A Holiday...without travelling

The summer's almost over and it's time for vacationers to return back to Namma Chennai. Travel agencies keep advertising in the papers about vacations that cost ALMOST nothing. Well, I've just been on one such vacation. And it was in a place that you definitely wouldn't have considered: Chennai city itself. Yes, the city where mercury is more plentiful than water is an ideal vacation spot, and you can stay for as long as you like!! For the still unenlightened here's how you do it:

GUIDE TO VACATIONING IN CHENNAI:


6.00 AM - Time to get up from your bed, brush your teeth [if it's one of your priorities] and head for a brisk morning walk because you sure as hell cant do it after 7.30

7.30 AM - After you've taken an auto back from wherever you've walked to, sink into the dining table chair and enjoy your cuppa. Drink it slowly so that you can irritate anyone who needs to rush off....good entertainment. Take up the paper

9.00 AM - By now, you have reached the obituaries column and can no longer pretend to be engrossed in it. Go back to your bed. From now on, you shouldn't get out of it. And considering the weather, you proably wouldn't want to. Ponder about life

9.03 AM - Stop pondering

9.05 AM - Start staring at your mobile phone. See if you can hypnotise it into receiving some messages. If you can't then send some to your friends, who will actually begin to think that they're pretty good at hypnosis. If messages aren't free, give missed calls.

10.20 AM - Well, it should be this time when you finish talking, or else you need to brush up on conversational skills. Have a nice long bath, but remember the entire city needs water...

11.00 AM - By this time you should be completely bored. If not, then you haven't followed instructions properly. Switch on the TV or log on to the Internet (recommended...i hate the idiot box). That should keep you unprofitably occupied for 2 hours. Have lunch in between

12.00 - 4.00 Go to sleep. If you can't sleep look up insomnia's cure in the Medical almanac

4.30 PM - Another cuppa. But this one should be drunk rather fast...no one's around to get irritated

5.30 PM - Now you can think abt going out. Just think

6.00 PM - Now you should be outside. Walk to the nearest supermarket/novelty store, browse around and come back. Or go play badminton. Or read a book..whateever

8.00 PM - Check mail. I know you just checked it at 12 but it pays to check, right? Have dinner

9.00 PM - Start repenting for wasting the day, and make a resolution to do some useful job tomorrow....say save the world, or learn to fly. The trick is to resolve to do something that's either impossible or impractical. Give your imagination free rein.

10.00 PM - Conscience assuaged, you can go to bed. After all, tomorrow's another day...

My CV

I have just finished my resume and I'd really appreciate some feedback (on tone, manner of writing, etc..) on it..., so please take time to download it and peruse the contents. Download it here

A Patient Diary -- Part III

Note: Better read these starting from Part I.

....12.40 is what strikes my eye first. The time on the clock on the wall in the operation theatre on the first floor in SMF in Annanagar in Chennai on this planet.

Relax, I don't think they operated on my brain.

The head nurse beams at me and says: "The operation is over"

I'll say. I am aware of a major pain in the a**. Really major. I try to turn on the bed, but learn excruciatingly that my present position is infinitely better, painwise.

They wheel me back to my room. Same way. L5, L4, L3.

I was just settling in when I found that I had been allotted another room. One that had become free. It was equipped with an AC. So, once again, I was lifted and wheeled to room 514.

I sinked into the new bed, very comfortable, and heaved a huge sigh. Everyone left.

Oh, I am forgetting about Mr. Drip. He came along, too. The IV stand in the new room was rather low, and Drip was hooked onto it. Mine, being a young heart, started pumping with ferocity. The blood from my viens rose into the IV line: the other way round.

My heart froze. My throat didn't. I screamed. The nurse rushed in. I pointed fervently to the maleficent IV line. She calmed down.

"Oh, that can happen", she says, coolly, and proceeds to walk slowly towards the IV stand and raises the bottle.

The blood goes back in and so does the glucose. I h.a.h.s again.

20 minutes later, to get my mind off the pain, I ask my father to get me Baldacci's Last Man Standing, and begin delving into it.

