Doc n Doc

Last few minutes of the day. Fatigue in my nerves and a good buddy beside my glass of vodka.

Me: But what happened today at work?

Anoop: Chuck work man,..let’s discuss something else.

Me: What do you think about the saree man? I love the saree. I have not seen any decent research on this piece of garment which has attracted me so much. I mean there is so much to it. It can be used in a lot of ways from being conservative to being amorous.

Anoop: Know what,…in Kerala the saree has evolved so much and for that matter the ‘mundu’ is what used to be and the blouse is a addition of recent years

Me: Yeah man, that reminds me about a recent Supreme court judgement in which the judge had compared the addition of a blouse in the attire of women with Kerala to justify the ban on Jallikattu in Tamilnadu. And I am kind of mixed man in my response to it.

Anoop: But these kinds of things are part of the socio-cultural milieu. We have the huge spanish bulls which are let loose on the streets every year, and of course we have the matadors and bull-fights.

Me: Kerala is a beautiful place man

Anoop: You should visit Kerala once man. I will take you to some beautiful places which are not mainstream.

Me: India is a beautiful country. I mean,…we have so much variety and so much to discover in this country.

Anoop:One of my friends who stays in the U.S commented about the hypocrisy of India. That was the last straw. I mean people get so enamoured with that country.

Me: Yeah man,..think about it,..most of my cousins are in the U.S and some more are work in progress. I simply do not understand. Our country will soon be a country of faggots, old buggers who have sent their kids to the U.S and a few patriots like us.

Anoop: U shud visit Kerala once man. It is a beautiful place.

Data loss due to muddled mind…

Anoop: But why don’t people understand the potential that is India. I mean we know english, are intelligent. Soon we can become a 24/7 nation man. Catering to the needs of the entire world.

Me: But what about that cable which got cut a few days back? We shud sue Egypt man.

Data loss again

Anoop: Let’s call her man

Me: Let me get her number

We lambast a fellow mallu over the phone. Drunken laughter.

Me: Let’s go and talk to Zerin.

Drunken Hi to Zerin and Abhisar.

Expression of surprise and mocking smiles on the face. Expression of “Bloody drunkards on face”

Me: Well done Gerrad,…

Loud guffaws of laughter from Anoop and Abhisar. I am anywayz laughing at my joke.

Me: Tell me one thing, why do u watch a match between teams which are only bound by a thread of financial considerations?

Somebody in the room agrees with me

Me: There is no such thing as a team Liverpool or Team Arsenal. Why do u watch these matches man?

Anoop: And Liverpool is such a small place man. I mean, not even the size of Kerala. Kerala is a beautiful place man. How can u respect a team which names itself after that place man? (Laughs at his own joke,..I don’t remember if I laughed or not)

Data loss due to u know what

Me: We never had dinner

Anoop: Didn’t we have dinner?

Me: I am going to have dinner.

Anoop: But didn’t we have dinner?

Data loss due to u know what?

Zerin: When did u guys start drinking?

Anoop: I drink MC because it is cheap

Me: Why don’t u drink with us?

Hahahahahahaha

Feel like a human being

Travelling down outer ring road. Saw an accident victim in the first few minutes post-accident. He was right below the rear end of a lorry. His bike was badly smashed in the front and so was he. He was bleeding from the nose and his ear. Not very good signs. Parked my bike by the side of the road and tried to see if some first aid was possible. I weaved my way through oncoming cars to beg for a first aid kit. No car would stop in the first place and nobody would even look at my supplicative self.

Got a first aid kit, only to realise that nobody was calling for an ambulance. As I was dialling for an ambulance, I realised that a better idea would be to just put him in an auto and get him to the nearest hospital. Rushed him to a hospital nearby. Docs, the real ones, told me he was sloshed. Retrieved his phone and called up his friends. They were there in 20 minutes and once I was confident that they could take care, I left.

One of his friends thanked me. I said that it was normal to help. He said he had seen a guy dead on the road because people hadn’t helped. It all boiled down to the golden hour, the first one hour post-injury.

Things which stuck on my mind are that the people who helped were people on two-wheelers and pedestrians. It included the auto driver who did not mind blood on the rear seat of his auto and the possibility of a police hassle if asked to bear witness. No car stopped. People in cars would just peer and drive away. I can understand what might have run through their minds. But it is sad that people assume such things would not happen to them.

But at the end of the day, I felt this is the first worthwhile thing that I have ever done. I consider saving a life to be next only to education when you transform lives. And though I am a doctor, who has not practised in three years, I am still not in the business of saving lives. This felt immensely satisfying.

Thank god I was there.

Zapped in Bangalore!

We have dime a dozen portals for information about Bangalore. But something which catches my attention about all these sites is the generic nature of information and the lack of any specificity. They create more clutter than actually helping out any particular search for information. They seem to suffer from the same problem as with statistical information provided by the Government of India. We can get information about a lot of topics, but the relevance and usefulness of the information is circumspect.

So for a person like me who has just shifted into Bangalore, there is ample information about everything, but most of it is useless and/ or outdated. Just yesterday I had a look at a ‘Bangalore shopping guide’. I wanted to buy a pair of jeans and I look in the shopping section and there listings only for expensive, designer stores. I am simply not able to understand on what basis they have decided that only people with loads of disposable money will look up a shopping guide which doesn’t seem to expensive.

Data data everywhere, not a drop of data which makes sense. Forget the ‘rhyme’ for a moment. Will ya?