Model Anesthetist

Anesthesia  as a profession is highly skilled and its practitioners need not only to be adept in their hands they need to be stress free during emergencies for mostly their job is one  continuous series of crisis situations ,
 Like firemen for  society in general for doctors the anesthetist is their firemen as in any code blue situation  the anesthetist is to be around .
Of course he has his spare moments specially during those long safe surgeries as the surgeon snicks and stitches the anesthetist is into his dream world but always alert to his monitors .

Amith my friend is a great anesthetist but this is not the only interesting thing about him he is also a car enthusiast ,
Even in his childhood he would meticulously polish the fiat car of his dad to a fine gleam
those were his Goan childhood days later with medical admission and a long 6 years of becoming a doctor and a post graduation in anesthesia he hardly had time for any hobbies but he did start his collections then
he collected a radiologist as his life partner..... early signs of a collection aficionado

It was while they were working in Kozhikode or Calicut in Kerala during a regular

jaunt to the Travel book shop Amith found small model cars  (Hot wheels )as he browsed around it fascinated him and he bought a couple never knowing it would spiral him into a endless quest for made to size model cars
He then thought of bigger ones and searched the net to find out a wholesale dealer who sold bigger models which were  more authentic ones .
At the same time he also found a small kit for building model planes .
Having read a lot of books on the world war II given to him by his mother a history professor
Amith knew every bit on the  second world war planes ,
he was much pleased with his first plane model as it looked good and with Google and Wikipedia to hi aid he soon became an expert slowly moving on the more difficult models ,

Amith collections of cars and planes he made grew into one and then two cupboards full by now Amith was a serious plane model builder and he specialized in second world war planes he built a couple of warships and tanks for a change ,
Today living and working in Brunei Amith can be seen in his pare time meticulously glueing pieces  of a plane and painting them painstakingly .
 Each and every small part of the model would be so authentic .

him a 



he would have a smile of satisfaction on his face as he completed one more
His family supports him a  lot , even his naughty 6 year old is careful with the models !

And whenever he tires  making planes or collecting cars Amth goes on a swing in his lovely burnished  model sports car making heads turn in Brunei

Reviews kakka muttai and magalkku

Some days like we are destined to get good food we also get good films !
Yesterday was one of those as I saw one very good Tamil film called Kakka Muttai ( crows egg) and a Malayalam film which had achieved distinction by getting national awards Magalkku .


Kakka Muttai is a film that delves into a grey world existing beyond the visual limits of most of us middle ,upper class , and rich people in the country ,
we do hear and see slums but hardly know the inner workings of one though at times their proximity is very close .
This movies plunges us into one and before we know we are absorbed into the juvenile antics of two brothers around 10 and 5 years of age whose father is jailed for a petty crime and the mother lives a hardy life in their miserable small tenement just  managing to meet the bare needs of her children and the aged mother of her husband .
the children too keep away from the riffraff of the slum and make some paltry income by collecting coal from the railway track and selling it ,they stop going to school as the mother cannot afford that anymore .
thus we are introduced into a very poor family in a very poor slum but a family which is reasonably happy .
The problem starts with the inauguration of a Pizza chain nearby and this material temptation turns the family upside down !
that too this news  is brought to their house from an advertisement in  the freebie TV that they got from the local party !
The feeble attempts of the grandma to make a pizza out of a Dosa is smirked by the children who know the difference though they had never tasted one
The movie is about how the boys who manage to make the money to buy the pizza are still insulted and slapped by the pizza shop manager as they are form the slum this news spreads as a video which unscrupulous local thugs ,politicians and the police all use to make a fast buck out of the pizza shop owner who wins in the end by getting the TV cameras capture a pizza feast for the two children where he feeds them himself
The film is unpretentious but at the same time has an excellent message .


