HARK YE INDIANS

The Great Indian Corruption has not decelerated one bit in its path of rampage. even after we thought that following the social stir three weeks back that there would be a "time-off" however short that may be. Well we got it all wrong. Scams and shameful acts continue to occupy the front pagers.

Anyway you and me haven't been bothered at all (as usual, have we? -Cheers to that) while enjoying the national primetime show at home as UP police 'investigates' the case of national athlete Arunima with the premeditation (brilliant detective work indeed) that the athlete had most probably attempted a suicide.. Indeed. How could I think that there were robbers/chain snatchers on that train? After all it is UP - Mayavati in charge - keeping Dr.Ambedkar's torch alight and shining.

Another "currently running to packed houses" show originates from Haryana, and the very place our MaLe pugilists hail from - Vijender, Akhil : Didn't we worship them when they won medals? Of course we did! We are proud of Bhiwani! So what if two ladies, rephrased - "fallen females" were beaten to death by 6 MEN, as the great town watched silently, I repeat - silently. And Haryana's chief minister has been prompt to assert himself with Haryanvi Masculine Strength, and "quote" : No law and order problems in 'my' state. Point taken. Of course, the men were practising 'punches' (for almost 70 minutes - that's a mind-blowing 23 rounds in the arena) on two expenable and disposable sand-bags, Sorry body-bags -- doesn't matter, does it, my friend? Of course not..as long as the punches were finding their target.. And thus spake the Haryanvi CM : All is well! Of course, we loved the song, you and me, didn't we?And the movie too. The way you and me have been sitting at home, over the last 3 weeks, patting our butts and screaming these three lines in sequence..

To come to think of it, we were shouting down corrupt politicans and bureaucrats to oblivion, or hell.. Whatever. Tell me one thing my friend//my moralistic, courageous Indian brother/sister- have you seen, do you know, or have you tried to know (in case you are in the UK or USA) that there is another Tamasha going on in your country (oh of course you can call it 'our country'!):

The MPs slugfest in the proceedings of the PAC which's supposed to tag and nail the 'irresponsible', (was that too strong a word?)people questioning their accountability over the Rs.70,000 crores India lost in its 2G spectrum allocation. I haven't moved the skin covering my Holy Indian Gluteus Maximus an inch,
because my skin is 6 inches thin (the thinness is decreasing by the day) ... Just wanted to know the number of inches in your case -- no not the thinness, the distance you have moved 'yours' (I was just looking for an voice in agreement)

They(politicos) are also throwing muck at each other in debates over the latest release "Peter Davy Arms Drop": when the issue is how much our intelligence agencies and our Politicians had been compromising our national security with our belief in them. Down with them!
It's good that no spontaneous voice of protest has been heard recently. Now of course yes, we are all Indians, and I don't know about you but I don't stand up, or even put my hand up because I am proud of my Self-Respect and no way, shall let it get dirty just because some acts of lumpenism are taking place in a god-forsaken somewhere, an alibi that reflects my Dignity. (what's yours mate? Just between us..)

And why should we? Anna Hazare is there to take the dirt. And of course we shall claim our stakes in the spoils of victory... Our utter inertness, and richly traditional, and proudly hereditary Apathy has given so much motivation to the frail septuagenarian who conveniently does the dirty job for us. We should be -- (we are the descendants of those who contemplated on sequencing 'Shrutis' 5,500 years back), we know them by the word and thoroughly so. And we've been applying our Wisdom practically -- we should be as Detached as possible, from what actually is an illusion -- [well except for the spoils of victory that might be gained for us by the same frail septuagenarian who conveniently does the dirty job for us)

Have you written a letter? Have you uttered one word in protest? Are you illiterate? I know what you are going to shoot off what remains conveniently shut when it matters : "one can't do it alone".. I guess Anna Hazare is the Indian version of the Hamlin piper, that when he took the first step, everything followed. Why bother about others' tapping toes? Are You a paraplegic? Or a vegetable?
Of course you have got jobs to do.. You are all physicians, MBAs, Teachers, IT professionals...(I can see the Indian halo around your head). Or you are still expecting the 72 year. old to speak on your behalf ?

What are you, yourself? You point fingers towards politicos.. Stand in front of a mirror and point the finger at what is looking back at you. Maybe something will happen (if you are not an narcissist that is, frozen in front of that mirror, lost in your proudly burning eyes.)
I know you will get this mail out of your head the moment you finish it reading it. You are not Capable of doing Anything otherwise..You are the Great Indian Sample of Shamelessness.
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 Sent from my BlackBerry® 
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri
Consultant Physician (special interest in
Cardiology & Critical Care)
Mumbai, India.
@ drchodri@yahoo.co.in
@ dranirbanchaudhuri@gmail.com
@ philodoc_2@hotmail.com
http://jogyou963.blogspot.com
http://anirbanspeak.blogspot.com
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Everywhere I go I find that a poet has
been there before me..(Sigmund Freud)
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AMAR SINGH HAS LOST IT?

18/04/20011 - 1845 hrs.

Amar Singh is holding a press conference right now , it is being telecast live all over India right now.

Could any body please explain to Indian citizens about why are we listening to this utter unadulterated crap? I think someone, minister, politician, government , opposition, social activist, editors who care ONE bit about India's people, owe this one to us before we really go berserk out of frustration.
These people, these circumstances , these gimmicks, lies, ultimately drive the Indian common man to reactionary emotions. It is Good not to have M K Gandhi around -- he would committed suicide any way..

Unfortunate. Very unfortunate. Our country doesn't seem to have much of a future. Darkness all the way.
Sent from my BlackBerry®
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri
Consultant Physician (@Cardiology &
Critical Care)
Mumbai, India
http://jogyou963.blogspot.com
http://anirbanspeak.blogspot.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------
"Inherent in every Intention and Desire is
the mechanics for its Fulfilment."
- - - Khalil Gibran

THE BEST MEDICINE

I have been suffering from this neuropathy affecting my left hand over the last 6 months. Clinically one would brand the nerve disorder as Left Ulnar Mononeuropathy - the ulnar nerve is one of the 2 main nerves supplying the arm and hand - in my case it is the left one and it is my left hand that has been affected. I've been experiencing an ever-increasing pain, to the point of being excruciating,and an almost constant, weirdly tingling sensation in my left hand, particularly in the ring and little fingers and the area of the palm below them which do not exactly move the way I wish them to.

