Dr Anil Khetarpal

20 Questions that are worth their salt.

2012-02-29T14:56:00.001-08:00

Do you press the elevator button many times in succession? Do you think it can help it move faster?
If you could have a chance to revisit a certain period of your life, what would it be?
Would you ever break the law to save someone dear to you?
What piece of advice would you want to give to a troubled teenager?
What came first - night or day?
Do you believe that Science and Religion are inseparable?
Why do you think night-terrors occur?
Who is the first person you want to see when you are most happy?
Do you long to know others secrets?
Do you possess complete control of your life?
Do you think your life has a story worth telling?
Have you been the kind of friend you want as friend?
Do you bother to keep track of your childhood pals? Does their exponential progress affect you adversely?
Would you be willing to give away 15 years of your life to turn extremely attractive or famous?
Do you discriminate people based on their living standards?
Would you be able to hold glances with your dear ones if some of your secrets are spilled?
Have you done something that you are proud of?
Have you ever felt attracted to a particular thought that doesn’t match with your overall personality and way of thinking?
Have you ever witnessed a death?
What would you think your age to be, if you are not aware of your real age?

10 things to stop doing to yourself.

2012-02-29T14:28:00.000-08:00

(1) Stop spending time with the people that are dishonest and bear double-standards. A leopard can’t change his spots; you better change your trajectory.

(2) Stop worrying way too much. Not just it would stud your face with premature wrinkles; it would also misbalance your body’s metabolism.

(3) Stop keeping yourself under self-imposed radar all the times. You have all the rights to fly freely.

(4) Stop judging everyone way too early, and too harshly. Be lenient. Allow generous benefits of doubt. People may behave bluntly as they are often too preoccupied with their problems.

(5) Stop living the alter-ego’s life. You suit best when you fit in the shoes of your own life; its OK to emulate someone you cherish, but then you have to draw the differentiating line somewhere in between.

(6) Stop harming yourself. Kick the butt. Don’t do drugs. Bravery induced by heavy drinking is a mirage. Exercise. Don’t overeat. Don’t overstress. Stay happy.

(7) Stop keeping grudges. Forgiveness can bless you with some of the most cherished relationships in the years to come. Everyone makes mistakes; its best to shoot the breeze and bury the hatchets.

(8) Stop being the Perfectionist Personified. Mistakes have their own charm; and everyone has a distinct learning curve. Sydney or the bush phenomenon is unpractical; things lie somewhere in between.

(9) Stop neglecting the beautiful moments. Stand beneath the lamp post in twilight and see the golden shoots of grass swaying insanely. Get flown in high tide as if you defy the gravity. Talk with the moon. Smell a fresh daisy flower.

(10) Stop expecting too much from others. Give the people their elbow rooms. Burdens of expectations have full potential of hijacking the pleasures from a relationship. Accept your folks in their own face values. Stop being a cynic critic.

Fear is the recipe to disaster.

2012-02-29T14:02:00.000-08:00

In the cantankerous ride of life, I have realized the importance of being fearless. A fretful person’s outlook and insight gets blanketed by cynicism; the colors slowly transform to the darker shades of grey, to no beneficial avail. Fear is a primordial reaction of our living beings; but you must learn to evolve as you grow. It offers you no help getting intimidated by a seemingly difficult situation as the pertinent choice would be to master out a plan that serves you right.

Being lily-livered would transform you into dead meat, sooner or later; realize this and don’t be afraid, the dog won’t bite you. Immerse deep into the origin of fear and look out for the collateral options. Fear is not a matter of necessity, for all of us have witnessed people for whom fear had been an alien emotion. The more you doubt your abilities, the more you are prone to succumbing fear. Acquire the larger meaning of life by sheer wisdom, and then visualize the situation from a tangential perspective.

Faint-hearted folks have never been able to realize their full potentials. Take the example from history books and you would find that most of the successful people took some or the other decisions in their lives that breached the dominion of fear. Fear stalks your vision. Fear curbs your rationality. Fear is addictive for the weak-kneed chaps as nothing else provides them a better recluse. So declare war to your innate fear and discover the warrior in you.

As Happy As Larry

2012-02-29T13:41:00.000-08:00

When I am happy, I go the whole hog. I smile a lot; I speak at a rate of knots. When I am happy, I want to share the joy with my hospital staff. I become happy when I see someone being discharged from my hospital in amazingly improved condition. I become happy when I learn a new tool of my trade. I become happy when I am able to finish all the day’s assignments on time. I become happy when someone cares to write a letter of good words to me. I become happy when I see my kids working hard to carve a niche. I become happy when I help someone who has lost all hopes.

Happiness is a startling feeling. I feel happy when I finish the last page of an engrossing book. I feel happy when I add a new word in my vocabulary. I feel happy when it’s the festival time. I am a light sleeper, but a heavy dreamer; I feel happy when I am able to recall a dream that had tranquil notes. I feel happy when I take a break from the frenzied life of Delhi to visit Krishna Temple in Vrindavan. I feel happy when I take out my surgical gloves after the day’s successful stint. I feel happy when one of staffs greets me with a super-smile. I feel happy when I finish writing a blog post. I feel happy when I wipe a tear.

The life’s expedition should be to remain nose-deep in the sea of happiness. Happiness is not a physical feeling; it’s womb lies in the layers of mind and soul. Let’s lower our thresholds of realizing the bliss of happiness and enjoy the raptures of life. What else the life is meant for if not for the cause of eternal jamboree?

7 benefits of becoming a doctor.

2012-02-29T13:09:00.001-08:00

You get heaps of professional satisfaction, every passing day. You manage to transform despondent faces to the ones that radiate sheen. You manage to help someone duke out that pessimism and roar back in life. A doctor may not get all the cakes and ale in life; but on the professional frontier, he is a winner on most of the days.

You are generally taken with mighty respect. Generally people consider doctors to be noble and selfless chaps. And generally, people are right when setting their opinions. Barring exceptions, the prevailing lot of doctors is sensible, compassionate and hard-working.

You get to meet a lot of new faces daily. Social insulation might never occur to a doctor, as the prevailing equation of demand-supply ratio is in favor of doctors. By meeting strangers every day and offering them a slice of life, as a doctor, one increases one’s chances of blending in life quite easily.

You understand the importance of being punctual and being regular. As doctors, we have to be there on time, every time. It might not prove to be a sabbath’s day journey in the initial days; however, as the time passes, you don’t need an alarm clock or a manual reminder. You are always on a programmed mode.

People look up to you as a role model. I am not saying that doctors are the only role models of the society; the list of provisional role models is packed like sardines - soldiers, scientists, farmers, honest officers, teachers to mention a few. Being a doctor attracts a plethora of attached emotions; you are looked upon as one of the more responsible citizens of the country. People come up to you to take advices. Kids want to emulate you when they grow up.

People want to befriend you. I must say that in India, there is still a large mental gap between a doctor and non-medico population. A lot of times I feel that my patients get elated when I ask them about their lives, their families and their own spaces. It’s a common perception that a doctor doesn’t make friends easily; though with the changing mind-sets, advent of sophisticated communication channels and evolution of social media machinery, the feeling is fading fast.

Your voice is being sought after. People want to know the reality behind printed medical news, which so often contradicts itself if all the versions are put together. People want to know your opinion about their genuine illnesses; people trust you verbatim. In most of the cases you don’t have to stress a point to make it feel relevant; the fact that you said it twice is enough for a patient to realize its importance.

10 gospels to make you stronger.

2012-02-28T23:46:00.000-08:00

You can’t change the past. It’s sad, but true. No one has got the authority to meddle with the demsne of past; you can learn some of the hardest lessons of life by actively exploring the past.

A tomorrow is not the certainty. Who know when the world ends? Skeptics fuel to the circulating theories that aim to affix a date for the apocalypse; no one knows the programming basics of this celestial interface. And who can be certain to see the light of the other day? Live in the glory of today, and reap the best out of it.

Death is the only reality. Even a doubting Thomas won’t question the credibility of this fact.

Failure is a part of life. Don’t take a failure rather too personally. Everyone fails; and those who try the most, fail the most. A failure is the stepping stone to the acme of success; no one gets overnight triumphs.

What lies in front of your eyes may not be the truth. The world is complex, and a lot of information lies in the perspective of the observer. Your sensory system may not appreciate the truths that your programmed system is not familiar with. You would only observe the facts, people, emotions and incidences that fall in the habitual territory of your limited mental sphere.

People are, and will be, multicolored. Nature comes with a precise set of opposites. For every ray of lustrous light, there lies a blob of engulfing darkness. So no matter how hard you try the other way around, you would come across hypocrites, liars, conspirers and lechers. You must know how to hitch horses together.

You can be your biggest source of happiness. We tend to oversee the possibilities that lie within us, and wander elsewhere in pursuit of happiness. From soda to hock, you would remain your biggest reservoir of energy, inspiration and happiness. Seek the true you, and feel the elation.

By doing the same thing every day, you are negating your chances of self-growth. You are blessed with a super-charged up sensory system, meticulous motor system and all-encompassing autonomic system. This means a sea of possibilities lie in your existence. It would be impertinent not trying new things; life is a cherry pie for an eager beaver.

Information is the nearest entity to knowledge. Information is not the true knowledge in every case; the real knowledge comes from experience. In a lot of the cases the information would provide a good degree of knowledge, but then you never know what lies beneath without hunting it yourself.

Your actions are reflected back at you. Be a Good Samaritan and enjoy the ride of life with an incandescent insight; be mean to others and you will be dead meat one day. Life keeps a record book of its children, and yes, life never holds a due.

You don't need a password to read a face.

2012-02-28T09:56:00.000-08:00

Have you ever tried to percolate inside the gravey face of a laborer? The sun-burnt skin, the wrinkled forehead, the stained teeth, the anxious eyes; all tell a story.

Have you noticed the twinkle in your eyes when you come across the face of a toddler with glowing skin, puffed-up cheeks and impish eyes?

Have you thought to dwell in to the psyche of a senior citizen with a face that reflects thoughtful attire, and a sage like glance?

What feelings do you come across when you see the face of a random stranger crossing the road? The face with sparse eyelids, flared up nasal alae and hollow cheekbones.

Do you forget the face of your childhood teachers? I remember my teachers’ faces to be loving, sagacious and full of authority. Did you ever think of their rides of lives at that particular period?

Did you ever tried to peep inside the foundation coated faces of those models that bear powerful rays of artificial lights every other day? Those florid and forced smiles, sculpted nasal bridge, lustrous skin and probing eyes.

With some experience at observing people, you can easily tell what all a person has gone through by giving a penetrating glance to a face. A pleasant life shows at the exterior, without any exceptions. Cosmetic means can hide to age-related changes to some extent, but when it comes to emotive sketching, the impressions over a face are permanent.

Take out some time to feel people’s psyche by looking at their faces. No face is ordinary; every face has a story worth telling. I am sure this experience would make your thought-process attain a different trajectory; a lovable one.

Dolce Vita.

2012-02-28T08:33:00.000-08:00

It concerns me a great deal when I come across someone who claims to have lost all hopes. In this crazy world of blind race to materialism and ephemeral gains, it means much if you manage to uphold your sanity. Most of us don’t take a lost battle nicely; we tend to take it a bit too personally. And the irony is that most of the times we don’t fight with an opponent; we fight with ourselves. So no matter who wins, you are destined to feel the pangs of defeat in such a stance. It’s high time when we must not glorify the life to be a battle; life is meant to grow, to learn and to enjoy your own existence.

Every other day we comes across various cases of adolescent depression, childhood obesity, refractory panic attacks, suicidal tendencies, road rages, overinflated self esteems and unexplained anxieties. It saddens me without limits.

What has happened to the concept of a dolce vita? Why do we torture our inner selves beyond their thresholds?

Why do you give yourself the screaming abdabs every now and then? Why don’t we decrease the unnecessary burdens that we are carrying just for the heck of it?

Why don’t we see life from a perspective that gives us a view to die for? Why do we fear failures? What is our definition of a failure? Does the definition of failure that you harbor needs to be retouched?

Why do you exhaust yourself with attacks aimed at yourself? It’s a thorn coated life, but that shouldn’t stop you from appreciating the juices inside.

Redefine the rules, yet again.

2012-02-26T04:41:00.000-08:00

You are given a set of DNA to carry your life around; but that doesn’t mean that your existential realities are pre-determined. You are bestowed with mammoth power to see beyond the wall and to think out-of-the-box. The flight of your every day thoughts makes you the person who you actually are. Rekindle hope in your belief; aim to look out for the unseen messages in your daily lives; don’t stop chasing your goals for you never know how close you were at the time of calling it quits.

Every time you experience a melee of thoughts, let the best one prevail. Make your choice a learned one, a conscious one, an unobtrusive one. Get your act together. Get your fingers burned. Give an arm and a leg for something that has a life-changing potential. Aim to clear out the fluff from your spiritual territory. Envision the outcomes. Get enmeshed in the aura of nothingness, and seek out knowing your priorities right. Be a legend of your own time, in your own well-deserved rights. Fail to get fatigued. Rise every time you are declared dead.

There are, and there would be, people who listen to their own calls. They are the path-breakers, the game-players. Be a live-wire. You are the artist; you are the canvas. Taste life, and give the potion to those that deserve a portion. An obstacle’s primary objective is to help you raise the bar; see it as a companion to your race. There are no finishing lines in the race of life. Lighten up with the expectation of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

The World of a Moment.

2012-02-26T03:52:00.001-08:00

Assemblage of emotions that are born out of egregious wombs.
Listlessness; often of the order to make you start feeling like a blotting paper.
Dulcet reminiscence of close-held memories while you stare at those framed family photos .
Aroma of freshly baked muffins.
The uproar of your happy Labrador.
Felicity over a trivial achievement; ironical it is - trivial the achievement, less evanescent it’s after-effects are.
Petrichor. This means smell of earth after it has rained.
Varicolored desires.
Sugary promises.
Flawed fortunes.
Pandora's box of burdened expectations.
A pregnant pause.
To beleaguer your satanic side.
To be able to touch, and feel.
Halcyon spirit. Declining to come out of the cocoon.
The tenacity of friable dreams.
The affection of morning mist with moon shine.
Diaphanous delusions.
Grumpy rides of a less blessed life that fail you all the times.
To sink in your own inner self, and get drowned helplessly.

20 things to make you more efficient at work

2012-02-23T23:43:00.003-08:00

Make a list of assignments that require your immediate attention. Be sure to ease out the fluff and make sure to prioritize even the contents of this list.
Read a lot of books that deal with your professional expertise. Reading self-development books would also be open the gates of your mind to help you attain a future-proof vision.
Organize your work-space efficiently. Organize your data, your table and your work schedule.
Invest in things that make you happy.
Aim to balance out long term gains with short term objectives.
Learn to make smashing presentations. Of course you can hire someone for this; but knowing the complexities of basic chores can bring about a bigger change. Steve Jobs used to work relentlessly over his presentations for days till he got the right message with the right color-tone, right visuals and right choice of words with right duration.
Keep an archive of all your important mails and transactions. Keep a track of all your passwords at a safer place.
Unsubscribe from all the 3^rd party emails that are of no use to you. Keep the appetite of your inbox sane for the want of those useful emails that evoke some professional and personal interest.
Learn dropbox. Or any other online file storage application. I learnt this, and found this really helpful.
Learn to bookmark sites. This way you would be able to keep a track of all the useful sites that you would want to visit every now and then.
Get registered to the conferences in your professional mileu, and make it a point to attend them. The learning phase of a professional should never stop. And the age that we are living in, it must keep on redefining itself with a discovery announcing its presence every other day.
Make it a point to keep in touch with your colleagues, regularly. Pertinent advises just emanate naturally amidst vapors of freshly brewed coffee.
Aim to learn a new thing every 3-4 months. It would not just feathers to your versatility; it would also help you in your professional frontier.
Make it a point to read all human-written emails yourself, and to respond them without fail.
When you get bored of your professional schedules of the day, browse the internet productively. Surf informative blogs, take a look at most watched photos on flickr, learn some new internet technologies that don’t require you to be an IT geek, get a sneak peek into twitter trends, observe the latest advancements in your professional world, watch educational videos on youtube, find out what’s happening in the world by hitting a credible news site etc.
Eliminate distractions while you work.
Give your undeterred attention to one task at a time, and see the remarkable change in results.
Set out for the most vital tasks at the time when your mind is the freshest.
Reward yourself with small breaks while at work. Utilize this time to relax yourself, mentally and physically.
Don’t make others in a position where they had to struggle to read your mind. Communicate.

Do you have a substitute for an ironclad attitude?

2012-02-23T22:54:00.001-08:00

Pursue your ambitions doggedly. An ironclad mindset can sail through the wavy patches with commanding grit. There exists a fine line between being stubborn and being resolute; the differential feature is the inclusion of intellect in the latter category. Rather than struggling mindlessly for your cause with faded insight; aim to define your objectives with staunch precision, and then go for the jugular.

Hell-bent attitude would make you withstand toughest blows of the destiny without really calling it a day. Be obstinate. Thwart off melancholy. Love the tit-a-bit of the sojourn that leads you to your choice. It all lies in the mind; closer to being that of the switch on, switch off mechanism. You assume a task to be impossible and your mind sends signals about it to the subconscious, which is not able to decide on its own and relies on the decision of the mind to process it. Once subconscious is presented with any fact, it does its best to make that happen. You must have noticed that as soon as you think a task to be cherry play for you, it actually starts taking shape pretty brilliantly. So the call is to reinforce the belonging to a cause; that way you are feeding your subconscious with your objective and it would ensure that you see yourself in an advantageous position.

Stylize your modus-operandi with little known tools. Opt for tangential cause-effect analysis. Look out for the abstract side of the problem areas. Seek help from your own deepest spaces. Link multifaceted theories together, to arrive at a new platform. Don’t confuse an obstacle with a barrier. Make a lot of side routes that must be looked for when a certain plan doesn’t work. Do brain-storming painstakingly. Don’t mitigate your chances for the lack of your belief in your abilities or in your cause; get up, sport a wide grin and get going.

10 Things Everyone Should Know How To Do

2012-02-21T06:22:00.001-08:00

Knowing one’s own blood group. It would further help if you know the blood group of your family members. No one knows when the time puts you in a position where a timely blood donation offered by you saves a priceless life. So head to the nearest lab and get your blood group tested if you are not aware of it by now.
Knowing basic cooking skills. Don’t take your feet back by the failure of being criticized. Flaunt the what-the-hell attitude and surprise your family. It would also help you in exploring a whole new realm of self-discovery. A shabbily done sandwich might not appear appealing to the eyes, but it holds energy reservoirs to keep you going. And a coffee is a coffee; it tastes awesome even when the amateurs try their hands in.
Knowing to manage money. Being spendthrift might bring you an acute kick, but to survive in the jungle, you need to know the importance of planning with your financial matters. It happens so often that we underestimate the power of money and look lost in rainy days. Don’t get stupefied by the shine of the nickel in your pocket, treat it wisely. Make budgets. Invest intellectually.
Knowing first-aid & CPR. You never know when would you be in a position to save a life; in a crowded park, in a busy cafeteria, while crossing the road or while kneeling down in a temple. Heart attacks can occur anywhere; accidents can occur anywhere. Even government in India is encouragingly carrying out lessons in basic life support at a good scale. You don’t have to be a medical or paramedical professional to understand this. Just a knack for serving social responsibility is all it takes. A lost life is disastrous; stand up and pledge to bring about a change.
Knowing to play with kids. Children have an altogether different time zone; a different world indeed. They spread eleemosynary happiness wherever they step in. Borrow some positivity and innocence from them and shed away those burdensome worries that plague you every now and then. Don’t let you mental muscles fall prey to ageing; it’s best to be as giving as a kid.
Knowing to operate a computer. Obviously this is out of bounds for the underprivileged population; they are busy toiling hard to make their ends meet. But for the people who can afford, a computer is worth an investment. The future would be relying heavily on technologies that are driven by computers; so its but natural for you to keep abreast. Google a lot. Read a lot. Learn new things.
Knowing to maintain cleanliness. Untidy spaces clutter your minds as well. Many of us procrastinate tidying up our rooms and homes thinking about the efforts involved. But as you start practicing it, you would find it is one of the most productive exercises ever done. We should not put ourselves in contaminated envelopes; for in the expedition of purity, cleanliness matters.
Knowing the basics of exercising. Most of us won’t think twice before paying up the fee for a health club; it’s the motivation that starts wavering after initial sessions. Exercising is vital. No matter if you are on the wrong side of forty or on the right side, if you don’t optimize your physical activities, you are lessening your chances of attaining the pinnacle of fitness.
Knowing the art of listening to others. Random acts of kindness often come when you start listening to people. The more you listen, the more you understand. Blabbering, even when the other person is on a different perspective altogether, would just fatigue your vocal cords and increase the void in your inner-self. Be patient. Be reasonable. Be kind. Lend your ears.
Knowing to express love and care. Be warm, tender, thoughtful and affectionate. As a doctor, I hold my patients’ hands to let them know that I am there for you. It’s important to share love. What else is the fuel of life, if not love? Love has the power to over rule the greatest odds. A loving soul is the axle of a content life. Love is the only juggernaut of this celestial sphere.

