I'm Married!!

i really am!!! Married!
i married Dhaman on monday, and i'm really sorry i didnt let you kno earlier, coz, hell we din't know ourselves!

the katha(abridged version)
Dhaman Koka, all of 31 years and genes from the marwadi clan and the naidu clan(yep he's hybrid) floored me over about 2 years ago.He's an industrial design engineer who designs and manufactures chemical reactors. I've been trying to convince my folks that this is THE guy for the past year or so, but they weren't open to the idea. They were rather desperate that i should keep away from Dhaman and were scouting for a hairy brahmin boy from the maami network. ew! so one fine sunday i had to walk out on them to prove my point -- that dhaman was it and i wasnt gonna marry their hairy bram boy. Things got really messy here from the legal angle so dhaman and i got married the next day -- a court marriage, and yep, i was in jeans and a shirt:)
his folks are darn cool about the whole thing and are thrilled to have me over!
we're waiting for my folks to cool down for the traditional ceremonial wedding. let's see how things work out!

will be throwing a post-wedding party sometime in april. will keep you guys posted, hope you guys show up!

cheers!
Mrs.Taruni.D.Koka ( man, the Mrs bit makes me SOUND fat! argh!)

P.S: sorry i had to redirect you guys to my blog as gmail doesnt let me mass mail, and orkut aint letting me update my 'about me'. plus i dont have any of your numbers, so do mail them over to rtaruni@gmail.com.

Day Ten and Going Strong

I'm proud of myself. I've attended 10 days of hospital postings without bunking. I wish I could say without as much as a thought of bunking, but nay, it kindda creeped in on 5 out of the ten days. In my defense, I was still in bed when those thoughts creeped in and hence it was probably my sublimal alter ego(whose actions are unaccountable for by me) and plus, hey, I did eventually manage to haul my lazy ass to hospital! so yeh, I am still proud of myself (smug smile)

Last week I was posted at the Communicable Disease Hospital, Thondiarpet, which is an hour and 15 minute drive from my place. The drive back was taxing coz the roads were narrow and my god, the jammmmmmmmmmm! A good part of the drive was spent staring at the rear end of meanass lorries and petrified cattle that had meanass masters( whipppppppp!).
But the hospital per se was beautiful! It was clean(surprise surprise!) and HUGE!! Ok, not that huge, but I didn't quite expect to see a navigation board for a peripheral health center! I think I was expecting a small cubicle for a dispensary and a smaller one for the patient examination room and that's it.
But what we had was a airy foyer, where we interns sat, and 10 looooong wards( most of them could hold 60-100 patients). And this was just one block. There were other blocks with actual tarred roads connecting them.
Most of the cases that came in there were chicken pox/measles/cholera/mumps. Infectious diseases. I haven't had chicken pox earlier, though most of my classmates have had it in their chidhood( the merits of growing up in India). Nonetheless, I found myself sweating it out with a mask and all ,fogging up my glasses and examining a hundred off chicken pox cases. We interns had to do the pre rounds, write review notes and go for rounds with the assistant docs. Chicken pox(chi pee as we fondly diagnosed them as) ward was easy peasy save for a case with encephalitis that we had to refer to an ICU anyway. The measles ward on the other hand, was kind of a toughie. I couldn't quite hear the lungs of bawling infants/toddlers, and they just start crying when they see some one with a stethoscope and a white coat coz they invariably think we are armed with injections and that we love poking kids in the ass with those. sigh*
Beside the mundane chi pee and measles, we even had a case of Tuberous Scleroses who had come in with a history of diarrhea! The downside to all of this were the painful hours I spent examining myself for a rash after an evening of being down with a temperature. Needless to say, I was really disappointed when I couldn't come up with a rash. Dayum!
All in all, Thondiar pet was productive n nice -- the nurses were nice, I didn't sit around and swat flies and I learnt quite a handful.
Unlike the present posting at the Sexually Transmitted Diseases dept. at MMC GGH. It is just way too draaaaaaaaaaaaaaab!
Yesterday, we were sitting around in the male OP waiting for a pateint to swing in with dick troubles. But nay. Nothing happened, besides a call for a pal informing her of her granny's death(RIP)
There are about 8-10 assistant profs at the std department -- the guy docs sit around in poker formation, the lady dos pretend to keep themselves busy by flinting from room to room displaying their gaudy new saree colllection and telling the PGs off, and there are quite a handful of PGs by the way. And then there are us bored interns. And pray, where are the patients?!!
Erm, you know if I'd contracted an STD, i'd have issues walking into huge ugly dirty building that says 'STD BLOCK' in huge block letters. That , plus the fact that the GH is one place where the chances of running into a long lost pal from school aren't remote(this place is crowdedddddddddd). And having the dispensary( where patients from other departments have to queue up for their meds too) bang opposite the std block doesn't help either.

