Nerd...Who me ???

This is an oft repeated tendency I begin to observe in myself over quite some time now. An inability to mix and mingle into the general conversation, disinterest in other putative areas of interest and more than that, utter disregard to what other people might think about me behaving this way. The other day, I squirmed and made my way out of a gathering congregation about bangles and sarees to wear on a marriage party. I tried, I tried not to be rude and endure that piece of ...or whatever it was that was being discussed at the breakfast table on a good wintry sunday morning. But I couldn't. And I finally got up and got out.

Its not been the first time that this is happening. At least at home I was given the liberty to stay shut in my room. Because I would address someone s uncle at the beginning of the party and say goodbye as brother. My mother's and father's friends have never been a subject of enduring memory for me. While I do remember the lift of an eyebrow or an oddity that stands out in a vague paragraph mentioned at the end of the chapter in some textbook, or the way the lilt of the bagpipes carries on in the background of some celtic music, I fail drastically in the semingly mundane, but essential things that make up life.

Am I getting prematurely senile? My 'absentmindedness' could be the telltale signs of a fast approaching presenile dementia ? The 'nerdiness' a manifestation of the most innermost fears that shaped me into the oddball of information and efficiency that I am ?

I cannot say for sure. But I hope, I seriously hope, routine, 'normal' things in life assume more importance in my mind than they currently are. I am missing out on things, I think. A lot of them. And the worst thing next to missing them out could probably be being unaware of the things I am missing out on.

I am amazed peoply typify me as the talking, joke cracking nutty girl who always manages to smile. Nothing can be farther from the truth that is. I am vivacious if I want to be, I can be lethal with my anger. And I can crack a joke at expense of myself. But nothing, and nobody can claim to know me, if they misinterpret my reclusiveness as being upset, and typify me as a forever cackling goose.

I hate it when people say the most hurtful things masqueraded as a joke. Mostly because while I can be sarcastic to the point of acid dropping sentences, I usually fire it at people i do not respect.

Wish I did not become a submissive fool to people I loved. That is the trouble. They abuse that position. Sooner or later.

Few moments in yesterday...

The key fitted, two clicks, door opening

into the silent, sturdy security,

of a hardworking life.

I walked back, barefeet, into the cocoon of my privacy;

bringing thoughts and case files of a hundred people back

into the empty confines of my shelter,

save mine.

But a single silent blink broke somewhere in my eyes,

the bulb chose to die;

as a smile bore down through the cushions,

wood, granite and earth

into a face looking up at the moon inside

an eight year old car, two other lives beside

one in giggles, another in sniffles

the third singing of lanes left by.

Tumorous smiles, unkempt voices

flying high in sweaty summers

happy stars and moons drooled on paper,

handprints on posters,

meaning of lager

Fevicryl on boots,

When promises took roots

only to bore so deep, that realities did not weep

when they turned into memories

locked forever shy.

And even the yellow light blinded me back,

up from the depths of

that protracted happy goodbye...

In Two days

In two days I turn twenty nine;

today I pick up my diary and leaf

dog eared pages to go through

memories I had long since buried.

My fingers type unaccustomedly in blank verse

on the keyboard, as I attempt a poem,

Again.

After a long, I mean really long time.

Not about tear jerkers, not about the love

that cheated and died, not about

being human, or being a doctor,

but a list of the things, I want.

I want for my birthday.

At twentynine, I wake up from a long,

unbroken dreamy sleep that wakes me up

with the corners of my mouth stretched,

the kind of smile, I used to get on my face,

when I dug up cashews hidden by my mother.

I want a long bike-ride, behind some person I

can hold close to me, someone who

would understand that meaning of

' driving to the point of no return'

doesnt necessarily mean we would die

at the end of the ride.

I would like to as well, watch a movie that

would wrench the last tear drops of my eyes,

and not have someone looking at me and thinking

'What an emotional fool she is !!! ', while sympathising

with me.

I would, like to go looking for tigers

with my brother, in the forests of Rudraprayag and

Kumaon, where I wandered as a child

in the fantasies of the Jim Corbett books my

brother gave me to read when I was eleven...

