The Wandering Mind

Anyway forget about all the dark entries made previously...this one will make them seem like a night-lit stadium!!

When one studies its seldom that one can put in more than,say,6 hours of dedicated intense study- with the stuff you learn staying in your head for a good period of time. Yet in Medicine we have to do more than that.Much more. Like 10,sometimes 12 to 14.Its survival instinct..one does not want to flunk the exams and one must do what one should to stay ahead. Eventually the time comes during our staring at the book when we feel :

"I wonder what my friends in the corporate and software fields are doing with the money they earn"

"Is this what I had fantasized about during my entire childhood?"

"My family doctor was right when he told my parents that I need to see a Psychiatrist when told about my intention of joining medicine"

"Is sex as easy to get as depicted in Gray's Anatomy?"

"I wonder if I will ever fully understand the meaning of the 4 lines that make a sentence in the text I just read"

"Heath Legder as The Joker is coooooool"

"Its sad that the message alert tone is not heard very frequently from my phone"

"Whatever happened to the one that got away? If only she/he would have realised the mistake they made and come crawling back to me telling me that I'm the one,finally!!"

"Going on a 24 hour drinking binge right now is what I need.Oh wait,I don't have the money!"

"Will the world end now that MAD is becoming more and more probable?"

"I should get back to studying"

"What would I choose: Being the superhero of my dreams or being immortal?"

"Ok I'm the helmsman for the USS Enterprise,and there's a Bird of Prey right in front of me. Activating Photon Torpedos....."

"Who is the better guitarist-Edward Van Halen,Mike Mcready or David Gilmour?"

"Dr.(Self Name),MBBS,MD,DNB,DM(Cardiology/Nephology) How cool would that be??!!"

"That cockroach has been darting across my floor for,like,forever"

And so on and so forth. The above can be freely borrowed for any book dealing with how to waste time or The Psychology of a Med Student,should the prospective author decide to,no problem.Only too glad to help:-)

Basically the point of a persons growth is when he/she reaches a point that they have traversed before and they decide to go the other way. And so it is that after a while we shake our heads and go back to what we were reading, with concentration this time around. Hopefully things work out for the best.

I am by nature a realist,but appearently my mood is very much subject to circumstances around me(and here I am writing about personal growth.Anyway..). But the way things are at the moment,I would be what you would call a pessimist.Ok,a fatalist. (Some Kudos for honesty,people,c'mon!)

Because things,at the current juncture,are tough,the toughest I've experienced in my life. But then on I can put it in writing that 20 years from now I'll look back and wonder how simple life was back then,when the only thing required of me was to be a dilligent student and nothing more. But we as humans tend to get caught up in the moment. Its only natural.

Well,anyway,thats that.Its easy to theorize things like this but truly applying them in reality is what makes us wise.

Tata.

What is a blog there for,exactly? It is definately not for sharing your most deepest of thoughts or putting out your frustrations in text,and I certainly do not think that it is a forum where you can fully express,in clear and succint terms,what is wrong in our lives,the political system, or the world in general.

For starters we cannot say that the current crop of politician are corrupt,stupid, and mind numbingly naive to think that what they state in their agenda will be taken at face value by we,the people. But then,that was what we thought 20 years ago;that our elected representatives will not be as bad as they are at the present moment.

It is certainly not a forum where we can talk about our love lives,or lack thereof.

It is not a place where we can curse the people whom we work for,because should they come to know that we are,our ass is going to get fired in a jiffy.

I do not want it to be a place where I talk only about the movies that I've seen...I have come to realise that..thanks to Cheeki for the feedback.

Many of us use these blogs to say how screwed the world is,how things can be better,how the people who run the country don't know their ass from a hole in the wall,etc etc etc.

But have we tried to do anything about it ourselves? Have we tried undoing the wrongs that have been done due to short sightedness and narrow mindedness?
Have we consciously tried to change the world we live in,instead of only cribbing about it?

I honestly believe that not everybody enters politics to make money,although thats what eveybody ends up doing.Most of them would have entered it out of a desire to make their constituency a better place,with better roads,electricity and potable water. Alas one they're in the game,and money comes in from virtually all avenues,welfare of the masses takes a back seat.After all,and they're right about this,they cannot support a family based on a government salary.So they must choose other routes to survive.

But,in the end,that does not validate what they're doing. No way.

The solution? Dictatorship? It is a short term solution which will create more damage than control it. Look at Pakistan. Plus it is inherently against the principle of human freedom where a regime can jail you for no reason,take you away and lock you up in a hole in the wall 'cos you might have done something wrong,and you cannot fight for your innocence. You're guilty.period,and not guilty until proven innocent.

Whatever. We have more important things to think about,like living our lives,don't we?

I don't think the governing body of medicine in India,or anywhere else in the world has got it right.Instead of producing a Doctor who is truly caring and interested in the welfare of patients,as well as one who has a real zeal for the residency he is pursuing,residents come out at the end of their course cynical,battered and only interested in making money,and fucking soon at that.

Which is why people say that Doctors are money minded,which is why doctors may not be as good listeners as what they were previously,in the era when our parents were kids.

