I get my first well deserved break of Holi for nearly 2 days out of which I plan to visit the hospital tomorrow night. Out to do tonight as a night shift for a friend of mine who has to go to meet his wife...and I will go to the hospital only tomorrow night. And so that gives me a whole of nearly 12 hours to do what I want to do....And I put it down on pen and paper just to prove to myself how efficient I actually am.
1> Clean the pigsty i live in. Put the sweaters, jackets away and bring out the Summer dresses.
2> No Holi for me. The tradition continues.
3> arrange my External Hard Drive.
4> Read a bit of ECG; and most importantly,
5> Sleep for as long as I want to.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
Ed Norton is fantastic in The Illusionist. Finally gulped the fever down with this fantastic movie. after counting miserable hours with movies like My Name Is Khan. I have promised never to trust Bollywood again especially the big banners type. Day after tomorrow is my Emergency night, and i hope my flu and ' Yellowish, copious, nonpurulent expectoration' is down by then.
Am finally making some head in diagnosis. I am happy because of that. I am also happy that I finally filed my tax returns. And I tried to capture 7 ravishing parrots on one single tree but my 2Mpxl camera mobile did not capture them and upon the instigation of few college kids they flew away...
Am finally making some head in diagnosis. I am happy because of that. I am also happy that I finally filed my tax returns. And I tried to capture 7 ravishing parrots on one single tree but my 2Mpxl camera mobile did not capture them and upon the instigation of few college kids they flew away...
Sunday, February 21, 2010
.....
For a land that is filled with the hatred of castes, with honor killings occuring regularly with fathers exulting over the blood of their daughters they took with their own hands, where handsome and dashing men and women talk only to women and men after they have checked out their castes and bank balances...you get to hear of some people who dare to defy orders.
And when they come from as meek a profession as mine, its all the more adorable....
Funny land this, as if deciding that happiness in a relationship would be directly proportional to wealth accrued, here they have to be Yadav calling Yadav, Chowdhury calling Chowdhury or Mittal calling Mittal.....
We are in 2010 for chrissakes. And here love comes laced up with caste tags. God be with the ones who bend the rules.
Someday more of this will change the world.
And when they come from as meek a profession as mine, its all the more adorable....
Funny land this, as if deciding that happiness in a relationship would be directly proportional to wealth accrued, here they have to be Yadav calling Yadav, Chowdhury calling Chowdhury or Mittal calling Mittal.....
We are in 2010 for chrissakes. And here love comes laced up with caste tags. God be with the ones who bend the rules.
Someday more of this will change the world.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Not to be
On the contrary, the guy with pancreatities came to Emergency of our unit the first thing in the morning. The Final year Post Grad posted there took him the normal way when Surgery guys refused to operate him; neither he nor his family opening his mouth to speak a word about all that drama they had been doing till they absconded with the file. Only when they reached the ward and my Co-Pg saw them was the whole thing known...Hes still there, got a Smart Card to get all treatment free from the Government.
Sometimes like this when you think people could have been really innocent and that somewhere some act of misunderstanding on your part or impatience on their part could have led to mismanagement or 'denial of health' as I had last put it, they come as scoundrelly as these...drink Alcohol, abuse their wives, get pancreatitis, abscond with files for 2 days, come back, get themselves admitted to the same unit to earn that hidden vote of sympathy, get a Smart Card that this unbelievable state has granted to every family who holds a BPL card ( whether they belong to it or no), and get Imipenem twice a day, free of charge.
And someone with Chronic Kidney Disease having three kids who he is the sole bread earner for...has no one to give him blood, no card to ensure free dialysis, each setting costing him 3 thousand bucks when he perhaps earns barely two thousand as a daily wager...finally denies dialysis and is carried off by his relatives to a not so distant death.