The condition seems to have developed, according to my neurologist,due to extensive playing of guitar, an exercise I had indulged in with passion, in my late teens and early-20s, when I used to play in the college rock-band which had a rather brief yet excitingly joyous professional stint later on. I had formally learnt classical and folk guitar (like flamenco,the Catalan folk) which is played finger-style, and that requires a 'classical' acoustic guitar which traditionally sports a much broader finger-board than usual. That necessitated my left fingers to stretch extensively, and all the more so when I used to hold the broken chords in the background when we played those Scorpions numbers(I still remember those initially painful hours during rehearsals as we played songs like "When The Smoke Is Going Down").

Over the last few months the left ring and little fingers had forced my hand into a clawed shape of submission, the fingers getting contracted and flexed at the little bone joints, a seemingly eternal state of Spasm that was not exactly painless. I find that rather ironic as the name of my rock-band (well it was 'mine' just as it was any other co-member's) was SPASM too, a name I'd kept myself along with Miku, the bass-guitarist who went on to become a hand-surgeon himself later on. Now that's one of 'those quirks' of destiny, isn't it?

Coming back to my neuropathy, the pain had, at one point of time, increased so much that even the strongest painkillers were not being effective, and I had become literally sick of pain-killing injections. Nothing seemed to work, and the fact that I could no more hold chords, or even use my left fingers while playing guitar(ultimately I had to quit my favourite pass-time activity)only added to my frustrated,depressing woes.

Three weeks back,as I was having my morning cold coffee, my 21 month-old daughter tiptoed her way into the hall, nimble-footed, and stood in front of me,looking at me with her sparkling, bright eyes. I knew that look. She wanted to climb up and sit on my stomach, straddling her legs on the sides facing her father - her favourite "seat" in the morning, as she would excitedly tell me how the pigeons had looked at her from outside the kitchen window or how busily the crows had pecked at the crumbs on the parapet. That day I found it difficult to give her a hand to take her morning seat. The pain was too much in my left hand which found itself too weak to carry her weight. I knew she would be disappointed.

As I looked back at her eyes with helpless apology written all over my face and with a tinge of guilt too,trying to shake my afflicted hand off the pain, I spoke to her in my Bengali mother-tongue,telling her,"Aaj baba'r haate khub byatha je.."(which vaguely translates into - "But there is too much pain in father's hands today...".
She isn't too familiar with that language as her father has got only a handful of relatives and none in Mumbai to pay the occasional visit so that the language is spoken. I really don't know what she understood, but she didn't show any disappointment. What she showed in her eyes was gentle and tender care. She took my hand in her soft, little fingers kissing it mildly, looked up at me and said in broken English,"Baba?pain no...Baba?pain no no.."..

Well,my left hand hasn't exactly stopped paining since, but that was the last time I felt the pain. I have not needed any pain-killers since then simply because I don't feel any pain anywhere, anymore. And as I watch my daughter growing up each day, every hour, every minute, I just wonder how beautiful life can be for anybody in the simplest of ways, in spite of all the pains and troubles,the aches and breaks it keeps on dishing out on a regular basis. No matter how much one cries, life always gets back to you as a great leveller, giving you something to smile about, and perhaps with a little reward at the end. It is just only a matter of time.

Let it be..
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry®
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri
Consultant Physician (@Cardiology &
Critical Care)
Mumbai, India
http://jogyou963.blogspot.com
http://anirbanspeak.blogspot.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------
"Inherent in every Intention and Desire is
the mechanics for its Fulfilment."
- - - Khalil Gibran

TOLERANCE A VIRTUE?

[[ thoughts penned down in a moment of frustrated anger few months back, when there was this meeting of seditionists in Delhi.. Still relevant after all these months..]]
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 India seems hell-bent on propagating Tolerance on an unprecedented, to such an extent that the average Indian common man shall perhaps think and act in the most reactionary of ways.
Of course India stands as an example of true democracy and the way an Indian enjoys his fundamental rights and individual freedom, as empowered by our Constitution, is perhaps the best amongst all democracies.

We may argue over this fact, as to how the extensive political corruption in the government and bureaucracy continues to exist and make its way to the front page of the morning newspaper or in TV news channels on a daily basis if Our Democracy, strengthened by the voices of the masses empowered to enjoy their constitutional rights, is truely practised.

But we shouldn't forget the fact that we come to know about our political corruption through the media which has never been gagged by the ruling section in the history of independent India. (barring the controversial regime when Emergency was imposed upon the entire nation by the Indian govt in the early 70s) -- it is the freedom of thought, speech and action bestowed upon by our constitution that allows the media to take up its role as a constructive critic of our governance, as a source of extensive information to our citizens, and even in the role of a virtual vigilante in face of extensive, scandalous corruption. The question is - -in order to maintain our "traditional" sanctity of Democracy as a primary priority,are our governing institutions becoming weak, too weak to preserve democracy, thereby eroding the rights of a common man in the process, to practise it?

When it comes to international politics, India has always been too accommodating and submissive. Though the status of India in the United Nations continues to be revered to some extent by the West, the East and our immediate neighbours, recent developments reveal that India is getting arm-twisted by her neighbours, effectively losing out when engaged in bureaucratic battles.

It is sending the wrong message. Otherwise Ajmal Amir Kasab wouldn't be surviving till now, being lavishly paid for by the tax-payer's money, our money. It is incredibly outrageous to see him tossing the entire country's self-respect wildly, being taken by the scruff, spitting at our judiciary, practically at our faces. And we continue to indulge him.

Why is a brute of a man with pervert homophobia, who killed innocent people mercilessly in Mumbai on the fateful night of 26/11, being continued to allow to live, to make a mockery of our judicial system, spitting at our traditional tolerance?

When he is ignoring the court proceedings dealing with the formalization of his death-sentence, demanding to be tried in a USA court under the umbrella of human rights commissions, he is insulting our democracy, he is insulting our constitution, he is insulting us, Indian citizens.

