different people, making it a useless term. Maybe some humans exist who get satisfied with piles of currency and luxurious facilities and fame they don’t deserve… maybe some hearts do achieve eternal peace in filth of corruption… but mostly such people are unsatisfied, misguided or blind worrying for what they lack when they have nearly everything… or they are scared, weak, unable to change the situation, unable to achieve or to find out or even to search for the missing thing that would fill up the emptiness in their lives.

There are people with personality disorders, neurological and psychological pathologies making them blunt minded, or ignorant to others, or extremely selfish… but it would be really a horrid situation to think that most of the people in society are affected with such miserable conditions… Is it really a ‘normal’ thing to be corrupted, to get black money, to cheat in exams or in other things, to do things that could harm others for our own benefit… and if it’s not why is it acceptable to the community? If satisfaction a tell tale or a mirage… and if it’s not why it’s not getting any importance in human life?

Maybe satisfaction is a highly personal thing, depending upon the value system our parents and the society has imprinted in us, or on the situations we’re exposed or on our experiences in our life… maybe it depends upon our motives, our goals in our lives, our intelligence and our ability to feel others. We can’t expect a beast to be altruistic and yet be happy… but we’re not beasts. We need not to be beasts, we can still live life of human beings; and it’s our responsibility to stop the evolution of the community in direction of being that of beasts.

I may be too young or inexperienced to define something as complicated and abstract as satisfaction… but I guess it’s a good feeling, it’s a strange joy, the strange feeling we get when we make someone happy really for nothing, when we sacrifice our most beloved thing for joy of someone else, when we fight for justice for strangers, when we tolerate for benefit of others, when we protect our self esteem against all the temptations… the list has to be big, as satisfaction is a big thing… though it’s vague, it does exist.

Why violence

2011-12-01T03:55:00.000-08:00

It was a pleasant moment, some joke had happened and was blessing everyone with a smile, was trying to relax their tired minds… but the moment ended, and their minds screamed, the smiles disappeared, and the faces got covered with that regular fear. The horror occupied their hearts. The older ones were so adapted to this fear that fearful expressions were tattooed on their wrinkles… because this wasn’t new; this was a usual scene in their house.

I don’t know whether it’s insecurity, or lack of confidence, whether it’s some kind if epilepsy, or some prefrontal lobe lesion… effect of media or wrong concepts of manhood; I don’t know what makes people so violent that too to their closed ones, to those who’re extremely harmless and even useful. Why on Earth is domestic violence so profound? What makes them to make their homes most dangerous places in the universe and most painful and harshest to survive to their own loved ones?

Is it some kind of territorial display or is it some effort to show dominance… an effort to hide incapacities, or pathological method of gaining some confidence? Or is it some revenge of some mighty harmful person around, directed to the harmless ones? Are those acts thoughtful or are they just thoughtless tantrums thrown for some thoughtful purpose? Why do they get isolated from their family, why do they suspect their family? Why do they wish to ‘own’ their family members instead of thinking of themselves as a part of the family?

The questions are endless and they don’t have good answers. Maybe it’s the mixture of everything above… whatever it maybe, it’s very painful to have a home that lacks safety. Insecurity stimulates the efforts to survive and they are not always good ones. Like a genetic disorder violence spreads from one generation to the next and like some epidemic it also haunts complete societies. Media, movies celebrate violence… and it takes just some little anger to convert a human into a blood thirsty ghost.

The future of this violence is dreadful… we don’t want to be an extinct species killed by their own pals, we don’t want to end up in low intelligence species consuming most of its time in fighting and then recovering from the big injuries. This must end somewhere… but who’ll end this and how?

Thoughts as a ‘Post intern’

2011-10-18T07:26:00.000-07:00

Being a parent isn’t a negative thing, I feel. There are tons of biological, psychological and social benefits of having an offspring and of raising her. There’s sense of responsibility, sense of joy, pride, achievement and also curiosity, initiative and creativity a child gifts to a parent. Caring someone without any expectation is the most wonderful thing in the universe… but it becomes troublesome when care mutates to worry, and tons of expectations take birth. It’s nothing less than horrible to worry about the future of creatures who by no way simulate the parents, or who don’t listen to them or refuse to act as extensions of the parents. Kids are different than their parents and they grow to be yet more different adults; though not always they’re bad, I get a shivering sensation when I imagine myself fifty plus or something and having a daughter who’s like how I am now.

It’s natural for the parents to crave for the safety and success of their kids and anything unusual, eccentric, or adventurous is ‘less safe’ or riskier than what is traditional, conventional or routine behavior (no matter however mundane it is for the kid). Worry takes birth in mind of a parent when their kid’s ‘safety’ comes to question; and the worried mind can’t understand that safety isn’t ‘everything’ in life of any person. We can’t shoot for any goal unless we take at least some risk. The more we take the risk, more are the chances to achieve or to lose something; and it’s not like that we always have to lose something. We’re humans, not machines programmed to achieve success or to do tasks incapable of captivating our minds. Goals matter to us, so do dreams. We become restless, and it’s a fact that we can’t enjoy anything until we ‘get’ that thing. There are passions we can even die for and there are attractions transforming us into miserable iron particles dancing to reach to that merciless source of magnetic force. There are addictions, some habits we go on craving for even when we get hit on our face in trying to quench that thirst.

Of course, I’m not speaking about addictive drugs, or habitual wrong behaviors; but alas, behaviors those are not routine even though they’re good are also considered as ‘wrong’. Neither I’m saying that following our mind is always rewarding, or blessing us with positive outcome… there are hitches, negativities, frustrations, depression, tons of loneliness, and pools of tears when something goes wrong, when we lose something or when we fail or fall. But one failure doesn’t imply that we’ll fail always. Losses are not permanent; though they’re painful sometimes they act as essential keys to open the doors to success. But alas, the worried mind looks to such sentences as ‘bookish unpractical statements’; it ignores the fact that books are nothing other than written or typewritten experiences or thoughts of some living human beings. Of course it’s very hard to convince this to my worried parents… still I know that they don’t hate me; it’s obvious that they want all the things to be positive in my life. I can feel the heart of them, and I’m not having any prefrontal lobe lesion to accept useless and harmful risks (though it’s a fact that risks bless us with the ‘high’ of adrenalin rush). But even after thinking a lot over it, I find some risks are worth to be taken… some dreams are worth sacrificing the ‘safety’ and even ‘whole of the life’.

But truly (don’t tell this to my parents) sometimes I feel relaxed that I’m not a parent of a kid like that of me…

Thoughts as a ‘Post intern’

2011-10-03T02:32:00.000-07:00

It wasn’t easy to retake the entrance examination… in addition to reread the books you know line by line and to get the damn boring job of solving those mcq papers done again and again, I had to face people offering tons of advices, trying to convince me against wasting a year… my parents used to trust me as they always do, but they were also unable to hide their worry from their faces. I was immature (and it’s normal for a teenager), and was determined or more properly I can say I was haunted, fascinated, infatuated by the medical field. Even sight of a white apron or stethoscope was sufficient enough to elicit physiological changes in me showing excitement. My habit of daydreaming is as old as I am, but this time it was very intense, like some drive. But improperly for a teenager I was worried too, was extremely tensed, I couldn’t imagine myself taking admission to any other course than this MBBS… the thought of failure used to affect me like some terror attack would do, I used to have panic attacks, crying jerks and all those psychological symptoms a person exposed to extreme stress would have. The door of private medical colleges was closed for me; we didn’t have that much money… in fact that was the only reason for which I was retaking the exam.

Some years have passed since then; today I’m waiting for some documents to apply for MBBS degree certificate. I’ve completed my MBBS from a government medical college and am about to be a registered medical practitioner… I own a stethoscope and a couple of aprons and have been attaching "Dr." before my name since last one year. But strangely, I miss something. I don’t feel satisfied; I feel I still haven’t got something I wanted to have.

I’m no more a rebellious immature teenager. I’ve learnt to think hundreds of times before doing anything. I’ve developed methods to keep myself away from infatuations… and to stay calm in stressful situations. Nowadays I don’t get excited easily either. But yet, I’m not the person who I was craving to be… and ironically to be that person, I’m still craving. And am still figuring out what I shall do to quench that strange craving.

But it’s not easy to sit and think upon this… in addition of attempting to get over this frustration and searching for some stimulation in this medical profession, I’m facing people who call me mad for not feeling satisfied… my parents too are confused, now they don’t even attempt to hide their worry and even force me to try for a stable life, to appear for MD entrance to get MD to get money and position…

Is it possible to be an adult and still be an immature or to be mature and still searching for some satisfaction?

To be unwise

2011-09-24T07:02:00.000-07:00

It’s very easy in this world to get lost somewhere, or to get hypnotized. Some dreams, some thoughts, some persons or some incidents like some drugs are bound to make us mad or to make us to think of ourselves as near perfect or most suitable deserving the endless joy of our life. There are stimulants destined to give us a high and there are thoughts which seem to be wild games of the mind… though there is the consciousness always busy in trying to keep us awake and to differentiate reality from the constructions of the mind, sometimes it’s just ok to fall prey to enchanting creations coming out from deep inside…

diary of an intern

2011-09-13T01:24:00.000-07:00

Life doesn’t come sometimes as it should be… hitches come or obstacles or beautiful distractions. Sometimes the path becomes so demanding that we forget where we were going. Sometimes there are illusions of dreamland, oceans of ambrosia which turn out to be mere mirages, constructions of our own minds which in reality are nothing. The heart gets broken sometimes, sometimes it bleeds… but how obstinate it is, it always loves it beats; always hopes that this journey will end somewhere, where it’ll meet the cause of its beats… where it’ll forget all of its mistakes and the pain it has received after committing each of it…

To be selfish…..

2011-08-21T07:31:00.000-07:00

It rules the world, people say, it rules motivations actions adventures risk taking behaviors and even something as delicate as feelings of love and affection. Selfishness is the utter cause of animal behavior, books say, including that of us humans. It’s the ultimate truth, essential for survival… for combating the demanding situations, and for gaining what that is required. Male quadrupeds fight for area of food, for females; females go for strongest mate to have safe future… even single cell organisms do changes in themselves only for the sake of survival, and no one can even compare the selfish acts of animals called as humans; in Darwin’s world even deepest human relations, families can be reduced down to one or other form of commensalism.

After all we’re animals, biological things, and effects of some molecules and physical forces leading to some chains of chemical reactions or electrical or physical activations; why shall we bother to behave as selfishly as some unicellular organism swimming with its flagella or something in search of a better place of survival even without understanding the meaning of it? But we do bother, all of us, as per the capacity of structures called as brains or more broadly as per the complexity of the bodies of the organisms. Responses of a more evolved multicellular organism to a stimulus are different than those of a unicellular, biologically backward animal. I’m not sure about the plants, fungi or animals with extremely primitive nervous tissue development; but in humans and animals with developed brain there is something called as cognition… we have a picture of the outer world in what is called as ‘our mind’ and we all live in our own private worlds formed in our minds due to the trillions of experiences we get from the outer world. We all are gifted by the universe with our capacity of ‘feeling’ the world… and humans form the most gifted species with astonishing capacities of ‘feeling’ the feelings of others, of peeping into the mental worlds of others and even that of changing them, of seeing the future and dreaming and doing efforts to bring the dreams to life.

We’re not flagellates swimming in response to some chemokines, neither are we quadrupeds thinking nothing except food mates and then shelter… we’re humans, though we’re biological things our joys are far more wider as we’ve intelligence, and that makes us vulnerable to become most selfish species on the planet or most selfish person in the universe… but it is the only thing- ‘our intelligence’ which awards us the ability of being completely altruistic doing the acts of helping others and caring others without any direct benefit to us. We might have inherited selfishness from our selfish brainless ancestors, but altruism is a product of evolution, I think. And for us it’s as true as selfishness, and for some of us it’s even truer than selfishness, and those ‘some’ are legends, responsible for the survival and evolution of humankind. We would have been extinct by now, if altruistic people were not there to save the world from destructive acts of selfishness…

I think we must honor this gift of evolution to us, we must allow at least a bit of altruism to survive in us… then and only then we’ll be able to build a world full of altruistic people, and that world will be filled with true love, affection, with a guarantee of being cared and without any fear, without any stress, that is that will be like what we call today as ‘heaven’.

the reason to draw something

2011-08-18T00:33:00.000-07:00

I really wonder what exactly arts is…? What’s the purpose of creating something strange, really strange that has no survival value? Or maybe it has… we don’t know it yet! It’s like some potent addicting drug acting directly on the brain… a stimulant, an analgesic, a hallucinogen or maybe a depressant; maybe it’s a way to escape from the harshness of boring dull uselessly competitive real life, or a door to enter our long wished dreamland or a measure of communication with our own self, a companion who never gets bored with us, an advisor suggesting solutions to problems unrelated to the topic of itself… I don’t know what’s the experience of others, but when I draw something, my drawings speak to me, that too… in silence.

searching for some time machine

2011-08-07T20:37:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time I was immature, a curious kid
Wondering why things happen and how do they occur
Life was a miracle for me, or was a wonderful puzzle
At that time I always used to be in some hurry
As every moment of life seemed to me
Like some beautiful irreplaceable opportunity…

Once upon a time I was very romantic,
Where everything in the world had a beautiful challenge hidden in it
Every word had some secret poetic meaning
Every face I saw used to sing some wonderful tunes of music…
Where even worst things had some goodness attached to them
And every failure was nothing but a chance to learn some lesson from it

Maturity comes at its own price, and some experiences are potent enough
To wash away the sense of being alive from life…
Too much of adversity ruins the life,
Where every step is a danger, nothing appears romantic…
Life seems unruly, a collection of unexplainable bizarre happenings
Or it seems like some long dull journey, without any destination for it……

Now I find myself struggling with my own mind,
Or attempting to get out of the inertia caused by some unknown thing
Or lost in search of some miracle or some time machine
Which will take me back to my youthful state of my mind…
There I’ll relearn to wonder,
And to look at life like some secret miraculous power…….

to be a patient

2011-07-21T03:50:00.000-07:00

It’s hard to be a good patient. “Strength is important, so is health and hence the rest,” I say to patients, some of whom are workers working for daily wages hence can’t tolerate or afford the ‘rest from work’… some of them still co operate, some get admitted and take complete bed rest, some have to go for ICU, and they do go there… I’m a medical student, an intern, and at least two three beds in ICU here are always reserved for people like me, and I don’t require to be in a critical health condition to get admitted in the ICU.

… But what happens when I myself get ill is contradictory to the situation; I’m the most unruly of the patients I’ve ever met. I take medications whenever I feel need of them (especially the pain killers- even though I know that THEY ARE NOT GOOD FOR HEALTH), then totally forget about them (something like the antibiotics or the vitamins). I like to stay away from other doctors (I don’t trust them), I never consult seniors about my own health, and I never take what it’s called as rest. One day absence from work for me accounts for one day extension of my internship; and I want to reach my destination as soon as possible…

I keep on working, doing job of an intern physician even though my capacities are seriously impaired, even though I’ve to struggle with my lower cognition levels and headache due to fever for doing tasks like measuring the blood pressure or inserting branulas or taking blood samples or taking the patients to the CT scanners… or even taking histories and advising treatments (that includes rest)… but doing tasks requiring still more cognition like reading understanding, working at night without sleeping becomes just impossible, I find myself sleeping miserably when I want to write or to do something meaningful for my goal of life. Still no one understands and even imagines that I might be suffering from something called as deranged health condition. And I get bombarded by duties of patients one after another.

Am I a bad doctor? I don’t think so, I never do injustice to patients… and I try my best to protect my health from being deranged, never even taste bad foods never go for addicting chemicals and try to give time for my body for doing exercise; maybe that’s the reason I’m able to work in conditions compelling others to lay helplessly in bed. But to do tasks those I love, I need to be healthier………….. but it’s hard to be a good patient!

being a human

2011-07-17T03:35:00.000-07:00

Life is like some journey from birth to death, some people are lucky to choose what type of journey they want… they may take it like some entertaining trip or an adventurous tour or like some mission to discover something or to help someone, or like some routine dull rush of everyday life where more than the journey something else is important! But there are some people for whom life is nothing other than an everyday struggle to survive… when their existence is in question, creativity is a far away thing… they never get a chance to get their neocortex used and developed. They too have a journey of life like us, but it’s restricted, instead of enjoying and learning from new experiences they’ve to turn their back to them and to ignore them to conserve their energy only to have their life sustained till death arrives. They get tired while attempting to fulfill their basic needs to the extent that they don’t even think of having big goals and planning to achieve them…

We don’t wake up worrying about what to eat and where to sleep; instead our worries are totally different. We’re among the lucky ones, who’ve got education and some safety… we’ve got a chance of using our parts of brains those are exclusive to humans; we can exploit being a human, and we have to, I feel. And instead of turning ourselves into some highly paid robot, we’ve to preserve our humanness and have to try to give the world something as a thanksgiving for this rare chance it gave to us of being and living like a human, and have to work to make this world a better place so that each and every human will get a chance to live like a human…

diary of an intern

2011-07-15T03:30:00.000-07:00

I wonder sometimes what’s in the alcohol that makes some person an honest slave of it…. an honest consumer who’s almost never honest about his (yes I see almost all males) drinking habit. I know the neuroscience of addiction, I’ve read it, and I also have read that it uses the reward centre of brain- the same that gets activated when we feel happy and makes us to crave for something, the same that gets activated when we fall in love with someone or something, the same that makes us to feel the bliss. Then why people go for alcohol when they can get the same joy from other things like being addicted to some good habit or to some good person? Are they all depressed, or ignorant about the effects of that drug which can damage anything right from the guts, the liver, the brain to the DNA? Is it peer pressure, or pressure from the stress of life, or a silent slow way of doing suicide? Though ignorance can explain alcohol addiction in illiterates, I wonder why people who themselves are doctors also go for it. I’ve read that alcohol forms long term memories and associate the positive feelings of the environment of consuming alcohol- like a group of intoxicated funny talking friends, high fat foods which themselves stimulate the reward centre, the music of pubs to the alcohol and makes the person a fan of it. But our brains are not dead hard wired things and we can change the programming whenever we want, at least theoretically… long term potentiation isn’t a permanent thing. But then why it doesn’t happen in reality, why people continue to go for it again and again even when they know that alcohol is dragging them to death, when they get complications like cirrhosis, ascites, fatty liver, alcohol induced dementia, tremors, anemia, gastritis, and even alcohol induced psychosis, when they have to get admitted in the hospital for these complications for number of times? Why do they go for it at first place, and why do they lack the willpower to fight against it when they become slave of it? I’ve seen people shouting for alcohol when they’re laying on the death bed constructed for them by alcohol only… and I wonder what would have happened if they had loved some person or cause to this extent…

It makes people to ‘see’ everyone as beautiful as their depressed brains can’t recognize the asymmetry of faces, people become more ‘adventurous’ or ‘helpful’ as the inhibition making them ‘shy’ from the prefrontal cortex is reduced… but these depressed adventurous brains are more prone to accidents which could be lethal to themselves or others…

mm… love also makes us to trust others more, to look at and concentrate at the positive things of others, but the causes are different… Is alcohol like love… no, love is totally harmless and alcohol is known to damage many things, we could treat alcoholics with love, but in their case they’re in love with alcohol only… they value alcohol more than any other person or activity in their life, even more than themselves. Whenever they’re happy they celebrate it with alcohol, they look at alcohol for washing away their tragedies and stresses, they go for alcohol for entertainment when they feel bored… alcohol is everything for them, they don’t need family and friends to the extent they need alcohol. Some think of themselves as dedicated to their families, they never drink at home, but for them joy and family are two distinct things… and the ‘joy’ is alcohol.

I’m writing this because I’m really horrified to see the number and severity of patients who get admitted repeatedly only for the sake of alcohol. I encounter poor people mainly who’re illiterate or semi illiterate or maybe educated. They’re mainly males of varying ages, of varying stresses and family backgrounds… till date I’ve seen only one woman who had got admitted for alcohol induced psychosis and she had told that she learned drinking to accompany her beloved drunkard husband.