Sometimes like this when you think people could have been really innocent and that somewhere some act of misunderstanding on your part or impatience on their part could have led to mismanagement or 'denial of health' as I had last put it, they come as scoundrelly as these...drink Alcohol, abuse their wives, get pancreatitis, abscond with files for 2 days, come back, get themselves admitted to the same unit to earn that hidden vote of sympathy, get a Smart Card that this unbelievable state has granted to every family who holds a BPL card ( whether they belong to it or no), and get Imipenem twice a day, free of charge.
And someone with Chronic Kidney Disease having three kids who he is the sole bread earner for...has no one to give him blood, no card to ensure free dialysis, each setting costing him 3 thousand bucks when he perhaps earns barely two thousand as a daily wager...finally denies dialysis and is carried off by his relatives to a not so distant death.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Felt a little less of myself today. Did get another opportunity to bend the situation. Am beginning to realize that there are indeed streaks of a dictator in me. And while always, almost always the intention is for somebody's benefit, the method of execution of this intention is not always desirable. I am lucky to get a very kind hearted man as my teacher who gives me full brreadth and space to carry things out the way I choose. And while my strictness and concern for hygiene may prevent bedsores, stops pyorrhoea, and maybe causes people to recover, it doesn't necessarily apply to all. Especially people who bend the "Rules".
He did bend the Rules. And to some extent I was trying to put him back in place. But guess the result was undesirable. If he continued to act on my advise he would have still been in the ward. I hope he has the good sense to return a second time. I was almost asking him to stay in the ward. But two minds acted together and on second thoughts I asked him to go to the emergency. Predictably he did not.
For all his act of absconding with the file for twelve hours and returning minus the Ryle's tube and Negative Suction eighteen hours later, its true, as my colleague said, 'He could have done a murder and come walking back', which he did. But this was not the regular alcoholic Pancreatitis or the alcoholic liver disease you meet in wards frequently, whose chief intention is to get well to be able to go home to resume drinking. This was a scared, almost semi-apologetic alcoholic who I once had to virtually bully to believe that he would survive and that his love for his kids did not mean that he must spend his 'last moments' with them but to fight back, take medications and get cured.
They left for some place without ever telling me, breaching all the trust I thought they had in me which they had made amply evident in the 4 days that I had been treating them. we knew almost 6 hours later he was not in the ICU he was supposed to have been sent to. He returned at 5 the next morning, walked into the ward and requested admission. I gave them one of the biggest scolds that comes out of my pits once every two or three weeks, but still had asked him to lie in one of the beds till my Professor came. But a discussion with the Co-PG who was on duty the same time and I asked him to go to the Emergency, get another card and get admitted. Almost contacted the Doctor on duty, but he wasn't in the Emergency, or the concerned ward today morning.
he was not well. Did I deny Health? Possibly my action sounds politically and officially correct and in th event he was upto any mischief it may even have been astute of me to have sent him to the Emergency. But still a sense of foreboding persists. The possibility that the ignorance of the intervening twelve hours can so drastically change a treatment decision. He was an alcoholic, possibly a wife beater or a rogue. But he was sick. And minutes before he absconded he was talking about seeing his kids, and I am quite sure had he mentioned that he had gone to see his kids I would have allowed him to come back to the ward. But fear of the act becoming a precedence to others to repeat it for their own means, no communication with my seniors who would have been in a better position to decide, and somewhere the fear that my Professor would ask me the logical question my Co-PG had asked, about using his hospital stay to act as an alibi for possible wrong or criminal act prevented me from doing that. And I sent him away.
He has not been sighted ever since. I hope he has the good sense to come back again. He wont make it otherwise.
He did bend the Rules. And to some extent I was trying to put him back in place. But guess the result was undesirable. If he continued to act on my advise he would have still been in the ward. I hope he has the good sense to return a second time. I was almost asking him to stay in the ward. But two minds acted together and on second thoughts I asked him to go to the emergency. Predictably he did not.
