You need mad people to bring about change. Mad people like PB....who was the Unknown Indian I met in my first year of connectivity. My first and last e-guru. My educator in ' Big, bad and dad world of Internet'. PB is a doctor, and a very angry one at that. And a very successful one at that if it counts. Fighting for a cause still I believe. A Khalsa who is not good looking, ( Unlike what he told me), and who does not wear a pagdi or hold a kirpan. PB is not my father figure, though he is aged rightly to fit into that slot. And his anger has made him run from a number of Esteemed Institutes and throw the resignation letter in the face of some of the most powerful figures in India. I met him during my earliest days on Internet, when I was addicted to chatting. ( Unless specified, when I mention the word 'meet' it usually means to meet over the Net) . And his opening lines were the " I am an Unknown Indian, from Dilli. Not Dilli as in the capital of East Timor silly, but Dilli as in the Capital of India". And the ubiquitous " I know all that needs to be known....." dialogue he kept on telling until he finally revealed his identity months later to me. Don't know why he took to a 18 year old girl then. I would have learnt about Interntet anyways.....I was addicted to the computer to this extent that my computer teacher had asked me if I had done the Revolving Cube in BASIC...a 3-D figure I had done by putting 8 points in 8 circles arranged vertically and running in a loop alternated by 8 dark points in the same position so that the point appeared to shift in 3-D space as the formula took sine-cosine values. He probably took me to guide me through the ' Bad world of Internet Daddies...' , and he did...and a year later, in my 2nd MBBS days, we were chatting like old friends, 19 year old with a 45 year old. He taught me perhaps what I will teach kids, if I ever take up chatting again...Thing is, I am speaking bout his anger now, and my anger, which is the common point I find in us, and some doctors I see around me, who I immediately identify with. I want to tell is the purpose of anger....and how it can be used to build something creative. The chance of meeting one such person early in life is a mere conjecture. His being famous or anything has nothing to do with the story. And its not important to me either. I hardly know a lot of famous people. But what Thats the purpose of internet....You might be Tom Cruise acting as a gay activist talking to a 12 year old in Vietnam, asking him about bombs lying on his backyard, and no one will have a clue. This of, course, excludes the 'Big Bad world on the net....the landmines you should avoid when you walk acros the e-fields...But its necessary to know that there are landmines. And I know them now, to the extent that I will be similarly telling some kid who I might e-educate in the future with his lines..." I know all that needs to be known..." Very corny. And undeniably complacent.
Anyhow the topic is the anger potential that people like him and me carry. My anger that erupts in phases...when my voice slurs, my alae flare and if situation so demands, I cannot rule out a physical reaction...despite being a woman and being fully aware that I am not physically strong or well trained. Its a very very bad situation...for people like us who cannot speak anything but the truth, and worse, cannot stay silent either. I have suffered because of this...Especially in situations when other people have taken me behind screens and asked me why I should bother about certain issues and not let the affected people handle it themselves. More commonly people like me will mostly be laughed at, be scorned and in all probabilities opposed tooth and nail when they want to carry out their ideas, and ridiculed openly when they scorn an idea for some reason.... n most cases, hospitals, industries, states, republics, the faces of these and several others entities have been changed by people who have run them as dictators...with a lot of anger which they channelized positively...creatively, passionately...I am not justifying them who took it to extreme ends...And its also not a fact that continuation of functionality and consolidation and improvisation of gains is done by such people alone....But almost always it takes a mad man to start something that becomes eternal..In setting up anything, anger is a necessary tool...as is jealousy and insecurity...The difference is that it should always point towards the sublime, towards creating something...Crime is almost always involved as well. And dictators don't take much time to turn into despots. Thats when the fall starts..Fuhrer turning Hitler..Neverthless, the face of that enterprise, state, nation or industry is changed like never before. I can vouch that these group of people must have been very sad, very misunderstood, very lonely. Trouble is, they deserve to be. And thats not a presentiment that I try to justify because I identify with these with the worst and most basic of my emotions.... I compare myself ceaselessly with my Senior Resident I adore. I have a voice which when shaken with the temper matches the anger I carry in my genes that had once sent my mother crashing a chair on a table, I manage to send a gang of Jats out of the ward when they have been creating nuisance for a hysterical female. I feel happy to have restored order there. The mob was avoided. there was a reason. But at times I also feel scared that I don't have energy to back it up...And scared i might turn into a martinet. Situations have not gone that out of hand...But there is an underlying component of the realization that I am not soft, or sensitive...the Melanie Ashley kind of woman...I am not the Scarlett type of woman either...I am more like the Ellen O' Hara type of woman..And the Arundhati Roy type of woman who speakes despite being ridiculed...mixed with the Kiran Bedi style....I adoreboth of them. But only upto a point. I don't want to be anyway like them. Period. I carry a lot of anger in my blood..which I hope I will channelize in a good way and do something good for people...I will never be that smart to keep quiet and cover my ass when no one turns up to speak against the system....And I