JAB we MET!

[PIC for representational purposes only, downloaded from Google images]

And then the door opened and she stepped into the hall. A beautiful Sheetal made her way to the stage clad in her favourite Nauvari saree with a chandrakor bindi on her forehead. Everyone was in awe, not coz she looked very cute, but coz her giggles just wouldn’t stop! Instead of the shy bride that everyone thought she would be, she seemed to be in her own world today! It was her biggest day, and she was getting married to….

Dhudd! Again the door opened, with much more force, one more time. And Manas almost tripped and was staring at the floor!!! Somehow he managed to pick himself up, put the tilak cap back on his head , adjusted his dhoti and reconfirmed that it wasn’t loose , esp after the impact upon his stylish entry! In contrast to the first entry, the guests were all giggles this time! Soon he was up on the stage too, sitting next to her! Both the eyes met, albeit for a lil stare and soon were hovering around, the guests in their vibrant attires and loads of enthusiasm made it an evening that they would always remember!
He looked at her pretty green bangles and put the mangalsutra around her neck! A dream was realized today! A wish fulfilled! She was so happy.. and her face glowed with happiness!

Both were reminded of the first time their eyes met… woh pehli baar, jab hum mile!

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He was travelling to Mangalore. He got into the B2 compartment, Seat no 22, upper berth.. he put his bag on the seat and kept his shoes underneath the lower seat in the luggage space provided. Took out his novel- EVERY SECOND COUNTS! He was gonna read this one, bout the worlds first heart transplant, on this journey! As Nethravathi express made its way through the scenic konkan railway route, he couldn’t help looking out and admire the beauty of nature , esp during the monsoons! Lush green fields, sparkling river water, waterfalls gushing out of nowhere and drenching the train as it passed in and out of the innumerable tunnels on the route.. this was a fine lil journey! He was going to take up an assignment as a doctor in a newly set up institute. A new place awaited him.

As the evening made its way into a dark night, he finished his dinner [ rotis, rice, dal, matar paneer, matka kulfi..yum yum it was!] , set up his bedding and slid off to sleep.

“Psst ..psst.. thak thak thak”
Someone was tapping his berth! He didn’t open his eyes, thinking that it was a dream.
“Hey , can you hear me? Thak.. thak..thak”

He slowly opened his eyes.. a humanoid form greeted him in the darkness! OMG! Ghost!
He quickly wriggled out of his bedsheet! A girl in her teens was talking to him! Everyone else was fast asleep! She was muttering something .. he couldn’t understand ..

“What are you speaking mam, I cant follow you…”
She put her feet on the lower berth and climbed up and whispered in his ears…
“Can you help me?”
“What is wrong?” He whispered back..
“See , my seat is in the next cubicle, upper berth just like yours. All the rest are occupied by these college guys. They are a group of four and are constantly pestering me. Asking me whats your whatsapp no... lets be FB friends.. I am scared to sleep in my berth with these guys around! Can you please switch seats with me. I can see that there s a family here. I will be more comfortable here!”

He got down. “Ok” . he said and made his way to the next cubicle.

Trring ! the alarm rang at 6am! 6.30am and Mangalore junction would arrive. As he climbed down , there she was. Already ready , pulling her luggage out into the alley!

“Hey hi.. getting down ?” he asked. He could see her face now, a cute lil smile on her lips.
“Yup, I am getting down at Mangalore” ,she said!
“But there s still 30 mins right , and I think the train s delayed by 20 mins .. so make it 50” , Manas replied!
“Oh! is it?, I had no clue! Do you stay at mangalore?”
“Nopes, I am going there for a job. And what bout you? Do you work there?”
“No I am in my final year of postgraduation at Father Muller s medical college.”

Ahh , so she was a doctor too! Cool!

Before they could go on with the conversation, the train pulled itself into the station. It was time to get down.
“It was nice talking to you, and thanks for the help last night.” She gave him a sweet smile and walked away, to the pre paid auto stand and faded away from his sight!

