Sacred Spaces...

The minute between the thought, and the bitter-sweet utterance of something you never meant to say….
The moment the drumbeat in the heavens warns you of the first feel, of better than diamonds, on your nose…..
The instant the whisper of the wind warns you, of an intimacy that could make you blush….
The minute before your eyes squint at the light of day, when Phoebus caresses your face….
The second between your fleeting glance at the face you were searching for, and your hasty turning away….
The fleeting instant before you realize someone you need is just behind you….
The intervals of anticipation, of hope, of the knowledge of the divine…..
My sacred spaces.

The hours between searching for that insignificant something, yet so significant….
The space between the last word in a letter long ago, and it’s full stop....telling more in it’s resigned emptiness…
The days between seeing the extra grey in your father’s hair, and now, ticked of feverishly on that wall calendar….an act infinite in it’s repetition….
The years between the hurt and learning to let go, to love the self better….
The immeasurable gap between three ages torn apart by forces greater than their reckoning….yet never giving in….
The ages between the search for your big act in the circus, and the curtain call….
The instant you realize those blurred faces, begging for an encore, will never get one….
My sacred spaces.

The intervals always stay
Haunting you, hurting you, hunting you down……
For words hastily said or never said at all…
For baseless accusations….
For endless expectations…all of them disproved meticulously…
For those wild and reckless things you thought yourself capable of doing…
For those you did….and regretted…
My sacred spaces.

The intervals always stay
Laughing at yesterday’s biggest tragedy….
Forgetting last year’s devastating heartburn…pushing you to move on…
Clearing your head after an innocent indulgence…
Forgiving you for convictions that antagonize the world at large…
Smiling at a momentary spell of lunacy…
Loving you for being you….
Noticing, the small kindnesses you bestow on people, when no one else can see…
Convincing you to look to yourself for strength…almost forcing you to believe in yourself….
Holding you tight when you’re not ready and you want to run away…
My sacred spaces.

The Lucky Pen

Dedicated to Sree Devi, who injected some excitement to my boring blogolife last week.:)

Today I found myself walking aimlessly about the stationery section at HEB, searching for that elusive article, the lucky pen.


The lucky pen, if not a self explanatory term, is that unusual piece of stationery, that besides endowing its owner with a legible hand writing, also manages to procure him/her an A grade in all the exams he/she writes using it. Not to forget blogs and novels, which become instant winners and best sellers.


Well, the lucky pen doesn't have any particularly unique characteristics. There is no way you can know of its remarkable properties till post-examination or post-blog, or rather, post-comments.

My earliest revelation of the existance of this unique article came after a 5th grade GK contest where I emerged a winner. It was a red Stic pen with a green cap and a Mickey mouse picture on it in black. It was an ink pen and leaked like crazy. My bony little fingers had perpetually deep, dark blue stains until I lost the pen in 11th grade. Even when my Dad used to comment at the dinner table that all the ink in my tummy would stain my innards blue, I just got even more defensive about the pen. What did he know about its magical properties? Huh!

I cannot explain adequately in words, the distress I felt when I finally lost it. I even suspected for a week that someone had stolen it to take away my luck. Highly unlikely, given that it had ceazed to write for intervals that exceeded singe digit number of minutes. And that too, only if you held it at a particular angle, which generally involved twisting your arm. Looking back, I feel my grandmother must have lovingly removed it, fearing for my sanity and the shape of my arms.

Soon after this episode my Dad gifted me a Parker ink pen which had these cool refills that you could just snap on. And besides, the refills were expensive. I mentally bestowed it the property of luck. Well, it did not have it. I royally messed up my 12th grade boards. Well not that bad, but not lucky pen worthy performance for sure.

When I first went to college, I decided that this time I could not afford to go wrong. Through extensive trial and error, I arrived at the conclusion that the blue jeans "HOKITA"(Made in China) pencil pouch that my mother gave me, the Parker pen and an Ajanta Scale were the crucial combination. Not to forget my grandmothers Pope John Paul II blessed rosary.

The rosary unfortunately did not last me till my VISA interview which must be the reason my name came stamped all wrong. I've been on the hunt since then.

Thankfully this sacred knowledge has been revealed to one more blessed soul. My room mate, Sree Devi. I am not alone in this holy quest.

And to all those out there, who think we are heretics, the truth shall be revealed to you one fine examination.