For all his act of absconding with the file for twelve hours and returning minus the Ryle's tube and Negative Suction eighteen hours later, its true, as my colleague said, 'He could have done a murder and come walking back', which he did. But this was not the regular alcoholic Pancreatitis or the alcoholic liver disease you meet in wards frequently, whose chief intention is to get well to be able to go home to resume drinking. This was a scared, almost semi-apologetic alcoholic who I once had to virtually bully to believe that he would survive and that his love for his kids did not mean that he must spend his 'last moments' with them but to fight back, take medications and get cured.
They left for some place without ever telling me, breaching all the trust I thought they had in me which they had made amply evident in the 4 days that I had been treating them. we knew almost 6 hours later he was not in the ICU he was supposed to have been sent to. He returned at 5 the next morning, walked into the ward and requested admission. I gave them one of the biggest scolds that comes out of my pits once every two or three weeks, but still had asked him to lie in one of the beds till my Professor came. But a discussion with the Co-PG who was on duty the same time and I asked him to go to the Emergency, get another card and get admitted. Almost contacted the Doctor on duty, but he wasn't in the Emergency, or the concerned ward today morning.
he was not well. Did I deny Health? Possibly my action sounds politically and officially correct and in th event he was upto any mischief it may even have been astute of me to have sent him to the Emergency. But still a sense of foreboding persists. The possibility that the ignorance of the intervening twelve hours can so drastically change a treatment decision. He was an alcoholic, possibly a wife beater or a rogue. But he was sick. And minutes before he absconded he was talking about seeing his kids, and I am quite sure had he mentioned that he had gone to see his kids I would have allowed him to come back to the ward. But fear of the act becoming a precedence to others to repeat it for their own means, no communication with my seniors who would have been in a better position to decide, and somewhere the fear that my Professor would ask me the logical question my Co-PG had asked, about using his hospital stay to act as an alibi for possible wrong or criminal act prevented me from doing that. And I sent him away.
He has not been sighted ever since. I hope he has the good sense to come back again. He wont make it otherwise.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Rann
It wasn't a different movie. I wouldn't say it was even differently made. But it was somewhat fresh, even if it was a tinge undercooked, the flesh was soft in all the right places. And there was Amitabh Bachchan.
Ram Gopal Varma has come with a movie that was much awaited a long time right now. After his spectacular feat in churning out a million year movie like Aag, he had to come up with something to prove he was at least alive, if not retarded. With Rann, he shows glimpses of the dexterity he showed in movies like Jungle, Raat, Bhoot and even to some extent, Satya.
Its a movie about the things we know. NDTV, CNN-IBN, TIMES NOW, INDIA TV...all merge with truth versus sales war to their own conviniences and convictions. And above all, there is this man who grows beyond the lens with each passing day. He is almost out of the earth in this movie. With a single look, a single 'namaskar', Bachchan bursts out of the screen into your consciousness like no one, literally no one, can manage to do. East or West.
Riteish Deshmukh ( I hope I got his name right) doesn't disappoint and while I cannot say the movie is made for audiences like us ( who know it all, but who do not act upon this award because of the cautious conclusion derived from above that it would be of no use), it is good for the general mass populace that eats and sleeps with Tulsi, watches sting operations on Shakti kapoor on IndiaTV, and discusses what toilet paper Shah Rukh uses or what brand of Mineral water Priyanka Chopra uses to wash her face.
Media is a Phenomenon. And a consequence. 26/11 was an unfortunate result to that end. Unless we have the quantum of hysteria ( read action) generating population streamlining their takes on this issue, the cautious intelligentsia ( read, people who eat, read, know and sleep) will fail to do anything that would be of any consequence.
Rann doesn't disappoint. Big B is a pleasure, almost a superhuman to watch. The back ground score is fantastic. Sudeep is awesome with his cocained tremors and jitteriness. Riteish ( I hope I got it this time too...) manages to look visible, and all females look gorgeous. Had it not been for the Music Score which is disappointing, very dismal and crassy.