Magalkku is a Malayalam film directed by Jeyaraj warrier with Shobana donning  the role of a mentally unbalanced woman who does not know her own child and a doctor in the  mental hospital Suresh Gopi  desperately tries to bring Shobana  back to sanity by  using the child , does not succeed but the child brings  fresh air to the center till the time the human rights champions come to know about it and removes the child to an orphanage !
As a  person who had been involved with special children and worked in a  destitute center as a volunteer doctor I could well rhyme with the scenes in the film
Ramesh Narayanans music and singing by  Hariharan and Manjari and Adnan sami has given it excellent songs and a couple of awards too ,of course the acting talents of Shobana needs no mention

Man and Nature

Man and Nature
Man and nature have a symbiotic relationship but when space is a criterion they intrude.
Even an innocuous tree which needs to be nurtured for our ozone issue turned out to be a monster by falling on our children recently .
Every two seconds somebody gets bitten by a dog in India and one dies every 30 minutes of dog bite and this is from a statistic 6 years back.
There are more than 25 billion dogs in India and more than 1.3 million in Kerala most of which are... stray dogs especially in urban areas which are attracted by food wastage in abundance.
In this situation we are nowhere near the goal of achieving the planned rabies frees Kerala by 2015.
Dog catching and killing was the answer before the Animal bite control rule of 2001 where only incurable infected dogs are allowed to be killed rest are to be caught neutered or sterilized and homed in same places .
The local bodies have the responsibility of doing this and of which they have been grossly negligent in fulfilling.
Dog catchers are a priced commodity these days
Possible solutions are
Domesticated dogs need strict licensing and compulsory vaccination
All pet owners should be made to pay a small dog tax which could be used to sterilize and control stray dogs
Public activists who make a hue and cry on dog culling should also have a look at the ways the dog menace in other countries were reduced ,instead of crying murder they should form kennel clubs to care for stray dogs .
Selective felling of branches which are dangerous instead of cutting trees totally should be the ecologically correct way to be adopted by local bodies,
one doubts how this will happen with these bodies who never even clear garbage efficiently
A concerted dialogue between various power brokers in this filed is needed to reduce human suffering because of nature intrusion.
Health Department should stock adequate post exposure vaccines and speciality clinics for animal bites .
Public should be made aware of things to be done after an unfortunate bite
Environmentalists and animal lovers should also have a rational view and need to consider human costs while preserving nature

Uttama Villain

Uttama Villain

 

Kamal Hassan is one of the versatile actors that Indian cinema has produced and can be included amongst the greats like Sanjeev kumar,Shivaji Ganesan ,Mohanlal and Naseerudhin shah ,of course Amitabh Bachan .

The sheer variety of the roles  Kamal has done over the years  is mind boggling .

 From the quintessential lover boy which I feel suits him the best ,to the innocent orphan he portrayed in Kalaathur kanamma where  captured the hearts of a million mothers to the sun glassed serial murderer in Sigappu rojakkal

As an agile dwarf clown  in his own Mera naam joker ,

how could one forget the middle aged matron with inviting eyes in Chachi 320 where he showed how a man could do a stag act with perfection ,or the raw emotions of a mafia don who loses his dearest in Nayakan , classical dances which he did with élan and grace unbecoming of a man are legends

 what about the many comedy roles he has done with so much ease ,

once upon a time he was the darling of many girls in Kerala as the most popular red lipped hero of those times .

Even today above 60 he can give a run to other younger heroes in romantic roles even with a paunch that threatens to peep out  these days .

Movies Maro cahritra the Telugu romantic taken by his mentor K Balachander are almost epics (Maro Charitra   later on became the hindi super hit Ek duje ke liye )

In Tollywood they say if one needs to ne knuckled in the head better to get it done by someone wearing a diamond ring and that mostly means to be groomed under Balachander because that is like a passport for success in the  tinsel world .

It’s not a myth but a truth .

look at all those talents he groomed from Nagesh the brilliant comedian and actor par excellence to Kamal and Rajini and countless others .

To Balachander amongst his protégés Kamal and Rajni are like his own children .

It’s this relationship that is the most significant in this film made before the legend left this world

It’s a rare few who can live a role with a mentor just as in life and kamal is lucky that he could .

“ Utamma villain “ is almost his story with him in it  being a superstar having a mundane family life with a fat wife of convenience and a lover in the form a doctor .

