'Jodi tor dak shune keu na ashe tobe ekla cholo re...'*

While yes, I love sunrises and the state of self-reflection they induce within me, there is still no feeling quite like sitting up at two in the morning, attempting work, and hearing the song you really needed to hear, come on shuffle from your music. Perfect.


Why is it perfect? Because over the past couple of weeks (months, even), I have been running around everywhere and facing a lot of sleepless nights and sleepy days (not unlike this very night) chasing work and homework and self-inflicted torture of extra work like a madwoman. And in between, I veg out in front of the TV or laptop and watch Modern Family and crush on Phil 'Dum-phy' (only a true Modern Family-ite will understand this...) guiltily. To add to the guilt, naturally, is a diet and lifestyle high in everything I am learning about is bad for me (except for smoking. Ew. Guess I'm not as badass as I sound after all, eh...). Good body image, you say? What's THAT?!


So of course, when you hear Amitabh Bachchan's voice telling you to stand tall and walk alone even if no one else heeds your voice, it is oddly extremely comforting. Extremely comforting and new-lease-of-inner-strength-inspiring. Especially so (did I mention?) at two in the morning, as you're making notes under a small desk lamp. I found myself stopping and just listening to the song, with my mind in blissful silence. More than anything, this song told me to pause from being an overworked (and never-paid) cog and remind myself of all the wonderful things I believe in, and must not give up on.


Something similar also happened to me yesterday, when I was driving back from another town and I decided to leave the motorway at an earlier junction to try and find the place where I go to for cheaper petrol through a different route. I had a lecture I needed to attend in forty minutes and I knew I was taking a cheeky gamble with exiting the motorway one junction earlier (countryside driving, if you are really unlucky, can equate to crawling slowly behind large tractors on one-way lanes), but I decided to do it anyway. Anything for cheaper petrol, right? 


As I try and find my exit on the roundabout, I accidentally end up driving into some sort of a holiday resort/hippie home resort/elderly people's retirement resort... place. I am still not entirely sure what it is! Frustrated at the time lost and cursing myself for taking the wrong turn, I drove along into the resort to try and find a place to reverse... and suddenly in front of me is a big, beautiful, blue lake, surrounded by the rich, lush greenery of nearby grass and expanding out into the horizon were hills in the background. I notice the sun is shining, and coming from the car's speakers is a trance song by Above and Beyond - 'Home'. I went into a trance myself. You must remember that I have been living in the hospital, with machines and people all around me, and it has been ages - Absolutely. Freaking. Ages. - since I had seen nature around me.

I stepped out and goshdarnit - actually breathed for the first time in a long time. The car window was still open, and I could hear the lyrics "the sunset builds a memory, our love sign... and all at sea we come alive" being sung. It was blissful, and it felt like my little secret. And to find all this purely by accident made it all the more magical. Some wine and a good book and I would happily have set up camp right there. 

But alas, I had a lecture to drag my ass to.


However, the moral of the two stories remains the same - don't give up, walking alone can lead you to discover what it was you needed all along. (And of course, always listen to inspirational music at two in the morning - this one is for the fellow insomniacs...)

* Loose translation, as I am led to understand: 'if they answer not to thy call, walk alone'

Those Moments

Last week, whilst on placement at the GP's, a woman in her late twenties or early thirties or so came, presenting with a urinary tract infection. She had lost her husband in a freak motorbike accident a year ago, and she has two little boys to take care of by herself (both under the age of five, I think). She had presented that morning to the GP surgery because she had noticed the signs (I will spare the details, for the non-medics who may be reading this) of a urinary tract infection and she wanted some antibiotics at the earliest. She began talking about how she has two little boys to take care of and how this is the 'last thing' she needs. But what was most prominent about her was her face, whose each crease seemed to reveal the horrible loss and suffering she had gone through. She looked like she was going to burst into tears at any moment.


