The Angel Wears Raincoat

On a November morning, when the dark clouds crowded over the busy town, when the gravitational pull on me when I'm on my cosy cosy bed went extremely high, it rained.

For some reasons, I have always been in love with the rain all through my life. Turning into a 24 year old, I still had those beautiful feelings for running around in the rain, dancing getting drenched, jumping around in the muddy puddles. It has always been my ambition to be happy with whatever I've got and to be the best I can be. (Well, yes, the rain does bring philosophical thoughts too to me)

Rolling down out of my bed, staggering around I went about getting ready for work. I have to confess by the time I was ready to leave home, I was getting blasé about the day’s work. And to add to that, a little irksome mood kept peeing out as I had to go through the beautiful rain to boring work.

The cold engine revved up and I was on my way to JIPMER.

The road ahead was busy as people were walking with colourful umbrellas, parents accompanying their school going children and college busses on the mundane trips. The traffic did not do me good. I was frowning already.

500 meters ahead, I could see a slender figure standing right in the centre of a busy road and swaying irregularly. Another victim of the effect of alcohol, I thought. As I was moving close to him, I was fuming. There was a little commotion around him.

As I approached near, I realised that the slender not-so-tall middle aged guy was wearing a raincoat and was standing right in the centre of the road and waving to the vehicles to move on either side of him. Curiosity replaced my little irritation completely.

Almost very close to him, I realised that there was an electric overhead cable that was cut and lying on the road. This guy was standing right in front of it and signalling people so that they would avoid it and not run into it. For a moment, his eyes caught mine staring at him so intensely. He waved his hands and I obeyed subconsciously.

I kept moving.

I took a turn and exited the main road and continued on my way…

RESPECT.

For the Angel who wore raincoat.

Beast of Burden??

A puff of smoke rose swirling up.

A curly haired, medium stature guy with dark complexion stood beneath. I could see a not so pleasant smile on his face and from the creaks of his lips smoke came out. One one hand, he had a smoking cigarette and was tapping it and waving it in the air and on the other was a mobile phone which he was looking at.

Beside him stood a shorter lady wearing a bright green saree. She held a child on her one hand and a milk bottle on the other. She was trying to feed him so that he would stop whining. A heavy handbag hung on her shoulder; it looked so heavy that it was almost pulling her down. Down below, near her feet was a big blue duffel bag.

I was standing somewhere near, waiting for a bus, tired and hoping to escape the harsh sun as early as possible.

A little while later, the guy spoke something to her and he started walking. She bent down, took her duffel bag and followed him.

I sniggered. Who would treat his own queen like a donkey, I thought. Is that sacred yellow thread/chain they tie at marriage nothing but a rein, I chuckled.

Don't treat your lady like a beast of burden.
Carry her load, not because she is a weaker version, but because she is your queen.

What The Frail Old Man Taught Me On Love

It was on a mundane afternoon, one that I so vividly remember. It was one of those rare days in medical training (Internship) when nothing throws a surprise on you. Everything went well since that morning and all I had left with was a chronic disease OPD to attend after which I would walk back to my hostel room and enjoy the rest of the day absolutely doing nothing.

I was sitting in the female side of the OPD. All I had to do was to take blood pressure measurements, check blood reports of old people with diseases like diabetes and hypertension and re-write the medicines previously prescribed for them if everything was normal. I was doing it fast eager to finish it off.

An old woman come and sit at my table. When I enquired her, she did not respond. She made a few facial movements but made no voice. Instead, an old, should be 75+, frail looking man, standing nearby her side, was the one who did the talking.

I didn't listen to him. I was waiting for scream from the OPD nurse. That's what she does when any male enters the female OPD. (She does this on junior male doctors too at times :-p). I was waiting for this guy to be thrown out. I glanced sideways at the nurse. She was looking at us and beaming a broad smile. Strange!

This old man was cleanly dressed and was carrying two heavy bags. He spoke very softly and his voice indicated his frailty. With his little voice he was informing me what his wife's problems were and what medications she was on. He seemed to know the names of all the medicines and the dosage strengths and he was almost instructing me not to forget anything in a very polite manner.

