A Dramatic Turn of Events...

So, it turns out that the jump from resident to consultant is interesting to say the least. Most often the moneys don't increase much (most often, remember), but the perks are to die for. 

I've been a consultant for a couple of months now. A jump so to speak from mid level slave to mid level slave driver. The grass being greener, the hours being better and the power being colossal on the other side.

Bazinga!

Ok that was bad, he stopped writing even before I did. 

Practical jokes and with great power comes great etc etc apart, it's a world of difference between me, the reluctant student, to me the over-enthusiastic-I'm-so-fresh-from-exams-I-know-everything assistant professor. Mostly now I shake my head sadly at the lack of intention to learn in my students, both in the past (my current problem) and in the present (soon to be current problem)

Thankfully I don't let them too near my patients. Or patience. 

In other news, I've finally flown out of the nest and settled comfortably in a wilderness not so close yet not too far. That translates loosely to no nagging and the potential of a good meal once in a while. This living alone thing is nice too. My house, MY rules. My f***ing laundry and dust and damn it pave the parking area before it rains you wankers so I don't bring mud into my house. Like so. For you lazy I don't like clicking on links people, or oh no not again people, it points to this.

So it's a rather annoying thing to have always wanted to live like a slob without having the folks nagging about picking up behind oneself and making the bed and all that jazz and finding out, rather distressingly, that given a choice one would pick up behind oneself and make the bed and all that jazz.

The good part of course is the freedom to cook. Though we've been restricted, mostly self imposed, to processed meat, chicken and fish. Which have turned out satisfactory. I'm still alive, which is something. 

In a summary of facebook statuses since I wrote last, I came back from Singapore. Spent a rather cold, very drunk december in Jaipur for a conference with a terrible scientific session but incredible entertainment. Absolut flowing like water and belly dancers from Ukraine or Belarus or some such. 

Six months of the usual nonsense that happens in the loony bin. Moved out. Discovered Vietnamese Basa. Tossed an iphone for a good old nokia due to signal issues, stressed about iOS5 and found Infected Mushroom to be the ideal background for masochistic working out. 

And finally after mourning the departure of Mike Portnoy from Dream Theater, I got to listen to their new album and I find, albeit grudgingly, that I respect the new drummer's skills. Feel free to decide for yourselves here.

Baaack

Oh my God! This is what this blog looks like. Derelict, dilapidated, abandoned and all that. Hell I'd like to say I was insanely busy doing this and that and hacking the occasional head and dealing with didactics but nay, those are just excuses for the lack of a muse. A-muse, get it? You do? Great! We're back in sync gentle readers and this ride's going to be a roller coaster.
So it turns out that we've decided to vote again and despite every reservation we had about democracy being a waste of good money and in this part of the world it being a way to waste bad money too, we filled the forms and dropped it off at the local poll office. We jaago-re-ed so to speak. Rose to the occasion. Woke up and smelt the sweaty armpits. Needless to say Murphy chuckled in his grave and we found that the good name was not on the good list. Or the bad. Or any list outside of the list of residents posted for emergency this month. And despite writing to the EC, Jaago Re and the local MP promising him my vote in an act of final desperation, we ended up inedible ink less. (Yes, I know it's spelt differently but it's supposed to be a pun. I couldn't have been gone so long, could I?)
But in funny news I know someone who wanted to vote but didn't want to be marked for a month so she painted on transparent nail polish and did a quick one with some acetone and now all she has to show for the whole franchise deal is... nothing. But a good idea it is.
In other interesting bits of information the sixth pay commission comes to the rescue of all previously underpaid doctors who worked for the central government (not the state government if you've been reading the papers). As a result of recession and fiscal policy Doctors apparently rule the roost at shaadi.com and bharatmatrimony. The hits have, if google analytics has to be believed, risen exponentially. Of course we are at our usual Murphy moment of being the dog in the manger sitting on the proverbial golden egg largely due to the lack of time to spend the new found booty. And I am talking of financial booty. Not the other one. The one that can be attracted with sufficient finances.
Add the arrears to that and we have a new Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and a black acoustic guitar. And the dream that little white boys and girls will one day play with little black boys and girls and realise that white men can't jump.
Flight of ideas apart, I can't for the life of me remember why I've stopped writing. It's fun and even the thought of repetitive stress crippling my wrist doesn't deter me. I've learnt that there's light at the end of the carpal tunnel.
Oh yes, there's a few months worth of bad puns coming your way.
In cooking this month, we speak of 2 interesting ways of eating bread. The first was featured on some travel and food show on one of the travel and food channels on Tata Sky (my life is jhingalala, yours?) . The first involves a whole loaf of unsliced bread which can be easily sourced, albeit with the risk of a suspicious stare from the local bakery. Speaking of which there's one in Pondicherry called "Bangalore's Famous Iyengar Bakery", run by a malayalee of course. So we have this loaf which we shall cut in half. The only way it should be cut in half, before an inane doubt creeps up in your mind. and we scoop out the inside to make a bread bowl. Fill it with some nice chicken masala or beef stew or even the bhaji of the pav fame and proceed to demolish it with the inner bits and thence to consume the bowl piecemeal. While not spectacularly different from the taste of sliced bread with any of the aforementioned accompaniments, it is novel in its presentation and therefore worth a try before the realisation sinks in that it really tastes the same.
The next bit of bakery wizardry comes from the National Law School where an enterprising cheta decided to slice a bun in half, keep a good sized bar of chocolate within and pop the result into a microwave for 30 seconds at full power. Here we shall stop and imagine the molten chocolate sandwiched in soft warm bun. Once done we shall mop up the drool from our keyboards before typos become the norm.
Speaking of drool on keyboards, there is a commercially available rubber key board that rolls up in to a crepe bandage sized cylinder and being rubber and all that is impervious to drool, coffee, coke and single malt scotch. Other hazardous substances may be tried on request and the promise of replacement if the rubber dissolves or something.
There's been little on the music scene. David Cook and American almost Idol or Idol or somesuch is out with an album that sounds identical to Daughtry so it is miss able barring maybe one or two songs. The Dave Matthews Band releases it's interestingly titled album next month, the single "Funny the way it is" from the same is brilliant. As is the Freddy Jones Band whom I just can't find enough of despite scouring the web.
The Big Bang Theory is the new addiction. Remarkably sharp comedy that is and it comes highly recommended.
So that's all there is considering I have about 4 hours to get back to work for the night and I've already pulled myself up off the computer for falling asleep on it. Hope there's more in the coming weeks.
Toodle-oo and pip-pip.

