Mid Life Crisis

I have been suffering from the disease since I was 15 or something, and the symptoms continue to persist even today. I started suspecting the disease without actually knowing how you feel like if you have the disease. Without going through the signs and symptoms I was sure of my mid life crisis.

I think I acquired the bug watching some of the auteur's so called classic movie where they actually depicted their sexual frustration arising out of long standing marriage and the protagonist take fantasy with some young girl and faces consequences out of it.

But with me acquiring the disease at 15, without a girlfriend or any obvious psychopathic tendency (to the best of my belief) was something very peculiar.

What started with a silly joke with friend gradually turned into a (pseudo)philosophical metaphor.

If you don’t know the length of your life then how can you define your mid point? If the journey can be ended at any point, why the midpoint can’t start as soon as fifteen?

So what were the symptoms like?

With time symptoms are also changing, but to be precise whenever mind is full of melancholy –I think this is it.

In nineties the symptoms were precipitated by lack of connectivity with the so called world at large, Guwahati was a small city then and there was paucity of information regarding what we thought to be happening world.

Now I live away from my loved city, there is excess of information though but nothing is there to fill the vague in those time of incompleteness.  

There are many other precipitating factors that lead to such desperation, so I started a methodical root cause analysis for the so called disease I am suffering from. It can be loosely hypothesized “as not having achieved what I thought to be achievable at that point of time”. With time the faith and confidence level is getting down and down and down. As the suspicion of failure is creeping in that is leading to the melancholy which I call as “Mid Life Crisis”.

I cannot tell you for sure but if I have to explain “My Mid Life crisis” to you; I got to tell you it is almost like love. While explaining my mid life crisis I have to quote from my memory of a famous film whose dialogue still resonates in my mind. The film was "Suraj Ka Satwa Ghoran” by the maestro Syam Benegal .Here after a long and complicated tryst with the ‘element’ called love protagonist Rajat Sharma explains :definition and feeling about love is something like soul or God ,until you find one your quest for love will go on .

So my quest for my mid life

The life journey of life is mysterious and unknown

To the great Indian middle class, Mid Life crisis has nothing to do with libido, mistress, or sexuality,

Being grinded in a routine called life we long for a way out looking for some sunshine and if we smell of losing the goal sadness creeps in. We name this sadness by various name, and mid life crisis is just one such example.   

Thoughts on a Sterilization Tragedy

 

I was shocked on hearing about the ‘sterilization tragedy’ in Chhattisgarh. Yes, it is in fact a sterilization tragedy. Sterilization - Sterilization (also spelled sterilisation) is defined as “any of a number of medical techniques that intentionally leave a person unable to reproduce”. A government-organised family planning camp in Bilaspur district of Chhattisgarh, took a wrong turn on that fateful day.

Sterilization also means making a surface, article etc. free from any kind of organism. This is essential for any health care practice, especially in a setting where any kind of surgical operation is taking place, even as simple as sterilization for population control. Such a setting should not exist with without strict sterilization and aseptic practice.

However, we all know that India is a land of “Jugad”, and ethically and scientifically recommended practices are things that are beyond our comprehension.

But, what led to the tragedy? I don’t have any detail about ‘what happened in Chhattisgarh’ but I have an insight into what usually happens in India in the name of infection control practice through my professional experience.

We are at a pre-historic stage in terms of awareness, and burdened by lack of resources. The situation is even worse in government hospitals situated in the periphery.   

I was more surprised when I heard that the doctor in question has been suspended with immediate effect!

Blaming the doctor, making him the scapegoat for everything that went wrong in a medical set up is an inherent problem of Indian society. But no one wants to see beyond that. Root cause analysis of any problem is not in finding a scapegoat and burning him like we do in Dussehra.

It is a clear fact that all those hospitals run on poor supply of basic necessities like soap, trained nurse, proper equipment for operation (cloths, autoclave, gloves, nurse and proper ventilation in OT) etc., but all hospitals are given targets to achieve within a given period.

Target of fulfilling the dreams of different governments/ employers, like increasing the number of operations, increasing high tech operations and achieving “x” number of total sterilizations, free Anti-tubercular therapy or anti retroviral drugs given to tuberculosis and HIV infected patients respectively during the year.

This is where the problem starts:

People are over worked and they are given exorbitant tasks to complete without any infrastructure. If you don’t do it, you are not following the instructions you are given, so you are in danger of losing your job. And if you make some compromise and continue to work with whatever resource you have, then you are doing your duty.

At first, nothing will happen, even if some infection occurs, people will think infection is a normal incident. In fact, most of the practicing physicians think that we have antibiotics to tackle the bugs. But as a clinical microbiologist, I have observed through my practice and research that most of the hospitals in India are full of organisms, against which there is no antibiotic at all. And the sad thing is that there is no new molecule in the pipe line in the near future also

The reason for the deaths can be something other than infection also, like spurious drugs reaction, operative complication, wrong case selection etc. Root cause analysis of all of them will lead to one answer: non adherence to the mandatory stringent quality control norms.

