Seriously Joking

Two months plus in Saudi Arabia now

2012-01-25T12:27:00.001+05:30

Most of my friends already know that I am currently employed by the Ministry of Health, Government of Saudi Arabia, as a Pediatrician in Al Moweh town in the Ta'if/Makkah region of that country. I have been working in the Al-Moweh General Hospital for almost 50 days now, and the journey so far has been full of downs and ups. Mercifully, the current level of my comfort in this country is high. I have a residence permit, my salary for the last 2 months, a fairly well-appointed house taken on rent, and blessings from Allah. The work is not very strenuous, and I get about 2 full days off every alternate week. In addition, I cook my own food, splurge money on snacks, biscuits and the like.

I talk to my family every day, skype with them every 2-3 days, chat with my parents at least twice a week, and spend the evenings walking, jogging, networking, reading, surfing the net, watching movies, spending time at the supermarkets and so on.

I have overcome the resistance of not wanting to make chapatis; have made them thrice so far, and am enjoying consuming them. I eat sometimes at the Kerala hotel (fish curry/rice/dosai or their sambar/dosai/vegetable curry for breakfast). Once or twice, I had chicken hamburger/keema roll at a Yemeni fast food joint located near the garden - the one and only garden in the town.

I have become a lot more pious here and do my namaaz at least 80-90 per cent of the time, excluding the morning prayers, which is an obstacle I have not yet overcome. I also read the Yaa-sin chapter from the Qur'an, and read the other sections of the Qur'an whenever I can.

I still do not have TV in the house, and therefore get bored at times. I do have about 60 movies on my laptop, many of them still unseen, and I do see them regularly, This helps to cut the time and end the evenings. On a few occasions, I invited Dr. Narendra (an Ortho surgeon who is from India) to my house for dinner and he has done likewise for me.

Nothing else of note to write here, so I will sign off this entry. I hope you liked the encapsulated history of my tenure in Saudi so far. To read more, go to my blog on Saudi Arabia. Click here.

Three months after my last post

2011-12-26T16:51:00.003+05:30

So much has happened in my life in the last three months, that I am overwhelmed by some of what I have myself engineered, and some that Allah has chosen to apportion to me. As I had mentioned in my last post, I was selected to go to Saudi Arabia to work as a specialist Pediatrician way back in April 2011. Somehow or the other, the status of my selection did not change over nearly 7 months. It was only around mid-October that my appointment formalities were completed from the agent's end, and I was given a tentative 2-3 weeks to wind up my Mumbai affairs so that I could fly out by the first week of November. I requested the agent to give me some more time, and finally, he arranged for the ticket on 16th November.

Between 18th October and 16th November, I had to run from one place to another, sometimes to make new connections with others (e.g. opening an N.R.I. account) or to break existing relationships (e.g. resigning from all the hospitals, or calling up patients and informing them about my planned departure after a month). I also arranged for Dr. A.Basit Bhoira to visit my clinic in the mornings (he is a recent pediatrician attached to Saboo Siddiq and Dholkawala Hospitals) and Dr. Lakshmi (a new pediatrician who visits Masina) to see patients in the evenings.

I bought two lap-tops, one for myself and the other for the family to keep at home. Also, I had to arrange nearly 60K to pay the agent, and as my ticket was from New Delhi, I had to arrange for my travel to New Delhi. Also, I urged my entire family to accompany me to Delhi and to see me off at the airport. Hence, an additional expenditure of Rs. 50K came into the picture (flight tickets for all 4 of us to Delhi and for the three of them (my wife and daughters) back to Mumbai, plus 1 night's stay in New Delhi (2 doubles)). Thus, all in all, I spent nearly 1.8 lakhs before the planned departure. I did not have to buy any new pieces of luggage or clothes or any thing else. That was a blessing, since we had already spent so much money!

My farewells to the entire family on my father's side as well as both families on my mothers' side took the form of either meeting them all on a social occasion, or individual visits to Sakinafaiji in Pune and Zehrafaiji at Marol. In addition, I met Moizmama, and called up as many others as possible, including friends, doctors etc.

My mother was quite apprehensive about my going to a foreign land and tried to dissuade me whenever possible. However, I convinced her that everything would turn out fine. Eventually, she compromised with me and asked me to keep in touch with dad and her from time to time. Of course, I said, and that was that.

The other resistance had come from Nishrin, who was worried that she would not be able to manage the affairs and both my daughters single-handedly. I told her that the main purpose of my going was to earn some extra money and to provide an opportunity for her (and the kids) and me to live apart from each other and thus gain a measure of emotional, financial and social independence. A sort of "training", one might say, for us to live without each other should Allah snatch one of us away from the other during future life. (This last reason I did not vocalise openly, but you can see the wisdom behind it. So many husbands do not "independentise" their spouses, and this leads to immense difficulties for their spouses in the event of death or disability of the husband.)

For those who want to read a day-by-day account of the stay in Saudi, I recommend that you visit and read my other blog on this very topic. I make entries daily and I am sure some of the entries will interest you immensely. To visit this blog, click here.

Sharing lots of news and views

2011-10-18T21:25:00.001+05:30

Returning to this blog after several months, I find that I need to share a lot of stuff. First of all, Facebook has transformed the way I surf the net, post news, post photos, share interesting things and so on. Little time is therefore available to do anything else. Indeed, this blog post is also written while I wait for some recent photos to upload to my page on facebook!

However, I agree that blogs have their place in cyber-space and cannot be totally replaced by facebook. While blogs offer creativity, facebook apps do, too, but within the parameters set by the applications themselves. Also, Facebook is a social platform, while a blog is a mouth-piece to air one's own views and shares.

I appeared for, and cleared, an interview for the Ministry of Health, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in late April, 2011. Following this, there has been a long wait as the agent sorts out my application, and now, as I write this on the 18th of October, I am still awaiting my visa to travel to that country and join as a specialist pediatrician in Taif city, a hill station in the country. A lot of my well-wishers do not want me to leave my practice and go, but it is only I who realises that going there would improve my family's finances tremendously and also allow me to pursue my own hobbies of photography, nature watching and international travelling ... all pretty expensive and out of reach at my current income levels. As of the contract that I signed, I would get paid 150% more than what I make here in India, and it would all be tax-free.

Thus, as of now, the idea of going there is on, and I am waiting for it to reach its logical goal of success. As to what kind of life my being alone in Taif brings, Allah alone knows ...

My elder daughter Inas joined Hotel Leela near the airport as a Hotel Operations Trainee in July, and is busy with this since the last 3-4 months. A stipend of over 10K per month has kept up her spirits, and only last week, she did a major splurge and bought a blackberry curve phone for herself. Her duty hours are so long she barely finds the time to do any other work than travelling to and fro (each way, the journey takes over an hour and a half), working at the front desk for anywhere between 9-12 hours (although the duty is stipulated at 8-9 hours) and sleeping for 6-8 hours. Food and other routine tasks take up most of her other free time, and it is only when she has a day off that she is able to surf the net, go and buy things or visit with her friends. As a family, we all respect her hard work, but it sometimes makes her testy and short-tempered when socialising with us; also, she regularly makes excuses and avoids doing not only some household work which we keep for her, but also her own personal work ... which is a pity.

Hannah, my other daughter, is busy with her XIIth standard studies, and she is constantly running to one tuition or the other ... and mind you, she is doing commerce, not science. She does, however, have the time to chat for long periods on the home's landline number, and with her Whatsapp and free internet, she is forever busy chatting with her friends on her mobile phone. Aside from this, Hannah has become a good eater of food, and it is interesting to see her eat well and opt for designer foods.

Nishrin is very much busy with her own salon work, and there is nothing much to report about changes in her life. She did lose her paternal uncle last month, and this made her a bit morose and serious for a week, but things are back to normal now.

My parents and brothers and their families are all right, and there is nothing new to report there.

My nature trips continue, and I try to go at least one, and possibly, two trips each month. In October, I went to the Ovalekar wadi butterfly park on the 16th. I have added photos of that trip to my facebook profile and you may visit the photos here. There is a chance that an account of this trip may get published on http://www.ghumakkar.com, an Indian travelling site.

On the day of the Sunni Eid

2011-08-31T17:03:00.002+05:30

Many of you must be fed-up to see images of people hugging each other on the day of Eid. Of the Azad Maidan ground full of devotees bowing with choreographic precision while offering the Eid-ul-Fitr prayers. Of young boys and girls running across the town, playing, screaming, collecting the "Eid" envelopes from their elders and relatives, spending the cash on hand-held brick games or street food or getting trinkets and make-up kits.

So, here I am, with an unusual take on what happens on Eid day in the streets of Bhendi Bazaar. For the last 20-odd days, hundreds of street-wise entrepreneurs had set up eating or sales stalls on both sides of the main roads at Bhendi Bazaar, selling halim (goat's trotters in a heavenly gravy), cheap cosmetics, kurtas and ladies' tops, undergarments, handkerchieves and what-nots. The stalls are all erected under bamboo roofs and inside,the there are cheap wooden tables that are covered with white cloths and upon which the sales stuff is kept/displayed.

During the last week, and esp the last days of Ramadan, the roads are choc-a-block with hordes of Muslims who shop for dresses, shoes, and all the other stuff that is on sale here. Traffic moves at a snail's pace, or even slower, and this, combined with the heavy rains that we saw this year, creates a lot of chaos that has to be seen to be believed.

And then, it is chand-raat. The night before the Eid when the frenzy reaches its acme. Stalls remain open through the night, and close at almost 4:30 or 5:00 a.m. By 9:a.m., the Eid prayer congregations have dispersed, and then, this happens:

The dismantlers arrive by noon, and by 3:00 p.m., the stalls have been all demolished. There are plastic bags, muck and newspapers lying all around the place. The bamboos are removed, the strings are all thrown nearby, and the bamboos are all stacked up on a side. A truck moves from one dismantled stall to the next, folding and taking away the tables. A hand-cart hovers nearby too, stacked with large folded sheets of plastic that formed the sides and the roof of the stalls.

And the roads and footpaths will be reclaimed by the locals by the next day, and life will return to "normal".

Only, this - this that I have described and shown, is also NORMAL for this part of the city!

Just take a look at the final picture and judge for yourselves. This is a very sorry state of affairs. Those that have earned their money from here must take responsibility in cleaning up the place.

That's all for now.

Ramadan nears end, and other musings

2011-08-28T20:38:00.001+05:30

Yes, Ramadan will soon end. I have been fasting only intermittently, not the least because I keep getting spells of hypoglycemia towards the afternoon. These spells have been symptomatic and have led to an unusual amount of feeling chilly, sweating and palpitation with some degree of weakness. It appears, therefore, that the lack of exercise coupled with fasting is not doing any good for my diabetic state.

Anna Hazare's anti-corruption campaign led to him fasting for 288 hours straight; he was only drinking water and had lost 7 kg, and was extremely weak and dehydrated according to the doctors treating him at Medanta Hospital, New Delhi. His demands have been acceded to, well almost, and he has stopped his fast amidst shouting and cheering from thousands of his fans today morning.

Inas began work at the Hotel Leela nearly 2 months ago, and is currently away at work. She is finally experiencing what it means to be really, really busy.

Hannah isn't too keen on fasting or prayers. She was preparing for a stage show on behalf of her college since the last week. Well, the performance was finally given by her team at the Kaleidoscope festival at the Sophia college today morning, and Hans is confident her team will win it.

Practice picked up last week. Today onward, it has shrunk a little, -but it may pick up again later next week.

Accidents Do Happen

2011-06-24T17:30:00.003+05:30

Yes, they do, and they do not forewarn us when they do. My brother's daughter and my own elder daughter stumbled while negotiating a rough road patch last Sunday while riding a scooter. My daughter was driving, and had a helmet on; my niece was the pillion rider, and she did not wear a helmet because we didn't have a spare in the scooter. They were on their way to Colaba to do some shopping, while the adults, that is, us, were enjoying ourselves at a group get-together just ahead of their destination, at Colaba.

I got a call on my cell, and Inas, my daughter, practically in a panic, asked me to rush to "St. George's Hospital" as Nuriyah (my niece) had had an accident, and was bleeding profusely from her head wound. The call threw all of us sitting at the get-together in panic, and both us, and Nuriyah's mom and Dad rushed to the hospital, where we took over from the kids (my younger daughter Hannah was also there, as she had also been going with the other two girls to Colaba, albeit on a second scooter).

It took us more than two hours to get all her body X-rays done, and for the head wound to be stitched. In view of the fact that she had bleeding from both the head wound as well as the right ear, we suspected that there was a breach of the internal base of the skull, and perhaps a fracture of the temporal bone and the mastoid. Hence, a plain CT was imperative. Hence we decided to take her to Saifee Hospital (Click here.)

I contacted a surgeon I know, Dr. Saleh Dhansura, and after taking his advice, we all went to Saifee, where we got a C. T. scan done within half an hour. It confirmed the temporal fracture, but revealed also, that there was a thin layer of subdural hemorrhage inside Nuriyah's skull. Hence we got her admitted under Dr. Dhansura's care.

By the time the C.T. was done, and actually, even before that, Nuriyah was neurologically all right, thus allaying my fear that she would have some deficit or seizure or God knows what else. She was put on IV antibiotics, IV fluids and kept Nil-by-mouth (NBM). A medico-legal case was also registered, and I learnt later that the constable was with Nuriyah's mom late into the night to take her statement. The image below is that of Nuriyah on the day of her discharge.

Eventually, Nuriyah stayed in hospital for 3 1/2 days, and we took her home on Wednesday morning after a repeat C.T. scan showed that the bleed inside her skull had resolved completely.

Inas, my daughter, sustained abrasions on the top of her right foot (see above), and these haven't healed yet as I write this. She has started work at the Hotel Leela near the international airport, and is away from morning to late evening. When she returns, her foot has swollen considerably. I started her on anti-inflammatory tablets and an antibiotic. She should improve soon.

That's all for now.

10 Good Reasons To Not Live Near Relatives

2011-05-10T20:15:00.000+05:30

Occasionally we may have the opportunity to live close to some of our relatives. It could be our parents or a sibling. Or it may be members of your extended family, such as aunts and uncles, or cousins. Living close to our relatives is not always a positive thing. Here are ten reasons why such a choice can have negative results.

Privacy – If you have relatives living in your neighborhood, they are more likely to pay more attention to what you do or don’t do, than the average neighbor. They are also more likely to share that information with other relatives, as well.

Interference – For some reason, relatives are more likely to give unrequested advice on how you should live your life or raise your children. Having relatives nearby can mean unwanted interference in your personal life.

Expectations – When you live close to relatives, you can’t use distance as an excuse for not spending time with them. There may be a greater expectation of involvement in their lives because of your close proximity.

Appreciation – ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder’ is the old saying. When relatives are located nearby, we often don’t appreciate our time with them as much as we would if our access to them was more limited.

Holidays – There can be expectations on their part or your part, that you will spend holidays together, because of living near each other. This expectation can cause misunderstandings and friction when both families don’t share that same expectation.

Birthdays – Having relatives who live close by can mean lots of birthdays where you are either expected to attend the celebration or at a minimum provide a gift. If you lived in different towns, the expectation would not be as great.

Unexpected Visits – When relatives live close by, it can be very convenient for them to stop by and visit without giving you any notice. Some people are comfortable with these types of visits, but many people prefer to be consulted before visitors show up on their door step.

Favoritism – Other relatives can easily make charges of favoritism being shown between the relatives that live near each other. This can cause unnecessary friction within the extended family.

Guilty by Association – Just because a family is related to you, doesn’t mean that they will have the same kind of lifestyle or reputation that you have. Your family may gain negative associations from others in your community simply because of your family connections.

Offense – All the things listed above can lead to members of your families being offended by the actions, or lack thereof, by your two families. This kind of emotional drama can be an added source of stress.

There can be many benefits to having relatives living close to your family. Unfortunately, there can be negatives as well. Choosing to live close to relatives is a decision that should be considered carefully.

Copied and forwarded from this link.

Vacations have begun in India

2011-04-29T20:13:00.000+05:30

The arrival of mid-April is the time when schools and colleges finish with their terms, examinations and all, and close for the summer break, which is approximately 1 1/2 to 2 months in all. I still remember that when I was a schooler, my school used to wind up around the 11th of April. Most times, due to the financial problems my father had, we would stay at home, though a few times, we did take small trips to places around my home city Mumbai; for example, we went to Pune, or Matheran, or places similar to these. Once or twice, we went afar, such as our trip to Aurangabad/Ajanta/Ellora and one trip to Kapadwanj, our native place in Gujarat, where we stayed for over three weeks in our ancestral house.

When I had daughters of my own, they studied in a school that did not allow children the same privileges we had; the school would continue to function till the 1st of May, when the report cards would be given out and the official vacations would begin. Considering that the children had already finished their final examinations nearly 3 weeks ago, the school management's insistence bordered on obstinacy at best and a kind of devilry at worst. I remember how bored my daughters would get, and how stupid it all looked. Both of them have now completed school, but the school in question continues with the same policy it had in those years when my precious kids went there.

Vacations are also the time when people go out of their home city, and as a result, there is a sharp fall in my professional work. Today has been a dismal day, with hardly any patients in the clinic and barely a few calls on the cellular. With such practice, it becomes difficult to maintain internal calm and be philosophical about money.

There is news brewing at the home front, and I will share it here when the time is right. In the meantime, read on ...

Two weeks on since my last post

2011-04-25T13:53:00.000+05:30

Hi readers. I am on to the walks at the Mazgaon garden, and have reached 12 rounds now, which I complete in 1 hour, at about 5 minutes per round of 490 ft. However, I walk on alternate days, and the remaining days, I do a bit of yoga, a bit of aerobics, a bit of stretchings, and a bit of calisthenics after a single round of warm-up. My wife has started coming with me, and we begin the day at half past five, leaving the house at 5.50 a.m. or so, reaching the garden around six o'clock. One hour or 65 minutes of workouts, and then we return home, arriving back by 7.15 a.m. The routine has gradually set in, and to meet with the morning deadline, we go to sleep a little early as well. I am even able to catch sleep in the afternoon, so I am pretty much okay. Not so, Nishrin, as she gets just 5-5 1/2 hrs of sleep daily, and is gathering a sleep debt every day.

To complete my floor exercises, I even got a few spreads stitched, with a cloth top and a plastic bottom surface. This enables me to do the workout on a bit dirty ground too.

The garden resonates with the sounds of countless parakeets, a dozen or so Indian koels, some barbets, and a few other bird calls that I haven't as yet identified.

Back to exercising

2011-04-07T16:14:00.000+05:30

About 15-20 days ago, (just a few days before I lost my cousin Aslam at a young age of 42 to a massive coronary) I resumed exercise in the form of a daily walk. There is a very nice, well-maintained hill-top garden at Mazgaon known as the John Baptista Garden. I used to go there some years ago for my daily walks, but I had given this up in favour of intermittent stints with the various gymnasia which include the Gyms at Saifee Hospital, City Centre (Talwalkar's) and the one at Dongri (Mission Fitness).