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He was really hungry today. A heavy evening OPD meant a lot of talking to do. And that just fuelled his hunger. He made his way to this new restaurant that people had suggested- TRATTORIA. He was gonna have the nice and spicy Manglorean fish with Chicken Schintzels and rice. Yummy!

So as he sat and ordered his food, a familiar laughter greeted his ears, to be followed immediately by the sound of shattered glass. In her carefree style the lady had waved her hand and had hit the glass on the table which had crashed to the floor. The waiter rushed to pick up the pieces.

“Im sooo soryyyyy!” Squealed a familiar voice…

His eyes met hers, one more time! ! ! (‘’,)
She looked as confused as she did that night, in the train.. “im really sorry , I will pay for the glass that I just broke!” She hadn’t yet noticed him staring at her, since almost everyone was.. at the commotion! Soon the dust settled, and she looked around and spotted him! Her eyes acknowledged his presence! As her group finished the dinner, she saw him step out to wash his hands. She quietly got up and made her way too..

“Hey hi, how are you doing? Im sorry I couldn’t converse after getting down from the train that day. I had a class at 8am and had to keep all my stuff in the hostel and then get there. I am Sheetal, what about you?” A gentle nudge from her elbow and he knew it was his turn to speak!
“Hi Sheetal, this is Manas here! Nice to see you again. Do you come here often? This place is quite close to your medical college right?”
Yup, she nodded… and then SHEETAL SHEETAL SHEEETALLLLL,kahaan gayi yeh ladki?!, she could hear her friends cry aloud in the background.
“Oops , gotta go now. You TC and hope that you have a pleasant stay in this new city!”

And as the soft duppatta moved over his hand as she rushed out, his mind wandered into the wilderness of imagination! He could see the shadow move out of the exit door, quickly it turned and waved back at him , before he lost it again…!!

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Six months had passed since he had taken up this assignment. His parents had come down to be with him. Mom wanted to shop and he decided to take her to Janata stores at Hampankatta, the shopping hub at Mangalore! As she strolled and handed over things to be put in the trolley… she told him to get the cooking oil from the first rack . she had forgotten to pick it up from there. Manas went to get it. When he came back, Mom was not to be seen!

Where did mom go, I am sure she must be somewhere in the store. He started looking around and what did he see!!! Lol, mom was happily chatting with another person at the far end of the store. As he moved towards them, a familiar silhouette greeted him! Omg! Mom was talking to… Sheetal!!!… how on earth did this happen?

Manas , idhar aa.. you didn’t tell me that you have a friend in this city who s also from Mumbai? Sheetal was staring at him too. Running away wasn’t an option here. He just managed to say.. Ya MA, I was gonna tell you but looks like she told it before I did. Sheetal bit her lip, and quickly explained that she was in the store when she saw them enter. And when he had gone to get the cooking oil, aunty was standing alone and she introduced herself as his friend. Aunty was happy and wanted to know more about the shopping stores,in the new city, and so she took Sheetal s number!

That night he copied her number from his mom s phone into his phonebook! He was happy for a reason, and he didn’t know why?

10pm -hi , this is my no.. Manas here
10.01pm- hey, so who gave you my no? hehe.. shud I tell aunty that u stole it from her cell ..ha ha
10.01pm- shut up, you almost killed me there.. out of the blue , u pop up and mom s there too!
10.02pm- hehe, I saw ur face then..worth taking a pic.. blushing like crazy!

Well well WELL, that’s how Manas and Sheetal started whatsapping and this continued till next February…

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Not all stories have fairytale endings, but GOD had written a good one here!

They both were madly in love . It had been a year and half since they first met on the train. She had completed her PG training by now. And it was her time to return back to Mumbai. And that made him a tad uncomfortable. Everytime he thought of it, his heart skipped a beat! He had, yet, not proposed to her ! and the fact that she wouldn’t be there in the city made him really uneasy!