Very dramatically in the film kamal gets to know he has Glioblastoma multiform which is a brain tumor stage four and his days are numbered so he goes back to Balachander his mentor director who shouts at him at first telling he has done all he could with him and the present kamal is more of an icon than the one he knew but kamal goes on to say that he needs to do a film again directed by his mentor ,

finally he blurts out the truth and the scene that followed was one of the best I liked in the film ,

K Balachander is not only an excellent director he is such a wonderful actor probably all his love for Kamal was really expressed on the camera as he pours his grief on his protégé ,he agrees to do the movie and the film is about the film making and the story of the film that is made which is a period film where kamalhassan is a lucky guy thought to get the spell of life forever and the funny things that happen with a clowning Nasser as the king and seductive heroine who is after kamal and this gives them pleny of ops to romance on the screen and it all ends with a narasimha avatar to kill Hiranyan

strangely here the hero is Hiranyan and narasimhan the villain gets a sudden itch to go to the loo when its time for him to tear the villain to pieces and the villain becomes the king

This part was excellently choreographed by blending theru koothu ,theyyam and nangyar koothu and since it was kamal doing the dance with others there was no doubts about the professionalism in the dances

The film making was blended with real life scenes of kamals illness slowly getting known to his family ,the scene between him and his teen son after he knows the truth is one of the most outstanding ones ,the sheer emotion is portrayed so well by both .

An in the end Kamal bids farewell with a mischievous wink the hallmark of his in real life too

I liked the movie a lot

Please do see it

 

City Streets

Cities and at times some towns have a character to them ,they are liking living entities .
I am jotting down a few cities and towns i had been in India as well as abroad ,a very small collection but these places have left an indelible impression one me .

Al Ain
In Arabic it means The Eye
Al Ain is a known oasis town and a stop for caravans in the desert dunes in the past ,the village had a salubrious climate was green and had water supply ,there was a hot spring near mount Jebel Hafeet

 It was also the birthplace of Shiek Zayed the founder President and father of UAE ,He was very particular that Al Ain retain its heritage and hence Al Ain has no multistoreys like Dubai ,Shariah or AbuDhabi
I landed in Al Ain to work  in Tawam Hospital a very reputed tertiary state of art hospital run by the Johns Hopkins group on a hot Sunday morning in July 2006 ,
staying there for six years I fell in love with  the place and it was like a home to me
,I met many good friends there .
Al Ain is known as the garden city of the UAE as it has finely pruned gardens all over it has beautiful roundabouts and is spacious and expansive unlike other cities .

AbuDhabi


 The capital of UAE was just 160 km away from Al Ain and the fine highway had a speed limit of 160 km per hour and we used to go there often ,

Its a city of straight roads mostly leading to the lovely cornice and the grand Emirates palace ,the Shiek Zayed mosque in its marble splendorour and the several high rises are the hall marks of Abudhabi .
the city has an excellent trasport system of sophisticated buses and cabs ,lot of eateries and malls .

Beirut
the Paris of the east
The capital of Lebanon ,the very name conjures a medicterranean haven of pleasure and leisusre ,dusky eveningss behind frosted windows ,tall clinking glasses ,dark coffee in checkered tables on pavement ,smoke from lazy hookahs twisting itno the gabled roofs the distant mountains ,aquamarine sea ,drifting ships and nights young with dance and song .
History has marked its presence in every part of Beirut ,in the Roman Baaths ,the balbaak ruins ,Magnificient St Georges cathedral where the monks had once hidden its treasures in its basemnt during the long civil war .
The Solidaire is the restored historical area of the city ,its windows did show shattered glasses and bullet holes were seen in its walls preserved to show case the long civil wars ,today it is the epitome of fashion and its streets go gay with pop music group live TV recordings and restatrants of all hues .
Beirut was big but one could make a walk through maor areas from the museum to Hamra street which was like Bengalurus Brigade road and the sea lapped corniche ,
i stayed in the centre of the city and my prestigous hotel looked at the spot where its illlustrious president Rafik Hariri was assasinated in 2005

Bangkok

Thailands capital welcomed us at Swarnabhoomi Airport with a huge tableau of the pallayi kadayal or churning of the mythical ocean and obtaining the nectar of heavens or Amruth ,one of Hinduisms important mythical tales ,shows how much importance Thailand a Buddhist country gives to its Hindu origins of Buddhism .

We entered out of the airport to a cloudy day ,the rainbow colored taxis added great colour ,Banghkok had many streets named after its kings Ramaa 1 ,Ramaa 2 Sukhumvit road and swarnabbhoomi Airport all pointed to its Hindu lineage ,more than nine kings of Thailand were named Rammaa .