Ram Gopal Varma has come with a movie that was much awaited a long time right now. After his spectacular feat in churning out a million year movie like Aag, he had to come up with something to prove he was at least alive, if not retarded. With Rann, he shows glimpses of the dexterity he showed in movies like Jungle, Raat, Bhoot and even to some extent, Satya.
Its a movie about the things we know. NDTV, CNN-IBN, TIMES NOW, INDIA TV...all merge with truth versus sales war to their own conviniences and convictions. And above all, there is this man who grows beyond the lens with each passing day. He is almost out of the earth in this movie. With a single look, a single 'namaskar', Bachchan bursts out of the screen into your consciousness like no one, literally no one, can manage to do. East or West.
Riteish Deshmukh ( I hope I got his name right) doesn't disappoint and while I cannot say the movie is made for audiences like us ( who know it all, but who do not act upon this award because of the cautious conclusion derived from above that it would be of no use), it is good for the general mass populace that eats and sleeps with Tulsi, watches sting operations on Shakti kapoor on IndiaTV, and discusses what toilet paper Shah Rukh uses or what brand of Mineral water Priyanka Chopra uses to wash her face.
Media is a Phenomenon. And a consequence. 26/11 was an unfortunate result to that end. Unless we have the quantum of hysteria ( read action) generating population streamlining their takes on this issue, the cautious intelligentsia ( read, people who eat, read, know and sleep) will fail to do anything that would be of any consequence.
Rann doesn't disappoint. Big B is a pleasure, almost a superhuman to watch. The back ground score is fantastic. Sudeep is awesome with his cocained tremors and jitteriness. Riteish ( I hope I got it this time too...) manages to look visible, and all females look gorgeous. Had it not been for the Music Score which is disappointing, very dismal and crassy.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
.........
Things become easier when you are that tired as not to notice who or what you return to....
I hope I will meet some people, some doctors, whose life like me, will stretch beyond staking claim to correct diagnoses, knowing more medicine than most others, churning out factual details of places they visited 3 years, 8 months, 26 days and 8 hours ago. For who, it wouldn't matter how many books were finished how many times over, or who would give their souls a minutes respite to the condescence we usually reserve for people who are not physicians.
By virtue of this presupposed enlightenment, I am dying to meet a person who reads the blood tears shed to come to this point. All life's accumulated, unfulfilled, rotting dreams and sadness. Of the places I have visited so far but never been...Bombay, Cochin, Calcutta, Guwahati, Cherrapunji, Shillong, Rameshwaram, Bangalore, Jaipur, Agra....Delhi and Cuttack have been the two places where I have let my heart out. Where I have once or twice let go of my usual reserved self, sensible, not complicated, over academic self and adorned the Other garb few, very few people have seen me in. My list of admissions would be small, by the virtue of which I would still perhaps be counted as a 'virtuous' girl, but whether the world's final decision of me is cared a hoot by me is baseless.
If anyone cares to listen, our lives, all our lives, are a big mockery of ourselves. For the show of empathy we put on when we have cast cursory glances at patients embattling the biggest disease of poverty, and when they go, they put a hand on our heads and bless us. Us, high profile, Next to Gods. And while fully aware how little we did for them ( we could do for them, under the circumstances), we swell with pride. I feel terrible each time some woman or man blesses me for 'saving' them, or their boy or girl. The blessing are too much for me to carry. The numerous question marks I hoard inside my soul come tumbling out, and I seek refuge in indifference. Few days back involuntarily, my hands went to touch the feet of one such woman I had seen for some time. The bitch in me had once decided never to touch any person's feet here out of 'professional courtesy'. But that woman's eyes were so full of love I had to bend down.
