turning a new leaf

Along came another exam result.. and i got a ticket to move up to post graduation.. after much ado, i have chosen Anesthesia.. why?

the morale is questionable.. money is good.. working atmosphere is also quite fine.. the risky nature of this field makes it a bit less favoured in the high rank circles..

yet, i chose this clinical speciality with much eagerness.. hopeful of a new bright future..

getting thru yet another exam has made me feel so relaxed that i have begun to understand my hidden dragons are getting unleashed slowly.. a lot of pent up hatred and lost hopes are smouldering in my heart.. if i let go of the strings this fierce rage would consume everything i once loved and cared for..

betrayal of trust is such a trigger for me.. it unplugs my bottled up anger and ignites the ammunition within..

i have begun to fear this wild beast within me.. and i increasingly feel the need to tie up all the loose ends..

so people .. beware.. coz i am dangerous.. you could get hurt..

adios

The Break (Up)

2013 was eventful..

so wat?

well its 2015 now so almost anybody feeling nostalgic at this moment could only be thinking of the beautiful 2014.. its ups and downs.. achievements and failures.. 

but 2013 was a year i thought i had have wanted to forget but it isnt.. 

it is a year of bold choices.. for me and my family.. we both took a decision and that turned out to be the best kept new year resolution ever..

coz its still running in 2015.. its good to know how strong oneself is for a change.. and to remember how bad it is to forget to count one's blessings by lamenting over the lost past.. 

as i penned here before 2 yrs ago, the memories of the past has got itself shaken nad shovelled through lanes i dare not revisit, and has been tampered with by too many sour events... but it has rearranged itself into a new memory and rewriting my understanding of people and places...

for example there was a baker model house down the lane where i lived, and it used to bring me immense sadness thinking of the happy memories of my childhood days when 7 cousins of "M" used to play batman and wat not in its cosy interiors.. leaving M was not an event at all in my life bcoz unfortunately i never knew i was leaving it when i did.. i never got to say good bye.. so a part of my soul got torn off and left trapped in that place...  for a long time it pained me to see the part of me sitting in the empty hall, staring at the empty computer room, the empty cupboards and the bare kitchen with the old blue Kelvinator and looking out thru the small balcony at the flat jungle behind.. 

and then, one day.. that part of my soul just died  a slow peaceful death ... hypoxic ischemic something something..

now when i pass by M, i know it has ceased to be a ghost from the past and it doesnt torture me anymore to watch it grow smaller and smaller in the rear view mirror.. sometimes i see a little girl in light blue shirt and navy blue skirt with two plaits of hair tied with blue ribbons wave back at me.. the smile on her face shall keep me company in my journey forward..

horcruxes : one down, many more to go ;)

adios

happy new year 2015

the pause

post hs
the wat nxt stage
nothing specific in mind as i walk towards pg entrance zone.
the blank
the pause
..

looking back , all i c is a veil.. looking ahead, is also a veiled future..

to forgo the past without knowing wat the future holds s wat life is all about.
or so they say..

the suspense is neither killing nor thrilling..
the wait is dragging..
the track is clear though ..
a path through the woods twisting around tall trees and disappearing into green oblivion..

the blank gets painted green..

that is it .. thats how far you get..
for now.

the bitter gourd

mmm.. bitter first, sweet eventually..

bitter days are not ones we wud want to remember.. strangely enough we actually dnt remember it.. i believe there are certain survival mechanisms involved in the higher centres of the cerebrum which enable us to move on.. to forget the past and the crucial moments which destroyed everything we knew to be true till that moment, only to reassemble into a new meaningful memory with quite a different relevance in the life ahead..

of course life is ahead.. all we have to do in it is to smile and pose for the imagery, while time runs the reel and our life plays along on the canvas of reality..

bitter and sweet together.. how can one thing be both at once...

only time can tell .. bcz how the palate or equivalent in our frontal sulci n gyri tht makes sense of the perceptions of everyday's us , decides to experience them is a mystery in itself..

the suspense adds spice to life, i guess..

adios..

the party is on!!

hey..

its been a while since i wrote something here.. i almost forgot i had a spot here where i used to drop in from time to time..

a year passed by and its been legendary..!