Bangkok's prime attraction was the great Buddha temple with a huge reclining Buddha many statuettes of Golden Buddha's ,the pointing spires of the temple looked ethereal in the foggy rain that hampered our photographic attempts

there were a lot of malls one I remember particularly was the electronic mall where one could strike a good bargain for any electronic goods

Evening saw us in a cruise in the Chor payya river as it moved under several ornate bridges skirting the lit high-rises as sky trains thundered past and the hordes  of tuk tuks ,motorbikes colored cabs  raised a babble .

violence against doctors ..petition

The Recent spurt of attacks on Doctors and on hospitals and clinics is alarming.
If people start taking the law into their own hands and mobs start administering justice as they deem fit then it is a sorry state for a country like India.

It means anarchy has set in and this sorry state would spread to every field shortly.

The Medical community in India has been contributing its mite for the present health status of the country and its demoralization by such occurrences will reflect on this.

Every Physician needs safety for doing his work and it is the primary responsibility of the Government to protect him

The Medical Protection Act has been passed by many states expressively only for this purpose.

In spite of that the spate of recent attacks on doctors not only by damaging their property but by bodily injury is unacceptable in any civilized country.

Public anger and emotions may be the reasons given for such acts but if a mistake has been committed by any medical professional or hospital there are legal avenues to investigate the same and punish the guilty.

The present situation of mob inquisitions and violence is not befitting to our nation.

The Medical protection act has been passed by several states expressly for the purpose of protecting the physician and his clinic or hospital from violence

But We hardly have examples of guilty people who do this being punished under the medical protection act, if this has been done it would acted as a deterrent for such acts in the future .

The supreme court order that no doctor can refuse any patient in an emergency and has to offer first aid puts the onus on physicians to treat cases for which his center may not be equipped or he is not professionally skilled to handle (for example a defrillator may not be available in every clinic to treat a patient who may have a cardiac arrest and he may die in the clinic before he is referred to a tertiary care specialty center

 If any such mishap occurs in such cases again the doctor is considered to have committed negligence and many times has to face crowd anger and later legal consequences for negligence!.

Medical science accepts the possibility of unexpected complications for example a patient to whom an allergy test has been done for a particular drug as per guidelines can still encounter a fatal anaphylactic shock though rarely, this would still be considered as medical negligence though after expert opinion the doctor may come unscathed the damage to his reputation has already been done or he may have suffered violence from the relatives by then.

Quackery is carried on in our country with ease and the rules have been made flexible for cross specialty practice,

Health authorities close their eyes on such Practioners who are also considered as modern medical doctors and the crowd does not differentiate between them and qualified doctors, these ill trained quacks add to the negative image of the profession.

The quality of drugs prescribed in the country is not consistent as there are lax regulations and monitoring by Drug control authorities, the use of such drugs by any doctor can produce complications for which again he would be blamed

The media too instead of delivering facts in many instances succumb to sensationalism and induce crowd anger, they hardly make any effort to present the version from the physicians side ,they also d ignore the  achievements of the medical profession .

One has to remember that in such a vast country like India with such a huge population and great poverty reasonable and economic medical care both primary and tertiary has been possible only because of the unstinted efforts of this community ,today India is one of the most economic for medical care comparable to many countries

If there are genuine cases where doctors are negligent there are plenty of avenues wherein the affected public can raise their allegation, they can request an inquiry from the Grievance cell of local IMA branch, they can file a police case against the doctor or file a consumer grievance case where it would be investigated and due justice given,

We support this as it is a fair way to punish the guilty

But what is happening today is taking over of the law by any disgruntled crowd and bodily harm

and obstruction of work by a doctor

The state should not allow this to happen.

Anarchy cannot be encouraged

Hence we request the authorities to kindly address this sorry state of affairs

We demand justice from this unfair situation which is increasing day by day We insist that a fair hearing be given to any case of negligence and no doctor is subjected to humiliations before this is done We hope our pleas are heard by the concerned.

