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