Doctor or Business?

A doctor has the huge responsibility of treating a patient.. Most people come to a doctor with a lot of trust, because their life depends on them.

But a doctor is as human as the patient. And to become a doctor, one needs to go through a lot of study and hard work. But a doctor is still liable to make human errors.. Sometimes it may cost a life or perhaps a severe disability. To a doctor it may be a statistical insignificance most of the times, but to a patient, or a family member, the harm done maybe be very dear. The following post by a friend shows how it feels to be a victim of such error at the patient end.

"It is over a year and four months today. We feel victimized- victimized by the utmost failure of a judicial system and lack of conscience on the part of an otherwise noble profession- the medical sciences. 

A year and four months ago a perfectly healthy woman was rendered blind for life after a supposedly harmless cataract surgery. This woman is my mother. She continues to be an example for all of us, till date- we may have a weak moment but she refuses to be put down. She may not have her job anymore but she refuses to let her idle moments make her bitter. She is still as much in-charge of the house as in her better days.

What irks me- to this day we read about the doctor practicing freely at eye camps meant for the less privileged- causing further damage with a promise to restore conditions at a higher price at his 'private' clinic. To this date he is associated with a prestigious organization which, I suppose, hasn't bothered to check his track record yet. I'm only aware of three lives being ruined personally- the rest are just mere numbers to the onlooker anyway.

The local papers in Jamshedpur (Tatanagar) won't run our request of highlighting the malpractice- we can't buy them at a price the other party offered.

The lawyers we hired seem to be in need of endless amounts of money to print every possible piece of paper or notice for the past four months- we're being milked dry. The police won't move the file up till we can buy our way out of the pile.

All we have, all I have, is words- a social medium- where I can request each one of you, please be aware, please be careful.

People of Jamshedpur- it's a humble request- the best way to curb medical malpractice is by not giving such insensitive people a market, a platform to clean their hands.

I urge you, request you- please stop this man by spreading the word, by not giving Dr. [name withheld] more opportunities to fill his pockets at the cost of innocent lives. Even a simple apology from this man would have made us think, but he refuses to either acknowledge or take responsibility for his actions.

We have been through the trauma of trying to save her eyes for a whole year- not everyone has the means and resources to fight. This plea for help ironically comes from a family of doctors and lawyers. I shudder to imagine what an average Indian would do.

Please help us! By helping yourself."

What do you think is the solution to such a problem?

Dreams

Dreams have always been mysterious.. Some say they are just fairy tales without apparent logic; some say it tells about our past; some say it tells about our future; some say it tells about our present; and then some don’t say at all.. I have seen dreams vary from person to person. And then they make their own concept about what they see.. But some things are common..

Dreams have always intrigued me.. The way the brain works.. All the mysteries.. It's all so alluring.. My interest in psyche and psychology has been from childhood.. Isn’t it fascinating?! As a child I used to wonder why I dreamt what I dreamt.. Some dreams were recurrent.. Most didn't make any sense!!

As I grew up I did some reading, not much of a research you could say; just light reading.. And I was fascinated all the more! The other day I started reading "The Interpretation of Dreams" by Sigmund Freud. But I just started.. :P I was soon reminded that I had my whole life for reading such books, as for now I needed to concentrate on my academics! Yeah, right! You hear that so often, right!?? Lol :D .. Anyhow!

In a documentary I came to know that sometimes you dream about your work. Your mind perfects yourself when you sleep and dream. It's said, anyhow, that REM (rapid eye movement) sleep is needed for consolidation of memory, mostly the memory of skill. You don’t believe all these humbug till you actually see it, do you?

