All I want is a Ride

All I want
Is a ride.
Take me anywhere.
As long as I can
See, hear, feel.
As long as the dark glasses
Of ignorance
Are stripped off my eyes
Every other minute.
As long as all this extra weight I carry
Of petty skirmish, complacence, mediocrity,
Is stolen, hidden, taken away.
Until my mind
Is simple
And clear
Like the wind in my hair
And water through my fingers.
As long as this sponge
Can soak up
More words,more thoughts, more smiles, more darkness,
More death and destruction,
More happy imperfection,
And learn from it,
All I want
Is a ride.
Take me Anywhere

– G .

Belagavi, India.

Delhi, India

Call it Magic

Sometimes the days are roller coaster rides.

The movie I live in, is technicolor, with an oscillating background score and a whole bunch of volatile emotions flung about like pages torn from picture magazines, stuck on a large yellow wall, dotted with rough illustrations in ink, filled with mad things people say. And a desk.

Inevitable, that a bookshelf should extend from the floor to the ceiling. Sitting next to the large window with the wood chimes and the billowing white cotton curtain with golden elephants stamped all over.

Inevitable, that a cat should be curled up in the cushy corner that I want to occupy.

Inevitable for Ayn Rand to continue to recur in that corner of my field of vision.

The framed Beatles poster isn’t quite straight. There is a Bob Marley one too, hiding behind the door.
The pieces of the jigsaw puzzle lie scattered near my blue-yellow running shoes.

Ah, daydreams.

Surviving from run to run, waiting for the time to lace up and struggle every step up that hill repeat run, complaining about form and pace, building castles for the marathon coming up.

I’m just happy I’m running, that i can feel the wind in my hair, that I can feel my muscles complain about a rising mileage, that sweat dripping into my eyes is a sensation I can look forward to.

The memory of the profound simplicity of field life keeps piping up like an intelligent and obstinate child.
When did wanderlust find me and trap my soul? I cant remember.

I leave you with Coldplay playing Magic. The music floats in the air like ringlets of smoke or bubbles with a dot of rainbow, created from watered down shampoo and a pen without a refill.

Of Inspiration and Inspiration

There is no greater high than being back on the running track. 

I’m fatter, older and slower. My muscles’ amnesia is painfully(literally) evident, my feet are just about clearing the ground, my knees pipe up complaining alternately, and sometimes together, and barely discernible inclines make me feel like killing myself. To say nothing of, my form is ALL wrong.

And I’m not running with music. So, there’s no Black Eyed Peas Phunking With My Heart, no cliche Eye of the Tiger helping with the remote possibility of a second wind. I do have this really cool bunch of people clapping when i finally finish the run they completed about fifteen minutes before me.

Despite it all, I do finish the run, and the rest of the day I feel like the cat’s whiskers. I also don’t feel killing myself over a piece of chocolate cake that I’m going to have no matter what (yolo!). Nothing compares to a post-run euphoria, and its as addictive a habit as working in the field. Every painful step in front of the other feels like I’m squishing out all the stubborn laziness, pooling in abundance inside me, like toothpaste from an almost empty tube. Akin to Sunday confession, and kriya, and meditation, for me.

Having committed myself to at least a good six months of slavery to books I don’t like reading, and expensive twelve hour classes I wont like attending, I constantly find myself trying to take 10 steps back to retain the memory of the big picture that I’m trying to achieve. Next year, this time, if I’m getting myself butchered in a post-graduate program, I will consider myself lucky. 

Stop scoffing, contemporaries, I’m not trying to cast myself as the solitary warrior, here. Consider this a collective sigh, a small wail sent up on OUR behalf. 