25 Amazing Moments

2012-02-19T00:36:00.000-08:00

Someone expressed love interest in you. And that someone was not a random someone.
You got your first job.
You had your first night-out.
You helped someone with your pocket money, and no one came to know of this.
You just cooked your first ever recipe. Though it was anyway far-flug from being perfect; at least you created something that others loved.
You decided to take your dreams ahead.
You paid a surprise visit to your mother, when she needed you most but was not expecting your arrival.
You got your first pay check.
You ramshackle ordinary expectations and secure exceptional grades in your class. Who the hell ever mentioned you a lousy pupil? Period. Thing of past.
You managed to just propose to your love interest.
You observe the twilight with stars in your eyes, open-armed.
You first touched the fingers of your new born.
You helped a cupid-couple in distress by arranging ordeals of court marriage.
You founded your own company.
You got rid of all the loans.
You were proven right in one of your decisions that had a life changing potential.
You woke up to witness your spouse thoughtfully staring your face, seeming lost in the province of love and belonging.
You just smelled the air containing whiff of wet earth, for it rained first time in the season.
Your first kiss.
You shoot a video of your grandson, with the happy family providing the peppy background noise.
You overcame your addiction. Be it nicotine, alcohol or any other illicit substance.
You just got your complete body check up and got to know that you are completely healthy.
You boarded a flight for the first time in your life.
You open your cupboard to get your hands on old albums, letters, diaries and hand-written chronicles.
You donated blood for the first time.

The Bliss of being a Middle Class family.

2012-02-18T23:50:00.000-08:00

By middle class, I intend to mention the strata of population that form a common household; that are not extremely affluent in terms of financial prosperity, yet form the major volume of pulse of the nation.

They happily worm their way to the local vegetable market and put in a great deal of time to select the freshest supply of the day. Not everything comes at a bargain price, but yes, vegetables do come, especially when the market is at the verge of exhausting its supply.

They remember most of the less-known festivals and look forward to be a part of them keenly. They organize Satyanarayan Pooja or Mata ki Chowki (on a small scale) in their homes when their adolescent son manages to get exceptional grades in the final exams, or when their brilliant daughter gets her first job.

An evening tea, enjoyed in the company of the spouse and kids amidst smoke-stained air and dying sunlight, brings more pleasure to them than attending an office party in some 3 star hotel.

They make it a point to watch one of the early morning spiritual TV program.

They keep a vigil track over fluctuating gold prices.

They make it a point to visit their parents, staying at their ancestral village, at least twice every year. They carry gifts to be distributed to their siblings and families that have remained in the rural settings.

They love to spend time with their growing kids. At every given or created opportunity, they try their level best to inculcate the flurry of moral values in them.

They hate changes in cultural values.

They believe a lot in traditional methods of treatment.

They are less inhibited in striking amazing friendships with a large part of their neighborhood. They love to be known and to be respected.

They make it a point to watch Republic Day parade and Independence Day speech on their TV sets with the whole family glued together. They understand the fabrics of politics better than some of the best known professionals, yet don’t normally gather courage to stand up and bring about a change. They are expressive, sentimental, large-hearted and keen to learn.

They keep a check on monthly expenditures with eyes of an eagle. They save small amount of money every month to be able to purchase their teenager a laptop on his next birthday.

They invest in their children’s education without any second thought. They would compromise in paying for the premium of their health insurance; but their kid’s tuition fee would always be paid on time.

They surf the classifieds in the hope of a better job every now and then; but prefer not to leave their existing jobs in the end.

They prefer speaking in their mother tongues.

I was born in a middle class family and am proud of this. No amount of money can buy you happiness that the middle class luxuriates in. The joy of smelling the first whiff of morning coffee, the thrill of seeing the plants in your flower-pots grow, the raptures of planning for that local pilgrimage trip with your family, the excitement of trying out that branded shirt, the kick of watching the last over of the much awaited cricket match, the delight of seeing your entire family eating out together in the dining table – Middle class embodies the essence of any culture and any country, any given day.

I love to be a part of Delhi.

2012-02-17T03:54:00.000-08:00

Extreme of emotions, extreme of climates.

To get irked at the silliest of provocations seems the primordial paradigm in Delhi. People have abundant affinity to spill the venom by implicating others’ sisters in selected series of swear-words.

The light is red, and red attracts. It’s a very usual sight to find an army of cars, parading from different directions, trying to speed up and cross the intersection, even when the traffic light is red and the traffic policeman is in the uniform.

Graffiti, aimed at simplifying the purposes of DNA Testing, takes a high on the back side of most of the moving 3 wheelers. Pappu Te Lucky De Papa Di Gaddi… and what not. Even the 4 wheelers don’t fall behind the name game; the imaginations become more urbane, and more Haryanvi, not necessarily in that order.

Street-side food stalls. Crispy, succulent, cheap and Pan-Indian.

No matter its day or night, people would look preoccupied. Finicky auto drivers, stubborn clerks, fussy house maids often drown the day in the morning hours itself.

Arrange me a pass; I belong to so and so family. I sometimes wonder how the organizers plan out for a profit. It’s more of a status symbol, a habit indeed, that a lot of affluent or well-connected Delhites are addicted to.

Gaudy weddings. Ostentatious Karwa Chauth celebrations. Omnium gatherum. Protuberant bellies. Flamboyant flyovers. Delhi-belly (made famous by the celluloid adaptation).

Most of the mobile phones don’t work properly in mute mode; hence, when in doubt, keep the ‘General’ profile activated. And this is a phone for which you paid through your nose, so why not talk loud.

Road-rages. Jungle of serpentine metro-tracks. The poor migrants from UP, Bihar working relentlessly at the construction sites to earn one square meal.

Centuries old commercial establishments that haven’t deteriorated in quality of their products.

A moderate amount of alcohol intake is the antidote to most of the worldly problems encountered during the day; this is the axiom by which a lot of Delhites live by.

Ear-splitting noise of fire-crackers the moment Indian Cricket Team wins a crucial match.

The devotees of rumour-mill. The gossipers. The gastronomics. The snazzy feat of cars playing loudest possible club-rock during the dark hours.

The Ice cream carts doing brisk business in the night, irrelevant to the month of the year.

Never-say-die spirit that virtually inhabits the tissues of Delhites. The day is not far away when word ‘Jugaad’ would be included in the Oxford Dictionary with appropriate esteem.

25 Awesome things happening around you

2012-02-17T01:46:00.000-08:00

A friend is helping a friend come over the pain of a failed relationship.
Two people in your town are falling in love.
Someone is making an opinion about you.
A flock of vegetable vendors is arranging the veggies in a nice, decorative way to sell them in the evening.
A babysitter is stealing a cookie while the baby is watching her.
Buckets of tears are being shed in your hometown over the afternoon telecast of some particular daily soap.
A girl is making up her mind to respond in affirmation to the marriage proposal, made by her eye-candy an hour back.
Someone is on the verge of dying because of extreme hunger.
A fireman is entering a building, engulfed in fire, to save the strangers.
Millions of fat-laced fries are being eaten by femme fatales that are tired of trying to be in shape.
Someone has just experienced a sleep-terror and woken up with shudders down his spine.
A toddler just managed to take first few steps of his life, without any support.
A young female made a promise to her boyfriend that would remain unbroken in this lifetime.
A soon-to-be-bride is busy day dreaming.
An adolescent just managed to get first ever experience of snorting cocaine.
A soon-to-be daddy is shopping baby clothes without looking at the price tags.
Someone donated more than a million dollars to the charity, and proceeded to cook for his spouse.
An actor has rehearsed for a particular shot for 68^th time amidst scorching heat.
Someone just bought a brand new deodorant, for the very first time in his/her life.
An Emergency Medical Officer is busy saving one of his patient’s life.
Someone just got rid of all the debts that kept on lingering for more than a decade.
Someone is pretending to have fallen slept to avoid lousy company of his guests.
Someone just helped a blind old lady crossing the busy road.
A cancer patient just came to know that he has achieved complete remission.
Someone woke up after sleeping for 28 hours at a stretch.

This is important stuff if you are a parent.

2012-02-14T22:17:00.000-08:00

A honey-coated intimate talk would always perform better than the harsh scolding.

Inspire them to come out of your shadow, and to create a niche.

Don’t encourage superstitions.

Often an engaging dinner-table conversation provides more calories to the mind than the luxuriant supper; make your child feel loved, and protected.

When your kid is watching some film that requires parental guidance; behave like a parent.

Watch the tendencies of your kids. They bring about a lot of habits, a lot of personality attributes from their past lives; by being a blatant critic you would diminish the chances of pulchritude in your kid’s life. Observe, learn, think, and then react.

Believe in the saying that Mother Nature is the biggest teacher. Organize field-visits and outdoor camps.

Don’t make your child realize that he is meant to top all the subjects. As a parent you are required to lessen the pressure that he is already bestowed with.

Inculcate the power of reasoning in your child. It would help him to combat a lot of problems that eventually seep in the life as adolescence knocks.

Make them aware of the simple, yet so fundamentally essential, financial planning. We often neglect this aspect while raising our kids, only to witness them turning into overspending adolescents with no realization of what the money is all about. Tell them the importance of having a plan in hand. Don’t really depend on your kid’s education system for this; in my opinion, this is your call to make your kid prepare well for the matters involving money.

As a parent, it’s your sacred duty to infuse the essence of sex education in your child. The world is full of satanic perverts; it lies in your dominion to keep your child safe, and feel good in the glory of the world.

Science has proved that junk food lowers immunity. Think about this. Less immunity may also mean that many immunizations won’t work properly, though researches are on to substantiate this theory.

Be a role model. Wake up early. Go for the morning walk. Eat healthy. Think clearly. Practice charity. Love your elders and be responsible to them. Share quality time with your kids. Never use swear words in front of your kids (or for that matter when away from the sight of your kids). Give your bit in household works. Remain organized. Love a lot.

Love is in the air.

2012-02-14T21:37:00.000-08:00

Love is the unmitigated joy. Love is beyond controls, and beyond imaginations. Love is the amulet that holds the power to transform lives. Love is the aperture to divinity. Love seeks no explanation. Love is the frontier of redemption. Love is the stellar force that makes a person God-like. Love is the basis of so many creations and so many fundamental truths, religion being one of them.

Love is ageless, and timeless. Love is the magical balm that allays all the co-existential sufferings. Love gives you the power to accomplish what others can not even dream of. Love reinforces the reason of your space odyssey. Love is boundless, and limitless. Love is the brush of fortunes amidst the shredded canvas of life. Love is the loaf of soul.

Don’t oppress love. Support it, display it, and practice it. When you fall in love, you rise in life. Love is the most selfless feeling that one can ever come across. Love needs no instructions. Love is the cardinal code of life so close to us yet so elusive at times. Love as if there is no fear; love as if there is no boundary. Bestow love to all the persons that walk in your sphere of life, and make them understand the real meaning of life.

Love is everywhere. You need to adjust your mental settings to be able to find the presence of love; here, there and everywhere. You need to be more grasping, more free-thinking and less judgmental. Love is the bohemian emotion that Mother Nature empowered us with. Think about love and all you are left with is a stellar feeling of nothingness. Love abolishes uncertainties. Love propels life.

The Rants of Plants. Who Cares?

2012-02-09T12:02:00.000-08:00

It’s official now. Plants can talk. Plants can not only communicate amongst themselves, there are significant reasons to fuel the theory that they sense, feel and react also. Researchers at Exeter University, Britain recently concluded this when they plucked the leaves of cabbage plants and monitored their biochemical reactions and its effect on nearby plants. The monitoring was done by means of highly enhanced video cameras and the recording clearly hints that plants talk to each other in some complex, probably inaudible, language that the humans know nothing of as yet.

Period. So shall we portray more compassion when screaming near plants or trees? How many of us would be able to withstand the news of a sturdy, young tree being chopped down to pieces by emotionally-deprived evolved species of Mother Nature, the human? How many of us would pay heed to get a close eye to our plants’ demands, said and unsaid? What governs the world of trees and plants? Do they also have souls? By logic, they must be having one; just think how incapacitated that soul would be – it’s not easy to be lying there, standing still and experiencing every extreme, without being able to do anything.

Can plants just experience and communicate or there are more realities yet to be uncovered? Plants are laced with a rich assortment of emotions, as experiments have revealed that plants tended to raise alarm to their nearby shrubs when exposed to an imminent danger. So do plants also discriminate when thinking about others, like their human counterparts? I am so mightily flummoxed by the array of possibilities that exist in this nature; what is true to the eyes can be so vehemently false to the soul. What is the purpose of a plant’s life but to act as slaves for the majority of living organisms?

If one day someone discovers that plants cry, how would you feel? As for me, I would feel drowned; even the touch of the feeling has started making me uncomfortable. And its because if they are able to shed tears, I am sure humans and animals incessantly give them all the reasons to cry, all the times.

Sans Souci of Childhood.

2012-01-31T12:26:00.001-08:00

A person is in Dixie’s land before he turns a teenager; to be in clover is the motto of childhood. As a child, I treaded on enchanted grounds commanding the commotion every possible moment. I used to be a nimble-footed child and the studded blobs of mischief used to be my trademark. At every given or created opportunity, I used to excel in rodomontade; sometimes I used to follow rules, and at the other times rules used to follow me. I loved to win every time in every activity just like any other child.

I used to play merciless pranks on my friends and my teachers with equal gusto. I clearly remember putting an incensed fire-cracker beneath the wooden chair of my Sanskrit teacher as she just settled in; every punishment that later followed was worth the sight that we witnessed looking at her changing facial gestures as the fire-cracker exploded. It was fun; pure adolescent fun. Once I placed a small puppy, the progeny of a stray dog, in the table of my English teacher. As she opened the drawer, to her horrid disbelief, the canine came out crawling. She produced this ear-splitting scream and we, the kids, were in seventh heaven with sweltering joy. I enjoyed all the attention and felt like a star; the fact that I was the class monitor never made me deter from any of the prank-playing motives.

As I was the best scholar in my school, and was good at extra-curricular activities as well, the tag of class monitor came naturally to me. With every discordant deed that amounted to the saucy pranks played by me, requests were made to the school principal to dethrone me of my class monitor-ship by the affected souls; however, the second best student was way behind me so dethroning never actually happened. Alas, nothing can replicate those magical days of our lives; long live childhood.

Be in Elysium. Pack your bags.

2012-01-31T12:25:00.000-08:00

Traveling is tantalizing. The crude joy of packing up your essentials and hitting the road with a broad grin on a sun-soaked morning has fewer matches. Some people revel at road-trips, other at planned vacations of snow-capped peaks. For me, the joy of unplanned voyage comes with biggest foudroyant. The primrose path of traveling is immune to comparisons; for some, it is therapeutic, and for others it is exploratory.

The sight of mud-coated sideways, the smell of pollens in the air, the sensation of having taken a new birth – traveling enriches your experience of life by studding it with much required indulgences. You travel to find new paths, to discover the places that have legends around them and to create some enriched infographics in the visual cortex of your brain. When you travel you seem to be the best choice for the practical illustration of theory of relativity, for time vapors away fast before you start appreciating the bubbles in your soul.

Traveling is the time tested turn-on for the hedonist. You get caught in a bundle of halcyon every time you come across a flock of sheep; you feel soaked in the divine titillation every time your gaze gets fixed on the sight of a solemn tree with ear-splitting twitter of birds. Traveling is such a teaser, with insane intensity. The hedonics of palmy days remains forever in the memory-centre of your brain; traveling comes with long-lasting effects. Give the primordial site of your personality a relish, fasten your boots and be a vagabond.

Winning hearts doesn’t require a degree.

2012-01-30T13:45:00.000-08:00

Greet your fellow colleague with a beaming smile. Offer your listening ears when someone requires them the most.

Don’t criticize weather and/or food and/or ambience of that newly opened restaurant and/or social networking websites and/or deadlines and/or your country just for the heck of it. It doesn’t really make you smarter if you voice an opinion that is not really yours. Many times we listen to a fact so many times that we, mistakenly though, think it to be our own. We must exercise some mental gymnastics before formulating an opinion about anything trivial or significant.

Throw away surprises, pleasant ones.

Wish your folks and family their share of special days. Send flowers when someone close to you gets a promotion or when someone’s child excels in extracurricular activities. Obviously you can’t afford to forget birthdays and anniversaries; it would help if you send them hand written notes or greeting cards. Don’t leave the entire social relationship burden to facebook.

Give your children that much deserved tight hug, lavishly.

Praise the culinary skills of the person feeding your hunger.

Stand up for a cause, and make your voice count. Be the light that illumines paths of others. Be the torch-bearer.

Arrange group picnics. Arrange informative seminars in your vicinities. Arrange recreational classes in your neighborhood. Arrange medical camps for the elders and the poverty-stricken strata.

Pay for an underprivileged child’s education. Save electricity. Donate blood frequently.

Lessen the pollution. Make people realize about the ill effects of pollution by rendering practical examples. Drive with a sound head. Don’t go overboard when throwing a party. Reduce wastage of food.

Even if you picked up that unwanted sales call mistakenly when you were in the middle of your presentation, speak politely. Show your mettle. Refuse to behave standoffish.

Infuse morals in your kids. Playstations are OK, Tai-Chi is OK; but losing contact with the quintessence of our culture is not OK. Morals inculcate the strongest of cements in a child’s spine; help him get the strength.

What is a Coincidence?

2012-01-29T22:53:00.000-08:00

A coincidence is a planned motive by the occult natural forces. A coincidence is a clue. A coincidence is a brush with something important, with something that holds stellar importance to our oblivious eyes. A coincidence is meant to awaken our senses and to sharpen them relentlessly. A coincidence, strikingly notable in nature, comes with a massive motive; its up to your visionary vigilance, emotional enlightenment and spiritual strength how you perceive a coincidence.

Identify the hidden meaning of a coincidence before it’s too late. A coincidence is a planned bet on your intuitive capabilities by the supernatural. A coincidence comes with mammoth facets and aplenty possibilities. A coincidence is a channel of something bigger waiting to announce its existence. You can take the coincidence on its face value and let yourself be undeterred and untouched; you can take co incidence on its stalwartness and allow the spheres of your spiritual entity to swell.

