I'm back!! After a self imposed exile of 2 months where I was trying for a residency amidst the toughest competition I have ever faced..believe me I faced the same set of exams last year but it was nothing compared to the intensity this year. Survival of the Fittest would be the principle applicable here...people have realised that only the toughest get in..and so it is in 2008.
The good news is that I have been shortlisted for a Diploma in Psychiatry in NIMHANS...and I am not going to say anything until counselling is over and I submit my documents and sign in as a student there.
These exams have made me very superstitious. I refuse to believe anything until it is 100% sure,and I sign on paper with the instituion I am supposed to be a part of.
The other thing of import that has happened during these 2 months is the death of Heath Ledger. A great actor who will be immortalized as Ennis Del Mar in "Brokeback Mountain" and as The Joker in The Dark Knight come July 18th this year.
And Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. As with most things political these days, the elements are Terrorists,A Dictator losing grip on the country he has been ruling over for the past 10 years, and more Terrorists.
We were at the receiving end of some horrible umpiring by Steve Bucknor in Australia, someone whom I thought of as being one of the more sensible umpires of recent times. But the shitty decisions he gave made me want to haul his ass and pack it off for good to The Windies or Honduras or wherever he is from. And I think that is the treatment that should be meted out to him.
I also had the pleasure of going to The Christian Medical College in Vellore to attend an interview for a Diploma in Psychiatry residency there. While the interview result was one that I had not expected(I was not in the main list,but am 3rd in the waiting), I saw exactly how much of an impact that Hospital has for the town and for the whole of India in general. I stayed for a day in a small lodge in a street opposite the town campus of the hospital, and the street was crowded as hell with lodges,shops,restaurants and messes of all nationalities(from Punjabi ones to Bengali) and the streets were filled with people from all over the country-presumably relatives of patients who were admitted in the Hospital, and the hospital itself is top notch.
What I did not expect was to have a Professor of Psychiatry personally give me a samosa while I was waiting for my interview call!(I was too nervous to eat and politely refused...hope that didn't piss him off..maybe it did. Is that why I wasn't in the main list??!! Kidding) That gesture spoke volumes for me...the rest of the staff in the whole hospital are rumored to have the same attitude when it comes to patient care. And I would love to work there. For the simple reason that I want to see what it is that makes these distinguished,top-notch Doctors work in a place like that for a pay that is so low when any other corporate hospital would welcome them with open arms with salaries that are at least 5 times what they are getting there. I can give them the highest compliment I can offer.
These 2 months have taken quite a beating on my psyche..I have been enormously stressed and I have wasted a lot of time in worrying,time which could have been better spent in studying, but hindsight is always 20:20 and so it is that I can now look back and say that I could have done more.
Let the counselling at NIMHANS get over then I can be all jubiliant and euphoric. But until then its strictly fingers crossed.
If i seem a but disoriented,it's because its 3.45 in the morning! My old habit of studying till late at night hasn't left me..yet!!
More later.