This is not an unusual situation for an Indian Medical Graduate to be in. Its also an unfortunate situation for them, us, to be in. In the current generation, I have come across a subset of these bright, motivated, clinically oriented, and this is a difficult combination to find already, but patriotic doctors, who recognize the crying need for medical care in  many parts of the country and want to do something about it. In order to actually be able to achieve something constructive in that vein, very quickly the requirement of having a post graduate degree for a host of reasons becomes evident. Giving those incredibly competitive and remorselessly memory reliant exams, is so difficult for this subset, because they happen to be concept-oriented people, not learn-by-rote people. 

Its not easy to get a residency abroad. It requires hard work, a lot of time, and a big dollop of luck. But its concept based, predominantly.

So, these kids want to stay in the country, but desperately want to bypass the Indian entrance exams.

Its a tad worse for the female subset (dont boo, boys) because a section of the family seems to have devoted a part of their lives reminding them about various Important Things: their incessantly ticking biological clocks (ALREADY you’re going to be an elderly primigravida), the necessity of getting married (you’ll feel lonely and regret not getting married when you’re old and are suffering from arthritis and/or dementia or you just want to talk about the book you’re reading), the grandparents desire to see them married and preferably witness irritating great grand babies running around the house While They Are Still, you know, alive (how do you argue with that?).

See, if you want to have babies, its all good, more power to you. But if one wants to travel around, mess up a few times in general, discover and re-discover what clinical medicine means, and get selfish pleasure out of sticking IV lines in the middle of a forest, then prioritization is a persistent knot in ones stomach that insists on prompt resolution.

At some point, hopefully, we all reach a crossroad, take the road less travelled, and reach the same damned crossroad again a year or two later, if a little wiser the second time around. By that time one is compelled and/or motivated to choose said path. So all thats left really, is the actual doing. 

If i think about the future, things begin to look daunting, and the tunnel threatens to become darker and cloudier. Like a stuck record, my brain starts flashing a shady-motel neon sign that says things like ‘Baby-steps!’. Interchangeable with “One freakin day at a time!”.

And of course, my favourite, “Carpe that (expletive of choice) Diem!” 

(side note: if you see a post MBBS person hanging around with a morose/blank expression, showing symptoms edging towards zombie-like behaviour, the drug of choice is an encouraging smile. You can gauge boundary issues and (always) after oral consent, move in for a hug, as supportive therapy. )

To explain the point of the title, though titles should be self explanatory, is to take a deep breath and to literally look for inspiration in everything around you. Yes, its preachy, but it really is aiding survival here.

Chai on the way.

A Golden-baked Sunday

It has been a glorious Sunday. Early in the morning, a baby turned pink from an almost purple blue.

Then a hike to the hill just off the highway, hidden behind dense thicket, surrounded by large rocks and purple weeds, revealed a stream gurgling loud complaints as it splashed rocks into shape. We watched water spiders make waves and heard brainfever birds in the distance, in addition to my company airing their ear worms loudly. 

On the way back, we made a detour through the local sunday market, and while the others bought strange shaped and coloured vegetables from small piles, i attempted to catch the eye of anyone who looked like they may be interested in being my camera’s subject.

Brunch was an omlette, with the sweet locally baked bread and a colourful salad tossed in olive oil, vinegar, pepper and lemon ( I think). After much lazy hot water splashing, I sit here, with my feet up(my toe ring changing colours after having been subject to multiple elements of nature), my back to a luke warm sun, under a wood thatched roof, a wooden hand-made chime dancing gently over my head, and strains of flute coming from the neighbouring hut. My limbs ache sweet from the walking. Afternoon is spilling into evening, the birds are flying back in poorly constructed Vs and I feel good. I have caught the day, as if off guard, in a moment that is still, and alive. Im sipping very sour lemon tea, nibbling on a very sweet sweet a friend has brought from Kerala and reading a book called ‘Emergency Sex (and other Desperate Measures) : True Stories from a war zone’, written by a bunch of people who worked with U.N.

The song of the crickets has already faded into a barely discernible back ground track, and the infamous Bijapur mosquitoes have begun to buzz in my ears, attracted to my bright laptop screen.

Today has been sorted. I am grateful.

