What gives

Role model in a christian context,what is it exactly? Do we have them anymore?Were the footprints left by the men and women of the past so great that we keep pointing out the lack of it in the current scenario? I am not asking but I find this issue raised often times enough. I personally do not think we need 'role models' as much as we do 'genuine models',faltering men and women of God going about their portion in Good faith. The Gospel of Luke potrays the need of the kingdom and the hour. The kingdom does not need good people like the rich young ruler,it needs people who are willing to follow Jesus.Infact even Jesus says in so many words "Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good -- except God alone". Role models are perceptions of the onlookers.I have seldom seen or heard a contemporary labelling a colleague as a role model-it is always someone older,bigger and from a totally different generation. Most times attributes in a p...

He could have been all of twenty eight years.I saw him in the casualty with a nasogastric tube in his nose which looked black due to the decontamination measure(charcoal) the CMO had given him.Looked haemodynamically stable.He refused to answer anyone's query as to what he had taken.He kept his eyes tightly closed.I mentally made a note that this would be a tough nut to crack.He was shifted to the ICU for close monitering. The next I saw him ,he shuffled into my consultation room for counselling.Yes,he shuffled in because he had early features of motor neuron disease,the fact that I had misssed out on the first night when we were so busily focussing all our attention on the poison and it's effects. He started talking then and I listened. He had been married for seven years.He had two children.His wife of seven years hated him and literally made his life hell.She was not only promiscous,she was also intent on taunting him and had on many occassions threatened to put him in a ...

'A' was married off at sixteen to an opium addict who left her when she was one and half months pregnant.She was born to a family of five sisters and she was the last but one.When her son was five years old her parents chanced upon her husband somewhere and brought him back.He lives with her but she adds he doesn't want to and looks like he will leave anytime as he continues to remain an addict.Her old parents are sick and suffering.Her five siblings are married and settled.Her son is six years old now.She is emotionally bankrupt at twenty one,has no support system.Saw no point in life. She consumed carbide. 'B' was again married off at the age of fifteen.Her husband was an alcoholic who died of haemetemesis when she was twenty.She has two sons and a daughter,fourteen,ten and six.Ever since her husband died,her sons have stopped listening to her and goes their own way.She is educating her daughter in upper KG.She has just managed to retrieve her health insurance c...

Travelled back all the way to Herbertpur in a day.Was quite zapped out by the time we actually hit the place.I am yet to sit down and assimilate what has been done so far and work out the plans to chart out what needs to be done in the coming days.Looks like a handful indeed. The weather change has been drastic.It was a little confusing down south with no cue whatsoever from the locals.The schedule was such that we had to be ready for the breaker at 6.30 AM in the morning.Would be coldish but we never quite got the pulse on the right amount of clothing all through.Early in the morning we would see hefty men dressed to the hilt from thigh above with monkey caps,jackets and mufflers but the lungi would be well above the knee and absolutely bare feet.Not a great help here.Some of the candidates would come out hesistantly with sweaters just to suffer through it through another weather confused afternoon. Met some old colleagues some of whom surprised me with their predictability.It was l...

Just finished a four day extensive workshop organised by the infectious disease team in CMC for toxicology under the ECHO project.I am impressed by the concept and encouraged by the spirit behind it. The idea is to equip the peripheral hospitals not only in quality monitering but also to empower them as potential resource centres for poison management with the faculty in CMC accompanying the hospitals on a regular basis either by telemedicine conferencing,email,telephones and contact classes. I have always felt that an institution like CMC had a greater responsibility towards health-care in our country by virtue of the vision it was started with,richness of the resources it enjoys and the sheer standards on quality it has set for itself. For an institution or individuals to be relevant it is mandatory that it has a firm hold on the ground realities that plague our huge nation and contribute effectively towards bettering it. Net-working with the peripheral hospitals could not only h...

I am off to the familiar portals of Vellore once more. This time to attend a workshop.Apparently a group of consultants are working on a common protocol for poisening and as CMC often does ,they are roping in a group of mission hospitals....nothing seems to be clear at the moment,I just have a list of work-shop roster and a one way ticket handed in by a colleague and I am off tomorrow only because our poison incidents are extremely high here and I need to understand what I can pick up from the seminar especially since they have included the counselling bit with the department of psychiatry. The added bonus is that my senior from ODC seems to be part of the team. I also hope to do some shopping around for our DNB family medicine course here,meeting up with old colleagues and seniors who seem to be managing the programme there to get the feel of what they are up to. I am looking forward to the visit.

I was reading through one of the anecdotes Ravi Zach had illustrated in one of his books.I thought it was relevant to these times and our life. The anecdote goes... A boy lived in a village with a family who were said to be his gaurdian.He has a perpetual question in his mind-'Who am I?'.This question disturbed him a lot because nobody seemed to have an answer for him. One day a messenger comes to him and tells him that he would have his answer provided he embarked on a journey and followed the rules. The boy was given a sword,a map and some food and was given some conditions with it. He could not draw blood with the sword,he could not waste the food and he had to follow the map to the tee. As he embarked on his journey,he heard frightening sounds along the way and some beautiful music as well. He drew his sword whenever he was frightened and when he heard the beautiful music he was drawn towards it but since it did not fall in line with his map he held himself back. Ev...

This u-tube version of the hill-song adapted with pictures from BBC's planet earth was sent to me in a mail by Dr Mark Kniss,who was the founding doctor of the hospital I worked in in JKD.I have met him but for a month during his visit to the hospital almost three decades after he left the place.I did not hold any responsibility apart from that of a physician then.Eversince,he has accompanied me through all those years of responsibility in Satbarwa. The assurance of such stalwarts being on their knees was what kept me going through all those years. I would also get a monthly phone-call all the way from America.... This mail came through on a day when I needed the reassurance badly.I had just lost a patient I had been struggling with for the last two days and was feeling utterly lost and beaten.I sat through the afternoon ,just soaked in the healing the recording seem to bring forth....and I blessed him from the heart and did what I normally do when I am touched.I shared it with ...

The winter is flourishing in Herbertpur as expected. The cold winds coming in intermittantly with the shower which stays but for a while.The winter sun comes in the mornings and sort of hangs around till the noon,the monkeys on the terrace are the only lucky souls to enjoy it.Christmas was strainful and albeit a little sad.The voices of worship stiffled by the chill in the weather and the hearts.The new year dawned with the Hope,grace and mercy that can only be yours and mine because Jesus lives. The Hindustan times ,Dehradun issue on the first, was something you would want to hide from your children.There were three articles including the headlines writing about attrocities on children.There was Aarushi's case,......and others are better left unmentioned. The older I get,more desperately I cling to the Word of God.I chucked off my television when I left Satbarwa...i am glad I did...the papers are just that,papers but for a few articles in the centre page which are sometimes th...