Starting wasn't difficult, but I realised, to my horror, that my body had certainly grown old; I am obviously grossly over-weight and sport a tummy that is a mother of all tummies!I remember doing 7-8 rounds of the garden during the earlier period, but now, even after 10 days or more, I am barely able to complete more than 6 rounds. Also, I combine the rounds (mostly walking, but a few rounds running) with some amount of calisthenics, aerobics, floor exercises and so on. The entire rigmarole takes more than an hour. I end it with a vegetable drink like neem or tulsi or karela drink, available just outside the garden. Sometimes, I stop to have upma, poha or idlis. I even take these for my kids when I am returning home.

All in all, this has been a good start and I am patiently waiting for the scales to show a weight loss,but I am also looking at honing up my fitness quotient over the next few months, before I go on a vacation.

India's win at the Cricket World Cup 2011

2011-04-07T16:11:00.001+05:30

Of course, it was mind boggling. Dhoni, the captain, hit the last winning ball for a six, and here is a Youtube video showing the same, click here. A thousand and two hundred million Indians rejoiced on seeing this shot, as this got India the World Cup, almost taking it away from the Sri Lankans, who also played well.

Aslam Bookwala, R. I. P.

2011-03-22T21:32:00.004+05:30

Aslam Kayam Bookwala, 42, my first cousin, is no more. He passed away on the evening of Sunday, 20th March, 2011. To describe Aslam in a blog is to do him injustice.

He was all that I am about to write, but he was a lot more. To many, he was a source of inspiration for the way he lived his life - a life so brief, and yet, full of achievements in his personal and professional domains. His was a world in which TODAY was all that mattered; of course, he saved for his family's future, no man or woman in his/her right senses would not; but he savoured his today as if tomorrow did not exist beyond its ephemeral existence, such as poets see in visions.

He loved food, and it showed on him in his last several years. From a thin, scrawny boy, he grew into a substantial person, but, to be honest, he looked just right with Shabnam and his two kids, Husain and Adnan. Whenever he visited India, he made it a point to call on as many of his relatives and friends that he could. He had an open hand when it came to showering largesse on those less fortunate. Many of our common relatives will vouch for his. Moreever, and this is significant: he would hand over large sums of money to me to "do" charity at my clinic, insisting that I do more of this, and not less, as the sawab would accrue to his deceased mother.

I was reading the thoughts of the several friends and relatives on his demise in various parts of Facebook, including those posted on his profile.

Zahabiya Motiwala writes: "His smile, his talks, his masti, his bindas attitude to live life for today as who see tomorrow, his passion for food, His style, all this has given us beautiful memories of him which we will treasure all our life. Its really very sad and heart breaking."

Abbas Bookwala writes: "It would be an understatement to say we shall miss you. But we shall also learn to live life better and value our present. We shall not let God calling you at this untimely hour go in vain."

Farah A. Bookwala remembers him with these words: "I will always remember him as the kaka who made cutting chai at all our picnics. I will miss him deeply but no longer mourn, as I know, he's gone to a place much better than the one we live in."

Even as I write, messages are being added to his profile and elsewhere. For his father, his passing is a big blow, and we pray that Allah provides him with the courage to bear this with fortitude. For his siblings, Rashidaben and Saleh, his loss may be something that we, as observers, cannot even hope to fathom. For his countless relatives, friends, admirers and clients, he was bigger than life, and we will all miss him deeply.

May his soul dwell in heaven and may he rest in peace. Shabnam, Husain and Adnan, we are all with you in your days of sadness and loss. We will pray that you will all remember him as an always smiling, forever helping young man, and may you all bear his loss with courage and fortitude as well.

Amen.

New Blog

2011-02-21T21:11:00.004+05:30

I have decided to put up all my Nature Watch experiences on a new blog. Do check out this link.

Thank you.

My First Birding Expedition: Nerul and Talave

2011-01-30T17:55:00.009+05:30

Pursuant to my earlier resolution to adopt Bird-watching (or birding, as it is called) in the beginning of this calendar year, I joined my first ever outing organised by the Bombay Natural History Society (B.N.H.S.) on the 29th of January this year. Starting from the pick-up point at Dadar T.T., the bus in which we were travelling took us to our first destination in about an hour and a half, picking up some more enthusiasts along the way at Chembur, Vashi, etc. The bus is owned by the B.N.H.S., and is adorned on its sides by pictures and activities of the society.
Our motley group consisted of about 16 people, including the tour guide Mr. Vandan Jhaveri; we were joined by a few people travelling in their own cars, one of whom, I would later discover, was Mr. Julius Rego, our birding expert, with whose help this outing turned out to be a successful one. He is a resident of Nerul, and is into marketing furniture. He told me he has been into birding for the last 10 years. But, what 10 years! He is able to identify the genus and the species of the bird by a sighting that may not even last 10 seconds! Identification of a bird, he told us, is not only on the basis of its physical characteristics or colour, but also on the behaviour of the bird while it walks the mudflats, while it feeds on the seeds on the mud, or on smaller fish or molluscs when in the water, behaviour of the bird as it moves within its community, by its bird-call, by size and also by … of course, its movement in the air and among the mangrove or other trees.
While appreciating our Oxford Field Guide written by Grimmett and the Inskipps, he
strongly recommends a thorough read of Salim Ali’s classic book of Indian birds. He also told me, in particular, that I had to do a lot of birding to be able to stand comfortably with other birders. “You should,” he said, “come to the fields every week for six months.”
My co-expedionists were, as I said earlier, a motley lot. There was the Unbelievable Unmesh, with his tattoos and his fit physique, the Gangly Girish with his professional camera and an ever-present smile, the Elegant Elizabeth who kept pretty much to herself, the Ascetic Anil, the Savvy Shailesh with his hugely expensive camera and a good bit of experience, the Charismatic Cathy, the only non-Indian India-based executive working with Shell, and many more whose names I am afraid I wasn’t able to collect, but who were no less interesting. In particular, the father daughter duo who were together most of the time, no less because the daughter doted on her father, than because the latter had some sort of infirmity.
We started from Dadar just before 7 a.m., and reached the Nerul mudflats a little before 9 a.m. This is where Cathy and Julius joined us.Julius began with his educative dialogue by first pointing out a few trees as we marched into the marsh. He showed us a few butterflies and some other creatures of the environment too, and before long, we had familiarised ourselves with the football tree, a calotis lizard, various types of snails, molluscs, the mud skipper fish, and of course, billions of blistering barnacles – on rocks as well as on the exoskeletons of the molluscs themselves.
He started showing us a few birds, the black-winged stilt to begin with, and as we progressed inside, the realm of birds enlarged – and soon, there were so many birds, both within the water, and off it, birds of the mangrove and the marsh. It was a pleasure, a revelation, a delight and a happy assault on the senses when we espied a huge formation of ducks taking off in the distance, a mix of terns and gulls flying in unison, and finally, a big mass of birds sitting, walking and rummaging about. Thus, we saw about 20-30 birds here. Also, in between this watch on the marsh, we saw a lot of flying Asian palm swifts and barn swallows, gazillions of house crows and rock pigeons and several other birds, such as the Asian pied starling, which the Oxford Atlas excludes from our region (!)
By the time we had left this location, we had walked over 3-4 km, seen over two dozen or more birds and were feeling great. Some of the birds were easy to see, such as the curlews, the stilts, the Little Stint, the Lesser Sand Plover (the last two were really pretty and we saw them for quite a bit), the cormorants (especially when they began to swim and dip their heads in to feed … in synchronised unison), the Caspian terns, the gulls (so many of them) and the Grey Heron. On the other hand, a few birds proved to be elusive, such as the Martin, which made a single brief appearance, the Blue throat, which was seen just once by Mr. Julius, and a few others, whose names I do not recollect.
From here on, we moved on to the second location, a village named Talave, which included dry grassland and scrub. This area is dotted with houses of fishermen and a large tract of dry grassland and scrubby land. Here, we saw a different range of birds, most notably the Black-shouldered Kite, a lot of Red Avadavats, Laughing Doves, the Indian Pond Herons, the Ashy Prinia, the Black-crowned Night Heron, and more waders and water birds.
We also saw a little of marine ecology – snails, barnacles, the mud skipper fish, the bivalves, oysters and so on. This walk had a beauty of its own, and by the time we returned to the bus, it was nearly noon, and we were getting ready to depart for our own homes. Julius left us here, and we all expressed our thanks to him. The return journey took over 1 1/2 hours, and I arrived back at my residence a little after 1:30 p.m.
All in all, a great journey.

To see the pictures of this expedition, check out Shailesh's Picasa Gallery here.

Birds we saw:

1. ? Water Rail
2. Ashy Prinia
3. Asian Palm Swift
4. Asian Pied Starling
5. Babbler ? species
6. Barn Swallow
7. Bee eater ? species
8. Black Drongo
9. Black winged Stilt
10. Black-crowned Night Heron
11. Black-shouldered Kite
12. Blue throat
13. Brown Shrike
14. Caspian Tern
15. Cattle Egret
16. Common Kingfisher
17. Common Myna
18. Common Redshank
19. Common Sandpiper
20. Common Stonechat
21. Eurasian Curlew
22. Eurasian Spoonbill
23. Fan-tailed Flycatcher
24. Great Egret
25. Grey Heron
26. House Crow
27. Indian Cormorant
28. Indian Pond Heron
29. Jungle Crow
30. Laughing Dove
31. Little Cormorant
32. Little Egret
33. Little Stint
34. Little Tern
35. Long-tailed Shrike
36. Painted Stork
37. Prinia ? species
38. Red Avadavat
39. Rock Pigeon
40. Sand Martin
41. Spotted Dove
42. Sunbirds ? species
43. Warbler ? species
44. White-eared Bulbul
45. White-throated Kingfisher
46. Wire-tailed Swallow
47. Shikra
48. Osprey

Over the weekend: Magn 2K11, Meniz etc.

2011-01-17T14:26:00.000+05:30

After an indeterminate period of mostly lazy weekends, there is, finally, something to write about. My daughter, who is doing her final year in Hotel Management, had, in her college, a 2-day festival called Magn 2K11 (the last part indicating the year 2011, of course), and I, to participate as a spectator, went to her college to see some of the events. While the festival has improved over its last edition, it wasn't as exciting as the earlier one was.

On the second day afternoon, the events that I saw included a little bit of bar-tendering, a little bit of unofficial dancing and some other activities, off-stage, there was excitement at the various food stalls. Inas and I partook of some of the many available treats including fried prawns, sev-puri, chi. tikka and a mocktail. I left at half-past five. Later, Nish and I returned after the clinic hours to get some more food for home (we took some more prawns of a different variety and Thai rice with gravy, as also a few hamburgers.) Inas did a good gig with her friends. All in all, a nice experience.

Then, on Sunday, Nish and I went to our get-together, the famous "meniz". In a meniz, a group of friends plan a get-together once every month/few months/or whatever periodicity they like; the get-together is at the place of one of the friends. The place rotates from one member to the other, and the sequence is decided at the very beginning by a draw of lots. My cousins and the two of us have formed such a group with 10 couples, and we began the cycle with the first meniz at MY residence over 2 months ago. This time, it was the turn of my cousins from Borivali - the Panchas. We travelled by train from Mumbai Central, and arrived at the hosts' residence at 1:00 p.m. The meeting saw us all letting our hair down. We played Antakshari (the song game), Dumb Charades (the acting game) and Chinese Whispers. Enjoyed these.

Earlier, Sakkamaasi, Shabnam, Fatema, Shamina and Yasmin welcomed us with a kokum drink, and served some rather primitive sev puris.We sat for lunch after the arrival of the late latifs, which, for the first time in many years, we were'nt. Food was catered and quite nice to eat. It included a unique halwa made from besan, a spicy dry chicken and biryani with soup.

At about half past 4:00 p.m., the hosts served us tea and dhoklas.

All in all, a good time was had by us all, and we started back for home after six p.m.

A guest post

2011-01-06T19:27:00.001+05:30

Recently, a health and safety advocate from the South Eastern parts of the U.S. of A. approached me for help on highlighting what, according to him, needs to be done for folks staying in rural areas or smaller cities that do not have the correct infrastructure for health and disease detection, amelioration, management and, to an extent, holistic therapy including palliation. He has made a case for this in a small guest article that he requested me to post on this blog. This is what he has to say about cancer in particular, and about all diseases in general.

Open skies, fresh air, and cool, clean water. Rural residents often enjoy the best there is in nature and in life. But why is it that victims of cancer in rural areas are diagnosed with more developed stages of cancer than those in urban areas?

The truth is, cancer may not be more prevalent among those who live in rural and remote areas. In fact, research shows that the problem in diagnoses may not reside in the actual health of rural residents at all, but in the quality and quantity of health care information.

Pancreatic cancer, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and mesothelioma symptoms may develop just as quickly among urban and rural victims, but the latter may have limited access to frequent doctor visits. That and inadequate information lead to fewer chances for proper and speedy diagnoses.

What can be done?

1. Most important is prevention. This means that the right information gets to the right people before they even have cancer. If we share what we know about cancer, we can help others live lifestyles that may prevent cancer. The spread of information may be slower in remote areas, and thus information sharing may take more effort.

2. Next, it’s important for those in remote areas not only to have information, but to know how to find out more, especially if cancer may be a possibility for them. Those suspicious of possible cancer symptoms should ask a doctor about X-Rays, CT scans, MRIs, and PET scans. The technology and methods used by doctors are designed to screen for cancer. It’s important that potential victims inquire about them.

3. Avoiding or ignoring treatment options offered by a doctor may be detrimental to cancer patients. However, in rural and remote areas, hospital visits can be far and few in between. It may be beneficial for patients to speak with their physicians about the more holistic approaches to cancer prevention and treatment. Along with a doctor's help, exercise, a healthy diet, and a clean environment can help prevent or lessen the destruction of certain cancers.

Remember, information sharing can save lives. Those in cities and those in rural communities can both benefit from the knowledge and research of others. Knowledge is more than power; it’s a responsibility. It’s up to a ll of us to spread cancer awareness.

- Eric Stevenson. For questions about this article please feel free to contact him at epicsurvivor @gmail .com.

The month of Muharram, the month of Noel

2010-12-21T20:26:00.001+05:30

As some of the readers of this blog aren't Indians, I will start by declaiming that the accident of birth placed me firmly in the arms of Islam, and within the subsect of Dawoodi Bohra community, about which you can read here

The Bohras are a one million strong community with its diaspora all over the world. It is one of the few Islamic sects to be led by a leader, who is called the "dai". The present dai is Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin, and he is over 95 years old. Old age, illnesses and infirmity have curtailed his mobility significantly. During the month of Muharram, which Shia muslims observe to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Husein A.S., the dai selects a particular city or town where he stays for 10-12 days to preach a daily sermon to his devout followers. Read the book shown alongside to understand the story of the martyrdom of Imam Husein A.S.

This year, our dai chose to stay in Mumbai for the entire duration of 10 days, and will extend his stay to shower his blessings on Mumbai's Bohras for a longer time as well. The locality of Mumbai that becomes the center of attention is called Bhendi Bazaar. This is because this is the place where the tomb of the previous dai, Syedna Taher Saifuddin, the father of the present dai, is located; so also, right opposite this tomb is the biggest mosque of the Bohras, the Saifee Masjid, where the dai presides to give the sermons. These sermons are linked by internet and other modern technologies to not just the important mosques and congregation centers of Mumbai, and not just to similar structures all over India, but also to all similar centers to all the parts of the world. Thus, a Bohra sitting in a mosque in, say, Andheri, will see the same images and so on as one who is located in San Francisco, California, or elsewhere.

Now, don't get me wrong. I am NOT a devout Bohra, and although I admire the systematic structure of my community, I do not love its leech-like tendency to extort money from its members, and I certainly don't endorse the fanaticism of the members who have elevated the dai to a station that is higher than where it is meant to be. I can understand it, I just cannot endorse it. So be it.

Now, this year will go down as the mother of all the years that I have seen Muharram, for the people who came down to observe the Muharram in Mumbai was easily over a hundred thousand, and the community's administration arranged stay, food, and all other means of hispitality for all of them. The response, as they say, was phenomenal. I have appended a few pictures of the Syedna, and his faithful followers below. Do take a look.

Going on to the next big festival, Noel, or Christmas. It is around the corner, and shopping and other forms of activity is picking up as it nears. Yesterday, Hannah, my younger daughter, attended a prom function organised by the cultural dept of her college (read "seniors"). She went dressed in a violet frock that looked stunning on her. I will try and post a photo of the same if possible.

That's it for now. Take care.

Children's Day

2010-11-14T19:13:00.000+05:30

Unlike other parts of the world, India celebrates Children's Day on the birth anniversary of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India's first Prime Minister, and arguably, the most debonair political leader India has ever known. That day is this day, i.e. the 14th of November every year, and it fell on a Sunday this year. As a child specialist, my clinic gets a bling decor, usually sponsored and done by one or the other pharmaceutical company. And so, this year too, like the ones before, the clinic looks as if there is a big occasion there: for the past few days, my patients have been getting goodies in the form of gifts, toffees, and so on. They are getting their consult too, of course, but they aren't minding their stint in my rooms, as the clinic looks so unlike a doctor's consulting room.

What else? Oh, yes, I stayed away on Saturday morning, as I was attending a medical conference. Otherwise, all things considered, the last week has been so unexciting. The kids are also enjoying their Diwali holidays. Nishrin, as usual, is busier now that the rest of her family is taking a breather. Whenever holidays "strike", weddings happen too, and this means more work for her in the salon. That's always the way it has been for her.

A college friend, Sudhir Rao, was in India from the U.S. and left early last week. Rakesh Ghildiyal and I met with him and went out on one occasion. Sans Rakesh, but with some other class mates, I had an evening out on yet another evening. For those who are interested, you can read about this party here.

That's it, for now. Have a happy Sunday, guys and girls reading this!

Purchased a new car for Dussera

2010-10-31T17:58:00.001+05:30

Yes, I got me a new car this year. It is a Swift Dzire, the longer version of the basic Maruti Suzuki Swift, that is all a rage in Mumbai this year. Its big selling point is the low price tag: my VXi version in petrol cost me, with accessories and all taxes, a tad under 6.5 lakhs! If you see the prices of all the other long cars, they are all over 8 lakhs, and some smaller cars too go beyond 7 lakhs, such as the Punto, VW Polo and the Jazz from Honda (which is, actually, more than 8 lakhs on the road minus the accessories!)

Having used the car for over 2 weeks, I am very happy with the choice. It drives much better than my earlier 800 cc Alto VXi, and it looks impressive on the road as well, considering that it looks just like an ordinary hatchback from the front. The silver colour wasn't my choice, but that of my younger daughter Hannah, but I like it now. I simply love the ease of driving, the reasonably small turning radius, the centrally locking doors and windows (a feature that Altos do not have), and the amazingly large boot! I haven't had the heart to remove the ribbon that was placed there by the distributors of the vehicle. It's beautiful.

Monsoon ebbs, heat resumes.