 

Strong Doctor

just to make things a bit light ,of course iam as angry as everyone here
take it in a light spirit we need to laugh too
With increasing violence on doctors i just thought i will take off on a comment written by a doctor in this forum .Dr Praful thanks

All doctors wear helmets and shatter proof face masks...
Bullet proof vests to be procured from Kevlar bought in concession by a Government subsidy
All furniture iv stands and lamp fixtures to be made of plastic
Marked changes in MBBS curriculum
Selection will be like for army and police recruitment height weight ability to fight back will be scrutinised
Base camp under commandos during internship is must
First year physical fitness and 8 pack training
Aamir khan will be roped in as national coach
Salman khan will be the dean of this dept he will teach drs to hit and run
Second year during anatomy special boxing traing with dead body punching and wrestling with specimens
Mulayam singh yadav will teach wrestling
Morning prayers to dara singh
Third year pharmaco therapeutics a special segment for how to treat doctors who are injured by thirr patients
Tamil actor Vijay will show how to reverse dislocated shoulders and hit the enemy telling iam waiting
By final year most doctors will be black belts with judo kung fu kalari and kolattam expertise
Rajnikanth will be roped in to teach juicy dialogues like
If i tell pay bill once you pay hundred times
Doctors will go on deputation in turns to mumbai bhais to learn how to throw back stones and play with knives like with a stethoscope
Voice training will be by Amrish puri oopps sorry cant have ghost lecturers
Doctors will go to kolkata to learn magic from pc sorcar to turn the missiles thrown at them into flowers to have the last laugh
Arvind Kejariwal will be honorary prof of anarchist methods
Supreme court lawyers will train drs in fourth year how to sleep on cases and take summer holidays
Finally if nothing works they will meet our PM .Modiji to learn how to be abroad 365 days in an year

See More

Kerala Rains

Kerala Rains ...nostalgia
June first is always a memorable day for Kerala ,
its when school reopens ,for a state with 100 % literacy that's an exiting day indeed .
though Iam a Keralite
 I studied in Madras but every year during this time I would be in Parappanangadi in Malappuram district in my ancestral house in Kerala and i would share the excitement of my cousins who studied there .
Our school would open only by June first week .
Days before the D day parents would make a beeline to the local textile shop to buy the uniform clothes give it for stitching
( the school mercifully allowed them to do so unlike these days where the school insists on a package deal ),the shopping spree would also include pencils pens geometry boxes school bags lunch boxes and above all umbrellas .
how could one exist without those as the famous Kerala monsoon would come by June first .
The sweltering torpid heat of April and May where ripe mangoes would fall from trees ,ponds would go dry ,and the grass give a burnt look ,pregnant ,jack fruits would be split open to gorge on their sweet insides ,the holidays would be languorous slow and lazy as it loomed long and we would mostly be on trees rather than on Terrafirma by mid May the heat would be sweltering and people would wrinkle their foreheads and squint their eyes to look at the horizon for clouds .
A few summer showers would only make matters worse as the heat rose from the ground but the number of trees gave a lot of shade too .
The timing of the monsoon in Kerala is really amazing .
One expects the south west monsoon to set in by may end from the southern tip of Kanyakumari and slowly weave its way through kollam ,Allepey Ernakulam and then to Calicut and then upwards to Goa , Mumbai and later across the country to race to west Bengal by July .
Alexander Fraser wrote an excellent travelogue called chasing the monsoon where he would just wait for the clouds before he rushes to the next place by train or bus for it to arrive and all the way upto Kolkata ! great travel writing indeed .
so by end of may the distant rumbles of thunders would be heard like the distant drumbeats of an advancing army ,
strong flashes of lightening and drenching short showers would leave us in a frenzy of happiness as we frolicked in the green pond
water snakes would peep from the weeds as exited as us with the arrival of rains
The birds would chirp happily and the old Namboothiri ladies would hurry home with their bamboo umbrellas covering their face and head as they returned from the temple .
Mostly every June first morning the school children in their new uniforms would reach their schools wet as those days they walked all the way about 4 to 5 km and rains never failed to baptize them
These days rains aren't so punctual they are inconsistent but by June 15th one can be sure Kerala can be seen only through a rainy specter and this would last till august
I would wave my cousins goodbye as the rains poured and the lightening flashed and quietly try to go out with an umbrella and my mother would yell at me to go in and start doing some work as schools are opening shortly
i love Kerala rains

Breakfast Tales

The Breakfast tales
 One day Morning I just  some time for a quickie breakfast as I had some work in Ripas hospital a little away from my house
 Rajahs was a well known Indian restaurant and it was close to Ripas
So I went there
but it  seemed closed so I strolled to the nearby lucky restaurant a Chinese one
I settled down for a cup of latte coffe which I liked and said no to the Dim sung cart and its delicacies
But the coffee brought was as dark as midnight ...
no Milk
well dont think they knew what was that !