Alcohol isn’t a small thing to ignore; it’s at the top of list of drugs causing harms to human lives, and still people adore it! I don’t really know why people take everything lightly, including their health, their relationships and their lives? I don’t know why they succumb for drugs like this, and will it be ‘possible’ to make the ‘possible’ thing of changing their synaptic structures possible? I can’t keep guessing now… because I’ve to go, I’ve to tap the ascetic fluid of a dying chronic alcoholic patient.

diary of an intern

2011-07-10T03:17:00.000-07:00

The more you crave for something the more difficult it appears to achieve it, I feel sometimes; but we still keep on craving thinking that at least at some time we’ll get at least a trace of it… I dream of a heavenly world, happy humankind and me a tiny neuroscientist working to make it happier… but what I encounter everyday is a series of extreme tragedies sadder than even those of Shakespeare’s, violence enough to evoke disgust even in medieval soldiers, heights of carelessness, drug seeking behavior putting the whole families at risk of extinction, and me a helpless small intern physician doing my job of internship, preparing for documents of internship completion, worrying whether I will get some extension, trying to concentrate on the necessities for getting a good PhD position, making some vague efforts of reassuring the patients and of reassuring myself that one day or other the situation will be better!

I don’t know where to start and how… I don’t know whether dreaming what I dream is ‘normal’ psychologically or whether I’m suffering from some ‘disorder’. But I dream, truly, that too while awake, and I crave for making them to come true, and I try for them at my best… but this my best is not enough, I feel always.

“Why my right hand is not moving doctor, I try but I can’t move it? I can’t work without it, I can’t eat… there’s no one to look after me, I’ll lose my job… please do something, do anything, leave my leg paralyzed, but make my hand as it was… give me some medicine,” a fifty some man begs me when I reach him to insert branula and to take blood samples. I tell him to practice moving his hand, but who’s there to motivate him, who’s there to give him physiotherapy… is there any drug to reverse damage occurred due to stroke? I can’t wait there with him, I’ve to move on to the next patient, there are fifteen admissions today and my job is to send each investigation of every patient before closure of the labs, to bring the x- ray films, to do other irrelevant meaningless official things an intern has to do…

Not all stroke patients are old, not all hypertensive persons are above forty, and not all patients who visit hypertension OPD regularly have their blood pressure under control… they seem to be waiting for a stroke or heart attack or renal failure. There is a tendency to write the blood pressure as 120/ 80 mm of Hg to avoid complications, no matter what the real blood pressure is. And advices about good diet and exercise are neither given nor taken seriously… even the doctors are victims of junk food and lack of exercise leading to increased girth of abdomen and decreased diameter and elasticity of blood vessels. Some patients are also so horrible that they come to visit the OPD fully drunk, with their exhaled air containing nauseating quantity of alcohol. Conditions like dementia, Alzheimer’s, and even Parkinsonism are not big diseases here, they’re mere byproducts of aging… and people with these conditions are admitted very rarely only and only if there is exam of students that too as ‘exam cases’! Everything is as if superficial, lacking depth, being done just for showing or for legal procedures… nothing including health is taken seriously; there is no question of caring for the health of others. No one has time for useless things like sympathy, initiative and even curiosity… I guess if classical case of H. M. would have happened here, he would have died in the darkness even without getting noticed!

I fear I’ll get blind if I don’t get any light of hope… I fear my curiosity will die and I’ll become an input output machine examining predefined things called patients. I feel smothered many times and I think of giving up… I think of going far away from everything and never to return, I think of finding peace within myself like the monks, by doing meditation and by increasing the size of the brain’s reward center or of becoming mad or drugged to live permanently in my dream ignoring the horrid real situation… I can do that, that’s not difficult, but that’s not challenging either… I want to see my dream as a happening without altering my consciousness. I want to bet my life, no matter how hard it seems even to survive the real situation. I’ll keep on trying and searching for hope… maybe on some blessed day in the future I’ll get somewhat closer to my dream.

Abstract… whirlpools of odd thoughts

2011-06-27T07:09:00.000-07:00

Our minds are bizarre beings… they make us to sense art in some useless drawings and compel us to search meaning in some weird poetic lines. We find rhythm in some strange voice, and tend to fondle part of our mind beating in any other mind. Life comes as a series of riddles, and we name them as incidents transforming our lives… But it is this strangeness of mind that makes us capable of being called as alive.

diary of an intern

2011-06-19T05:54:00.000-07:00

I don’t know when people are going to stop taking everything for granted… and why they do it. I work in NICU these days, its intensive care unit for neonates, and babies arrive there whose uneventful birth and maturation had been taken for granted by their parents. The mothers are nearly always teenagers (many are below eighteen, but their age on our papers is almost always twenty or above… no proof of age is required to have a baby in a hospital), uneducated or half educated… who doesn’t know that it’s necessary to take some active care to have a healthy baby and it’s not a kid’s play to have a baby. They are accompanied by their mothers or mother in laws, sometimes father, brother… husbands arrive only rarely, mostly they come to collect the body if the baby dies in NICU. Low birth weight babies are so common here, so are babies with severe anemia. Sometimes the mother gets PIH, the baby is hypoxic due to delay in birth, and sometimes suffering from IUGR… sometime’s it’s struggling with some infection since in utero. They never come to know this before the birth, because they never attend ante natal clinic. Then after noticing some abnormality, or if some local doctor refers, they rush the baby to NICU in nearly lethal condition…

They marry because they think it’s necessary to get married as everyone does it, and then they get pregnant because everyone has kids after marriage… and they think it’s obvious that the baby will be normal. They don’t know the concept of spacing between the kids. Many know about tubectomy as a method of contraception but according to them, it must not be done till you have a son. To improve their condition, we need to give them health related education and education in general… but what about those who are highly educated?

People don’t really know why they’re doing whatever they’re doing. The most common cause of doing anything is because everyone does it… and there is general tendency of taking everything for granted.

Prepare for the entrance and get the admission and then you’ll become happy, get a post graduation then you’ll become happy… get a highly paid job then you’ll get happy… get some promotion, then get married, then have some kids… then earn more money collect properties, earn some fame… then you’ll become happy… they keep on doing one thing after another and take their own happiness for granted which rarely arrives in their life. And when they get old, they expect the next generation to do the same things… doing what ‘everyone’ is doing, chasing the happiness without knowing exactly where it is!

I get shocked to see my friends who are MA, MSc, MBBS, and PhD crying before me because their ‘to be’ husbands are demanding too much dowry. Then I see my pregnant professor friend praying the god and following some quack regimes to have a son… and mother of my doctor friend, a lawyer’s wife undergoing one abortion after another after diagnosing the sex of baby as female before birth of the baby- till she attends menopause, only because everyone has at least one son and she hadn’t!

Where are we? What is the role of education if everyone is behaving like an illiterate person, and doesn’t know what in actual they want from their life? Does education means only a way to get highly paid job and nothing more? When are we going to stop taking everything for granted? Is it really necessary to do something only because others are doing it…? Or is my brain extremely eccentric to think that we can have happiness in doing things what ‘others’ call as ‘strange’?

Abstract… it doesn’t require words

2011-06-17T07:12:00.000-07:00

Life is like a wave of some ocean; sometimes it’s a tsunami, and sometimes a tiny ripple… but it’s not ever lasting and is never constant. All it’s a dance of driving forces- our wishes, our desires, our passions and our needs… sometimes they back up each other, sometimes contradict… and we keep on craving for that summit while struggling to meet the needs to survive. And a tsunami occurs when we throw ourselves into our heavenly dreams and just forget to stay alive.

to prove myself......... to machines!!!!

2011-06-07T07:08:00.000-07:00

I wish I should have been born thousands of years ago; I would have ignited first fire or would have sown the agriculture’s first seed.… I would have written books on anatomy or would have lived my passion of finding new things to make health better, without getting trapped into today’s tasteless education system. I would have felt proud in being called as a ‘mad’ scientist. But today mad people don’t become scientists. I live in an era of robots… and madness is a contra indication of what they call success. I live in an era where passion has become just a sexual thing… people don’t and even can’t imagine having it in other areas of life. They work because they have to work to survive, to earn money, to get reputation, to get recognition, to win a competition to get prizes or to get admissions to get a chance to do a more ‘reputable’ work. There is no value or ‘reputation’ to creativity, initiative is a useless thing, there’s so much pressure of proving yourself before other machines that you forget what your inner drive is. Questions are not those which arise in mind after understanding but they are those which appear in exams or interviews… and answers are not those which consume your lifetime but are those which are already given in textbooks. Schools are nothing better than factories of robots who grow up to fight amongst themselves to master strategies of scoring in exams for getting work positions those are completely constructed for robots. And robots are hardwired things programmed for success with unchangeable programming; they don’t possess weakening human feelings, they don’t dream leave apart falling in love with some dream, they can’t understand the delicacy of loving, scarifying, doing something that isn’t related to ‘succeeding’ or achieving things associated with success. In the world of robots, people learn to mutate themselves into robots thinking that it’ll be a reversible change and they’ll become humans once they’ve achieved a ‘safe position’ in life… but the ‘safe position’ never arrives, and they continue to be robots for their lifetime.

For me, being a robot is worse than living the worst nightmare of my life… and I wonder whether there are little suppressed humans still alive in their robotic minds? I have no chance of finding this out, and I’m too small to help those little humans even if they are there to grow up and to express themselves. Meanwhile, I have to prove myself before other machines so that I can survive… that too without forgetting my inner drive. It’s a hard thing to do… what to do, I’ve been born at a wrong time in a wrong era! Alas, I should have been born thousands of years ago………….

Heart of a mother………..

2011-06-02T02:37:00.000-07:00

The most mysterious thing in the world is love, I feel as it makes us ready to give up many things just for nothing. It’s a surprising thing, how a mother loves a baby and why when the baby has nothing that can help her in her life. She never demands the child to take care of her in return, or never gets angry in real if the child fails to understand her and even to respect her… but it hurts her if the kid fails to assure her of his or her pleasure. She wants the baby to grow up independent of her, she wants her or him to be successful happy healthy and fulfilled in every aspect of life. She tolerates many things, sacrifices her everything only to make the child an independent satisfied person, and demands nothing in exchange except a sense of assurance that the child is safe happy and is leading a productive meaningful life. If the situation demands, she can give up the warm hugs, can give up the relaxing baby’s touch; she can give up the sense of importance the baby gives to her… but she can’t give up the need of baby’s safety and her need of constant assurance that the baby will continue to be safe and is having and will have a good life.

She doesn’t crave for the presence of the baby in her life (though it’s joyous to have it), but it’s the progress and pleasure of the baby she really craves for. But if the baby suddenly disappears from her life, she can’t stop missing her or him…… I miss you Raani, and I worry for you; just tell me where you are and how.

static vs dynamic

2011-05-15T00:27:00.001-07:00

Sometimes life feels like static, never going forward……! And one moment seems like one era; but that moment goes away after some time, and life starts getting its regular pace. What we’ve to do at that slow moment is to wait, survive and keep walking at snail’s pace while trying to accelerate our life till it becomes faster than light. And once it becomes so, we’re free to use our motion to energize the world.

Can someone hear my mind........ ?

2011-05-06T16:27:00.000-07:00

I sit here in casualty and examine the patients, both parties- the culprits and the victims… and I try to imagine the cause of their deeds, the tsunamis occurring in their minds causing such gross violence… their faces appear anything ranging from cold dead looks to look of a rabid animal, from crying moaning expressions to expressions throwing smiles like that of Batman’s joker. I can’t understand how some human being can take away the ear lobe of other by biting, or break someone’s eye, or make someone to land in coma by hitting on head.

I wish I could see this world with the eyes of these violent people. Is it threatening like some lonely midnight with giant cannibals ruling their small scared minds? Or is it disgusting with every other creature called human evoking a sense of nausea and discomfort in them? Do they lack feelings for the sufferings of others, or do they get pleased with them? Or do they have become insensitive to the pains of others due to the burden of pain their own hearts carrying? Or do they do it just as a part of routine life, and don’t understand the consequences of it? Do they feel really satisfied after doing it, do they like it, or is it mere their helplessness? Is it some effort of showing power, or of feeling secured in the hostile world created by their minds?

They’re not mad like the rabid dogs, they’re conscious enough to know the laws, to sue each other, to try to find flaws in the laws and to try to mislead others and to collect the proofs or to wipe them out. Why can’t they understand that what they are doing is bad…..?

I know a doctor is not supposed to think over all this stuff, my job is to offer health services to their bodies ignoring their ailing minds, and I must and must forget everything happening in the OPD just after getting out of it, but it never happens. I feel stopping such violence is the first thing I should do as a building block of my dream world; I take it as a purpose of my life. I want every person in this world to smile with a child’s smile coming out right from the bottoms of their mind.

Then I’ve to give up thinking as a seriously dehydrated diarrhea patient arrives there, I get out of the wound care area to attempt inserting branula to pass intravenous fluids to increase the volume and to avoid him from landing in shock… but I find cigarette smoke feeling the outside air, making the diarrhea patients to struggle for normal air. I frown and search for the source of the smoke… and what I find is that it’s not the relatives of the violent people taking treatment for their wounds, but it’s the doctor’s room before the dehydrated patient’s treatment area… and I see my colleagues, MBBS doctors, smoking mercilessly without thinking of the patients fighting with death just outside… … I get shocked, but run short of time as the patient is really dying. I close the doctor’s room’s door to leave them smoking inside and by the time I deal with the patient they escape from the room. Who’s more violent, those people damaging each other’s body parts, or these doctors enjoying their puffs without thinking about others and the laws? I think both are equal.

Where I’m living? Where are morals, where’s humanity? Are they real, or mere myths… or hallucinations created by my mind and I a schizophrenic? I think it would be better if I were a schizophrenic; at least I wouldn’t have got troubled by the happenings in the outside world to which we call as ‘real’.

I want heaven here on my planet

2011-05-02T19:27:00.000-07:00

The world would have been a much better place to live if violence were not there; if there were no cruelty and people were caring for each other.

I see violence every day, and it’s not easy to find a trace of humanity over here. What people want is destruction of each other. I always have hated low class violent movies with lots of fights and injustice and assaults… but never in my life had I imagined that they could be this true. There is no peace, there are no smiles, what their faces shower is anger and revenge flooding from their minds, and sometimes there are tears and fear. There is blood, broken bones, bumps, lost organs caused by people who are members of the same species, humans. There are rapes and rapists, lies, frauds, fake care and showiness… I crave for goodness, I search for hope and I see darkness; I don’t feel convinced about my role in casualty of treating their wounds and helping the Medical officer in medico legal procedures……..

But some goodness is there, I see it when I see people bringing complete stranger accident victims for treatment, when some nurses really care for the patients. And I want to exaggerate that goodness. I wish I could get that goodness out of their brains and amplify it by several folds and then spread it to every human brain in the world like some infection resistant to hatred. I wish I could bring this horrid situation to an end and make a world where humans would act as humans. And I want to do it, no matter how impossible and strange it may sound… just trying to figure out how.

A Causality of humanity

2011-04-30T00:11:00.000-07:00

How nice it would have been if I were a robot….! I would have done my duty as per the order and would be satisfied… but robots don’t feel anything, so I wouldn’t be satisfied. But at least I wouldn’t be dissatisfied like what I feel; at least I wouldn’t feel incapable, sad or lacking something or like living in a nightmare…

But I do live in a nightmare… I’m in Causality department of my hospital, and it’s not less than a nightmare. I’m not new to the wounds, the fatal accidents, deadly dehydrations, bleeding, burns, bites, poisoning cases… but here I see the medico legal side of these things… and it’s as horrid as the fatalities themselves. Though my job is to try to keep the victims alive, I do hear the conversations of accompanying people, the police, the medical officers and the victims if they are in a state of talking.

I hear a drunkard father with a stab wound on his arm he says caused by his own son expensing all his money as military pension on prostitutes and drinks and gambling, and speaking of throwing his wife and son out of their house… and filing a case against them, and the son saying that the wound is caused by that man himself…

I hear different stories about a young woman drinking linden from her different relatives, and I hear people misleading police about the burns caused to a middle aged woman.

I see brothers with broken bones and many injuries trying to kill each others in fighting, and filing cases against each other for attempts of killing. I try to be a machine and try to help both parties to survive…

And I do feel proud of my hands when I suture the wounds… when I insert the RTs, it almost never injures the patient… but I feel incapable that alas, I can’t suture their minds, can’t help their minds to get rid of the poison of hatred for their own kins… I can’t even understand what in the universe is making them to behave like this? How people get time to make stories when someone from their home is dying?

And I keep on working, treating one patient after another, like a machine programmed to suture, to insert the branulas, the catheters, RT tubes… and keep on feeling flaccid, paralyzed, something like a loser. I must be totally mad to dream a happy altruistic world when the reality is exactly opposite. There must be something wrong in me, so that I keep on thinking that the situation can be changed… and a violence free world can exist with every heart ejecting love with every beat it beats. Either my concept of a human being is wrong or we’re living in a world of subhuman…

I try to find a solution that’ll at least start changing the situation… then I find the chain of my thoughts broken… the branulas in causality department are damaged, they just gel folded up when attempted to be inserted in the vein, I use the scalp vein set for superficial veins as an urgent measure to reduce the dehydration… there are soooo many things those need improvement… and by now, I’m completely sure about my madness in dreaming my dream world. But alas, this can’t stop me trying for making my dream a reality.

a fossil of memories

2011-04-10T05:06:00.000-07:00

I’m in UHC, and it’s not busy… only few patients arrive there, that too with stereotypic complaints, nothing to stimulate thinking. Other doctors are there and they talk to each other about some topics that never attract me. I sit there tying my hands with my best friend- my loneliness; trying to draw my feelings on pieces of rough paper… examining patients occasionally and then giving medicines to them (the pharmacologist over here is on leave for unknown time).

When I feel dull the sensations of my dream world in which I live become blurred… I keep on trying to keep control over what I think but I lose it often. And I look at the calendar hanging over the front wall telling me how time flies… I was an extremely sincere student once upon a time, a matter of pride for my parents and teachers and a stimulus evoking jealousy in my fellow students. I always and always occupied the first bench, always was the first to get into our college bus and into our class, always was first to examine the slides first to do the dissection first to reach the patient and examine her… and was of the rarest varieties that used to read and then attend the classes hence I always answered questions of teachers. I happened to be the strongest girl in my class and had overtaken all boys from my batch in the fitness test in physiology, and no one could attempt ragging on me when it was so common when I was in first year. And when other girls were requesting boys to break the skull during dissection, I myself was using the hammer and chisel eagerly to see my most favorite organ, and when the brain was out I glanced that I was encircled by more than forty mystified students of my class and they were staring at me as if they were looking at some ghost or something.

I hated mugging up and reading the small readymade answer books… all I read were the big weighty reference books. I was never a topper but was surely in top ten, teachers expected me to write answers like those short answer books and sometimes I had to take the reference books to the teachers to tell them that what I’ve written is correct… I had written an article for our magazine explaining this situation and had won the best article prize for it. I remember of it when some nursing students those I don’t know ask me today, “Are you Namrata Shinde from 2005 batch? We have seen your photo and read your article Maathaache Manogat… We liked it a lot…” and I had shocked all those people who used to think of me as a book insect by winning first prize for Love letter writing. I really had enjoyed the rumors saying that I couldn’t be delicate enough to write something as tender as a love letter, and the prize winning letter was written for me by someone else. Next year I tried to combine science fiction and romance in the competition and got a queue of girls with tearful eyes at my room to congratulate me for my writing… that was the birth of my novel ‘I know you love’. On a professor’s request I had written a drama to express problems faced by young people for representing my college in a competition… my roommate was the only girl who had read it, and boys from my class congratulated me for it. But a big competition started amongst senior students for the lead roles and politician boys of my class took it from me and instead of my drama they played something else; I had no copy of it with me. I lost it for good… and recalled about it after four years when unexpectedly my roommate showed me a bus driver and said, “Look, this man looks like the loafer Raghu in your drama…” I was left in tears.

I have attended some clinical postings alone in my second year sometimes with a batch one year senior to me… I used to literally wander in the college and canteen searching for my colleagues who used to bunk them and beg to them to come to the postings when teachers refused to teach only to one or two students … I never attended parties, never went to watch movies, never attended trips, I didn’t even attend the gathering of my college… I was immersed in my efforts of collecting more and more knowledge… I’ve read Harrison’s medicine and Belly and love for surgery in my second year only… and had read most of the Kaplan’s psychiatry and tried my eyes on big Nelson of pediatrics. All I wanted to do was to become a scientist working on brain.

But things started changing and getting worse and worse… in third year there were almost no lectures and in postings rather than sincerity something else became important. Scoring in exam became a dirty game of politics. It wasn’t transparent… and I hated sordid means. I did have quarreled with one of the lecturers for whatever was going on there… no lectures, declaration of exam just one day prior to it without any explanation about the syllabus, copying… everything was like living in a hell. As there were no lectures, I had no chance to communicate with the teachers in proper. Then I had got shocked to see one of my most respected teachers smoking the public canteen in my college. It was hardest thing my life to accept this realty which was far far away from what is ideal.

