Longings of a heart

“The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and a wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of dart in the pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden-that is what the state is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc. are simply a waste of time.”- C.S.Lewis. The Cath lab at my teaching hospital is a state of art facility practicing cutting edge medicine. Through real time X rays and microscopic catheters, holes in the heart are patched up, adamant, unrelenting skipped beats are brought back to rhythm and obstinately narrow blood vessels are dilated to infuse current of life. For an anaesthesia registrar, it is an out of ordinary posting. With a slightly delayed start of the day and an occasional coffee break in the sun, it offers respite from t...

“An anesthetist has hours of leisure, minutes of horror and seconds of terror”. - Unknown “A professional is one, who does the thing he knows best, on the day when he does not have the mood to do so.” The operating facility in the centenary building is nestled in the second floor. Set up exclusively for women and children, this place can be an anesthetists’ nightmare. Unlike its elder cousin, the main operating complex, that resembles the British TV show, the crystal maze, it is well built and technically advanced. Only that her virtues are compensated by its appalling emergencies. Its walls of glinted marble have seen it all and the medical personnel within it have done it all. With Women rushed in with babies stuck in their pelvises and naughty kids aspirating a peanut or two, the moments for the duty-on- call are no less than a Hollywood suspense thriller. It was one of those days when I was on call, during those hours of leisure that the obstetrician rolled in a g...