So no wonder we hardly have cases at the STD block. What an utter waste of space and doc-power. And then they gripe about how there are no docs at the peripheral health centers. hmph!
Anyway, I've gotta scoot and attend my 11th consecutive day of not-bunking. Aye aye, 10 and going strong!
And yeh., those ARE new:D!
I got brand new caps for my chipped teeth
Cheers!

How Common Is Common Sense?

I didn't go any place for a vacation. I haven't been sleeping all day long ( as i normally do on holidays). Heck, I aint even watching half a dozen movies (though I did watch a 2-3, but they dont quite add up to six!) a day or eating out everyday( the stuff that usually keeps me blissfully happy)
I have been observing.
People. Their beliefs, their reactions. their practices.
The last few days have been rather thought provoking, thoughts on myriad issues and in various fields and I intend to pen a couple of them down now.

A pal and I went to a water expo a couple of weeks ago. It was more of an engineering thing. It made me realize that engineering is by far a tougher and more challenging field to be in. All those motors! All those materials. What goes where? What and what don't go together. What stuff catches on fire at the drop of a hat! And how ,dear god, does one remember all those temperatures and pressures coz' people were talking in kelvins and kilograms and none of them had a reference book by their side.
And it made me feel reallllllly dumb! At one point, I was going to ask a PhD on ozone purifiers, "erm...so this machine of yours..., is it used for sterilization of equipments in hospitals...coz I'm a physician you see" just so those geeks don't think of me as a dumb bimbo, which I bet they did!
Well its not just the engineers who've dumbed me over. People with common sense have!

It's been brought to my notice by a pal who was injured last week at a cricket match, that Vaseline works beautifully on abrasions. I brushed him off with a " What rot! leave it alone and it'll heal. Put something on it if you want to watch it rot!"
But he decided to go with the Vaseline and hey presto, its healing beautifully, scab free and all, and apparently it'll be scar free too! gotta see that!
Now how is it, that after 4.5 years of med school, nobody told me that one is allowed to apply Vaseline on a wound? I googled it up and found an article on BMJ that supports this mode of treatment. And this is just one example of how native treatment works better than allopathy. My pal's mom, a housewife blessed with amazing culinary skills and quite a load of common sense, pointed out to me that all the antibiotic creams that are prescribed for wounds, contain paraffin/ other petroleum products, if those work, why would applying Vaseline alone not work? Now why didn't that occur to me? probably because I've got blinkers that decide on what I glean and what I don't. Happens in Nature too. Watched a programme on Discovery( at a pal's place) today that said that insects are so specialized that they eat only a special kind of leaf. They are species specific when it comes to food. And we are pretty much that, when it comes to knowledge. I have evolved to an extent , that my thoughts have been streamlined to think like an allopathic doctor who swears by the tomes and anything outside the tome doesn't strike home easily. Must shake that off, for India is a country that hasn't yet learnt to swear by Allopathic doctors. Most Indians still trust their homeopathic physicans and the unnani medications. And why? coz they work! coz they provide hope. coz don't just flatly say 'this is all we can offer' ' or 'this is what is recommended based on research'. I'm gonna try and treat beyond the textbooks. maybe i could pick up a few tricks of the trades from the patients themselves -- ask them what sort of native treatment they've tried, and look it up to see if a study has been done on that, and if not, do one in that field. Amen.
And now to answer the title Question: How common is common sense? Not too common. I recently bumped into a steel cupboard in the hostel which looked a bit like this (forgive the crude image) :


