When lives speak!

I am honoured to be in your presence, said he!

The audience was august. The who's who of Christian Medical College was there. Some of them, among the best doctors the country has seen. Few of them do world class research, the brightest brains. There were Harvard and Cambridge scholars in the crowd as well. Some of them could have lived multi billion dollar lives of the developed west, yet they have stayed back, just to work in India and serve the masses.

I have never been to a University. I don't belong here, he started slowly. His english was not up to the haughty standards CMC prides itself in. I have been here before to this institution as a few of my relatives work here, he stuttered; And then his life took over.

Over the next hour, his life shone bright. CMC gave him a standing ovation. Thrice! Three times we all stood up and clapped for this man, for his life spoke. And it was loud!

He is the son of a safai karmachari (manual scavenger). His parents cleaned up human excreta with their hands in the dry laterines of the olden India (What am I saying, they still exist). But he refused to be drawn in to the same demeaning job, though nobody gave him another. For those who understand caste system in India, he belonged to the lowest of the lowest tribes. The untouchables. Yet he refused to be called himself that! Rather he took the fight to the opposition.

He had single handedly united the many people who are made to do these menial jobs and has fought the might of an indifferent and unconcerned Indian government for over thirty years. And in the process has helped pass a law banning manual scavenging and helped rehabilitate thousands of workers in to better jobs.

Oh yes, the casteist Indian mindset had often come in the way. The lords of the supreme court has never punished one man in the last thirty years for misusing another human being, he said. His voice crackled. No, we don't get justice in this country, but I don't stop. I sensed a tear drop peeping out of my eyes.

Then he challenged the CMC community; the intellectual and sometimes class-conscious elite. Do you live in rigid structures created by the society? Oh yes, you don't let casteism in its true form come in to you, but is there a hierarchy that you live with? A hierarchy of the glass doors? A hierarchy where one human being is treated higher than another? I felt an uneasiness. Then the slap! And another! May be we felt his life speaking through the pricked conscience.

CMC stood up again when he finished! And again when he got his citation. And again when he answered the few questions. No you don't need university driven education to get standing ovations. You don't need the British accent or impeccable vocabulary to get standing ovations.

For when your life is so loud, the world stands on its feet!

Achievements of life!

I walked out of the airport and there was somebody carrying a board which read "Samuel Gnanadurai". I called him and off we went to the guest house which was booked for me!

Sounds very fancy, isn' it? Well if you are one of those who was fascinated by these like I was as a kid growing up, it does sound fancy. 

I thought those are the happy people. People, who has achieved so much in life that there is a car to pick them up. It has not stuck me this hard until yesterday when it happened for me twice in two days. I mean, I'm on a big travelling spree and out of the four boring flights, two had people waiting to pick me up. It stuck me hard that it does not mean that you are an over achiever and it means that somebody is gracious enough to pick you up. 

This actually got me thinking! What actually is an achievement then? If you are achieving something which had been a childhood dream, is it not achievement enough? Then most of the petty day to day things will have to be called achievements. 

In one of those travels I stayed with the most brilliant boyfriend I have! He went on to do study engineering in a famous IIT and then went on to design aircrafts. How cool is that? When we started talking and when the talk veered off to our lives, I could read from his mind that he is fighting off the same question. Is that all there is to life? That you settle down in your own two bedroom apartment among the glittery high rises of Bengaluru? Wasn't that an achievement as well, I asked! Yes it is; To buy a flat was a dream! Any day; But is that all? The question never really went away.

How do we define achievements of life? Does the very definition of achievements of one's life keep changing?Is it that important that we keep achieving something? Do we achieve anything in life? Can they be qualitative? I mean, like I'm happy, and so have I achieved? 

Oh! The question marks of life. How often do we answer such philosophical questions. What do you think folks? 

National Health Insurance Scheme - Entering Dangerous Territory!

‘Modicare’, as is now beginning to be called, after the budget presented is not new territory for Indians. But one has to be careful in treading this dangerous path, for pitfalls along this road are sometimes steep.

So, for a start there are many different systems of health care.

1) Health care is provided and financed by the government, just like the Police force. Government run the hospitals and the health care shelters, where people are to be taken care of. The govt fund this from the tax structures. Minimal charges are levied on some functionalities but they are bare minimum

2) Then there is the insurance model. Insurance actually means, that some money is collected by the people who are part of the scheme at constant intervals, which will be put together to finance the cost of the health care. The health care will be provided by private players.

a) insurance schemes where it is compulsory for everybody to be part of it and the insurance money is deducted at source.

b) Insurance scheme where there is a single insurer (usually a government company) and anybody can voluntarily join the company. This helps to keep the cost less since the intention of the insurance company is not profit and also easy to administer. Also government usually fills in for the deficit.

c) Private insurance companies pay for those who have been part of their insurance scheme. The market mechanism of the capitalistic world forces its private players to have competitive pricing. The government can fill in for the deficit here also.