Long delayed...

... has this post been on the state of affairs in the world. I'm largely bored which explains both the lack of something to write about and the lack of enthusiasm to write about something. But we're changing that. The cobwebs that have grown around the keys have been wiped clean and those little bits of dust stuck in between have been dealt with an ingenious device - the USB powered vacuum cleaner. How cool is that? USB powers the world at large if no one's noticed. After cell phones and Microsoft, USB is binding us and bringing us closer.
How? I don't care it just sounded cool to give the port importance.
Slumdog has swept the Oscars. Leaving a very disgruntled Sukhwinder Singh moping on the sidelines. Little unfair but c'est la vie, apparently. Resul Pookutty is da man. But seriously best film and best director? Think the Academy needs to take stalk of where they stand. It's a good movie, different from the rest of the stuff that comes out of Hollywood and apparently different enough to make Benjamin Button, Frost, Nixon and the rest of them seem - ordinary at best. In any case it won and a bunch of Indians are jumping around claiming that it's our movie. No it isn't. It got shot in Mumbai, that doesn't make it our movie. If it were our movie, it would have never reached the Kodiak Theater. It wouldn't even have run longer than Billoo Barber (which till I got to know better, I was hoping was a rip off of Sweeny Todd).
So stop calling Slumdog an Indian movie and feel happy for AR Rehaman. His work is finally being recognized.
And global and local warming has arrived making life a sticky sweaty mess most of the time. Polar bears are apparently turning bipolar with the glaciers melting, and Arctic Terns have decided to no longer migrate. I'm looking at a Honda Civic Hybrid and coming with a cruel reality that even the electricity that would charge the car is generated by the burning of fossil fuels.
It's all going downhill and the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep. Before we go back to the stone age. Though I still believe we were at the height of peaceful coexistence then. Largely because there were too few people to make a difference.
Morbidity apart, I've blissfully rediscovered the Star Wars, comics in .cbr/.cbz, pakistani music, lounging around in a lizard like fashion and other such hedonistic pleasures that would at best last the next 3 days till I find myself back in Emergency.
Oh well, that's fun too. May the force be with you.

Virtual Reality

So after many profound brain things inside my head I'm back on Facebook. While my angst against social networking is not entirely gone and now that there are a million others claiming their individual superiority and new nifty applications that get sued by toy manufacturing giants, I've decided that a known evil is better than an unknown possibility of a good time. Yes, I humbly accept that that makes no sense. It wasn't meant to.
And thus I'm back on the wild world web having decided to let nifty little applications determine my social life. Of course there's also the fact that compared to the real world, the illusion of the matrix is pretty good.
Anyway profile updated and random socially acceptable likes and dislikes are in situ and I can go back to ignoring the site.
In interesting news Madagascar 2 has finally arrived in our fair part of the world and much as i would like to see it... again... for the fourth time I think I shall pass. I can now recite King Julian's new and improved insanity when woken up from a dead slumber. I feel, deep inside, that it will not be appreciated by the hoi polloi around me. So I shall continue to watch it in the privacy of my laptop. Streaming is so cool. As are cheap dvds of the streamed videos. Except of some time lag in the audio which was, after much wrestling, fixed.
But as I wanted to say but as usual got sidetracked, Madagascar 2, some say is not as funny as the first installment. Nay. I refute thy claims, critic. King Julian of course has been put on steroids for his mental condition and it's worsened. The penguins are a trip.
Alex, Marty and this time even Gloria and Melman go into the usual sentiment trip and considering this time it's in Africa, some much self-discovery and emancipation and yada yada happens that serves only to distract us from the real hero.
Bernie Mac will be sorely missed.
Go watch. Watch it. Maurice, you naughty little monkey, shake my arm.
In other such things the Mekaal Hassan Band (which I remember mentioning) and Shafqat Amanat Ali's solo album (Tabeer) and to say the least very good. I'm not going to go into the cool production, the mature fusion of hindustani and rock and the very excellent voices in detail but you get the gist. Some disappointments though especially with Tabeer. Dum Ali Dum and Naina in particular lack any kind of substance. But like always it's worth a listen and some songs will stick on.
So there it is life in a nutshell. More whenever.

PS I'm back on facebook because some mental plans for ganging up and consuming insane amounts of alcohol are made and propagated therein. It's just easier to plan the hangover thus.

Just like that....

