Ostriches in Banana Republic

"Where donkeys cried out loud for the welfare of cows and dogs,  he carried her corpse on his shoulders and walked away ". Though the sentence stirred me, I knew the news will not bother me more than a couple of days. Have you ever wondered how these years that we live in will be marked in the pages of history?
Since the chance of truth appearing in history books is quite rare,  future generations may never figure out that we were a generation of Ostriches who immersed our heads deep in sand heaps and bothered only about our own business. Will they ever find out that education,  technology and scientific advances didn't change the fact that open defecation and child marriage were accepted in our communities? If truth was passed on to the next generation,  will they label us a bunch of barbarians who beat a man to death because of what we assumed to be his choice of food? Is it probable that we will be remembered as a generation where the majority remained silent and let a few carry on with the atrocities?  Asking a lot of questions without any solutions doesn't make the world a better place.  But I am afraid that if I don't wonder out loud occasionally,  I may lose a piece of my mind. Hence the rambling; please bear with me.

the relief post

this...my dear ones,is the great post created by his excellency "Wai wai"(thats my latest name...apparently i keep asking 'why' for everything..)to celebrate the relief and happiness after pracs..ophthal pracs got over by around 1.30...morning wasnt that great but to be frank after a point you just want it to get over cos the pressure is just too irritating...this year's interesting viva experience was the community medicine examiner telling me that the selective male migration from kerala contributes to the high sex ratio there....ENT was pretty peaceful..i mean i didnt know a lot of stuff but the externals seemed to be too nice to flunk anyone...

Ophthal had 2 funny characters who were planning the dinner menu whole they were taking my viva....got raped in short case discussion...hope they showed some mercy on me...it was complete blankout..they asked me whether i didnt have food...in hope of getting some sympathy i nodded and tried to put on an expression which was supposed to look like i havent had anything to eat for the past three days...but for all you know they would've already seen enough and more people like me...another interesting pracs news,also from comm. health is the HOD offering job to the patient after one of my batchmates finished taking the history.

as usual,i am going to publish this post roughly 2 months after i started typing it.here i am,sitting in the dodd computer lab hoping that i am in one of those moods of creative idleness when i can rattle on something interesting...oh,btw...results came out around 2 weeks back and i passed all 3 subjects,though it was bare minimum marks in 2 of them...to be frank i was konjam scared that i'll go down in ent/ophthal...sad thing this year was my parents looked up my marks and i got a load of advice after it...i mostly kept quite during the session..thats usually my defence against advice,scolding,etc...quite effective in most of the cases but experienced ones can easily see through it and continue pounding you...the more dangerous ones insist on a reply from you and wont back down till they get one....the silence trick works sometimes in vivas too...its usually the silence followed by the sorry face which yields good results..however,high amount of caution should be exercised to say "sir/ma'am...i dont remember/i dont know" after a justifiable duration of silence...

speaking of vivas,i'll be facing quite a lot of them this year...as a matter of fact,its been hardly 2 months into final year and i've already finished 2 vivas...boy,this is going to be a tough year...the amount of stuff they teach and the amount of slogging my fellow medicos do has gone up exponentially...being the lazy soul that i am, i spent my precious time scribbling meaningless random things which i try to think of as poignant thoughts and intellectual takes on life...if u happen to go through my notes,you will find profile pictures of martians,pirates,damsels,future cops and bits and pieces of conversations during lectures...i dunno why listening in lectures is such a laborious task...i find it quite tough to keep my undivided attention in a lecture for more than10-15 minutees..funny thing is that i religiously used to take down notes in first year!!may b its part of evolution(or aging(!!) ???)...lol...or may be its cos my attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is progressing rapidly...anyway,the good news is that i am going home on saturday..3 weks of joblessness...planning to be back in good old velluru by 30th may to face more vivas,tests,depressive episodes,euphoric moments,gossiping,doubts and self reflection(???!!!)...planning to try some mal blogging during hols..btw,my critic tells me that i write better stuff in english than in malayalam...also hoping to visit oddanchathram sometime this month...sadly no family trips this time...bro' is in twelfth...damn you extra clases and tuition centres...i am feeling a bit of conscience prick that i haven't completed my labour room record yet...one half of my brain tells me.."its alright...as the old saying goes,you can only njoy being lazy when thre is plenty of work to be done.."the other half is trying to be all realistic and sensible and tells me"well,try telling that to your principal and professors one month down the lane during the final year review!!"

