Anjaani Manzil

Adieu चवन्नी

2011-06-30T15:08:00.002+05:30

Today India has officially relegated its चवन्नी's as useless bits of small change

On 18th May 2011 RBI announced the retirement of the good old 25 Paisa coin. The retirement comes into effect from 30th June 2011 (The day of writing the post)

The notice is available in the RBI website (you can follow this link)

Though decimalization happened about half a century back, 25 paisa were always known and will continue to be fondly remembered as the ..... चवन्नी

So the logical question is - When will अठन्नी go ? ....

We can come to an approximate time by reasonable deduction - here's one flow of reason ....
- अठन्नी would go at that time when the value represented by अठन्नी becomes too small for people to care about it .... we now need to know the value below which people generally don't care to discriminate... And it's here चवन्नी 's retirement will serve as a good benchmark... So, after putting 2 and 2 together - अठन्नी will (most probably) go when its value is equal to that of today's चवन्नी

... or in other words when the price levels doubles (and money's value halves)

... Assuming a conservative inflation rate of 7% this is going to happen in about 12 years from now .... sometime in the year 2023 ..

So in 2023 अठन्नी will (most likely) become useless and Indian currency will be staring at an interesting crossroad ... one of it's two units of measuring money (rupee and paisa) will become useless ...

We will be left with only Rupee ...

At that point government would have many options ...

One would be to introduce higher value units ... say a Mohur or Asharfi ... with one of Mohur/Asarfi equal to 15 (traditional) or 100 (plausible) or 1000 (my reco) Rupees ...

Another option would be to come out with a New Rupee and Paise which will be about 100 times the value of current Rupee and Paisa .... This option is very likely to cause a lot of confusion ...

Third, and most rational, option would be to do nothing .... and just let Rupee continue as the sole unit of Indian money ....

भाग्य भविष्य का जीवन ज्ञान - 1

2011-03-19T09:31:00.010+05:30

यह ज्ञान "लाल किताब के टोटके व उपाय" नामक पुस्तक से अर्जित है.

" लाल किताब .." वह पुस्तक है जो की सुख-सम्पति, सौभाग्य और शांति के लिए लिखी गयी है.

इस पुस्तक के माध्यम से आप अपनी सभी तक्लीफों, दुखों एवं परेशानियों से छुटकारा पा सकते हैं.

निम्नलिखित नियमों का पालन किये बिना नौ ग्रहों के उपाय का फल निष्प्रभावी सिद्ध होगा -

शंख-ध्वनी प्रातःकाल अवश्य करें
तुलसी का वृक्ष अवश्य लगायें
ब्राह्मणों को भोजन अवश्य कराएँ
लक्ष्मीजी की उपासना अवश्य करें
एकादशी के दिन दान अवश्य करें
दिन में मैथुन न करें
नग्न हो कर स्नान न करें
माता पिता का अनादर न करें
सास, श्वसुर एवं परिवार के सदस्यों को आदर दें
नित्य प्रातःकाल बड़ों से आशीर्वाद लें
मदिरा का सेवन न करें
तन-मन से भोजन ग्रहण करें
सूर्य की ओर मुख करके लघुशंका न करें
ऋण लेकर अवश्य चुकाएं
टूटे बर्तन घर में न रखें
खाने से पहले गौ-ग्रास अवश्य निकालें
गंजे आदमी से दोस्ती न करें

Is it just me ?

2011-01-02T20:07:00.001+05:30

I have been around for some time now ... long enough to remember at least 3 decades ... of all the three - the one that has just gone past seems to be the most happening one ... job ... school ... venture ... illness ... recovery ... throw in a few nice friends (including the female kind) ... a few memorable trips ... a wonderful wife ... an adorable son ... and the decade rates high on the interesting scale ...

is it just me? ... or is everyone going through interesting times? ...

???
??
?

It's a small world

2010-08-13T10:04:00.002+05:30

Here's an interesting one -

Late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran ... of the Rushdie fatwa fame (older generations might remember the overthrow of Shah's regime)

... He has a huge India connection ... It seems his grandfather was born in Barabanki , India and grumps supposedly lived in Lucknow for a long time ... said to have moved on when the British gained the upper hand in India ... the Ayatollah's born name - "Ruhollah ibn Mustafa Musawi Khomeini Hindi" ... so he was called "the Indian" ....

Interestingly .... the guy against whom he pronounced the (in)famous fatwa- Salman Rushdie .... also has Indian roots ... He was born in India and he studied in Bombay

aren't the Indians everywhere ...

Vidya Dadati Vinayam - Gyan from the past

2010-05-18T11:08:00.004+05:30

Bringing to you the famous 6th verse from the preface of "Hitopadesha" .

Wikipedia tells us that Hitopadesha is a Sanskrit text that was probably written by a guy named Narayan and that " ..The book has many stories in common with the Panchatantra; it is believed that the author Narayana loved the Pachatantra so much that he rewrote it, improving the flow and adding stories of his own .." .

The book probably contains stories and gives us some "good advice".... There is no unanimity(on the net) on the year of creation of these verses ... some say they were writen in 11th - 12th century AD... I haven't read the book (though might have read the stories at various places)

So here we go -

विद्या ददाति विनयं विनयाद्याति पात्रताम् ।
पात्रत्वाद्धनमाप्नोति धनाद्धर्मं ततः सुखम् ॥

vidyA dadAti vinayaM, vinayAdyAti pAtratAM ।
pAtratvAddhanamApnoti, dhanAddharmaM tataH sukhaM ।।

विद्या vidyA = knowledge । ददाति dadAti = dad verb, to give । विनयं vinayaM = training, discipline, cultured mannerism (from training), humbleness, Prudence(my interpretation for usage) । yAti = comes । पात्रताम् pAtratAM = worthiness । pAtratvAt = from worthiness । dhanaM = wealth, money, enrichment । dhanAt = from wealth, from enrichment(my interpretation for usage) । dharmaM = Right thought and action, Right conduct (my interpretation of usage) । some words morph when used in combined form in Devanagari rendition of sanskrit , have not given the devanagari for those words in this translation key।

My interpretation -
Knowledge makes one prudent, prudence begets worthiness　।
Worthiness creates wealth and enrichment, enrichment leads to right conduct, right conduct brings contentment　।।

They had taught me these words in school Sanskrit ... but that was a very long time back ... and school was such a waste of time .....

Coming soon - Interesting Persian words and their usage in Hindustani

Sources for which links were not given in the post - HITOPADESHA -Collection of Tales , Practical Sanskrit Note at facebook

Cool Obama

2010-03-04T11:24:00.003+05:30

Not covering his politics ... there is lots of it ... and I haven't been following it ...

This is about his cool quotient ...

Came across the piece on his physical condition in news ... here's dugout news for you ... seems like Obama is a real cool dude ... resting heart rate of 56/minute and BP of 105/62 ... both the numbers are impressive ... when Obama gets worked up both his heart rate and BP are expected to rise ... but since the rise will be from a very low base he would still remain cool for an increasing amount of (for the lack of a better word) "agitation" ... very cool thing to have if you are in a position where calm and rational thinking (of whichever shade of political thought) is extremely important ... some might say US President is a job which may not require one to have calm and rational thinking ... the previous President can be sited as a supporting artefact for this line of thinking ... leave "calm" and "rational"... he was accused of having done no thinking at all ...

Coming back to heart rates ... for comparison- an average person can expect a heart rate in the 70-80 beats/minute range ...my resting heart rate would be somewhere in the 75 to 85 beats per minute range ... and Lance Armstrong's resting heart rate would be around 32 (reported here) ... which probably explains why I haven't been winning any US President's elections or Tour de France lately...

What should I be doing this year?

2010-01-20T11:19:00.002+05:30

So it’s a new year… (not that “new” actually…. about 20 of the 365 allocated days of this year have already gone past)… and Its another year into remission (the test was on 9th, Result came out on 15th – all clean) … so in keeping with long standing traditions (whose logic has not been verified ) it is a good time to take stock of things and then indulge in some wishful thinking for the future..

Before I get into it- acknowledgements -This job was made slightly easy by Gokhale who has already shared his thoughts on the subject … Taking a cue from him... I am making this public declaration of my intentions … With the hope that a positive public pressure will help me meet the targets….

here’s my list

1. Physical wellbeing

1.1. Eat and drink properly- If I do this one correct, a lot of ground will be covered on the health front...
Targets
1.1.1. Drink at least 2.5 liters of water a day … spread over the whole day … (baseline – currently irregular, around 2 liters/day)
1.1.2. Eat at regular intervals … with the last meal to be a small one taken before 9 PM ... (baseline - currently last meal is heavy and usually after 9:30)

1.2. Get ample sleep – Sleep, in my opinion, is an absolute must for physical well being … and I think I haven’t been getting enough of it
Targets
1.2.1. Sleep atleast 8 hours in a night … (baseline - less than 8 on most nights)
1.2.2. Carry no sleep deficit to next week week …

1.3. Waist and Stamina – Waist is a key downstream indicator… To control waist I will have to get a lot of other things under control… (Much like project tiger… where to protect the tiger the whole ecosystem has to be protected)… The approach is to work away the waist rather than starve to a thinner midsection.
Targets
1.3.1. Under 32 inches (baseline -38 inches at the widest :-(
1.3.2. Enough stamina to run a half marathon by the end of the year (baseline 2.5 KM max)

2. Mental wellbeing

2.1. Learn a Language - This is part of a more ambitious target of learning one new language a year . Since I know Hindi and a bit of Sanskrit and Urdu … Persian(Farsi) looks achievable
Target
2.1.1 Work @ 1 Lesson/day on http://www.easypersian.com

2.2. Gyan Recap – Whatever I am supposed to know... Small background- In my student life, I was very efficient… I used to pass most of my examinations with minimal effort … I lapped up the subjects as fast as they were thrown at me… With time (and there was plenty of it) I perfected the art to such an extent that I could pass with very little studying… As a result, I fear that, I might not have learnt as much as some of my more studious mates …To top it up my jobs hardly require any of the learnt knowledge … so I have started to loose the gyan .. I think a recap would be a good idea …
Target
2.2.1. Finish reacp of one broad topic a month

2.3. Write more often – Another background - As I have mentioned somewhere earlier- I was very efficient in childhood…. So efficient that I felt no need to maintain proper homework copies after as early as class 2 … This required a lot of skill in maneuvering myself through the schooling system without getting caught- for some strange reason, my teachers had a fetish for checking homework copies... they kept on asking me for HomeWork copies … I devised many successful ways to give slip to the teachers… As a result of my success in keeping away from homework, I could never get enough practice on writing… Which explains why writing doesn’t come spontaneously to me… It think its time to make amends and therefore I should write more blog posts.
Target
2.3.1. At least 50 blog posts in 2010 (baseline - 4 blog posts in 2009)

3. Relative wellbeing

3.1. Travel more often– Family that moves together, grooves together. I think i should take wife and son out more often
Targets
3.1.1. Take atleast 26 leave in this year .
3.1.2. Take Shams to three new places in a month

3.2. Stay in touch with family
Targets
3.2.1. Whenever Mom is in Delhi, meet her at least thrice a month
3.2.2. Visit In-laws at least once in a quarter.
3.2.3. Call Mom, Sis and Dad at least once a week.
3.2.4. Call all other relatives at least once a quarter.

3.3. Learn to Invest – Learn and try to limit all the mistakes to now (when I don’t have that much) rather than latter ( when I expect to have more).
Target :
3.3.1. Not lose money

4. Social wellbeing

4.1. Have lots of friends
Targets
4.1.1. Connect more often with existing friends
4.1.2. Make atleast 5 new friends outside office

4.2. Cooking – Learn new stuff
Targets
4.2.1. Make 6 sets of folks eat lunch/dinner cooked by me (might be counterproductive to social well being , but what the heck)

4.3. Help a few people – People near me, around me

... In earlier times … I used to ask friends to send feedback (on me) on Newyears… Very few replied … lesser number replied truthfully … I can easily trace the cause to the time of the year… Newyear makes people lie and it also prevent them from giving good feedback… all this primarily because people get into the habit of lying while filling their yearly appraisals.... and then some more when they read other peoples appraisals (which they appraise)… too much of appraisals also keeps people from giving good feedback.

Anyways… not much can be done about this … And I am still open to suggestions... So shoot if you have nice targets to suggest to me.

Chalo Copenhagen

2009-12-05T12:23:00.004+05:30

My cousin Ramsha is headed to Copenhagen for climate negotiations

Here's a picture of hers (extreme right) with rest of the official youth contingent and the Environment Minister

Picture taken from Hindu web article

http://beta.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/article60174.ece

Dream TV Channel

2009-09-13T10:22:00.002+05:30

I would happily pay huge sums for this TV channel -

Shahrukh Khan, Akshay Kumar, Amir Khan, Shahid Kapoor ... these along with Bheegi billi and other characters of 9Xm ... singing, dancing and doing stuff that teaches fundamentals of colours, counting, alphabets, size, animals etc etc

My Three and a half year old loves all these characters ... wants us play their songs on the comp ... likes to watch Bheegi Billi... but has totally revolted against learning the regular stuff that is expected from kids his age.

:-)

Dead in the news

2009-06-27T13:37:00.017+05:30

Michael Jackson .. mai-ka-lal jai-kisan (in desi jokes) ... Mikaeel ... is dead ... he died a few days back ... the whole world knew MJ ... most know about his death (its all over the media) ... many are sad ... he might even be remembered by a generation or two ...

I didn't know Michael ... and am sort of indifferent to his death ... it just makes me wonder why some immensely successful people face multiple troubles in their post-success lives ...

Hidden somewhere in the papers was news of another death ...
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/renowned-educationist-anil-wilson-passes-away/481449/
An ex-principal of St Stephens, New Delhi had passed away ... some people people knew Anil Wilson ... most of them would be sad .... he would also be remembered by a generation or two ...

Unlike MJ's case I am not indifferent to Anil' death ....I had shared a very brief period of my life with Anil .... all of about 2 hours... when we sat in the same room.... along with 5-6 other people ... all loaded with radioactive glucose... in AIIMS ... ... All of us were in for a PET scan on 16 Oct 08 ... and though he was the known educationist ... it was I who was giving all the gyan... I was more experienced ... I had dealt with cancer for longer .... and was trying to build up some positive vibes in an otherwise gloomy room ...

anyways ...

I had wished him luck and said goodbye when I left ...

goodbye again dude ...

peace to all

Oouche Roche

2009-04-25T09:22:00.006+05:30

Article from TOI
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Business/HC-scraps-Roches-plea/articleshow/4445931.cms

" ...The bench also said that public interest was predominant and it required that patients get access to cheap cancer medicines in the country ..."

The Patients vs Patents battle continues ...

I personally think that our society has chosen a flawed model for supporting and promoting innovation and growth in area of lifesaving drugs.

Silent Observer

2008-09-27T10:04:00.011+05:30

History, society, economics and communication
they are the themes of this post, this rumination

And why ??..... Because ...

Now is the time to look at these four -
History's in making, like never before
Prejudice's resurgent, hatred is it's core
Profits are moving from shore to shore

and communication ???

cause the net and the bloggers are changing the game
and readers and writers are one and the same
the youtube generation is wielding the mike
professional reporters can go take a hike

I watch from a distance, tune into the climes
A silent observer, I learn with the times
I hope to be smarter and wiser sometimes
-then pour all my thinking in beautiful rhymes

Re-Start

2008-06-24T21:39:00.001+05:30

If, at first, you don’t succeed try, try and try again ....

Back to the future

2008-04-28T21:54:00.002+05:30

Small time personal announcement-

picking up a regular job from day after tomorrow

Thank-you thank-you thank-you in advance

Downers

2008-04-24T19:46:00.003+05:30

-- It is not a fair world

-- Markets have ugly distortions and frictions which mar their theoretical beauty

-- The system sure works - only hitch is - it doesn't work for you

no SCANdal here - I am clean (updated)

2008-03-27T18:30:00.010+05:30

Well... the PET scan results are out ... This was the second PET after treatment got over ... An unassuming pre-printed report says that things are fine

Am posting some of the PET Scan pictures for the curious ones who have never seen such images

Here's the latest update from my Hematologist Dr Auro Viswabandya

I had a loook at PET scan and it appears absolutely fine.

Your blood reports are normal and no intervention is required at present.

You can definitely get prepared for half marathon run in November 2008 ! Absolutely no problem.

For some people, the weakness / tiredness remains for a longer time post chemo and radiotherapy. Try to ignore that and get back to your normal schedule. Should be alright.

It will be better to have a repeat PET after 6 months and if everything is fine, then the next PET can be after 1 year.

PET Scan at AIIMS

2008-03-26T12:57:00.005+05:30

If you are looking at getting a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Scan done in New Delhi, then getting it done from AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences) is an option that you might consider.

AIIMS advantage

AIIMS was one of first few Indian hospitals to set up a PET/CT center. They have (what seems like) competent staff. Very importantly they are much cheaper than the private PET centers.

The drawbacks are -

a) Long waiting list - you have to book well in advance - 1.5 months lead would get you a scan date of your choice ... If you are lucky, you can get earlier appointments ... The more resourceful can try pawwa/jack ... a senior AIIMS doctor (preferably from dept of Nuclear Medicine) would a be an ideal jack

b) Government Hospital treatment - I will not call the AIIMS PET experience bad, but it pales in comparison to the royal treatment given at Apollo PET center at Hyderabad ... AIIMS guys might call you empty stomach at 9:30 in the morning and then do your scan 4 or 5 in the evening ... To be fair they are not totally inhuman - children, elderly and the extremely weak are scanned first ... but still, I think smarter scheduling will result in substantial improvement in the customer experience.

Rates

First time scan (full body) - INR 7,500
Subsequent scans - INR 4,000

Tips

- PET center is the first building (just one floor tall) on the left .. when entering AIIMS from Aurobindo Marg gate (opposite Safdarjung Hospital)

- For booking a slot, you would need a written test prescription from your doctor . Things would be smoothest if this prescription is from an AIIMS doctor.

- Preferred way of payment is thru bank draft. At the time of booking they tell you the exact amount and details for the draft. I had to get a draft in favor of "Director, AIIMS, New Delhi" payable at New Delhi

- Bring previous scan reports/sheets and diagnosis records/discharge summaries. They might ask for a photocopy of the earlier reports and medical records. A photocopy of previous scan report(from AIIMS) serves as proof of repeat scan (repeat scans are cheaper)

- Bring a one liter bottle of water along. Some types of scans require you to drink a "contrast". The technician makes this "contrast" by mixing something in your 1 liter water bottle.