Why are we being having to put up with the audacious obnoxity, that too at our own expense? Is it not denigrating our constitutional rights to live, think and express freely with Dignity? What is the priority of the federal structure of our Democracy --- to let us citizens to live with freedom and dignity, or to be politically correct in the international society? It is better to act brute rather than being hypocritically tolerant. Kasab and the political will of the country from he hails should be "neutralised" openly to set a precedent, a strong warning to everybody who thinks of harming Indian democracy.

Kasab's lawyer attributes his client's behaviour almost to the point of justification to the solitary confinement which imprisons Kasab to make him Suffer! But isn't THAT exactly the idea behind one's punishment by the judiciary-suffering by imprisonment?  India needs to put a stop to this nonsensical charade of a politically correct democracy.

Terrorism cannot be dealt with an intent that is guided by the need of rehabilitation. Otherwise  people like Geelani, one of the major secessionists of Kashmir shall continue to spit venom at our Democracy's face, being allowed to participate in seditious meetings as like in New Delhi yesterday in the presence of "humanists" like Arundhati Roy (so much so for these supposedly intellectual humanists).

Freedom of Speech indeed!
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Sent from my BlackBerry®
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri
Consultant Physician (@Cardiology &
Critical Care)
Mumbai, India
http://jogyou963.blogspot.com
http://anirbanspeak.blogspot.com
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"Inherent in every Intention and Desire is
the mechanics for its Fulfilment."
- - - Khalil Gibran

Drafting of the Jan Lokpal Bill

For the first time in the history of Indian democracy, Indian citizens shall be participating in a direct meeting with the government's ministers today, a meeting which carries immense practical significance.

It was significant that in yesterday's press conference the civil society members of the panel clarified all points of ambiguity, and the 'no-nonsense' stance that they have taken up to reveal in the press conference while taking on such malicious propaganda was a pleasant relief for us, and it has only strengthened our belief & trust in them, and our solidarity has become stronger than ever.

Certain sections of the political class have been palpably uncomfortable recently and seem to be a bit unnerved too, as has been evident from the malice they've been trying to infuse in the mind of the Indian citizen ever since after Anna Hazare called off his Satyagraha. The cause doesn't take any pondering to be identified. We have become used to the folly and deception that they have been personifying with shameless consistency.

A mood of 'confrontation',a healthily benign one, in the civilian panel-members' approach oozing honest confidence,is important for us to observe as it is so important that they speak in a voice that comes from you and me, and they prioritize in a similar vein upon what points to take up and stress upon. It has to be unanimous and there should be no ambiguity, as at this point of time it is important that the momentum gathered from last week's nation-wide protest does not slow down, and our belief in our leader and in our own selves remain stable and secure so that the voices of protest do not waiver, -- particularly so now that the shameless political class are showing signs of desperation, and are likely to take desperate measures to weaken the backbone of the newly strengthened solidarity of the Indian citizen.

Simplicity, honesty and self-belief shall prevail as they have always done.
Let's hope for the best.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry®
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri
Consultant Physician (@Cardiology &
Critical Care)
Mumbai, India
http://jogyou963.blogspot.com
http://anirbanspeak.blogspot.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------
"Inherent in every Intention and Desire is
the mechanics for its Fulfilment."
- - - Khalil Gibran

Ask yourselves for once..

The last 10 days have seen some unprecedented social activity in India, and the man in the centre of what can be called a tumultuous mass uprising that India has ever seen was Anna Hazare as took his fight to protest on behalf of the Indian public against corruption right up to the government.

As he sat down on his Satyagraha mission, announcing a fast unto death if the government didn't relent, the common Indian came out of doors to show his support for Anna in an unprecedented, and more significantly in an unexpected way which caught India's political class on the wrong foot. Anna Hazare, armed with the power of solidarity that India showed with unprecedented spontaneity, literally armtwisted the government into making long-awaited constitutional provisions which would empower the common man to seek transparency in and thus hold accountable, any action of the politico-bureaucratic system which might reflect doubts of corruption and nepotism.

Apart from surprising the government, the way Anna Hazare took up the crusade on behalf of the common man surprised
the common man himself too, and in a big, big way. At the moment Anna's movement has taken a back-seat, not so in a negative way, because the government has conceded some time-bound, conditional policies which will take a definite shape in reality soon. There is no point now in dissecting Anna Hazare's movement because it has served its purpose, and a panel which would facilitate the passage of the remodelled Lokpal Bill in parliament has been formed with a specifically concrete agenda. And nor there is any point in discussing the modalities of the panel that has been created because we all are eagerly waiting to observe its effectiveness on specific dates in the future.

The way Indians came out of the confines of their homes in support of Anna, seemed to have shaken the common man awake from his decades-long slumber of apathy towards the decadent insensitivity of Indian politics. I know that my statement can stimulate vehement protests from the Indian public which is seemingly so sensitive where its holy 'middle-class self - respect' is rebelliously questioned by a conscientious voice(or one of eccentricity bordering on lunacy).

I might continue to live in a mode of self denial but if I do some impartial and honest introspection, I will agree with my conscience that this inaction has almost proceeded to define my moral character so specifically over the years, that it has only encouraged the politicians to go on unabashed with their nefarious activities.

The result of the movement led by Anna should have been immortalised as glorified history by now. Yet one finds questions which disturb the newly found strength in the wake of the social uprising. The 'glory' of victory of the mass movement seems to have eroded away fast in the days that have followed -- a big disappointment for all of us who shed moral cowardice for once and dared to dream. And that is the issue which any responsible citizen should be debating upon, and try to find answers if he really wishes to see a better future in reality.

Cynics have already started to tear down Anna Hazare's persona and the voice of protest he personifies. And one feels the presence of a dangerous malady in the common Indian psyche, something we have always mocked to abuse with a smirk over cups of tea, when we have gone on about our exercises of self-criticism following times of defeat and frustration -- when we have felt cheated (and betrayed, and defeated) looking at results of elections, or, diplomatic exercises that couldn't earn brownie points in the international arena, or even cricket matches and Olympic events (..Even when we tended shout an out-of-form Sachin Tendulkar to retirement a few years back, the 'God' we flaunt now with all records broken)

It is a cynicism that is so typical of Indians who would never accept an event in concrete reality hands down whether it is good or bad, a vain act of 'conscience' which we seem to display with fanfare, giving it a tag of 'Democracy' that promises us freedoms of thoughts, speech and rights. But there is no denying the fact that we have been irresponsible as citizens, we have been selfishly apathetic towards our political system as long as its actions did not affect the brittle security of our own individual families, another tool of self-denial in which we seem be basking in a spirit guided by nothing but glorified escapism, when we lose our way out-of-doors in the darkness of a crude reality that our political system has been forcing upon us over the decades since India went republic, increasingly so and without any scrupules.

