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Give and Take

There was a time when everything I owned was exclusively mine. I could not bear to share it with anyone. My kindergarten report card said I was very obedient and had good learning skills. But under the column for teacher’s remarks for improvement, I clearly remember the neatly scrawled words “needs to learn sharing with friends”. I laughed it off later on thinking how selfish I must have been in my childhood. But it was only in the recent years that I realized the true meaning of sharing. Spending my entire schooling years at home and being a day scholar in my undergraduate days, did not expose me much to the joy of sharing. I was never aloof though. I made friends, was a cheerful little brat who got into trivial squabbles like every other teenager. But parting with something that was once declared mine did not leave me with a happy feeling. There was always a sentiment of wanting to keep things with myself. What if they spoiled it? Let them get their own if they want! I once kep...

Resurrection !

494. Four hundred and ninety four. Days gone by since I last wrote something for this webpage. I'm wondering what I've actually been doing over the last 494 days. But things have changed. Some things I wish had remained the same. Some, I'm glad changed. Like someone once said, "Change is the only constant in this universe". The best way to deal with it, in my opinion is to accept it. Nothing will remain. Not even this! Wet clothes. Both, the ones worn and the ones hanging on the rope. Slimy, slippery pavements. Fungus growing everywhere. I sometimes felt if someone would'nt move their arm for a while, moulds would probably start flourishing. Dank, musty smell from locked cupboards. Clouds. The season i despised the most - the monsoon. It took me a year and a half in Chennai, the land of never ending pitiless summer to realise the significance of the monsoon. When it first arrived, it always brought great respite from the heat. But two days of relentless beari...

Casualty Chaos

Having finished four successive night duties in the casualty, I was eagerly waiting to get back to day duty from the following morning. Day duties were chaotic, most of the cases being ‘pseudo emergencies’, patients referred from peripheral centres for further management, wound dressings, abscess drainage and the like. Even though night duties were relatively free, spending the night in one’s own room, on one’s own bed is an extravagance – a luxury you underestimate till you spend a week in the government hospital, being on night duty. I found myself yawning at eleven pm that night. We were out of gossip material/books/movies/people to discuss. My male co-intern did not like being woken up once asleep. He jumped at the opportunity and said, “You girls look tired and sleepy. Sleep till 3.00 am. In case of any emergency after that, sister will wake you up.” The staff nurse nodded her head in agreement. I sleepily walked towards the duty doctor’s room with my female co-intern. The room w...

Running Amok !

Thought 1 : “ Will I ever be able to do it? Was I making a blunder? Would I be able to endure the five and a half yearlong agony? Wouldn’t I be totally out of place? What am I going to do after that?” Thought 2 : “Never underestimate yourself. Five and a half years is a long spell. Will probably never end. I would have figured something out by then.” Thought 2 overshadowed Thought 1 and I ended up in medical school. With those five and a half years behind me now, (well, almost) I was reflecting on some of the moments I had spent as an undergraduate, that I had never anticipated of while having thoughts 1 or 2. - Pushing everybody in sight, scampering down two flights of stairs from the lecture hall, every morning to reach the dissection hall before the others, to grab hold of a good spot to see the cadaver being cut up. - Washing the heart specimen under a tap (it was full of clots!) - Burrying the ‘strange organ’ ( I think it was the spleen) within the depths o...

22 Ways To Kill Time

WARNING : PRACTISING THIS LIFESTYLE MAYBE INJURIOUS TO HEALTH 22. Look busy. Nobody but you should know that you are actually wasting time. 21. Switch on the television and change channels as rapidly as you can. Its an art. You'll soon get used to it 20. Sleep. The ultimate and most rewarding way to spend time 19. Watch your favourite movie again 18. Visit your school community on orkut and send an 'add as a friend' request to the people you hardly knew back then 17. Comment on the worthless, good for nothing 'activities' people do on facebook 16. Visit the most expensive garment shop in the mall, try out all the clothes and come back without buying anything 15. Make a plan for tomorrow. It is always best to be well prepared 14. Doodle 13. Daydream 12. Write a song 11. Make paper planes 10. Plan a holiday 09. Execute the plan 08. Send a 'Whats up' sms to a friend 07. Gossip 06. Cook something 05. Clean the mess you created in the kitchen after cooking 04. Co...

The big joke

13th January, 2009 1.05 pm With Medicine paper-1 answered somewhat satisfactorily, I was now faced with the task of preparing for the ever dreaded Medicine paper-2 scheduled for the next day. “Tomorrow’s exam is going to be one big joke” retorted my friend on my way back home. I wanted to start preaching about optimism, but found myself nodding my head in agreement with her instead. She had a point. There was less than 20 hours left for the exam and a mammoth portion of the syllabus to read. It wasn’t going to be easy. 2.00 pm Ready to face the challenge, I opened the textbook to the page of contents. I quickly decided upon a plan. I would read the unimportant small topics first and dwell on the big essay question topics later on. Finishing the small topics first would give me a lot of confidence and let me concentrate on the more important ones. I estimated it would take me roughly 3 hours to do so. Setting myself this time limit, I proceeded with the short topics. 5.00pm I wasn’t ...

Filmy touch

You must have come across this quite a few times. A patient (often unconscious, comatose or spilling blood everywhere) is rushed into an operating theatre with hue and cry. The swinging doors swiftly bang shut in front of the anxious, hyperventilating patient’s relatives(usually a wailing mother/sister). The head nurse chases them away to a bench outside the OT. A doctor (apparently the physician cum surgeon) breezes through the corridor and into the OT, totally ignoring the wailing relatives. The red bulb over the OT door blazes on(if you are still wondering what this means- it means the surgery has begun!) A few minutes later, the nurse comes out.(don’t ask why). She walks in and out of the OT a million times, totally ignoring the wailing patient party, who desperately want to know what’s happening inside. On certain occasions, the doctor diagnoses a woman (usually unwed) to be pregnant by feeling her pulse or listening to her heart sounds. I wonder from where movie directors got th...