A coincidence is a short-cut to a part of your destiny. A pair of remarkably eager eyes and a pair of cautious cerebral hemispheres can do wonders with a seemingly commonplace coincidence. A coincidence comes with a series of codes, waiting to be unlocked. Don’t let any of the coincidences, happening at frenzied pace in your life, go unnoticed. Invest your insight in them and see the secrets of the nature unfolding in front of your bare eyes. A coincidence is the clue to find the ‘x’ in the snarled-up equation of your life.

Pain is the Divine Ordeal.

2012-01-29T22:00:00.000-08:00

Pain is a sensory emotion, a forced one. Reach out to its roots and discover the array of paradoxes. Pain embodies pangs of throes. Pain is a pitiless form of strained meditation. Pain is the progeny of many wombs. Pain seeks no permission. Pain is onerous. Pain is the mother of fear. Pain is a fake fluke but its ordeals are real. Pain is autocratic with no hint of laissez-faire.

Pain is ephemeral. Pain is a tribulation. Pain is the cellar of accomplishment. Pain exists for a reason, and the irony is that the moment you find the reason, the pain is gone. Don’t be a prey to odynophobia for pain is there for some purpose. Pain is perplexing. Pain is as selfless in its unrefined form as selfish it seems to your biased eyes. Pain is a prank. Pain is inducer of heartrending pessimism.

Pain provides aplenty observations; the choicest ones reflect you closely. Pain revels in the kingdom of tyranny; yet pain can be conquered by a mild maneuvering of a single thought. Pain is pretentious. Pain is programmed. Pain is perennial. Pain is the biggest illusion. Overcome pain to prove the might of your mental mechanics. Pain is prudent and pure, and its after-effects, callous. Pain is hair-raisingly macabre. Pain is the divine ordeal for you to take control of your mind and body.

Serve with a Verve.

2012-01-29T21:18:00.000-08:00

We have been given lives to know ourselves, in astute details. We have been given lives to help others in knowing them. We have been given lives to make this world a better place to live.

Life is meant to remain joyous. Life is meant to master the secret of finding bliss in every activity that we participate. Life is in details and the details lie in taking care of every aspect that touches us in our voyage as humans.

We are born with our own set of identities, our own set of setbacks and our own set of expectations. If we dig deep, we will find that eventually we have the same one goal of our lives. And that goal is to elevate our spiritual self to the uppermost level, so that we are able to extract pleasure from seemingly painful conditions and we are able to identify between good and bad.

I have always found biggest of joys in being able to serve the person in need. In my capacity as a healthcare professional, I routinely practice my expertise to spread hope and happiness. I find this very therapeutic and when I bring across a smile to someone’s face, I feel closest to God.

Since antedeluvian times, people are exposed to all sorts of famines and cataclysms that make their lives take all the wrong turns when they expect it the least. We, the humans, must invest in a process by which we can make people’s life immune to avoidable mental, physical and social catastrophes. No matter how ahead we reach in applied sciences, we make no appreciable progress if we don’t device new means of bringing happiness to people’s lives. We must rule our minds to serve our people and we would make Mother Nature happy by abiding this simple tenet of life. May we discover a world where love songs are sung at twilight and at dawn, where people don’t get flickered by every passing emotion and where people explore the awesome possibilities of life like there is no tomorrow.

We are doctors; but we are humans too.

2012-01-29T07:22:00.000-08:00

A lot of times, I sit together with fellow doctors and we discuss the changing patterns in patients’ behavior. At times we feel good in finding that we deal with a whole new lot of educated people who know the importance of a medical checkup or a medical treatment; on the other hand we get flummoxed by a certain lot of patients that fail to take us in our professional spirit and keeps on failing us. Many a times, patients think that by paying up the consultation fee or treatment fee, they must be deemed healthy, come what may. We work hard as doctors but we can’t really achieve the unattainable results just because our patients press for them.

There are certain situations that make us, the doctors, feel bad. It always helps if a patient gets to know the limitations of a doctor also; we are also bound by certain rules, and the most rigid rules are those posed by the course of diseases. I am placing few stances when we, the doctors, feel belittle and disheartened.

Patient pays up for the consultation fee and hopes to get every seed of the miraculous recovery presented to him/her right there, on the spot. What we advice is on the merit of your health and indwelling disease process; you must show trust on our professional caliber. Its not that every disease can be treated on out-patient basis; for some ailments you would be required to get admitted and observed closely.

Patient asks for the rationale of the investigations carried out on an admitted patient, and he does that with a vengeance. It is sad that due to incomplete, and often faulty information, patient thinks that we are tending to investigate him more than what is required. For the patient it might be just be a prevailing bout of fever, but for us, the doctors, the rationale possibilities run much higher. We tell the patients that abdominal ultrasound is not only required when one is having abdominal pain; it can have other indications as well. Sometimes patients listen to it and better senses prevail in them; sometimes they outright label you as the money-seeking doctor. I am sure there are ample of instances happening daily in the professional lives of a lot of my colleagues.

Patient asks for a guarantee of the treatment process rendered. This is always dismaying, and often signals the shifting mind sets of a large population. We give the reference of medical literature; we take pain in providing detailed interpretation of the disease course and disease process. Sometimes it works and sometimes patient thinks that we, the doctors, have knowingly kept a gap in the treatment process so that we get to treat him again when he arrives with similar problem. For a doctor, it is a known fact that some ailments have high recurrence rate; for a patient everything must come with a guarantee. How can we, possibly, guarantee that typhoid won’t occur again? How can we guarantee that those esophageal varices won’t bleed again? How can we guarantee that the hernia won’t surface again?

Patient tries to be overfriendly with you and in the process starts exceeding the thin line in between patient-doctor relationship. Yes we don’t mind behaving like friends with some of the patients that have high faith in us; but that does not give you liberty to behave abruptly. Show a little respect to the doctors; it would only strengthen the bond that you share with your doctor.

Six Degrees of Separation.

2012-01-29T06:00:00.000-08:00

I have always been enthralled by the theory that any 2 people in the world are 6 steps away from being known to each other; and these 6 steps mean 6 people. The world is so small then; so beautifully small. And I must bow to my friends and superiors with enviable data analytical capabilities, with strong statistical abilities and with a pivotal passion for mathematics, that we have been given this social finding that sounds so spiritual in its face value. A beggar who is forced to share the pavement with the army of stray dogs is just 6 people away from knowing Bill Gates; does that causes ripples? Is this the ecstasy of hope or of disillusion?

In 2007 study was carried out by Microsoft employees, Jure Leskovec and Eric Horvitz, who examined a chain of 30 billion conversations among 240 million people. They found the average path length among Microsoft Messenger users to be 6.6; pretty close to the theory of six degree of separation? Huh.

According to a study of 5.2 billion social media relationships in twitter, it was found that the average distance on Twitter is 4.67. On average, about 50% of people on Twitter are only four steps away from each other, while nearly everyone is five steps away.

In another work, researchers have shown that the average distance of 1,500 random users in Twitter is 3.435. They calculated the distance between each pair of users using all the active users in Twitter. It heralds an intellectual debate by galvanizing the thought that an unusually active person might be separated by a number less than 6 to any other person of the world. So, if you aim to make the world a close-knit family, start making the right noise, at the right time, to the right person.

The data team of Facebook data released two papers in November 2011 which document that amongst all facebook users at the time of research (they studied about 721 million users with 69 billion mutual friendships) there is an average distance of 4.74.

It means the nature wanted us all to remain accessible to each other. It is us who played the bad game and created rifts in between humans, social lives, nations etc. You must agree that six is a small number eventually; the onus on us is to break the bar of this number in the way that helps the society most. Do you find a possibility of six reducing to five or may be four in the coming years with the aggressive might of social media spectrums and easy availability of communication machines? Shouldn’t politicians or think tanks of the nations think laterally and use this information to develop a system where the underprivileged gets introduced to the person keen enough to help at that moment of time. At least in India, deserving people have to spend a lot of time in trying to get a break just because they don’t know the right person; can an algorithm be devised for the practical usages?

The world is a small space; let’s shrink it more by knowing everyone. And at the places when knowing everyone does not suffice, let’s help everyone to give the human relationship it’s real meaning back.

Its sad to see someone addicted to drugs.

2012-01-28T03:53:00.001-08:00

Drug abuse has a lot more evil to it than what comes to our immediate thoughts. Unfortunately, we don’t realize the magnitude of the problem sitting in our plush offices. People who fall prey to this satanic ritual fail the voice of their self-righteousness and conscience. Most of the drug addictions lead not only to psychological dependence but also to physical dependence. I have seen a lot of young, middle aged and elderly people spanning all walks of life that have been eclipsed to the world of lull darkness by this fiendish habit.

A person fails to see the malicious implications that drug abuse brings along. Most of the time people first experience substance abuse in the setting of peer pressure. Many times people take recluse in this horrendous habit while tending to negotiate their anxious and dejected state of mind. People start doing drugs in a fraction of moment, failing to see the horizons that fade in the future with enormous pace. Illegal drugs are costly to procure and invariably involve middlemen, the people with antisocial background and necrotic conscience. So a gullible person that gets involved with this unfortunate habit has to break laws to keep fuelling his or her substance craving episodes.

The conscience of drug addicts takes a toll to suffer a premature death. An addict can not differentiate between good and bad; what his myopic view sees is the dose of drug and mode to procure it. Even the dog in the street knows that drug abuse has never-ending appetite for lives. The loss of a loved one is impossible to be replenished. Are we doing something to address this problem, collectively or sporadically? Is our government doing enough to protect our kids and youth by the evil effects of this habit? Do you think you should think more actively about this problem? By failing to keep up to the social expectations, aren’t we failing ourselves in the eyes of our children and our loved ones too? Can anyone be sure to keep one’s progenies immune to this stigma?

What is your elixir of life?

2012-01-28T02:48:00.000-08:00

We crib a lot of times that the world doesn’t love us. In a burst of negative birr, we tend to filter out the positive aspects of a situation and the left-over remnants of a complicated mental process make us realize, falsely though, that we are no longer loved by anyone in this world. It’s such a common thing to not to realize that you are, indeed, loved by more people than you expect in the brightest of your days. We are all commanded by different set of thought processes; some of us churn our thoughts more than the others; some of us get presided over by the wings with poor control, so what they are following is an ungoverned trajectory; some of us are the eager beavers, you give their minds a simple, dead-looking thought and they would, exotically enough, create a lesson of life from it.

We, very often, overlook the love that our colleagues and acquaintances harbor for us. It happens that we get indulged in our families and close group of friends so much that we don’t really appreciate the silent glances that scream of enormous love. Not everyone that takes you in high spirits is expected to cross your path and announce his or her feelings for you. Certain feelings are preceded by a very small slice of life or plainly by a déjà vu, or by an involuntary force that is difficult to be overcame. The existence of such seraphic love happens more than our hackneyed mind-process and biased eyes can see. So, in most of the cases, we don’t really reciprocate our feelings and an imminent beautiful equation is never delivered.

Look around you to catch the signals of unconditional love; give your thoughts the eyes of an eagle; let your mind wander uninhibitedly and identify the subjects of it’s alter existence. You would be amazed to find more love in the universe than you ever imagine. The universe is built with fabrics of love, so there should not be much difficulty in finding the quintessential part of the universe’s basis. And love is not just a feeling; I am sure it has its own properties. You believe in it and it strengthens your belief in everything; you throw it over someone and you get it back in return; you bend it and it shows its tenacity; love is a cure-all elixir of life. Give your mind some elbow room and find love at all around you.

Prolonged Cloud-Commuting. La-Nina calling shots.

2012-01-23T01:03:00.000-08:00

The bloom of winters is not fading away even though we had our customary festivities i.e. Lohri, Makar Sankranti that announce the onset of warmer days ahead. New Delhi has become the cathedral of mist and heroically steps into the league of western urban climatic realities.

It happens so may times that your touch phone requires sustained efforts as you finger pulps, frozen cold, fail to evoke the senses out of that intuitive-gone-numb touch screen.

While driving, your pupils remain mid-dilated to capture the maximum visual field, courtesy the smog. So many penurious people, who inhabit in footpaths and streets, succumb to hypothermia while we continue to liver our quota of saturnalia.

Those of us who have been non smokers attempt to exhale in twilight to visualize what it likes to see the impression of smoke coming out of our lips.

The days have shrunk considerably in length and the people working in night-shifts might feel cheated by the elongated spree of winters this year; the hubbub of night fails to settle. I read in newspaper that this prolonged duration of winter this year is attributed to La-Nina effect, an ocean-atmosphere phenomenon. Is the climate giving us a clue for some precise messages?

The incessant binge of freshly brewed coffee, the chatter of colleagues over unending supply of roasted cashew nuts and home made pakoras (the fried snack made by batter of gram flour), the picturesque surroundings when even the ordinary looks carve out a memorable artistic expression – a photographer’s delight, the shattered and shriveled appearance of those living out in the open, the helpless stray dogs, the feeling of being involved in cloud computing in the office and in cloud commuting when driving back home, the incredible number of hours spent beneath the quilts and cushions, the aggressive beams of the cars that work overtime due to Sun’s leave without notice, the terror of touching something metallic with bare fingers – Winters give us a different slice of life.

I miss the clunk of Typewriters.

2012-01-19T11:45:00.000-08:00

I miss the clunk-clunk of the iron molded typewriters. Yes, its good to be in the company of computers and printers, but my heart has started craving for the authoritarian typewriters. There were days when no office was ever complete without the chaotic clunk of those metal buttons. The frequency of clunk was more or less directly proportional to the amount of business the office was doing. Even now, whenever I see some old Hollywood film, the sight of a blonde girl working calmly on the typewriter while her superior is puffing cigar in the next room seems so familiar.

Time paced hurriedly and computers took over. Printers took over, fax machines took over, cloud computing took over. Nothing remained the same, though the poor typewriter always tried to make space for every other competitive product. Alas, the dignity and respect that the typewriter displayed for the superior species never got returned back. When the typewriters were about to be introduced in the market, there was quite an uproar by a certain segment of people. Poor spellers lobbied against the concept of mechanical typing and imposed the severest of resistance against buying typewriters. They were afraid that they won’t be able to hide their inaccurate spellings with illegible handwriting. But as the typewriters entered the commercial markets, they created a legend. In the late 19^th century, the most popular typewriter was appropriately named as The Dollar Typewriter.

I have passed a large part of my early years in various B town cities of India; and owning a typewriter had always been considered a thing to be proud of. As a child, I have fond memories of trying my finger pulp at hitting the cold, hard buttons and seeing the carbon making imprint on the recycled paper. It used to be such a pondering process; I don’t know was it the love of typewriters or was it the sense of seeing a form of creation with wide eyes, but I had always loved to watch a typewriter in action. Even today, if I get a choice to install some software by which I can hear the clunk sound of typewriter buttons when pressing my computer keyboard, I would go for it without second thoughts. I am sure many of us have deeply attached sentiments with the legacy of typewriters; if any one is planning to start a typewriter aficionado group in India, consider me IN.

You can’t love your parents enough.

2012-01-19T08:45:00.000-08:00

It takes a lot of courage to reminisce the childhood days in slow motion, in sepia tone. We hold most of the moments so close to our hearts that a lively whisk to the blob of memories proves to arrhythmia-inducing mechanism. Don’t you get stirred up when you remember the days of hand-cooked, warm and delicious meals, served always on time and in abundance?

Our parents used to say a lot of clichéd sentences and most of us, if not everyone, used to know the next sentence in offering in the times of a tumult. For a bad academic performance, we used to be told that if you study hard you will make a career, and if you spoil your time playing in the fields, you will get nothing in return. Many of us were forbidden to eat curd at night as it is supposedly a cough inducing agent, but that didn’t stop us from secretly relishing on Bhalla-Papri before supper. You attempt to gulp down water just after you ate peanuts and you were sure to be fired a spree of clichéd advices. Those days I thought a cliché to be an avoidable sin in any communication, and I never paid any heed to the repeated advices as I used to believe Science more. I was wrong; its sometimes OK to be over sensitive for your kids once you attain parenthood. Parents stop living for themselves once they step into parenthood; its all about sacrifice which comes in naturally. Many of us kept our noses to the grindstone to keep our parents’ faces glowing with self-assured happiness. And yes, many of us got back on the horse that bucked them even though the parents were always there to share our sorrows and to help us get back on our feet.

It is important to be insightful with the kids. When you see your little daughter arranging to get her doll married, you see a little part of yourself in her. When you see your little son cuddling with you German Shepherd, you get caught in an amazing array of emotions. The little bit of God gets activated in ourselves the day we become parents. Parenthood is beyond descriptions.

Indian Kids Vs Kyrgyzstan Kids?

2012-01-17T06:21:00.000-08:00

I am sure many of you must have read the recent report about Indian Kids that created quite a furor. If I were to ask, I would place my bet on the mass sentiment that there is something amiss in the report. A large number of Indians are working in the top-notch corporate companies across the globe. In past few years few of our people have been given the topmost responsibilities in Ivy League universities; Indians are always regarded as the brainy and hardworking individuals. Then how come this report places our kids second last amongst 73 nations that took part in the annual Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)?

It is difficult to say about the selection bias as about half a million kids were included from 73 countries for this specific exercise. Indian Government had selected students from Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh and they stood second last in the horde. Many of us might have never heard the mention of Kyrgyzstan before; it’s a small, underdeveloped and mountainous country with a population of about 5.3 million (that is about 1/120 than that of India) that thrives mainly because of agriculture. Being an Indian myself, this report doesn’t really makes its way in my cerebral tank.

Today’s TOI (Times Of India) reports that a sharp decline in reading and mathematical ability has been found to have raised to demonic proportions in Indian kids. I agree without a second thought; but then this is not the problem of one province. Kids across the globe are finding it difficult to actually read from the books, courtesy the computer. In India we, as parents, teachers and responsible citizens, pay a lot of stress to make sure that our kids get enrolled in the best of the schools. The curriculum followed in our schools is no less than that of their counterparts situated at the other side of the sea. Our kids keep on innovating machineries, creating designs and developing frameworks. Indians have always been the favorites for employment in any industry that requires moderate knowledge of English language. Still 72^nd rank out of 73 must create fracas in our thought process. I must say I am shaken severely.

What happened to the land of AryaBhatt and Sushruta? Or can there be a possibility of errors in the overall process? Anyone smelling something fishy or I am the only one? My gut instincts are really not able to imbibe the fact that we stood just ahead of a underprivileged country with population less than half of Indian capital. It’s the eventual time for the policymakers, education promoters and parents to start thinking out-of-the-box. How else can one justify the ever escalating costs involved in educating our children?

Top 5 Qualities of a Patients' Counselor.

2012-01-16T23:41:00.000-08:00

Patient counselor is the ‘Abrecadarian Bridge’ between an ailing soul and its journey to health. A patient counselor can make much difference in the overall outcome of a patient’s odyssey in the hospital. People have different levels of subjectivity, different levels of patience and different levels of knowledge. Obviously, it is difficult to trace out 2 individuals with akin attitude. So a counselor’s task becomes as diverse as it can be; and its all a mental game, where winning is defined by the outlook and a loss can be cataclysmic.