Scan done

2008-03-26T12:42:00.004+05:30

Monday morning I got a PET Scan done. This is the second scan after treatment got over. The previous scan (done in Sep 07) had come out clean. If this one comes clean, then there are good chances that my blood cancer will not come back again.

Results will be out tomorrow.

Complan works best on girls

2008-03-07T15:22:00.006+05:30

Don't believe me ???

It's not my imagination ... it was proven in a scientific experiment

This well regulated study was started when Ayesha Takia and Shahid Kapoor were kids ... what did you say - they still look like kids !! ... well well ... this was started they were real kids.

At that time, in keeping with scientific temperament and in the quest for the enlightened truth, they were given Complan

A few days back the results were evaluated -

Shahid hasn't done that well ... He has managed to grow just 2 inches more than the average Indian male( avg height 5'5") ... Even today he looks slightly smallish and does boyish things ... Here is a picture of Shahid

Ayesha, on the other hand, has grown quite well. She is a good 5 inches taller than the average Indian female(avg height 5'0") and is sumptuously endowed in other dimensions too. Latest pic (wearing green) -

Conclusion - Complan definitely has different effects on boys and girls

sources - video by psvyas on youtube, Ayesha from masalaababes Shahid from bollywood.ac
Note - Some of the external sources are not as discrete as I am ... they may carry titillating and objectionable images.

And the award goes to ... Daso

2008-03-04T12:54:00.003+05:30

If I were to give away an award for the best captions on an Online Photo Album ... I would definitely give it to the captions on my pal Hrishikesh Das and his mate Jyotsna's album of their Goa trip

This Album (click to view) contains gems like

"Don't think it is a lighthouse...looks pretty heavy to me!"
and
"They tried to break the fort with love writings...but I guess fort was stronger than love... "

Lemonade - A good use for life's lemons

2008-02-19T11:03:00.004+05:30

some wise guy in England has set up a "young people repellent" - something called a "mosquito" - read a BBC piece about it This "mosquito" thingy emits a shrill annoying noise that is audible to only the young ... the irritating noise is supposed to keep the trouble-making teenagers and other young people away

Note: It is "SUPPOSED" to keep the young away ... but no one told the young about this supposedly intended purpose ... so, the young have put the mosquito noise to good use ... this economist piece points out

British teenagers have already shown how the table can be turned. Using mobile phones to record the silent-to-many output of the Mosquito machines they have used the sound to disrupt classes by irritating fellow students while teachers remain oblivious. And in schoolrooms, where mobiles are banned, the sound is a useful semi-private ringtone. In an already noisy world an arms race of sound is not to be welcomed.

Rahen na Rahen Hum - Remembering Majrooh

2008-02-08T12:06:00.000+05:30

I was moved by the beauty of this Majrooh Sultanpuri song from the 1966 movie "Mamta".

Thank you CP, for pointing me to the "tehalka" piece on Majrooh.

You can hear the song "रहें ना रहें हम" from the "Dishant" website.

Here's my transcript of the lyrics, enjoy -

रहें ना रहें हम, महका करेंगे
बन के कली, बन के सबा, बाग़-ए-वफ़ा में ..

मौसम कोई हो, इस चमन में, रंग बनके रहेंगे हम ख़िरामा
चाहत कि खुशबु , यूँ हि ज़ुल्फ़ों से उड़ेंगी, ख़िज़ा हो या बहाराँ
युहीं झूमते, युहीं झूमते और, खिलते रहेंगे
बन के कली, बन के सबा, बाग़-ए-वफ़ा में ..

खोये हम ऐसे, क्या है मिलना - क्या बिछड़ना, नही है याद हमको
कूचे मे दिल के, जब से आए, सिर्फ़ दिल कि ज़मीं है, याद हमको
इसी सरज़मीं, इसी सरज़मीं पे, हम तो रहेंगे
बन के कली, बन के सबा, बाग़-ए-वफ़ा में ..

जब हम न होंगे, जब हमारी, ख़ाक पे तुम रुकोगे चलते-चलते
अश्कों से भीगी चांदनी मे, इक सदा सी, सुनोगे चलते-चलते
वहीं पे कहीं, वहीं पे कहीं हम, तुमसे मिलेंगे
बन के काली, बन के सबा, बाग़-ए-वफ़ा में ..

logic of maa- bahen and other simians

2008-01-30T09:09:00.001+05:30

For quite some time now, Bhajji and Monkeys have dominated gossip, blogs and news ... thankfully their story ended yesterday ... and in its end, it also ended up hogging max space on TV and morning news papers ... here's my take

A TOI piece suggested that Bhajji didn't racially abuse Symonds by calling him one of those-simian-species-which-should-not-be-named ... instead he was merely throwing "normal" insults on Symonds' mother ... It seems that this explanation was the clincher ... it ... along with lack of recorded proof and solid BCCI clout ... sealed the case in favor of Bhajji.

But look closely ... was the case closed in favor of Bhajji???

If we assume (as claimed by Bhajji, and not disputed by Symonds) that Symonds provoked Bhajji ... with something comparable to maa-behen ki ... then Bhajji should have fought for an equal punishment for Symonds ... Equal punishment for equal crime ... It would have been fair ... Both guys used bad language - both get fined for it ...

but now .. with only one guy punished ... Bhajji comes out of the controversy as the offending offish boor ... while Symonds is the poor sufferer ... Symonds' offensive provocation went unnoticed, while Bhajji coarseness got punished.

Obviously if we had assumed that Bhajji did intentionally call Symonds a Monkey ... then things would have fallen in the grey area ... the comments could have been found to be racially motivated - in which case Bhajji should have been punished to send out the message that society will not tolerate racial attack and abuse ... Or the comments could have been found to be of non-racially-motivated, cuss words of the saala, gadha, kutta, bunder variety ... using which, it seems, is an OK thing in todays international cricket ... and no action should have been taken

Anyways ... it is possible that Bhajji was so messed up with the racial abuse charges ... that he totally forgot to do the logical thing ... demand equal punishment for Symonds ... and with that he failed to establish, for the records, the fact that ... Symonds started it all ...

Now since we are talking about "logic" and "news" ... here's another one ...

Health Secretaries are the kind of people who should NOT be making logical mistakes ... Seems like our current one just made one -

While trying to say that the bird-flu was brought to India from Bangladesh, by illegal poultry traders (a very possible thing ... in fact most probable) he is supposed to have said this -

"If we see that the virus circulating in Bengal is the same as the Bangladeshi type, we can almost be certain that illegal trade of infected poultry from Bangladesh into India was the cause of the present outbreak. If the strains don't match, the virus may have then been brought into India by migratory birds."

how can same virus strain prove that "illegal poultry trade" is the cause of the virus spreading ??? ...

...The same set of wild migratory birds might have landed first in Bangladesh and then in Bengal to spread the same strain of H5N1 virus at both places ...

... wild birds in Bangladesh might have caught the virus and then migrated to join illegal bangladeshi bird-force in India, spreading the virus here ...

... some infected Bangladeshi chicken might have just walked over ...

there are many ways in which both the countries can end up having exactly the same virus strain ... but ... for our health secretary ... if the strains are same - illegal traders are the only ones to blame ...

His only saving grace ... he is procedurally smart ... he did what only an accomplished Indian civil servant can do ... he played it safe .. by by using an "almost" in "...we can almost be certain..." he sort of saved his a** ... that was very clever ploy... but it cannot fully hide fallacious logic ...

So that's all for today ... one should always remember that actually ... things are not all that bad ... not everything is gloomy ... and not everything needs to be logical ... so we can all chill out ... watch the news ... and enjoy

(Update 05 April 08)
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Ducks_cause_of_bird_flu_outbreaks/articleshow/2927117.cms

Madman - Perur writes well

2008-01-25T15:27:00.000+05:30

Here's link to a very nice story written by my pal Srinath

http://www.deccanherald.com/Content/Jan62008/artic2008010545058.asp

easy come, easy go

2008-01-22T14:57:00.001+05:30

One year's up

2008-01-19T20:25:00.000+05:30

It's been exactly one year since the day I started chemo therapy

Rahim shows the bright part of it -

रहिमन विपदा हू भली जो थोडे दिन होय |
हित अनहित इह जगत में, जान पड़े सब कोय ||

Says Rahim these troubles are good, though if of a limited size
they teach you good from the bad, and make you worldly wise

TATA नन्हूँ

2008-01-11T10:31:00.000+05:30

Yesterday TATA launched its new people's car - Tata Nano ...
Here's a pic (googled out of a german website)

I just love the name "Nano" ... It sounds great ... and very importantly the actual meaning of the word ... and its popular-press usage ... both add a favorable flavor to the car ...

First on to the popular press ... "nano" is most commonly used along with "technology" in the word "nanothechnology" - the next in-thing ... the cutting edge of modern development ... the driving force of future ... nice association for a car that is touted as a paradigm shift (yes i am licensed to use the "p" word) in auto industry ... gives you the feeling that TATA Nano is capable of being the driving force for the masses that will make India's future

Not to leave the actual meaning of the word ... its a prefix that means one billionth ... with India's population being a little more than a billion ... one billionth is just the right fraction for each person and his/her car ...

Now to my favorite ... Nano sound so much like " नन्हूँ" ("nanhu") ... the everyday coo-chi-coo hindustani word that means - small and cute ... bang-on target for the car ...

nice choice of a name ... Mr Tata

(there is some discussion on small car related problems at Gokhale's blog post)

Want to collaborate for a Hindustani Blog ?

2007-12-24T18:49:00.000+05:30

I am looking for equal partners to start a blog in Hindustani written in Devanagari.
Let me know if you are interested.
We can figure out the details of the blog (thing like -Name of the blog .... the kind of stuff that we would post on the blog ... the kind of stuff we will not post on the blog ... how the blog will look etc etc) later ...

Not so sweet 16 +16

2007-12-20T21:55:00.000+05:30

Really strange ... in the last few days I have read about a few interesting personalities ... all of them had a common trait ... they died at the age of 32 ... how odd can that be ... These guys are from different corners of the world ... were active in different fields ... and lived in different times ... check them out yourself ... Sikander ... Adi Shankaracharya ... Ramanujan ... Bruce Lee

Ek Chidiya - Anek Chidiyan

2007-12-14T10:58:00.000+05:30

Truly Classic from "Films Division", made for the "Center for Educational Technology" (NCERT) and played about a million times by Dur-Darshan ... repeated to the extent that it got etched forever in our memories ...

I have transcripted the lyrics in देवनागरी and Roman (English) scripts -
firefox users should enable indic language support (start->settings->control panel->regional and language support) to see देवनागरी properly

हम् .. हिंद देश .. हम् हम्हम् ... हम सभी .. एक हैं .. ता र र र र
भाषा अनेक हैं हम् .. भाषा अनेक हैं हम्

ये अनेक क्या है दीदी ?
अनेक यानि बहोत सारे
बहोत सारे .. क्या बहोत सारे ?
अच्छा बताती हूँ .. सूरज एक, चन्दा एक, तारे अनेक
तारों को अनेक भी कहते हैं ?
नही नही, देखो फिर से

सूरज एक चन्दा एक .. एक एक एक करके तारे भये अनेक

ठीक से समझाऊ ना दीदी

देखो देखो एक गिलहरी .. पीछे पीछे अनेक गिलहरियाँ
एक तितली .. एक और तितली .. एक एक एक करके हो गयीं अब अनेक तितलियाँ

समझ गया दीदी .. एक ऊँगली, अनेक उँगलियाँ
हाँ
दीदी दीदी वह देखो अनेक चिडियाँ
अनेक चिडियों की कहानी सुनोगे
हाँ हाँ

आ आ आ एक चिडिया एक-एक करके अनेक चिडियाँ .. दाना चुगने आई चिडियाँ

दीदी दीदी हमे भी सुनाओ ना
तो सुनो फिर से

एक चिडिया, अनेक चिडिया, दाना चुगने बैठ गयीं थी
हाय राम! पर वहाँ, ब्याल ने एक जाल बिछाया था
ब्याल, ब्याल कौन दीदी ?
ब्याल, चिडिया पकड़ने वाला
फिर क्या हाउ दीदी ? ब्य्ला ने उन्हे पकड़ लिया ? मार डाला ?

हिम्मत से अगर जुटे रहें तो .. छोटे हों पर मिले रहें तो बड़ा काम भी होवे भईय्या .. बड़ा काम भी होवे भईय्या
एक दो तीन ... चतुर चिडियाँ, सायानी चिडियाँ, मिल जुल कर, जाल ले कर, भागी चिडियाँ .. फुर्ररररररर

दूर, एक गाओं के पास, चिडियों के दोस्त चूहे रहते थे और उन्होने चिडियों का जाल काट दिया
तो देखा फिर तुमने, अनेक फिर एक हो जातें हैं तो कैसा मज़ा आता है

दीदी मै बताऊं .. हो गए एक .. बन गई ताकत .. बन गई हिम्मत
दीदी हम अगर एक हो जाएं तो बड़ा काम कर सकते हैं ?
हाँ हाँ क्यों नही
तो इस पेड़ के आम तोड़ सकते हैं ?
हाँ तोड़ सकते हैं, पर जुगत लगनी होगी
..
.
अच्छा , ये जुगत, वाह, बड़ा मज़ा आएगा

हिंद देश के निवासी सभी जन एक हैं X4

रंग रूप वेश भाषा चाहे अनेक हैं X4

एक अनेक, एक अनेक ... सूरज एक चन्दा एक तारे अनेक
एक तितली अनके तितलियाँ ..एक गिलहरी अनेक गिलहरियाँ
एक चिडिया एक एक अनेक चिडियाँ

बेला गुलाब जूही चंपा चमेली X4

फूल हैं अनेक किंतु माला फिर एक है X4

hmm .. hind desh .. hm hmhm .. hum sabhi .. ek hain.. ta ra ra ra ra
bhasha aneka hain hmm .. bhnasha aneka hain hmm

ye anek kya hai didi?
anek yaaney bahot saarey
bahot saarey .. kya bahot saarey ?
achcha batati hoon .. sooraj ek, chanda ek, taarey anek
taaron ko anek bhi kehtey hain?
nahi nahi, daikho phir sey

sooraj ek chanda ek .. ek ek ek karkey taarey bhaye anek

theek sey samjhaoo na didi

daikho daikho ek gilahri ... peechey peechey anek gilahriyan
ek titali ..ek aur titali .. ek ek ek karkey ho gayeen ab anek titaliyaan

samajh gaya didi .. ek ungli, anek ungliyan
haan
didi didi woh dekho anek chidiyan
anek chidiyon ki kahani sunogey ?
haan haan

aa aa aa ek chidiya ek-ek karkey anek chidiyan .. daana chugney aayi chidiyan

didi didi humey bhi sunaoo na
to suno phir sey

ek chidiya anek chidiyan
daana chugney baith gayeen thi
hai raam! par wahan, byal ney ek jaal bichaaya tha
byal, byal kaun didi ?
byal, chidiya pakadney waala
phir kya hua didi? byal ney unhey pakad liya? maar dala

himmat sey agar jutey rahen to ..chootey hon par miley rahen to bada kaam bhi hovey bhaiya .. bada kaam bhi hovey bhaiya
ek do teen .. chatur chidya, sayani chidiya, mil jul kar, jaal le kar, bhaagi chidiyan .. phurrrrr

duur, ek gaaon ke paas, chidiyon ke dost choohey rehtey they aur unhoney chidiyon ka jaal kaat diya
to daikha phir tumney anek phir ek ho jaatey hain to kaisa maza aata hai

didi mai bataaon ... ho gaye ek .. ban gayi takat .. ban gayi himmat
didi agar hum ek ho jaayen to bada kaam kar saktey hain?
haan haan kyon nahi
to is ped ke aam bhi toad saktey hain?
haan toad saktey hain , par jugad lagani hogi
..
.
achcha, ye jugat, wah, bada maza aayega

hind daish ke niwaasi sabhi jan ek hain X4

rang roop vesh bhasha chaahey anek hain X4

ek aneky ek aneky .. sooraj ek chanda ek taarey anek
ek titiali aneky titiliayan .. ek gilahri anek gilahriyan
ek chidiya ek ek anek chidiyan

beyla gulaab juhi chumpa chameli X4

phool hain anek kintu maala phir ek hai X4

Let me know about transcription/spelling/transliteration mistakes by leaving a comment

(Thanks to Saurabhusbondre , the youtube video has been posted by him. Another thank-you goes to my pal kholu for pointing me to the video)

The Nobel Sherwani

2007-12-11T11:33:00.000+05:30

The Sherwani is looking smart at the Nobel Awards Ceremony

Honed to Perfection ???

2007-12-07T22:13:00.000+05:30

This article was recommended by Subbu in a comment on Susu's blog-post about some transient midlife-crisis/existential-dilemma

It says that, many a times, the search for perfection is not good for you ... that the extra load and worry is just not worth it ...

I agree ... not because I am a lazy bum (you guessed wrong) ... but because I have always believed in "ek lohaar ki"

Wouldn't it be great if we all knew when to stop ... we could just show up ... make maximum impact ... and then rush out before the law of diminishing returns kicks in

I cannot paste the whole article ... nytimes copyright rules bar free distribution ... but you can always follow the URL
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/health/04mind.html

I guess folks in the software world would find the concept familiar. One of the warnings, given at the time of training, is against gold-plating

So folks ... chill out ... take it easy and enjoy

Shikaar-e-Naukari

2007-12-07T09:49:00.001+05:30

Shikaar-e-Naukari ... sounds like the name of a complex poem ... it probably is complex ... but it definitely is not poetic ... it's more of a slaying-the-beast kind of a thing ... this Shikaar-e-Naukari (a bad translation of the word "Job-Hunt")

In all possibility "hunting" would have been an adventure thing even in the times of the early man ... only brave men (women?) would have entered the forests to slay the beast ... possibly to protect their fellow tribesmen, cattle or fields ... or maybe to kill a lunch or a dinner ...

With advances in technology (spear ... bow and arrow) and society (division of labour ... surplus produce ... specialized fighters) the odds would have tilted away from the hunted and in favour of the hunter ... fear would have come down ... and men would have started enjoying the hunts ...