The cupboad owner must've lost the almarah's key and instead devised this ingenious way of keeping her cupboard out of bounds by looping a cycle chain to the handle and locking ( with a big heavy lock, mind you) it up through a loop above her mirror. Little did she think that the doors would swing with an open sesame if the loop around the handle is eased out, which believe me was a very easy thing to do as the chain per se was locked in a very lax position.
And for the record, I did not steal anything from my classmates cupboard, and 'locked' it back again. And the brain that came up with this innovative lock is supposedly one of the finest in the city by virtue of being a medical student at one offinest medical schools in the country.
Oh well, maybe common sense is for the common man

Movies With Subtitles

Il Postino -- one of the many movies I watched last week, was being screened at the Film Chamber, a place whose existence i wasn't aware of till last week! And it is bang in the center of the city! It's this huge place that lies on an arteriole of a lane that branches off Mount road, probably why I had trouble finding the place. I mean I really had to keep an eye out for that tiny street lest I miss the turning. One has to be a member to watch movies here, but my pal and I got in free coz we weren't regulars.
The regulars who came in were 60+ year olds, the kind of crowds one finds at carnatic concerts at the many sabhas of the city. This did strike me as odd , coz' I didn't know old folks watched Italian movies! I didn't think half the crowd capable enough to get to their seats let alone read off the subtitles in the movies! But it was nice to know that the old folks in chennai do stuff other than just nod their heads at kutcheris!
I would write a review with synopsis and all if not for the tiresome research (I could plagiarize from imdb.com, but I'd rather not) involved in assembling one -- procuring a list of actors, directors and comparing their work with others and their own past works. and I find those kind of reviews meaningless. All the charts and name quoting are for those who make a living out of making charts and for those who figure in the charts! For someone not in the film industry, movies are just plain uncomplicated entertainment. And sometimes, thought provoking.

il Postino(The Postman) was a very powerful movie. You can imagine how powerful it must've been if it made such an impression on some one who just read off the subtitles. The story line was fairly simple -- about how a guy serves as the postman to Pablo Neruda, the famous poet who had to flee Chile and take in a tiny island, and how Pablo Neruda influences him. The postman, Mario, always in awe of the poet, more so for the things poets get out of being poets( the women who clamor after them!) requests Pablo to pen down a sonnet for him , the subject of the sonnet being the gal he likes, Beatrice. Pablo refuses, but offers him a fresh notebook, that he personally autographs in front of Beatrice. But try as he might, Mario can only draw a rotund moon in a futile attempt to write a sonnet. Over the months however , Mario learns about how poets are inspired, what metaphors are, and before he knows it, he was dropping metaphors all over the place.
I don't know why but somehow the cadence of the movie reminded me of Oldman & The Sea by Ernest Hemingway which is surprising coz the movie swings from heights of merriment( when Mario finally marries Beatrice), to despair and disappointment(when Mario doesn't hear from Pablo after he returns to Chile, save for an official letter from his secretary asking for the return of his things), to touching and oh-god-sweet( when Mario records the sounds of the island -- the sea, the wind, the church bell... for the poet despite the fact that the poet seemed to care less) to ironic when Mario dies just before the recital of his first poem at a political rally) to downright sadness( when the poet revisits the island and learns of Mrio's death, and listens to the tape Mario was recording at the fatal political meet that captured the excitement, eagerness and ectasy mario felt at having finally written a poem all by himself and the chaotic moments before his death) There was a poem that rolled up at the end of the movie, but I didn't read it coz I was just staring at the screen , unfocused.
I didn't quite relate to the communism and the political bits...it was the story of one man( the post man specifically) which moved me. I don't know why. M aybe it was his naivety, or his unfaltering hopes that 'Maybe tomorrow the poet will write me a sonnet for Beatrice ' or his eagerness to learn how to write poetry, learn how to invent metaphors and his undying efforts at inventing them or his ironic death on the brink of his recital of his first poem. I can't quite capture in words, what that movie did to me. I can't. and maybe that's why it's such a spectacular movie-- one that leaves u speechless and touched.

