Obit.

So I started work a week ago... And much as I might have wanted things otherwise this blog is being neglected. Like, perhaps, some many other aspects of my life such as personal hygiene and nutrition. But today, having woken up when most BPO people are winding up for the day and birds and small rodents are poking their sleepy snouts and beaks out to gingerly sniff at the morning air I decided to post for what it was worth.
Funny story of the month began with a friend pointing out that an obituary in the papers may have been of a common acquaintance and a request to dig up more facts. The paper stated that so and so had died in an accident and his last rites would be at Bangalore. A few shocked moments and a few phone calls later we find the story unfolding thus. So and so, as we shall call him for the sake of anonymity, was apparently planning to tie the knot and do the do with the future (now current) Mrs So and so. Which is all fine in the grand scheme of things till the Paterfamilias put his foot down in the manner of the typical patriarch for reasons best known to him and apparently stated in the vernacular, "yeh shaadi nahi hogi!" or over my dead body as the case may as well be. Kids nowadays aren't as efficient at bumping off their folks as Aurangzeb was or as whacked in the head as Romeo and Juliet, so the So and Sos decided to go ahead and take the leap. Or is it Plunge? So it came to pass that the aggrieved father in a fit of rage decided to announce to all and sundry that the So and so was no longer a beating heart. Hence the item in the papers.
What is wrong with the world?
My time to ablute draws nigh.
Toodle-oo and pip-pip.

Dry Spells

No jokes.
Flashes of inspiration apparently come at all times, rather at any time. When least expected. And when there is no paper or pen to jot down the thought in an anal retentive way and speaking into a phone to record the elusive idea is a consummation I haven't devoutly wish'd for yet.
So as I was waiting for an Oncologist friend with a ward full of high profile cancers and thus a rather unpredictable schedule, I found myself seated on a pavement, helmet in hand. Having carefully juxtaposed myself between two dessicated betel stains on the sidewalk, I figured this could be a long and boring wait before we actually got off to watch 300.
Again.
No more movie raving and glorifying what I now call aesthetically appealing violence and bloodshed. I am a surgeon. Gore doesn't disgust me, at least not as much as Bush does. Make what you want of that cruel pun with substantial innuendo (it's bringing up rather disgusting interpretations every time I read it.)
There are things about Delhi I like. The Metro, the food (except when someone tried passing off some buffalo meat as tenderloin), the fact that if one has enough money to run the air-conditioner and refrigerator for 6 months and a heater and electric blanket for another 6, how women are out with summer clothing, the fact that I can get a vascular instrument set at 2AM and an extra ventilator or a contrast CT.
And there are others I dislike. A large percentage of the people, referring patients to SJH due to a lack of beds, fat men in tight flashy clothes, signs that one should not spit here - in English (why?) and hindi (what's the point?) surrounded by the aforementioned dessicated paan stains.
And there's stuff that I'm not sure about such as Dry days. Very ambivalent am I.
Alcohol in any form is only sold via government stores in Delhi. So every gazetted holiday (72 this year I think) there is no booze sold. The Government also randomly assigns dry days where one can't get a beer even at restaurants. Pre-elections is a good example. Delhi was dry from 5PM on the 3rd to 5PM on the 5th. And on Good Friday and today. Today to apparently allow people to count votes in sobriety. So that left 5 hours between 5 and 10 on the 5th where everybody decided to get drunk, fall off an assortment of vehicles, assault each other with a battery of weapons and land up at casualty making my night miserable.
The downside of course is that I can't obviously drink on such days unless I drive to Faridabad, Gurgaon or Noida. The good bit is that there's a statistically significant reduction in the influx of cases on such days.
Have been listening to Shine by Take That. Don't judge me. Listen to the song. Mike (I think) Owen's fronting them this time around. Welcome change.
For a parting bit of entertainment read this. And then this.

The bell...

