Watch before you eat

Scientific studies are coming up with unbelievable results. Intake of trans-fatty acids is now studied to be linked with increased incidences of aggressive behavior, impatience and irritability. Contrarily, omega 3 fatty acids are known to induce a state of agreeability and placidity. The moment I read this report, I thought to discuss the scope of this report with my colleagues so that we may improve the standards of dietary instructions to be given to the patients. The report had been alarming in coming to a conclusion that a diet containing excess trans fatty acids can cause harsh mental discordance including severe depression and at times, suicidal instincts.

I think, we, behave erratically when it comes to diet. At some spectrums, we tend to over limit us and at others, we tend to be extremely lenient. I come across parents who keep a strict watch over their kids’ diet, and this is not always healthy for the kids. I recently got a couple counseled as their child had been suffering with deficiency of some of the vital nutrients just because of too much interference with the normal way of dietary intake that a child should be allowed to indulge in.

A lot of patients make it a habit to self-prescribe multivitamin pills and keep on using them for years; I don’t bolster this practice at all. We must aim to keep our nutritional and physiological status in equilibrium so that there is minimal need of any supplements; a healthy state of body and mind would help you doing well with just the use of natural resources. Bulimia nervosa used to be a condition typically found in young girls; a thing of past I must say. I frequently come across patients, which range from being the amateurish adolescents to middle aged men to senior citizens, who practice to throw out after indulging in some high calorie meals. The trend, I believe, is just the tip of the iceberg. 

As Happy As Larry

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? 

The Rants of Plants. Who Cares?

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.

Pain is the Divine Ordeal.

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.

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.

What is your elixir of life?

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.

Where is the FUSE of your body?

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'.

All Random Events have Planned Motives.

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.

Indulge in Self Affair. Its Therapeutic.

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?

Death Is Dark (And Secrets Are Kept In Dark)

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

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?

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?

My Favourite 10 Films With Medical Theme

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.

Top 10 Problems That Nurses Face

1. The venepuncture site (canula insertion point) gets blocked again.

2. The patient asks too many questions about finer nuances of the disease (The nurse invariably thinks about the silent glance and understanding gesture that the patient portrayed when senior doctor was taking rounds…. That was fine, but what happened to him now? Is he testing the authenticity of my medical degree? That’s fine. But please stick to the syllabus).

3. The patient seems to have a fascination with pressing the nurses call button (What lies in a reason?).

4. The little kid in the ward defies the boundaries of producible sound while crying inconsolably; and does not succumb to the usual baits.

5. A doctor is taking ward rounds and another doctor demands the attention of the same nurse for a different patient.

6. You have 5 trauma patients for whom you have to check vital parameters every 30 minutes. And it’s the busiest night shift already.

7. The anxious patient suffering with Hepatic Encephalopathy with Sub Acute Intestinal Obstruction is adamant at taking the Ryle’s tube out. He has done it 3 times in past 6 hours and you are mumbling divine hymns.

8. Before you take the over from the preceding duty nurse, you are called by a anxious looking resident doctor (its his first day of joining) in the expectation of getting a thorough orientation of the ward, the hospital and the life. Predicament can’t get louder.

9. Though you have finished with the Herculean forms and draconian quality assurance paper-works, you get thumbs down for that not-so-neat handwriting by never-pleasing horde of quality assurance guys.

10. The patient complaining to doctor that ward nurses seldom listen to him (though you religiously put every inch of an effort to help the guy in disguise).

The Glow Of Red Bulb

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

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

Will this ever happen?

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

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.

Insane Spirit Of Divine Saturnalia

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?

Have you found your joystick?

I remember it was a cold morning in Hong Kong. The year was 1992 and I had just entered the big hall in Prince of Wales College, meant for the practical training session of basic laparoscopic surgery. As my instructor finished with the illustrations, I held the laparoscope with keen eyes and fearful fingers. It was a bit uneasy to absorb the concept of minimal invasive surgery being really hit the jackpot with its potential applications. The experience was very strong. As I was guided by my instructor, I started making use of laparoscope with my gaze fixed on the monitor. Seemed unreal, but it was happening. It took me some time to not to stare at my hands but to focus on the screen. Those 10 days taught me the most magical aspect of surgery, performing big procedures with small incisions. I think, it took me my share of time to become relatively adept at. But I enjoyed the process and my learning curve.

Days passed by and I started doing laparoscopic (minimal invasive) surgery at my hospital (Khetarpal Hospital started functioning from year 1992 itself) with overflowing vigil. I learnt with every procedure; to be honest it used to take a lot of time in finishing one procedure and most of the practice spanned in removing gall bladders. I was feeling good to have adapted relatively very new concept and technique of surgery in my own practice. Those were the days when very few organizations in India were performing laparoscopic surgeries. As some more water passed under the bridges, the words spread and I started getting more patients who were keen to be performed minimal access surgery. But one thing remained unchanged, the sight of laparoscope infusing the vigor in my inner self. I remember, I went to Muktasar (a small town in Punjab, India) with my team and performed 32 Gall bladder removal operations in a single day. It was such an absorbing and full of beans experience. Life has in its stores to teach you and to make you efficient, only if you know the real meaning of being efficient.

Even today, as I enter my OT (Operation Theatre), the very sight of display of scopes and other minimal invasive instrumentations, gives me a cause to reinvent myself. I love to perform surgeries; in fact I don’t think I could have done anything in my life with such quantity of interest and gusto. I owe a lot to the laparoscope; it is my joy stick, my pillar of strength, my pal.