(Normally it would irritate me when a lay person instructs me to prescribe, what's the point of me spending 5.5 torturous years in a med school then, I would think.) He was quite worried that I might miss out something from a big list of different medicines she was on. Probably, it has happened before that some junior doctor in a hurry forgot to write something or wrote something wrong. If that happens, his wife would have no tablets to take of that particular medicine for the next 2 weeks. So his behaviour was quite acceptable and I did my best to measure her blood pressure, check her reports and write her all the medications she required.

After I was done, the old man lifted his two heavy bags on one hand, held his wife's hand with the other and slowly walked her out of the OPD.

The nurse told me later that this particular old man brings his wife twice a month, every month from his village. His wife is hard of hearing and she has a high blood pressure and diabetes. It's a long journey from his village to JIPMER so he brings everything that would be required for her including, food, towels etc. and waits till the afternoon for the chronic disease OPD. He makes her sit in a bench and he waits in a long queue for her. He meets the doctors, gets the medications written, stands in another long queue for getting the tablets from the pharmacy and finally takes her back home.

When the sister had told me all this, I had a big smile on my face and a little tear on my eyes.

That frail old man made a statement so strong that penetrated my heart. I saw what true love was all about. The commitment, the care this old man had, simply melted my heart. He showed a commitment time nor tide would never fade.

Dear old man, I thank God for bringing you there to inspire me. I promise you, that when I hold the hands of my queen, I would remember the lesson you thought me that day.

And sure it does. Every once in a while in the middle of an ordinary life... Love gives you a fairy tale!

A Smartphone Battery Miser

It has become one of my life’s greatest disappointments to look at my mobile and see that my battery is about to die. It’s such a terrifying feeling to know that my mobile will run out of charge and will shut down leaving me strangled and disconnected in middle of a busy day or during a travel where charging facilities aren't readily accessible.

Thanks to the pathetic battery life of today’s smartphones and the constant cycle of such disappointments that I have had, I have morphed into something disgusting. A battery miser. Yes, a smart phone battery miser.
There are tons of battery saving apps and battery drain preventing apps in the Google market. I constantly keep track of them and keep reading the reviews. I have been hoping from one app to another believing the impossible promise of a longer battery life. Some apps simply disappoint by themselves draining more battery. The others bring about no visible change.

What can the apps do for you if you keep using your mobile more, you might ask. Yes. The first thing I did was to decrease the screen brightness to the minimum possible through the settings. The awesome AMOLED display fitted in my mobile constantly is dim because of my stinginess and others find it too difficult to read text or view images. To add fuel to my craze is an app called the screen filter. It enables to decrease the screen brightness less than 10% (the minimum possible using the Android default settings). I have been using this app and now my AMOLED screen displays pathetically washed out images and poorly dim lit text with no clear contrast. It is no longer crisp nor clear. All for a longer battery life.

What could be worse? I am so fearful of switching on the Wi-Fi or the mobile internet. I switch it on only for an instant. I try to check whatever I wanted to do on the internet and put it off as soon as possible. Often I am not being notified of my emails and messages from Whatsapp and Hike because I have switched off the auto-sync feature to prevent battery drain. I’ll have to open the apps and refresh them in order to get the notifications.
All for a longer battery life.

The kill apps button. I keep pressing this button whenever I unlock my phone. I am pathologically obsessed with an uneasiness which creeps into my mind when these background processes keep running and keep draining my precious battery. It has become an obsessive compulsive disorder for me now.

Games are a strict no-no on my mobile. Mobile is not for playing games! It would drain the battery more. No switching on the GPS or the Bluetooth either. If I find that the GPS had been left ON by mistake, I would faint. Any new custom ROM that promises better battery life would have been tested by me in vain. The battery stats in android is my best friend. I keep checking for the battery percentage. I keep checking for apps which drain the battery the most. 

My pathetic worsening condition has rendered my 20k+ smart phone into something worth nothing more than an ordinary mobile used for making calls and texting people. I constantly keep check of the battery percentage. I charge the battery whenever I get a chance. My mobile does not auto sync. My mobile’s AMOLED display performs poorly that an ordinary TFT display. And so on…

I type this on my laptop because typing this in my mobile drain a lot of battery!!!