Because many of us are not aware of such things and even if we do, we turn a blind eye to them as they are costly and time consuming and there is no chance of earning any revenue by these quality control procedures.  

The problem we are facing today has only one answer: prevention.

But how?

Adherence to basic quality control norms for prevention of such occurrences, which is the only option we actually have.

Or the same story will repeat itself:

Healthcare practices

Without soap….

Without instruments …..

Without infrastructure for the required purpose…..

With an uphill target to fill.

Till we have those manage it with some “Jugad”

And if something bad happens, identify a symbolic culprit (a doctor in this case), sack him from the job and we are all happy till a repeat incident happens.

 

I was late in blogging it even though I made the draft immediately after getting the news and I was totally upset with the incident and after three days of the incident now the focus is changing to some spurious drugs, but point is same _ total apathy towards quality as we all do in every aspect of our life.do you know any medicine we buy from the chemist next door may turn out to be spurious.it can be a chemical manufactured by some unknown unlicensed company. Even a branded medicine can also be carrying a label only but actually it might be some chalk powder packed with the companies genuine looking level by some crook, everything I mentioned doesn’t matter to us as we live in the age of apathy, compromise and Jugad.  

 

 

Life is elsewhere

This was the title of a book by Milan Kundera. I read it in a time when I had just discovered this genius .Now after 20 years I have completely forgotten what was it all about, but the title is still lingering in my ears.
To me this sense of belonging to somewhere else is more pronounced in special times.
As at every year end the a sense starts creeping into my mind with the moist air ,dew drop and as TV advertisement and  movies starts celebrating the season;I feel like being stuck in day to day maze called life. Sometime it feels like everyone is enjoying and I am trapped. While calculating what I have done in the years bygone and what I haven't , subconscious mind whisper into my ear -'life Is Elsewhere'
Then comes uruka ,maghbihu then bohag bihu ,puza and what not ....
Whenever I am doing something this whisper continues
Its not that I live a lonely life like all those in mental movie or I avoid the party or anything .Even in the parties if I am present there I feel I should be doing something else  .
For many years I am residing outside my home state -Assam, so every day I long to be in the places I grew up in. This longing increases when there is something going on in  my home state (some festival, ritual or  event like book fair) .Rarely I am able to be in the places  where i wanted to be, but then I feel like something is missing  as if this was not the thing I was looking for. For instance if by any chance I reach Assam for some occasion I am more saddened .there has been major changes everywhere, changes that made me feel like this is not the place about which I longed for day in and day out.
Take the case of Guwahati, the city today is not the place where I grew up
Or my ancestral village where there was no motorble road  till a decade back . Everything have changed out there also .(I know only constant in life is change ,still it sucks )
Whenever I wonder throughout places, I feel something is wrong    
So where do I belong to?
Then again this whisper comes 'Life is elsewhere'

Same is the case with my professional life,

The ever busy clinical microbiologist in a war against infection  versus the writer seeking exactitude  both telling each other the same phrase –‘life is elsewhere’
May be some manthan is needed for any Amrit ,may be the halahal coming out of this manthan is too toxiac and this auditory hallucinations is a side effect of all these friction  

I often try this parsee poetry as therapy for this  
Gar firdaus,
ruhe zamin ast,
hamin asto,
hamin asto,
hamin asto.
"(If there is ever a heaven on earth, it’s here, it’s here, and it’s here”)
And at the same time another voice resonates inside

What am I doing?

Life is elsewhere
Life is elsewhere
Life is elsewhere

My favorite books

I hate chained challenge, like they do it in those shit fund (opps ! chit funds schemes), So when a phenomenon called ‘ice bucket challenge’ was circulating in the social media I found it irritating. After a few days another kind of request was hovering around –it was a favorite book challenge. Throughout my life I am very much into book (may be because we were born and brought up in a different kind of world than today).It hurts when people say reading out of syllabus is a not so cool thing. So when the name ten book challenges was circulating and a friend requested me to name my favorite books I thought I should accept it. I went back to my memories and chalked out a plan about how to approach it .To includes books I liked or books that had some influence on me? I took a mean between them and come out with the following list.

1Bhagwat Gita: There are many versions of Bhagwat Gita .I liked the ‘BhagwatGita as it is’ by Swami Prabhupad. First I read the English version that was in my friends place then I brought the Assamese version translated by Mukunda Madhab Sharma.The translation is also brilliantly done.