What he didn’t know was that all this while his mom too was texting her. She liked Sheetal and had asked her if she would like to marry Manas in the near future , to which she had replied YES! They decided to keep this a secret and surprise Manas later. Mom had communicated with her parents when they went to Mumbai for a week. As luck would have had it, her parents studied in the same college as mom had and since they had a love marriage themselves, were quite happy to let their daughter have it her way!
With this they had fixed up a surprise..

On 14th February Sheetal asked him to take her out on a long road drive along the romantic coastal road..

Enroute was the famous Shri Krishna temple at Udipi . They visited the deity and offered their pranaam. Outside the temple complex, in the courtyard, she made him sit down for a moment and told him that she would get the prasadam, and then they would proceed with the drive along the coast to Honnavar. And then she slid away..and our boy Manas had no clue what was to happen next..

….another elderly couple , a few years younger to his parents , came and sat across him. A young priest and his lad put two wooden stools and a few puja things and flowers around! He was gonna get up, thinking that some small puja probably was on the way , when he saw Sheetal coming back with 2 boxes in her hand. And out of nowhere, accompanying her were his parents. He was surprised! And then when his mom spoke to the other couple, he knew that they were her parents. No wonder, they looked similar to Sheetal.. rather it was the other way around..haha! and out of those 2 boxes came out 2 rings.. and before he knew of it, she had slid one in his fingers and he followed suit.. a surprise but extremely memorable and sweet ENGAGEMENT had just taken place!!!

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Another nudge from her, jolted him back to reality.

Hey, what are you thinking.. tie my mangalsutra tightly.. looks like you just had a recap of JAB WE MET , na Manas???
Yup, he meekly said.. with butterflies in his belly!!

Man and Wife.. a new journey had just begun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

To be or NOT to be, is the question!

Its been a long time that I have penned down something for my blog! You can say that the nuances of a hectic cardiac unit has probably done this to me! But I love to write! I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions! I love to write when im happy and enjoy it when sad! I write best , when I am either falling in love or falling apart! So today, after a brief hiatus .. I decided to write again!

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I finished all my CT alls, the orders for the admitted patients and retired back to my side room. Being a single resident in a heavy surgical unit made things worse! You had to finish male ward rounds, female ward rds, cvts icu rds, ems icu rds, micu rds, anaes icu rds and see any patient of yours transferred to any other speciality ward in KEM. Finally after all this, as a daily routine you would slump down on that single bed next to the table with all the discharge papers and blood collection bottles! Most of US would be battling depression in that phase! But I was happy, this is what I always wanted to be… ! I loved cricket, writing, trekking, listening to music.. but my first love was always SURGERY!..and when you really love something /someone , you are willing to go that extra mile and take all that suffering.. with a candid SMILE!

And I was smiling today.. as it was an pre emerg day.. on ideal grounds it should have been an off call , but without a co, you had to be on campus![ anyways surgeons= no social life!] My pre emerg day meant that it was Sunil s emergency! That’s how the units were planned in KEM ,two units in the ward had their heavy and light days complimenting each other, so that if for example Sunil had an heavy emergency going, I would come down and help him out! [ I love the protocols we had, took some time to understand why things were so strict and different.. but retrospectively, now I can say that those were the best!]

Soon there was a knock on the door! Who would do that at 3am unless its an emergency? I got up and opened the door. I see my ward mama perspiring , those beads of sweat on his forehead made me a tad uncomfortable! Who has sweat at 3am on a cold night? Is he hypoglycemic? Did he take insulin and then,forgot to eat? He was stammering… ya , must be that.. I thought! I switched on the light, told him to sit down and then talk!

“Sunil ko maara!” those were the first words that trickled out of his mouth!
“ Bahut laga hai! Haath pe fracture lag raha hai! Sudhir ko bhi sar pe maara, abhi CT mein leke gaye hai usko!” Subhash mama was mumbling and trembling!