The very little we do for patients out of routine is enough to go by. In 6 months practise, I must say, I have not ever saved a life, the people I did CPR revived momentarily to go again after a few moments, I may have recognised ST elevations and detected a few MIs, but I guess short of a blind doctor, everyone else would have done that. The first patient I had fought for, Promila, died of 3 evacuations. I am good at treating bed sores, and I feel nauseated taking BPs of patients here so my patients have Dettol, Sumag and Listerine mouthwash as a necessary accompaniment to their kitty of pills. Still, I have not felt that rush that should come when people must have saved lives. I have detected few cancers, may have a reasonable aptitude with medicine, but the gloat coming from it is insufficient as I suffer from physical inability to carry on that stems from a mental fatigue. And it is particularly depressing when a patient's attendant apologizes to me for losing the patient with the excuse that 'I did my best'.
I fail to understand why System has to be so screwed when it denies Essential Medical Care to those who can survive, with a little more detailed attention and monitoring. The ones who do are the ones who would survive with the medications alone. That an astute Pharmacist would do equally well. So are we Pharmacists?
This is the story all over the country. Doctors get trained to work as Peripheral Health Workers, and in most instances are so busy trying to outsmart one another that they all fall in the same bourgeoise lot of average mentalities staking claim to excellence. Our system caters to the rich, to the ones who can seek health care and afford it like child's play. And over the years, like triaging IC Bleeds with midline shifts, we cautiously distance ourselves from the lot.
Who doesn't want money? My life is a guilt ridden tale of dreaming that I visit all these places, with the amount of money that would give me the luxury to have the "time" to visit all these places and not to return to be held accountable for my own life's dreams. My life is about having a roof over my head, if not in company with anyone, then with enough engagements to drown my time in. And then my music doesn't have to stop at Pink Floyd, or my books at Midnight's Children. Thats the average lot of providence I have slotted myself in now, and I must crawl through the tunnel to reach the end.
All I am wondering is, if there is anyone else who knows there is a tunnel, who would take action, and not repent it a moment later if it comes to doing something for an average patient with average resources, where one could afford to be a Robin hood with the Power Cables running through my Hospital Hosiery of Muslin and crap.
Does someone live here, who after gloating about the Gold medals and Correct Diagnoses and treatments ad infinitum takes a break and looks inside himself or herself? We cannot change the machines that have been fitted in us from the birth. I am overweight, and graying, and notoriously sceptical, cynical and forthright, numbed over to the point of hostility, if not indifference. I want to know if there is a hidden shadow behind every light that flickers here. Who sees not what he/she is doing to the system, but what the system is doing to him/her. I am even seeking it with the hope that shadows will merge, and then perhaps a catharsis will ensue. Sometimes I feel I am the only insane person here. People seem happy around me, reciting details of job slips I have never checked, gloating in new acquisitions I don't envy, or reciting numerical and geographical details of places they have been to so and so days back...while I am sure they do not remember the very scent of that land.
I hope its only my life that has these question marks, pauses and circles all put together in a narrow mouthed knapsack and purse stringed from above. I am unsure if letting them in is a wiser thing, for I do not know if letting them out will be of any consequence either. What am I at 27? Thousand odd books, two maps, a Chinese Fan and a laptop, a MD Medicine, writer of a new blog with the same name as the one I deleted 3 years ago? With so much faith in the humanity part of it all sometimes I feel like I am a Comrade....Not the person I once used to be. I live alone, and with the company I have, I am not sure I fit in the comfort zone. So I am convinced in my numerical status. But I have questions, and I don't know if it stems from ambition or the truest part of me I keep hidden. And because I don't have answers my loneliness becomes a burden, and I take petty refuge of some kind or the other to get rid of it.
If at 33,000 feet and above the Himalayas, I wonder if my plane would crash and I would be happy enough to fall into the middle of the mountains, I must have been the only person who was thinking that day, that way.
I don't want to. I want to live, like all patients whose deaths I cannot delay. And I don't know quite how, I don't know what lies at the end of this tunnel.
I hope I will meet some people, some doctors, whose life like me, will stretch beyond staking claim to correct diagnoses, knowing more medicine than most others, churning out factual details of places they visited 3 years, 8 months, 26 days and 8 hours ago. For who, it wouldn't matter how many books were finished how many times over, or who would give their souls a minutes respite to the condescence we usually reserve for people who are not physicians.