I would, like to cook up a meal,

an American chopsuey or a veg-au-gratin

with the cheese perfectly cooked, and red wine

and sit with my friend ( a girl this time)

discussing MBBS headaches and films.

I would, I wish, spend

one quality day with my family, one whole

day that goes just right, set in the nineties..

when I was just the age that was right.

Or spend a present day in the present time

wearing my FCUK t-shirt that says

FCUK 1972

( The year my parents got married !!! )

And well, they cannot 'see' the difference.

I want to turn back the hands of time,

to walk with someone with feet filled with blisters

someone who I would know, would last even till

a bitter truth than a convenient lie.

Someone for whom my respect shall

start, continue and grow, until

the deepest honor and lust of

a beautiful feeling.

Love.

And also to go, with someone, get drunk,

on the dancefloor, and release,

every memory in my mind in one drunken

fever,with someone close to me

I can trust even when I absolutely let go...

fully knowing that

when I wont be able to stand up on my legs anymore,

someone will carry me home...

back to the incredulous safety of our confines.

Or to go on with a black t-shirt with dinosaurs

painted in front, to my English teacher,

who would unabashedly stare at my boobs, but

would actually be reading aloud

"Triceratops"

And I would love it he got the name right.

I wish I could go on a ride

on my bike, when the monsoon would lash in

Cuttack, and would race the train till my house

grinning that I beat it..

and would dance the night away with

Channel V hits and my cousin sister.

Also watch all horror movies with my hands crossed,

and when electricity fails, run to the loo,

hands between my legs,

failing miserably before I reach the door.

At twenty nine, I know,

none of this will happen.

I will possibly have a long day to lie on the bed,

dream about all the contorted truths of the poem that

has actually happened..

and then get back to life

which is good neverthless

And read up a book on Neuro.

Again

It has worsened now than when it started

she was scared then she would go

and not be able to live

beyond a twelve year old,

with her parents. When it started,

and she spent hours locked up

in the bathroom waiting for it to stop.

They came they ate into her,

tortured her soul month after month

leaving bright red tears on beds

chairs, skirts, roads

and she ran from everywhere.

They worsened, came at their wish.

And bled her life away, her legs shaking

Her eyes reflected the silent agony

she went through, as she stood

through endless hours of work.

She cannot stand because she is weak,

she cannot sleep, because she will dirty the bed,

she cannot speak because she is

catching her breath, while,

the remaining blood trickles out

beneath her in steady dribbling jets.

There inside of her it started,

that flesh day by day, eating out

blood and rooting in the place

where a life begins,

right there, it grew

and spreading tentacles

cuscutas of its veins

drained life blood from the house

that gave birth to it.

Till this day, when it has grown

into the tree, crushing beneath it

the house where, it began as a seed

and its roots drain deeper

leaving the shambled cottage's

hungry lungs cry for air.

White pallid skin, replaces golden

parched lips reflect the hunger in her

eyes, as she passes by every child

she sees, she wants it.

To be her own.

But fears, because, tomorrow

every possibility exists,

This poison ivy will never

allow a small seedling to grow

and attach itself to his

mothers womb.

Or if it does, she will

choke him to death.

Diwali...

How many years thus passed,

he had promised when he stepped out

the door,

to bring candles and crackers

for the evening, saving graces

for a year spent in counting

grains on the bottom of the urn

and potatoes dug from the ground

sharing that in a family of five.

That he would not return, amidst rains

and summer heat, amidst

loss of memories that counted in

a storm that broke the house,

water flooded inside

took a happy child

and returned.

Today, that he returned, seven years hence

phool jharris, candles, diyas, anaars in hand

for the daughter who had died,

for the son who had grown up from the

rocker horse, pulled carts outside,

for a mother who could not see or hear

and a wife he no more recognized.

HS

I am filled with a lot of good feelings over the time for my Professor,which I am finally penning. I am aware that word may possibly trickle out to him ( or worse, he may read it...) but I am not scared. My feelings about him do not arise out of a need to placate him to give me a better position in the list of Publications in the pipeline ( I am not bothered even if my name is not on the list), or to go gung ho somewhere and to someone about my exceptionality ( I am not an exceptional person).