So as time and space and planetary alignments would have it I find myself way north of the usual latitude in the NCR recovering from the acute removal of a parotid. Long story but the bottom line is I have a funny haircut, a lopsided smile, an aching face and am grossing out the north with a suction drain sticking out of my neck. Which one hopes will come out today.
I also haven't been writing for many reasons. Primarily since I've had nothing to write about, or if I have it's just way too technical, neurosurgery-wise, since that's all I've been up to.
The entertainment industry is in shambles. With the possible exception of House being available as a streaming video nothing spectacular has happened. We've finally as an industry broken into the hallowed grounds of animation with Roadside Romeo which as a movie sucks. I've been listening to the absolute worst music courtesy the radio.
Let's play a game. Think of the worst song you've heard in modern times. The chances that I'd have operated listening to it and worse yet would know the lyrics and in moments of stress have even hummed it are close to 95%. The latest in the long list is the not so new Sajanani Vaari Vaari from Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd. What a song it is! But that is just one... there's come songs from Cash and Race and other such monosyllabic movie titles whose soundtracks inundate my consciousness from time to time and in true altruistic fashion I ensure that the consciousness of all around me are also inundated by the same bad music.
So there's the rub on work and entertainment.
What else is happening? The usual wikipedia trolling is getting me nowhere.
And yes a new day has dawned. America Voted for Obama, despite all the jokes and misgivings this is a momentous occasion. The world will not be the same and history has been rewritten.
Watched his acceptance speech through the haze of post operative delirium and I found myself thinking, "Yes, we can." Brilliant speech. Now all we can do is to hope and pray he doesn't go mental. Which is the word of the day by the way.
That's all from here and now, from the other side of the knife and the back of beyond. As usual we end with promises to write more and draw more, to fill lives other than mine with joy and humor but we know deep down that the only thing that will actually happen is I'll hack more heads and drill more holes and occasionally get mails chastising my choice of profession and the resultant step motherly treatment that this blog gets. Oh well, such is life (since I forgot where the apostrophe's come in c'est la vie...)

On the days gone by

Ok then. Been a while and all that jazz. Many things have changed since the last post and that annoying blog-in-Hindi option seems to have suddenly appeared, as has a new grammar Nazi, albeit anonymous, who's made mincemeat of my syntax, spelling and inappropriate punctuation. While I shall try to toe the queen's line and be as proper as I possibly can, I've never had the patience to edit more than once so any of the inconsistencies that crop up geographically, grammatically or ecumenically should be forgiven and forgotten.
Life's been revolving around work and a new found passport into the operation theater and the past few weeks have had me going medieval on many a random skull. Yeah so we're in the 21st century and survived the Y2K crisis (which some people made out to be potentially worse than the nuclear holocaust that Nostradamus had predicted) and technology rules our lives but still medieval is what we are while getting to the brain.Yeah that's what we use... it's hard initially as is the skull but does wonders to shoulders and forearms.
The average neurosurgeon therefore is lean, emaciated, unshaven, but has arms to die for... or at least a right arm to die for.
We also apparently believe in the 24 hour validity of both a bath and brush.
Work apart what else is news?
Kabhi Kabhi Aditi is a trippy song. Trippy enough to have on constant repeat and begin a groove to it when it plays in the middle of surgery.
What you say?
Some of us like music when we work. And considering we're all low tech (see above) we use FM. And till a little while ago that was good. Then every station barring two decided to go local. Now while I have no grouse with local music and to be honest while the melodies are catchy and some even excellent musically the lyrics I'm afraid drive me up the wall and get me to the state of wanting to grind my teeth to a fine white powder and replace whatever the man was snorting when he wrote this. So with much cunning I position the dials to Radio One 94.3 since 91.9 will be vetoed by all except the anesthetized patient and begin to scrub for the case. Only to find that some more cunning and devious lie in wait in the shadows to switch to the hottest local station - Mirchi - less than a minute after I gown up for the surgery. It's an unerring regularity with an unerring tendency to piss me off (since this plays at hourly intervals). Anyway 94.3 plays contemporary hindi film and pop music which is how I got to hear the Aditi song in the first place and has the funniest fillers in Prof Ulfat Sultan, Chamarajpet Charles and Rajani Saar. Since it's all accent dependent a transcription will not be attempted and neither in the near or distant future a recording and streaming of the same. Best that you should hear them for yourself.
So that's what's been happening. Bad humor, worse work shifts but a good dreamless sleep after it all.
A parting shot at new music, I shall consider reviewing Sampooran by the Mekaal Hasan Band. Think it's got the potential to be the next good thing that'll never make it big.

Back.