At the risk of revealing too much of personal information on this blog (and forgive me if I do, I honestly swear, as a medic I lose hold of what is considered normal, society-appropriate conversation because we spend most of our days talking about people's shitting and pissing habits, and their sex lives. It is all just another bunch of presenting complaints to us, and nothing becomes embarrassing any more, awkwardly enough. Although I exaggerate a little bit on the sex lives part, unless you're in ObGyn of course.), I could understand exactly what kind of physical horror she was going through, having had my share of UTIs before. There is no metaphor that can be used to describe the irritating, frustrating chaos that a simple matter of Escherichia coli going where it shouldn't, can cause to your daily life. 'Just fucking awful' should just about cover it.


And although I am not in the same shoes as the woman who had come in, my heart absolutely went out to her. More so because - funnily enough - just the night before, I had been reading Lori's blog, where she has gone through similar life events. This is the wonder of blogs, feelings that I may never have been privy to knowing about, are brought to my awareness and attention through wonderful blogging and expressing to the whole wide internet. I don't want to talk too much about Lori's life on here because it is her personal life and we are not particularly blogging acquaintances. Her words are all heartfelt and there is so much you can learn from her experiences, though. Please do hop on over if you feel like it. I started to ponder over what this patient we were seeing would have written in her blog, if she had one.


The GP asked her how she was coping with her two sons, and her life in general, and hearing her try and put on a brave face when her eyes were clearly ready to give way to the flood of tears she was suppressing... it was really sad. I am, sorry to say, not a particularly easily-depressed medical student. 


Maybe it stems from my understanding of love as something that needs to have caused something to be struck inside you, before you start caring for those people on a personal level. Maybe it's a disguised survival mechanism I use to deal with the shit I see every day. Being ill is not a very nice place to be in, even if it's a simple admit-treat-discharge case. But I am very rarely touched by the stories of the patients I see. Everyone has their demons, and unless I am connected to that person in a bond outside of the medical professional relationship, I find it hard to take those demons home with me. I leave them behind, with the patient's case notes, because I cannot find it in myself to get emotionally attached to people whom I would not normally have formed an emotional attachment to outside of the work place. Does that make me sound like a bitch? I hope not. I would like to think I am still caring and compassionate and understanding of the misery they are going through, but I feel no need to get involved in their misery. Especially as it is not in my professional interests to do so.


But sometimes, once in a blue moon, there comes along a case where you wonder where the patient finds the strength to chuckle at your silly jokes still after all of the losses and suffering they have gone through. And you yourself learn to find real strength through the patients. I have always maintained one thing - that life lessons can come from the most obscure, random of places, if you are willing enough to look for them. This was one of them.

Why Consultants Should Always Be Funny.

Mr. Orthopaedics Consultant: So.. why are women more likely than men to get neck of femur fractures?

Class of six female students and one male student: Because post-menopausal women are oestrogen deficient...

Mr. OC (after a contemplative pause): Yeah... hmm. Or... well, maybe women just deserve it!

You should have heard the sharp intake of breaths six women getting ready with their defensive attack took, while the males in the room shared a seen-it-all-before rolling of the eyes moment...! Maybe this didn't make you laugh out loud, but it definitely made us all chuckle!

Earlier that day, whilst in surgery, the anaesthetist whom I was shadowing was telling me how he hoped I never planned on doing anaesthetics because 'we are just technicians' and how the best part of the operative anaesthetics assessment was filling in the post-operation forms because 'no one else understands what I have written... and after a while, sometimes even I don't...'...!! Got to chuckle, come on! It makes working as a team so much better if you can share a few laughs.

On a serious note (?), there is nothing more joyful than teaching in a simple language from someone who can speak freely, banter and even swear a little! Some may see it as unprofessional, but I feel if there is no patient nearby, there is nothing wrong with seeking a little bit of humour in the hospital. At the risk of bringing forth a cheesy, cliched moment worthy of a Scrubs script - sometimes those working in medicine really need that breather, it's what helps them to keep going.

PS: Dear Blogger/Google Chrome, NO I DO NOT need to change my spellings because not everything needs to be the way America decides it should be! Thank you! Sheesh.