But I have realized this over the one year that I have worked under him, from the first meeting, where his first question to me was ' Are you single?' ( He was worried if I had a place to stay...) and I thought of the myriad possibilities of shapes that question would take acquire in my life, ( I did not take one in the wrong sense) when I was not sure I would be staying on in Rohtak in the first place. And my "Yes" was more an answer to me, rather than to him. A decision, I have come to give the highest regards to, of late. I got a room to myself, albeit dilapidated, but big enough to house my thousand odd books, the day I joined Rohtak. Someone as unsocial as me would have had a lot of problems if I had not got the room then.

While I am still filled with awe about the professors back home ( I was always too much into Medicine, its in my blood, its in the air I breathe, and I had SCB by its guts...you could blindfold me there and leave me and I could walk about and back without hitting a single post...), while I still look upto them for their presence, for their knowledge, and their commitment ( Can never forget CBKM coming to ward at 11 to look up a patient, or doing a pleural tap today...a venesection tomorrow...putting a note another day...it maybe bigger to me because at that time, I knew much less...I was, as an ordinary MBBS, still not into the system), my teacher, my Boss, My professor, Sir, as I call him inside my mind as my mood makes it, I have seen for one thing more than another...his effort, his sincerity.

While I am not the ones who normally goes all out in front of people who move and shake the country..( got that attitude from dad...he refused a banquet invite at Maurya Sheraton where Bill Clinton had come...though his reasons are obscure to put here..but I want to drive home a moot point...I cannot make an effort to please someone if I don't feel like it from within...possibly because I haven't been in a situation where my career, or my position have been similarly placed, and in a way, as a post graduate, I still dont belong here..) but to see it day in and day out..for friends, for people who hear my Professor's good name and come, for people in positions of power...I do not see the intensity of his sincerity diminish. And while our troop ( of postgraduates) sometimes waits with exasperation wishing him to actually kick these people out of his office ( for closing their eyes in answer to 'what is your problem', thinking for 2 minutes...and give a dramatic soliloquy for another 10 minutes...by then I would have had a cardiac arrest..or would have advised 3 people on the benefits of clean health habits, physiotherapy, GCP, rushed to my room and back...stole a trip to my personal life..and back...blessed someone and back....), the fact that he comes with his hair in the air is enough to stamp the exasperation out. And his frank admission that he was exasperated with all those 'wise men' he has to entertain...I am sorry...but just his admission of the fact that he was equally bored through his smiles and his compulsions is enough for me to adore him. Not many would admit it. And I don't mind his living it. Its his way of living, and dealing with those around him. I may not agree to it, but it doesn't diminish the mutual respect I have for him.

And I am glad he has given me space. Space to wander, and lose myself be lost..and finally, beginning to gather myself up again. There was once this concept of firebird I had accidentally built in my mind ( first from an isolated orkut profile picture upload...then a poem whose two lines went like...'and then the firebird from her ashes rose, and prescribed her lunatic a sedative dose'...to isolated meanderings when I wished to be one of the firebirds known for their healing qualities in Harry Potter ( I have always been a fairy tale kid....I hate myself for that) When I wanted to fly and go and cry over a bleeding toe nail, and cure it, because there was no other entrance for me into that person's place or life) and today, he reminded me of that situation in his unbelievably artless pinup expression...honesty. My Boss does not have an ego. And if he does, its not the harmful kind. Thats the best part about him.

I listen to stories when I hear him straighten up in the presence of two girls with he took a picture with ...and I know that expression even without seeing it. I have seen how uncomfortable he gets ( in comparison to his friend and my other inspiration here who can hug a bunch of us silly willies with a damn care attitude about the world who would be stupid enough to comment...) and I remember his expression when I told him about my medical problem. He had not even looked at me once. He looked up at the ceiling instead of looking at the MRI scan showing a fibroid twice as big as the uterus. And I wondered if I had told him something banal...or worse...like I had a sexually transmitted disease. And then I wondered if he would have looked me in the face if, say I had a brain tumor instead. But anyways. Thats possibly because he hasn't got friends or the situations to let go of his straight laced ways. In any case, I am not worried, or troubled, or even saddened by this. I find it mildly amusing, even kind of funny...the same way I feel for my mothers tempers about our ( me and my sister's) perennial single statuses...or my continuous ignorance of my medical condition, basically which cannot be helped ( got another verbal lashing...when I told her by Hemoglobin has gone down again to 10, its actually 9.6...and gave her the explanation for it...I am not taking medicines...did she have to be irritated?). So I look upon that stiffneckedness with the same adoration I have for my mothers continuous banter when she opens her mouth, as I watch the television unfazed, or look into her face without an expression...