Those looking for some thrills would go for the kills ... We know that Raja-Maharaajas, Nawabs and other assorted muchchads hunted for pleasure ... and the English and their (its turned ours now) language took the adventure-sport of killing a step further - it called it "Game" hunting...

Times have changed from then ... today shooting with the gun is out of fashion ...most of the shooting takes place thru the lens of a camera ... but the thrill of the kill remains ... and that is good news for me ... for I am on a Job Hunt

The fun part began with the resume ... something I last made when I was in b-school ... more than 3 years back ... in fact I had kissed my CV goodbye on the day I started on my own firm ... thankfully there was an old copy stashed somewhere in my yahoo briefcase ... so with a little copying of formats (thank you G) I could reconstruct most of the CV ...

The issues while making a CV are many

- size - one can make a five pager with intricate details of each project (technology, business domain, learnings, contributions, achievements, reporting structure blah blah blah) ...

- details - Some put a section on non-verifiable and usually cliche skills (out of box thinker,excellent communicator,team-player,eye for details etc etc) ...

- level of cow-dung (bull-shit for non-feminists) - Some people like to open with a paragraph of pompous self-boast e.g - A dynamic go-getter, with a penchant for innovation, drive for success, working as a catalytic change-agent zzzzzzz ..... others put more non-verifiable bullshit in the (believe-it-or-not) achievement's section e.g- Helped underprivileged blind children climb mount everest while carrying mother Teressa on my shoulders...

- Font - Thankfully laziness saved me the trouble of choosing fonts ... I unashamedly copied (smart worker, champion of efficiency enhancing methods like re-use) from the standard IIMB format
..
.
.
There were lots of other things ... but, for your benefit, I will cut the story short (or else I lose the very few readers who have bothered to read this far).

so what did I do? ... ... you might have guessed it right -I took the shortcut ... made a one-pager (size limits the amount of bull-shit) and sent it to friends for feedback ... Oh yes - I have been a quality guy ... I know the pluses of peer-review ...

The feedbacks are in and I am into the final draft ... hopefully it will not carry too much of embellishing bull ...

as Jigar Muradabadi had said

sab hi andaaz-e-husn pyaare hain
hum magar saadgi ke maarey hain

signing-off today with thank-yous to xl, uncle, pareekh, andy and jim

We didn't start the bubble - too good

2007-12-06T10:33:00.000+05:30

Way cool

Note- Pilfered from a usually biased and occasionally good blog (sort of like lotus in the middle of muck)

Track your comments

2007-12-03T18:28:00.000+05:30

This seems like a very friendly feature of blogspot

Now you can get intimated of any follow-up comments on a post... Meaning ... if you write a comment on a post and want to get an intimation whenever someone else writes another comment on that post - you can easily do that ... you just have to check an option box while posting your comment ...

this picture shows the option box that needs to be checked -

I always wanted a feature like this ... and was very happy when I discovered it today ... am wondering if its been around for a while ... and also wondering why blogger's has not publicized this new feature

A Rupee for petroleum

2007-11-27T12:34:00.000+05:30

Lately the financial newspapers and blogs have started carrying loads of hu ha about petroleum and currencies ... should crude be traded in Euros ? ... should it be priced in Dollars ? ... does it really matter? ... who keeps his forex reserves where? ... who's weaving a basket for his currency? ... the issues are every where ... so I have come up with this novel suggestion

It would be good fun if, instead of running after dollar, pound, yer and euros, the persian gulf countries moved on to the Indian Rupee ... moving to the rupee wouldn't be such a strange thing for the sheiks ... they are already familiar with it ... in the olden times the Indian Rupee was in wide circulation in the gulf ... things went to such an extent that RBI had to issue special notes, popularly called gulf rupee, for the region ...

The gulf rupee was similar to the indian rupee except the fact that it was in different colours and the serial numbers included an extra "Z". Here's how the 1, 5,10 and 100 gulf rupee notes looked like (pics taken from Qatar Central Bank site)

Gaining weight - Fat a fat

2007-11-26T21:14:00.000+05:30

There used to be a time when I could eat anything ... and not worry about my weight ... infact watching weight was the kind of stuff that girls did ... Those were such lovely days, I could eat to my hearts content with blissful abandon ... Mithais, chocolates, ice-creams, kingfishers .. triple helpings of everything ... sub chalta tha ... sub khoon maaf they

All that has changed now ... I am putting on weight on regular food ... don't know why ... its sort of scary ... i am already 85 kgs with a 40 inch paunch ... is this the onset of middleagedness ????

Block out

2007-11-26T18:59:00.000+05:30

A new strategy to break out of the writer's block has just chamkooed to me.
Write short posts .. which don't require too much of thinking or typing.

Clear Scan

2007-09-27T09:17:00.000+05:30

- The results are out ...

Which results ??? - Well the results of PET Scan done 3 months after treatment

What were they trying to find out ??? - If there are any signs of cancer cells left in my body

What did they find ??? - Nothing ... it was a Clear Scan

What does it mean ??? - Means that the treatment seems to have worked, the cancerous cells are gone, the residual mass of dead tissue is gone ... and cancer has not returned in the last 3 months

Wow seems good ... so you off the hook ??? - Sort of ... will have to send the report to my doctor and he will decide if this is "remission" ... Then will have to get a few quarterly PET scans done ... to see if the disease is relapsing

So you live life QSQT ??? - Yes I will ... but who doesn't

What are the chances now ??? - Pretty good ... If the cancer does not return in the next year or two there are good chances that it never will

Situation seems good ... you held up will ... Good Show :-) - Thank you

Graceless on TV

2007-09-25T21:23:00.000+05:30

Yesterday I spent a lot of time watching TV ... there was the T20 final and lots of bed time latter because I was tired after not eating the whole day (had a PET scan ... which required me to come empty stomach ... so hadn't eaten anything after previous night's dinner ... and since AIIMS is a "sarkaari" hospital, the scan scheduled for10 in morning actually took place at 4 in the evening ... leaving me hungry for longer than I could take)

So I was watching the TV and was stuck by total lack of grace from 2 people ... First was the Pakistani Captain ... he first thanked and then apologized to all the Muslims in the world ... I wondered why? He looked silly cause obviously all Muslims in the world had not supported his team ... infact we can do some calculations and find out his support levels ...

Here we go -

Reasonable assumptions
A> Muslims in India will support India (their own country)
B> Muslims in Bangladesh will not support Pakistan team (Bongs fought Pakis for their independence)
C> Muslims in non-cricket playing countries (like Indonesia) will not be interested in cricket and will support no one.

Now Numbers
World Muslim Population - 1500 million
Muslims in Cricket playing nations - 451 million
Muslims in Pakistan - 158 million
Muslims in India - 150 million
Muslims in Bangladesh - 135 million

Scenarios

Best Scenario for Pak Captain - All cricket interested Muslims except Indians and Bangladeshis support him (166 Million, slightly unlikely as there is no reason for all Kenyan, South African, Britisher etc etc Muslims to support Pakistan)
This translates int0 11.1% of world Muslim support and 36.8% of cricket interested Muslim support

Worst Scenario for Pak Captain - Only Pakistani Muslims support him (158 million, very likely)
This translates into 10.5% of World Muslim Support and 35% of cricket interested Muslim support

Bottom-line is that only 1 in 10 Muslims of the world would have supported him. Even in the cricket playing world only about one third Muslims would have supported him. He made a fool of himself by claiming global Muslim support. Two of my friends have written on this very topic. Samcho in his post Twenty20 and Siddhartha in his post ICC World Twenty20, Religion and myth-busting.

Now on to the second person who lacked grace ... it was Columbia University's President Lee Bollinger.... He invited Iran's president Ahmadinejad to his University and then went on to pile insults on him ... I am no fan of Ahmadinejad ... but I sincerely feel that if one invites a guest one should treat the guest in a civilized manner (if you hate someone to the limit of insulting - don't invite him in the first place) ... BBC showed the most insulting part of Bollinger's speech live ... makes me wonder if (and how much of) Ahmadinejad's speech was shown uncensored (I went to sleep after hearing Bollinger's part) ...

Reminds me of more crude behavior that I pointed out in my earlier post Saddam dead - Winners in West-Asia rejoice ... I don't expect the world to be free of crudeness ... infact crudeness adds spice to the world ... but I did expect the Presidents of a big university to be slightly better mannered

Thats all for this post ... will prolly write something when my PET Scan report comes out tomorrow.

Delayed Plan, Round Trips and a Marriage

2007-09-18T08:34:00.000+05:30

Those who have read the earlier post know about my mission-remission plan. In the plan I wanted to wait for normal blood counts before training to first regain and then maintain stamina.

Like all good plans mission-remission slipped from the very beginning - My blood counts refused to hit normal levels - which meant that the plan stood delayed ...

But all was not bad... there was a silver lining ... etc etc ... blood counts actually got stuck after creeping near 90% of normal values ... Being a Mechanical engineer I could easily declare the blood counts as normal ...You see its very characteristic of Mech engineers ... we don't shy away from happily rounding off pi as 3 and the value of acceleration due to gravity 'g' as 10 ... for the illiterate - pi is actually 22/7 which comes out to be around 3.14... 'g' varies from location to location but conventional students like to believe that it is 9.8 m/secsquared ... Mech engineers can do all the approximations because we pad up our final results with a "factor of safety" ... which means that when calculations require a part to be 1 inch thick, the mechanical engineer can safely ask for a 2 or 3 inch thick part :-)) ... Sadly I don't have a "factor of safety" so the optimistic approximation may not work.

Anyways, I could not let technical glitches from spoiling my plan ... Normal blood counts would have signalled that my body could take the load of shaping up ... now I planned to bypass the counts and test my endurance directly ... So I took two adventure trips (must agree that the trips were not solely for testing my load-bearing capacity ... after months of staying at home I was dying to go out and meet people) ...

First trip was more challenging ... it involved driving on Delhi-Agra-Gwalior-Jhansi-Satna route in two days ... Gwalior-Jhansi strech had to be covered after sunset (poor planning by me) on a path which had non-existant roads (poor planning by UP and MP governments) ... the challenges didn't end with the drive ... there was more -> Satna- Allahabad travel, stay with the in-laws, Allahabad-luckhnow-Delhi by various combinations of train and bus ... Bottom line is I endured the trip without too much trouble ...

Second trip was within a week -> I went to Mumbai to attend my friend Andy's wedding. It was a typical Tam affair ... the detailed story is on the IIMB Class of 2004 blog. This one was two days flyin-flyout kind of a trip . Was good fun ... but took some time to recover from it ... slept throughout the day for 2-3 days ...

Anyways ... so that was how I was whiling away my time ... after all I have the licence for doing Haraamkhori ... though I guess the licence will expire soon ...

I have my PET Scan on 24th Sept ... The scan will tell if the treatment (chemotherapy and radiation) has succeeded so far ... an all-clear in the PET means I would be back to normal life (though I will have to take care of my body ... stay in shape and get regularly checked-up to see if the cancer has relapsed) ... In case PET shows that the cancer lingers on, then I will hold my Haraamkhori licence and may have to get on to a second-line of treatment (which is slightly tougher than the first line treatment ... with less optimistic results) ...

So the coming week is a week of uncertainties ... which is nothing unusual for me ... I can continue making full use of my Haraamkhori licence-

Ajgar karey naa chaakri
Panchi karey naa kaam
Das maluka kahi gaye
subkey daata raam

CBC 4000 and climbing

2007-08-10T13:20:00.000+05:30

Most of my friends have been tracking my progress (against blood cancer) thru this blog.... there was a time when I made frequent postings ... in those days; no one felt the need to mail or call to find out about my health ... lately I have been getting a lot of calls and mails from my pals - all wondering if am doing OK ... I guess a personal health update is overdue

So here's the latest -

I have completed the first-line of treatment ... this means I have undergone R-MACOP-B chemo therapy and have also taken radiation (40 Gy which were distributed over 20 sittings) ... If this first-line treatment succeeds ( I hope it will) then I will not need any further treatment and will go on to live a (hopefully satisfying) long life :-)

When the radiation got over (in late June) I came back to Delhi have been resting at home for the past 1.5 months ... in this time I have slowly evolved and brought into action my Mission-Remission ... Mission-Remission is a three staged program for getting my life back
here's how it goes -

1. Let blood counts mount
Chemo and radiation had slowed down the production of White Blood Cells (WBCs also called Leukocytes) in my body ... a normal man has WBC count ranging from 4000-11000, mine had come down to 2400. The first thing that needed to be done was the wait for the blood counts to come back to the normal range. I rested at home, ate good food, got blood counts analyzed twice a week ... all in anticipation of normal blood counts ... My counts first rose to 3000 level ... stayed there for a while and then slowly started improving .... I reduced the frequency of getting counts done to once a week ... Last Monday the blood counts touched 4000 ... if the figure goes further up in next Monday's blood counts I would declare myself to be officially back to normal blood counts.

2. Get back in shape
To give you an idea ... I was 5 kgs over my ideal-body-weight when I was diagnosed with cancer ... the treatment put me on steroids and I gained a further 5 kgs .... so now I am 10 kgs overweight ... before I got the disease I could work 10 kg dumbbells with ease ... now I have trouble doing 3 kgs ... earlier I could go on a morning walk of 6 km and come back feeling refreshed ... now I get totally drained out in a 3-4 km walk .... Clearly I need to shed weight and build up my strength and stamina
I have given this 3 months time ... starting next week (when I will declare the blood counts to be officially normal) ... aim is reduction of weight by atleast 10 kgs (from 81 kgs today), reduction in waist ( from 38 inch today, to below 32 inch) and regaining stamina (back to comfortable 6 km walks) ... in the process I might also get back my strength (with other things in place it will come automatically)
During this time I also aim to get a job for myself ... What kind of a job? ... I don't know ... I am a man of many talents (some would say "well hidden", but I ignore them :-) ... and since I am a very fast learner ... I can potentially do many things (no point being modest these days :-) ... I have to make up my mind ... there are unconventional options like teaching or taking up a job in one of the NGOs ... but my guess is I would get back to rigmarole of corporate life ... any suggestions on this are most welcome ... please feel free to shoot out possible career options and openings at baawara@gmail.com

3. Keep on the good work
Once life gets back to normal ... I intend to keep it that way ... I probably will need to be more careful with my health than most blokes ... but hey staying fit cannot be that bad a choice ... I think making little challenges for myself will help ... first challenge ... completing Delhi Half-Marathon in 2008 :-)

I told you so

2007-08-10T10:11:00.000+05:30

About a year back I wrote a protest post on this blog.
It was called Live-in, Wives, Legislation and Jail

At that time I thought that the "Domestic Violence Act" was unfair (I still do) . It (apart from its many other shortcomings) assumed that men were guilty and therefore must be punished by (pre-conviction) prison sentences imposed by their wives.

My argument, that the DV law is flawed, has been backed by this news article (to see the video click on "watch video"). The article says that the DV law is being misused- even Supreme Court thinks that the law was badly drafted.

A basic question ... Does a law become good just because it has been passed by an elected parliament ??? ... looking at the biased domestic violence law the answer seems to be - NO ... then comes the more important point ... when all laws are not good then shouldn't we stop following the "not good" ones ? (this may look like sedition to a lot of people - but it is an honest question)

You see - an impartial judiciary can ensure implementation of any law (by punishing the violators) ... India can boast of a slow, but largely impartial judiciary ... If judiciary has to implement "bad laws", it would effectively be spreading injustice (even if it has the best intentions ... because the fault lies with the law not the judiciary) ... Any law not based on time-tested and important principles like equality and assumed-innocence runs a big chance of being a "bad law"... By dishonouring the principles of equality, assumed-innocence etc, the parliament is actually exposing the common man (note the pun) to possible travesty of justice.

The onus is on the parliament - By passing good laws, they can prevent the courts from meeting out a travesty of justice ... more importantly they can prevent people (like me) from thinking "... should I even be following any of these biased rules? ..."

Greater good of people demands that the rules and laws be based upon equitable and universally accepted principles ... I think some "equitable" principals are laid out in our constitution (I know the constitution provides an exception from "equality" by saying that special rules can be made for women- making a women specific law for tackling a problem faced by both genders is plain idiotic) ... Whether these principles are "universally accepted" remains an open question (The fact is - An individual has practically no choice over his country's constitution just like she/he has no choice over her/his parents, her/his looks , religion, etc ... most people are usually happy with what they have ... the ones who are not become - whiners ... deserters ... misfits ... rebels ... revolutionaries ... pioneers ... inventors ... prophets etc)

Finally, the two things that can reduce the justifications (actually there are some good ones) for partial and biased laws are
1) A more swift, effective and impartial investigative force (can it be police?)
2) Faster justice from the courts

$urpri$e

2007-07-04T15:32:00.000+05:30

There are small surprises in life that give us much more happiness than their monetary costs ... Getting a box of your favorite chocolates as gift ... finding the long forgotten 500 rupee note in the jacket pocket ... one can think of numerous examples ...

Today I had one such small-joys-of-life experience ... I got a cheque ... not too much in value ... but totally unexpected ... It was the payment for my piece in "Men's Health" ... I remember writing that stuff with no expectation of getting paid for it (Had I known maybe I would have written it more carefully) ... I was under the impression that people wrote such stuff just for the kick of it ... but then the cheque came ... and it gave me a high that no drug (at least none worth the cheque's value) could have managed ... :-)

Makes me wonder if one can sustain ones self just by writing opinion, insight and analysis pieces. There are a truck load of topics out there ... eco, Int relations and trade, health issues, climate issues, race/religion issues, rich-poor issues, moral-immoral issues ... If you can think about it , then you can write about it ... there can be many interesting pieces on many interesting topics ... but the point is - will people like to read them ??? will someone pay for them ??? does anybody apart from Vir Singhvi(or is it Sanghvi?) make a living by dishing out his style and guile, cheers and fears, vices and biases, fakes and takes ..et cetera et cetera for public consumption ... and then make a good life out of it ...

All you journalists out there ... tell me ... is it possible to make ends meet just by writing off your heart's content ???

(It's very unlikely that any journalist will ever read this post ... so the question passes to anybody who has foggiest idea about the publishing industry :-))

* I remember that I had promised a piece on Sudoku .. and I will definitely keep my promise some day ...

