12 hour shifts worth cookies

                                            

‘Its 8:00 PM and I’m done’ said Dr. Joe. He was drained from a gruesome 12-hour shift. His scrubs had the signature stench of  ‘Relief hospital ’ and his eyes like any other emergency physician reflected the urge to do nothing but get some sound sleep.

‘But she refuses to see anyone else but you doctor’ said the nurse in a tone that didn’t sound convincing to Joe at that moment because all he wanted to do was run away from his chaotic work environment which he had slowly started to dread to wake up to every morning. ‘What had happened?’ he thought to himself what happened to the young empathetic Joe who used to get a good rush of adrenaline from saving lives, from making patients smile and go back home, from lending some of his hope to the unfortunate. Before he could find an explanation to the downfall of his passion the nurse handed the file to him and walked away with an expression that wasn’t really motivating.

He walked towards the bed with his sore legs and with fear hoping that this wasn’t a patient who had to come back because he screwed up the last time he saw her. He had a glimpse of the brief notes the nurse had jotted down on the patient’s case file just to be alarmed. 

Mrs. Alice.

55 Years.

Vitals- stable.

k/c/o bronchial asthma

Now c/o cough with expectoration since 3 days.

The memory of Mrs.Alice instantly came back to Joe who usually wasn’t all that good with recollecting the faces of his old patients once he drew the curtain and saw her face. He remembered how she had come with her worried husband about a month back during his night shift with an acute exacerbation of bronchial asthma severely breathless. He fortunately managed to treat her well and why this incident managed to stick to his memory was not because of the ailment she had but rather because this lovely old couple reminded him of his parents whose calls he had been avoiding off late because of his busy schedule. 

‘Hello Mrs. Alice how are you doing today? Nice to see you again, I see the cough has come back’ said Joe with his tone transforming suddenly from a cranky sleepless doctor to that of a polite hotel receptionist. 

‘Oh I have no cough doctor, I just came to see you’ she replied with a blank and subdued expression.

‘Then what’s wrong Mrs. Alice and where’s your husband today he seems to be missing?’ Joe asked 

‘He’s no more Dr. Joe. He had a heart attack two days after we consulted you for my asthma attack’ 

Joe thought he had reached the point in his career were the news of death would not startle him that much but this was beyond the level of acceptance and made him gasp in the inside.

‘I’m so sorry Mrs. Alice’ and he could say no further for he didn’t know what to say.

‘Don’t be. The day we came to consult you after we left back home I remember how Fred and I discussed how you were such a fine young man and he was telling me how you reminded us of our son who doesn’t stay with us anymore. Its hard for me to deal with his loss alone but I woke up today and got reminded of you and thought ill come see you and give you this, a little something that I made’

She handed him a small box of cookies with a smile and suddenly the 12 hours did not seem that long anymore.

(As doctors we are trained to put our life and interests behind us and work for long and tiresome hours, which often distances us from the passion that this profession demands us of. Many a times we are weighed down by the extreme expectations patients have out of us- we are either seen as Gods with magical healing powers or ignorant money making machines there’s hardly ever something intermediate. The above story is purely fictional but its a reminder that however hard it maybe to retain the empathy you feel for your patients, and irrespective of whether you have reached the pinnacle of your career or even if you still haven’t found a place in this competitive field the challenge really is to seek and look out for the compassion around you and embrace it for that will never perish.)

Bubble wrapped memories

I’m sitting on my couch with bubble wrap in one hand and a mosquito bat in the other. ‘POP’- the electrically fried mosquitos irk to this hemispherical plastic destruction. But this is nirvana to my ears, each bubble is a face I cant remember, they are those places that fade away like a mirage, they are the flickering memories that come and go.

I can sense a mosquito halo around my head and as the halo breaks into a single grey little malaria causing clump in front of my face, I can see a young man whose been staring at me from the other corner with dark circled bags full of remorse under his eyes. ‘MOM’ he says with a stern 25ish tone. I smile back at this face that was very similar to someone’s I once fell in love with.In this case his father’s probably But what was his name damn it? 

‘POP’ today I just love bubble wrap I think I always have. I love how it’s filled with just air; just imagine if there was water inside them. I hate water it reminds me of the tears these strangers shed in front of me, the sympathy that I get for this disease I have.The disease I cant remember the disease that doesn’t let me remember.

Mom do you want me to read to you tonight? My supposedly son asks me. Stranger or son I don’t think I’m programmed to say no to Maya Angelou. He reads the one ‘on ageing’-

‘But aint I lucky I can still breathe in’ we both end in unison.Now my bubble wrap is wet. I told you, I hate this salty fluid rolling down my face.

’Can I give you a hug mom?’ I nodded yes. Strangely it felt like something I knew, something I remembered, and something so pure. And ‘POP ‘ went the last one on the sheet.

Sticky coffee fingers

'She kept looking inside the empty cup. Small puddles of coffee remaining here and there. Like the storm had passed. The longer she looked the deeper she thought about them. She put her fingers in, cleaned the cup but dirtied her fingers. You'll have to get your hands dirty if you look deep. Like life.'

THE HUNGRY HOSTELITE

HUNGER comes in many forms-theres that crying unbearable hunger that comes from your tummy where just anything edible would suffice and then theres the hunger of the tongue or a craving to be more specific where your tongue longs for the correct proportion of sugar and spice,theres the midnight hunger,the ever so popular chocolate hunger, the mom made food hunger,not to forget the junk food hunger, ‘the hunger without a reason’ hunger and many more.