And the jealousy I had evoked in some persons started affecting me. I was getting accused wrongly of using my power to bully other girls and of showing off my height and figure and what not by persons who never happened to interact with me and even those classmates to whom I used to always help didn’t stand by my side. I was alone and again got accused of having some kind of behavioral problems… and having some pitfalls in personality rendering me unable to what they called it “mix” with other girls.

It was a blow to my soul, it was improper. I was getting tensed because of it and then I developed some kind of inflammatory disease, was wrongly diagnosed with Rheumatoid arthritis, became a guinea pig for orthopedicians who fed me chloroquine, methotrexate, anti depressants and tons of pain killers as strong as opioids. I was surviving, trying to make as many efforts as I could to reach my dreams… but alas, no one here knew what a scientist is and what they did was either to ignore me, or to pity over me, to mock me or to try to explain to me, “you complete your MBBS then while preparing for your MD entrance examination do your PhD thing.” I contacted to some scientists who suggested me to have some experience with research and this was the hardest thing to do in my college. I still managed to do a project for which I had to contact a local gym, a local video recording company, and had to take lectures of first year students on neuroscience to make them ready to be volunteers for my research.

I became so weak that I fainted while standing to observe a surgery. My parents were shocked to see the changes in me and they attributed them to the toxic drugs I was consuming for that arthritis. I took the drugs for more than a year, developed some itching skin reaction and anemia after that when my mother took me to a big hospital for joints, I gave up the toxins as the doctors over there said that I had no arthritis… after some months I also became allergic to common pain killers like parecetamol. My score in exams dropped near to the boundary of passing in third year, and in final year exam I got that gynecology blow over my soul. The days after declaration of my final year results were the darkest days of my life; my parents who were used to boast for my achievements were terrified. “Your thoughts are nice, but they’re meaningless if you always become a loser because of them,” My mother said to me ten months later that incident.

I survived it though I was a bit depressed, and was unable to express myself in full, and was dumb, it was an extremely traumatizing experience… even the part of my novel I had written in those days is so negative that now I’ve to rewrite it. But I didn’t give up trying for my goal, and then tried to express myself by writing in nature network, and in my blog about my feelings. And I did meet an angel powerful enough to make smile even in that condition. He helped me a lot to get out of the situation. Then I got a chance to do a research project on learning and memory in another university, and I did pass the final year exam to become an intern…

Now I’m an intern in UHC, and its 12 o’clock in the afternoon… the OPD is going to get closed. The doctors surrounding me who were discussing amongst them have left. I’m still looking at that terrible time map called as the calendar. What you say- why have I written all this autobiographical matter? Remember what I’ve written in the second paragraph… “… I keep on trying to keep control over what I think but I lose it often.”

being a doc

2011-03-04T12:39:00.000-08:00

Few days ago people in Walsang had seen a caricature wandering in their village for the first time. Now they know me as a doctor who works in PHC, and I get many smiles and salutes right from the moment I get down from the bus. The kids say, “Look a doctor is walking!” some brave ones come to me and ask, “are you a doctor,” and when I say yes, I see their eyes shining with pride. This’ the glory of this occupation, people learn to put their faith in your hands and they look to you as something special…

It might make you slightly grandiose when you find people waiting for you making queues and depending on you for their health and well being… it would be appropriate if I were some superhuman… but I’m not. I too am a human, and I too fall ill. Yesterday I was on the bus stop for more than two hours but couldn’t catch a bus thanks to my ill health and the crowd and Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’ ruling the already crowded buses. I couldn’t attend the morning OPD and I got a permission to come in the afternoon from the MO via my cell phone. And when I arrived here at around four pm I saw kids running into their homes after seeing me and then their mothers coming out and then they asked me, “Doctor where were you in the morning, we waited for you…”

I know being a doctor is not an easy thing to do… it’s a big responsibility. And it’s a thrill to make those people happy and satisfied with whatever resources you have with you. And it’s a big challenge to work in areas with scant facilities like these PHCs (and also something like my big hospital)! And it’s a lot of fun to play angel when you’re just a tiny human… and you get thousands of blessings every time the patients feel better after visiting you……

But to me, something is missing here…. I feel sorry, but this’ not the work that’ll give me complete satisfaction… I want more. I want to make each and every health center to have good health facilities like good medicines in sufficient quantity, good diagnostic tools, good surgical equipments, good transport facilities, and good care. I want every doctor to play angel and not robot. I don’t want this difference like rural and urban health facilities, and rural lying far behind the urban ones. I want every doctor to practice logically if not ideally. And I crave to make the treatments safer, I want every disorder to have cure. I want to make people really happy, even when I’m not there to treat each and every one of them. I want to become a scientist and want to work on brains of us… and also want to make improvement in the health condition of people in the world. Just figuring out what I shall do, and where I shall make a start to achieve it…

diary of ntern....

2011-02-25T02:45:00.000-08:00

Humans are weak animals, with a small life and a big mind and huge desires… I feel myself as fragile, a miniscule creature hoping to bring happiness in human life. I love to go this PHC and see people every day and do something that I can, to help them with their health problems… and I face obstacles every day in one form or other those in fact should not arise. This PHC affords being constantly online, it affords the webcams, it affords the decoration it has… and the new decoration that is taking place; can’t it afford a one thousand rupees sphygmomanometer? And there are round needles, no matter what kind of wound it is, and where and for whom you have to use that big bored round needle for applying sutures… why should the people tolerate that extra trauma, only for the cause that they live in a village?

And I see poverty ruling lives… almost every woman and many men I see are anemic. I heard a doctor saying that complaint of weakness the women over here do is nothing but a psychological problem… I thought what’ll happen if he bleeds and his hemoglobin level falls near to five; won’t he complain of constant weakness and fatigue? The iron and folic acid syrup over here is out of stock, now I give the tablets… and they’re going to end soon the pharmacist insists. And I encounter women with backache and weakness in limbs due to compression fractures in vertebrae… with extreme tenderness over spinal cord… they are osteoporotic… leave apart the cementing of vertebrae and other surgical treatments I couldn’t even give them calcium tablets. They refused to attend a higher center- my hospital… and I’m sure they wouldn’t have got the treatment over there also. They can’t afford CT in government hospital and MRI from private hospital is a big thing for them. At least to increase their bone strength to some extent, I advised them to take milk everyday… then they smile at me sarcastically… “If I were a queen I would have got milk,” I remember one of them saying. My knowledge is helpless here… so is me.

And the men are addicted to one or more drugs… especially to the alcohol and the smocking. If not anything else their families will definitely get good nutrition if they stop spending money on their addictions… but who’s going to stop them? Why the government doesn’t ban such things in total, when it’s known that smoking is hazardous to health, it harms even to the non smokers… why the cigarettes and beedies are still being produced? If they start getting profit from selling and producing something like cynide, will they do it? Will they promote suicide by cynide? Then why do they do it with nicotine and with alcohol? Who has given the manufacturers the right to ruin the lives of the consumers? I’m totally clueless… I’m nothing but just an intern physician.

And I see violence. I see adults coming with police cases with heads broken due to fights in families and in rival families… I see women with tender infected injuries they’ve got because of beating by their drunken husbands… and I also see kids with head injuries due to getting hit by a stone by a small sibling or a playmate….. And the cases of dog bites in children are also on rise as the kids go and kick the dogs on face!!! They also hit the pigs, but the pigs don’t bite. What is this? Why? Why this violence… why everyone likes to pick up the stone and target the head of other? Is this a learned behavior from the parents… or is it something deep in genes? I know, I can’t do anything at this level of mine. I want to study neuroscience and want to stop this violence… but I also want to stop this under nutrition and addictions… and these scant facilities… I want to see them happy. I don’t know what I should do to make it a happening… Leave it; I’ve started daydreaming……………………………………….

diary as an intern

2011-02-22T06:26:00.000-08:00

I’m an intern physician… I’m at PHC Valsang… and it happens to be one of the topmost PHCs in Solapur district. And here are many drugs, I never see in my hospital… though it lacks some fundamental investigation techniques, it seemed to be near perfect to me as a primary health service center… provided that you refer the patients to the necessary higher center when the need is apparent… and this doesn’t sound bad. But…

I hate that ‘but’… but it is there. I don’t want it, but it is there. This polished structure, this cleanliness this cool behavior is now I feel is sheep’s skin worn by bad nasty careless educated wolves…. Enemies of health working as health care workers. I feel it, that these webcams are foolish, morons or idiots… machine things having no IQs….. or maybe I’m an idiot.

As usual today there were many patients, with their usual complaints, and with their own usual theories about their complaints, and with their usual wrong beliefs and wrong health habits. And as usual I try to explain them the things, the importance of minor activities and good health habits and their effect on health… that ‘saline’ (their term for iv fluids) are not energy doses and that (pain killer) injections are not the solutions for every health complaint. And I usually succeed in convincing the patients and making them to understand their health problem at least an outline of it f not in complete… but then I face the complaint of the MO and even of the attending staff and class four servants that I ‘spend’ or ‘waste’ too much time on patients… and the crowd is very big and I’ve to check the patients in fast………..

Today I encountered a cheerful forty year old obese woman, a butcher’s wife (her weight was apparent by her size, though I didn’t actually weigh her). And she was there to tell about the ‘weakness’ of the right side of her body… there was no obvious loss of functions… and when asked about the onset of her weakness, she described an episode of profuse sweating with transient confusion which was followed by the weakness and the weakness had reduced then… she had not consulted any doctor. This was a mini stroke a herald of a catastrophe. I asked her about her blood pressure, and she told me that she was taking one blood pressure tablet for high blood pressure once upon a time which she stopped as someone told her that her BP was normal… I wanted to measure it, and I took her to the MO’s chair. He wasn’t there and I got a chance to examine the only BP apparatus in this PHC… it is fixed to a stand near the MO”s chair. And to my horror, its release valve is malfunctioning! And I got the reason why the MO tells that the BP of every patient I send to him as normal… even that of those having symptoms of angina. I somehow stopped the airflow and her BP was 210/ 150 mm Hg……………… stage two, very high.

I reached the drug store to find some suitable drug for her… only to find out that the ramipril and hydrochorothiazide tablets over here are the dolls decorating the showroom… the pharmacist refused to give those drugs to her. And I asked sir about what to do with that patient, and guess what that lady got- atenolol that too just 50 mg…….. aten 50 for bp 210/ 150??? He said after looking at my shocked face that what’ll happen if our stock of ramipril ends… the patient can’t afford it, so we give this one affordable- atenelol 50 mg! Then why the hell are you keeping that drug in your drugstore… I can’t guess, and can’t understand the logic behind this… the logic behind having the drug and not giving it to the patients who require it. Atenolol blunts the CNS… makes people dull as an adverse effect… and we must give any drug after evaluating its need or benefits and the potential harms it can cause. And if a better drug is available, we must give it instead of some crude one… I really can’t understand the logic behind giving her atenolol when ramipril was available.

And I see them telling a patient to get his forearm massaged at home with a gel after a trauma and when by examination fracture was apparent with no x ray advised and no immobilization was done. And I see infants getting prescription of nimesulide syrups… and I feel what if this’ just a bad dream and I’ll get up and I’ll see that this isn’t true… but it’s not… it is the truth. And I face it, everywhere… everyday and continue to hope that at least at some point of time this’ll change and we’ll live in a healthy happy world.

Am I really mad to dream what I dream? Is it possible to make some improvement? Is it possible to make the health service perfect… to make everyone healthy and happy? Can the world in my dreams exist? I don’t know… but I can’t stop thinking of it and trying for it… as if I don’t think of my dreams, I think nothing! And someone has beautifully told me that dreams can come true, without that possibility nature would not have incited us to have them… and I believe in him.

ideal Vs Real................ ..........!!

2011-02-18T18:14:00.000-08:00

It’s not an easy task to be a good doctor, especially when nothing is known about many things, no specific treatments are available for many diseases, and many treatments those are available are not reachable to your setting… no diagnostic tools are available, and when patients have bad habits like addictions and false beliefs… I encountered today a patient with fully developed rheumatoid arthritis… with Z thumb, and bent fingers, and lungs shouting fibrosis and COPD, coughing and moaning with pain and with a packet of beedies peeping out of his pocket… and was asking me about the cause of nodules over the back of his elbows, and was requesting me to give some “high quality” drug that would cure him. He was emaciated… I wanted to refer him to higher center (the heck, to my hospital!) but the MO stopped me. Anyway it was a question what they could do for this patient… (I guess nothing other than prescribing a RA factor test and ESR and CRP- what if they were positive… and high) He was a regular patient over there, and was an alcoholic along with being a smoker. I had to give him some analgesics and after him I faced another patient brought by his wife, who was looking like his daughter… he was with full stretched abdomen with ascites of high grade and pitting edema over his feet… and she said that he had vomiting of blood in the morning. And he had same kind of vomiting few months ago… but no swelling. He was having liver cirrhosis (alcoholic) and he was drunk at that time also. And I found that ascitis tapping is not being done here. I searched for diuretics… alas, they were also not available. I ran to MO to ask for what to do, and he told me to send him back with some Tonic capsules (Tonic!!!??? He was as if closer to last stage… I would definitely have admitted him if I were in my hospital). I told her to take him to the causality (the emergency sector) of my hospital in case if some emergency arises… and then I caught the assistant of the pharmacist giving gamma benzene hexachloride ointment to a patient whom I had prescribed betamethasone ointment for atopic dermatitis.

What is going on here…? When are we going to get up and start practicing logically if not ideally? I see steroid tablets being given abundantly because the stock is in abundance, and the nimesulide… and tramadol injections for people with chronic trivial low back ache. I accept opioid analgesics if given after trauma or for severe pain. It’s not something that should be given to each and every patient complaining of pain. And nimesulide is totally unacceptable. And health advices like how to protect lower spine from injuries, and how to take care of spine, and to do exercise are not being given at all. And even if they’re told to do so, the smokers and alcoholics are not going to seize it.

How to change this? Where to make a start? Am I too small to think of that? I don’t know… maybe I’m… or maybe I’m confused. Is my dream of healthy happy world a daydream of a fool? Maybe it is; I never say that I’m a sane person. And I’m going to keep on trying, let me see what the future is going to show me…

me at phc

2011-02-17T10:43:00.000-08:00

I’m a human, alas, though I wish to be some angel or demon or something supernatural… so that I’ll be able to do everything I’ve to. I go there, somehow… and encounter a big crowd called OPD patients waiting for me, and the MO raising his eyebrows (as the wall clock over there has been set at a wrong time). I get my own chamber, and I’m left alone to speak to, to examine and to diagnose and then to treat the patients. I do have experience with gynecology, I’ve worked in orthopedics (but it’s really hard to handle patients with injuries and joint complaints without the aids of X- ray films), and in ENT… I know surgery, and little quantity of ophthalmology… but I can’t control sweat gathering over my forehead when I encounter pediatric patients, then patients of deep lung infections and heart complaints, and then a tons of types of fevers and skin rashes and scabies and fungi… here I see everything, and I’m the whole and sole and the responsible person for them… I literally have to dig out information buried in the graveyard of my MBBS school memory. And ironically I’ve to refer patients with something like CSOM or DNS or like IUGR to my own tertiary care hospital… I sign the forms requesting them to do further investigations and do the necessary operations… as those things don’t happen in primary health centre.

The pharmacist insists me to prescribe something in her reach… people try to run away from work, no matter if it’s as small as getting up and opening the cupboard to take out the drugs. And they ask me why the hell I’ve chosen this PHC as it’s defamed for you really have to work hard here. I haven’t chosen it, I’ve been allotted, and no matter how exhausted I get I don’t feel my decision of working is a wrong one. I like experiences, I love patients… and as usual I feel tied because of lack of treatments to some diseases, and the hazards of the treatments I give to them… for some patients I do nothing rather than leaving them to their own luck (or badluck).

Today here was a camp day for laparoscopic tubal ligation operation. And there were maybe more than hundred women or girls (yeah, I don’t know what should I call to them when their average age is around twenty and they have two to three kids) waiting NBM since last night for the Civil Surgeon, and he happened to arrive at around 4.30 in the evening. I was shocked to see the en mass administration of anesthesia and the peon lifting the post operative patients and carrying them in his arms to their bedside (which’ a cloth piece laid on floor) … here are no stretures. But it’s good, that they’re doing family planning… in my hospital I’ve encountered many G4 G5 and sometimes G6, G7…

I don’t know from where I should start to do something that’ll transform the picture to close to ideal one… just trying… I really wish I would be some structure with super power!!! Oh my magic stick, where are you?

PHC continued......

2011-02-16T07:45:00.000-08:00

Wandering is not new to me, but searching some address in a completely strange environment, at a place not given in details in google maps was a bit challenging. With some anxiety and some fear and tons of loneliness and kilotons of curiosity, I reached Walsang- The village of the PHC which has been allotted to me by the DHO. I was walking like a fool, looking at any slightly big house as the PHC… and people were looking at me as if a strange funny fast cartoon character was marching before them. The village was the same as where I’ve spent my childhood, with only few houses with more than one floor and the school and some little private clinics, and open gutters and garbage and pigs. But I encountered about three medical stores which was a bit surprising to me.

And when my legs were about to give up walking, after asking few times to the locals, and after spending almost one hour in searching, I reached a place they were calling as PHC. It was open, and crowded… “Who’s that girl,” I heard a woman asking to a man…

I work in a tertiary care hospital, that too aligned to a medical college- Govt. hospital Solapur… so my idea of primary health centre was something with a standard far below than that of my hospital. And that’s why I got shocked to enter it- the PHC at Walsang… in contrary to my hospital, it’s computerized, and is extremely clean and webcams are recording the behavior of doctors and nurses with the patients… and finger print machines are used for attendance recording… I was pinching myself repeatedly to examine whether whatever I was seeing was true. And I was to have a heart attack or may be a stroke due to excitement when I visited the drug store…

Along with Amox and cipro here septran and tetracyclines like tetracycline and doxycycline, cephalosporins like cefalaxine and cefixime are also available. Of course, higher antibiotics are not always necessary and can cause resistance and toxicity is high especially with the tetracycline group… but they are must when strains resistant to routine antibiotics are encountered. Here in my hospital we pray that the strain shouldn’t be resistant and if it is, we are left with no other choice than telling the patient to purchase it from nearby private medical.

Antihistaminic drugs like cetrizine are also there… but chlorpheniramine maleate stock is in abundance. I don’t understand why they go for CPM when cetrizine has far less CNS side effects… diclofenac and paracetamol are available in my setting also… but diclofenac is sometimes out of stock, here that’s not the case. I almost shouted to see Diclofenac gel in their cupboard. I never see such things in Solapur. I wondered to see a tablet with serratiopeptidase as a constituent… but the other constituent of it- nimesulide disappointed me. Why the hell government is providing something as toxic as nimesulide when it is banned in many countries? One more thing that bothered me was the needles… according to new agenda we use a new needle for every patient, but here the needles are used in ancient manner repeatedly for many patients after boiling it for sterilization. This seems dangerous, when I remember the long queues of patients and relatives waiting for ART drugs in my hospital. And yes, vitamin B tablets are out of stock here, same as in my hospital…

But I liked this PHC… at least the first impression is good. It would be an ideal health center if only few drawbacks it has were removed. It’s as if it’s very close to the health service in my dream world… of course higher facilities like x rays and CT are not available… but still it’s good as it’s just a primary health center. Why my hospital lacks these things like the webcams and the attendance recorders and the cleanliness and the friendliness, why so many drugs are not available here? How can a tertiary health center lag behind some primary one in many things? Why other PHCs are not like this one… why are many of them closed for almost all the time?

I don’t know management much and economics was a big challenge before me when I was a high school student… but it would be very pleasing if I could answer my own questions… I’m here to learn and to use whatever knowledge I have for the patients over here and I’ll do it. But I can’t stop myself dreaming an ideal health service serving the whole world… I want my dream to come true.

PHC... and me

2011-02-14T19:06:00.000-08:00

I fear sometimes to do something that others don’t… to be an intern that others don’t expect. I’m not a heroine, a Hercules… a fearless monster with extraordinary strength. I’m a normal human, fragile many times due to some unknown inflammation… who’s unable to give up something that her mind calls as being honest to her job! And my job is to be an intern on a way of being a capable independent physician… I must and must do the things and to use the sources as what a good and ideal physician does. I feel there’s nothing wrong in me to wish to expose myself to the extremes of medical practice.