Didn't think it would come to a time when sitemeter and google analytics would start telling me that the number of people visiting our little patch in the woods would reduce to levels that it no longer made sense for either site to devote a bit of memory to keep count of the few who swing by. And many thousands of people egged (notice it's egged not egg,are egging or will egg) me to continue writing despite all and reminded me of promises I had made and am not keeping.
So here goes nothing.
After the last run in with suicidal/homicidal/genocidal gas repairmen, we've settled in quite well thank you. No more telltale aromas of LPG wafting through the house. The occasional new house glitches of flushes going off on their own still exist. And only because it's a new house can one be sure it's the plumbing and not some poltergeist.
This time's funny story comes courtesy the paterfamilias. Not something he did or thought but just the usual anecdote. He's gotten himself a Swift and yours truly managed to wrangle a spin. Nice car that. Spacious, responsive but a little tight on the gearstick. That should resolve in a while I guess. And with some cool new car stereo that reads a flash drive via USB and plays it all with scrolling text. Makes my Xplod look like some Jurassic Park hand me down (which it is, the only thing the tape slot is used for is the tape adapter for the Pod). All the cribs aside there is one more to add and that's the fact that there's a nasty blind spot at about 30 degrees that the designers didn't quite take care of. So while driving and narrowly missing many a wayward motorist due to the aforementioned blind spot and cribbing about it, Dad launches into a story.
Long, long ago when the man was globetrotting and found himself in Europe and the conversation turned to cars in India, Dad mentioned his car that was an otherwise nice drive and all that but had this blind spot problem that forced him to look out of the window every time he wanted to turn to the right. When further interrogated he mentioned that the car was a Premier Padmini (yeah that long ago) made by Fiat. Perplexed at the loud laughter that ensued my rather distraught father probed into the possible cause of such joy. Turns out the explanation was thus, "It's obvious, isn't it. It's an italian car. Italians always drive with their heads sticking out of the window."
That episode apart, we've come a long way from the time that changing gears meant trying to haul the steering wheel off the assembly.
Also been discovering more and more of Rashid Khan. And loving it...
And since my well of ideas is running dry we'll leave you with a few snippets.
The first is courtesy Jay Leno who pointed out that a recent German study has shown that many adult Germans are depressed and most of them think that the best way to deal with that is a long walk. And the Poles are now worried because last time the Germans were depressed and decided to walk, they walked all the way across Poland.
Maggi Cuppa Mania - the Chilli Chow Yo flavour is good.
When not paying attention to what one is walking on, one must at least have that much awareness of the ground to avoid stepping on BOTH gum and cow dung. Each is bad enough, together they're impossible to deal with.
And finally, heard on radio - Save the earth, stop eating meat since cows produce methane by the gallon and methane after carbon dioxide is the greenhouse gas of the millennium. I'm thinking why won't they stop drinking milk. A steak doesn't produce half as much methane as a healthy, grass-munching heifer.
Peace be on thee.

Almost Unreal

Damn I realised that I'd forgotten I'd had an online presence. The last post was a half-eaten apple. For more reasons than one. So I'm done with my month in emergency and this time around no insensitivity towards boys with toilet brushes or auto drivers with plastic bottles or the usual assortment of patients who come my way. I've realised that it's not a statistically skewed position I hold and my life is not all that left-shifted. Why? Because the net and even my textbooks have a plethora of nethers with an equally varied selection of objects within them.
But that isn't the point is it... Casualty is such a blissful posting. Yeah so your hypothalamus is mijooked and you can barely focus for 15 minutes when the shift is all over, there's this wonderful instant gratification, don't-have-to-care-about-tomorrow emotion that keeps the adrenaline going for a month. Well at least 3 weeks after which it's no longer as cool as it's cracked up to be.
Instant gratification reminds me of Unreal Tournament. Which is not what you miserable little worms are thinking about. Though it can be the name of some sleazy time bound competition that could theoretically happen in the bowels of men's hostels but that isn't the story either.
Unreal tournament is the ultimate instant gratification tool after internet porn. May be in moments of extreme geekdom, it occupies the same pedestal.
An environment (sometimes just a room), a bunch of other characters, an assortment of weaponry, a set number of frags. You die, you respawn, they die they respawn, whoever gets the magic number of kills wins. And if you want you try another room.
No story. No complex map to navigate, no secrets to unravel, no dark, long, anxiety inducing corridors a la Half-life or Doom. I remember when I got some shareware version of Doom and took three nights to finish it and had nightmares for three weeks and walked very slowly and carefully around corners for three months.
But Unreal is the future of gaming for those who don't want to use anything beyond maybe the midbrain. We come home, leave our frontal lobes behind and fire away at bots till the frustration of the day disappears and settle for a good night's sleep. And the good news is that such activity improves hand eye co-ordination.
The bad news is that I need a graphics accelerator.
Worse is that I'm constantly told by residents of The Age of Empires that I'm a Wendol equivalent or by those Baldur's gatekeepers that I'm of the mental capacity of a halfling.
The plan is to get me either a Redeemer or a Flak Cannon and make the best of the five minutes.

Just...