this jan 2013, i got my ticket to practice the art of healing .. or license to kill/cure.. :)
dont worry, i cured most and killed none so thats a fair scoreboard i guess.. now i have been practising out there 2 months and the experience is thrilling. the responsiblities have been huge but it all seems lite compared to our intense house surgeoncy  days.. yeah, intense not harsh..

so the ppl, the patients are regular country fellows with the ailments as routine and boring as possible.. i am kinda enjoying it, and am relaxed and content with the life now.. but it itself feels wrong or stupid.

its a fact that the moment we start earning a living in a field /area that seems comfortable, we tend to nest in it.. we start committing ourselves to various stuff like money deposits in banks, a cosy niche in the whereabouts of our workplace to live in and a couple of tv shows to hang on too.. and with a spar for cooking and hangouts, life just got itself defined...

and here we are stuck in an island of dreams , with a mirage of endless possibilities playing in front of our eyes.. the rest of our shitty life and the important issues that need to be addressed remain wrapped and hidden in the storeroom ....

rethinking , if it happens at all, occurs many years later, when we see our colleagues after the boons of youth have faded away.. suddenly it dawns upon us as to how we got stuck in our lives at the same old place we were years ago, while the wings to fly to newer heights were always there right infront of our eyes.. only we shut them off in our stupid storage room...

sad truth of life revealing itself today, so that u and me realise that we shud not shut ourselves up in the cosy comforts of our present life and forgo the great adventures we were always meant to have..

so i am gonna try hard and remember wat i used to dream, back in  the days of yore, and i am gonna fight for  the life i dreamt of living.. may be live and die fighting for it, but still atleast it means an existence with meaning..

adios

resentment

it is not uncommon that u tend to resent something that u suck at...

 it  sucks especially wen u suck at something that u always thought u wer gonna be good at...

it  was good to to live in that dream in which u would think that u wer bad at those other stuff bcoz u wer not in that particular place wer u wer passionate abt ur work...

it was an amazing feeling to anticipate that the magic would reveal itself wen u finally reach the place of work u always belonged to...

it would come as a great disappointment wen instead of magic, disaster hits and after so long , if u still find urself out of place , then the realisation descends upon u that this isn't u.. this isn't ur playground.. this isn't my thing...

i seem to have lost my trueself in this messy egoistic man-jungle...

and i resent it

psy psy psy

have u heard tht label??

he he... u guessed rite.. 2 weeks of psychiatry posting taught me the depth of those three letters..

i was posed with a puzzling thought,... how do we know if the psyche is normal .. who is psy and who isnt... difficult though it seems, i was determined to learn smthing or the othr as to how to make the difference... behind the protective bars of nurses' station i could see a ward of patients who were tabooed as mentally ill..
while on the other side i saw the medical personnel whom i mingled with more than i did with the so called mentally ill..

i willl tell u the truth i learned.. psychiatric patients are ppl who have accepted their illness and are taking treatment... for al we know, those who havent been found to have psychiatric illness are either not aware of it or not willing to get it treated,....;)

between the eccentricities of these patients ( and of some others  of the latter categories ;)), i saw and learned the twisted games that mind played on humans... and i got in touch with wats it like to go crazy... it is indeed an extreme experience ... and the faces will haunt me,.. as always..


funniest realisation of all, there was a quality of the average malayali that i was happy to see that ward of patients finally were rid off...

hypocrisy..

for all i saw there were men and women who more or less understood and accepted themselves for wat they truly were, and i'd say they were quite and example for the common ppl outside..

adios

the womb and some pregnant thoughts..

its curious how a zygote multiplies and invents itself into something as exquisite as a baby over the 9 months in mother's womb... no questions asked.. no different opinions raised.. just pure existence.. wanted or unwanted, baby grows... 1 month of my labour room posting i saw and lent a hand in extracting this beacon of life from within mother's womb and gift it to its family..

family differs.. some are so overjoyed at the new arrival on earth.. warm welcomes are such merry occasions... :) i feel so happy for the baby who seems wanted.. but my heart wrings wen a baby is received with no applause.. perhaps the father didnt want a girl, or the in-laws didnt... the worse tragedy is wen the mother herself seems not to want the baby...