I patiently explained to the very hospitable pair of waitresses who were really sincere in making the bespectacled mildly obese indian thats me have a hearty breakfast   that all I wanted was a good cuppa coffee with milk and sugar and not anything else
what with my south indian genes used to kumbakonam degree coffee which to some of you not knowing the lingo is the finest filter coffee made out of freshly ground and roasted coffee seeds and lathered with fine pure cows milk and sweetened by just the right pinch of white sugar
The Kumbakonam degree coffee would any day beat the Starbucks flat for its price and taste
 ( my opinion others may differ )
these days Kumbakonam coffee outlets are a craze in Tamilnadu highways ,one can settled down to sip into a blazingly hot coffee in a copper tumbler and one could cool it down and froth it by repeatedly puring it into a bigger vessel given alongwith
so as I dreamt of that i found nothing of the sort happened here
She went in and brought a jumbo cup of darker coffee with a thimble of ice cold milk
I patiently asked her for another cup poured 3/4of the turbid brew in front of me into another cup and poured the ice cold milk and drank the less than lukewarm concotion and paid my bill with a smile


I stepped down and walked into an open Rajahs and tucked into 2 steamed idlis and one vada with one cup of good coffee and felt very happy

Tasek Merimbun

Brunei Darussalam is a small country in the  big island of Borneo in  South China sea ,

tropical in landscape and equatorial in climate  .

it is a green nation .

the country is highly evolved in maintenance of ecological balance  and serves as a right example of how to preserve our greenery to others .

Huge swathes of undisturbed forests and national parks dot the nation with smaller towns and the cities ,the buildings are mostly tile roofed and melds well with the landscape ,

there is order and cleanliness and people are civic minded and disciplined .

It is rightly called the Abode of Peace

The major city  in Brunei is BandarSeri Begawan the capital

It has regions of shopping malls residential areas and offices interspersed with green belts ,even in the capital city there are hilly trekking areas like the Shah Bander and Tasek Lama ,there are well built gardens like the botanical gardens and the waterfront area which are tourists delights .

The other major town is Kuala Belait and Serria the oil towns of Brunei .

There are also national parks like Ulu Ulu reserve about which I had blogged earlier .

http://hariwrite.blogspot.com/2013/12/ulu-ulu.html

Muarah is a harbour town and a point of departure to Labuan in Malaysia and also to Kota Kinabalu by boats 

Tungku beach ,Jerudong beach and  and other beaches are also well maintained and safe .

I wanted to go to Tasik Merimbun about 70 Km from where I stayed and did last sunday

 Around 3pm I went there with my friend Dr James and his family .

It was cloudy and it was pouring by the time we reached the nearest town Tutong about 30 km away .

we were not very sure of the way and got a bit lost in Tutong where we had to turn left .

for information One needs to turn left after the first signal about 5  km away when a board showing Tanjong maya is seen 

One needs to follow this road till one reaches Lamunin about 13km 

We were told from Lamunin one could do a 1.5 km trek to reach a lovely waterfall which we did not attempt as we were not very sure of the way .

We turned right again in Lamunin and then went towards Tasek Merumbin another 10 to 12km away .the roads are good and signboards are clear too .

There are small shops on the way which can function as live GPS with very friendly people around too .

Tasek Merumbin has a butterfly park and trekking tracks ,there is a lovely lake with a rickety bridge leading to a s shaped island ,
we did not attempt to cross the bridge as it was looking very fragile and the lake itself was said to have crocodiles in it ,
there were a couple of boats parked but no one was around ,
fishing is also a great sport there as we did see a few youngsters with a fishing rod returning back without any catch but .

The place was scenic and quiet and is ana excellent place for a day picnic for families as one could return back quickly too 

ONV Kurup song

Today is the birthday of reknowned malayalam poet Sri ONV Kurup
Among his many sweet film songs  I like this as one of the best
this is a humble attempt to translate this song as a tribute to this great artiste

you tube link below

https://youtu.be/WetR5SlPTnc


Vaadil Pazhuthiloden munnil kunkumam
Vaari vitharum thrisanhya polle
Adhilomen idanazhiyil nin kala madhuramam kaalocha polle
madhuramam kaalocha polle


like the dusk that spreads vermillon powder through the  door slit at me
 the sweet sound of your footsteps heard in my corridor
the sweet sound of your footsteps

Hridayathin thanthriyil aaro viral thodum
mridhulamam niswanam polle
illakali jalakanam ittu veezhum polle
uyiril amrutham thelichapolle
tharala vilolam nin kalocha kettu njaan
ariyathe kori tharichu poyi
ariyathe kori tharichu poyi

like someones  finger strumming on the strings of my heart
like a drop of water falling  on a leaf
like my soul getting  sprinkled by the nectar of love
i heard your footsteps
and
lost myself without knowing to escstasy
lost myself without knowing to esctasy

vaadhil .....


