Longings of a heart

WHY CHRISTMAS? I write these lines in genuine confusion. And I write these lines from a milieu that has already submerged itself in the avalanche of celebration. The pagan festival that marked the birth of Constantine twenty centuries ago has totally forgotten him and remembers the radical rabbi of Galilee who lived for 33 years and was later crucified for being unpleasant to the Jewish teachers of those times. They called Him Jesus of Nazareth and the people who follow Him were called Christians in Antioch not too late after His death. The story did not end there. The real story started there. Disciples and women who formed His close company soon found that His grave was empty and for forty days He was found talking and moving in the midst of them before He ascended to Heaven. These followers were native fishermen.  They had left everything to follow Jesus who in their opinion had the Words of Life. These men went around the world, (India included) and carried the news about ...

WORLDS APART I am sitting in the centrally air-conditioned computer lab of the Dodd library in CMC Vellore. I type these lines on an Intel Atom processor connected through a high speed Wi-Fi. This block is situated is a ten storied building connected through elevators and pneumatic chute systems. I start the day with a good morning SMS and a refreshing shower thanks to the 24 hours water supply and uninterrupted power that illuminates the long corridors of the place we live. Then I enter the mess for breakfast that serves extensive menus all three times and indulge in some gastronomic delights. I approach the library and drown myself in the ocean of books to face the PG entrance taking breaks with hot Chocolates served by automated machines and surfing mobile internet.   A life marked with hi-tech gadgets, unbroken comforts that can pamper you in a second and spoil you in the next. Two months ago I was in a totally different world, may be like a H.G.Wells who travelled ba...

LIGHTS AND SHADOWS  He opened his eyes, looked at me and smiled. 8 year old Bhagaban was lying in the second bed of the paediatric ward of Ashakiran hospital. The scene was quite different few days before. Brought from a distant hamlet called Badigod, he was the second son of a family who were finding it hard to make both ends meet. Badigod had just begun to taste the fruits of development. Mobile networks had intruded the air space; roads connected them to social mainstream. Bikes, cable televisions, urban colours through migration had all affected this remote part in tribal Orissa. But this family was not fortunate enough to enjoy this progress. As if poverty was not an ailment enough, Guru Mattam the head of the family had passed away due to an undiagnosed illness. The mother took up the baton of leadership and worked as a daily labour to fetch some food for her young ones. Soon another tragedy struck. The elder son Bhagaban had begun to develop swelling of the body. ...

WOUNDS OF HOPE The wind was harsh as a surgeon’s knife cornering mankind to the embrace of warmth and wool.   Laxman was consoling the winter shivers by sleeping beside the fiery campfire in the tiny hamlet of tribal Orissa. Suddenly, he threw a convulsion and fell into the fire.  The rebellious brain, by dead habit, did not attend to the thermal injury his body was suffering, till the somnolent villagers could salvage this mentally retarded child. His right arm got totally burnt and the elbow joint was exposed. Maggots made their cottages in the putrefied flesh. The ignorant parents brought this child of utter neglect to the hospital 20 days after the mishap. The first look at the wound, as the attending doctor triggered many feelings in me. Hope was not one of them. I had to explain the parents that the child would need intense ulcer care- the inclement insects had to be flushed out, the dead tissue had to be excised, the wound needed to be cleaned, before a sk...

A YEAR- A STORY  Should I make this reflection public? I doubt how a personal and intimate musing as this could be of any social benefit! But then I feel that the story needs to be told, because it involves struggles that are too common for ordinary mortals and if we could sit and discuss them, let alone find solutions, then the purpose of this writing is achieved. That’s why I pen these words hoping to find friends who share my temptations and people who can guide me forward. The year that went by had many facets like squares of a dice. Some fell on right numbers. Some tumbled away into waywardness. This is my take on the year that glided past in my life. The year started on a good note. I went to the lakeside and took some resolutions. Those were the initial days of my work in the hospital and I could learn many new things. I was given the responsibility of the ward and the lives of the patients in it. I did the first C-section, performed the maiden lumbar puncture, gave ...

DILEMMAS AND DIRECTIONS October brought with it, the quick transition in weather as the chill blanket of fog, pushed the monsoon winds to oblivion. Likewise, the in-patient department of Ashakiran hospital was putting up its contrasting facets like an artist flouting various costumes. At a moment it was a sanitised version of hell; in the next it became the sentinel of hope. At an instance it offered solace; it broke the hearts of men in the next. In those moments of rapid incarnations, the ward offered valuable lessons as I sit down and ponder over a Sunday that took me through a full circle of dejection and contentment. The phone rang persistently voicing the urgency of the call that Saturday night. The nurse on the other side spoke in her typical dialect, “Saar , naya patient asla!!” (Sir, a new patient has come). Clearing my eyes of the scales of somnolence, I looked at the watch. It was 2:00 am. Facing a cold that was sending a shiver down my spine, I set out of my room...

FAITH, DOUBT AND MEDICINE “…Let him ask in faith with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave in the sea driven and tossed by the wind.” - The Bible. Life is a drama with scenes engendering varying emotions. Hospital is a place where we can best see this phenomenon. Life and death; hope and discouragement; victory and defeat; faith and doubt appear as two facets of a coin as we walk through the wards. More than the white coats, the stink of phenol, the needles and injections, these feelings emanating from human hearts have touched me in my sojourn as a junior doctor. And the question, why people do not comply with our instructions, in the recent staff meeting triggered this prose. In a place like tribal Orissa, where awareness levels are abysmally low, a perfunctory look at the hospital reveals a lack of trust- the pervading feeling that the hospital authorities are bent on causing harm to the patient. Noncompliance to treatment, thinking that doctors want to squeeze ...