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.
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.