There was such an unimaginable heavy lull after il Postino, and I'd have loved to dwell a bit on the irony, when the folks at film chamber started screening their next movie - le fate ignorante, a not so powerful movie, but interesting nonetheless. It was a modern day movie about a widow who discovers that her late hubby was involved in an extra marital affair with, not another woman, but another man. It was kind of weird when they showed her hanging out with her late hubby's gay partner who by the by lived with a bunch of other homosexuals, prostitutes and transsexuals. The best part of the movie was the sunday lunches -- the spirit of the queers was magnificently captured in those scenes, so much so that I wish I had pals who were as gay as the gay gays!

Anyway, the thing I was wondering about these international films is this: how much of the real power is lost in the translation coz it didn't seem like much? and why didn't it seem like much?
On post-mortem, both movies did have a pretty strong impact though they were both being read off the screen rather than watched. I still emoted with the postman, with the widow, felt the joy and the pain and all!
What made me do that? Was it like reading a book with background sounds? I suspect that the tone at which the actor delivers his speech does help fine tune the feeling of being ' in' the movie. But am I not missing out on a great deal of visual cues from the actor? Does my eye flint from bottom subtitle to actor's eye? which do i see first? what is the impact of the first on the second? what if i skip the first? or what if i skip the second, would the movie still have the same impact?
I hope to answer these questions by the end of this week. I'll be watching a couple of other international films. Let's see how those turns out!

My TV-less Life

We are a dying breed in Chennai. oh wait, we are probably the only ones left probably because we were the only ones to start with! We are a family of four that houses the following:

a. Four PCs only one of which is functional and another which is a company provided laptop which stays ours as long as we are their's(teh company's that is). The other two 'puters rest atop a wooden cupboard and serve as the loo for dust mites, the poop of which invariably trigger an Ig E mediated reaction in three of the four above mentioned family members.

b.A possessed JVC music player that does not play Cd's or tapes and that cannot be controlled with the remote control that came with it though the cd tray keeps frisking out when no one is around. Spooky, yes.

c. A personal portable digital player for every member, that has redefined fashion in a lot of ways. For example, gone are the days when the women of the household(my mom and i) sport a golden necklace. Instead we wear our Yepp /Creative, and seriously, THAT is a lot funkier than a piece of function less metal, albeit precious.

I shall terminate the list here to start another one which will point out that

a. I wasn't trying to show off

b. The list is not complete, we do have a fridge ,micro wave etc, but they do not serve to highlight point c though they support point d.

c. A TV didn't figure in the top three of my list. And that's what makes us a dying breed.

d. We aint paupers who can't afford a TV.

The History:

We did have a TV. Two in fact, four if you include the portable ones that my folks got for their folks, which they returned to us coz the screens were too small.None of them count anyway, coz we had them for a negligible amount of time.

What happened to the TVs?
We sold them.

why?
coz' my mom decided so..

why?

Part One: The Promises
Being TV-less ensure that the our grey matter stays grey and not some brown rotting mass which apparently iswhat happens in a TV addicts braint. It would ensure that violence,sex and advertisements don't corrupt our moral judgment of things. It would ensure that our family stays together for it does away with the remote control fights that has known to push families apart. this in turn would ensure more quality time with the family. We'd also turn out to be nicer human beings( in what way, i don't know, but if mom says it is so, then it IS so. mum is the word.)
in short, it's good for the soul , in a truly incomprehensible way,

Why?