Because for a medical student to who wants a subject of his choice,say,Pediatrics or Surgery,getting it is a Herculian task.He will be told many times over "Better be willing to compromise". And he will eventually end up with a subject that is not of his immediate liking-say ENT. Because the system dictates that only the brightest/most hardworking/intelligent get in,as do people who have one crore of money to pay up the exhorbitant capitation fees demanded by most of the private institutes nowadays.People in the middle are fucked. And they end up pissed at their jobs,and wish they hadn't joined Medicine in the first place.

Why is it considered an unholy sin to actually get what you want? For an average student with some brains and intelligence and who will be willing to work hard at the field he is in,to get the subject of his choice and be in a much better position to be a better Doctor to his patients?

Because there are too many ungergraduate seats and hardly any post graduate ones.If that is the case then the number of seats for the MBBS course should be halved,so that the ratio of an MD seat for an MBBS one is about 1:3,and not like 1:30 like how it is now. Sadly,a lot of the money for a hospital's basic needs are supplied by the fees that the Undergraduate students pay. Which is why their number won't ever be reduced. Sad,but true.I'm speaking from the perspective of a college like the one I studied in.

The other alternative is to increase the number of MD seatds,but that also will prove an impossibility because the ratio of resident to faculty should be 1:1,and considering how shitty the pay for faculty in a teaching hospital is,it will be a much better,and more just world,if their numbers were to increase.

Thanks for listening.

Delhi and updates.

It's been a while..(since i could say that I wasn't addicted-Staind.Hahahahah!!) But really I had been to Delhi and then was busy wasting time and not doing anything productive.

Now I have realised that I had to update my hardcore fan following of maybe 3 readers on goings-on.

Delhi was a nice place to visit.Although in India,in comparison to southern cities,it might as well be a totally different country..the way of life of it's residents,food habits, the very broad roads,traffic that moves quickly as well as a metro rail service that does not smell of Pan spittings or urine.

I had been there to write an entrance exam for admission into AIIMS,the premier medical institute of the country.Competition is cutthroat and the paper was such that the cream will definately be seperated from the rest of the students who write it. But I studied as much as I could and wrote the exam with presence of mind,something that I don't do very often.

I had also been on a plane for the first time in more than 15 years,and I was nervous as hell about it,because my paranoia has escalated post 9/11 and is still very high regarding hijacks and the like.Hence,I was quite on edge until I boarded.Then until take off it was excitement and anxiety,then post take off it was exhilarating!!The sight of a giant city looking like little squares during take off was really cool!

Now I am back in Bangalore,and have been chilling a bit post-AIIMS.I saw quite a few movies,Garden State being one of them.Zach Braff"s directorial debut is an uneven movie that is refreshing because it is different.The tale of a young man who is numb to feeling, going home for the first time in 6 years to attend his mother's funeral,to see the changes in the friends he grew up with and finding a love interest played to perfection by Natalie Portman is at times quirky,at times dark,and at times totally incomprehensible. It turns out the reason he is numb because he has been on Lithium and Anxiolytics since he was a kid!! Braff is good,but I feel he makes a better director and writer(he wrote the script too) than actor. Sadly it might be due to the fact that he has been stereotyped as John Dorian from Scrubs to such an extent that we can't imagine him in any other role.It's basically a coming-of-age tale told in a different way.

Then there was Zodiac,David Fincher's movie about the serial killer of San Francisco and the men who investigated the murders and how it got in the way of their lives. Well made,relentless,and it keeps on making you wonder what's coming up ahead,but as far as performances go it was mediocre.The story is the ultimate winner here.Mark Ruffalo is good,but Jake Gyllenhall is unconvincing as a cartoonist who is obsessed with solving the case. Robert Downey Jr. isn't given enough screen time to expand on his character.

And then finally.....(drum roll)...Om Shanti Om,or OSO. I was the victim of a family conspiracy that made me watch the movie. Let me just say that Akshay Kumar is the best thing of the movie,even though he appears for about a minute. SRK did the movie 'cos one of his best friends was directing it,and it tells you that he's a true friend!! Because the movie will roar at the Box Office just because SRK was in it,and it's sad to see a pathetic movie such as this do well,even though it had minimal substance. The only people who will go to this movie are the women to see SRK,and men to see Deepika Padukone(who is the second best thing of the movie.She is HOT!). Nobody will go to appreciate a movie well done.

I've been reading The Dilbert principle.And it is amazing.Scott Adams explains in detail why companies use complicated words to explain simple things,why people are promoted to management,and how to get ahead in the work place by doing no work and pretending as if you're doing lots of it!!It is worth a read for anybody,because it explains things as how they really happen,and not how it's supposed to happen.

Following is Chris Nolan's debut feature film and it is clever and crafty.In short,vintage Nolan.The non linear story telling and the complicated plot are all there,as is the superb cinematography,which was by Nolan himself.I only hope that Nolan does not let this become his formula,and that audiences should not be able to tell what the ending is after seeeing a couple of movies which he directed.Because this guy is the Alfred Hitchcock of our generation and he should remain so.

More later.

See this movie.

Requiem for a Dream is perhaps the most brutally honest movie I have seen. It shows how drug addiction can ruin your life,and the depths people go to to get high one more time.

