What gives

All of eighty and delirious ,the old Pandit shuflled for his Janeu(Sacred ceremonial thread according to hinduism which the brahmins tie around their person).Two devoted sons tried to wrestle him down to his bed.He had a diaper on ,and a catheter but was insisting deliriously that he wanted to use the toilet.Suddenly he picked up his thread and put two loops around his ear.The sons interpreted that he wanted to pass stool.This was a learning for us. Another time another man in his eighty came in screaming with chest pain.He had extensive anterior wall MI .My junior colleague managed him well.His ST elevation had reverted ,his pulse rate was well controlled and he was comfortably seated by the time we saw him for the morning rounds.By the afternoon he complained of chest pain and then went into a supraventricular tachycardia but his hemodynamics held, so we medically managed him.He was by nature a comfortable man.He shared that he was ready to die.We got talking to him one afternoon.He ...

 It was a busy OPD and and as always I enjoy talking to my patients . 'A' entered the OPD talking loudly with an elderly woman.A bright woman obviously educated came in with some vague complaints.She was from Delhi but had ventured into town recently and kept asking me relevent questions.However ,I found that she was tiptoeing around certain health issues and not dealing with it as one would expect. Certain senior doctors run this trust where they do hysterectomies for ladies free of cost.I was talking to the said doctor and she told me about a cause of distress and shame uterine prolapse was to ladies from a rural setting so she along with her husband had decided to raise money to do the surgeries free of cost. A lot of our patients have benefitted from the scheme.I examined the  lady and got out a history that she had a rectal prolapse and had had it since childhood.I was a little taken aback that she had done nothing about it.Suddenly she just broke down and burst out about...

It was an ordinary day in the clinic .I saw a family who stood out stark.My heart jumped with joy to see them. Not that I knew them personally, but when they come to the hospital on their own it makes our day. These are our friends from the  Musahir  bastis sprinkled around Majhwa.I had seen Mari a few weeks back. She just strolled into the hospital ,informed us that she had completed the anti-tubercular medicine at the block and wanted a chest X-ray done.I could not understand the reason and so instructed someone to ask her to get her final sputum checked at the block which would be enough to deem her cured. Three weeks later she was back with another family in the tow and again demanded a CXR off one of my junior colleagues who wheedled out a history of amenorrhoea from her.She turned out to be pregnant so naturally could not get a CXR done.My colleague got out another important information from her.She wanted the CXR to declare herself cured  in the block hospital so t...

  Sheer resilliance   of the people of India beats me. One of my younger colleagues was telling me about a beggar in Varanasi who sits outside one of the bigger temples and has educated his children so well that one of them is an IAS officer and all his children are doing well but he continues to beg outside the temple .When asked the reason for still continuing to beg , he says that he had earned his livelihood and had educated his children through begging and so he was going to continue to beg for the rest of his life   I am not sure how to respond to that. In the intricate nooks and corners of the villages in UP one hardly sees good houses.Yet out of these hardy villages where the carpet weavers,daily labourers,the out-caste,the differently abled,the high castes live separated by the boundaries of generations ,are sprinkled highly educated daughter-in-laws   hidden behind the curtains of tradition.Meeta tells me she is a doctrate with a PHD but she is a daught...

Mr P came to the outpatient with a diabetic wife who had chest pain but was stable then. He got around talking about his life.He had missed the govenrment pension and was bemoaning his plight.He had worked all his life in the national jute mill in Kolkotta .When Mr Ramnath Goenka died the  mill spiralled downhill.The government of West Bengal under Mr Basu had to take over  but it was not working , they decided to shut it down. The livelihood  of the thirty thousand workers were at stake ,I suspect mostly from the heartland, Mrs Gandhi had to intervene and the central government apparently took over the running of the mill. In the mean time Mr P retired.The mill ran under the central government leadership for another half a decade after the which the government gave  VRS to all the employees and shut down the mill for good.Mr  P however missed the bus so did not become eligible for the government pension .He is left with memories and the bitter  taste of a ...

 This is a post long overdue.I promised Evelyn I would write this a month ago but somehow the connect between the pen and the thought process did not come through easily so I conveniently pushed it back somewhere in a file in the grey matter.Today I was reminded, so here it is. I am not too passionate about rabbits.I know them as creatures which have a reputation of eating up the area where they reside...apparently nothing grows around them so I am wary because if there is one thing that can bring a deep seated joy in my heart it is plants and the flowers especially in the wild. I find rabbits dumb and not particularly special to look at.The only time it had me involved  was on a cold Satbarwa winter in Wendy's stew.It was my first and perhaps the last . So I was not too excited to see the creatures cohabit the paraphenalia in one of the old garages in the campus.I looked at it from a distance and enjoyed the roses more than it's neighbour. One day I saw our little friend Dani...