well i am not gonna plunge into social and ethical issues of unmarried pregnancies or teenage pregnancies or the various excuses ppl find to get rid of the baby... these are indeed issues of gr8 importance and surely a topic discussed and scrutinized  too often. but wat do u or me actually do when we  r confronted with a matter such as this is yet to be seen... for all that matters is wat we chose at the right moment.. finding fault with these women who i have seen in the past 2 months of gyn posting days i hav long given up.. they are not angels.. they are mere humans.. and in life they made choices.. with or without conviction. but they did chose smthing.. and its not so uncommon that somebody's right is someone else's wrong.. so i say, lets not judge others, esp women and wat they do with pregnancies...

i wish i could rush into bickering abt the bossy pgs and superior clinicians, but i guess this time i shall keep quiet.. basically i am amused how these ppl have bad mouthed already 10 times as much i had have wanted to abt them... it made me think.. the curse of being a woman doesnt end with pregnancy .. she is driven by passion, she gets too emotional too quickly, and she can be very unreasonable almost every time she quarrels.. and she loves to gossip, loves to tell the world how she is the victim and how everyone else victimised her...
i am no different.. for the past 6 months of my hs, i have done nothing but whine abt my pitiful self. i have done nothing to boldly question the conventions and give it my best shot.. perhaps the coming days would have pleasant surprises for me ..and i am learning now that afterall hs or pg or snior or patient or sister or lift man or attender.. everyone is a human being, a creation of god, and capable of doing good deeds.. and we dont do bad things coz we are evil.. we step out of the divine light once in a while, coz we r human.. and we step back right in, again coz its human to try and be better...

God works in mysterious ways.. :)

adios..

grief

paediatrics slapped me on the face, and threw a bucketful of ice cold water over me... quite a rude awakening...

faces i saw there will haunt me for ever.. the children in paediatric icu and neonatal icu.. the children in wards.. recovering children, dying children, children with no hope left, children who cant literally afford to hope for best...
i seek the expression of the elder faculty when a child dies, i see helplessness in their eyes, and i wonder...  will all the knowledge in the world help me return this child to his/her parents intact??

i salute the nurses and the staff of medical college for the critical keralite is too egoistic to acknowledge the praiseworthy job these ppl do... their dedication and sincerity in patient care is indeed a great example to the world...

i am searching for words to express wat i feel inside,.. but i cant... the grief that fills my heart is for the children who died during the past weeks while i was at paeds duty... meena, praseeda, antony, adithyan, mahi, manju... my tears are for you... my heart fills with sorrow for you... what your families have been put thru is unimaginable... i partake in the grief of your familes, and cherish my little memories of you...

i mourn the pain and sorrow... for once in many years, i know not how to feel angry.. i am not able to point and blame... i see no point in rage... all i feel is numb and shrivelled... all i can share is grief..

adios

back with a bang!!??

ya ya.. yada yada... life in a mad house is,..well.. loony..

back to college for the rest of HS, i was disappointed abt the couple of weeks of extension i won for the long leave... one day extra in this place is loathsome.. hmm, that is the price i have to pay for the sweet homeliness.. accepted!

but i had no idea wat was in stock for me thr... i was genuinely surprised at the unexpected goodliness i met with at my new destination.. sure enough,ENT dept is reknowned for its hospitality and warmth towards HS, this was a paradise in hell! its one thing to tag along a bunch of senior professionals and have no idea wat is happening at the front of the crowd, and something else to belong to a group of colleagues.. it wasnt abt seniors making u do the shitty odd jobs, but it for once felt we were taken into consideration as other human beings like themselves.. it felt strange, since it wasnt the kind of  treatment HS usually get from most depts... for some depts we are like nonexistant, till the day our postings end.. some of them take 1-2 weeks to realise that "those little kid docs are gone?? who is gonna do all the ground work now??"

 perhaps its a phenomenon that once ppl get ahead in life they  easily forget the hardships they have put behind.. how many of us take some time out of our precious 24*7 to think of the little parts of our life when we are indebted to the bus/auto/train employees, the waiters at restaurants, the sweepers in corridors, the waste removal personnel carrying our huge waste turnover, the supermarket employees, veg vendors, policemen and security personnel... the list is unending, and i too ran out of ppl i remember to acknowledge... we look down at other individuals, who by profession or competence , are inferior to us but perhaps a million times better person than ourselves, and we are expecting a courtesy that we have never shown ? its high time someone tried to break the chain...