No, the liking stems from elsewhere. He has given me space to actually go down to the average murk that consumes one of us sometime or the other during post graduation. Keeping up in the Medical profession is difficult. Going about with the same energy, I find myself sapped of it each time after I do an Emergency. I know I am not like the saviour there...but I try to do my best. And I know I am the one anyday who spends more time counselling patients. I have seen its rewards. Doctors forget body is a temple. It has its own healing powers within itself that will begin to act with a small nudge from outside. Call me a believer in Alternative medicine or whatever ( I actually wanted to find out a unani doctor in Chandni Chowk when I used to live in Delhi, but then I had other persuations, so I could not go about it all out). I have got myself into this downward slide maybe or vacuum for like 4 years now...and for sometime, it got into my system and choked my aspirations. I slouched. And it showed. My files, my patients, my work, all started to reflect that inner negative vibes I was carrying within me...

And finally he told me. He stopped me from taking a break, asked me to wipe my paws and to get back. And got back I did. Three days later he told me something I will never forget. I don't want to put it down. But I knew that he knows me. Not for what I am, but what I can be. I am grateful for that. I have carried these people in my heart of hearts when they have been with me when I have been licking the pits.

I often remember that incident in the movie The Perfume where the protagonist doles out a thousand concoctions of perfume for his teacher before he leaves (about that movie, later). I am not speaking in that murderous perspective at all. I speak in the perspective when it doesn't matter to me if I am read, or published, if my name comes in a positive impact factor journal...if I go and do a fellowship in John Hopkins and all that...For all I know, I might turn into a yoga teacher tomorrow, or marry a farmer and own a farm in South America, or just go to some island and practice medicine and live my life like the oracle in Minority Report, where her truths would no more be the life she saw in reality, or her dreams, but the fairy tales she read where people lived happily ever after...I dont know where I am going to end up in my search for the meaning of two words in my life...Love, and Happiness. But I know that even if I am caught for sometime, I shall fly away someday to that place my closed eyes keep dreaming of. And that I will also ensure I know the meaning of both of them before I go. But I am glad he stays silent where he does. And speaks with his artistically inarticulate honesty when he speaks what he speaks.

To this end, today when I asked him why I have become like that, when no one else around is like me, and that my laid back attitude is highly unexpected for a post graduate in Medicine...what he said picking up from a weird ad which might be airing somewhere...starring a ludicrously muscled hero from Bollywood ( how health conscious my Boss is...u can take a guess when at 46, he can run 10 kilometers without his breath flaring.)...Sucharita, those people win who do not defeat somebody..but who are able get up after being thrown down.

Thank you so much for these words ( And I am glad I havent seen the ad..I would have never got the perspective then...) Today, he makes me want to go back to my life again in the aspect that I want to get serious about what I like. I like to heal. And I like to write. And for now, these two are perfectly sufficient for me to lead my life successfully, if not necessarily contentedly. I will be content if I can pour in the words, happy and love inside that porridge. But its not the time for that. I want to write again. Not just this blog. Or silly stories for kids, or words of life and childhood, and love and loss. I am picking up writing for writing about everything...to the patients who could not live to teach me the lessons, to the patients with whom I have had my most honored moments...to people who have shown me what love could possibly mean. And better, entail.

God bless you. Even if I will be one person who will come up with bare faced facts and complaints and its true that I think you should take some serious lessons from your friend ( my other Boss I adore..his best friend, his mirror isomer) about recognizing people, their motives and capacities ( Dear Sir, you always...almost always trust the wrong people...and suffer because of this), I am glad with we three, the reticent Co-PG of mine, the strictly unsocial SR we treasure..and the whatever me, you have taken the magnanimity to trust us.

And we shall never let you down. God bless you