I’m not a studious medico kid who prefers thick stereotyped books over the live experiences in the hospital. I’m not a time saver kid running before the clock to have one more MCQ paper solved in a day’s 24 hours. I run behind the experiences… I just can’t refuse to go to the incomparable monthful of experience of attending a PHC… no matter what and where the PHC is, no matter even if it’ll cost me my hours and make me to travel by bus everyday for a month… My friends tell me, then yell on me, then beg me for not doing this- to break trend of escaping PHC service with the shining notes with Mahatma Gandhi imprinted on it… then they give up and I’m left alone to express my fear to this dead machinely computer screen. The clerk in District Healthscience office doesn’t like me, and I get the PHC far far away from where I live. And then I’m left in complete darkness about the status of it… whether I’ll encounter a live human there or whether there’ll be a big rusted lock telling me some corrupted tragedy… and I feel I’m not prepared to face it. Still I’m going there without knowing the outcome… tensed…. I wish how happy it would be if everything were normal, uncorrupted, like something in my sweet dream world. But this isn’t the dream world and I crave for some live hand on my shoulder telling me that what I’m doing isn’t wrong… I know I’m not wrong.
Let me see what is there…

Let them to say what they want………..

2011-02-01T11:30:00.000-08:00

They say it’s in vein
To spend hours… in teasing your brain,
To play with words to haunt minds,
To think of the world… existing only in hearts

They say it’s utterly madness
To try to find something…
which maybe completely fruitless
And to consider the world… which affects you not

They say it’s a big flop
To spend your life in searching…
Answers to the endless ‘whys’
And in attempting things… which may cost your life

They say it’s a severe bad luck
To be unable to be practical…
In this ‘Practical’ world
And to foster dreams… those sound irrational

But this madness has its own reward…
What others say doesn’t bother a mad!

She lives life like the spring
Bringing blossom to every mind she meets
Buds are bound to flower…
It’s exciting to watch flowers born as thorns
It’s really funny to live for a cause
No matter, even if it costs you your life

i insane

2011-01-15T09:55:00.000-08:00

I’m not a good student… I don’t sit in the library and mug up MCQ books. I don’t know which common questions they ask frequently in the entrance exam, to be honest, I don’t even know exactly how many and which subjects they’re supposed to ask questions on, what I try to read is everything available about the diseases I encounter in the OPD and my beloved neuroscience. I don’t plan, and I don’t want to appear for that exam. I don’t want to be a physician… don’t want to spend my life in the hospitals trying to offer already available treatments which may or may not be effective, and in trying to fight against the disorders disabilities tragedies and curses with maybe partially useful or totally futile or guess based regime weapons, and in trying to be satisfied for offering the treatments to needy ones no matter what the results say…

I don’t hate doctors… really, and I do salute their contribution in the health care system, because if we remove doctors the system will be totally paralyzed… but I don’t want to be one. A doctor has to be practical (yes, I’m speaking of an ideal doctor… and not about the money making robotic machines devoid of their own brains and alas, also of hearts!). She can’t be enthusiastic- the doctor, can’t be drastic… can’t cross the boundaries. She just can’t be curious beyond a certain limit. And she’s helpless; she has to adjust with the scanty diagnostic facilities and primitive like treatments even though she’s working in a most advanced setup (leave apart something like what I experience here)… she has to see failures, she has to face conditions where there is no treatment… there are diseases with no cure, and there are people who get them, and come to her with great hopes… like a machine, she has to take consent and has to convince the patient about the scant regimes and potential hazards of those regimes, and to tell that to the disease there is no treatment.

When she decides to go beyond the limits and to expand the boundaries, to question the regimes and the pathological conditions and mechanisms in physiology, wants to seek something better and safer…, she’s not a doctor, she’s a scientist. I know a doctor is not supposed to play the god though some people still do call her a god, neither a scientist an idol. But… but… but why to accept the limitations, why to surrender the pathological processes and traditional treatment regimes when you believe that something better can be found out? Why to spend life in prescribing VDRL and then ART to thousands of AIDS patients rather than trying to defeat the HIV in total…? Why to go for AMP or nailing and plating and working on live human’s bone/s as on a piece of wood rather than finding something that’ll deposit natural bone where it was and how it was before the accident? Why to give something as hazardous as steroids or cytotoxic drugs to control inflammation? Why is in cases of fights and crimes, MLC papers and signs and signatures and proofs and photos more important than the fact or facts why the heck their brains became so violent? Of course, there is some answer/s to every why, but alas, none meets my satisfaction…

And I, like some unsatisfied wandering spirit keep on thinking of research while working as a doctor in my hospital… and my mind keeps on hovering between the reality and my dream world…

The saga of jealousy

2011-01-09T22:18:00.000-08:00

It’s something deep in mind, a weakness, a fear, a sense of being incompatible… and it kills others. Where in Darwin’s theory of evolution, does this jealousy stand? Is it a disease or a pathological state of otherwise innocent mind? Or is it characteristic of some villain hidden in the dark depth of everyone’s mind? Is it a fact… unavoidable… or an avoidable catastrophe?

When it affects friends, the friendship ends… relationships go to hell… siblings become enemies, lovers become filled with hatred, joyous stimuli offer punishment… what is that, that dares to snatch all the happiness, and fills the innocent heart with filth of being jealous? Why people want to pull others’ legs? Why they can’t tolerate the victory of their own pals? Is life only a competition? Is it just a game of win or loss? To prove our superiority, do we need to prove others as lower? Can’t life be just a simple win- win situation?

When it affects them, teachers stop distributing knowledge, and co workers start gossiping in ears… care takers become life takers. It has happened in epics… it forms a part of our history books… we read it in news papers, we feel it happening to us… and sometimes we can’t stop but feel jealous of other ‘lucky’ creatures. I wonder if there is any research explaining the phenomena behind this evil emotion. Is it something that humans (and also other ‘higher’ animals) feel when they see someone getting something they feel she doesn’t deserve? What if the person in question perfectly deserves what she gets? Or is it something people feel when they see others getting something they want, but don’t get… even when they know the person deserves that achievement, and even when the person is very good to them? Or is it a reflection of insecurity they feel about themselves, rather than about the achiever? Being a victor or loser has no effect on being jealous… as if unsatisfied; the victor may be envious of some capacities of the loser one, and if not strong minded, the loser is always jealous of the victory of victor… Is it universal… is it acceptable? And… is it reversible? To this social illness, isn’t there any cure? Is altruism an illusion? Is ‘happiness in the happiness of others’ mere a theoretical word collection?

But I’ve seen angels, there are some people craving constantly for other’s smiles. And I’ve experienced someone called a villain saving lives of others… and seen her transforming from villain to heroine to again villain again to heroine… I’ve seen hatred melting away, and smiles erasing frowns. I’ve touched the softness in the hearts of hardest stones, and felt the hardness of softest hearts… but sill I don’t understand where and why in this world does jealousy stand…

It’s a bad power, causing lethal mutation of soul. It is a bad kid of comparison, a habit of peeping into others’ lives and killing your own soul with negligence; it is a sign, symbol, symptom of lack of confidence… or is it a pathological transformation of a desire to be equal? How comes the same desire stimulating some persons to lift others up and to be angels, stimulates jealousy in some other persons?

It is a disease getting born as a small larva, and eating the person, then her pals, then the society, countries continents and the whole world and becoming an anaconda or a dragon… I hope true love, true faith, true devotion, true satisfaction and true sacrifice are immune to this infection…

beasts are dumb

2010-12-24T17:33:00.000-08:00

I wake up to hear your meow, oh my cat where are you? You were my alarm in the mornings and even at odd times of day, my comfort when I tended to cry, my responsibility, my sense of achievement. You were my proud, telling me how humane I was… I used to think that you needed me, now I understand that it was me who was really needy. I miss you when I enter the hostel, when there is no one waiting for me; no one runs behind me, no one to jump on my jeans… no one waits for me to bring the milk… no one is there to attack and spill the biscuits on table. Trust me, I don’t eat biscuits, they’re still here waiting only for you. And there are two lizards in my room; I know they can act as tasty dishes for you. Ok I permit; you can jump on my computer, walk on the keyboard, and climb the window and make things fall as you fall down. Ok you can sleep on my bed, enter my cupboard, and make the floor of my room laden with your fallen fur. You can drink the water from toilet and then insert your head in my bucket, and make my roommate angry on me for your presence. You can lick my plates and glasses, and if it’s an emergency you can use the underside of my cot as a piece of dirty land…. But please please come back…

See how mad I’ve gone … I’m writing to you when I know that you can’t read. You can’t understand even if I yell on you. You can’t understand my words… you’re not a human; you’re quadruped, a beast, just a cat. I shouldn’t be involved in you to this extent, to talk with animals I’m not a child. I still remember how you used to act when I used to act as if I would beat you. I still remember your voice. I still confuse every white object in darkness with you… where are you?

Did you know who you were for me? Have you ever thought that the person you were playing as if she was your feline sibling was facing most catastrophic typhoons in her life? Could you understand the transformations taking place in my life? Were you aware that you were the only living company of me, during most lonely days of my life…? How could you, when even I wasn’t aware of your importance till now… till when I wait for you, and don’t get you, till when I understand that I’ve lost you?
Was your behavior mere a reflection of love of reward of food and that of security… or was it a result of some care for me? I don’t care about your purpose, as whatever its purpose might be, your behavior was a reward to me. I needed you to believe in me, to be taken care of by me, to think of me as your safety. I liked to see you happy… I pray you should be happy wherever you might be. I loved you as any parent would love her dependent baby… and she loves to see the baby growing independent of herself. But she craves to see the baby… you don’t come to me, don’t follow me, don’t trust me, but… but at least once please show your face to me.

See how forlorn I’ve become, I want to call you, but can’t, as you don’t have any mobile phone… I want to write to you but don’t know your address… to read my email you’ll never come to the internet… And you continue to trouble me in my memories and in dreams waking me up and making me nostalgic… my Billu, my Moti, my Sonya, my dear Khawadya , my Boku do this favor to your non feline mom, if you have that sixth sense, sense her worrying heart and at least to convey your well being please come back…

picture of a mad 2

2010-11-28T22:36:00.001-08:00

Madness can be beautiful… when it’s not causeless, and the beauty of it depends on the beauty of the cause that maddens… a beautiful desire, a beautiful person, a beautiful dream or a beautiful dream world; they change the mind, mutate it… grab your saneness, rule your senses and lend you as a forlorn to wander in the world searching a dream world, breaking all the rules of a normal person… you search your dream even when you look into the mirror, alas! You can’t even understand that you’re no more a wise person, a person you were before that small accident… and people call you as insane or as a mad… but… but oh poor haunted soul, have you ever noticed that… that your madness has added lots of grace to your face? Trust me; this madness is the most effective beautifying treatment (Though it can cost you your life… but who cares about life in the midst of this madness?). Yeah, madness can be beautiful…

When a human ages…

2010-11-20T04:16:00.000-08:00

Swollen legs
And shrunken eyes
Can you believe…
I was a king in my times?

Senses severed,
Joints tortured,
Fighting with arthritis
And I can’t remember things
Can you believe…
I was a ruler of minds?

Struggling for my aims,
Living in my dreams,
Loving, teasing, playing and winning
… Losing my heart,
Can you believe…
I was very smart?

Now the heart is damaged,
And my pride injured,
The king of then,
Is now no more!
Now I’m a loser,
Time did this slaughter
… And I got sacrificed
Can you believe…
The power I have enjoyed?

Once a divine beauty,
I’ve lost my vanity
I have no powers,
No aims, no dreams,
I do survive, but…
With no hopes!
I’ve lost everything
This is time’s victory,
But… but you have to believe,
I still… still have a story!!!

autobiography of a mad...

2010-10-29T00:06:00.000-07:00

Am I mad to dream what I dream, people say your dreams should be feasible… a microbe can’t dream to be as huge as a dino, a thorny desert plant can’t look beautiful, a poison can’t dream to save lives… how can an intern dream to be a good scientist, or a doctor, or a healer? How can I dream a heavenly hospital, when I practice at a place where people with their saliva of chewed tobacco, and also urine, within a weak transform a new posh building into a hellhole… or when the freshness of morning in hospital is stolen by smoke of cigarette of the patient, or relative or the compounder or professor doctor? How can I expect doctors to take care of patients, who themselves don’t respect their health? How can I convince the patients to take care of their health, when they’re illiterate, and when surviving for today is their major problem? How can I dream fine diagnosing techniques and healing machines, when even basic norms are not properly followed…?

Am I mad to think all this, when almost everyone wants their self development… when to this almost everyone agrees or ignores, when nearly every medico is engaged in mugging up the bookish lines or copying for the medical entrance, when almost every scientist is running behind hot grants or publications, when making money, enjoying luxury is almost everyone’s goal, when almost everyone hates something new, or odd or anything that challenges the established situation? How can I dare to not to take part in this rat race, when innocence has been graved by formalities, and showiness, and desires to get more? How can I dream a smiling lovely world, when in fact the world is studded with sadness, revenge, lack of knowledge, poverty, violence and negligence?

But smile is also there, and there are hopes, there are some people burning their souls to help others… there is at least some goodness in heart of an almost worst person, I just want to eliminate the bad things, no matter if the world calls me a mad person. I know, the dinosaurs are extinct today, but microbes still persist… it steals your eyes when a desert cactus flowers, almost every life saving drug in emergency is otherwise a poison… anyone can dream anything, and can bring the dream into reality with her perseverance… I can dream my dream world, no matter even if there’s heaven and hell’s difference between the real and ideal. I can breathe for my dream world, and work for it, no matter how close I will be able to take this world to my dream world till I’m in this world. constructing heaven using hell as the raw material is a challenging task, it’s exciting, it gives me adrenaline rush… and most importantly a purpose to survive. I’ll prefer dying for my heavenly dreams to lying happily in arms of some angel in some ready- made heaven… and strangely I’ll be happier. I may really be a mad person…

selfish care...

2010-10-28T07:46:00.000-07:00

I’m trying to stop thinking since last few days; and trying to think nothing except me and myself. I want to do something, and earn something in my life… why should I bother about the lives which are not the part of my life? Why should I think what’ll happen to others, when I don’t know answer of that question about myself? Why should I think of rest of the world, which isn’t a part of my own world? Why should I dream about the whole world, when the world is not even aware of my presence? Why should I crave for the smile of those, who don’t even bother about my tears? I feel bad sometimes; I too shed tears, living on the edge of depression sometimes I too sink in ocean of being alone… but I can’t express, neither they’re keen to know about my pain; they respond only to my smiling face, then why… why about their feelings I should bother? They come to me, when they need happiness and forget my presence in their happiness. They come to me, to recharge their souls, where should I go, when my soul gets deprived of energy?

Can’t I be a machine? Can’t I be heartless… a ruthless soldier, defeating innocence for success? I want success, victory in every field of life, and the salute those distant shining stars get. I want to be distant like a star; people don’t respect my easy access… they think it’s my duty to die for them, and consider that I can’t have any personal problem. They think thinking about my pleasure is my crime. Can’t I pursue pleasure like the wild, and think about me, myself and my own private mind?

But my private mind is this world. It thinks nothing if it doesn’t think of others. It becomes forlorn for their pleasure… tells them to do anything to me, but after doing it they should be happier. Then my dreams come of happy world, I can’t separate my world from my dream world. Bringing that dream world into life becomes my purpose of life… if I don’t live in my dreams then I won’t survive. I don’t help people because I’m an angel, or because I’m a fool; I do it as their pleasure is my gain. I gain pleasure from making them to smile, oh sorrowful souls come; I welcome you when you need… as your satisfaction is my lifeline. I can never sacrifice my pleasure, as sacrificing my pleasure gives me more pleasure.

… But how joyous it would have been, if at least few of them had considered about my mind… but still I thank them, as they only have made me self efficient.

reality kills

2010-10-11T00:50:00.000-07:00

It’s not easy to write your heart when the heart itself is not ready to dictate its heart… sometimes in life, or many times if you’re the chosen one, your poor heart encounters situations that its tender feelings it has to stop. The mind wishes to stop the heart, to end its beatings… mechanical yet painful. I wish if I had no heart… alas, I’ve it, and it’s merciless like that of any other’s.

I’m an intern, a blood sucker, doing bloody business of taking, marking and sending blood to laboratory studies… I do it, I try to do it mindlessly, without getting involved in the owners of that blood… but can’t. I can’t as usual separate my thoughts from the sufferings of my patients.

Here I see the poverty. Poverty of patients of money, and that of health, and that of knowledge, and poverty of doctors and the staff of sympathy and of the sense of care they should possess as health care workers, and my poverty of maybe guts or of the authority to stand up and to change the situation at once. I can’t even think of any solution to change the situation.

I’m very inexperienced, I know I don’t know many things… but I know from books and from my dreams that this’ not a health service that can be called as ideal, not even close to the good one. Even an illiterate would tell that the fridge in ward is meant to keep drugs and blood and blood samples and not for bottles of alcoholic beverages…
I see pain every day, surgeries, ulcers, wounds, sutures, weakness, forlornness, fear, trust, suspicion… and the rage, the disgust, fear and avoidance… I dwindle to float in this ocean of varied emotions. And I can’t do a thing to stabilize the condition, even if I sacrifice everything. I see traumas, accidents, lost body parts, amputated limbs, head injuries; I see coma and death killing the caring ones. I can’t stop drunken driving, can’t seize the violence, and can’t make those damaged parts once again to work. I see, see and feel and get numbed. I want to scream, but can’t as I’m a doctor, and I should love silence. I’ve learned to cry to weep to moan and to shout in silence. I’ve learned to die silently… and I do it every moment of my strange life.

I fear; I really fear that my life will end in this useless way, in this hell, and I’ll die and wander as a ghost that too here in this hellish government hospital… or I feel that I already have died and have been posted to this modern hell. I crave for making some change, to make at least Earth if not heaven from this hell… but can’t make even a slightest change.

Where are my dreams, I call them mutely, try to search for them blindly… and grope with my numb fingers to figure out the reality making my fingers to bleed, telling my deaf ears that my dreams are more impossible than the complete impossibility itself. I feel regret that still I live, but still I live because I don’t want to feel regret after I die… I still hold some hope, some breaths telling me that something will happen… some day and I’ll see my dreams becoming alive. I want to see my dreams alive… or I want to give up being alive.

Patched person

2010-09-24T03:19:00.000-07:00

Something happens and shatters the heart… and the soul gets wounded. We survive and collect the pieces hoping to patch up the injured mind. They fit in each other, as we suture them… but they never form a person who we were before getting injured… leaving us like a patched piece of cloth.
…but remember, at least sometimes the patched piece is better than the original.

diary as an intern

2010-09-24T03:06:00.000-07:00

I write, I dare to write… indicating the height of my shamelessness, when in fact I should keep taciturnity. Who gave me right to write about my laid up acts, when I don’t stop them… when I’m too weak to stop them? Is there any benefit in vomiting out my pains in the form of this typed moaning, when I fail always to reduce the pains of others? Do I have any right to attempt to reduce my own sorrows… when I, like a blind, deaf, and senseless stone, evidence grieves of innocence? I don’t know… but I think the answer is no, and still I do it… as an attempt to keep my all time loser life from getting lost in a failed death.

Here, in my hospital, everyday, I evidence rape of humanity… and do nothing. In contrary sometimes I assist in the raping to the rapists… no! It’s my virtues, those are getting raped… traumatized, mutilated… exposed to high grade violence. And I like a victim; forlorn… weak, unable… survive, and try to come out of one shock only to get shocked once again at the next moment, only to get victimized for one more time. I survive, to find some hope, to find some meaning in my meaningless mundane guilty life, to search some purity in my dirty world, where my dream world seems to be a dream of a drunkard, dreaming a heaven while lying motionless in a ditch containing sewage water.

I see patients coming with injuries gifted by human violence, I see victims of fights coming with bruised cheeks, broken lips, fallen teeth… I see wives with hemotympanum due to the slaps from their life partner husbands… I see innocent train travelers with ear injuries because of stones hurled by some nasty unknown humans… I see patients who’re in hospital only because of careless family members. I want to stop the violence… want to halt the negligence. But do nothing other than observation. And I see doctors who look as patients as valueless dirty nasty insects. I see major rules of hygiene getting violated; I see false clinical notes being written and drugs being prescribed without proper examination. And to sensitize them I do nothing… when in fact I too am supposed to be a ‘doctor in my dreams… or to offer some healing’.

But sometimes I do succeed in making them to smile, my advice works sometimes, I feel that I can do at least some little changes in those painful lives… I feel I will succeed at least to some extent to make this world a better place to survive… and that’s why, and that’s how I dare and manage to continue this life of mine without any life.

ideal vs reality

2010-09-18T03:22:00.000-07:00

How easy it would be… if I were not a doctor. Life would be worth living, I could help in the living of others… I would call myself as a human, and not a demon. If I were not a doctor, then I would consider it’s a deity who offers treatment to the ill… no matter how expensive the deity is. I would consider then, I know at least something about health… and I would be eligible to help others.