Medical College Blues

This is an unedited version of a letter my sister sent me. (Unedited except for the identity of a crush and yes, why I want to blow BIT up). She wrote it for THiNK, hoping that I would convert it into some sort of story. I didn't have time. She was 8 months into her MBBS course. The letter follows: Dearest Chechi, I’m sorry I was so late sending this thingy. How are you? Do you still feel like blowing up the place? Sometimes life is boring, you just have to bear with it.You asked me to describe the first few months in medical college. You know I ‘m not much of a writer or an observer, still. When it comes to memories, dissection table would be the most distinct. After the first dissection, we felt so sick. We had lunch break right after dissection. Most of us used to miss lunch the first few days…coz after spending time with the cadaver it was impossible for us to swallow anything. (Note that we are not allowed to use hand gloves so that we got over the disgust and we also got the real feel.) Its funny, coz nowadays, it’s dissection that seems to stimulate my appetite. Weird how things just become a part of your life I remember how we used to wash our hands with Dettol and God knows what else before we used our hands for anything, now who’s got the time? It was weird standing in front of a naked body especially after studying for 10 years in a girls’ school. Thankfully we had two classes to get accustomed to the situation. I guess our Profs sensed our discomfort. Tsk! Tsk! A guy was the only person who fainted in our batch. That shows the power of today’s girls! (Chechi, just some of my own feminist crap). The first day we opened our dissection box, the scalpel, the blade with which we mercilessly tear open the bodies (it’s real sharp), fell on a girl’s foot. Soon we got accustomed to these minor mishaps; most organs were not a problem. But when we did external genital organ, I still remember the guys gasping when the penis was cut. When we took out the testis from the scrotum, I felt really disgusted. I never took the trouble to hold it and find the anatomical position…n guess what??? I got it for my internals. I was forced to hold it. I guess a Doctor just has to know something of EVERYTHING.Nothing however would rival the shock I got was when I realized that we had to get our own real bone set, not plaster of paris, but a real person’s bone, and everyone was telling me about how difficult it is to get it. Why all the stressing on a real bone set you may ask. Apparently, every individual’s bones are unique and there are certain contours and properties of real bones that synthetic substitutes can never perfectly reproduce. Back to my story, sometime later this real scary guy came up to me, he looked real creepy. He was trying to sell bones on campus and was milling with the outpatient crowd to avoid being noticed. He was ready to sell a bone set for 1000 Rs. You should have seen the bones! They were fresh! I mean they had a little bit of flesh on them. Damn scary, real bones, like they just popped out of this horror movie show or something. And I, carried away by that new feel of being independent, guess you lose your senses in the battle to prove yourself, bargained for 800. But my friends told me not to buy it coz it was fresh or something like that. So after all that mindless bargaining I told the guy I wasn’t going to buy it…and the guy started crying. His soulless, grey eyes were actually filled with tears. Guess everyone has feelings. Later, my friends told me he was a grave digger. I was petrified-the real world of medicine exposed in all its gory details. To save a life, we take another person’s dear ones remains…sad…and I bargain for it. I felt like crap. It suddenly forced itself on me, like an immense burden, how man has to go to the extremes, just to survive. He forgets everything. Even I forgot in the heat of being a good medical student. I sort of hated myself then. But now, I have become insensitive to such things. I carry the bones of some person in my bag whenever I go for osteo class, sleep off with them on my bed. Guess it’s a part of being a doctor.Recently we learnt about the skull. And I was listening in class as usual, answering anything I knew (which was not often), when sir brought a foetus skull. You should see it, it’s so small. The bones are not ossified. You could really see what a delicate thing it was. It was so sad, a mother’s hope, her greatest dream…still-born. And here it is - a specimen for us at the embryology lab. There are all kinds of specimens here, kept soaked in formalin, for us to study. They are all so cute, you couldn’t possibly believe anything was wrong with them, but yes they were still-born. A mother’s 9 month long wait and just one of the many specimens in every medical college. It’s pathetic really. To save lives, for medicine to go on, we have to become so ruthless, so insensitive. But without