2010-09-25T14:53:00.002+05:30

Mumbai is an interesting city with even its climate forming an important aspect of day to day discussions of the Mumbaikar. If you want to learn more about the monsoon that graced the city this year, just go back a few posts on my blog and read all about it. This post, though, is about the heat and sweat that follow on the heels of a refreshing rainy season. Currently, I am reading the book shown alongside. Suketu Mehta is not your average Mumbaikar. He is one of the privileged ones who got to go abroad and stay in the US of A for several years. Educating himself in Mumbai and also abroad, Suketu has retained his ties with his parent city, and, through his infinite patience and sensitivity, has managed to get stories out of the most secretive souls of the city. When he talks about the riots that ravaged Mumbai in the aftermath of the demolition of the Babri Mosque, he writes about real people who participated in these riots, including people who actually killed fellow-humans in the frenzy of the moment. If you can, you should try and get your hands on this book and read it. Suketu writes charmingly and with wit.

Going back to my favourite topic, the monsoon has almost disappeared, with the city staying dry since almost a week; in its place, the high humidity of over 80% has made comfort non-existent, and people are seen walking down the roads with lassitude and torpor.Even with the A/C on at 25 degrees, the rooms don't feel cool. Outside, it is a torture to walk. One can just about bear the heat if one is astride a two-wheeler or inside an air-conditioned car. The heat has come on almost suddenly over the last few days, and now, everyone is talking about how it is becoming more and more difficult to venture outside the house. The heat also cuts productivity and creativity. This is the main problem with the heat.

For those readers who wish to travel to Mumbai sometime, I strongly recommend the Lonely Planet Mumbai Guide. I have, for my India specific travels, always relied on the India tourist guide of the same publisher, and it has never failed me once. I used it to travel to Hyderabad, Jaipur, Bangalore/Mysore/Ooty, Chennai/Mamalapuram/Kodaikanal, Jammu and Kashmir, and even smaller places like Mahableshwar. It is one of the best resources for travel. Of course, now, with the internet making many more sources available, people are getting their info online, and even using these resources to print out illegally downloaded guides, such as the Egypt guide I downloaded a few months ago (see my Egypt tour post in an earlier blog here). Despite this, however, the LP guides are really satisfying and entertaining.

Ravi, who has commented on this entry, has suggested that I read the book shown alongside ...

Rains in Mumbai this year

2010-09-16T21:51:00.000+05:30

It has been an eye-opener. This year, it poured torrentially in Mumbai. It took just a month for half of the entire season's average rainfall to fall upon the city. By now, we have had more rainfall than what we have had in the last over 35 years! By the end of August, all the seven lakes that supply water to this metropolis were full to the brim, or at least over the levels reached in the past several years. The water cuts imposed on the city last year were removed by the civic committees that look at the problem officially. Everyone seemed to be happy at this decision.

However, there is a flip side to this situation too. The heavy rains caused several accidents: tree branches that fell on unsuspecting citizens and either killing or maiming them, walls that fell on to sleeping dwellers and killing them there and then, landslides at construction sites, flooding, and above all, a very high incidence of malaria, typhoid, jaundice and other tropical diseases that filled up all the beds in the various public as well as private hospitals.

As I write this, I am filled with sadness at the various tragic occurrences, but, also, I am happy, for the busy season brought me a lot of professional satisfaction, and money too. I am happier, even, for the fact that no one in my own family - nuclear, joint, or extended, had any of the problems I listed above. For this, I can only thank the merciful and bountiful Allah, who continues to bless us.

It would be interesting to learn from you, dear reader, about your experiences with extremes of climate - whether rains, or heat, or cold. I know from Anna that she had to face extremes of cold where she lives. A comment by you would be welcome if you are reading this, my friend.

Trip to Egypt -2 ... Day 1

2010-09-06T21:06:00.001+05:30

Thanks to the readers who took out time from their busy schedules to read my first instalment on the above subject. Those who did not read it, may click HERE.

Let me continue.

The itinerary was planned by Medha, my travel agent from Creative Holidays. Her charges included most of the fees and moneys for all the locations that we were to visit while in Egypt. It also included a daily breakfast, 3 days' dinner in an Indian restaurant while in Cairo, 3 days' dinner on the Nile cruise, and dinner while in the desert. It included visa fees too. It did not include entry to the Mummies' room in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and it did not include out of pocket expenses and any upgrades if we took them. (We did not take any upgrades, and the single biggest out of pocket expenditure was the tips that we had to give to our local tour guides, waiters and stewards at the various hotels we stayed and on the Nile cruise, as well as tips to the porter who looked after us on the train from Cairo to Aswan ... but I am getting a bit ahead of things ... so please be patient while I carry on.)

Day 1 (6th June): Leave Mumbai for Cairo, arriving at the latter at about 3 in the afternoon. We travelled by Egypt Air, and the memory I will carry back with me is the beautiful but dour air hostess who looked after our catering and other needs on the flight. Also, I must say that the sights of the various artificial islands that we saw ... obviously the "palms" that Dubai is famous for ... were breath-taking.

While the Cairo Int. Airport is located far to the east of the Nile river , which, by the way, neatly bisects the metropolitan city of Cairo, our hotel, the Hotel Horizon Pyramids, is located far west of the same river at Giza, and is more than 25 miles from the airport. Looking at this problem, our local tourist agency, M/S Sunny Travels, represented at the airport by an ebullient, chain-smoking, innocent-faced Mostapha Hamdy, decided to take us to neighbouring areas of Coptic Cairo, part of Old Cairo - before taking us to the hotel later in the evening. This is what then occurred: we took our bags from the airport carousel, went out, got into a spacious Honda SUV, and drove to Old Cairo.

While their official itinerary was to show us a Jewish synagogue and take us to two or three churches, I asked them to also take us to visit a few of the holy shrines where we could offer prayers. These included the shrines of Hazrat Iman Husein, Syeda Nafisa, Syeda Rukaiya, and a few more. There was a protest from them, as these places were not on the official agenda, but we negotiated a price for this, which they agreed upon - a sum of 90 U.S. greenbacks. While we visited the shrines of Syeda Nafisa, Syeda Aisha and Syeda Zainab, we did not find where the shrine of Syeda Rukaiya was, so we skipped it. The photos alongside show the shrines of Syeda Zainab, Syeda Nafisa and Syeda Aisha.

We would see the shrine of Imam Husein at a later time, when we visited the Khan-el-Khalili market (see future blog posts).

To the non-Muslims, the above places are shrines of holy Muslims who were either prophets or other biggies of the religion. As per tradition, Bohras as well as other Muslims visit the graves of these people and pray there for salvation and other more earthly desires to be fulfilled.

However, before we visited these shrines, we took a trip into the heart of Old Cairo, where we were shown an old, very old Jewish synagogue (cameras not allowed), and a few churches, of which the Hanging Church was clearly the best. This church is built over the old course of the Nile river, which once flowed 40 feet below the church. The inside has a marvellous central podium with 13 pillars, each representing one of the apostles of the Christ, while the 13th represents the Christ Himself. Here are some pictures of this podium, as well as some more enchanting sights of this church:

This church is supposed to have sheltered Jesus Christ when He was a small child, and the courtyard has a couple of date trees under which He is supposed to have played. The pictures show our family on the steps to the church, a view of the special podium (or pulpit), and a few stained glass windows.

It is obvious that this church is one of the prized heritages of this otherwise Islamic country. We did see some other churches, and we were also taken to St. Barpara Church and the Ben Azra synagogue, but we could not take any pictures, since cameras were not allowed inside.

After the visits to the shrines, we were driven into the heart of commercial Cairo, where we were taken to the Bukhara Restaurant, the only Indian-food serving restaurant in this amazing city. The owner was a soft-spoken Muslim, who served us a-la-carte. We chose to have a chicken makhani, dal fry, special Egyptian "chapatis" and rice. A salad with large red and green chillis was also served, and we would see different versions of this salad at many places over the next week and a half that we spent in this country.

While the children and I took food heartily, Nishrin felt under the best of condition, and had a headache coming on, and so, did not eat anything. After dinner, which was quite nice, we drove to Giza, and checked in at the Hotel Horizon Pyramids at about 8.00 p.m. This is a good hotel, and from the upper floors, we are supposed to be able to see the Great Pyramids, but tonight, we were allotted rooms on the first floor, albeit adjoining ones, and we settled in for the night, eager to explore the country the next day.

Trip to Egypt - 1: Preparations

2010-08-29T17:30:00.004+05:30

Today, on this rather wet Sunday, I have resolved to write about my trip to Egypt. Actually, I did begin to write the events as they occurred in a diary that I purchased expressly for the purpose, but never found the time to write every day as the trip was quite exhausting and left us with few opportunities to sit at a desk and write. Even so, I will, over the next several posts, begin to describe whatever happened over the 11 days that we were in that lovely country. By we, I mean my family, of course, and by the "11 days", I mean from 6th of June to the 16th of June, 2010.

To start at the very beginning, I started planning for the trip about 3 months before we actually undertook the trip. I wanted to do thorough background research so that we would not only do this trip with the least possible costs, but also individualise the trip with the travel agent so that nothing important was missed. This was important as I am quite sure I won't be able to visit this country again during this lifetime. I began with a search for a good Egypt travel guide, and discovered, rather unhappily, that the Egypt -specific guide was not available in Mumbai. The one that was available had the entire Middle East region in it, and its cost was over Rs. 1300. I would have loved to get my hands on the book that is featured alongside.

In the circumstances, I began a search for a soft copy on various file sites, and came upon the ME book available for FREE DOWNLOAD at one of the locations. Dutifully, and with glee, I downloaded the entire book, and then printed out the Egypt pages off my clinic printer. The second image alongside, I presume, is the book that I downloaded, as there was no cover page.

When I had all the required pages with me, I took them to a shop that does spiral binding of books, and voila! I had my handy guide.

The next thing I did was to go to www.egyptair.com and also www.makemytrip.com and look for the best flight deals. Eventually, and with some problems to boot, I managed to book 4 return tickets, Mumbai to Cairo and back on Egypt Air at a little over Rs. 21000/= per ticket. There was a way to book the exact seats too, and it gave me great comfort to book a pair each of window and center seats one behind the other somewhere in the mid-section of the aircraft, reasonably near to the mid-section emergency exits.

I also began to ask people about which travel agent to go with, and visited the biggies, namely, SOTC, Cox and Kings, and so on. Subair, my cousin and neighbour, recommended that I go with Creative Holidays (office just behind Metro Adlabs above Mayrose Restaurant) or Akbar Travels. He also provided me with the names of the persons to contact. I began the process of contacting both the travel agents. A Poorti Mulye was the person I saw at Akbar Travels, while Ms. Medha Deshmukh was the lady in charge of the ME section of Creative Holidays. Up until a month before the actual holiday, I was unable to decide which company would finally plan my trip, but, in the end, I chose to go with Creative as their offers were not only dramatically less expensive, but also, their itinerary was better planned.

There was one more item on the agenda: convincing the rest of my family to agree on Egypt on this, our first overseas holiday. For me, it was Egypt all the way since the history of Egypt attracted me greatly; besides, trips to other, more exotic locations were also costly. I also considered that travelling through Egypt would involve stretches of walking and climbing (for example, on the Pyramids), and I, sure as the sun rises in the East, wasn't going to get younger as time passed. Inas was the first to agree, then Hannah, and finally, Nishrin, as she realised that she had no option.

Did I have enough money to go abroad? Well, I managed it quite well, actually, and the entire trip cost us about 350,000 INR in all.

That's it, for now.

Now in Ramadan

2010-08-16T18:00:00.000+05:30

Ramadan is upon us, and most Muslims all around the world would be waking up early in the morning to eat some food and take a niyyat to fast from about an hour before sunrise until sunset. For the Dawoodi Bohra Shia Muslims )to which I belong - it being the sect that is headed by the Syedna, viz. Syedna Muhammad Burhanuddin (T.U.S.), today is the seventh fast, and I write this an hour and a half before the time that my family and I will perform the Maghrib prayers, inshallah, and then break the fast.

For the non-Muslims who want to know more about Ramadan, I came across this link of what looks like an interesting book on its importance. Take a look at the link on the left of this write-up and browse the book if you wish to understand the pious nature of this holiest month of the Islamic calender. Personally, I haven't much of a religiosity tagged on to me, but during Ramadan, I change into a mellow and more spirited individual. :-)

This year, both my daughters have been fasting, and it is a pleasure to fast with them. The elder one, Inas, even goes to the gymnasium after breaking her fast. The younger one, Hannah, is currently at home, awaiting the start of her college life. As such, she is also fasting. In addition, she has been a great help around the home, and I really like her for that.

Is there anything else to report? The food, what else? In this month, we are all busy either buying, or processing, or making food, delicious, thrilling, enjoyable food. The home of every Muslim resonates with the sounds of vegetables being chopped, pressure cookers indicating that the food inside has been cooked adequately by the sound of the whistle letting off the steam, vessels and plates being cleaned, the cooked food being arranged artistically for the pleasure of the fasting people, fruit plates being created with diced and cut fruit, blenders whizzing - creating fruit juices, mock-tails, etc. ...

During the first six days, we have had vegetable sandwiches, chicken sandwiches, dosai, uthappam, bhajiyas, upama, sev-batata-puri, falooda, various fruit, orange juice, mango juice, lemon juice, chicken tikkas, and maybe one or two things that I forget now as I try to list the stuff. And all this is at the fast-breaking time. Dinner is another meal, at or after 10 p.m., and the third meal is the sehri, or the pre-sunrise meal, where you stock up for the day ahead!

Apart from the food, praying the salaat, reading the Holy Qur^an, and donating money to charity is also something that every Muslim does ... more of it than during the other 11 months of the year.

Finally, it is not only about praying and fasting. It is also about controlling your other body-senses, your mind and your sexual urge, during the day time when one is fasting. Thus, one abstains from watching, or doing anything pertaining to sex; one does not lose one's temper as far as possible; one does not hurt another person; one does not willingly do anything that would harm someone else; one eschews bad thought and bad action.

That is all for now.

Monsoon meanderings

2010-07-21T20:26:00.000+05:30

It is with glee that I observe huge fat raindrops outside my window. Rains played truant last year, but this year, they are back with a bang! In the first one and a quarter months of the rainy season (monsoon), it has already rained half of the season's annual rainfall in Mumbai. And, during the last week, the rains have continued to lash Mumbai, albeit not with the same fury as in previous years. Today, as I write this, we experienced about 15-20 minutes of really heavy rains, and they slowed down thereafter, but not before driving pedestrians off the roads and creating deep puddles at many places.

One of the main problems I face is that it always seems to rain as soon as I leave home and go on my 2-wheeler towards my clinic. It is uncanny, but the coincidence seems to occur a bit too often for my comfort. It - the rain, I mean - makes it impossible for me to remove my cell phone when it rings, and my patients are left wondering why I won't pick up the phone. How can I? Someone suggested that I should use a bluetooth device, but even they get spoilt in the rains, and last year, I lost one such device while driving in the rains. So, no devices for me, thank you.

The way the rains fall in Mumbai, it causes a lot of sickness, and the rainy season is one of the best for medical practice. Almost all the hospitals are full, and I have had a tough time locating beds for my patients who need hospitalisation. A few days back, I called up four of the six hospitals that I visit, and got a negative answer from all of them, so I had to admit the patient in some smaller nursing homes. A heavy practice means poor sleep, mental tension, and a lot of other unrelated trouble, like not finding time to visit my parents, not remembering to get the urgent rations that the house needs, late arrival at home for the night, and so on. At the same time, it also means a lot more money flowing into the house, and saving for a non-rainy day when the practice can literally plummet (Talk about mixed metaphors, LOL :-))

Several jottings

2010-07-18T18:19:00.002+05:30

I have been remiss, and haven't posted anything for the past few months, and I apologise, dear blog, and my kind and patient followers, for the same. Well, things have certainly happened, and over the next half an hour or so, I plan to list most of the important stuff here.

As I had pointed out in my previous entry, we did have a misaaq function, and it was a hit. Almost all the invitees turned up, and the food, catered by one of the Mumbai Dilawers (Al Taam Caterers), was appreciated by all the guests. Hannah was dressed in a specially stitched gown in peach colour, and looked stunning. Inas and Nishrin also wore new dresses. The Punjabi relatives came in all their finery too, and had a gala time eating the sumptuous food. The function was held in Garden Hall in Mazgaon itself. Although this is a good enough place for up to 150 invitees, it did prove to be a bit small for the gregarious crowd that we were entertaining. All said and done, the function was an unprecedented success, though it did burn a much bigger hole in our pockets compared to the one we had a few years ago when Inas had undergone the misaaq.

The food menu consisted of roasted almond ice cream, chicken legs, a soufflé and a rice and tender lamb curry served on fire. There were the usual salads, a soup, mouth-fresheners and so on. Hannah received a lot of love, lots of money and some really delightful gifts, and I must post her thank you on this blog on her behalf.

On to the next bit of news. We planned a holiday and finally succeeded in going, to Egypt, in the month of June. This holiday took place from the 6th of June and went on for the next 11 days. We did this holiday through "Creative Holidays" and it was an unique one, since we visited almost all the main attractions of this immensely developed and civilised country. I will write a log of this holiday and link the readers of this blog to it someday. I hope that this does not take a long time! If you want to see pictures of this holiday, check out this site.

Lastly, I must share with you that Hannah's S.S.C. results came out last week, and she has got an amazing 89.1 per cent in the best five of the six subjects that she appeared in. Only her marks in English were a bit low, and kept out automatically by the board in its calculation.

Some upcoming news

2010-04-21T19:23:00.000+05:30

Okay, so we are finally set to invite close friends and relatives to a lunch to celebrate the "misaq" ceremony of our younger daughter Hannah on the coming Sunday, i.e. on the 25th of April 2010. "Misaq" refers to the initiation of a Bohra Muslim girl into adulthood and enjoins upon her the duties to be undertaken by a devout Bohra Muslim woman. The actual ceremony took place more than 1 1/2 years ago at the hands of a priest who is officially called the Daawat-e-Muqaasir saheb. We were to hold the function around the same time, but, unfortunately, one of our family members, Dr. Altaf Savliwala, a pediatrician based in Lonavala, died around the same time, so we had to cancel the function. This time around, we hope to have no further obstacles. I will certainly post pictures of the event in the week following the Sunday the event takes place.

In related news, some relatives of Nishrin, my wife, are coming over from Punjab. We will be hosting them in our house. We hope to be good, nay, very good hosts, to these (wo)men. Some of them are visiting Mumbai for the very first time in their lives!

Finally, a word about the function: as is customary, most of our guests will be eating out of a large round steel plate known as a "thali". However, we are having some guests who may not be very comfortable with this system, and we would be serving them on tables. In fact, we are having more than a dozen and a half people who are strict vegetarians.

Inas wins herself some medals and trophies

2010-03-09T18:05:00.004+05:30

Readers of my blog, too few, I know, but treasured friends nevertheless, may already know my daughter Inas, who is now in her second year of the three year B.Sc. course in Tourism and Hotel Management at the Anjuman e Islam's A.K. Hafizka Institute located next to the Old Lady of Bori Bunder (a.k.a. the Times of India) H.O.

