Ah it's life...

More irrelevant than baby’s blabber, stupid causeless like actions of some toddler

Or meaningful predetermined and thoughtful, set of events leading to a destined outcome

Complex serpentine leading to nowhere, full of mirages where nothing is in real

Or simple straightforward and accurate, where arrow has no option other than hitting to its target

                 

Haphazard unpredictable and lawless, where every event is ruled by the chances

Or calculated strategic and formula driven, as if it’s created by some mathematician

Ah that’s life, a series of strange events, has no meaning but still sets the stage

The moment we think we’ve figured out the plot, everything changes to make us to feel lost…

Lost in a jungle, fierce and cruel, the only real emotion we might feel is a sense of competition

Angels may come, suddenly from nowhere, but we can’t be happy as they may not be real

Fickle volatile and superficial, some relations evaporate like oil floating on the river

Some are like the sky, always with us, no matter our location no matter the status

The sky may just be an illusion, picture of the past—a memory hitting to our vision

Vision of the mind might be accurate; the gut reaction only sometimes fails

Comedy tragedy thriller or mystery, jumping across the genre without any warning

A strange creation by some awful stubborn poet, ah that’s life, we can’t love or hate…

Covered with thorns or flowers or both, it’s a bizarre path to walk on

With Flowers capable of turning into thorns, and thorns capable of becoming our allies

Ambition focus work and efforts, may or may not bear the fruit of success

Sometimes just letting go is what that is required; sometimes it might hit the face

Sometimes faith saves the day; sometimes it’s the cause of death

Nihilists might just embrace some cause; devotees might get divorce from their god

Ah it’s life, maybe it’s not meant to make any sense; what surprises me most is the drive to sustain

Maybe it’s the hope forcing us to keep on turning pages; maybe it’s the curiosity for what’s next

Where it’s going, directed or flowing or is it stagnant this being my ultimate destiny…

I’m waiting to see, dreaming hoping and living, just as a main character of some awful poet’s script

the scientist in my mind

Hindsight is faulty, I remind myself, every time I find myself mulling over my past decisions and their outcomes... I'm not a very important person, thankfully, with many lives depending for their directions on what I do; but certainly, at least for some lives, for those lives whose I am a purpose of life, my decisions do matter, and so their outcomes. It wasn't an exam, there wasn't fear of failure, the only conditions were strong determination maybe reaching to the levels of stubbornness, a commitment of not leaving or not changing the pathway, of sticking to the decision and tolerating whatever the consequences might be, suffering everything without surrendering to the situation while keeping the morals alive breathing with unadulterated mind, while keeping inner desires alive and the passions burning—without suffocating because of lack of hope or chance or stimulus... Joy had left my mind a long ago, there wasn't fear of being devoid of it, there wasn't fear of pain—my mind always bathing in it; tolerating huge ugly surprises offered by the destiny, I used to think I couldn't be surprised any more. There wasn't expectation of someone understanding my situation, everyone including my loved one's judging the situation with their own viewpoints, distant, far away, far far away from me, and far away from my feelings.

I loved research, wanted to explore some questions in my mind, a chance to search for the answers, to check my viewpoints and the viewpoints mentioned in my books; tired of searching my answers in books of religion and philosophy and in my own uninhibited mind and in minds of others, I knew, to take me closer to the truth science was my ultimate option. Every voyage in ocean of science for exploring the answers introduced me to a new set of unsolved questions, burning, calling my attention, waiting to be solved, so interesting that I could spend years living on their Iceland... it was like some addiction, like some drug, some hallucinogen or stimulant bathing my neurons, making me to forget my identity, it was my joy—capable of killing me without making me to feel bad for my lost life.

Life isn't just a journey of adventures in some fantastic ocean, the destiny wanted to teach me, with mundane deserts and banal landscapes occupying some of its span, life is something more than just a burning desire. Typhoons came, or tsunamis, or black outs... I got lost, living my life, trying to keep my wish alive, trying to survive in pure 'no science land', mute, as shouting was not allowed.

