Goodbye, Old Friend

Honestly, I didn’t know about this till I stumbled up on it. It seems I am unaware of events happening around me. And blogging didn’t help me either. If the other half of the world is ripped off our planet, I wouldn’t know about it either. And it would take me few years to know that our planet is only a half globe, the shape of sand cakes we make in coconut shells.

Till last week, if someone had asked me how many planets are there in the solar system, the answer would have been nine. I didn’t know about the fate of Pluto. The exclusion of Pluto from the list has left the solar system with only eight planets. Pluto was classified as a planet since its discovery in 1930, but in 2006, it was re-classified as a 'dwarf planet' by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). According to the IAU, dwarf planet is a celestial body orbiting the Sun, which is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, but is not capable of clearing its neighboring region of the planetesimals.  (Any of innumerable small bodies thought to have orbited the sun during the formation of the planets) Other dwarf planets identified by IAU include Eris, Ceres, Haumea,  Orkus, Varuna ,Ixion, Pallas, Hygeia and four yet unnamed bodies (2003 EL₆₁, 2005 FY₉, 2002 TX₃₀₀, and 2002 AW₁₉₇).

People the world over are divided into two groups - those who think there are nine planets, and those who know that there are eight planets.

In August 2006, the planet Pluto was eliminated from the list of planets by the International Astronomical Union. We now have only eight planets orbiting the sun. Clyde Tombaugh discovered the so called planet in 1930 at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff Arizona. Now you can forget that.

Also forget what we were taught as kids. I remember the list of planets was one of the long lists I had learned by heart.

To be considered a planet it should be a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a nearly round shape and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit. Pluto is taken off the list because its oblong orbit overlaps Neptune’s.

A friend of mine tells me that this whole thing is the fault of George Bush. He was responsible for the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, Hurricane Katrina, the Tsunami and Global warming. Now, “because of his inept administration we must eliminate Pluto as a planet,” a spokesman for the Curious Scientists Society said. ( I don’t brag, but incidentally, I am the President of the society, and due to sky rocketing real estate prices, we have  our offices at my home). The spokesman for the group also said that “Bush somehow got the notion that Osama bin Laden was hiding on Pluto and demanded that our group vote to disregard it as a planet thereby eliminating his hiding place”.

In any event, we now only have eight planets and this should make it easier for the school children to learn eight rather than nine.

I don’t know what will happen to the astrologers who survive on the Navagrahas. (The nine planets)

Bring some nobility back

"Two types of individuals graduate from medical school. Those who view medicine as an occupation and those who view medicine as a vocation. The former are called Doctors. The latter, Physicians. Sustaining the Dignity and Nobility of Medical Care is a cogent reminder that being a true physician requires not only service to our patients, but also to the gift of our profession..."

– Patrick J. Loehrer, Jr, MD, Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center

Medicine is a noble calling and it is a rare privilege to care for patients. I have always believed strongly that we, who have that privilege, also bear the responsibility for respecting the essential nobility of providing medical care. For a variety of reasons it is challenging today in what we call modern medicine to sustain that spirit of care and to put trust in the system of care.

Many of the challenges, which are as old as the practice of medicine, have to do with medical ethics and money. There is far more money at stake in the current medical marketplace than at any time in history, and companies that make products used in medical care have enormous financial and political influence, and so are hospitals too. Another challenge is the implicit belief by the public that there is a medicine to fix anything. This often leads to greater difficulty in accepting that one's medical problem cannot be cured or in facing the prospect of one's death or the death of a loved one.

It is a long and arduous journey for an aspiring medical student.. It takes close to 15 years to become a complete doctor. You have about five years of medical school, another three years of post graduate studies, then specialization and maybe few years before settling down and practicing. Youngsters today do not have the patience to wait for about 15 years. For that matter, even their family members do not have the patience. The best and the brightest are no longer expected to enter the noblest profession, the practice of medicine. People pay millions to buy admissions for their children to medical schools. With money, they make them doctors, who otherwise would be incompetent to gain admission to any University. That is a big investment. Why do they do that? The investment should bring in returns to them some way or other.