as always, i dare not be the one.. i have been the one too long, he he... only i got to be the one who ppl ridiculed..!! anyways, quoting the legendary MJ, i wanna change the person i see in the mirror everyday.. but there is too much of expectations in the form of some appreciation or glory in return... and as we know, expecting something return is where all virtue ends and keeping scores begin... back to square one, eh? k.. i know i know i got carried away by philosophies i barely follow, but its good once in a while to acknowledge onself is not so perfect as one always love to believe....

so the pleasant days at ENT was indeed concluded with a bang ,at a BBQ, and the joy of togetherness was awesome... i loved the way we HS and PGs alike forgot our age/gender/dispositions and attacked foodies like starving kindergarteners... i will cherish the humanness of it all, always...
leaving ENT, and moving on to ophthal reminded me of how some kids i used to study with till 10th left afterwards to join entrance coaching at PC's or young indian soldiers who lost their way and ended up in pak military camp.. such was the hostility, but i must mention here that atleast pak soldiers and PC would surely have acknowledged the presence with some ammunition( words told or untold).. the agitation and rage i was trying hard to fight off could be empathised by negro slaves back in 18th century.. "do thid, do that" commands uttered with such insensitivity and such manner of aloofness was quite irritating to the core.. for among all the aspects of human body these ppl are concerned with the very light of life in it, and they failed to see... or they failed to perceive wat they saw in us.. for once i was tortured within from ignorance of wat exactly went around there and wat ,indeed, was the prupose of my being there..

ah such harsh words, such indignation..!! mm perhaps i should calm down now, and move on to where i am now...where a pandora's box of unknown is waiting to explode... the very enchanting little world of paediatrics, fellas... its pure thrill to be part of that world,it made me forget entirely the rage of past few weeks.. it made me laugh,..and cry... it taught me some harsh lessons, with such gentleness... and again it wasnt any ppl.. for i hav not met one doctor in this profession yet who i'd want to take a lesson of good conduct from.. here, i witnessed Death... yes, death for real.. and death of an innocent 7 day old newborn...

and death, my dear readers, is such an agony... imagine a baby who is just ur handful, and its heart beating away slowly to death and u trying ur best to revive it by squeezing life and beat into its failing heart.. and ur attempts fail, and hopes of a family dying along with the purest thing on earth.. the Death of an innocent baby...

amusement, rage and sorrow... and i am going back to it all after a short break ...

to the unknown tragedies of future, and unexpected pleasantries as well... here i come.

adios

the roller coaster theory

you fear it before hand, you puke afterwards.. ya the same old phenomenon. but meanwhile, might as well enjoy the ride eh.. :)

house surgeoncy full swing on , ladies and gentlemen.. and the first week u should have seen me raving mad and restless, running abt in the acute care room in casualty@med col.. gosh! it was awesome thinking i was saving the lives of all those poor ppl coming in with RTA,heart attack, vomiting blood or whatever.. the bubble burst soon enough and 1 week into it, i was beginning to get the whiff of my ignorance and helplessness that loyally follows it..if i ever wondered why ACR postings were only 1 week, that one week taught me quite a lot.. but mostly, as i said, abt my ignorance and the coexistant helplessness.

well, moving on to IDU was a pleasant change of atmosphere, and back to square one i was.. running the ward 24 single handedly ( happily ignoring the other 2 HS colleagues and the sisters,attenders and of course the unit chief and associates ) felt like bliss, until.. well in an unexpected twist of events, a hepatitis patient went in for liver failure and a varicella encephalitis patient with kidney failure and uncontrolled BP was brought in with his life hanging on peritoneal dialysis... yup, my dear fellas, i did it... i saved them both.. dont worry, soon enough the bubble here burst too and i am not quite sure if it happened out of the resurfacing of my Ignorance and Helplessness syndrome, or just the stress and pressure of sleepless nights and days of titrating antihypertensives and watching over the 40 cycles of dialysis, end on.. again, it cost quite a bubble bursting for me to have realised that Infectious disease unit had in stock for me not only a 1 week posting ( that felt like a life time in that isolation ward for varicella) but also  xmas new year surprise gift... yup! all wrapped in shiny little dew drops, i am sitting out the first week of a brilliant career-deciding year 2012, at my home, with chicken pox... and , mind you, it was just BBQ alright :)