But I’m a doctor… alas! I work as an intern in a government hospital… alas! And I know now that every trust people possess for a doctor is nearly always ‘the myth’. And almost every doctor has to be a robot… to work in a government hospital.

Professionalism is different from this rat race of money making and of avoiding troubles… they work here because they’ve to work, because it’s compulsory… and they work as factory workers who love to strictly follow the worker’s laws of maximum work and maximum work hours… if patients think of doctors as government workers, then the doctors say, they must act as government servants… and not as humans.

This leads to carelessness, malpractices, negative attitude towards the patients… they look at each and every patient as a pile of file work… and not as a chance of getting some blessings. They never work for the smiles; they work for getting their completion signed, to get the money, to get the degree… to get higher authority… I don’t know where in this list the satisfaction stands… whether it stands?

Why does this occur… why we lose touch with humanity when we become adult humans? Is this natural only… or is this something pathological… something like a social psychological epidemic, of which we’re still unaware.

I’m inadequate at this stage to find out the cause of this tragic happening… I can do nothing except guessing, and moaning and suppressing my own screams… and hoping that at one day or another, the pool of my unuttered cries will flow out, and wash away all the negativity form this world…

Till then I’ve to survive.

intern diary

2010-09-15T04:54:00.000-07:00

With my eyes open, I see the pain… with eyes closed, I feel the pain. I’m not on land, but immersed in an ocean of pain… my heart is nothing but a moan of pain.
In my final year, ulcer was a ‘Short case’, or a short note for four marks. It didn’t deserve more than ten pages in my notes book, or more than two pages in my standard surgery text book. It was painful at that time, now it’s a synonym of pain. It’s debilitating, distracting stimulus that elicits moans… my heart was moaning when I was doing the dressings. There was pus, or blood or mixture of both… and the eyes were oozing pains.

And I’m in a government hospital, cheep, where the table on which the patients sit for getting their wounds covered with dressing, is always covered with the discharge from the wounds of the patients sitting on it before that patient, and with the foam formed by reaction of hydrogen peroxide with the naked tissues. The room smells as if it has been painted with pus… thankfully flies are absent.
The injured, ill, infected patients form a queue for that table, with noses open, and their eyes, and their ears to the screams of others. And one after another they reach that dirty table and we do the dressing, without changing the gloves… sometimes the pads get dirty, sometimes the solution… all it depends on the luck of the patient. For each and every patient we’ve to use the same scissors.

I try my best avoid contamination, but what to do… I’m just a human. And I live in a primitive era, which is far away from my dreamed future.

And I hear, this dressing helps some patients to get completely cured… no matter what quantity of time the patient has to spend as debilitated… it’s not fixed and ranges between days, weeks, months… or infinity… where amputation serves as a solution.
I want a solution… something that’ll heal these wounds immediately, without causing this disturbance… I beg the destiny to give me strength and luck enough to find it, or to send some angels who’ll build that magical thing, and construct my imagined world… without any suffering. In exchange it’s free to erase me permanently from my dream world.

.. now at least I can try to make my government hospital hygienic one… though not pain, it’ll reduce the chance of infection.

happening

2010-09-06T03:06:00.000-07:00

Sometimes my life seems to be a fast action movie, sometimes a heartbreaking tragedy, sometimes a horror show… and many times a tasteless, blank, boring unending program without any climax. Valleys are there and banal unyielding, unfertile land laden with boring rocks… but no peaks, I feel sometimes. Though I try hard, I can’t stop feeling bad. I know it’s acute, and as usual won’t last for more than few hours or days… but my heart will continue to ask, what is that I lack… skills, intelligence, luck, good luck, some magic, or some breakthrough incidence? … Or is it mere patience?
I try to console myself… but fail to digest my failures, like dark comedies, telling stories of my all efforts going into fuss. I feel pain in chest, some breathlessness, lack of hopes… the failures knock the doors of my deep seated depression and it comes out to haunt my success deprived brain. I don’t cry, as I’ve become an expert to hide my un- oozed tears behind fake smiles.

Why anyything I think doesn’t happen? Why my life doesn’t take any twist? Why some lottery, some shower of fortune, like that happens in some people’s lives transforming their lives from iron into gold… never happen in that of mine? I know, mistakes were bound to happen as I was still in learning a stage… but what if the mistakes killing my project were not made by me? And what if I know with guarantee that someone has deliberately curded my experiment?

My heart fails to find out any solution… then it weeps, asks why… why I crash always… why everywhere I fail to show my talent… is there something called talent in me? Or am I a crude uncultured jungle beast, far away from skills of being delicate? I can be delicate and I was, I know… and was far away from being careless. My heart was trapped in my research work; it could never allow silly mistakes… then why? Why should I evidence my dreams getting shattered because of someone else’s carelessness?
But I have to evidence it, to feel it, and as usual to survive it. A born loser, of winning something, I feel, I’ve no right… but I wasn’t a loser as a kid, I was… leave it… I’m not an aged worrier who survives on memories of past victories. But… but why can’t my life story be like those whose debut becomes a big success? Leave it… we should work for satisfaction not for success. But what’s the use of hard work, if it results in such heartbreak? Won’t anyone’s heart break if s/he has to tolerate abortion of their dreams in ninth month that too because of someone else’s mistake…
If I’ve to lose every time, then what’s the use of taking part in battles? Today I lost a big battle against the destiny who only had offered me a chance to show my bravery. It turned out that most important RNA samples in my dream project were denatured, calling for ‘the end’ of my project, thanks to a careless fellow who added wrong concentration of chemicals in it... I couldn’t do it as, as a project student I was deprived of the rights to handle them…. He’ll live peacefully, I know… what about me, as I’ve to go back to my working place with those heart breaking photographs of broken RNAs… or with some unplanned project summary concentrating on the less important samples which escaped his ruthlessness?

I close my eyes, and daydreams arrive of completing my beloved project… I wish I could once again start my project, with authority enough to not to allow anyone else to poke her/ his running nose and to spoil my project as it has spoiled now… spoiling my belief that if you work from the bottom of your heart, destiny gets pleased from the bottom of her heart… but my destiny seems to have no heart. Heartless, it loves to bring my each and every effort to a terrible and miserable end.

I want some magic that’ll convert my dreams into happenings… or some energy to keep me alive, and strong enough to digest these unexpected disasters, and carry the aborted dreams to the eternity up to a point of time when they will breathe alive, independent of mine. Can dead dreams breathe once again… but who says my dreams are dead? They just can’t die, even though I can die in between while working for them.
And I die many times like I died now.

With this very big failure welcoming me in the field of research with garland of pricking poisonous thorns, I still feel obsessed with the idea of being a scientist. In fact I wish I would a PhD student here, at this time… only to work tenfold for at least ten times on that lovely project of mine! The research slapped me at the entrance only of that field, and still I felt blessed, I remembered with that painful hit that even Sachin Tendulkar’s international batting career had begun with a duck… it might be my mere good luck that I failed now, like once I had failed in my final year’s final exam, and had encountered an angel leading me to the entrance of my dream field.

… But still I can’t stop my heart from craving for examining whether what I had thought was correct. Oh destiny, I don’t know you’re good or bad, ruthless or just taking exams, you’re surprising, like a puzzle…. may you be coldblooded to whatever extent, let me inform you, my work has not yet stopped… just it has been postponed, and I’ll be a part of it, no matter as a researcher or as a subject, as a human or as a rodent, while living intact… or as a dead!

a battle wid words

2010-08-29T02:36:00.000-07:00

Words parade themselves as language of humans,
Constructions of sounds sounding mind of everyone
Ask us to salute the power they possess
They say without them we’re just beasts.
I got angry on this beasty comment
Got fussed to see the smugness of those ink droplets

I warned the words you’re not so clever,
Not honest… not helpful always…
Don’t think yourselves as kings and queens of hearts
You’re our servants, helping to translate our thoughts

The heart can beat without any word
…And eyes mutely shed tears.
Same thing happens with enchanting smiles
The mouth shuts up and breaths tell stories…

Words smiled to this rage of mine
Told me that they’re gifts to humankind
They spoke out, “we’re little angels
Don’t fight us, for we’re to help,
Wanting your heart to get expressed as a page
We crave to wipe out your pains, and to shower fountains of happiness

Sometimes we’re wet, sometimes dry
Or like a cooling breeze, spreading fragrance in the sky
You people compress us under burden of your feelings
We always want to wipe your tears
You only wash us away, with flood of your emotions

We get lost in torrents of your thoughts
The sorrow makes us moan, and extreme joy to fly
We want you to help to get mysteries of heart solved
But oh dear, what can we do, if in the conflict we too are involved?
You don’t hesitate to use us as weapons
Leaving bodies intact and bleeding souls…
We feel it’s better to hide than stabbing hearts
You do the slaughter, how can we be the murderers?”

Then I got guilty for my comments,
Like those angelic sounds I too became wordless

d game of virtues

2010-08-29T02:27:00.000-07:00

I killed my non- violence; cut throat of my innocence, of the tiny humane kid in me who loved animals, whose mind wasn’t aware of the darkness of death, and was taking every essential step to survive… I wanted to study brain, to do a project to understand something about our understanding. I did it, trained my rat team; they loved me like what my cat does, unaware of the fact that I happened to be the to be slayer, to end their tiny trained life. Do I deserve to be called as a human?
Humans are animals, I know. And animals kill others when they need it; I don’t know whether that is this painful to them. They kill for their protection; they kill for food, to show dominance… or to win over a potential mate, to propagate their own genes… some are even cannibal, they just do it without understanding. I knew what I was doing, without their knowing, suppressing my strong desire to allow them to continue their innocent life, feeling as if I was doing a crime.

I had to know, to study… and to do it I knew there was no other option. People look at animals as sources of calorie, fats, proteins, fat soluble vitamins… is it odd if I had to look at them as sources of information, as a hidden treasure of knowledge… or a key to understand a host of brain functions. But what if they are lives, animals… mammals with neocortex like us? …But this’ the thing that makes them ideal subjects for this work. And I wanted to do it in exchange of everything of mine… on that dissection table; I sacrificed my virtues only for keeping my virtues alive.
That might be a sin, I agree… but I’m not afraid of hell’s sufferings. But it really hurts to kill someone who trusts you, no matter the trusting party happens to be a rodent.

One day or other, I hope we’ll make some machine that will study the behavior and brain activities, without causing any harm to the owner of the brain. Till then I’ve to act as a rat assassin.

My study gave me a chance to peep into the heart of rats… and it’s not different from that of cats… and that of humans. It craves to get relaxed in some safe secure arms.

saluting solitude

2010-08-29T02:19:00.000-07:00

A lone bird, I tweet alone, shout alone… and when happy I whistle also while alone. Confined in my closed isolated room, I enjoy some lonely smiles, or weep my lonesome tears, whatever I may do, I feel, who’s there to care. While surrounded by a crowd also, alas, I continue to feel alone. I hide myself from the caring ones, least my mask shall fall like a waterfall bathing them in my tears. There’s molten lava kept under pressure in the heart of this cool thick stone. I don’t want my keens to get burnt in that. There is more sorrow in my heart than the life it has… and I feel it’s not good to share something as painful as my moaning mind.

Loneliness since centuries has been the mother of fine thoughts and great arts... where the pains stimulate creative mind. I have learned to enjoy the troubles it gives… but truly speaking at least sometimes this isolation hurts a lot.

d art of dissection

2010-08-20T04:05:00.000-07:00

I see art in every work I do, as delicacy is the soul of art… dissecting a semisolid structure like fresh brain of an immature rat, that too to expose and separate hidden structures like the hippocampus, amygdala, and striatum requires the same inventive attitude as that of painting the moods of mind and arranging words those penetrate the mind…

set of questions

2010-08-19T00:20:00.000-07:00

Have you ever experienced those set backs
Which teach you something, and never come back?

Have some incidence made you to cry
The effect of which transformed your life?

Have you ever felt the pleasing pains,
And tolerated losses without complaints?

Have you ever got the joy of losing,
Your everything, really for nothing?

Have you ever craved for something,
What people say is not even a trivial thing?

Have you ever become too forlorn,
To give up the things; and acting like a mad?

Have you ever bathed in showers of joy,
Which makes you to forget the boundaries of life?

Have you ever fallen in love with your dream,
Got life’s everything, yet lost your life?

It’s ecstatic to die for your dream,
Even though the dream itself is not rewarding…

my life

2010-08-07T06:55:00.000-07:00

The doors of my mind are always closed; even any rat- tat- tat s not allowed crossing it. and my face is always covered with a thick mask of my usual public face with a cool deceiving smile, stimulating other’s minds. Outward stimuli can’t affect my inside, no matter how harsh or pleasing they are. And inside there is something violent going on, something like the wildfire, or hurricane, or a volcano… no peace at all… for me, these are not catastrophes, these are parts of my life hidden in depths of mine. When they’ll come out, I don’t know… I don’t know whether they’ll ever come out.

A person with a volcano sleeping inside, I never feel strong enough, energetic enough, having enough speed to catch the peace of achieving my aim. I crave for the strength in my dreams, but never give up; I just can’t, enslaved by the fire in my heart.

Will I get some solace, some rain, some cold, some warmth… evoking a smile coming from the depths of my mind? Whether at least at some point of my life, will I feel satisfied? Whether at least for a moment will I be able to enjoy this gift of human life?

I will, I think, when I’ll see my dreams alive, maybe fifty, hundred, thousand years from now, when there will be showers of joy, when everyone will smile, when everyone will be satisfied, when every heart will be pure, when every disease will get cured, when everyone will get what they wish to have, when everyone will wish good for others, when heaven will reside on my Earth…

Till then I’ll keep on burning my life. I’ve been a burning life since ages, and you’ll find me in burns of every heart, even after my death, attempting feebly to give them some solace hoping that it’ll help me to smile.

nightmare n dream

2010-08-03T03:08:00.001-07:00

It was the same nightmare once again; I don’t know to me what it wants to tell. I got up, disregarding the darkness occupying my room. It was 2.30 am, only three hours had passed since I had surrendered to sleep, and the goddess of sleep had showed me the same movie of horror, humans were acting as ghosts there, named terrorists, and fear and terror were ruling my dream world. I was the same, restless, hyper wanting to eliminate the terror. I saw their faces, with horrid expressions, felt their acts, and the screams tears moans of persons like me and you. There were bomb blasts, and bullets, and deaths. Violence was damaging my world, revenge was raping humanity. I was not scared, but was far beyond that, numbed, I was trying my best to save as many people as I could… then I reached my hospital, the same where I learn, and saw terrorists were sitting there also with aprons and stethoscopes, and guns in their hands. I peeped into the prescription given to a patient, it was poisonous chlorine gas, I yelled on the terror doctor, and once again looked to the prescription, it was changed now, it was a cancer chemotherapeutic agent, and concentrated dose of radiation… did the patient need it? Someone called me told me that I had to retake my gynecology exam… I searched, but there was no exam hall, it was the same desert where terrorists were getting trained, I knew that place, I had visited it many times, in my nightmares. Whatever was happening, it was far beyond my comprehension. I had to save those teenage boys and girls from getting converted into live demons, should I kill their master, I thought, and was about to do so, when I opened my eyes, to sense that it wasn’t true… or was it?

I don’t want this to happen, though in reality it is happening. I don’t want the cruelty, the revenge take toll of this Earth’s happiness, our happiness. Instead of those horrid expressions and wicked laughter on those faces, I want to see innocent smiles. I want love to rule this world, and not the hatred. Instead of those money making machines in hospitals, I want to see real doctors. I want to make the treatments tolerable and effective like the magic stick in my good dreams. I want to make our human life happier. And that’s why I don’t want to sleep… least that nightmare shall wake me up!

diary

2010-07-18T07:15:00.001-07:00

I’m sick somewhere in my soul, and the treatment I don’t know. I’m a dynamite, about to blow, but when I’ll explode even I don’t know. My every laughter even slightest smile, or even the grimace and teardrops try to express my mind, but poor they always fail in doing that. Hurricanes and tsunamis occur in my head, when I try to give it some rest. I wish to keep working all the time, as work is the only thing that rests my mind. I see faces when I face the clouds, and feel clouds covering every real face. I wish to wipe them out and let every face shine with clarity and purity of their mind. I’m a soul thirsty of some peace; a pinch of happiness will pacify my sufferings, I feel. Even my happiness bothers me, how can I dare to be happy when I’ve to do something…

Am I a worrier, loving purposeless battlefields, or a soldier protecting vague boundaries? Why I always feel incomplete, why every moment tells, ‘you’ve to do something’? What’s the thing that bites me always, why like others I can’t enjoy my presence? Why I always feel guilty of my unavailability to my loved ones, yet why can’t I devote myself to them? Am I a little thing hoping to alter the world or simply a mad person being grandiose or paranoid? I’ve tried to find answers to these questions, and still they mock me, standing before me like posers.

I think I should consult a psychiatrist for my uneasiness, but fear that I’ll think there, that most psychiatry treatments are still vague. Will those sedative drugs really calm me, or will that forced sleep convert my dreams into nightmares? Mind is the thing yet to be discovered, our knowledge of our thinking organ is yet obscure. Many minds get polluted, because of lack of care. Should we blame those unlucky creatures, for their cruel crimes? I truly loathe those brutal beasts, yet I see humans behind their dead faces. Can we heal those love deprived souls, alas; love isn’t a tablet that we can sell in stores, nor isn’t it a surgery… it’s a stimulus that alters mind’s synaptic structure, and where to find that angelic structure delivering this to them in sufficient strength is a poser. I search a magic stick to find the answer, and when I’ll find it, I think I’ll be able to pay off at least some part of the huge burden of the debt of unending love, I’ve received from my loved ones. And then my indisposition will reduce, at least to some extent.

For now, I’ve some little questions, and their answers: will I be a good scientist? I don’t know. Will I heal others? I really don’t know. Will I be a good person? I can try to be. Currently, am I a good person? And the answer is ‘certainly no’.

Addictions of Soul

2010-07-15T23:13:00.001-07:00

Addictions are bad, no matter how good they are… they enslave your brain, affect your thinking, functions, dreams, relations, your whole life, and the life of persons related to you, that too negatively. You become forlorn; dependent… can’t even stand without aids of your killer. It enmeshes you, and you become happy even though you’re tied. You forget the relations, emotions, and your verve. The culprit becomes your ambition, your purpose of survival, and may be the purpose of your death. And you become happy to hug even death for you master. The closer you go, yet closer you want to go. You keep on increasing the dose, more… more… more… and finally it gets incorporated in every nanometer of your soul. Yet you never develop tolerance… you keep on finding pleasure in even a trace of it, and craving for just an illusion of it.

Addictions of nicotine, caffeine, alcohol or even heroine, morphine playing with chemicals of brain fall short to these addictions of soul. Drugs may cause death when not taken in required dose or if taken in ‘required’ dose… but they do develop tolerance. Rehabs can help you to become addiction free for these drugs, meditations and behavior therapies, drugs developing aversion work there, but alas, they too are helpless when applied to treat the addicted soul. Here the addiction rules your brain and your soul, and no drugs can de addict you unless you’re dead.

These are the passions of life taking you to death, or leave you nowhere, and of no one. These are the passions for arts- living in a dream word, or the passions for science- building a dream world, or the passions of helping others- making them to smile while sacrificing your happy moments, to protect others endangering your own life, to care others by becoming careless for yourself, to heal others while leaving your own wounds untreated, or to fall in love with someone who always offers neglect… and they give you an unending happiness, making you addicted. They don’t give anything other than the joy of life, or a sense of divine satisfaction… but to survive what other things are needed?

They won’t transform you much, just will make you haunted, and people will call you a ‘mad’ or ‘a ruthless mad’, and you do will act ruthless, and you do will become a mad…

my sin

2010-07-14T07:08:00.000-07:00

Playing in my arms, my cat was mewing blissfully, and the crow resting on a branch of tree outside my window, was calling me for its regular breakfast- a biscuit. My grandma in her ninety’s was craving to ‘see’ me, as she hadn’t done that since one year. My parents were calling me home for at least the weekend, and my brother had been postponing the feast of Pav- Bhaaji constantly since last two weeks, waiting for my arrival…I was harsh, ruthless, immersed in my joy- my work… in my room. And then I left the room also, when needed; deserting my cat for whom also it had become a home…

The cat might be missing that comfort, who’ll care it if it falls ill? The crow would have got de-conditioned by now for the reflex it had got, after shouting before that closed window for many times, fruitlessly. My grandma has many granddaughters, but to whom she would express her love she has for me? And my family might be feeling unlucky as they have to love, and have to crave for, and have to care a big hard yet delicate stone…

“You shan’t form bonds of love with animals, if you can’t carry them for lifetime…” my mom says to me. She says to me that I’m responsible for the pain of the cat, what it gets because of my absence. I’m responsible for the pains I give to my loved ones… being like a heartless machine, I shouldn’t have loved others, and shouldn’t have made others to love me. Why did I form bonds, if I had to be ‘free’? But I swear, I never love anyone expecting their love in exchange, and I never love anyone after deciding that I shall love this person… it happens on its own, how, when, even I don’t know or remember.