... tolls for me. It turns out that whatever administrative issue AIIMS was having with it's Senior Resident posts has been sorted out and Dispatch has finally gotten around to matching the numbers with the faces and addresses. And if I take what certain well placed sources have had to say seriously, I came close to being a victim of Arjun Singh's vote bank politics. But since most stories have to be taken with appropriate condiments we'll leave it at that.
The downside of it all is that I have about 10 days left in Bangalore. Bengalooru. Whatever. That's not half as bad as I have 10 days before I reach Delhi. Which is scary. The goodbyes, the I'll miss you, this place and the beer and the music are again bad but what is wrenching the gut is the thought of dealing with a swarms of humanity that I've dissed as long as I remember. The good part however is that Neurosurgical Trauma involves people who to a large extent are incapable of speaking coherently. Either due to alcohol or due to the head injury due to the alcohol. Now if I were a less conscientious doctor I'd have figured it would be a good thing to leave them in a state where they can't talk and ruin my life. Instead I'm going to have to scan their brains and set them right. But this is something I've always wanted to do so I'll just not crib about the where.
Polyglyph had their first show, well attended by friends and family as most first shows are. We were as Mr. D has said thus. Here is a short preview. So if you like us and we have another show and you either get a mail or read about it here feel free to drop by. Of course considering I'm heading to higher latitudes that may not happen. Unless you like this so much that you want to sponsor another gig. Or get us to cut an album. I could give up cutting people for that. Or at least think about it. Anyway, enjoy.

Eventuality.

Ok here's a warning. This isn't a funny post. And today I'm not amused. Just Quiet.
Lost a grandparent this morning.
And it's been a grandparent losing week from what I hear.
Well to be fair, she wasn't someone I was close to, considering I used to meet her about once a year and in the recent past with even rarer frequency so I'm not devastated or anything. At the same time the morning was spent getting my dad a ticket to head to Vizag (as I'll always call it, along with Bombay, Madras, Calcutta and Bangalore) and then driving him through mind-numbing traffic trying to make the GoAir departure. And apparently that airline does exist and fly since he's reached.
Mind numbing traffic does do wonders. Completely blocks any semblance of thought and strangely can also be a time for quiet introspection and rationalization if looked at another way. Like sandpaper... can smoothen a rough surface and roughen a smooth. No, I just wanted to use that somewhere. But that isn't the point. The point is though I've learnt to deal with death in a clinically detached way at some point of time what it has taught me is to treat life with a reasonable amount of respect. The fact that life is ephemeral. That no amount of medical knowledge and surgical technique and bio-medical engineering can change that. That life will slip from one's grasp at a moment's notice.
And no one can do a thing about that.
All we can do is try with what we learn over the 12 odd years of structured medical education and that random classroom called medical practice.
But medicine and dealing with life and death is just one aspect of what's been running through my head. As I said this was a part of my family (reasonably close genetically at least) that I've lost and though this doesn't affect me as much as it would perhaps the people closer to her, what it does do is sharply pull the rug of comfort from under my feet.
The immortality complex that we develop along the course of our rather long education is something that cocoons all that are near and dear. We ostrich when we hear of their problems and refuse to acknowledge the fact that they grow old and a step closer to the end. Events like today's are sharp reminders of the inevitable and also augmenters of a helplessness that should be fought. For one's own sanity if not anything else.
So how does one wish that nothing goes wrong with the people one cares for knowing fully well that something will...
I need a stiff drink and some sleep. Night all.

Wisdom yet again...

Sources of Wisdom in the world are often not evident to the untrained eye. One must be a seeker of wisdom to find it. Unlike opportunity, this particular entity may not even knock. Take this for instance.

Picture taken with the w810i, somewhere in Bangalore.

Addendum : Too many people seem to be asking me this so go here if you don't know what the thirukural is or want to know more.

Kids These Days

The weekend past was spent conducting a couple of lit events at St John's Medical College and attending a full paisa vasool concert. I did get in for free so theoretically it would have been paisa vasool if anyone but Himmesh was there but this was also a band that I have and would have paid to watch, time and again. The grammar in the previous sentence is of a dubious nature but there are reasons for that too. And the organisers at John's are a kindly bunch and thus the free entry.
Many thoughts have risen in the old cranium the past few days so this just might be a long ranty post so there's the headlines so you can scroll down to the relevant parts or just leave if you find them uninteresting
1. Lack of substantial participation in lit events
2. Rather depressing state of knowledge of the current TV generation
3. A somewhere it is Thermal and a Quarter Concert
4. The deplorable state of affairs regarding music taste or the difference between good music and popular music
5. Adobe Audition as the best audio editing software no matter how amateur you are or How what you hear is never what you get
6. What is this Gazzag anyway

Part I& II
So I was asked to conduct Word Games and 20 Questions at Autumn Muse 2006. It used to be a good fest in the years gone by attracting excellent talent in literary and debating events. Culturals will always be big anywhere. Vellore Engineering college gets some 15 western music bands so we shan't go there. Now there are hardly 5 teams in registering who know what the event is. And they don't know grammar. Or slang. Or difficult words. And in twentyQ somewhere along the way you realise that they aren't reading classics anymore. They aren't reading medicine either so what are they doing? TV? Awesome!!