But then it hits you like an epiphany! It's not that you don't see; you just don't realize! I remember while I was posted in Medicine ward and was assigned to take innumerable blood samples of all the patients that the world could offer, I ended up having dreams wherein I saw myself taking blood samples from all the patients that the world could NOT offer! :D Unless you realize it, you'd say, "Man I'm so vexed doing this stupid work, that I even see it in my dreams now! How pathetic!" But when you realize, you understand that after that dream you actually became good at it.. You understand that you have been practicing it in your dreams! Amazing how the mind works! I poked so many careless needless into virtual patients in my dreams, only to make me good enough to do careful poking on the real ones! :D

But then some dreams are not related to work.. You cannot place the dream.. And if anyone asks you what you saw, you have no answer! Because it's not what you saw that mattered! It was what you felt!! That feeling.. That old familiar feeling.. That sways you. And it's stuck with you even when you are awake! Maybe your conscious and logical mind tells you, "C'mon! it was just a dream, not real", you can’t reason with yourself at times, can you? You are stuck with that "feeling"! Could be good, could be bad. As they say, dreams open the door to your subconscious mind. All those feelings of guilt, hatred, love, sadness, longing, etc. just comes out like that and gets you right there.

I used to listen to dreams of my friends. I had this idea of a dream. An analogy. I never came across such an analogy at the time I made it, so it was interesting how I made it.. :P And I am here to share. Our brain's a kitchen! And everything we see from day to day consists of all the ingredients we need, even sometimes without our realizing it. Now when you sleep, your subconscious mind comes to life with all the ingredients it has, and it being the chef, of course! It starts cooking and offers it to you.. And it's a wonderful chef with an uncanny sense of humor. It may take visual data from some and feelings data from some and mix it into a nice dish. That's when you wake up seeing that you had gone on a date with some lovely movie actress (say Kate Winslet) whom have u seen a nice romantic movie (say Titanic) or being bashed by your most feared villain (say Amrish Puri) for not doing your homework. :D Though at time your chef actually takes proper ingredient with proper feelings and makes them so real, that at times you can't tell apart dream from reality. Isn't it? :) So, as I used to listen to the dreams of my friends, I used to ask them questions, and always found some link or the other.. But you may still ask WHY?? Why dream some things at some times and some at other. I guess some do have answers, while some don't. I want to know so much more about dreams, don't you? Readers, you are free to comment with suggestions of some good books or documentaries that you might have come across.. :) I'd go through them when I'm done with "academics" :-\.. :D Thank you for reading. :) See you soon. :)

Sieving My Thoughts

couldn't take a pic on the day related to the post.
 this was taken  on another day

Just another day, I was standing by my terrace room door. There's a construction going on the opposite side of the road. There's this man. He's sitting with a 1m by 2m sieve and a garden spade.. The sieve is inclined against the outer wall of the building. There's a heap of sand just half a meter away from where the man was working.

Using a bigger spade he throws some sand on the sieve. He sits down on one side of the sieve and uses the garden spade to sieve the sand. The coarse particle remains on his side of the sieve and the finer particles of sand form a small heap on the other side of the sieve.

On the other side of the sieve, mimicking his dad, is a 3-4 year old boy, around 2 feet tall, looking all cute and adorable. On his countenance is the expression of a man who's doing the most important thing the world could offer. I watch them work diligently sieving sand.

After sometime, the man got up, strolled away from their work area, took out a packet of guthka (chewing tobacco) and swallowed it down. His son, meanwhile still sieving sand, looked back at his role model just at that precise moment, but got back to sieving quicker than he had turned to look at his dad..

The man picked up the spade picked up some sand on the spade and asked his son, who was having the time of his life STANDING on the sieve and sieving the sand, to move from the sieve, as he was about to throw the next packet for sieving. The kid shows his hand to his father, asking him to stop, removes the coarse particles of the sand with his garden spade from the sieve, and then motions with his hand to his dad as if giving a green signal..!! The man waits patiently for his son to move. He's too tired even to scold him it looks from where I stand. Or, perhaps, he was different from other dads. His son moves, and he gets back to his work.

Within few minutes, the man stands up and strolls inside the building being constructed. His obedient 3yr old diligently sieving the sand.