it, there would never be medicine coz you can never understand without seeing. It’s just not about mugging up. It’s another one of those paradoxes in life that you can’t explain.But it’s not that bad. We get to see every guy in our batch bare chest, not something you get in every college. I still remember how shocked we were when the tutors asked us if any of the guys were ready to strip up to the waist for us to study. I mean we were like: What was she up to? And the worst was when she asked each one of us to come up and feel for the apex beat. It was really weird. It was like they get a free massage in exchange for stripping. But now whatever, every other person is just a subject. Who cares! (Except for the fact that I screwed up my percussion during the exams) It’s fun in a way.And you won’t believe it, every week I prick my finger more than three times just to get the blood and test it. I hated the idea. Pricking my delicate fingers. Some of my friends haven’t been able to get over it yet. You see, we even shed our blood to get through these five years and become the so called doctors. And as if that wasn’t enough, we need another ten years to be able to practice. But the good part is- it’s fun all the way. Why? Coz we deal with people. Real people. And you just realize how unique each human being is. Not just character-wise but also anatomically - the arteries, the nerves, the veins, the organs, everything is so different. No two specimens are identical. And you have to be so careful. It’s amazing. You actually start thinking: Can Science explain everything? There is something supernatural about life that defies comprehension.Whenever we go to the college there is a shortcut through the leprosy center. Most of the residents have recovered fully and yet no one has come to reclaim them. As we go by, they just look at us, passing through the center to the college, waiting, to see if someone would come for them someday, someone they can call their own. I’m so lucky to have everyone. And sometimes I think I am real lucky to belong to this generation, a generation without prejudices like the one before. Then again, I think maybe I’m fooling myself, maybe we’re just a generation with a whole new set of prejudices.The psychiatry and alcohol rehab center is another place we have to cross always on our way to college. I remember when Sameetha was walking by one day, one of its inmates called out "Hello sister! On your way back, get me a pack of cigarettes." They used to call us by all kinds of names when we walked by, hoping we would respond. It was like try your luck. If you hit, you get a girl to look back at you (mostly in fear / anger / annoyance), otherwise you have nothing to lose. For us, it was our silent zone. We used to be so quiet while crossing these areas. Now they know us by name, and we are the least bothered, after all, we are all humans. In fact, Sameetha got her first and only proposal from one of the inmates. It’s sad how life can just slap you right across the face. Whenever we walk, we get flattering comments like- you look so pretty, and I love you and what not. It must be so difficult to be stuck behind those rails. Only they know what they are going through, and boy! How desperate they must be. It’s sad and, I must confess, funny at the same time.The best part of my first year would be, when I finished just one month of MBBS and I went home for vacations, our domestic help came up to me with her lab reports, asking for my opinion on the case. I just stared at it the X-ray and the blood tests results. And I am like, what in the world is going on?! It was still Greek and Latin to me. Then I go like what the doctor said was absolutely right. (Sophisticated nod plus grave raised eyebrow) AND she surprisingly agreed, when I didn’t even ask her what the doctor said.It’s so funny how people think that less than one year of MBBS is more than enough to make me a super specialist in every subject in the medical world, even better than the super specialist he/she is visiting, who has spent more than 20 yrs dedicated to the subject.My first few anatomy classes felt like entering foreign territory –phalanges, superolateral, nasion, cerebrohematoma, shentons line. I never used to follow a word. It took me 2 whole months just to get used to the lingo. These days, I see how the interns come in the morning after working the entire day, just to see that there is no food left. And I keep thinking, that’s me in five yrs. No food! I can’t even imagine the situation. Oh well! From here to there there’s still five years. On the whole I am so happy where I am. I love my college, my batch, my friends, everything! It’s a profession I am sure I will love. It’s tough, requires a lotta determination and focus but I think its fun at the same time. You feel you’re doing something useful, important, relevant. And I hope that this belief stays for the next five years. Love Nandhu