Counselor must always appear as compassionate as possible. A ruckus-filled mind is more likely to respond favorably to a seraphic soul than to anyone else. So try to peep in the tunnels of patient's psyche; look out for the factors that are troubling him the most and then make him realize that you really understand him, and care for him.
Knowing the tit-a-bit of complex medical jargons also helps a great deal. The patient must not be rendered a piece of advice that is in contradiction to the prevailing medical concepts. It happens many a time that the patient turns to the counselor to have greater knowledge of disease and its treatment method. It happens mainly because either the patient is shy enough to ask direct questions to the treatment provider or the doctor leaves a lot of information between sentences and the patient’s queries suffer a boomerang’s trajectory.
To maintain the patient-doctor axis in equilibrium is one of the foremost responsibilities of an adept patient counselor. Once this axis is in symmetry, the work happens with the best pace. Learn to efficiently wipe out the fluff that would be of no use to the patient and the ultimate treatment process.
Counselor must be very patient. Troubled patients tend to loose their cool, and also tend to develop aberrational thought-process. In such a spree, the counselor can be at the receiving end of heat words. Such situations are not very uncommon and must be handled with the maturity of a sage and the wisdom of a geek. Remember, the kind acts never fizzle out; the repercussions would be there for you to feel and revel in the glory of inner solace.
It helps to keep your self in the patient’s state of mind at times. You can not just think out quickly of the best mode of response, but you can also identify the most potential stumbles that are troubling the patient. Learning has to be constant to keep evolving the ways that help the patients multi-dimensionally.

When you counsel a patient, put your world in the process. You are entrusted to calm down aplenty agitated nerves and you must practice the most valuable principles, the principles of hope, help and trust. Your role is important. You can put your best foot forward to help your bit in preserving the sacrosanct nature of medical profession by filtering out the granules of uncertainty and doubt from the patients’ minds. You can abridge the negativity right there by early identification and disseminate seeds of hope, knowledge and compassion to ensure that the miracle-working force of faith starts setting in. It is every doctor’s dream to get a patient counselor with angelic demeanor and sanguine outlook.

Be a Vagabond. Explore Life.

2012-01-12T07:14:00.000-08:00

Many of my colleagues think that I am overindulgent in my work. They keep on telling me to go slow on the pedestal of life; they think I have no life beyond the walls of my hospital. I appreciate their concerns but what do I do? I love my work. This is the biggest stress relieving activity that I ever laid my hands on. It needs just a glimpse of my freshly fumigated Operation Theatre and all my stress calms down. I think all of us have our very own versions of stress busters; how else can one cope up with the crest and trough ridden processes of life?

I have always derived pleasures from the present moment. I have seen people working their nerves off, day and night, just to realize years later that all the exercise was not worth it. If you come across life rather poker-faced, chances are high that you will miss the ebullience. You must look out to find out different facets of life and deal with it in a way that gives you ample of time for self-discovery. I frequently see people shedding tears over impending worries, and I can not understand the rationale behind. By fearing incessantly about the possible occurrence of an unfortunate event, we only increase its likelihood.

Live your life providently. Have a ferocious appetite for knowledge. Make faith your talisman.

Don’t invest in fleeting pleasures of life. Being hedonist is not a bad thing; you just have to know the real meaning of pleasure. Foster self-belief.

Have aplenty compassion. Be hawk-eyed. Get drowned in the ebullience of self-sacrificing moments. Cultivate amour proper. Explore the abecedarian truths of life and abide by them. Spread the seeds of love.

Do we need an ORACLE to correct us?

2012-01-12T07:01:00.000-08:00

To attain the apogee of success, one must invest heavily in oneself. Every one of us is capable of producing the never heard of positive changes in the society but the process must start from the ‘self’. The universe is a meshwork of billions of galaxies and every galaxy contains innumerable planets; the vastness of space is beyond ordinary comprehension. But this must be having its logics. By the experience that I have accumulated through all my life till now, I firmly opine that everything that happens has a cause and an effect. Certain things follow a boomerang's trajectory, certain things belittle others and certain things propagate others. Nature’s machinery must be one of the most flawless and insurrectionary one. So you can not just thwart off anything that takes place in the nature and term it poppycock. That would make you look so ordinary, so wishy-washy. I have always tried to look up to certain event from various angles.

Sometimes I engage myself visualizing a specific situation from one perspective, followed by which I make my opinion and just move ahead. Then, consciously, I again visualize that same situation after some time, this time from a different perspective. I do it a lot of times till I am convinced of robbing off all the assumable perspectives. I must admit I observe different truths every time. Here lies the Nature’s flummox – you see what you want to see. The truth for one person may not be the truth for other person. As I explore further, I observe that a lot of insightful findings can be discovered if we tend to practice our savoir vivre. I love to wander in thoughts; that makes me a wayfarer in the affair of life.

The Cult of Underdogs.

2012-01-09T10:53:00.000-08:00

Failure is a constant companion. Eremophobia envelops a lot of people the moment they start failing in their objectives. Failure is a term less understood in its totality and applied scope. What is failure at one stage can be a success in the other one. Statistics reveal that about half of the undergraduates have flunked in one or the other subjects. In the enormous researches, it has been shown that most common cause of the failure is missed deadlines, followed by that of impractical expectations. A failure is like a litmus test; the stronger and the more knowledgeable emerges the final winner. Life is but an unending race that requires the expertise of being a marathoner and a sprinter.

Your failure is not an exception. The way you plan your comeback is something that can make you an exception. Thwart off the esquivalience. Analyze well and don’t be biased while judging yourself. Be ruthlessly true. Your observations would be simon-pure and the chances of finding a valid reason that led to your failure would soar high. Tabulate a lot of questions, even the basic ones and start answering them. Once you are done with the entire analysis job, write down the findings. Speak to people who may have been in a similar state. Don’t feel dilapidated; it’s easy to blame the entire fiasco on the luck and make your lachrymal glands overwork. Halt. Learn from the failure. Reinstate your belief in your abilities and dreams. Imagine yourself having attained your objective and revel in the glory of celebrations – let it be all in the mind. It would invoke your subconscious mind and the pieces would start falling in places. Flood your neural fluid.

A comeback is worth a jamboree. The winning moment has something very special about it – the overshadowing glances, the grandiose gait, the glib speech, the mighty magnetism and what not. When you feel low in anticipation of a failure, make yourself remember your own power. What in the earth can overpower you? Underdogs have a notorious history of performing and winning when no one expects this from them. Underdogs are not born underdogs, they happen by choices.

Make a comeback that shifts all the glances over you.

Make a comeback that is truly worth your lifetime.

Make a comeback to leave a legend.

Make a comeback to let people know what magic can be caused by an array of focused thoughts and unflinching actions, acting in unison.

Make a comeback to make people believe in the glory of underdogs.

Every Cell of your body is the Alter-Ego of the Galaxy. What say?

2012-01-09T03:31:00.000-08:00

The world is crafted by a dab hand with inestimable intellect and flocks of foresight. You dig a bit deeper and you will be stupefied. To know the moves of this celestial jigsaw, you can’t really afford to remain a fysigunkus. If you circumspect clearly with an unhindered mind you will see that the universe, the nature, the life, the body and the mind are studded with opposites, lying in near vicinity to one another. A night compliments a day. For a sorrow, a happy moment is waiting nearby. Fits of anger often culminate in angelic love. A male is incomplete without a female. Successes and failures often mark the trajectory of a lifetime with equal representations. When fear looms to the vertigo-inducing heights, courage precipitates. Our bodies have the white matter and the grey matter, in close proximity. If there is an atheist sitting in one corner of the congregation hall, chances are high that in the same room there exists an ecclesiastical, God-fearing person.

Why do opposites are so ubiquitous? Do they serve the purpose of confounding us, or do they denote the vital steps of the ladder to enlightenment? Why do you choose to be at a certain perspective of the picture, when your other folks put their beliefs in the other side of the perspective? Have you experienced the lightening shudder that travels your spinal column the moment you change your faith from one perspective of the picture to the other? Being able to see the opposite with the same set of eyes and spiritually lifted mind can be foudroyant. Researchers say that there may be more than 170 billion galaxies in the discernible universe, so what do you think about the existence of opposites when you take the bigger picture into notice?

When I say that a random cell of your body is the alter-ego of the galaxy, would you like to correct me? I see a lot of similarities in the mentioned pair. Our minds keep on giving birth to a lot of thoughts every single day, and in the galaxy also, a lot of organisms take birth daily. Night is an eternal reality of the galaxy as is the sleep in our physiological system. Nature gets affected by calamities e.g. earthquakes, lightening etc. and we, the humans, also get affected by painful moments in our lives. When it rains, they say the weather is going to be pleasant afterwards; have you noticed the state of your mind some time after you have stopped crying? Our cells work till the time they die and the planets also have to keep on revolving to remain in the galaxy.

Cosmological makeup of the universe is yet to be deciphered correctly; and no one knows what gave birth to a living organism. What is life? Can a non living thing give birth to a living thing? So there has to be a living whiz to master all the successive origins. What I feel is that we must blend our scientific results with the spiritual knowledge to decode the BIG ORIGIN. It may be the penultimate step for us in decoding our destinies; but then we must act fast; there are 170 billion more galaxies to be taken care of.

Why are you making your child a slave?

2012-01-09T02:06:00.000-08:00

I often become witness to the ghastly sites wherein the parents of a toddler or a sprightly kid spend fidgeting times stressing hard about their child’s first admission to a school. Parents, in order to give their child the best possible academic roof, often fail to look into the aspect of a child’s education from an unbiased perspective. What do you want your child to gain in those initial years? Do you think a child should be made to waken up at wee hours in the morning forcibly? How many children are getting the required amount of undisturbed sleep in their routines? Do you keep yourself abreast of latest psychological recommendations pertaining to that of a child, or a teenager?

Ok, I agree. You lead a stressful life and with the way the tides are turning, you are right when you think that the best prepared would be able to survive in the jungle of mankind. No second thoughts. But have you spared a thought about what actually would the best prepared look like or think about? Does it help when you burden the child by expressing every iota of your expectations to his tender mind? Someone wants their kid to become a NASA Scientist, someone is nurturing dreams to watch their progeny establishing the status of a business tycoon one day, someone is making their child rehearse, even when the child is down with that seasonal burst of tonsillitis, to participate in the audition of that music related reality show. Why do you oversee the reality when it lies in front of you, stark naked.

Every child is different. Then why don’t we follow a system where every child is given a different treatment. Why this mad gush of a plethora of subjects? Do you really have to learn about the Friedel-Craft’s Alkylation of Benzene compounds when you want to make it big in finance and accounts? What is the use of juggling with knotty calculations of calculus when you have lost your heart to literature and prose? Why don’t you get a choice when your mind is least occupied with the fluff? Are we benefitting our kids, or, in turn, inciting more harm than good? Why don’t we encourage our kids to know themselves spiritually? Its pretty obvious that falling in the same league, as they turn adults, they would be having loads of cholesterol in their vasculature, loads of confusions in their minds and loads of unhappiness in their lives. Why don’t we break the chain reaction to give our kids a lease of life? Why do we want to program their existence and turn them in the lines of human robots, who cringe every minute for inner solace?

God’s creations are all so exquisitely beautiful, and charm of children is beyond comparisons. Why can’t we give our children a world where they can be free-thinkers? Why do we, blame it to our thoughtlessness or lack of enlightened knowledge or plain simple faint-heartedness, choose to make them slaves?

Do you suffer with LYGOPHOBIA?

2011-12-30T22:40:00.000-08:00

The rustles of raw emotions creeping in your mind stir you. You turn back and take few deep breaths; you realize the clock is giving you a gawky look straight in your face. Its Midnight. You start thinking what all choices you are left with? Brew a coffee? Open that unfinished novella? Browse activities tab? You experience a sinking feeling; you look around with confounded eyes. The room is all dark, so duteous to the rituals of night. It is so dark that you can actually see the darkness, feel it close to your cheeks, infiltrating into your sinuses. You start getting uncomfortable. You start getting algophobic. You can feel your heartbeats, pounding as if targeting to crush your own heart. You stand up and your fingers have already begin to search for that light switch, even before the idea came to your conscious mind. You hum to yourself, consciously trying your best to not to make eye contact with anything but the cold, hard ceramic floor.

You turn on the light. Something evaporates out. You feel relieved to a great extent. As if you were caught with your hands in the cookie jar moments back. You fail yourself by sheer reminiscence of those ghastly moments. You question your courage but quickly retract; you know it pretty well that the night is not meant to be evaluated with ordinary five senses. Acronycal legacy spells words that are beyond common taste or comprehension. You remember the night, weeks back, when you were engaged in deadly combat with the unidentified during the hypnagogic phase; and when you woke up, you were able to feel the susurrate of the unknown, the mighty unknown.

Night is to sleep. Night is to take a leap, if you don’t wish to sleep.

PS: If you have a fear of the darkness or of the night, you probably suffer with lygophobia. That’s what they say in medical journals.

ReSOLUTION Time. Choose Yours.

2011-12-30T21:25:00.000-08:00

For every problem that caused you melee, there is a resolution to be taken. The cumulative exercise of taking resolutions at the eve of a New Year sees a pragmatic height as the transition from dusk to dawn happens this beautiful day. 2011 is a passé. It won’t come back ever, unless of course we happen to experience an odyssey in a space machine. I am sure our resolutions don’t come in packaging; they can range from being simple to being rodomontade personified. I am listing some of the most common resolutions that I have mentioned just out of my experience while interacting with a lot of people last fortnight.

Adolescents:

I will make my facebook friends’ list swell to the maximum capacity of 5000. (and that must include all the beautiful girls in the town / handsome hunks in the town)
I will add to my already existing guinea-pig charm. (and I will add husk to my olive-oil coated voice)
I will learn to play guitar. (for the more hilly-billy sorta, replace guitar with drums)
I will participate in that reality show. (I have pacified Mom for that and Papa is not a problem till the time Mom understands my emotions)
I will join the gym and sculpt my exterior appearance. (You are either born with a bunch of packs or you develop them; sadly there is no other way for boys. For girls, toning is important. Peer pressure, you know)
I will loose weight / I will gain weight. (My physical appearance is the biggest hurdle in me not getting the desired attention of opposite sex)
I will quit smoking. (before the world knows that I, actually, smoke)
I will get a new GF / BF. (All those pick-up lines that I memorized can’t go in vain)

Young Males / Females:

I will get the cupid pay some attention to me. (I just need a little bit of grooming, that polished accent and a fatter wallet)
I will visit the exotic islands of Lakshdeep.
I will send my video-recorded performance to the e-auditions of that newly formed production house. (I have the talent, and you don’t preach me anything else)
I will change this job. It sucks. (I am not a robot to continue working when all my crushes have either left or are planning to leave the place)
I will quit smoking. (I really don’t want to, but they say it can cause me cancer)
I will loose weight / I will gain weight. (The neighborhood health club has offered some irresistible discount offers)
I will start my own business. (Where will the money come from?)
I will go on a road trip to Laddakh with my bunch of pals. (Being a rubbernecker evokes me)

Middle aged Males / Females:

I will reduce my time in front of idiot-box. (enough of mumbo-jumbo. And it is not so cool to announce that you actually are a TV buff)
I will resist eating sweets, deep fried stuff and reduce on my junk diet. (my doctors, I fear, would refuse seeing me if I continue to wolf down like a pig)
I will devote time to my leisure pursuit e.g. Photography, Clay modeling, Writing, Learning to cook Italian etc. (Life is meant for what else than to hone what your soul cherishes)
I will pay a visit to my parents every 3 months. (I love my parents)
I will quit smoking. I will limit my alcohol intake. (Do you know the effective ways of achieving abstinence; I have tried a lot of times, unsuccessfully)
I will be nice to my kids, and to my spouse too. (I am their world. I must protect them and provide them the unending love. I just wish my spouse was little more understanding)
I will plan for my post-retirement life. (My back hurts when I sit for more than 1 hour at stretch; I, possibly, can’t work for more than 5-10 years)
I will learn Power Yoga. (What is the meaning of all the money if I don’t have mental solace?)

Seniors:

I will know myself. (What is the purpose of my birth?)
I will keep the fabrics of the family tied together. (They look like a bunch of morons sometimes, constantly bad-mouthing about each other. I never thought they will turn like this.)
I will take my medicines on time. (Now do I have another choice?)
I will learn to chat on skype / send e mail / operate a facebook account. My grandkids have been pressing for the same. (I love my little brats. They are a hundred times better than their Dads / Moms)
I will go in the neighborhood park daily for that morning and evening walk. (No one bothers to company me at home.)
I will know the methods to attain celibate state. (I don’t want to die. I don’t want to take rebirth if I die. I want to experience the bliss of soul. Is it possible to get away from all the pains, all the expectations, all the worries?)
I will visit my village every year to have a laid-back vacation. (I should not have neglected the place where I got my roots. It’s most peaceful out there only)

Breaking News: Khetarpal Hospital Is Expanding

2011-12-30T10:02:00.000-08:00

Khetarpal Hospital would be entering its 20^th year of life after 3 months. The end of teen years; what could have been a better occasion to expand its horizons.

I had been planning to inflate the size of my hospital for a long time. It’s finally turns a reality; I have acquired the adjoining building and the process of turning it into a cathedral of health care embellishments has started with a dash. The architectural layout has been finalized and construction work has commenced. The bricks, the mortar and the unending yells of chisels and hammers; I am glowing in sang froid.

I visit the portion many times a day, taking two steps at a time. The habit has failed to desert me, even in the wrong side of fifties. I seldom stand at a solitary spot of the building and visualize the imminent array of activities. The trollies moving around with a frenetic pace, the sound of a nebulizer exhaling the whiff of medicated oxygen, the front office area bristling with activities, the constant squeak of keyboard buttons, bursts of cachinnation, the silent prayers, the miracles, the thanksgiving sessions – I am reveling in the glory of moments on the card.

I would not just increase the number of beds, but also make provisions to incorporate some of the high-end specialties in my hospital. I plan to give the most agile pair of wings to our existence. I feel like a neophyte once again, full of vim and vigor. I feel like I would be able to bring more smiles. I feel so blessed for I am one of the sources by which the suffering people connect with their divine beliefs.

So, right now, it’s all walls and windows for me. What a better way to celebrate the festivities of onset of New Year.

No more moonshine Mr Politician.

2011-12-30T09:12:00.000-08:00

Who loves politicians?

I am not a usual follower of real-time dose of news; it just happened that I was switching channels in the night of 29 December 2011 when I came across ‘live footage’ from Rajya Sabha. A heated debate on the current version of Lokpal was stirring with a lot of moonshine, an essential part of politics. I glared the screen for quite a few minutes and then started feeling like being hauled over the coals. I have never understood politics, and I won’t ever will; the subject needs more manipulations than my heart and brain could allow in unison.

I don’t like modern forms of politics in its face. Most of the politicians today will first undress you mentally and then outrage your intellect.

Anna Hazare did an exceptionally hard-hitting work of evoking the common man’s emotions. I don’t think even he ever imagined the amount of dynamic support that he gleefully witnessed during his long-drawn-out fast at Ramlila Maidan, New Delhi. For every fact is not seeable until the onset of divine light. Divine light is the light of knowledge. It is the light that doesn’t hide even a tittle of darkness in the silhouettes of its multiple spectrums. No matter the ideal Lokpal bill becomes a reality sooner or later, my gut feeling says it will see the light of the day in coming years.

Politics is the pith of any country’s dynamism. We must choose our politicians very sensibly and cautiously, for the repercussions would be merciless if we get lenient in our choices. We live in a vast country with a rich farrago of cultures and it’s our duty to keep the legacy going.

Elections are at a stone’s throw distance. I will practice my electoral right with wired conscience and hyperactive senses. No knee-jerk reflexes and no suspended animation; I must out-perform as a citizen to give my bit in the extended prosperity. Mere cosmetic correction won’t really do; what our politics needs is a comprehensive remodeling.

08:00 AM to 08:00 PM. I love the mesh-work of my moments.