The kid stands up and looks around to see his dad missing.. He gets apprehensive for a while. That's the first time I see a "child" on the countenance of this 3yr old. He looks as if he's about to cry. But that countenance disappears quicker than it appeared. He goes to the heap of sand, throws his spade (like his dad had done just a while ago) on the sand. He looks around and sees a spent guthka packet lying on the ground. He picks it up. I cross my fingers. "Don't!", I want to shout. My voice stifled by the cold northwesterlies that hit me. He looks inside the packet, turn it over in his other palm and gulps the contents. He throws the packet with the attitude of self-importance; picks up the spade he had thrown into the sand; goes back to the sieve and starts sieving again…….

I close the door, the wind still in my veins chilling down my spine. I sit on my bed and close my eyes……

How do you think this child will grow?

How do you think Raja's 2G scam gonna affect him?

How do u think 20% off for burgers at McDonald's gonna help him?

How do u think home loans and education loans will help him?

What will his psychology be like?

How do you think he'll perceive this world to be like?

I had so many questions in my head.. I felt so lost inside.. Am I the only one feeling so? 

God!

Let's talk about God and Religion today…

What or Who's God?

Let's go back in time..

Early man: no science.. None whatsoever.. No fancy car, no dishwasher, no
electronics, not even table-chair! He's hunting, and surviving..

Imagine yourself as the dumbest person on this planet.. You see the morning
sky and see the sun, what do u think? Wow! I can't see that.. That's one hell of
a bright light.. You look at it in awe as it sets and rises! It's warmth
energizes you after cold night..

You see rain.. Thunder clouds.. How do u feel? U feel scared.. If you are
having a hard time imagining, think of your childhood.. Weren't you afraid of
thunder and lightening?

Of course! It's suppose to scare you.. It's how evolution of brain has
happened! Being scared of loud noise! It gives u an impulse to protect
yourself.. Go inside a cave or something..

But then you ask yourself, who was "shouting"?? Was he angry or something??
Exactly what this early man used to think.. And they name him GOD!!

Early man couldn’t understand all the mysteries of the universe.. Why that
"bright light" kept coming up and going down, why the burning heat during
summers, why the freezing cold during winters, why the fierce rain during
monsoons, etc..

WHO was controlling these things after all!!! (Oh and that WHO isn’t World
Health Organization)

So, they ASSUMED, that there was this superpower, a master, the controller
who had created them..

C'mon!! They didn't have geography lessons to tell 'em that the earth is
round and it's the 3rd planet from the Sun, the so called "bright-light"! Nobody
told them about solar systems, air compositions, biology, chemistry,
electricity! Poor guys!

What do u do when you see a nice and interesting thing you donno about? You
make up a story! You make assumptions! You make discoveries and you invent your
discoveries!

So God was created!

What does this guy look like? Ooh he's definitely a man!! Look at him roar
(thunderstorms) when he's angry!! What language does he speak?? "God knows"!

So now we have a God, who looks like a human, and supposedly a male, and he
commands all of Nature (the wind, water, earth, sun, etc.)

One MAN!! GOD!! MALE!! THAT'S IT!!

NAH!!! Not liking.. Let's add a female.. That poor guy can't do everything on
his own!! This GUY should have a wife, some sons and daughters, a ministry, blah
blah!

What's this!! EVOLUTION!!

A man's opinion is a product of his surrounding.. So I don’t doubt that while
cave men thought their Gods lived in caves, kings and emperors thought their
Gods lived in palaces!

So as society developed, religious men also thought that even god has some
society or ministry kinda thing.. Lets make one take care of wind, one for
water, one for earth, one for food, one for this and one for that! WOW!! SO MANY
GODS!!

So as man evolved, concept of God evolved.. Until recently.. I'll come to
that soon..

Let's talk about RELIGION!