Radio Ga Ga

2007-07-01T09:40:00.000+05:30

Sometime near the beginning of time, when I first started off blogging, Delhi was already a quasi-modern city. Even in the ancient days of 2004, the city boasted 3 or 4 FM stations. Some of those stations were passably good, some weren't. One knew which was which - There weren't too many alternates and each station had its musical leanings (broadly angrezi, punjaabi-based-khichdi, akaaswani-based-oldies+social-message-trash). They also had well separated frequencies- one knew them by heart (hardly surprising since there weren't too many channels ... moreover it helped if you receiver had the tendency to lose "stored stations list" on each power cut)

All this has changed now.

Delhi, these days, has well over 11 FM stations and the list is growing fast. I found this out when I sat down to configure FM channels on my mobile phone (small miracle of convergence ... sometime in near future I hope to write about configuring a few zillion TV channels on my "portable electronic sustenance thing" - PEST) . Now my phone also has the "feature" of assigning channel-names to stored frequencies - This forced me to spend about an hour trying to figure out the names of various FM Stations ... it was not a very difficult exercise, the RJs helped me in this ... every 5-10 minutes the RJs tend to announce something like "its a gloomy day and you are listening ABCXYZ FM". On the whole this might look like a huge waste of time, but it wasn't - my efforts revealed two well-hidden facts - that "Meaoon" is the only FM station which is "just for women" and that "Gyanvaani" is Delhi's only full time "educational" FM radio channel ("educational" should not be confused with "educational films" like the classic legend "mysore mallige" which used to be afloat in hostel LANs)

So here's the current list of Delhi's FM stations. (hope it helps you in configuring your PEST or in case your receiver has the habit of losing "stored stations list" helps you in tuning into your fav FM station)

91.10 MHz - Radio City
92.70 MHz - Big 92.7 FM
93.50 MHz - Red FM
94.30 MHz - Radio One
95.00 MHz - Hit 95 FM
98.30 MHz - Radio Mirchi
102.6 MHz - AIR FM "Rainbow"
104.0 MHz - Fever 104
104.8 MHz - "Meaoon" 104.8 FM
105.6 MHz - "Gyanvaani"
106.4 MHz - AIR FM "Gold"

Point to note ... While most channels are separated by multiples of 0.8 MHz ... this rule does have some exceptions ... I wonder if some sort of optimized-station-separation is mandated in the policy for spectrum distribution.

Bharat ek Khoj... Shristi sey pehley sat nahi thaa

2007-06-12T21:38:00.000+05:30

Here's a blast from the past

One of my favourite TV serials, it was first telecast when I was in class 5 or 6 ... in those days , when history classes were the most boring things, it made history seem interesting to me ... Aptly named "Bharat ek Khoj" ... it was the story of Indian history, as told by Jawharlal Nehru in his book "Discovery of India"...

I especially liked the title tracks ... they had a distinct sound and aura about them

Yesterday ... I did some googling to dig out the mp3s and some info on the tracks ... The tracks are actually recitations of Sanskrit originals and Hindi adaptations of Nasadiya sukta and Hiranyagarbha sukta ... These Hymns (sukta) can be found in Mandal 10 (book 10) of Rig Veda.

Opening Track (click to hear/download the MP3)

(Sanskrit Rig Veda 10.129.1)
nāsadāsīn no sadāsīt tadānīṃ nāsīd rajo no vyomāparo yat |
kimāvarīvaḥ kuha kasya śarmannambhaḥ kimāsīd ghahanaṃ ghabhīram ||

(Hindi adaptation Rig Veda 10.129.1)
srishti se pehaley sat nahi thaa, asat bhi nahi
antariksh bhi nahi, aakaash bhi nahi thaa
chipa tha kya, kahan, kisney dhaka thaa
us pal to agam atal jal bhi kahan thaa

(Hindi adaptation Rig Veda 10.129.7)
srishti ka kaun hai karta, karta hai va akarta
oonche aakaash mey rehta, sada adhyaksh bana rehta
vahi such-much mey jaanta, ya nahi bhi jaanta
hai kisi ko nahi pata, nahi pata, nahi hai pataa, nahi hai pataa

Closing Track (click to hear/download the MP3)

(Sanskrit Rig Veda 10.121.1)
hiraṇyagharbhaḥ samavartatāghre bhūtasya jātaḥ patirekaāsīt |
sa dādhāra pṛthivīṃ dyāmutemāṃ kasmai devāyahaviṣā vidhema ||

(Hindi adaptation Rig Veda 10.121.1)
vah thaa Hiranyagarbh shristi sey pehley vidyamaan
vahi to saarey bhuut jaat ka swami mahaan
jo hai astitvamaan dharti aasmaan dhaaran kar
aisey kis devata ki upaasanaa karen hum havi dekar

(Hindi adaptation Rig Veda 10.121.5)
jiskey bal par taejomay hai ambar
prithvi hari-bhari sthaapit-sthir
swarg aur suuraj bhi sthir
aisey kis devata ki upaasanaa karen hum havi dekar

(Hindi adaptation Rig Veda 10.121.7)
garbh mey apney agni dhaaran kar payda kar
vyaapa thaa jal idhar-udhar neechey-ooper
jaga jo devoon ka ekmayv praan ban kar
aisey kis devata ki upaasanaa karen hum havi dekar

(Hindi adaptation Rig Veda 10.121.9)
ho.. srishti nirmaata swarg rachayta poorvaj raksha kar
satya dharm palak atul jal niyaamak raksha kar
phaili hain dishaayen baahu jaisi uski submey subpar
aisey hi devata ki upaasanaa karen hum havi dekar
aisey hi devata ki upaasanaa karen hum havi dekar

Now ... my Sanskrit is a bit rusty ... in fact my Sanskrit was always rusty ... never shined even a bit ... I could not graduate beyond "Ramah kandukain seh kridanti" and "Vrikshe patrani pattanti" ( I think these words are grammatically incorrect Sanskrit for "Ram's playing with the ball" and "Leaves fall from the tree") ... I have some questions which someone with better command of Sanskrit/Vedas can possibly answer - Can we call the couplets or verses (which are part of a sukta) in Rig Veda Shlokas? can we call them Mantras? are they called Rik ? ... What is the difference between a Shlok, a Mantr and a Rik ?

That's all for this post ... will soon write something on Sudoku

About Men's Health

2007-06-05T18:14:00.000+05:30

Folks I got some footage in print media

"Men's Health" Magazine (India Edition, June 07) carries a few picture and an article by me.
:-)

pages of interest 58-60

and the story continues ....

2007-05-27T22:27:00.000+05:30

Regular folks know that this blog has become (almost solely) about my Lymphoma ... I am not comfortable with the "oh poor me" undertone which(I think) comes with my disease and can get attached to the blog ... Since I don't want to be the "beechara" fellow... I would (hopefully sometime soon) start posting about more regular stuff (whatever that is) ...

And, from now on, I will mark lymphoma related posts with the label "Mission-Remission" ... this should help folks interested only in the Lymphoma story.

The past month and a half were supposed to be a break... a break from treatment which ended up being a break from blogging ... there was a lot of action in this time ... which would have made some interesting reading ... here's a sample ...

First there were the wild mood swings that came with steroid tapering-off ... I was taking some steroids as part of my Chemo ... actually "some" would be an understatement ... I was taking lots of steroids(about 10 times my body's natural production) ... This was soooo much that (in all probability) my body would have stopped making some of its own steroids (called "Cortisol") ... with the ending of chemo, the huge dosage of steroids had to end too - The plan was to taper the steroids down to Zero in 15 days ... these 15 days (and a week afterwards) turned into my personal flower-power days ... I went thru withdrawal symptoms that only the most wasted junky can boast of... there were cycles of depressive lows followed by ebullient highs ... lots of cranky behaviour that my wife(Afshan) gracefully endured, and I thoroughly enjoyed.

By the time the freak-mood subsided, my drug-induced diabetes had also vanished. Now I can hog whatever I like, as much as I like ... thank god for small mercies.

Then came the nice girl (Ananya Dasgupta) from CNN-IBN. She suggested that I do a citizen journalist report. Being ever so fond of "footage", I obliged and got my 5 minutes on national TV ... ideally I would have preferred being featured as a filthily-rich-guy... but that's still years away ... right now I have to settle for the citizen journo clip, which, apart from being for a good cause, qualifies as an "A" Grade look-mom-i-am-on-TV moment ... You can check out my citizen journo efforts at CNN-IBN website (by clicking here) ... The clip was immediately followed by a live discussion (Link here) ... pls discount the wrong age and the slightly sentimental pen-sketch.

I took part in the live discussion from Hyderabad ... had gone there to get a PET Scan done ... The scan is the one of the best available methods of detecting cancer ... it works like this - first they injecting some radioactive glucose in the blood ... then they take a picture of radioactivity that builds up inside the body ... Since the cancer cells eat-up 5-6 times more glucose than normal cells, they show up as bright spots in the PET Scan image ... My doctor tells me that my test results are good ... there is no "active disease" left in my body ... He shied away from using the word "Remission" ... mostly because the "residual mass" (leftover fibre and dead-tissue at the tumour site) has not reduced by the amounts that he wanted ...

So I am on "Mission-Remission" ... which starts off tomorrow with the first dose of radiation ... Will keep you guys posted about Mission-Remission and other interesting topics ...

Comming back to life

2007-04-12T09:28:00.000+05:30

Finally the chemo-therapy is over ... with that phase-I of fight against cancer has been completed.

I have shifted back to Delhi to rest, recuperate and rejuvenate. The whole aim is to the get the body and mind out of the effects of cancer treatment ... and get back to life

The first steps are already on the way ... I am slowly tapering off the corticosteroids (that I was taking) ... hoping that my metabolism will slowly come to speed on its own. More about this story in the following posts.

Right now, I will leave you with some visuals of the growth next to my heart.

This is how my chest looked about one year back. An expert can detect initial signs of lymphoma, but my doctor missed those signs completely. The lymphoma was later aught in an x-ray 6 months down the line. If it had been caught at the time of this x-ray treatment would have been much shorter and easier.

This is how the chest looked when I got the X ray in December last. The chest doctor suspected that I had TB. He asked for tests, but started off with TB before the tests could confirm/deny TB. I took that medication for more than a month.

In the first month of TB treatment, I started having difficulty in breathing and swallowing.
I met more doctors and they started hinting that I might have something other than TB. At that stage I got this X-ray taken in first week of Jan 07. It showed significant increase in tumour (In just one month's time). I got a laproscopic biopsy two days after this X-ray. That biopsy confirmed cancer

This is how my chest looked yesterday. Chemo therapy has taken out most of the tumour. But still I can see that some residual tissue still remains.

Chemo 12 - .

2007-04-12T05:40:00.000+05:30

It's over ... and I am happy
:-)

Chemo 11 - The Buzzzz

2007-04-01T06:28:00.000+05:30

Having done Adriamycin and Cyclophosphamide on 5 earlier occasions, I was expecting nothing new on the 6th.

I was in for a surprise ... thanks to something called cumulative dose which makes a repeat of the same old drug a whole new experience (not a pleasant one at that)

... in plain speak - repeat doses of the chemo drug causes more effects and side-effects than the initial doses. This is because - Any drug takes some time to leave the body, some of the drug remains in the body for quite a while (funda of half-life). The effect (of the drug) lasts much longer than the drug itself. So, the effect of repeat dose adds up to the effect of the initial dose (thus curing me faster). Sadly the side-effects also add up (e.g. so the mouth ulcers come faster and cause more trouble etc). Worst is the accumulated toxicity - most of the chemo drugs have a cumulative toxicity levels ... one is not supposed to take more than a particular amount ... even when that amount is spread over many days ... and wisely so ... I don't see much fun in a cancer free life if that life comes with failed Kidneys, dysfunctional liver and failing lungs.

... The body also makes its contribution or rather refuses to make it contribution (of putting putting up a good fight). It gets tired of fighting the Chemo ... gets hit faster and takes more time to bounce back.

Well, now that things are in perspective, the immediate effect of 11 Chemo can be described as a very strong buzz (less like a good high more like a bad hangover) in the head ... coupled with water tasting bitter (the torture is - my kidney will get damaged if don't drink something like 5 litres of liquid) ... coupled with bouts of extreme fatigue ... coupled with uneasiness ... upset stomach ... nausea etc etc.

That's all reduced by today ... and will get much better by the time I am ready for the last Chemo ... which is on the good day of Thursday ... it was supposed to be on friday ... but the coming friday is "Good Friday" (commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazreth ... definitely not a day to celebrate) ... so the doc advanced the chemo by a day.

Before signing off ... It's been a month since I have replied to mails ... don't hold it against me ... will catch up once the chemo gets over and the body gets recharged ...

till later ...

Goodbye Shaheer

2007-03-31T22:21:00.000+05:30

Shaheer, the 3 year old from Peshawar, died today ...

I hope there actually is some place called heaven and the little boy goes there ...

Makes me wonder ... Why the children? ... and then my thought goes to the parents ... They came with two kids and hope for a cure ... and now, when they are leaving ... one of the boys will be in a wooden box ...

For ages their land (near Khyber-pass in Hindukush) has been one of the most important connections between India and rest of the world ... today they have to fly to a third country (Dubai) to get back home ...

Life is strange ...

A Thought for Shaheer

2007-03-30T08:00:00.000+05:30

Folks spare a thought and a prayer for Shaheer, the 3 year old boy from Peshawar who underwent a Bone Marrow Transplant. Shaheer's graft (donated by his 2 year old brother) was accepted, but he has developed a serious complication called (possibly Drug Induced) Interstitial Pneumonia. None of the medicines seem to be working- the kid is on lung machine, heavy dose of Morphine and Steroids. He is fighting for his life in the ICU.

Such Interstitial Pneumonia is not very common here (someone said more common in radiation tratment patients in Australia). This is the first case in 15 years in CMC. If you know a Heamatology/Oncology/Pulmonology doctor who has successfully dealt with Interstitial Pneumonia (after Bone Marrow Transplant) and would be available on mail/phone then do let me know at baawara@gmail.com - Pls stop your search ... the little boy is no more

I hope the kid pulls thru ..

Chemo 10 - 9..8..7..6..5.....

2007-03-26T06:26:00.000+05:30

The Countdown is on ... there are just 2 more Chemo's left.

Life's on a routine ... a boring routine ... the initial hiccups with OPD Chemo administration have been sorted ... and there's nothing much new ... Just bidding my time ... Chemo will get over ... Then there is a one month break ... after which I get a scan (called PET Scan ... more about this one when it comes) ... Scan will tell us the extent to which the Lymphoma has survived the Chemo. (we hope that all lymphoma will be wiped out, but realistically some might still remain) Then we let loose some radiation on the remaining bits of Lymphoma ... just to deliver the knock out punch :-) Since the scan is not 100% reliable- we will nuke the remaining tissue even if scan shows no malignancy.

Now some might think ... what's the point of PET Scan when it's results may not affect future course of treatment ... Well I don't know ... the doctor asked for it ... maybe it helps in identifying the targets for the Nuke machine

I have learnt that these guys use some serious equipment for nuking the cancer- linear accelerators and all. Will talk about these big guns when I get to see them.

The plan is to go back to Delhi on 10 April and then chill out. The treatment path is chalked out. There's nothing i can do which will improve my chances . So i am taking things easy ... I think Delhi is a good place for taking things easy.

Chemo 9 - You have to "Face" it

2007-03-19T06:59:00.000+05:30

Long years ago ... when I was well and working ... Afshan(speaking purely as business partner) gave me this fine advice "go meet the clients" she said "else you will slowly turn into a face-less phone number and email-id" I was slow on uptake, thinking - why bother someone, waste their time and mine, when we can get all the work done on phone and email.

Friday's chemo was a reminder of that advice. It turned out to be a short demo-exercise on the need of putting a face (hopefully one which evokes recognition and empathy) to a name.

It was slated to be a long Chemo ... atleast 8 hours of drug infusion ... CMC OPD would not have handled it (they typically handle chemos that last less than 4 hours) ... so we had to get me admitted in one of the Haematology wards (called M wards locally, this includes M 1,2&3 and MTS 1,2,3&4)

Now M wards have a lot of patient load, so we had booked our room one week in advance ... We had played it safe ... asking for a room on Thursday (one day before the Chemo- so that Chemo could start early in morning ... also as a buffer just in case we had difficulty in getting the room) ... And we called M ward office almost daily- to remind them of our booking (obviously we were worried ... we din't want the chemo schedule to go awry because of some stupid room availability issue) ... each time we got the same reply - "we are not expecting any discharges, can't say anything yet"

Then we made a couple of trips to the office and realized that the lady seemed to be more helpful when "face to face" than on phone (on phone- "no rooms yet, pls try again later"... face-to-face - "yeah we are trying, will try to fix something up for you... definitely ..sure.. blah blah") . So on Thursday, when all the phone calls failed, we landed up at the office ... planted ourselves there and then convinced the lady that the ROOM IS INDEED NEEDED. We left after extracting a promise on getting a room first thing next morning.

Finally we did get our room ... not exactly early in the morning ... but after keeping our faces planted in front of her for about an hour and a half (It helps that I look like a cancer patient ... evoking some level of sympathy from the casual onlooker)

With the room problem out of our way, a doctor was needed - to give all the right instructions for the chemo to begin ... Getting the doc was the job for the nurses at M2 ... but why would they do it in a hurry? (They didn't realize the seriousness of the situation ... delay in giving Chemo meant delay in reaching home ... which meant me missing the starting of the cricket match ... really serious stuff)

This was another chance for me to use my "Face value". I just strolled into M3 (ward just above mine) and showed my face to Dr Biju (consultant who was around at that time) ... That did the trick ... being the nice doc that Dr Biju is, he was happy to see me, asked me about my health and when he found out that I had come for the Chemo he set things in motion right away ... two minutes later- Dr Abhijit had written down all the instructions and prescriptions ... the chemo nurses were already being called.

Chemo nurses looked pretty grumpy ... having to come down on such a short notice ... thankfully they too recognized me (I am 9 chemos old ... most Heamat Department people know me by now) ... one of them smiled and said ... " oh so its you who has got admitted in room 209 " ... and things went smoothly after that (She even found a vein in the first try)

That was not the end of the demo on face-power. Chemo got over by 6:30 (and my hopes of watching the match from the beginning soared) but the discharge- bill refused show up ... that despite all our requests for a quick discharge and countless phone calls... at 8:15 Afshan had had enough ... she took charge of things, went directly to the billing section and got the bill settled in 5 minutes flat ... proving that showing your face fastens everything ... manifolds :-)

Some of you might have started thinking that CMC is a lousy place ... things don't get done on there own, you have to push for stuff to move, etc, etc ... don't think that way ... people here are nice ... they are polite and the (at least) do things once they see your face ... you must compare it with the usual places ... where things don't move at all, despite all your pushing and prodding ...

that's all for now ... going to meet my doc today ... to discuss the future path of treatment

Chemo 8 - Hallu hallu

2007-03-10T09:40:00.000+05:30

It's been quite some time since I last wrote ... many would be wondering why ... after all, in the last 4-5 weeks , I have clocked at least two posts per week ...