Well, the good news is that she excelled in her first year's annual exams. She stood first from among the 300-odd students from her batch; not only that, she also got the highest marks in 2 of the 6 subjects for which she appeared. This was old news, of course, to us, but she finally received the prizes and awards at a glittering campus evening on Saturday, 6th of March 2010.

In all, she received one gold medal for her first rank, and a rotating trophy and a certificate for the same, and two other medals for the two subjects, and a rotating trophy too, for one of those two subjects, and two certificates for the two subjects. My parents and my wife, along with me, were those who witnessed her triumph on the stage at the event. Presenting here, some pictures of the momentous event.

She really made us proud. Unfortunately, we, i.e. my wife Nishrin and I, could not stay back to enjoy the dinner, as we had to attend a wedding of a doctor friend of ours. My parents did, however, stay back, and informed us that the meal had indeed been a good one.

Inas, congratulations to you from your entire family! Do continue to achieve high targets in the years to come!

A net friend comes home

2010-02-02T13:19:00.002+05:30

I have known Anna Morawska, a Polish citizen living in Legionowo, a suburb of Warsaw, since the past several years. Or, have I? I must say that I had never met her; I had heard her voice but twice; and I had spoken to her just once over her mobile phone. Apart from this, we had exchanged a few SMSs and about a dozen-odd personal emails. Thus, I was to meet her for the very first time on her maiden trip to India. We interacted a few times on the chat module before planning and finalising. Finally, I decided that my family and I would host her when she came down to Mumbai, and help her out whenever she went to different parts of the country as a tourist.

Anna arrived in our society building on Monday morning at around half past eight, escorted by a doctor friend of hers (he is Dr. Sandeep Pendse, a non-practising MBBS doctor, who is now a teacher in "humanitites"). Lugging a large orange suitcase, and a smaller, softer bag and a hand bag, she arrived with a large - nay, huge smile. Chatting with her, I realised that she is a witty, soft-spoken, fit and intelligent person. Nishrin served her and the doctor "upma" and "gulab jamuns" for breakfast. Afterwards, while I went to my clinic, Nish took her to Fort for a little bit of shopping. She wanted some Indian dresses. I joined them at a store near Kala Ghoda, and Nish left for her parlour work. Eventually, she (i.e. Anna) and I went to the Gateway of India, took the harbour cruise, lunched at the Colaba Delhi Darbar, and returned home on my scooter - weaving this way and that, and scaring the day-lights out of her!

She vows to write about her experiences in the form of a novel!

A meeting of old friends, and a new blog is born

2010-01-15T20:38:00.011+05:30

Around the end of December 09, old friends, classmates, actually, from our class in Medicine met at a 5-star hotel in Suburban Mumbai (the J W Marriott) for talk and dinner. The meeting was organised by Ketan Gundavda, Purvish Parikh and others, and was totally sponsored by two of our own class-mates, Dhiren and Akshay Shah. I attended the meeting with Nishrin, and so did about 30-odd class mates. From the proceedings of this meeting, it was decided that we would try and meet more often; also, I took upon myself the responsibility to create a blog and a Yahoo group for our class. Thus, the blog and the group have been created. I look hopefully to the future and wish that class-mates will participate in these two energetically.

Here is a photo of the group of classmates taken at the above meeting.

A New Year, and some new resolutions ...

2010-01-02T21:10:00.003+05:30

I hereby resolve to try and cut down my intake of food ... glorious food, ravishing food, delicious food, energising food, food that creates happiness, ecstasy, joy, satiation, all-round satisfaction, merriness, a spring in the step, a dance in the waist, a rumble in the stomach, a pain in the heart, a gas in the colon, a stiffness in the knee .... okay, I know you know what I am driving at: It is a simple truth that the things that give us the most pleasure are often the things that also cause sickness, pain and suffering.

I also resolve to return to this blog at least once every 10-12 days and put in an entry. I thank the people who are following this blog despite my infrequent entries! I need to crystallise my thoughts and this blog is a good way of doing the same.

I also resolve to celebrate my 50th birthday in style, and to travel abroad with my family in the coming year. I hope I earn enough to sponsor this trip, and I urge the readers to pray for me in this regard.

Finally, I resolve to cut down on the time I currently spend on Facebook, playing games that are inane, useless, time-consuming, and full of tripe, and also fun, spirited, worth a lot more than the money that I earn (virtual money, of course) playing these games.

What resolutions have you all made? Do comment.

December is here

2009-12-01T17:17:00.003+05:30

... and the very first day of this, the "tenth" month of the older Julian calendar, is World AIDS day. Observance of this day is paramount to humans all over the world. AIDS is now prevalent all over the globe. It is estimated that this disease has killed over 25 million people to date, and that it is currently present in over 35 millions humans as a disease. According to information available on Wiki , the first World AIDS day was observed under the guidance of the UNAIDS in 1988, and since then, we have been having this observance every year. Memorial services for renowned people who died from this ailment or its complications forms an important event on this day.

AIDS is a modern disease, and already, we are into a pandemic of this dreaded illness, and it continues to take lives despite modern treatments against it.

The theme for this year is: UNIVERSAL ACCESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS.

A new month is around the corner

2009-11-30T09:54:00.004+05:30

November is almost over, and with it, the first anniversary of the Black day that Mumbai experienced last year when 10 Pakistani Muslim terrorists attacked the city and killed off hundreds of innocent people. Yes, I am talking about 26/11, and that day, and the next two nights and days re-defined Mumbai for all its denizens: it was, everyone felt, no longer a city of dreams, and no longer a carefree or safe one for all, esp. not for women, old persons and children. It had, it seemed, transformed overnight into a sort of monster that was heartless and cold and calculating.

The anniversary observations were markedly subdued at all places; between friends, it was muted conversations with the occasional tears misting the eyes. At higher levels, there were the telling of many heroic tales, the release of a damning book by the widow of A.S.I. Hemant Karkare, the candle-lighting ceremonies at various chowks, and a lot of soul-searching and rumination by those who were victims, but who lived to tell their own stories.

The next few days were the days of Id-ul-Adha for Bohris (on the 28th) and the other Muslims (the next day, or yesterday, as I write this post). The weekend was also marked by the observance of Thanksgiving by the Christians.

Facebook and all that

2009-11-23T13:20:00.002+05:30

Every once in a while, one re-discovers things. Last month, I re-discovered Facebook. I had signed up more than a year ago, but it is only in October that I started networking and also playing games. The games are addictive, and I play Farmville, Cafeworld, Mafia Wars and Fishville currently; sometimes, I also indulge in other games like Text Twist, etc. I have added many new friends, and improved connections with some old ones too.

However, as a result of these activities, I am finding less time to interact, blog, check mails and do all the other things I used to be involved in earlier. I have almost stopped visiting sites like Writing.com, mouthshut.com and so on. I know that this is not good, as the games are childish, time consuming and do not help in any way.

What do you, dear reader, think about all this?

Last Sunday of October

2009-10-25T15:12:00.003+05:30

Yes, it is the second last Sunday of this month, I know, but read on. Once the 31st has passed, October will end, and then, officially, winter will begin in the Northern hemisphere. This year, climatic changes all over the world have wrought havoc on people. In India, the errant monsoon that returned late in September and early October after playing a hide and seek for more than one and a half months destroyed the standing kharif crop, brought floods, devastation and deaths to adjoining areas of three states in and around my own (Maharashtra) and so on.

On the personal front, my practice has been good so far in October, but the healthy season is approaching, and I think my resting and recreational days are likely to return. I am going for a medical camp to a place called Jhalra Patan in Rajasthan next weekend, and hence won't be around in Mumbai to write in my blog. :-)

Finally, Nishrin took a decision to visit her relations in Chandigarh in December, and hence, I went to Mumbai Central computerised reservation center and booked return tickets for her and Inas via Paschim Express for the 18th of December, a date that coincides with the 1st of Muharram for our Misri calendar. We aren't sure if Inas' college will give her the needed permission to stay away for ten odd days. But let's see ...

Inas completes her training in a week's time

2009-10-22T13:42:00.006+05:30

For those out of the loop, Inas is my older daughter; she is 18 and a half years old, and is doing a course in Hotel Management. At present, she is in her 2nd year of the three-year degree course, and as part of her education, she is posted as an Industrial Trainee (I.T.) at a famous 5-star hotel in Mumbai, since 1st May 2009. The I.T. training takes 6 months, and these six months will be over for her at the end of this month, i.e. after 9 days.

From all the conversations I have had with her, I have learnt that:

Trainees are paid a pittance as "stipend" (Inas gets Rs. 1200 per month, which is the best from among all the hotels that train students in Mumbai; by the way, that translates to under $ 40/= per month).
Compared to the measly stipend that they get paid, they are made to work like dogs ... at least 10-12 hours a day.
Standards of food and general hygiene are as poor as at lesser prestigious hotels once you peek behind the glamorous and ostentatious exteriors; Inas tells me about this and has pledged never to eat at the hotel. She says she has actually seen the cooks cutting coriander without washing them, dicing vegetables and adding them to the pot without washing them, etc. She also saw a cockroach gaily sauntering among the various pots and pans!
Food served to the employees is not even 10% of that which is served to the guests, is often repetitive, and rarely something to look forward to. Internees can expect little more than what is given to the permanent employees.
Inas' life was limited to dressing up and going out at about 6 a.m., and returning at 7 p.m. or so, daily. She would take a quick bath, have the one meal at home and go to sleep by 9 p.m.
Many of our own day and night time activities and household chores had to be tailored around Inas' schedule and Hannah, my younger daughter, and I, had to do the work that normally would be shared among the three of us. We could not attend night programs, watch night-time movies, or go for last shows to theatres.

There are some more things, but I will leave that to some other post.

An interesting gizmo

2009-10-21T13:35:00.002+05:30

I saw this video on the net. Looks interesting, but I don't know if this will become available soon ... do check it out:

http://www.snotr.com/video/3131

BTW, the video shows a flat screen laptop that can be carried on a sling and rolled into a small, dainty "rolltop".

Wife lost her cellular ... and more

2009-10-18T17:38:00.003+05:30

Actually, Nishrin, my better half, keeps her cell phone in the outer room while working on her clients in the room within, as the cellular signal in the inner room is too weak for her to receive calls properly. In the past, too, she had lost one cell phone. What made today's loss all the more distressful is that this was the first cell phone from her favourite brand Nokia, that it was a present from me on her birthday, and that it was purchased by me less than a month ago.

During the time the phone went missing, I was in the outer room of our clinic too, and saw a few Sunday patients, and it is really surprising that someone picked up the phone and disappeared, almost from under our eyes.

In other news, Sunday has been a quiet day, and this is quite usual actually, but I am mentioning a few things that will make it a little hectic by evening. My parents and the entire family are about to descend on my home mat to spend the evening and have dinner. The occasion is sponsored financially by my mom, and will be attended by both my brothers and their families. A cake will be brought by Kaizar, the elder of the two younger brothers, and it will be cut by his daughter Nuriyah, who celebrates her birthday on the 22nd of October, and by my mom, whose birthday according to the Misri calendar falls today.

Food (Biryani, soup and dahi-kachumber) is being brought by me from the caterer, and will be supplemented by mom, who is bringing sheerkhurma and cutlets.

My family will be giving Nuriyah a gift pack containing a hand-chosen T-shirt (Inas and I chose it at a local store) and a decent gel pen. This will be not just for her birthday, but also because she cleared her S.S.C. exams last May, and because she underwent the "misaq" ceremony some months ago.

More news tomorrow ...

Diwali: a festival of lights or pollution?

2009-10-17T19:28:00.003+05:30

I have seen 49 years of Diwali celebrations. And, down the years, the shape of the festival has certainly changed! As a child, I still remember going to my father's shop (also run by his three other brothers, a partnership, if you may call it so) on the eve of Diwali. The night heralded, for businessmen, the start of a new accounting year (according to the Samvat calender); business-people would go to book shops during the day, and bring back "chopdas" or books of accounts, neatly and reverently wrapped in clean and crisp red cloths. They would also arrange to buy saffron, which they would mix in water, along with some red ink in inkwells, and they would clean up the wooden twills and keep them ready for the traditional "pooja" at the appointed auspicious hour, usually in the evening at 7:52 p.m., and sometimes, in the afternoons, at either 2:52 p.m. or 3:52 p.m. All the family members would come to the shop, and while the adults got themselves busy arranging things for the pooja, the children would eagerly await their rations of the fireworks, which, once given out to them, they would take to the center of the footpaths, and start lighting up. Joy and merriment was evident in the eyes and hearts of not just the children, but also their parents and care-givers. The mothers and daughters would dote on their children, and also keep an eye on the ceremonies taking place near the main "seat" or "baithak" of the shop. As the time for the actual pooja neared, the men would open up the books, and dip their twills in the saffron and red ink mix, and at the stroke of the appointed time, they would begin spraying the first page with the saffron-ink mixture. Each book would be sprayed, one after the other, and then passed on to the eldest brother, who would write religious lines and numbers on the tops of the page - usually a "Bismillah Irrahman Nirrahim" or the numbers "786/110" - both considered auspicious for the beginning of the new year.

The dichotomy between the Islamic phrases and prayers and the Hindu rituals and poojas were never considered contradictory, as nearly each and every shop played the same rituals at the same time. Thus, within minutes, the adults would go into their shops, while the children ran out with matches, sparklers and fire-crackers, and the street would get transformed from a moving-humanity, moving-traffic scene, to a brightly lit and noisy one with thousands of crackers bursting all at once in moments that seemed magical to us children. As the crackers stocks got over, children would move back into the shop and begin to pull at their mothers' dresses, either because they wanted more crackers, or they wanted to have a bottle of Coke or Gold Spot - drinks that would be served to each of the family members.

Down the years, while the ostentation and the noise have increased, the faith and the rituals have remained almost the same. While in the past, we used to burst simple crackers, such as the sparklers, the snake tablets, the ground chakkar, the kothis and a few stings of "lar" (pronounced as ler), today, people spend much more on fireworks, and expenditures of more than a few thousand rupees is no surprise. In fact, many households spend in five figures on fireworks. Also, people often burst more and more noisy stuff and smoky stuff that pollutes the environment no end. Children and adults with asthma or chronic respiratory ailments often stay within their homes, or, if they can, go away to hill stations, vacation spots or resorts, or ancestral homes in their native places, to escape the scourge of Diwali.

Doctors have to deal with many more cases of breathing difficulties during the ten days preceding and following the main dates of Diwali. At the same time, lest one forgets, there are incidents of accidental burning, eye injury, and, as it happened yesterday at a small place in Tamil Nadu, cases of wholesale fire-cracker shops blowing up due to some electrical short circuit. In the present case, more than 30 people, mostly customers, but also shop workers, lost their lives. See this for more details.

As a parent, I often used to buy a limited cache of fireworks for my two daughters until about six or seven years ago, when my daughters themselves lost interest in burning crackers and now mouth the pollution line and dissuade our neighbours and their friends from lighting them as well. This awareness among today's teens and youth is certainly commendable, but I also think sometimes of the thousands of men, women, and unfortunately, children, employed at the fireworks factories, whose employment may come to be terminated - and at the very least, they may have to take reduced salaries, as the people lose interest in lighting fireworks.

The government, on its part, is also trying to do a lot to reduce the impact of fireworks on noise pollution, and many extremely noisy crackers have been banned this year, e.g. the sutli bomb. NGO's like the one run by Sumaira Abdul Ali, are also into the act of monitoring the menace of noise pollution caused by fire crackers. Here is a report written by her on the evils of noise pollution: click here.

The Monsoon Game

2009-10-08T12:58:00.005+05:30

Every single year, India, an agro-predominant country, looks to the skies to assess if the rain-Gods would smile at it or frown. Almost half of the action that takes place in meteorological satellites pointed to the Indian sub-continent is towards the calculations of the arrival, stay and departure of the south-westerly monsoon. Crores of rupees wasted on an imperfect science that keeps turning up riddles more than solutions.

In the midst of this, the news that we have been having more than the average rainfall for the last over 15 years; and then, the news that this year, at least, rains have been truant and the entire country is facing a deficit of from 20-50% rainfall.

Mumbai's case is a lot more peculiar than the one faced by other parts of India; in Mumbai, 150 million Mumbaikars depend on the various lakes around their city for their water needs. These lakes, including the Vaitarna, Bhatsa, Tulsi, Tansa, Vihar and the Upper Vaitarna - need to fill up completely for the Brihanmumbai Mahanagarpalika (quite a mouthful, isn't it?) - or the BMC - to supply unrestricted water to all the parts of the metropolis.

This year, Mumbaikars had to face the axe as the BMC first imposed a 15% cut, and then increased it further to 30 % as the dry spell continued to have its dark shadow upon us. Then, the rains came liberally, and we saw almost 20-25 days of good monsoon from late August to mid-September. The water cut was reduced to 15% as a result of this. Presently, September was ending and October was nigh upon us when the clouds gathered again over Mumbai, and within a few days, it was raining heavily!

I had already stowed away my raincoat, and had to bring it out once again last Monday! This unexpected rain was actually a reflection of the very heavy rains that lashed areas of East Maharashtra, North Karnataka and West Andhra Pradesh; here, there were flash floods and millions of people lost their homes and hundreds lost their lives.

However, the rains provided succour, and helped re-fill the lakes around Mumbai. This was, in a way, good news to the Mumbaikar, as the lakes now have enough water to last till the middle of May 2010. However, the BMC has maintained the 15% cut and is likely to do so to prevent any unforeseen problems.

For me, personally, the rainy season is a time for more professional work, while for my better half, who runs a salon, it is a bit of a business dampener. For my daughters, it is something in between a blessing and a curse, since it leads them to the pleasures of getting wet and dancing, so to say, while at the same time, reducing their outside activities and even school attendance.

Sachin's New House at Bandra

2009-09-12T13:07:00.015+05:30

The above fantastic images are of Master Blaster Sachin' s new house at Bandra. Note the seashell concept. Isn't this a marvellous idea?

Ramadan - more news

2009-09-11T21:24:00.003+05:30

Okay, so I started in right earnest by doing the first fast; after this, the rest were a breeze, but I did miss about four or five so far; a couple, I missed because of no particular reason other than the fact that I had more work in the day time and no energy to fast. In spite of these issues, I have managed to remain in good health so far, and intend to fast till the end, which is just about a week away. My last fast will be on the 19th of September and Inshallah, our Eid will be on the following day, that is, the 20th of September, which is a Sunday.

During Ramadan, I try not to talk abusively, to do charity with patients, to avoid confrontations at home and at work, and to generally be a good human being. Whether I succeed or not is for the others to say, and for Allah to witness.

Apart from fasting, I pray the Maghrib and Esha prayers regularly, the morning and afternoon prayers on occasion, and read the Quran on most days. There are a few other prayer books that I try to read, but the lack of time prevents me from reading much of those.

I have gone out with my family on one occasion to "eat" the special Ramadan offerings, and while I can say that I really enjoyed myself, I think my wife just about tolerated it and my daughters liked it, though less than how much I did. We had sauted goat kidneys and brain with Indian bread and also had the hearty malpua with rabri - all at Mohamedali Road's famous Minara Masjid Lane (Ibrahim Merchant Lane). My brother Murtuza and his wife Sakina also ate with us, and I sponsored them. The total bill: about Rs. 450/=!