Early man: hunters. Killing, and feeding! How disgusting, you'd say! No
manners!! Sorry to say, but they didn't have moral science class those days..

But then came this "thinker" who thought, that we are under the command of
god! So this "thinker" guy is now our moral science teacher for all around
him/her. And I assume this moral science teacher is old.. Else he wouldn't have
many listeners, now would he!! Who listens to a stupid young fellow!! c'mon!
he's soooo young!! Yeah you get it.. This guy's old.. And maybe, just maybe, he
has some nice hallucinations, because of scientific causes we know affecting
old! But who's gonna tell the other people that this guy needs a hospital and
not an audience!!

But anyways amidst his hallucinations, he tells wonderful stories.. He
teaches the young people the meaning of life! He tells about God.. Everything
that he thinks is positive

These stories are carried forward.. And as they are carried forward, they are
modified.. And you have no idea to what wonderful spicy substances are added to
it!! I call it the best cooked recipe!

So we now have a story, and a moral science book for those hooligans who are
not moral..

This is actually how empires spread.. This concept of religion was a
brilliant idea to make uncivilized humans, civilized!! It was ingenuity of the
human brain to devise such a fabulous masterpiece to make humans what they were
to human what they became.

But THEN things changed!

WHY?

'Cause there wasn't only one psychotic "thinker"!! There were more!! All over
the surface of Earth!! And as explained in my last blog, communities met, there
was a collision of beliefs! And this resulted in wars, superior-inferior
duality, etc.!

So, now not only were humans fighting, but even Gods were! Say for example,
let's have a death match between Allah and Ram! Yeah right! Hilarious! Next
round with Jesus perhaps..!

God and Religion in Present society..

After discovery of science, all those unsolvable mysteries (like, what if we
fall from the edge of the earth?) were solved! Humans realized it wasn't God who
was controlling things at His bidding.. There were scientific proper reasons to
things that happened around us.. Why rain fell, why sun is so bright a light,
etc. etc…

BUT.. GOD remained.. WHY? Because the stories are wonderful and grannies love
telling nice stories to startle the young newborn's mind!! And religious stories
somehow make the best bedtime stories! And why not.. Even in school perhaps!!
After all it was "THE INGENIOUS IDEA" that made uncivilized, civilized.. Now who
wants their children to be uncivilized!! Not me! So tell the best story ever
made!! God and Religion!

What's God's purpose now?

Apart from mental solace, God has now become, what I call, the
"external-Parent".

What's that???? :o

Read on.. Next blog soon..;)

The World Now, the World Then, the World To Be!

As the world comes to its present stage, I wonder how it was before..

What do we know from history and science books about evolution of human beings? Human's evolved from apes. They were hunters and food gatherers.. They hunted in groups. And slowly began grouping and socializing and building societies, families, etc.

This is what I infer..

Not all humans are equal. Everybody is different in their own good ways.. Some were good at cooking (considering they had discovered fire already), some were good at hunting. Some could run faster, and some had better vision. And maybe some were better at communications and decision making.. So what do the humans decide?? Work together!! Together they hunted better and could protect themselves better..

As their brain grew more complex, they started questioning and trying to understand things. Even the emotional component grew complex.. So they started building families, and societies.. Meanwhile they also invented GOD for questions whose answers they couldn't find..

Now all over the world such societies flourished.. All had different beliefs and concepts to the world they saw. For example, humans who flourished in forests and good vegetation around, had their primary food as vegetables.. As their spiritual concept evolved, they felt God was responsible for the delicious food in the form of vegetables (vegetarian). Meanwhile people living in desert areas had a tougher life.. They had to hunt and kill and also had to compete for food.. The environment was hostile (or had grown hostile) due to climatic change and prolonged grazing of tame animals.. So basically meat was their food.. They believed in non vegetarian food as their primary source.. Meanwhile people living on the shores had sea food, fishes, etc. (non vegetarian).. So although both the communities are basically humans, but one has become primarily vegetarian and others non vegetarian.. Their concept of god evolved similarly. So while some sacrificed goats and bulls in the name of god, for others harming an animal was a sin.