while the BBQ was still on the grill, i had an interesting week at the pulmonary medicine dept... believe it or not, my first heads-on with these guys were back in 2nd yr, and i was absolutely awestruck.. when i learned i was gonna be in this dept for my sole specialty posting, it wasnt much of a disappointment for me to know i missed out on radiodiagnosis, forensics, dermatology, and some other depts.. but , as the narrative is going downhill, gathering all its sarcasm to the fullest, you might have guessed already that here, no bubble is gonna even appear for me... of course some vesicles appeared towards the end, and i should admit i
was overjoyed to get the fever -( which was lost when i learned it was my 2nd chicken pox in less than 4 yrs!) - bcoz if there is anything i wasnt expecting there , it was "chill"..

ya, there was the December chills, and plenty of exacerbations of asthma and COPD was occurring statewide, but surely, it wasnt my fault .. anyway, i continued to feel so and i wondered why.. sure it was a guy place, and i was the sole female in that dept, but i still couldnt make out if the Chills had something to do with my gender. 3 days into the new place, i just lost all my xmas spirit.. at xmas my family received my ghost at home.. :) back to wrk from the break, i felt i was back in Azkaban.. and Dementors were so sweet.. it was just my luck, and the prejudices were deep rooted and quite mutual by then... the "lone wolf" thing was pretty much in fashion for me some time ago, but this time , it was killing the mood of the year.. the road from xmas to new year was just so rough, i was snapping at everyone.. patients, bystanders, family, loved ones... and 31st i just lost it, i broke away... if i could grab a drink or something on new year eve, i would have done it this time ...

and come New Year 2012... there i was ,down with 102c fever and a couple of shiny dew drops on my back.. :) what a bang! but in a sense, i was happy to have that excuse ..i grabbed it and was back home, to mother's love and a ton of chicken pox medicines ( believe me, you dont wanna have chicken pox 2nd time for all the world, once it starts) ... sure enough i hated Acivir tabs like i was eating lead bullets.. but it was sanity and homeliness.. and my hopes for the year to come is fully reloaded... 

hear me, all the mad music loving maniacal young doctors out there, i am so out of the nut house and back with a bang... ( while it lasts.. he he)

signing off..

fear

results are out and the freak-out wait is over.. so... what nxt??

the fear of the unknown is always replaced by the fear of...
next unknown..

we are afterall humans, eh? the funny thing that i came across last week is, amidst all the pressure of upcoming results, my mind was all clogged with worries abt whether i passed or not.. over a few hours, however, i was told i got thru... the moment of joy and gratitude passed soon enough and there I was , back on my worry chair, wondering if it was first class, or distinction...!!

pity that in these strange circumstances, i easily forgot the year behind all this, and the work and effort that actually went into this day's better outcome... and i knew, i was already turning into the greedy ambitious woman i always feared i'd become... i controlled my flying expectations of the percentage i had scored, but nevertheless curiosity was building, so i did indulge into finding out my marks...

yup, it wasn't bad.. for the efforts i put in, i actually thought 62% in mbbs isn't so bad... but i couldn't bring myself to congratulate me..

of course, after every gr8 venture we tend to hope for the best outcomes, and we even visualise ourselves at the heights of glory.. i did, he he... i even imagined how i would create a new record in mbbs history- of course it was indeed made this year, but not by me, but by a fellow classmate- and how i'd turn into some celebrity geek of all times... :)

i didnt realise this dream, just like many other fantastic figments of my imagination... i just moved on to the next level without so much as a hurrah... mm, i guess my day of glory (or god forbid, infamy) isn't here yet.. and one of my greatest gurus of all times taught me the lesson of job satisfaction, and even shared his dictionary with me, so that i understood better what he meant by it...

 some hectic house surgeoncy days ahead, guys.. i will keep u all posted, but till then...

adios...

anger

i am angry... ok if the question coming up is "are you in your teens or something??" i have to say "nope".. but yes sometimes i ask the same question to me when i see my angry self in the mirror.. what gives me a huge relief is that i have witnessed the anger of so many ppl and even been on the receiving end many a time that perhaps i have stopped feeling guilty about it , among many other things.. and so , yes, i am angry.. i am angry bcz of a reason... and anger puts in so many thoughts in my mind , tells to do mad things to vent off the surplus and even make me want to jump off a cliff... fortunately ( or unfortunately) no cliffs in my vicinity!