It would have helped my dear compatriot -- all this collective cynicism of the conscientious middle-- class, when we were being cheated by the ruling politicians. We were quiet all the while, effectively speaking. We were never unanimously vociferous in directing our vent and Holy Cynicism, or came out together in the streets when the corrupt faces, one after another, were exposed at a ridiculous rate of one scam per week, did we?

Let's face some crudely basic questions, sans theories of economics and the concepts behind bulls and bears in financial highways,
sans the statistics of inflation and GDPs.
Did you shout asking for Kalmadi's head or baying for Tainted Thomas's blood, in a united voice as a nation disgraced? NO. Because you didn't get a reduced salary on a couple of months when you read in the papers and heard in a TV channel that the Commonwealth Games Organising Company headed by a criminal named Kalmadi had
cheated India of an astronomical amount of taxpayers money, did you? Because your business didn't do drastically bad when it was found that the nation has been cheated of Rs, 1700 crores due to a graft in the allocation of the 2G spectrum, did it?
Because you didn't have the feeling that it might have been your money that some shameless MPs flashed on a disgraced day in our parliament, did you? And since you didn't 'feel' the loss, you didn't react. So this is the quality of your spirit of nationalism, your fiercely proud patriotism, with which you question not only the honesty but the spontaneity too of last week's social stir.

In the backdrop of Anna Hazare's movement one can now see an astonishing picture comprising of three different facets of India. 1)The spirit of India personified by a 72 year old man taking on a system singlehandedly by its horns,
2)the young face of India coming out in his support with uncorrupted belief, and
3)a cynical middle-class questioning the rebel ensemble with its archetypal smirk, that's you and me.
Think over the picture of ours that we are putting up for the old crusader, and for those restless dynamic hearts who still dream of a shining India, and for which they can make a non-violent mass protest that shakes the entire country.

What does your conscience tell you? Or is it that you too have been guilty of the moral cowardice that I have displayed over the years? You don't have to answer anybody. Just ask yourself in your own privacy, and Think over the answer you get. Then act accordingly. I,for myself, am still hopeful of our conscience meeting on a common ground sometime in the near future. It all depends on us -- you and me. Or is it too good to be true?
------------------------------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry®
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri, M.B.B.S
Consultant Physician [special interest
in Cardiology &Critical Care]
Mumbai, India
(+91)9870611252
http://jogyou963.blogspot.com
http://anirbanspeak.blogspot.com
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"There is a Purpose behind us all. The
Whole intends to do Something through
us." -- Swami Vivekananda

The Best Medicine..

I have been suffering from this neuropathy affecting my left hand over the last 6 months. Clinically one would brand the nerve disorder as Left Ulnar Mononeuropathy - the ulnar nerve is one of the 2 main nerves supplying the arm and hand - in my case it is the left one and it is my left hand that has been affected. I've been experiencing an ever-increasing pain, to the point of being excruciating,and an almost constant, weirdly tingling sensation in my left hand, particularly in the ring and little fingers, and the area of the palm below them which do not exactly move the way I wish them to.

The condition seems to have developed, according to my neurologist, due to extensive playing of guitar, an exercise I had indulged in with passion, in my late teens and early 20 s, when I used to play in the college rock-band which had a rather brief yet excitingly joyous professional stint later on. I had formally learnt classical and folk guitar(like flamenco, the Catalan folk)which is played finger-style,and that requires a 'classical' acoustic guitar which traditionally sports a much broader finger-board than usual. That necessitated my left fingers to stretch extensively,and all the more so when I used to hold the broken chords in the background when we played those Scorpions numbers(I still remember those initially painful hours during rehearsals as we played songs like "When The Smoke Is Going Down").

Over the last few months the left ring & little fingers had forced my hand into a clawed shape of submission, the fingers getting contracted and flexed at the little bone joints, a seemingly eternal state of Spasm that was not exactly painless. I find that rather ironic as the name of my rock-band(well it was 'mine' just as it was any other co-member's) was SPASM too, a name I'd kept myself along with Miku, the bass-guitarist who went on to become a hand-surgeon himself later on. Now that's one of 'those quirks' of destiny,isn't it?

Coming back to my neuropathy, the pain had,at one point of time,increased so much that even the strongest painkillers were not being effective, and I had become literally sick of pain-killing injections. Nothing seemed to work,and the fact that I could no more hold chords, or even use my left fingers while playing guitar (ultimately I had to quit my favourite pass-time activity) only added to my frustrated, depressing woes.

Three weeks back, as I was having my morning cold coffee, my 21 month-old daughter tiptoed her way into the hall, nimble-footed, and stood in front of me, looking at me with her sparkling, bright eyes. I knew that look. She wanted to climb up and sit on my stomach, straddling her legs on the sides facing her father - her favourite "seat" in the morning, as she would excitedly tell me how the pigeons had looked at her from outside the kitchen window or how busily the crows had pecked at the crumbs on the parapet. That day I found it difficult to give her a hand to take her morning seat. The pain was too much in my left hand which found itself too weak to carry her weight. I knew she would be disappointed.

As I looked back at her eyes with helpless apology written all over my face and with a tinge of guilt too, trying to shake my afflicted hand off the pain, I spoke to her in my Bengali mother-tongue, telling her,"Aaj baba'r haate khub byatha je.."(which vaguely translates into - "But there is too much pain in father's hands today...". She isn't too familiar with that language as her father has got only a handful of relatives and none in Mumbai to pay the occasional visit so that the language is spoken.
I really don't know what she understood, but she didn't show any disappointment. What she showed in her eyes was gentle and tender care. She took my hand in her soft, little fingers kissing it mildly, looked up at me and said in broken English,"Baba?pain no...Baba?pain no no.."..