Well ... I have not written because my body has asked me to take some rest ... duly obliging, I spent the last week resting ... taking time off from everything ... didn't even answer mails ... enjoyed the bliss of doing nothing (not that I was doing much earlier) ... but that's how it's been ... that's the type of energy that's left in me ... enough to keep a happy flow of thought going ... but not enough to let me put a sustained effort in anything ... its like the body is saying "... enough dude ... show some respect for the intensive chemo regime ... take it easy for some time ..."

So "Taking it easy" is the prevailing sentiment ... everything at a slow serene pace .... Hallu hallu ... as they would say in Hyderabadi ...

There was one exception though ... 8th Chemo ... it was not slow ... infact it was a fast hurried affair ... mostly because we had smartened up ... we didn't want to repeat that six hour ordeal of the 7th chemo ... and with a little help from Dr Auro (my consulting doctor ... very nice and knowledgeable) ... I managed to be the first patient in the chemo room ... FIFO ... I was the first out too ... in fact I left home at 12 and was back from chemo by 2 ... This must be some sort of an all-time record for fastest friday afternoon chemo at CMC ... (the fact that this particular chemo lasted just 15 minutes helped)

Other updates -
CT Scan - report shows that tumour has shrunk by almost half on all three dimensions. Volume wise tumour is down to almost 1/5th the original volume
Blood Counts - At a decent level of 5800
Mood - upbeat

that's all for now ... till next time ...

Chemo 7 - A Dip in the sea of humanity

2007-03-05T07:18:00.000+05:30

The sight was overwhelming ... The waiting area (with rows of fixed metal-bucket-chairs, an overworked fan and a TV) was full ... the hallway, with a continuous run of backless-wooden-benches, was full too (the less inhibited were squatting on the hallway floor) ... The elevator and stairway landing was substantially big ... it had plastic seats arranged in tight rows ... these rows too were full ... so were all leaning spaces on stairway railings ... the stairs themselves (except for a small way for people to climb) were full ... the crowd had overflowed down to the ground-floor ... which also had seats ... all fully occupied .. to the last broken-three-legged-seat and one more ...

And into this vast sea of humanity two more drops were added - Afshan and Tanweer Alam ... the concerned-wife and first-time-outpatient ... walked in to the Friday OPD - Department Haematology, Christian Medical College, Vellore.

I wasn't actually anticipating a quite stroll straight into the doctor's room ... I expected a Queue, with most seats in waiting area occupied ... but this was slightly beyond my expectations ... this was more like the crowd outside an small-town-cinema-theatre ... waiting for tickets of first-day-first-show of a mega block buster (perhaps starring Govinda and scantily-clad-item-girls) ... Only that people were less loud, more civilized and there was no pushing and shoving (maybe because a substantial chunk of the people were seriously ill ... and the rest were anxious and concerned relatives)

Earlier ... the day started with a morning trip to the Hospital ... I gave blood sample at 8:30 AM (the blood count report is a prerequisite for Chemo) ... Then we went to "Saravana Bhavan" ... which is one of the best chains of eateries for dosas, Idlis, Vadas, Murrukks and the kinds (the firang junta need not feel left out here ... they have eating joints all over the world) ... then Home ... Bath etc ...

By 1:00 pm reported to Heamat MRO (with appointment slip) ... MRO guys kept us waiting for 20 minutes, did something with our file and then sent us to the OPD ... which had the legendary crowd ... we stood waiting for an hour ... then Afshan had the bright idea of putting some guilt in the heart of one of the sitting relatives ... coaxing a seat for me (come on ... I am a patient here ... entitled to some special treatment) ... We met Vedika and Vedant, 16 month olds non-identical twins from Maharashtra ... Vedika will be the marrow donor for Vedant in 6 months time ... We shared some Dairymilk chocholates with these kids ... Shared some chocho cookies with a poor boy who was eyeing them while I was eating ... most of the time - we spent waiting

By 3:00 we still hadn't got a chance to meet the doctor ... Afshan did some running around ... talked to the doctor on phone (our regular consultant was on a week long leave, so we were assigned to an alternate) ... Doc said that he would call us as soon as our file reached him ... The file finally reached the doc by 4 ... consultation was just 10 minutes (all normal ... go get your Chemo ... CT scan report will come by Monday) ... we reached Chemo Room-1 ... nurses gave us a list of Chemo drugs to buy .... finally at 5:00 pm I was one of the last patients to be given Chemo ... The damn thing got over if 45 flat. (finally after that 5 hour wait)

My next Chemo is going to be 15 minutes short ... I plan to talk to my Doctor and work out a way to beat the OPD crowd ...

Clearly OPD at CMC is tough road to walk ... there is such a huge crowd of people walking the same road that one moves at a snail's pace ...

Home ... Home Again

2007-02-28T15:58:00.000+05:30

Saturday was the day I had been waiting for... on Saturday I moved out of the hospital and back to home ... back to Shums, Afshan, Amma and Aapa ... back to home cooked food ... and back to generous pampering ... Of course, the home in Vellore is not like the one we have at Delhi ... while Vellore home is different, it is by no means inferior or bad ... in fact, I like the place ... Vellore ... its got the small town feel (probably cause it IS a small town) ... you don' t have to travel too far to get stuff, things move at a human pace and there there is no chaos (especially on the roads)

The fact that the doctors have shown confidence by to letting me out, is encouraging. (It proves that mine is not a total gone-case ... something we have known right from the beginning ... haven't we?) ... From now on I will take my Chemo therapy as an out-patient ... which, I must say, is not an encouraging idea ... it means that Afshan will have to stand in long ques for getting appointments and making payments ... while I will have que-up for giving blood samples and for getting Chemo ... But we prefer the out-patient status ... it comes with the comfort of home.

Home ... in Vellore ... is a 2 BHK house with 3 bathrooms, a store room and is on the first floor ... It sports a decent balcony (Shumzi's swing has been put in the balcony) ... under our balcony is the mezzanine floor balcony and a single room ... we have also taken the Mezz-floor room as well ... It serves as my day-time abode of not-so-quite (due to construction next door) solitude ... The room doubles/triples/Multiples-up as a study/office/guest bed-room/etc ... Mom has got basic kitchen stuff up and running. And we have a reliable "bai" for Jhaadu-Poocha-Bartan ... Our long-time house-help(family member by now... he is on our ration-card) Ramzaan is a big hit with Shums and helps with the kid for at least 4-5 hours a day.

So all-in-all life is going on a smooth track ... Usual things ...happening at usual pace ... Day before - we took Shums for his Hepatitis A1 immunization .... today- I have a CT-scan scheduled
in another hour ... it should tell us the current size of my tumour ... Then we have my 7th Chemo (and my first as an out-patient) on friday .... and so life goes on merrily ...

Now ... I got to go ... and have a bath before heading out to the hospital for the CT ... will keep you guys posted ...

Chemo 6 - Time to think of the inequities

2007-02-23T18:29:00.000+05:30

Today was an odd day ... atleast it had odd beginnings ...

The day started off early ... too early ... I was up at 2 in the night (after having slept at 9 the previous) ... then tossed around in the bed ... couldn't get much sleep ... generally waited for the sun to come up ... and when the sun finally did rise ... I got up ... had bath ... had breakfast ... and when it was time to take medicines ... oddity again... I ended up taking Metformin (Diabetes medication, causes nausea) ... rather the nurse gave it to me (not her fault too, seems like the junior resident goofed up) ... apparently I was not supposed to take Metformin (it will add to the nausea of Chemo) ...(Latter Addition: Maybe the doctor didn't goof up, I am still taking the medicine ... though one doctor was saying that he would take it off ... that doc is on leave ... I have to check on the next OPD appointment)

Then ... The Chemo nurse couldn't find a good vein in my right hand ... so got the IV line set up on the left hand ... that's a second consecutive week for the hand ... the veins of my left hand had turned red after last week's Chemo ... I wonder if repeating the hand was a good thing to do ...

... there was more action for the morning ... the blog post (that I was writing in the morning) ... got accidentally deleted ...

Anyways ... Chemo started around 10 in the morning ... its 7:30 in the evening ... the chemo is still going on ... it has already outlasted a "sabzi wali maggi", two mausambis, Tehri, a cheese sandwich, mutter-paneer and rotis + a shot of Insulin ... (obviously, today was the day-off for diabetic-diet :-) ... it might go on for another hour or so.

Rituximab was the star of the day ... it went on for six long hours ... gave me enough time to ponder on the absolute unfairness of it's pricing ... The drug is Hi-Tech, cloned, artificially-engineered, trans-species, genetically-modified, all the hu-ha and the works ... at 1.35 lacs/700 mg dose ... the price is impressive too ... but I don't want to crib about the absolute price per se ... Typically a fortune is spent in developing a hit drug like Rituximab ... after all, the pharma firm(Roche in this case) would have spent lots on chasing thousands of molecules.. spending millions on clinical trials etc ... Roche has to recoup these costs and make some profits too ... hence the high prices ... In other words ... they have a case when they ask for a pound of the patient's flesh ... lets not begrudge them their rightful due ...

What I totally oppose is this - While, Roche asks for a "pound of flesh" (high price) from its American patients ... it's demanding both legs, both eyes and the good arm (impossible price) from the Indian ones ... Here's how - The drug appears to be 25% cheaper in India ( my dose would have costed around 1.8 lacs in America) ... but, in actuality, it is still way beyond the average Indian's reach ... The Aam Aadmi has to spend 12 years of his earnings on a 4 dose treatment ... the American Joe needs to spend just 5 month's of earnings for the same treatment ... how very unfair.

Indian cancer patients are getting a raw deal ... we are being made to shell out a disproportionately large portion of our life's earnings to sustain R&D cost of new drugs ... in practice, we are cross-subsidising patients who are way better-off than us ... enough is enough ... we better wake up and smell the coffee ... It's time we start taking exceptions on patent-protection of life-critical drugs ... or at least threaten the Pharma firms with such exceptions ... we have to have down to earth prices in this country...

Phew!!! ... that was serious stuff ... I have been typing away with one hand for way too long now (IV drip is on the other hand) ... the Chemo's got over too ... time to take a break ... we'll catch upwith you again in the next post ... till then ... ciao

Swinging both ways

2007-02-21T09:51:00.000+05:30

Short recap for all those who joined late..... My problems started eight months back with frequent fevers ... doctors brushed those off as viral ... start December - X-ray showed huge growth in chest ... wrongly identified as Tuberculosis ... one and a half month of wrong medication ... a lot of small biopsies and inconclusive pathology reports followed ... finally video assisted thoracoscopy got out some good tissue samples ... these were found to be malignant ... alarm bells rang ... I had cancer ... in two days rushed to CMC Vellore ... CMC identified "Mediastinal Large B-Cell Lymphoma" as the technical name of my condition ... Started on a 12 dose, weekly, intensive chemo therapy regime called MACOP-B + Rituximab... 5 weeks are over ... 7 more to go...

Now on to the funny situation ... the latest thing that is bothering me is not my cancer, but my blood sugar levels ... they have been thrown haywire by one of the steroids that I have to take ... and to some extent by the anti-diabetic medication that is being given to control the sugar ... Early in the mornings (5 am) my blood sugar level goes extremely low (Hypoglycaemia - with sugar levels around 40 -50) ... by late afternoon it shoots up to extremely high levels (Hyperglyceamia - sugar 300 -400) ... So my sugar is swinging both ways ... in fact its swinging wildly ...

So yesterday an endocrinologist (someone who deals with the endocrine system ... I have no clue what this system is ... Wikipedia says it produces hormones) came ... He has made some suggestions to my doctors ... lets see how his gyan gets my drug-induced-diabetes in control.

Othewise, I am doing fine here ... have met lots of interesting patients ... most of whom are doing well in their treatment ... Shaheer, the pakistani 3 year old with Thalassemia has been taken into the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit ... He will remain in the BMT unit till his marrow graft gets accepted and will come out after about a month ... Mr Matthew ... the patient who has been fighting Leukaemia for six years and who boldly proclaimed all cancer patients to be "Thick Skinned Buffalloes" comes down from Chennai every 3-4 days to continue is ongoing Chemo.

On my part, I have taken up the task of making a Hindustani (not Hindi or Urdu, but Hindustani) adaptation of a children's story book called "Rahul's Challenge" . This book was written by Sister Ann Bothamly, Ex- Head Nurse, Haematology Department. She is a Britisher who has made India her home since 1968. After retiring, she runs a home for children. In her day time she visits cancer patients, especially children at the hospital. The book is a story of a boy who has leukaemia and has to undergo Bone Marrow Transplant. Sister Ann uses it as a preparatory book for all BMT children ... it gives the kids an idea of all the things that they would have to go thru ... my adaptation should help Hindi speaking kids who are not comfortable with English ... Right now haven't begun work yet ... What should I call the story ? "Rahul ki Chunauti" or "Rahul Ka Mukaabla" or a totally different name ... These are the interesting choices that I have to make now....

Rest all is cool ... Should be discharged from the hospital in another week's time ...

Chemo 5 - Caustic Truth

2007-02-17T07:20:00.000+05:30

Folks Chemo 5 is over - It took 3 hours for the drugs to go down and I spent next one day balancing diabetic diet with nausea ... Its a catch-22 situation ... can't eat too much cause I am on diabetic diet ..on the other hand.. if the stomach gets empty (while loaded with Chemo drugs) I run the risk of getting very bad nausea and vomiting ... I think I managed the balancing act pretty well ... got away with just a slight queasy feeling and just a few hours of elevated sugar.

Fifth Chemo was a rude eye-opener... yesterday- a drop of my Chemo drug had fallen on the bed (clumsy nurse)...today morning- I noticed that drug had burnt the bed sheet .... just like chemistry lab, where spills used to burn our aprons and school dress....It's slightly unnerving...cause the chemicals in the chemistry lab were confined to the beakers, burettes and pippets...this damn thing is running thru my arteries and veins.

Check out the pictures (I have put stain and burnt area in red boundary)

Since I am posting pictures ...here's one with my balding head ... notice that my face is swollen ......

Another one with me and my little boy Shums ... i am lost in some thoughts .....

That's all for today ....more action in next week....

Pre Chemo Short Update

2007-02-16T07:49:00.000+05:30

Morning Folks ...today is another Chemo..a repeat of the first Chemo dose.. have taken this combination before.. with minimal fuss....so its a cool day

Abbu's coming down today...will stay on for a few days.....He has been real calm and composed in front of me...that's a great support... I can rest assured that dad is thinking calmly and taking rational decisions....takes the job of worrying (and thinking of where the money is going to come from) off my head :-)

The status health wise is.....blood counts rose steadily thru last week from 3000 to 3500 to 4000....they have taken fresh samples today morning....Neutrophil count (and hence immunity) is holding good.

It's the blood sugar that needs to be stabilized. I don't want to get cataract or major eye problems (which high sugar + steroids will cause) ..so am trying hard, with the doctors, to get the sugar in control. We have attacked sugar on all fronts ..... regulated diet, oral medication,insulin shots and exercise ... almost every trick is being tried.

I am running a small experiment of my own...using my glucometer I trying to figure out the ideal exercise schedule for myself (should it be pre-meal?, post-meal?..how hard? ..for how long?...how much after insulin? Amaryl?) Its turning out to be good fun. In fact I am doing so much of self-blood-sugar-testing that I ran of testing strips in the morning, so took a morning walk to the pharmacy to get more.

There seems to be an interesting day ahead....too much of action..dad coming...he will have a car with him...which means that Shums can come and visit me too......I am looking forward to it all...

Breakfast has come in ......and I just can't resist the idea of attacking it right away.....

so long for now....will write again after the Chemo

February 14

2007-02-15T08:28:00.000+05:30

Yesterday was Feb 14 - St Valentine's day. It's also my nephew Kabir's birthday..so for me.. its more Kabir's Day.. (without the St or "Sant"..hello.. I am talking my nephew here). Kabir turned 3 yesterday .....and from his pictures I can make out that there's a cute little Alam who will (in true Alam tradition) be super-hit in Switzerland(that's where he lives).

There's another 3 year old ...who was on my mind yesterday... He is two rooms away from me and has come all the way from Peshawar, Pakistan. This little kid has Thalassemia Major. The disease will leave him with a compromised quality of life and life-long dependence on blood transfusion. He has come for a bone marrow transplant- the transplant is the only hope against life time of transfusions. Guess his marrow donor....it is his younger brother...who is just 2 years old.

The ironic part in his story is ...that Thalassemia could have been avoided by a simple screening test (a blood test). This child's, his younger brother's and his whole family's troubles would never have risen if his parents had known about the Thalassemia test and had bothered to get the screening done. Indians are prone to Thalassemia and must be careful.

I think Valentine's day is just the right day to remind all you wonderful couples out there..If you are planning to start a family..please don't forget the Thalassemia test along with other pre-pregnancy and post pregnancy screening tests. I have seen many Thalassemia children in the ward here...believe me folks the risk is just not worth taking.......remember you owe the test to your kids....

With that message ..me signs off.....will send you a pre-Chemo update tomorrow morning.

Sweet Surrender

2007-02-12T06:43:00.000+05:30

Yes it is true- The Sweets are going to be surrendered....so will be the chocolates, biscuits and double helping of mom's food....gone are the days of eat, drink and be merry...its good-bye Khana-khazana and hello to Kalahandi
{for those weak in geography- Kalahandi is the place in Orissa, India, where (sadly) starvation deaths are a regular feature}

All my gloating about eating my fill and more (in post "year of the pig") has boomeranged...someone's evil eye ("buri nazar"), someone's voodoo and a lot of jealousy have come together and taken the pleasures of unrestrained hogging away from me.....

Want details?....here the latest "twisht" in my tale -

Fact is that I take a corticosteroid by the name Prednisolone (75 mg daily). Apart from fighting my tumour, It gives me a feeling of well-being and an very healthy appetite.