That's about it for now.

A little bit of this and a little bit of that

2009-08-24T21:06:00.002+05:30

Sounds quite crummy as a blog title, doesn't it? Well, I don't have anything momentous to say right now, so I decided to go with smaller stuff that can add up to something readable ... or so I hope.

... I want to say that of the many things that really encourage me, the most encouraging of all is the smile that my patients give me as they improve and recover from whatever illness has put them under the weather.

... I want to say that even if a patient pays me less than what I deserve, I am satisfied if the patient or his/her parents extend a hand of friendship and cooperate with the treatment plan properly.

... I want to say that I love to eat street food: this may be one of the reasons why I seldom fall ill with gastrointestinal problems as my gut flora is used to being abused.

... I want to say that I don't subscribe to the patients and parents' oft repeated worry that eating bananas and curd will make their child ill and suffer from cough and cold. In fact, I don't mind if the child even has an ice-cream, as long as he/she is also taking medicines properly.

... I want to say that I think my parents are now really, really old, as they hardly leave the house, fall ill often, and my dad gets breathless even if he has to utter a few sentences in a row, and my mom suffers from cardiac anxiety and is always scared to venture out of the house.

... I want to say that I enjoy eating. So much so that I know that even if I skip lunch every single day during Ramadan (the month of fasting), I am not going to lose any weight. Underline the word "any". In fact, don't be surprised if I actually gain weight.

... I want to say that Pediatric practice is a very flucutating form of medical practice. The climate decides if the pediatrician is gonna be busy or not in his office. Right now, with swine flu raging around us (more as a media hype than actual pandemic), practice is really good. I am not complaining.

Swine flu, Illness, and now, Ramadan

2009-08-23T20:18:00.007+05:30

I think there has been a big gap in my blog, and I will try and make up for it today with a lot of snippets of what, essentially, has been going on with my life.

Well, for one thing, Swine flu (novel H1N1) hit India towards the end of the first week of August, 2009. Cases in Pune were the first to be discovered, and India saw its first death from swine flu in a std 1xth Muslim girl from there. The disease then reared its head in Mumbai, Pune, and so on, affecting many of the larger cities from India. The Government of India, and the Mahrashtra govt swung into action pretty soon, and we had a state of near panic and Pune got touted as the swine-flu capital of India. Masks became the commodity most sought after, and a black market in masks soon became active, with masks costing Re. 1 or 2 now costing Rs. 20 a piece, and the N 95 masks costing about Rs. 80-100 costing more than Rs. 450 a piece.

As the cases climbed, so did the few who succumbed to the illness. In what can be termed a knee-jerk response, Mumbai closed its multiplexes, schools and so on for a period of 3-7 days. Knowing that swine flu is here to stay, this kind of temporary closure did allay anxiety and the hoi polloi got the impression that the government was abreast of things and not dilly dallying, but this was senseless. Reports from WHO and so on tell us that the entire life cycle of this illness may last from anywhere between 1-3 years, so that short term actions will, essentially, be useless.

Swine flu attacks will continue periodically, and over the next year or three, it will affect at least 50-60% of Indian citizens (that's over 600 million individuals). Even if 1% die, we are talking of about 5-6 million people dying from this disease. The expectation is that this may not happen if the organism continues to display the same level of aggressiveness that it does as of today, but there are scientists who are saying that the disease severity may, in fact, increase, as the virus will continue to undergo antigenic changes and turn more virulent (= aggressive).

Okay, so with this swine flu, doctors had a very busy fortnight indeed, as we battled to allay the anxiety of parents who brought their offspring no sooner than they had had a little fever or cough. Speaking for myself, I think I had the best 15 days of practice in a long, long time. In fact, the rush of patients reminded me of a similar panic that had gripped Mumbai a decade ago when there was a scare of plague following an epidemic of plague in Surat a town that lies in Gujarat (a neighbouring state of Maharashtra). At that time, though, the panic remained for just three days. I remember how Surat then underwent a magical transformation from being a filthy city to becoming one of the cleanest cities of India under a new city commissioner.

Anyway, this handling of so many children with respiratory complaints had its inevitable side effect on me, and last week, I came down with flu like symptoms - cough, cold, fever, and body-aches. I did not go in for a confirmatory test for swine flu (incidentally, the municipality and the govt. have set up about 15-odd centers in Mumbai for swine flu testing), as swine flu or not, this illness was not going to kill me, and would be all right in a week to ten days' time. Today is the sixth day of this illness, and though I still have a bad cough, I am able to eat, move and have no fever, so I can see that I will be all right in another few days.

Ramadan is upon us. For Bohras, it started on Friday, and today was day 3, but for the sunni Muslims, it began today, and will run its course as usual. I performed the fasts on the first two days, but gave it a slip today as my cough has turned a lot more serious and I did not fancy bearing this for an entire day. Tomorrow, I do plan to fast, of course.

In other news, everything is going on as usual. Hospital admissions are modest, clinic practice is returning to normal, parents are all right (mom is fasting, dad isn't), Inas is fasting, Hannah isn't, and life goes on.

Taxing times

2009-08-04T13:19:00.004+05:30

It has been my observation that when it does not rain enough, times become tough for every one; for the farmer, it means a reduced time window for sowing seeds that ripen and bloom in the coming year and yield crop and hence, reduced annual crop yield and reduced income; for the townie, it means reduced freight (transportation) of the harvested grain to be taken to the big city; for big cities, it means reduced amount of grain and vegetables in the markets, and higher prices of the same; for the stock markets, it is a period of gloom as a good monsoon spells positive news for India, which is, by and large, an agrarian economy; for politicians, it means an era of broken promises; for the housemaker, it is a time of shortages and delicately balancing the market purchases against a fixed household income; for corporates, it means tightening the money belt, with reduced ad spends, reduced allocation to the company's wages account, and so on.

We had good rains in the third and half of the fourth weeks of July, but after this, the rains have played truant. Almost none so far since the 25th of July.

Let's wait and see.

Rains continue in fits and starts

2009-07-09T20:34:00.003+05:30

Mumbai's rains have always been unpredictable, and I remember days from my childhood, adolescence and youth before asserting this claim. There is a near consonance in the starting date, which is usually any time between the 4th and the 10th of June. We begin to read from late May that the rains have hit the Konkan coast. Once the rains are in Goa, the rainy season is but a few days away.

This year, though, something unusual happened. A cyclonic storm in the Bay of Bengal (Aila) and the El Nino effect upset the calculations. The monsoon advanced normally upto Ratnagiri, and then stalled out there for nearly eight days before slowly moving northward. We got our first rains around the 20th of June, and thereafter, rains have been playing a game of hide and seek, with the catchment areas of the five or six lakes that we in Mumbai draw drinking water from - receiving poor rainfall.

The civic authorities (Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai) have been forced to cut the water supply by 10, then 20, and now, 30 per cent in view of the near alarming situation. I admit, though, that in the housing complex where I live, there has been near normal water supply because we also draw water from a bore well.

In between, we have torrential rains. We had one such downpour lasting more than 3 hours yesterday morning, and many schools and offices remained shut as a result. We had one more such downpour today evening, with water collecting in many low-lying areas of the city. The civic authorities have a ready excuse for this, and I believe that they may be right about this: when it rains heavily at the time of an ongoing high tide in the ocean, water is bound to drain off slowly, and also, sea water will enter into the city.

Let's see how it goes ... it's fun for those who are passive observers, but for those who get caught in the downpour, it is an agonising experience indeed, as they have to wait endlessly for taxis, wade through ankle or sometimes knee-deep water as they make their way to their destinations, they have to get wet, and perchance fall ill later on, they have to ... oh, I guess you get the point.

More later.

Rains in Mumbai

2009-07-05T13:18:00.005+05:30

Finally, the day Mumbaikars were awaiting since the first of June! On the 4th of July, it rained and it poured from dawn to late at night with a slight let up in the afternoon. The weather bureau reported nearly 125 mm of rain in Colaba and almost 250 mm in Santacruz.

What really affects me is that once it rains like this, there is no escape from the wetness ... whether you are at home and the cool droplets fall on your hands when you hang out the washing or your towel after a bath; on the bus, where you attempt to close the window shutters and they are jammed, so you are wet all over before you decide to change your seat or simply brave it if there is no free seat elsewhere; when you are walking under an umbrella (these are getting bigger and bigger each year, and the unfoldable ones are returning to fashion!), and while your head face and upper chest maintains a modicum of dryness, your body's lower half takes the full force of the rain PLUS the spray from passing cars, trucks and what have you; on a scooter with a top 1/2 of the two-piece rain suit on, and bottom 1/2 still in the dicky ... and your thighs, with the handkerchief in one side pocket and your wallet in the other ... taking the full brunt of the rain; in your car, and when you step out, you can never coordinate the opening of your umbrella with the car door opening, or when you simply decide to run from the car to the entrance of wherever you are destined to go ... and you get all wet; or in a train ... and you get wet; or under a tree or some form of shade of a shop eaves or roof ... and you get wet; or, like a traffic policeman who wears those bright yellow or white raincoats ... and still ends up wet.

If this is the case, why not enjoy getting wet? This is exactly what I do when I return from work late in the evening. I deliberately stuff my rain protection gear inside the dicky (if I am on a two-wheeler) or on the back seat (if I am in my car) and then walk leisurely from the car to my building's life ... a good 15 feet!

Flooding occurred at all the usual places by the evening ... at Mazgaon circle, near St. Mary's ICSE, at JJ junction, at Null Bazaar and so on in my area, and at more than a 100 flood-prone areas all over Mumbai.

Even so, I think the average Mumbaikar is really, really happy that heavy rains have fallen, for we get our water supply from the catchment areas of Vihar, Tansa, Tulsi, Bhatsa and Vaitarna Lakes. If it rains well there, we will get water here .

Old and present students of Bharda New High School

2009-06-23T14:16:00.008+05:30

Some students of the Bharda New High School at CST, Mumbai, got together on a warm afternoon under the stewardship of Mr. Abbasbhai Igatpuriwala, one of the old teachers, in Bharda's auditorium, on 16th June, 2008. The purpose was to discuss what best we, old Bhardaites, could do about our alma mater.

There were equal supporters for "contributing to the upliftment of the school buildings and the staff" and for "starting new institutions of excellence and advanced studies" in Science and Technology (to be named after Mr. A.H. Mulla, our beloved principal who passed away in March) and in Mass Media and communication (to be named after Mrs. Banoo N. Cama, still very much alive and in her eighties).

As a result of the deliberations of the meeting, an online Yahoo group has been created where Bhardaites can come together to interact. To visit this group, please click here.

Values: old vs. new - a perspective

2009-06-06T20:47:00.001+05:30

I am 49 years young. However, when dealing with the tweens of today (those who are between teenage and adulthood, viz. my daughters, and others of their age), I feel like someone from Satyug. I am not joking, and most readers of my age will probably be nodding their heads in understanding. :-)
Values have changed so much, that often, what seems like a "ghor apradh" to me, sounds like a "all in a day's work" to my children! They think nothing of ignoring your requests to this household chore, or postpone the purchase of a 4 GB card for the time being, or wait a little while to have lunch while their father is on the way home, negotiating the killer traffic at Bhendi Bazaar. To them, retiring to their own rooms when my friends come to the house is, to put it bluntly, their bounden duty. It matters not that their mother (my wife) comes home after a hard day's work, hungry and thirsty: if I nudge one of them to get up and get her a glass of water, or to unburden her of her handbag or something, they will immediately turn the other way, or tell me to ask the "other daughter"' or, they will get her the water, and then refuse to do the next task asked of them, saying that they "already got up once to get mom water".
It is not only frustrating, but also demeaning, to hear them shout at each other at 11:30 p.m. to "give me more space on the bed, and to shift there."
I am sorry if this diary sounds like a public lament of my daughters, but I am using my examples to illustrate what is, I am sure, a general experience of most parents.
Coming to adult values, it is too late when yesterday's teens realise where they went wrong. Their own ghosts come to haunt them later on. Values never change, only perceptions do. And yet, false values have gradually seeped into the moral fabric of the society. Petty behaviour, insulting an elder to that person's face, speaking rudely to one's own teacher/boss/superior, ignoring the pleas of one's own parents or elder siblings, etc. are now so acceptable, that the youth does not even consider it as wrong behaviour. To a large extent, the open sky policy and the invasion of channels from the West have contributed to this moral depradation. Music today has words like F@@K and so on openly weaved into the lyrics. In such an environment, how can the tween remain untouched?
The need of the hour is to sit with them and talk to them, to sensitize them to their follies, and to do all this before it is too late.
Can I do it? I don't know. Can you? Do tell me!

Just look at those muscles

2009-06-04T13:59:00.001+05:30

Just look at those muscles. - MouthShut.com

Shared via AddThis

2009-06-01T21:09:00.004+05:30

If someone saw me in real life, they would immediately remark that I have a rather huge belly. If you've seen my photos here and elsewhere, you wouldn't guess that, would you? And yet, it is true. Years of chai and indiscriminate eating has caused my belly to bloat up. My belly measures 39 inches. God! I have been trying to shed this flab off and on. I made my first serious and fairly successful attempt in 2007. In this, my first attempt, I passed with flying colours, as I lost nearly ten kgs within six months, and the belly shrank by nearly 3-4 inches!

The top photo is the one I achieved after five months of gymming in 2007, while the lower one is the earlier one.

My second attempt began in January 2008 at Talwalkar's (see my review on that). This was a failure, as, instead of losing weight, I gained 3-4 kg there, and lost no fat. I left that, and am now in my third attempt at a local gym called Mission Fitness. Having completed three months there, I can safely say that it is the best of the lot, but I haven't lost any weight or inches so far. I am maintaining a daily visit there. Recently, the physio person there changed my routine from alternate day cardio/weight training to daily weight training + cardio. I completed one week of that, and am now into the second week of the same. I am praying that I see results soon.

Mouthshut.com

2009-06-01T20:52:00.004+05:30

This is an unique website which allows common people to give reviews of almost anything under the sun, allows them to maintain diaries, allows them to comment on others' reviews, and allows social interaction and exchanging of virtual gifts. I have been a member there since many years, and have written some reviews too; yesterday, on a lazy Sunday, I decided to do a little more on the site: I read reviews, commented on many of them, uploaded photos, wrote two diary entries, gave away virtual gifts, sent messages, etc.

The beauty of this site is that it keeps rewarding members for doing any of the above activities with MS points, thereby encouraging members to keep interacting and to never leave the site. Very interesting site. Do register as a free member and explore the site.

And, please, check out my profile here.

Writing an entry every single day

2009-05-26T13:20:00.004+05:30

It would definitely be desirable to visit one's own blog every single day and to write a few words there ... personally, though, I am no pro at typing, and writing long entries is something that I don't either admire or cherish. Even so, I am committing to writing one entry every day for the entire week beginning from today. Let me see if I can come good on my resolve.

Between the 15th and the 25th of May, I stood in as a substitute for some of my professional colleagues at one or two hospitals that I visit. It was a sort of busy fortnight for me, as I was now seeing patients of mine as well as two other pediatricians! Apart from being very professionally satisfying *and monetarily too, I may as well add*, this experience reminded me of my younger days, when there weren't that many doctors or pediatricians in my geographical territory which is about 5 odd sq. km south of my home at Mazgaon. It was after a long time that I was seeing so many patients in the hospitals where I was standing in for the other doctor(s). And although tiring, it was enjoyable too, since it will definitely earn me more cash in the days I worked that hard!

I also wanted to share one more thing with my readers: on Writing.com, where I have an extensive portfolio of my non-medical writing, I am currently participating in an unique writing contest called the "14 days - 7 prompts - 1 story contest". In this contest, the admin gives the contestants a word prompt that HAS TO BE incorporated in the coming installment. At the same time, the next prompts have to be also incorporated too, without going back and re-doing the story! Thus, the writer has to be very imaginative while tying up the prompts as they come every alternate day. To read the story as it develops/developed, click here.

Cricket, Politics and some more stuff ...

2009-05-24T17:01:00.008+05:30

As everyone knows, the Indian Premier League (IPL) is a limited overs game with both teams bowling just 20 overs to decide the game. This year, because of the simultaneous holding of the General Elections for Indian Parliament, the venue of the IPL was shifted to South Africa instead of India. Well, the round robin league is over, and so are the semifinals ... and today, on this warm Sunday evening, Deccan Chargers and Royal Challengers will play the final for the cup and the glory. Within a few days, the Congress Party's cabinet will be in place too, and India will begin a glorious chapter of politics with the ruling party in full strength; no more coalition style politics, thank you. And, as an Indian, I wish MMS (Manmohan Singhji) has a very fruitful run as a PM (his second tenure), and India prospers as a result.

In other news, Murtuza's family and mine, are treating Dad on his just passed 75th birthday (he turned 75 on the 20th of May). We have invited him and mom to my place for dinner and to gift him a little token of our love. Murtuza's daughter Umme-Salma continues to run a slight fever since the past three days. My aunty Asma Sawliwala had a stroke last week, and is admitted at Prince Aly Khan hospital ICU as a result. She is unconscious and is being artificially ventilated. Inas keeps running for her duties to the Taj, and Hannah is at home, reading books or whiling away her time seeing television or playing a game on the computer. Nishrin's work is going fine, and mine is too.

Almost a month gone

2009-05-10T18:02:00.006+05:30

It's been some time that I have written in the blogs that I own, including this one. It isn't that I don't enjoy blogging; of course, I do. If I did not, would I start so many blogs? However, it is also true that life sometimes just does not permit you to write ... time runs short, motivation runs short, or at times, there just isn't anything happening enough in your life to write to the world about! In my case, it never is the case that nothing is happening. So much is! If nothing else, my medical experiences would be enough to write so much about!

Since I last wrote in here, my elder daughter Inas has begun her industrial training at the Hotel Taj at Mumbai. For those not aware, Inas is in the second year of the Hotel Management (three-year degree) course of the Mumbai University. As part of the course, students are required to complete a six-month hands-on training at any of the designated hotels in the city. As Inas was one of the best students in the course, she got a chance to take the training at the famed Taj Group Hotel located at the Gateway of India ... the very same hotel that was attacked by Pakistani terrorists in November 2008. Initially, we were wary of sending her to that spot, but in the end, common sense prevailed. She began her training on the 2nd of May. Every day, she is required to be there for 8-9 hours, and her first 1 1/2 months' posting is in the Kitchen Department. This is one department that she dislikes. However, she is in, whether she likes it or not. Just yesterday, she told us that she had to peel over 250 onions! In the process, she accidentally nicked three of the five fingers of her right hand, and had to apply "Band Aid"s on the tips of all these! She has been called the "Chop Chop Queen" in honor of her "accident" :-)

Okay, Hannah continued going to school for a fortnight more, and her last school day was the 1st of May. Her results came that day, and I am happy to inform you that she did well, scoring 77 % marks in Marathi ... for the first time in her career. Her overall percentage climbed a healthy 7 % ... from the earlier 59 % to over 66 % this time. Within a few days, her tuitions for the Xth standard have also started, and she is barely able to enjoy 2 free days every week, the rest being interspersed with tuitions in Hindi, Marathi, Math and Science. Once her school restarts, she will have tuitions in French as well. This will be her final year in school, and then, it will be college life for her from June 2010.

