Being Anti-Social

Up until the late nineties, it was truly a joyous time- these last ten days of December, the first ten days of January, Valentine's Day, Diwali, and birthdays. We would wait anxiously for that time of the afternoon when Postman would ring the bell, drop the letters and be on his way before we could run to see who had received a card or a letter. It was exciting, to put it mildly, and the memory is still warm. 

The envelopes- red, pink, lemon yellow, green, even a dull grey, white. even the blue inland envelope; to whom was it addressed; trying to guess the handwriting; then checking the stamp for date and place, and if it could be removed and reused; and then, irrespective of everything, taking our letter/ card to a quiet corner of the house, reading, smiling/ frowning/ laughing/ crying/ blushing/ getting angry- depending upon the contents; immediately penning down a reply, and contributing to country's economy by posting it as promptly. Archies' remained our most frequented shop until those late nineties! Ah! the charms of the good old days. 

Now, frankly, since the e-cards came, the entire art of greeting has lost its warmth. In fact, as the year draws to a close, I am dreading it- no, not the new beginning but the deluge of WhatsApp messages, clogging of FB wall, mass emails, and jamming of the network because everyone is busy forwarding their New Year wishes. 

There is no personalised thought, no real effort- someone else seems to read our mind, we tag our friends and share it/ forward it. How wow is that??? To compliment it, there is no desire to even 'save' these messages! In comparison, I still have cards and letters from my friends and family - which I regularly received until the birth of my first one (after that sadly, technology took over to a large extent), and sometimes I still read them; and they most definitely, take me down a certain memory lane.

This year, I started my own thing- I reverted back to the age-old custom of calling; actually calling friends and relatives on their special days instead of the e-thing. And I can tell you, even a 10 minutes (because it was long -distance) call made me feel more connected than an email, an ecard, a post on their wall, a Whatsapp or WeChat message, or anything in that sphere could ever do. However, given the fact that technology has certainly made staying connected easier and more affordable for everyone, I would be happy e-messaging as long as the same message is not meant for the entire world!

Personally, there are no new year resolutions, not yet, except this: I will not even open mass messages, forwarded videos, and such. May you find courage too! 

On the Other Side of the Fence

There is a very fine line between two sides of this fence.

I stay on my side; I become a patient. A typical patient who trusts and doubts doctors with the same fervour, who imagines the doctor will be able to cure me, who wants to practically hug the doctor when something terrible has been fixed, and who wants to find another, ‘more reliable’ doctor when there is no relief, and who even tells other friends who is a ‘good’ doctor to consult and why.

I jump across and I come to belong to the side of doctors. I see their viewpoint, their tensions, their joys and their sorrows.

My father is visiting us, and yesterday, when he went for his walk, a child fell down in the park and started crying. He could not see the child in pain and offered to look at his presumably hurt leg. He did not know the parents or the child, or anyone for that matter, and he could have ignored and continued walking like the rest of us do, but no- he could not walk away. Being a doctor is what he is, has been, for the last 50 years! When he came home, he was very happy because the child had gone home running!

My brother would have done the same, or even my brother-in-law, or even my sister, or my sister-in-law. I guess, once you are a doctor, you can’t help being one when you see someone who you think you can help.

I have seen this side of the fence all my life. When we were small kids, we would hear the door-bell ring all times of the day and night, and our father would never turn away a patient even though it was a clinic, not a 24-hour hospital with ER or A&E facilities. I see the same now- with rest of my family- who all are, shall I say, unfortunately, in the business of saving lives?

I say unfortunately because saving lives is no longer just a noble thing- it is a complex equation of money, facilities, accessibility, ability and destiny.  My brother and brother-in-law are both neonatologists- very sensitive area because it has a lot of emotional investment, both for them and for the patients’ families. They are based in small cities where such level or quality of healthcare had been unheard of before, and for everything bordering on ‘serious’ or life threatening, you had to run to the metro cities like Delhi, and wait to get treated in the maze of super-speciality hospitals, where even trying to get doctor’s attention needs effort; or die on the way because there was nothing else that could be done! But it is not just making such a facility available in a small city- it is what comes with it!  They give up their mental peace and pleasures, and in return, sometimes they smile when they win love of a child and his family, and at other times, they go through intense mental agony because in spite of their best efforts, they are unable to save a child, and feel responsible for it even when we all know that not only our body but God also works in mysterious ways. They understand the pain of his family, but there is nothing they can do except feeling solidarity with the family.

I have seen both of them spending entire nights in the NICU to treat a serious patient, discussing cases at the dining table, missing their own kids’ birthdays and school performances only because there was a patient admitted who could not be left alone even for a minute, being up and back in NICU at the slightest ring of the phone, being available 24x7 even over the phone, and what not. They impress me, and I love them not because they are family but because there is a passion involved there. They give me faith, and confidence that there will always be some doctors who are not in for the money, or quick gains…there are some who really want us to get well, and who are happy when we do feel better.