when , after many hours , i find myself at peace and i try to collect myself starting with remembering exactly how and why i got angry, the results are surprising. sometimes its just my hurt ego that got pissed off, sometimes its my  overstated expectations of ppl.. sometimes i am angry like a child coz i didnt get what i wanted, and at others i was angry bcoz i disappointed myself... now i am eventually happy that i had this emotion to lift the heavy load of daily frustrations off my heart, and every burst of anger leaves me so emotionally incapacitated that i bearly react to or remember subsequent bad stuff.. sure i am selfishly happy i can still feel angry when i want to. it keeps me connected to reality.. reminds me i am capable of enjoying  human moments...

but i am sure anyone would agree that the worst kind of anger is that implosive rage that one feels out of place , far remote from the point of ignition and so gradual yet intense in onset  that at the maximum of fury , i am absolutely ignorant abt the reason for my anger, even though i know and believe that it was something quite important.. you cant win a fight in such a state.. you are unaware of the hows and whys of how to prove your point and convince the person who seeks a clarification regarding the subject matter about your emotion... in fact such a rage and any arguments occurring adjacent to it may put healthy human relationships to peril by mere choice of words exchanged or even by its intensity itself, which is exponential and quite out of proportion to the cause itself... as i said before, hours later, when you come back to ur good senses you would be wondering why this other guy you were talking to all morning barely meets you in the eye after what happened...


hmm... anger is a strong emotion, and in its worst avatar, it can burn down everything we have ever tried to build patiently with love... of course a lecture on how to conquer anger with love is not what i intend to do here, coz then you would leave this page this instant! but i want to tell you how much i am indebted to this emotion for it defines a huge part of what i am.. and sure enough i am playing with fire here, and my rage has already proved its destructive instincts.. look down my past and you can see the burnt down ruins of many a good relationships :) and yes, anger is what i am best at and it defends the meek little girl i am within... it protects me from getting hurt and scorches anyone who dare to hurt.. its useful, yes , and puts me right at the top of the Stubborn list.. and perhaps , inspite of all this bullshit abt how i am the angry person, i do wish love conquered over it...  

death

am i scared? no. honestly what i actually feel is awe... death is that single event that nails us down to earth and tells us "hey wake up! dream's over.." death of close ones are painful.. when your eyes water , your heart is wrung and tears ebb and flow.. you lose your parent, sibling, friend, relative.. and you mourn the departure.. the event consumes you the way you were till yesterday, and like a phoenix birdie, a new you is born from the ashes of woe..

now death knocks at not only our doors, but also at our neighbours', colleagues', and at the door of any other 3rd person whom we seldom care about in our busy little world.. be it natural death from ailments, or death from an accident, or, worse, a kind of death we wish never happen again, on or off the newspapers, death sure is a shaky business.. how do we respond to the loss someone else is suffering from...?

now working at a hospital makes this thought pretty unpleasant, esp for a beginner like myself.. witnessing a death, witnessing the loss of a perfect stranger who,  however, entrusted his/her beloved's life upon me, in a certain manner, is unpleasant.. i dont know how i would want to react to it.. but it had to come , for death always does, without warning... and not 1, but 2 souls where taken, wish as i might that the world didnt lose 2 most amicable old ladies... my forerunners would like to tell me "hey kiddo, life is like that.. its not always fair.. deaths happen all the time.. try to live with it..!"

when another soul is lost to the oblivion, no matter whose it was, i think it matters and it should matter... for young or old, everyone "lives" at the mercy of someone else.. and someone dies not bcz he/she ran out of mercy... perhaps death knows no mercy.. perhaps death is mercy itself.. depends on when,how, and upon whom death descends...

ah! death... such an intriguing mystery...!!

.and us mortals - yes, doctors included - watch  in awe - the interplay of life and death.....

മൗനം...

പലപ്പോഴും അഴലിന്റെ മൗനം..

