For the first time in my entire working life, I get to desk all to myself!! Now all you normal, desk-owning people dont go scoffing at me, you dont appreciate the value of your desk! Let me tell you how fabulous it is!

I have one, two, three, four, five!! drawers in my desk. Can you imagine? I am still getting used to the idea. One for my stationary, one for papers, one for my bag, one for my snacks, and one for my handcream. This is brilliant, I tell you. The joys of working in a private hospital. Never mind that my desk is crammed behind a filing cabinet and in front of what can only be described as a store-room. A desk is a desk nonetheless. I dont have to take my stethescope and my papers back home with me at the end of every day. I have my own phone extension where I can be reached. Which automatically switches over to voicemail at the end of the day. How fabulous is this?!

I am going to be really sad to move from here to desk-less lands when these three weeks are over. But until then, let the rejoicing begin!

When I was at university, and used to take the bus everyday, I had a habit of studying people on the bus. There used to be one seat at the front of the bus that faced reverse, and I used to sit there and study the faces of the people, and try and imagine what those people were like outside the microuniverse of the bus. It used to be entertaining I guess.

However, I havent taken public transport in a long while. But the other day, I had to drop the car off to be serviced. And the bloody “courtesy” car was $55 for the day!!! I told the moron at Toyota that its not a courtesy if you are going to charge for it. He didnt seem to understand that concept though. Anyways, so I took the tram back home. With nothing to do for the half hour trip back home, I let my mind drift. But not for long.

A couple of stops later, a young girl got on the tram. She must have been 14 or 15 at the most. She had asian features, but had muslim head-gear on, so I guess she must be from Indonesia or Malaysia or some other place. She was wearing a school uniform, but not any school uniform that I recognised. She had a school bag on her back, and on one of the straps was a bright smiley button pinned. “Islam is cool”, it said. She had a pocket-sized book in her hand, and although at first I couldnt see what the book was called, I could see that it was a book that she liked. There were little pink post-it notes all along the length of the book, marking various pages. Then she went to turn a page. Except that she turned the page backwards, going to the previous page. And in the process, I saw that what she was reading was a pocket sized Quran. Then it made sense! Arabic is written right to left, so every book written in Arabic starts on what we conventionally think of as the “last” page, and finishes on the “first” page.

There was something very not right with this picture, I felt. She had obviously read the whole Quran at least once, judging by the post-its. She is far too young for this, I thought. A tram is not the most ideal environment for reading such deep and meaningful books like the Quran. It requires a quite setting, conducive to introspection and analysis. Plus, there is a certain time in life when reading religious books with such fervour is warranted. But that time is not 14! Your brain isnt developed enough to appreciate the depth of knowledge between those pages. Gosh, I am almost twice that age, and I am not sure my brain is developed enough to handle that! At 14, one should be reading Stephanie Meyer, Franklin Dixon or even J. K. Rowling. The whole picture really bothered me. She was too young to be this passionate about religion. Maybe I am being a bit too judgemental…..

Once upon a time, there was a patient, who, for the last one month, had been on a breathing machine because no one could figure out what was wrong with her. Or how to fix her. For the last one month, every doctor in the unit, all the top brass had been scratching their head thinking “what the bloody hell is going on?” They tried every trick in the book. Making the patient lie upside down. Inhaled nitric oxide. Fancy modes of ventilation. None of the tricks worked. Some made things worse.

Then came this man who walked into the ICU one day. He was a very simple, unassuming man. He stood and watched the patient for a while. Watched the breathing machine do what it was doing. Looked at all the blood tests. Then, almost as if he was thinking out loud, he started talking. Went to the breathing machine, and played with the settings. Almost immediately, the patient’s breathing improved dramatically. Two hours later, her blood tests looked better than they had ever looked in the last one month.

This man did what everybody in the last one month was trying to do, but nobody actually managed to do it. And the beauty of it was, when he actually explained what he did, it was so bloody simple. Its what should have been done right at the start, but no one thought of it because it was so simple. Nobody tries simple things with a complicated patient. Yet that is exactly what was needed.