3) Out of pocket expenditure, where the patients pay from their own pocket to the private health providers.

Traditionally we had always followed the first model where the government pays for the health care of all its citizens, but slowly with more and more private players playing bigger roles in health care we have entered the second and the third model. In fact india has among highest out of pocket expenditure in the world and is among the major reason for poverty in the country.

Now, Modi government has come up with this humongous experiment of insurance scheme for nearly 10 crore Indians (5 times more the population as covered by Obamacare).

So what are the pitfalls?

The major pitfall according to me, is the government losing track of the infrastructure development for health care in the primary care level. India right now spends approximately 1.85% to 2% of its GDP on health care. The draft national health policy bill recommends India spend 2.5% of GDP on health. But the modicare alone costs around 5% of the GDP! How viable is a universal health insurance scheme of this magnitude only time will tell. So instead of concentrating on health insurance at the secondary and tertiary hospital level, developing infrastructure and human resource at the primary care would solve a lot more problems.

The other major danger I see is empowering private insurance firms and very soon the insurance firms will be deciding on the course of treatment and diagnosis rather than the hospitals. If there are not enough checks and balances, the fall in this pit is a deep one.

So I’m entering stigmatised territory now. Let us face it! The health care sector in the country is among the most corrupt. We keep denying the inevitable, but the stark reality is to trust a doctor in this country is difficult.Any doctor! I administer courses for doctors across the country and everybody privately agrees that the rot is deep. And to empower private practitioners through the modicare may end up digging up an infected would.

The other major mishap we have faced in the last fifty years is the turn the health sector had taken towards specialist based care. We have always followed the American west, and even in this we have done the same. But the UK based model of having family physicians as the first point of contact is a better model especially for a country as populous as we are and as poor as we are.

Imagine I have a headache, I have to visit a neurologist, an ophthalmologist, an internal medicine expert and then to realize it was stress. May be even a psychiatrist sometimes. But is it not better to go to that one doctor who treated our whole families, and who can then refer in case he thinks he cannot handle on a case by case basis? By this model we can empower the MBBS graduates who are now left lurching around looking for PG seats without knowing their own values. And modicare will greatly profit the specialists and specialist based care.

I know it is a long and a difficult road, the road of affordable and quality universal health care for every Indian. The road ahead is not only long and difficult, but also full of pitfalls. Modi and the team should take slow and careful steps, lest the fall is deep and there are bottomless pits as well.

Lessons from the Marathon man! It's me (vadivelu voice)

I ran a marathon! I ran a marathon! I mean, it was only 7.5 Kms. Yet this is the longest ever I have run in my life. And yipeee, I'm happy.

Not many who know me after my school days, know me as a fanatic sportsman. I played cricket, Basketball and shuttle badminton at various points of my life at a fairly decent level. And I played during every bit of free time available. I have been to state selections, represented my district and have been in many district level winning teams. In fact looking back my school life had only been sport. I was a sport fanatic, still am! Just that I don't play anymore.

I did not like one bit of the four years in college, just because the college never had good sports teams. Of course there were other reasons for not liking college life, but this is one major reason. I still hate myself for choosing that college; anyways that is for another day.

After college, life catches up with you! Nobody played any sport in Cognizant. Nobody even had time to breathe, leave alone play. Makunda was worse. Civil service days were heady. And then the paunch began to show. Not that I was thin before. I don't think I have ever been the thin one ever. Still, when you touch 30 and the paunch start to show, you know you have not done justice and you could have been fitter.

So 2018, I decided is going to be the year. Many years and many resolutions have come and gone, but this year have started well. I started jogging few days a week. Started to swim again after eons. And then the marathon happened. The reluctant man in me was pushed out to run by the team I work with now. (Shhhh! I actually outran them😜!)

And it was an experience! The younger me, would have quit half way through. Five years ago, I would have preferred to walk and talk with people along the way rather than run alone. I don't quit anymore. The body was cramping badly, yet I told myself, come what may I will crawl to the finish; and finish I did much faster than I even thought.

And so the mind is full of enthusiasm now! What about doing it daily, early morning? Says the mind. I don't know how much more the bruised body will let the mind win! Yet, these days my mind wins the body more often!

May be you need to become old to know that mind winning over the body is all there is to life! How I wish I had known it better then!

The wall!

The wall is perhaps the most inappropriate, simplistic and arguably an insulting name to him. For walls don't think. They just stand there, till a force greater than it can collapse it forever. For, the holder of the egregious nickname, never collapsed! Of course he failed. But always stood up again, taller, stronger!

When I read in the morning that Rahul Dravid is celebrating his birthday, my mind wavered to childhood, for the many days when I tried to imitate him. We learnt to drive like Sachin, flick like Azhar but always defended like Dravid. The front foot well forward, the bat in line with his eyes, dead straight, softest of hands and of course the eyes on the ball. This never changed. Like a well oiled machine, the foot and the bat did its work. Day in and day out.