 

NOT my last trip to the woods

for a while now (since i started on my field mission), i have been repeatedly told to document my experience.
i used to be the kind of person that couldnt stop writing. the actual matter written was of course only occasionally anything other than balderdash, but it was a record, if messy, of the goings on. anything that would be remotely interesting or cringe-worthy would be there for a future me to facepalm away my nights at. then various crowded-and-not-so-pleasant-encounters-in-my-life-later  i developed a block. i just couldnt get myself to sit in front of a mode of translation from brain-words to actual written words and put anything down. the ideas in my head were too muddled and my words not fully formed enough to force their own identity on me and push me to write them.

little has changed. except that, what is hopefully only my first mission, is coming to an end. a feeling resembling a rapidly growing hibiscus plant, is growing on me; the fear that these things im learning from everyday happenings, and accepting so matter-of-fact-ly into my thought pool will slowly fade, that this exponentially climbing learning curve will plateau and i will settle down into the rut of ‘civilised’ city life with little but memories that stand out as blotches of colour on an otherwise nonspecific canvas.

and i panic, sit up sweating from this mediocre nightmare, determined to not let that, of all things, happen.

hence, here i am, typing, typing, like a drowning girl frantically reaching out for a log of wood, hoping, that it  really is never too late, determined to store my remaining couple of months like a folded picture in my wallet that i can keep opening and looking at. finding new details in old memories, learning new things from old mistakes.

watch this space for ideas that may not be fully formed or snippets of happenings -to-me from the forests of chhattisgarh, if and when i am graced by the presence of network and a functioning internet connection. until then, count your blessings, enjoy your peace. 🙂 leave me to look forward to the gruelling work schedule about to kick all the holiday cheer stuffing out of me.no,nobody is forcing me to go. but me. sigh.

this time when i pack

anxiety (Photo credit: FlickrJunkie)

this time, as i pack my stuff into my all consuming, seemingly pitless, weight-absorbing rucksack, preparing for my return to bijapur, aside from the pre-work, post-holiday blues, i do not feel any anxiety about what i will forget to carry with me or what i will reach and then realise i havent brought with me, that essential piece of trivia that i definitely couldve done with. i am relaxed. i have realised one thing, thank god, that i do not NEED anything. a pair of clothes that fits, my stethoscope (Tintu, for future reference), my camera, running shoes, toothpaste, cash, identity card, earphones. oh, underclothes (mom would cringe that this is an afterthought). everything else is peripheral, could easily be done without, is not irreplaceable. living in a place like bijapur, meeting the kind of people that i do, watching them live in a forest in the middle of nowhere, with, really, much less than whats in my list of essentials, these tribals arent unhappy, or ill equipped to face anything that they come across. i find myself wanting to do more with less. it has become as if, a fun exercise. oh, i do not have this, hm, what can i use instead? this leads to less baggage ( imagine all the heavy meaning implied by the word baggage), fewer attachments, minimal airport time, no loading off and on the bus anxiety, and a general look of dis-approval from my mother who reminds me every time that once i come back to ‘civilisation’, i must transfer my loyalty to suitcases. i am, at this point, tempted to launch into a tirade about what ‘civilisation’ really means, and whether i am coming away from it or going into it, and whether its a good thing or bad, but lets save that ramble-in-the-busy-market for another day. meanwhile, i do not know how long this weightlesness, gravity-nullifying, freedom-setting endeavour will last. i hope its one of those life long unshake-able habits one develops from the field. its a lesson that has hit me late into my field journey, that so many have arrived at so much earlier, but i am determined to revel in the feeling.

p.s. i think i forgot to mention my box of ear-rings. thats my vice. one must look good in a mirrror/stream/rear view mirror irrespective of geography. no?

Related articles

• this time when i pack (nomadoc.wordpress.com)
• Naxals kill journalist in Chhattishgarh (dnaindia.com)

Binsar Valley

Monsoon treks

Maharashtra, India

Paradise flycatcher!