Part Two: The Real Thing
coz she wanted our lives to be miserable and unenlightened(which she obviously thought was good for the soul). So when everybody in school was trying out the ' how you doing?' stunt of Joey of friends...we'd scratch our heads and say, ' yeh am good, whats with the drawl n nod dude?' And yeh, we'd get laughed at initially for not having recognised the joey imitation and later pardoned (not our fault that we didn't know who this joey guy was) and pitied (after we spewed our sob stories of our sad TV-less lives). and finally respected and awed at , for the TV is almost equated to a basic need isn't it, like food,water,shelter and TV?
no more like, pizzas,coke,room-with-ac and TV and now the internet.

ok, here, i'd like to pause and reflect on how lucky i am.
oh hear ye god, i'm thankful, that i have been blessed with the internet. aye. and with an awesome speed at that!

ok, so it is hard to believe that a family in Chennai has lived without a TV under their roof.
Sans set-up box, believable. but no TV? That's like a childhood devoid of the right kind of stimulus for a growing child! or worse, like being an orphan!
But we did survive, albeit with the ugly scars of ignorance that could have been prevented by the blinding enlightenment via the Discovery channel or Sun TV. Or heck, even the Doordarshan!
And when I think back, we didn't have much of the quality time with the family either. We don't do dinners out or for that matter, 'in' together for we don't have a couch in front of the TV-that's-not-there that usually serves to bond other families together.
We don't know half the things that are happening in the world. I do realize that internet is a good source of news and all, but heck, there are a lot more fun things to do on the internet than read drab news that doesn't seem to affect me. Instead we(bro n i ) resort to borrowed pirated Cds**(bad for society, punishable crime and all) and bumming around other people's houses for the TV( wrong motive for a friendship) and fight over the one functioning computer that can be used for murfing around.
Life without a TV hasn't made it any better, but it sure does suck!
* see, i did warn u in my previous post that my posts would contain rants, raves and craves.
** disclaimer: don't sue us. this is not a confession
pssst: amma don't read this on Mother's day.

Where I stand now

ok, technically, I'm sitting at my comp. on a chair. which ain't too comfortable coz' neither the ischium(ischia(?) @ plural - the butt bones) nor the wooden chair I'm sitting on have the consistency of a cheese cake. sigh* how i pine for those. cheese cakes that is. anyway, the land i live in right now doesn't quite know how or what cheese cakes are made. double sigh*
I live in Chennai. Madras as it was formerly fondly knowns as. It's a dirty old city along the east coast of the Indian peninsula ( hey this thing has spell check! I'd never have spelled peninsula right otherwise) I hated this place when i first got here( a decade ago) and i guess the place grows on you. it did on me at least. love it to bits now, dirt, traffic, local cheese cakes and all.
so that settles the geographical location: i stand on Madrasi terrain for the record.

I'm all of 23 and it doesn't seem like it's been 23 years at all! it seems like i graduated out of primary school only a year ago, and then again, it seems like i signed up at med school eons ago! heck, WHEN am i gonna be a doc?! A shrink might point out that it seems that way coz i had a horrible childhood and a wonderful time at med school. nay. on the contrary i had an awesome childhood and a horrible horrible time at med school. ok, not that horrible. but not that good either. i especially hate the studying bits of med school, not to mention that the day starts darn too early for a medico. this settles the chronology, which by the way seems rather warped most of the time for me, and i do hope to sort it out in these rantings of mine.

Most of my rantings will be rantings. raves and craves too sometimes. but mostly Cribs,Gripes and the like. no, i'm not a pessimist expecting LIFE to dish me out the worst of its stock( i realise that if i had the worst of the stock, i'd probably be hypoglycemic, blind with a subnormal IQ, hypoglycemic being the worst of the lot. i need food. kapish?)
but LIFE has dealt me a few hard blows( hard is a very very relative term) and i might just about cover them in my blogs. might. and oh, i have two artificial teeth. one of the hardest blows LIFE has dealt me.

see, toldya hard is a very very relative term.

i don't work. i aint a student. I'm in between. Hope to metamorphosize into an intern in a couple of weeks. hope coz, its gonna take a miracle for me to clear my final year.fingers crossed. toes and eyes too*

i started this post thinking that it'll end up in a gooey mess, coz i didn't think i knew where i stood. but, what do u know?! i DO know. am 23 and aging, a budding doctor, blissfully unaware of what is in store for me and I'm rooted in India. a country i hope to explore in the course of my lifetime. well it didn't turn out too gooey coz this post has been all about the facts, hasn't it?
and for the record, i am NOT fat. a fact. plump, maybe. a hazy fact. but a fact nonetheless.
cheers,
quack*