Now, it seems, it is also giving me hyperglycaemia and possibly insulin-resistance. This means that I have very high sugar levels in my blood ....and possibly, Insulin (the stuff that's supposed the help use-up this sugar) has become increasingly ineffective.(Well, I have pre-existing diabetes trouble- here's my September-06 post on Diabetes)

Yesterday my sugar level was around 425 (normal range 80-140), They gave me a shot of Insulin...the damn thing reduced a teeny-meeny bit to 380.....they gave another shot of Insulin and still blood sugar was 250 at the time I went to sleep. (despite a measly two-chappati dinner)

Now the two ways- other than Insulin, of reducing blood sugar are - controlled diet and exercise. Since I can't exercise too much, the resident doctor has decided that I must be put on very controlled diet. To be precise - a 1500 kcal/day diabetic diet.

1500 kcal/day will probably just about keep me alive and is likely to give me that empty-stomach feeling. What makes it a torture is the fact that Prednisolone will make me feel hungry, while rest of the Chemo-drugs will give me nausea on empty stomach. This has put me in a really tight spot - one right between the rock and a vary hard place.

So today,I have decided to be nimble and tactful with the dietician, maybe I can negotiate some tasty food and space it well enough to beat the hunger-spasm and the nausea.

Don't know if it will work......lets see......

Chemo 4 - Should be smooth sailing now

2007-02-10T07:01:00.000+05:30

Chemo 4 was possibly the easiest and fastest of all Chemo's. Chemo-nurse started an IV --> put a saline line on one valve --> Vincristine and Bleomycin were side-pushed (from the other valve).. and in 5 minutes flat and it was all over...short and simple.

From now on, I expect nothing but smooth sailing in the next 8 Chemo cycles.It's Just that the blood counts should hold on. WBC is still at 3000, but... the good news is that these WBC(leukocytes) are mostly "Neutrophils" (80% of WBC). Neutorphil is the stuff that eats up infection casing bacteria, fungi etc.... With about 2400 Neutorphils/Microliter of blood..I still have a decent cover against infections.

With this stable situation, I will leave hospital and move on to the temp-home that Amma and Afshan have set up in Vellore( prolly after Monday's blood counts at the hospital). Then I would need to visit the hospital only once a week to get my Chemo.

Actually, I could go back to Delhi and take remaining Chemo there....but I prefer to stay in Vellore...the deciding factor is not the Chemo, but management of any possible complications. For managing the unexpected odd situations,I would prefer CMC over any place in Delhi. Not that I want an odd situation to arise, but just to be on the safe side if it did.

Rest all is good, I am itching to leave the hospital. The room and the surrounding are chipping on my sanity. I wonder how people keep their heads from going bonkers when they have to stay on for months (some critical patients have to... someone in my ward once stayed for 5 months)

I asked the 5 month-stay fellow, how he deals with it. (Actually he has been fighting Bone marrow cancer for an impressive 6th year now)...He said......

We Cancer Patients are "Thick Skinned Buffaloes"

Interesting words...I guess hope/faith and thick-skin keeps a lot of us guys in good fighting spirits.

With that, your thick skinned friend would take your leave..got breakfast to catch up with....Will keep you guys posted..cheers

The year of the pig

2007-02-09T07:17:00.000+05:30

The Chinese new year is round the corner. Come 18 February and it will be the year of the "Pig"...yeah I know some people like to call it (inoffensively) "boar" , but boar is so bore...for me its just the year of the P I G - pig.

And in keeping in tune with the season, I am on a hogging spree..I am eating in almost every waking hour of my life...all thanks to some healthy appetite generated by Prednisolone

here's a sample
05:00 AM - Make Maggi at the "no cooking allowed" heater and eat
06:30 AM - Bread jam or banana or biscuits
08:30 AM - Two helpings of breakfast. Including at least two eggs and bread. idlis vadas/ pongal
10:00 AM - Puri-bhaji from YWCA canteen
10:00 - 12:30 - Anar, Mausambi, Kharbooz, Tarbooz and Banana
12:30 PM - Chicken Soup
01:00 PM - Home cooked food....Gosht or keema enough to feed a baby elephant
03:00 PM - Samosa/Cutlet
05:00 PM - Two masala dosas from YWCA canteen
07:00 PM - Dry chicken and veg-soup
07:45 PM - Home cooked dinner

End result. Blood sugar count of 350 and an injection of insulin from the ward nurse.

The interesting thing is that even after giving a free run to the "pig" inside me...my weight's holding on to 73-74 KG levels...Hope all this eating comes handy ...today is another chemo day

Blood counts slightly up - good sign

2007-02-07T18:40:00.000+05:30

Folks short update on top of the last post. My blood counts have started to increase on their own. This is a good signs and shows that body is capable of bouncing back after the occasional strong punch from the Chemo (I guess hour long squash sessions with VC have built up some of this stamina)

Instead of telling stories, I will let the numbers do the talking

Normal Range WBC count(lukocytes) per microliter of blood - 4,300 to 10,800
me after
1st Chemo - 4,700
2nd Chemo - 4,200
3rd Chemo - 2,700
today - 3,000

rest all is fine..steroids are making me pick up fat at all wrong places...I am losing muscle-mass due to lack of exercise. Soon I will be look like a small egg(neck and head) on top of large egg(paunch) with sticks (arms and legs) jetting out in all directions...

Doc says next Chemo will be on Friday (as scheduled) but after a blood count in the morning....

signing off for today....so long

Counting Blood

2007-02-06T06:03:00.000+05:30

Till now, (very luckily) my body has shown no adverse reactions to any of the chemo drugs (only drug, that I am yet to take, is Belomycin- it is rumoured to be rough on lungs and the skin. we'll see how it goes, its scheduled for this Friday)

So Far,So Good

Now, the game has boiled down to killing the cancer cells before the body gets badly hit (from chemo). The hit, that I am talking about, can come from two fronts..one- permanent damage to organs (heart,lungs,liver, kidney, bladder, eye sight). The damage is already being managed. I get things like "rescue medication" to reduce the effect of chemo on some of the vital organs. Regular tests/check-ups will ensure that any damage is identified early and slowed down.

The other area from which the hit can come- Infection due to low immunity. The Chemo kills leukocytes (WBC), which are part of the immune system(and help fight disease). Chemo also slows down bone-marrow- this can bring down the number of RBCs, WBCs and Platelets (measured by "blood-counts") in my blood - Leaving me "immune supressed". My blood-count numbers will definitely come down (inevitable), its the amount of dip that is unknown- it depends on my body-condition, fitness and my diet. Some dip can be tolerated, but if the numbers hit a bottom, i might get infection even from the very food that I eat and the shit that comes out of me. In slightly better cases I will still be catching other peoples cold (which might come to me as pneumonia ... which is why visitors are discouraged).

My blood counts are being measure every third day. The last check showed a slightly low count (for the first time during entire Chemo). This was an expected dip(in fact doc says could have happened earlier), and the counts are expected to bounce back. There will be another check on Wednesday, the counts should go up by then. If they don't, then I will be given something called "growth factor" which should set the counts right. The docs hope to continue with Chemo on friday.

So, all in all ,life is currently revolving around the blood counts....and, I guess, these counts are going to be the "hot topic" for some more days...

Chemo 3 - Hair today, gone tomorrow

2007-02-04T18:47:00.000+05:30

Here's the short update on Chemo 3. It was on Friday, went on for 7 hours and it went on fine. No lochas, lafdas or any problems whatsoever.

The only noticeable side effect, which I have observed, is that I have started losing my hair at an (note the pun) hair-razing speed. I first noticed this in the bath on Saturday...by today (Sunday) when I tug at a bunch of hair from my head, it just leaves my scalp and sticks on to my hand. Most of my hair don't even need the encouragement of a pluck, they have started falling off on their own. My whole bed is covered with hair, so is my bathroom sink.

While this hair loss is expected, its extent is not. Meaning, I knew that I would go bald, but I didn't know it would be this soon and I still don't know if the whole body is going to lose hair. All I know is that my head is going to be a shinning plate in a couple of day... and it might stop at that ..in which case I would look like "Mogambo"...there is also a possibility that all my body hair- lashes, eyebrows, chest-hair....every kind of hair may fall...if that happens then I would start looking like an overgrown lizard....Maybe then I can call myself by a respectable lizard name like "Comodo Dragon" or "Godzilla"

I have decided that tomorrow morning I will use my skills learnt at IIMB (where I was known as "Alam-Nai" even before I had graduated to become an Alumni) and shear off the remaining growth on my head. If I don't do that, there will be hair: there, everywhere

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

2007-02-01T17:04:00.000+05:30

Today began on a very positive note. I woke up fresh, full of energy and all ready for a bright sunny day. Did morning exercises... I think I overdid them by throwing in some sit ups to the regular ward rounds and stair up-downs.

An x-ray was scheduled for today and I was all set for the trip to the radiology department. To my surprise, it was the radio department that paid a trip to my room. At 8 in the morning an portable x-ray machine rolled into my room and took the routine snaps of my chest (the guy didn't even make me do the customary "take a deep breath and hold" stunt, he said that such fuss is made only when people visit the department, and not when the department visits them)

Results are extremely positive, my doc tells me that the tumor has shrunk significantly. I met the junior resident in the ward corridors, and he was more forthcoming with info- he said that the tumor looked almost half of its earlier size. The exact extent of reduction will only be measurable in next CT scan (scheduled 3 weeks from now), but still, the X-ray results were the extremely "Good" part of the day.

The "Bad" part didn't take long to come. Drug side-effects popped up again. This time I had sudden and strong pain in the lower back. It was so bad that I could lie in only two positions, all other postures very uncomfortable. Doc tells me that it is an expected side effect and has given me some medication. He expects the pain to be under control in 24 hours. I have spent most of the day lying face down with my leg folded up and the back arched. It's evening now and the pain has subsided, I am finally able to spend some time sitting and walking. As a consolation prize the chewing pains in the jaw have disappeared (refer last post for chewing pains episode).

Now on to the embarrassing stuff. I had been dreading GI ulcerations (a side effect of all chemo drugs, most significantly of Methotrexate)...and they did show up in a mild form. Mouth lining have gone pale and things have started tasting bland. Stomach is slightly upset. Worse of all is the effect on the lowest most of my GI tract. Washing up after taking the dump is not pleasant at all. Its about as ugly as things can get....hopefully GI tract will be back in good shape soon and lessen this misery...

All said and done...today's good news far overshadows the bad and the ugly...

Tomorrow is another day...Tomorrow is the day for my third chemo..

Energy Crisis

2007-01-31T20:52:00.000+05:30

As i read more about my own disease, things are becoming clearer. I have discovered that my general disinterest and lack of enthusiasm of the last few months could have been due to fatigue that is caused by the disease...

This has taken a load off ...i had begun to think that i had lost it...that my self-motivation and drive had deserted me for good... Now i can happily blame all the lazy postponements to Fatigue ....how convenient....Great

But on second thoughts...its not very convenient... i have had the fatigued feeling through most of today...so much so that i did not even feel like writing something interesting for the blog.

The only bright spot was a long call from my dear friend "uncle". After that i was charged up for half an hour. I went exercising by walking fast laps around the ward and by going up and down stairs.

That was a temp high.. I am back into today's energy crisis. So i am gonna sign off for the day ...will catch up with you guys tomorrow....

Jaws - Acne attack

2007-01-29T12:44:00.000+05:30

Its been 12 days since I started on chemo. All this while I have been living in a room in the oncology/hematology ward. The ward has interesting rooms- a few of them have air filtration systems, few of them have "No Visitors" sign and at one end we have a marrow transplant room with quarantine area.

The patients are also interesting. They come from varied places- all corners of India, Bangladesh and there was an Afghan patient in the room next to mine. All of them look frail and weak, some have no hair and most wear a mask when they step out of their rooms.

I seem to be the odd one in this setting. I look fit(at least from outside), have hair (it will take a couple more weeks for the hair to go)and don't wear a mask (immunity hasn't come down yet).

This was making me feel like an impostor, a fraud, a non-serious patient- loafing around in a very serious ward.

All this feeling of guilt was washed away the moment first indications of being "on-chemo" showed up.

The first culprit was "Prednisone" (a synthetic glucocorticoid hormone). It is a daily oral medication and has been made me over-energetic and constantly hungry. Three days back it threw up some acne on my chest. By the time the doctors gave me an ointment,the acne had invaded my back too. Docs tell me that acne is a side effect i have to bear, that the ointment will give some relief, and that the acne will increase with time. Currently, the worst chest acne have become big and a couple have almost turned purple in colour.Thankfully the acne on the back have responded well to the ointment and are not causing much trouble. As a result of all the acne I have started bathing twice a day (which might come as a big surprise to many of you)

The other guilt reliever came with "Vincristine" (an anti-miotic agent), which was given in the second chemo. Vincristine has made my jaw muscle act funny- my first couple of bites (into anything even mildly hard) hurt, things get normal after the initial few bites. So now, i do a few dry run of biting and warm up my jaws before i sink my teeth into anything. This reminds me of ragging days at RECW- After a good round of thrashing and slaps the jaw muscles used to become so sore that we just couldn't chew on our food.

Now that i have had the initiation rituals and feel a part of the hematology ward, I wish that other membership prerequisites, of this exclusive club, are not too hard on me.

Chemo 2 - The anticipation story

2007-01-27T12:00:00.000+05:30

Sometimes, and this always happens when you are expecting to be miserable, the anticipation is more nerve-wracking than the actual ordeal. One tends to worry mountains for a mole-hill size problem.

My second chemo is a good example. The dose was slated for Friday 26th of Jan...needless to say i was all worked up much before that. By Thursday evening i was all over the Internet- searching for more info on Methotrexate and Vincristine, the two chemo drugs. The net threw up some discouraging findings - between the two they can cause all possible complications in life, everything from skin rashes to death is a known side effect of these drugs. Being a smart manager, i reduced the problems to just 2 - managing nausea and Gastro-intestinal ulcers. Then began the story of Anticipation

Actually I have been steadily preparing myself for the chemo. I have already put myself on frequent small diets and have began drinking water frequently....on Thursday i moved into fifth gear, by evening i was drinking like fish.

Night came slowly and along came unending thoughts about the chemo. I got so anxious that I couldn't sleep. Some coughing came to my rescue, the nurse gave me some Benadryl (remember that potent intoxicating cough syrup of college days). One thirty was late time to go to sleep, but that was when i got the Benadryl and went into deep slumber.

Late to bed, late to rise. The nurse woke me at 6 and then again at 7 and asked me to get ready. I took a bath, had breakfast and then lay down on the bed, ready to start the drip, waiting for the chemo nurse. The chemo nurse didn't show up for a long time, it seems staff strength was low on republic day and I had to wait my turn. Every half an hour my ward nurse would come with reassuring words, telling me how the chemo nurse was just on her way. Obviously, chemo nurse had better things to do than putting me on Methotrexate. Being a patient (no puns here) guy i waited and waited.

Finally the chemo nurse did show up at 1 at noon. She tried to set up a line (needle with valves at one end, IV lines are attached to the valves at the end of this needle) , first attempt failed. She poked my hand again; finally a sound line was established. Establishing a sound line is extremely important. If, by mistake, the chemical goes into anything other than the blood vessel it can cause severe burns and pain.

Vincristine was given as a direct injection to the line. That got over in two minutes. Next I was given Methotrexate. It kept running down the IV for five long hours. I kept waiting for the drip to get over and nausea to show up. I was tethered to my bed by the IV lines and could not run to the loo to puke..so i kept a tub next to my bed for puking.

Five hours were past..Methotrexate got over, i was put on dextrose (hindi mey, glucose laga diya)...... the nausea never showed up...lucky me

I started feeling gifted....told the doctor...maybe my body type does not nauseate. He gave the knockout punch "nausea and GI ulcerations can strike on the second, third day or even later".

So here I am ...doing fine...and in perpetual anticipation of nausea....

Single handed post

2007-01-26T19:54:00.000+05:30

Just finished my second chemo. no immediate reactions or complications. Spent most of the 5 hours reading Lance Armstrong's story. A drip line is still running dextrose on my left hand, so typing with only one hand. Will give you guys a detailed account tomorrow when the drip is removed.

Bottom line is that things are going fine.

Chemo 1 - Patient Report

2007-01-23T06:34:00.000+05:30

Last Friday I started off with my chemo-therapy. This was the first dose in line of twelve weekly chemo-therapy doses that (I hope) will get rid of my tumor. The combination of my drugs goes by the fancy name of MACOP-B, It will be further spiced up with 4 doses of the wonder-drug Rituximab.

A nice guy by the name Tarun Jaboc (he is a doctor here at Vellore) has already taken the pains of writing about these chemo drugs. All the curious minded people can read more about my drugs at Tarun's blog article on MACOP-B

I always had a glamorous image of chemo. I used to think that there are special operation- theater-like-rooms, with strange contraptions, in which chemo patients are strapped on to a futuristic machine and given treatment. Actually chemo is not all that hi-fi. It’s given on an intra-venous (IV) line, much like glucose and saline. You lie down on a bed and the chemicals flow into you from a simple humble IV line. That’s all.

The interesting parts are the horror stories associated with chemo-therapy: - stories of nausea, vomiting, body rashes, blisters and ulcers and shitting pain. Thankfully I did not have anything more than mild nausea on my first chemo. But then, it was a mild chemo and my body hasn't weakened that much, at least not as yet. There still are harsher chemicals to come and I am not getting any stronger. So, in future, I might just have some interesting chemo side-effect stories to tell.

When we were young, elders used the bogey of "Scary-Baba" to keep us off mischief. “..stay at home, don't take things from strangers, don't walk down empty alleys ...Scary-Baba might catch you...”
The side-effects of treatment are the new Scary-Babas, prowling the side-alleys of the unknown road called chemo-therapy. I just hope that if and when the Scary-Baba catches me, the doctors will be right behind to save me.

Staging Lymphoma

2007-01-23T06:11:00.000+05:30

(writen on 15 Jan for the benifit of those who have just discovered that they have lymphoma)
Here’s what happens once a pathologist declares that you have lymphoma.