Tragic it is when a comment on the frequency of posts hits you deep inside. True it's turning out to be some monthly affair. And considering I'm on call tonight and in emergency all of next month I'm guessing it's a good thing to try write a post.
My drafts folder has some bastard child paragraph of stuff on the virtues of Centrum, a firang brand of multivitamin that has turned out to be the best in some double blind study (15331331). Incidentally common everyday instances of a double blind study are two orthopedicians reading an ECG or two neurologists reading an MRI. My stand on research unfortunately still stands despite colossal wastes of time and energy such as this and that Ignoble prize winning theory on nose picking.
The other half of the abortus has a glossary of sorts on commonly used terms in the loony bin and what they really mean. I guess after that wonderful reception to mijook, how can one stop?
Neurotic - Loose
Psychotic - orre loose
CT/MRI - Ways of avoiding letting the world know that one doesn't have a clue as to what one is dealing with. Eg : "Sir, what is God's name is that?" "I'm not sure, let's get a CT and then an MRI"
Biopsy - When CT/MRI shed little light and there this gnawing compulsion to KNOW. Eg : "Sir, what in God's name does that MRI show?" "I'm not sure, let's go in and take a small biopsy." Mijook it is.
Then there's the assortment of vegetables, goners and the likes that makes the classification of patients in The World According to Garp seem the most realistic thing in that book. But those of you who haven't read it... do. It's a good book.
My last outpatient for a month today, which means it's my last day to interact with the assortment of patients we get from all over the country. What about next month you say? Next month is Trauma (reminds me that there was someone who thought that a patient with trauma needed to be seen by psychiatrists, till I pointed out that trauma just meant hurt from anything, a blunt object for instance). Which means my patients to a good extent would not talk much and logic states that they'd only be from the immediate vicinity (a 100 km radius is the immediate vicinity).
We seem to get patients from everywhere. While AIIMS seemed inundated with folks from Bihar hopping on the the Garib Rath and dropping by the hospital on their way to the Qutub Minar or the Red Fort, this place seems to attract people from every state. Most commonly West Bengal. We have the dubious distinction of having the second highest patient density from there after CMC, Vellore. And there are plans to add a coach more to every train that's heading this way from Kolkota (kolkata? Calcutta damn it) so the sick can be exported out.
When asked the average bengali answered, "Our government doesn't feed us well so we're all sick." And I couldn't resist the Ayn Rand-esque reply to communism and had to tell him that's the result of expecting a government to feed you as opposed to going forth and getting some food like the rest of us do. And that they were the ones electing the same government for half a century. Another more worldly-wise said, "There is no guarantee in the hospitals there." Again, the question of poor government health care arises and the irony of a communist state having poor state-run health establishments. (Kerala of course is the exception where the government hospitals run almost at par with the private sector). Then there is also the seminal question of what guarantee are we giving. But the point was lost on the man. Anyway these patients are the hardest to deal with. A lot of them do not have valid income certificates and can't afford treatment, we of course are made privy to this fact only at the time of discharge and then a day is spent trying to waive of charges. And they are not satisfied with anything. It's a little unfair because when we try explaining the possible deficits they would have, the language barrier might just interfere with that. But I'm guessing if you want to be treated outside you jolly well understand something outside of what you grew up speaking.
The Tamil patients also come in droves and can be incredibly annoying while giving a history of their ailment. They will invariably dwell on the various doctors they visited and what was done at each hospital and how they now have a lump in their brain and thus have arrived here for the needful. So the question "why are you here" is a bad one. The question "what is your problem" elicits a range of daily troubles like the lack of water in the village to how the crops have failed or the fish aren't biting. They respond to direct leading questions well though and some history can be gleaned.
North Karnataka breaks one's heart. After driving one up the wall. It is possibly the poorest place I've encountered. They would sell all they have and come down here and camp till admission, they're illiterate, ill-informed, have little ability therefore to make an informed decision and constantly reiterate that they are so.
The gults as always will either hunt you down in the canteen to ask you when they're going to be operated and when told firmly not to bother an eating neurosurgeon will pounce on you just outside the canteen or will wail at a moment's notice.
Who's left? The biharis who decide not to go to Delhi will drop in, the mal's are educated but some know way too much. The locals would fit into any category above.
And I'm late so toodle-oo and pip-pip.

PilGrim

In a moment of... well I wouldn't call it weakness but let's just say rationally challenged thought, I promised my granddad that I would trudge up the famed seven hills to pay obeisance to the family deity. Actually if I remember correctly he said he'd do the trudging if I made it to the hallowed halls of Neurosurgery and I offered to accompany him. So we left about 36 hours ago on this shady Mysore-Thirupati-Chennai Passenger that stopped on almost every two-bit platform and picked up more despicable people. Why despicable? Let me elucidate. So this large extended family gets on and occupies most of my lower berth, preventing my reclining and drifting off. Then proceeds to consume portions of pomegranate and then tossing the bits unceremoniously, not out the window but on the freaking floor of the compartment. Cursed socialism for a while then just decided to pick the piece up and toss it out hoping that setting an example would help. But nay, the man continues to thup seeds hither and thither. Now the seeds of a pomegranate are meant to be eaten.
On an aside, thup, which is tamil for spit, is the first evidence of vernacular onomatopoeia that I've ever encountered. And how good an example. ThupI, so simple, yet so clear. Any more examples would be received with much gratitude and appreciation.
Anyway in some form cruel justice, one of the extended family who was on the wait-list ended up sleeping on the thupped upon floor.
So we arrived at Thirupati on the Pilgrim express and a short ride later entered the vast halls of "srinivasam" the pilgrim services centre setup by the TTD at around 5 AM. No rooms allotments till six screamed a board and while perusing the sign a man walks up and offers to get a room. For a little more than what is the regular price. Went ahead and gave him the go to do the needful, slowly coming to terms with the fact that this was to be a regular feature.
Wash and breakfast later, we began the trudge up 3,665 steps over 9km. Finished it in about 3 hours and my granddad's my current hero. Unfortunately between getting up and getting to the correct queue we'd gotten too late to make any of the special offering deals that they have up there. So we hobbled along to the above 75 queue and holding up my hobbling granddad got in for the usual 5 second look at the deity before being shoved away by the crowd controlling scouts who are unfortunately ever prepared.
Took a bus back and planned to visit the temple dedicated to the Goddess Padmavati (consort to the God on the hills). There too we found the queues all closed for the next hour and refused to bribe some local tout and entered the temple hoping to get a glimpse. And how we did. The deity was being taken around the temple on a palanquin and a good look ensured that we didn't have to spend the next couple of hours in some queue, which seems to be the way of life in Thirupati.
The town itself is hell. Built around the ten odd temples with nothing outside of a train station, a bus terminus and about a million lodges. And advertisements for Bio beer and Bio whiskey which I did not have the guts to try.
No pictures due to an embargo on cellphones and cameras in the temple complexes.
But it's strange when a temple becomes a business or sorts where one can get ahead in the queue depending on the amount one spends and having spent that much time, energy and money all one gets is a 5 second glimpse. Not that I believe too strongly, but still. Actually it's worse if one doesn't really have the faith. But it's done. I'm aching all over and have a couple of days before I start off my residency so rest it is...

