April

April has been an eventful month.I got to meet most of the family.My father celebrated his eighty-eight birthday,my sister and my brother-in-law was home for the holidays which was nice and I got to meet the greater family ,and my immediate family thanks to the elections which comes around once every four years and just being home..Most of my greater family memories are entwined around the cardomom harvesting season.....which is becoming rarer by dozen.We spent a considerable part of our holidays painting the fences at home in between the rain and shine,I managed to paint my book-rack,apparently ages old,talking of antiques...one of the copper containers were actually from the sixteen hundreds.My mother continues to use my grandfather's aluminium bowl from his Sreerampore theological seminary as a rice measuring bowl.She makes sure all of us keep it filled each time we measure out the rice to be cooked for the day.We do not understand the logic but I do believe that blessings come from the top.My grandfather was a giant.
Coming back to the current,Maisie the mongrel was the only one which survived the dog flu which took her sister,Coal 1 and Coal 2.Masie was the weakling in the group but she turned out to be the strongest.Thanks to aie Noz and Colin ,it has a shining coat and a sackful of dog supplements to eat beside the usual food.
I also performed my duties as a citizen and cast my votes for candidates I do not know personally nor have taken into account anytime in my life.Therefore i guess i have not performed my citizen's duty to the hilt.It was a mixed bag with each individual casting their franchise as per their own interpretation of what is right,often members of the same family splitting their votes three ways.I just realised that in the local context the bigger picture of the country is so irrelevant.We are more concerned about who will make our town cleaner,build our hospitals and run them better,manage our sewage better ,make our place safer for the future generation than worry about who builds a mandir or a masjid...etc.Even our parliamentary candidates were more in anticipation of better candidate who could potentially represent the state better ofcourse we do not compromise on idealogies but this year we had a wide choice,which was nice.
Sikkim is also giving us an array of young entreprenuars who impress with their ability and enterprise.Many youngsters have entered fields like farming with the entire gamut of packaging and marketting in their hands.They seem to be doing a good job.As I was leaving Sikkim ,My sister-in-law handed me a couple of packet of first flush from her nieces'tea-garden which was so smartly packaged.
I think Sikkim is slowly but surely coming of age with no dearth of talent and brains amongst the youngsters.A few decades ago my late cousin PG was the only person to clear the UPSC and become an IAS in Sikkim.I am not sure there are too many of them around still but the youngsters seem to be scoring nineties by the dozen in their boards from prestigious institutions all over India and abroad,thanks to the chief minister's scheme where the government toppers are selected and sent to these schools on a state scholarship.I cannot for sure say how many of these children are going to make a success of their lives,I will leave that to one's defination of success.
Back in the hospital we are labouring on, hopefully not in vain,I was hit by an onslaught of very sick patients which is slowly filtering down to acute gastroeneterites by hordes.My colleagues say,a flush of rain will bring forth a variety of patients,I am confused as to what I want.It would sure make the weather cooler.
First two days I was taken unawares by the heat and by mid-morning I was walking around like a zombie,forgetting names of the people.Thankfully by now I practise medicine almost by instinct.The very first day I did the foolish thing which wiser people from around here do not do.I went to the market in the mid-morning and found it deserted.I cleaned the house the best I could single-handedly and cooked meal for fifteen people.One of my junior doctors was leaving after her bond completion.It was nice to have every one over for a meal.
The following day whilst at work I realised I was functioning only 20 % ,was immensely drowsy and unable to take in what my colleagues were trying to communicate .Hence I started to prepare for work in the morning like one prepares for a war.I armed myself with a bottle of ice-cold water with flavour of tang,a box of grapes to mull on in between patients.This I realised made a whale of a difference.I was my own person by the end of the day.However I was a little taken aback when I started giving one of the ladies' a lecture on 'how one should drink adequate water and not go out in the son without a head covering preferably a cotton one'when I realised that an old lady was giving me an indulgent smile...I had forgotten that they have seen sixty odd summers which was going to get hotter in that place.I was the baby ,taking baby steps into the Benaras heat.
The election rhetorics are getiing louder and louder,they are also getting baser by day.The new low was when the PM called Rajiv Gandhi 'brastachar number 1'.I remember sitting in the OPD a few months ago,when suddenly this youngster bounced into my room ,dressed in sports clothes,smart but I could make out he was from one of the humbler backgrounds.He had a minor ailment but wanted it looked into before he went back to the archery camp,he said.He was under training in a camp in Bangalore,he said.I got started talking to him and he told me that Rajiv Gandhi had started these schools in several places where children with certain talents were picked up and groomed and he was one such kid.I remember feeling a sense of joy and admiration at Rajiv's far-sightedness and most importantly concern for the country's youth.Where are such leaders today?Will God have mercy on our country and give us leaders which will take India towards that light or push us into an abyss of darkness and confusion.We need to pray.We do not know who it should be one way or the other but we want the Lord's mercy on our land.
I have been reading Harper Lee's,'Go.set a watchman'.Her,'To kill a mocking bird 'was one of my favourite novels.I enjoyed the book.It seems to be relevant to the times and a fitting tribute to a society which is multi-layered ,it's choices,it's living,it's causes coloured by factors which are beyond human control,sometimes hijaked by stronger few,heavily corrupted with personal agendas where people like Jean Louis are considered naive.Naive they are,thay have lived in their personal heaven but when reality of the situation hits one in the face it can be devastating.Ask me,I have been through it.During such times I remember talking to one of my colleagues and he told me,'We are not in heaven as yet'.I repeated it dully with an ache in my heart then,but it took supernatural to take me to a place of healing.God has to do it otherwise all of us will be walking around with festering wounds hidden just below the surface, in communities,forever rubbing each other to pain.
The Lord will heal us if we let Him.