Coconut water arrives at 3 p.m. It seems that certain people experience nausea in their first meal after surgery, as a consequence of a reaction with the anaesthetic. The nurse was present, looking at me anxiously to see if I would puke violently. Well, I didn't.

So I graduated to mango juice, and then to a solid diet.

I eat the idlis, which again form the bulk of dinner. Sleep does not arrive, giving solace over pain, until the good doctor recommends a painkiller injection. That is a situation soon remedied by the nurse, and I drift off, only to awake at 3 pm with unbearable pain, which of course requires another poke of the med into my b***. I drift off, again.

A Patient Diary -- Part II

I am rudely awoken at 6 am by a hospital attendant, who then calmly proceeded to depilate the concerned area.

I stare at the clock on the wall opposite the bed as it meticulously inches towards cutting-up time. Well, not really. I did stare at it for about ten minutes, then gave up and went back to Morrell. This apprenhension and worry thing does not me bespeak, methinks.

At 10.15, as promised, a couple of strong-armed attendants arrive to take me to my doom.

Holding the IV line (the attender) and walking out of the room (me), I lay down on the gurney. My muscular attenders then wheeled the gurney down to the operation theatre on the first floor.

We see so much of this scene in the movies. Somebody being wheeled on the gurney and his frantic beloved running after it, holding the IV line. We should all try it from the perspective of the person lying down. I assure you, it is not pleasant. Lying down on that thing, all you can see clearly is the ceiling. The gurney was wheeled through the corridoors into the elevator. I saw L1, L2, L3, L4, and L5 rushing past me in a blur. I would have seen L6 too, but we reached the lift.

The lift went down surprisingly fast. Time is relative. Einstein is GOD.

They transferred me from one gurney to another and the door of the op-theat closed, leaving me marooned in horror land. Everywhere I see, there are green and purple gowns, and people, whose faces are covered in green masks.

Even the air seems lifeless, in suspended animation.

Drip. Drip.

They are wheeling me in, now, and with smiling eyes the anaesthetist drags out a long syringe, puts it into the nozzle of the IV gauze and presses the plunger. A cool liquid flows into my veins.

I turn my head to look at the IV line.

Drip. Dri......

A Patient Dairy -- Part I

The nauseous fumes of disinfectant waft towards the bed from the open bathroom, as a premonitory sort of welcome to the new inhabitant. Me.

I am in Sundaram Medical Foundation, admitted as an in-patient for the "excision" of my "pilonidal sinus cavity", a cavity between my spine bone and my pelvic girdle in which a few foreign particles saw a chance to make a comfortable home. This, of course, caused the doctors to shake their heads sadly..."Surgery is the only option, I'm afraid".

Even I'm afraid. I have always been scared of hospitals. The impersonality, the starched uniforms, the grave countenances, the stuck-on smiles of the nurses, the grim faces of surgeons..brrrh..hosptials give me the shivers.

The room was on the second floor, directly below the terrace (which made it unbearably hot), and looked out into a petrol bunk. I know, because I looked through the window. I had to keep it open, steeling myself to the thought of mosquitoes making merry, to combat the heat.

We have got to get this room changed.

I opened the Agatha Christie, and started reading.

Dinner came at eight. Three idlis, sambar and pudina chutney. I have a rather voracious appetite and I glanced sadly at those idlis. My mistake, because they were rather filling. A very good canteen the people at SMF run.

At around ten, a young, jolly, chubby-faced junior surgeon paid me a visit.

"How are you, da? (Yes, he really said da) We're thinking of cutting you up at 10 tomorrow. Don't worry, it's a piece of cake. (piece of flesh??) And oh, don't eat anything from now on. Ciao!!"

My operating surgeon, of course, walked in a few minutes later and glared at me, (not maliciously, of course, he just had the habit of glaring at everyone) saying very little, but confirming that he would operate at 10 in the morning. The nurse, meanwhile, was searching for the right vein in my left hand. She found, and pushed in the IV line. The doctor left, after glaring at me once more. The nurse measured my BP, and left.

Drip.

Drip.

One more Drip.

This room is unbearably stuffy. Never knew Annanagar was this hot at night.

Some more drips.

I put down David Morell's Nightscape, and close my eyes, plunging my psyche into a troubled sleep

Drip.