Found this saying on John Mayer's Blog and liked it a lot.

Now that I have the time to do the things I always wanted to do,I find myself drawn to doing absolutely nothing at all! I am Planning a trip to Mangalore/Manipal and perhaps Mysore,as I need to go to ask for a refund at Manipal University(where I joined a DNB programme before the NIMHANS result came out) and because Mysore is the place where I spent 6 of the best years of my life and haven't visited in a year and a half.

What I like about Mysore is that the side effects of globalization and opportunity haven't yet kicked in there,hence the traffic is manageable, land is not as overpriced as in Bangalore,and you won't find shops squeezing into each other in any street possible in the hope of attracting customers.Instead you will find wide roads and some greenery and one of the most beautiful lakes you'll ever come across in South India.It's called Kukurehalli Kere(Lake). Apologies if I haven't got the spelling right,but my heart is in the right place:-)

In terms of eateries, The Jewel Rock is one of the finest restaurants I have ever been to.Period. The food is good,drinks are reasonable,and the ambiance is good. In fact,it is unique in that everything about that place is NOT EXCELLENT,yet many people of Mysore are bowled over by that place and keep frequenting it. I was one of them,back when I was there.

The palace was,is,and will be the first thing that pops to everybodys mind when the word "Mysore" is spoken but I visited the place only once,and that was because my family was with me when they were waiting to admit me in College,and I haven't gone there since.

You tend to feel comfortable in a place like that, and although I couldn't stand the place during my first 3 years there,towards the end of my course I absolutely loved it,and I sorely miss it to this day.

Apart from that I have been seeing movies that are not new. In fact I just saw Munna Bhai MBBS for the first time about a week back. Yes,I know I know "How the hell have you not seen it?" and all that but I loved it!! It was hilarious and although replete with songs and melodrama ( 2 things I find hard to tolerate in a movie), it raises a lot of issues that are relevant in the practice of Medicine,things like treating the person and not the illness,taking the time to ask the sweeper of your hospital his name,and getting close to your patients,even if that means risking getting hurt if the person doesn't respond favourably,or in the worst case,dies. Because Medicine these days is becoming like any other industry,with Corporations ruling the roost,and money talking all the way through. In fact,money talks to such an extent that some of the Doctors who man the Primary Health Care Centres(PHC'S) take money from patients even though they aren't supposed to

What they are doing is not imminently unjustifiable because the kind of pay they get is really really bad, and they have families to feed and they need more than what they get as their salaries.

But on the other hand,the patients who come there are so poor, and for them to spare even 20 rupees which they give to the Doc ,for services rendered,hurts like hell. And if they have a condition that is beyond the scope of the PHC to treat,then God help them.Because even with the Yashaswini Scheme for Farmers being fully operational,the discounted bill is itself exorbitant for them. Had they been charged the full rates the number of suicides of farmers would have risen drastically.

Which is why health care needs to be more affordable.Because diseases like Cancer,Heart Disease and Diabetes do not have a class preference and affect the rich and the poor equally. The poor are left to wither and the rich tolerate the hand that fate has dealt them,with insurance playing a major supporting role. But even with the best of hospitals,the bottom line is profit. Because if a hospital shuts down,then they will not be in a position to help even if they really want to.

The Hospital that is closest to attaining middle ground is Narayana Hrudayalaya,where you find the best of consultants and where the rates are as subsidised as is practically possible. The "charge the rich and serve poor " philosophy works there,if not perfectly then as close to ideal as possible

Anyways that's it for now..more later. Take care and try to be charitable.

Hello!!!

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.

You know you're a Doctor when.....

As mentioned in the title, When:

1)The instant you say you're a Doctor to an acquaintance, they start of with a totally vague symptom thinking you know the diagnosis,AND the treatment.Which is what they expect you to do because,and let's face it,you are a doctor.

However,the history these acquaintances(now prospective patients) offer is far from diagnostic.Such as:

a)I have this major pain in my arse,what could you think it could be?Is there any treatment for it?

We might want to answer that the pain is most likely a failing marraige,but we are forced to say that it could be haemorrhoids.

2)People start bitching to you about the kind of care that they received the last time they,or their relatives,were in hospital. And the fact of the matter is that you don't have a clue how things work in that hospital,nor can you defend or persecute the hospital for same.

Yet you say something like "Yeah,some hospitals tend to be that way" instead of saying "I don't have a freaking clue what you're talking about, man"

3)People tell you "Wow!!You're a Doctor!!So you're raking in the moolah aren't you?"

When the answer is that "Dude/Dudette,I'm unemployed"

4)When people ask you what it is you're specializing in. You would want to say "Fuck you!! I'm working my ass off to get into a speciality you retard!!"

Yet you say "Well i'm interested in surgery,(not to mention what makes you tick((should the interviewer be a particularly smouldering female)))"

5)People say that how they wish they were a doctor,yet due to some family circumstance,they were unable to. We say what we think,namely "You lucky Bastard" and we mean it with all of our heart.

6)Those in high paying jobs say "Wow!There's shitloads of money to be made in Medicine"

When the reality is that the shitloads we might be making will come at the time when we have a wife and kids to fend for....and the people who so graciously said we'll be making shitloads have had their share of all night discos,totally unwarrantied vacations and would have paid off their loans for their cars and flats and whatnot.

Anyway,I'm all written out for now. Just to lighten up your mood!! My aim is to make a movie out of all this......and those who read this I'll sponsor their tickets for the premiere:-)

Peace out.

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.