Himabindhu mughapadam chartiya poovinne
madhukaram nugarate uzharum pole
ariya nin kalocha cholliya manthratin
porulariyathe njaan ninnu
nizhalugal kala mezhuthunoren munnil
mattoru sandhyayayi nee vannu
mattoru sandhayayi nee vannu

like a honey bee stranded in a flower in the snow
i was absorbed by the magic of your footsteps
and like the shadows drawing patterns
you came to me as another dusk
you came to me as another dusk

https://youtu.be/WetR5SlPTnc

The Search ...book review

I just finished reading this excellent novel by Maureen Myant
The times of the second world war is one of the dark chapters of human history when men maimed fellow men ,when love was a discount and mindless inhumanities were committed on  fellow humans because they differed in beliefs race philosophies and political thoughts .

when the human race denigrated to lesser than animal thoughts where cruelty sadism and violence took a front seat it was the times when decency civility and mercy were at loss and people were decimated to the likes of cattle .
The story of a young boy in Czechoslovakia born in the turbulent second world war times when the German mindless automatons led by their satanic leader the greatest evil born amongst humans a non decript artist short in stature and mind could make men mindless robots to abide to  his perverted will
This ten year old boy sees his father shot dead while he hides high in a tree and his mother and two sisters bundled into different trucks to different concentration camps
how this tiny soul faces the odds gets imprisoned escapes joins the partisans and does acts that an adult would squinge at never losing his humanity and his goal of reuniting his family
on the other side it shows that there are decent German families who in spite of the danger harbors poor souls who were spirited away from their homes and hearths to murder and mayhem
the meeting of the boy to one such family who go through a personal disaster of losing their only son a German soldier who deserts his army in order to avoid the mindless violence which he is forced upon and finally dies
at the end the coming together of the family seems to be an anticlimax as the boy meets a wizened old lady whom he hardly recognizes as his mother  with whom he returns with his little sister while aching for his new found German home to  thread back a life .
Brilliantly written novel
how lucky we are  

The Pride of the Pendikars

The river Saraswati was one of the great rivers of India, though many call it a myth sure evidence is being unearthed today that it was and it still does exist.

 During the Vedic times thousands of years back along the banks of this great river lived a group of Brahmans called Gowda Saraswat Brahmins 

they were  so called because they lived along the banks of the Saraswati river or because they followed their saint sage Saraswat. With time Saraswati river dried up or disappeared into the bowels of the earth and the Gowda Sarsawats migrated to the west coast some went up to Punjab some to Kashmir some to to Dwaraka in Gujarat but those who went to the west coast reached Gomantak today's Goa and settled there as a vibrant community not limited to priesthood but into enterprise and trade, Exodus started during Aladin Khiljis rule in 1294 and later in 1506 during Portuguese reign due to religious persecution. 

They migrated down the west coast some settling in south kanara some going by boat to Cochin and even down south up to Trivandrum, 

wherever they went and settled down they adapted to the place but at same time preserved their individuality in their customs and traditions their skills and vibrancy contributed to the region and soon they became dominant players in the region.

I give this introduction of GSB before I write about Dr Ramesh Shenoy of Cochin a radiologist by profession, a multitasker by skills to give an idea of his antecedent history no wonder he is doing what he is!

Born in 1963 to Sri. Sreenivasa Shenoy and Smt. Priyamvadha of the GSB community in Cochin the family was well  known as the Pendikars. 

Pendi (Konkani) or pindi (Malayalam) is the waste bit left after pressing out oil from an oil cake and as the family was initially involved in oil business they came to be called as the Pendikars, 

The business was started by Sri. Yogya shenoy  son of Sri. Janardana Shenoy Sr at Broadway Ernakulam in a site taken on lease from TD temple, 

Sri Janardana shenoy had migrated from Vypeen a nearby island to Ernakulam in the 17th century .

