216 seconds of your doctor's time.

Witnessing a doctor see 49 patients in 3 hours. I was the 50th cos I was a non paying goodwill gesture patient not in a queue. Waiting 45 minutes to see the doctor Is practically speaking not a wait given all things and other people actually being critically ill. 

The doctor's board reads physician and intensivist.  I google the word : Intensivist: A physician who specializes in the care of critically ill patients, usually in an intensive care unit (ICU). 

All I know is that he brought my wife practically speaking not to exaggerate "back from the death bed".

I have no problems in waiting.

That's 3.6 minutes to a patient including smiling and hearing and writing a prescription and measuring BP  and pulse, listening through the stethoscope.............

Life threatening and life saving split second alternate courses of medications reviewed and chosen all in the mind.  

For those 3.6 minutes of audience with the medicine man, there is a 2 hour round robin life circle of your own to manage and then the intake of the magic pill works or not is a hit out of the ball park or is it just a canter for a home run or simply strike one two and three.  Wham you are cured or you keep coming back in hope.

Courtesies exchanged.  

All good sir, 😊

BP reads 130/80 

Perfectly wonderful. 

Let's stick to this one pill and meet after 3 months.   In case you feel you want to see me feel free to come.   

Any thing I can do to get off this pill ? 

Nope ! Live healthy,  maintain healthy habits. Walk regularly and low salt intake. 

I curse and mutter under my breath and as always say "Thank you so much for your time sir. "

My share of 3.6 minutes ends and the doc smiles and takes off his reading glasses and packs up for the day ! 

I would not exchange my life for his, not for all the money and all the good things that life has to offer to anyone in the world because I would just keep wondering if what I did in those 216 seconds each time was the right thing or not and here was this man doing it day in and day out,week after week, month after month, year after year with a smile on his face. 😊

I still remember - Even when he said "sweetheart  admission is not an option."  He said it with a smile on his face.   

I like a man whose smile and shoulders are always fighting the existence of gravity. 

I guess that's how you choose a physician for life, someone who knows what to do when things go drastically wrong too and handles it with a 😊

Cardiac arrest

CARDIO PULMONARY RESUSCITATION 

Was reading about the CPR and everything simple associated with it.   Even if your heart stops beating the doctors believe the next ten minute window that the brain is kept alive, by pumping the chest it pumps blood into the brain. 

It is this critical window that can make the difference till medical help arrives. 

I really don't know why they don't teach such basics right from school.  

If Keats can be expected to be understood and addition and multiplication is progressed to trigonometry and calculus why on earth can't basic life saving techniques be taught in school. People should grow with this kind of knowledge and hands on practice just like addition and subtraction. 

A cardiac arrest occurs when the electrical conducting system of the heart fails and the heart beats irregularly or very fast. Soon after; the heartbeats stop, so does the blood flow to the brain.  As a result the person becomes unconscious and stops breathing. In such situations the victim can be saved within ten minutes because the brain remains alive during this period even when the  heart and respiratory system stop. In medical terms the victim is only clinically dead. 

Knowing what to do is critical. 

I was a silent hypertensive for how long even I don't know, for    someone who gets breathless by a simple activity like stepping onto an escalator is an expression in humour but my wife has been hypertensive for ever since I have known her.  

The insurance companies test you for your medical fitness before they insure your life and for that they run a battery of tests on you : blood, sugar and body fluids, you name it they do it,  then they make you run on a treadmill. 

Well, my blood pressure did not qualify : for me to be allowed to run. The new discovery that my perfect cool demeanour and perfect behaviour of the Mercury being rock stable at 120/80 all my life till now, now read 140/100 consistently for over an hour on 3 different machines on a regular Wednesday early morning. 

It did not sound too good, in fact the non acceptance of the fact as a matter of fact unlike all other things of life taken  as inevitable probably sent the Mercury in a tizzy at 170/108 at complete rest by the evening.  

The next day I was seated in front of a specialist out of turn as if the world could overturn. 

People live with high blood pressure and low blood pressure all their lives. My better half is living proof of it.  Beta blockers and pregnancy safe , , , infant safe all ring in the ear.  I knew the drill.  

3 days of pills and Sunday came and Mercury registered perfect readings for me to qualify to run on a treadmill.  