goodbye 2009

regardless of how short its going to be i've decided to put up a post on the last day of this year...it feels kinda nice to sit back and look back at the days which have gone and will never come back...this year was not one of my favourites....this was the hardest year for my batch since we joined college and my batch means a lot to me...we went through too many crises..hopefully its all over now...i feel a bit sad too as 2009 is getting over...2010 sounds so...i mean its the sort of dates u'lll read in science fiction novels when they want to imagine all sorts of stud robots and other stuff in the future...cant believe i'll be starting final year in another 3 months...scary,though.i can still remember my first day in hostel as if it were yday...ah...i miss first year...
TV channels and newspapers are trying to collect and put up stuff on everything they can think of abt 2009...i liked Indian Express' editorial page...they've filled it with selected 'Letters to the Editor' and quotes by ppl from diff. stratas of the society...i kind of felt an urge to spend some time of this last day on net...after all i turn to this place so often...when i am bored,frustrated,etc,etc...so anyway HAPPY NEW YEAR to all of you out there....and goodbye to 2009..

blah blah and more blah

Aaaarrggh...it hurts to see that my blog is such a barren land..not that i am getting very concerned abt no one reading it,though i would be kind enough to admit that i've given up searching for comments on my posts cos i know there 'll be none...but what actually upsets me is that i haven't really rambled on anything for a long time...it gives me a lot of satisfaction when i can just bullshit away to glory abt any random thing and there is a nice loooong post at the end of the session..so here i am trying to make yet another post though i cant really think of anything interesting to jot down..frankly speaking,i should be studying/doing my project work/something in those lines...i've got two tests coming up next week..but its ok...for the time being i really really need to express myself...

may be i should write abt my quality time spent in buses..being the ideal,faithful student,i miss the collg bus on most of the days and therefore end up taking the town bus in the morning..i really like those twenty minutes which i spent with myself,unless i am terribly late for a class...i think abt any random topic,scold myself for being such a lazy ass,philosophize,review my past mistakes,try to make up songs abt my collegemates,plan my future,etc,etc...but the funny thing is that i dont talk so much with myself if i am in the collg bus..not that i'll be talking to someone all the time...there r lots of times i sit inside the college bus and just get bored...also i guess sitting near the window helps my thought process,whether its collg bus or town bus....one good thing abt town buses is that u get to witness interesting stuff at times..once i remember an old woman beating up a drunk guy cos she thought he was trying to misbehave with women..actually the poor chap was so drunk that he just kept falling off his seat..i dont even know whether he realised that he was getting thulped so badly...anyway finally the conductor joined the fight and our protagonist was mercilessly thrown off the bus....(btw,as i just finished the last sentence,the plank on which the keyboard was placed kinda came off the table and everyone around started staring at me..i could sense my ears turning red..thats the first thing which happens to me when i am under pressure..i just looked around, gave a sheepish smile and continued :D )

Its funny how absurd your thought process sounds to you when you actually write it down and read it after a few months...i had typed till the previous para and left it some 2-3 months back...coming back to the topic,(what topic actually?dont demean yourself..theres no topic;this is just senseless babbling!!)i wonder how my dad would've spent the numerous hours he spent travelling...having to work at a place which is almost 3 hours away from where you stay means a looooootttt of travel.But unlike me,he's not that much of a careless daydreamer....he did make quite a few friends,made millenious observations about ppl,witnessed several funny/wierd moments which were later presented to us as interesting stories...i guess i've inherited that quality of adding garam masala and being a story teller...thats enough for the time being..i am tired of thinking for more stuff to make this crap longer..

Med school bloopers...

Since i couldnt really think of any happenings in the recent past worth blogging about and i am not imaginative enough to think about biographies of psychopaths, i thought i'll just put up some bloopers which r famous in the college...this being a mini india and thus having ppl who r not familiar with the mother tongues of their patients results in the origin of a zillion language jokes..some of them may not even have happened but they r still quite entertaining and r always the favourite topic in gassing sessions especially if u cant think of any other interesting stuff to talk about...

