Rach back from kutch...

Hi guys!
Rach back from Kutch....
15 days of salt-water and no internet and that is just the beginning...
Anxiety and apprehension initiated this much-awaited trip of the new year..But there was a good friend on board to alleviate my stress..presenting Khushnuma Calagopi (parsi) homeopathy grad from pune (been buddies since over a year after spending 15 days together at Dr.Chetan Bhatt's clinic). So u can say we were like the jay and veeru of this story (literally inseparable).
After 15 hr long journey , where we chatted incessantly,from bandra terminus to Gandhidham (gujarat), we woke-up to ass-freezing weather and gloves and socks doing nothing to help us.
We somehow unloaded our luggage with almost 10 other people from the camp ( some doctors and volunteers) and got into an ambulance which drove us to our camp-site 1.5 hrs away from the station.
Enter-Bidada..the name of the village where it is based. The trust is called Shri Bidada Sarvoday Trust and this was their 37 th annual fully charitable camp. They have senior famous doctors from all over the country, mainly gujarat and mumbai coming over for 2-3 days for each speciatly and checking alomst 400-600 patients each day and performing surgeries worth Rs.20 lac each year and providing medicines worth lacs to the patients who come there. WOHWOW!!
The place has progressed from doing operations in oil-lamps to air-conditioned OTs in the middle of this desert called kutch...
We used to have duties starting at 8-8.30 each day going till atleast 7 or occasionally even 9 and later...
sometimes we used to be in OT assisting in surgeries or in the wards taking care of post-op patients...mostly i the OPDs...examining patients and writing prescriptions...
In the morning we used to hate getting up and out of the cozy bed n blankets in the 5degrees cold , with mist coming out of our mouth when we spoke...but having hot coffee at such times was a boon!
and i had carried maggi! so i made maggi and had there! it never tasted so amazing..!!
All food was jain..so no potatoes or onions or carrots or garlic ..!! imagine my state!!! uf....!
But luckily Amrita Rao came there one day to stya and one day John abraham came so there was a lavish dinner on both days with onions n potatoes....man i hogged those days!!!
And one day in the honour of Consul General of USA who had come there to fund the camp..a dinner and DJ party was organised at a nearby farmhouse.....so the food and music was awesome!!!
There is this beach called Mandvi beach about half an hour from our place...me and khushi went with the whole team of general surgeons there! it was good fun tohang out with practicing surgeons almost as many years of experience as my age..!
There we witnessed a very beautiful sunset...and chilling cold breeze...and ate the original kutchhi dhabeli and frozen falooda...
i dare say it was anything less than yumm...
One day when we went for the peripheral OPD at Mundra Port, abt 2hrs from our camp, we shopped with two young surgeons...one from KEM and other from JJ...we bought kurtis with kutchi work on them and suit-pieces and they bought sarees for their new wives...
Till the second last day we had made good friends with a room-mate who had just joined us 3 days back...so all three of us went to mandvi market and bought more suits and bedsheets....Gosh..so pretty..!!!! had i more cash on me i think i would have bought atleast another 5 kurtis and few bedsheets...
In the market we had some awesome pav-bhaji which is like finding water in a desert, in kutch...and it was delicious...
and on the way back...as we shivered in the cold wind in the rickshaw,,,,we halted at this divine temple called 72 Jinalay..its absically a jain temple of Lord Adinath made fully in purest marble...it has 72 temples surrounding the main temple... replete with exquisite carvings in every pillar and arch...it was beautifull...one of the most beautiful temples i ahev ever seen
and were we lucky or wat..!! the lights went out just 5 minutes after we enterd the temple and it was almost a complete moon that night with clear skies...the entire temple and idols were glowing divinely in that moonlight and i was with one of my closest friends(khushnuma) and mum and rachel messaged me in those 5 minutes that they were missing me...(too much of a co-incidence na ) (rachel is my closest college frnd) the only words to cal that experience is DIVINE...
Aur kya kahoon....these are all the good memories...and they are the maximum ones...
Not a single moment waas dull as i had khushnuma the ever sparky with me...
We had some issues with other junior docs on campus but they were so triffle that i wouldnt want to even recall them..only recollect that i learnt that you gotta be really smart when amongst compete strangers..and diplomacy goes a long way...
So hopefully and maybe i will go there again next year...keeping fingrs crossed...
I am going to miss the calm and peaceful atmosphere and balmy wintry afternoons and my new found mate..but boy am i glad to be back to internet, family and sweet water...(not in that order) ...

Does Homoeopathy Work?

Does homoeopathy work?? Is homoeopathy a smart career choice? Am I doing the right thing by entering this branch of medicine? Will it give me financial independence in future? These and many more questions were running in my mind ever since I came to know that I will have to take admission in a homoeopathic medical college! Lo and behold! They were unanswered even after completing my entire one and half year long 1^st BHMS term!