Well, my left hand hasn't exactly stopped paining since, but that was the last time I felt the pain. I have not needed any pain-killers since then simply because I don't feel any pain anywhere, anymore. And as I watch my daughter growing up each day, every hour,every minute,I just wonder how beautiful life can be for anybody in the simplest of ways, in spite of all the pains & troubles, the aches and breaks it keeps on dishing out on a regular basis. No matter how much one cries, life always gets back to you as a great leveller, giving you something to smile about, and perhaps with a little reward at the end.

It is just only a matter of time. Let it be.
------------------------------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry®
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri, M.B.B.S
Consultant Physician [special interest
in Cardiology &Critical Care]
Mumbai, India
(+91)9870611252
http://jogyou963.blogspot.com
http://anirbanspeak.blogspot.com
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"There is a Purpose behind us all. The
Whole intends to do Something through
us." -- Swami Vivekananda

DIGITALIZED MOVEMENTS AND RECENT TRENDS

[Dedicated to Dr Jnanananda Mukhopadhyay-my college-mate in CNMC]
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Hi,

The common Indian (or the Indian commoner -- if you prefer) is back again. My wife tells me I've started like The One too..
While I've been searching for a check-marked coat, I noticed that it has been a fascinating few fast dissipating weeks that all of confronted recently.

The archetypal couch-potato that I am, as I continue to watch on TV the massively spontaneous mass uprisings, I wonder in awe about the Collective Strength of us, Common Men(and Women), and it is a calming reassurance for the cynical minds that : Yes, It Can Be Done.

I'm sure that against the backdrop of the middle east 'renaissance', the eager anthropologist and the social observer didn't miss to neglect a definite pattern in human behaviour that had been theorized by scholars decades ago, but was not believed in entirety because an ever- accelerating process of technological evolution (and thus enabling technological advancement) in the late 20th century had ensured one definitive sociological phenomenon -- our society got segmented into smaller (in size, not necessarily so in relevance and importance) institutions -- small and essentially Isolated, that allowed the same basic diurnal activities of the human species to be carried out -- Families, which provide the stage for the same activities(and Acts) being carried out, to the day, at this very moment.(Well, the 'modes and modalities' in which the activities are carried out are quite different, but that, being a subtle variation, is not relevant to the present issue at hand that you have to bear with the products of the conditioned dyslexic I suspect myself to be..

This 'isolation', in the context of quality, quantity, subjectivity, objectivity, (...could you suggest more? My vain attempts to put on masks of expertise in philosophy, or sociology, or anthropology, shall never succeed, and I can only see doom..)shall always continue to vary, sometimes drastically. Though neosociological (a term borrowed without permission) trends seem to indicate that this concept of 'isolation' shall wipe itself out, I have a point here to argue and disbelieve for good reasons.

The 'neo--sociological isolation' shall perennially continue to exist over turning pages(or e-pages) of geography and across slides(or pps) on demography, (well at least till geography and demography shall cease to exist themselves). I fully agree that yes, technological evolution did lead to the present social structure where mass or collective actions of human behaviour are much less palpable or directly observable in any given situation, than individual behavioural patterns (and which thus dominate to affect our senses on any single day, anytime and anywhere on our family-stages).

Yet I find it a paradox: it is technological advancement -- that is throwing exploring lights on community behaviour at the moment. We just cannot ignore the role of the internet in all the recent changes the world has witnessed . There seems to be a new air of hope all around -- one barely expected to witness the way people changed systems in the Middle East recently, from Tunisia to Egypt, where freedom of expression had been usurped almost as a historical tradition. Man shall continue to dream and new ideas will always flow in, as they had done over the last 50 years. What clearly stands out is Absolute Intent and the way people used it, the practical execution to bring down everything that is stagnant and decadent.

One of the strongest factors behind this is the Internet -- the way people have used it for healthy communication, in e-forums and social networking sites as they fought to dream, to fight on...

Awareness has spread all over the world rapidly in its most unadulterated form, (we have witnessed sheer lack of speed and dilution of the original intent with time and peripheral distribution, in the networked fringes, breaking so many promising dreams before us, things just "fizzed" out)..I think India's fairytale is a very strong pointer about how we should proceed tomorrow, governance and administration at any level and in any office being amongst the foremost priorities of them all..

The Egyptian revolution and the 'mould' its socio-politics has chosen to be impressed by, are not Causes. They are Results (which I choose to qualify as unavoidable) of the Collective Consciousness of a group of people present in every cross-section of society, driven to secure unision by a variety of factors that they felt so as to prioritise in the same bracket. We all heard the barely audible pitch of voices accelerating to a crescendo, causing audible cracks in the glass that shattered away noisily in the palaces of the feudal elite. It was this Collective Emotion that spread digitally and was shared all over the world in the speed of light that hastened and strengthened the movement.

The prominent context which I'm trying to point out is the 'form' in which informations were despatched and received. Almost a century ago, a similar need to spread and share valuable information had become absolutely imperative in the European battle-fields where the First World War was being fought. Spread they did, in a hitherto relatively unknown technology which constituted of a manual exercise that printed a meaningful sequence of 'dots' and 'dashes' on a piece of paper, in a remarkably simple way that allowed transfer of information in incredible speed - the dots and dashes containing the essence of information zipped to and fro across continents and oceans, from one station to another in forms of electromagnetic quanta.

While the speed of 'actual' transfer (the physicality of the process) has remained almost the same, the time taken for the information to reach the recipient's brain, get registered and comprehended in its fullest form has come down drastically. More important is the format. Through the world-wide-web , ideas are shared in virtual audio-visual forms which incorporate the factor of 'Emotion' (which I believe you are fitter than yours truly to remotely attempt to conceptualise) to the data -- and that affects the result in an entirely different scale the parameters of which are neither digitally controlled nor contollable, in concrete digit units - a factor which man dreams to control with more authoritative volition some day,
(again - the concept of androids, humanoids, avatars is beyond the current issue. Though it would be interesting to observe when overzealous fertile brains (?geniusoids-- cerebroids) shall tinker about anti-corruptoids, fanaticoids, or nihilistoids, agnosticoids, even jihaditoids.. over superconductor receptacles containing hybrid consummables of siliconised caffeinoids)

And THAT is exactly why the process cannot be withdrawn or ever withdraw by itself (I'm putting in brackets against possible provocative protests, of course digitalised, coming from the [[ Academists, or Acosmists or Monists, even Nihilists or Primitivists -- .. They get me petrified to inaction! Do cover for me because I'm retreating, with just my Pen in hand)

Dreams and passions are shared now in the most elemental forms, no longer a question of when or where, and the echoes continue to reverberate to be manifested later, someday and somewhere else, so we have to Got to Continue: speak, listen, learn, share and adapt. All,.. to Live.