1) You begin shortlisting of possible hospitals to get treated from. This takes the form of frantic calls to all friends/known doctors/friends who know doctors. Your aim is to shortlist the best place for further workup and treatment. If you are lucky (like me) you will get an inside picture of many oncology departments/hospitals (they are all bad…some are less so….most doctors don’t have faith in their current hospitals…so if some doctor has good words to say about a facility in which he has worked in the past, you better give that facility some serious consideration)
2) You get a chest-abdomen contrast CT Scan done. This is an easy procedure. One is first given a liter of a metallic drink, which one has to drink in an hour. Then one is strapped in a CT – Scanner (A large and thick hoopla ring with a stretcher in the centre). One is also put on a drip (needle with butterfly shaped back, connected to some line of fluid- called iv contrast) . Then the stretcher is taken thru the hoopla ring a couple of times and you are done with the procedure. The scan tells you about all those lymph nodes which are involved in your lymphoma.
3) You also get a bone-marrow biopsy. This is to ensure that the lymphoma has not spread to your bone marrows. In this procedure, one is made to lie on ones side and a local anesthetic is given to one edge of the hip bone. Then a large needle is poked into the bone to extract some marrow. Despite the local anesthetic the procedure hurts, though just for that moment and not latter.
4) A lot of blood tests are done to find out some vital parameters

Then the doctors sit together, with all reports (including those reporting specially stained slides done by a pathologist) to find out the type, location, size, spread and stage of your lymphoma. Once staging is done further course of treatment is decided. Treatment could be either chemo-therapy or radio-therapy.In my case i might end up getting both

Always ask – So how can we be sure of this Doc?

2007-01-22T14:37:00.000+05:30

(written on 15 jan)
Most of us non-doctors know nothing about disease and its treatment. This makes us totally and inescapably dependant on our doctors. Whenever we begin sneezing, coughing, running high fever, seeing two at a time or shitting rocks …we just run to the docs and unconditionally surrender our body and purses to them. Thereafter, we religiously take the pill, apply the ointment, exercise the joint, massage the muscle and restrict the diet as prescribed by the doctor. We then hope that, in return of our blind faith, the doc will deliver us from our suffering and heal our wounds….

Beware…

Personal experience has shown that unless prodded with intelligent questions, the docs tend to be complacent and prone to making mistakes …..This puts your life and limb to danger

I have a lymphoma…so do quite a few other people I know about. One thing common amongst us all, apart from having lymphoma, is that our doctors began our treatment by assuming that we had TB. The TB diagnosis invariably began on a hunch and was never based on evidence. Thus, in almost all cases, precious time was lost before the lymphoma could be diagnosed. This time is the difference between life and death for a scaringly large portion of people. If the doctor had bothered to get the right set of tests and biopsies done, without wasting time, the lymphoma would have been discovered much earlier and would have been far easier to treat.

So why don’t the doctors diagnose the lymphomas earlier? Or for that matter why do doctors start most of their treatment without solid proof pointing to the cause or nature of illness
…..Because its easy, takes less time, is less costly for the patient
…..But mostly because the patient never asks him smart questions like….On what basis are you calling this a TB?… What is the proof that it not something else?

For a doctor each patient is just another case in a day full of many cases. It is upon the patients to keep the docs alert and on their wits ends by asking them insightful questions.

And my recommended question to ask your doctor-

So how can we be sure of this doc????

Things close to My Heart

2007-01-12T21:44:00.000+05:30

There are a few things that are extremely close to my heart. So close that some of them completely overshadow my heart in X-ray films and CT scans. They are called lymph nodes, and they have gone berserk. My lymph nodes have been multiplying at such a great rate that i have a 14 X 10 X 8 CM mass instead of the pea-size nodes that normal people have.

This condition of the Lymph is called a lymphoma ( a kind of cancer of they lymph). I found out only yesterday that i have a lymphoma in my chest and that it might be in immediate need of attention. Now i am planning to go to CMC Vellore, one of the better medical facilities in India. There, i will get to know the exact nature and spread of my Lymphoma. Also the intensity and course of my treatment will be finalized.

Hopefully, regular chemo-therapy will put me back into good shape. Will keep you guys updated with this challenging and new phase in my life....

Short Update

2007-01-09T18:04:00.000+05:30

Just underwent a diagnostic thoracoscopic surgery. Looks like I have a tumour, definitive answer in another few days. I'm Unable to type myself so taking help from Juhi. Will keep posting if possible.

Saddam dead - Winners in West-Asia rejoice

2006-12-31T15:17:00.000+05:30

Yesterday the whole world saw gruesome pictures of Saddam's assassination. I found broadcast of the pictures a disrespect to the dead. Today morning's Hindustan Times confirmed that most Indians also didn't like this version of victor's justice and its crude public broadcast.

We Indians have grown up on stories and mythologies of far more gallant treatment of the defeated. Most notable is the story about Porus, the king of Punjab(it was called something else at that time), whose army lost to Alakshendra's (Sikander). Sikandar asked Porus "how should i treat you?" and Porus is rumoured to have said " as one king treats another "...and Porus was treated like a king...his kingdom was restored (he was installed as a governor of Sikander)

Even in mythology - When Ravan was dying...Ram sent Laxman to go to the dying man and ask him for his knowledge...and when Laxman did this rudely, Rama instructs him to treat the man (guru at that point,cause he was the source of knowledge) respectfully.

No wonder Indians didn't like the circus show that is being put on by Bush/Maliki and being passed off as justice.

Interstingly the Iranian's and Israelis are rejoicing. They have their reasons too

Iran's chief enemy is gone..the men in power in today's Iraq were trained by Iran ...Shia/Persian Power has increased, Sunni/Arab power has decreased ...they have gained access to the holiest religious sites of Shias . Very importantly, they have gained a strategic significance due to which they can talk to America from a position of strength.

Israel on the other hand is happy to see the adversary who bombed them dead. One of the strongest Arab countries lies wasted. Muslim world, especially in west asia, is more polarized on shia/sunni lines and more likely to fight amongst itself than against Isreal. Americans have a ground presence in the region..another plus for Isreal.

I think Iran and Israel are rejoicing because they are the real victors of Iraq-America war.

Funny Day

2006-12-31T14:52:00.000+05:30

OK the result is out...the second biopsy say nothing conclusive.......neither confirms TB nor any tumour/cancer..doesn't even deny either....The pathologist seems to have learnt her art from the politicians...her whole report contained nothing useful or meaningful.

I am confused.....how am i going to be treated when no one knows the disease that i have....my strong suspicion is that i will be the guinea-pig in guess-the-disease experiment run by the doctors.

Ouch

2006-12-29T10:40:00.000+05:30

My last post would have given you the impression that I would never go for a repeat biopsy.

But lately, the doctor whom I am consulting for a second opinion (Yes Uncle, i went to Dr Kuplati... finally) has dropped some serious sounding words "thymoma" and "Thymic Lymphoma". This has scared me enough to get a second biopsy done. Thankfully, this time the biopsy-doctor was better skilled than the neanderthal-butcher who poked me the last time.

Results will be out in another 3-4 days.

My Parrots have flown away

2006-12-25T12:19:00.000+05:30

Ji haan

" Merey toatey ud gaye hain "

aur un ki udaan ke peechey ek kahani hai.....

So this is how it happened:-

For the past six months,I was in a low health phase. Falling sick had become a monthly routine. So, when i ran high fever again (about a month back) someone had the bright idea of getting my chest X-Ray done....That was a genius idea cause the x-ray showed something abnormal in the lungs. Being a rational man, I took the next logical step and got a CT scan done. Scan showed enlarged lymph nodes right next to the lungs and the heart.

This put doctors in overdrive....They asked me to get HIV, hepatitis, tuberculosis and god knows what tests done. Nothing came positive

Then i had to get an FNAC and a Biopsy done. For the benefit of inexperienced readers- Not only do these procedures sound scary, they actually are scary- some guy pokes a needle into you chest and then puts you in the CT-scan machine to check his aim. After checking the distance he missed by, he corrects his aim and pokes the needle again (in your chest). And thus after a little trial and error, CT-Scan monitors tell him that he has reached the right spot. Now, this man pokes really huge needles, injections and contraptions deeper into your chest and withdraws fluids and tissue to examine. All this while you can feel/watch him, under light sedation of local anaesthesia.

At this stage i started marvelling at the wonders of the "exact science" called "modern medicine". Now, I thought, these guys will run complex tests, spectrum analysis, rocket science etc etc and soon remedy my ailments.

Alas! this was not to be.....I was mistaken .....it seems modern medicine is not that exact a science after all. There are big elements of art, luck etc involved.

So, instead of giving me the cause of my lymph inflammation, the nincompoops at cytopathology labs (of no lesser places than AIIMS and Gangaram) gave me two reports, one contradicting the other. They asked me to repeat the scary biopsy procedures..ha ha ha...

What a bunch of incompetent quacks. Thankfully they did not wear leaf-skirts and human skulls and also saved me the trouble of watching their evil-witch-doctor Jhinga-la-la dance.

Finally, i decided to ditch the repeat biopsy and one of the doctors is treating me for the most likely cause....suspect TB (ji haan mai tapedik ka shikar ho gaya hoon). I take four different medicine and an injection daily.

Quite a sad situation..But take it from me....if you had to go thru what i am going thru.....then your parrots would also have flown away too....

Politics of Fear

2006-11-29T00:06:00.000+05:30

These are very interesting googlevideo clips that were sent by my friend Jim.
They are part 1,2 and 3 of the same documentary. My guess is that copyright of these must be with BBC (or so it seems with whatever little i could see on my limited bandwidth) and also that hopefully no laws were broken when they were put at googlevideo

Part -1 Philo groundings of neo-cons and radical islamist
Part 2 - Ideologies develop,distort, but not flourish
Part 3 - The false fear

Bahadur, Khan Sahib and Santa-Banta

2006-11-28T15:00:00.000+05:30

StarOne has cracked the TV humour-show market. The Great Indian Laughter Challenge (and its many offshoots, sideshows et all) are the second most funny shows after Tageshi's Castle (The POGO show with Javed Jaferry voice-over)

They even have comic acts from Pakistan. what is interesting is that the paki stand up act almost always has a few "Khan Sahib" jokes. Khan Sahib seems to be the Santa-Banta equivalent.

Apart from being made fun of, the "Khan Sahib" (Pathans) and the Santa-Banta (Sikhs) have another thing in common. Both these communities - the Pathans and the Sikhs sided with the "East India Company" in the "1857 rebellion" (Gadar ki ladayi). Maybe..and just maybe... 1857 losers tried to get even with them in a funny way.

If this hypothesis is even vaguely true, then others who sided with the "Company sarkaar" should also be at the receiving end of jokes. We can have a look at the "Gurkhas" - the other significant martial race that sided with the "Firangi". Indian joke scene is flooded with gurkha acts, they all start with ..Shaloom Shaab..hom Bahadoor ..... there might be other's who were with the English in times of Gadar and i don't have a complete list, but maybe when i am thru with The Last Mughal (by william Dalrymple) i would know better.

Someone should look at this angle of Khan Sahib, Santa-Banta and Bahadur Jokes and see if 1857 events secretly influence today's stereotypes regarding Sikhs, Pathans and Gurkhas

Risky Cat

2006-11-23T15:57:00.000+05:30

When I was in B school, there used to be a lot of talk ( i guess in eco and fin courses..) about risk profiles. How some people are risk takers (woh loge jo matka, juan-patti aur stock market kheltey hain), some are risk neutral (jo PPF aur mutual funds me paisa daaltey hain) and others are risk averse (jo unti mey paisa daba kar baithtey hain).

At that time it seemed more like intellectual bullshit- academic simplifications with little or no real world grounding. Today i got a better understanding of "risk taking" . here's what happened-

My little one (Shums) has grown fond of cats (I know some of the twisted minds are already joking about another "pussy lover"). My home usually has 6-7 cats hanging around, trying their luck for free food. Most of them are either current or previous litter from either "Chen-Chen" or "jangli-billi".

Now Chen chen happens to be a very friendly cat and Shums just loves playing with her- trying to pull her tail, ears,whiskers and occasionally trying to gorge out her eyes. Chen-Chen doesn't mind all this and patiently bears it all.

Not all cats are Chen-chen. Today, while he was on his pram, Shums started waving happily towards one of the not_so_friendly cats. This cat greeted him back by shaking hands (paw with nails extended). In the exchange Shums got a very minor scratch on the webbing between his thumb and index finger.

If the cat had scraped me, I wouldn't have given it a second thought. After all, i am the kind of guy who takes risks, does bungy jumping, quits cushy jobs to try alternate lifestyles. I don't take cat scratches seriously

But, I took the scratch much more seriously cause it happened to my kid. There is a .001 % chance that the barely visible mark had cut deep enough and was from a paw nail that had been recently licked by a rabid cat. The rarest of rare chances. But i was not willing to take even the rarest of rare chance with my son. I ran to the doctor and am getting Shums 5 anti-rabies shots.

This shows that risk-taking-ability is as very much situational. A Big risk taker of one situation can become a total play-it-safe guy in another.

I keep wondering ..can we turn around this logic and extend it on the opposite side... can every play-it-safe guy be turned into a super-risk-taker by getting him into the right situation(read: by brainwashing)??

...i don't know...only the best spin-doctors can tell

Live-in, Wives, Legislation and Jail

2006-10-28T13:33:00.000+05:30

He: Oh Shut up! I am sick of that stupid line that you keep repeating. Can't you think of something smart to crib about.

She: You insensitive pig!

He: Bitch

She (angry): SLAP!!! (slaps him)

He (grimaces): SLAP!! (slaps her and say) next time you touch me i will break your neck.

Seems like a bad but fair domestic fight....actually its not....After Oct 25 the fight ceased to be fair.

From Oct 25 onwards, if you happen to be "He", you would have just broken the law. To be specific, you have committed "Domestic Violence" under sections 3(a) (physical abuse),3(c)(threat of physical abuse)and 3(d)(psychological/mental abuse) of THE PROTECTION OF WOMEN FROM DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ACT, 2005.

Your crime would be a cognizable and non-bailable offense. While "She" would have done nothing wrong (at least nothing of cognizable, non-bailable variety)

If "she" happens to be your live-in partner. She would have power to get you kicked out of your own flat (Which you were kind enough to let her share).

Worst case is, if "She" is your wife and you guys live in a joint family. Not only can she get you kicked out form the joint family home and prevent you from seeing your own kids, she can also restrain your mother and others from entering your shared bedroom

You might end up in jail for a year(apart from the Rs 20K fine). All this merely on the basis of her words (while your words do not carry the same weight...some witnesses are born truthful)

This law seems bad...actually its intent is not...it rightly wants to prevent Domestic Violence.

The law seems bad because it protects only one type of people who suffer physically, sexually, psychologically and emotionally in a domestic situations - Women.

Men can also suffer domestic violence. There is no reason to deny them protection in a domestic violence law.

We have other laws slanted against men. In India only men can be prosecuted for rape.

What happens when a woman rapes a man????

The lawmakers did not see the possibility of rape by women. That was extremely poor legislation. But the rape law was framed generations back, its mistakes can be overlooked (but must be corrected).

The Domestic Violence law is framed in today's enlightened world. I should be a progressive law - free from parochial mindsets and gender bias. Sadly, our lawmakers are still infusing a strong gender bias in laws that are better off being gender neutral.

I hope that in next election we will elect smart and unbiased representatives,who will legislate progressive laws.

Till then..Indian men better keep their wives and live-in partners happy......

69

2006-10-23T22:31:00.000+05:30

On the way to Pehalgam from Srinagar, lies a small Kashmiri town named Avantipur. Avantipur gets its name from a great 9th century Utpala dynasty king- AvantiVerman.

Amongst his other great deeds, the king also constucted a grand temple for Lord Vishnu.I had stopped by to take a closer look at the temple. It is built in the Gandhara style(which has quite a few features of Greeco-Roman Architecture). From the excavated remains, i could make out that the original temple would have been Grand.

What's interesting about the temple is it's association with number 69. On the permeter wall of the temple there were 69 small chambers for 69 dieties. Obviously, King AvantiVerman (or his architect) must have seen something auspicious/significant in the number 69.

I tried to think up the rationale behind 69: What are the other things associated with 69? - few things came to my mind. hippy movement, woodstock and the famous 69 position.

What links these 69 things together ???

I couldn't come up with a cosmic link. So here's my take on linking all 69 related things.

There are images of Kamdev, Rati and wooh (kamdev image had two consorts being groped by him, one i imagined as Rati..other could have been any lady..i call her "wooh") on both sides of steps leading to vishnu idol. --> Kamdev would have been a champion of the 69 position --> which the hippies would have enjoyed in the Woodstock.

If you think I am talking Bakwaas...then give me a rational basis for the number 69.

Kashmiri Diwali

2006-10-21T13:23:00.000+05:30

With Diwali and Eid around, this is bonafide festival season in India. It's time for families to gather and spend time together. Keeping with the spirit, my family is gathering at Abbu's place in Kashmir.

Coming to Srinagar is not an easy task. Mighty Pir-Panjal ranges separate the Kashmir valley from the rest of India. There is no rail link, the only practical road connection is a very beautiful, but scary, mountain highway from Jammu. Since my boy (Shums) is 10 months old, I can't take this day long journey.I had to travel by air.

The valley is sandwiched between two very high mountain ranges. Clouds play a major spoilsport in all air travel - they can cancel your flight, force your plane to return to Delhi or get it diverted to Jammu...Our flight also had a close brush with some low flying clouds. The pilot tried a couple of times, but could not spot the runway. Finally when he did manage to get us on firm earth, we were greeted by rain and cold weather. To top it up, I came to know the that road to my home was blocked by security people for some stupid force movement..Thankfully I managed to reach home without much trouble.

The house is scenically located on a hillock, jetting out of a hill.It has farms & university below and trees & rocky peak above.It offers a good view of Dal Lake (in front) and lofty Himalayan peaks (on its right). There's a small stream that is being diverted to run thru our gardens. Overall, its a very peaceful place. The day i reached there was distant background sound of firecrackers - pat.pat .pat. patpat.pat (the sound that a "ladi" makes). This was more a Diwali-eve Delhi sound than a Srinagar sound. One does not expect pre-Diwali crackers because of Srinagar's demographics - though you find quite a few Kashmiri Sikhs (dad's driver is one),the only Hindus that i have seen are Tourists and Army walas.

The "ladi" sound(which i wrote about) got punctuated by a big "boom". The boom was slightly too big for a firecracker. I went asking Farooq, our house help. He explained the story behind the sounds. It seems two militants had entered a house right next to our university. The pat pat ..patpat was gunfire exchange between militants and security forces. The boom was the sound of security guys blowing up the house in which militants had sneaked into. I went out ...I could see smoke from across the plantation of Poplar trees. Soon i could see the flames from the house. It was just half a kilometer from my house...slightly scary huh?. Conclusion, i thought, the price of letting a militant into your house, is your house. Farooq told me - the security guys invariably blow up any house in which militant are found hiding. They do not bother to determine if the militants forced their way in (almost always). I sympathised with the house owner, he lost his house for no apparent fault of his. But even then, the militants were killed, so some good came out of blowing up a house....