New Chapter

Memories, for me (as I'm sure for everyone else), are sacred. Especially memories in the form of the written word - I save MSN conversations, WhatsApp conversations, SMSes, e-mails, letters, the whole shebang. Words are all the more precious to me because those thoughts that you once had (and possibly shared) are so unique to that situation, to that very time and place, that to re-create that same magic is impossible. What's gone is gone, so I try and save as much of it as I can, such that I may be able to induce myself into a feeling of nostalgia looking back on the innocence of the words once exchanged.

So you can perhaps understand why removing certain blog posts from this blog has been sheer torture for me. I feel like a little bit of a hypocrite - in particular because, as I looked through my old blog posts, I have noticed a recurring theme of how I always seem to say that one should take the good and the bad together with open arms - and yet here I am, erasing precious, precious memories of who I once was and the life I once lead that made me who I am now. This is after having made an unofficial decision in my head to never remove any blog post I had published because I wanted to be able to look back on the words I once wrote. Oh well. I haven't deleted them all at all, of course. I have simply moved them from this blog to another blog, but it still feels like a little bit of a loss to me - letting go of the blog posts I once displayed with pride on this blog.

Was it because those memories were too painful? Maybe. Four, five years on and it still stings. Maybe it will always sting. Perhaps more at the abysmal style of writing I had more than anything, ha (although, I was surprised at how nicely - in my opinion, anyhow - I wrote and how much I used to think back then... when I was just a kid! I swear I drink too much and think far too little nowadays, I miss the sober Sunrise... :))!

I felt I needed to let go of it, that any new bloggers (however unlikely!) that were to chance on my blog did not need to read what I had written. Sometimes I feel like I had left some old posts up there only for a select few people to still see and remember, but it doesn't matter any more. I told myself, 'let go'.

I have a fair few number of thoughts I would love to blog about at some point. Going through my old posts has reminded me how much I love and miss writing, and how it is always important to express oneself because somehow or the other, sometime or the other, the lessons you learn through expressing yourself will become useful for the future. I am still reading blogs and blogs are still my absolute weakness, but I am just not finding the inner peace to be able to write at leisure, as my thoughts are not unfolding in a semi-accessible, semi-logical way. If I do again, I will write because I love blogging and I don't want to let go or give up on that after five-going-on-six years of it.

I will leave you with a quote that has played on my mind a lot of late, as it essentially describes me, and to an extent is a metaphor for everything we come across in life, and not just the men we are with. It's funny to see how I am growing up to be exactly like those in my past that I have let go of from this blog, sometimes. The quote is from a wonderful movie, 'Before Sunset', which I feel everyone who enjoys a little bit of introspection should watch. They should also really start with watching its predecessor, 'Before Sunrise', really, to get the full experience of the wonder that is those movies.

Enjoy!

"I’m happy you’re saying that, because… I mean, I always feel like a freak because I’m never able to move on like this. People just have an affair, or even entire relationships… they break up and they forget. They move on like they would have changed brand of cereals. I feel I was never able to forget anyone I’ve been with… because each person had their own specific qualities. You can never replace anyone. What is lost is lost. Each relationship, when it ends, really damages me. I never fully recover. That’s why I’m very careful with getting involved… because it hurts too much. Even getting laid, I actually don’t do that… because I will miss of the person the most mundane things. Like I’m obsessed with little things. Maybe I’m crazy, but when I was a little girl… my mom told me that I was always late to school. One day she followed me to see why. I was looking at chestnuts falling from the trees, rolling on the sidewalk… or ants crossing the road, the way a leaf casts a shadow on a tree trunk. Little things. I think it’s the same with people. I see in them little details, so specific to each of them… that move me and that I miss and will always miss. You can never replace anyone… because everyone is made of such beautiful, specific details. Like, I remember the way your beard has a bit of red in it… and how the sun was making it glow… that morning right before you left. I remembered that, and I missed it. Really crazy, right?" ~ Celine, Before Sunset.

Jo barse, sapne boond boond...

I think all places have personalities. Marine Drive is so open, welcoming and humbling. Like a pillow that will cushion the thoughts flowing from your head. It's so nice seeing everyone else around you, too... knowing they, too, are looking out to the sea and enjoying the fresh air and that perfect, blissful moment's respite from all things that make Mumbai the chaotic, cosy home she is... think Marine Drive would indeed be an interesting persona to talk to!! All the stories from all the people she has stored up on those sidewalks and those waves crashing to and fro of hers... all the love, pain, hurt, success, hunger, fear, jealousy, greed, sin... wouldn't you love to be a fly in the minds of those who arrive to unburden their shoulders of the weights at Marine Drive?