I have run and I have walked for all reasons all my 41 years but never had I imagined that  I would be running on treadmill with electrodes and wired up and a computer screen recording everything just like the Russian Drago in Rocky IV. Well here I was running for 7 minutes and the second upgraded incline and speed and I thanked myself that I had come wearing Nike air run free 3. 

I could handle this and run this damn machine down. At the fourth incremental incline and speed, I realised this was an unrelenting machine and I was not.  All of a sudden Drago's face of grit and determination came in front of my eyes and I knew there was pain involved here and I had no business to be running on this machine to prove anything to anyone leave aside to myself and I was no fitness freak, even my 7 year old son could out run me without even trying. I really don't know who humours whom when we run together neck to neck and tell each other "faster faster".  I was always a short distance sprinter even in school. The 80 meters sprint medal floated in front of my eyes. Not even 100 meters.  

 This was serious running I was running. Now I knew what it meant by "you can't get off a treadmill".   

Stopping was not an option, just not an option. I was beyond breathlessness, I was panting.  6th upgrade of incline and speed and I was actually running now to save my own life. I remembered scenes from movies in which the villains make you run on the treadmill till you beg them to stop, that you would tell all your secrets and passwords of life to just get off the treadmill.  

Proud man that I was,  so far running without holding the rails after all I was 75kg and 5'10" tall with perfect cholesterol and triglycerides. I asked ? Sorry I gasped " Bhaiya how many more inclines to go ?"  I heard one more to go, I saw my watch 18 minutes of this running business done so far. 

Calculated one more raise incline would probably mean 90 degrees. I would not be running against the wall. I would be running on the wall against gravity. My hands reached out for the rails.    Time left : 3 minutes.   All of a sudden my steely resolve to run against gravity disappeared and I gasped and blurted out "if all those printouts are good enough can we choose to stop now"  and the gentleman of a technician said "yes no problem, all good on paper " stop stop I did not want to sound like I was begging but In my mind I was.   

The damn machine slowed down and stopped.  I got off and now I realised what a blackout meant or would feel like.  I felt weak in the knees out of shape and out of breath is a mild way to put it.    But I now knew the feeling of what it feels like that - if someone were to stab me with a knife in the chest I would not feel a thing.  This was one of those physically numbing moments.   

I was only 41 and all of a sudden I understood what my father meant at age 50 by " screw the TMT, I am not getting it done ".  He was damn right.  I guess fathers are always right.  Ok let me rephrase it. Fathers generally are almost always right. 

The doctor said : well done, all good.  Go easy on salt, pickles, butter and ghee and you know the drill.  I wanted to tell him bloody joker can't you read the blood reports they are perfectly within normal range.  Even the good cholesterol to the bad cholesterol ratio was fine.  I just don't eat ghee and butter is a rarity.  I just wanted to get out of the place.  

I got out.  First thing I did was drive through McDonalds, one medium coke.   I was empty stomach. I wanted the sugar Rush.  Black poison went in.  I could still not think clearly.  My heart was still thumping so hard I could feel the thump on my smiley t shirt. My feet still could not feel the clutch properly.  Smsed to a friend about the test and the response was.  "Ya now we know what we mean by the expression PANTING LIKE A DOG with your tongue out." 😜👍.   

Went to the specialist the next day. 

130/80. Excellent. Changed medicine. Come back after one week. 

120/80.  Excellent. Changed medicine. Come back after one month. 

Ride In the Delhi Metro in peak rush hour

The metro is a great leveller. 

People catching their shut eye moments of life with their eyes open.  

The ear phones plugged into the music phones drowning the din of the drone of the metal wheels and the whining of the high speed short spurt engines. The music playing inside being material or immaterial or transporting you into a trance, whatever. The only touch with reality being the monotone announcement of the next approaching stop. 

Hands cradling the head with the elbows on the knees.  It's like holding the entire world in between your palms and the index fingers pressing both the temples as pressure points to prevent the mind and the pain from  taking over life.   

Stop after stop, stop after stop.  

There is only so much you can absorb as the eyes look into a stranger's eyes and you break into a smile knowingly, another set of eyes simply squirt away.   

Hands holding the hands rails.   It's like a symmetry of wrists broken by the shirt sleeve cuffs and the rings and the watches.  Every watch you see is an imaginary story of age and time and how the leather and steel and resin and glass and plastic have weathered the storms in the lives  of the wearer. The stories that you imagine are limited only by your own imagination unless you are lost in your own imagination.  