But again, That is what Life is all about, isn't it? I shall be keen to know what YOU say..

------------------------------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry®
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri, M.B.B.S
Consultant Physician [special interest
in Cardiology &Critical Care]
Mumbai, India
(+91)9870611252
http://jogyou963.blogspot.com
http://anirbanspeak.blogspot.com
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"There is a Purpose behind us all. The
Whole intends to do Something through
us." -- Swami Vivekananda

GOOD MORNING INDIA

"Good Morning India!"

"..Over the last 96 hours, we have witnessed one septuagenarian, armed with only Honour and Dignity, and the Will to preserve the two without an iota of compromise, take India's corrupt establishment by its roguish horns and making it relent to submission -- basically doing the dirty job for us, all of us. And of course for that generation too that follows us in toddling steps at the moment. It blindly trusts us to be responsible parents, keeping its own honour and dignity to be defended by the safety of its parents' hands.
A dawn has never ever been so beautiful as today's, breaking to soothen my tired eyes -- I'm really cherishing the first spoils of the victory that you all have won for me). And
while a new, rejuvenated India wakes up
to celebrate history, we shall not bother much about this non-bothering lot, because it takes all types of antithesis to keep a system running, perhaps as a reminder of the oft- digressed virtue of Responsibility and a lesson to be learnt from time to time that one cannot afford to drop guard.

It's an irony of truth too that he has gone ahead and about his mission for those who, over the last 96 hours, have barely bothered to care a hoot about what India is undergoing, and how, and arrogantly enough, even why. But of course they shall display their birth- rights to share all that shall be attained once the technicalities of India's new anti-corruption bill get sorted out to be formalised for practical execution..

I do not wish to spoil the First Indian Morning in any way. It's just that I felt a bit sad last night when I heard in a television debate,a couple of renowned "intellectuals" still sounding unconvinced, and more strikingly, absolutely dud and opaque to any sort of ideas, or reasons... Or for that matter even dry, dumb logic with which you poke(for pure and free entertainment's sake)these thick-skinned descendants of the primordial primates commoners like yours truly share common along ancestral lines. It's only that in these "cases", Darwinian evolution seems to have gone awfully awry..

"Elite pragmatism", for me,seems to wear a very different definition, essentially negative, at times when such acts of cerebration are on rampant display courtesy these bunches of luminous idiots who suffer from verbal diarrhoea trying to hog the limelight for no apparent rhyme and reason.

No more negatives now.
I wish to scream to all of you "Good Morning India",and of course to express my gratitude for the victory all of you have gloriously fought to win for me, my family, my neighbour, and the next neighbour....

PS : We should start a new calender which starts with 9th April 2011... Just a fleeting thought from the opened floodgates I am feeling subjected to, in this glorious morning that greets me with Hope.

Be good, all of you.. ..."

-----------------------------------------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry®
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri, M.B.B.S
Consultant Physician [special interest
in Cardiology &Critical Care]
Mumbai, India
(+91)9870611252
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"The most beautiful thing we can
experience is the Mysterious."
---- Albert Einstein

The world supports Anna

Here's a couple of excerpts from an e-correspondence I had last night with my good friend Arin Basu who is a resident of Wellington, New Zealand.

"-----Original Message-----
From: Arin Basu <arin.basu@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2011 06:59:48

At least Anna Hazare is from our dad's generation, which is a reassuring thing that all did not go in vain. So, what are you planning to do about supporting Anna Hazare's fast and his movement?
/Arin
Sent from my iPad......"
---------------------------

Arin was keen to know about the sweeping change India is undergoing right now.

As I wrote back,
"... Sadly enough, I observe some pathetic intellectualisation of his movement by a section of the "cocktail elite" from the media, branding it as 'television tamasha' and anti-development. (3 hours back I heard Manu Joseph , editor of Open magazine, commenting in a TV newshour debate," There are two "Indias" - 'us' and those who vote.."!) I wonder how many Indias we have created to confront by now, with our progressive intellectual exercises in tennis club evenings and caffeine afternoons in art galleries, and which one to identify for my 2 year old daughter..

It is easy to loose direction when any movement gathers momentum ( sadly anti-physics!) and we should be watchful especially with our intellectual watchdogs barking in intellectual unision, yet I can only see Hope.."
---------------------------------
Arin's reply :
"-----Original Message-----
From: Arin Basu <arin.basu@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2011 07:44:32
To: <drchodri@yahoo.co.in>
Subject: Re: A Letter to a friend
I share very similar sentiments as yours. My advantage is that, I do not live in India and therefore I do not have to live up
with the kind of crap that the magazine editor of Open for example was saying in TV as you wrote, "us" and "them" India. To me, India is one country, dammit, at least it was when I last checked. People may look
and talk a little different (I mean then again not that different),but we are all in it together.

I am excited to follow Anna Hazare's movement. It's exciting to think
we are finally going to get a strong ombudsman agency to take care of
corruption in public life, and that it's going to happen in front of
our eyes. It can't get better than that.
/Arin
Sent from my iPad...."
---------------------------

It was with great sadness that I bitched about India's respected and reasoned journalist Manu Joseph who seems to have lost all sanity and sensitivity (along with the money Hasan must have duped him off too, to stash away in his Scandinavian black pool).
And here is one of the exact foci where the vain irony of India's destiny finds secure shelter. Here is an Indian who pledges support and solidarity towards his compatriots in one of the most testing times Indian democracy has ever confronted. He provides us hope with a voice that represents what the world is feeling about the sweeping change India is undergoing,... and a pointer too to the degree of hurt exasperation and hatred we all have gradually developed over the years as a reaction to the utter decadence our political-bureaucratic 'mafia' has been cheating us to, with criminal apathy and complete lack of scrupules.
And it points to the intellectual corruption that has eaten away into segments of India's 'elite and the educated' -- the ever - conscientious fifth column who should be guiding us to freedom of propriety. It is our own people that has been letting us down, sitting smug in air-conditioned seminars over coffee and wine. Manu Joseph seems to be the personification of The Great Indian Cerebral Hypocrisy that finds Anna Hazare's fight a 'TV show', and brands India's new found voice as anti development.

