Holiday in the hills

(Written between 31.1.12 - 4.2.12 and posted today - an insight into my modus operandi)

Now obviously I should be writing about my sisters wedding which took place on Monday but I’d rather write about that when I have the photos to upload which won’t be till i reach Delhi. Meanwhile, Vishal and I are in Munnar for two days before proceeding to Cochin for the All India Ophthalmic Society annual meet. We are staying at the Club Mahindra, Munnar which is a rather cool five star-ish place. We have a semi detached cottage to ourself, the views and the buffet meals are fantastic all adding up to a great mini break. The only issue I have is that the walls are paper thin. I woke up with a start this afternoon when my neighbours phone rang, I am not even going to think about what he can hear. ( Afternoon naps – benchmark of any holiday )

Towels arranged as kissing swans on bed. Barf !  

We’ve mostly been lazing around in the resort but set off to visit the Kolukkumalai tea factory this morning. This tea factory was established by the British in 1936 and is situated on top of a mountain accessible only by jeep. I need to mention that the road leading to the factory is a mud track strewn with boulders which makes for an extremely bumpy ride lasting 8 km or around half hour. However the views are great with multiple tea garden photo-ops on the way. The tea garden itself was quaint, they still process tea partially by hand and with the original, century old machines. The place had a sleepy, forgotten and mildly sad air about it with the few women working and the men wandering around already drunk at noon. A far cry from the briskly efficient Warren tea factories I have seen in Tinsukhia. 

"Enclosed by tea leaves" photo taken by our jeep driver. In reality we are standing by the road side behind one scrawny tea bush. DIY trick photography. 

Aforementioned instrument of torture

I was supposed to have posted that two days back but didn’t. The day after the jeep ride I woke up with every muscle in my torso and back stretched and sore. So if you are loosely jointed with poorly toned musculature, I would advise giving the trip a miss.

We next reached Cochin by road. Due to usual hospital inefficiency, we didn’t have any accommodation booked but I’d asked my father to book us a room at the Railway rest house. This turned out to be right next to Ernakulam Junction so we ended up wandering on to the station to buy newspapers and coffee. All for 32 Rs a day. Made me rather nostalgic for the good old Indian Govt parasite days.

It was great meeting all our friends again, face it, AIOS is definitely more about socializing than higher intellectual pursuit. No small amount of Ethanol has traversed my system in the past week. First, Roshnis cocktail party, then at Munnar ( Its a tea plantation hill station, the ghosts of the erstwhile planters expect you to get mildly pickled after sundown ) and then all the reunion dinners. Vishal is continuing the party at an alumni dinner on a ferry with all the usual suspects.

I last visited Cochin almost 10 years back and I have a residual memory of Chinese fishing nets against the sunset and a lazy backwater cruise winding slowly  between sleepy villages. Kids ran along the boat on the banks while the firangs tanned on the decks. On this visit, the city seemed a lot more grubby with more touts and dreadlocked Israeli tourists. The food in the Fort Cochin Goa-esque shacks were nothing much to write about either. I really couldn’t understand the appeal of the city to all the tourists either, unless they use it as a base for short trips to Allepey or Munnar.

Oh, my talks went off well. As well as can be expected with an audience of ten people in a hall with a capacity of three hundred . The lethal combination of paediatric ophthalmology and community ophthalmology helped to exponentially decrease the level of popularity of the course and keep the audience at bay. It didn’t help matters that the AIOS quiz was taking place simultaneously. Oh well.

I am in Cochin airport waiting for my flight back to Delhi. For the first time, I’ve really missed Vihaan over the last couple couple of days and am looking forward to cuddling up with him tonight. A world with soft cheeks , curly hair and that indefinably sweet baby smell is a good place to be in.