Young physicians are being told that they will find jobs in the health care industry. Health care industry is a term calculated to depersonalize the practice of medicine, and thereby de-professionalize it. Industry is defined as the manufacture or production of goods on a large scale. In contrast, the practice of medicine is a calling, a personal service delivered on the smallest possible scale, one to one. With the effort to reduce the healing professions including physicians to an industry, the terms customer and consumer are used increasingly to replace patient.

Referring to the patient as a customer in a subtle way denies the essence of the patient-doctor relationship.

Doctors now advertise in ways which, until recently, were held to be unethical and unworthy of any profession. The result has been a shift in emphasis. Caring for the patient is giving way to competing for the patient with hopes of stimulating a sale in the medical market.

I recently saw an advertisement in the local newspaper.  Even though the item was given as news, it was obviously, propaganda. The news was that” Doctors save the life of a woman”. I was amazed at this news. Doctors are supposed to save lives, and what else? So I read on.

The story was headed by a half page picture of a  lady doctor wearing the doctor’s coat, sitting with her computer and an ultrasound scan picture. A patient had an ectopic pregnancy (pregnancy outside the uterus).This patient was admitted to the hospital where this gynecologist was working. She did the ultrasound exam and could not locate the pregnancy. The radiologist repeated the ultrasound and found that the pregnancy was implanted on to the surface of the liver, which is rare. Then the general surgeon operated and removed the growth. And finally, the gynecologist is seen sitting with a great smile of ‘Eureka’. And her biography and address naturally follows the news item. In Malayalam there used to be a saying “ the man leaning on the wall took away the girl”.(Mannum Chaari Ninnavan Pennum Kondupoyi)

This is the limit to which medical profession and doctors have degraded. They resort to anything and everything to make money. Ethics are long forgotten. I only wish they get the time and peace to enjoy this kind of money. 

Present day Health insurance has given way to sky rocketing medical bills. A doctor, who charges hundred rupees usually, will give a bill for five hundred, if the insurance pays the bill. And on top of this, all unnecessary investigations are added up on and repeated to make the final bill as huge as possible. Doctors play along in this game, as they are given a cut in this.

Law and philosophy serve as effective guides for patient management, but the physician must ultimately rely on his or her own judgment, based on moral and ethics, taking the facts and values of the individual patient into account. Physicians' sensitivity, empathy, integrity and clinical expertise should merge to give them a firm sense of what constitutes effective treatment and patient satisfaction. After all, that is the purpose of the profession, isn’t it?

Partners in trouble

The housemaids working here deserve a lot of sympathy. Due to unfortunate circumstances, these girls leave their country and families behind to embark up on a journey to a strange land about which they have no idea. To work for people whom they have never seen. Often, they leave behind ailing parents and dependants. She has no leave. No holidays. No medical benefits. No gratuity. She ekes out a living as long as she has good health. She come with lots of hopes and dreams, and often end up in despair and depression.

The disturbing, perennial problem of domestic worker abuse is common throughout the Gulf. 

In Kuwait, there is now one domestic worker for every two Kuwaitis. Every year, hundreds of housemaids flee to their embassies seeking relief from non-payment of wages, long hours, and lack of food, captivity, isolation, and violent physical and sexual abuse. Kuwait continues to exclude domestic workers from its labor laws, and fails to enforce the laws already on the books that might give domestic workers some minimal protection.

And things aren't getting better anywhere. This summer, horrifying stories of housemaid murder in Kuwait made the news around the world. Even kind-hearted employers there routinely confiscate the documents of domestic workers and restrict their movements, sometimes forbidding them to leave the house unsupervised. Some workers go outside only to wash their employers several cars.

Doctors in Sri Lanka recently found 23 nails in the body of a tortured housemaid who returned to Colombo from Riyadh. She was getting tortured on a regular basis, till she ran off to her embassy.

The average salary is about 4 to 5 hundred dirham.  I go to the hospital at about 6.30 in the morning and have seen these girls cleaning the cars which are parked outside their gates. And then they also sweep the pavement and the area in front of their houses. I can only imagine the amount of work they do inside the houses. And top of this, majority are sexually  abused by the boys and men of the house. Once, a housemaid had told me, she was ashamed to confess that she was used by the 70 year old man of the house, and then by all his three sons, the youngest of which was only 13 years. Most of these maids yield to the threats, due to fear of punishment. If uncooperative, they will be implicated in false allegations and sent to prison. It is pathetic. 