Just like that...

Oh Joy to the world. Blogger now saves drafts automatically. But that apart this bit of blogger has been neglected by author and audience alike as the weekly updates from sitemeter inform me and the occasional sojourn into Google Analytics reaffirms. Now Google Analytics has a new and hitherto undiscovered version that I need to analyze once I have the time and bandwidth but as of now I know someone in East Anglia read my blog. I thank you, friend.

I wasn't going to post, the way things are going, but when I came to know that people's early morning bowel movements were loosely connected to what I wrote or rather whether I wrote, things change from hobby to moral and intestinal responsibility. At this point I'm tempted to say that those who can blog and those who can't photo blog, but I won't be mean and instead hopefully just generate drool and other such Pavlovian reflexes.
Will probably write when I have something funny to say, till then here's a taste of last week's bruschetta and a little more.

Drool.
Provoloni and Pepperoni on fresh Ciabatta Bread

The aforementioned bread with olives, fresh tomatoes and basil. And a hint of the 70% chocolate.


"All the better to eat them with..."

Adios amigos, till next time where hopefully I'll have a happy review of Pirates III and some news about where I'll be doing my Neurosurgery.

And then some...

It's the end of the world when I've had nearly unlimited access to a keyboard, a monitor and broadband for a few days and I haven't found anything to post about. Or just not posted. Laziness isn't something I want the blog to be a victim of. So here I am wonderfully happy at home albeit my last day. I was here for a short holiday on account of Mr D's taking the big plunge. We wish him and his pretty bride a long fruitful happy married life.
And on that note we also realize that we have little else to say and shall take up valuable screen space with pictures and cartoons as follows.

When wet cement signs should bark...

Birds on wires...


On a movie I wanted to but never could see...


The cartoon is from a vicious online comic site - xkcd. google it. and while at it also take a peek at sinfest and cyanide and happiness.

Peace and back to the grind.

Law of the Land

The Blue Billion is thankfully back to square one with it's prodigal eleven sequestered in undisclosed safe houses with black cats and other creatures of voodoo significance prowling the nights around them.
Bob Woolmer was killed by either the mafia, the bookies or a particularly irate fan. Or so the speculations go. Greg Chappell is still alive so it rules out the irate fan. And we have enough of them. The demand for donkeys has sky rocketed in Bihar and it's hard to imagine that they'll ever run out of donkeys. And the coach's existence also brings about the lack of bookie or mafia involvement. Which means what we all have suspected for quite a while is true - that sachin, sehwag and the rest of the nitwits no longer have it in them to play cricket.
Now that we've established that why are their ads still running on TV and in print. Especially that disgusting one where Sachin lends his voice to Reliance to read out the score. Now of all the things about the man, the last thing I want to be exposed to is his voice. And if I were him I wouldn't want my voice to be heard reading out Bangladeshi scores as they plant their flag deep in the arena of international cricket.
Cricket fever is finally gone and the Supreme Court has squashed Arjun Singh's grand plans. Amidst riotous revelry is an irate idiot of a HRD minister and the Left front claiming the SC's questioning of the 1938 demographic statistics was irrelevant.
Our dear Health Minister has been shown a moonie by the courts too. And if there's one thing the Times of India has done right it's that the only thing missing from their file photo of Anbu to complete the picture are a couple of horns and a forked tail. About time. Not that AIIMS is running wonderfully well but the last thing it needs some some cretin like Anbu rushing in with a spanner to throw into the works.
Forseen circumstances are forcing me to stop now and give up control of the laptop. Adios.

Summer is here by the way.

Break....

I detest these long breaks from being able to write. I can often blame them on either the lack of a computer to write on, or wrist pain from trying to sms a post or the unreliable sify connection. Mostly it's because I haven't a thing to write about. Strange, ye all say. Not at all. Considering I'm all through with complaining about both Delhi, AIIMS and the Chom assortment that plagues my life as of now. Now I go back to being amused often loudly and in-their-face.

Night duties have been filled with either Sardars affronted when someone innocently asks if it's finally past 12 o clock in order that a break may be taken, 30 odd students of the KSO (read some newspaper for more information) ordered by court to be treated at AIIMS since they were apparently not given the required attention at RML (another local hospital). And considering they were under police custody after trying to enter the parliament protesting the arrest of their brethren back in Manipur. It was all good till we needed to admit a couple of them (which we actually may not have if there was no court order). Now we needed to keep them nil orally and they wanted to eat pork. From Koopchand at CP which is apparently certified free from tapeworms. Mental note to check the place out. In the end of course the KSO stalwart had to settle for a glucose drip and six policemen to ensure that he didn't take the next bus to pork land.
Speaking of tapeworms I've decided to make it known that I shall avoid Pepsi since the blue billion debacle. In any case, the pesticides in Coke are far superior in ridding the gut of the occasional infestations.
Fort Minor plays in the background and despite many accusations of not growing up and listening to angsty nu metal I still like that music. I can list cutting edge production, incredible recording, nice use of mixers and turntables as reasons but I'm going to stick to simply the fact that the man/men have a neat sense of putting words in rhyme and rhythm and generally getting me in a good mood.
Continuing in my flight of ideas and musical genre, the grandparents left happy due to a cartload of cds that we bought a few days ago and the play list now has Rashid Khan - Brindavani Sarang, Kishore Amonkar - Todi and Ahir Bhairav, Hariprasad Chaurasia - Pilu and Lalit and Brindavani Sarang and finally Gangubai Hanagal - Behag. And the winner is Gangubai. I've never heard her before, live or recordings, and she is simply divine.
As usual posts on classical music come with the disclaimer that prevents (theoretically) commenters from taking my trip about what I think.
Finally in a show of either surprising secularism or insight we find this on a bottle of Jim Beam, Kentucky Bourbon. Now either we acknowledge that Urdu is a secular language and one of the greatest tragedies is associating it with any religion or we acknowledge that alcoholism is a problem that all irrespective of caste, creed, religion and tribe face.