Religion was devised to teach eager people the reason for their existence.. A novel idea. Beautiful stories were fabled.. Stars were followed.. Astrology was invented.

Some societies (like Aryans) built caste system. Another novel idea! They divided labor according to the individual skill. People with better logic, made decisions (Brahmins). People with brutal strength fought wars (Kshatriyas). Those with skills of making things, exchanged what they could make/create and did business (Vaishyas). Those with no skill were asked to clean or work as laborers and farmers (Shudras)

What happened after that?

Population grew. It's no rocket science. A limited space and population growing.. Two communities, that had started far away from each other, met. And what happened when they met? What happens when u meet a stranger? You are afraid. Everybody is afraid of the unknown!

Oh and if I forgot to mention!! Humans from different communities didn't only have different eating habits, and religious/spiritual beliefs. They had also different character, physical qualities like height, skin colour, hair colour.

So! When two different communities met, there was a collision.. The resulting existent belief depended on how they settled the collision.. If they went on a war, the stronger emphasized their beliefs and forced it upon the weaker.. It was a simple game..

While I was going through the history of Genghis Khan on Wikipedia, I saw how he increased his empire! During his days, there were different small tribes fighting amongst each other.. What he did was, he took those tribes in, one-by-one. And thus increased his empire.. He educated them, gave them medical facilities, etc.. So basically any ruler he fought or educated, etc. and eventually brought smaller communities and formed a bigger community..

Making and breaking of empires continued as the population grew and their were more people who could think and understand better than others. These people became Leaders for the others. And the more influential the leader, the more Godly he was thought to be! And more the people followed him blindly..

Some novel concepts got corrupted too.. Religion became a basis of war! Whose stories were better? It was corrupted and twisted according to the whims of the Leaders!

Also caste system saw a downfall.. People were assigned to caste by skill, had started being assigned by birth! Diseases that were predominant in Shudras because of the work they did, were designated untouchables! And a corrupt hierarchy was made accordingly!

Anyhow the population grew bigger and more communities mixed.. More mixing of beliefs.. Compatible ones got along better, while non compatible ones fought amongst each other.. WARS happened to prove who was stronger and who was powerful to rule the WORLD! With growing communities and mixing beliefs, the wars differed in their scale- from regional to world wars..

Eventually communities divided the Earth into their regions to keep.. Called them their countries, state, cities, etc.

THAT was the world THEN..

What is the World NOW?

It's different! Humans today have better understanding of things that happen around them. Science brought about the major difference in man's way of understanding of the world around them.. Things like Social networking and stuff has bridged all gaps between communities.. We now know, there's nothing to prove who's stronger and who's weaker.. Cultures and societies have started mixing like never before..

Once novel ideas like Religion and Caste are obsolete now!

The only benefit of religion is spiritual solace. It has nothing to do with what happens around us.

Caste system has no basis whatsoever.. Now as doctors we know why Shudras acquired diseases that people of other castes didn't. So, if a Brahmin was to do a Shudras' work, he'd acquire the same diseases! So are Brahmins untouchables?

We also know that the Earth is not divided into Countries and States naturally. These are artificially made by men, in times that are irrelevant now.. Human understanding has evolved to a great extent now.

So what should the World Be?

No boundaries, no divisions. All of Homo sapiens living in harmony with rest of the Natural World. Wake up people, we have come a long way from Stone Age! We don't need religion, to teach us what's right and what's wrong. We don't need caste system to tell us who's gonna or destined to do what.. We don't need corrupt Leaders to manipulate stories to their whims and make us act in their favors. We need good education to UNDERSTAND how things happen around us.. EVOLVE! I donno if it's time for REVOLUTION, but it's definitely time for EVOLUTION!

Peace n Harmony!