After I saw it my gut was feeling uneasy and my mind was dazed.The movie is near faultless.The 4 principals deliver the performances of their lifetime and Darren Aronofsky has declared that he is here to stay.

The Score is what echoed on and on in my head even as I was about to sleep..it is haunting ,melodious and ensures that the film stays with for longer than you want it to.The ironic thing is that these young protagonists are at an age where they can do anything they want with their lives. However,their entry into the world of drug addiction is not gone into...they start out as junkies willing to pawn even their mothers television for some cash.

Jared Leto is near perfect,as is Jennifer Connelly as the spoilt rich kid who is Leto's love interest.Marlon Wyans gives an amazing performance as Leto's friend and fellow junkie.But the movie belongs to Ellen Burstyn.As Leto's widowed mother with nothing to hold on to but the vague promise of appearing on a television programme,a person who is so obsessed with becoming thin so that she can wear the red dress she loves so much(which she also wore to her son's high school graduation) which doesn't seem to fit her anymore,and who falls prey to prescription amphetamines,she is amazing.Her harrowing transition to a lonely widow to a schizophrenic drug addict is perfect,and I think that for a performance like that she should have gotten the Oscar Award for Best Supporting Actress,which sadly she didn't.

I think everybody should see this movie once.It should also be part of the therapy for drug addicts who want to quit. Because this is one movie that has the potential to make them. It shows the world of bright young adults being transformed into a nightmare becasue they want to get high.The hazards of i.v drug use and the seedy world of prostitution is also delved into.But the love that Leto and Connelly share is demolished into a mere parasitic relationship where one is dependent on the other for money and drugs.

See it once even if you don't watch movies regularly.

Take Care.

The Long Halloween

"The Long Halloween"-Batman in a gangster noir story.But it rocked all the same.Here is a relatively young Batman who is introduced to Harvey Dent for the first time,and it also shows some serial killer who likes to kill on National Holidays,hence him/her being christened "Holiday".

It also shows Batman to be naive,if that is at all possible-he keeps reminding himself of the promise he made his parents at their grave that he would rid Gotham of all evil,and from what you read,he actually thinks it can happen!

Far more attention worthy is the young D.A,idealistic to a fault,and deeply passionate about his convictions. The accident that threw him over the edge is more or less the same,but his pre accident psyche is not well described.In fact,it's not gone into at all.The Animated Series Batman showed Dent to have a volcanic temper and one who would snap at anybody if his threshold is broken(which is not all that much anyway).But in The Long Halloween,that aspect is not gone into at all,only the fact that he is almost as focussed as Batman in trying to stop the plague of crime and corruption.Maybe more.

Hopefully The Dark Knight will show Dent to have a bit of a temper before he becomes Two Face.The casting of Aaron Eckhart took me by surprise.What was even more surprising was that Ed Norton and Matt Damon were offered the role initially and they turned it down.

Norton is perhaps the most talented and gifted actor of his generation,but he isn't physically right for the part of Dent.But the intense personality and volcanic temper that I hope will be Dent's character profile is almost too easy for Norton to pull off.Which is why he chose to instead play the most volcanic character of the Marvel Universe-The Incredible Hulk!!

Damon I would have had grave misgivings about.Not that he's a bad actor or anything,you just can't see him playing a character like that.

My choice would have been Josh Lucas.He has the charisma that Dent exudes,and he can be quite mean as well,as he showed in The Hulk.Plus he can get quite angry too(The Hulk again).

Eckhart is a good actor.He single handedly made Thank You for Smoking a memorable film to watch.Hopefully the goody goody movies he has been in recently(No Reservations) will provide the contrast needed for The Dark Knight.And hopefully we see more of a Suspect Zero type perfprmance from him.

Don't answer the question!!

I had seen this movie called "Little Children" starring Kate Winslet that is a very accurate,albeit cliched look of the life of an educated,empowered young woman in Suburbia,and how the gossip and the attention to trivial detail is too suffocating for her open and broad mind.How does she deal with it? By having an affair.Of course,the stimulus was when she found her husband jerking off to lingerie(not her's).

It is a black comedy in that it shows how the bad choices we make are sometimes preceeded by moments of sheer hilarity.....which is a lot like real life.There are also other sub plots involving a child molester just out of prison,a gung-ho ex cop who is mentally unstable,for reasons unkown until the end,and a law student who still hasn't passed the bar exam with a son and a successful career wife,and how he doesn't really want to be a lawyer-the look in his face when he joins the skateboarding group shows that his interests perhaps lie elsewhere.

How many of us actually like what we do?

John Mayer is a genius.Quite simply put. I have been listening to "Room for Squares" again and it seems amazing.The lyrics are mature,even though they sing of love (and of one's body being a wonderland).The guitaring is top notch,even though it's not flashy and doesn't have amazingly fast speed metal solos!

I had recently quit my job in the search for greener pastures,and a psychiatry residency.Hope the risk pays off now. The hospital where I worked was top notch,with the finest doctors one could assemble under a single roof.Only thing was there wasn't a psych residency available,hence the decison to quit.

More later.