Sometimes, it takes a real genius to focus on the problem without getting distracted by all the superfluous details along the way. A la Arjun. I really wish I had this clarity of vision in my repertoire. What this man did today blew everyone away. There is now hope for this patient. Hope that she will survive. Make it out of the ICU someday. See her grandchildren grow up one day.

You know, I never really understood why people liked working in the ICU. Its a hard lifestyle. You get called at 3 AM. You miss your kids’ birthdays and school performances. Your stress levels are perenially high, because all your patients are bloody sick. But today, I had a glimpse of why ICU is such a rewarding career. And it took my breath away…..

Nothing quite like having your boss point out in the middle of a big meeting that you have got grey hair!

The fact that said boss was concerned that I was getting grey hair because he was working me too hard is inconsequential. My standard reply blaming the MOTH as the underlying cause for the grey hair went flying out of the window as I was too busy deciding whether to be enraged by the remark, or touched by the underlying concern!

This blog post has been selected by BlogAdda as one of the top posts for this week's 'Tangy Tuesday Picks'.

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Date: Sometime around 1999.
Setting: Four women somewhere in India. Call them A, B, C and D. They are all aged in their late teens at this time.

A came from a middle-class family. Her parents were very strict. She wasnt allowed to have male friends. She wasnt allowed to be friends with girls who had male friends. She wasnt allowed pocket money. Her mother controlled every aspect of her life. She did well in her studies. Her family constantly pushed her to do better in her studies, for she needed to become a doctor. She, however, didnt seem to mind her family’s controlling nature. She thought thats how it was in all families

B came from a family where both parents worked full-time. She was a real tom-boy. Short hair. Jeans and shirts were all you would ever find her wearing. Care-free and happy go lucky. Her parents supported her in everything she did. She had no obvious ambitions about what she wanted to do. She took things as they came.

C came from a moderate family. Loving mother. Strict(ish) father. She came from a family where girls were expected to be home-makers, married by the time they hit 20. She was a very outgoing person. Outspoken. Called a spade a spade.

D came from a similiar family too. Her nickname was “tubelight” because it took her forever to get a joke. She was a bit ditsy, but in a very likeable way. She never rocked the boat, she always went with the flow.

Fast forward 10 years….

Date: 2010
Setting: A, B, C and D are sitting in a bar, somewhere in Australia, cocktails in hand, talking about their lives. Very sex-and-the-city….

A has very little to do with her family now. She is a doctor. She met and married a boy from a different caste, one that the family didnt approve of. She moved to a different country. She now enjoys life for what it is meant to be, rather than living life the way someone else wanted her to live it. She has experimented, and not regretted any of those experiments.

B qualified as an automobile engineer. She quickly found a job as a lecturer in a very prestigious engineering college, and soon her lectures became very popular. She was offered a very lucrative deal to write a text-book. Refused that. Met a lovely guy, and 6 months later, they were married. No longer the tomboy, she is now a house-wife, and loves to cook.

C’s family were actively looking for suitable boys for her, when she met a guy in college. He made her see the stars during the day, and she quickly became infatuated with him, and he with her. 5 years ago, they got married. They have a 7 month old daughter. She has no say in any decisions, because “he knows best”. In her own words, she is “tired” and has “given up”.

D met a guy during one navratri festival. They soon started talking, and talking turned into dating. Four years later, she told her family. Her father was not happy about this, but they ended up getting married with the family’s consent in the end. They have a 1 year old daughter. She is still a tubelight, and still as ditsy as ever. Until C started talking about her problems, and then D offered advice. Mature advice that blew everybody away. No one expected these words of wisdom to come out of D, of all people.

At the end of the very long night, as each of these 4 women slipped into the bed, there was just one thought going through everyone’s mind. How did we ever get here? For some, it was a thought accompanied by a sense of loss, for others, it was a thought accompanied by a silent prayer of thanks to their guardian angel. But one thing was for sure. Back in 1999, nobody would have imagined this would be the way these cookies would crumble.