I have a friend from back in my high school days who just turned 23 a few days ago, who shall be known as Mr TDH (Tall, Dark and Handsome). Now most of Mr TDH’s male friends agree (while turning a bit green with jealousy) that he is a very eligible bachelor, and most of his female friends (present company excluded) either blush in silence or make non-committal replies. However, Mr TDH also happens to be a very polite gentleman (making him more eligible). Now, as with any other Indian family, Mr TDH’s family also consists of a vast number of “well-meaning” aunts and great-aunts, most of whom only materialse to haunt one’s dreams from the moment they deem you are of marriagable age until you finally get married, never to be seen again. Mission accomplished.

So, as per age-old tradition, the day Mr TDH turned 23, his cellphone started buzzing with calls from many of these “well-meaning” ladies, out on their secret mission to get another nice young lad “settled”.  Defying all rules that apply to those on a secret mission of any sort, their first question was “So when do you think you are going to get married?”. Poor Mr TDH. Being the nice, elder-respecting Indian boy that he is, he couldnt very well tell them to stop bugging him about that. So he did the only thing anyone can do in that situation. He asked his friends, i.e. us, to give him some ideas to avoid being bugged by these “well-meaning” ladies. So, drawing on centuries of evolutionary experience that most Indian kids develop, here are the suggestions we could come up with.

1) Move back home and pretend it is because you cant even afford to support urself financially

2) Move out of home and say you are too independent to live with another person

3) Keep studying for as long as you possibly can. One of my dear friend can personally vouch for this idea, she plans on doing it for as long as she possibly can

4) Inventing a fictional girlfriend, preferably one who lived on a different continent. That way, you already have a very good explanation of why the parents cannot meet her

However, none of these seem satisfactory to Mr TDH. So if any of you have any hidden gems or fool-proof plans, please let me know, and I will pass them on to Mr TDH. The hunt continues!

Hmm….so, yesterday, I went to watch The DaVinci Code with a Catholic friend of mine. I, like the millions of fans worldwide, read the book ages ago, courtesy of a kind friend who loaned it to me. And unlike that friend, I hadnt studied art history in school or anything, yet, I found the book totally fascinating. I have always found history fascinating, and religion full of tall tales that didnt appeal to my logical mind. But the DVC introduced me to the world of religious history. And now I cant get enough of it!

I really want to find out more about the events in history surrounding the birth of one of the most prominent religions in the world. I am going to start with the easy parts first. I watched The Last Temptation of Christ today, and very soon, when I get some more time, I would like to watch the Passion of the Christ. And at some stage in my life, I would like to read the Bible. But I digress. The Last Temptation of Christ, for those of you that dont know, was released in 1998 or something like that. And caused a huge furor at that time. For it portrayed Jesus as a man who was prone to hallucinations, headaches, seizures….My medical mind tells me he might have had a temporal lobe tumour. But again, I digress. He had these for years, and as part of these hallucinations, he developed the idea that he was the Messiah sent to rescue the people. With love. Slowly, the hallucinations changed content, and made him decide that he needed war, not love, to rescue the people. And in the end, he needed to die at the hands of the Romans in order to rescue the people. But the difference between him and other hallucinators was that he was charismatic, and as such, had a willing audience in the form of beggars, lepers, and lost souls. But throughout the movie, he is portrayed as a lost soul himself, who develops worsening psychosis until he asks Judas to be an accomplice in his own suicide and asks to be betrayed to the Romans. Scary to think more than half the world relies on something that may have originated from something so unreliable. No wonder the Catholic Church tried to get that movie banned all over the world!

Ok, so maybe the last time I got up on the stage and acted was back in high school, but I used to love it. I still love it. However, after leaving high school and foraying into the deep, dark, abyssmal black hole otherwise known as med school, acting, like all my other interests, went out the window, sucked out by the black hole. Or sucked in by the black hole. Yeah, sucked in.

So earlier this year, when I met someone who was part of an amateur drama group that was looking for more members, I felt like I had come alive again. My heart jumped at the thought of getting back on the stage. Finally! Here was my chance. So i asked her to get in touch with me with the details about the group and stuff…..Woohoo!

So drama group was supposed to be this sunday. And what do I find out the monday before? That I am on call all weekend. Which means I cant make it to drama group. Darn med school, and darn hospital! And darn the fact that the powers that be expect medicine to be your life and soul. Take my new registrar for example. Who has to travel back and forth between auckland and hamilton every time, coz her husband lives and works in auckland. But the powers that be told her she had to work in Hamilton if she wanted to work in her chosen speciality. They are so understanding, and supportive, arent they? THEY. Who get to run the lives of hopeful doctors the way that is convenient to THEM. Makes me mad that I am an eager and willing part of the system. AAARRRGGHH!!!!

Something very strange happened to me on last friday. Something that is probably not an unfamiliar aspect to most people’s lives at some point or the other. Something that is as much a part of life as anything else. Failure. I got my first meeting with failure on friday. Yes. I failed at something. For the very first time in my life.

So how does it feel? To be honest, I dont know. I dont know what I feel right now. If I think back to the moment when I failed, I feel horrible. I feel ashamed. I feel like I didnt fail the task, I failed myself. Its awful. And what makes it worse is that this is one task that I am not supposed to fail it. This is what I am supposed to be good at. But this time I wasnt.

So then, if I think about what implications it has for my future, I feel even more weird. I feel like the blow hasnt sunk in yet. I feel…..anaesthetised. Actually, that is a pretty good analogy. The initial shock of this was huge, i felt totally overwhelmed. Like the bitter sting of the anaesthetic going in. But then, that initial shock passed, and now, I am sort of numb. Where I can see what is happening, but I dont feel anything.

But I hope this numbness wears off. Because I want to feel. I want to feel the pain, and the bitter sting. So that it can serve as a reminder of what not to do. Because at the end of the day, if I stop focussing on the enemy, I am the one who loses the battle. And so, it is my fault that I failed, no matter what.

Incidentally, the day before the events of friday, he told me something that now seems to resonate everytime I think about this. We were talking about something totally different, but he concluded that by saying, “Sometimes, what we percieve as failures initially, turn out to be a great success”. None of us knew this was gonna happen the next day. But maybe it was a sign. Maybe someone is up there, watching over me, who knew that I would need the strength of these words very soon. Or maybe, it was someone else who was watching over me. Someone much closer than God.