This is one utter bovine faecal material that has been flourishing in our contemplative educated elite with heavily accented thoroughfare, that we should be guarding against...
Let's go for it.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry®
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri, M.B.B.S
Consultant Physician [special interest
in Cardiology &Critical Care]
Mumbai, India
(+91)9870611252
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"The most beautiful thing we can
experience is the Mysterious."
---- Albert Einstein

MODERN TIMES - FARCE

Sometimes I get the feeling that I've forgotten Good Old Laughter.. And the 'existential' need to put everything in the back of the mind, just laugh the garbage off and over, to ''enjoy the inevitable'', specially with modern times with all its baggages weighing down so heavily..
In case you get the same feeling occasionally...


-----------------------------------------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry®
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri, M.B.B.S
Consultant Physician [special interest
in Cardiology &Critical Care]
Mumbai, India
(+91)9870611252
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"The most beautiful thing we can
experience is the Mysterious."
---- Albert Einstein

THE BEST MEDICINE

I have been suffering from this neuropathy affecting my left hand over the last 6 months. Clinically one would brand the nerve disorder as Left Ulnar Mononeuropathy - the ulnar nerve is one of the 2 main nerves supplying the arm and hand - in my case it is the left one and it is my left hand that has been affected. I've been experiencing an ever-increasing pain, to the point of being excruciating,and an almost constant, weirdly tingling sensation in my left hand, particularly in the ring and little fingers, and the area of the palm below them which do not exactly move the way I wish them to.

The condition seems to have developed, according to my neurologist, due to extensive playing of guitar, an exercise I had indulged in with passion, in my late teens and early 20 s, when I used to play in the college rock-band which had a rather brief yet excitingly joyous professional stint later on. I had formally learnt classical and folk guitar(like flamenco, the Catalan folk)which is played finger-style,and that requires a 'classical' acoustic guitar which traditionally sports a much broader finger-board than usual. That necessitated my left fingers to stretch extensively,and all the more so when I used to hold the broken chords in the background when we played those Scorpions numbers(I still remember those initially painful hours during rehearsals as we played songs like "When The Smoke Is Going Down").

Over the last few months the left ring & little fingers had forced my hand into a clawed shape of submission, the fingers getting contracted and flexed at the little bone joints, a seemingly eternal state of Spasm that was not exactly painless. I find that rather ironic as the name of my rock-band(well it was 'mine' just as it was any other co-member's) was SPASM too, a name I'd kept myself along with Miku, the bass-guitarist who went on to become a hand-surgeon himself later on. Now that's one of 'those quirks' of destiny,isn't it?

Coming back to my neuropathy, the pain had,at one point of time,increased so much that even the strongest painkillers were not being effective, and I had become literally sick of pain-killing injections. Nothing seemed to work,and the fact that I could no more hold chords, or even use my left fingers while playing guitar (ultimately I had to quit my favourite pass-time activity) only added to my frustrated, depressing woes.

Three weeks back, as I was having my morning cold coffee, my 21 month-old daughter tiptoed her way into the hall, nimble-footed, and stood in front of me, looking at me with her sparkling, bright eyes. I knew that look. She wanted to climb up and sit on my stomach, straddling her legs on the sides facing her father - her favourite "seat" in the morning, as she would excitedly tell me how the pigeons had looked at her from outside the kitchen window or how busily the crows had pecked at the crumbs on the parapet. That day I found it difficult to give her a hand to take her morning seat. The pain was too much in my left hand which found itself too weak to carry her weight. I knew she would be disappointed.

As I looked back at her eyes with helpless apology written all over my face and with a tinge of guilt too, trying to shake my afflicted hand off the pain, I spoke to her in my Bengali mother-tongue, telling her,"Aaj baba'r haate khub byatha je.."(which vaguely translates into - "But there is too much pain in father's hands today...". She isn't too familiar with that language as her father has got only a handful of relatives and none in Mumbai to pay the occasional visit so that the language is spoken.
I really don't know what she understood, but she didn't show any disappointment. What she showed in her eyes was gentle and tender care. She took my hand in her soft, little fingers kissing it mildly, looked up at me and said in broken English,"Baba?pain no...Baba?pain no no.."..

Well, my left hand hasn't exactly stopped paining since, but that was the last time I felt the pain. I have not needed any pain-killers since then simply because I don't feel any pain anywhere, anymore. And as I watch my daughter growing up each day, every hour,every minute, I just wonder how beautiful life can be for anybody in the simplest of ways, in spite of all the pains & troubles, the aches and breaks it keeps on dishing out on a regular basis.
No matter how much one cries, life always gets back to you as a great leveller, giving you something to smile about, and perhaps with a little reward at the end. It is just only a matter of time.

Let it be.

(author's note : this was written in early February)
-----------------------------------------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry®
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri, M.B.B.S
Consultant Physician [special interest
in Cardiology &Critical Care]
Mumbai, India
(+91)9870611252
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"The most beautiful thing we can
experience is the Mysterious."
---- Albert Einstein

A Letter to a friend

To one of my many friends who are urging on and raring to go,

To Dr. Aparna Agnihotri Tripathi,

Thank you so much for the effort. We really need to assemble and channelize our efforts in the most constructive of ways.

Personally speaking, I would hate to be in a possible future position where my daughter, utterly frustrated and disillusioned, would ask me what did I do in my own capacity to prevent the rot -- the way I ask now : what did my father do except leading a secure life with his wife and son, without any effort to de-stagnate the 'system',and letting this political system settle in with every election,
guided by nothing else but cowardice and lack of intent. I'm sure many more have the same question,in essence that is..

And what have we got to lose? Things can't get worse than they are... A scam a day being just the tip of a malignant malady that has eaten into us, making us dumb mannequins, consumed by the most selfish consumerism with no goal or vision, so much so that we didn't have a Leader to guide us because nobody took the First Step.

And can we deny our own corruption, before pointing fingers towards the corrupt?

There is a leader now (it's a shameful but not a paradox that he is a septuagenarian who is trying on my behalf and my family's and my daughter's), and I see a chance to redeem and undo everything that needs to be undone, and start all over, afresh..
No way I'm going to let this go..

