If you want to feel impotent for the rest of your life, become a doctor, better still, work in a village.
Seven out of ten times, it is too late by the time they come to you. All that you know, All that you can do is of no use.
Either its too late, or too expensive.
We survive, on the other thirty percent, drawing strength from them, believing that every life matters and that slowly, with time, the numbers of those who can be helped will increase.
Lot of belief.
I can grapple with Nietzsche and Kant, go to bed with Kafka’s diary, read Indian history in the daytime, write about medical policy in India and study two courses in subjects as far apart as hospital management and medical law simultaneously.
But faith, that legendary entity is lost to me. I catch glimpses of it in some writings. I can see it in the works of CS lewis, his stories, his essays and lectures. To me it is a dream-skill that I have always wanted to own. Peace tranquility and assurance of the most difficult questions, questions I can only bypass or find inelegant and ugly answers for.
From where stand I can barely understand how a man like Lewis, could have such faith. Perhaps a lifetime of training in sciences has stripped away my ability to feel the presence of the unsee-able.
That pristine mind was one of the best ever to have wielded a pen. His lucidity and simplicity have opened so many eyes, stimulated so many minds. But he knew something that is denied to many followers of his, like me; faith.
Times have been fast paced and for most parts exciting. I have a feeling that this blogs going to be increasingly a photo blog, and so, let the pictures talk.
Met up with Sthuthi, one of my best friends, after almost a year. We spent a great long weekend catching up and reminiscing good old times, as old people do.
Met Bathsheba, best friend/cutest batch-mate/eternal crush, and introduced her to 2 of the most important women in my life.
Met Arpitha’s dad (father- in- law to-be)
Mom and dad visited
The hospital’s new block was dedicated. I MC’d and smiled officially.
Had a day in Goa all to myself. I visited old goa, made friends with an old beggar lady near st. Fransis’ church and took wedding pics of a bridal procession. more pics at my flickr photo-stream.
This is a letter i wrote to a friend after my final year MBBS exams, I had just failed the exam. dated late 2006
Right after I finished my theory exams I made plans for what to do with the extra six months I was sure to get. Surgery was bad, pediatrics was impossible and I knew there was no way someone could read my paper and give me 50%. Then I forgot about the plans temporarily because I had practicals. They went astonishingly well. I know full well I did not know enough even on the day of the exam, particularly in orthopedics. But I passed. pediatrics , the scary one, went without much trouble. I passed that too. So I celebrated, since they were over, and buried the worry of the results. Just looking forward to the well deserved break, I took off.
I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Became chubby, went to Gwalior, blogged and what not. All his time the results were the last thought on my mind. Then time for the break was over, and I was to go back.
That was a terrible thought.
They wanted us to join internship even before the results were out.!!! What if I failed? I wont, they told me, I told myself. So we went through orientation with grumbling, expressed our opinion, got lucky. Then we waited and waited.
Somewhere along the line I began to hope.
It might have been during my holidays because I was drunk on pleasure, or it might have been the in Vellore, among the cold and impersonal concrete monuments and warm and special friends.
Hope that somehow the corrector will overlook my Himalayan blunders and black hole sized holes in the fabric of my answers. Hope that I will graduate with my friends. Hope that things will be alright.
That is what causes most hurt, hope.
And love.
Faith I have little, so that did not dig in.
Wonder why of the pantheon of virtues and godly characters mentioned in the scriptures Paul mentioned only faith hope and love?
They are what has given mankind its happiest moments. They are that which empowered social change, brought about justice and kept peace. Harmony needs hope and love. Service needs love and hope.
They are also behind mankind’s bleakest hours and greatest miseries. Misplaced love, reasonless hope, and blind faith. These have not just caused wars and crusades, but everyday kill the spirits of million of souls world wide.
Our greatest assets are also our greatest weakness and sometimes, enemies.
Ain’t man thoroughly messed up.
You have an assignment pending,it needs to be done in 7 days with an average of 20 pages of writing a day. Sounds easy, right? but then your study material is total crap, and you need at least 3 hours of reading up before you can write each days portion. You are tempted to just copy and paste the whole thing from wikipedia or other relevant site, after all that’s what the people who made your study material did. The tiny twinge of conscience that bothers you can easily be smothered by promising yourself that you will do the next set of modules properly.
Alas, you made a promise to yourself sometime ago, that whatever happens, THIS course you will do for he sake of learning and excellence and not just acquiring the letters after your name or forwarding your career prospects. so, what do you do?