Swank.

Not Hillary of the Boys don't Cry but I can make 'em by knocking their teeth out in the second round 'cos I'm worth a Million Dollars Baby, fame. Just the root of the word 'swanky'. It's 2 pm and I'm reeling from the effects of a reasonably bad night at work and way too much caffeine but this is the one chance I have to get at the laptop, so here I am.
Why the one chance? The owner's not back yet but others more needy than I need the keys to surf the waves of information albeit in bits and pieces. But I'm ranting. The flight of ideas is primarily due to the fact that I'm incapable at the moment of sticking to an idea for longer than 30 seconds. That apart I'm ok.
The powers that be took pity on me and some thirty others and offered us rooms at the new Trauma Centre, about a mile away from AIIMS. The mile is a small issue when compared to the flashy, swanky as of now pleasantly cool rooms that exist there. It's a nice large single room with an attached bath and a little balcony. Furnished with a computer table, a revolving chair (to make my attempts at pursuing academic excellence a little roundabout, so to speak), a book shelf, a bed (with a mattress, this is a new one) and Godrej look alike. Just what do you call those things? Steel cupboards? Almairahs? So I'm finally bereft of the pigeon brood, which incidentally is now a brood and not just potential omelets. And in good time too for as of now the little things are quiet but they are rumored to have the highest decibel to size ratio at the age of ten days. I'm also potentially looking at a death-trap in summer due to a rather poor ventilation and little provision for installing electricity consuming, ozone depleting rented air conditioners. But that might be offset by some eco-friendly architecture.
So this is the time for all good men to come to the aid of getting through to something substantial in the coming months and not getting comfortable in the luxury of a room, butter chicken and a substantial paycheck.
Next up if nonsense doesn't come my way, Kareem's in Old Delhi and a meat extravaganza like no other.

Fry and I

More benevolence and a slack schedule finds me here yet again. The friend in question's gotten himself a 12" Toshiba. Not a Vaio... Well that means I get to use this for a few days more and post away. Wonko, or Wanker depending on time and inclination has more posts in the last couple of weeks than I do. And this is not a consummation to be wish'd as Hamlet muttered after that eternal quandary about things being and not being.
I've been reading Paperweight by Stephen Fry and it's been a joyride to date. Does come with a Statutory warning that reading more than two essays at a stretch is inadvisable but those two essays usually leave me rolling on the floor laughing. ROTFL, get it? Anyway he says that Shakespeare never said anything. It was all his characters and while quoting one should ideally reference the character and give due credit to Lady Macbeth for example when washing hands. He also mentions sentences that end with 7 prepositions and palindromes with oscillate and generally has a ball... or two.
There is also a transcript of a Sherlock Holmes story hitherto unpublished and also not quite proven to be the result of Watson's hand (notice the credit giving habit extends beyond William). An interesting tale with a rather fun twist at the end. Lay your hands on it people. It is worth it.
In another reference to Wonko, you'll notice that his new posts are all about photoblogging from his fancy new phone that's effectively a camera that you can make calls and send sms's from. It is then that I realized that I hadn't gloated about my phone in a while. Not that anything new has been discovered on it but what I did do was ride in the metro with the earphones in listening Bela Fleck and Dave Matthews Band, making like the advertisement - I (sony) my long commute. The sad part is the Metro will take another few years to link South Delhi by which time I will either be out of here or dead due to over exposure to bhangra.
In other great ironies that plague my life, Petrol is apparently cheaper now and my car is too below the tropic of cancer for it to make any difference to my life.

And then some...

Somehow my life revolves around monkeys. I'm tempted to say evolves too but that is apparently is hotly disputed in circles of intelligentsia in the city and out. Delhi's been a difficult place to adjust to. The weather, the people, even the language to an extent. But the one thing I've never had trouble with is food. Between my tapeworms and commensal bacteria it's almost always been good with the pipes. But the past week has been one of cramps and the unmentionables and yesterday I was informed that they found a dead monkey in the water supply.
Cringe people who read this. I did too.
Then I figured it was too late to purge, one way or the other and there was nothing to do but hope that chlorine is as good as they say it is.
Then I wondered for a moment if this was a good way to rid the world of them that live in and around "medical". Then I had to rush to the facilities.
It's been cold and raining for the past few days here and like Russia, the met department's been blaming some western cause for the muck that I have to wade through to get to work. There are moments of wonderful bright sunshine that drive the pigeons that are trying to build a nest in my window out into the open. I'm tossing the idea of pigeon egg omelets in my head but will just board up the window I guess.
All the preamble about my otherwise miserable life done with, the highlight of the past two days has been the serendipitous discovery that Thermal was playing less that ten minutes from Medical. And since I went there, the discovery that they can cover any band. Over twenty minutes they went seamlessly from Rush, U2, RHCP, Aerosmith, Stevie Wonder (Superstitious, can you believe it!), Dire Straits and maybe another couple which I can't remember and finally finished up with Stairway to Heaven. And they ended the show with Sunset Man. Joy to the world.
And the central government employees though are not paid well subsist on the many allowances that are permissible. For example, the hostel I live in is about five minutes away from the gate of Medical and thus "outside" the campus. Which means them that live there are eligible for conveyance allowance. Which is good. What is better is that I'm given 4.30 meters of white cloth and Rs 130/- to get myself two white coats to induce hypertension. I'm good with that. Aren't you?