2011-12-28T06:22:00.000-08:00

A day is so long. You can accomplish a lot of things in a day’s span. Yet some of us crib about the seemingly short length of the day. They wish it was longer. I feel the day is just enough in duration to give you the best opportunity to get your tasks done. Yet for some of us, most often the teenagers and the ones who have lost their drive to work, the day’s affairs are sitting on the fence and prevaricate the things to the best possible extent. For them the day starts late and ends early. And the time in between is just sufficient for them to eat, take rest and indulge in day-dreaming. For the starry-eyed amateur, the world has just opened its wings. Learning to fly comes later in life and requires tenacity in the attitude.

There are people who are accomplished multi-taskers. For them the day is an opportunity. For them the dawn is the opening of gates of life and the dusk is the hard-earned reward. Females, as they say and now proven by scientific researches also, are born multi-taskers. The connecting strand between their two cerebral hemispheres is roughly 20%-30% thicker than that of their counterparts, and that gives them to simultaneously perform a feast of activities. That’s why they can manage small kids at home with more vigor than that of a newly trained nanny, cook meals with the precision of a gastronomic aficionado, take shots at knitting and designing their own fashion-ware, satisfy their gossiping-genes to the abyssal heights and give a new meaning to the sulking relationships of peers in the family by reinventing them. A day is a clay mould; you put your life in it with a focused effort and you get back the result of your choice.

I feel good when I am working at a nightmarish pace. There are times when I perform 12 surgeries, give consultation to 50 odd patients, take 8 hourly ward rounds in my 45 bedded hospital, attend close to a hundred phone calls and still feel like a neophyte when it comes to the energy levels. It all lies in the mind. You can opt to live you life without complaining or you can be in a huff with no rewards. You become what you think. The mesh-work of moments admires those who are dab hands at the theory of relativity. The length of the day is fixed; you make it longer and you make it shorter.

Why this Kolaveri Di?

2011-12-28T05:49:00.000-08:00

Why are people so impatient today? Why are they so monotonous and preoccupied? Why don’t people spare some quality time holding hands, leaning on shoulders and wiping away tears? Why this paroxysm of uncontained angst (read 'Why this Kolaveri')? Why those choleric glances? Why that waspish statement? Why that splenetic attitude? Are we meant for anything else but to love, care and spread happiness?

People are fast becoming raring to go to any horizon to keep the appetite of their ego satisfied. They become myopic and commit heinous follies. They overlook the broader picture, they get hurt easily and the only solution, for releasing the angst of getting bruised, they come across is to cause emotional asphyxia to the person involved. Stumbling-blocks are getting a bit too many in our daily lives. You drive on a road and you rarely ever witness a smiling and content person behind the steering. People honk ear-splittingly as if you carelessly stepped over their toes. I just came across an infographic that stated that every 60 seconds, 11 million conversations happen in the instant messengers; I am afraid no one has ever calculated the amount of swear words that take birth every 60 seconds. I am sure the figure must be as high as a billion. Why this fetid temperament? Whom do you curse? Does it take so much energy to visualize a situation from a different perspective?

Relationships get sour before reaching their maturity point. People don’t really value relationships much; to satisfy the ego takes priority and everything else gets the consolation of back-seat. People put in abrupt responses with a masterly spunk. People feel as if the world is an asylum and all the insanity is pondering over them. Why this brutal rage? Where have gone the days when people used to live life. What I see these days, most of the folks are busy spending their times in one or the other worldly thing. When you refrain from scheduling your life, you are taken for a toss. In the short run, you won’t really understand the importance of planning and execution, but in the long run, you experience the early fall of autumn in your life. So live as if you were always meant for living; Don’t embarrass God by puking out the abhorrent emotions and indulging in ruthlessly cold actions. Live life. Be an amulet. Be simon-pure.

10 Random things that Doctors hate.

2011-12-25T08:08:00.000-08:00

You discover that home made sweets are being smuggled in for the patient by the attendants, in spite of the fact that the patient is a known diabetic and admitted with Ketoacidosis.

Your patient is in evident septicemia and in spite of your best intuition & clinical wisdom, you don’t really get the cultures positive.

That X Ray Chest film is in rotation again.

You smell that the I/O (Intake/Output) chart is crooked by some of the lazy staff on duty.

The old gentleman in the ICU got very sick again and no attendants are being traceable. Even the provided cell numbers are in sleeping mode (read switched off).

A hematological test, carried out at ABC lab, provides an unexpectedly bizarre value. You want to be reconfirmed so this time you send a fresh sample to another high profile lab, let’s say XYZ. To your amazement and mounting frustration, this time again the values are bizarre, just on the opposite pole.

A chronically non-compliant patient gets admitted in a bad shape. He holds a history of being treated for pulmonary tuberculosis on a number of occasions at different places; and to make the matters worse, he never really finished the treatment as per his doctors’ advices. This time he is diagnosed to be having MDR (Multi Drug Resistant Tuberculosis). You feel bad.

You have just 30 minutes of your OPD Consultation time left for the day and 18 patients are scheduled in the waiting list.

Your JR signed of the discharge slip without taking heed of the fact that Tab Crocin can’t be taken 2 tea-spoons full.

One of the attendants tries to judge your clinical and academic knowledge by making his internet-acquired-medical-knowledge the standards of excellence.

Is there an EXPIRY DATE of your charm?

2011-12-25T01:06:00.000-08:00

I am at Udaipur as of now. The event is Golden Jubilee Celebration of RNT Medical College, Udaipur. I entered this college with the typical bewilderment of a post-pubescent young male way back in 1970s; that was the era when our existential spaces were not serenaded by the insane communicational devices. We were not having the luxury of 'sending friend request' to that bewitching beauty in the neighborhood; we used to have the only choice - to face the music in person, with no indirect references. No days were alike, no nights were similar. Our thoughts raced faster than some of the processors available these days.

Those were the times of paradisiacal joys that never came alone. The coarse appearances on the exterior were giving shelters to the brooding hopes and bludgeoning aspirations. We used to make merry as if we were the last inhabitants of this mortal world. We used to think rationally, irrationally and, at times, from the diagonal aspect as well. There was this olive oil coated voice to be served to opposite sex and those harsh swear words to be served to the denizens of male dominion, with little conscious effort.

The classes were boring as usual, compensating for the abyssal fun experienced during clinics, dinner-halls, playgrounds, lanes of Udaipur and occasional road trips. Little did I realize that, like every other medical student, I would be missing those easygoing and undemanding days for the rest of my life? Today, I feel content. I see a lot of my college folks gathered for this saturnalia. Wrinkles have appeared, crow feet have crept in, but not to replace that sparkling voodoo; someone rightly said, charm doesn’t come with an expiry date.

What are you doing this Christmas?

2011-12-25T00:14:00.000-08:00

Be the wax that supports the fabric thread in spreading radiance of light.
2.       Be the ‘Santa Claus’ that gallops down the chimneys to give surprise gifts.
3.       Bake a cake and get caught red-handed savoring its tender taste.
4.   Reply to every SMS by creating an individual reply; you are only investing in the jungle of spry optimism.
5.       Be a lenient host. Stuff your guests with the most exotic delicacies.
6.       Learn to tend the bar (one in your home) with that guinea-pig charm.
7.       Smell the whiff of the X-Mas cards sent to you.
8.       Enjoy the elysian afternoon with that outlandish lunch.
9.       Learn to wrap the gifts by the most fluorescent and loud-in-your-face sheets.
10.   Make a wish silently and announce the blessings vociferously.
11.  Watch the flickering flame of a candle and think about your existence. Be aware of the eternal celibacy.
12.   Don’t watch your steps as you walk. Show the world what all are you capable of with two left feet.
13.   Sing Christmas rhyme with notable lust for getting the right notes, right loudness and right rhythm.
14.   Invest in buying chocolates; how else can you distribute them to the peppy kids all around?
15.   Say your kids a story; it doesn’t really matter if your project yourself as the superhero. The thing is in.

Who kicked the hornet's nest? Don't target Bhagwad Gita.

2011-12-21T23:00:00.000-08:00

The controversy over Bhagwad Gita is unholy and unexpected. I don’t purchase the theory that Bhagwad Gita is biased in its interpretation of life and its true meaning, leave aside of allegations that it contains inflammatory scriptures. What I collect is that the controversy is more due to anti-ISKCON stance of some mighty forces in Russia than due to the neutral teachings of our holy book. The matter is interspersed with a lot of indwelling hullabaloo; while the prosecutor says that his plea gains its status based on the expert opinion of the concerned officials related to Tomsk State University, the irony is that the so called ‘expert officials’ deny their opinion as being the official word. They render it to their own personal estimation.

The whole basis of stigmatizing Bhagwad Gita takes its birth from the interpretation of the scripture by Swami Prabhupada. Some have termed the explanations to be potent enough to cause religious divisions and some also travel to the extent that abusive words have been used for the folks who display no faith in Lord Krishna’s teachings. I have this deep insight that things are being manipulated and there are some gains on offer for the people responsible for stirring the hornet’s nest.

We, the Indians, have absorbed moral values, tranquility and wisdom by following the teachings of Bhagwad Gita ad infinitum. And why just Indians, I am sure a lot of our global citizens have seen their lives being catapulted to higher spheres just by pouring unconditional faith over the knowledge shared in Bhagwad Gita. Bhagwad Gita has been and would remain a favorite with scholars, sages and wise people all over the world. Leo Tolstoy was an ardent aficionado of our holy book; its first Russian translation took place about 225 years ago. The knowledge has no boundaries; its always on the self propogative spree, enlightening everyone that comes across its path. It would be best if this storm is resolved as soon as possible and I am sure the government of Russia would act in an exemplary way.

7 ways to win hearts of your patients

2011-12-21T22:16:00.000-08:00

Be courteous. Politeness travels a long way and helps disseminating your reputation to the remotest of places. Well-mannered words are the best emollient to soothe the nerves of your already irritated and depressed patient; so take a leap to travel the extra way.

Don’t make them wait as long as it’s in your hands. Shed the temptation of that freshly brewed coffee, of that nicotine break and of that cat nap when it’s the stipulated time to see your patients; provide your best in reducing the sufferings and that just doesn’t include rendering medical consultation. Behave as if you really care, as if they mean the world to you.

Don’t hide any fact. May it be a fact related to the prognosis, cost implications, disease course, expected duration of hospital stay, the fine words in treatment consent form. Don’t hide anything. A patient has no choice but to put the faith of his life to you; and you must come out a winner in helping him negotiating his illness in the most transparent manner.

Practice ethically. One must not indulge in accepting gifts from corporate that in turn want the return favors. One must adhere to the regulations laid by the respected councils of medical constitutional bodies. I am sure we can reduce the rate of nosocomial infections a great deal if we start following the protocols strictly. We can find innumerate faults in the system, but to say the fundamental fact, the cleaning of the system starts from the self.

Offer out-of-the-way help to the deserving patients. You came across a poor patient and you refused to take your charges; you have won a heart forever. You tried your level best to dwell deep in latest scientific literature to find out the best treatment modality for a patient suffering with a very uncommon disorder. You must not behave as robots while sitting in your OPD chamber; add a human touch and be sympathetic. The rest of the things will automatically follow a great deal.

See the world from the patients’ eyes. It can help you allay your feelings of frustration that you come across so frequently while taking rounds or while catering to a patient immune to all the counseling. Circumspect the circumstances of your patients and you might start feeling a sense of belonging to them. You are there to heal, not just to write a prescription and leave.

Remain approachable. For your patient, you are the God personified. Though I must say these definitions are getting a jolt every passing day but still, ethically, you hold a very responsible position in the context of your patients. Don’t refuse to see any patient who adamantly seeks your consultation. Help, just like hope, follows the trajectory of a boomerang. The more you give, the more it comes back to you.

Do you really care for your shadow?

2011-12-21T21:44:00.000-08:00

‘A person without a shadow is a Satan’ ---- English Proverb

We, the humans, are the most capable animate beings in the world. We hold distinct advantage from the animals, birds, insects in being able to express, feel, relate and accomplish. But still a majority of us feels monotonous and devoid of vigor; why is that so? The supreme creature that holds enormous power to unlock the mystical secrets and to invent the most insurrectionary techniques and methods should be content from inside, but that rarely is a reality. The blinding question is a big ‘WHY’.

As sage ‘Patanjali’ clearly said that one of the biggest reasons for failures and sorrow is the fact that we have this innate fear for being mortals. We fear death. We fear losing our dear ones. We fear a day will come when we will turn old, frail and powerless. This fear is the biggest detractor; we must out limit it to experience the raptures of life.

Do you ever get disturbed when your shadow appears smaller than the other person’s shadow? Do you ever feel perturbed when your shadow falls at an unhygienic place? Do you ever bother to find where your shadow is when you are in the middle of a very significant meeting? I am sure most of you will answer with a vocal ‘NO’. You are right. No one really bothers what happens to the shadow; we are just concerned with our bodies. Here lies on of the greatest treasures of life. Our physical bodies are the shadows of our souls, and we denote our souls, not our bodies. So why to take pain when our bodies suffer; they are mere shadows of our existence. Realize this truth and herald your journey to bliss.

The World is a Canvas; and I hold the Brush.

2011-12-18T03:37:00.000-08:00

The darker days in our lives help us shedding away the myopic view of the world. One must be having a visionary stance on the finer nuances of life, so close to us yet so esoteric. I saw a new world when I was passing through the roughest patch of my life. Many a folks who used to frequent me like I have been their diurnal source of oxygen, vanished in oblivion. Many a folks started believing that I must have done some sins in my present life to have reaped the bad days which swallowed me those days. But I felt stronger because my family and my close-knit friends, who had knew every inch of my life, provided me rock-solid support.

The reticulum of intuitions came into play and all of us were connected even when we were at far ahead distances and chose to remain mute at our respective places. Such is the power of faith and belief, when you start experiencing it, you start seeing the world from an entirely different perspective. And this is what the real call of life is. I don’t think we are born just to earn, eat, make merry, shed tears, sleep and then die in isolation one fine morning. Life is meant for something bigger, something of a grandeur measure. It’s a journey to refine one’s soul and to escalate it to higher echelons of spiritual plane. God lies in methods and our methods must be godly. The fabric, its threads and its patches are all important for the essence of a cloth; in the similar spree, life, along with its limitations, unsolved quests and riddles and confusing questions are all important for the essence of a soul's journey through the mortal world.

Have You Came Across God-Like-Particle?

2011-12-18T03:25:00.001-08:00

If universe is the answer, what is the question?

If Xenoglossia (a condition in which people start speaking in languages that have been unknown to them, though the languages exist. This is most frequently found in children) is the answer, what is the question?

If death is the answer, what is the question?

Does a logic exists that has universal applicability?

You chase your destiny willfully or you get trapped in the lanes that point to it?

God-like-particle is in the way of being discovered. What next? The final decoding?

You catch hold of an extremely engrossing book, one vivid evening. Is this a coincidence, or is this something else?

If religion is the answer, what is the question?

If dream is the catalyst, what is the reaction?

Mental anesthesia has been a reality. In later part of 19^th century, a Scottish doctor operated more than 300 patients in Bengal without giving any form of traditional anesthesia that involved exposure to an agent. All he did was to hypnotize his patients and not even in a single case did any of his patients complained of any discomfort. The variety of surgeries that he performed was overwhelming; brain tumor surgery, abdominal surgery etc. So, if pain is the question, what is the answer?

In the marriage of Sensory Nervous System & Motor Nervous System, who plays the cupid? My choice is Autonomic Nervous System. Who bears the biggest brunt out of all these?

We are not born equal. Congenital illnesses prove this. Is the celestial constitution biased?

I love my addictions.

2011-12-18T02:15:00.000-08:00

Writing is my newly found addiction. The list of my addictions has displayed a remarkable variation all these years; it is tough to contain me in a bunch of hackneyed words. There was a time when I was addicted to taking lighthearted laps with full throttle in the town with a bunch of friends; it was frolicsome and the involved exhilaration came as an added reward. There was a time when I was addicted to chewing rolled betel leafs, containing a mishmash of areca nut and slaked lime paste with a heavy coating of aromatic kattha. There was a time when I was addicted to learning the nuances of Microsoft Office; precisely it was the time when Pentium 3 processors were considered to be the most potential candidates, able to overpower an ordinary human brain one day.

There was a time, in my adolescent days, when I was addicted to watching Mumtaz, the silver screen starlet, on celluloid. Like every other teenager, belonging to heartland of India, my heart too swayed with the mischievous movements of her eyelashes. There was a time when I was addicted to perform surgeries at a stretch. In one of those golden sprees, I had performed 34 laparoscopic cholecystectomies (surgery for gall bladder stone) before sun could rise twice. The place was Muktsar, Punjab and 20th centuary was dusking away. There was a time when I was addicted to listening to the breath-taking songs of Adnan Sami. My favorite ones were ‘Kabhi to nazar milao’, ‘Nakhra uska garam masala’ and ‘Bheegi bheegi raaton mein’. With the pacing velocity of time, as Adnan Sami lost considerable weight, his news songs failed to evoke that signature charm.

There was a time when I was addicted to learn the Piano and every night I used to practice on the keyboard till my distal phalanges could contain their anguish. My music teacher, Vineet, a young lad with a remarkable hold over his practiced dominion used to teach me with grand vigor and it was his very subtle and soulful approach to music that I finally learned to make some music. Addictions are for indulgence and I am sure everyone has them. Your personality and the state of your subconscious mind attract certain habits, certain actions to you, and in the long run they metamorphose to be called as addictions. For some, love is the addiction; as for me meditating in the kingdom of Lord Krishna is my latest addiction.

You can't censor my thoughts. Can you?

2011-12-14T23:16:00.000-08:00

Why do people have to judge incessantly? Why do people have insecurities that drive them to think in egregiously biased manners? Why cant people just sit back and observe with an open mind?

Can you really imagine your posts, your pics being subjected to scrutiny before you are able to upload them? To me it sounds something bizarre to say the least, and I am sure most of the geeks out there would share an opinion like that. To deal with a small bunch of nuisance-makers, this would rather be a tough blow to the ordinary social media user.

Unpractical, flawed and undemocratic.

And I just read at one of the credible portals that Indian ministers want the scrutiny process to be done manually. So if that ever comes to see the light of the day, the honest taxpayer would be someone at highest loss. There are a lot of brighter ways to spend the national resources; invest in strengthening infrastructure, create more chances for the betterment of life-quality, make food cheaper and most widely available, check out the tentacles of corruption, fight inflation, give wings to the dreams of underprivileged and what not?

Our facebook profiles should not get unnecessarily poked; the right to express must not be compromised. More than 35 million tweets are sent by Indians per day and you want to scan those using human methods before they get posted. That typically mars the basic usability of such commendable web portal.

In the times of calamities, twitterati have used the site to provide commendable help resources in very short time. Facebook provides a working vent for all of us suffering with emotional fatigue. Now just imagine, can you really wait for your family album to get a nod from some of the authorities before you decide to share it with your close friends?

Please don’t snatch our rights of speaking and be heard to. It would not help to screen our social media content before we post them. Not only does it sound rude, it also defies some of the basic rights that we possess as humans.

Where is the FUSE of your body?

2011-12-14T07:51:00.000-08:00

Tragedies are weapons of destiny that don’t intend to harm you; they announce their presence in your lives to make you learn the art of self defense. They make you stronger and help you reinforcing your faith in the supreme spiritual power. Within your subconscious depths lie infinite wisdom, abyssal power, an unbridled supply of all that is so necessary for your existence. It is waiting there for you to give it the wings of expression and development.