It was a world of mark oriented students, and teachers teaching nothing but how to gain marks... I, stunned, stunted, suffocating tried my hard to pass this zombie zone, but blind, as there wasn't light, landed into something more horrible, into a world of profit and loss, money seeking people, immoral, corrupted, harmful and even threatening to life and career if their demands left unfulfilled... I was by law forced to spend one year of my life in this managerial branch in area studded with toxic people, or people made toxic by the situation, by the filth of lack of knowledge and lack of desire for getting knowledge, the only desire they had was money, and ways of getting more money, science wasn't in their lives close to their list of joys, mocking me, harassing me for what a dumb strange alien creature I was... for my loved ones it was period of honour, for I was a medical officer—a gazetted officer and a doctor with a staff of more than thirty working under my supervision; for me it was a dark period with me struggling to get out of my intellectual and emotional coma, crying when alone, always counting the remaining days of my bond period.  

Days passed, months went away, years passed, and here I find myself, alive, striving again near my starting point. More than a decade has passed in my efforts, and here I am, still trying, stubborn, with increased passion, and with a bunch of certificates, some money and a degree allowing me to write a prefix 'Dr.' before my name and a license to practice medicine, some nightmares, dull dark memories, some scars, some unhealable wounds on mind, some altered beliefs, lots of pain, unbridgeable loneliness, but stronger, tougher, more informed, and aware that I still can be surprised... It feels good to be conscious again. Maybe Phoenix isn't just a myth, maybe it's a symbol of the scientist in my mind.

helpless cortex

Accurate calculated precise timely, my intelligent cortex envies machines... motivated, disciplined, hardworking, racing against the moments, it hates me wasting my time in useless things. Rational, always thinking of the outcomes, calculating gains and losses, it thinks it knows how to get the best of everything. Careful planner, futurist, it believes in its independent existence...

And there's a wild creature, living somewhere deep, fun loving, free, limitless, hating boundaries... stronger, younger, even more intelligent than the planning elderly. Passionate, addicted, mad for some maybe trivial thing... the king, it rules every act of the conscious mind... Odd creature, has odd philosophy that my cortex can't digest... for it giving up is the best way of getting; losing everything offers more joy in some cases than gaining something. An unruly kid, it knows that certainty may be boring, searching joy in being uncertain. Constant, never getting tired, it's as stable as the existence.

I get confused, to whom shall I listen... then I give up, allowing the mad being to take control. My cortex starts planning, ignoring the fatigue, working like a machine, only to satisfy whims of  my untamed mind... partial, I don't help it.

is consciousness a curse

There's no difference, I feel sometimes, between some mindless tiny organism—trying to do it's best to survive, to protect its life cycle in some environment it has no attachment with regardless whether it's neutral or nourishing or hostile, indifferent, dumb with no capacity to peep into the future and no desire—and me, once a native of dreamland, workaholic, ambitious, confident... now just a caricature or carcass of my past, with unconscious dreams, comatose, unable to communicate with my consciousness, with hopes though shrunk resembling constructions of a grandiose mind—stubborn, alive even when the reality is in sharp contrast.

Maybe the tiny organisms are not mindless, thinking deeply, curious, trying to solve puzzles posed by nature on their minds, loving them, trying to tend them while trying to sustain... maybe they're more complex, intelligent, understanding the meaning of life, the purpose of being alive; maybe these brainless existents are born with the knowledge of  mind; maybe they're mature, grown up beyond the concept of me and mine, looking beyond punishment and reward; maybe they're huge, spiritual beings, too big to be confined in boundaries of plasma membrane and cell walls, selfless and polite, thinking of themselves just as a 'part', or they might be infinite, endless, nothing but the universe itself... maybe they're not conscious as we are, their consciousness being the existence itself, their world being 'real', not polluted by senses and feelings—just some 'impression' of the world as in our sensitive, deceptive and fool  minds.