 The family still holds religious icons and heirlooms for the past two centuries in great reverence .

The Sankarasserri madom is the ancestral house or Tharavadu of the family in the Chitoor Road. 

His grandfather, father and his paternal uncle were all Ernakulam Thirumala Devaswom temple Adikharis

yearsin Over the years St Alberts School in Ernakulam has produced many worthies of the city it was here that Ramesh too did his school studies. He went on to do his MBBS and later Diploma in Medical radiology from Kasturba medical college
 Manipal  Karnataka

A radiologist is trained to look at screens and decipher and is a vital part of diagnostics in Modern Medicine,but Ramesh did not stop looking at his computer monitors when he was doing an Ultrasonagram & Xray , the computer attracted Ramesh like a magnet and he used to twiddle with it even in the days of the proverbial floppies which many youngsters wouldn't even have seen leave alone to have worked with them but to Ramesh the 1.2 MB plastic covered floppies were an irresistible attraction, he learned by experimenting with them.

Ramesh was also an ace organiser quietly doing his work in the background and never eager to be in the limelight but his talents were noticed by keen observers like the ace Nephrologist of the city

 Dr Georgy K Ninan who was a pioneer in Renal transplants in Kerala Dr Georgy requested Ramesh to take up the post of general secretary of SORT Cochin (Society for Organ Retrieval and Transplantation). In 2002  SORT was a fledgling organisation in 2002 with a meagre bank balance of Rs 1000. Ramesh ran helter and skelter he produced greeting cards for the New Year with SORT messages and by selling them slowly increased the balance.

By 2004 the first transplants had begun and then there was no looking back for SORT with its committed committee members and Ramesh putting his weight into the nitty gritty of running an organisations all this for a good cause which he believed in, of course Ramesh never hesitated a second before he pledged his organs to be donated after death as an example for others.

Ramesh is also actively involved in Stem cell donation group in Kerala. Being an Executive member of the Indian Medical Association Cochin since 2001. He was an organizing committee member of the I M A State conference in 2010 & I M A state office bearer since 2014. He was Qualified Private Medical Practitioners Association (QPMPA) Journal Secretary cum Treasurer for over two years. Also was part of the Care and Share organization (USA) Kerala Chapter.

He was also active in the Radiology association (IRIA) being an executive member of the IRIA Kochi Chapter since 2009, was organizing committee member of IRIA State conference in 2012 held at Cochin and recently in 2015 was Treasurer at the IRIA National conference held at Cochin

Ramesh had also played a big part in making the Cochin I.M.A a pioneer in using  newer technologies. He initially started using emails for event announcements later starting an I M A Yahoo group. Colorful brochures gave way to newsletters sent  by email later by using SMS/Whatsapp.

Once social sites started becoming popular he started Facebook and Whatsapp IMA groups

He also made I M A software Applications using  Team App software, any member could download this from the web and it has a lot of I M A links, details of past present and future events, archives of newsletters  and photo gallery .

Ramesh went on to make websites for I M A Cochin and later I M A state branch, SORT,Cochin Clinical Society etc

He introduced public health awareness by SMS associating with Telecom Company. The IMA drug bank was looking for a suitable place to be in and Ramesh with the help of his community and the GSS Sanghamam found a place in central Ernakulam with air conditioned comfort. He created websites for several other social organisations too  and one for his own Pendikar family

Ramesh was instrumental in forming Pendikar Kudumba sangamam and a family tree was created with exhaustive inputs,

I asked Ramesh how he went about doing this the hard way said he, I visited each and every member possible to collect details which I then painstakingly added to the tree  and the site

Which led to family meets over the years

A family meet which got rare media reports a meet where more than 200 members attended! Tracing their lineage back to the 17th century!!

Ramesh family ventures too are into several branches helping the public in many ways .
Also an executive member of Gowda Saraswatha Seva Sangham for last 12 years. 

Ramesh is also part of R.S. Shenoy  school of hockey and is chairman of all health activity

He works as a freelance Radiologist in several hospitals in Cochin and divides his busy schedule with great finesse

Ramesh is happily married to Pathologist Dr  Shankari R Shenoy and has one son Vishwas studying for plus two. Ramesh goes about quietly continuing his profession and at same time contributing to his colleagues his family and the society at large. Once an I M A President described him as a silent killer who though in the back ground does the real work, this silent killer is sure a pride for the Pendikars