Nishrin continues to work solo in her parlour after having removed her one and only assistant in November-December 2008. This is taking its toll on her mental peace. There are days when there is a rush of clients and she has to refuse some; there are days when there are hardly any, and she sulks around at the parlour and even weeps at times on her misfortune. To inform the readers, I should add here that she had to remove her assistant because the latter was stealing her work and attending to her clients outside the parlour at the clients' residence by doing home visits after finishing her work at the parlour.

What about me, you ask? Oh, well. My practice picked up a lot more than I had expected, but still, I was doing worse than what I did last year in April. I finally got a letter allowing me to admit patients in the 'general' class at Noor Hospital, and to date, I have admitted quite a few patients there! I am sure that the hospital trustees will have to consider giving me full privileges in the year to come. My writing work at WDC attracted prizes again. My gymming had to take an unscheduled break when I developed severe back spasm in mid-April ... then I re-joined in late April, took yet another break as the spasm acted up again, and have now re-joined and have resumed muscle training since the past four to five days.

That's all for now ... but I would like to end this post with a small bit of news: May is a month full of birthdays in my extended family. My youngest brother's both children, my own Hannah, and my dad, all have their birthdays in May! My nephew Shabbir was born on the 7th of May in 2002; my niece Umme-Salma on the 8th of May in 2008; Hannah on the 14th, in 1994, and my dad, on the 20th, in 1934. My brother Murtuza invited us all for cake-cutting and dinner on the eve of the 8th. My brother's wife Sakina had cooked the dinner, and it was okay. My other brother Kaizar, did not attend owing to some problems.

Hannah will turn 15 this year, and Nish and I plan to give her 15 gifts, of which one will be sponsored by Inas. We are also planning a surprise party for her and are inviting 7-8 of her best friends for an evening of fun and frolic. Let us see how this goes ...

2009-04-13T18:51:00.005+05:30

Recently, I read about a friend's bad experience with Citi Financial due to mistaken identity. This reminded me of my own bad experience with Citibank due to their publishing a wrong telephone number in their advertisement.

I want to share my experience with Citibank ...

the bank that never (let me) sleep (s)!

About fourteen years ago, I used to live in a locality that had telephone numbers beginning with 371. My number was 3712484. Now, as most of you know, -2484 are the last four digits of Citibank call centres, as CITI codes as 2484. No matter. Then, one fine day, Citibank published a half page ad on page 1 of the Mumbai edition of ET (Economic Times). The ad simply said: Get Loans at Low rates

against your shares. Call (you guessed it!) 3712484 NOW!

I remember that this was during the second stock market boom after Harshad Mehta's stint ,,, the KP10 boom, if you will. Mumbaikars were sitting with penny stocks like Himachal Futuristic, Silverline Industries, Pentamedia Graphics etc ... and all these were priced above 1000-1500 per share, with PG being priced at 2700 per share!(Today, barring HFCL, the other stocks, including Mazda, (KP's darling stock) have all sunk or vanished.)

Phir kya ... the home phone started ringing non-stop from 7.00 a.m. onwards! I looked at my own number on the front page of ET at 8.30, by which time, my wife and I had already fielded not less than 70-75 calls. We tried calling Mumbai's own citi call center, which we knew was 2022484 ( I had a credit card from citi, so I had the call center no), but we could not connect. And, our own phone never gave us a second chance to use it for an outgoing call!

Remember, there were no cell phones back then.

By about 10, our patience had reached breaking point. Finally, I connected to the citi phone center. They were as surprised as we were, and one of them immediately recognised the number to be citi's number for New Delhi. I demanded rectification on an immediate basis, but they, obviously, could not do anything right away. About 11.30, I got a call from their head, one female officer called Anjali something. She was profusely apologetic, and said that they would publish the new number in the next day's newspaper, and in the meanwhile, we should just wait and suffer in silence.

I was shouting at her by then. I asked her to send someone "decent" to take all my calls, and to stay with me till the menace receded. She was willing to do even that, but then, she had a brilliant thought:she sent me a box pack of an advanced telephone answering machine manufactured by Philips. The person who accompanied the box was knowledgeable and helped us to set up the whole thing. He also handed me a letter signed by ?Anjali, and then left.

Over the next few days, the calls gradually stopped. However, citi never sent to take the machine back. We used it for the next five or six years, before it malfunctioned and had to be thrown away.

A new financial year begins

2009-04-02T13:32:00.005+05:30

Isn't it a funny twist of Fate that a new financial year begins on All Fools' Day? I am a practising professional, and as per Indian tax rules, I am required to file the returns of each financial year by the end of August of the second year of the two years that the financial year pertains to. For example, I must file the returns for the F.Y. 09/10 by August 31, 2009. And so on. Now, to tell you the truth, my Chartered Accountant (C.A.) has never filed my returns on time, and I am forever running to his office and seeking time with him to clear the accounts back-log and planning ahead for the next F.Y. This March-end, we finally submitted (with whopping late fees), the returns for the F.Y. 2007/08. Two more returns need to be filed now ... and I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Financially, the last twelve months were a complete disaster, and not just for me,but for almost all people in India and also all over the world. American citizens were the most hit, but no one anywhere in the world was spared. The inflow of cash is not a worry as much as is the inflow of patients, which is something that can cause doctors to get extremely bored and incapable of action.

I would have written more, but that will have to wait as I have too much other work at hand.

-T

Relatives visit ...

2009-03-19T14:01:00.004+05:30

A fortnight ago, Saleh, my first cousin on my pop's side, visited me at the clinic. Having met Nishrin, he then waited for me to also arrive at the clinic and was with us for at least an hour and a half. Saleh continues to be a pragmatic person; what I do find changed in him is that he looks much happier now than he did some years ago when he used to visit us from Dubai. It seems that Canada has been nice for him. Living at a small place called Missisuaga (I hope I have the spelling right), which is about 45 - 60 minutes away from the Niagara Falls, Saleh is enjoying life ... and I envy him!

Today, it was the turn of his younger brother Aslam to visit us at the clinic. His wife Shabnam was also with him. Aslam and Shabnam continue to dwell in Dubai, and their son Husain was also with them today. I gifted them with a small token of my appreciation that they all came to visit us.

Tomorrow, Nishrin's relatives -- her fufi, her first cousin Pinky and her family, are coming down from Chandigarh to spend a few days with us. We are all looking forward to them being with us. They would be going to Nanded next, and finally, to stay with another relative before going back to Chandigarh on the 29th of this month.

So, what does a visit by a relative mean? It means a rejoicing of sorts, as it rejuvenates both sides. It also awakens slumbering emotions and makes people yearn to hope for more.

More about the Kala Ghoda Festival

2009-03-03T23:33:00.004+05:30

The Kala Ghoda Association, which was founded some time in the late nineties of the past century, has been instrumental in organising a multi-faceted arts and cultural festival to showcase the heritage of Mumbai's Fort precinct as well as the cultural and artistic diversity of India's vast cultural scene. My family and I have been intermittent but regular visitors almost every year, but in the past five-0dd years, our attendance has dwindled, thanks to the growing up of our two daughters. In fact, if I am not mistaken, I did not attend ANY function of the KGAF in the last three years!

This year, I decided to participate more actively, regardless of whether my family members did or did not; hence, I did so. I visited the Kala Ghoda core festival site on the second day of the eight-day festival; this is the open area in front of the Jehangir Art Gallery. The milieu changes completely. There is no entry for vehicles. Stalls are set up by various cultural organisations, private parties that deal in arts and crafts, NGOs, and others. There is a special activity are earmarked for children. They have drawing, painting, pottery, drama, acting and other workshops for children every single day. Story-writing, poetry writing and so on are also featured.

Caferati, a literary organisation that is run by a trio of three enthusiasts, Manisha Lakhe, Peter Griffin and Annie Zaidi, organises the literary aspects of the KGAF. Most of their activities are played out in the rear lawns of the David Sassoon Library just across the road from the Jehangir Art Gallery. This year, they also had internet contests - including flash fiction (story of up to 55 words on the theme of cheating), SMS poetry (on the theme of murder) and Poetry Slam (three theme poems and one free poem), as also Lyric writing and Drama scripting. Anyone could submit their entries on the net, and if their work was selected, they would participate in the final rounds on a later date at the KGAF venue.

I participated in the first three of the above contests, and was a finalist in the poetry slam. I read out my first poem on the theme of "Rock", and was then eliminated in a sort of round robin contest. Anyway, a finalist ... not bad, eh?

I also recited a few poems on one of the other evenings in an "Open Mic" session. That was appreciated a lot by the audience.

KGAF also ties up with the Bombay Heritage Walks Association to conduct free heritage walks on each day of the festival. I was privileged to join three of the seven or eight walks conducted by the BHWA. These were the D.N. Road walk, the Gateway of India walk and the Ballard Pier walk. These walks were fantastic; not only did they inform us about the architectural wonders that are located in the Fort precinct and around it, they also entertained us with the stories of the men and women who created these monuments, who lived in them or worked in them and those who made these simple structures monumental in scope.

In addition to these, I also visited all the installations and exhibitions that formed the canvas of the festival. There were 3-D creations of a rocket made from barbed wire, men and sports figures made from steel and wiremesh, a multi-wheeled artistic form made from bicycle wheels, a statue of Ganesha made from discarded motor cycle parts, and a huge 40 feet tower made of buckets, taps and so on on the theme of conserving water, to name a few. There was a kiosk where visitors could "write" to a Pakistani citizen (thousands wrote notes); a kiosk that enabled us to look inside a slum house where ceilings leaked each monsoon; a kiosk that highlighted the plight of the Indian woman, and so on.

There was a stage too, where the dance and drama events were held. Eats ... from all the restaurants that form the facade opp. the Art Gallery, and free movie screenings at the K.R. Cama Oriental Institute and the Ghia Hall. Unfortunately, I could not attend any screening of any movie due to lack of time.

All in all, a great festival, with something for everyone. I enjoyed being a part of it!

A month ends and a lot of stuff to narrate

2009-02-28T22:54:00.005+05:30

As readers will have observed, I am returning to this blog at the end of the month ... my previous post was on the 1st of February. A lot of things have happened in the past month, the most important of these being the fact that time was always short. Let me first list the main things that have livened up my life:

Global economy continued to deteriorate: not that this is news, but the fact is that this decline has affected my practice considerably. I am sure that everyone else has also been affected likewise - businesses, professionals, salaried class, and so on.
In Mumbai, for a whole week, culture ruled as the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival got under way during the second week of February. I visited the main center three times, saw and photographed many artifacts, installations and sights. Also, I went to three heritage walks - one at Ballard Pier, one at D.N. Road, and one at Gateway of India. I also recited a few poems at an open-mic on one of the days at the lawns of the David Sassoon Library. Finally, I also participated in three contests run by Caferati: the SMS poem, the 55-word story and the Theme poetry slam. While I got disqualified in the first two, I was selected to be a finalist in the slam onthe basis of my poem on "Paper". More about this slam later.
p4poetry.com had its monthly poetry reading at the residence of Raj/Renuka at Juhu on the 24th. The theme was "LOVE" and I recited two poems.
Inas got selected for her industrial training at the Taj Palace and Tower.
We completed six years in Mazgaon on the 8th of February.
I started gymming again, joining the gym Mission Fitness near Noor Baug. Nishrin paid half of the fees, while I pitched in with the rest. The total fees for 1 year were 10000 INR. Since the day I joined, I have not missed a single one of the nine-odd days. I am already feeling better - both physically and mentally.

Having listed these events and occasions, I am already feeling bored to write more. Hence, I am going to end here. More in another entry.

Bangalore Visit, January 21-25, 2009: Background

2009-02-01T19:44:00.005+05:30

This year, after a three year gap, I decided to once again attend the annual national pediatricians' gathering. This, the 46th Pedicon, would be held at Bangalore, or Bengaluru as it is now called by the government of Karnataka, from the 22nd to the 25th of January, 2009. I registered as a delegate some time in August, and received a confirmation receipt a month later.

I was excited to go, and even suggested to my wife Nishrin that she should accompany me, since I would be returning to this city after exactly 19 years - we had gone there together for our honeymoon in 1990. It would be a sort of romantic return - but as was expected, Nish could not come owing to the fact that her salon practice would be on in full swing. Therefore, I decided to go alone. I asked some of my colleagues as to who would be going - and eventually, Praful - my friend and colleague from Masina - officially Dr. Praful Shanbhag - and I - coordinated as much as possible - and decided to explore the Pedicon together.

I booked my onward flight journey for the 21st morning, as I would also be attending a workshop on early recognition and management of cerebral palsy; Praful would come to B'lore on the next morning, and he booked his flight with his own agent. However, it fell upon me to book a hotel room for the two of us, and to book a common flight for the return journey on Sunday the 26th of January. Both these bookings I did with my credit card, and later on, Praful reimbursed me his share of the flight ticket AND ALSO PAID THE FULL ROOM CHARGES FOR BOTH OF US. I think he will get someone from some pharma company to sponsor the room charges, but even so, that was awfully nice of him.

The theme of the conference was "Redefining Child Care". I was in intermittent touch with some of the B'lore pediatricians who were on the organising panel, the chief one being Dr. R. Nisarga, the main organising secretary.

For booking the hotel, I called upon a dear friend from Writing.com who is staying in the same city - viz. Vikramadith Raman. He was kind to point me to this site (which is only for Bangalore), from where I finally arranged the booking for both Praful and myself in a double Delux room, the hotel being about 2 km from the conference venue and very reasonably priced. It was called Hotel Atlaantic Inn and it is located at J C Nagar opposite "Fun World". The room rates were Rs. 1500/= per night plus 12% luxury tax. I even requested Vikram to go to the hotel and check it out. Which he did. Wasn't that really sweet of him? I kept in touch with him, and later, also got in touch with another Writing.com friend from B'lore, one Mr. B.A. Satish. More about these two friends in a later post.

To replace me at the clinic, I requested my senior registrar at Masina Dr. Sandeep to visit and see my patients daily in the evenings. He complied with this very nicely. At Dholkawala Hospital, Dr. Munira Khambati filled in for me and at Masina, Dr. Avinash Desai.

In the last few months, one pharma co. reimbursed me the entire flight charges, while another sponsored my entire registration package. Thus, the trip became a reality.

Returning after a long gap

2009-02-01T18:42:00.004+05:30

While I plead guilty to not writing anything in any of the blogs that I currently own, I must say that I was a bit distracted by real-world events; also, for about 5-6 days in the fourth week of January, I was out of town and without a connection to the net. In addition to these "excuses", I was also a bit despirited as I am out of touch with my physical exercises, have put on weight and need to do something strongly to get back into shape.

Okay, enough of that. To read more about my state of mind, visit my other blog: Click here!

Now, on to a little more news. January was bad - practice was dull, I missed those six days when I went to Banagalore to participate in the Annual Pediatric Conference (Pedicon 2009). I had registered for the conference way back in August 2008, having paid INR 6000/= for the same. One of my colleagues and a personal friend, Dr. Praful Shanbhag was with me: we stayed in the same room in a hotel, stayed almost together during the entire five days of the conference and returned together as well. But a lot of other things occurred too, and I am going to write that out as a separate entry right after this one.

In other news, India started its ties with Sri Lanka in the Cricket One dayers with 2 consecutive victories; Mahesh Bhupathi and Sania Mirza moved to the semi-finals of the Australian Open Tennis tourney; our beloved PM Sardar Manmohan Singh underwent a complicated 5-vessel cardiac bypass surgery and is none the worse for it ... in fact, he is "positively better"!

In my home, Hannah had her annual sports and a few other school functions; she made me run to school with her on so many days, I have lost count. Inas continues to have projects and work that is driving all the rest of us mad; my brother Murtuza finally purchased his own house and has just announced that his old house also got sold; mom went to her physician and has been asked to rest and take more medicines; Inas and I went to Lonavala on the occasion of the 40th day observation of my cousin Dr. Altaf's untimely demise (see this); Dad celebrated his 77th coconut birthday and Nish, her 44th cake birthday on the evening of the 31st of January in a dinner meet at my residence - and wonder of wonders - my bro Kaizar also came this time with his entire family!

That's about it for now. Let me rest awhile and then begin my post on my Bangalore visit.

And, if you are bored by all the above, click here for some fun.

Just another day

2009-01-06T21:13:00.003+05:30

I think today could be marked off as just another day in the almanac of 2009, as nothing really rocking or interesting occurred. For us, the Dawoodi Bohras, it was the 10th of Muharram, and so, everyone from the community was in the mosque to listen to the day-long sermons that would end at the time of the evening call for prayers with the recitation, by the priest, of the martyrdom of Prophet Husain (A.S.) at the hands of Layeen Shimra *(another Muslim, who represented the tyrant rulers of that time who did not wish for Husain's version of Islam to spread).

I took both my daughters to the mosque, but not as early as one might think: we reached at 4:00 p.m. , and were there till the end of the sermon. The story of the martyrdom of prophet Husain (A.S.) and his family is heart-rending even today, after so many hundreds of years. Most listeners were beating their breasts and crying by the time the muezzin called the evening prayers. My daughter, Inas, and to a lesser extent, Hannah, were a bit sceptical about how the prophet conducted his affairs during the last 72 hours. Why, she asked, did he have to send his soldiers one by one to get killed at the front. Well, I told her I DID NOT KNOW. What else could I do but come clean on this issue.

Nishrin has been going here and there to make enquiries at the top beauty academies as she wishes to update her skills. Yesterday, she went to the L'Oreal and Yasmin, today, to Nalini's and to the Toni and Guy academies. I don't think she has made up her mind as to which course she wishes to do.

A new year has begun

2009-01-03T17:19:00.003+05:30

The new year, 2009, brings with it a lot of the gloom that 2008 was a characteristic of: economic slow-down, inflation, share-market collapse, terror attacks - even the 1st of January was not free from it, there being three bomb explosions somewhere in Assam -and so many other things. At the same time, the new year, in re-inventing itself every 365-odd days, also brings with it the hope of a better tomorrow; a tomorrow that is already the present for all of us. What a wonderful word the word "present" is! Today is a present to us from Father Time. We must make the best of it!

We, in India, saw the world through glasses that were gleaming and speck-free in the month of January; the stock market was above all previous highs, the Sensex touching a phenomenal 21000 in the middle of that month. From then, until the end of the year, we had travelled down to sub-10000 levels, having touched a bottom close to 7800 some time in October. The world economy drove the sensex down, gold and dollar prices up, and industrial and general growth indices near rock-bottom as the sub-prime crisis took with it huge banks and non-banking financial institutions; several private companies also went under, especailly auto manufacturers - the erstwhile giants of the auto business like Chrysler, Gen. Motors, etc.