Our world is different, subjective, limited, selfish, it's not even real—getting transformed into something different with even a slight change in perspective attitude attention or information, making us vulnerable, confined, lost in consciousness... it's worse than other animals with simpler joys and straight forward punishments; our joys are complex, punishments are strange, we lose even after winning, sacrifices can make us happy; weak, we can get lost completely—searching happiness while sacrificing our aliveness, planning, cheating, suffocating ourselves in polluted worlds created by our polluted minds; imprisoned in boundaries created by wrong thoughts, scared, insecure, suspicious, we can act as a big disease to ourselves...

Is consciousness a curse, a drawback, neurons being some powerful parasites ruling us making us mad—getting lost in illusory fake worlds existing only in our minds, giving us a false sense of being intelligent independent farsighted, enslaving us, making us to do what they want, while confusing us, deceiving, hiding information from us, masking the reality...

Whatever they do, neurons make us 'conscious'; we've no choice but to be conscious, except for some exceptional glorious moments of intense pleasure as in complete surrender during meditation or devotion in religious spiritual doings, or as in some forms of epilepsy or instances of intense human bonding what we call orgasms, there's always a boundary separating us from rest of the universe, it's hard to feel blended or a 'part'... it's hard to imagine an identity without being conscious, or a different identity— huge eternal encompassing everything; we're not that huge, our brains tell us most of the times—the times when we're 'sane'.

But they're not that dishonest, giving us a chance at least to suspect to wonder or to imagine that there's a world beyond our consciousness that's real, same to every eye; maybe we'll never evolve to have that objective perspective, to peep into reality to that extent... we've science, we've statistics—very strict measures to overcome our subjectivity; we bend the rules, overlook statistics, our world still being affected by slightest changes. We're not machines, not intelligent beings thinking in terms of statistics and math, even statistic experts being non statistic thinkers, we humans  are just unable to stop being affected by stimuli either relevant or irrelevant.

Maybe neurons make us powerful, the creators—authors, poets, artists, mechanics of our own worlds, the power in fact being just a perception, the world in fact being a mirror image of external world, the image depending upon the angle size shape texture and cleanness of the mirror, changing with any change in the mirror, the mirror being unstable—modifying itself, getting adapted to the perceived mirror images, changing its capacity to reflect, in addition to searching its own place in the reflection; maybe our brains are mirror houses, the mirrors changing themselves constantly, making us dazzled, puzzled, short sighted in order to keep us from getting mad, it being disturbing to know that the reality may not be 'real'...

I give up there, feeling too naive, too small, like a mindless tiny organism—trying its best to survive, to protect its life cycle in... , hoping that one day my human race will come up with the knowledge of mind, will break the bonds of me and mine, will be selfless, everyone feeling sense of being a 'part', of being responsible; feeling unrealistic as unable to think of any plan any way to reach that situation, my consciousness starts suspecting my mental status, and I—dreaming to be a realistic dreamer—shift my focus to present and near future, to my own personal subjective world without suspecting whether it's real.

to make some difference...

It's like swimming in some endless ocean, I feel sometimes, where we're tiny miserable creatures, trying desperately to come out of it, with no sense of destination, no sense of direction, no strong hopes of getting out of it, no purpose for getting out of it or for staying in it... moving hands and legs tirelessly, bearing the pain, with no joy in doing it, the waves in the form of different strange unforeseen incidents dragging us pushing us to random directions. Life, sometimes, seems like a meaningless occurrence, a negligible phenomenon with everything summing up to a big zero, meaningless, waste.

Something happens then, someone calls, asks for something, someone say thanks, someone blames... results we're waiting for arrive, either we succeed or we fail, something pleases the mind, something hurts it making a deep stabbing wound—we get some feedback... the endless moment of meaninglessness ends making us to feel alive. Part of this universe—we constantly interact with the part of universe other than us. The interactions, our actions and reactions, efforts of the body to stay alive or of the mind to know about life, the thought of we impacting rest of the universe enables us enough to keep on trying doing the seemingly meaningless tasks.