See , with a residency this tough.. even HELL seemed a pleasure place! But what it did to us , was that it made us a very close knit family! All the residents of the batch were friends for life! Be it a guy or a gal, we were there through thick and thin! Be it fighting with Krunal when we teased him with Nimisha[ a continuous banter day in and out] and he came at 12am at midnight to clarify to us that aisa kuch hai hi nahi, saala khaali phukat chida rahe ho.. nimi ko bura lagega [ and now they are a married couple, the first from our batch to marry..pehla love marriage ! and I keep telling everyone their story.. I can still remember Krunal s face when he came at us and yelled that night..ha ha!] and Nimisha was no less a tyrant.. when I would keep collecting all the HGT strips and keep in the bottle in my apron pocket, now I know how they would disappear. The apron was on the chair in the ward, the bottle with the lid intact.. but the vanishing strips did bother me then till I realized that they were with this lady in the preceeding ward! No wonder she always offered me to help with my ct alls and I would revert back saying- handwriting alag hone se nahi chalega! But after all these years, they are a wonderful couple and friends for life!


Similarly the ward sisters, mamas, etc were a huge family. I still remember them cooking and keeping rice, daal, one sabji and a banana which we would eat at 4pm as lunch. The sister in charge getting milk and chicken in a dabba every day when Sunil was ill and needed proteins! …The mama s trying to make us smile with all their stories, getting hot water to bathe at 5am and a bucket with a mug, getting us a razor to shave looking at our unkempt look, getting the bread butter at 2am when we missed dinner, etc . A new shirt was gifted to us when they saw us in the same dress for days at a time.. the stench probably did that..ha ha! But that was how residency was.. work , work and work.. the side room was home, and the ward members..our family! I still remember the joy when the first appendectomy we operated went home! Each of us would have his or her own story of the first surgery..1st appendectomy, 1st perforation, 1st thyroid, 1st tracheostomy, 1st BK amputation…the list goes on and on! And nothing made us more happy than seeing these patients go home happy.. trust me ,that is all a doctor yearns for! A happy patient.. his smile and good wishes make our day! I still vividly remember the first CPR and the fact that we couldn’t save him. None of us were in a mood for dinner that night! Eyes were moist, and the heart bled a little!

So when I heard about what happened to Sunil and Sudhir, we rushed to the EMS[ EMS= emergency wing of kem, ESR to be more specific]. What had happened is that a 70 year old chronic alcoholic who had been drinking since evening had come with hematemesis[ a condition in which you vomit out copious amount of blood secondary to ruptured oesophageal varices] and had breath his last as soon as his trolley reached the ESR ! He did not give us any time to do any intervention… immediately CPR was started, he was intubated and life saving drugs administered into him. But alas, that was not enough! And we all know how fatal this condition can be. But as soon as his death was pronounced by him, they all pounced on him and beat the smithereens out of the surgical registrar on call, Sunil![ and im not talking bout GOT here] . Poor guy, he had just come out of an illness that he had contracted treating the open Kochs patients in the ward, not giving a damn to his own health! And tonight, he got his reward! Sudhir understood that the deceased relatives would like to get the paperwork done at the earliest. So he had gone to the mortuary to fill up the papers.. and that’s where they pounced on him too! 25 guys on one Sudhir.. clearly he wasn’t a wrestler .. and so had to bear the brunt!

With time the wounds would heal. Sunil s plaster cast was off in 6 weeks.. he still continued to do ct alls with the cast in situ. Never did he ask for a vacation and refused to go home and tell his parents about the incident. Sudhir too continued with his daily activities, a hairline fracture of his skull was a gift he had to be happy and content with!

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So what makes me go back into the past and take out these memories from the bag? [ my fav bean bag of the best days in life!] Frankly, how politics have made people brazen and insensitive, hurts us more than anyone else! Never hurt the heart that heals! We understand the sadness and how it feels when a life is lost! As a CVTS guy, I have seen this aspect closer than anyone else! Sometimes irrespective of your best efforts, you are not successful! The power to give one life , is in the domain of what we all call.. GOD[ different religions, different names!]