There were tremors and rumours for sure: at one time, the second biggest bank in India (and the largest in the private sector), the ICICI bank was itself under a cloud and people rushed to withdraw their money from it. This rumour, like many others, proved to be unfounded, but it is also true that the Government of India, the Department of Treasury and the Reserve Bank of India had to announce a slew of measures - not once, not twice, but over three times, to keep the market sentiment in a positive direction; the last such package was announced only yesterday. We do, therefore, expect the stock market to open positive the coming Monday, i.e. on the 5th of January.

The terror attacks in Mumbai were timed at the worst time: they were repulsed successfully, but there were no winners, since the spirit of Mumbai was almsot trod under the feet of fundamentalists. Over 180 people , including tourists from abroad and several decorated police officers, died in the 60-hour mayhem that occurred between the 26th and the 29th of November, 2008. Stocks of the hotel industries fell, esp. those that were affected in the attacks, viz. the stocks of Indian Hotels Ltd. (Taj Hotel is a part of their offering) and the East India Hotels Ltd. (the Oberoi, Mumbai, is from their stable).

Now, over a month later, these stocks have recovered, as has the stock market generally, as it hovers near 10000 once again. Will it breach this mark decisively this time? I don't know, but I sure hope so.

I bought a handsfree bluetooth device a few days ago over the net through ebay India. Redeeming a discount coupon that I had received earlier, the bluetooth cost me just over 730 INR. The first instrument that was sent to me from the Delhi trader whose product I had bought was defective - not working. I got in touch with the owner and he asked me to ship it back to them! I did, at a cost of Rs. 80/=, but thankfully, the new piece arrived within 5 days, and it is working perfectly! As I write this, I am listening to a popular Hindi song from the seventies called "Chudi nahin ye mera dil hai, dekho, dekho, toote na ..."

Inas, my elder daughter, whose name appears sporadically in this blog, has gone for a "waiting" today evening, and I must go and fetch her at or about mid-night. Hannah is studying hard for the upcoming examinations that will start, for her, in mid-January. Muharram is going on, and soon, will pass. Nishrin must be busy in the parlour, as usual. Dad must be at home, watching some or the other TV serial - his favourite pastime. Mom must have gone to the mosque for the "maghrib" prayers and the sermon thereafter.

Life, in this way, goes on ...

Christmas has come and gone

2008-12-28T19:01:00.005+05:30

Indeed, as the title says it, Christmas has come and gone ... this time, a little more silently than in the previous years ... at least in Mumbai, but, thanks to the economic melt-down, perhaps all over the world as well. Festivities such as having a Christmas tree, visiting Santa, giving gifts etc. will all go on, but as the pockets aren't so deep, the trees will be smaller, and the gifts, not as ostentatious as before. Travelling to a foreign country will also, I am sure, be marked by austerity and some effective use of common-sense (which is otherwise so uncommonly seen).

Mumbai has had the terrrible terror attacks a month ago, and although people have begun to lead near normal lives, the fear and the suspicion are still there: people check under their seats when they visit a restaurant, and some will even chide the manager for not having long table-cloths under which they may hide in case a terrorist visits their restaurant. Introspection, quiet demeanour and an acceptance of Fate have all conspired to flatten the enthusiasm of the average Mumbai who wants nothing more than peace and a promise of no-repeats of what happened on 11/26.

Today is the 28th and we are roughly midway between Christmas and the New Year. I saw big crowds near the Regal Cinema, which is a stone's throw away (I know the analogy is a bit weird) from the Taj Palace hotel and the Gateway of India. Both the Taj tower and the Trident started operations and welcoming guests on the 21st of this month, and have sent a clear message to the terrorists and their masters that they will not cower down before the actions of a murderous few.

Today was also the first day of our Muslim-Bohra calendar year. Yesterday night, we had a sort of feast - a tradition that we follow every year. We create several dishes, and also dice a lot of fruit, and serve it all in small, dainty plates and bowls atop a large serving plate known as a "thaal". This large plate, mostly of stainless-steel, is circular and more than 3 1/2 feet in diameter. Along with the dishes that are served up, we also place, in the thaal, a smaller plate containing a silver coin, some raw rice, jaggery, a supari piece, a coconut, a garland and a single betel leaf: the belief is that this is a "birthday" of the thaal. You could say we are invoking Allah for his beneficence and his limitless mercy.

Generally, we count the items on the thaal and make sure we have at least 21 items, but at times, we aim for larger number, which is usually an odd number. Yesterday, we reached a modest 25 dishes, while others aimed to go to 51 dishes or even more!

Stuffed ourselves, yes ... we did. And then, Nish and I went to attend a wedding ceremony of the son of one of our neighbour friends, where, too, we ate some food.

That's all for now. Hope you liked the entry.

Christmas Party in our building

2008-12-25T17:58:00.008+05:30

After much vacillation between whether we should or shouldn't have a party this year, considering the terror attacks in Mumbai a month ago and the economic gloom that has threatened the livelihood of millions all over the world, the society's children and youngsters decided to go ahead with a Christmas programme that would incorporate a small memorium for the victims of the 11/26 terror attacks in addition to whatever else that they would put up for the entertainment of the members and their guests.

My younger daughter, Hannah, participated in a "Fashion Show" (with a ramp created on the stage specially for this purpose!) and also in four of the eight or nine dance items that were put up for the programme. Inas, my elder daughter, was more or less preoccupied with her college activities and also, perhaps, did not want to be an active participant this year.

In the event, the programme was very well organised. They even had a professional conductor of the entire programme, a sort of Emcee by the name of Akash. He was quite good.

There was a delightful presentation of a children's fancy dress competition to start the show. The best-dressed children were also the ones with the best performance: to wit, both the daughters of Dr. Abdul Bashir and Archana Khan. While his elder daughter depicted the attire in different seasons, the younger one showed off the various things associated with clouds. They won the events in the two age-categories and got prizes from the judges, viz. Rukhsana Bhombal (m/o Ayesha Bhombal) and Durriya, another member).

This was followed by a Fashion Show, in which about 8 "models" participated, viz. Hannah, Akshay, Aamir, Zahabiya, Nirav, Rahul, Priyanka and Rahul. Hannah wore a distinctive hair-style and her mother's black saree which suited her to a T. The models did many ramp-walks, sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs, occasionally in a group of four, or three, and finally, a row of 8, turning back into 4 pairs as they exited the stage to a loud applause.

The emcee then called the oldest guests and made them walk the walk in a parody show called the "Senior Citizen's Fashion Show", in which my dad, who had come as my guest, also participated. One lady (from 610/C) and my dad won "prizes" - a genuine surprise!

This was then followed by a slew of dance recitals, most of them, nay, all of them, based on the beat of new Hindi movie songs. Hannah participated in many of these, and several people from the audience appreciated her lissome body and beautiful and graceful dancing in their conversations with me. All the dances (barring just a few) were choreographed by Tasneem Karmalawala; she also choreographed the amazing fashion show.

I had to leave for about an hour to attend to patients at the clinic, but was back in time to partake of the delicious food that the organisers had arranged. There were five or six snacks stalls, with sada dosa, bhelpuri/sevpuri, pani puri, sandwiches, popcorn, etc. and dinner in the form of Schezwan Veg. fried rice and Hakka Veg Noodles with Veg. Manchurian balls with gravy.

All of us had hearty meals. The party closed at about mid-night, with some guests and members dancing away into the night with all the children, who danced like there was no tomorrow.

All in all, a very enjoyable evening was had by all.

Mumbai Terror Attacks: What next will be most effective as a deterrant?

2008-12-22T13:21:00.013+05:30

Expressions of sympathy, hanging of lists of names of victims, lighting candles, going on peace marches with placards in hand ... all these are activities to foster unity amongst the members of a fractured community that is a microcosm of India. Mumbai has suffered at the hands of terrorists repeatedly, with the 1993 blasts, the 2006 train blasts and the current terror attacks at the top of a huge list. Each time, Mumbai's denizens have gone back to their routines pretty fast ... and each time, they have faced terror again, after a hiatus of months.

In such a climate, it becomes imperative to ask what we can do to prevent such an occurrence for ever? Look at the U.S. of A and the United Kingdom; they were both brutalised with the twin tower tragedy in the former and the train attacks in the latter: yet, they both have never had a further attack on their soil. Why do you think this happened?

I think the sole reason was their serious attitude and actionable activities.

Somehow, Indians lack that ability to coalesce with each other and think like a breathing, thriving, multi-brain organism.Our responses have wither been driven by rampant political drama (such as the resignations of various central and state ministers) or acts of tokenism (such as the ones I listed earlier)). The real truth is that even if there had been cohesion between people, there would have been no forward-looking dynamic action; just the acts of individuals, groups of individuals and the NGO's.

That, my friends, is the reason why I have so much anger and passion burning inside me. I participated in all the tokenist activities, but I feel as though I could have done more, much more.

How about joining self-defence classes? Joining an NGO? Giving some cash or material to recognised charities? Booking a table at one of the 5-star hotels -Taj or Trident? Visiting some of the victims' families and imparting some courage and forebearance? Filing PIL's in courts against inactive politicians and overzealous security setups? I am sure readers will think of many other things besides what I have listed.

If you do even one small thing, but do it with heart and with full feeling, it will not have been a waste.

In the end, we have to all look inside our own selves and determine what distance we are willing to travel to make that crucial difference in the lives of others, and ultimately, in ours too. Redemption of our souls will only occur when we are satisfied with what we have done. Empty actions - that is actions devoid of inner feeling - will be useless.

Choosing the Right Career

2008-12-15T13:37:00.004+05:30

I have seen the ridiculous matter of my elder daughter (Inas) slogging away, reading for the Common Entrance Test (CET) to gain entrance in a Medical College, and then, changing her mind a few weeks before the exam and finally, once the results were in, she switched over to a three-year course in Hospitality Sector (hotel management, catering and tourism). Initially, my wife and some other near and dear ones protested against her this decision, but later on, things became all right. Inas has begun to well and truly like the new line of studies. Doing projects, going for "waitings" - i.e. going to wedding and other functions where her friends and she wait at buffets to serve the guests - and earning money at each of the waitings - is something that she has begun to not just adjust with, but also enjoy.

Having said that, let me also say why she shifted away from a career in medicine: the following things repulsed her: a long duration of studies, which can stretch to 8-10 years if one does even basic post-graduation; or, to 11-12 years if one does Masters in a super-speciality; the prospect of very heavy books and very serious studies; the very idea of leaving social duties and being available to one's patients for emergencies at all hours of the day (or night); the requirement to stay in student hostels for 6 months per year or more; and finally, the fact that one doesn't earn anything till the entire course is over and internship has commenced (thus, after 5-6 years of joining). In addition, if one studies in Maharashtra, one has to compulsarily serve a rural area for one year after completing the internship, or pay a penalty of Rs. 10 lacs to the government in lieu of the same.

I think most of the objections outlined above have strong logic, so I respected her decision and decided to show her the green signal to join the hospitality course. Today, she goes for waitings about once a week and has begun to earn money that she can use for out-of-pocket expenses or fun, or even save for a rainy day.

A cousin, a doctor and a gentleman is no more: Dr. Altaf Savliwala

2008-12-08T18:35:00.007+05:30

A dear colleague of mine, Dr. Altaf Savliwala, son of Safakathusein and Sofi S. Savliwala, a Pediatrician by profession, and a soft-spoken and gentle human being, died on Sunday, 8/12/2008 in the early hours of the morning due to a massive heart attack. I came to know him about 36 years ago, when I was but a boy of 13. I still remember his soft-spoken nature and kindliness. When a particularly nasty illness struck me at the age of 15, he was studying to be a doctor at the Seth G.S. Medical College and the K.E.M. Hospital. It was he who got me evaluated by his boss (Dr. P.D. Anjaria), and looked after all my needs over the next several visits to the hospital.

Eventually, I was to study medicine and pediatrics in the same medical institutes and pass out in 1986. Over the years, I came to know more and more that he was a gem of a person. Never one to show anger publicly (or privately to me or anyone not of his immediate family) or create any form of friction between him and others, Altaf was the epitome of geniality, cordialness and humility.

I salute this kind soul who Allah called to His presence rather prematurely and early. He was only 54, physically trim, and healthier than most middle-aged people I know; also, he was a calm and careful person, and it seems cruel that Allah should snatch him from among us with the first cardiac arrest of his life.

Altaf left behind his wife Fatema, daughters Tasneem and Zahara and grand-daughter Umme-Hani (born of Tasneem and her husband Ali-Asgar).

May his soul rest in Peace.

Mufaddal adds this:

In continuation to Dr. Taher's views, Dr. Altaf's death has left a deep void in my life. Altaf was a thorough gentleman, well matured, cool and composed person. I remember all the good days that I had the pleasure of spending with him during my visits to Lonavala.

Fate has dealt us a very hard and a nasty blow and snatched away from us a great human being. I pray that his soul rests in Peace and God give strength to Fatema, Tasneem and Zahra to cope up with this tragedy.

A Brutal Assault III

2008-12-06T21:16:00.001+05:30

Three more days have passed since the paramilitary forces such as the National Security Guards (NSG) finally took control of one structure after the other after a struggle that lasted for nearly 60 hours. The Oberoi and Trident Hotels are not as damaged as the Taj, which took the maximum damage; Nariman Building, which, it turns out, was the command center of the terrorists and the place from where their leader watched TV news and guided his "men" on how to move and where to attack, is almost completely damaged and in danger of falling.

At the end of all this, and the investigations that are going on, the National Home Minister (similar to the Minister of Home Security in the U.S.) has resigned; so has the state-home minister. The state's chief minister has also resigned on the 3rd of December evening. People, however, believe that resignations are nothing but political ploys to defuse the peoples' anger, and as such, serve only as "palliative changes" and not as real change.

News culled from various sources have thrown out many shocking details of the terror attack: the technology used by the terrorists was state of the art, their shooting skills, superb, their strategising, totally geared to cause maximum damage, and their planning, very, very detailed. They had even created their own escape routes, should they succeed in hoodwinking the security forces. They were to return to Karachi in Pakistan - once again, by sea. Their use of advanced AK 47 machine guns, satellite phones, grenade launchers, credit and debit cards from Indian banks, Indian SIM mobile phone cards, motorised rafts, false maritime licences, etc. point to an amazing level of planning, and correspondlingly, an amazing lack of intelligence by Indian authorities. It has become evident that their boat was challenged in the Mumbai waters by the Coast Guard, but they were let off once they showed the licences, which were forged = professionally.

On the eve of the 3rd of December, more than a lakh people, angered at the lack of proper security and the insensitiveness of the politician-class, lit candles and gathered en masse at the Gateway of India, just adjacent to the cordoned-off Taj Mahal Palace and Tower. Some of the men and women were celebrities, and had come to the spot because they felt passionately about the issue, but the vast majority were common Mumbaikars who were there to show the victims' families that they were with them at this hour of personal grief and tragedy; they wanted to display that they were Indians first; they wanted to tell off the politicians and bureaucrats who had failed the nation; and finally, they wanted to unite with each other and rise above the parochialism of caste and class. I was there, too, and felt a sense of terrible loss but also a sense of unity and pride in the spirit of Mumbaikars, who had finally had enough and wanted firm and decisive corrective action by the government.

As I write this on the eve of the fourth, I wish to say that two more bombs have been found, containing the lethal RDX, at two different locations visited by the terrorists on the night of the 26th, on two different days - yesterday and today. These bombs remained unexploded, probably due to some error, or else, they would have caused still more deaths and tragedy.

More than 180 dead ... and the nation continues to mourn. Mumbai is back to normal, but it is not the normal normal that I have seen earlier. People are subdued, they are morose, not joking or enjoying life as usual. The wounds of the dastardly attacks will take a long time to heal, and the scars may never fade from the memory of the present generation of Mumbaikars. Questions still remain to be answered, but that is another story.

A Brutal Assault II

2008-11-30T18:18:00.005+05:30

It will be a long time before Mumbaikars will recover, but their hard questions will not stop.

In my earlier article, I had hinted that I would tell you about how exactly the events unfolded in Mumbai as the terrorists went about destroying the secular fabric of an already fragile metropolitan city with bomb blasts, religious rhetoric and possibly the worst Hindu-Muslim riots to ever occur in free India as a part of its shameful but chequered history.

However, I am quite sure almost all readers already know how the events occurred. It all started with an assault at the C.S.T. railway station on the night of 26^th November. Within an hour, it had moved to Cama and Albless Hospital, situated just behind the HQ of the Brihanmumbai Mahanagarpalika (the Municipal Corporation building); and then, after the three prominent policemen lost their lives – in a small lane just behind the Cama Hospital, the chief of the anti-terrorist squad Hemant Karkare, encounter specialist Vijay Salaskar and ACP Ashok Kamte, the terrorists escaped in a stolen police jeep past Metro cinema and towards Chowpatty.

At this point, I have learnt that initially, the Mumbai police force, including the three policemen who laid down their lives (see above), did not realize that they were up against people who had not only the technical knowhow to carry out a sophisticated operation of terror or the arms and the ammunition to fulfill their ambitions of bringing a city – and indeed, a nation, to its knees, but also that they were completely emotionless and cruel to the point of being devoid of any feelings: they went about the act of killing these decorated officers with complete insouciance and no regard for their status or rank. This very fact should have, and probably did, alert the intelligentsia among the police, the strategic forces and others, that they had a big cherry on their hands and it would be some time before they could swallow and digest it.

The terrorists then probably proceeded to their three target buildings, and planted bombs in the taxis that left them at their destinations. These bombs exploded at various locations all over Mumbai, depending on where the cabs went after leaving them; thus, one cab exploded near Dockyard road station, one at distant Vile Parle, and one near Napean Sea Road: all bombs probably activated by remote mobile-phone triggered detonators. These taxi blasts served to terrorise the entire city, and at the same time, threw red herrings about what the terrorists were up to.

The action then shifted to the three buildings – not buildings all, because two of them are five star hotels and more than that – they are landmarks of Mumbai. The Taj Palace Hotel, with over 400 rooms – located at the Gateway of India and the Trident and Oberoi hotels, located at the prestigious Nariman Point. In addition, they also targeted a non-descript building going by the name of Nariman Building – located just inside the main Shahid Bhagatsingh Road and ahead of the Colaba Market. This building is a community center for a certain sect of Jews, and also houses many Jewish families in it.

I want to ask here why they chose only these three structures and none other. I think that they realized that the two hotels would be mostly populated by foreign tourists and the third building already had Jews, traditional enemies of Moslems worldwide. Once they were inside these buildings, the next stage in their act of terror happened.

It is believed by the police that at the Taj, they had two staff from the house-keeping department, who let some of their associates in with the weapons and other things a week or two ahead of their D-day. Thus, the terrorists already had the master keys to the various sections of the hotel, the map of the hotel, and much necessary inside information about the “lie of the land” as it were. They were able to stay inside the hotel as guests, planning every single step of their coming assault. They ate, slept and played out full rehearsals of the entire plan a full week ahead!

I am pretty certain that they staked out the Oberoi in much the same way, and also visited Nariman Building and strategized everything there as well. Thus, when the actual action began, they went in with full knowledge of what they would be doing over the next few days – or more, depending on how everything panned out.