The thing abt these bloopers is that they r handed down batches but as years go on the name of the person who made the blooper changes..for eg,there was this one about the guy who used to bunk almost all the physiology pracs in his first year and then finally turned up for the exam without any clue about the experiments...he got a question on demonstsration of reflexes..the smart ass made friends with the guy on who he was supposed to demonstrate the reflexes on and told him to lift his leg when he hit him below the knee.Having struck the deal,our hero was so excited and happy and he looked around at the lesser mortals around him who were dumb enough to have actually attended the classes..finally,the examiner,who looked like he was going to fall asleep any moment, turned up and repeated the question which he had already asked half the class......."Demonstrate knee jerk,please".Mr.Smart ass took the knee hammer in his hand,gave a look of disappoitment for being asked such a trivial question and gave a small tap below the subject's left knee...i would give a fortune to see the expression on that examiner's face when he saw that right leg going up...the funny thing about this story is that when we joined college,this one was atributed to one of the guys in final year batch..i later found out that they used to believe that this was done by one of their seniors and one week back,one of the lecturers shared this with us as a heroic act of one of his batchmates...so i guess ppl just come with a story and put in the name of someone in college at that time just to make it more interesting...
Coming back to language jokes,there is this one about the paavam south indian medical stud who had never heard a bit of hindi taking the history of a patient who came with some stomach upset.This chap asked the patient courageously,"Jab aap toilet jatha hai, janvar aatha hai kya?"All that he wanted to know was whether the patient passed any worms in his stool.I dont know whether the patient was being very smart or he was feeling a lot of sympathy for the poor guy.He just said,"Nahi bhai saab,me toilet jaane ke samay dharwaza baand kartha hai!"(now i know my hindi is not that great but i think i've put together the last sentence kinda ok..i didnt reall bother abt the first one 'cos its anyway supposed to be screwed up :) )
Actually i dunno why i started the post with this joke.After all,i am also a southie and sometimes i am slightly bugged with those morons from up north who make fun of the south indian hindi accent,make those stupid hair oil joes and think that they are really cool.On top of that,the zillion language jokes which i mentioned earlier comprises mainly of the molestation of tamil by punjabis,delhiites,biharis,etc.I think one of the very famous one is the one which happened in one of the opthalmology exams.Having learnt some of the important key words in tamil including the translation of "I am a medical student","Please look this side",etc. our protagonist was feeling a bit of self-confidence."So what if I dont know the language?",he told himself."After all a lot of communication is non-verbal.."since he had half an hour more to wait for the exam to start he tried to boost up his spirit by remembering all those heroic stories of doctors who went and worked in Africa,how one of his seniors from Kerala worked for two years in Bengal."Also there isnt much of histoty taking in opthal...its mostly exmaination only..this should be a cakewalk for me." At last it was his turn and our all the initial intro and some how surviving through the history taking(the survival bit mainly applies to the patient..)he was so happy to just start the examination.So he confidenly raised his index finger and told the patient.."Inge ukarungo.."I can only imagine what that guy must have felt at being ordered to sit on somebody's index finger.All that our doc-in-making wanted was the patient to look at the tip of his index finger.I guess the exam tension and the relief of having finished the history taking bit must have mixed up all those funny-sounding tamil words which he crammed the night before exam.May i should once write a post about the possile thoughts that the patient would've had on being asked to sit on an index finger.There any more language bloopers which had been handed down batches....I think for the time being I'll stop with this one.

Pegasus(the awesome version)

Actually i was supposed to publish a post on psychiatry posting and Herbertpur trip before this one but owing to my laziness it never saw the light...so here u go...a short story on the making of PEGASUS '09...my part of the work was actually kinda fun..calling up ppl from all colleges,inviting them for the fest,explaining to some of them why we cant give free accommodation 'cos of our tight budget,listening to a few horrible caller tunes,apologising to some for different reasons and blah,blah...i also got to be a bit of a critic regarding t-shirt designing,posters,etc but all the work connected with designing stuff was done by the silent chinki and chichra...one of the few things connected to pegasus which they werent involved in came out with a Vitruvian man without his important stuff...


From the time when ppl started planning abt pegasus or even much before that everyone kept reminding each other that this is going to be the last thing we r gonna do as a batch and we'll be soon joining the old men club..anyway,everything went well and now we r all officially jobless...i guess a few guys also had a bit of PPD(post pegasus depression)..the term was coined by either pranav or chichra..i am bad at remembering who said what...i just remember the shit ppl say..now its time for dinners and getting the rest of the sponsored money...i cant actually believe this post is becoming so boring..i was damn excited after pegasus and i started writing this stuff thinking that i am going to create my longest post ever..but now i am actually running out of things to write...oh,i forgot to mention my mistake..i asked my bro' to come to Vellore and enjoy the fest..well,to put it short,the poor guy got ultra bored... plus he had to listen to crap like 'how i got syphilis', 'what type of weed do i take',etc,etc...