By virtue of this presupposed enlightenment, I am dying to meet a person who reads the blood tears shed to come to this point. All life's accumulated, unfulfilled, rotting dreams and sadness. Of the places I have visited so far but never been...Bombay, Cochin, Calcutta, Guwahati, Cherrapunji, Shillong, Rameshwaram, Bangalore, Jaipur, Agra....Delhi and Cuttack have been the two places where I have let my heart out. Where I have once or twice let go of my usual reserved self, sensible, not complicated, over academic self and adorned the Other garb few, very few people have seen me in. My list of admissions would be small, by the virtue of which I would still perhaps be counted as a 'virtuous' girl, but whether the world's final decision of me is cared a hoot by me is baseless.
If anyone cares to listen, our lives, all our lives, are a big mockery of ourselves. For the show of empathy we put on when we have cast cursory glances at patients embattling the biggest disease of poverty, and when they go, they put a hand on our heads and bless us. Us, high profile, Next to Gods. And while fully aware how little we did for them ( we could do for them, under the circumstances), we swell with pride. I feel terrible each time some woman or man blesses me for 'saving' them, or their boy or girl. The blessing are too much for me to carry. The numerous question marks I hoard inside my soul come tumbling out, and I seek refuge in indifference. Few days back involuntarily, my hands went to touch the feet of one such woman I had seen for some time. The bitch in me had once decided never to touch any person's feet here out of 'professional courtesy'. But that woman's eyes were so full of love I had to bend down.
The very little we do for patients out of routine is enough to go by. In 6 months practise, I must say, I have not ever saved a life, the people I did CPR revived momentarily to go again after a few moments, I may have recognised ST elevations and detected a few MIs, but I guess short of a blind doctor, everyone else would have done that. The first patient I had fought for, Promila, died of 3 evacuations. I am good at treating bed sores, and I feel nauseated taking BPs of patients here so my patients have Dettol, Sumag and Listerine mouthwash as a necessary accompaniment to their kitty of pills. Still, I have not felt that rush that should come when people must have saved lives. I have detected few cancers, may have a reasonable aptitude with medicine, but the gloat coming from it is insufficient as I suffer from physical inability to carry on that stems from a mental fatigue. And it is particularly depressing when a patient's attendant apologizes to me for losing the patient with the excuse that 'I did my best'.
I fail to understand why System has to be so screwed when it denies Essential Medical Care to those who can survive, with a little more detailed attention and monitoring. The ones who do are the ones who would survive with the medications alone. That an astute Pharmacist would do equally well. So are we Pharmacists?
This is the story all over the country. Doctors get trained to work as Peripheral Health Workers, and in most instances are so busy trying to outsmart one another that they all fall in the same bourgeoise lot of average mentalities staking claim to excellence. Our system caters to the rich, to the ones who can seek health care and afford it like child's play. And over the years, like triaging IC Bleeds with midline shifts, we cautiously distance ourselves from the lot.
Who doesn't want money? My life is a guilt ridden tale of dreaming that I visit all these places, with the amount of money that would give me the luxury to have the "time" to visit all these places and not to return to be held accountable for my own life's dreams. My life is about having a roof over my head, if not in company with anyone, then with enough engagements to drown my time in. And then my music doesn't have to stop at Pink Floyd, or my books at Midnight's Children. Thats the average lot of providence I have slotted myself in now, and I must crawl through the tunnel to reach the end.
All I am wondering is, if there is anyone else who knows there is a tunnel, who would take action, and not repent it a moment later if it comes to doing something for an average patient with average resources, where one could afford to be a Robin hood with the Power Cables running through my Hospital Hosiery of Muslin and crap.
