Longings of a heart

‘Life is a congenitally transmitted sexual disease with 100% mortality’. - Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s world. ‘So God created mankind in His own image’. - Genesis 1:27. The surgical intensive care unit was buzzing with activity on Monday morning. A platoon of doctors was on rounds making their assessment of the critically ill. After they had ceremoniously washed their hands to control hospital borne infections, they moved on to the next bed. The patients on the other side were the only living beings in the midst of the high technology medical equipment. There were tubes sticking out of all the orifices of human body. Machines delivered breaths to the sedated patients through an endotracheal tube, with monitoring of vital parameters displayed on digital screens. The nursing students with their teachers, the respiratory technicians and the critical care fellows- all made the place busy enough. Suddenly high priority alarms went off. I, being the peripheral registrar posted ...

“Your father knows that you need them!” Luke 12:30. Another month has gone by. I see my salary slip and wonder how we’ll pull through these 30 arduous days. How will our needs be met? In the same mood of dejection, I look at the calendar. MD entrance exam is only few months away. There is tons of material to be read and assimilated. Will I be able to get into ‘the dream of my life’ this year? What do the professors think of me? Am I good enough? I look into the mirror. I get sad about my frame. Why am I losing hair? My waistline is just bulging beyond redemption! Thoughts take me into a downward spiral of worry and anxiety.  My daughter next to me keeps playing with plastic toys that squeak on pressing their bellies. She squeezes them with all her might and the sound that follows exhilarates her. She does it again and again. Suddenly her expression changes from wonder to pathos and then to almost inconsolable sorrow. Her wail is no less pricking than a Shakespearean tr...

After a busy day in neuro-anaesthesia, with drooping eyes and gas filled lungs, I reached home. I began sipping a cup of tea when our daughter began to cry. My wife had gone next door for some help and daddy was officially on the duty of babysitting. Considering that she was hungry, I offered her milk from the feeding bottle. She pushed it away. I tried to entertain her with music, rattles and lullabies. None of them worked. Her arms were wide open which meant that she wanted to be carried. In few moments, the cry turned to wailing and then to shrieking. I did not want to carry her, more out of tiresomeness and less out of my paternal duty to correct my over pampered kid. She kept on howling as if she had just suffered an injustice in a cosmic scale. I did not budge. I stood right in front of her but did not touch her. Her grandparents and aunts love was only spoiling her. And my wife not being around gave congenial conditions to correct Amitha, our eight month old child. This last...

" I f you being evil, know how to give good gifts to you r children, then how much more does the Father in heaven!" Matt 7:11. I was carrying the pain bleep for the month of January. I would see patients suffering from post op pain and relieve it with bolus of opioids and anesthetics.  And at dusk I would go around monitoring their discomfort. Alice who was eight months pregnant would insist that she would accompany me. We enjoyed our romantic walks around the wards of Christian medical college. One day as we passed by nursery, the neonatal ICU, Alice said ‘, This place is scary! Very sick kids are kept here .” I nodded and looked around. Parents in anxiety were looking through the glass window to catch a glimpse of their children. ‘They would be feeling horrible no? ” my wife said. ‘I don’t know !’ I replied bothered more about finishing rounds.                     ...

‘I never went to religion to find comfort. I always knew that a bottle of Port could do that. If anyone wants to come to religion to find comfort, I would certainly not recommend Christianity.’-C.S.Lewis December always brings with itself an air of celebration. During my childhood, the last month of Roman calendar would bring new clothes, long leisure and cosy winter wear. The season of Christmas was always associated with gifts and fern trees decorated with cards and bells.   25 th December is a holiday with no school and good food. Though my mom would say that it was not about Biryani but Christ who was born for us, it hardly sustained my attention beyond the confines of the carols and cathedral. In my college, I began to understand what Christmas was really about. Every year I read through the pages that are called Gospels. And each time I read new and radical themes come forth. These thoughts, cause unrest and joy in equal proportion. This year on the Christmas...

The MRI room no 11 buzz with activity at 4:30 in the evening. I monitor a 2 year child with development disorder in the globular contraption that scans his brain. He is the 10 th child we drug to unconsciousness that day. Life becomes monotonous and dreary as a PG registrar. There is no time for Alice and our temperament begins to strain. So we decide to escape.  It is 4 in the morning on Saturday.  Ours is the only light illuminating the corridors in the annexe. We wake up in a jerk, pack the backpack and get down for an auto rickshaw. We get into a terrifying 3 wheeler that picks the rough spots on the road for us to tumble. We reach the bus stand for a bus to Chennai. As the vehicle starts, Alice falls asleep. I watch the majesty of NH 4 as my ears are plugged to Don Moen’s tunes. The bus races past the 120 kms in two hours. The green country side gradually gives way to the metropolitan bustle with universities, hospitals, real estate villas and restaurants filling...

“ Pride is not about having something. It is about having something more than the other person. If comparison is gone, pride is lost.” C.S. Lewis The cardio-physiology lab at Christian medical college is medical technology at its zenith. Mega machines and multiple monitors make its operators a humble lot. The centrally air-conditioned Cath lab with X-ray machines to scan from various angles, creates a semblance of robotic medicine. The series of radiations that these innovations emit scan through the heart and guide the interventional cardiologists into the right vessels. And I was there to sedate an agitated patient and thereby aid in a smooth procedure. Suddenly I overheard a conversation. I admit that eavesdropping is not the most virtuous of acts, but the topic of discussion captured my attention. “Just with a cardiology degree we must not be satisfied. We need to do at least three fellowships. A single one is not enough!” . A cardiologist is one who takes three year...