IRRESPECTIVE OF THE TYPES A HOSTELITE IS PERPETUALLY HUNGRY.

Chapter no 107. Of the book ‘u have to live with the fact’ says that hostel food will never taste nice, and even if it ever does  a majority of us would never agree to this. Even though we fight to stand in the queue to get our favourite chicken piece, become friends with the cooks just to get hot chapathis straight from the pan and maybe even sacrifice going early to class just to fill our stomachs till our hearts content.
 Like every other human being even we ‘live to eat’. Only that we crave a little more than the rest of you. For us unfortunately there is no variety to spice up our lives and our taste buds are treated  with a monthly timetable instead.

Man invented wheeled vehicles,he invented rockets but the greatest invention and blessing for a hopeless and lazy hostelite would be without doubt a packet of 2 minute instant noodles or any other form of instant  food for that matter and nothing kills the craving better than eating that bowl of noodles  along with your friends at midnight (sometimes though when it comes to food ‘sharing is fighting’ in a hostel). 

Never call us hostelite's greedy because to crave and kill that craving is a challenge for us every time and there are no limits for that. It is very unlikely of us to crave for caviar or a master chef approved fancy plate and doing that is no crime, but it would just lead to a bigger hole in our wallet. However there are no prices for guessing the most wanted and most talked about food amongst us and you wouldn’t be surprised to hear all of us say in unison that - ‘no one cooks better than my mom’.

The aroma of spices that fills your house when your mom opens the lid of the cooked biriyani, fish marinated in a spicy masala being fried in the after noon accompanied with rice, that noise you hear when u pour the batter of dosa on the pan and the tanginess of the chutney combined with the crispiness, chocolate icing dripping over a double layered chocolate cake, cheese peeping out of a huge burger or sub with your favourite toppings, the haste to reach till the crust of the saucy pizza, the sizzle of a colourful and delicious sizzler, the missing hole of a sugar glazed doughnut, the intriguing Chinese flavours, the orange carrot halwa the white rasagulla, the vanilla ice cream that falls into a cone topped with hot chocolate sauce....is this heaven?? NO these are just frequently occurring dreams of a hungry hostelite.

Six legs in a blue box

        

  They say I’m cold blooded, the sight of me makes them scream with fear, being chased by brooms and shoes has become more like a hobby and all those two legged creatures want to do is kill me. I was born with six legs and I live in a blue box, actually a lot of blue boxes, it’s called a TRAIN apparently. I have relatives in America and Australia, but I came out of an egg that was laid in a place where people seem to speak so many different languages I’m surprised no one has hissed back at me yet, so colourful I feel so sober here with my brown wings. It doesn't get so cold in here except for the A.C compartments where I've also come across some different people, mostly to themselves, less loud but the frequency of their shrill when they see me - did not know I was such an eye candy. Well it goes without saying that professionally I am a nibbler,I am sure no other eerie creature would have tasted the kind of food i've tasted here, so much variety. The AC compartment does get boring thats when my antennas lead to me to the general compartment for some entertainment.humans are funny creatures,probably because their brains are high up there unlike us cut our heads and we'r still alive.

 
I have traveled with many of you’ll to different places, most of you’ll would have seen me, disgusted by me, but I manage to escape to every dirty nook and corner where your huge eye balls can never reach, listening to your stories some sad, some happy, some endless, and most of them which never did make any sense (usually happens when two young individuals of the opposite sex sit together, we usually don’t have to try so hard ) but this is my story the story of a cockroach your most feared co traveler, the most loyal passenger of the Indian railways

I live at the edge of life.to survive is a risk for us cockroaches I only fear two things in my life, the first one being- me ending up in a biology lab traumatized mercilessly by a bunch of confused students, they get the jitters even when we’re dead. I thought size mattered these days. The second fear being eaten up by Cambodians. They tag us as ‘filthy’ yet they eat us, funny things indeed. But yes it goes without saying that humans are gifted with a good set of taste buds. Because it is their food that gives us a purpose in our lives. Because otherwise we are a very simple species no big dreams of being a billionaire, white collar job, no Ferrari, no Louis Vuitton, no themed weddings, no debts, no relationships, no size zero just nibble some pieces of your food and get it down our alimentary canal and yes I’m pretty sure your biology would have thought you the further steps.

Life here is chaotic. Helter skelter, humans stamping each other’s feet, dropping their heavy luggage and when they do this it’s an earthquake for us all the time by the way. It’s a good thing we don’t have vocal chords and that’s why we don’t have chai wallahs and food vendors but I have utmost respect for them because it’s their high decibel yelling and chanting that keeps me alive and awake (they've always disturbed my siesta). And then there’s that white paper u people always fret about ‘THE TICKET’ and all the melodrama with the TTE - quite a theatrical site for me.

For me action time is when the darkness sets in. The background music suddenly changes to loud snores, they come in all types alto, soprano and some unidentifiable types .During this night orchestra I start my explorations aimlessly crawling through the seats, the dirty creaks, sometimes even over laptop screens, book pages, newspapers, smelly shoes, coloured suitcases, and yes I even crawl over you when your dreaming about sand castles and mermaids, for this is an endless adventure for me where I have no treasure to find but travel where the railway track leads me. Coming straight to the point the next time u happen to travel in my same berth do bring some traditionally prepared home food because unfortunately I’m not a big fan of junk food. Without the suffocating hugs, awkward kisses, and the filmy running behind the train and the hand to hand through the transparent window good byes I would like to bid adieu by saying just one thing– 'please, don’t carry me home'!!! ;)