 വേദനിപ്പിക്കുന്ന നൊമ്പരങ്ങള്‍ക്ക് മറയായി ഞാന്‍ ചൂടുന്ന മുഖം മൂടി... ചിലപ്പോള്‍ കണ്ണീര്‍ത്തുള്ളികള്‍ എന്നെപ്പറ്റി സത്യങ്ങള്‍ വിളിച്ചു പറയുമോ എന്ന്‍ കരുതി ഞാനും മൗനം അവലംബിക്കാറുണ്ട്..  ഒരക്ഷരം ഉരിയാടാതെ എന്റെ ചിന്തകളെ ഞാന്‍ എന്നില്‍ തന്നെ ഒളിച്ചു വയ്ക്കും..

ഒടുവില്‍ അടക്കിപ്പിടിക്കാന്‍ ഞാന്‍ പാടുപെട്ട എന്റെ കണ്ണീരെല്ലാം വറ്റുമ്പൊള്‍ ഒരു ചെറുപുഞ്ചിരിയോടെ എന്റെ മൗനം വാചാലമാകും.. പറയാതെ പോയ നല്ലതും നല്ലതല്ലാത്തതുമായ എന്റെ വിചാരങ്ങളെ മനസ്സ് വീണ്ടും മറവിക്ക് സമ്മാനിക്കും..

ദു:ഖം മറയ്ക്കാന്‍ മൗനം... മൗനനൊമ്പരങ്ങള്‍ മറയ്ക്കാന്‍ മറവി...

ഇവര്‍ എനിക്ക് എന്നും പ്രിയപ്പെട്ട കൂട്ടുകാര്‍...

ഓര്‍മ്മകള്‍...

ഒരുപാട് ചിരിപ്പിക്കുകയും ചിന്തിപ്പിക്കുകയും കരയിക്കുകയും നൊമ്പരപ്പെടുത്തുകയും ഒക്കെ ചെയ്യുന്ന മനസ്സിന്റെ കണക്കുപുസ്തകത്തിലെ ഏടുകള്‍... ഒരുപക്ഷെ എന്റെ ഏറ്റവും വല്യ ഭയങ്ങളില്‍ ഒന്ന്‍ ഈ ഓര്‍മ്മകളെ എന്നെങ്കിലും എനിക്കു നഷ്ടമാകുമോ എന്നാണ്... വല്യ നിരാശകളേക്കാള്‍ എനിക്ക് വിഷമം തോന്നാറുള്ളത് കൊച്ചു കൊച്ചു നഷ്ടങ്ങളെപ്പറ്റിയാണ്. ചില ഓര്‍മ്മകള്‍ എത്രതന്നെ നൈമഷികമാണെങ്കിലും അവയെ ജീവിതത്തിന്റെ കുത്തൊഴുക്കില്‍ നഷ്ടമാകുന്നതില്‍ പരം ഒരു വേദന ഉണ്ടോ....

എന്റെ കുട്ടികാലം, സ്കൂള്‍ ജീവിതം, നാട്ടിലെ അവധിക്കാല കുസൃതികള്‍, കൂട്ടുകാരുമായുള്ള രസകരമായ സംഭവങ്ങള്‍.. അങ്ങനെ എന്തെല്ലാം ഓര്‍മ്മകളാണെന്നോ ഞാന്‍ മറവിക്ക് സമ്മാനിച്ചത്..അതെ .. ഞാന്‍ പൊലും അറിയാതെ എനിക്ക് നഷ്ടമായ ഈ ഓര്‍മ്മകള്‍ ഞാന്‍ തിരിച്ചു നേടാന്‍ ആഗ്രഹിക്കുന്നു.. ഹൃദയത്തെ നോവിപ്പിക്കുന്ന കണ്ണീരിന്റെ നനവുള്ള ചില ഓര്‍മ്മകളെ ഞാന്‍ മനപ്പൂര്‍വം യാത്രാമൊഴി ചൊല്ലി സ്നേഹത്തിന്റെ സമ്മാനപ്പൊതിയില്‍ പൊതിഞ്ഞ് മറവിക്ക് നല്‍കിയതായിരുന്നു...

the pain of loss, even the loss of a dear memory, is unbearable...

repurcussions...