Dravid never wrote poetry. You don't relate mathematics and poems, do you? For he wrote theorems. Every innings of his had a structured hypothesis to it. The steps clearly in place; the syntax intact; his batting never had conjectures, the theorems always ended with the customary Indian "Hence proved" label.

When Sachin and Laxman were doing their art, on the other side Dravid often stuttered and stopped. The cover drives often went to the fielder. The boundaries were not flowing. Sixes were unheard of. Yet, often at the end of it all, Dravid stood still. The shirt drenched in sweat. The eyes gleaming. Concentration intact. The man in a trance. Till the theories he developed was proven, he never quit.

Happy birthday Jammy; 

What can one woman do?

It is quite a steep climb, careful benji! I told my friend who had accompanied me to do the hill climbing we did in the evening. As we went to the top, the view was nothing less than breathtaking. All I saw was greenery and the beauty of it all. We came back talking about the risk of falling and the calories burnt climbing up.

Even as I was climbing it struck me, that Aunt Ida had climbed that hill almost hundred years ago. She surely saw the beauty and the greenery. But she saw beyond! She saw a medical college there. She saw hundreds of Indian women and men being trained in medicine there. What vision! What foresight! Amazing, I told myself.

It would have been barren land then. It is a buzzing, yet serene and beautiful medical college campus now. It is now the best medical college in the country. Among the best doctors of the world are being made here. People's lives are being changed here. Young men and women come here with dreams and go back becoming change agents of this huge country and of course the world. I'm one of those who was blessed by the vision she saw, as my grandmother was among the first to pass out as a doctor from this prestigious institute.

How did she manage this? When she set foot on Indian soil, women were dying in tons for want of medical treatment. She decided she will train women doctors, unheard of in India before her. Now 100 years later, mostly woman treat the woman in India. Every day, averaging ten thousand people cross the gate waiting to see a doctor. When she decided to begin, all she had was a 10*10 room and a single bed. Now there are 3000 plus beds another thousand to be added. How did she manage this?

Why didn't she just come here as a tourist, take some photograph of the hills and the greenery and go back? Or may be just stay satisfied by her one bed clinic and keep going back to busy Monday morning clinics and praise God for that? Why didn't she just think of it as a calorie loss exercise or a Sunday evening outing and just leave it at that, like I did tonight? That why question keep haunting me.

What a vision? How did she manage to see hundred years afar? Did she have a direct hotline connection with the divine? May be God directly gave her that vision; Or may be she asked the divine to give her the vision! This surely cannot be human, my innermost heart whispered. May be so! May be so!

Are you the small dot in a remote village thinking what can one person do? Or are you the eternal pessimist who thinks we are doomed, like me? Are you the patriarchal society's male chauvinist thinking woman's role should be in the kitchen?

Come and see the vision which Aunt Ida saw! On the top of a hill!
                                               

                                                                        Medical college campus from the hill

Aunt Ida and Vellore during her time

  

                                                     

Thank you for the music!

For all the musical genes in the family, music just did not happen for me. Though I was part of a choir for a long time, I don't hit most of the correct notes! I mean, simply put I could not sing. And not to mention the many attempts at learning musical instruments which never materialised the way it should have, partly due to my own laziness though.

Yet, through it all music did have a role to play in my life. And like any other young Indian growing up in the early twenty first century ARR was one of the musicians I grew up listening to.

Remembering the many times I had sat alone in my room only with ARR and his sound for company and wondered how and why he used a certain instrument and a certain rhythm pattern for certain songs. Those majestic double bass runs in the song "Veerapandiya kotaiyile", the haunting melody of the 'Jeans' theme music humming 'nisarisa', the violin interludes in the villagish folk number of "Poraale ponnu thaayi", the melancholy of "Yenga pona raasa", the guitar rhythm of "New york nagaram" and the many other Rahman specials.

Oh yes, the music did speak. Everytime I heard the "Unthan desthin kural", I could feel the urge to go back home. The zillion times I have heard Rahman's version of Vande Maataram, I have felt passionate about my country. And whenever the "Kaalailyil thinamum kan muzhithaal naan kai thozhum thevathai amma" sang, I felt my mother calling me.  Did you feel a peace surrounding you when "Vellai pookal" was sung? I did! Everytime.

Of course there are many other musicians and music I had enjoyed. from the inimitable Illayaraja, to the Simple and profound music of Jim Reeves, From Amy Grants serenity to the loud sounds of Michael Jackson and Backstreet boys; the Christian Gaithers, the rock show guys "Queen", "Eminem", and a few local musicians like Theodore and the four part harmonies of the choirs I have been part off. Yet ARRs is the one music I have enjoyed the most and the one I go to when alone.

Thank you ARR sir for the music. For I enjoyed your company in the many times of loneliness. Here is to many more years of tamil music I so enjoy. Happy happy birthday