Travelling peak traffic time in public transport is real life.  When you travel in the freedom of your personal space without the smell of the sweat of another human, it's the time to appreciate the good things of life that you have bought by burning fossil  fuel and cursing the stationary traffic because of other people who have also managed to do the same.   

As you look at people lost in life on the same track, who have found life with their iPhones and their samsungs and all the other cell phones that both companies are trying to gobble up before the poor become poorer or richer.  

The youngsters offering their seats to elders and the ladies or actually not doing it.   It's just a state of mind of how we judge people.  Never in the world across all ages were all youngsters respectful and nor do we live in times where the world has completely fallen apart.   The tag and the extremely hard earned omega all travel with the nine penny plastic watch.  Yes the metro is a great leveller.   I think observing people who travel alone in public transport- their faces are a true reflection of their real state of mind and life and how they feel about life at that point of time in which they are completely alone. Families waiting at home. Work left behind.  It's Their eyes and shoulders and their feet planted on the floor and in the quite that Is the closest to reality.   Destination arrives and life is an act once again.  

Happy New Year.

New year eves and the new year makes me nostalgic.   

It reminds me of childhood days spent buying new year cards by the score. The dilemma was only between Choosing UNICEF and CRY for fulfilment of social responsibility inculcated by dad inside the heart and the mind, which was split finally equally between both reaching out to India and the world. 

Then choosing which ones to send to whom out of the whole lot of cards. 

I used to take it to the next level by then choosing between the limited choice of variations of postage stamps available at different different post offices and then came the deliberation on the choice of words thought over and above greetings of the seasons and a few family update notes to be written in intricate handwriting by dad, then the envelope for the address was my responsibility.   

Those were the days when greetings were not simply a greeting.  

It was an effort that showed that you cared, and more than cared.  It was like the renewal of a bond built through the years and reminiscing about the times gone by and the times to come.  

It was time taken out for people you cared for : even if it meant to communicate via a simple happy new year card, once a year. 

Those were the good old days. 

These are also good times.  Broadcast  happy new year on Whats app and you don't even care who all it went to so long as you pressed send even If you had not spoken in five years and the number did not exist anymore. 

But you tried to reach out. 

Sending a SMS is also a sign that you cared enough to send a SMS.

I guess this is evolution of connectivity with your past and your future without actually connecting. 

30th December 2014.  

Food : Dead or Alive ?

How do we eat dead meat ? 

The concept of dead and alive came to me from a Comic strip in which aliens ate live meat, humans asked the aliens how could they eat something which was still alive and the aliens simply asked how could we eat something which was dead.

Visited Uttam nagar by lanes today which had Shop after shop of mutton  and pork, generally I have a strong Constitution and blood and gore does not make my stomach go squeezy  but so much of blood in the drains and so many bloodless and lifeless goats and pigs stripped .... Made me think. 

The cross section of the pork meat in so much of abundance robbed me of my love for bacon, for how long ? I do not know ? 

I have seen headless chicken fly and I have eaten the same chicken. I love chicken meat, I tolerate mutton and I love bacon but bones make me lose my appetite. Chicken patty stuffed between burger buns is fine but the oversized KFC chicken legs makes me lose my love for it. 

Stuffed Chicken breast made by Pooja makes me want to live for another life time.

Beef  is also an amazing item how can you not like tunday ke kebab, beef sliders in Goa made by Vandana are to die for. 

For Almost 5 short or long years, I quit eating non vegetarian stuff, thanks to my monthly visits to pick LPG cylinder @ 6 am  and watching the activity at the Lucknow butchery and the carcasses and the thela and rickshaw "load" of meat covered with blood stained, age old daily used same piece of cloth, as I write this - the memories of aversion revisits. "Screw the aversion",  reached home to devour "amazing mutton chops," there is nothing that Pooja can't transform.

This note was written on the 19th of December 2011. Brought into the foreground of the mind by the ban on beef.   All of a sudden the question arises - is it really a free country anymore.   Tomorrow we might have to stop eating vegetables.  

Plant cells are alive all the time, right upto the time they are chopped and hit the sizzling frying pan or the pressure cooker and subsequently enter your mouth and the acid in your stomach starts acting upon them to extract nutrition for your body.  