The details

OK, so after the last bombshell, I guess I should flesh out the announcement a bit. I had been feeling mildly discontented in my current job, mostly because now that I had stopped having palpitations and sleepless nights before every OT, I had started feeling a little restless. Also it has been more than two years since I moved to Delhi, so a bit of dreariness there too. We have been seriously contemplating starting our own ophthalmic clinic but (a) that needs truckloads of money (b) that sounds serious ass grownup, right up there with preparing for your kids school interview ( yeah, thats going to happen soon enough )
So, I came up with a ridiculous plan to move to Africa, then I dressed it up in practical, sensible terms to convince Vishal ( Our salary will be tax free! We won't need to take a loan! We can start Vihaans college fund ! ) As luck would have it, we immediately got a good offer and after some intense negotiations and inept bargaining we have decided to move to Addis Ababa. I am not going to tire of saying that for a while. Sometimes I wake up grinning in the middle of the night.

Yes, thats me. Really.

I always thought that the first time I saw my name in print it would be on a magazine article, a newspaper piece, a slice of life column, something that would reflect my literary soul. The reality however is this.

I was careless enough to let them mis-spell my name!

A cop out? Hardly. It still represents days of research and nights tapping at my laptop while shooting envious glances at my sleeping family. I am most pleased with the illustrations which were adapted from my hand drawn diagrams and the photos of my own patients. Makes me feel like one big fat serious ass eye doctor. Whoo-hoo.

I am seriously grateful to Dr. Zia Choudhuri and Dr. Vanathi for giving me this oppurtunity and in awe of all the hard work they have put into making this book so great. Also, a big thanks to Dr.Sumita Agarkar for recommending my name in the first place. I would have loved to have had such a lucid, exam oriented text when I was a post grad. Order your copy at  www.jaypeebrothers.com  

Back to Work

I am planning to start working from April 1^st. Originally, I had planned to join back by March 1^st, but as the hospital has retained the doctor who completed her fellowship in October till April, I extended my maternity leave by another month. The official maternity leave given by the hospital I work for is 82 days. This is way more than the six weeks paid leave given in the U.S. and way less than the six months paid leave which government employees in India are entitled to. I went on leave two weeks before my delivery, so my leave expired in Jan and I have been on unpaid leave since then. I think the hospital was also happy to have me join back in April because then they wouldn’t have to pay two people in March. Yes, the legacy of monsieur Scrooge is alive and well in the medical profession in India.

I am an Ophthalmologist specializing in Paediatric eye disorders and squint. I mostly treat children with defective vision, the most common cause of which is refractive errors or glasses. I also commonly treat conditions like lazy eye, squint, infections of the eye, cataract ( Yes, it happens in children ), trauma to the eye and Nystagmus (shaking of eyes by birth ). I perform surgery on both children and adults with cataract and squint.

Eye Doctor Speaketh – Any eye disorder in a child needs immediate and appropriate treatment as it can lead to permanent, devastating  blindness. Most disorders can be rectified if treated as early as possible.

I enjoy my clinical work because I mostly treat young children with not much wrong with them ( He got paint in his eye when his brother tried to paint his face! ) which makes for a cheerful atmosphere. There are aspects of my job which I definitely don’t enjoy mostly involving numbers and graphs and revenue generation. In a charitable hospital ! A curse upon you, corporate culture ! May a swarm of locusts devour any MBA who crosses my path ! I won’t delve into the topic in any more detail because open forum and libel suites and the rest.

Anyway, just to emphasize the positive. I went on a screening eye camp to Mandla which is a backward, tribal district  near Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh last year.

Children diving for coins at Marble Rocks in Jabalpur

We stayed for five days and treated about six hundred children. We also identified children who needed surgery and brought them back to Delhi for the same. They stayed in the hospital for a week, most had surgery in both eyes,were given glasses and then transported back home.Below is pictured the happy result of that effort.

 The most gratifying case was of  a 4 month old baby with congenital glaucoma in both eyes. This is a condition where increase in pressure inside the eye causes the main nerve responsible for vision to atrophy and leads to permanent blindness. We counselled the parents and rushed this baby to Delhi immediately.One year hence, this baby is completely cured thanks to a delicate surgery performed in both eyes.

  Unknown to me I was four weeks pregnant during  this trip. If I had known I obviously would not have undertaken the strenuous journey and I can’t go this year because duh, the baby. Now that my baby is out and has ten fingers and ten toes, I am really glad I went. Would I like to be a corporate suit with a Blackberry and spa vacations in Bali? Probably yes, the grass is always greener on the other side  but maybe the highs we enjoy aren’t too bad.