If you care about excellence, then you will quick find out that it comes at a steep price. So you find yourself asking yourself repeatedly:
Do I?
I discovered The Pioneer a couple of months back via Kanchan Gupta’s twitter page. If the ugly lay out doesn’t put you off and you dig deeper, you would be pleasantly surprised to find that they are a good news source and a great Op-ed and food for thought site. So I was looking forward to an invigorating read when Kanchan Gupta announced that his boss, Mr. Chandan Mitra was going to write about his (low) opinion of twitter. Unfortunately the post, titled Tweeting is silly, read like a rant more than anything else.
His arguments against twitter can be summarized as:
Twitter is silly because;
While he give no evidence to back up his claims, underlying his assertions seem to be a belief that online social networks are somehow inferior to real world ones, and that these networks are a sign of degeneration of the society.
What he gets wrong:
I sincerely hope, that as a member of the main stream media he will give twitter more serious thought, or at least be informed in his derision.
Here are some further readings for those who wish to know that twitter can be used for and what brevity can do.
How to do good on twitter (Mashable)
10 most creative uses of twitter including quitting smoking
Use Twitter to become a better writer
How to make a plant talk using twitter
How a student twittered his way out of prison
I mailed myself these books from home. Most of these are used books, bought via BetterWorld Books which saves books from ending up in land fills. Some are flicked from dads library.
Life seems like a whole series of interruptions inter-spaced with attempts at regaining sanity. Or maybe that is so particularly for me because the last year or so I have been trying to undo the damage my fucking around in medical education did to me, but just as the plans are approved and I start going somewhere, something has to happen to derail me.
I am not sure if Asha and Immanuel (my sister and the latest addition to the family, her husband) will be very happy to hear that I think of the wedding as in interruption, but the latest (pleasant) break in my rhythm is now officially over.
I have finished maintenance tasks on the main site, this blog and others. Up ahead are
Oh, and six pack abs.
ciao
Anand P
After a record 48 hours of travel in 6 days, I am home for my sister’s wedding.
The house, as I expected, has been given a makeover, though by someone with no aesthetic sense, which could be either of my parents. I have caught a bug in my traveling and so have advised Asha, my sister, to stay away from me; last thing she needs is a red nose and cough just before her wedding. The house is not the only thing that’s getting a makeover, dad tells me sis has a strict beauty regimen for each day of the week, printed and posted above her table. Today was “scrub your face with walnut scrub and then put a multani mitti face- pack” day.
I am used to book-clutter in my house, everyone at home loves to read. We read all the time and anywhere, so typically I am greeted by magazines on the tea-table, books on the chairs around the dining table, books on the staircase along with dads writing paraphernalia and my room, of course has an overflowing almirah, books stacked on the floor, my bed, and my table.
This time though, the tea-table had just, gasp, news paper, the chairs were empty and dads writing papers were neatly arranged on one of the stairs. To make things worse, someone (mom) had managed to arrange all the books in my book almirah, close it, lock it and lose the keys!! What’s more, the remaining books were missing!!! I was told later that they had been filled into cartons and put away into the loft. Even dads office looked clean and orderly, the first time I have seen it like this in about ten years. Looks like mom finally had her way.
Fortunately I had enough books on me to make the room habitable, even if barely so, then I raided dads office and shifted the books he had ordered for me, into my room, so now the room looks normal with multiple open magazines on the bed, my PGDM textbooks and two or three other books on the table, sharing space with dad’s new laptop, and the floor is sufficiently untidy to call it mine. Whew.
Here is some of those unaesthetic changes I talked about; my mom wanted the railings to look like wood, so now they look like zebras in sepia.
In the last 60 hours, I have spent 30 hours traveling, mostly on buses. I have been to Belgaum, Bangalore, Chennai, and back here to Sankeshwar.
Attended a wedding, remembered a friend whohas passed on with stu, met most of my core group, met other classmates, indulged in my latest hobby, made friends with a game developer when he offered me a ride, took lots of photographs and now, am back in the hospital.
Will be heading to Bangalore tonight, then to kerala, for my sisters wedding
The newly bonded and families
There was a double rainbow over the hospital the day I left.Don’t read too much meaning into that.
The guy in front of me on the bus to Chennai was sketching, so I felt obliged to take a snap, later on turns out he is a game developer.
BTW, I have launched my main site, where my cerebral avatar will be writing stuff. its here.
ciao
Anand Philip
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