Does someone live here, who after gloating about the Gold medals and Correct Diagnoses and treatments ad infinitum takes a break and looks inside himself or herself? We cannot change the machines that have been fitted in us from the birth. I am overweight, and graying, and notoriously sceptical, cynical and forthright, numbed over to the point of hostility, if not indifference. I want to know if there is a hidden shadow behind every light that flickers here. Who sees not what he/she is doing to the system, but what the system is doing to him/her. I am even seeking it with the hope that shadows will merge, and then perhaps a catharsis will ensue. Sometimes I feel I am the only insane person here. People seem happy around me, reciting details of job slips I have never checked, gloating in new acquisitions I don't envy, or reciting numerical and geographical details of places they have been to so and so days back...while I am sure they do not remember the very scent of that land.
I hope its only my life that has these question marks, pauses and circles all put together in a narrow mouthed knapsack and purse stringed from above. I am unsure if letting them in is a wiser thing, for I do not know if letting them out will be of any consequence either. What am I at 27? Thousand odd books, two maps, a Chinese Fan and a laptop, a MD Medicine, writer of a new blog with the same name as the one I deleted 3 years ago? With so much faith in the humanity part of it all sometimes I feel like I am a Comrade....Not the person I once used to be. I live alone, and with the company I have, I am not sure I fit in the comfort zone. So I am convinced in my numerical status. But I have questions, and I don't know if it stems from ambition or the truest part of me I keep hidden. And because I don't have answers my loneliness becomes a burden, and I take petty refuge of some kind or the other to get rid of it.
If at 33,000 feet and above the Himalayas, I wonder if my plane would crash and I would be happy enough to fall into the middle of the mountains, I must have been the only person who was thinking that day, that way.
I don't want to. I want to live, like all patients whose deaths I cannot delay. And I don't know quite how, I don't know what lies at the end of this tunnel.
Some Days Back
She sloshed her feet
in the rains,
her tears, flew down with the drops from above,
she must show patience...
A while more, she said to herself,
the shadow will lift.
Before the answer came,
demanding her presence.
Slave to destiny?
Or enslaved to human choice?
Did she really want a lot more
than she deserved
for greed to be surfeit?
Last glance at two empty iron chairs,
set against the tide of time.
Last step off the platform,
everything blurred,
time crunched below the iron wheels,
blowing off the candle she had kept alight.
Things changed forever,
her hope that time will turn back,
fireflies will dance one chilly
monsoon night,
or mermaids will live to see the day,
four feet taking equal steps,
faded into nothingness,
blown away by the
windmills of time.
in the rains,
her tears, flew down with the drops from above,
she must show patience...
A while more, she said to herself,
the shadow will lift.
Before the answer came,
demanding her presence.
Slave to destiny?
Or enslaved to human choice?
Did she really want a lot more
than she deserved
for greed to be surfeit?
Last glance at two empty iron chairs,
set against the tide of time.
Last step off the platform,
everything blurred,
time crunched below the iron wheels,
blowing off the candle she had kept alight.
Things changed forever,
her hope that time will turn back,
fireflies will dance one chilly
monsoon night,
or mermaids will live to see the day,
four feet taking equal steps,
faded into nothingness,
blown away by the
windmills of time.
Friday, February 5, 2010
The Sulfated Ishq
Different plot, not an entirely different cinematography, and a Quentin Tarantino remix with an Indian masala mix. The result is refreshing but falls somewhat short of a man who gave us movies like Maqbool and Blue Umbrella. When it comes to Vishal Bharadwaj, you begin to expect a difference. His heroines ooze sensual democracy, with the audacity to look back at the man who looks beneath the fabric swathing the body. His plots thicken with the native lingo of the brazen Indian Backside replete with the permutations and combinations of inferences that leave most mouths slackened. With that in place, Vidya Balan ( Krishna) is just the heroine in the backless cholis who delivers the obscenity with such 'in your face' grace that she wins your acclaim hands down. Arshad is brilliant, Naseeruddin, is more than everything else he has always had, nimble and very fit. Performances lend all the credibility to the script.