Oh boy. I am missing Mumbai so much now.

On a semi-related side note: HOW I wish I had painted my toenails!! And HOW I wish I had rolled up my jeans!! Oh well. Imperfections are perfections, as a recently-read blog post (and trigger-er of this post) reminded me! [/end fashion mini-whine]

#MomentsMakingLongWardRoundsOnOurAlreadyPainfulFeetAllAfternoonWorthIt

Consultant Cardiologist: Mrs. Johnson*, the surgeons will come and speak to you tomorrow about your surgery.
Mrs. Johnson: Well... I don't understand why I need surgery. You said just the other day that there was nothing wrong with my heart... why are you keeping me here if there's nothing wrong with my heart?
CC: I never said there was nothing wrong with your heart, if there was nothing wrong with your heart, you wouldn't be here Mrs. Johnson, like you said...
Mrs. J: I remember you saying that, doctor. Why I was sitting right here when you said it... why did you say it then?
CC: I didn't, Mrs. Johnson.
Mrs. J (finally giving in, in a tongue-in-cheek tone): Ohhhh... don't argue with me doctor... I'm a woman!!

All the female medical students tagging along on that ward round gave her a mental high-five.

*The name has been changed. Obviously.

Five Years

Musical Mood: My Heart Will Go On - Celine Dion

15th of August 2006. I would make a comment at this point in time about how time flies, but really - it hasn't. It has taken a lot of out of me and my life to get to the 2011 version of this date. Love, hurt, success, failure, boredom, excitement, happiness, sadness... a lot has happened, a lot of Life Lessons I have been collecting along the way. And this blog has been a witness to it (almost all) for the past five years. In actual fact, if you look at my very first post, it is dated the 17th of August 2006, but I very specifically (and yet very hazily) remember creating this blog on the pandra August. Or anyway, that's the date that has stuck with me, because I remember thinking my baby blog shares her birthday with my mother India's birthday. Or well, that is the date I am going to go by as that is the date that has been stuck in my head all these years.

Every year, for the past four years, I have wanted to celebrate one further year of my blogging... and every pandra August, I have been busy or pre-occupied with something or the other that I never had the chance to sit down and reflect. Or I may have had other thoughts that I wanted to blog about at that time. I also didn't want to be too 'cliched' and 'cheesy' by celebrating every 'blog-iversary' (although I have no clue what is considered 'cool' in the blogging world any more, as I am so out of touch with it!) so I never even really bothered wishing myself a belated blogging birthday. But this time, I made a resolution. I actually wanted to sit down and think about what blogging has meant to me, and I told myself I will wish myself for my fifth anniversary at least...

I love blogs. I have loved blogs ever since I started reading them, even though I never much liked or knew of the idea enough to comment about them much prior to reading them anyway. To me, blog-reading is like walking down a street full of houses, and getting to peep into the windows of people's lives, and I find that endlessly fascinating. (I specifically say windows because one only sees what the writer chooses to open his curtains to the public to, to.) The kinds of topics people choose to write about, the way they write, the way their mind thinks... I just love it, I think it's really interesting and I am drawn to reading more and more. Despite being a public platform, there is something so wonderfully personal about blogs. Just as it is my place to introspect and run away from the humdrum of my life, so it works for others, too, I guess. And that in turn leads to seeing all these colours that lie within a person.

I want to share something I wrote a long time back (December 17, 2009), which still describes me accurately:

Someone once described what his blog meant to him to me, and I really
like the description and it suits me too, so here goes (paraphrased): "My blog
is a mirror to me, rear view and dressing-table both." I guess it shows it's a
place for reflection. Something to look back on and see, and also something to
assess my current situation now. It also serves as an outlet for me to set my
thoughts free, because sometimes the act of just publishing to the world wide
web can psychologically be freeing. I guess I also blog because I want certain
people to know my thoughts. Real discussion can spark anywhere, any time... and
I love that there is always a chance of someone coming along who will really
challenge and complement your thoughts - and that in itself is a nice feeling.