When you begin to recognize these potentialities of your deeper mind, your subconscious mind, they will all take form in the world and will reinforce your beliefs and help you coping up with the drastic times. Many a times, I have witnessed power of the sub conscious realms lifting people up out of their immensely incapacitated states, providing them plenteous health and vitality once again. Many a folks are able to discern their past life information by processing their subconscious mind, using correct psychic techniques. I am sure a lot of us have read about 'Past Life Regression' and some of us believe in it as well. As far as I am concerned, I am a staunch believer in reincarnation, importance of Karma and abyssal power of subconscious mind.

I believe there is a miracle-working curative force within your mind; it lies in your subconscious sphere and can heal the troubled mind and many other ailments of body that have a mind-body-soul axis. The moment you reckon the force from the mundane and simpleton suggestions, imparted to you in mighty proportions by nature and its forces in your everyday's life, you would enter a plane that embodies 'nothingness'. Crack the convolutions and embrace the emptiness. The joy lies with the 'Nought'.

A Nurse. An Angel In Motion.

2011-12-12T03:31:00.000-08:00

They have taken care of my patients as if they were their own kids.
They have spent sleepless nights in the wards, ICU and Casualty so that the patients can bear a sound sleep.
They have stricken friendship with desolate patients so that they don’t feel homesick.
They have refused to leave from duty if an emergency arrived in the waning end of their shifts.
They have made sure that every nook and corner of the hospital looks spick and span.
They have abandoned visiting their home towns if there was a shortage of equivalent man power in the hospital.
They always brought home cooked delicacies when they returned from their ritual of once a year visit at their native place.
They have cleaned the spilled vomitus and blood stains when the ward boy was not in sight.
They have juggled hard to learn computers so that they can help the hospital’s vision of keeping the systems as per the advanced standard protocol.
They have attended their duties even when they are down with viral fever or acute gastritis.
They have cold sponged the infant suffering with ‘febrile convulsions’, even when the child’s parents slowly drifted into sleep.

Just observing them at work makes me retrospect and realize that I have been bestowed with tons of knowledge by all the staff nurses I ever came in contact with. They have this altruistic attitude to life, and they never make qualms about petty things. A doctor is incomplete without an equally capable army of allied nurses; patient management is a comprehensive process. A nurse is someone most close to God; a mother figure, a sage in motion, an emotional healer. I wish every person of the world gets to know that the nurses sacrifice a lot to make sure that the ailing ones start gaining health again. I don’t think I can do anything that can ever match the favors that have been bestowed over me by nurses. One needs to have this in her soul, in her tissues to be as selfless as a nurse is.

A Nurse is one of the most divine animate beings. I salute to their spirit and their cause.

I am Immortal. Are You?

2011-12-12T03:03:00.000-08:00

I have learnt some of the best lessons of my life in the courtyard of Lord Krishna’s temple in Vrindavan. The importance of self-discovery and meaning of physical existence was oblivion to me years back. Then the rendezvous happened, a transcendental one, a stirring one. There is more meaning to the basis of our existence than to earn, eat and die solemnly a fine evening. Why at all we take birth in a cosmos full of nebulous hints? As I embraced Lord Krishna, my soul found a conduit that was full of light and at the end of it, there was nothing but magical and ecstatic easiness. The moment one comes across the aim of taking birth, fears alleviate.

I have experienced the profound power of being at the center of celestial orbits when sitting solitarily infront of Lord Krishna’s idol, enjoying the nothingness of inner self. The quintessence of consummation is realization of self. It is rhapsodic to say the least. A soul is free from general emotions of guilt, hatred, anger etc. and the moment we start feeling ourselves not as physical bodies but as wandering souls, we attract cosmic blessings. A blessing is nothing but shared enlightenment. This is why we live; to understand the course of our trajectory, to perform better in the world that we inhabit. I often see people perturbed at the very thought of death; in fact death is the opening door. When someone dies, he just switches his place. A soul is immune to death, so why worry? You can never die; you are immortal. So why not plan a journey keeping in account of your soul? I believe in Lord Krishna, someone else believes in Jesus and so on. We have different idols, different faiths but the essence is the SAME.

'Observations' have been my best buddies.

2011-12-08T12:50:00.000-08:00

Serendipitous observations have always been my thick friends. As my profession demands, I have to spend a lot of time observing my patients’ gestures and expressions in the hope of getting a vital clue about the indwelling disease. This way I am blessed, for the requirements of my profession and my personal interest blend in perfectly. To observe is the prerequisite to learn, and eventually to grow.

I hold this deep-seated belief that by keenly observing a person, or a situation, or a mere thought, we allow our energy fields to get closer to that of our subject of observation. And this gives us power to reach a state where the intervening lines no longer exist; you reach as close to your subject as you are to yourself. And this is precisely the point where you start producing the desirable changes, the changes of betterment. Observations start touching the key-points when your intuitive abilities have outgrown the ordinary standards.

To enhance your intuitive powers, you have to know and put your faith on the virtue called ‘belief’. If your subconscious gets to know your belief, it turns the desire into the reality. But then the belief should not be an artificial one, or one with fragile integrity. Nothing is a miracle. The cosmic reality is all studded with the mutual arrangements and reactions of energy fields. Your thought is a cloud of specified energy; energy that has power to transform. Prayers get answered when the faith is unalloyed, because the subconscious perceives this as your deep desire and the natural forces act in accordance to make your desires see the light of the day. So strengthen the roots of your existence; start practicing faith and stop worrying.

New Kid in the Block. Welcome Doctor.

2011-12-08T12:27:00.000-08:00

A lot of young doctors are joining the existing brigade of healthcare professional every day. This profession can be very demanding and tiresome; even confusing at times. To be a successful doctor, an intern or a newly crowned resident doctor must adhere to some basic tenets and the glory would be on its way to greet with open arms.

Plan your day ahead. It would be awesome if you can divide the day in the chunks of 2 hours each; that will give you greater flexibility and clarity over the acts, their courses and end results.
Don’t lose your sleep. A healthy mind needs your daily quota of hypnotic trance.
Talk to your patients. Talk a lot. Make moves to understand their insights.
Don’t hide any fact from your patient. You sit in the seat just next to that of the God in your patient’s eyes. Do your best to keep up to the heightened expectations.
Always take consents as per the protocol. On a bad day it would save your skin as well.
Follow sanitation standards. Wash your hands as per the WHO recommended protocol. Don’t abridge the minutes passed practicing hand washing.
Take Hepatitis B vaccination. Everyone tries to be smart enough to avoid a needle prick injury, but one can never predict a bad moment. One stitch in time saves nine.
Take complete history of the patient. Remember to include allergy history, family history and past medical history as feverishly as you take history of present ailments. The deeper you dig, higher you soar.
When in doubt, take help from the seniors.
Respect the nurses and allied healthcare staff. You can learn a lot from them just by observing them closely.
Give wings to your lateral thinking. Why this? Why not that? Keep the handy versions of your reference books always available.
Get access of the medical and surgical journals of your choice. The more you read, the better you know. You get to know a lot of latest modifications in the standard regimens of treatment when you read journals.
Be acquainted with a patient by his name (not his bed number or room number).
Write legibly.
Never write about the clinical state of the patient in the case sheet unless you have examined him.
Participate in the academic activities. Get enrolled for seminar, workshops, conferences etc.
Co-operate with the quality control team of the organization you work with. They are not your enemies; they just want to make patient care more effective.
Go slow on stimulants.
Practice meditation.
Try not to get irritated even in the adverse settings. No one comes to the hospital in a serene mental state.
Write notes about the key things that you learned. Maintain a diary, if possible.
Wear clean uniform.
Sport that warm smile more often.
Love your profession.

All Random Events have Planned Motives.

2011-12-08T11:38:00.000-08:00

I have always placed a rock-strong belief in the concept of reincarnation; and every time I come across a book written by Dr Brian Weiss, my belief increases manifolds. As a kid I was told about the concepts of reincarnation, karma, prayers and related spiritual subjects by my parents. Even though many questions were left unanswered due to lack of credible explanation, my heart abided the teachings. I definitely placed my belief in the theory that your destiny is the result of your karmas and when you take re-birth, its just another chance to get away from the cycle of life and death and attain the ‘brahm’ state.

Dr Brain Weiss, according to me, is an immensely talented, insightful, knowledgeable and courageous person, who kept his questioning cells free from any restrictions. Life is what other than the state of utter liberty? As I have grown up spiritually reading his books, I take no exceptions in instating that his observations and findings make sense. Our karmas, our relationships and our thoughts make tangled knots in our subconscious mind, which eventually exhibit in the form of physical symptoms. For every phobia, déjà vu, string of strange but related incidents, there lie a lot of spiritual and karmic connections. What we perceive as random events or moments in our lives are planned ones, with detailed and precise motives. The power of soul is unparalleled, and in most instances, unexplored.

Meditate a lot. Learn to align the axis of your mind, body and soul and all your fears, insecurities, negative emotions would go for a toss. You will feel liberated. You will feel elated. You will feel close to God.

Do You Require An Electromagnetic Helmet?

2011-12-01T13:58:00.000-08:00

We are living in the era of scientific ecstasy. Our thinking neurons have taken a leap from Pre-Neanderthal era to that of the modern day, where zippiest telecommunication is the call of the hour. I am sure if you ever happen to pass by a congested lane in Old Delhi, and you happen to appreciate the sky, all that you see is the patches of sky blue bruised badly by an array of electric wires. Now this is the truth that is visible to the eyes. The reality is far more ugly, and horrid as well.

Millions of cell phones that enjoy closest proximity to human bodies that any electronic appliance ever did; lacs of giant cell phone towers dispersed everywhere. How much electromagnetic radiations to you think you have to eat everyday because of these technical expansions?

Your home has a TV, a satellite direct-to-home transmission service, desktops / laptops with internet facilities, refrigerator, washing machine, stereo system, microwave oven and what not. If you happen to see all those electromagnetic waves piercing your bodies, I am sure you would faint in gross disbelief. These electromagnetic waves have energy, and that energy must be doing something with our bodies, and our minds. What do you think? Are you sure they are non-interfering? Has anyone measured susceptibility of a DNA to the riot of electromagnetic waves?

Offers, and some more offers. Electronic devices have become a lot more affordable than they used to be a decade back. That means an even distribution of intruding electromagnetic energy in our households, society and world at large. Someone mentioned, ‘faith is blind’; how true indeed. A case of mass myopia, or a case of exaggerated, unrealistic hopes? How much maneuvering does the nature allows?

Are we digging our own graves?

Make Your Kids Aware About SEX. Educate Them.

2011-12-01T13:29:00.000-08:00

Its an entangled world. An overtly complicated one. Different cultures, different styles, different education modes, different standards of living, different expectations, different choices, different moods, different mindsets, different beliefs and the list is unending. The differentiation between good and bad and the explanation of everything that lies in between is of crucial importance. Armour your kids with a good dose of sex education so that they face the world with wisdom, clarity and courage.

Keep your talking style very natural. Don’t appear like you have rehearsed a lot for the final talks; kids are way too smart to judge the difference between natural and artificial. A natural talk would evoke more interest and reliability.
Avoid complex description of sexual anatomy. The motive is to simplify things for adolescents or kids, not to make the seemingly difficult puzzle an unconquerable one.
Speak about sexual maturation, menstruation, onset of secondary sexual characters before the onset of events so that the kids embrace these events with an enlightened psyche. If you don’t feel comfortable enough, ask a psychologist about the proper way to do this. Remember, a parent is the best person to give the child some sensible education about sex and the allied paraphernalia.
A child, in all possibilities, would ask you strange, sometimes embarrassing, questions about sexuality; the best you can do is to provide a real answer in the most comprehensible way. Don’t just attempt to make your child loose hold the topic so that you don’t have to answer the queries. An unanswered question might never be raised again by your child and a wrong answer, gathered from dubious sources, can be detrimental.
Encourage the child to ask anything that comes to his mind.
Ensure free spirited, knowledgeable talks when you are imparting sex education to your kids. They must not feel inhibited morally to raise questions.
Involve your spouse in the process. Kids can ask a question related to sexuality to anyone in the family; and if all the answers are given by one parent, the kids may smell that talks are scripted.
Kids should be told about the line that separates affection from sexual abuse. They must be explained when to say a ‘no’ and when to report the things to parents and teachers. You can’t take chances with your child’s emotional and mental health; and with the rising incidences of child abuse, it would be just apt to make your child well prepared to shield himself.
Keep a check on the quality of video games that your kid adores. Sometimes these may contain explicit material, ambiguous gestures, provocative body language or simple misinterpretation of the sexualities, by which your child might be affected in an adverse way.
Keep your internet settings in parental control mode. Remember, a kid’s mind is very pliable and an access to pornographic sites can be extremely ruinous.

A Check-list Before You Start Writing Your Biography

2011-11-29T23:27:00.000-08:00

Make sure to keep it non-controversial, unless, of course, you are eyeing some short lived media attention and long lived grudges.

Don’t let the text be loud, allow the sub-text to rule the mood.

Sit with your family and friends more often. Observe them closely and ask them for old-forgotten memories.

Visit the significant places you have ever been. In all likelihoods, you would find some new thing and recollect some nostalgia.

Click a lot of photographs and keep all the albums handy. Devote a lot of time looking out at the pictures; the childhood pics, college pics, marriage pics, ceremonial pics, holiday trip pics, family pics etc.

Divide the events of your life in some chapters and treat each chapter as a separate entity, an al-inclusive one.

Get a basic hold on Microsoft Word (or any other tool that you prefer for the similar application).

Keep a diary with you; if you are well versed taking notes on your smart-phone, it will be as good if not better.

Make a schedule of writing; aim to write daily. In the scheduled writing hour, prefer to not do anything else; even if you are suffering with writer’s block of the day, don’t keep the pen down. You can anyway refine the raw notes at a later stage.

Keep breathing space in your writing schedule. You have to be at your thinking best so offering yourself deadlines serves no real purpose.

Talk to your old friends, and if they allow, record their conversations about your togetherness.
Always keep a backup of your soft copy.

Tie up with an editor, and explain him about the job before you press the ‘hiring now’ button.

Buzz your social network about your progress in writing the biography. It will keep your close ones informed and you might get some motivation by their comments and feedbacks.

Keep the narration simple, and don’t breach its integrity.

Refrain from using opulent, flowery words. The aim is to ensure an easy comprehension.

Avoid going high on artificial stimulants to get a high (read excess coffee, tea, alcohol, nicotine); the flow is just the best when you are truly in pulchritude.

If possible, start each chapter with a theme quote. The quote can be your own. PS: I am using this strategy for my own biography.

My Most Awesome Moments

2011-11-29T23:20:00.000-08:00

Successfully accomplishing some rare surgical procedure at my hospital.

Meeting free-thinkers that don’t really fit in the old-hat notion of predictable preachers.

Holding conversation with my old patients that have been my most ardent supporters.

Witnessing a patient in whom the recovery has been faster than usual norms.

When a new born is christened as Anil, just because the parents have been inspired by me.

When I explore the internet to find out unbelievable pace of advancements in surgical sciences.

Being able to stick to my schedules of the day and still extract some time to spend with my wife during the fag end of the day.

Standing in the court of Lord Krishna at Vrindavan / Eskon Temple with transcendental state of mind, and experiencing the inexpressible solace.

To savor Kachauri of Kota. Nothing beats its signature style aroma and flavor.

To be able to extend that extra help for the person who truly deserves it the most.

The moment I just wake up.

When I explore a new country, a new culture, a new horizon indeed.

When I experience déjà vu.

When I am able to learn a new trick in the dogma of internet and computers; whoever says new things are for blue-eyed boys, go get a life.

When I find a long-forgotten pal in some form of social media. Though I must say it has started happening virally with the arrival of facebook.

Dial Code 212 - Dr Anil Khetarpal Speaking

2011-11-29T23:12:00.000-08:00

I love my room; the four-walled quarter, placed next to the dialysis unit in the second floor of my hospital. It has sheltered me in most exhorting hours, and in the most mundane moments as well, without changing its typical heart-warming feel. It houses some of the most sophisticated machinery required to manage an oddball personality; it has a small library, an equipped computer system with attached paraphernalia, a sofa-cum-bed, a small refrigerator, a designated space for visitors to sit and hold communication with me, a worship corner and a LCD projector system. Many a times, I have spent hours in my room, my sacred space, mugging over the theoretical intricacies of a complex clinical case, gulping down cans of red bull. The room has witnessed a spree of interviews, a binge of professional meetings with proficient peers and a fling of day-to-day customaries that we, doctors, are so used to of. This is the place where some of the most brilliant ideas have blessed my mind and where, often enough, I have been able to hold very satisfying soliloquies. I have found that late evening hours are the best when it comes to my imagination nerves; in accordance, I keep meetings with some of the best brains in these hours at my room. I don’t know whether I am addicted to my room or it has gradually become an extended home to my soul, but I miss it when I don’t step in for a couple of days.

Not many folks are aware of the well shielded identity of this room; many think it to be another private room meant to be occupied by a patient, for many it’s the doctors’ room. I have followed the measures to make sure that room doesn’t get unnecessary highlight, so that I may experience self rendezvous moments without much interference. Here, at this place, I try my hands at writing blogs, watching youtube videos – mostly surgical ones, preparing powerpoint slides, fine tuning the hospital functioning, catching an occasional day time nap between the strangulated schedules of surgeries and appointments, collaborating with my peers, opening the cork of a fizzy cola and what not. I have learnt some of the most astonishing discoveries about myself, sitting in my room, watching out of the stellar window, that so beautifully gives a close view of Delhi Metro.

I have spent countless nights in this room to ensure a 24 hour clinical vigilance to my patients. Many old patients are well aware of my room’s location and don’t hesitate to knock even in the oddest hours. They bear this unwavering faith that they would be helped by me in my capacity, and I make sure to give this trust factor a shot of steroids every time. I feel a divine connection when I am with my patients, listening to them, examining them and offering them treatment. My room has witnessed riots of laughter and rebellion of tears, with equal ease, without getting corrupted. To the less enlightened ones, 212 is the extension code of my room. Enter with faith and hope and come out smiling.

Indulge in Self Affair. Its Therapeutic.

2011-11-27T02:04:00.000-08:00

Memories astonish you. You are taken aback with stellar force and you feel comfortably stupefied. You realize that your character is your talisman and everything else is ephemeral.

I am writing my biography. If the pieces fit in perfectly, I would be able to publish it in a couple of months. I must say it is a very rewarding experience to travel back in the lanes of time and discover entirely new things about myself. In the hunt to woo the ordinary accomplishments, we, more often than said, tend to forget our own very existence. We breathe but don’t really feel the air, our bodies laugh but our soles remain numb, and many a times, we emote like a programmed machine. In the race of life, we tend to outreach ourselves, and there can be no defeat bigger than this. Life is meant for something different; as someone beautifully said, “God is in the details”. Is there a real meaning of life when you don’t really feel you, when you don’t really see the place you fit in the ecosystem, when you don’t really chase every intricate question that nature has to offer?

With every passing day I am discovering myself. I have started loving the whole exercise and nonetheless to say, I am falling in love with myself. Billions of cells in my body breathe life, but do I appreciate the meaning of LIFE? Where do you really fit in the axis of mind, body and soul? Who has the highest command? Have you discovered your real potential? Brain is found to be active all the times during the entire tenure of a human life, and what about soul? Brain-dead is something aghast, and what about folks with soul-dead phenomenon? I find myself lucky that I am savoring the experience and holding a dialogue with myself for a lot of people leave this world without knowing why they came here and where do they leave for?

Find Out and Celebrate.