Let's wish each other luck and urging all to join and lend voices,
HE is doing the dirty job for us..
Regards,
Anirban.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry®
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri, M.B.B.S
Consultant Physician [special interest
in Cardiology &Critical Care]
Mumbai, India
(+91)9870611252
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"The most beautiful thing we can
experience is the Mysterious."
---- Albert Einstein

SUPPORT ANNA HAZARE

Support Anna Hazare. This phenomenon is not just another flash in the pan. The spontaneous support firing up in every part of India really shows the utter frustration in and disgust towards the political system we have developed over the years.

The period since early 2010 has been a watershed -- Scam after scam being dug out by the responsible segment of the media, and the abhorant shamelessness with which the politicos tried to deal with that initially, then the Supreme Court literally having to harshly rebuke the vigilance agencies into actions of intent -- a pointer towards the stagnation and the rot that has eaten into the political class and into our own morality that we have literally sit back letting it all happen just because we are just 'secure' in our own families..

All revolutions start like this.. Are we afraid to deal with the responsibilities that a sweeping revolution might bestow upon us?
Are we silent because we don't have the dynanism to carry forward the changes a revolution shall bring upon? Listen to the wind - "the times they are a'changing"..

Join the movement.. Otherwise we won't be able to look in the eyes of our children when they'll grow up to find a rotten system and ask us what did we do..

Have we become cowards that we shall continue to 'observe' times sitting smugly in front of TV sets, and just bitch about it?

I know I'm probably sounding melodramatic, reeking of cheap hypocrisy -- a voice like mine does not have any worth.
Listen to those who have. Or you are no better than me..
-----------------------------------------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry®
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri, M.B.B.S
Consultant Physician [special interest
in Cardiology &Critical Care]
Mumbai, India
(+91)9870611252
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"The most beautiful thing we can
experience is the Mysterious."
---- Albert Einstein

On Books...

It was yesterday evening when I found myself smiling with dry amusement over a mail an lady-friend of mine (a college-mate) had sent, apparently with what can be qualified as benign disgust..
Not that I was bothered much because the disgust had not been primarily vented upon me in the first place, but I came to know about the feeling of exasperation she apparently goes through on a regular basis when she reads the literature' I seem to have started creating and sharing with some of you over the last couple of years, with brazen audacity.

While I would strongly suggest to my little 'e-fan club' to dismiss my literary garbage as a vain pathological process sickening an infertile mind that is probably going ballistics due to premature senility crossed with insane narcissism, the thing that bothers me is the state of contemporary affairs around me that triggers the pathological process from time to time. And that brings me to the exasperated question my friend has asked in her mail : why waste time reading and writing where I should be busy securing my socio-economic status to confront the demands of a rapidly mutating reality that modern times present before us all ... why waste time where nothing will change to respond to the voices of honest,asking minds, or to the acts of lunacy I indulge in.

Now let's get serious.. As far as Reading is concerned, there is a reason,a natural one, why I, all of us here, keep ourselves attached to books.. to what successful extent is subject to certain external factors behind our control, but perhaps we 'feel the urge' to do so no matter what, and that's the reassuring thing. Absence of that is an indirect yet one of the first pointers to Stagnation -- something which is against the nature of Nature..

The need to keep one's self connected to literature -- I feel that it is both inherent and the response of a mind that gets created, in optimal amounts to its surrounding stimuli. I must state that it doesn't, in any way, comment upon the intellect of a human mind or qualify human minds to segregate them into intelligent and dumb categories, or for that matter into superior and inferior groups where the parameters are cultural and intellectual attributes -- a perception which some 'intellectuals' have always seemed to exhibit in the most dismissive of ways, with upturned noses (a trait that should be simply shouted down by all, and in the most risqué and commonly vulgar of ways -- exactly what these high noses turn their faces from with sarcastic smiles.)

It is more so if I try to restrict myself to the medical profession (though whatever I express holds true for every profession which is pursued with sincerity and honest passion), as most of us rarely find the time and the chance to try extra-professional activities. It IS essential for medical professionals to remain actively associated with stimulating forms of art, literature being one such...

It has been advocated and suggested consistently over the centuries as a necessity or need for the human mind, and correctly so. Consciously keeping myself away from the luminous, immortal names of the greats,the giants and the geniuses (at times things become too bright and dazzling for the common eye which misses to see and percieve,at times even the possible attribute of mortality of the immortal), I mention here a favourite quote of mine, attributed to Yoshida Kenko,a Japanese philosopher in the 12-13th century : "To sit alone in the lamp-light with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations - such is a pleasure beyond compare...".
Plainly speaking books influences the human mind with the balanced rationale with which one looks at life and chooses the way to interact with it. And with that comes the secure attribute of stability with which man participates in every process of perception of what lies immediately outside his own entity, which is so necessary for all of us to interact and understand.

For two minds to understand and pay honest attention each other, standing in the common field of life, it is imperative to understand and conceptualize life itself as correctly as possible. Drifting away from this optimal correctness creates a whole spectrum of perceptions all right (thus providing the eager student of life a broader area to choose from) but with increase in choices, the possibility of incorrect choices,the 'mishits' increase too. Though the skeptic and the cynic can put in an argument statement here that nobody reaches his goal bypassing his fair share of trials and errors, the answer lies in the statement itself -- it is desirable that the share remains fair 'only', the possibility of which decreases with the increase in the choices of life. And one of the most secure ways to approach life is to have a stability in perception which is exactly what books offer to provide us with. And understanding the needs and expectations of life better needs enables us to understand each other better -- the safeway to a good life, with peace and the least possibility of confrontations in any sphere,in every stage of our existence.

That accounts for the Reading. Regarding the writing, the less said the better.
I do not claim that my outputs will decrease with time, and if that sounds a threatening possibility, so be it. What can one do about a lunatic, other than keeping him in straight-jackets? And a circus needs its jokers too to keep the entertainment going.. (Smiles)
-----------------------------------------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry®
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri, M.B.B.S
Consultant Physician [special interest
in Cardiology &Critical Care]
Mumbai, India
(+91)9870611252
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"The most beautiful thing we can
experience is the Mysterious."
---- Albert Einstein