As the book is titled –Bhagwat Gita as it is (যথাযত) few people have some strong inhibition with the word ‘as it is’. That may be actually true. Things can be interpreted differently by different people under different condition. As a snssrkit sloka goes -ekseyisha padrathai nanarupe prakalpanum.  To make my understanding even I have never gone through the explanations given in the book. I read one sloka a day, then its translation: then try to think what it means and have my own interpretation. Throughout my life the book has shown me light in many of my dark days of confusion.

2.Yairuingam(ঈয়াৰুইঙ্গম) :by Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya : I think the first novel of my life was Mrityunjay by the same writer .I was in class III and blown away by it .Later when I came across yiauingam I fell in love with the narration and the plot. It is a novel about Naga ways of life –seen through the eyes of a young teacher from the Brahmaputra valley .I dreamt about making a big budget movie –a cinematic adaptation of the novel. Now life has moved ahead and I don’t have that much of resources to do justice to the project but some where I someone come out with the dedication I still think it is an Oscar wining idea. 

3. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky; May be first classic I read in English, the murder scene is still entrapped in my mind .May be my fascination for dark literature has roots to this book .To be precise it made me what the dark painter as many of my friend and reader puts it.

4.Eyi Bondoror Abeli ,এই বন্দৰৰ আবেলি /ভবেন্দ্র নাথ শইকীয়াৰ নাট্য সংকলন: it is the book or his writing or the book? I would put it as the persona .As many put it as এজন মানুহ এখন আকাশ(one man and the sky)Why two book clubbed together? ‘Ei bondoror abeli’ because the book gave me the idea of writing short story one day. It is a collection about love and longing of the writer towards his land when he was faraway doing his PHD in United Kingdom. Many years later similar themed movies were brought into mainstream what we know as –NRI movies .

 and natya sankalan because of its quality and overall influence of his plays (or persona) on me. Many people don't think that drama is a thing to enjoy on stage not a thing to read .Many who reads drama shy away from naming some play in their favorite books as it is an unconventional thing. But surprisingly when it comes to learning literature methodically people start with Shakespeare first.

For me many dramas their styles have enriched my love for literature as it is. To name a few: all Girish Karnards play, collection of plays by Mahesh Dattani and a few.But first and foremost these dramas by master playwright Bhabendra Nath Saikia

5 The Unbearable Lightness Of Being by Milan Kundera: -It was love at first sight . May be it was in early nineties when I found his book in the district library shelves and one of my friend recommended him to me. The style the content of his writing had many inspirations. After a decade I have brought the book again and have re read it to found that the effect was same.

There is no doubt about his class and what boosted me more  was the fact that he don’t write in English.He is from a small country and he writes in a local language but he has readership across the globe.I had problem against few of the English writer whom I thought were not worthy of the attention they use to get . Being from a small state of local language, iconic status of Milan Kundera boosted on my moral. Though I had a issue against him ,not about the class but about possibility of bias. As he was vindicated by one party that had certain political and economic believe and he writes against them my apprehension was that he is promoted by people who had the opposite lineage. Even though I admit Kundera is Kundera when it comes to writing.

6. Mahabharata the complete collection by Aamar Chitra Katha: I have read Mahabharata in many forms, but first love for books was through comic .The foundation of my knowledge of history and mythology was through  amar chitra katha, just to revisits my past I brought this complete collection of Mahabharata by amar chitra katha the thrill is same like in those good old days, I found out that the pleasure and taste of discovery was all the same.Thank you uncle pifor enriching our childhood.

7. Xugandhi Pokhila (সুগন্ধী পখিলা); by Hiren Bhattacharya. I brought this book in class V just because the name was so popular, and today I have to admit this is the second book whose pages I have flipped over and over again after Bhagwad Gita. His lines always it takes me to a different hasnahana nights. Unknowingly his words has mutated inside my vocabulary .may be because of which I dare not to write poetry. Because if you write any –invariably you might find some his influence or may be his replica of his poetry only. May be same is the case with many of us.

8. Golam (গোলাম): by Sourabh KumarChaliha. I believe in structure and plot of a story, when I ask myself -why can't we narrate a story around a plot (like mental arithmetic around incident, a notation of a song or an idle afternoon.) There is a fear that the narration can be dull, product can be without outcome.story can be without a kahani/ But with skc rest assure that you are in for an unusual treat.

9. Tintin. (Name any, Hergé,): My loves with books were before I was acquainted with written words, and every frame of any Tintin book was source of amusement and pleasure. Even today I enjoy those books. In Tintin pictures even a bystander who has nothing to do with story or a stray dog have many things to say.

10. Alchemist by Paulo CoelhoSapiosexuals tend to avoid mentioning alchemist, may be to avoid cliché. And may be because of simple way of his writing (not the content). When I first read this book I was sad, as me too had something similar in mind . With time I have realized that everything is there in the universe since antiquity and time and time again people write in down on their own way and people will accept or reject it on their merit.

The list can continue, but I was to select 10 so hence the list.