Work in Progress.

Those of you who came by yesterday and saw the title mobile blog and nothing else, my apologies. But I do hope to get that up and running in a couple of days. Work has begun in earnest and I'm back to being bored as hell. The hours are good. The work mind numbing but this as they say is the small step in the right direction. Nothing funny's happened out side of an MP who wanted to get someone he knew admitted. When we pointed out that the hospital policy was to only admit if beds are available he went on a ranting spree till we pointed out that he was of the policy making ilk...

Somehow think that the double standards that politicians lay down for themselves are an unfortunate fallout of a pseudo communist regime. Not that it doesn't happen in capitalist/democratic states, but just feels so commie when that happens.
My phone continues to amaze and impress me. In fact the more I'm disillusioned with the apex of health care in this country, the more I love my phone. There is of course one small problem. No network has a signal strong enough in the hospital. Except for MTNL which has a tower bang in the middle of the campus and in exchange gave the hospital mobile phones instead of pagers. As a friend says, how cool is that?
This evil conspiracy ensures that when at work the mobile isn't a distraction anymore.
Thus if called and found unreachable I'm at work. Mail me instead.
Between gmail's mobile friendly version and opera mini I think I should be able to blog from the phone. that would revolutionise things.
Nothing else blogworthy. Adios.

Ready? AIIMS... DAAG - The Fire

Dear God,
I do know that I don't believe in you and often our interactions are by proxy to say the least. All I want to know is if the last two days of running from pillar to post at the apex of the Indian Health care system is any indication of things to come in both life and afterlife.
Eagerly anticipating your reply.
Sincerely yours.

Crazy kiya re only. So the academic section will not let me join till I'm declared medically fit before 12.30 PM. The medical officer will not see me till I get my urine tested (before 10 AM) and xRay done. And ENT and Eye are cursory but essential. And after all the running around over the past 48 hours, today, apparently might just be the big day.
Notwithstanding the fact that there is no accommodation. There hasn't been for six months. Married residents have a year's waiting list, which is reason enough to not indulge in handkerchief-pandkerchief. And it looks like it's sardines for a few days.
Then again there's the bright side. here's a shot albeit fuzzy, of the many fuzzy companions in Aiims.

2007

Now before I launch into some drama about my resolutions and how they've never made too much sense to anybody outside of my conscience here's an interesting story.
The Airbus A320 has enough fuel loaded onto it to do close to 3500km. And maybe more. So when my materfamilias got onto the plane that was to fly her from Bangalore to Delhi in these turbulent times, little did she realise what she was in for. It turns out that the plane took off more or less on time, flew the perquisite distance and then hit a solid wall of fog that had successfully blanketed the entire NCR and made even CAT III systems ineffective. So the A320 with all the luggage and passengers did a 180 and flew, not to Jaipur, Ahmedabad or Lucknow or even Bombay but all the way back to Bangalore. It is therefore a well laden flight that the Wright Brothers would be proud of. No wonder the damn thing gets hijacked and flown to Azerbaijan every once in a while.
Saddam was assassinated by the US. The TOI for the first time in many years had a really nice write up on that. Tragic the world is becoming.
To matters on a lighter vein, it's a new year. Like the many that happened in the past and like all those years it's a time for joyous revelry and looking back and looking forward and looking back again and crossing the road sideways.
And once the hangover abates it's time to take stock of all the goof ups and decide which ones were simply too embarrassing to repeat and which are funny enough to do maybe once more before they get boring. Hence the resolutions. Had a couple of people call me up and swear to go off alcohol, but that's a recurrent theme in their lives and more so at this time of the year. Partysmart apparently doesn't work as well as it claims. Then again the makers of that 'erb didn't think of times when the 1st of January would be a holiday.
So I resolve not to grin in an evil fashion every time an ambulance howls past. The truth is, sorry as I feel for whoever is in the van, I'm laughing at the plight of the poor sod who's going to be woken up at 2 AM. I've been there. It's not a good time. And in the event that I get where I want to I'm going to have to do a lot of that and considering what goes around comes around I'm guessing this would be a good time to stop that practice.
I also resolve to build up the courage to eat teetar tandoori that I found at a shop near home. It doesn't look like much meat but it's a scary meat. Which brings me to how any meat is ok as long as it's advertised as an acceptable animal. Meat of Obscure/Unknown Origin that masquerades as beef/mince under the flyover on KR Market is a classical example and incredibly tasty.
I'm going to try and be nice to people in order to buy myself a ticket to heaven considering my job saving lives isn't enough.
Will try to be tolerant towards the north.
Will also try to keep this blog going.
The other resolutions either don't deserve mention, can't be followed or are simply too bizarre to be broadcast on a public forum.
Yawl have a good year ahead.