On the other side of the fence, this means that I give benefit of doubt to the doctor when his treatment does not meet my expectations, change doctors when I am unhappy with the way I am being treated, even not recommend him when someone asks, may be even complain to the authorities if I feel serious damage has been done due to the doctor’s negligence, but….remember, doctor is just another human being who has worked really hard to be in a position to save lives, but he is not God, and like rest of us, doctors also do not have all the answers, or any magical powers or potions. 

Do Talk to Strangers....

While going through my drafts, I found this one, written a few years ago. Thought to share it because this was exactly the topic I wanted to write on today! So, here it is:

I met her at the clinic. She was dressed in a dark blue/ black trouser and a white T-shirt. She looked kind, yet, I had my own trepidations. I had no clue how was she going to be. As we started talking, I looked at her face and concluded that she was at least 10-12 years younger to me. I noted, absent-mindedly, how baked, brown my skin looked against her white; how wrinkled my hands looked against her young, supple and moisturised skin. I wondered if the thought of skin colour, race, or ethnicity had ever crossed her mind while treating her patients.

We didn't talk much in our first meeting except the evaluation. However, I was intrigued how such a young girl, obviously from UK (her accent gave that away!) had left her home to come to the land of sand. I wanted to know what had prompted her to do so. I wanted to know if this was a choice she had made or did it just happen to her. Was she married, or living alone here? (Us nosy Indians!! Or, more positively, we are naturally curious!!)

Our next meeting and the two more after that, and we got talking, I mean, really talking. We talked about her choice of profession, pregnancy, kids, deliveries, side effects of the same, her own aches and pains, her family, my family, and what not....and then she told me she was leaving and moving back. Her husband had been transferred. (I did think- would her husband have agreed to move, leaving his practice behind if his wife was the one being transferred- but didn't ask her.) We bade farewells and hoped to see each other again someday, and hopefully for better reasons.

As I said that bye, I wondered  how we had shared a small but warm bond. I could not help wondering again how easy it is to talk  to total strangers. Why is it that with total strangers, or people we meet by chance, we never think about any repercussions of our confessions and deepest feelings and fears while with our closest friends and family, we are worried that they will judge us, and might even share our 'secrets'  with our other 'friends' or family?

Is it similar to the comfort one draws in being anonymous, untraceable? Is it because we know that we don't know them well enough to run the risk of common friends, and hence social judgement? Or, is it  just the positive vibes that assure us? 

Yet, we make the mistake of misjudging people all so often. We regret. We promise ourselves never to trust another person again - and yet again, every now and then, someone comes along, in a new or unusual situation, full of those positive, comforting vibes, disarms us, allows us to bring our guard down, and relieve ourselves of our emotional stress- even if for a little while. 

May everyone have more such encounters! We all need a sympathetic ear every now and then, don't we?

A word of caution: however disarmed you feel, however warm the positive aura of the person might be, DO NOT give out your passwords, credit card number, CVV, your kids' personal details etc. etc. etc.- you get the drift, I hope.

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L'Affaire

OK! I am finally convinced that I will be like fish out of water when we move back to India. Why, it already seems like a different country! For example, a friend told me yesterday about her friend's extramarital affair that has been going on for a few years now. She did not want to share the 'secret' but the pressure of keeping it for so long had started getting on her nerves. And since I do not know her friend, she could safely use A and B instead of their real names, without a threat to their private and public lives. 

To say I was shocked, would be an under-statement because these two people in question were not some teenagers; high on hormones, confused, infatuated, experimenting until they met the right people....no, these were grown ups- people in their forties, people with families where they play the role of parents to their children, and caretakers for their aging parents, people with long-standing marriages where they shared history and future, people who could very well comprehend the consequences of their actions but they just chose to follow their heart (?). Well- this must be what they call mid-life crisis then. Like no one told that marriages are not all fairy-tale 'happily ever-after' affairs until you find it for yourself  that there is no such thing as a 'perfect marriage', no one told about mid-life crisis either! 

Extra-marital affairs are not new to mankind but they have, historically, held the status of being taboo, an exception rather than the norm.....so what has happened now? When did the moral code change so much that people now 'want to experiment outside marriage', with or without the knowledge of their spouses? Whatever happened to the old-fashioned covert appreciation of another person's husband or wife or partner, and leaving it at that? Is it really normal now for people to look for a little extended comfort and excitement outside marriage when they start seeing their own marriage as stagnant, and want to do nothing to improve it? Or are there any other reasons too? 

Looking at my face, my friend said I was over-reacting....this was 'almost the norm', at least in metros! Is it? I am not judging anyone but it would be interesting to know what motivates, gives courage to people to break the promises of fidelity, without guilt. And, equally interesting to know if they would be so forgiving of their partner's/ spouse's little experiments too?