I guess it's the same with all forms of communication, be it SMSing or
Facebook or e-mailing or MSN or blogging - we all like people talking to us and
taking notice of us and replying to things we write.

I have noticed that there is a bit of a blog ethics thing going on in
the blogosphere. If I comment on someone's post, they return the 'favour' by
commenting on my blog posts. I hate this. In that sense, I used to have a fair
number of 'followers', but as time progressed and I stopped blogging/lost
interest in blogging for a while, I lost interest in stalking blogs too. Now
that I am 'back' in blogging, I find my followers count has dwindled down to a
mere one or two. But that's OK with me too. I have found my time away from
blogging to be useful in acting as a sieve. Now instead of following around 10
or 15 or so blogs, I only occasionally read around 3 or 4 whose blogs I have
actually remembered despite the hiatus and missed reading. Goes to show
something, eh?

Yep. It all still rings true. Blogging is a social, interactive activity just as much as it is a deeply personal, introspective activity, so to celebrate my five years of blogging, I want to dedicate this post to some really wonderful bloggers and blogs I have read over the years. Personalities and their words that touched me on some level - superficial or deep - and made me come back to their blogs time and time again and remember them and heartfeltedly wish them well in their lives. Anyone reading this can see it as a meme of sorts, and maybe you would like to take this up for one of your own blogging anniversaries, too. :-)

If you look at my very first blog post (dated 17th of August 2006), and see the comments - you will see a certain Miss Shama as the first person to comment (it is really obvious - she says so herself). She was the lady who introduced me to the world of blogging. Her blog, Koffeeshop, was the initiating point of blogging for me. Her thoughts were fun to follow. I never imagined I would be as into her blog when I first started reading it. I thought I'd only read a couple of posts and then probably forget about it. Oh boy. 'How I was wrong!' I can safely say, after looking at how the following five years have expanded out, in terms of blogging. She had a number of commentors and she had some really going thoughts and discussions going in her blog. But what I enjoyed the most was the way her blog stuck to the theme of a coffee shop - the conversations were always light-hearted and allowed plenty of scope for discussion as the conversation (and the coffee) intensified. :-) "Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after." - a quote by Anne Morrow Lindbergh that hangs on the 'wall' of her 'coffee shop', and her customers always had fun. Shama, if you are ever reading this (unlikely!) - please come back to blogging and most importantly, thank you.

The second blog(ger) I must mention is also one that has not been updated in years (but she has been one of the bloggers I have known since the beginning). She is an awesome girl I've been lucky enough to meet. I have no clue which of her blogs I am supposed to write about, or which blogging name of hers I should use as she has had a confusing blogging history! :P I will call her K. I am not sure how to really put into words what it was that drew me to her blog. In fact, I am not really sure how to put into words what draws me into conversation with her, either. I find myself babbling a lot of things, freely, to her. I remember in our old e-mail exchanges she used to find it amusing how much I babble. And upon meeting me, I guess she got so sick of me babbling that she actually told me to "shut up and eat" (in her own words)... sigh. :D I guess her blog posts in a certain way reflected an open... certain something, that I could see reflected in my personality as well. Her posts (and poems) made me think, and they were interesting - I can't really recall any fixed theme but then again, I am not sure there was a fixed theme. Oh, and her photos kind of rock. Trust me on this one. K, if you are reading this, let me say it to you using your favourite word: get back to blogging, girl!! :D

Aayushi is a blogger who I loved reading straight away. It was only recently that I got myself acquainted with Aayushi's blog, through Det-Res's blog. I randomly clicked on Aayushi's name in the comments section as I know someone called Aayushi and I like the name. LOL. And what a lovely blog hers is. Her blog, Gentian Violet's tag-line reads, "Life. Science. Colour. Medicine. Beauty. Photography. Singledom. Music. Mumbai. Fiction." so how could I not delve further into the archives of her blog?! Aayushi is also the first ever blogger that I have met, and the first ever person I had raasta ka khana in Mumbai with, and that makes her and her blog all the more special to me. Furthermore, she's in medicine. How awesome is that?! Great minds DO think alike, after all... Her photos are always a pleasure to look at and I love reading her blog posts, especially the ones on medicine and health care and her hospital life in India, but they are all interesting and each one gives you an insight into her personality nicely. :-)