2011-11-26T22:50:00.000-08:00

1. You don’t get to see any red light during your trajectory from home to office which carries 14 signals.

2. You wake up in the morning very fresh, and very awake.

3. You smell an impending headache and the sight of aspirin seeps in your visual field.

4. You go out to shop with a defined budget in your mind, only to know that the budget was an overrated one and you are left with much money even after shopping.

5. You just had the most succulent breakfast in the morning, very appeasing and very satisfying.

6. You don’t happen to read any disturbing news in the morning daily.

7. Your facebook profile shows 15 notifications, 3 messages and 6 add friend requests.

8. You look in the mirror and you appear 10 years younger to yourself. Where are those blackheads and wrinkles?

9. You observe your kid to be making same pranks as you used to do in your formative years.

10. You visit a worship place and instantly feel a divine connection; you don’t feel to come out of the transcendental state.

11. Your work, in which you didn’t put in many efforts, gets praised by your colleagues and superiors grandly.

12. You make your parents happy, genuinely happy.

13. You are able to live your day without hurting anyone.

14. You remember all the passwords of your virtual world (that includes 3 email ids and 7 social networking profiles)

15. You feel the thrusts of wind over your face, overjoyed thrusts.

Be Unpredictable. Be Erratic.

2011-11-26T22:19:00.000-08:00

The learning phase of a living human being starts from the embryonic state itself; we come across the hard realities and we learn the measures to move ahead. In scientific language they term this as conditioning; a process in which a human being learns to respond appropriately to the stimulus being offered. As our brain tissue keeps on getting conditioned in a hackneyed way, it starts behaving in a predictable manner. You cannot really blame the brain for this; in our society, we get punished and criticized if we don’t act in a particular way in response to a stimulus, hence with the intention of keeping the reward centers satisfied, the brain follows the traditional, utterly jejune path. This is precisely the point where we, unknowingly and indirectly, start behaving like robots. Give us a stimulus and we will behave in the most predictable way that has been taught to us. Give us a peck on the cheek and we will reciprocate, show us the middle finger and we will show you the fist, the list is never ending.

There is more to life than is visible from naked eyes and is observable from a brain conditioned to behave in the predictable manner. There have been people who displayed abundant courage and behaved in unpredictable, may be out-of-the-box manner, and have been at the receiving end of all the glory, affection and praise. Masaru Ibuka founded Sony Corporation at the age of 37 years with no clear idea of what products would the company deal in. They struggled with a failed rice cooker, failed tape recorder and kept on paying the electricity bills by the incomes generated with crude heating pads. It took them 10 years to deliver their first successful product, the pocket radio, and from that point there was no looking back. The corporate history is stuffed with examples that created legends just because t hey refused to act in the defined, particular way. It’s important to keep on asking questions to yourself; to stay active, even the brain muscles need stimulation.

Act as if there is no tomorrow. When you analyze or think, do it from every possible angle. Discard the stereotyped notions and allow yourself to see the real light of wisdom. Understand the meaning of life; it gives you opportunity to live the way you want, not the way your acquaintances have conditioned you to.

Eat, Pray and Love.

2011-11-23T05:56:00.000-08:00

Eat. Know what to eat. Discover the perfect way to eat. Relish the experience of eating. Eat with friends. Eat with family. Eat in the setting that evokes your soul. Eat to enjoy. Eat to stay healthy. Eat to celebrate. Eat to stay powerful, physical and emotionally. Eat to learn about the cultures and diversities. Eat to know the secret spices of nature. Eat to give life. Eat to sanitize your body systems.

Pray. Pray with closed eyes. Pray with open eyes. Pray with expectations. Pray to learn and find. Pray to seek answers. Pray to ask questions. Pray to experience the darkness. Pray to see the light. Pray to find the God. Pray to identify the soul within. Pray to supercharge your emotional identity. Pray to galvanize your energy fields. Pray to gain spiritual ammunition. Pray to provide answers.

Love. Love unconditionally. Love like there is no tomorrow. Love the imperfections. Love the faults. Love the less blessed. Love your friends. Love your enemies. Love your desires. Love your ambitions. Love the unsaid commitments. Love the turbulence. Love the tranquility. Love the obstacles. Love the velocity. Love your body. Love your soul. Love complications. Love simplicities. Love, for there is no other way, that is going to stay.

A Doctor and A Tweet.

2011-11-23T05:37:00.000-08:00

Twitter is something that always astonishes me. If facebook is akin to a coffee house, twitter is no less than a parliament. The joy is boundless the moment you come across 140 characters typed by someone you hold immense respect for. You get to know the real thing, no media manoeuvrings, no added floss or deprived gloss. You don’t have to gain the permission to get a glance over anybody’s view, except for the random souls who believe in ironies – being on twitter and keeping your tweets protected. There aren’t a lot of doctors that use twitter regularly; I have came across a lot of profiles that belong to the health care fraternity, but to my dismay, either the profiles were made in the quest to keep pace with the advancing social media engineering where the user had made little efforts to keep and stay updated, or the profiles were fake identities, created by marketing czars to advertise about the newest kid in the town of wonder diets.

If you want to be on twitter and make the most of it, you have to keep on tweeting. Tweeting is expressing your thoughts, ideas and observations in 140 characters or less at a time. The more you tweet, the more buzz you create and more credible your online presence becomes. Twitter is a practical and powerful tool as it gives you the power to express your thought and send it to any chosen user in a moment of time. You can retweet to spread the thoughts expressed by any other user as well; your timeline (the synagogue of facebook wall) gives you a compact view of all the tweets posted by people you choose to follow. Like a tweet? Now you have plenty of options; retweet it or put in a reply or type your views and send it to your choice of end listeners. However, things don’t work on auto-pilot mode all the time; you have the power to plan the delivery of your tweets but you have to browse every now and then to know about the twitter trends. What is a twitter trend? A twitter trend is a word or phrase that is been most talked about in the world of twitter. There are different twitter trends for various geographical locations and are hugely inspire by the events happening in various places. Did I hear someone say twitter is the public spittoon? It is indeed a myopic view. Twitter opens countless minds in front of you; the more you read, the more you learn.

Tomorrow must be grief-free

2011-11-23T05:10:00.000-08:00

There are instances when a doctor feels terribly helpless. Imagine the plight of a family who comes to know that a doctor can do little to combat the myriad of illnesses they are bestowed over. It occurs a lot of times when an occasional case of advanced multiple sclerosis or that of terminal stage of malignancy pops up in the usually serene OPD setting. Medical advancements have been great but nature’s modes are, and will never be, poorly fathomed. It happens most of the times that a family’s faith is shattered when they come to discover that one of their loved relatives is suffering with an illness that has little hope to be conquered. We, the medical practitioners, also find ourselves drenched in the pool of despair in such settings. Hope is the functional steel of the life, and when a person has no hopes left, how vulnerable would his mental state be? Is there a worse emotion in the world than that of an impending loss?

A loss is a very serious occurrence. It is akin to betrayal; the sense of bereavement is something that one would never want to imagine. The race against time serves no real sense to the sprinter; you end up feeling the egg on your face. Had there been an appliance that would have rendered emotional immunity on demand, a lot of worldly problems would have ceased to exist. Care must be permanent, unconditional and supreme when it is needed the most. Nature’s rules are multifarious enough to shake the faith of the ordinary human being; the road to enlightened knowledge has dark tunnels, labyrinthine in course. Would there be a day when we will be able to combat every malevolent illness? Would there be a moment when the world would witness a mass grief-free moment?

Don't delay. You might just miss the bus.

2011-11-19T14:48:00.000-08:00

In the torrid paced setting of the modern-age world, it sometimes begins a habit to procrastinate. We've all had moments in our lives where the urge to procrastinate is extremely tempting and at times indefatigable. Putting things off or choosing to adjourn rather than actually getting work done can lead to multifaceted problems in the long run. And why just in long run, your important work schedules can go for a serious toss in the short run as well. Procastrination is comparable to looming in the dark with the belief that light is your muse; it doesn’t happen like that all the times. You must try to work over the mental settings that regularly push you for postponing your works.

Break your work into reasonable parts: Perhaps you've wanted to reorganize your shelf, but it's such a huge project you procrastinate and are reluctant to begin.If this is the case, then break up that large task into to smaller increments so you can't really procrastinate. Not only will it seem easily doable, but you'll find the work getting done in a relatively short amount of time. Your brain’s reward centres would feel stimulated and the positive feedback phenomenon would keep you revved high to not to try procastrination in the future.

Lightening up your work helps a lot: Another helpful tip in combating procrastination includes exploring your psyche and changing your mindset. If you're a perfectionist, you know that the thought of even beginning a project is overwhelming because you're consumed with having it turn out "just right" which causes many to delay it incessantly without any logical reasons. Getting rid of or suppressing this urge for flawlessness will definitely help your project get under way and stop the annoying urge to procrastinate. Always remember, early you start, more are the chances of getting the work finished in time.

Schedule your space and time: If you can't seem to get started on anything, make a list to battle your habit to procrastinate. Rank all of your projects in order based on when they're due and how difficult they are. If you are more of a computer person, there are a plenty of desktop applications that provide the virtual reminders and to-do-lists that keep on glaring in the background of your desktop. It's hard to procrastinate with a list in front of you, guiding you through the day. Make sure to order the tasks in terms of their relevant priorities.

It’s important to reward yourself when you accomplish a task with precision and without delay. Planned relaxation time is great, as long as it stays within set boundaries and doesn't turn into time where you put off the scheduled assignments. So whatever your personal barriers are when it comes to tending to procrastinate, just keep structure in mind when planning your day, your month or your year. Keep small chunks of time as a buffer but don't leave super large slots of time that could cause you to procrastinate. Wings of time don’t wait for anything, and they flutter fast when you are busy doing nothing. So roll up your sleeves and stick to the schedules; your reward centres must get their daily supply of stimulation.

Nothing is a Myth.

2011-11-19T12:02:00.000-08:00

As I write this I put enormous faith on the interdependent nature of energy and mass. Whatever happens, holds a good reason behind for its occurrence. What I have gathered through years of my interaction with people and my real-life experiences is that nothing happens just for the heck of it. We explore, sometimes quite deep inside, to find the truth and then dig deeper to find its origin and relevancy. However, most of us miss the essentially stubborn point, that is, after a certain level, everything is as complex as a ‘zero’. Nature is born with a mind and its rules know no other path than the one that establishes its supremacy.

We are all born with our energy fields and live them. In the processes of life, we tend to maneuver our energy fields a lot. A truth is a truth to the person whose energy field is compatible with it, for the other person it may be false, or between the shades of truth and false. You challenge the highest authority; you challenge yourself and the fun is not in discovering a greater force than you. The fun is in realizing that the biggest powerhouse dwells in your own very DNA. Legends are not created when the energy fields assume mammoth proportions so as to evoke mass reaction, that too in a sustainable and reassuring way. A myth is something that doesn’t exist; it’s a relative reality of the mind whose energy fields bear self-doubts.

You are the light and you are the shadow. You have the capacity to absorb the world’s energy in the way you want. Get ignited or get burnt. Get a life or plea for one. Focus on the enormous reservoir of energy lying inside you or pass your life bitching about the achievements of others. We are born with five essential senses to know the world around us and nature has more than five senses to overpower us in the times of a head-on collision. Put faith in your abilities, identify the soul within and you can explore senses that defy ordinary capacities. Know the world from inside out and keep the methods simple. Start the celestial journey from the centrum of your soul and you shall never be defeated. Oh did I mention defeat, sorry, it’s a relative word too.

Missing the Buzz... Here I am.

2011-11-19T06:37:00.000-08:00

I am writing this post after many months; and I must establish that by the end of April 2011, for the unfathomed reasons, I had the gut instinct that I may be kept denuded of my virtual social life for the weeks to come. Professional commitments come in the unyielding coats and, like most of the toffee-nosed bosses, demand unflickering attention. Initially I felt bad for now adhering to my daily ritual of blogging, then the craving diminished as the time passed. When time decides to move on, it virtually gives horns to your internal processors, complimented with a comfortable amnesia, selective of course.

It was an usual morning about a week back and I could experience a sudden jolt in my telencephalon. What the heck I was doing all these months? There had been moments of ecstasy, randomness, accomplishments, failures, humdrum and what not? Why was I careless enough to keep my readers devoid of their daily dose? Why not spread the whiff of my experiences to the folks? To observe is the bliss and to disseminate the knowledge is divine.

It is hard to extract some slice of life from the over-congested schedule of my daily life as a doctor; but it had to be done. And as I write this small piece, I feel content. I feel like a child who just found an uninhabited jungle of mango trees, with bunch of ripe mangoes hanging from every branch. The more I write the more I know myself. To discover the untouched facets of your mind and soul is indeed an experience. The more you discover something precious, the avarice increases exponentially. You keep on exploring till you start nearing the kernel of your existence, your innerself, in its purest form. I make a promise to all my friends, colleagues and readers that I will continue to write till the time I think my rendezvous with life bears a potential to be shared.

The Eerie Emptiness

2011-05-03T00:17:00.000-07:00

Emptiness fills the vessel of vacuum. What is nothing to ordinary eyes remains occult to knowing mind. Void has an identity; it is probably composed of lowest energy particles in dynamic equilibrium thus making it ‘nothing’ according to the principles of matter and kinetic energy. But why does emptiness has its space and existence? I believe anything which is potent enough to have its space, can’t be nothing. There has to be a potential energy in it; with some motive.

The vacuum of space is probably near to transcendental state of mind; which is very rich in its potency and seemingly dead to the oblivious eyes. Does the emptiness repel its possession by measurable particles of mass and energy? And if it does so, it must be applying some energy to maintain its existence. Is emptiness pure or is it attained after an array of assortment? Who understands the purpose of emptiness? Is emptiness pre-occupied or open to new colonizers? Empty state of mind has never caused any entropy so can we safely render it divine or supernatural?

Hey Stethoscope, Do You Have A Soul?

2011-04-27T06:19:00.000-07:00

I seldom wonder, what all whirls in the mind of a patient who happens to be at the wrong side of consultation desk with a doctor. The heightened hope, the abundant anxiety and the heaps of anticipation; all make a confused assortment in the shallow sulci of patient’s brain. The doctor is observed and studied with electric eyes, whether he is paying enough attention to the array of symptoms; or seems pre-occupied? If psychomancy would have been as easy as humming a nursery rhyme, the patient would have deciphered every smidgen of scientific knowledge dwelling deep in the cerebral cortex of the clinician. The patient normally comes with pre-occupied set of answers, only if the clinician is clever enough to pop the right question at the right time.

The white-coat syndrome threatens to attain monstrous manifestations to the ill prepared patient. The sight of sphygmomanometer and stethoscope, the smell of fumes of formalin, the sound of tongue-twisting medical syllables; all make the patient feel like tittle drop of water in the gory fire of tropical forest. The occasional question put forward by the all-knowing clinician that trespasses the mental boundaries of the ordinary person, makes the patient dilapidated. The Greenwich longitude starts settling with flashy pace. The patient finally adjusts his focal length to dire measures and attempts to observe the illegible handwriting of the doctor; the hopes get dashed again.

Now comes the counseling time. The good doctor will give ample of time to the patient and his most scintilla of concerns with big ears. The rapport establishment exercise does half the work for ideal acquiescence with the treatment. I feel that patient should be given every opportunity to express himself as many tangled cases get solved with the focus on seemingly inconsequential points in symptomatic narration by the patient. We are here to treat illnesses; we should make our personalities more approachable, more interactive and gentler.

Frozen Frowns

2011-04-24T06:54:00.000-07:00

They say that body mass decreases when a person dies due to flight of soul from the body. They say some theories have crawled to the point where this has been proved in the labs. What I want to ask, whether emotions (e.g. love, faith, anger etc) also have measurable weight? The abstractionism is mysterious, as it is not visible. The abstractionism has powers (you would agree, how else we can explain the evolution biggest of history changing events from a fit of faith, love, anger or other thoughts). My point is why the powerful has chosen to remain invisible?

Forgotten faith leads to forbidden fear. Fear is the recipe for disaster. In every disaster lies a potential escape. To hunt for the escape is meant for the intelligent intuition. Intuition is the offspring of belief, intelligent intuition eventually born by intelligent belief. What is an intelligent belief?

A needle is a needle when viewed from a certain angle. It can cause you optical illusion of a small dot, if seen from another angle. The perceived length of the needle depends on angle of viewing; for some viewers, it is shorter, for some, it is longer. Which angle are you viewing your life with? No matter how much potency and efficacy has been bestowed over your life, if your viewing angle is wrong, you will perceive it as a blemished dot that hardly exists.

They say before any unaccustomed happening that is going to affect us, our body’s senses react in aberrant way. And we don’t become aware of the same, until it happens. How strange? How do our body’s deepest senses know of the impending future? Are things pre-planned? What is the role of brain in our bodies then? Don’t you think that most of the sights are illusionary and most of the thoughts are misleading? What blindfolds us?

Death Is Dark (And Secrets Are Kept In Dark)

2011-04-24T04:02:00.000-07:00

Death is the shell, death is the seed. Without death, birth is impossible. Bodies die and decompose; soul is ever youthful with indescribable wisdom, it changes bodies in accordance with the most mysterious laws of nature. A body is the virtual reality that is seen; a soul is the factual reality that is unseen. The laws of nature are locked with the bushel of convolution; and the key to open the locks of secrets has been rendered out-of-bounds for the ordinary minds. Death is metamorphosis; the transmutation of sable smoke into lustrous light.

My initial reaction was that of stupefying shock when I heard that Spiritual leader Sri Sathya Sai Baba passed away at the Sathya Sai super speciality hospital at Puttaparthi in Andhra Pradesh's Anantapur district today (24-04-2011). Though I was watching closely about his health affairs, the tiny flickers of hope refused to die down. But it happened. I felt all 5 phases of grief (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance) in quick flashes (Denial, Depression and Acceptance predominantly). Why can’t our souls be allocated one body for the soul’s lifetime? Why do bodies have to wither and decay? Why don’t souls identify each other, as bodies do?

The life is a mirage; and death is the end of it. I believe death is the closest clue that nature has given us to decipher the inevitability of life. I am not sure whether the holy grail of life can be cracked by us, lesser mortals. The constancy of a thing reminds of its importance; and death is the only constant that we know. So if I assert that death is the most important thing in nature, would I be rendered wrong? And you would agree that the important thing is important because it has vital essence; it has some uncommon thing which is of extreme importance. So if the death is a prized phenomenon and not a conjectural occurrence, why don’t we take it as the biggest clue of nature’s super secret laws and study it? Death is dark and most of the secrets are kept in dark, which is human tendency. Does God also think like humans?

Benumbed Blitzkreig

2011-04-22T23:02:00.000-07:00

All of a sudden, your eyelids get a life. They get away from the mutually cuddled position and resume the usual role of visual sensory watch guards. As vision enters your retina, the neuronal circuits get a life and occipital cortex takes a sigh. It’s the onset of another morning; the bodily clocks never fail to astonish you with their cold-hearted accuracy. Who invented the clock? Who invented the necessity of slogging for money? Who invented that night is meant for dizzy galore? You appreciate the heightened lassitude of your body with snail-paced-velocity of crisscross thoughts. The order started appearing in your thought processes with noteworthy inclination. You sit, you yawn, you stretch your stiff musculature, and you step down the bed.

You think for the day’s schedules, the apprehension disseminates in the billion cells of your body. The iron-fisted day has blazoned its arrival. You hurriedly finish up with the daily rituals and get armored to fight for your existence yet again. Where is the time for self appreciation? Where is the time for discovering unknown horizons? Why do we allow ourselves to get occupied in the whirlpool of humdrum? You glare yourself in the mirror, tuck your hair, watch those fine wrinkles in your forehead, those crowfeet besides your eyes and you turn away. Did you really see yourself in the mirror? Can you identify yourself? When was the last time that you were turned to see yourself in the interior mirror; that is your soul?