Is there any help for me?    :-(

Let go !!! Or wait...!

Few days back, I took a "seemingly" awesome pic. I am not self boasting but then, have a look. It seems that I have caught the leaf at mid air. I put a caption saying that often you'll have to let go of the old and unwanted things in life.

But then on closer look you will see a fine strand of a spider web holding the leaf.

Interesting isn't it. To me, it means a lot.

I leave it to the viewer for extrapolating little things into deep thoughts of insightful reflection. 

Like I often do. :-) 

The Pain That Perfects

The door opened and a slender figure carrying a two year old boy on her hip entered.

An expression of relief spread over her countenance shadowing the fatigue and exasperation after waiting in a long queue forgoing her breakfast. Holding her son with one hand, she held out the case sheet to the junior surgeon standing near a raised bed. She was tall and thin, modestly dressed and her hair properly kempt. It was hard to tell from the first glance that she was bitten by poverty. It required a closer and a keen look to reveal that her clothes were very old and her hair were losing pigments and appeared too brittle. The boy she was carrying was wearing a short pant and a dirty tee. He had those big round eyes which were now scanning the shabby little room with curiosity.

The junior resident got the case sheet and went through the notes written by a senior surgeon. The notes described how the disease started its manifestations and how it has progressed so far. At the end was written instructions for the junior resident for the minor surgical procedure to be carried out to relieve the patient of the symptoms. This particular case notes ended " Incision & Drainage". The little boy had an abscess full of purulent pus on his chest that has to be incised and drained.

Now in this hospital it was a common practice to do incision and drainage of small abscesses without the use of any anaesthetic. There were many reasons they gave supporting it but still, in my opinion, it was simply one of the cruellest forms of surgery. The pain will be sort-lived, of course, but would be excruciating. Imagine the scalpel cutting through the already tense skin covering an inflamed abscess. Whatever it was, no one questioned such practices. Such practices have been in use since no one remembered when and it had come to be accepted routine and normal.

The junior surgeon gestured and the lady moved closer to the examination couch. She made the boy lie down on it. The junior surgeon was assisted by a uninterested orderly who stood by his side passing on the gloves, instruments and the other things needed. No time was wasted. The boy's chest was cleaned and the instruments to cut open the abscess were all ready in the hands of the confident surgeon.

The next 15-20 minutes were hell for the little boy and everyone around. He made a loud cry with his shrill voice. It made me very sad. But as kept watching, I noticed something very strange. The boy's mother was forcing him to stay still when the surgeon cut open his chest abscess. I saw tears rolling down the mother's cheek but she was determined not to let her child move. In a way, she was imposing so much pain on him but, at the same time, was silently suffering as well.

Why would she put her own child under the knife?
Why would she not let him alone?

She believed that the abscess was going to harm her child. She believed that though the surgeon would impose more pain, the pain would be temporary and do good.

Life does this to us at times. There'no no way of escaping from pain but just endure and let it perfect you.

“Turn your wounds into wisdom.” 

― Oprah Winfrey

The Long & Winding Road - A Tribute To The One Who'd Share The Journey

The long and winding road,

Lonely, I’d always trod.

The colours of the evening sky,

Comforts me in vain as I walk by.

There’s no place I’ll have to reach,

There’s no purpose that I’d preach,

There’s no reason to hurry,

No happiness, nothing to worry.

I felt so cold, I felt so numb,

Waiting for my princess to come.

For one thing, I’d asked of the Lord,

To bring some music, to strike a chord.

The sun went down,

Dark, it had already become.

I closed my eyes,

Beneath the dark greying skies.

From my peaceful slumber,

Woken by a light like thunder,

For a moment, I was distraught;

Will no peace follow me, I thought.

A pleasant sun, did the morning bring,

Like magic, my autumn had turned to spring.

Little birds at their squeaking best,

Filling the air with happiness and zest.

In a day, life was all changed,

Joy like never before, fully experienced.

I looked around, hoping someone be seen,

There in all her beauty, stood my precious queen.