know I will always land in trouble for this..Anyways. Remembering PB of the old days when he used to say he had a lot of it too, when the Hindus ran after him in 1984, and he decided to cut off his beard and hair for good. I saw him years later on a TV channel, fighting against female foeticide, taking on Hinduja and Kamte. I saw the same anger and impertinence we read about...and it was reassuring to know that even higher up, people like us exist...So we are not that abnormal. We belong to that race of people. Its dangerous. And probably harmful in the long term if not matched by physical fitness and mental acuity. But I hope I dont turn out to be that dumb either... To bring about change. And to assure equality of health providence...Someone predicted I will end up being a dictator and will run my family the same way I will run my enterprise. That has subconsciously made me decide I should remain a Unwed Black Widow Spider. Women like us are just professional success stories I guess, if at all. You need additional qualification to be more than just a great friend, excellent conversationalist, travel companion good doctor, administrator etc...Being a homemaker is a very different thing. You cannot run it with everything else and other people on your mind...We don't fit in that category. And perhaps we should best try not to fit. And going by the possibility of the gene I carry from Tiger Mama ( My very handsome late brother of my mother, with blue eyes and an intelligence I have found in very few men till date), I swear I feel threatened at times that my own nerves will give way. Especially with Morning Casualties coming from next week where we will handle them solely on our own. And I will have the added disadvantage of being ECG illiterate, because I plan to stick to my target of not touching a book till my 1st year ends.
Mellowed was the word PB said he had become post Delhi riots and nearly 2 decades of pvt practice...and championing the cause of fight against female foeticide in India. I only sometimes wish I stayed in touch with him, just like AB...my earliest mentors in life. But their success was the key deterrent. I wish to stay anonymous. And since my net awareness made me know these people and I interacted with them to come to a point when I started believing in what they believed in, I have the habit of withdrawing on to myself, and lose people who matter in my life. And I did it then too. To PB, after my computer teacher, I owe my internet sense, and to some extent now, competence. And I plan to take it further as the only hobby I will have. Crashing my computers and building them anew, once the affordability doesn't remain a problem. To PB I also owe the fact that I was never swayed by my academic scores...But that perhaps acted in a wrong way ( My scores are best left unmentioned..all I can say is they were pretty commendable..) Ultimately the disinterest made me commit a fatal error which took me nearly 4 years to recover from, but in any case I am not guilty of any thing. Only one feeling perhaps that had I continued to take my career seriously then when I did not take it, life would perhaps have been be different. My scores needed to be taken seriously. Someone else might have made a gold mine out of them...And I have still not bothered to collect the gold plated ones..Necessarily happier or more fulfilling I cannot tell. But whatever shape my life took on from then, whatever people I chose to be with, whatever emotions I experienced, I became a totally different person than was predicted of me....To the point that now I have a thriving electronic existence beyond my professional life i have nothing else to do or no one else to meet, whats worse, I do not miss the lack....I have lost the power to appreciate normal fun filled movies..or read light romance novels....I am not Kafkaesque, not Ayn Randish....Not Marquezed, or Rushdied.....I am Me. A curious pot pourri of everything with a dollop of confusion. I want to be happy in life...but there are far too may options that make me pleased that it become a problem which one to accord the highest priority to...The movies I see or the books I end up appreciating these days are morose, dark critically acclaimed stuff that do not make any body happier. And while it may be called a certain class in choosing them so it doesn't necessarily enrich life ( Or does it? I do not know it yet) And most of all, it makes you accept and remain undecided about most things in life and not have a definite stand about anything in life....
In any case, I wrote about PB because he will remain one guy who taught me a lesson when we were talking about the Delhi riots..." You will never know what it means to belong to a minority community...So stop theorizing about idealism" I was too young then. He was my counselor in MBBS days, slots my sister or parents could not take, he filled with a lot of ease. And a lot of how I feel today when I cry against the system reminds me of sentences he used to tell then which I did not understand. Though my promise to be able to hack systems still remains a distant dream, may be I will do it someday. And I don't know how to use my anger, especially when my professor is a Gandhibadi who keeps folding hands and giving in to peoples even when they abuse him on the face... when I and a like minded Final Year and Second year are sitting on our haunches to be just summoned to bring back the errant behaviour to a justified end....We are basically the people who run to cover other's asses to get our own feet in mud. And who cannot remain silent and diplomatic but speak at the cost of our reputation ( which almost always gets noted as ugly...because most people do not have the capacity to handle ugly truths about the system about status quo and the need for change.....And in the end, whether we stay Dictators or wisely choose to 'Mellow'...( which I will...I prefer a yellow Mellow to a Fascist, it is a more successful career option...), we are always misinterpreted and misunderstood.
Doesn't make a lot of difference. I will write about it here. And someone who is like me will read and understand what I want to say.
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