Science has still not proven that the plant cells are completely dead by the time they pass out of your system.   

Just food for thought.   

Enjoy your meal whatever be your choice.   

UNPLUGGED.

UNPLUGGED. 

Ever since I was a kid, I loved the song "Wired for sound" by Cliff Richard.  It was one of my all time favourites for no special reason.   Those were the 80s and the 90s and it meant that listening to it on the big sound box and the cooler version was listening to it on the Walkman and the wired headphones all night long till the batteries ran out of electrons.  

Those were the only set of wires that mattered back then.  

http://youtu.be/5OxwhOrX9Cc

Cut to 2015, 21 feb Saturday,  I reached work and took out the laptop and plugged in the power cord  and that's when It struck me, I was wired for life,   for the power cord  was followed by the lan patch cord, followed by the iPhone charging cord  that went into the laptop, then came out the external battery charger cord that again went out into laptop, next came out the hands free ear phones that went into the phone to prevent radiation and my brains from getting fried all day. 

Remove even one wire out of this set one by one and life will stop after some time.  

Cut back to 6 feb 2015.  Had a severe headache. Unplugged  all the wires and stuffed them in the bag and drove home. The pain so severe that I felt I would rather die than be able to suffer the pain along with the sinking feeling.   So next we visit the hospital emergency room with Pooja carrying the bag with all the wires cos can't risk leaving them in the car. If the car was stolen, life could go on, but without the wires NO WAY. 

Next thing I know was that the wires that mattered in life were still in my bag and out came lots of wires in cool colours and clips clamped to my arms and legs and suction cap electrodes on my chest.  

Emergency ECG. 

All of a sudden the one thought that struck me as I was staring at the bright white light on the ceiling while the machine spewed the paper with the printouts for the doctor to understand whatever that meant. 

PAIN and throbbing pain and only more pain and I just didn't give a damn other than  Hope the doctor does something for that, I was not in control of the wires that went in or out. 

What followed was routine protocol to relieve the pain. 

What that meant was that wires had a new meaning in life.   

Wires for sound. Wires for living life. Wires for measuring life. 

19th feb 2015, some one I knew, who lived life with an epic smile passed away after a long fight, God had pulled the plug at age 46 from someone who had the will to live.   

That's our connection with wires and more wires and more cords and synaptic transmission.  I think it's high time we unwire ourselves before God pulls out the plug cos we can't unwind ourselves. 

MTv Unplugged was the best series ever created, but unplugged has a new meaning in life now. 

Just another day in paradise.

Chain of thoughts on the 18th of December 2014. 

The temperature dipped today. 

My driver to the railway station explained to me why he sits with a straight back and how using the complete back rest makes him sleepy and he can't afford to be sleepy when he drives 300 to 400 km or even 500 km or 10 km and how he sleeps on a TAKHAT and not a Charpai. 

Have not been reading the newspapers for quite some time despite knowing the perils of it.  

So reading the newspaper today taught me how fragile life is and no matter what you do to protect it, there is a maniac out there who does not even know you exist and who will end it in the blink of an eye.  

To quote someone.  "All that I have lived for, has gone and now I wait to follow. "

Could not read or absorb Prasoon Joshi's rhyme of poignance.  Well how does one think in rhythm in times like this.  Hats off to you man.  

There was Anupam Kher who wrote that he was reduced to a dead man walking and how he had died everyday all these years by the acts of terrorism.  His words did not captivate me or hold me hostage to read to the end. 

I really don't know what ever he meant by what ever he did write exclusively for Hindustan Times.  

Times like these also carry a tag, people write EXCLUSIVELY.  

Spice jet grounded, travellers and their dream destination on cheap air fares don't take off.  But my heart goes out to the 5300 odd people employed in the organisation. 

Recall the days of 2006 when we piloted funding the education of kids dreaming to become a commercial pilot, going to the U.S. and coming back to a guaranteed job with Spice.  The bank took no guarantee on those loans, just a promissory note that repayment would happen.  

Even in those days, it was a far fetched dream.  Well I guess it would have flown for a few years atleast.  