After listening to the news all over on TV and reading articles and news items, my reckoning is that Mumbai actually escaped a lot of damage only because of three reasons:

a) The terrorists lost a raft at mid-sea with hundreds of explosives and ammunition. They reached Mumbai by rafts in a boat from Karachi via Porbunder (although the last point has not yet been substantiated and the first point has been denied strongly by the Pakistani Government).

b) The NSG commandos were there quite early in action, although they still took 4 hours to reach from Delhi to Mumbai

c) The attacks began at night – or else there would have been tremendous damage at CST and in the hospitals.

It seems that the terrorists had planned on eliminating 5000 people; in the event, a loss that is much lesser in numbers is more than “compensated” by the brutal manner in which the killings took place: over 50 dead as they waited in the concourse of the railway station; entire families who were waiting to travel to their home-town were eliminated; men, women and children killed in cold blood as they sat eating in the restaurant in the Trident; employees of the hotel killed in their working places – the kitchens, the restaurants and the service areas of the Taj; and, finally, people killed on the roads of Mumbai, as the terrorists took to them en route to their own destinations.

Above all, the entire operation was carried out by the terrorists with an expertise and proficiency hitherto unseen in terrorist actions in our country and outside. Flying two planes (or four) recklessly through buildings needs average accuracy; planting bombs in busy marketplaces needs planning, but little accuracy; however, commandeering three entire buildings and mocking the hundreds of security forces with explosives while being just 3-4 in number speaks of astonishing planning and deadly accuracy. Thus, it would be fair to say that modern, hi-tech terrorism has finally arrived in India. And to expect our untrained policemen or home-guards to counter these people is sheer stupidity.

In the event, the successful termination of the attack was only thanks to the intervention of the black cat commandos and the factors already discussed above.

Where do we go from here? What does the government need to do to prevent such dastardly acts in future? I will discuss this in the last part of my article.

A Brutal Assault I

2008-11-30T18:09:00.004+05:30

Yes, I am a Mumbaikar. I live a normal, non-descript life in a small locality in South Mumbai. I have dreams and aspirations, successes and failures, problems and difficulties just like all you readers out there. However, what I really want as a citizen of the World's most populous democracy is to be allowed to live my small, non-descript and non-lime lighted life SAFELY and in PEACE.

After all, who doesn't? Even the rich and the famous want the same things. I am, in that respect at least, as ambitious or non-ambitious as they are, or the beggar on the street is - which, thankfully, I am not. We all want to live peacefully as we journey through life, don't we? And who is to ensure that we do so? The elected representatives of the country, state, city and locality, of course.

While I am not equipped to understand which aspects of security are "central" matters, which "state" matters and which are within the ambit of the "local municipality", I am certainly sure that all of them failed to stop the three nights and two days of terror that hit Mumbai starting at or around 9:30 p.m. on the 26th of November, 2008.

I must say this at the outset: this is solely my own work, inspired both, by the hours of sitting glued in front of the TV and watching the news channels nearly 12-16 hours a day, and by the reactions of my family and me, as we went about trying to preserve a modicum of "normalcy" in our life.

I was returning from my clinical practice when I saw a few bullet-proof jacketed policemen on the road near J.J. Hospital. Something did not seem right, and when I reached home, I learnt from a family member that there had been firing near C.S.T. railway station. You can then imagine how the next 60-70 hours must have passed. Immediately, I was there before the TV, switching on one of the news channels, and I saw the beginning moments of what became, for me and for millions of others, the worst three nights and two days of my life.

Let me hasten to say that I haven't lost any family member, or property, or had any personal assault upon my physical being, but my mind and heart have been rendered asunder by the devilish actions of the dozen or more individuals who carried out the most fiendish plan almost to perfection. Even their death must have been planned, since they were "fidayeen" who were prepared to die for what they believed was a just cause.

And what did they want? Money? Fame? Perhaps fame, but definitely not money, since they sent an email that asked the government of India to "stop atrocities" and "release all Moslems" from their grasps within jails or incarceration. They wanted the erstwhile Moslem states of India (read Kashmir, Hyderabad etc.) to be released from the sovereignty of India.

And above all, they espoused the cause of jehad.

Is this the right way to conduct jehad? I think no one will disagree with me when we say that terrorists are totally misguided about what they think should be the right form of jehad. Moslem scholars all over the world have denounced terrorism as a form of righteous jehad and condemned those who would choose physical violence as the correct way to influence the world and to change the ways of non-Moslems. I ask you: can a parent forcefully control his/her offspring? Then how can terrorists hope to seek governments to submit to their nefarious suggestions by use of brutal force?

And herein lies the paradox of the tragedy that played out in the past 72 hours in Mumbai. The terrorists came via the marine route with arms, ammunitions and explosives that were so huge in quantity that they could have possibly completely demolished all the three structures that they attacked: Hotel Taj Palace, Hotel Trident and Oberoi (which are actually two separate buildings adjacent to each other at Nariman Point) and the Nariman Building at Colaba. Their avowed plan was to do precisely that: they wanted to injure India so badly that it would never recover economically, politically, psychologically or any other way. They wanted to do all that, and also demoralize every citizen of India. And, additionally, by hitting out at 5-star hotels, they wanted to hurt Americans, Israelis, and citizens from all over the world who had come to India to enjoy its wonderful hospitality.

And, I daresay, they wanted to cock a snoot at the mighty United States of America and show them what they could do – when they wanted, with whomever they wanted.

In my next entry, along with a discussion of how the actual terror played out, I am going to ask several questions to the authorities who have failed utterly. We are alive and the tragedy has passed only because of the valour and bravery of the armed forces, some of whom gave their lives to eliminate the terrorists.

Night of Terror ... and not yet over: Mumbai 11/26

2008-11-27T14:53:00.003+05:30

Most readers would be aware of how terrorists have held Mumbai hostage since 9:30 p.m. on the 26th of November ... and right up to now ... as they continue to shoot and terrorise innocent people at more than one location ...I am too shocked to write coherently for now, but suffice to say that this is the worst act of terrorism for India ... ever.

Writing this on the evening of the 27th: the siege at Taj and Oberoi (Trident) hotels and at Nariman House continues. So far, over 100 people have died, including 6 foreigners and 14 policemen (which includes 3 decorated policemen - Chief of ATS Hemant Karkare, DIG of ATS Kamte and Police Inspector Vijay Salaskar). At the time of writing this, I have learnt that these are terrorists who came by boat from Porbunder in Gujarat. They have been hoarding large numbers of AK 47 machine guns and hand grenades for over 2-3 weeks inside the two hotels. When the attacks started, they created many areas of confusion by having bombs explode inside taxis in places as far off as Vile Parle, Dockyard Road, Colaba Market, Napean Sea road etc. This was then followed by attacks at the CST railway station, and then, the three locations that I have listed at the beginning of this paragraph.

I was up, watching TV, till 3.00 a.m. Then, I have cued in again at about 7 a.m. Through the night, shooting, fires and throwing of grenades have continued in and around Taj Palace, Hotel Trident and Nariman Building. There were over 400 people inside the Taj, but they have mostly all been removed to safety by the time I write this (it is 3.00 p.m. GMT at present). At the Trident, there are still over a 100 people trapped inside their rooms. At Nariman Building, there is a family of 7 Israelis - which stay inside. There are 3-4 terrorists inside Taj, 2-3 inside the Trident and over 6-9 of them in the Israeli-occupied building. 5 terrorists have been shot dead since yesterday night and over 11 have been arrested. More later ...

Professional chit-chat

2008-11-19T14:09:00.003+05:30

If you belong to the medical profession, you are sure to identify with much of what I write in this entry. If not, it may be a little difficult to identify with and empathise with the contents of this entry, but, I assure you, whatever I write here is the truth.

Medical practice is cyclical, and it can sway from the lowest rung of a success ladder to the highest one, sometimes in a matter of days. As climatic changes can cause illness or cause a break-out of "good health", I have had alternate days of a full waiting room and a completely empty one, with just medical representatives (the bag-toting pharma-representatives) awaiting their turn to see me and to promote their company's products. The trend of the practice outside can be easily calculated from the number of reps. who are waiting to see me! On empty days, they finish their "calls" faster, and are therefore promptly at my clinic in droves. On the busy days, they are not to be seen as they cool their heels in the waiting rooms of the other doctors whom they also meet.

Having said that, let me also hasten to add that over an entire month, the things get balanced out and average incomes are reached, so there is no panic or anxiety.

Down with the 'flu

2008-11-17T20:54:00.002+05:30

I suppose you can call this a quickie entry, but I am down with flu-like symptoms today ... this, I think is my second attack of the flu in as many months. This time, it started with a slight tickling sensation in the nose, then on to a lot of powerful, earth-shaking sneezing, then the slight irritation in the back of the throat, and by the end of day 1, a slight cough. Over the night, the cough worsened - so much so that I started getting bouts of wracking cough that caused my head to swim with anoxia (lack of oxygen) for a few seconds. Now, it is the end of day 2; the cough looks and feels better ... but let's see what happens next. So far, I have not taken any medicine other than paracetamol and a cough syrup that goes by the name of Zedex. I chose that since it has no sedating anti-histamines. It comes from the house of Wockhardt.

Hoping to have a better Tuesday as compared to my miserable Monday!

Preferred Authorship on Writing.com

2008-11-15T21:23:00.003+05:30

Sometime in the first week of November this year ... i.e. just over 7-8 days ago, the staff at Writing.com made me, after 6 years of being on the site, a preferred author. This means a lot to me, as this enables me to go even higher in the future. The higher levels are those of moderator, senior moderator, and finally, staff ... but the last is something I don't intend taking up, and also, I am unlikely to be offered that post as I am not a resident of the U.S.

The immediate announcement came with a mail in my G-Mail inbox; I was, naturally, elated to see that my portfolio had turned from a black one to a sunny yellow! Yippee, I said, and immediately went into the WDC site (that, to my readers, is Writing Dot Com). There was a forum meant for Preferred authors and above, where I duly went and declared to the world of WDC pref authors and mods that I had now become a part of their circle. I received many congratulations and accolades ... for which I thanked them repeatedly!

Now, this is no longer a novelty. If you want to see my writing, please do visit this page on the site or this, much more clean link.

Tell me what you think of my writing once you have read some of the stuff that is displayed. If you find the site overwhelming, click on "Table of Contents" just below the portfolio image and browse through the items at leisure.

Are there any items I would like you to really, really read? Of course! If you want to cut through the clutter and see my best work, just open the first folder called "My Awarded Items" and read whatever you fancy within that folder. My personal recommendations for this: "Endings and Beginnings", "With a Cherry on the Top" and "Gandhi: The Naked Fakir".

That's it for now.

Hannah's misaaq

2008-11-12T16:20:00.004+05:30

To all those readers who are not able to understand that word in the title, a misaaq is an initiation of a person into the fold of adulthood; it is similar to the "janoi"or the thread ceremony of Brahmins; something similar to this exists in some form or the other in almost all faiths. I am reminded of my own misaaq which was performed when I was but 15 years old. A misaaq is performed by a priest upon a teenager who is ready to take on his/her own responsibilities and duties as a Muslim. Before the misaaq, the person is a child, and his/her caretakers are responsible for him/her and his/her deed (s). Once the person has been misaaq-i-fied,the responsibilities are his/her alone. He/she pays for his/her own sins and earns grace for his/her kind acts before the Almighty.

During the ceremony, which takes about 45-60 minutes, the priest goes over the history of Islam, explaining to the candidate the various events that shaped the religion and the various dates that defined it. He talks about the pillars of Islam, explains the meaning of the "kaleima" (There is but One God and His name is Allah and Mohammed is His Prophet). He goes on to tell about how our own sect of the Shias separated from the Sunnis, how Bohraism came to be, and finally informs the candidate about the Syedna - our Head of Religion. He asks the candidate to swear allegiance upon Islam and its rites and responsibilities, upon the Syedna and asks him/her to perform all the religious duties regularly.In a way, this ceremony is quite rigid, because no one who has undergone the misaaq can remain completely pure and only religious. The World has its own way of intruding into the privacy and purity of one's religious obligations and of twisting morals of an individual completely.

This, in fact, is something that the priest himself must surely be aware of, since they charge a not-so-insignificant sum of almost 4000 INR to do the job.

After the misaaq, my daughter Hannah (now renamed Habibah) went to school and attended it for the half day that remained to be completed. I plan to attach some pictures of the event later.

Back to gymming

2008-11-03T13:48:00.002+05:30

After a gap of over 5 months, I started my Gym routine again from the first of November 2008. As the gap has been rather long, I did only 40-50 minutes of moderate intensity cardio activity only. On Sunday, I could not go, and on Monday, that is, today, I did over 65 minutes ... 45 on the treadmill and 20 minutes on floor exercises, including abs.

I have just over 2 months to go before my annual membership at Talwalkar's expires, and I hope to lose at least 3-4 kg before that is over. I weigh 81.7 kg at the start of this stint of gymming. My target is 78 kg by the 15th of January 2009.

Wish me luck!

Bigg Boss

2008-10-14T21:12:00.002+05:30

The great national show that is airing on Colors TV channel since the past eight weeks is actually in its second season. Based on Endemol's international format "Big Brother", this show was last seen on Sony TV in 2007 when the winner at the end of three months was Rahul Roy (Rahul, who? did you say?). This time, we have had new participants, and among those who got evicted in the past eight weeks were a politician (Sanjay Nirupam), a dancer (Sambhavna), a two-bit actor (Rakhi V), a seasoned actress (Ketaki Dave), a British actor (Jane Goody - who had to leave in the second week itself after a medical report on her turned out to reveal that she has cervical cancer), a gangster's moll (Monica Bedi - who's got back in as a wild card re-entry), a starlet (Payal Rohatgi) and a few others, whose names I can't remember at the moment.

Those who are still in include Raja (a small-time actor), Rahul Mahajan (the BJP fellow's son), Ehsan Qureshi (the comedy-ghazal-singer-actor), Debojit (a singer), Asutosh (an actor), Zulfi (a model), Diana Hayden (a model-actor) and Monica Bedi (re-entrant).

All through, the show provided us viewers (or, should I say, voyuers) a lot of entertainment as the participants went around their daily/weekly tasks, fought, fought even more, bitched, gossipped and romanced (Rahul M with Monica, then Payal, and again, now, Monica). Shilpa Shetty, the last season's winner on the Big Brother show in the U.K. in 2007, is the Friday night hostess who conducts the eviction episode. She is good, but not as good as the guy we had last year - viz. Arshad Warsi. Even so, the show is quite engrossing, and I find myself rushing home every weeknight to catch it as it airs around 10 p.m.

Everyone's favourite this year seems to be Rahul, but I think Debojit and Ehsan are the dark horses to watch out. Among the girls who are still in the fray, I don't have much hopes for Diana, but Monica just might ride on the public's sympathy vote.

Are any of my readers watching this show? I would love to have your comments on this show. What did you like? Hate? Who is/are your favourite(s)? Do you regularly send SMS's or vote to keep people in?

A month and some days later

2008-10-06T17:06:00.002+05:30

Today, as I was browsing a newspaper item, I came across "advice on how to make your blog be noticed". The author of this was a blogger who was recently approached by Penguin India to make a book out of her blog. She says that one must make the blog readable and accurate in terms of grammar etc., but most of all, the blog must look and read like an honest outpouring of the thoughts of the writer.

I was sitting there and wondering what my blog would look like if I did that! Ha ha. I am sure Penguin India (or any other publisher for that matter) would turn red in the face to read the absolutely honest stuff that I would write if I were to go in that direction!

So, what prevented me from blogging this last 35 days? Do you want a flowery answer or the one that shoots straight from the hip? The first option is not workable, actually, since I am one of those "honesty" wins type of guy. So here is the factual answer: I did not blog because I never got the proper time or the motivation to do so. Fasting leeched a lot of my imagination and creativity, and that is a very honest appraisal. Prayers, and finding time to prepare the special iftaar dishes also consumed a lot of time. Finally, boredom and ennui also sort of drained me of motivation and vigour.

The result: not a single post in Ramadan. And for five days afterward too! However, here I am, back to write some words of wisdom and foolishness - with the sole purpose of entertaining you, the reader. Welcome back to the blog, and enjoy.

Ramadan has started

2008-09-01T18:03:00.004+05:30

Yes, it has. For our community, the "Dawoodi Bohras", Ramadan started on the 31st of August 2008. Today, as I write this, we are into the second of 30 days of fasting, religiosity and shunning of vices like lying, cheating, robbing, etc. Ramadan is observed as a month of repentance and doing deeds that will help in redeeming ourselves in the 'after-life". This includes fasting, the reading of the Holy Quran, the praying of the Salaat and the giving of "zakaat", the dispersion of 1/40th of one's net worth in charities. In addition, Muslims are encouraged to visit Mecca for the performance of "umrah" (intent to do Haj) during Ramadan. My intentions being noble, I could not complete both my first and second fasts on account of symptoms of hypoglycemia - low blood sugar - that I developed towards the afternoon on both the days. I have sought advice on this and have been told to hold back a little on my diabetes pills from tomorrow. This, then, is what I am planning to do.

The monsoon surge in professional work

2008-08-26T19:21:00.002+05:30

One of the things that is unique about medical practice in India and similar tropical countries is the surge in illnesses that occurs around the time of the monsoon. This season is marked by floods, a general decline in the hygiene status of cities and metropolitan agglomerates, slush, a multiplication of the population of house-flies and mosquitoes, the ubiquitous vectors of deadly diseases such as malaria, typhoid, gastroenteritis, etc, a rise in humidity that brings in illnesses like acute attacks of asthma and croup, crowding and gathering of masses (e.g. under awnings and rain-shelters during an unexpected bout of rain), and several other factors that cause a rise in illnesses, hospitalisations, and the like.

The indirect spin-off of this is that our professional work rises too: there is a spurt in the numbers of patients visiting the clinic, a rise in patients who get hospitalised, a rise in home-visits and a sudden increase in the number of patients who call on our mobile phones for advice that is, seemingly, for problems that are so small that they do not merit a visit to the doctor - e.g. ear pain, a rash on the skin, a slight runny nose, a stickiness of the eyes, a mild cough and so on.

While advanced economies like the U.S., Europe and so on have doctors who will almost never directly take patient calls, and chemists who will never bypass doctors and never give medicines unless the patient hands them a valid prescription or the doctor faxes him one), in countries like India, this is generally not the case! This means that doctors never get paid and cannot raise bills for a telephonic consultation, patients can buy medicines from the chemist on a friend's recommendation or by showing a past prescription of a doctor, or by simply asking the chemist for, say, "Amoxil" or "Tavegyl". This skews the advantage towards the patients, and as chemists still get their pound of flesh, and the manufacturer is also not hurt financially, it is the doctor alone who gets cheated out of his rightful income.

This, dear reader, is the sad but true account of medical practice in India.

Now then, having said that, as India is home to more than a billion souls, I am certainly not cribbing that doctors do not earn well; it's just that a lot of practice gets siphoned off in the above manner.

Okay, last para: now that the monsoon has all but receded, the inflow of patients has reduced. This has enabled me to do other things, like, for example, writing this loooooong entry in my blog!