I love everyone, everyone is mine… but I belong to no one. They do many things for me, but for them, I do nearly nothing, except that of making their souls to worry for me. I’m selfish, I feel many times. I put my work before my duties. Do I have more feelings for my work than for my loved ones? I have tried to find out, but found no instrument that could measure my feelings of love.

Even though I’m not a person running behind a fine career; and I never wish to have heaps of money, and never have I craved for physical comforts, I do crave for my dreams… I want to make this world happier. I want to make human life easier, planet Earth safer. I want everyone to enjoy the comfort, everyone to get showered with the feeling of love, to make every person to love every other person…

But I myself do fail to express my love to my loved ones. I love them, I love them a lot, but still I hurt them. I hurt myself, because I never express or I always fail to express my feelings for them. I fail to show that like others, I too am a human. This isn’t a characteristic of a good person, I know. I know I’m not enough to please my loved ones; I’m weak, selfish… a bad person, devil or maybe be sinful. But I never expect what they say ‘haven’ after death, instead I want the hell. And I guess, there also I’ll crave to make heaven from that hell.

childhood of violence

2010-07-02T06:52:00.000-07:00

I’ve experienced death winning over life, horror movies happening in life, suicide of morals and murders of humanity. I’ve seen selfishness taking control of judgments, and corruptions spoiling societies… these things aren’t new to me. but still… still there are some more horrible things I can’t forget those I’ve seen… and my visit to remand home here was one of these heart breaking incidents.

At the entry, directly before the gate there was a prison mimicking a crowded cage. And there were the kids, small boys of innocent ages…. But the innocence had been wiped out of their faces by strokes of their fates; and their bodies were reflecting the wounds and scars and roughness gifted to them by the harshness of life they had experienced. They weren’t crying, there wasn’t a trace of sadness, but there were vague laughter indicating either their emptiness or cruelty like that of the Joker in movie Batman. Like adult prisoners these juniors were also having specific dull uniforms… but they were also torn flashing the fresh bleeding wounds underneath them, maybe these were products of their recent fights. And there were flies, hovering around their wounds, faces and the bodies, but the bodies of the kids were careless about them. Inside the cage there was their well-categorized society with at least two gangs, and bosses, and servants and slaves…

The histories of the little criminals were also like them, violent and hopeless… a 14 yr. had killed a man and another 10 yr. old boy was there for raping an infant. Drug addiction, thefts, and fights were the common crimes over there and some were there only because they were products of criminals and some were runaways from their so called homes. The family histories of many of them were not known, as they were reluctant to talk, they only language they knew had nothing but commands for their fellow prisoners…

Outside the cage, where criminals were not allowed, the environment wasn’t much different. There were criminals whose only crime was that they were born, and were still alive… they were orphans or semi orphans or children of parents who couldn’t raise them. They weren’t living in a cage… it was something more fearsome. It was a big hall, dark, and underground, like a vault with old windows unable to be opened. Their torn bedsits forming their beds were covering the nakedness of the floor with partially broken, uneven tiles. And big rusted iron trunks with or without locks were forming their cupboards. Their properties? Half of red Lifebuoy soaps preserved and used carefully, or unused- as they used to get such one piece of soap once in four months, and a dirty bottle filled at various levels in different trunks with equally dirty oil, it was the coconut oil they were supposed to use for their scalps, broken comb one for each trunk, torn dirty towels, and clothes matching the towels, the trunks of girls had one more thing in addition to these, it was slice of Shikakai soap given to them to ‘clean’ their long hair, once in fifteen days. And the ‘rich’ ones had either a pen or a pencil, or an extra slate.

I couldn’t get a chance to see their food, but it same for the caged and non- caged ghosts of kids. They were just living, some were attending schools nearby, and some used to beg at the school time, for an extra chocolate.

There were no parents, no relatives, the hall had only kids of different ages, and the guards there were the only adults present. Official care was there, daily morning prayers, play and exercise hours for the little ones, and occasional visits by politicians giving them ‘sweets’ or stale ‘fruits’. But there wasn’t what we call ‘love’… I searched for it… but couldn’t see it. The dreadful thing I saw while searching it was that some out of prison boys were the slaves of the caged bosses, bringing Gutkha and tobacco packets for their rulers.

I don’t know whether, and I can’t find out, whether their brains can digest something tender or complicated like ‘love’. Their brains seemed to be deprived from this stimulus since… or maybe since before their birth.

I was there, crying for my own fate… thick skinned, hard minded medico of first year, a person who was used to dissect dead bodies of humans and playing with real human bones… but still dead bodies of those living childhood less children, made my tear glands to secret some drops of tear. I was there only for two hours. I wanted to learn about them more, to study the reasons of violence, but never got permission or a positive response. The only thing I could do and I still do it continuously, is to slow down my bike while passing from the road before the gate and to look at the cage and the cage birds and their slaves, as it lands in my road to hostel… they also have a television in that cage, which almost always shows violent fights of WWF…
Four and half years have passed since my visit to that place… but nothing seems to be changed, the cage, the kids and their condition, the violent television, and my helpless nature, and also my deep painful yet useless feeling to change this.

the ornament of the mind

2010-06-30T07:21:00.000-07:00

They were earrings; golden, beautiful, shaped in the form of round baskets, intended to increase the beauty of two ears, no matter how the ears actually were. My mother had bought them for me, few years ago, when I was of age not to be able to differentiate between gold and brass or any other metal. And my ears were like me, meant to hear the soul of others; they could never bear such golden pressure. Waiting in the cupboard, tired, bored, the rings were craving to hang down from someone’s ears, still not daring to approach those of mine.

And now I told to sell them, refusing their generous help to improve the look of my hearing organs. I was called ruthless, cruel, a person lacking sense of beauty, stonehearted stone. They were not the rings, they were feelings, they said. And I felt it ruthless to keep money engaged in those shiny objects. The design, the shape, the attractive nature, and the expensiveness of the rings always fall short to explain the depth of feelings in my drawings and in my words building poems from my heartbeats; nor can they reach the height of knowledge, I wish to achieve.

Isn’t it inhumane to parade your insensitivity in form of that unused stored beautiful property, when there are people craving for their basic needs, when there are hospitals running out of facilities and when there are many researches pending because of lack of funding? I always feel that the quantity of numbness of anyone’s heart is directly proportional to the quantity of ornaments laden on her body.

For me, tons of gold and kilograms of diamonds are just impotent to give the pleasure that I get from extracting a true smile from a crying face. I might be an ugly stone hearted person for those rings, and for those who judge beauty in terms of shining… but my ugly heart always crave to bring beauty in the ugly corners of the society.

It’s not like that I’m blind to beauty and deaf to emotions, in fact I find beauty in bare old sunken ears, and sense unexpressed hidden treasure of emotions. No ornaments are essential to remind me of the love of my loved ones.

It’s not like that I loathe ornaments, I also wear them many times, but my ornaments are not golden. They’re invisible, something like an aura, an incomprehensible sensation. I like to wear courage, pleasure, and at least mask of optimism… my dedication, craving for knowledge decorate me, offer some beauty to me, no matter to what extent I am ugly. My desire to change the world, to make it happy… to build a fountain of smiles is more valuable to me than those earrings with golden feelings.

I want to build heaven on planet Earth… do you know, in heaven, gold is worth equal to that of the rocks and stones?

meeting the past

2010-06-22T04:08:00.000-07:00

I was in 25th year of my life, of the age having maximum strength in human life… but wandering in forests of hopelessness. I was tied, frustrated, feeling alone and devastated, living a life of a failed student, a new member of an odd batch, a dull fellow… my vision was blurred to the extent of blindness, I couldn’t read, couldn’t comprehend. The words I had depicted on the walls and the roof of my room which were supposed to stimulate me, were now mocking me, challenging me to bear their sight… but I couldn’t… I didn’t want to look at them, I didn’t want to continue… didn’t want to survive. My dreams were appearing to be frauds of my brain… or they might be mere hallucinations of an oxygen deprived dying brain. I was deprived of success, since ages… I was deprived of hopes of success. And I was tired to this regular struggle to keep myself alive… I didn’t want it. I wanted to suicide, to show my dying brain the heaven of death, the aura, the greenery, what eyes see when near death. I was weak, with my hopes suffering from total flaccidity… and my dreams were rigid, hard but not moving, alas, they were also paralyzed.

My consciousness got reduced to take me somewhere near the stupor… and I felt like falling in abyss of my past. And there I encountered her, mere a teenager, unaware of her future… lacking the power of 25, lacking the information… but full of enthusiasm, willpower, a wish to break all boundaries, to create new records… a carelessness, readiness to accept the consequences, willingness either to reach the top or fall in valley, the confidence, a fire to fire back any attack… and there was me, old, experienced, ‘adult’, thick, numb, staring her and envying her like a granny. I wanted to tell her not to be this reckless, to stop the speeding… to look for the ditches, to seize the dimpled smile and to offer some wrinkles of wisdom, of the worry for the future and her horrid presence.

But she refused, as expected; she said she had to build her future with the stones in her presence. Her future was me, I knew… I tried to convey her, “hey immature girl, look at me, for I’m the consequence of your behavior. Look at my grades, and the failures… and the dark circles around my eyes due to unstopped tears. I’m not alive, neither I’m dead. I have the strength but can’t use it… I have the dreams, but can’t make them alive…”

And she neared me to touch my cheek, “oh I can’t believe that I’m going to be this big fat grandma at 25. I know experiences are bound to offer maturity, but premature aging is what you now call as a doctor- ‘pathological’. Look at me, I’m nothing except a struggler, still I made you to feel jealous of mine. I won’t change my behavior, for you’re the consequence, I can see through the time, unlike you my vision isn’t opaque… I can see the consequence of yours. You’re so close to my goal; I’ll never call you a failure. Letdowns are bound to happen; I don’t want you to lose the vigor… I’ll offer a push, if you try to stop in between. You’ve the strength of knowledge, and I have the speed, imagine what’ll happen if both are combined. If you lack confidence, let you be, just borrow the sense of recklessness from me… Look for me, I’m always alive in your memory, and if your old memory fails… search me in the pages of your ‘teenage diary’.”

Hidden page in a medico’s diary

2010-06-13T05:11:00.000-07:00

Look at me, I’m a doctor to be, a medico studying MBBS in Govt. institute… look at me, I wear the apron, no matter how the environment is hot, and hang the stetho around my neck, as a garland for victory in the entrance exam… no matter it’s functioning or not. This looks gracious, I know… I know it has no other use. My ears are not yet trained to differentiate the heart sounds; I hear them even when the stetho is switched off. Tell the kids not to be scared of me; I won’t give injection, as I can’t hold the syringe. I confuse in subcut and intra-dermal, all I do is intramuscular. Never have I tried my hand in intravenous. Out of vein IV is a main problem here.

Look at me and my genius, I know nothing, still people call me a scholar. Look at me and my ambitious nature, except proper studies I do anything to be a topper. I repeat the parrot’s fission to score in the exams, if that fails I don’t hesitate to use cheats and frauds. I lure the post graduates, hang out with anyone, use my ‘X or Y’ factor, and attend and arrange ‘wet’ parties… only to know the questions before the exams, and to be favored in the oral exams. ‘Morals’ is a word not present in my dictionary… all I value is marks.

Look at me and my capacity to understand, I write FQs on lung cancer… but like my pathology professor, I too am a heavy smoker. Atherosclerosis, liver cirrhosis are present in the ‘markings’, but alcohol and fatty foods are the things I crave for. I don’t follow any of the physician’s principals, except the one saying, “never accept your fault.”

Look at me and my idealism, unlike the weak ‘normal’ creatures, I never flow away in emotions. As an ideal doctor, I’m apathetic to the pains of the patient, for me ‘It’s’ just a written case for exam. I have to suppress my laughter in ICU, and attend the labor ward with popcorns in my hand.

Look at me, I’m a to be doctor… and Beware of me, I’m tomorrow’s practitioner.

the marine

2010-06-12T01:29:00.000-07:00

the mind and the madness

2010-06-10T01:18:00.000-07:00

just a... dream world

2010-06-08T00:48:00.000-07:00

It was a hospital… yes a hospital, and that too of here, with everything right from the nurses, medicos, proper doctors, and of course patients and relatives. Nurses had their regular uniform, with no change, and doctors were wearing the same unwashed dirty Aprons…

I thought I was having one more nightmare… something like my live life, something I’m used to observe… I thought the nurse would now shout at that old patient… the doctor would tell the relatives of that old stroke patient to carry him to home for it was useless to keep him in the hospital as the stroke was irreversible. The blind girl would receive few mocking laughs… and that accident patient in the causality room would lose battle with life… the poor grandma would pray the doctors to save her money and the doctors would deny saying that MRI facility isn’t available as it was a government hospital… the angio fibroma boy would lose his life because of excessive bleeding during the surgery, and that diabetes uncle would get infected after the amputation operation…

I was preparing my heart… but it gave a painful sprain like contraction instead of the usual moan, when I saw the nurse’s smile… Nurses can smile! The stroke patient had got the treatment and left the hospital walking, talking and laughing; the blind girl had her own functioning beautiful eyes… poor grandma was still there but was smiling while holding the reports of the MRI in her hands, the MRI machine here was functioning, and there was another instrument… more advanced! The accident patient had got all his organs repaired with cultured organs from his own tissues… and the angiofibroma had got treatment with nano robots… without surgery. The diabetes uncle was happy with his brand new leg, and control of diabetes… … I needed to admit myself in the ‘Cardiac Care Unit’ to avoid an heart attack due to powerful fountains of joy…Oh my goodness… there was something like Cardiac Care Unit here, in this government hospital, with nano instruments to take care of narrowed blood vessels, tissue cultures synthesizing heart valves, part of heart walls and even complete hearts, with the patient’s own genetic composition… I tried to see the date; might be it was a day in future… but couldn’t see the year! I thought to go to the Obs- Gyn department and to see the conditions of females there…

… but the voice of ambulance started becoming shriller and shriller… as if a mosquito was singing… no there were many, I killed one of them with a slap on my cheek… and got my dream aborted. I had to wake up, to study… I was to have my Obs- Gyn exam. I had to pass, so that I could make my dream true…

But I really wanted to live in that dream… permanently! The mosquitoes shouldn’t have waked me up; hey did I notice there wasn’t a trace of these mosquitoes in my dream world?

A lost worrier

2010-06-07T01:45:00.001-07:00

Once I saw a worrier, lost but surviving for hopes
The pain was visible as were the wounds,
I dared to ask her the cause of her mourns…
It was the loss, she told me in her words,
“Followers become criticizers,
And loved ones emit hatred…
Pride and honor flow away with the blood
It’s all related to win or loss in life’s battlefield.

It’s hard… hard to be confident
As confidence, like fair weather friends, requires a piece of achievement.
The blood, the wounds, the pain is valueless…
…If it’s not accompanied by success.
The loser is always alone,
As the crowd follows the victor…
The sacrifices, the wills, the daring is rubbish,
…If it hasn’t lead to a triumph.

Tears may be there…if the emotions are intact
Or there maybe eyelids …trying to cover the dryness of the mind
There may be a grimace, advocating the pains…
…Or a fake decoration with the loser’s smile.
Smile, tears or may it be a grimace…
For it there is no one to look at.
No one to hold hands, no one to convoy
No one to assure, no one who relies

The loser is friendless… with all humiliations
Garlands of mockery are ready to welcome
The loser is a subject of making fun
…Or a lesson teaching not to challenge the situation.
Collection of misery, host of grieves, a live disappointment
A loser is a disgusting thing to look at…
A cursed person, a live omen, feeling of sadness,
…a loser is something that evokes aversions.

But may it be a winner or a loser
…A worrier is always a worrier
Losing in one battlefield doesn’t end the war
Anything can happen in arena of life
One battle ends to welcome another
Losses occur only to test the capacity of the soldier
History salutes them who become winners after a loss
Also there are losses losing battle with the loser…”

it was a... dream

2010-06-05T07:06:00.000-07:00

I was driving on a lonely highway as it was four o’clock in the morning; my big neuro lab was waiting; neurons in culture dishes were whispering, and the newborn brain imaging machine was trying to control its heartbeats for today it was going to be tested for the first time… my heart was also racing with record breaking speed; I remembered last time when it had broken all past records, when I had tested my equipment to change destined synaptic connections in live animals without any genetic alterations… and now it was racing again with some more speed; I thought I should slow down, least I should meet with some accident. Speeding on such rough road wasn’t a safe thing; but since when my road had become this bumpy? The roughness increased with arrival of huge mountain like stones and there were thorns welcoming me with their painful pricks… this wasn’t the road I wanted to go… this wasn’t the destiny I had planned to meet… I had lost my path, there was no one except the darkness and stones and thorn pricks…

I lost my balance, and started falling in a dark disgusting valley, opening directly into the hell… I shouted and got my sleep broken, only to find myself sitting before my lifeless computer, beating my hailstone like head, hoping for birth of some little spark… if not fire. I was a fire… in the past; I remember. Is it extinguished… or mere hidden, fearing to get smothered due to lack of any stimulating factor? I miss myself, for my life has become a wet piece of wood emitting tears of smoke in an attempt to get the fire… I need sun; I need some warmth, some air; I’m tired to get entrapped in these clouds. These dirty, dark, shapeless clouds like stigmas are staining my life… masking my soul, eclipsing my hopes… and choking my dreams. I crave for fresh air… I need a breather, an escape… just one… one chance to prove myself.

But I’m a prisoner in an honored jail; and the walls of this jail are thick, and it has a big ruthless lock with no key… and is unbreakable; I’ve broken myself in attempting to break free from this, several times, and have nurtured many wounds; sour, infected, bleeding… they are far away from getting healed. And there are scars, contractures, kids of some milder wounds which have got wrongly healed, ready to restrict my every movement… to weaken my every effort. As if I’m surviving with a big weakness, as if I’m an old debilitated paralysis patient seeking joy in memories of the past… not daring to think about the hopeless dark future… something like the dark disgusting valley in that dream, leading me directly to the hell…

And I want to convert that hell and others into heavens… I don’t care even if my life becomes a live hell while working on my heavenly dreams. And that’s why I need an escape. I want to use my wings, want to spread them to their full and fly in the sky of my dreams… I need freedom. I just need a chance to break free from this rusted golden cage… or unnatural strength to shatter it, or my lost fire to melt it, heat it to its evaporation point. I can’t…. I really can’t sustain to be confined…

The game of life...

2010-05-13T04:07:00.000-07:00

Hurricanes come sometimes, disturbing our lives; sometimes life seems like a particle of dust aimlessly following a storm… or a piece of detached dried orphan leaf, destined to get destroyed. Sometimes efforts give pains only and no rewards, legs get tired after following an aim, and the aim seems to be a mere mirage. Floods come sometimes and wash away all of our hopes… sometimes killing draughts occur, deserting our minds. Disasters come to test our patience sometimes; sometimes life seems like an endless voyage through the ocean of disasters. Expectations get killed sometimes; sometimes frauds occur without any expectations. Sometimes life itself seems as a fraud… or a failure; sometimes we doubt whether we are alive and why…

But… everything above has a positive side. Hurricanes teach us to fly like a weightless particle or to stand the pressure, detachment teaches freedom to the leafy life. Mirages show us the things, that are not existent and waiting for us to come into existence… floods, draughts, deserts give us the reason to survive, to save others from those sufferings. Disasters are the milestones on the way of success, more we cross them; more we get close to our aims… or are garlands of victory, more valuable than expensive diamond sets. Killers of expectations teach us true love, which is defined as ‘that what is done without any expectation’… and warns us what they’ll feel if we kill the expectations of our loved ones. Life is like a thriller movie, more the danger, more is the adrenalin rush… more the suspense, more we miss our heartbeats.

Now tell me… is life a loss, a lost game? Or is it a plain luck that we’re still ‘not out’ in our life’s game? We’re alive, means we still have a chance to win... and sometimes losing also is a fun.