On the topic of medicine blogs, Det-Res's blog, 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious' is one I have enjoyed reading very early on (within months) in my blogging days. I really wish I could remember how I came across her blog, but oh well. Her thoughts constantly make me think, and her writing style is simple yet it has always struck with me. Her blog is one of the blogs I remembered even after a mini hiatus from blogging, and I actively made an attempt to seek out her blog because I remembered her and her blog posts. Despite being (through my interpretation) somewhat personal and introspective, they are still posts that are open for others to understand the emotions from. She sometimes puts into words so brilliantly what I am never able to; I remember thinking on several occasions with her blog how she has hit bullseye. Also, reading her blog sometimes makes me wonder where I will be in a few years' time and whether the lessons she is learning (in life and in medicine) will be ones I will learn too. Barring one occasion for medical school purposes, I have never once spoken to her outside of her blog (heck, I don't even know her real name!) and yet her words strike a chord within me. That, as I say, is the true power of blogging. ;)

Finally (for this part), there is a very special, crazy, cool lady I want to talk about. Although I have some rough idea of how I came across her blog (blogging friend of a blogging friend, y'know how we roll in the blogging and blog-hopping world... :P), to this day I cannot remember how or under what circumstances I found her blog. So far, I have mentioned all Indian names, but Jazz (now called Nicole) is an American woman/mother-of-two who (when I last checked) is from the East Coast, New Jersey area. Her blog - And All That Jazz - was about her life, simple as that. Jazz is a perfect example of why I love blogs so much - the simple things that made up her life were blogged about, and somehow I found myself drawn to her blog posts and to her life. Her attitude is perhaps what 'jazzed up' (pardon the pun) her blog, I really don't know. But there was something about her blog I loved. I remembered going through the archives, wanting to read more about her life, her annoying co-worker, funny stories involving her kids... everything. She talked about TV shows, weekends in Vegas with her girlfriends, books she liked... I mean literally everything. And no blog post is ever boring or dull. Her personality, her attitude like I said, is what really shines through. The more you read her blog, the more you realise you like her personality and the more you realise you probably would not want to get into her bad books as well, haha!

However, the story takes a funny twist. For some funny strange reason, I went through a LONG period of not reading her blog. I can only say I genuinely got busy and since I don't think she ever read my blog, I was never reminded of her blog and as things do in a teenager's mind, her blog must've slipped along the path of my memory somewhere. It must have been easily three or maybe even four years since I stopped reading her blog. I think the last I read it was probably in 2007. Then, all thoughts of Jazz disappeared from my mind until suddenly during autumn 2010. I was occasionally reminded of her blog and then in December 2010, I went crazy trying to Google search her blog out, in a sheer nostalgia-driven state. I managed to find her blog, only to find some really sad and shocking news about her family. And she has not blogged ever since September 2008, but I still remember her blog well. I would so love it if she were to come back, her posts were fun to read. So much so I refuse to read through all the archives as I will then have no more Jazz to read. :(

Despite years of not remembering her blog, I still came back to it, and I still remembered how much I enjoyed reading her blog. I wonder if she ever wonders whether there has ever been a silent (I was mainly a silent reader anyhow) reader of her blog who enjoys reading about her and who thinks of her blog still, and has fond memories of her blog as part of her blogging memories. Life is so strange - who knows who we'll remember in a few years and who will completely be erased from our minds. I wonder where she is now, how she is doing now, how her children are doing now, what is on her mind these days... you can't miss someone you were never close to, but I miss Jazz and her blog in a way that can't be explained.

~~~

I have decided to (temporarily) end this post here, and post further in a second part blog post, as this post is getting very long and there are still plenty more of wonderful blogs I want to walk you all through. Maybe I wish finish on the 17th of August after all! :P

So keep your eyes, ears and blogrolls open for part 2...