The Scalpel Speaks

My husband had gone to read a paper at a conference and i went along rather reluctantly, as always. The arguments were the same, the additional expenditure of my ticket and his  usual answer, if i go alone then i  don't enjoy, so in a way my ticket is also wasted and if you come along we get to spend the 16 hours together both ways of our long flights. The latter statement may sound a trifle over the top, for a couple married as long as we were but doctors who are in government jobs would know that Cardiology and Gynaecology pretty much exclude any leisure and throw in a couple of kids with their Board exam sect …… you get the drift.    The kids hadn ’ t accompanied us ,so i was kind of looking forward to the long haul flight in a   warm, fuzzy kind of way    God please don't   send a young mother with a wailing kid,i know this will not pass the lofty moral censorship with a lot of readers,but heck,in all honesty,its a nightmare   We we...

Winston Churchill had famously remarked, the only thing worse than his progeny inheriting his looks would be if it inherited his wife’s intellect! I was also beset by such fears. My face, my habitus, my inertia, my Nirvana like calm, absent drive/focus/perseverance/tenacity; I would have none of it- in my offspring. But I vainly prayed that somethings I wanted passed unchanged. My love for a soulful story, exquisite penmanship, the love for the printed word.   Empathy, for what is a pretty picture without a heart.   A strong sense of right and wrong. 22 years down, the surprises don’t cease. From the little girl who saw her sister’s Gold Medal from school and quietly said, i want one too! She just sat at the table with her books….and got one the next year…..and the story continued till she declared she had to do well in her 12th Boards- not for self aggrandisement but as a tribute to her teachers and school. I argued, it’s easier said than done, but her will prevailed. With he...

I was checking my daughter’s 'status'-  (Status stopped meaning what you and I know it means long time back, and then it meant what Mark Zuckerberg wanted his Facebook folks to infer from it: whether you were single or taken, and now, it is on Whatsapp in a new  avatar:  a picture or a slogan that defines the day that was or the day that will be. The Birthdays, Rose day, Friendship day, all have their place of pride up there on it.) I wanted to get an idea of what time she hit the sack, by the time of the last post, (which generally is her status, it’s the beginning of the end-of-the day activities for her and also her kindred souls) when I come face to face with a cute guy (learnt sometime back not to get my maternal excitement up- it must be his birthday, and ALL of them post their pictures and videos with him to underline their importance in his life lest he forget them in his annual record keeping from one birthday to the next.)  Coming back to ...

"I can relax now," declares A, relief writ large on her face. "Are you going on leave ?" asks S, knowing full well that it is a rhetorical question. There is no leave for doctors through this Corona pandemic. "Have you tested IgG positive ?" (signifying that you have developed protective antibodies against the Covid-19 virus and therefore are not vulnerable to it), that's the only news that can give some joy. "Are you permitted to work from home ?" That is nasty coming from one Gynaecologist to the other who can work from home only as well as a pilot can ! The questions flow, fast and furious (too much Netflix) as we sit around in our demarcated chairs, six feet apart in the waiting area of our now deserted OPD on the fourth floor of our hospital, the OPDs having been shifted to the first floor for the duration of the pandemic. I have packed my 'Covid Bag' and kept it in the car and am ready to walk into Quarantine as and when requi...

“Will you marry me ?” he asked. The tall, good-looking, articulate SDM of the city. I run away, though it broke my heart to do so. Why? I was a doctor and he wasn’t- and I had to marry one. One day his patience with my work will run out, or my love for the good life will tear me away from my calling. It’s like taking the holy vows of The Order! Marry I did. An upcoming physician, and me, a gynaecologist embarked on our journey of Life and Medicine together. During post-graduation, the only sizeable leave that one gets is the preparatory leave before exams, so we prepared to get married in his prep leave. I must have been the only newbie wife to pack a couple of his books on our honeymoon trip and even badgered him to study, balancing the ardour with the arduousness ! Love is... cooking together... till it’s not. When you return from the hospital, long past anyone’s lunchtime- tired, hungry, to a half-cooked meal which is the best you could manage before dashing out. Before the...