And several times make up for what the script lacks...
A good plot to take the movie to where it should have been. The script is ordinary, the woman using one or more men to avenge her husband has been seen before ( Hollywood if not Bollywood ). And wearing those sarees with hands as supple as Vidya's make you a bit more uncomfortable when you see her holding the Automatic. She is either not comfortable in her sarees or not comfortable with the pistols. ( But she is beautiful in every single scene of the movie, even when she cries with white scleras)....The plot becomes predictable and somewhat boring. Nowhere do you sit forwards in the chair and await what is coming next. The climax is dull but mercifully ends before it becomes a burden. The Missionary of charity 'Tai' somehow uses her senile intelligence to set fire to the woodhouse LPG-mined by the wronged wife. And the 'Cuckoo' is perhaps the next evolutionary advantage to husbands who wrong their wives.
Whats in...Naseeruddin Shah's audible gasps ( neednot eulogise him...), Arshad's chutzpah ( He is one fantastic actor who knows his job), and Vishal's Music which this time has become rivetting ...with the oldies as ringtones, and 6 year old kids running around with guns ( If you want to see more of Badland UP, watch a scarcely mentioned movie called Shakti....apart from the chart thumping Ishq Kameena number of Shah Rukh and Aishwarya, it had some really stark reality bytes.) The back ground score is decently raucous, with some ploys and camera positions that will immediately remind you of Tarantino as you watch the scenes unfold. I wish I understood the profanity to have been better able to get under the scene. I also missed the initial few minutes. But it was tad sad at the end I was not longing to see those minutes.
Watch it for performances, watch it for the audacity to kiss on screen and not offer biological non primate explanations for hormonal candour. And watch it for the snippets of directional brilliance that comes in bits and pieces. And also watch it for the hope that Bharadwaj will bring much more brilliantly made movies in the times to come.
Vidya Balan does not need to ooze oomph. Rightly led, she is a remarkable actress and will give superlative performances if she is properly honed.
And several times make up for what the script lacks...
A good plot to take the movie to where it should have been. The script is ordinary, the woman using one or more men to avenge her husband has been seen before ( Hollywood if not Bollywood ). And wearing those sarees with hands as supple as Vidya's make you a bit more uncomfortable when you see her holding the Automatic. She is either not comfortable in her sarees or not comfortable with the pistols. ( But she is beautiful in every single scene of the movie, even when she cries with white scleras)....The plot becomes predictable and somewhat boring. Nowhere do you sit forwards in the chair and await what is coming next. The climax is dull but mercifully ends before it becomes a burden. The Missionary of charity 'Tai' somehow uses her senile intelligence to set fire to the woodhouse LPG-mined by the wronged wife. And the 'Cuckoo' is perhaps the next evolutionary advantage to husbands who wrong their wives.
Whats in...Naseeruddin Shah's audible gasps ( neednot eulogise him...), Arshad's chutzpah ( He is one fantastic actor who knows his job), and Vishal's Music which this time has become rivetting ...with the oldies as ringtones, and 6 year old kids running around with guns ( If you want to see more of Badland UP, watch a scarcely mentioned movie called Shakti....apart from the chart thumping Ishq Kameena number of Shah Rukh and Aishwarya, it had some really stark reality bytes.) The back ground score is decently raucous, with some ploys and camera positions that will immediately remind you of Tarantino as you watch the scenes unfold. I wish I understood the profanity to have been better able to get under the scene. I also missed the initial few minutes. But it was tad sad at the end I was not longing to see those minutes.
Watch it for performances, watch it for the audacity to kiss on screen and not offer biological non primate explanations for hormonal candour. And watch it for the snippets of directional brilliance that comes in bits and pieces. And also watch it for the hope that Bharadwaj will bring much more brilliantly made movies in the times to come.
Vidya Balan does not need to ooze oomph. Rightly led, she is a remarkable actress and will give superlative performances if she is properly honed.
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