But there was just one ray of hope…..a science that has survived for more than 200 years cannot be hocus-pocus and must be working! I only had to see it happen in front of my eyes...thats all.As I started going to OPDs the next year, I saw homoeopathy doing wonders in so many chronic cases, but its effectiveness in acute cases still remained a mystery to me.

Along came 18^th Septmeber’06, as evening came I experienced extreme mental and physical restlessness along with chilliness and intermittent fever. I could not get out of my bed sheets despite the burning fever that I had! My sore throat was relieved by hot food and hot drinks in contrast to my everyday aversion to hot drinks! My cold was also relieved by taking steam.

My chilliness forced me to take notice of my intermittent fever and I called up a college professor to help me out. He suggested blood investigations including a test for malarial parasite.(reports attached).And as rightly gauged by sir, the ring forms of P.Vivax were detected parasitizing my RBCs.He immediately prescribed me Arsenic Album 1M after a careful case taking and evaluation of my condition.

But on seeing malaria….I was very skeptical about homoeopathy actually working, especially since my prelims were just a week away! So I called up an allopathic physician and asked her the indicated medication course for malaria and purchased the medication promptly, just in case i had to take it! Then I thought that this was probably my only chance of seeing homoeopathy cure acute illnesses and see it working for myself. So I decided against taking any allopathic medication and started on Arsenic three times a day.

To my surprise and that of my family members too…two days later when my fever had gone and my hatred for hot drinks was back….sir asked me to take another blood test….the parasites were nowhere to be seen in my blood! Homoeopathy had worked miraculously!

But there was still the question of relapses because of the particular variety of malaria that I had contracted. Again the anxiety returned whether homoeopathy will keep that at bay? Again the temptation to turn to allopathy for instant cure came. But I remained strong and let homoeopathy do its magic!

And thank God or Dr.Hahnemann or Dr.Jenil…whosoever….I have remained malaria free and relapse free for the past 4 years now!!!

I now have complete faith in homoeopathy and recommend each one of you, who have doubts, to try it out for yourselves and become true followers of Dr.Hahnemann.

THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES

After 8 long years since it first made its appearance, i finally got a chance to experience the phenomenon of meaningful theatre in the form of The Vagina Monologues...
The cast of 5 extremely dynamic and brilliant 30+ indian women dressed in black and red, lead by Mahabanoo Modi simply rocked the stage with their power packed performances and punchy lines, all of it while being nicely seated in their red leather bar-stool style chairs. They started with a sincere plea to keep the cell phones switched off and lead into an enthralling experience of what the ones with the vagina feel regarding it. I think i must have never heard so many words ,medical or non medical, being used so beautifully with any human organ! The array of characters portrayed varied from your typical mumbaiya mahrashtrian lady to a funjabi kudi to the shy reserved parsi aunty to the average american female to the attrocity prone Bosnian woman. Woow! It was some ride around the world! Funny, witty, engaging to the Tee! Poetic and musical! Intelligent, intriguing, demystifying! Heart wrenching and empathy-awakening! Liberating atleast partially the ones who came to watch it, but i think its the alredy liberal who go to watch it ! Puts to shame the taboos placed on the sexuality of the indian woman. My saulte to these 5 liberated women on-stage and all others off-stage who mustered the courage to bring this to the indian hypocritical culture and bring an awakening of sorts! Bravo! Now thats what i call a performance!

It s amzing..

Continuing post - come in our life for a reason, season or lifetime....
Its amazing..as Aerosmith said...how people enter our lives as a link to another relation, a new experience...and how they disappear leaving behind this new found relation to cherish maybe for a season or a lifetime....sometimes the relation they gave too vanishes after sometime....but then thats an experience..or one can say perhaps that the experience was the reason we were introduced to that person and now since we have had it..its time we move on to the new experience, and cherish the memory of the old one...thats all that there is to life after all..isnt it...at the end its all just a memory rt...yesterday, today which becomes yesterday tomorrow and tomorrow itself...

never mind this highly repetitive and confusing post..this is just a blog...sigh...things people do when they have time....blog..!

Sehar of the Indian Sahar...