Part III - Bring your Daughter to Thermal and a Quarter
Taaq turned 10. Have seen them and heard them for 9 of the 10 so I shall speak and not take flak. Like they say in Cheers, I'm rubber and you're glue, anything you say bounces of me and sticks to you. The concert started at seven and within twenty minutes of it's starting the heavens opened like they did an hour before the concert and the previous day. Incredible really. Autumn Muse does that to the weather. Clear skies for a week before and after the fest and torrential, end-of-the-world, let's all pair up and get on to the ark rains bang in the middle of the Rock Show. Squelchy but it's fun if you're at the sound console.
This was the song list
Galacktiqua, Look @ Me, Paper Puli, Sunset Man (Hallelujah!), Brigade Street, Wonderwall (yeah Oasis but I actually like the song now), Holy Jose (new), Sanity, Bend The World, How Can I Get Your Groove(clean, simple, awesome), Shine On You Crazy Diamond (another trip), Chameleon and Hoedown. How do I know? I've spent the last 36 hours trying to clean up the audio recording but more on that later. The one thing new that I saw this time was 23 year old Nate from the Chicago area who's here with his tenor saxophone which he cleans with used currency notes when it gets damp, by the way. Now Nate changes the way the band sounds to a level that I haven't seen in this many years. Be it blistering solos in Shine or Hoedown or fill-ins in Sanity there's something to it. Treading the fine line between staying in tune and straying off it, as he would say, it was trippy da.
Thank you lord that Bruce is back to singing and Pascal isn't. And like I said it was good fun and so was the 10 year anniversary bash after that.

Part IV - The serious bit
As the rains poured down the sound console had the usual influx of the audience who didn't think getting wet was a good idea but didn't mind the risk of electrocution with all the cables around. Now in the midst of the hoi polloi was one heckling gentleman screaming for rock. I do understand the individual preferences of the world at large and that would explain how Himmesh and the Backstreet Boys are oh so up in the ratings or why the only thing we get to hear in rock competitions is heavy metal. Or why Strings, Fuzon and Call are raking in millions by selling albums in India. It doesn't quite gel well. Shah Rukh Khan is a superstar while Nasserudin Shah is best known for his role in Tridev. Why no one's heard of Dave Matthews Band but would swear by 'Nsync. Why music with the shelf life of spoilt meat is so popular while enough good bands haven't gotten very far.
Time will change things they say. But a paradigm shift (how I love that phrase) in people's tastes is unlikely to happen and till then Himmesh is going to rule the roost.

Part V
Adobe Audition is so cool. That's all there is to it. Simple any moron (including yours truly) can work it with ease and actually get something that sounds almost, but not quite like perfect.

Gazzag. What kind of meaningless palindrome is that? The worst kind.

More editing remains me off.

And I made no spelling mistakes apparently.