Maybe it's negligible, maybe it's short lasting; maybe we're too tiny and short living to affect the universe, but to the universe we can sense and track and keep record of—to the universe of us humans, we can hope to be something more than negligible... almost anything we do, our any decision, any action whether thoughtful or mindless can affect our world: our world with randomness as an important deciding factor, luck as a major controller; we can't control luck, but we can learn to be wise enough to control our wish to control the luck, to know the factors we can control, to be consistent in our efforts of controlling the controllable... maybe that's what we need to make some difference—significant, and essential to sustain our humankind. 

life of management

It's not just wondering about the diseases of individual patients, nor is it just paying heed to tendencies of groups, epidemics, mentality and educational levels of patients... it's not just following the government rules, or adjusting with current political trend... answering to media, local over enthusiastic political activists eager to make issue of anything to gain some political benefit, managing a team of workers elder to me by decades, paying attention to jobs of newcomers, their friendships and rivalries with each others, answering to taluka and district offices... managing economy of scanty drugs, the sanitation of operation theatre and the instruments... managing the government funds, salaries of workers, and government schemes... being a medical officer is being more a manager than a doctor...

It's hard to keep in touch with your medical knowledge, to handle everything according to standard norms, the conditions being slightly strange or not as mentioned in books... x ray machine is here though not properly trained technician, doctor is here—me of course, though not proper health facilities like even basic drugs... patients are uneducated, politically alert villagers wanting me to diagnose and treat every disease with the x ray machine and whichever drugs I have. PHC is a referral service, they say, but they don't provide any means to convince the people to move to higher centers if they show signs of  malignancies, heart diseases or diseases not treatable at PHC level... People look at the referral chit as a proof of the doctor's incompetence, or ignorance—overall lack of interest in their health condition. Many are not willing to invest that much time and energy for their own health or health of their relatives...

I'm out of my big lovely standard books, in real world, among real patients—posing conditions similar to those described in my beloved books but in highly different circumstances, learning to deal with people with very different viewpoints than that of me—very different from one another, to convince them, to handle their differences and sometimes to make use of them, to handle unforeseen circumstances. Maybe this extended part of medical education is worth a year....

It requires strength

"I'm no more a romantic person living in some dreamland or a perfectionist craving for best or an innocent sweet child, honest, always true to her morals... I know it's nearly impossible for life to be perfect, dreams might be just fantasies, not always meant to be achieved; morals are just luxuries only lucky fulfilled and superhuman can afford, or they're rules of some mad obsessed ne'er-do-wells, or are some chants in fairytales—never working in real life. There's no true love, there's no passion; devotion is a meaningless word... selfishness being the first predictor of success, luck being the second. Loving others without expectation is killing your own soul. Trusting someone is risking yourself, promises being stepped down as cheap talks... or bluffs... cheaters are winners, believers are fools—born to be flop. I'm not describing some nightmare, or experience of some negativistic person with some personality disorder... this is real life, alas, not a fiction...."

It's very easy to be cynic in this world, series of experiences pushing us to pessimism... but thankfully it's not all desert. It requires strength—a lot of strength to see the meadows, the rivers, the waterfalls and the jungles... True love is here—able to surpass all fictions, pure care isn't mythological, here is comfort, here is trust... faith is here to make us relaxed. It's not harmful to rest in dreamland when we know what is real... It's not harmful to attempt mending the future while living in present. Number of efforts may not lead us to success, but they're bound to increase its chances—if done in correct direction. We're not passive limp non-living objects moving only with forces from outside, neither are we reptilian brained animals thinking only of me myself and my present tense... we can gain knowledge, can plan the future, can think strategically while still protecting our morals... we can get joy by doing something for our loved ones; we're humans, we're born to celebrate our humanness.