over night, one gets to know that one's wildest imaginations have lead one astray... one day ago, i was filled with angry emotions of a kind of fierce protectiveness that expanded across the world to include all poor orphaned victimised girls.. my angry young heart roared at the perverts whose "condition" put innocent children's sanity in peril... and come sunset, and sunrise, and i hear a different story..
the story of a stubborn little girl who was pampered and led to such a level of lack of honor and discipline tht she made quite a number of ppl at the vicinity to misinterpret the whole scenario.. perhaps a  well meaning uncle decided to teach this impertinent little girl a good lesson abt proper behaviour and got cast in a nasty limelite.. to whomsoever tht cares to take a look at the situation, at a glance it appears tht the girl is undoubtedly the victimof worst imaginable tortures from her surrogate family.. but perhaps the alternative theory is the truth, would any common third person try to seek the truth???
the truth .. ahh its still a mystery.. perhaps it will remain forever in the grave of silence ..

lamentations..

the girl lay in the bed and her gaze fixed outside the window.. the nurse kept pumping stuff in and out of a nasogastric tube.. but she is totally unaware that such maneuvres are going on .. an old man who claimed to be her grandpa was mumbling something like "beatings " and "hits on the stomach" and "the girl's uncle did this in a burst of fury when she asked permission to go to the youth festival" .. the senior doctor examined her.. "paracetamol" said the child... " oh, so that is wat u took?" the doctor enquired. "yes".. " how many?" "...."

back at the doctor's room medics are discussing abt wat mite most probably hav happened.. speculations.. wild speculations.."parents working abroad?" "yes! yes! and she is staying with that uncle and family..." " do you think he...???"  " of course its happening evrywhr..!" " why on earth would parents wanna leav their girl child behind and go abroad..!?!?" 

"why not? of course parents have to make money to some day marry their daughter off... where will the money come from otherwise..?" " but surely a 12 yr old girl needs her mother by her side doing those growing yrs..."   " who cares... thank god patient survived and was conscious to say the name of the drug she took as overdose.."  " ya, we shud be proud.. we saved her life!"

victimised, helpless, alone... somebody's daughter always lies at some random casualty bed... apart from treating the case and prescribing the antidote, isn't there something missing that a doctor like me should have provided her with..?

THE QUESTION

the question is.. why?
i am replaying those crucial times in my life when i actually convinced myself that perhaps this is what i had love to do for the rest of my life.. i am trying to find out where exactly did that glitch happen which thrust me into this one-heck-of-a-profession.. !!!
i am not complaining.. coz somewhere down the road i see those pretty framed photos of well doing doc girl doing a gr8 job, making it big at the industry.. but the path of getting there looks damn fuzzy.. now, who could tell me why??
perhaps its the gross embarrasment of finding myself to be 'not' that cool gal who is gonna be 'legendary' in medical mad house, that hit me hard on the face.. but i am not gonna give up.. oh no.. not me. coz i am no quitter and every time i was beaten up by the cruel reality, i hav bravely- yelled out aand kept out of trouble till the coast was clear, and then- stepped upto my stands and faced life courageously..
so all i want to ask them is... why not...??

:)

the leap..

october 17th is the day when i finally took a courageous step.. towards the practitioner of tomorrow.. i must confess i was the stupid girl alright, all pale and anxious like a child going to school for the first time.. more or less holding amma's hand i stepped in at the hallway of a college such as none others.. the college of real life and action.. a holy temple of service and love where i am to spend a while everyday under the guidance of a young yet accomplished forerunner and inturn, under the kind and tender blessings of a still higher authority..

 i never dreamt this day would ever come and that i would have had the courage to actually take a step towards doing something in my power to enable myself to stand on my own feet.. i keep asking myself the same question.. what does it require to make myself more worthy of this unique opportunity, now that i have got myself this gig.. its funny though that after 5 yrs of beating abt the bush i finally saw the clearing and the river beyond which will take me forth to the promising future where i must build the journey itself.. and i am perplexed and quite terrified sometimes for i dont understand it.. i fear everything that i cant understand and i am sure to run away from anything that makes me feel trapped or confused.. but then i would have to run away from life itself right? indeed it seems all i do is to run away from any real commitment -  in my mind, in my studies, in relationships and in life at large...

oh i wonder when my heart would dare to dream the dream that i dare not... spreading its wings my heart flies here and there and i am reluctant to cage it in human accomplishments.. the leap itself that i boast of today, may masked by yet another cowardly hesitation.. any day...

 hmm.. what's to become of dreams!!