You ate a little with you thoughts ricocheting like the bubbles of boiling water. You are almost ready to move out of your house. Haven’t you already moved out of your house? Were you there in your house? Where is your house? Who are you? Why do you exist?

Where Is My Bed?

2011-04-22T07:33:00.000-07:00

You just exhausted your last kilo calorie meant to be burnt for tedious professional commitments of the day. You relished the succulence of your otherwise ordinary supper, the food smelled like alter-ego of divine vapors. The presumptuousness failed to die down as you feverishly gagged the buttons of the slain remote control. Effrontery caught the craze with a gall and soon you were submerged in some old classic film or the vehement debate over some breaking news. The law of relativity smells you as a potential victim and you swim in the sky of thoughts, mesmerized and frozen.

Your eyelids soon started turning soporific, nothing can help it. The signals have turned green and hypnosis would prevail with indefatigable might. You turn your posture in that comfortable cushion once more and have a glance at the old wall clock. It’s already midnight. The nature is workaholic and its machinery has no match. One more day passed with eyes open, one more night will pass with eyes closed. What are we here for?

A Designer Brain For The World

2011-04-20T06:06:00.000-07:00

1. Start a new hobby every 3 months.
2. Join a fitness club.
3. Adopt a child.
4. Devote some time for prayers daily.
5. Don’t forget to wish birthdays and anniversaries.
6. Learn to cook.
7. Read a book.
8. Smile more often.
9. Complement your colleagues.
10. Watch sunrise.
11. Drive with ease and patience.
12. Donate in charity.
13. Take out some time for self-organization.
14. Get your finances structured.
15. Learn to play a musical instrument.
16. Take care of your parents.
17. Write a blog. Regularly.
18. Post your facebook status often.
19. Avoid stimulants.
20. Dream big and start with a detailed plan.
21. Don’t mix personal and professional life.
22. Think of the ways to contribute towards society.
23. Don’t keep grudges.
24. Give your spouse pleasant surprises.
25. Pay taxes on time.
26. Don’t join too much social networking sites. Join the selected ones and remain active on them.
27. Don’t keep too many expectations from anything.
28. Purchase Greeting Card and Post it.
29. Write letters to your friends and family.
30. Carry a photograph of your family when traveling.
31. Let your calmness dominate over outbursts of anger.
32. Read biographies.
33. Watch cartoons.
34. Savor fruits.
35. Love animals.

Dilemmas Of A Resident Doctor

2011-04-20T03:20:00.000-07:00

1. You are facing your first job interview. You are asked whether you have intubated a patient solely. You mutter and fumble and succeed in arousing a lot of doubts in the interviewer’s mind.

2. It’s your 4th day of posting in Accident & Emergency Department. You are virtually surrounded by a flurry of patients with near similar presenting complaints with near equal anxiety. You gallantly finished the test by scribbling at every patient’s prescription slip, only to realize that for 2 patients you prescribed Inj Perinorm instead of Inj Stemetil. Now what? You gushing like maniacs to find the piece of literature (available with every medicine) with fine prints to evaluate to possibility of potential side-effects. Life in the fast lane with blinding beams.

3. You did not bother to examine the patient completely and the senior consultant appears from nowhere. You are asked about abdominal findings and you get only 2 abbreviations in your mind; NAD (No abnormality detected) & WNL (Within normal limits). You follow your mind; only to be taught the basics of abdominal palpation with an annoyance. After all, it was no body’s fault that patient’s spleen was massively enlarged with beautifully palpable anterior margin.

4. You are in the middle of the night with virtually no patients to attend on emergency basis. You feel nauseating with the combined effects of nicotine with drawl, hunger pangs and drowsy eyes.

5. You are explaining the consent for surgery and anesthesia to a patient; and this guy is serious. The moment you tell him the rare possibility of dreaded complications (including but not limited to death), he appears shocked and betrayed. And in a knee-jerk reaction, he orders you to arrange a meeting with the senior doctor, so that he can re-decide whether he wants to be anesthetized and operated upon or not. Now who will call the senior consultant; and what sort of explanation can save the resident doctor’s already compromised authority?

6. You feel thrilled to have a sight of a beautiful intern in the ward. You steal glances while organizing your hair with an electric vigor, only to gather in coming minutes that she is blissfully married and preparing for USMLE to settle with her in-laws in Philadelphia. Life is a crap!

7. You are assisting in OPD of your Unit Head. You are told to write ATT (Anti-tubercular Medications) to a patient, you gladly wrote AKT-4 Kit, to be taken once a day. But your Unit Head seems unhappy, he asks to write individual drugs with their dosages and your pen virtually slips with the flood of sweat between your index finger and ring finger. What if he asks about individual complications of each anti tubercular medication? What is the full form of DOTS?

8. Its post midnight. You are in duty room. You get a call regarding refractory febrile spike of a child. You collect yourself to attend him. You get another call about the routine blood sugar (RBS) value of 24 of another patient; you shout on the phone for 25%D infusion. Another call for a patient (Post Operative Day 1 of Hemicolectomy) complaining of severe abdominal pain and increasing distension. Another call from Emergency ward to attend a family (which just arrived in dehydrated and lethargic condition in the hospital) suspected to be having food poisoning. Another call for repeated failed attempts of peripheral canulation of a 5 day old infant. Oh God!!! Why ME?

9. You were set to cool your heels this Saturday evening with your girlfriend in the swanky interior of PVR Saket. In the late morning of Saturday, you are told by ever arrogant Roster Incharge that your shift has been revised and you are supposed to do a 24 hours duty starting this evening. What lies in a Sabbath?

10. You observe with great wisdom that your Unit Head is not able to make a diagnosis; you scratch your brain and the missing piece pops up with a flash. You tell your opinion with puffed torso and somber voice, only to finds its utter triviality in milliseconds. Is there any software for erasing recently acquired memory? If it is there, I would like to apply it to my Unit Head to save my already negotiated self-pride.

My Favourite 10 Films With Medical Theme

2011-04-20T00:44:00.000-07:00

1. Angels in America (2003), a fantastic HBO production that explores AIDS in the early 1980s. The Barbarian Invasions (2003), a French-Canadian comedy-drama that looks at the end-of-life decisions of a patient with terminal cancer.

2. Dirty Pretty Things (2002), a peep into the lives of immigrants in London, one of whom is a physician from Nigeria.

3. The Painted Veil (2006), Set in China in 1925, the movie tells the story of the marriage of a young London socialite and a bacteriologist living in Shanghai.

4. Ikiru (1952), a Japanese masterpiece that explores how a bureaucrat finds meaning in life after being diagnosed with a terminal illness.

5. Miss Evers’ Boys (1997), a screenplay that explores how racism and research intersected in the United States from the 1930s to the early ’70s.

6. Motorcycle Diaries (2004), a beautiful portrayal of the real and metaphorical journeys that medical students often blindly follow.

7. The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936), a melodramatic black-and-white biopic that reminds us how far we’ve come in terms of understanding and controlling infectious diseases.

8. Traffic (2000), a powerful story of how the illegal drug trade affects three individuals.

9. Yesterday (2004), a South African film that puts a face on the global AIDS pandemic.

10. The Doctor (1991), Based on the book A Taste of My Own Medicine. William Hurt plays an arrogant surgeon who is diagnosed with throat cancer. As he begins to see medicine, hospitals, and doctors from the patient’s perspective, he learns that there is more to being a doctor than doing procedures and writing prescriptions.

Know More About Darwin, Einstein & Edison

2011-04-19T06:41:00.000-07:00

EDISON

Edison built his first lab at the age of 10
Edison was deaf and he liked it that way!
Edison has a mysterious tattoo on his arm
Edison proposed marriage … by Morse Code!
Edison saved a boy from a runaway train

DARWIN

Darwin once ate an owl
Darwin wanted to be a doctor, but he couldn't stand the sight of blood
Darwin received best birthday gift ever: a mountain!
Darwin was a backgammon fiend
Darwin married his first cousin

EINSTEIN

Einstein was inspired by a compass
Einstein failed his university entrance exam
Einstein’s first official job was that of a swiss patent officer in bern
Einstein, the war pacifist, urged FDR to build the atom bomb.
Einstein’s brain was pickled in a jar for 43 years and driven cross country in a trunk of a buick!

Top 10 Patient Queries

2011-04-19T02:46:00.000-07:00

A lot of queries are raised by patients during their treatment process to their health care professionals. I am enlisting some common queries that I come across from my patients who are planned for surgical intervention.

1. Is it a major one or a minor one?

2. What is the cost of the procedure?

3. How much time will it take for the procedure to be done?

4. When would I be discharged?

5. Will I develop weakness after this operation?

6. Would you be video recording the procedure?

7. When can I start eating?

8. For how much time will I have to take rest after procedure?

9. Can this problem recur?

10. Do you offer discounts?

(Note: These queries are not necessarily in the same order of appearance)

The Convulsing Confusions

2011-04-19T02:08:00.000-07:00

How many thoughts can wander in a human mind in a minute?

How are thoughts related to intuitions?

How are intuitions related to outcomes?

If a pleasure causes mental fatigue, is it worth it?

Which angle are you viewing your life with?

How do you allow trespassing of your mind? Is it controllable?

How does mind harbors miseries and pleasantries in isolated existence?

If the soul has a life, what constitutes it?

Why do we seek divine intervention when we are unhappy?

What is the basis of programmed release of undecipherable happenings in our lives?

Do Dreaming and Day Dreaming have a common basis? What controls the same?

What are divine sensations? How can those be achieved?

Does a thought carry measurable weight?

Light is the basis of life, energy is the basis of light, what is the basis of energy?

What is more logical, life or after-life?

The Glow Of Red Bulb

2011-03-31T05:04:00.000-07:00

I seldom think about the cerebral calisthenics happening outside the operation theatre. The relatives of patients waiting mutely with anxious gazes; seems so contemptible. There can be no pertinent portrayal of what happens in the numb minds in those crucial hours. The leviathan wait just seems a tunnel with no light. Feelings of belonging, affection, care, hope all form a broth; so close to the nectar of life. Divine, pure and subliminal. Everyone prays differently; some chant feverishly, some succumb to silent soliloquy, some let their faith pace ahead of time to conquer the peaceful news for them, some leave it all to their karma and almighty. The prodigal emotions are invoked ardently with no premeditated effort.

People experience some of the biggest soul-stirring moments outside operation theatre, waiting for their loved ones to come out safely and cured. Most of the times the wait just seems cruel, heartless and never-ending; anxious calls are made to staff nurses and doctors to get a pie of the real news. The Operation Theatre has an unyielding heart of rock; it sees the most piteous sentiments; it transforms the bodies (and the souls). Relativity of time can be experienced best while warming the waiting seat with a constant effort to ward away the negative thoughts that loom vehemently. The anticipation seems agonizingly aberrant. Unpleasant incidents often have a heart of gold and they tend to transform the ordinary metal; the ordinary people.

My SWOT Analysis

2011-03-31T02:47:00.000-07:00

Strengths:

My faith in Almighty
My Medical Education
My Professional Experience
My Family
My Friends & Colleagues
I can write well
I don’t forget people & their patterns
People love me (especially my patients)
Internet savvy
Don’t keep up with Joneses mentality
Love to appreciate hidden humor in ordinary things

Weaknesses:

Not able to take out adequate time for family & friends, due to surmounting professional engagements. Not able to spend enough time in recreational activities that I love (listening to old ballads, reading literature)

Thinking from the heart (and not from the brain) most of the times

Opportunities:

To learn new advancements in surgical sciences & patient care
To evolve more as a person and to be able to identify with my inner self
To learn from others in similar roles to mine
To pay back to the society in my embroidered capacities
To evolve as a Multi-tasking individual (Doctor, Blogger, Musician, Gourmet Connoisseur and what not)
To help poor and needy people in my capacity as the director of a Multi Super Specialty Hospital

Threats:

Time pressure, which can wreck my plan for self-enlightenment because it catapults me back to my “usual” daily routine

India Vs Pakistan. Frantic Frenzy Floats.

2011-03-29T06:52:00.000-07:00

A national frenzy is looming large. Who will eliminate whom? India meets Pakistan in the knock out round of Cricket World Cup 2011 tomorrow. Vapors of adrenaline would color the air inducing mass delirium. CEOs and Office boys would be staring the screen with equal ecstasy. Many corporate offices have declared a day off, so that employees can absorb the finest nuances of the saga. Taxi drivers in Mumbai have decided to give their accelerator pedals a hypnotic high. Clubs offering large screen rendezvous with the live telecast are buzzing with the anxious calls for bulk booking of seats. The rivals would be locking horns in a world cup after a good 8 years, it’s no ordinary happening.

TV Channels (live streaming the match) have escalated the advertisement rates to dizzying heights. A lot of nickel would be experiencing frantic dissemination, here and there. Verbal diarrhea would inflict the reporters with heightened severity. Hearts would find mass synchronization in their beat pattern. Millions of focused thoughts would encircle the 22 warriors in crucial moments of the game, one at a time. Second chances would be vehemently denied to the players who would blink first. Gallons of catecholamine would be flooded in the streets and houses.

Who will win? Our own cold blooded assassins of the Bat-And-Ball, the hardhearted executioners, the mass favorites. I hope India wins.

Will this ever happen?

2011-03-26T04:15:00.000-07:00

When humans would interact with birds, animals and plants freely.

When we would just require supply of light to get energy. No forced necessity of meals or water.

When currency would be an outdated reality & every luxury of life would be equally available to every living organism without any costs.

When inter-planetary travel would be a norm.

When there would be no diseases in the world. Genetic assortment would be possible to tackle for every illness even before birth. And this would be as easy as operating Microsoft Word.

When weathers would be customizable.

When we would have a defined control over our subconscious.

When the break of dawn & dusk would be at the mercy of a remote control, one for every individual.

When we could turn the environment into a 6-D reality by mere thought.

When we could absorb all the required knowledge by attaching a pen drive and pasting the data in our body’s hard disc. This will render the concept of IQ archaic.

When the birth and death would no longer be the masters, but the slaves.

When the intensity of smiles would be measurable.

When anything fake would no longer exist.

When souls will talk to each other, anytime.

My Supply Of Red-Bull

2011-03-21T06:38:00.000-07:00

I love to do the activities that I have enlisted below after a lot of mind-work.

1) Performing surgeries. Nothing can match the thrill & satisfaction that I derive from performing surgeries. The moment I see an OT (Operation Theatre), my catecholamines go berserk.

2) Kneeling down to Lord Krishna in awe-inspiring admiration. I visit Vrindavan every week and on exceptions, I make it a point to visit a Lord Krishna shrine in the vicinity. The poised trance effuses a lot of canalized energy, which is the ignition fuel of my soul’s journey in the ordinary lanes of life.

3) To listen to songs. I love to feel the melodies and it really relaxes a lot. My all time favorite being, ‘Raah mein unse mulakat ho gayi’ from Vijaypath (A Bollywood Film)

4) To call my friends and have a light time together. I am sure few things can beat the thrill of meeting old folks and have a dream time together.

5) Watching old photographs and taking a stroll in the orbit of preserved memories. I am sure all of us love to do this.

6) Learning new internet and web related applications. I know the difference between Blogger and Tumblr. Want more?

7) Watching a film or a cricket match (whatever is readily available)

8) Cooking a dish. It’s in my blood. My father had a florid flair for cooking and I got the dominant genes.

9) Checking facebook updates of my folks. Who dislikes facebook anyways? (And if anyone dislikes, who cares for him anyways?)

10) Organizing myself and my work place. This is something which comes in high priority (though has been mentioned at the bottom of the list); I believe organizing helps you in discovering the facets of your life and yourself that you were unaware of. It’s like finding your occult power and feeling its potential impact. Its like kinetic meditation.

An Evening To Remember

2011-03-21T05:29:00.000-07:00

The orange light of nature’s traffic lane. Evening is the tune of addiction. Who hates an evening? It’s a flash in the pan before all is covered with a black blanket. A cathedral of pre-retirement. The bed of young rainbows. The lain of infatuation.

Flocks of hymning birds trespassing the kingdom of sky with stubborn spirit, sips of coffee with whips of thick cream, tubs of peppery popcorn with naughty aroma, vapors of infectious playfulness whirling the little parks and playgrounds, the army of roadside assortment of eateries squealing their larynx out, the sight of a an ordinary human returning back from a hard day’s work, the evening is a precious environment.

Evening is otherworldly. The lumbar bone of the day. A moment when you switch from day light to dark night. Things which define the day refrain the knock of evening, but to gradually succumb to the hypnotic hymns that reverberate in the evening’s soul. The lilt of the reddened sun seeks shelter in the broad wings of evening, and tranquility starts floating. Watch the evening and forget yourself.

Insane Spirit Of Divine Saturnalia

2011-03-19T05:57:00.000-07:00

Colors are insane. Colors are innocuous. Colors are divine. Colors embody gaiety and glee.

Colors are pleasant and they have the power to change someone’s appearance by a mere contact. Colors are commanding. The yells fill the hollow of the air, temporary rainbows flood the sights, acquired delirium dominates. A handful of colored dust sprinkled over an innocent cheek is a vista to cherish.

Celebration is similar to worshipping. The former is to adore self and the latter is to appreciate other. The souls turn maniacal and the faces turn buffoon when Holi arrives. Indians are known to lead a struggling life and Holi gives us a moist embrace in the scorching heat of daily life. It soaks our souls, we turn kids again. People jolt with joy, dance with frenzy, tease with naughtiness and water bodies turn color pools.

A vivid assortment of colors. Everywhere. The atmosphere turns easy on the ear, melodies arise and dictate, mass hysteria occurs and people make merry like there is no tomorrow.

The senses are numb and the spirits are high, it’s the arrival of Holi with a kick. The cologne is authoritative, the ecstasy is unstoppable with the colors flowing and glowing.

Let the hoopla buzz till there is no tomorrow. Hello Supermoon, are you listening?

Hey Doc, I Googled And Got Something Else

2011-03-18T01:36:00.000-07:00

Want to become a doctor? Or already a practicing clinician? Well, be prepared to face a flurry of questions from your patients, relevant or irrelevant. While some patients get satisfied testing your basic clinical knowledge, some have the quench to get you reminded of your final professional viva voce.

No one is at fault, it is the sociological development.

With the popularization of search engines and availability of medical data related websites, patients (and the population in general) have started feeding their symptoms & signs to the search bar and preserving the results to test your skills.

Don’t gouge your brains; patients are willing to be elucidated. Though I understand, human body is a cathedral of complexities. No longer acceptance of the superficial interpretation of the disease and its management, you will have to justify why the war broke out, what weapons would be used and when will the peace be restored. While to some of us, it might feel as a redundant infringement of our contented domains, to some it gives a thrill.

It also provides uncalled for and unintentional witty outbursts sometimes, in otherwise mind-numbing routine of clinicians. And the humor is shared by patient as well. It’s the part of learning process. As clinicians, we should respect our patient’s smallest of the queries and in turn, it lies on the patient’s perspective to refrain from making a final verdict on a doctor’s skills by giving the contents of the medical website, he browsed the night before, a preference. Medical Science is a perplexed field and only a trained doctor knows its versatility and applications. There is an army of atypical syndromes, atypical clinical presentations, atypical infections these days and medical websites or pre-coded software programs are unlikely to take their significance in fair account.

I feel good in attending to patients’ smallest and bizarre-at-the-best queries, as to infuse accurate understanding is imparting practical education and if you have been chosen to treat someone’s health issues, why not do it with an élan and in a flawless way with the broadest smile?