Feeling the Beat

Exams seem to bring out the blogger in me. It seems the only means to dispel stress when my head is buzzing with an overdose of Quantum Mechanics. Somehow, today I find myself trying to remember when exactly was the first time I heard music, in the conventional sense, of course. Sonia reminds me that waves, rain drops, the flapping of bird wings etc etc too can be called music. But the Zog is at present solely interested in the organized cacophony that we homo sapiens insist on labelling with that term. The more I think of it, the more I am certain that my first musical experience was the song "Aayirum Kannumayi," sung to us by our mother as a single stop solution for everything starting from scratches, cuts, bruises, black eyes, ant bites, wasp bites, hard words, hard stares, hard whacks on our behinds. That was the one song she could sing without being off-key, even once. Besides, my Dad played it endlessly on our Fischer Price stereo. I must admit, other than the above, my first auditory stimulations were restricted to exclusively the ONV Kurupu lyricized or the ABBA, Michael Jackson vocalized variety. Of course, there was the occasional "Daisyeeeeeee! Daisyeeee!" Since I couldn't understand any of the rest, I was very taken up by this song. To this day, daisies are my favourite flower. Later, I learnt from a string of conservative aunts, sisters and grannys that the song was in some ununderstandable way profane. Even later, I learnt it was not the song, but the film the song was an integral part of, that was the issue. Hmmm. As I continued in this hopeless ingnorance, where even my dreams played out to the tune of "Dancing Queen","Dangerous" or "Arikil nee", my parents suddenly turned my world upside down, enrolling me at an American School. Here I was, two decades behind people my age. Disney music was the in thing, at the time. I found myself mouthing "When You wish upon a star", "Cruella D' Ville" and "Under the Sea" with a zillion other toddlers, one school spring concert after another, carefully making sure that not a sound escaped me. I didn't exactly have a melodious voice. I was terribly relieved when the whole Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys phase happened. No more concerts. You just had to listen. This was about the time my father gave away our Fischer Price music box to a newly arrived cousin of his. I felt an unexplainable animosity towards the poor soul from the minute he handled that sacred instrument. However, audio tapes had gone out of fashion and my Dad, forever the electronics geek, believed it was high time we had a CD player. Our sleek, black Kenwood, four speaker entertainment centre was exciting. But that ended listening to music for my poor mother, who was intimidated by all the complicated (she said) gadgetry. My Dad hated the boy band, "Hit me Baby" variety of music and he stopped too. Thus was initiated the Asianet News and Asianet serials era of my parents lives. I have a feeling though that the Tatu and Alanis Morisette CD covers made Daddy rethink his feelings for Boyzone.:) I have no qualms in admitting that college was by far the best era of my musical journey. It was no longer boring to like retro music and let your hair down to the tune of the Beatles. Pink Floyd was synonymous to cool and ABBA and the Carpenters were free flowing, integral parts of the lingo. Once again, it was safe to be me. Not for long. It seems the "me"ness in me also included a love for classical music. And classical music was a surefire means to get you trampled as social dirt. I listened to Tchaikovsky clandestinely when my room mate was away or when she was fast asleep. I re-edited my playlists when she was back. Phew! It was almost like being in the closet. I wish I was like the dude in the "Clockwork Orange." He liked Beethoven and it actually made him cool. But me, no way! Maybe I had to wear the weird white outfit and mask too. Right now, my playlist is a liberal mix of every genre known from here to Tahiti. I never discriminate. The ud is as beloved as the veena or the violin. The beat of the samba as appealing as the slow playing of the saxophone. My memories of music seem to be associated more with my growth and mood swings than anything else. Whether it was lying on the hostel lawn, looking at the moon, drinking coffee and listening to Pink Floyd, air banding with a passion on "I want to hold your hand" or playing "I'm a bitch" and "Girls just wanna have fun" when I am up to some mischief or the other or feel very aware of my feminity. Also it is strange how every person who comes or leaves my life has a song attached. Tanima-Cindy Lauper-"Girls just wanna have fun", Hathi-Pink Floyd-"Of your possible pasts", Jianni-Black eyed peas-"My humps", still remember the way she sang it on hostel night, Udita-Beatles-"I wanna hold your hand",my sister-Pearl Jam-"Ain't no mountain high", Ma-"Aayirum kannumayi", Daddy-Boney M-"Daddy Cool"(You should totally hear my Dad sing that song).....the list goes on. Funny thing is, in my dreams too, these songs are like theme songs, denoting their entrance and exit. Funny, the associations that our minds make. And yes, I do admit, like Sonia says, that sometimes, the only music you feel like hearing is the waves when you hold a conch shell to your ear, Whooo!, the wind rustle through leaves, Whishoo!, rain beating against a tin roof, Tdindintin!, the crackling of a warm fire, Kcklkl!, or the chirping of birds, Chipchr!, when you actually manage to wake up in the morning. Other music also counts. My favourite as I have mentioned before, is the sound of my dads key turning in the lock of our gate when he gets back from work, Kchick!, the sound of your mom taking a shower, all the time imagining how lovely she looks and smells when she steps out, RShhhhshr!, the sound of your sisters text book clamping shut after home work, Thdddt!, time to play, time to play! So many sounds, all so divine, Pity that none of it, is solely mine!