DOCTOR

Life in an OT

July 22, 2022

The first thing that came to my mind looking at the operation table where I was to be operated upon, was to pray and hope that I don’t fall off that table during the procedure for it was small and inadequate to take my body size.

Then came those planks attached to the operation table to rest my arms on and it instantly reminded of a certain shades of grey and activities associated with it.

Lo and behold!! As I lay on the table the nurse (male) started tapping/hitting my arms to find an elusive good vein (his term not mine) which was hidden under the layers of fat and shaved patches of my dark skin.

With a gown that I didn’t fit into, arm planks, hitting and needling, if I ever wanted a BDSM it seemed it was coming true on this very operation table.

Then comes the masked up amiable anesthetist who asks me if I have any vices/ addiction. I was wondering की आज इस टेबल पर surgery होगी या मेरे को therapy दी जायेगी. The list of vices and addiction was long and the thing that tops the list is over thinking and manifesting the worst case scenario in my life. बहराल यह सब तो बता न पाया उनको.

As he went about injecting the required doses of anesthesia he asked me my favorite actor and I said it is The Badshah of Bollywood (naa I didn’t get that dramatic) Mr. SRK and then he asked my favorite actor female. In that few milliseconds faces and names came rolled in my front of my eyes and in order not to breach public order/ decency and outraging my modesty (of whatever was left) on the operation table I said Alia Bhatt (Kapoor बोलना ज़रूरी तो नहीं है ना?).

The last thing I remember before I woke up on the other side of the surgery was him asking me to think of Alia Bhatt. I am still wondering whether the anesthetist had asked me to engage in emotional infidelity in order to achieve his professional goals?

Or maybe its the case of what happens on the Operation Theatre stays in the Operation Theatre!!

BTW I am all sorted now other than my cycling and trekking which is to be avoided I am up to anything you got to offer!!

KABIR SINGH

July 9, 2019

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Finally saw the film Kabir Singh after weeks of dillydallying. With not so flattering reviews from one of my favourite movie critic, I had made up my mind of letting this one pass however as the days progressed and with that its box office collections and a strong word of mouth, I was left with no option but to cede to the popular demand.

Three weeks have passed since its release so this one is not going to be a conventional review, I mean अगर तीन हफ्ते बाद भी फिल्म रिव्यु देख कर movie जानी पड़े तो आप से गुजारिश है की आप इसका online stream होने तक का इंतज़ार करें.

I have a confession to make I did enjoy the movie!! Was it because my expectations were low initially?? Hell, No!! It served its purpose of being an escapist entertaining cinema. The songs since the day I saw the film has been playing on a loop.

The whole brouhaha about it being a misogynist film and its portrayal of bully of a hero is true.

To justify the actions of a bully just because he happens to excel in the medical profession is too much. A flunky graduate with such anger issues would have counted amongst the neighborhood louts, but in this he is someone who is tolerated by all.

To have a girl marked as one’s own by the bully without her consent is straight out of the 1980’s, I mean which girl allows that?? Bcoz I passed colleges in the late 90’s and I am still looking for answers.

How long do friends and family tolerate and keep standing for a bully who puts his own interests and anger issues in the forefront? He is an alcoholic, ready to pick a fight and snorts cocaine (BTW an aunty sitting behind me does tchh, tchh when he does that) at the drop of a hat. To each his own in dealing with the heartbreak and Devdas too took to bottle in early part of the last century, didn’t he??

Yes Shahid Kapoor is the bully , Kiara Advani is the girl that gets marked and it is their love story that sets the screen ablaze.

Despite all the above I did enjoy this film, because there are some movies like Article 15 that we enjoy and want to emulate and there are some like this one that eulogies imperfections that we lap up.

Is there a dichotomy to this? I do not know?

Me enjoying this film make me a misogynist too? I do not know?

Do I justify violence against women, an emphatic NO !!

Can the vagaries of the heart ever be understood and questioned? I do now know.

Somehow all this reminds me of a Punjabi movie scene that went viral on social media some time back: https://youtu.be/EwpdMobhlp4

What I know is Shahid Kapoor excelled as Kabir Singh a character I wouldn’t want to know or deal with in real life but isn’t Cinema also about showing the character we abhor. Kiara Advani brings out the vulnerable side of Preeti. For Preeti is the calm that douses Kabir’s angst and fire. It’s the classic cases of opposites attract.

So to conclude it did make for a good watch and if u plan to watch it then please book the ticket in advance as even after 3 weeks they aren’t easy to get.

Hospital

January 6, 2016

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Florence Nightingale once famously said “It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm.” She couldn’t have chosen better words to describe the dark, desolate and depressing hospitals that are supposed to make us feel better.

Lately i have had the misfortune to visit the dreaded hospitals quite a few times for various reasons and each visit has left me a little under the weather. No matter what the gravity of the disease the wait for the test results, the doctor’s visit and the diagnosis is something that is unbearable and toxic.

Over the years i have realised irrespective whether the hospitals are Government managed or run like a three / five star hotels makes us feel no different, other than the difference in hygiene and the sensitization of the Nursing Staff, the patient and their families always go thru the same emotions. The anxiety, the patience and the wait is something that they all offer in equal measures. The families of the patients empathise with each other and share the pain. New and painful medical treatments that these hospitals inform us with are something, we are never prepared to fathom.

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Hospitals are the place that is supposed to ease our pain and sorrow but the path leading up to that destination isn’t easy and comfortable. The emotional, financial and physical turmoil is not something that everyone can handle. Well irrespective of all the above in the end we all will fight for our dear ones and go at extreme lengths to protect and heal them. For that is what family is there for to stand in our times of need.

The visit to a hospital is inevitable for there is nothing certain than death and taxes and to reach the former going thru the grind of a medical facility is mandatory. Like Atul Gawande in his book Being Mortal said “It is not death that the very old tell me they fear. It is what happens short of death—losing their hearing, their memory, their best friends, their way of life. As Felix put it to me, “Old age is a continuous series of losses.” Philip Roth put it more bitterly in his novel Everyman: “Old age is not a battle. Old age is a massacre.”

So just pray to God to spare me the dependency on a hospital and its equipments and when the end comes it to be quick not like a battle that takes ages but what takes place in a jiffy. Not being alive without consciousness and control but to say the final goodbyes fully awake, living and letting go.

By the way the only time the hospital have made me happy is when a new life is bought into the world by the birth of one’s own progeny and that is it !!