If a housemaid is found pregnant, she will be sent to jail and kept there, till she delivers her baby, and then deported after any other kind of punishments due to her. So, most of them try to hide it and escape to their home country. There have been instances when they secretly delivered the child at home and then tried to kill it.

According to an international watchdog, Human Rights Watch (HRW), there have been no cases of  prosecution in the UAE, of employers accused of raping domestic servants.

“This provides a culture of impunity that perpetuates sexual crimes against domestic workers. Our research indicates that all rape cases of domestic servants that are brought to the attention of the authorities, are settled out of court and no one has been prosecuted,” said Hadi Ghaemi, HRW’s Researcher for Middle East and North Africa Division.

Now, let us come to our story.

This girl was Indonesian. They have characteristic looks.

She was young and charming. She had come to this place few months back to work as  housemaid and was admitted the previous night for abdominal pain and vomiting. The admitting doctor had made a diagnosis of gastritis (Inflammation of Stomach).Dr Hannan was doing his rounds in the morning, and as usual, started off with his elaborate history taking. It is generally a long process for him because he would ask things which others do not. He got the complete story including that of her family. Her schooling, financial situation,  parents,siblings…and what not. He also got the history that the girl had missed her cycles for the previous two months. Then he went on to examine her abdomen, and found she had a swelling in the lower abdomen. He put two and two together, and made a provisional diagnosis of pregnancy.

All the while, there was a young man anxiously kicking and knocking at the door, disturbing and irritating Dr Hannan.  He appeared very tense and agitated and was sweaty. He wanted to know what was wrong with the girl, and what she had told the doctor about her illness. Dr Hannan enquired why he had to be so upset, to which he answered that he had to decide whether to keep the girl or to send her back home. That was when his father rushed in. He was in his middle age and well dressed and wore the usual golden fountain pens in his pocket and the customary cooling glass. Dr Hannan explained to the father that he has to send the girl to gynec ward for an examination.

Why? He asked

“We have to exclude pregnancy”

The man suddenly appeared pale. As if his whole blood was drained off.

He said “No, doctor, please, no need to examine. I am going to send her back by today’s flight.

The son appeared much relieved hearing this.

Dr. Hannan would not budge.

He said “We have to get her examined whether you send her or not”.

Both the father and son tried their level best to stop Hannan, by requests and threats. But he sent the patient for examination. The father and son waited outside and desperately paced the floor in different directions.

The Gynecologist found that the girl had a growth (fibroid) from the uterus. She was not pregnant. One could see the obvious signs of relief on the faces of the father and the son. The color came back to the father’s face. The son recovered his courage, went in to the room, and gently stroked the hands of the girl. She smiled at him.

The father didn’t seem to like it.

“Whatever, we will send her back home”, the father said.

“Doctor, is it something we can treat here?. We will keep her here. She is maskeen ( poor).Please tell baba to keep her here”

The son was obviously recovering his courage..

I was wondering where all his compassion was, till then.

Now the girl looked happy and looked lovingly at the boy.

The father was visibly upset and angry.

“No” He said. “I will send her away”.

The son looked angrily at the father and hit the table top to express his anger.

We left it between the father and son to settle the issue.

We just made sure that the girl didn’t have any serious illness to worry about.

A Perverted mind

Yes, maybe you guessed it right. It is the opposite of “A beautiful Mind”. Sylvia Nasr’s award-winning biography was a drama about the mystery of the human mind, triumph over incredible adversity, and the healing power of love. If someone would choose to write on a perverted mind, they could pick on us, Malayalis.

Malayali men are universally acclaimed perverts. Are there eye brows rising? Don’t be angry at me. Any woman who passes through will vouch for that. We have many other perverted attitudes unsuitable to the present day culture.What I have seen in life is that those who talk too much about principles and morality are the worst perverts. They try to hide their true colors in the camouflage of religion and moral talks.