Reality Bites

It's one AM. And sleep eludes me in a manner that would make Carlos, the Jackal not Santana, raise an impressed eyebrow and smirk a "You're good kid, real good. But as long as I'm around you'll still be second best." This takes me back to a 36 stanza trip I wrote once one the Mask that has disappeared along with many cherished and not so cherished things in the midst of the four or five changes of residence that used to happen in my life.
It is done, by the way. A day long assessment of three years of learning that didn't go quite as well as one may have liked. Those who've trod (treaded?) that path have attempted to console me by saying that the point of post graduate exams is to squelch all resistance that one's ego might put up while being... squelched. The end result is a blubbering, hypoglycemic idiot who ends up watching Munna Bhai Part Deux.
It's not so bad a movie. But remove Arshad Warsi and it is. Not in quite a state to give movie reviews though Sin City is relatively fresh in the mind and a take on the Movie and comic might come around some time. File that with the waiters from idiotville who despite incessantly managing to make life for all and sundry a living hell have not made it to this blog.
Back to the blubbering blathering bashibazouk... (couldn't resist that. Just discovered all of Tintin on my computer in .cbz) Strangely an unfortunate fallout of the ego bashing, rather humiliating experience is a sudden fear that treating patients may not be such a good idea. That I'm hoping should pass. On an aside I've decided that unsolicited medical advice over the phone or via the internet will not be given any more. It may be given over coffee and beer but not over the phone. The next person who calls in sick will have to first rattle off their credit card number, it's expiry date and that cool 3 digit number at the back of the card. No more Mr. Nice Guy. With the possible exceptions of Kiera Knightley, Koena Mitra and the Ku Klux Klan (the last bunch will get a prescription for Diazepam and Lasix, just to see what happens) and any thinly veiled dancing girls who decide to call.
Results of the afore-oft-mentioned exam will be declared on the blog when they're declared to me.
If random TV trolling gave rise to a distaste for Power Rangers in any avtaar, it's also gotten me thinking about reality shows. What is it about us as humans that we want to see other's misery. And other's lives. In technicolour.
I will admit that a few of those shows are good- The Amazing Race and Pimp My Ride, off the top of my head. But the rest? Disaster Videos, Best Police Chases of All Time, Ripley's (for crying out loud some moron has a tissue expander in his forehead and is obsessed with body modification), How to get a date?, The Apprentice, that stupid designer show... the Cut (I think), Survivor, Indian Idol and finally the killer - Fear Factor.
What kind of weird prostitution is Fear Factor all about? I might give you money if you eat these worms faster than her. And your mom's watching. And some statutory warning to not attempt the stunts at home. Hey, lets all get some tarantulas and jump into the tub. After that we can get the eggs of some endangered species and eat them. Ostriches. The only upside to the whole thing is this woman called Summer Papania. Don't bother googling - there are no pictures of her. If you missed the ostrich egg episode and the favourite winner episode, you aren't ever going to see her again till the reruns. Reruns of Fear Factor is the end of creative television.
But why are we so fascinated with misery being inflicted on our brethren (and sistren)? I don't have the guts or the inclination to eat a worm, as early as I may be up, and I sure as hell don't want to see someone else eating them. But the rest of the planet seems to want that kind of entertainment. It's the modern day Colosseum. An arena of pitched battle and fatal fighting with a significant section of society watching and enjoying what deep down inside they know is disgusting.

Et tu?

Couple of quips on the net that made me believe in the existence of sentient sapient beings on this planet.

A: Dude would anybody be upset if I confessed to being turned on by her drinking an ostrich egg (w.r.t. the Summer episode)
B: Nobody but the Ostrich...

Still no Sleep.

Leaving wells alone

Many years ago when lounging in the corridors of the hostel where many of us boys became men, some persisted in staying boyish and others might actually have become women if they managed to lay their hands on the money for the surgery, a friend of mine asked me to solve a particularly noxious crossword clue. It was on the lines of not fiddling with water sources - Leave well alone. Of course it doesn't sound half as cool as it felt when I solved it but we aren't here to discuss whether or not I'm cool. On my usual aside there's a difference between thinking you're cool and being cool.

The point is leaving things to their natural state of progress, egress or entropy is not something we as a race have ever managed to do. My life and work to a large extent is founded on some intrepid man who decided that maybe cutting someone up could save his life. As opposed to poking clay dolls of his mortal enemies, or poking him with enemas as the case and civilization in question maybe. This troublesome meddling thankfully is not restricted to surgery, or to just what mother nature made. It extends everywhere. It would turn out that no self-respecting intelligent being can sit and watch a creation (of any body's - God, Nature, Other beings) and not meddle with it. To see how it works, to improve it and occasionally to just take it apart and see what's inside. Category III includes 5-8 year olds and pathologists.

Why is this relevant? It doesn't need to be but it is. Permit me to meander some more. I'm on a long exam-going leash that allows for random ruminations that may or may not be... relevant. But like I mentioned surgery aside, man's need to mess around with other men's creations has in a very broad way benefited us all. Sony, Open-Source Programming are just tips of the iceberg. How does one get that sentence right? Sony and open-source are on the same tip, so to speak of the iceberg, but most icebergs (including the famous one) don't just have one tip. English apparently is a very phunny language.

The missing Navbar (for those of you who're here for the first time, you'll never know) and the cool drop down menus are the result of people refusing to sit around and let someone else's code take over their lives. Their urge to prod, tweak and hack, ethically of course, established templates is what keeps us from settling into what would have just been another web page.

Not that this blog would win awards for best design, it's the spirit that makes a difference.

Hell it's made me want to learn html, javascript, css and now gml.

The new links acknowledge this. Thanks for the code snippets.

In less intense stuff, more new music - Snow Patrol. It shall be reviewed sometime. And Haiku.