One of the things which i 'll remember abt this year was the crazy'dappamkoothu'outside the informals stall...it was the spontaneous ideas of one of the brilliant minds around and it turned out to be a huge crowd puller...the crowd went absolutely crazy...u could see dust clouds above the informals stall...another last minute decision was the singing competition near jukebox..the no. of ppl who think that they can sing is much more than what u imagine..talking abt singing,i am remineded abt the dilemma that the in-charges faced when one girl kept on bugging them to let her sing a tamil song during Rock competition...she just wont be convinced that all those wierd looking guys wit long hair are not exactly the fans of Tamil filmmusic..finally they had to let her sing 'chandralekha' during one of the events..eye witnesses told me that she was trying to put so much expression into the song that she looked like she was trying to shit...i forgot to ask abt the audience response...

Though i was in reception,there was enough time to go &watch some culturals also...adzap this year wsnt that great..WCC had to advertise for underwear which glows in the dark..they just went crazy and half the audience started hooting and howling..of the few ads which i watched,i liked MCC's the best...they were spontaneous,uninhibited and provided 101%entertainment...Turncoat was quite good(in this one,u r given a topic forwhich u start speaking supporting it first and then change ur opinion whenever the judge says 'turncoat'...)the guy who won the event spoke on'Hand-eye co-ordination is extremely important while watching TV:-)..it was truly hilarious..i thought of taking part but finally didnt have the guts to do so...
I think its time i ended this post..otherwise i'll just come and type two sentences everyday and publish it by next year pegasus time only..anyway,now more than one week is over since the final showdown...i remember the last night in reception..i slept on the cane chair..badly wanted to sleep on the bean bag but both of them were already occupied..this time i didnt have stamps all over the face when i woke up..the last collg to get clearance and leave was BMS collg,B'lore...Next year we'll be final years who will come and see the fest like some visitors..cant believe time has flown away so fast..sometimes i wish all this should just get over fast and that i just want to get out of collg..but then i remind myself of the struggle after that..phew...i think i am feeling too hissy&pissy today..more than i usually do..may be its a strange co-incidence that today i complete 3 years of collg life...

Clerkship notes-1

Well,well...it has been quite sometime since i added anything here and i am feeling kind of lazy though i am supposed to study how to put Ur hand in some one's gluteal fold and etc,etc...(don't misunderstand me..my posting started in the unit of colorestal surgery..)i wonder how many assholes will a colorectal surgeon's index finger see in its lifetime...i seriously pity that finger..how many times would it have hoped.."if only i was not born in the hand of this jackass..or may be at least his left hand instead of the right.."i wonder whether this is the reason why most of these ppl seem to be quite constipated most of the time...may be some time they should put a finger in their own anal canals and ensure that some shit goes out...
Anyway,besides the finger in the ass stories(oh that reminds me of the story when one of the senior surgeons was in a mood to rag and asked a few of my seniors to do rectal examination on each other...dunno what the end of the story was..not that i care about the fingers of those pricks..)we had fun watching the PG registrars sleep during surgery and listening to the utter stupid answers that we gave to the questions we were asked etc,etc...and now i've rightly reached the conclusion that this post sounds damn boring...not that it means i am going to stop writing this shit..so who cares if they r boring..i'll might as well make them a bit longer than my prevoius ones..i was actually embarrassed by the size of my first 2 posts when i had a look at them..i mean,how can a medical student who has entered his third year (Hopefully..)not be an expert in the art of gassing and creating amazing loads of bullshit...actually i think that was the major difference between first year and second year...believe it or not..i wrote one full page on a machine for second year Univs.without having any clue of what it is...but i haven't yet achieved the great heights of my friends who defined pregnancy as a condition affecting women in reproductive age groups all over the globe or those great souls who drew the picture of a scorpion when the lesser mortals who set the question papers quizzed them on scorpion sting treatment or the imaginative ones who defined drunkenness as "a condition which causes embarrassement to a person who consumes alcohol and to those around him"..
actually most of the stuff i've written here r not really stuff about my clerkship posting...but i cant really think of any highly interesting events during this posting except for one of them suggesting that we can take turns to volunteer for the demonstration of rigid sigmoidoscopy(in which a 25 cm rod makes it way up ur..well,u guessed it right)or digital rectal examination(i guess the name speaks for itself..but for those morons who happened to think it involves anything realted with computers:"NO!"it just means that the surgeons index finger will be having a trip into ur ass)..so,i hope i've at least made this post longer than the others..if not may be i should consider accepting the invitation to volunteer for the demo..on second thoughts,no..who knows what these ppl are going to put into u once u show them ur backside..i am sure one day they 'll make something the size of the twin towers or something.. :-)