What provoked me to write this is a recent incident. A TV channel was showing two girls being arrested for charges of prostitution. I was wondering, how in the world could the camera crew reach a scene of arrest unless it was informed and well planned? Obviously this means the police who had gone to the place had tipped the TV channel of their adventure in advance. The unfortunate girls were trying to hide their faces from the camera, and all the while the cameras were chasing them, trying to get as close pictures of every part of their body. The men involved were totally ignored.  Who is interested in seeing them?

I had written once on the Malayali morality. Now I believe we have genetically perverted minds. What is so exciting about two poor girls caught for prostitution? The truth is that the Malayali craving to see such perverted activities never ends. I don’t think such events happen even in the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu.

Most Malayalam channels beam programs on crime… murder, rape..nothing else. Without any shame they display the mutilated bodies of men and women killed or raped. What is this craving?

Ours is basically a sex starved community. We are afraid to talk to women in public, but secretly desire it. We crave sex, but will never agree that we do. Our men use every chance they get to touch and paw women, whenever and wherever they can. That is why they crowd at public places and festivals. The way the men look at women and the obscene comments they make, is repulsing. They forget they have mothers, sisters and daughters at home. They talk about women as if they are a commodity and use the words like Charakku,Stuff,Vedi.. without any inhibition.

 One might ask, why are you using the word ‘they’? Like they asked the companions of Jesus” Aren’t you one of them?”

 Just because I was shy to join the group, but you can include me, fine.

 I can make an amendment. I agree, not all men are alike. There are good people as well, like everywhere else. But it is the general attitude I am talking about.. We act as the moral police of the world.

One cannot go to a hotel with a woman, be it your wife or sister. Everyone looks at the woman as if you have snatched her from somewhere. Even the attitude of the receptionists is the same.  I was wondering. Isn’t there something called consensual sex? Haven’t we got the right to have sex if it is mutually agreed up on and desired? Or is it a crime to have sex? Or is it that marriage is the only license to have sex? Then it makes the purpose of marriage as sex. Or is sex only meant for procreation? Or is it that someone who doesn’t want to get married will never be allowed to have sex? Isn’t there something we call a biological necessity? Or, isn’t it a human right?

Some time back a blogger had asked a question on legitimizing prostitution. I argued in favor of legalizing it. It is highly desirable in places like ours, where we have a morally obsessed community and a bunch of hypocrites in the Police department. Poor women will be saved from the atrocities of police. They could make a living and feed their starving children, though it is at the cost of their own health.

It is our attitude which has virtually turned God’s own country in to Devil’s own.

Photo courtesy The Hindu..

An Interview with God

An interview with God is based on an anonymous poem that is viewed and loved by millions of people. A friend of mine sent it to me,and I thought I would share it with you.
I didn't look at it from a religious point of view. But I loved  the comments God has made.He has expressed His in depth knowledge of our minds and attitudes. I also included a link to a video presentation at the end..So beautiful and a must watch.




I dreamed I had an interview with God.

“So you would like to interview me?” God asked.

“If you have the time” I said.

God smiled. “My time is eternity.”

“What questions do you have in mind for me?”

“What surprises you most about humankind?”

God answered...

“That they get bored with childhood, they rush to grow up, and then long to be children again.”

“That they lose their health to make money...and then lose their money to restore their health.”

“That by thinking anxiously about the future, they forget the present, such that they live in neither the present nor the future.”

"That they live as if they will never die, and die as though they had never lived.”

God’s hand took mine and we were silent for a while.

And then I asked...

“As a parent, what are some of life’s lessons you want your children to learn?”

“To learn they cannot make anyone love them. All they can do is let themselves be loved.”

“To learn that it is not good to compare themselves to others.”

“To learn to forgive by practicing forgiveness.”

“To learn that it only takes a few seconds to open profound wounds in those they love, and it can take many years to heal them.”

“To learn that a rich person is not one who has the most, but is one who needs the least.”

“To learn that there are people who love them dearly, but simply have not yet learned how to express or show their feelings.”

“To learn that two people can look at the same thing and see it differently.”

“To learn that it is not enough that they forgive one another, but they must also forgive themselves.”

"Thank you for your time," I said humbly.

"Is there anything else you would like your children to know?"

God smiled and said,
“Just know that I am here... always.” 

- Author unknown
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