Read a Hillary Clinton quote of 2011 that keeping snakes in your backyard to bite your neighbours does not mean it will not bite you.   To think of it what does the bitch think she was talking about.   The snakes had flown to the U.S. and bit them a decade ago.  To think that the US is what has funded the Taliban indirectly in the Afgan war.  A decade of war inflicted in Afghanistan. 1 trillion dollars and 3400 NATO troops dead and 13 years  later The US begins evacuation.  

What are we talking about.  GREEN ZONE 

Investigations show that coal imported from Indonesia to India was invoiced as twice the value of the actual price.  That's 29000 crores. Cost of electricity would have reduced by Rs 1 per unit.   You and I pay for it.  

MBBS and MD seats sold at Rs 3 crores each.   Why would the doctor not cheat the patients even if the patient was not helpless.  He has to recover the money in his lifetime and pay off his dad, that is if he cares enough for his dad else his dad can also fend for himself. How did dad get the Rs 3 crores remains unanswered.  

Hero Honda sells 500 motorcycles online in 8 hours through Snap deal. 

Online retailing is the new buzz.  Everyone is raising funds.  For every one successful venture 10 have closed down.   Some have booked losses more than what they sold.  Amazing.  Deep discounting.   Flipkart, Amazon and snapdeal  all survive thanks to the global funding.   The future is out there even if the combined losses aggregate 1000 crores in a year.  That's a lot of loss and we are still funding.  Latest to enter is QIA the guys who own Harrods.  Wow. Brick and mortar funds online.  Hope of making more money drives the entire world. 

If I were to tell you that this boom will not last and the dot com bubble and the airline bubble and that  eretailing is also a bubble, it is mind blowing. How funds keep investing into losses. 

Which brought me to an article on trust.   You have no clue who is driving you at uber, and how the London black  taxi cab is 20% more expensive than any other but you know that you can trust them.  Well ok so be it.  I would not trust no one with my life I don't know.  The girl made a mistake.  It could have been a boy and he could have got killed and it would not have made the headlines it did. But stop. Rape makes it sensational.  And oh my god after so many days of it being in the news I read that its "alleged rape". And the author closes the article with "Go girl sue uber for the  moon and the stars and the milkyway", which is basically saying "babe go and make money out of the situation if not anything else. 

Oh by the way I read that the Nirbhay episode is now 2 years old.  Mind blowing, I did not recall this.  What I did recall was that she was flown to Singapore for treatment. It's not funny what kind of a paradoxical life we lead ourself into. Human life and human abuse is gender biased.  

Radio cabbies work the hard way and the application on your phone works the smart way.  Oh by the way it even talks about the Sydney hostage drama on how the pricing of the cabs to evacuate the area went up.   It's called surge pricing.   Wow. 

The world is about making more money out of the given situation.  FROM YOU AND YOUR SMART PHONE. 

The rouble falls.  I did not read further   There are some 1500 odd medical students in Russia who are insulated because they pay in USD. 

Ferrari did not win a single pole position in 2014, for the first time since 1993.  Now that's big news.  The engineer pays the price, he was asked to leave. 

It's good to read the conclusion that Pakistan will still not change after this incident, it was scary to read further that it could lunge further deep into its neighbours which includes India. 

The picture of the day was police commandos outside Delhi public school.  Which proves what I had written that schools would become military establishments in the near future.  You simply can't protect the future.  You can't be everywhere.  

Oh yes the world has changed and yet it has not changed.   President of America is black and he has been taken for a valet and a server and the First Lady is just another lady is her experience. Racism still exists but not to the degree it was before and even the president of the United States is worried about the safety of his children if they were alone and black and without the secret service.  That's something. 

I foresee Delhi and the country turning into a fort during his visit as the chief guest to the Republic day parade. Meaning : Traffic SNARLS.

Traffic advisory to reach office during Republic day preparation is what I will read the newspaper for next.  Till then let Jack Ma also invest in India.  

Oh yes I almost missed the real news.  USA and Cuba resume ties 😊 after 53 years.  Had I not read the newspaper I would have missed it.  

And we talk about children and their future and Michael Jackson sang for the world with the rest of his fraternity "We are the world"  and then sang, "Man in the Mirror ", and where did he end up ?  Accused of child abuse, which brings me to the next question, who is the worst of the enemy the terrorist who kills your child or the friend or unknown person who abuses your child and sends him back home to live with it for the rest of his or her life.