Story of my heart and the dreams it had entrapped

2010-05-11T04:55:00.000-07:00

Never had I expected one more failure
To my ill heart it was an aggravating factor
It stopped beating, entrapping my dreams
I shouted for them, but heart was obstinate…
I wanted to stab it, to cut it open
But the hard hit injured my soul…
With a hardened heart and wounded soul
I started wandering to pacify my pain

Flowers asked me to have some scent…
I refused; to me thorns were more pleasant.
Clouds came to lure me for rains of hopes…
I knew no hopes, my eyes were raining.
My verve was flowing with the flood of emotions
My emotions were nothing but a sense of faced negations

Then wind came to blow my mind…
Punctured with my feelings; it was resistant
Gentle sunrays wanted to caress me…
I was too inflamed; warmth raised a wildfire
My thoughts were burning my frozen life
My emotions were ice cool, apathetic was my mind

Birds were chirping, calling me to have some fun…
I thought like my fate, of me they were making fun
Moon arrived then, with his dark girlfriend…
I envied it, it had many twinkling friends.
I was alone, trapped in myself
My shouts were inaudible, even to ears of mine

Tired was the nature, and so were the nocturnal beasts
I was stubborn, stuck to my fate’s darkness.
Not afraid of the reptiles and wandering hunters,
I wanted to taste the poison, or sharpness of paws and canines
Shouting owls had now replaced the chirpers
And like my thoughts, trees were making dance of ghosts
I was the ghost, desiring to kill me…
No other servant of death was ready to overtake me.

My dreams were buried, somewhere in forest of my mind
And they were scared, not of the forest but of my dreamless mind
I was scared of unknown things, of the future or past memories
Scared to an extent, I wasn’t afraid of halting to survive.
I requested the darkness, the hunters and killers to let me to die
… But no one dared to face my mind’s fire.
I spit on the moon and stoned the stars,
Nothing happened… they were far apart

I kept on weeping with my dried eyes,
Now there was no water, like the desert of my mind
Blindfolded to any happiness,
My eyes were unable to penetrate the darkness
Ears were engaged in cries of wolves,
Mute was the whistle of rustling leaves

I didn’t want any angel to come,
To touch my heart and wipe out all pains
Never did I expect some magic to happen
To convert the night into a beautiful dawn
…But the dawn was destined to arrive,
It was my luck that I continued to survive…
I got everything the angel and the magic,
My heart opened up to release the seized dreams…

Art: To Express

2010-04-29T03:36:00.000-07:00

Beware: The Hunt

Sometimes I envy easy animal lives

2010-04-27T02:07:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I envy easy animal lives
Their simplicity and lack of desires
They do what the nature tells
Don’t bother if their attempt fails
Never think of failures and successes
Just go on doing what life demands
Not trapped in morals and principles
They take life as it comes
Never have the things called goals
They aim only for their basic needs

My needs in contrast are unending
For my goals I keep my life on pending
I forget the basic needs to reach my aims
My aims aim all of my happiness
Success is something taking me to my goals
And failures push me some steps away from them
Away from my goals, I crave for them
I burn my life for the things I desire

Nature signals the animals to make some changes
I resist the nature, I hate changes
The nature hates me in this way
From normality I get pushed away and away
For me the pyramid of needs is also reversed
I don’t want food but the happiness of the universe
For me everything is very complex
I spend years in considering pros and cons of them
Shooting for my goals is also not easy
Fear of failure is ready to kill me

Animals get happy with simplest achievements
For me, things except my goals are not achievements
For I’ve a part of brain called neocortex
And my limbic system is enslaved by it
So are my centers for breathing, living and sleep
In other words I’ve got haunted by my goals
My heart beats my goals and lungs respire to them
Eyes search for them and ears hear them
My goals are the only songs I utter
The only fragrance I smell and the only joy I enjoy

My goals are ruthless, they keep on calling me
And I like a haunted child keep on following them
Even when I know, they push me in valleys of depression
Or make me to get lost in deserts of loneliness
There I forget myself and search fulfillment in them
As if I’ve learned to get happiness from troubles

I can’t decide what’s good and what’s bad
The benefits of the beasty life are profound
It’ll open me a treasure of happiness
My life will be fulfilled with all achievements
But I want nothing except my aims
I give up the joy and embrace the pains
The pains soothe me which I take for my aims
My life is affected, it can’t be normalized

But sometimes the pains do become unbearable
And I can’t stop envying those easy animal lives

Frozen in time

2010-04-18T23:37:00.000-07:00

Jailed, trapped in a secluded place… away from my dreams, away from my hopes away from myself, I try to breathe here, and try to meet myself, but fail always as I failed in my exams. Every situation, every person, everything seems to be the examiner to put me on test one or another… and like a lost worrier, enslaved and commanded to play war, I keep on fighting with the situation with my lost soul. Deaf, I can’t hear my heart beats… are they there? Blind, I can’t see my future… is it there? Or is there mere mute darkness, endless like my pains?

And here I search ways to keep myself alive, to survive to the moment of escape, to the point of freedom, to fill my dreams in my arms… but blind, deaf and also anaesthetized… I feel nothing. I doubt whether I have the thing called mind, there is something mutilated, blunted like a blunted weapon that has lost its sharpness facing tons of rust. Rusted because it was not in use; it’s still not in use, as I tolerate the injustice mutely, fearing to face more of it… and I face more of it… often.

And I worry, about my finished future… about my charred hopes and dries tears. Tears come out sometimes, and I expect to feel their warmness, at least they will thaw my frozen soul… but alas the tears are also cold, dumb like my emotions. Already surrendered, I beg them for escape, and they laugh at me in return. How can they be so ruthless? Heartless examination and the exam takers, they themselves lack heart why should they bother for that of others? They crush my heart; mercilessly make me numb by giving intolerable pains… still I live, expecting some magic to happen.

And I believe in magic… I still dare to believe something, when my life is an orchestra of unbelievable happenings, and shocks… endless, coming one after another or all at the same time. I wish, I pray… I beg to the deities, and ask for some sense in life, but never get it. And I sit finally kneeling in the darkness of my trapped mind. Waiting… waiting, hoping for some hopes to come to sensitize…

Then I get tired, and anger comes to rule my soulless lifeless life. I burn down the darkness and shout to make some sound. I get my rusted weapon to hit it on their head… I hit it on the walls to get free, and kick the wall, punch it to the moment of exhaustion. Then I drop down wounded like a mad, like a tired schizophrenic being ordered by some sound. And then the hopes come to bandage my wounds, to heal my soul… and I go to sleep to get lost in the arms of my dreams…

But my dreams shake me, to make me awake. I open my eyes but don’t believe in the scene. The rust of my mind has gone, so is the darkness. I see, I feel, I sense the dawn in my life. I see my life, right there with me, smiling and calling me. My dreams introduce me with my life, and make me worthy to survive. Oh sweet dreams, creators of my hopes, that’s the reason why you’re worthy of my life.

...let’s heal the world

2010-04-14T06:27:00.000-07:00

Boundaries are ruthless, signs of our negligence. They’re for the politicians or for the religious divas, not for humans not for us. Science doesn’t follow boundaries of any region, religion, and even that o gender, so is the scientist’s work. The arts, the feelings, humanity and the expressions, everything is immune to the harshness of these borders… then why shouldn’t all of us? None of us have created the boundaries, then why should all of us follow them?

They’ve been created by some populations in the past, temporally (or in the time map) far far away from us and they divide us from the persons from our own era, whom we can see, feel and even touch; separated from us only by physical distance or that of emotional.

And we can’t erase them, at least now, at this moment. Alas, we can’t get up and take a big eraser and eliminate everything hindering the flow of our emotions. We can’t erase boundaries from the Earth… but we can erase them from our heart. We can get a big, beautiful universal or global heart, like the universal set in sets mathematics which incorporates everything but is a part of none.

Some will accept us, some won’t we shouldn’t bother, as all are our people. And we shouldn’t bother to dedicate our works, our attempts, and our sacrifices, to our people who share this universe with us. We shouldn’t allow these ruthless boundaries to entrap us and bar the waves of excitement, enthusiasm, and joy reaching to our hearts from all over the universe. Come on, let’s be universal; let’s eliminate the enmity, the hatred and create a healthy world. Come on, let’s heal the world.

A human who knows why to survive…

2010-04-12T02:07:00.000-07:00

Tolerating, breathing but not ceasing to stay alive
I had got bored with the inertia of my life
The things used to happen in their own way
This made me search, why on this Earth I should stay

I used to stay staring the walls
Had nothing to do with life’s rise and falls
Buried in a ditch covered with transparent land
I always stared, but never could say hi to the stars in my piece of sky

I wanted to explode, to break free
But was diffused, I used to feel
Tired of waiting, but bothering to make a start
Once upon a time I had thought to go and see my heart
But the mirror of my life was shattered
And every piece reflected a tortured image of my mind

I had to find who I was and why
Like a tree, wishing to break the Earth
And reach the demanding my piece of sky
But finding self of mine was a poser even staying where I was; was much easier
I seemed a purpose difficult to understand
Not just a thing that occupies a small piece of land

My causeless thoughts also had a cause
And pause less breaths also had a pause
I had paused to my life to stay alive
And had caused my life to forget the meaning of being alive

When I found the meaning and the lost world of my life
I broke the cocoon and became free to fly
Widened was my piece of sky
And the stars were now mere parts of mine

Now I’m a star not confined to the sky
I’m a human who knows why to survive…

I’m a piece of art expressing every heart
Or a beating that beats in every heart
I’m a tear of god’s pain and that of yours
I’ve to flow, never to stay in place…

I’m soothing as I flow
Give me your pain and all of your sorrow
And I’ll give you nothing but a smile
I want you to be happy, healthy and agile…

I’m a merchant to exchange happiness for grieves
A miracle to construct heavens in your dreams
I’m a shock to sensitize, a purpose to provide purpose to all purposeless lives
I’m a soul that wanders, and helps others to find their homes
Or I’m a ray of light that reflects every part of your mind
A burning fire that pacifies…

I’m a mystery unsolved since ages
And a history of all great sacrifices
A feeling of greatness hidden in depths of your heart
But I’ve been cloaked; just let me come out…

Strange experiences as a stranger

2010-04-02T23:19:00.001-07:00

I created this blog, few months ago to write my experiences as an intern, that’s what I was supposed to be since this February. But it didn’t happen at that time, and still it’s not happening. My internship is getting postponed constantly… as if it’s something special, as if it’s my wildest dream or as if it’s not supposed to be a normal happening.

And the cause of it is unknown, or at least I’m unaware of it. Maybe they’re choosing doctors who fit well into the system, who follow the traditional norms… who’re ideal medicos. Anything unknown foreign or unrelated like me is bound to evoke the ‘what is it’ response in them. It’s nothing but reaction to the stranger that’s what they display in my mark sheet. I fail to simulate or to mimic normal… alas, I’m not normal.

I’m a stranger here, I feel, or I feel strange here. I happen to be in a university where knowledge is contra indicated. I don’t like to repel the knowledge… and I shouldn’t repel this university for this’ the university I’ve to complete my MBBS at, and this’ the university which’s going to make me a doctor.

And this stresses me, to my breaking point… or breaks me many times. And I, like a broken wounded soul, keep on hovering around the same subjects again and again, willing to haunt this degree, this university, my college, haunted by the exam system… but not dying, immortalized because of my immortal dreams of being a scientist and do something for healing. But there isn’t a trace of human left in me, as if it has been vaporized or burnt or flee away from me. I’m just a plain living soul… or spirit, with no feelings except few hopes and extreme desire to reach my dreams. I’m nothing anything except my dreams.

Obs N Gyn

2010-03-30T23:18:00.000-07:00

A nineteen year old girl, twelfth pass, pregnant for the first time, and visiting a private maternity home regularly for ante natal checkups landed finally in painful breast abscess ten days later she delivered her baby. It was because of retracted nipple and the maternity home doctor might have forgotten, or neglected, or was just unaware of the fact that the breasts should be checked at the first visit. She was a registered practitioner holding some diploma after her undergraduate, and she had failed to take care of her patient and had made her and her kid to suffer a lot for such a simple reason. It was simple to diagnose, simple to treat, and unfortunately so simple that she neglected.

It could be a good medico legal lawsuit to appeal against her, but the village dwelling new mother feared the court. And the culprit doctor was left unpunished, free to neglect her other patients…

This happens here, many times. The patients don’t know the roles of doctor and same is true for the doctors. In fact we doctors are trained to neglect… not in the books mentioning some strange combinations of words and numbers as laws, in fact we’re supposed to mug up those laws without knowing the meanings.

We’re trained to neglect in the exams. As undergraduate students we must know that we should examine the breasts… and we must not examine them while examining the patient lest the ‘case’ shall become complicated, lest we shall fall short of time for reading… lest we shall lose the patient compliance. We’re supposed to write ‘All is well’ in our report or case history and examination, no matter what the reality is. We must must must modify the case in order to make it simple, banal or… digestible to the examiner. Then we pass in the exams and grow up as real doctors… only to follow the ‘all is well’ tradition. We need not examine the patient thoroughly we should not… we should not trouble ourselves, to take pains to see the nipples in this ‘case’. The patients are unaware many times… and they fear the court, most of the times they don’t even know that such laws do exist.

And we make money, increase the hospital building, take more and more patients… and increase our capacity of neglecting. Because one time or other in our lives we were medicos and we can’t forget the impressions left in our minds by the exams… the things supposed to be the only purpose of our lives as medicos. We never wanted to be doctors… we wanted to be businessmen and obstetrics and gynecology is the most lasting and profit giving business… it never stops even though in the society there isn’t any illness.

Frozen in time

2010-03-24T23:58:00.000-07:00

Here, in Solapur an epidemic of water born diseases- cholera, gastroenteritis and also the hepatitis is going on. They need more doctors… at least to look ‘at’ the crowd of patients. My previous classmates now interns, are attending them… or are trying to avoid. My hands are tied, by the three F’s on my mark sheet, indicating that I’ve failed in one subject… for they think that I have no sufficient knowledge or skill to handle the patients of obstetrics and gynecology. I can’t act an intern till I prove it on the mark sheet. I can’t help them to look after the patients. I can’t even look at the patients.

My skills and knowledge are under revaluation; they’re verifying it by recounting my marks. And they’re doing it since more than one month. They might be employing one full person for counting one mark and in this way they might need to employ a staff of around 140 people to count marks of me alone… I guess. Don’t they think this is too much? Don’t they think they’re harming themselves along with me? Do they think… ever?

What about my two months if the marks are increased? And what about my time spent in waiting for the results of revaluation, if my marks are not increased? I might not be supposed to wait, to take it this seriously… to value my six months. Or I should think the negative, should expect that my marks won’t increase… and study, or do something to pass in next exams. I should expect to pass in the next exams… or should I not?

I’ll manage my feelings… somehow. But what if I wish to go and to serve the outburst of patients… as an intern? No, I can’t think like a doctor, for I’m not a doctor, yet. I can’t think of the patients, yet, for I myself am on a way to become one… a psychiatry patient. I wish… I carve… I die to escape from this… but nothing happens. As if I’m frozen in time. And I can’t do anything, other than the waiting. And I wait; I still wait for the results of the exams… the impotent exams unable to test my abilities and my desires… And have to fight with my mind as it gets attracted to the frustration.

My classmates keep on thinking that I’m lucky to escape the donkey work of handling the huge lines of patients and I keep on envying them for they’ve got a chance to serve the patients… no one is happy… this’ the destiny. Is it? Probably I must feel thankful of my university that I got a chance to escape the work and to get time to sit before the computer and to type this in daytime… and to spend nights without any work, without any sleep, in worrying… in craving… or in sleeping, getting lost in irrelevant bad dreams.
But what… if I’m not thankful?

healing- to survive

2010-03-15T00:05:00.000-07:00

Life is painful, uncertain, and unpredictable… like a classical horror movie when the ghost arrives when you think it’s safest. We try hard, do our best to achieve something, we get the thing only to lose it at the next moment. Happiest moments in life turn to those of greatest grieves, haunting our memories like laughing cruel ghosts… making us to fear the happiness. Sometimes the situations are so hopeless that the word ‘hope’ seems to be rubbish or some impossible thing. We cry sometimes. Sometimes the situation is beyond crying; tons of grieves and depths of sorrow make our tear glands immune to feelings.

Does this mean we should fear it, keep on praying that the uncertainty should keep a distance from us? Or should we lose interest in life, for its uncertain? Or should we succumb to the fear and stop living or live life of some zombie, with no feelings? Many times the changes are irreversible; we can’t repair the things. Why should we continue to live, if life is continuously punishing?

But isn’t it good that we’re still alive? Why should we run to unsafe valleys of fear and depression in search of some safety or certainty? Can’t we become a little brave and use this uncertainty and grieves as the causes to remain alive? We can dedicate our uncertain lives to bring some safety in lives of others, to save lives, to try to palliate their sorrows, to heal them. We can dedicate our lives to make human life certain, safe and predictable, with good outcome. The situations are unchangeable many times but we can try to heal and to avoid them to happen in the future. Science is there to aid us, and so is the art of our heart. Let it beat, no matter with whatever quantity of pain it has, but always make it to eject happiness with its every beat.

We can make the world happy… at least we can try it.

Healing... an attempt to cure

2010-03-09T22:11:00.000-08:00

Healing… it makes to feel better. The wounds disappear and the intactness returns… intactness, the condition of no pain, no discomfort, no chance of getting infected by some troublesome pathogen. And the part can work with full potential, taking full joy, without the fear of getting more damaged. It’s a matter of chance… takes time sometimes, sometimes it never happens, sometimes leaves permanent ugly contractures named scars… and sometimes the condition worsens to its worst.

It requires luck… plain luck I can say, or the innate things to achieve healing… or some aids to heal faster… to make the wound disappear as quickly as possible… something like care, antibiotics or dressings- the things designed to cover the wound and protect it, keeping it dry and infection free. And science is working on it, at its best, I hope.

Mind also gets wounds many times… of all ranges right from tiny scratches up to bomb blast injuries, equally painful, disabling, bleeding… worsening. But the dressings aren’t available, neither the antibiotics. We can’t visit the market to purchase a mind healing medicine. Psychoactive drugs are there… but they’re mere numbing, making the mind to ignore the wounds like what happens to the extremities of diabetics. And the wounds remain there rotting, dying forming a gangrene of mind… not healable.

The gangrenous extremity is amputated to avoid its spreading… but… but alas, we can’t amputate the mind, yet, no matter how rotten it has become. The gangrene spreads, affecting the whole of the mind and the person dies leaving a walking cast of a human behind… the human becomes a mindless zombie, with no feelings, no joy, no pain, and no regret… of doing anything. And crimes increase in an effort to get some joy… or some pain… or some feeling, but dead mind can’t feel anything.
Can we treat this? Not yet, unfortunately… Can we avoid this? Maybe if we try… mind is fragile… humiliations, setbacks, losses, deaths… heartbreaks anything… anything can wound it. And the injuries can’t be avoided. We’ve to avoid the gangrene… the death of the mind and feelings. we’ve to pay heed to the wounds, to achieve this… we’ve to wipe the wounds, clear them, to make them dry by allowing them to ooze out the pains…

Again some are lucky, they can go to the arts to express the feelings to their own souls… to pray it to secrete some healing substances… and they succeed. Some have to keep on bleeding, tolerating… to try to ignore… and some succeed in ignoring. Some survive, carrying to painful wound throughout their life and some develop gangrene. But there are some wounded souls who attempt healing of their own mind by attempting to heal the pains of others. They become the dressings for other wounded minds, they become angels… don’t remain humans. But again, becoming an angel is a matter of plain luck… an innate thing, or aids in the form of some angel’s blessing…

The mind and the fear

2010-03-03T23:04:00.000-08:00

The mind and the fear

exam as a chance

2010-03-03T00:20:00.000-08:00

Retaking the exam… reappearing for the torture, tolerating the pains once again, again without any cause… it’s dreadful, but I’m not scared, and I don’t want to be. As I’m looking at it as a chance, to see, what happens if I look at it as a day to day happening? I’m not going to repeat the parrot’s fission and not going to try to be like some other person who I’m not. And actually I’m eager to see the results… in real sense…

my dream

2010-03-01T21:32:00.000-08:00

Here I accept that I’m not perfect
To reach my dreams I do lack the strength
I beg the strength to my dreams
And in this way gets fulfilled my every wish

My dreams give me wings when I want to fly
And they wipe my tears when I tend to cry
I cry my pains and weep my weakness
But fail always to abuse my lack of strength

A weak person with huge dreams
Can this mismatch lead to a fulfillment?
But I get things more than I deserve
As my riveting dreams make me to preserve

Are they some witchcraft or some magic spells?
Those turn my weaknesses into my strengths
My pains become stimuli and rewarding
And dynamic becomes my ill health

Are they some angels who give me blessings?
And every hit of bad luck brings a shower of success…

Fate, good luck or maybe some unknown thing…
I never have to crave for my novel dreams
Like the heart is gifted with beatings…
My days and nights beat with my dreams

I breathe for my dreams, I breathe my dreams
And even if I die in between I’ll be breathing in my dreams…

I’m immortal; I’ll never cease to exist
Because I exist only in my eternal dreams
Excepting my dreams, I’m nothing… anything
As if I myself is a sweet dream of my dreams…

ideal verses reality

2010-03-01T21:29:00.000-08:00

Ideal doctor is - A god or angel or something like that… a superhuman, a person who treats the patient, yet feels the patient, who’s ready for the patient at any hour of the day, who cares the patient, tries her/ his best to make the situation more tolerable, puts the patient ahead of everything, can’t say no to anyone, who works for satisfaction. Well, he/ she may not be complete, may not have treatment for every disease, and may not have all the high class equipments, but the dedication is never lacking.