My thoughts were premature, the militants were alive, the gunfire resumed,i was surprised...how could CRPF/BSF/Army miss the militants when they blew up the whole damn house...Maybe they blew up the wrong house.

The firing and grenades continued till evening, after which they stoped. Next day News-Papers told me that both the militants were killed. Three houses were burnt. One belonging to a widow, who had two daughters and a diabetic mom, she was making ends meet on a 2000 rupee pension. She would not get any compensation for her burnt house. I felt sorry for her.

The militants and the security forces are actually screwing the Kashmiris. No one can refuse entry when armed militants come knocking. Similarly, no one has the guts to refuse signature when security guys come with papers that give them permission to blow up ones home. The average Kashmiri is bound have a lot of pent-up anger and frustration.

Anyways, the other interesting feature of Srinagar is that one can watch Geo TV and other Pakistani channels and brush up ones Urdu. Besides, the Pakistani news-readers are much hotter than our desi variety.

I switched-on the TV. It had the same old news. Prime Minister informing the nation of ways to prevent Dengue. Another blast in a market, on festival eve, it killed a few and injured many. News reader said that a "foreign hand" was suspected .....Very familiar stories ..right? .....The only difference is that the PM is Shaukat Aziz of Pakistan, warning about Dengue in Karachi and the bomb blast happened in a bazaar in Peshawar. I could never figure out who the foreign hand belonged to..India or Afghanistan !!!!!

So i have seen and heard strange diwali crackers in Kashmir...god only knows what other things i get to discover...Keep watching this place

Finding time

2006-10-17T20:05:00.000+05:30

For the last few days, I have been thinking of posting another blog. There was a backlog of thoughts that i had to clear...thoughts on nuclear bombs, pulse rate during exercise, death sentences and what not.

And as a quick scroll below will show... i haven't written on any of these topics. In fact, i haven't written on ANY damn topic.

It's not because i don't have time to write. But because i don't have time when i want to write.

I only get a strong urge to write when
1. I am with Shums ...and my two arms and two legs are tied up in chasing/holding/bracing Shums
2. I am working
3. I am in the loo

But when i do have time....i just while it away...
And then i feel bad about it...

here's lyrics from floyd that capture my dismay over wasting away time

***********
..
.
And then one day you find that ten years have got behind you

No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking

And racing around to come up behind you again

The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older

Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time

Plans that either come to naught or a half page of scribbled lines
..
.
***********

One man's terrorist

2006-10-02T13:55:00.000+05:30

Terrorist, Aatankvaadi, Dahshadgard......these are some of the most common words found in todays media.

The words are being used very frequently. Open a news channel and you would definitely hear them in the first 5 minutes. Since the words carry a negative connotation, everyone wants to brand his/her opponent a "terrorists", an "atankvadi" or a "dahshadgard". In this bhasad* the word "terrorist" has developed as many meanings as the people using it. Here's an interesting piece on what Bushies mean by "terrorist". (from who else but aljazeera)

I have my own personal take
"terror" is anything that puts deep-seated fear in the hearts/minds of people.
"terrorist" is anybody who causes deep-seated fear in the hearts/mind of people.

Going by my definition, these are the common terrorists-

for individuals
1. Maths/Physics/history/Sanskrit teachers (depending on your choice of worst subject)
2. Exams
3. Economic/love-life insecurities
4. Corrupt Police/People with power
6. Neighbourhood/school bullies
7. Those who destroy life, limb, property (rioters, bombers and the kind)

For Groups and Countries
1. Opposing armies , militia and armed groups
2. Economic exploiters
3. Those hell-bent on destroying a group's uniqueness/identity/characteristics

If we got rid of all these 'atankvadis' (especially exams and terrible teachers) life would definitely be much more pleasant.

*
("bhasad" is a word introduced by Uncle, it can be used of any situation between "chaos" and "confusion")

Abbu and "Progress Report"

2006-09-29T14:16:00.000+05:30

Let me take you to the times of my schooling days -

In those days, I hated the idea of school, hated home-work (never did it properly after class 2) and hated the projects. What I hated most was the day when i had to get my "Progress Report" signed by my parents. The rules at Kendriya Vidyalaya dictated that such days came not once or twice...but thrice in a year.

Three times a year was too frequent for me to tolerate "school sponsored terrorism" ( phrase borrowed from Calvin and Hobbes strip). I countered by developing my own escape routine - hide the report-card till the very last day and then pop it in front of my mom seconds before the school bus was to leave. Mom usually had very little time to react, just enough time to skim through the numbers before signing off my "progress report".

After each such stunt, my mom used to warn me "agli baar Abbu sey sign karwana padega" (next time you would have to get it signed by your dad) . "Abbu" was used as a larger than life scare.

I usually managed to appeal to Amma's maternal instincts and avoid getting signature from Abbu. Eventually, i did once show my "Progress Report" to Abbu.... and, contrary to all my fears, he was supportive to the extent of being happy with my science and maths "Progress".

Thus, I realized that Abbu followed the policy of giving me space, allowing me to take my own decisions. He had his words of advice - "try to do everything with perfection" (Even if you want to be a thief, be the perfect thief - one who sneaks in unnoticed, does his job with minimal fuss, leaves no trace and then never gets caught), "try to stay within the top few students in your calss". He also had a big heart- when i was not that perfect in most things , when i did not finish in the top five(class 1 to class 10), he never held it against me.

This way, I was never under the maddening parental pressure that was making most of my friends crack (especially in class 10 and 12 days)

I love Abbu for that.

Years have passed since but dad has not changed much....occasionally he asks for my report ("..where are reports of those blood sugar and Lipid profile tests ...") and still has advice ("... see.. we have a genetic disposition to Diabetes, you got to exercise daily...")

Today, I myself am "Abbu" to my little boy- Shums. It is a big responsibility and it make me wonder..wonder whether i will be able to strike the right balance ....to give Shums enough space and yet ensure that he is out of harms way.

I don't have much experience on this job ..maybe its not not that difficult... maybe nature shows you the way.......maybe you can ask your Abbu for tips......

Will i do a good job? .....who knows......only time and Shums (when he is a Abbu himself) can tell.

Pissin Honey (It's such a great thing)

2006-09-27T20:35:00.000+05:30

It is Gods gift to mankind......the one shot solution to all problems.....it is natures bounty that only the lucky few enjoy...........it is the blissful sate of "Pissin Honey".

Yes .... I mean it ..... look at "honey"- it is made out of nectar and hard-work of tireless bees. In-fact it takes 5 litres of nectar to make one litre of honey and each litre of nectar requires from 20,000 to 10,000 bees' sorties.

Honey is special....... and so must be the guy who has "Diabetes Mellitus" (which is Greek and Latin for........."pissin honey")

My doctor just told me that I might have type II Diabetes Mellitus, and that I definitely have some degree of insulin resistance.

In non-doctor talk, this means that
1) I get to eat lots of healthy food and that too every 2-3 hours.
2) Afshan (my lovely wife) will get worried and will not let me do too any household chores. Hopefully, she might eventually get into the "mera_pati_mera_devata" mode, just like the wives in the 1960-1970s movies.
3) I get to exercise every day.

If all the three things happen, and they have to happen(else i die painfully), then i am gonna metamorphose into a six-pack hunk with a "pati vrata" wife....

Not too bad.........huh ?.......this...... pissin honey.........

Frank and Tony - Cricketing Gods

2006-09-23T19:47:00.000+05:30

Here's one .....................When the "Rain Gods" shower their displeasure on cricket matches..............who saves the game ???

hint..... its not the players , neither the umpires, referees or the spectators

I must tell you......

The job is for two mathematician, statistician types.....whose abode is in the land of the English

Their names : "Frank Duckworth" and "Tony Lewis"

Their claim to fame: They have stated the cricketing "obvious" and then went on to give it a quantitative basis.

The obvious fact stated by Duckworth and Lewis :- The major resources needed by any team to score runs are 1) Overs, in which to score 2) The batsmen who can bat in these overs (wickets remaining)

Seems simple.. right???

Interestingly, This simple statement(and the attached tables and methods) have made Duckworth and Lewis an inalienable part of cricketing world. They decide the destiny of every team involved in an interrupted match.

This makes them "great men".. gods of the religion called cricket

History tells us this interesting fact about "great men". Most "great men" have not only stated the "obvious", but have also given some numbers and formula regarding the "obvious". Numerous people have become immortal by stating simple observations and then attaching confusing numbers to their observations. Take the case of Newton:- He first stated the obvious ("apples tend to fall on the earth") , he then went on to attach numbers/formulas with this "obvious" {9.8 m/sec,G, g, F=ma, v = ut+ 0.5 (at*at)..etc etc}

What Newton did for Physics, Duckworth/Lewis (D/L) have done for cricket. They have managed to confuse the common man.

D/L have given us formulas and tables that quantitatively link the two main batting resources- overs and wickets. They have reduced the two parameters into one - "Available run-scoring resources". Further, D/L have gone on to give the exact percentage of "available run-scoring resources" left with any team, at any stage of an innings ("stage" being defined by the remaining overs and the wickets in hand)

But how does D/L decide matches???

When rain interrupts matches, only parts of the initially available "run scoring resources" get used in the two innings (other parts get washed off).

While one team might get to use one fraction (say, only 75% of the resources) in their innings, the other team might get to use another fraction (say 50%).

It is unfair to compare the score of a team which used 50% of its resources to that of a team which used 75%.

This is where D/L come in, their method
1) Calculates the difference in available run scoring resources of the two teams
2) Adjusts for this difference, and
3) Gives a fair way of judging the winner.

Let me elaborate,

Take the example of "Team1" playing "Team2" in a one day match. Let there be two interruptions in Team1's batting and one Interruption in Team2 batting.

For Team1 -
Interruption 1 (9 overs washed when the team has played for 10 overs)
Status Interruption beginning - 1 wicket lost, 40 overs remaining - Resource avail - 84.2%
Status Interruption end - 1 wicket lost, 31 overs remaining - Resource avail - 73.2%
Resource loss = (84.2 -73.2) = 11%

Interruption 2 (i'll spare you the details) resource lost 9%

Total Resource loss (Team1) = 20%

Team1 Scores 160 Runs. As a result of rains, Team2 innings reduced to 39 overs

For Team 2

Resource loss due to shorter innings - 12%
Interruption 1 (I am sparing you the details) resources lost 18%

Total Resource loss (Team2) = 30%

Over all, Team1 had 80% resources at its disposal, while Team2 had 70% resources at its disposal.

D/L sets the new target for Team2 by reducing Team1's score in the proportion of the resources available

New Target = 160* (70/80) + 1 (plus one cause you need one more than the other team to win) = 141

If Team2 makes 141 by the end of the "reduced overs", then they win, else they lose.

This was a case when the team batting second had less resources at their disposal.

The other case is when the second batters have more resources than first batters. There is different calculation for this case - Team2 would need to score more than what Team1 scored

Lets take that case: Team1 has 70% available resources (and scores 160) while Team2 has 80% available resources

Warning: this formula has not resemblance to earlier formula
Now, Revised Target = 160 + (235(80-70)/100) + 1 = 184

Please note, in the first case, a proportionate reduction in target was done. But in the second case the "magic number" 235 was used.

D/L has funny ways.

Whatever you think of the confusing formulas, D/L have become a part of the cricketing history. A refined version of their method (which runs on computers) has been used for all interrupted international one day matches since 2002.

Congratulations Frank and Tony..

As for me.........I am looking for an "obvious" to state... I also want to find some confusing numbers behind it.

Cautiously Confident (Caution : Funda overdose)

2006-09-19T22:01:00.000+05:30

How confident is too confident?

Case for Confidence
As people look at qualities - a self aware, balanced, consistent and "confident" demeanour is generally considered a good thing to have.

In competing for jobs, confident candidates have a definite edge over iffy-whiffy ones. Even my old b-school looks for the essential dose of confidence in incoming candidates (experience shows that quite a few cocksure smart-asses are masquerading as confident leaders of tomorrow)

It might seem that more the confidence the better it is...............................:-) well obviously there is a counter-argument

Case for Caution
A dash of doubt helps us keep our feet on ground. Small doubts lead to the ever useful sanity checks. If people were too sure of things....there would never be the second..third...and final draft....refining would be non existent - people will never take a good look from two steps back, and make the obvious correction.

Our insecurities save us from taking risks that we cannot afford to take. They make us evaluate and re-evaluate our options, till will settle on the right one (remember when you were choosing colleges, jobs, wives and swimming trunks...you were ever so cautious)

HMM!!!
So, where are the boundaries where the confident become foolhardy and the cautious become indecisive?

What is the point where the "fearless march into the uncharted territories" should convert into the "race to save your shit-scared ass"?

I have thought about it ...a lot......... and my temporary conclusion is .....confidence and caution are not mutually exclusive....In fact, to claim further , "confidence" and "caution" are not ever desirable things.

What are desirable are
1) Peace..a calm head, which knows the consequences of actions
2) Patience ...so that we don't panic at short term loss or get carried away by short term gains
3) Wisdom to know the right from wrong

If we have these three things....the apparent conviction of "confidence" and safety of "caution" would not be missed...

In the end I can confidently say that "confidence" is a non-issue....or maybe it is..

The Big Bang Theory

2006-09-15T15:52:00.000+05:30

If you have ever smoked more than two cigarettes a day ...you would know that smoking has a tendency to take over its victim in an all-pervasive grasp. Very much in the manner in which the Hyacinth weed takes over many of India's water-bodies.

Like the Hyacinth, which makes its first appearance as a single leaf or two, smoking also starts with a single puff from a borrowed ciggi.....like it happened to me about 10 years back in the “Cafty” next to third mess...in RECW.

Like Hyacinth, smoking rapidly expands. Before you know, you get hooked on to the "post-meal" sutta.....then the "pre-meal" sutta..."pre class"...."post class"...."pre-dump".....the list goes on...

The Hyacinth weed is extremely difficult to remove....if, while removing, a few leaves or plants are left behind ...the remains slowly grow back to cover the lake again. All the Hyacinth has to be removed completely to save the lake.

Same with smoking. I have never seen anyone who voluntarily quit smoking by slowly reducing the number of daily ciggis......It is not humanly possible..........one's resolve breaks before the habit is broken. I myself have tried many a times....reducing is impossible....

What is possible... is sudden break (shock treatment)...

Usually such breaks are inspired by

1. Emotional moms: "....beta merey sar par haanth rakh kar kasam kha ki tu aaj sey is gandi cheez ko haant nahi lagayega..."

2. Concerned Girlfriends / Cute Female Colleagues (most probable: while most GFs know, mothers are rarely privy to the fact that their "pyara beta" smokes) ..

(Something like this happened to me)
Cute colleague: You are such a great guy, i am sure you can leave smoking if you try
you : Well Hmm.. I am sure my will power is strong..so if i don't smoke for a month will you take me out on a treat?
Cute Colleague : Deal
you (sucker): Deal

(This didn't happen to me...but i am sure this method will work)
Girlfriend : You are not getting any further unless you quit smoking
you : Come on!!... i would become a sex starved maniac otherwise
Girlfriend : your choice.....the ciggi or me
you (sucker): Of course you my love....i wouldn't touch a ciggi again...now come on UMMM

Such shock treatment works for a while.... but the chemicals and the urge to smoke eventually wins in about two days time and makes you into a liar
You: "..Kasam sey maa.. jub sey tuney bola hai mainey haanth bhi nahi lagaya... "
OR else
You: See girl i told you....not even a single ciggi in the past one month. How about that treat now
OR Still
You: Never darling...how can I? I love you so much

To escape becoming a liar …I recommend you try the The Big Bang Theory......

The Big Bang Theory
Next time you have that serious lung infection/Viral/dengue/Malaria ....you would be forced to quit smoking for a week......this is the time when your body will be so seriously screwed by the high_temperature / near_death_experience that it would forget to crave for the ciggi.....

This is the BIG moment to seize.....gather all your will power and resist smoking for a few extra days........BANG ..the quitting will stick.......

Believe me....This works ....your body will be so relieved of escaping the miseries of the illness that it will forget to miss the ciggi... and if your resolve can block the mind from missing the ciggi....you will be free from the crutches of smoking.....

It’s worked on me (14 days since I last smoked) ...no reason why it will not work on you....

This "Big Bang Theory" is the recipe of freedom.....it should be taught in all schools.... and that too as early as class 8 (which is when a few "brave" boys first venture into the forbidden realm of smoking)

And so ....i start again

2006-09-14T19:22:00.000+05:30

There's an ideal i hold very dear to my heart.

It's not very big ...In fact it is just one word long.... it is............"simplicity"

I think the greatest writings are in the simplest words. Greatest complexities can be explained by simple examples. Even the mathematicians like simple solutions to deeply knotted problems

Simply put...........simple is elegant........

Sadly, my writing skills are not very evolved....so i can't put my ideas in a few simple words.....

So i have decided to keep practicing my writing till the ideas start coming out in simple words

Hello You and Me

I am back

Cheers

Me

Piracy -- what he heck i like this one

2004-09-24T08:35:00.000+05:30

Cric in my head:
Someone said
"friends who could have been more
friends who were more and decided to be less
friends who are reconsidering whether to be more or less"

Funda of a perfect life

2004-09-13T16:19:00.002+05:30

Here's an excerpt from a mail conversation

My friend : Howz life otherwise?

Me : life is going on well...except for the lack of a decent girl ....life is sort of going perfect;-)

My friend : I think the lack of a decent girl is the reason for life going on so perfect ;-)

:-))

Low low low

2004-08-27T17:00:00.000+05:30

It is that empty hollow feeling...creeping up on me....

Boss is home.. she took a half day...other (so called) senior guys are also off....

some part of me tells me..........don't do anything............
And what am i doing??? ....well..........nothing..

But hold on....surprise surprise surprise.......
Instead of being happy about being idle.....i am getting restless...
"doing nothing" is worse than "doing a lot of work".....
Its a very bad state....an empty head...nothing to do....its scary.........

This seems like the catch 22 of life....
When one has a lot of work...one yearns for idle time
and when one is idle........one gets restless for work.....