So,
I feel like it's time to speak up.
I don't quite know where to start.
Because the state of resident doctors today is so pityful,
It really crushes my heart.

So this one's for those with no fixed working hours ,
This one's for their sleepless nights,
This one's for their quiet breakdowns,
And for all their silent plights.

For all the times they've put patients first,
Before their own swollen feet and varicose veins,
For the countless instances they've treated an ailing,
At the cost of ignoring their own aches and pains.

How conveniently have we forgotten,
The times they've had their lunch at 9,
And what about those times they lied to their own parents,
Saying that they were absolutely fine.

Yet in return for these services,
Our colleagues have been beaten black and blue,
And while some have grevious injuries,
One's fighting for his life in an ICU.

Since when has this become tolerable,
A hospital environment turning violent,
Are all doctors disposable?
If not, why is the media silent ?

I question this lack of support.
Do you really think doctors don't have a voice?
But a community most likely to revolt
Is one which is left with no other choice!

To our tigers in Bengal, we say,
You've shown great courage-stay strong.
Doctors of this nation are with you,
Those hoodlums will pay for their wrong.

All doctors today stand in solidarity,
And ask for a law to protect us all,
So that none of our colleagues are ever harmed
When they are out there working on call.

To all the non-medicos I urge you to speak up,
For the situation has now become intense,
So far we've only used our scalpel to heal,
Please don't make us use it in self- defence.
- by the ‘shaken’ doctor

So , I hope that this situation will change hence! An eye for an eye is never the answer! But that doesn’t mean that you chop off my hands and I will not revolt!

Admist the sadness, let me end the article with some good memories that I had.. after surgery it was KEM CVTS. If surgery was hell, CVTS was 200 feet under! But irrespective of all the unearthly working hours, infinite stress, half the unit ending with divorces, hearing the great lady say.. why would I marry off my daughter to you? What quality of life can you give her when you spend 15 hours in the OT each day! And then calling it off! …I think we have seen it all!
But eventually it was CVTS which pulled us out of the darkest days of life.. and for that I shall always be grateful! So, time to get back, to the hectic life…. Dunno when the next one s gonna be ! adios!

thats a dear friend, an anaesthesist by profession.. ended up with POTT s spine which needed almost 2 years to get cured completely. obviously acquired while treating patients, but inspite of all the pain.. the SMILE was not lost. another great buddy, and a famous radiologist now, reading his CT scan then.. good ole days!

the famous ESR, non stop, patients' would troll.. and we were always up to the task..sun or rain, the ESR services always went ON!

The ward side room with the bed.. the CIRCLE of life for a resident began and ended here!

when you say -im dead tired today! what is the image that comes to your mind?
for us , this was it..be it lying on the trolley waiting outside the OT or on the bed, doing the CTalls!

thats HIM, with a plaster cast.. before and after the ATTACK. the spirit to serve and live life to the fullest was taught to us at our alma mater! life goes on, never forget to smile! he s a big laparoscopic surgeon at his home state, so happy for him!

the best buddies for life, how i miss those days! damn!

those #NOTEDIARIES, writing those half page notes while preparing for your exams, no respite from ward duties, no study leave, mavshi s dabba or the jeera rice with dal ...Patwardhan sir s wonderful ward rounds and our history taking sheets.. kem cvts , the good ole days!

docs do sleep on the floor, read for life, and work hard to get there! they dont celebrate birthdays as is the norm, everything happens in the side room! amazing memories!

So after all this when the question is asked.. TO BE OR NOT TO BE A DOC , in today s world..? i would still say BE ONE! life aint easy, but we are meant for tougher things! please dont mix political gains to demean a noble profession.. we work for the patients to be happy..respect that!