In reality with some honorable exceptions who dare to live as an ideal doctor… the treatment to every disease isn’t available, high class costly yet incompetent machines may be available. No one is dedicated to the patients… dedication to money is almost always there. Diagnosis is not possible without machines… doctors have legal bounding about the minimum of the investigations required. They exploit it, and run a side business of renting the machines. A CT or M RI may be prescribed for simple headache without any sound reason. Poor patients are always thrown to poor government hospitals where they receive treatment like waste particles of dust. They may not say no even to dead bodies, if they get the money… and dead bodies are not handled to relatives till complete payment is received. Doctor feels nothing even if a patient dies. Even if any mistake occurs by the doctor he/ she is taught in the medical school only to hide it, cover it and never mention it before the patient… or before anyone. These so called doctors are not humans… they are not even sub humans… instead they’re machines, money making devices. And medical colleges teach you to be a successful machine, to earn a rich luxurious life… no matter even if you’ve to forget to live, or to live a dead life… a rich dead life.

This is where I fail

2010-02-24T22:03:00.000-08:00

Obstetrics and gynecology- it’s the subject they chose to fail me. They think I can’t understand it, or handle a female patient as if it’s hard to understand… but definitely it’s hard to handle it. It’s just a subject, a branch of health sciences, and it is supposed to be like other branches, but it’s not… at least here.
Its books, tiny booklets… written by diploma holders are really hard to comprehend… what they imprint on mind is that females are machines of sex, they do not have other body organs connected to the sex organs, not even the brain. When I couldn’t understand a thing from the books, my friend told me that they are not meant for understanding they are there to remember and write in the exams as it is…
The diseases are troublesome, no doubt, but more troublesome are the diagnostic methods, and still more troublesome are the treatments… the last resort- hysterectomy with removal of adnexa… kill the female. Thankfully, this is mostly bookish… but reality is harder than the books.
The labor ward here reminds me of the mortuary with steel table ‘beds’ with arrangement of open gutters for the flow of blood or show… or the discharge, curtains are absent, the relatives are not allowed to come in but others are free to wander there wearing their dirty footwear, and sympathy is lacking, “remove your clothes you fool, and wear this gown, hurry up, do you want me to throw you out of the hospital,” these are the welcoming words for a patient in labor pains… sometimes the doctors start the labor deliberately in thirty eighth or ninth week by manually rupturing the membranes in the OPD… in order to decrease load on the housemen… … that’s what the reason they told me while clinical postings.
The female lies there, frightened to see the sight of other females, semi naked, screaming, sweating, and bleeding, with ‘liberal’ episiotomies done without anesthesia. Sometimes the nurse climbs up a stool and compresses the abdomen with horrible pressure… and the doctor shouts at the patient, “You careless lady, you’re killing your baby, it’s going to die in the abdomen, because of you. Push or you’re to lose your child…”
Then something happens, the doctor remembers about the towels… and starts quarreling with the staff… the staff shouts back at the doctor… they co- ordinate only on shouting at the patients. Caesarian sections are special ones with a step of inverting the uterus and like a bag and wash cleaning it, “don’t utter this in exams… this can kill the female with vagal shock,” the residents remind us while we are seeing. Why the hell you do it- no one answers.
They’re not sadistic, I’m sure… but they’re careless, machines programmed to earn. This might be better than the deliveries done at home by the dais, but it’s unbearable. There is nothing like delivery with dignity or something… it’s just like a bunch of female cattle delivering in cattle shed. I really wonder about those poor mothers who dare to deliver here, and their strength to survive this, both physically and mentally… but it’s really not for me. I can’t tolerate to see this… leave apart practicing.

The art of Healing

2010-02-19T22:29:00.000-08:00

I was in distress, feeling disappointed, and suffering from a major setback. No one values a failed student, not even the student herself. My friends who had the same accident or fight with mere bad luck are still depressed, one died of heart attack, one did suicide, one had convulsions… others are taking anti- depressants, some others flowing in streams of alcohol… and I, nothing!

I wanted to be a scientist… a path of tough competition, cut throat competition… but my throat was cut before the start of the competition… even before I could think to apply somewhere for a PhD in neuroscience… I was declared a failure. But still I’m alive, alone in my hostel, and without any doctor’s treatment… and I still want to be a neuroscientist, strange! I’m not careless… not even so strong, but I have found a way to heal myself… and for me it’s arts. And in contrary to alcohol and anti depressants it has no side effects.

I never felt science different from that of arts… science is an art and there is science in any art. Science tries to explain the effects of art on the brain, and art affects the brain. I’m not at all a big artist… but I’m sufficient to heal myself. I write poems, draw pictures, complete my novel… just without thinking… I just let my hands to do the job, whatever they want. And my hands calm my inner sense, pacify my feelings… and I tend to become normal. My every picture, every poem, every word shouts for my pains… and because of them I get the pain relief.
I want to heal others. That is a thing to be achieved in future… a hard thing, I think. Currently I’m happy that I can at least heal myself.

The shock continues… After The results

2010-02-15T22:26:00.000-08:00

This- the life- I really doubt whether it’s live, or is it a part of a novel--- of a scary novel written by a sadistic person, an author, who’s yet to know what are the capabilities of its characters, and who’s impotent to decide the future of those characters… the characters are futureless. Am I really a character, in that novel… in some movie… or is life like this only, unreliable, untrue, shocking but always… nearly always frustrating, like that of the results?

Or… is the result just an injustice… a game of favor which isn’t in my favor? Or… was is mere a stroke of fate… or something to test my capacities to strike the bad luck?

A thought about myself

2010-02-11T03:12:00.000-08:00

Autobiography of a mad person

Dwell in palaces, empty the malls
They have servants, to attend their calls
They get what they demand… still not satisfied;
And those people say that I’m a mad

Nights in five stars, and mood altering drugs
They sleep enveloped in most sexy arms
… Still not quenched, in that heavenly bed
They see nightmares; they have many unknown fears.
They cry though they have shoulders to cry
And they shake though they have supporting hands;
They live life like that of a dream…
But with a mind that has no songs but a silent scream.
They cheat, they fraud; to pull others down
They try hard… still not satisfied
And those people say that I’m a mad

I may be a poor, I may look like a beggar
Instead of setting down, I may prefer to wander.
And sleep by the roads, I may not have proper clothes…
I flow rivers of sweat, to make both ends meet
And I see dreams those are very sweet.
I lack supporters, so I talk with my heartbeats
With lives of others, I never make comparisons.
Tell me, is this so bad
That those people call me a mad?

I sing away tragedies, and smile to the pains
I help others though I get no gains…
It’s not like that I don’t understand,
…That those help seekers also call me a mad.
But with this life I’m much satisfied
… And have a happy, unadulterated mind
Yes! I feel glad that I’m a mad
And throughout my life, I want to remain a mad!!!

A blow to mind

2010-02-09T21:27:00.000-08:00

This post is more about wounding than healing. I’m wounded, right here in my soul. And the hell, the healer for soul isn’t available. Actually it’s a minute thing, and it shouldn’t even touch my soul, leave apart hurting. But in fact it did hurt.
My results for my final examinations wee out, and I learned I was failed. They declared that I wasn’t able to treat people, they declared it on the internet that I don’t possess the skills and knowledge required to be doctor… or at least to clear the exams. Exams… are they really capable to examine my capability? Do they really deserve to declare that I don’t deserve it? What my creativity, my knowledge, my feelings, and my dedication have to do with it? What is the thought, the purpose behind that exam? What do they examine?
They think I’ve to think in their way; I’ve to be like them… a robot, machine. They think humans don’t deserve passing. But I’ve passed in three subjects out of four… humanity does worth something. They might want me to change the way I think… or the way I live. I don’t live for the exams… and I never want to. I’ve many great purposes to live… not just repeating the parrot fission, and copying, and begging to the examiner… memorizing what the books describe, the tiny answer books, that’s what the examiner reads.
No. I’m not going to change… I just can’t; no matter what happens to me and to my exam results. I know what I want and I need it desperately.
At most I’ve to take that exam once again. And I’m strong enough to bear it. Writing one paper and appearing for the viva once again won’t kill me. And it can’t waste my time… because I’m free to do what I want to do. And oh exam, now I don’t fear you… if you can’t give any value to me, then I shouldn’t give it to you.
And yes, I don’t look at this as a battle with the situation… rather it’s a chance to examine what the exam does if I don’t fear it. And I’m not going leave my dreams. My life… it’s still dedicated to healing.

Why it's great to be a scientist...

2010-01-21T23:17:00.000-08:00

Illness- it’s a state of being out of health or a state of being sick. It’s a state when we feel we are not well… and we feel it when sometimes in past or in dreams, we have experienced what that’s called as being well. It depends on our education, our status, our wealth… our genes… that is on our luck.

People get cold; they become ill. They get depressed or anxious or bored; they feel ill. They get diagnosed with cancer or encounter an accident, become paralyzed; they get ill. They get a heart attack or angina or some kind of heart failure; they suffer illness. Some are borne with anomalies… they’re borne with illnesses. People get old, become disabled’ they get ill.

People who are normal or ill only for a short period are lucky people. Some… who’re not like them are ill so frequently that they feel ill or alone when the illness is not there. Pain or disabilities or sufferings are their life partners… honest enough not to leave them alone even for a moment. A child born with polycystic kidney disease doesn’t even know that a disease is accompanying it and is going to accompany it and leading it to the graveyard. Acute common cold is unbearable, but chronic sinusitis becomes a life partner. Cancer starts as an illness then grows as a lifestyle… so are paralysis, arthritis, heart problems, migraine and old age disabilities. Once they arrive, it’s almost impossible to send them back.

Like old unromantic marriage, chronic diseases tend to be dull… or slow killers. Once the ‘what is it?’ response is over, people learn to live with it. They have to live with it, till the life leaves them… or is taken away by the disease or its more horrible friends. People learn to combat the situation, sometimes to fight against the death… or attempt to reduce the fear of death, but it’s hard to accept. Some are lucky to defeat the death and get rid from the illness… but most of the times the new lifestyle continues for the lifetime… the length of which depends upon the graveness of the cause of the illness.

What doctors do here? They aid in the new lifestyle. They try to give some strength against the fight. They try to normalize the lives. Sometimes they achieve complete success… and sometimes flat failure. Many times they succeed in adapting the patient to the new lifestyle. Sometimes they prolong the patient’s life or improve quality of life. After all, it’s better to do ‘something’ than doing nothing. But we do need to try to improve that ‘something’. And this makes it fascinating to be a scientist.

Ideal Vs. real situation

2010-01-10T22:34:00.000-08:00

Healing, that’s my dream. That’s the purpose of my life. I survive in hopes that I’ll, in some way be helpful in healing people. I want to improve the depth of knowledge we humans possess regarding our own body systems. I want to find some way to study our brain… something like those optogenic tools [Temporally precise in vivo control of intracellular signalling]… that makes the receptor light sensitive. Something like that it could control our synaptic actions from outside.
I dream while awake, I dream at night in my sleep. I dream a lab where I get all the facilities… where I can work on the fine synapses of rat’s brain, and where I can do my research to study the brains of humans. I don’t want to face the reality… I don’t want to be awake without getting lost in my dreams… because the reality is far… far away from my dreams.
I’m a medical student. I’m not supposed to do some initiative or creative work. And I live in a place where… where leave apart the synaptic studies or fMRI studies… simple mRI is not possible. There is a closed room in our hospital… they say there is a damaged mRi machine is sleeping inside. But the room never opens… it has not been opened even once since last four and half years. I can’t break the lock. I can’t change the situation.

Medico

2010-01-03T21:46:00.000-08:00

It was as if I was getting raped by the exam. Now the trauma is over. I’m in an attempt to heal the wounds. Three days of vacation acted as a pain relief. I have almost forgotten it. But I can’t forget the live patients kept in exam as my cases. Well, I can’t do anything to help them. I don’t know what to do… and I don’t know how to do it. I’m zero; I know nothing. Bookish knowledge is there but it is also not complete. I can make mistakes… gross mistakes and can kill the patients who suffer from nothing serious. I don’t know how to insert IV… and I don’t know cardiopulmonary resuscitation. And I’m not supposed to know it.

In vacation I happened to watch a Hindi movie 3 idiots .It was funny; it described the condition of students who act as parrots and remember things without understanding. It was about engineering students. If it would have described same condition for medicos… it would have been a horror movie… a horror show rather than funny. Can you imagine students like us dealing with real patients; prescribing drugs, giving injections… without diagnosing the disease?
And we are going to do it… in one month or two if we pass the mindless exams… to prove your mindlessness to do such atrocities without feeling guilty. And I want to pass. I need to pass. I won’t be able to achieve my future if I don’t pass. If I don’t pass I have to pretend to be mindless once again for the period of exams… and have to stop thinking.

I don’t hate books… I love bookish knowledge. But I also love practical knowledge which is not impractical (as given in some practical books… you can’t shake a patient with fluid in chest violently enough to hear roars like sea waves…. You just can’t percuss on painful ICD.) And I hope I’ll get it when I become an intern. I must know what is the best thing that I can do at present to save the patient… in this situation? I must know how to do it… and I must be able to apply it in an emergency… but not as a profession.

I know today’s knowledge is not complete… not even sufficient to treat all patients. Sometimes you have to treat the patient when you know nothing about the disease… even if you are an expert… you try to give life support all rest is patient’s luck. I must be able to do it in case of emergency till I handle the patient to a professional life support machine doctor… I don’t want to make it my profession. I just want to increase the knowledge level we have… I just want to find some better solutions… to treat the disease, to diagnose it… to make the patient better, to understand a human in the patient. And that’s why I want to become a scientist.7 Healing

before the vacations

2010-01-02T01:47:00.000-08:00

I was away; was banned from thinking. My heart was banned from beating. The only purpose it was allowed was to circulate blood in my machine like organs… with no emotions, with no feelings and hopeless.
I was having my final year MBBS practical exams. And I was supposed to forget that I have a heart. I was supposed to regurgitate and then vomit undigested, not understood paragraphs from books, lists of diseases and conditions and bookish treatments mimicking lists of grocery or things for garage sell. It was supposed to come out in sequence that was given in books.
This wasn’t the examination of my skills; it didn’t test my knowledge. Feelings were contra- indicated. I think what it tasted was mere short term memory and limits of my hearts’ patience.
Live patients were there. But for us they were mere ‘cases’. Not ‘live human cases’ but mere plain ‘cases’, because the ‘live human’ component was supposed to be ignored. They were mere collections of signs, a pile of derangement. And things were supposed to happen as they are given in the books [in small question- answer booklets not in standard books]. And if they were not according to the booklets, we were supposed to mold them and modify them and finally tell them as they are given in books. Let the patient go to hell. Neglect the patient… remember its [the cases’] name; neglect the complaints… remember the diagnosis; neglect the situation… remember things of academic interest.

2009-12-07T00:59:00.000-08:00

I’m not an angel. Alas! I’m not an angel but a simple young girl whose heart gets disturbed to see pain of others. I can’t fly in the sky and bless people with some magic stick. I have limits of my being a human, limits of money, limits of living in a world that is yet to be developed- ‘a historical world’ where all facilities are scanty in comparison to the developed world.
Even the developed world lacks many developments and ‘expectant observation’ is the best available treatment for many diseases. Most common cause of nearly every disease is ‘idiopathic’. And every drug and surgery carries lots of side effects. Cause of psychological illnesses and their management is still a matter of debate.
In malignancies prognosis is measured in terms of ‘five year survival’… only five. And sometimes it’s also too less. Cancers in late stage are not curable in any part of the world and what you give is just ‘palliative’ treatment. You cut their organs; amputate body parts; give lots of cytotoxic drugs and showers of irritating radiation; then give tons of anesthesias and then… the person dies. You are satisfied that you have tried every treatment in the world to cure the patient…or will you feel hopeless that you’ve failed to save the patient? Individual opinions vary. Some people are angels they see positive side of everything; some are machine men or women who think of the money they’ve earned.
…Not me. I can’t tolerate it. I can’t ignore everything and say, ‘It just happens like that.’ I get very emotional. And a doctor should never do that. I won’ be an ideal doctor. I won’t be a doctor. I won’t practice.
But I don’t want to run away and hide in a luxurious hole and let people die in my absence because I can’t tolerate their death. And that’s why my heart is constantly in some undefined distress. I want to improve the condition… directly or indirectly. And an invention to improve the condition is the best solution, I think.
I want to become a scientist. Because, though I don’t possess any magic stick, I deeply believe in it. I want to bring it to existence. To my disturbed heart it’ll be soothing!7 Healing

i want to heal people

2009-12-05T00:34:00.000-08:00

#VRML V1.0 ascii

I want to heal people. But I’m not a die-hard nurse or a social worker or a dedicated doctor. And I won’t be. Even if I’m going to be registered practitioner by next year, I don’t want to practice. I just can’t do it because here in these four and half years as a medico, a MB BS student I understood that a doctor can’t heal everything. Every wound, every disease every grief is not treatable… and these limitations hurt me. I hate boundaries.
Some friends say it’s better to do something than doing nothing. Some say “Try your best and work best within these limits.” And people do need a good doctor. A doctor who is not a machine mindlessly prescribing drugs from its list of P drugs to everyone who arrives to seek medical attention. And alas, every here and there I see such machine doctors. Their emotions are blunted; deaths don’t bother them; pains are nothing for them; and moans are only annoying. It’s not their crime; many of them were emotional humane humans before they started practice. Working within limits of facilities and inventions; encountering series of failures; tolerating abuses from people for the failure as if it was their crime and managing family and trying to fulfill dreams of wealth and luxury and… this all repeated for years is bound to form a machine doctor, a health robot programmed to earn money and prescribe or do things as they are given in a short book, mindlessly. This may not be universal; some exceptions are always there. But they are always much more than mere a doctor. They might be someone like angels who fly in the sky and bless people with happiness of health.7 Healing
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Magic stick

2009-11-27T01:30:00.000-08:00

Here’s why I do this…
I dream the whole world; I wander in my dreamland- in happy future sometimes on developed Earth, sometimes in spaceships and sometimes far away from Earth, while sitting here in my small hostel room with the doors closed and bolted from inside. Sometimes the window is also closed; when it gets closed by the wind, I don’t take trouble to open it. This isn’t absolute isolation, some voices are audible, the shouts of ruthless big vehicles and the loud sounds from the pageants on the backside road are always there. Also there are human voices like laughter and chats of girls from my hostel, but all are at a distance… outside my room, outside my heart. And my heart tries to console itself; tries to get engaged in some entertainment like watching movies on my computer. But fails… Alas! I can’t get solace in it, instead I get disturbed. The voices, the window, and the movies they all provoke me; they try to challenge my loneliness but never succeed. This loneliness is not enforced, it is chosen one. I’ve chosen loneliness to meet the needs of my heart. What kind of heart it is that it needs to be lonely?

I’m not one of those alone souls who have no one to understand. I have a supporting family. My parents love me and my younger brother approaches an ideal young sibling. I have friends who always alert me and there are some who say, “Well, it’s great what you’re doing. But I’ll never do that!” When in home I get every luxury that I can dream of; I get everyone to talk with me, and I spend hours in chatting and speaking and getting understood. But… but this isn’t what my heart wants. After sometime it starts poking me and I get disturbed! My behavior becomes strange and I start weeping or shouting on someone or I cry causelessly. Even if my mother has coked my favorite dish from bottom of her heart, the food becomes tasteless to me and those chats become mindless. I trouble my family; hurt their emotions and leave home to come back here. I need solace. I need peace for my heart!

I want to do something… something that matters… something that makes the world after me somewhat different from the world before. I want to add in the difference positively.7 Healing