.I finally had my long-awaited and hard-earned vacation out of Mumbai after a gap of 2 whole years!!!5 days of traveling and I panned almost half of Rajasthan-The Indian Sahara Desert.From aerobus to mini-bus,used them all.From scorching desert sun to heavy Mumbai-ishtyle rains,saw them all.From fresh phulkas made directly over firewood to a grand luncheon,had it all. It was one of the most memorable trips due to a multitude of reasons.
Leaving Mumbai during the its best weather to go and bear the cruel heat was heart-breaking in itself.Despite the weather the scheduled flights were on time and we departed towards our destination on time.Thanks to the absence of any clouds over Jaipur we reached as scheduled and were greeted by the clearest possible powder-blue sky.We collected the baggage and hopped on to our taxis to be welcomed by an extremely chatty old driver-cum-guide.Once all settled in their seats we started the journey taking one temple at a time,starting with a village called Khaatoo.[I know it sounds funny ;) ]After taking blessings from there we made our way to another temple where we also halted for the most amazing lunch of the entire tour.It wasn't even a village,just a congregation of few people surviving on money pumped in by the visitors who come to seek blessings at the temple.The temple being home to the main goddess that we pray to, the elders took some time to finish rituals and I took time out to explore its beauty. The amount of beauty,creativity and skill that I witnessed was astounding.The main entrance of the temple was intricately sculptured with various animals,flowers and abstract designs and painted in a gamut of beautiful colours.The pillars,the floors and doors,the windows all had beautiful engravings of various religious symbols and still it wasn't overbearing so sober was the work.After the Pooja, I got my share of Moli-the pretty religious red thread and proceeded for a delicious lunch right at the footsteps of the temple.Its amazing how the simplest of things can give you the most amount of happiness.The dhabba consisted of three sets of rough and worn-out wooden tables and benches thrown together in a dingy corner near the temple,run by a few simple local marwaris.Because firewood was used to cook the food,all the cooking utensils and the entire kitchen were coated in an inch-thick black soot making visibility almost zero and forcing them to shift the kitchen out in the open.The fare consisted of the locally produced vegetables being hallmark of Rajasthan cooked in spicy gravy and fresh phulkas having a smoked flavour to them.Thanks to the Trust that runs the temple, the dhabba had managed to procure a water cooler which provided us with chilled water with the piping hot food...

to be continued..

Vampires...

A bagful of mixed emotions is what the name evokes at the very start.
Yes I am talking about the immortal,deadly,blood-sucking yet handsome,enigmatic,mysterious,magical and the most desired of all the evil creatures in mythology-the Vampires.These black and red hooded beings with pointed ears, a sharp nose,slanting dark eyes and a wicked smile,not to forget the patent lethal canines sticking out of their jaws, staring at you, waiting to have a dig at your flesh, strike a chord with some of the most undesired and hidden emotions of the human mind.They make one come face to face with primitive emotions which drive each one of us,knowingly or unknowingly.
The blood-stained teeth and nails, the blood-shot eyes and the scarlet lips add to the attraction innate to human beings to the color red whilst evoking a sense of fear,pain,misery,anguish and even anger and hatred.The smile, full of deceit and lust, is extremely menacing, conveying full well the depth and meaning of the intentions of the person flashing it.The bitten neck with blood-oozing from the wound refreshes the malice lurking behind the smooth porcelain exterior.
The stark black overcoat with its red insides remind you that nothing is as nice or good as it seems on the exterior.The color red,universally standing for danger, stares at you straight in the face,demanding attention and forcing out emotions lurking deep inside.All in all-"Straight out of hell" they seem to say.
Vampires invariably have been related to the various phases of moon with special importance being attached to the presence of a full moon.History bears mention of normal human beings being transformed into parasitic vampires at the stroke of midnight on a full mooned night by the "kiss of death" from another vampire, delivered at the characteristic position on the throat.Here we see them taking from the night, its mystery enveloped in darkness and the voice of its silence.
These living legends who reside in their personal coffins,seem to appear out of their hiding only at night and only when they need to rebuild their strength by feeding on yet another unsuspecting victim.They,apparently,absorb all the knowledge,characteristics and complexities of the victim along with its blood,making them some sort of living sponge.
Hundreds of movies have been made depicting charismatic vampires rising out of their coffins and biting hapless young beauties in their bedrooms,all resting on one fact, that we all have a wicked side to us.Whether or not we accept and acknowledge its presence, there is a Mr Hyde behind every Dr.Jekyll and shows his face every now and then.
Its beyond good and evil...
its just there...like thin air....sometimes there...sometimes rare.

The GIFT called LIFE

One doesn't value what one has.Most of us don't value the greatest gift of a normal and healthy human life that we have received.To be born, to be born healthy with every organ down to the smallest nail normal and healthy is one of the greatest gifts that one can receive.To be born with a thinking and reason-gifted mind that can change the life of not just one's ownself but also others' is an underestimated miracle.The joy of living an independent life, physically and mentally is a right denied to many unfortunate ones for no fault of theirs and there can be nothing than more heart-wrenching and pathetic than the plight of the parents of children who are born incapable of living a mentally and physically productive life.It tears your heart, makes you cringe, makes you crib, makes you want to cry, then it makes you angry, makes you hate fate and finally it makes you want to reach out to them and do whatsoever in your prowess for them.It makes you want to heal them.It makes you humble and value what you have.It makes you realise the greatness of the small roles that each and every part of the body play to drive the most complex yet self-maintained piece of machinery made on earth.It makes you want to use this indwelling reason-gifted mind for such higher purposes of existence.